Saturday, May 10, 2014

Looke Home

Retirèd thoughts enjoy their own delights,
As beauty doth, in self-beholding eye;
Man's mind a mirror is, of heavenly sights,
A brief, wherein all marvels summèd lie;
Of fairest forms and sweetest shapes the store,
Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more.

The mind a creature is, yet can create,
To nature's patterns adding higher skill;
Of finest works, wit better could the state
If force of wit had equal power of will;
Devise of man in working hath no end;
What thought can think, another thought can mend.

Man's soul, of endless beauties image is,
Drawn by the work of endless skill and might;
This skilful might gave many sparks of bliss,
And to discern this bliss a native light.
To frame God's image as his worths required,
His might, his skill, his word, and will conspired.

All that he had, his image should present;
All that it should present, he could afford;
To that he could afford, his will was bent,
His will was followed with performing word.
Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest:
He should, he could, he would, he did the rest.


--Robert Southwell, 1561-1595













Stanza 1:
  • "mirror", "brief", and "store":  three different images of "Man's mind".
  • "Most graceful all":  the "forms" and "shapes".

Stanza 2:
  • "better could":  could better (in the sense of improve).

Stanza 3:
  • "endless skill and might", "This skillful  might":  God.
  • "worths":  OED, sv worth 3b:  "The character or standing of a person in respect of moral and intellectual qualities; esp. high personal merit or attainments", but used in the plural sometimes for the worth of a single human individual (here God).  The examples cited at worth 3b are from Southwell's period precisely, ranging as they do from 1586-1631.
Stanza 4:
  • "To that":  To what.

     It isn't the modern critical edition ed. by McDonald & Brown (1967), but for a sense of Southwell's own orthography, see pp. 65-66 of the Grossart edition of 1872.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Luke 5:10

"A fisherman you are, [and] a fisherman you will remain, but henceforth you
  • will capture [men alive]
  • restore life to men [(rendras la vie à des hommes)]."
     François Deltombe's rendition of the supposedly double sense of Lk 5:10 (ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ἀνθρώπους ἔσῃ ζωγρῶν), in François Deltombe, O.P., "Désormais tu rendras la vie à des homes:  Luc, V, 10," Revue biblique 89, no. 4 (1982):  497 (492-497).
     Undoubtedly the commentaries (among the other tools I haven't bothered to check) cover and perhaps dispute this in detail, but BDAG (published in 2000) suggests not Deltombe's "third sense", but only "capture alive".  What is more, the Greek word index to Louw-Nida, the lexicon "based on semantic domains", covers only the occurrence in 2 Tim 2:26, and under the heading "Control, Restrain" ("'having been controlled by him to do his will'").  Unlike Kittel (TDNT) and Brown (NIDNTT), Spicq, in vol. 2 of his TLNT, includes an entry on ζωγρέω that gives for Lk 5:10 "keep a captive alive, be gracious and merciful to him, even restore him to life" (163), but of course antedates (or, rather, is roughly contemporary with) Deltombe.
     Deltombe is, for his part, quick to acknowledge that a few others before him had noted this potential "third sense", too, just e.g. Loisy, Hilgert, Wuellner, and Derett (497).
     Lk 5:10 as interpreted here in the light of the potential semantic range of ζωγρέω is meant to highlight a supposedly distinctively Lukan response to the concern raised by L. Grollenberg, who had observed that "A fisherman necessarily kills the fishes he catches.  Therefore, Jesus' symbolic description of the apostolic activities ('I will make you fishers of men' Mt., iv, 19 - Mc, I, 17), addressed to Simon and Andrew, could raise difficulties in a more logically thinking mind" (Tijd. Theol., V, 1965, pp. 330 s., as quoted on p. 493).

Saturday, May 3, 2014

"the good is said to be diffusive of its being in the way the end is said to move."

     "bonum dicitur diffusivum sui esse, eo modo quo finis dicitur movere."

     Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I.5.4.ad 2, trans. Ralph McInerny.
     I.e. the good is diffusive of its being qua final (not formal or efficient, and certainly not material) cause.
     Diffundere is to spread by pouring out.  Yet for Aquinas the good is "diffusive" (spreads itself abroad) by drawing in (attracting) "in the way [a final cause] is said to move".

Friday, May 2, 2014

"in future the evidence of rewards will reverberate in the bodies of the saints"

"You ought to consider that in future the marks of rewards [(indicia premiorum)] will reflect [(resultabunt, will reverberate, give off an echo)] in the bodies of the saints [cf. 1 Tm 4.8c] in accordance with the merits of the graces [(secundum merita gratiarum)].  Also, in our days the marks of the affections [(indicia affectus)] show [(demonstrant, are a sign of [this], evident)], as we see clearly in St. Francis:  the marks of Christ's Passion [(indicia passionis Christi)] were in [his body], because he was intensely affected by the Passion of Christ.  Likewise, the marks of mercy [(indicia misericordie)] reflect [(resultant, reverberate, give off an echo)] in St. Nicholas, for 'oil dripped from his tomb' as a sign that he was a man of great mercy.  Dt 32.13:  'So that he may cause honey to flow from the rock, and oil from the hardest stone.'  That belongs to a king."

