French Republican Calendar of An III (1794 to 1795), drawn by Philibert-Louis Debucourt

The French Republican calendar (French: calendrier républicain français), also commonly called the French Revolutionary calendar (calendrier révolutionnaire français), was a calendar created and implemented during the French Revolution and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days by the Paris Commune in 1871, meant to replace the Gregorian calendar.[1] The calendar consisted of twelve 30-day months, each divided into three 10-day cycles similar to weeks, plus five or six intercalary days at the end to fill out the balance of a solar year. It was designed in part to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, and it was part of a larger attempt at dechristianisation and decimalisation in France (which also included decimal time of day, decimalisation of currency, and metrication). It was used in government records in France and other areas under French rule, including Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Malta, and Italy.

History

The National Constituent Assembly at first intended to create a new calendar marking the "era of Liberty", beginning on 14 July 1789, the date of the storming of the Bastille. However, on 2 January 1792 its successor the Legislative Assembly decided that Year IV of Liberty had begun the day before. Year I had therefore begun on 1 January 1789.

On 21 September 1792 the French First Republic was proclaimed, and the new National Convention decided that 1792 was to be known as Year I of the French Republic. It decreed on 2 January 1793 that Year II of the Republic had begun the day before. However, the new calendar as adopted by the Convention in October 1793 made 22 September 1792 the first day of Year I. The Common Era, commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, was abolished and replaced with l'ère républicaine, the Republican Era, signifying the "age of reason" overcoming superstition, as part of the campaign of dechristianisation.

The calendar is frequently named the "French Revolutionary Calendar" because it was created during the revolution, but this is a slight misnomer. In France, it is known as the calendrier républicain as well as the calendrier révolutionnaire. There was initially a debate as to whether the calendar should celebrate the revolution, which began in July 1789, or the Republic, which was established in 1792.[2] Immediately following 14 July 1789, papers and pamphlets started calling 1789 year I of Liberty and the following years II and III. It was in 1792, with the practical problem of dating financial transactions, that the legislative assembly was confronted with the problem of the calendar. Originally, the choice of epoch was either 1 January 1789 or 14 July 1789. After some hesitation the assembly decided on 2 January 1792 that all official documents would use the "era of Liberty" and that the year IV of Liberty started on 1 January 1792. This usage was modified on 22 September 1792 when the Republic was proclaimed and the Convention decided that all public documents would be dated Year I of the French Republic. The decree of 2 January 1793 stipulated that the year II of the Republic began on 1 January 1793; this was revoked with the introduction of the calendar, which set 22 September 1793 as the beginning of year II. The establishment of the Republic was used as the epochal date for the calendar; therefore, the calendar commemorates the Republic, and not the Revolution.

The Concordat of 1801 re-established the Roman Catholic Church as an official institution in France, although not as the state religion of France.[3] The concordat took effect from Easter Sunday, 28 Germinal, Year X (18 April 1802); it restored the names of the days of the week to the ones from the Gregorian calendar, and fixed Sunday as the official day of rest and religious celebration.[4] However, the other attributes of the republican calendar, the months, and years, remained as they were.

The First Republic ended with the coronation of Napoleon I as emperor on 11 Frimaire, Year XIII, or 2 December 1804. Despite this, the republican calendar continued to be used until 1 January 1806, when Napoleon declared it abolished. It was used again briefly in the Journal officiel for some dates during a short period of the Paris Commune, 6–23 May 1871 (16 Floréal – 3 Prairial Year LXXIX).[5]

Overview and origins

Precursor

The prominent atheist essayist and philosopher Sylvain Maréchal published the first edition of his Almanach des Honnêtes-gens (Almanac of Honest People) in 1788.[6] The first month in the almanac is "Mars, ou Princeps" (March, or First), the last month is "Février, ou Duodécembre" (February, or Twelfth). The lengths of the months are the same as those in the Gregorian calendar; however, the 10th, 20th, and 30th days are singled out of each month as the end of a décade (group of ten days). Individual days were assigned, instead of to the traditional saints, to people noteworthy for mostly secular achievements. Later editions of the almanac would switch to the Republican Calendar.[7]

Development and usage

A copy of the French Republican Calendar in the Historical Museum of Lausanne
Excerpt from Pierre Jacotin's Map of Egypt (1818), including the dates of Napoleon's siege of Jaffa on 13-23 Ventôse VII (3-13 March 1799), and the dates of the retreat to Jaffa after the siege of Acre on 5-8 Prairial (24-27 May) the same year

The days of the French Revolution and First French Republic saw many efforts to sweep away various trappings of the ancien régime (the old feudal monarchy); some of these were more successful than others. The new Republican government sought to institute, among other reforms, a new social and legal system, a new system of weights and measures (which became the metric system), and a new calendar.

