Inscription on Mt. Ararat

For Nikolay Pavlovich [Romanov I], denominated Tsar of All-Russ’, Ivan Fyodorovich [Paskevich-Erevansky] liberated, by armed might, this most-holy sanctuary of the Christian faith from (Y)Erevan in the year of our Lord 1826.

Nicolao Pauli filio
totius Rutheniae autocratore
jubente
hoc asylum sacrosanctum
armata manu vindicavit
fidei Christianae
Johannes Friedrich filius
Paskewitsch ab Erivan
Anno domini MDCCCXXVI.

     Parrot, Friedrich. Reise zum Ararat (Berlin: Haude und Spener, 1834), 145 (p. 163 of the English translation of the book published in 1845).  Inscription on the "leaden plate" affixed to a cross erected on the summit of Mt. Ararat by the Parrot expedition in 1826, translation mine.  With thanks to my colleague Paula Skreslet for the diversion.

"'Africa's domestic economy encouraged large-scale trading and possession of slaves long before Europeans visited African shores'"

     "While it is not a straightforward matter whether the transatlantic slave trade was 'the gravest crime against humanity,' surely it was a crime. It was a crime and a monumental tragedy from the perspective of tens of millions of black human lives that were sacrificed on the twin altars of greed and human stupidity. That said—and this is a crucial point—there is scant historical support for the tacit assumption that it was an organized and systematic assault against hapless Africans who, but for lack of military wherewithal, would have risen up against and repelled their enslavers. The historical evidence is more sobering. As John Thornton wrote in Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 ([2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, ]1998[, 125]): '[In conclusion, then, we must accept that] African participation in the slave trade was voluntary and under the control of African decision makers. This was not just at the surface level of daily exchange but even at deeper levels. Europeans possessed no means, either economic or military, to compel African leaders to sell slaves.[ . . .  Africa's domestic economy encouraged large-scale trading and possession of slaves long before Europeans visited African shores.]' This conclusion is not controversial among serious historians of the transatlantic slave trade. It also helps explain the historical absurdity of those newfangled European abolitionists who, as it were, had suddenly started seeing the trade through a different moral lens and began struggling to convince African traffickers, until a minute ago their trading partners, of the wrongfulness of the enterprise.
     "If European abolitionists did not become saints overnight, African chiefs who insisted on business as usual were hardly Satanic. They were instead agents following a brutal social logic: So integral was enslavement to the internal workings and moral order of most African communities in that period that it is difficult to conceive of their functioning without it. Historically, a pre-colonial African kingdom that did not extract slaves from a vanquished vassal was as rare as one that did not regularly engage in slave raids. In the 1840s, Gezo, king of the West African state of Dahomey, told the importuning British, 'The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth.… The mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery.' In this, he echoed a sentiment that was not uncommon for the time.
     "Indeed, not only was trade in human beings par for the course, many believed that it was God’s will. After Britain declared all slave trading illegal in 1807, the King of Bonny (now part of Nigeria) doubled down in a tone not all that different from that of King Gezo: 'We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself.' Nigerian historian P.A. Igbafe observed about the pre-colonial Benin Kingdom that the institution of slavery was 'one of its main props.' This could well have been said about every single pre-colonial African kingdom. The Asante Empire, with its capital in Kumasi—located in present-day Ghana—was a slave-owning one.
     "Rather than a 'definitive break in world history,' therefore, the transatlantic slave trade was coextensive with it. That it was egregious in its brutality is without question, but it was a trade involving two sides and, crucially, seems to have unfolded within a moral and social calculus in which you were either traded or trader. It is one thing to recognize its sheer ugliness and another thing entirely to misrepresent it, which the campaigners for reparatory justice flagrantly do.
     "The transatlantic slave trade, moreover, is just one of three momentous episodes of human trafficking in African history, the other two being the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades. Consider this: The transatlantic slave trade lasted roughly 400 years. The trans-Saharan lasted for 1,300 years, and it preceded, overlapped with, and continued long [(a century or so?)] after the transatlantic slave trade had ceased."

     Ebenezer Obadare, "A Dubious Quest for 'Reparatory Justice':  The case for compensating Africa for slavery rests on bad history, questionable morality, and false promises," Commentary, September 2026.  I have not yet verified these claims, only that Obadare holds a BA in history and an MSc in international relations from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and a Ph.D. in social policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.  On the other hand, and am currently reading J. C. Sharman, Ties that bound:  slavery and power in Africa (Princeton University Press, 2026), and there Sharman follows up his own quotation of Thornton ("Europeans possessed no means, either economic or military, to compel African leaders to sell slaves") with "This was the case ['for the first century and a half of [Portuguese] contact' and] during and after the era of the company states until the end of European involvement in the slave trade.  Such a perspective runs completely against popular stereotypes of European masters and African victims.  It also contradicts an earlier generation of scholarship holding that Europe dominated and exploited Africans right from the beginning of relations between them—a view epitomized in the book [(Rodney Walter's)] How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. . . . [T]he Europeans were consistently in an inferior position" (65, supplemented by 59).  Though Sharman is here making, in context, a point about the (nevertheless African-dominated) ramp-up effected by European demand from the later 17th century, this one still stands:  ". . . Africans had centuries of experience with slavery and long-distance slave trades before contact with Europeans . . ." (75).  Not only that, "'[B]y the middle of the nineteenth century there were more slaves in Muslim West Africa than in all parts of the Americas at any time in the history of the black Atlantic'" (104, quoting Paul E. Lovejoy, Jihad in West Africa during the age of revolutions (Princeton University Press, 2016), 160, under the sub-heading "Limitations on the involvement of Muslim West Africa in the Atlantic trade").
     For but one alternative perspective of which I happen to be aware, with equally recent citations, some of them in French, see Sègbégnon Mathieu Gnonhossou, "Soul-destroyers tore me from my mother's arms : West African resistance to the slave trade," in Awakening to justice:  faithful voices from the abolitionist past, ed. Dialogue on Race and Faith Project (Seattle, Wash.) (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2024).  What strikes me, though, is how little the footnotes to Gnonhossou overlap with entries in the twenty-page bibliography to Sharman.  Glancing through the former all-too quickly, I caught only two titles cited by Gnonhossou that appear in the bibliography to Sharman, though Gnohossou does cite titles by Sharman's authors that Sharman does not cite:  Law (notes 15, 18, 20, and 30), Manning (notes 16, 20, and 24), Monroe (notes 18, 20, 22, and 23), and Ross (note 14).

