French Republican Calendar - Criticism and Shortcomings

Criticism and Shortcomings

Leap years in the calendar are a point of great dispute, due to the contradicting statements in the establishing decree stating:

Each year starts at midnight, with the day when the true autumnal equinox falls for the observatory of Paris.

and:

The period of four years, at the end of which this addition of one day is usually necessary, is called the Franciade...The fourth year of the Franciade is called Sextile.

These two specifications are incompatible, as leap years defined by the Southward equinox do not recur on a regular four year schedule. Thus, the years III, VII, and XI were observed as leap years, and the years XV and XX were also planned as such, even though they were five years apart.

A fixed arithmetic rule for determining leap years was proposed in the name of the Committee of Public Education by Gilbert Romme on 19 Floréal An III (8 May 1795). The proposed rule was to determine leap years by applying the rules of the Gregorian calendar to the years of the French Republic (years IV, VIII, XII, etc. were to be leap years) except that year 4000 (the last year of ten 400-year periods) should be a common year instead of a leap year. Because this proposal was never adopted, the original astronomical rule continued, which excluded any other fixed arithmetic rule. The proposal was intended to avoid uncertain future leap years caused by the inaccurate astronomical knowledge of the 1790s (even today, this statement is still valid due to the uncertainty in ΔT). In particular, the committee noted that the true Southward equinox of year 144 was predicted to occur at "11:59:40 pm", which was closer to midnight than its inherent 3 to 4 minute uncertainty.

The calendar was abolished because having a ten-day working week gave workers less rest (one day off every ten instead of one day off every seven); because the Southward equinox was a mobile date to start every new year (a fantastic source of confusion for almost everybody); and because it was incompatible with the secular rhythms of trade fairs and agricultural markets.

Another criticism of the calendar was that despite the poetic names of its months, they are tied to the climate and agriculture of France and therefore not applicable to France's overseas territories.

Apparently, the designers of the calendar were unaware of the possibility of a lunisolar calendar as their proposals do not appear to make any mention of lunar months, lunisolar calendars, or of the Metonic cycle. As a result the Republican calendar, just like the Julian and Gregorian calendars, has months whose lengths only have a vestigial relation to an actual physical phenomenon. This is inconsistent with Romme's assertion that the new calendar should be faithful to natural cycles and should not perpetuate past mistakes:

...reason demands that we follow nature rather than servilely continuing upon the erroneous path of our predecessors...

The proposal for the new calendar is a litany of criticism of previous efforts, the previous quote of Romme being representative. As another typical example is Romme's opinion about the nomenclature of the French Gregorian calendar:

This nomenclature is clearly a monument to servitude and ignorance, in which each successive civilization has left an imprint of its impoverishment. The astrological names of the days of the week and their cabalistic order which has been preserved since the first Egyptians and by the impostors which profited thereby and the blindness of men who continually preferred to suffer rather than change any of the idiotic habits of their fathers would dishonor our Revolution if we did not maintain the vigilance which has so successfully attacked all preconceptions.

This tone sets a high standard by which the Republican calendar might itself be judged.