To all,
I think that the church had no say in decimal time at all and the calendar
till1800, as the government was totally atheistic.It even engaged in
iconoclasm! Priests and ministers who refused to swear an oath of hatred
against royalty and anarchy were deported to French Guyana. Decimal time was
opposed by society at large, just as metric was, even if there was no FWMA
active!
Decimal time was 'suspended indefinitely ' by the law of `1795-04-07, (18
germinal an III). This was in all other respects a very important metric
law.
Apart from the reasons Louis gave for abandoning the calender in 1806,
Napoleon may well have listened to the church, as he was trying to make
peace
with it.
Han
----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis JOURDAN" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 10:28 AM
Subject: [USMA:11871] RE: horse "hands"
> At 14:55 -0500 01/03/26, Gregory Peterson wrote:
> >Bonjour Louis,
> >
> >I had heard that the metric calendar was not popular with the church
because of the 10 day week and therefore 3 more days between worshipping
days. Thus when the calendar was abandoned so was
decimal time.
Indeed decimal time time was abandoned much faster than the republican
calendar, which was used for more than 11 years between 1794 and 1806 (plus
18 days in 1871 during the "Commune" of Paris).
The metric calendar was not popular with the Church because there was no
Sundays at all. It is said that one of the reasons for introducing the
"decade" of ten days was to have just a day off every ten days
instead of every seven : that was an increase in productivity by 40 % -
indeed a wrong appreciation, because most people did rest both on new
"decadis" and old sundays...
> The population was not totally hostile to the new calendar : maybe the
"communication campaign" led by the poet Fabre d'Eglantine (who found out
the names of the months) and the painter David had been
efficient. What caused the death of the Republican calendar was twofold :
firstly, if there were signs that other countries were going to adopt the
metric system, it was evident that no other country was prepared to adopt
the Republican calendar. This would
result in serious problems for trade, etc. Secondly, its name :
Napoleon, who had in mind to become an Emperor, could not keep on with this
adjective ! But a non political excuse had to be found for cancelling the
calendar : they dug out a report from Laplace who, in
1795, had found a small error in the new calendar.
> Louis