"the end can contain the beginning only because the beginning contained the end."

      Bruce Lindley McCormack, The humility of the eternal Son:  Reformed kenoticism and the repair of Chalcedon (New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2021), 245n32.

"So called 'social trinitarianism' was not an option in the early church. Nor should it be today."

     Bruce Lindley McCormack, The humility of the eternal Son:  Reformed kenoticism and the repair of Chalcedon (New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2021), 245n32.

"command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high" (the Supplices te rogamus)

"with the pronouncement of the words of institution, the Sacrifice of the Mass is established [(acquis)], holy, approved; but this acceptation is only manifest for us at the moment in which the offering of our oblation appears transfigured in the fires of the Holy Spirit, transferred by the ministry of the angel onto the altar in heaven, fully conformed to the vivifying Body and Blood of Christ.  It is only then that, perfectly consecrated—Saint Gelasius and Saint Gregory said even simply consecrated—it can be divided [(rompue)] among all of those invited to the royal banquet of the Lamb."

     A. Sage, "Saint Augustin et la prière du Canon 'Supplices te rogamus…'," Revue des études byzantines 11 (1953):  265 (252-265).

"command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high" (the Supplices te rogamus)

"we do not call Paul's tongue or his paper and ink the body and blood of Christ, nor the significant sounds made by his tongue, nor the meaningful signs written on the pages of his letters, but only that which is taken from the fruits of the earth, and consecrated by mystic prayers, and taken by us for our spiritual salvation in memory of what the Lord suffered for us. The hands of men give this its visible appearance, but it can only be consecrated into being such a great sacrament by the invisible working of the spirit of God. For all the physical movements involved in the whole action are worked by God acting in the first place on what is invisible in the ministers, namely on the souls of men or on the services of the occult spirits who are subject to him."

     St. Augustin, De Trinitate III.4.10, trans. Edmund Hill, WSA I/5 (1991), 132-134.  Footnote at the end here:  "This strange little excursus into eucharistic theology throws an interesting light on Augustine's ideas on the subject, and must modify to some extent the impression we get of them, say from his commentary on John 6 (Homilies on the Gospel of John 26, 13-20). Augustine is customarily thought of, largely on the strength of that passage, as holding a 'symbolist' view of the sacrament as against the 'realist' view expressed for example by Ambrose in his De Mysteriis 9. On the whole this is true, as Augustine always lays great stress on the significance of the sacraments, which he classifies as signs, sacred signs, rather than as just things. In this he is firmly taken up by Thomas Aquinas, and again by the leading spirits in theology today, who are reacting, perhaps over-reacting, against a somewhat uncritical and mechanical 'realism' that has colored Catholic sacramental thought and piety for rather a long time.
     "But this passage of ours here shows that Augustine's 'symbolism' was not unqualified. He does indeed introduce the eucharist quite unequivocally in a 'signs' context here. But then he introduces this section, which is in reality a footnote, to explain that the eucharist is a quite unique sort of sign, in that it is to be identified with the thing signified (the body and blood of Christ) in a way that no other sign can be. Furthermore a real and unique spiritual, divine, causality needs to be brought into play to effect this unique sign. It is interesting to observe that he thinks angels might well be co-ministers of the eucharist. Are they thought of perhaps as playing the same kind of role as the mysterious angel in the Supplices te rogamus prayer of Eucharistic Prayer I (the Roman Canon)?"

     I was put onto this passage (though not this translation with this footnote) by A. Sage, "Saint Augustine et la prière du Canon 'Supplices te rogamus…'," Revue des études byzantines 11 (1953):  253 (252-265).  And Sage was very clearly thinking so back then.  The Supplices te rogamus, "so disconcerting for more than one theologian or liturgist" (Sage, 252), I was glad to read:

In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son, may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.  Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Supplices te rogamus, omnipotens Deus: iube haec perferri per manus sancti Angeli tui in sublime altare tuum, in conspectu divinae maiestatis tuae; ut, quotquot ex hac altaris participatione sacrosanctum Filii tui Corpus et Sanguinem sumpserimus, omni benedictione caelesti et gratia repleamur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Four theses on St. Hildegard of Bingen

If I am right about the importance of reading the visions of St. Hildegard of Bingen in the light of the early Vita of Gottfried of Disibodenberg and (after his death) Theoderich of Echternach, who imply that they were bestowed in order to ensure the orthodox (if imagistically allegorical) interpretation of both [1] Scripture and [2] Tradition; [3] set down in the form of an imagistic early scholasticism or [comprehensive] systematic theology; and [4] endorsed at the highest levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, then "The prophetessa teutonica can be shoehorned [(fugt sich . . . ein)] only with difficulty into the history of [Christian] mysticism [in general], and so-called German [Christian] mysticism [in particular].  Hildegard is not to be placed at the head of a line [of descent] that would lead from her to a [St.] Gertrude of Helfta or [a] Mechthild of Magdegburg.  She turns out to be in hindsight a theologian of high rank who develops, via the power of image and symbol independently, [a] theology saturated by [the Christian] tradition."

     Jörg Ulrich, "Vision bei Hildegard von Bingen:  Beobachtungen zur Vita Gottfrieds und Theoderichs und zu den Visionsschriften Hildegards," Kerygma und Dogma 47 (2001):  27 (14-29).  Image:  Eibingen, Klosterbibliothek Abtei St. Hildegard, Cod. 1 (Pergamentfaksimile von Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Hs. 1 (now lost)), fol. 1. 

