Thursday, April 16, 2015

"If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find him in the chalice."

     Widely attributed to St. John Chrysostom, but sounds to me more like somebody's crisp paraphrase of Homily 50.4 on Matthew (ed. Field, 518A ff. (vol. 2, pp. 63 (last line) ff.); NPNF 10, trans. Prevost, rev. Riddle):
neither let us account it enough for our salvation, if after we have stripped widows and orphans, we offer for this table [(τραπέζῃ)] a gold and jewelled cup [(ποτήριον)]. Nay, if thou desire to honor the sacrifice, offer thy soul, for which also it was slain; cause that to become golden; but if that remain worse than lead or potter’s clay, while the vessel [(σκεῦος)] is of gold, what is the profit?     Let not this therefore be our aim, to offer golden vessels [(σκεύη)] only, but to do so from honest earnings likewise. For these are of the sort that is more precious even than gold, these that are without injuriousness. For the church [(ἐκκλεσία)] is not a gold foundry nor a workshop for silver, but an assembly [(πανήγυρις)] of angels. Wherefore it is souls which we require, since in fact God accepts these for the souls’ sake.
     That table [(τράπεζα)] at that time was not of silver nor that cup [(ποτήριον)] of gold, out of which Christ gave His disciples His own blood; but precious was everything there, and awful, for that they were full of the Spirit.
     Wouldest thou do honor to Christ’s body? Neglect Him not when naked; do not while here [(μὲν)] thou honorest Him with silken garments, neglect Him perishing without [(ἔξω δὲ)] of cold and nakedness. For He that said, 'This is my body,' and by His word confirmed the fact, This same said, 'Ye saw me an hungered, and fed me not;' and, 'Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.'  For This indeed needs not coverings, but a pure soul; but that requires much attention.
     Having uncovered this on my own, I see now that I am not the first to have made the connection.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

"The certainties of physics might establish an intellectual foundation, and philosophical ambiguities may delight, but not much compares to the roar of a bike."

     Matthew B.Crawford, as quoted in The chronicle of higher education, 8 April 2015.

Sachphilologie

"If Turner had spent a bit more time with [August] Boeckh, ['who lectured on "Classical Studies" . . . at the University of Berlin from 1809 to 1865,'] he would have been able to use Boeckh's neologistic 'Sachphilologie', or 'a philology of things', to show how philology also stands at the beginning of the very contemporary turn to material culture.
     "This relationship between the verbal and the material is [also] fundamental to the story of philology.  Turner includes archaeology as one of the humanities subjects that grows out of classical philology (and antiquarianism, one of the subjects that flowed in to help make it), but he seems not to grasp how intertwined they are. . . . the twinned relationship between the history in words [emphasized by Turner] and the history in things seems likely to deepen in the near future."

     Peter N. Miller, "Word science," a review of Philology:  the forgotten origins of the modern humanities (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2014), by James Turner, Times literary supplement no. 5843 (March 27, 2015):  27 (26-27).

Sunday, April 12, 2015

"What has passed our lips as food, O Lord, may we possess in purity of heart, that what has been given to us in time may be our healing for eternity."

Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine, pura mente capiamus, et de munere temporali fiat nobis remedium sempiternum.

What we have taken in/consumed by mouth, O Lord, with a pure heart may we lay hold of, and of [this] temporal gift make for us an eternal remedy.

     Prayer said by the priest "Dum purificationem peragit . . . secreto", Missale Romanum.  =Bruylants no. 952 (vol. 2, p. 274).  According to Corpus orationum no. 4931aA-B, below, the prayer dates back to the 6th/7th century Leonine or Veronese sacramentary, though "pura" is first prefixed in codices dating from the end of the 9th century and following.

Quod ore sumpsimus, domine, mente capiamus, et de munere temporali fiat nobis remedium sempiternum.

     Corpus orationum no. 4931aA-B.  This is no. 531 in the 6th/7th-century Leonine or Veronese sacramentary (no. 7 of the 17 fragments of that in Mercati).  And according to this entry in Corpus orationum, "pura" is first prefixed ("praem.") in codices dating from the end of the 9th century and following (Ambrosian Sacramentary, Milan, Bibl. del Capitolo Metropol. D 3-3 (end of 9th); Missale Beneventanum, Benevento, Archivio arcivescovile, Cod. VI 33 (10/11th century); Missale of Robert of Jumièges, Rouen, Bibl. mun., Y 6 (1013/17); Sacramentarium . . . Nivernensis, Paris, B.N. lat. 17.333 (1013/66); Missale Beneventanum, Baltimore, Walter's Art Gallery, MS W 6 (11th); etc.). 

Quod ore sumpsimus, domine, mente capiamus, et de corpore et sanguine domini nostri Iesu Christi fiat nobis remedium sempiternum.

     Corpus orationum no. 4931b, which appears in sacramentaries (Bergomensis, Milano) dated to the second half of the 9th century and later.