The history of the Advent wreath

1914:  The earliest occurrence of the exact phrase advent wreath in the Hathi Trust Digital Library as of 30 Dec 2024:  Margarethe Müller (1862- ), Elsbeth: a story of German home life (New York:  E.P. Dutton & Company, 1914), 214.  Naturally, others follow.  Here there are clearly more than four candles, but in this report on p. 276 of vol. 23 (no. 1 (March 4 1921)) of The Quaker:  a fortnightly journal devoted to the Religious Society of Friends there are only three.  Etc.

1918:  The earliest recoverable hit on Adventkranz (specifically) in the Hathi Trust Digital Library as of 30 December 2024:  Ernst Mummenhoff, "Das Findel- und Weisenhaus zu Nürnberg, -orts, kultur-, und wirtschaftsgeschichtlich II,"  on p. 102 of Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg Heft 22 (1918).  "recoverable," I say, because OCR doesn't always work well on Fraktur.  A Findelhaus is a foundling hospital or orphanage.  There are no hits on the French equivalent couronne de l'Avent before 1943, and that one is in The Duden pictorial encyclopedia in five languages, in which the Advent wreath (or "garland") may bear (or at least has the circumference for) more than four candles.

Incorporate the following histories, along with the sources they cite, among others:

• Those listed under Gaudete Sunday specifically.
  
• Haemig, Mary Jane. "The Origin and Spread of the Advent Wreath." Lutheran Quarterly 19, no. 3 (December 31, 2005): 332–443.  My thanks to the Rev. Paul Gregory Alms for alerting me to the existence of this one, which, of course, I should have found on my own.  Helpful footnotes.
• Schlierf, Wilhelm Josef. Adventus Domini: Geschichte und Theologie des Advents in Liturgie und Brachtum der Westlichen Kirche. Mönchengladbach: B. Kühlen, 1989.
  

Civil valor

      "After all, we have gotten use to regarding as valor only valor in war (or the kind that is needed for flying in outer space), the kind which jingle-jangles with medals.  We have forgotten another concept of valor [(доблесть)]—civil [(гражданскую)] valor.  And that's all our society needs, just that, just that, just that!  That's all we need and that's exactly what we haven't got."

     Aleksander I. Solzhenitsyn, The gulag archipelago 1918-1956:  an experiment in literary investigation I-II, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York:  Harper & Row, 1973), 461-462 (chap. 12, Tyurzak) = first full paragraph on p. 464 of the Paris (YMCA - Press) Russian edition of 1973.  Cf. Alexievich.

"the earth speaks to us of Heaven, or why would we want to go there?"

      Jayber Crow, in Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow:  a novel, chap 32 ("Seen afar").  "This is a book about Heaven.  I know it now" (chap. 31, "The nest egg"); "This is, as I said and believe, a book about Heaven" (chap. 32).

Gaudete Sunday didn't really start to become "Gaudete Sunday"-as-we-know-it-today until the modern period in general, and the nineteenth century in particular

"we must examine more carefully those observances that are considered 'traditional.' . . .  It is not enough to assume that liturgies that look archaic or anachronistic are as old as they claim to be. . . ."

     John F. Romano, "Joy in waiting?  The history of Gaudete Sunday," Medieval studies 72 (2010):  123 (75-124).  More detail from Romano to follow as time allows, but he confirms what, from Schlierf and much more recently Haennig, I have long known about the Advent wreath as well.  Heavily but not wholly dependent on Romano is Marco Benini, "'Freut euch im Herrn zu jeder Zeit!  Der dritte Advent ist der sogennante Gaudete-Sonntag mit der liturgischen Farbe Rosa.  Woher kommt das und wie feiern wir diese Freude?," Gottesdienst:  Zeitschrift der Liturgischen Institute Deutschlands, Österreichs und der Schweiz 58, no. 23/24 (November 2024):  257-259, as supplied to me by Benini himself.  "More detailed" than the latter are pp. 5-27 in Glaube und Gedächtnis:  Studien zur Liturgie in Geschichte und Pastoral, Festschrift Jürgen Bärsch zum 65. Geburtstag, hrsg. Marco Benini, Florian Kluger, & Benedict Winkel (Münster:  Aschendorff, 2024).  Cf. my post on the Advent wreath.
     Here follows a chronology (IN PROGRESS!) dependent on the sources above:

• [Romano.]  Followed here by the last two paragraphs of Benini's 2024 article in Gottesdienst:
   
• 687 December 15:  the consecration of Pope Sergius I.  Romano "propose[s]" that associations of joy with the consecration of Sergius I indicate that it could have been "Sergius I or one of his clergy with his explicit permission[, and not, say, Gregory I (89),] who first employed Phil 4 as the introit for the third Sunday of Advent" (89).  Thus, the earliest hints at an eventual "association between joy and the third Sunday [of Advent] cannot be dated before the late seventh century in any Roman document" (Romano 84).
  
