Mark J. Reed wrote:
So what was the goal of the calendar's design? Given the Year of
Confusion, there was obviously a concerted effort to bring the Julian
calendar into alignment with the seasons, but what were the reference
points?
The Julian Calendar restored the Spring Equinox to somewhere around the traditional date in late March. It is likely that the actual set-point was the New Moon (conjunction) occurring just before Roman daybreak on Julian Day 1704988. We know that day as January 2nd of 45 BC (also called -44). But if that year (the first year on the Julian Calendar) were not considered as a Leap Year (after all, why put in a correction already in the very first year?), then that day would be January 1st, the First Day of the Julian Calendar. Fitting in a way that the Solar Calendar should have a Lunar set-point as its origin.
The considerations for the Gregorian Calendar were that the Equinox (as observed at Rome, for a day beginning at Midnight) should never occur LATER than March 21. In fact, due to the extreme jitter of that Calendar, there were Equinoxes occurring on the 21st, the 20th, and the 19th already in the first century from its introduction. But never on the 22nd, for several millennia at least.
-- Robert H. Douglass