Amid nostalgia for the ancient Roman Republic, the theories of the Age of Enlightenment were at their peak, and the devisers of the new systems looked to nature for their inspiration. Natural constants, multiples of ten, and Latin as well as Ancient Greek derivations formed the fundamental blocks from which the systems were built.

The calendar was created by a commission under the direction of the politician Gilbert Romme seconded by Claude Joseph Ferry [fr] and Charles-François Dupuis. They associated with their work chemist Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange, astronomer Jérôme Lalande, mathematician Gaspard Monge, astronomer and naval geographer Alexandre Guy Pingré, and poet, actor and playwright Fabre d'Églantine (who invented the names of the months) with the help of André Thouin (gardener at the Jardin des plantes of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris). As the rapporteur of the commission, Romme presented the calendar to the Jacobin-controlled National Convention on 23 September 1793, which adopted it on 24 October 1793 and also extended it proleptically to its epoch of 22 September 1792. It is because of his position as rapporteur of the commission that the creation of the republican calendar is attributed to Romme.[8]

French coins of the period used the calendar. Many show the year (French: an) in Arabic numerals, although Roman numerals were used on some issues. Year 11 coins typically have a "XI" date to avoid confusion with the Roman "II".

Design

L AN 2 DE LA REPUBLIQUE FR (Year 2 of the French Republic) on a barn near Geneva, dating to 1793 or 1794
1 Floréal, Year 79 issue of Le Fils du Père Duchêne, a newspaper published during the Paris Commune.

Years usually appear in writing as Roman numerals. Roman numeral I indicates the first year of the republic, that is, the year before the calendar actually came into use. By law, the beginning of each year was set at midnight, beginning on the day the apparent autumnal equinox falls at the Paris Observatory.

There were twelve months, each divided into three 10-day weeks called décades. The tenth day, décadi, replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity. The five or six extra days needed to approximate the solar or tropical year were placed after the final month of each year and called complementary days. This arrangement was an almost exact copy of the calendar used by the Ancient Egyptians, though in their case the year did not begin and end on the autumnal equinox.

A period of four years ending on a leap day was to be called a "Franciade". The name "Olympique" was originally proposed[9] but changed to Franciade to commemorate the fact that it had taken the revolution four years to establish a republican government in France.[10] The leap year was called Sextile, an allusion to the "bissextile" leap years of the Julian and Gregorian calendars, because it contained a sixth complementary day.

Each day was divided into ten hours, each hour into 100 decimal minutes, and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds. Thus an hour was 144 conventional minutes (2.4 times as long as a conventional hour), a minute was 86.4 conventional seconds (44% longer than a conventional minute), and a second was 0.864 conventional seconds (13.6% shorter than a conventional second). Clocks were manufactured to display this decimal time, but it did not catch on. Mandatory use of decimal time was officially suspended 7 April 1795, although some cities continued to use decimal time as late as 1801.[11] The numbering of years by Roman numerals ran counter to this general decimalisation tendency.

Months

The month names were based on nature, principally having to do with the prevailing weather in and around Paris and sometimes evoking the Medieval Labours of the Months. The extra five or six days in the year were not given a month designation but considered Sansculottides or complementary days. Most of the month names were new words coined from French, Latin, or Greek. The endings of the names were grouped by season. -dor comes from δῶρον, dō̂ron means 'giving' in Greek.[12]