• 8th-10th centuries:  "The earliest manuscripts for the music of the Mass" (i.e. antiphonaries) make Phil 4:4 ff. the Introit for the Third Sunday, though the passage does not occur there yet as the Epistle, but rather, as the Epistle, on the last and/or some later (Fourth-Seventh) Sunday of Advent, an indication that Christmas was in those cases the occasion (Romano 80-81).  "The appearance of Phil 4 as the introit for the third Sunday of Advent is the first attestation in any Roman source that associates the day with joy" (Romano 83).  And it was "The music of th[is] service [that] helped to create the characteristic joy of the day.  There is no evidence, for instance, in the sermons of Leo I or Gregory I that there is anything joyful about the season or liturgical customs immediately preceding Christmas" (Romano 83, italics mine).
• c. 965:  "Dominica de Gaudete" at Liber pontificalis 2:247 as edited by Duchesne, "the first [instance] I can see of the common medieval trend of naming Gaudete Sunday according to the name of its introit [alone], a trend attested for certain other Sundays like Laetare Sunday".  But this is still "a [mere] chronological marker by . . . introit" that "does not associate any greater sense of joy or customs with [the name]" (Romano 91).
• 1138 December 11 under Pope Innocent II:  "the earliest date that the celebration of Gaudete Sunday described . . . [on pp. 142A-143A of vol. 2 of the critical edition of Benedict's] Liber censuum could have been held" is supposed by Romano to have been the "specific occasion for the rebirth of Gaudete Sunday" (Romano 102, "rebirth" being misleading here, given that prior to this point all we have is the free-standing introit, above).  "It is possible and even likely that it was at this point when Phil 4, referred to as an epistle (epistola), was first read at the Mass on Sunday moming" (Romano 98).  "joyful readings . . . joyful songs" and possibly "special vestments" are the novum here, though not all of the new observances, restricted as they were to the papal curia ("The special practices that Innocent initiated did not even spread to the canons of the Lateran" (Romano 104)), long persisted (Romano 102).
• 1198/1216:  the ordinal of Pope Innocent III "includes the first definite reference to special vestments for Gaudete Sunday, with the use of violet chasubles" (Romano 102).  "Yet as the Middle Ages drew to a close there is no sign that the customs associated with the third Sunday included special rose vestments" (Romano 104).
  
• 1839:  Johann Hinrich Wichern of the Rauhes Haus in Hamburg sets up a wagon wheel (Wagenrad) bearing a candle for every day of Advent, considered as an anticipation of Christmas:  white candles for the Sundays, and red candles for the weekdays (Benini).
  
• 1860 (?):  The greens on the walls of the Rauhes Haus are transferred to the wagon wheel (Romano).
  
• 1925:  The four-becandled Advent wreath promoted (gefördert) by the youth movement of Quickborn begins to take hold in Catholic churches, beginning in Cologne, and in private Catholic (?) homes (Benini, 259).
• 1927:  The Catholic priest Pius Parsch first mentions [the four-becandled Advent wreath?] in his liturgical calendar (Liturgiekalender).
• 1932:  Fr. Parsch makes (once again?) no mention of the colors of the candles in his Adventabend:  Vorlagen und Winke für Heimabende (Benini 259).
  
  
• 1941 [October 6-10]:  The Cologn-ian refugee Therese Mueller introduces the custom of the Advent wreath at the National Liturgical Week [in St. Paul, MN] (Benini 259).
• _____:  Fr. Martin Hellrieger [of St. Louis, who immigrated from Heppenheimer as a child, and who was influential in the liturgical movement in the United States,] insists on replacing the red Advent candles of Germany with violet or rose candles in order that they might correspond to [what had only relatively recently become?] the liturgical colors (Benini 259).
  
• The rose candle we [therefore] owe (verdankt sich) to the [early 20th-century) liturgical movement in the United States, such that where one sees now the use of a rose or sometimes a violet candle in Germany that is a reimportation (Reimport) (Benini 259).
• post-1965:  The post-Vatican-II liturgical reform strengthens the emphasis on joy in the readings, prayers, and chants of the Third Sunday (Benini 259).
  

Yeo on Carlisle

      Douglas Yeo, "A message of hope and good news—told with a trombone," The last trombone, 17 December 2024.

May the instruction of Heavenly Wisdom transform us into members of His wedding party (eius . . . consortes)

T'oros Roslin, Wise and foolish virgins,
Gospel book, Walters Art Gallery
W.539 (1262), fol. 106v

"Almighty and merciful God, may no earthly undertaking hinder those who set out in haste to meet your Son, but may our learning of heavenly wisdom gain us admittance to his company, who", etc.