"once, maybe twice. But. . . . not forever"

     "The conclusions I’ve drawn from reflecting on the question are simple. First, we never know what the effect of telling the truth will be. It’s always worth telling it once, maybe twice. But there may come a time when you’ve done that, and there’s nothing more you can do. The penny may drop in their minds over time. It’s always worth saying what you believe to be true and maybe repeating it, but not forever.
     "A second conclusion is, however, that ideologues again are not interested in a conversation; they’re interested in either persuading you or making you submit. If someone approaches you in a provocative, insulting manner from the get-go, you know they don’t want a conversation. If you engage with them, you’re likely to be reduced to an undignified scrap in which you lose your dignity and your temper. So if someone approaches you in that fashion, refuse to engage on those terms. Some exchanges are simply not worth having. They’re dangerous, and silence is the best response. And there is good dominical precedent for Christians to use silence in response to what other people say.
     "The third thing I’d say is that even ideologues and zealots may speak the truth. And that’s why I felt I ought to respond to the ten most hostile critics to my book on colonialism. I paid them the respect of taking what they said seriously and assessing how much sense it made. I conceded three or four minor points to my most obsessive and recalcitrant critic.
     "Finally, zealots are not the only ones we are speaking to. In a conference I held in Oxford in 2019, Bret Weinstein gave us the gnomic advice, “Always remember the room is not the room,” which means, when you’re faced with an aggressive zealot, you need to think about how you behave to the people who are watching. They are the more important audience. So for their sake it may be important to speak the truth as best you can without being drawn into an undignified scrap."

     Nigel Biggar in Matthew Lee Anderson and Nigel Biggar, "Liberalism in the U.S. and the UK: A Q&A with Lord Nigel Biggar," Public Discourse:  The JKournal of the Witherspoon Institute, August 13, 2026.

"In your light we see Light"

      "And sometimes, though not often, I see another light in that [shadow of the living] light, and this I have called 'the Living Light.'  But I am even less able to explain how I see this light than I am the other one.  Suffice it to say that when I do see it, all my sorrow and pain vanish from my memory and I become more like a young girl than an old women [(atque interim dum illam intueor, omnis mihi tristitia ommsque dolor de memoria aufertur, ita ut tunc mores simplices puelle, et non uetule mulieris habeam)]."

     St. Hildegard of Bingen, Letter 103r to the monk [St.] Guilbert of Gembloux (1175), Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Joseph L. Baird &  Radd K. Ehrman, vol. 2 (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1998), 23 (21-25).  Latin as supplied by Jörg Ulrich, "Vision bei Hildegard von Bingen:  Beobachtungen zur Vita Gottfrieds und Theoderichs und zu den Visionsschriften Hildegards," Kerygma und Dogma 47 (2001):  15n3 (14-29).    Image:  Eibingen, Klosterbibliothek Abtei St. Hildegard, Cod. 1 (Pergamentfaksimile von Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Hs. 1 (now lost)), fol. 1. 

Gastadelli on the letter of St. Bernard to St. Hildegard

The legend of "The [enthusiastic] oral intervention of Bernard [of Clairvaux on Hildegard’s behalf to the effect that a luminary of that caliber should not remain obscure, but should rather be, by the papal authority of Eugenius III, proclaimed to be the recipient of a great grace, as indeed she was (according to the medievalist [Philipp] Jaffé) in Trier between 13 and 15 February 1148 (Regesta II, no. 9188),] is to be blamed on the fanciful [(phantasievoller)] biographers of Hildegard [Gottfried and Theodoric], exactly as the interpolation [of 1180/90] into [the authentically quite cagy] Epistle 366" (sometimes numbered 390) of 1147 in 11 of the 12 manuscripts of that famous letter.

     [Ferruccio Gastadelli], "Zu Brief 366" ("Aus Opere di San Bernardo, Vol VI/1, Milano 1986"), in Bernhard von Clairvaux Sämtliche Werke lateinisch-deutsch, ed. Gerhard B. Winkler et al., vol. III, p. 1188 (1187-1188).  Image:  Die Legend des heyligen hertzogen sant Ruprechts bey Byngen uff sant Ruprechts berg leyplich rastende [(Oppenheim:  Köbel, 1524)], XXVI =MDZ scan 55, Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ) of the Bavarian State Library (BSB).

It takes a village to raze a child

"It takes a village to raise a child," but it can take a smaller "village" (of meddlesome, know-it-all busybodies) to raze or (be)traise or craze him, too.

     Steve Perisho.

Faith AND life

      "These half-dozen questions effectively synthesized what the Tudor regime had been pursuing piecemeal, as the opportunity arose, since it was first established half a century before.  The interest in the personal morality of the religious has often been upheld as the signal of a new determination to do battle with the very basis of religious vows.  But the behaviour of individuals, their social and sexual liaisons, had always figured in the visitations, both those carried out under the external authority of the bishop and those investigations undertaken by their own congregations."

     James G. Clark, The dissolution of the monasteries:  a new history (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2022), 234 (Part Two, chap. V. The King's Commissions), italics mine.  The footnote at the end of this paragraph  appears to cite sources no earlier than 1492, however.  Would this hold also against claims about the rise of a supposedly new and unprecedented reformist
interest in surveillance and control at about this time?

The one lost sheep, the righteous one, who goes astray non-iniquitously

I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant, | for I do not forget thy commandments.

Ps 119:176 RSV, italics mine.

All we like sheep have gone astray; | we have turned every one to his own way; | and the Lord has laid on him | the iniquity of us all.

Is 53:6 RSV.

     Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.'
     So he told them this parable: 'What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost." Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.'

Lk 15:1-7 RSV.

     Image:  Habib Mhenni (photographer), "The Good Shepherd" (23 September 2013), from the Catacomb of the Good Shepherd, Hadrumetum (modern Sousse, Tunisia), but housed now in the Bardo National Museum in Tunis.  On the original excavation, see, for starters, A. F. Leynaud, Les catacombes africaines: Sousse-Hadrumtète, 2. éd. rev., et augmentée (Alger: Jules Carbonel, 1922).

I eat and drink the price of my redemption

"Your only Son 'in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge' (Col. 2:3) had 'redeemed me by his blood' (Rev. 5:9). . . .  I think upon the price of my redemption, and I eat and drink it, and distribute it.  In my poverty I desire to be satisfied from it together with those who 'eat and are satisfied' (Ps. 61:5)."

ille tuus unicus, «in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae absconditi », redemit me sanguine suo. . . . cogito pretium meum et manduco et bibo et erogo et pauper cupio saturari ex eo inter illos, qui edunt et saturantur. . . .

