AVVENTO. – It is the period marking the beginning of the Christmas (v.), just as Lent (v.) is for Easter. In the Roman rite it begins on the Sunday nearest the feast of St. Andrea the Apostle (thus between 27 November and 3 December), and consequently consists of four weeks; in the Ambrosian rite it begins on the Sunday following the feast of St. Martino (11 November) and lasts approximately six weeks. Just as Lent intensifies its function as Easter approaches (Holy Week), so too does A. through the antifone O (v.) in the Roman rite and the ferias of exceptato (from three to six days) in the Ambrosian rite. It has a dual character: penitential and joyful. Accordingly, violet is used in its liturgical offices, and the Gloria in excelsis and the Te Deum are omitted, while the singing of the Alleluia and the playing of the organ continue; the latter, however, is silent during the offices of Sundays (only in the Roman rite, with the exception of the Third Sunday) and ferias (also in the Ambrosian rite).
I. ORIGIN
1. In the East. When the Nestorian heresy arose, there already existed in Constantinople (and, after the Council of Ephesus, throughout the East), probably on the Sunday preceding Christmas, a feast of the Madonna whose precise subject was the virginal conception, but with probable allusions to divine motherhood. The controversy with Nestorius led the defenders of orthodoxy to insist, in the homilies for this feast, on the theme of motherhood, as, for example, St. Proclus did on Sunday, 23 December 428. The thought of the Fathers may be summarized as follows: a recalling of man’s primitive state in the earthly paradise and of his original fall; the divine plan of the Incarnation and Redemption; Mary, the new Eve; her divine motherhood foretold by the prophets, announced by the Angel, manifested on Christmas Day, and subsequently acknowledged by the Magi. But the remembrance of the mysteries preceding the coming of the Messiah required the commemoration of the Forerunner. Indeed, we know that in the mid-fifth century, in Jerusalem, Antioch, and elsewhere, St. John the Baptist was commemorated on the Sunday preceding that dedicated to the Mother of God. After the fifth century, however, it must be noted that in the East the feasts came to be arranged no longer according to a logical criterion (Christ as the center of the liturgical year and everything ordered in relation to him), but chronologically. Thus the Annunciation, or feast of the divine Motherhood, was moved to 25 March, and the Sunday, or the days preceding Christmas, were then dedicated to the figures of the Old and New Testaments who had represented or prophesied Christ.2. In the West. – Once the attribution of A. to St. Peter and its existence in the time of Tertullian and St. Cyprian had been rejected, the oldest testimonies are a passage by St. Hilary (d. around 366), which says: « Sancta Mater Ecclesia Salvatoris adventum annuo recursu per trium septimanarum secretum spatium sibi indicavit » (CSEL, 65, 16), and a canon of the Council of Saragossa (380): « Viginti et uno die, a XVI Kal. Januarii, continuis diebus, nulli liceat de ecclesia se absentare, nec latere in domibus, nec nudis pedibus incedere, sed concurrere ad ecclesiam » (PL 85, 66). Although Wilmart defended the authenticity of the first (in Revue Bénédict., 27 [1910], p. 500 ff.), and Cabrol the importance of the second, these two texts are nevertheless still considered by some to be of little probative value, so that the existence of A. at the decline of the fourth century remains doubtful. There may perhaps have been, in embryonic form, a preparation for the two feasts of Christmas–Epiphany, as is suggested by the exhortations of a Spanish ascetic (c. 400) to a friend to spend the last days of the year and the feasts celebrated during it in a holy manner, including by abstaining from marital relations. The fact remains that in the fifth century there were two aspects of A.: one at Ravenna, of Eastern (theological) character, and the other in Gaul, essentially ascetical (penitential) and at first unrelated to any structuring of the liturgical year. The Ravenna scroll, containing 40 prayers in preparation for Christmas and judged to date from a period close to the Council of Ephesus (430), is the clearest and most certain testimony to A. in the West. It seems to be elucidated by the homilies of St. Peter Chrysologus for the feasts of the annunciation and conception of St. John the Baptist and of the virginal conception of the Madonna, celebrated most probably on the two Sundays before Christmas. Its affinity with the Eastern conception is clear and is explained by the residence at Ravenna of the imperial court, which was closely linked to Constantinople.
In Gaul, on the other hand, A. had the same function for Christmas that Lent has for Easter; St. Gregory of Tours (d. in 594) says that it was instituted by Perpetuus, the sixth bishop of Tours. It consisted of a six-week fast from St. Martin’s Day to Christmas—43 days—during which the liturgy assumed a penitential character. There was not yet an appropriate formulary, but one gradually took shape, reaching its conclusion in the seventh century, and showing the influence of the Eastern conception, to the extent that it constituted a fusion of the two aspects of A. This occurred more extensively in regions under Gallican influence but not without relations with the East, such as Spain (the Mozarabic rite) and Milan (the Ambrosian rite), where A. lasted six weeks. At Rome, the homilies of St. Gregory the Great are the first to attest a genuine period of preparation for Christmas: it lasts five weeks in the Gelasian Sacramentary, and four in the Gregorian. The latter arrangement eventually prevailed universally, certainly not because it symbolized the presumed 4,000 years from Adam to Christ, but through an analogous reduction of the holy forty-day period, and thus under the influence of Gaul, from which the fast was also adopted in the seventh century, and the penitential rites somewhat later.