"Omnipotens et misericors Deus, in tui occursum Filii festinantes nulla opera terreni actus impediant, sed sapientiae caelestis eruditio nos faciat eius esse consortes.  Qui", etc.

     Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent, current (which is to say, not even 1962) Roman missal.  This is not in Bruylants, but vol. 14 of Corpus orationum fingers the differently-ordered no. 2669 in vol. 4,

Festinantes, omnipotens deus, in occursum filii tui domini nostri nulla impediant opera actus terreni sed caelestis sapientiae eruditio faciat nos eius esse consortes

which occurs in the mid-8th-century Old Gelasian Sacramentary that "is modelled on a type that largely represents Roman presbyteral practice around the middle of the 7th cent[ury]" (ODCC, 4th ed. (2022)).  (According to Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, at least, it occurs also in "the so-called Rotulus ('scroll') of Ravenna, dated perhaps as early as the 5th century."  On the resort to the Rotulus of Ravenna throughout Advent on the part of those revising the Missal after the Second Vatican Council, see, among other things, John F. Romano, "Joy in waiting?  The history of Gaudete Sunday," Medieval studies 72 (2010):  118-119 (75-124).)
     May the instruction of Heavenly Wisdom | instruction in heavenly wisdom | erudition in heavenly wisdom | etc.

Short shrift

      "Had Michel been spared the mutilation which was the cause of his dismissal, Paul would have had no difficulty in confessing his part in the accident, for in that event he would have derived no benefit from it, and judgment following his confession would have involved him in no loss.  But he knew now what the sentence would be:  'Find your brother and restore to him all that is his.  Without restitution there can be no forgiveness.'
     "And to do this—to admit his guilt when such admission meant the surrender of the fruits of that guilt—this was out of the question.
     "He had stolen from Michel once, when they were boys. . . .  He had taken a ring their mother had given Michel on his birthday; Michel, believing it lost, was inconsolable.  Paul hid it among his things; his pride got the better of his conscience, and he pretended to himself that he had ‘found’ it, until his mother discovered it, and drew the truth from him:  a type of surgery for which she had a painful aptitude.  She would have attained, he often thought, just renown as a confessor.  Since she could not fufill that role herself, she packed him off to the Abbé Courtot, from whom he received exceedingly short shrift.
     "'You are to restore the ring to your brother.  Do not merely put it back where you found it, but give it to Michel himself.  Tell him that you took it and are sorry.  When you have done this, return to me, and I will give you absolution:  not before.'
     "Would he receive other treatment in the present case, from the Abbé Courtot, or any priest to whom he made known the facts?  And except he made known the facts, would he have peace of mind while he lived?
     "Clearly, he must either confess his sin, or forget it.  The one he would not do, the other he could not. . . .
     ". . . no priest living would have credited such an argument, and neither could he.
     "Plainly, there was no escape from this dilemma except to cease the practice of religion, and this he did. . . ."

     Michael Kent, The mass of brother Michel (Milwaukee, WI:  The Bruce Publishing Company, 1942), 89-90 (chap. 5 (“As the green bay tree”), iii), underscoring mine.  Paul's sin was a sin of omission; he chose not to warn Michel of the approach of the boar.
     The OED does not recognize this "severe mercy" as the original meaning of "short shrift" (though it's an excellent one):  "originally a brief space of time allowed for a criminal to make his or her confession before execution; hence, a brief respite".

Dialogue is all the rage

     "The word 'dialogue' is in fashion; I regret this, not having myself any of the virtues of the dialoguist, which are not to hear what is said to one, or to take [what is said to one] in a sense that renders it easy to refute."

     "Le mot dialogue est à la mode; je le regrette, n’ayant moi-même aucune des vertus d’un bon dialoguiste, qui sont de ne pas écouter ce qu’on lui dit, ou de le prendre dans un sens qui le rende facile à réfuter."

     Étienne Gilson, "Le dialogue difficile," in Les tribulations de Sophie:  essais d’art et de philosophie (Paris:  Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1967), 103.  I was put on to this by the description to the recent translation of this book by James G. Colbery:  "the virtues of a skilled dialoguer ... are not to listen to what is being said and to take it in a sense that makes it easy to refute."  To this I would add the virtue of treating the process as a form of maneuver.

"This sacrament is the fruit of the tree of life"

 "Est . . . hoc sacramentum ligni vitae fructus".

     St. Albert the Great, Commentary on Luke 22.19 as trans. Liturgy of the hours (Universalis).  Opera omnia 23 (Paris:  1890-1899), 673, col. 1.

Make it possible for me to see them, live with them II

"Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae, eorumque peccata dimitte, meque eos in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac videre.  Per."

