Word: millenniums
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...thus that I have been entrusted with the dubious honor of writing the last Crimson column of the true millennium, a column whose subject is at the same time pre-determined and obsolete, a column of exactly one thousand words that will drop instantly from our printing press to our archives to blessed obscurity, as no one reads The Crimson on the last day before Winter Break. (Including...
Fortunately, I am not the first to face this dilemma; this is the third millennium, after all, and there are some precedents for how to proceed. An obscure manuscript recently discovered in the Vatican Library has been revealed to be a message from a clerk to his fellow students at the cathedral school of Fleury (this was before universities) containing his comments on the passage of the millennium. I have reproduced it here with my comments, so it may serve as a basis for comparison with our time...
...everyone knows, the XIst century--and with it, the second millennium--will not really start until January I, MI. This past year, the Year M, was simply irrelevant. Yet few are celebrating this milestone; we've already had one millennium celebration in the last XII months, and no amount of persuasion will convince the populace that the calendar started in the Year I, not the Year...well, not the year before that. [This was before zeros, at least in Europe anyway. The Hindus, Arabs and Mayans had zeros, but it didn't seem to do them much good...
...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...
...Calendar bickering aside, this has been a truly remarkable millennium. Think of what has occurred: the birth of Christ, conversion of Constantine, the fall of the Western Empire, the barbarian invasions, the rise of Islam, the coronation of Charlemagne, the creation of the Holy Roman Empire. We have seen the spread of new types of government, such as arbitrary lordship, and new ideas, such as religious intolerance, across Europe; will these trends continue into the future? The tenth century was called by Henricus Luce "The Ottonian Century" for the dominance of the Holy Roman Empire, but will the Empire maintain...