On The Calendar
What Sacrobosco may be most famous for is his criticism of the Julian calendar. In his book on computus, De Anni Ratione (1235), he maintained that the Julian calendar was ten days off and that some correction was needed. He made no proposal to correct the accumulated error of ten days but looking to the future, he proposed to leave one day out of the calendar every 288 years. In this book, he invented the false notion that Caesar Augustus took a day from February to give to August (see Julian calendar).
Read more about this topic: Johannes De Sacrobosco
Famous quotes containing the word calendar:
“To divide one’s life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.”
—Clifton Fadiman (b. 1904)