O God, who have commanded us to honor father and mother, kindly have mercy on the souls of my father and mother, forgive their sins, and make [it possible for] me to see them in the joy of eternal splendor.  Through.

"Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae, eorumque peccata dimitte, meque cum illis in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac vivere.  Per."

O God, who have commanded us to honor father and mother, kindly have mercy on the souls of my father and mother, forgive their sins, and make [it possible for] me to live with them in the joy of eternal splendor.  Through.

     Two forms of the Oratio pro patris et matris, Orationes pro defunctis, Officium defunctorum (Mass for the dead), late medieval/early modern Sarum missal (if not also other uses), translations mine.  Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae eccleslae Sarum, ed. Dickinson (Burntisland:  E Prelo de Pitsligo, 1861-1883), 873*.  Note:  these are Corpus orationum no. 1903, where the earliest of the 17 sources listed is the 11th-century Missale Drummondiense (Drummond Missal, London, British Library, C 35 i II (but unless it's only a fragment, this implies, rather, Morgan Library MS M.627 ("or early 12th century"); G. H. Forbes, ed., The ancient Irish missal in the possession of the Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, Drummond Castle, Perthshire (Edinburgh:  1882), p. 37) =Bruylants, vol. 2, no. 407:  Missel du Latran, 11th/12th cent.; Missel de la Curie, beg. 14th cent.; no. 491 in the 1st ed. of the printed Roman Missal of 1474; 1st typical edition of the 1570 Roman Missal of Pius V; 2nd typical edition of the 1604 Roman Missal of Clement VIII.  I was put onto this by the dedication to Eamon Duffy's The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2005 [1992]), though I should have noticed it also in the third typical edition of the current Missale Romanum, under Masses for the Dead, IV. Various Prayers for the Dead, 11. For the Priest's Parents (Saint Paul Daily Missal:  Sunday and Weekday Masses . . . (2012), pp. 2596-2597):

Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti, miserere clementer patri et matri "(parentibus nostris), eorumque peccata dimitte, meque (nosque) eos in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac videre.  Per" etc.

"O God, who commanded us to honor father and mother, have mercy in your compassion on my father and mother (our parents), forgive them their sins, and bring me (us) to see them one day in the gladness of eternal glory.  Through" etc.

Any updates to this post placed here only.

 

"make us love what you command"

"Almighty ever-living God, increase our faith, hope and charity, and make us love what you command, so that we may merit what you promise.  Through."

"Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, da nobis fidei, spei et caritatis augmentum, et, ut mereamur assequi quod promittis, fac nos amare quod praecipis.  Per."

Almighty ever-living God, give to us an augmentation of faith, hope, and charity, and, in order that we may merit to obtain what you promise, cause us to love what you command.  Through.

     Collect for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman missal.  =Corpus orationum no. 3819, where it is traced back to no. 598 in the Leonine/Veronese "sacramentary", which Mohlberg places in "Datierungsversuche" no. 6 (366/384), 28 (mid-5th-century anti-Semipelagian), 37 (468/483), 51 (492/496), 63 (498/514), and 68 (537/555).  So anywhere between 366 and 555 as of 1956.

1549 BCP, Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity:

 "ALMIGHTYE and euerlastyng God, geue unto us the increase of faythe, hope, and charitie; and that we may obteine that whiche thou doest promise; make us to loue that whiche thou doest commaunde, through".

1662 BCP, Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity:
"Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command, through."

1976 BCP, Proper 25 (Contemporary), Sunday closest to November 2:
Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command, through."

1973 ICEL, as above:  "Almighty and ever-living God, strengthen our faith, hope, and love.  May we do with loving hearts what you ask of us and come to share the life you promise.  We ask this through".

     Cf. this one.

     Image:  Fragment of a 3rd/5th-century vessel of gold glass in the British Museum that Princeton University's Index of Medieval Art treats as "possibly" an image of Pope Damasus of Rome (366-384), the earliest figure to whom this prayer is attributed in the scholarship indexed in 1956 by Mohlberg, above.

"the whole life and substance of the Church is in the Word of God"

"The gospel is, before bread and Baptism, the sole most certain and most noble mark [(symbolum)] of the Church, since [it is] by the gospel alone [that] it is conceived, formed, fed, produced, educated, led out to pasture, clothed, adorned, fortified, armed, conserved; in a word, the whole life and substance of the Church is in the Word of God, as Christ says:  'Man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"

"Euangelium enim prae pane et Baptismo unicum, certissimum et nobilissimum Ecclesiae symbolum est, cum per solum Euangelium concipiatur, formetur, alatur, generetur, educetur, pascatur, vestiatur, ornetur, roberetur, armetur, servetur, breviter, tota vita et substantia Ecclesiae est in verbo dei, sicut Christus dicit 'In omni verbo quod procedit de ore dei vivit homo.'"

