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.

Friday, November 26, 2021

"there are many people who reach God as Christians without being in charge of anything"

Vivarini & D'Alemagna, 1446
"we whom the Lord has deigned, thanks to no merits of ours, to set in this high station (about which a very strict account indeed has to be rendered) have two things about us that must be clearly distinguished: one, that we are Christians, the other, that we are placed in charge [(praepositi)]. Being Christians is for our sake; being in charge is for yours. It is to our advantage that we are Christians, only to yours that we are in charge. And there are many people who reach God as Christians without being in charge of anything [(multi qui christiani, et non praepositi)], and no doubt have all the easier a journey for traveling light, and carrying less of a burden. But we bishops, apart from being Christians, as which we shall render God an account of our manner of life, are also in charge of you, and as such will render God an account of our stewardship."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 46.2 On the shepherds, trans. Edmund Hill, WSA III/2, 263-264.

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

"I rather experience than understand it"

      "Now, if anyone should ask me how this [presence of the flesh of Christ in the Supper] takes place, I shall not be ashamed to confess that it is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare.  And, to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it [(experior magis quam intelligam | i’en sens plus par experience que ie n’en puis entendre)]. . . .
". . . such is the presence of the body (I say) that the nature of the Sacrament requires a presence which we say manifests itself here with a power and effectiveness so great
[(quam tanta virtute tantaque efficacia hic eminere dicimus | laquelle nous y disons estre & apparoistre en si grande vertu & efficace)] that it not only brings an undoubted assurance [(indubitatam . . . fiduciam | indubitable confiance)] of eternal life to our minds, but also assures us [(securos nos reddat | nous rend certains & asseurez)] of the immortality of our [(nostrae | nostre)] flesh.  Indeed, it is now quickened by his [(eius | la . . . de Iesus Christ)] immortal flesh, and in a sense partakes of his [(eius | son)] immortality."

     John Calvin, Institutes IV.xvii.32, trans. Battles =COS 5, 390-391 | p. 894 in chap. 18 of the French edition of 1545.  I'm guessing that asseurez is a plural of the adjective asseuré (Gremais & Keane, Dictionnaire du moyen françois, s.v. asseurer) rather than of the verb asseurer.  A less (?) likely possibility might be the adjective asseur, though that might make it (and nous) a feminine (asseures).

     I was put onto this by Francis Higman, "Calvin et l’expérience," in Expérience, coutume, tradition au temps de la Renaissance, ed. M. T. Jones-Davies for the Centre de recherches sur la Renaissance (Editions Klincksieck, 1992), 250 (245-256).
     I, on the other hand, more "embrace" (amplector | acquiesce à la promesse de Iesus Christ) than "experience" it.

Sunday, November 21, 2021

"They exchanged the truth . . . for a lie"

"In sum, what is new here is the turning of what really is a construct—the abstract 'individual'—into a new natural, so as to turn what is really natural—constitutive relations [to our parents, to the opposite sex, and to our children]—into a 'construct,' beginning with the reconfiguration of these relations on consensual terms."

     Margaret H. McCarthy, "Gender ideology and the humanum," Communio:  international Catholic review 43, no. 2 (Summer 2016), 294 (274-298).

Saturday, November 20, 2021

"Oh my friend, my friend indeed, who at my need his life did spend."

"Nor could he have commanded anything more lovable, for this sacrament produces love and union.  It is characteristic of the greatest love to give itself as food [(Amoris enim maximi indicium est, seipsum dare in cibum)].  Had not the men of my tent exclaimed:  Who will feed us with his flesh to satisfy our hunger?"

     Albert the Great, Commentary on Luke 22:19, as trans. Liturgy of the hours, Second reading, Office of readings for the Feast of St. Albert the Great, 14 November.  Versions:

Albert the Great, Super Lucam 22:19, Opera omnia, ed. Jammy, vol. 10 (Lyon, 1651), p. 320, col. 1, second full paragraph; ed. Borgnet, vol. 19 (1894-1895), p. 673, col. 2.

Job 31:31 Douay-Rheims:  "If the men of my tabernacle have not said: Who will give us of his flesh that we may be filled?"

Job 31:31 Vulgate:  "si non dixerunt viri tabernaculi mei quis det de carnibus eius ut saturemur[?]"

Job 31:31 NETS:   "And if too my female attendants often said, 'Who might grant us to be filled with his flesh?'"

Job 31:31 LXX:  εἰ δὲ καὶ πολλάκις εἶπον αἱ θεράπαιναί μου Τίς ἂν δῴη ἡμῖν τῶν σαρκῶν αὐτοῦ πλησθῆναι;

Job 31:31 NRSV ("meaning of the Hebrew uncertain"):  "if those of my tent ever said, ‘O that we might be sated with his flesh!’"

Job 31:31 BHS:  אִם־לֹ֣א אָ֭מְרוּ מְתֵ֣י אָהֳלִ֑י מִֽי־יִתֵּ֥ן מִ֝בְּשָׂרֹ֗ו לֹ֣א נִשְׂבָּֽע

"a hope longer than time and stronger than misfortune"

"I find no solution for the future except in Christianity and in Catholic Christianity in particular. . . .  If there is to be a future, a mighty and free future, that future is still far off, far beyond the visible horizon; we will be able to reach it only with the help of that Christian hope whose wings grow in proportion as everything seems to betray it, a hope longer than time and stronger than misfortune."

     François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'outre-tombe 14.7 [=partie 4, livre x], as quoted by Jean-Luc Marion and translated by Stephen E. Lewis in A brief apology for a Catholic moment (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 2021), 85.  French from pp. 468 and 472 of tome 6 of the new Garnier edition of 1898-1899 edited by Edmund Biré:

. . . je ne trouve de solution à l’avenir que dans le christianisme et dans le christianisme catholique. . . .
. . . si un avenir doit être, un avenir puissant et libre, cet avenir est loin encore, loin au delà de l’horizon visible; on n’y pourra parvenir qu’à l’aide de cette espérance chrétienne dont les ailes croissant à mesure que tout semble la trahir, espérance plus longue que le temps et plus forte que le malheur.
The line with which that second paragraph begins is "Si le ciel n’a pas prononcé son dernier arrêt;" "If heaven has not pronounced its last 'Halt!'" or, better, "sentence".