"every [(toute)] avoidable error"-in-"print" must be punished, with "prison or hard labor" if necessary

     "The need of truth is more sacred than any other need. . . .  One feels afraid to read when once one has realized the quantity and the monstrousness [(l’énormité)] of the material falsehoods shamelessly paraded, even in the books of the most reputable authors.  Thereafter one reads as though one were drinking from a contaminated well.
     "There are men who work eight hours a day and make the immense effort of reading in the evenings so as to acquire knowledge.  It is impossible for them to go and verify their sources in the big libraries.  They have to take the books on trust.  One has no right to give them spurious provender [(à manger du faux)].  What sense is there in pleading that authors act in good faith?  They don’t have to do physical labor for eight hours a day.  Society provides for their sustenance so that they may have the leisure and give themselves the trouble to avoid error. . . ."
     "A few straightforward measures of public salubrity would protect the population from offenses against the truth [(les atteintes à la vérité)].
     "The first would be to set up, with such protection in view, special courts enjoying the highest prestige, composed of judges specially selected and trained.  They would be responsible for publicly condemning any avoidable error [(toute erreur evitable)] , and would be able to sentence to prison or hard labor for repeated commission of the offense, aggravated by proven dishonesty of intention.
     ". . . .
     "Under this system, anybody, no matter who, discovering an avoidable error [(une erreur évitable)] in a printed text or radio broadcast, would be entitled to bring an action before these courts."

     Simone Weil, The need for roots:  prelude to a declaration of duties toward mankind, trans. Arthur Wills (New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952), 37-39 (Part one, Truth).  French from L’enracinement:  prelude à une declaration des devoirs enverse l’être humain, Collection Espoir (Paris:  Gallimard, 1949), 38-40.
     Who, then, should be prosecuted for this eminently avoidable error?  The translator?  Or someone else further on down the chain?  "All the more reason why it is disgraceful to tolerate the existence of newspapers on which, as everybody knows, not one of the collaborators would be able to stop [(y demeurer, to remain!)], unless he were prepared from time to time to tamper knowingly with the truth" (38).
     Cf. Geoffrey Hill on the metaphysical significance of inaccuracy.

Nos. two and three of Baumstark's "celebrated" "laws of liturgical development" ("criteria . . . of relative [liturgical] age")

"a [liturgical] text is [1] the more ancient the less influenced by the Bible and [2] the more recent the more symmetrical.  What is more, . . . the tendency towards symmetry is felt before the influence of the Bible, for there are many cases in which the symmetry, itself clearly secondary, has been destroyed by the more and more invasive impact [(action . . . envahissante)] of biblical language."

     Anton Baumstark, Liturgie comparée:  principes et méthodes pour l'étude historique des liturgies chrétiennes (Chevetogne, Belgium: Editions de Chevetogne, 1953 [1939]), 67, citing (his student) Fritz Hamm and (subsequently) Hieronymus Engberding (translation mine).  "celebrated" from Haquin, André Haquin, "Un prière eucharistique valide, sans paroles de consécration?: L’anaphore Syrienne d’Addaï et Mari," Revue théologique de Louvain 37, no. 4 (2006): 536n8 (532-544).  This struck me at first as counter-intuitive, but makes sense in the light of the presence of liturgy in Scripture itself (67-68).

Oratio, Feast of St. Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church, 17 September

"Deus, fons vitae, qui sanctam Hildegardem, virginem, prophetico spiritu imbuisti, fac nos, quaesumus, eius exemplo et intercessione, vias tuas scire et in huius saeculi caligine lucis tuae claritatem cognoscere. Per Dominum."

O God, source of life, who steeped Saint Hildegard in the prophetic Spirit, cause us, we pray, by her example and intercession, to know your ways [(vias tuas scire > Scivias)] and in the darkness of our [(huius, of this)] time to know the brightness of your light.  Through [our] Lord [Jesus Christ your Son, who, etc.].

     Prayer for the Feast of St. Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church, 17 September, translation mine (as I wasn't seeing this offhand in any of my apps).  Image:  RomkeHoekstra, Wikimedia Commons.


Church of England:

"Most glorious and holy God, whose servant Hildegard, strong in the faith, was caught up in the vision of your heavenly courts:  by the breath of your Spirit open our eyes to glimpse your glory and our lips to sing your praises with all the angels; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who". Etc.

Episcopal Church:

"God of all times and seasons:  Give us grace that we, after the example of thy servant Hildegard, may both know and make known the joy and jubilation of being part of thy creation, and show forth thy glory not only with our lips but in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who".  Etc.

