Italic Standard Time

 

I learned something new yesterday when I saw the above clock on the city's main Cathedral in Loreto, Italy. The clock face has only six hours and one hand. (There's a lateral crack in the stone face as well that makes it look like another hand.) Apparently, clocks of this type can be found in various places throughout Italy showing “Italic hours,” but this is the first time I’ve ever noticed such a clock. (Consequently, this post will be written entirely in italics.)

Italic Solar hour clocks first appeared in Italy in the mid 1300’s. In this system the new day began a half hour after sunset. In the 1600’s, the Catholic Church adopted the system as its standard.

In these six-hour clocks, four complete revolutions of the hand were required to reach twenty-four hours.

When the sun set it was the twenty-fourth hour; eighteen o'clock indicated that it was six hours before sunset, and coincided with the closing of the gates of the city or of the castle.

It seems to me that this would have been an untenable system as the length of days varies throughout the year, and someone would have to have adjusted the clock as the daylight hours changed. It would have been hilarious to have seen the Church implement this in the land of the midnight sun.

Traces of this ancient system can be found in literature and some idiomatic expressions and understanding the clock helps to explain some enigmatic passages in the Italian romance, I Promessi Sposi,--one, where a man returns at 11 pm, “just before sunset.” The days weren’t really that long—they were just using what I’d call IST (Italic Standard Time).

Napoleon’s invasion into Italy ended the Italic time zone as it was replaced by the one we currently use--when the new day begins at midnight. After the French had been expelled, the Papal State attempted to restore the Italic clocks, but couldn’t fight what had become a universal system.