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ten days of october 1582
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The missing ten days of October 1582

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Vanished. Gone. But what happened to the missing ten days of October 1582? And why did they not vanish for everyone at the same time.

The answer is the Gregorian Calendar.

Ten Missing Days

Until 1582, the Christian world ran on the Julien Calendar. Unfortunately, because the Julian Calendar was actually longer than a standard year (by 11 minutes and 14 seconds) it meant that over time, it became inaccurate. Every 314 years, the error added up to one whole day.

Meaning that over time the date of Easter became incorrect. At least according to the Council of Nicaea. In 325 they had set the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox. Around the 21st of March.

However, over centuries it became apparent that the drift caused by the calendar had made the date of Easter incorrect. Many proposals to fix this were put forward over the years but no action taken.

Council of Trent

During a session of the Council of Trent in 1562, a decree was passed asking for the Pope to fix the problem. As ever, the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly. Eventually Pope Gregory XIII signed an order in February 1582 to adopt the Gregorian Calendar (the one we use today). Bizarrely, to bring the vernal equinox (and Easter) back to the date of March the 21st, ten days had to be dropped completely from that years calendar.

It was decided that since no Christian festivals took place between October 5th and October 15th, this would be the time allotted to be “lost”.

In the countries that adopted the new calendar, you went to bed on October the 4th and arose the next day, on October the 15th.

Controversy

However, not all countries in the Christian world adopted the calendar. France didn’t make the switch until December of that year. Prussia followed in 1610. It didn’t catch on with the rest of the world until 1752, some 170 years later, when the British Empire adopted the calendar, skipped ten days and spread it around the globe as part of their empire.

It must have been incredibly confusing trying to communicate between countries during this time. Even crossing a border in Europe could put you back or forwards in time by ten days.

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