From: utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!rocky2!steward
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: re: re: Gregorian Great Circle
Article-I.D.: rocky2.142
Posted: Thu Oct 28 18:16:37 1982
Received: Fri Oct 29 04:19:33 1982

I have enjoyed reading the discussions on the net on the "Gregorian Great
Circle" and the various anachronisms and anomalies in his calendar.  I
thought that there may be, however few, some who would find of interest
an earlier entry in the, no doubt, same-and-continuing discussion.  Of
course, this was written before Pope Gregory XII made his mark on time.

I do not mean for the following to be taken as a personal assault on
anyone who participated in these discussions.

   -Bill Steward


"...that at the beginning of the world, - I speak of a long time, it is
above forty quarantains, or forty nights according to the supputations
of the ancient Druids, - a little after that Abel was killed by his
brother Cain, the earth, imbrued with the blood of the just, was one
year so exceedingly fertile in all those fruits which it usually
produces to us, and especially in medlars, that ever since, throughout
the ages, it hath been called the year of the great medlars; for three
of them did fill a bushel.  In it the Calends were found by the
Grecian almanacks.  There was that year nothing of the month of March
in the time of Lent, and the middle of August was in May.  In the
month of October, as I take it, or at least September, that I may not
err, for I will carefully take heed of that, was the week so famous in
the Annals, which they call the week of the three Thursdays; for it
had three of them by means of their irregular leap-years, called
Bissextiles, occasioned by the sun's having tripped and stumbled a
little towards the left hand, like a debtor afraid of serjeants,
coming right upon him to arrest him : and the moon varied from her
course above five fathom, and there was manifestly seen the motion of
trepidation in the firmament of the fixed stars, called Aplanes, so
that the middle Pleiade, leaving her fellows, declined towards the
equinoctial, and the star named Spica left the constellation of the
Virgin to withdraw herself towards the Balance, known by the name of
Libra; which astrologians cannot set their teeth in them; and indeed
their teeth had been pretty long if they could have reached thither."

                                Francois Rabelais
                                "Pantagruel" Chapter 1 ~1550
                                Translation by Sir Thomas Urquhart
                                and Motteux.  1851 edition.