"Changes of habit"

     "In the summer of 1538 the order was put out for former regulars to remove habits or face the capital punishment of felons. Anecdotally, Cromwell met Alexander Barclay – formerly a monk, now a friar – at a bookstall by St Paul’s and told him that if he did not take off his habit he would be hanged, 'for example to all other'. Beyond London and the vicegerent’s gaze, it proved more difficult to prevent. Sir Piers Edgcumbe caught up with two Plymouth Franciscans still clothed as friars. 'Wolde [they] by them new hobyts or naye?', he challenged them. 'They bowthe sayed that they wolde not for a yere or tow and by that tyme perchance ther wylbe aouther change and then oure olde hobyts wyll serve agayne.' One Sir Robert Elys, resolutely uncooperative, was 'carried hym to the joyell [gaol]', declaring, 'he trustyd within tow yeris he mought weer his clothyng  agayne . . . [and] that he had red in a pronunsticacion that ther shulde be a kyng in yglond that shulde do gret wrong to his comynaltie to ther semyng and that within tow yeris after he shulde take gret repentance for the same.'"

      James G. Clark, The dissolution of the monasteries:  a new history (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2021), chap. 9 ("Changes of habit").  Image:  Wikimedia Commons.

"Were it not for the poetry and song that they recite before me daily, I would not have created the world"

"Were it not for the poetry and song that they [all [sons of] flesh and blood [(כל בני בשר ודם)]] recite before me daily, I would not have created the world [(שאלמלא שירה וזמרה שהם אומרים לפני בכל יום לא בראתי את עולמי)]; and whence do we know that the Holy One, blessed is he, only created the world on account of the poetry and song?  From the verse which says (Psalm 96:6), 'Honor and majesty are before him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.'  That is to say, honor and majesty are before him in heavens, but strength and beauty arise from his sanctuary on earth. . . .  And whence do we know that the Holy One, blessed is he, created the heavens for the matter of poetry?  From the verse which says (Psalm 19:1), 'The heavens declare the glory of God. . . .'  And whence do we know that Adam opened his mouth in a song of praise?  From the verse which says 'A psalm, a poem for the Sabbath day.  It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praise to thy name, O most high!' (Psalm 92:1)."

     Midrash Otiyyot Derabbi Akiba [(מדרש אותיות דרבי עקיבא)] (7th/9th (prob. 9th) cent.), chap. 1, as trans. Harold Fisch, Poetry with a purpose:  biblical poetics and interpretation, Indiana studies in biblical literature (Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN:  Indiana University Press, 1988), 119.  Hebrew from the edition ed. Solomon Aaron Wertheimer (Jerusalem:  1914), 1-2 (beginning from the penultimate line of the text (not apparatus) on p. 1), not vol. 2 of (the still-less-than-fully-critical edition usually given for the Midrash Otiyyot Derabbi Akiba,) Wertheimer's Bate midrashot:  ʻeśrim ṿe-ḥamishah midreshe Ḥazal ʻal pi kitve yad me-Genizat Yerushalayim u-Mitsrayim, ʻim mevoʼot, heʻarot ṿe-tsiyunim (Jerusalem:  Hotsaʼat Ketav-yad ṿe-sefer, 1988 [1950-1953]).  Hat tip:  Brian Lugioyo.  Image:  Rylands Sephardi Haggadah, fol. 28v (Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art and Material Culture).

"from any ashes whatever"

"[Christ's] rising from the grave was a sufficient argument to prove that men are to be raised up by Divine power, not only from their graves, but also from any dust whatever [(non solum de sepulcris, sed etiam de quibuscumque cineribus)]."

     I.e. he did not have "to return to dust [(incinerationem pati, suffer incineration)] so as to give to them who have returned to dust the hope of rising from the dust [(spem resurgendi incineratis post incinerationem, to the incinerated the hope of rising after incineration)]," incinerare being post-classical, and capable of meaning both 1a. "to reduce to ashes (by burning)" and 1b. "to reduce to dust (by decomposition)" (DMLBS), an ambiguity not present in the DMLBS (at least) for cinis:  cineribus < cinis, "1. The residue from a fire," "3. Ashes regarded as the result of destruction or consumption by fire," "4. Ashes as the condition of the body after death (whether cremated or not)" (OLD); "II.A. The ashes of a corpse that is burned," "the person after death," "after burning the corpse" (Lewis (& Short)); "1. residue of combustion" only (DMLBS).  The word in the Vulgate of Gen 3:19 ("dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return"), by contrast, is pulvis; and in the Vetus Latina, terra (L:  the "allgemeine Form der Vetus Latina"; H:  Jerome's Vulgate (28*)).
     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III.51.3.ad 3.

A prayer referencing St. Hildegard of Bingen

München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Res/V.ss. 982 m, XIIIIv

A prayer [with reference] to [(zü)] the holy saint Hildegard [of Bingen]:

Almighty, eternal God:  we beseech thee to bestow upon us [(wir bitten dich das du uns verleihen wöllest, we beseech thee that thou wouldst bestow upon us)] the Spirit of truth and, so, [to] be gracious [to us]  as you were to the holy [and] chaste saint Hildegard, that we may fulfill your will [both] here in time and with thee in everlasting happiness.  Amen.

      Die Legend des heyligen hertzogen sant Ruprechts bey Byngen uff sant Ruprechts berg leyplich rastende ([Oppenheim]:  [Köbel], 1524), XIIIIv, as digitized by MDZ, trans. mine.