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".