The other day I had a text exchange with a priest friend asking about why, because it is a leap year, we didn’t celebrate St. Matthias. He wasn’t sure about why the leap year changed the date.
I responded that it was that it was an Ember Day in Lent, so we observed it, but I explained something about the leap year. I’ll give you a nutshell version, leaving out all the stuff about the Julian and Gregorian Calendar reform.
It has to do with the ancient dating. Matthias was/is in the Vetus Ordo calendar on 24 February in today’s way of dating. However, on the Roman calendar, which is still listed in Novus Ordo books, it was/is slated for the vi a.d. Kal Martii (the 6th day before the Kalends of March). A leap year adds a day at the end of February but it doesn’t change the date of vi a.d. Kal Martii. Instead it adds an additional vi a.d. Kal Martii… a Second Sixth… Bisextilis. That means that there are TWO 6th days before the Kalends of March. The Vigil of Matthias would be on the 24th and the Feast on the 25th.
Poor Matthias can get bumped around in the Novus Ordo, too, since his Feast can coincide with Ascension Thursday.
St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin – celebrated on iii a.d. Kal. Martii – also moves because of leap year. He is, in the Novus Ordo, on 27 February (iii a.d. Kal.). In the Vetus Ordo, on regular years St. Gabriel is on the 27th (iii a.d. Kal.) but the addition of the “Second Sixth”, this year he is on 28th (iii a.d. Kal.)
In the 2005 Roman Martyrology, we find entries today, 29 February, for the Pope St. Hilarius (+468), St. Oswald, Bl. Anthony of Florence, and in China St. August Chapdelaine a priest of the Paris Mission Society, who was arrested with many neophytes, beaten with 300 blows, partially buried, and later beheaded.
BTW… here is an page from the amazing Smithfield Decretals (France – 14th c) which is known for its fantastic marginal drawings of battling rabbits, a medieval Yoda, and Reynard the Fox – certainly inspirations for the online game base on medieval manuscript figures in which figures such as St. Hildegard of Bingen duke it out with warring marginalia – I digress. On this page, about half way down the right side column is an explanation of the leap year and St. Matthias the Leap Saint.
A standard solar year has 365 days and six hours, so in four years’ time these hours make 24 extra hours, which must be added as a new day to every fourth year. This additional day is what we call “double-sixth-day”, because, although it is counted as an addition, it stands under the same number as the previous day in the calendar, so that the two days are regarded as one and the same. The extra day is inserted in the calendar after 24 February (six days before the first day of March) so that we celebrate the memory of St Matthias the Apostle (24 February) on the next day, too.
Other points.
Bisextilis is not a Jesuit feast day.
Ember Days were often the days for ordinations.
People born on leap days are called “leaplings”.
Most of the Apostles Feasts seem to be distributed through the year toward the end of the month.
Ash Wednesday has not yet fallen on a 29 February and it won’t until 2096.
Tidal friction in the system of your planet and its moon slows your planet’s rotation down so that a day is lengthened by some 1.4 milliseconds per century. In about 4 million years, we can stop with the bisextilis correction.
Loading ...
“Bisextilis is not a Jesuit feast day”.
My understanding is that in the time of that order’s foundation, celebrating Bisextalis was frowned upon very much indeed. But as the years passed and the Jesuit leadership achieved a more … practiced and nuanced … understanding, celebrating Bisextalis
was tolerated so long as it didn’t frighten the horses. Now, of course, celebrating Bisextalis is still officially disapproved of by the Jesuits; but in private its enthusiastic embrace is practically mandatory.
Do not forget the story of Frederic in the Pirates of Penzance, who was born on February 29th in a leap year.
Gilbert and Sullivan tell us he was mistakenly apprenticed to a pirate, instead of a pilot, “until his 21st birthday.” At the age of 21, he is not yet free, because he has only had 5 birthdays.
amenamen: yes, that brings one back to happy choral society days of yore:
“How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way,
Years twenty-one I’ve been alive.
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
I am a little boy of five!
Chorus of Pirates:
He is a little boy of five!
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
A paradox”.
Gotta love Fr. Z’s sense of humor.
LOL to both Fr. Z and Clinton for the “Bisextilis” tomfoolery.
I just came back from a diocesan “listening” session on Synod of Synodality 2: Electric Boogaloo (I went because I was volun-told by my pastor). It was wretched, but could have been worse. I feel like I have done a good day’s Lenten penance in 2 hours of listening to folks explain how if we just gave out more donuts and had catchy music we’d be even more welcoming to folks. I feel like I should sit and just read the Summa for an hour or two to get my mind re-ordered correctly.
“Bisextilis is not a Jesuit feast day”.
My understanding is the Jesuits, as Clinton phrases it, “enthusiastically embrace” a whole litany of sextilia.
(neuter, for obvious reasons)
Following on from amenamen’s comment, had I been born of the day the doctor & midwife calculated I was due, yesterday would have been my 15th birthday!
As things turned out, my impatience to get out and see the world (I must have been really bored being in my mother’s womb for so long!) meant that I celebrated my 60th birthday on the day after Quinquagesima Sunday a couple of weeks ago.
As it happens, I was born on Ash Wednesday. Maybe quite appropriate, as my prematurity may have been partly caused by my mother’s smoking. Our then family doctor, a dedicated pipe smoker, probably felt it would have been hypocritical to insist my mother give up smoking whilst pregnant.
What does one do for the luna in the Martyrology for the bissextilis? The note in the Martyrology I have says to use that of the day (littera u this year), but then we’d have the same luna date twice in a row, and that would throw us off the actual lunar cycle, correct?
Mon Pere: luna
Interesting question. This is complicated stuff. I only vaguely understand how these things are worked out. This year my Ordo says that the
Dominical Letter: GF
Golden Number: 11
Epact: XIX – which means the letter of the Martyrology is u.
In the old MartRom of 1878 that I have, in the entry for vii Kal Martii (23 Feb) there is a rubric:
In anno Bissextilii his pronunciatur, Sexto Kalendas Martii, et eadem Luna, scilicet die 24. et 25. Primo die, id est 24, hoc modo: Sexto Kalendas Martii, Luna, quota fuerit. Deinde… […] Secunda die, id est 25. Sexto Kalendas Martii, Luna… In Judea, etc. ut in sequenti Lectione.
So, this was dealt with a few days ago with the real bis-sextilis.
Hence for Prime for the luna of
28 Feb – Prídie Kaléndas Mártii Luna undevicésima Anno Dómini 2024 (February 29th 2024, the 19th day of the Moon,)
29 Feb – Kaléndis Mártii Luna vicésima Anno Dómini 2024 (March 1st 2024, the 20th day of the Moon)
1 Mar – Sexto Nonas Mártii Luna vicésima prima Anno Dómini 2024 (March 2nd 2024, the 21st day of the Moon)
Time, and the Moon, march on.
In the newer 2005 MartRom there is a helpful page precisely for 29 February, lacking in the older RomMart.
On both days, u – 19 – it just repeats. On 1 March u is 20.
Fr. Z – I offer a correction that is quite minute, but if you start digging deeper into space science you will find much larger problems with our ”know and taught science”…
The earth has stopped slowing down its rotation and instead is accelerating its rotation. You see that 2020 the earth did not slow and the next 3 years we gained time.
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/earth-rotation.html
Did you know our magnetosphere is weakening?
Did you know the magnetic North Pole has left its hundreds of year old wobble rotation and is accelerating toward Russia territory?
That’s just a start…. They’re a rabbit hole to go down that points to the clear evidence that our academic cosmological science is wrong. I’ll give you an example.
Black hole (mass) constants are inserted in their galactic equation to cover up the fact that their planetary motion equation is wrong. In other words they insert a constant in the equation because the equation does not correctly predict the motion of the distant heavenly bodies..
You may point out the recent picture of the black hole…. Well dig deeper into it (are you still taking news at surface value?). That picture of the black hole is as artificial as googles recent pictures of our past…. The picture is a result of a forced (desired) outcome.
.