Word: exiguus
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...this millennium has been no stranger to calendar disputes. It was not until the sixth century that the monk Dionysus Exiguus created our calendar system by putting a date on Jesus' birth, and many people have still not yet agreed on the details. Think of the old dispute in Northumbria over the correct date of Easter: Starting in the year 627, as the Venerable Bede records, the Celtic and Roman traditions provided two different dates for Easter, and the Northumbrians were left to celebrate Easter twice a year. The queen fasted on a different day than the king...
...excuse for some folks to sell more alcohol, for others to drink more alcohol, and for still others to see if Anthrax really works as well as advertised. In fact, it's not even the year 2000. Our western calendar was concocted out of thin air by Dionysius Exiguus, a sixth-century Scythian monk, whose love of Jesus was eclipsed only by his inability to count accurately. Dionysius tried to estimate the date of his Savior's birth, and then tried to construct, on that foundation, a formal system of measuring time. Let's just say that mistakes were made...
...crowd pounding back beers in Times Square, the doomsayers bunched in armored yurts, all of them will greet the millennium at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31. But by more careful calculations, the millennium began a few years ago. A large part of the misunderstanding stems from Dionysius Exiguus--Latin for "Dennis the Short"--a 6th century monk who should be thought of as the original millennium bug. Dennis laid down the basis for the calendars we use today by figuring how far in the past Christ's birth was. As it turns out, he was off by several...
...century astronomer-monk Dionysius Exiguus tried to find out in what year Jesus was born according to Roman reckoning, misread his sources, and threw the dating of the Christian era out of whack...
...upon by many well-informed citizens who pointed out that there had been no year Zero A.D.; therefore the 20th Century could not begin until Jan. 1, 1901. (Actually, the pedantic insistence on Jan. 1, 1901 has been overborne by other pedants who say that when the monk Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th Century began the fashion of counting years from the birth of Christ, he missed from one to seven years. So the year 1900 may have been really 1901 or 1907.) In pedantic Boston, the 1901 view prevailed. On Jan. 1, 1901 throngs gathered on the Common...