     St. Augustine, Confessiones X.xliii (70), trans. Chadwick.  Latin from CCSL 27, 193 ll. 34-38 (cf. CSEL 33, 279 l. 21-280 l. 2).

"when man and woman possess their home, two minds, | two hearts that work as one"

"'may the good gods give you all your heart desires: | husband, and house, and lasting harmony too. | No finer, greater gift in the world than that . . . | when man and woman possess their home, two minds, | two hearts that work as one.  Despair to their enemies, | a joy to all their friends.  Their own best claim to glory.'"

     Odysseus to Nausicaa; Odyssey 6, c. 200, trans. Fagles (New York:  Penguin, 1996), 174. 

"That distant land"

      Andy Catlett's "remembering and his thoughts have carried him by now far outside of the matter of fact of this world's present age.  He stands now with his father [Wheeler] and his father's father [Marce], and with others dear to them, in the presence of a longed-for beautiful land that they have desired as if seen afar, that yet is the same, the very land that they have known and that they know, a love-made land, dark to them until by their own love they came to see it."

     Wendell Berry, Marce Catlett:  the force of a story (Los Angeles & San Francisco, CA:  Counterpoint, 2025), 144 (The future, 14).  Concluding lines, p. 151 (The future, 15):

     As they have carried the story, the dead and the living have been carried by it through the breakages of broken times, circling generation by generation back to that distant land, which they have never reached except by trial and in spells, never yet placing two generations securely in succession, the land where more than a century ago Marce Catlett departed with cautious hope in the dark past midnight, came home broke, and in the dark before daylight the next morning went back to work.

"'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.'"

"[Robert] Persons was still in hiding at Stonor; he sent his servant to see how Campion was looking, and the man brought back word that his gentleness and charm had already put him on easy terms with his captors.  The party dined together at the same table.  Campion chatted easily with them and with several members of the University who were allowed to approach  him.
     "[The 'professional priest-hunter' George] Eliot was ignored; neither magistrates nor soldiers troubled to hide their dislike of the man; once or twice on the road there had been hostile movements in the crowd as the informer passed, and cries of 'Judas'; his first elation was exhausted; the praise which he had received at Court sounded faint and distorted; it was almost as though this were Campion’s triumph, and he the malefactor.  At last he could bear Campion’s neglect no longer, and so broke out:  'Mr. Campion, you look cheerfully on everyone but me.  I know you are angry with me for this work.'
     "Then, perhaps for the first time since Sunday morning, when Eliot had knelt for Mass to receive the holy bread from his hands, Campion turned his eyes on him, 'God forgive thee, Eliot,' he said, 'for so judging of me; I forgive thee and in token thereof, I drink to thee.'  He raised his cup, and then added more gravely, 'Yea, and if thou repent and come to confession, I will absolve thee; but large penance must thou have.'"

     Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (London:  Longmans, Green and Co.,1937 [1935]), 168.

Is there more to this than a leyenda negra inglesa?

"The last thing [King Philip of Spain] wanted was to go to war, particularly with the English, whose formidable spirit he knew from the days when he had been their king.
     "But the provocation had been continuous. . . . [And] Then there were the slave traders.  In accordance with his stern moral code Philip forbade his American colonists from enslaving the native Indians and from importing negroes.  They resented this, and readily bought from Hawkins, although trade of any kind was forbidden them except with their Mother Country.  Not only was [Queen]  Elizabeth cognizant of this contraband business, she was a partner in it.  She had lent a ship of her own, unsuitably called the Jesus, for this very purpose.  Bristol grew rich once more with the trade that St. Wulstan had suppressed there in the eleventh century.  English galleys, laden with human cargo, plied regularly between America and West Africa, and on their return journeys, as often as not, stopped to sack a Spanish outpost or board a treasure ship."

     Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (London:  Longmans, Green and Co.,1937 [1935]), 105.  I merely note the claim.  It would be interesting to know what a specialist would say.

Sign of the cross as a form of public confession

St. Euplus, Dumbarton Oaks

     "It was the twelfth day of August, in the ninth consulship of Diocletian and the eighth of Maximian, when the governor Calvisianus said to Euplius under torture:  'What now do you say with regard to the things you admitted today in your confession?'
     "Euplius made the sign of the cross on his forehead with one free hand and [(libera manu signans sibi frontem)] said:  'What I said then I confess again now:  I am a Christian and I read the divine Scriptures.'"

     Acts of Euplus B. The Latin recension, The acts of the Christian martyrs, ed. & trans. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford:  The Clarendon Press, 1972), 315-316.  Eplus was executed on 29 April 304.  The reference to him making the sign of the cross is not present in A. The Greek recension.


"On this account, since Christ was already formed in her, the bride says, 'Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal on your arm.'  Christ is the seal on the forehead, the seal in the heart—on the forehead that we may always confess Him, in the heart that we may always love Him, and a sign on the arm, that we may always do His work.  Therefore let His image shine forth in our profession of faith, let it shine forth in our love, let it shine forth in our works and deeds so that, if it is possible, all His beauty may be represented in us."

     St. Ambrose, Isaac, or the soul 8.75, Seven exegetical works, trans. Mc Hugh, FC 64 (1972), 59.


"Let Zacchaeus grasp the sycamore tree, the humble person climb the cross. That's little enough, merely to climb it; we mustn't be ashamed of the cross of Christ, we must fix it on our foreheads, where the seat of shame is; yes, there, there above all where our blushes show, that's where we must firmly fix what we should never blush for."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 174.3, trans. Hill, WSA III/5 (1992), 260.  Vogel, at "La signation dans l’église des premiers siècles," La maison-dieu no. 75 (1963), 48n52, cites also "Ennar. in Ps. XXX, 3, 7 (PL, 36, 252)", but is this, at sec. 7 in the third Exposition of Ps. 30, that?  "Do you really think, my brothers and sisters, that all those people who set up their little local heresies and sects were unaware that when the Church was prophesied in God's scriptures, it was always as a Church spread throughout the world? By no means! I tell you, beloved, we are all Christians, we and they, or at any rate we are all called Christians, and all of us are signed with Christ's sign. Yet the prophets spoke more clearly about the Church than about Christ, because, I think, they saw in spirit that it was in opposition to the Church that people would found their conventicles."

