I'm confused about how to calculate the feast day for my wife's patron saint.
We're all used to seeing Greek and Russian calendars 13 days apart. But I was considering the patron saint of my wife, Elizabeth Fyodorovna the new martyr, and the fact we attend Greek church under the new calendar. It's a little unusual because we are at Greek church, but this is a recent Russian saint.
Now Elizabeth reposed on July 18, 1918 according to the New Calendar (NC), and thus her feast day is July 5th according to the old calendar (OC). Now of course, July 18 NC and July 5 OC are the same actual day. So if Greeks were to celebrate this on July 18 NC, and Russians on July 5 OC, they would be celebrating the same time as Russians. This is of course contrary to normal practice where Greeks and Russians celebrate things 13 days apart according to real time, but the same day according to the calendar. e.g. Russians celebrate Christmas on 25th December Julian calendar, which occurs 13 days later than 25th December NC.
This led my mind to thinking, the reason the calendars are 13 days apart is because of 2000 years of accumulated error in the solar calendars. However saints have been dying all through those 2000 years, and the number of days correction should vary from 0-13 days depending on how recently they died. (As if the calendars weren't confusing enough already!!). So to be technically correct, the Greeks should have changed the feast days of all their saints when they changed to NC. Depending on how long ago they died, the adjustment should have been 0-13 days. I don't know the history of the changeover, but something tells me this did not happen.
As a thought experiment, if Russia was to change to NC tomorrow without adjusting dates, Elizabeth's feast day would be July 5 NC, when in reality she reposed July 18 NC.
Perhaps understandably, this is pretty hard to deal with, so maybe people are ignoring this and just adjusting this by 13 days regardless. But this seems ridiculous for a martyr in the last century. The NC and OC have not gone further out of sync since 1918. So in theory, a saint who died in the 20th century should be celebrated by Russians and Greeks on the same actual day, which has a different calendar day. But usually saints are celebrated on different actual days with the same calendar day. Since she died on July 18th according to the NC, why wouldn't Greeks celebrate it on July 18th? Either Greeks would celebrate it on July 5 NC, which would be odd since that's not when she died, but it would be consistent with other dates which get the 13 day adjustment, or else somewhere in the last 2000 years there would be a cut off date where you stop making the 13 day adjustment.
So how does it work? What is Elizabeth Fyodorovna's feast day in the Greek NC church? I realise its not a huge deal in the cosmic scheme of things, but it would be nice to know the recognised feast day for my wife's saint!
We're all used to seeing Greek and Russian calendars 13 days apart. But I was considering the patron saint of my wife, Elizabeth Fyodorovna the new martyr, and the fact we attend Greek church under the new calendar. It's a little unusual because we are at Greek church, but this is a recent Russian saint.
Now Elizabeth reposed on July 18, 1918 according to the New Calendar (NC), and thus her feast day is July 5th according to the old calendar (OC). Now of course, July 18 NC and July 5 OC are the same actual day. So if Greeks were to celebrate this on July 18 NC, and Russians on July 5 OC, they would be celebrating the same time as Russians. This is of course contrary to normal practice where Greeks and Russians celebrate things 13 days apart according to real time, but the same day according to the calendar. e.g. Russians celebrate Christmas on 25th December Julian calendar, which occurs 13 days later than 25th December NC.
This led my mind to thinking, the reason the calendars are 13 days apart is because of 2000 years of accumulated error in the solar calendars. However saints have been dying all through those 2000 years, and the number of days correction should vary from 0-13 days depending on how recently they died. (As if the calendars weren't confusing enough already!!). So to be technically correct, the Greeks should have changed the feast days of all their saints when they changed to NC. Depending on how long ago they died, the adjustment should have been 0-13 days. I don't know the history of the changeover, but something tells me this did not happen.
As a thought experiment, if Russia was to change to NC tomorrow without adjusting dates, Elizabeth's feast day would be July 5 NC, when in reality she reposed July 18 NC.
Perhaps understandably, this is pretty hard to deal with, so maybe people are ignoring this and just adjusting this by 13 days regardless. But this seems ridiculous for a martyr in the last century. The NC and OC have not gone further out of sync since 1918. So in theory, a saint who died in the 20th century should be celebrated by Russians and Greeks on the same actual day, which has a different calendar day. But usually saints are celebrated on different actual days with the same calendar day. Since she died on July 18th according to the NC, why wouldn't Greeks celebrate it on July 18th? Either Greeks would celebrate it on July 5 NC, which would be odd since that's not when she died, but it would be consistent with other dates which get the 13 day adjustment, or else somewhere in the last 2000 years there would be a cut off date where you stop making the 13 day adjustment.
So how does it work? What is Elizabeth Fyodorovna's feast day in the Greek NC church? I realise its not a huge deal in the cosmic scheme of things, but it would be nice to know the recognised feast day for my wife's saint!