     Martin Luther, Ad librum eximii magistri nostri Mag. Ambrosii Catharini, defensoris Silv. Prieratis acerrimi, responsio (1521), WA 7, 721 (705-778), ll. 9-14, quick-and-dirty translation mine.  I have not read around in this treatise, which has not yet (?) appeared in English, but is no. 1.42 on the Prospectus for the supplement to Luther's works.

"There is but one single utterance of God amplified throughout all the scriptures"

St. Augustine preaching, Morgan Library
& Museum M.1175 (1525/30), fol. 192r (cropped)

     "There is but one single utterance of God amplified throughout all the scriptures [(sit unus sermo dei in scripturis omnibus dilatatus)], dearly beloved. Through the mouths of many holy persons a single Word makes itself heard [(unum uerbum sonet)], that Word who, being God-with-God in the beginning, has no syllables, because he is not confined by time. Yet we should not find it surprising that to meet our weakness he descended to the discrete sounds we use [(propter infirmitatem nostram descendit ad particulas sonorum nostrorum)], for he also descended to take to himself the weakness of our human body."

     St. Augustine, En. Ps. 103.4.1 (Ennaratio 4.1 on Ps 103), as trans. Maria Boulding in WSA III/19, 167.  Latin from CAG, i.e. CCSL 40, 1521, ll. 1-7).  Image identified the Index of Medieval Art.

"no power of oureselues to helpe ourselues"

"O God, Who seest that in our own weakness we do continually fall, make, in thy mercy, the examples of thy holy children a mean whereby to renew in us the love of thyself. Through."

As trans. Divinum Officium (online).

"Deus, qui nos conspicis ex nostra infirmitate deficere, ad amorem tuum nos misericorditer per sanctorum tuorum exempla restaura. Per."

     The Anglican breviary containing the Divine office according to the general usages of the Western church put into English in accordance with the Book of common prayer (1955), E474 (Feast of St. Calixtus, 14 October, and possibly elsewhere in the Proper of the saints, Tridentine breviary and missal):

"O God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves:  we pray thee, that, by the examples of thy Saints; thou wouldest mercifully restore us to the perfect love of thee.  Through."

     This is no. 1876 in Corpus orationum, and no. 44 in Bruylants.  According to the former it is present in two strictly 8th-century sacramentaries, Prague (before 788, a "Gregorianized Gelasian" from Ratisbonne originally) and Gellonensis (late 8th), as well as a number of 8th/9th century (and later) manuscripts, too.

The collect for the Feast of St. Calixtus in the contemporary Liturgy of the hours is very different, and much less interesting.  Indeed, there does not seem to be a single occurrence of the clause "qui nos conspicis ex nostra infirmitate deficere" anywhere in the contemporary Liturgia horarum.

BCP 1549:  "we haue no power of oureselues to helpe ourselues", followed by a different text:  seconde Sonday [of Lent].

BCP 1662:  "we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves":  Second Sunday of Lent.

BCP 1979:  "no power in ourselves to help ourselves":  Third Sunday of Lent.

"How many years it would take to reveal, direct, and confirm the necessary line, until the defense would stand as one with the prosecution and the court, and the accused would be in agreement with them too, and all the resolutions of the workers as well!"

     "This is an instructive example. Although 'revolutionary legality' won a partial victory, how enormous an effort it required on the part of the presiding judge! How much disorganization, lack of discipline, lack of political consciousness there still was! The prosecution stood firmly with the defense. The convoy guards stuck their noses into something that wasn’t their business in order to send off a protest. Whew, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the new kind of court were not having things easy by any means! Of course, not all the sessions were anything like so turbulent, but this wasn’t the only one of its kind. How many years it would take to reveal, direct, and confirm the necessary line, until the defense would stand as one with the prosecution and the court, and the accused would be in agreement with them too, and all the resolutions of the workers as well!
     "To pursue this enterprise of many years’ duration is the rewarding task of the historian. As for us—how are we to make our way through that rosy mist? Whom are we to ask about it? Those who were shot aren’t talking, and neither are those who have been scattered to the four winds. Even if the defendants, and the lawyers, and the guards, and the spectators have survived, no one will allow us to seek them out.
     "Evidently, the only help we will get is from the prosecution.
     "In this connection, I was given by well-wishers an intact copy of a collection of speeches for the prosecution delivered by that fierce revolutionary, the first People’s Commissar of Military Affairs in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, the Commander in Chief, and later the organizer of the Department of Exceptional Courts of the People’s Commissariat of Justice—where the personal rank of tribune was being readied for him, until Lenin vetoed the title—the glorious accuser in the greatest trials, subsequently exposed as the ferocious enemy of the people, N. V. Krylenko. And if, despite everything, we want to attempt a brief review of the public trials, if we are determined to try to get a feeling for the judicial atmosphere of the first post-revolutionary years, then we have to learn to read this Krylenko text. We have no other. And using it as a basis, we must try to picture to ourselves everything that is missing from it and everything that happened in the provinces too.
     "Of course, we would prefer to see the stenographic record of those trials, to listen to the dramatic voices from beyond the grave of those first defendants and those first lawyers, speaking at a time when no one could have foreseen in what implacable sequence all of it would be swallowed up—together with those Revtribunal members as well.
     "However, as Krylenko has explained, for a whole series of technical reasons, 'it was inconvenient to publish the stenographic records[.] It was convenient only to publish his speeches for the prosecution and the sentences handed down by the tribunals, which by that time had already come to jibe completely with the demands of the accuser-prosecutor."

     Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag archipelago 1918-1956:  An experiement in literary investigation I-II, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York:  Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973, Part I, chap. 8 ("The law as a child"), p. 305-306.

The liturgy "composed on his own by, say, some Pentecostal pastor in Houston for next Sunday's service in his church"

     ". . . the traditional liturgies have stood the test of time across many centuries by billions of Christians. For that reason, the understanding of God implicit and explicit in ['the points of convergence of'] those liturgies has more authority, carries more weight (gravitas), than one composed on his own by, say, some Pentecostal pastor in Houston for next Sunday’s service in his church; the theology implicit and explicit in the latter is more likely to be quirky, distorted, out of the mainstream. . . .
     ". . . the traditional liturgies have a depth, a richness, a beauty that, in my experience, these contemporary alternative liturgies lack. In my (admittedly limited) experience, the latter liturgies strip elements out of the traditional liturgies, reduce the imagery, make the language chatty and prosaic so that everyone can understand immediately what is being said. There remains only a faint echo of the enormous devotion and creativity that the early church poured into its liturgies. The most radical example of this reductive flattening-out that I have encountered was a Sunday morning service that consisted of nothing more than a praise band performing for about half an hour, followed by a perfunctory prayer spoken by the leader of the band and what was described as a 'talk' by the minister — nothing more.
     "If the alternative contemporary liturgies that I have experienced are typical of these liturgies as a whole, then these liturgies do not represent a fresh burst of liturgical creativity but represent instead the stripping out from the traditional liturgies of almost all their components. Accordingly, in discussing the theological implications of the acts to be found in the traditional liturgies we are also discussing the acts to be found in these alternative contemporary liturgies, since there are none to be found in the latter that are not to be found in the former.
     "My focus on the traditional liturgies does, of course, pose a question to the alternative contemporary liturgies, namely, why have they stripped so many things out? Why was there no confession of sins in that service I mentioned? Why no intercessions? Why no reading of Scripture? And why was there almost no sense of the majesty and awesomeness of God? Is there an understanding of God implicit in this radical stripping out that is different from the understanding to be found in the traditional liturgies? If so, what is that different understanding? . . ."

     Nicholas Wolterstorff, The God we worship:  an exploration of liturgical theology (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2015), 19-20.  "I should add here that the revisions of their traditional liturgies that all denominations, with the exception of the Orthodox, undertook in the twentieth century also amounted to the stripping out of a fair number of traditional elements and theological principles" (20n11).  Agreed!  But granted that the Novus Ordo was itself a comparatively free-wheeling and parochial hatchet job, why is it necessary, leaving that aside, to focus on "the points of convergence" of the traditional liturgies if not because the Reformers, say, did the same (if to a much lesser degree than that "Pentecostal pastor in Houston")?

"death over death did forever triumph"

St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 391 (c. 990/1000), p. 64

"Thou alone excellest in stature all the cedars of Lebanon; for on thee the Life of the world was hanged, on thee was Christ victorious, and death over death did forever triumph."

"Super omnia ligna cedrorum tu sola excelsior, in qua Vita mundi pependit, in qua Christus triumphavit, et mors mortem superavit in æternum."

     Antiphon to the Benedictus, Lauds, Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September), Brevarium Romanum (e.g. vol. 4 (Boston:  Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1941), 617), as trans. Morning prayer, Divine worship:  Daily office, North American edition (Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter), as reproduced at prayer.covert.org.  Undoubtedly there have been many other translations of this, just e.g. this one, a bit more literal, from Divinum officium (online),

Thou art higher than all cedars, whereon the Life of the world hung, whereon. Christ openly triumphed, and His death trampled down death for ever.