"Stagger onward rejoicing"

"Give thanks and lie down in peace, | Having seen your salvation."
"may | Hermes, master of the roads | and the four dwarf Kabiri, | Protect and serve you always; | And may the Ancient of Days | Provide for all you must do | His invisible guidance, | Lifting up, friend, upon you | The light of His countenance."

     W. H. Auden, "Atlantis," Collected shorter poems 1927-1957 (New York:  Random House, 1966 [1934]), 202-204. 

"after baptism the crossing of the desert, by a life . . . lived in hope"

"There remains, you see, after baptism the crossing of the desert, by a life that is lived in hope, until we come to the promised land, to the land of the living where God is our portion, to the eternal Jerusalem; until we get there, the whole of this life is the desert for us, the whole of it a trial and a temptation. But in the one who has overcome the world the people of God has overcome all things. Just as in baptism, after all, our past sins, like enemies pursuing us from the rear, are obliterated, in the same way after baptism, in the journey of this life, when we eat the spiritual food and drink the spiritual drink, we overcome everything that bars our way."

"restat enim post baptismum transitus per eremum, per uitam quae agitur in spe, donec ueniamus ad terram promissionis, terram uiuentium ubi nobis est portio dominus, in aeternam Ierusalem; quo donec ueniamus, tota ista uita eremus nobis est, et tota tentatio. sed in eo qui uicit saeculum, uincit omnia populus dei. nam sicut in baptismo, tanquam hostes a tergo insequentes, praeterita peccata delentur: sic post baptismum, in itinere uitae huius, cum escam spiritualem manducamus, et potum spiritualem bibimus, omnia nobis aduersantia superamus." 

     St. Augustine,  Sermon 363.3 (possibly Easter Vigil, 412/416), trans. Hill, WSA III/10, 273. Latin from PL 39, 1637, ll 29-39.

Sign of the cross

"At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign."

"Ad omnem progressum atque promotum, ad omnem aditum et exitum, ad vestitum et calciatum, ad lavacra, ad mensas, ad lumina, ad cubilia, ad sedilia, quacumque nos conversatio exercet, frontem signaculo terimus." 

     Tertullian, De corona 3 (AD 211), trans. Thelwall (ANL 11/ANF 3).  Tertullian, writing in his (final) Montanist period, here cites Christian tradition on the signaculo (sign of the cross) in support of the Christian tradition against wearing "a crown upon [the] head, except at a time of trial" (i.e. military service:  "not one of the Faithful has ever").  If the latter must be abandoned, then so should the former (and all other such "mere" traditions); if the latter abstention, then the former practice, too.  Trans. Conacher in his 2020 translation of the article on "La signation dans l’église des premiers siècles" by Cyrille Vogel (La maison-dieu no. 75 (1963):  37-51):

"Every time we go out or go anywhere, before and after all our activities, when we dress and put on our shoes, when we wash, at table, when we light the lamps, when we go to bed, when we sit down, whatever we are doing, we trace the sign of the cross on our foreheads."

According to Vogel, if we are willing to cite the gnostics (as we should be, for there is nothing uniquely gnostic--or for that matter Montanist, or even pagan--about the signatio), testimony to the custom can be pushed back fifty years behind 211 (Vogel 38n6 on Montanism; 41-42, incl. 42n19, on Gnosticism; and 44 (i.e. sec. 2) on paganism).

"Whoever has gone astray in the faith may thereafter believe whatever he wants to, everything is equally valid."

"Wer des glaubens gefeilet hat, der mag darnach glewben was er wil, gilt eben gleich."

     Martin Luther, Sermon Von dem Sacrament des leibs vnd bluts Christi, widder die Schwarmgeister (1526), in WA 19 (1897), 484 ll. 19–20, as trans. Brad Gregory in chap. 2 of The unintended Reformation:  how a religious revolution secularized society (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2012).  =LW 36 (The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ—against the fanatics), 336, as trans. Frederick C. Ahrens:

"Anyone who has failed to grasp the faith may thenceforth believe whatever he likes, it makes no difference." 

"forget not thou thy earth"

"O Brother of ours, O natural son of the Father, whose sons thou makest us by adoption, O Head of our Body, we see that thou art king of Heaven:  forget not thou thy earth, whereinto thine inestimable love to us did bring thee down."

     Luis de Vives (Ludovicus Vives, or Jean Luis Vives), as quoted (presumably in the 16th (?) century Bradford translation) by Eamon Duffy at The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1992), 236-237, citing A booke of Christian prayers in William Keatinge Clay, ed., Private prayers: put forth by authority during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge: Printed [for the Parker Society] at the University Press, 1851), 514.

"I'm a deeply flippant person"

"I'm a deeply flippant person, Anna.  Whereas you, you are deep.  You know, you have depth.  And when you've fallen in love with someone, I've got no advice for that."

     Kingsley Faraday (Daniel Henshall) to his sister Anna Ivin (Sarah Snook) in Episode 1.3 of The beautiful lie. Kingsley's fling meant nothing to him, but Anna is conducting hers with real passion.

O BONE JESU

"O good Jesu, o sweet Jesu, o Jesu, son of the Virgin Mary, full of mercy and truth . . . who for us sinners deigned to pour out your blood on the altar of the cross:  I invoke your holy name.  This name of Jesu is a sweet name . . . for what is Jesu but Saviour . . . O good Jesu, call to mind what is yours in me, wipe away all that I have made alien."

