Celebrating Sacred Time
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 This is the Coligny calendar - we are now round about the turn of the Christian era. This calendar does not emanate from a Christian milieu, but it does show people concerned with the various different time-patterns needed for the ritual enactment of their own liturgy. This bronze panel is massive - it originally measured approximately 5' by 3'6''; it was discovered near Lyon in 1897. It sets out times and feasts sacred to the Celtic tribes of that time and place in sixteen columns in tables covering a period of five years. The months are marked alternately 'MAT' (ie 'good' or 'lucky') and 'ANMAT' (ie 'not good' or 'unlucky'). So time is seen as having different qualities - there is the good time, the lucky time - and the unlucky time. There are the high and holy days - the 'stressed time' - and then there are the 'ordinary days' when not much is happening - the 'unstressed time'.   



This is an enlargement of one of the bronze fragments of the Coligny calendar. The idea that time has different qualities is a recurring factor in the connection between time and religion and human life. There were times when it was good and auspicious to offer sacrifice and times when it was unlucky to do so - and it was vital for the worshipper to know the difference!
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This is a Roman lunar calendar, based on observations of the phases of the moon. The Romans counted their days in a different way from us - instead of counting from 1-29 or 30, as we do - they had three fixed days in the month and counted backwards towards them. The first day of the month was called the Kalends (from which we get our word 'calendar' ) and was  originally the day of the new moon. The nones was either the fifth or the seventh day, and was originally the day of the half moon; the Ides was the thirteenth or the fifteenth, and was reckoned to be the day of the full moon.