  • Autumn:
    • Vendémiaire (from French vendange, which means 'grape harvest', derived from Latin vindemia 'vintage'), starting 22, 23, or 24 September
    • Brumaire (from French brume 'mist', from Latin brūma 'winter solstice; winter; winter cold'), starting 22, 23, or 24 October
    • Frimaire (from French frimas 'frost'), starting 21, 22, or 23 November
  • Winter:
    • Nivôse (from Latin nivosus 'snowy'), starting 21, 22, or 23 December
    • Pluviôse (from French pluvieux, derived from Latin pluvius 'rainy'), starting 20, 21, or 22 January
    • Ventôse (from French venteux, derived from Latin ventosus 'windy'), starting 19, 20, or 21 February
  • Spring:
    • Germinal (from French germination), starting 21 or 22 March
    • Floréal (from French fleur, derived from Latin flos 'flower'), starting 20 or 21 April
    • Prairial (from French prairie 'meadow'), starting 20 or 21 May
  • Summer:
    • Messidor (from Latin messis 'harvest'), starting 19 or 20 June
    • Thermidor (from Greek θέρμη, thermē, 'summer heat'), starting 19 or 20 July; on many printed calendars of Year II (1793–94), the month of Thermidor was named Fervidor (from Latin fervidus, "burning hot")
    • Fructidor (from Latin fructus 'fruit'), starting 18 or 19 August

In Britain, a contemporary wit mocked the calendar by calling the months: Wheezy, Sneezy, and Freezy; Slippy, Drippy, and Nippy; Showery, Flowery, and Bowery; Hoppy, Croppy, and Poppy.[13][14] Historian Thomas Carlyle suggests somewhat more serious English names in his 1837 work The French Revolution: A History,[12] namely Vintagearious, Fogarious, Frostarious, Snowous, Rainous, Windous, Buddal, Floweral, Meadowal, Reapidor, Heatidor, and Fruitidor. Like the French originals, they are neologisms suggesting a meaning related to the season.

Days

French Revolutionary pocket watch showing ten-day décade names and thirty-day month numbers from the Republican Calendar, but with duodecimal time. On display at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire (Neuchâtel) In Switzerland.

Each month was divided into three décades or "weeks" of ten days each, named:

  • primidi (first day)
  • duodi (second day)
  • tridi (third day)
  • quartidi (fourth day)
  • quintidi (fifth day)
  • sextidi (sixth day)
  • septidi (seventh day)
  • octidi (eighth day)
  • nonidi (ninth day)
  • décadi (tenth day)

Décadis became an official day of rest instead of Sunday, in order to diminish the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. They were used for the festivals of a succession of new religions meant to replace Catholicism: the Cult of Reason, the Cult of the Supreme Being, the Decadary Cult, and Theophilanthropy. Christian holidays were officially abolished in favor of revolutionary holidays. The law of 13 Fructidor year VI (30 August 1798) required that marriages must only be celebrated on décadis. This law was applied from the 1st Vendémiaire year VII (22 September 1798) to 28 Pluviôse year VIII (17 February 1800).[citation needed]

Five extra days – six in leap years – were national holidays at the end of every year. These were originally known as les sans-culottides (after sans-culottes), but after year III (1795) as les jours complémentaires:

  • 1st complementary day: La Fête de la Vertu, "Celebration of Virtue", on 17 or 18 September
  • 2nd complementary day: La Fête du Génie, "Celebration of Talent", on 18 or 19 September
  • 3rd complementary day: La Fête du Travail, "Celebration of Labour", on 19 or 20 September
  • 4th complementary day: La Fête de l'Opinion, "Celebration of Convictions", on 20 or 21 September
  • 5th complementary day: La Fête des Récompenses, "Celebration of Honours (Awards)", on 21 or 22 September
  • 6th complementary day: La Fête de la Révolution, "Celebration of the Revolution", on 22 or 23 September (on leap years only)

Rural calendar

The Roman Catholic Church used a calendar of saints, which named each day of the year after an associated saint. To reduce the influence of the Church, Fabre d'Églantine introduced a rural calendar in which each day of the year had a unique name associated with the rural economy, stated to correspond to the time of year. Every décadi (ending in 0) was named after an agricultural tool. Each quintidi (ending in 5) was named for a common animal. The rest of the days were named for "grain, pasture, trees, roots, flowers, fruits" and other plants, except for the first month of winter, Nivôse, during which the rest of the days were named after minerals.[15][16]