"O BONE JESU.  O dulcis Jesu.  O Jesu, Fili Marie virginis, plenus misericordia et veritate.  O dulcis Jesu, miserere mei secundum magnam misericoridiam tuam.  O benigne Jesu, te deprecor per illum sanguinem preciosum, quem pro nobis peccatoribus effundere dignatus es in ara crucis, vt abijcias omnes iniquitates meas:  et ne despicias [me] humiliter te petentem:  et hoc nomen tuum sanctissimum Jesum inuocantem.  Hos nomen Jesus nomen dulce est:  hoc nomen Jesus nomen salutare est.  Quid enim Jesus, nisi Saluator?  O bone Jesu, qui me creasti et redemisti tuo precioso sanguine ne permittas me damnari, quem tu ex nichilo creasti.  O bone Jesu Christe, ne perdat me iniquitas mea, quem fecit et creauit omnipotens bonitas tua.  O bone Jesu, recognosce quod tuum est in me:  et absterge quod alienum est a me.  O bone Jesu, miserere mei, dum tempus est miserendi:  ne perdas me in tempore tui tremendi iudicij.  O bone Jesu, si merui ego miser peccator de vera tua iustitia penam eternam pro peccatis meis grauissimis:  adhuc appello confisus de tua iustitia vera ad tuam misericordiam ineffabilem vtique misereberis mei, vt pius Pater et misericors Dominus.  O bone Jesu, que enim vtilitas in sanguine meo:  dum descendero in corruptionem eternam.  Non enim mortui laudabunt te:  neque omnes qui descendunt in infernum.  O misericordissime Jesu, miserere mei.  O dulcissime Jesu, libera me.  O pijssime Jesu, propicius esto michi peccatori.  O Jesu, admitte me miserum peccatorem inter numerum electorum tuorum.  O Jesu, salus in te sperantium.  O Jesu, salus in te credentium, misere mei.  O Jesu, dulcis remissio omnium peccatorum meorum.  O Jesu, Fili virginis Marie, infunde in me gratiam tuam, sapientiam, charitatem, castitatem ac humilitatem, ac etiam in omnibus aduersitatibus meis patientiam sanctam, vt possim te perfecte diligere, et in te gloriari ac delectari in secula seculorum.  Amen."

      "The fervent and affectionate prayer 'O Bone Jesu', invariably found in the printed Sarum Horae, and directly derived from St. Anselm's Meditations," as translated by Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd edition (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1992), 236 =Christopher Wordsworth, ed., Horae Eboracenses:  the Prymer or Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary according to the use of the illustrious church of York; with other devotions as they were used by the lay-folk in the Northern Province in the XVth and XVIth centuries (Durham:  Pub. for the [Surtees] Society by Andrews & Co., 1920), 83-84.

"Each of them, [the] man and [the] woman, should acknowledge and accept his[/her] sexual identity"

"By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity equally to the one and the other. Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity."

"Deus, creaturam humanam virum creans et mulierem, utrumque pari donavit personali dignitate. Ad unumquemque pertinet, ad virum et mulierem, suam sexualem agnoscere et acceptare identitatem."

     Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 2393 (under the Sixth Commandment; English, Latin).  Identitas is post-classical, apparently 4th century and following.  Blaise doesn't carry the modern sense, but the DMLBS (the other dictionary of medieval Latin to which I have immediate access from here at home) offers the following, no. 3a of 9:  "identity, condition or fact that person or thing is itself and not something else" (the OED gives the 8th century for that sense, and 1756 for 'individuality, personality' as a sense of the French identité).

Holy Kinship

Hans Thoman, Heilige Sippe (c. 1515),
Andreas Preifcke, photographer

The cult of St. Anne "was a popular one in the late Middle Ages in England as elsewhere, and she and her daughters provided a symbolic affirmation of the rootedness of the Incarnate Christ within a real human family. At a time when much in the cult of the saints militated against a positive valuation of human sexuality and the realities of marriage and childbearing, the cult of Anne provided an image of female fruitfulness which was maternal rather than virginal, and her thrice-married state, rivalling the career of the Wife of Bath, was an unequivocal assertion of the compatibility of sanctity and married life. She represented both the notion of the family and the principle of fertility, whose three holy daughters gave birth in their turn to six Apostles and the Saviour of the world".
St. Margaret, "whose spectacular torments and miraculous preservation spoke of holiness and otherness, was a symbol of transcendent power, the sacred beyond the limits of the experience of ordinary people. Her power to help sprang from her divinely protected and heroic virginal integrity. The figures in the other paintings are even more sacred beings - Christ and his six cousins, all of them Apostles, and Anne's three holy daughters. But here they are mothers and children of flesh and blood: one of the toddlers blows bubbles from a pipe, another clutches a toy windmill. The screen spoke to the women of Ranworth simultaneously of the divine indwelling in the concrete reality of the family, of the sanctity of marriage and procreation and God's blessing on ordinary things, and at the same time of the transcendent power of God to help those in extremity, symbolized by Margaret's virginal intercession. As in the case of Henry Walter and St Erasmus, the specialist saint is given a richly human symbolic context which prevents her being seen as a mere mechanical dispenser of power and favour."

     Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2005), 181-182.  Cf. Bruce Lindley McCormack on Sergius Bulgakov:  "To hereditary sinfulness there corresponded an 'hereditary holiness'—which had 'accumulated for centuries and millennia in the Old Testament church'" by virtue of the Spirit's work", and culminated "'in the Most Pure Virgin Mary'" (The humility of the eternal Son:  Reformed kenoticism and the repair of Chalcedon (New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2021), 133).

A prayer cobbled together out of Jn 17 RSV

Holy Father, keep me in thy name, which thy Son, Jesus Christ, hast given me, that I may know the glory of being perfectly one with thy saints in thee, even as ye are one.  Guard me, and lose me not.  Keep me from the evil one.  Sanctify and consecrate me in the truth, thy word, that I might have his joy fulfilled in myself.  May I be with him where he is, to behold his glory which thou hast given him in thy love for him before the foundation of the world.  And may this love with which thou hast loved him be in me, and he in me.

Holy Father, keep me in thy name, which thy Son, Jesus Christ, hast given me, that I may be perfectly one with thy saints in thee, even as thou, Father, art in him, and he in thee.  Guard me, and lose me not.  Keep me from the evil one.  Sanctify and consecrate me in the truth, thy word, that I might have his joy fulfilled in myself.  May I be with him where he is, to behold his glory which thou hast given him in thy love for him before the foundation of the world.  And may this love with which thou hast loved him be in me, and he in me.

