Wednesday, December 8, 2021

A worthy little habitation for the Verbum abbreviatum

Monasteriaka
"O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin prepared a worthy [little] dwelling [(dignum . . . habitaculum)] for your Son, grant, we pray, that, as you preserved her from every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw, so, through her intercession, we, too, may be cleansed and admitted to your presence.  Through."

"Deus, qui per immaculatam Virginis Conceptionem dignum Filio tuo habitaculum praeparasti, quaesumus, ut, qui ex morte eiusdem Filii tui praevisa, eam ab omni labe praeservasti, nos quoque mundos, eius intercessione, ad te pervenire concedas.  Per."

     Collect for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  Habita-culum is morphologically a diminutive (Allen & Greenough no. 243), though the ICEL doesn't and the lexica don't emphasize the fact.  It is also post-classical, and not surprisingly quite common in the Vulgate, whence, presumably, it makes its way into the Gelasian Sacramentary.  It would be interesting to look further into the earliest occurrences of the word, but my assumption would be that it functioned in Christian circles as a term associated not just with churches and such, but also the doctrine the Verbum abbreviatum.

"Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself."

van der Weyden
"God begot the the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world.  Without God's Son, nothing could exist; without Mary's Son, nothing could be redeemed."
     "Truly 'the Lord is with you,' to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself."

"Deus est Pater constitutionis omnium, et MARIA est mater restitutionis omnium.  Deus enim genuit illum per quem omnia sunt facta, et MARIA peperit illum per quem cuncta sunt salvata.  Deus genuit illum sine quo penitus nihil est, et MARIA peperit illum, sine quo nihil omnino bene est.  O vere »dominus tecum«, cui dedit dominus, ut omnis natura tantum tibi deberet secum."

     St. Anselm, Oratio 52 ad sanctam Virginem Mariam cum meditatione et laude meritorum ejus =PL 158, col. 956B (an edition that the 3rd rev. ed. of the ODCC calls "unsatisfactory") =Oratio 7 ad sanctam MARIAM pro impetrando eius et Christi amore =S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt (the critical edition), vol. 3 (Edinburgh:  Thomas Nelson, 1946), p. 22,  as translated in the Office of readings for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Liturgy of the hours, but with the addition of quotation marks around Lk 1:28.  I have taken the Latin from the latter, in which it differs slightly from the former.