ABSTRACT
The period of 100 years forms not only the chronological framework of history, but also determines our modern culture of public remembrance and historical celebration. The centennial is, as the hundredth anniversary of a certain person or institution, often accompanied by retrospective jubilee celebrations. The modern use of the century derives from older sources. One is the late medieval use of the notion of centenarium. It stood originally for “containing a hundred” and achieved the meaning “hundred years” at least in the discipline of calendar reckoning. The notion developed in accordance with millenarium (containing a thousand), a term that was sometimes used in late medieval times. Whereas the millenarium or millennium acquired a high apocalyptic significance due to its reference in Revelation 20 the centenarium (century) remained, with one or two exceptions, insignificant. Thus the boundaries of the centuries were never particularly favored in millenarian predictions. It is necessary to take the history of terms like centenarium and the vivid tradition of centennial celebrations into account to understand the whole range of meaning included in the modern idea of the century. Furthermore the year 2000 should be seen as the point of intersection between the two different traditions of the millennium and the century.