The Anglican breviary containing the Divine office according to the general usage of the Western church put into English in accordance with the Book of common prayer (Mount Sinai, NY:  Frank Gavin Liturgical Foundation, 1955; repr. 1998), E411 =1431:

O Tree of life, thou excellest in greatness all the cedars of Lebanon, for on thee the Life-Giver of this world was hung; on thee Christ was victorious in his death, and triumphant over all death for ever.

Perfect vacuity

Source

     "As a Jew with the greatest respect for the Catholic Church, I had always to this point assumed that in the Vatican only extraordinarily discriminating [(ausschließlich höchstkundige)]—[if] probably only [(nur) mere]—men work.  But the Pope’s answer[, almost three months in coming,] is perfectly vacuous [(nichtssagend)] because completely balanced.  Terror is not called terror, and no attempt is made to discriminate between perpetrators and victims.  Peace is called for, but with no attempt to indicate, even [if] only in a preliminary way, how, apart from flowery language, it is to be attained.  Of a moral compass there is, apart from commonplaces and the (naturally) congenial reference to God, no trace.  [What is more,] that reference to God is nothing more than a vacuous [(inhaltsleere)] vocable.  If one wanted to interpret Francis maliciously, one could say that the Hamas terrorists, too, shout 'Allahu akbar!,' 'God is great!' before, during, and after every murder."

     Michael Wolffsohn, "Papst Franziskus, die Juden and die Hamas:  Zur Debatte um das Papstscheiben an jüdische Gelehrte," Website of the Internationale Zeitschrift Communio, 22 Februar 2024, translation mine.  The reference, of course, is to this document.

Seebach in defense of St. Augustine on women

Persönliche Homepage Prof. Dr. Larissa Seelbach

"Augustine distinguished with reference to every human being between the outer human being, the homo exterior, and the inner human being, the homo interior.  While only the inner human being is in a position to know God, only the outer human being encompasses the specificities of human sexuality.  With respect to the outer human being the woman is placed on an equal footing with the man, since both possess an asexual soul.  Only with respect to the outer human being is the woman subjected to the man, since her bodily and social position corresponds ultimately to the traditional patriarchal subordination of the woman.  In reference to th[is] image-bearing [(Gottesebenbildlichkeit)] it is [at Gen. litt. 7.24/35] therefore said [that] 'we can only correctly understand the words to his image with reference to the soul, and the words male and female as having reference to the body.'
     "Augustine in no way doubted the image-bearing of the woman as homo, and from that point of view grappled with [(stand . . . vor)] the problem that in 1 Cor 11:7 Paul appeared to champion another understanding.  There [Paul] says, 'For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.'  According to this [passage] a pre-eminence over and against the woman would correspond to the man as image and glory of God.  This Bible passage was of value to Augustine for its capacity to harmonize with [(galt es . . . in Einklang mit . . . zu bringen)] his own understanding of the image-bearing of the woman according to Gen 1:27.  His decision to interpret 1 Cor 11:7 figuratively, and thereby to defend the wording of Gen 1:27, 'So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them', was pathbreaking.  Augustine saw in the outward distinction between man and woman an illustration of the differentiation within the human soul, independent of whether th[e soul in question] belongs to a man or to a woman.
     "Within every human soul [there] was[, for Augustine at Gen. litt. 3.22/34-24/35, but] in every case figuratively speaking, a male and a female element [(ein jeweils bildlich zu verstehendes männliches und ein weibliches Element)].  Both [of these] elements [of the human soul] functioned with respect to one another as [did] man and woman in society.  To the superordinate position of the man [in society] corresponded the function of the 'contemplation of eternal truth', [or] sapientia, and to the position of the woman [(der weiblichen Stellung) in society] appeared to correspond the subordinate 'management of temporal affairs', [or] scientia.  The male [element] alone connoted sapientia [and] possessed direct access to the eternal and divine.  And for this reason the man would—again in the figurative [(übertragenen)] sense—be [(wäre)] treated always [as] image-bearing [(gottebenbildlich)].  In the figurative [(übertragenen)] sense—[but] not in the real [(wirklichen) sense]!—the figurative [(figurativen)] woman, [and] therefore scientia, would rise to no image-bearing [(Gottebenbildlichkeit)].  The image-bearing of a real [(realen)] woman, whose asexual soul was the seat of [(beherbergt, harbored)] the figurative [(übertragenen)] male function, or sapientia, as well as the figurative [(übertragenen)] female function, or scientia, is not belittled [(geschmälert, diminished or curtailed)] by this intra-psychic distinction of function."

