Wednesday, August 13, 2014

"praise signifies that a man offers his mind [(mens)] to God...."

"Praise is a sacrifice to God inasmuch as it is a sign of interior devotion, for praise signifies that a man offers his mind [(mens)] to God...."

"Laus est sacrificium Deo inquantum est signum interioris devotionis, quia laus significat quod homo Deo offert mentem suam...."

     Thomas Aquinas, Super Psalmo 49, no. 7.
     Roy J. Deferrari and M. Inviolata Berry's A lexicon of Saint Thomas Aquinas based on the Summa Theologica and selected passages of his other works (Washington, DC:  Catholic University Press of America, 1948) gives three definitions for mens:  "(1) intellect, mind, spirit, intellectual being, the opposite of corpus, and sensus, (2) intellect, intellectual faculty of perceiving or desiring, (3) remembrance, memory."  The debt to the Thomas-Lexikon of Ludwig Schütz that Deferrari and Barry acknowledge in their Foreward is clear in its comparably tripartite definition of mens.  Nonetheless, it is not clear to me that the use of mens here is encompassed by either lexicon sufficiently.
     Corpus Thomisticum, following the Parma text of 1863 supposedly, has "sacrificium Dei".  But Robert Wielockx, who also claims to be following the Parma text, has "sacrificium Deo" ("Adoro te deuote:  zur Lösung einer alten Crux," Annales theologici:  revista internazionale di teologia 21 (2007):  113 (101-138)).
     For the larger context, see the online translation by Dr. Stephen Loughlin.

No comments: