"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).
