The use of the Christain calendar did not begin in 1 A.C.E. In fact the epoch was fixed by Dionysius Exiguus in 525 A.C.E. The Christian Era did not become general in Europe until the 11th century. The length of the year was taken as 365 ¼ days. In 1582 Pope Gregory ordered a reform of the calendar adopting the year of length 365.2425 which closely approximates the tropical year of 365.2422 days. In the new calendar a century year was not a leap year unless divisible by 400. Thus years 100, 200, 300 were not taken as leap years. To correct the accumulated error till 1582, 10 days were dropped. This figure of ten days is telling. If the correction was to be made from 1A.C.E. then 15 century years would have occurred out of which only three (400,800,1200) would be leap years. The correction therefore, should have been of 12 days. Why were only 10 days dropped? Some have tried to argue that the correction was made from the date of the first council of Nicaea (325 A.C.E.). But this argument is not convincing. For the Church, Date of Christ's birth would be of prime importance and the reckoning ought to begin from that date. Besides between 325 and 1582 there are 12 century years out of which three would be leap years, the correction therefore, should have been of nine days. Since the correction made was of ten days, the base year was in the third century. It is significant that earlier, the Church used an epoch from 282 A.C.E. and it seems most likely that the correction was made from this year. This is also evident from the fact that the year of correction was 1582 exactly 1300 years from the epoch. It would be therefore, reasonable to conclude that, since the year of Christ's birth was of prime importance to the Church, this year 282 was in fact the year of his birth.
