Pope Gregory XIII
1502 CE–1585 CE · Italy (Soncino/Bologna)
Born Ugo Boncompagni, Gregory XIII trained as a jurist at Bologna and served as a papal diplomat before his election. He is remembered above all for the Gregorian calendar, introduced by the 1582 bull Inter gravissimas, which corrected the drift of the Julian system and remains the global civil standard. A vigorous promoter of the Counter-Reformation, he founded numerous colleges and seminaries, including the Roman College's expansion and national colleges for training clergy. His pontificate also drew controversy: he celebrated news of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of French Huguenots, a reaction historians widely note as a stain on his record.
Did you know?
The pope who deleted ten days from the calendar
In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar to correct the drift the old Julian system had let build up in the seasons. Under the new Gregorian calendar, Thursday 4 October 1582 was followed directly by Friday 15 October 1582 — so ten dates, the 5th through the 14th, simply never existed. That calendar is the civil standard used worldwide today.
How we know
Papal bull Inter gravissimas (1582); Thursday 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday 15 October 1582, dropping ten days while keeping the weekday cycle unbroken.
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Italy (Soncino/Bologna)איטליהItaly
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About Italy (Soncino/Bologna)
Italy, in southern Europe, is treated here as the country as a whole. Rome is the seat of the papacy, and the popes ruled the Papal States in central Italy until Italian forces took Rome in 1870, completing the unification begun when the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861; the country became a republic in 1946. Italy also has one of the oldest Jewish diasporas, attested in Rome by the 2nd century BCE. In the Renaissance it was a centre of Hebrew printing, where the Soncino press issued the first complete printed Hebrew Bible in 1488, and of Jewish biblical commentary: Isaac Abarbanel spent his last years in Italy, and Ovadiah Sforno taught in Rome and Bologna.
In Italy (Soncino/Bologna) at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope Gregory XIII’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Gregory XIII’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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