     Larissa Carina Seelbach, "'Das webiliche Geschlecht ist ja kein Gebrechen, sondern Natur:  Augustins Wertschätzung der Frau (the title, also (?), of a 302-page dissertation published in 2002), Augustinus-Studientag 2004, Toscanasaal der Residenz, Würzburg, as published on the Zentrum für Augustinus-Forschung website, but also on pp. 71-91 of Würde und Rolle der Frau in der Spätantike:  Beiträge des II. Würzburger Augustinus-Studientages am 3. Juli 2004, ed. Cornelius Mayer unter Mitwirkung von Alexander Eisgrub =Res et signa 3 =Cassiacum 39, no. 3 (Würzburg, 2007).

"no one should . . . suppose that the creator of sex despised sex"

      "To heal souls God adopts all kinds of means suitable to the times which are ordered by his marvellous wisdom. . . .  But in no way did he show greater loving-kindness in his dealings with the human race for its good, than when the Wisdom of God, his only Son, coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, deigned to assume human nature; when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  For thus he showed to carnal people, given over to bodily sense and unable with the mind to behold the truth, how lofty a place among creatures belonged to human nature, in that he appeared to men not merely visibly—for he could have done that in some ethereal body adapted to our weak powers of vision—but as a true man.  The assuming of our nature was to be also its liberation.  And that no one should perchance suppose that the creator of sex despised sex, he became a man born of a woman [(et ne quis forte sexus a suo creatore se contemptum putaret, uirum suscepit, natus ex femina est)]."

     St. Augustine, De uera religione xvi/30, trans. Burleigh, LCC 6, 239.  Latin from CAG as reproduced in Past Masters =CCL 32, 205-206.  I.e., no one should suppose that the Creator of the sexual difference despised the sexual difference.

The preacher as adversary

 "So who is the adversary? [(Mt 5:25)] The word of God. The word of God is your adversary. Why is it your adversary? Because it commands things against the grain which you don't do [(Quia contraria jubet, quam tu facis)]. . . .
     ". . . Because the word of God is your adversary in giving such commands, I am afraid that I too may be some people's adversary because I am speaking like this. Well, why should that bother me? May he who terrifies me into speaking make me brave enough not to fear the complaints of men. Those who don't want to be faithful in chastity to their wives—and there are thousands of such men—don't want me to say these things. But whether they want me to or not, I'm going to say them."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 9.3 on the ten strings of the harp, trans. Edmund Hill, WSA III/1, 261-262.  Latin:  CCL 41, 105-151; PL 38, cols. 76-78 (75-91).

"God, who does not know sleep, . . . rouses us from sleep that we may ask"

"By [the Parable of the Importunate Friend at Midnight (Lk 11:5-8/13)] we are to understand that if a man, roused from sleep, is forced [(excitatur)] to give unwillingly in answer to a request, God, who does not know sleep, and who rouses us from sleep that we may ask [(qui nec dormire nouit et dormientes nos excitat, ut petamus)], gives much more graciously."

     St. Augustine, Letter 130 to Proba (c. 412) VIII/15, trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons, FC 18 (1953), 388 (376-401).  Latin from CSEL 44, 58 (40-77).

A refusal to reduce one's morals to the measure of one's behavior

     "For if a man lives with a woman for a time, until he finds another worthy either of his high station in life or his wealth, whom he can marry as his equal, in his very soul he is an adulterer, and not with the one whom he desires to find but with her with whom he now lives in such a way as not to be married to her.  The same is true for the woman, who, knowing the situation and willing it, still has relations unchastely with him, with whom she has no compact as a wife.  On the other hand, if she remains faithful to him and, after he has taken a wife, does not plan to marry and is prepared to refrain absolutely from such an act, surely I could not easily bring myself to call her an adulteress; yet who would say that she did not sin. . . ."

     St. Augustine, De bono conjugali 5, as trans. Wilcox (FC 27), p. 15.  Larissa Carina Seelbach, "'Das webiliche Geschlecht ist ja kein Gebrechen, sondern Natur:  Augustins Wertschätzung der Frau (the title, also (?), of a 302-page dissertation published in 2002), Augustinus-Studientag 2004, Toscanasaal der Residenz, Würzburg, as published on the Zentrum für Augustinus-Forschung website, but also on pp. 71-91 of Würde und Rolle der Frau in der Spätantike:  Beiträge des II. Würzburger Augustinus-Studientages am 3. Juli 2004, ed. Cornelius Mayer unter Mitwirkung von Alexander Eisgrub =Res et signa 3 =Cassiacum 39, no. 3 (Würzburg, 2007).  "Later, however, Augustine left no doubt about the reprehensibility of his earlier behavior.  In his treatise De bono conjugali he put [it] with unmistakable clarity. . . .  This is precisely what Augustine himself had done, in that he had treated his second concubine as, so to speak, a 'temporary solution.'"
     Presumably the way he treated his first concubine (?) Augustine covered in the paragraph immediately preceding?