     Thomas Aquinas, Academic sermon 16 (Inveni David; sermon on the Feast of St. Nicholas, the sixth of December), 2.4 (The academic sermons, Fathers of the church, Medieval continuation 11, trans. Mark-Robin Hoogland, C.P. (Washington, DC:  The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 240).  I was put onto this by Louis-Jacques Bataillon, O.P., "Les stigmates de saint François vus par Thomas d'Aquin et quelques autres prédicateurs dominicains," Archivum franciscanum historicum 90 (1997):  342-343 (341-347).
      Hoogland, following Bataillon, traces the phrase "'oil dropped from his tomb'" to the ninth "responsory from the [Dominican] night office [i.e. Matins] of the Feast of St. Nicholas.  This legendary oil is called the 'manna of St. Nicholas'" (240n32).
     1 Tim 4:8:  "nam corporalis exercitatio ad modicum utilis est pietas autem ad omnia utilis est promissionem habens vitae quae nunc est et futurae" (RSV:  "for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it hold promise for the present life and also for the life to come").


Monday, April 28, 2014

"in the same sense and the same meaning"

"Certainly there is a need to seek out and to discover the most adequate formulation [(formula)] for universal and permanent moral norms in the light of different cultural contexts, a formulation most capable of ceaselessly expressing their historical relevance, of making them understood and of authentically interpreting their truth.  This truth of the moral law — like that of the 'deposit of faith' — unfolds down the centuries [(per saecula explicatur)]: the norms expressing that truth remain valid in their substance, but must be specified and determined [(substantialiter firmae, sed sunt definiendae et terminandae)] 'eodem sensu eademque sententia' [(Saint Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium Primum, c. 23: PG 50, 668)] in the light of historical circumstances by the Church's Magisterium...."

     Veritatis splendor 53.  Clearly, one could lay the stress on either 1) the necessity of definition and circumscription ("definiendae et terminandae") or 2) the necessity that said definition and circumscription retain "the same sense and the same meaning".  Here I, following Fr. Hunwicke, stress the latter.  But both must be held together.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

"He who would valiant be | 'gainst all disaster,..."

John Bunyan,
by Thomas Sadler (1684).
National Portrait Gallery no. 1311.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Dearmer's bowdlerization is more explicitly theological, but BUNYAN'S ORIGINAL SOUNDS MORE LIKE SOMETHING A HOBBIT WOULD SING, and especially as sung by Maddy Prior with the Carnival Band on Sing lustily and with good courage (also on Spotify):

   Who would true Valour see
Let him come hither;
One here will Constant be,
Come Wind, come Weather.
There’s no Discouragement,
Shall make him once Relent,
His first avow’d Intent,
To be a Pilgrim.

   Who so beset him round,
With dismal Storys,
Do but themselves Confound;
His Strength the more is,
No Lyon can him fright,
He’l with a Gyant Fight,
But he will have a right,
To be a Pilgrim.

   Hobgoblin, nor foul Fiend,
Can daunt his Spirit:
He knows, he at the end,
Shall Life Inherit.
Then Fancies fly away,
He’l fear not what men say,
He’l labour Night and Day, 
To be a Pilgrim.

     Pilgrim's progress, pt. II (1684), as reproduced in The pilgrim's progress from this world to that which is to come, by John Bunyan, ed. James Blanton Wharey, 2nd ed., ed. Roger Sharrock (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1960), 295.  Cf. Pilgrim's progress as originally published by John Bunyan, being a fac-simile reproduction of the first edition (London:  Elliott Stock, 1875), 181.  A modernized version follows:

1 Who would true valour see,
let him come hither;
one here will constant be,
come wind, come weather;
there's no discouragement
shall make him once relent
his first avow'd intent
to be a pilgrim.

2 Whoso beset him round
with dismal stories,
do but themselves confound;
his strength the more is.
No lion can him fright;
he'll with a giant fight,
but he will have a right
to be a pilgrim.

3 Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
can daunt his spirit;
he knows he at the end
shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away;
he'll not fear what men say;
he'll labour night and day
to be a pilgrim.


     The latter (set to MONK'S GATE) is the version that appears in the Liturgy of the hours (Morning prayer, Common of holy men, vol. 3 (1975), p. 1817; Christian prayer no. 183), except that "Hobgoblin nor foul fiend" is replaced by "No power of evil fiend", thus distinguishing it from the original (above) as well as the Dearmer bowdlerization ("He who would valiant be").
     Bunyan, an Independent, fought under Cromwell and penned Antichrist and his ruin (1692) "against the Church of Rome, whose influence in England under James II he much feared" (ODCC3rev). Yet today "Who would true valour see" could (in the English, not Liturgia horarum) celebrate—for example—Ignatius of Loyola.
     That Bunyan is pleased I wouldn't venture. But I am.