Or us/we/ourselves.

     Inspired by this late 5th-century tablet, found in a grave at Hács-Béndekpuszta, east of Budapest, in "A world winking with messages" (Peter Brown).

Pseudonymity

"Bacon warned that many magical texts had attained their notable ability to survive and cross borders by adopting false papers—the names of apparently famous and reliable authors:  'Whatever they say, that Solomon composed this or that, or other wise men, is to be denied.  For the authority of the church and of the wise does not accept books like this, but seducers, who fool the world.  For they compose new books, and multiply new inventions, as we know from experience.  And then, so that they may attract men even more strongly, they give their books celebrated titles, and impudently ascribe them to great authors.'"

     Roger Bacon, "Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae, et de nullitate magiae," in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. J. S. Brewer (London:  Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859), 526, as translated at Anthony Grafton, Magus:  the art of magic from Faustus to Agrippa (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2023), 26.  (Yet Bacon was himself more enamoured of astrology than, say, Nicholas of Cusa.)

Neue Quäckerey in der Quietisterey

"The theologia mystica has been still more fruitful in the present century and spread [abroad] a pile of Schwärmer [(ein Hauffen Schwärmereyen)].  From this platonic egg were hatched [(hervorgefrochen) untranslated:] the Weigelianer, Rosenkreutzer, neueren Propheten, Stifelianer, Methisten, Hoburgianer, Böhmisten, Widertauffer, Quäcker, Bourignisten, Quietisten, [and] Septenisten. . . . [T]he Quaker Barclay cited the experience of Bernard, Bonaventure, Tauler, Thomas à Kempis, and other mystical teachers."

     Ehregott Daniel Colberg, Platonistich-hermenetisches Christenthum, begreiffend die historische Erzehlung vom Ursprung und vielerley Secten der heutigen Fanatischen Theologie, unterm Namen der Paracelsisten, Weigelianer, Rosencreutzer, Quäcker, Böhmisten, Widertäuffer, Bourignisten, Labadisten and Quietisten (Frankfuhrt:  1690) 1.16 (vol. 1, pp. 75-76).  The reference seems to be to Apology 11.5.  I was put onto this by Bern Roling, “Mittelalterliche Mystik im Kreutzfeuer des Pietismusstreites:  der Wittenberger Theologe Martin Chladni (1669-1725) und seine Auseinandersetzung mit der Frauenmystik des Hochmittelalters, Pietismus und Neuzeit 46/47 (2020/2021):  40 (38-84):

War es Zufall, so hatte Colberg gefragt, das ein Quäker wie Robert Barclay (1648-1690) sich auf Bernhard von Clairvaux (1090-1153) and Bonaventura (1221-1274) hatte befufen können?

Cf. the title cited in n6:  Conrad Tiburtius Rango, Neue Quäckerey in der Quietisterey (Frankfurt:  1688).  For what very little it may be worth, neither Colberg nor Rango are listed in Smith's 1873 Bibliotheca anti-Quakeriana.

Ordo naturae

Universität Wien

"For this reason one may not confuse the phrase order of nature with [the phrase] biological order, much less . . . [(gleichsetzen)] the realities they signify.  Biological order is [only] the order of nature to the degree that [the latter] is amenable to the empirical and descriptive methods of the natural sciences.  But to the extent that the order of nature is a specific order of existence that stands in [an] obvious relation to the causa prima (to God, the Creator), it is no longer a [merely] biological order."

     Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, "Die Bibel queer lesen?  Zu einem umstritten Heft des katholischen Bibelwerks," Communio blog, 29 May 2026.

"the gate is narrow and the way is hard [(einfaltig)], that leads to life [(Fülle)]"

Universität Wien

"The religious symbol-system of Israel was, with reference to the multiplicity [(Vielfalt)] of Ancient [Near] Eastern [polytheism]—indeed ancient polytheism [more generally]—comparatively simple:  YHWH is one and . . . unique (Dt 6:4), exclusive, shuts out all other gods. . . .  The God of the Bible is no fan of [riotous] diversity [(Vielfalt)]."

"Against the background of the genesis and phenomenology of the religious symbol system attested to in the Bible, [our contemporary] praise of [sexual] diversity looks to me like a surreptitious praise of polytheism.  It is [well-]suited to the self-understanding of the postmodern, [and] stands for all of that in opposition to the biblical tradition.  The God of Israel is one; he is constant [(true)], does not dissemble, wears no masks, has nothing evil up his sleeve.  The fulfillment [(Fülle)] that the biblical faith promises is not to be confused with the profusions [(Vielfalt)] of ancient cosmotheism.  [It is] only through the needle's-eye of simplicity [(Einfalt)] that man acquires access to the plenitude [(Fülle)] of the God attested to in the Bible:  so confess both Judaism and Christianity together (cf. Mk 12:28-34, 1 Thess 1:9, Rom 6:21)."

     Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, "Die Bibel queer lesen?  Zu einem umstritten Heft des katholischen Bibelwerks," Communio blog, 29 May 2026.

The Differentiation

"Blessed are You, L‑rd our G‑d, King of the universe, who makes a distinction between sacred and mundane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, between the Seventh Day and the six workdays. Blessed are You, L‑rd, who makes a distinction between sacred and mundane."

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַמַּבְדִּיל בֵּין קֹדֶשׁ לְחוֹל בֵּין אוֹר לְחֹשֶׁךְ בֵּין יִשְׂרָאֵל לָעַמִּים בֵּין יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי לְשֵׁשֶׁת יְמֵי הַמַּעֲשֶׂה בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי הַמַּבְדִּיל בֵּין קֹדֶשׁ לְחוֹל

     The Havdalah.

queer, quer

Universität Wien

"The queer [(queere)] reading of the Bible appears to be in fact a form of reading that stands in opposition [(quer)] to Holy Scripture."

     Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, "Die Bibel queer lesen?  Zu einem umstritten Heft des katholischen Bibelwerks," Communio blog, 29 May 2026.  As I don't have an etymological dictionary of German ready-to-hand, here is the etymology the OED gives for the adjective "queer":  "perhaps < (or perhaps even cognate with) German quer transverse, oblique, crosswise, at right angles, obstructive, (of things) going wrong (now rare), (of a person) peculiar (now obsolete in this sense), (of a glance) directed sideways, especially in a surreptitious or hostile manner (now rare), (of opinion and behaviour) at odds with others (see thwart adv.), but the semantic correspondence is not exact, and the figurative senses in German are apparently much later developments than the English word."

Frequent Communion

© Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.5

 "Qui tribus dominicis non communicaverint, excommunicantur."

"Those who have not partaken of Holy Communion for three Sundays [running] are excommunicated." 

     The c. 8th-century Bigotian Penitential (so-called), as quoted by Fr. Edmond Dublanchy, S.M., citing Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche, ed. Wasserschleben (Halle:  1851), 448, in "Communion eucharistique. II. Communion fréquente,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 3 (1908), col. 522 (cols. 515-552).  For the context, see The Irish penitentials, ed. Bieler, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 5 (Dublin:  Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1963), 219:

9. CONCERNING THE LORD'S DAY
     1. If anyone by negligence fasts on the Lord's Day, he must fast for the entire week; if (he does so) a second time, forty days; if, after that, sixty days.  2. Those who have not communicated for three Sundays, are excommunicated.

     communicaverit is PAS3P.  Cf. Penitential of Theodore I.xii.1, as quoted in the DMLBS, sv communicare:  "qui iij Dominicis non [communic]averint, excommunicentur" (excommunicentur being pPS3P).
     Presumably that "Qui" would have to be "Worthies who".  I.e. presumably in context it would not be directed against those who, say, haven't been able to get to confession.

Frequent communion

"In the current language of the theologians, above all since the time of St. Alphonso Liguori, there has been a consensus around reserving [(on est convenu de, one has agreed to reserve)] the phrase [(nom)] 'frequent communion' for that which is received [(faite)] at least many times per week."

     Fr. Edmond Dublanchy, S.M., "Communion eucharistique. II. Communion fréquente,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 3 (1908), col. 515 (cols. 515-552).

From "once in the yeare at the least" (1549 Book of common prayer) to "at the least three tymes in the yeare, of whiche Easter to bee one" (1552 Book of common prayer and following)

     This (unless I've missed something) in correction of the usually reliable Oxford dictionary of the Christian church, which since the 1st edition of 1957 right on up through the 4th edition of 2022 has claimed that "the BCP in 1549 and later editions fixed the minimum at three times a year" (1957).

"Firmly I believe and truly"

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
     De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
     Parce mihi, Domine.
Firmly I believe and truly
     God is Three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
     Manhood taken by the Son.
And I trust and hope most fully
     In that Manhood crucified;
And each thought and deed unruly
     Do to death, as He has died.
Simply to His grace and wholly
     Light and life and strength belong,
And I love, supremely, solely,
     Him the holy, Him the strong.
Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
     De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
     Parce mihi, Domine.
And I hold in veneration,
     For the love of Him alone,
Holy Church, as His creation,
     And her teachings, as His own.
And I take with joy whatever
     Now besets me, pain or fear,
And with a strong will I sever
     All the ties which bind me here.
Adoration aye be given,
     With and through the angelic host,
To the God of earth and heaven,
     Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
     De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
     mortis in discrimine.

     John Henry Newman, The dream of Gerontius (January 1865) 1.

re-cord-atio as an act of the heart (cor, cordis)

"Grant, almighty God, that we may celebrate with heartfelt devotion these days of joy, which we keep in honour of the risen Lord, and that what we relive in remembrance we may always hold to in what we do. Through".

"Fac nos, omnipotens Deus, hos laetitiae dies, quos in honorem Domini resurgentis exsequimur, affectu sedulo celebrare, ut quod recordatione percurrimus semper in opere teneamus.  Per".

     Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Roman missal.  =Corpus orationum .  This incipit does not occur in Bruylants, though there is an occurrence of recordatio (recordationibus) at 998 in vol. 2.  But on p. 81 in the mid-8th-century Gelasian as ed. Mohlberg in 1960, we get no. 504, which is even better (translation from pp. 179-180 of Peter John Cramer, Baptism and Change in the Early Middle Ages, c. 200-c. 1150 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), which covers "this remembering" on pp. 89-98):

Vat.Reg.Lat.316 fol. 82r

Deus, per cuius prouidentiam nec praeteritorum momenta deficiunt nec ulla superest expectacio futurorum, tribue permanentem peractae quae recolimus solemnitatis effectum, ut quod recordatione percurrimus, semper in opere teneamus.

God, in whose foresight are present all times gone by, and who does not wait for what will be, give lasting effect of solemnity to the action we once did and now remember, that what we pass through in our memory we may hold to in the things we do.

My translation (given that this falls under "Orationes et praeces de pascha annotina," "Orations and prayers for the anniversary of a baptism"):

O God, by whose providence no moments of [times] gone by are lost and no expectation of [times yet] to come remains [unfulfilled], give to/bestow upon the-completed/traversed-[baptism]-that-we-[now]-recall [(recolimus)] the perduring effect of the rite/solemnity, that what we run back through in re-cord-ation [(recordatione, recollection)] we may preserve always a fidelity to [(teneamus, incl. recollect)] in deed.

And my paraphrase:

O God, by whose providence no moments of times-past are lost, and no expectations of times-future remain unfulfilled, bestow upon the-accomplished-[baptism]-that-we-[now]-recall the perduring effect of the rite, that what we run back through in heartfelt recollection we may preserve always a fidelity-to in all we do.

A. Ernout & A. Meillet, for the Centre National de la recherche scientifique, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue Latine:  histoire des mots, 4th ed. (Paris:  Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1959), sv cor, cordis, on p. 142 of vol. 1:  "recordor, recordaris : se remettre dans l’esprit, M. L. 7129", to put/place oneself again in mind of (go back and figure out what "M. L." is).  The OED under the etymology for recordation:  "recordātiō act of calling to mind, recollection, faculty of recollection".