Neither hero nor villain

"Thus Columbus-the-hero and Columbus-the-villain live on, mutually sustained by the passion which continuing controversy imparts to their supporters. No argument can dispel [either of] the[se two falsehoods], however convincing; no evidence, however compelling. They have eclipsed the real Columbus and, judged by their effects, have outstriped him in importance. For one of the sad lessons historians learn is that history is influenced less by the facts as they happen than by the falsehoods men believe."

     Felipe Fernández-Armesto, at the time Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford, and the author of an important Columbus biography published by Oxford University Press in 1991 ("arguably one of the best-written and most historically sensitive" available, according to Dr. Valerie I. J. Flint in the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Britannica Library), but now William P. Reynolds Professor of History, University of Notre Dame.  "Columbus - Hero or Villain?," History today 42, no. 5 (May 1992):  9 (4-9).
     And yet it seems clear that there are, in Fernández-Armesto's mind, respects in which Columbus was and remains the former at least, not (of course) to mention respects in which he was clearly a man of his own time, indeed more Genoese than Spanish, given that he "never understood [already contemporary] Spanish[/Castilian] scruples about slavery" (6).  And yet "Las Casas revered him, and pitied, rather than censured, the imperfections of his attitude to the natives."  (Though I suppose the question might be, Right up until his death in 1566, 61 years after Columbus'?)

"God be in my head, and in my understanding; God be in my eyes, and in my looking; God be in my mouth, and in my speaking; God be in my heart, and in my thinking; God be at my end, and at my departing"

Jesus soit en ma teste, et mon entendement, | Jesus soit en mes yeulx | et mon regardement, | Jesus soit en ma bouche et en mon parlement, | Jesus soit en mon cueur et en mon pensement, | Jesus soit en ma vie et en mon trespassement, | Ainsy soit-il.

[Jean ]Sonet-[Keith Val ]Sinclair 991.

But the incipit varied. See, for example, this JONAS entry (where there is a complete (?) list of manuscripts and early printings, with dates, the earliest (plural) being either 15th century or second half of 15th century):

Jesus soit en mon chef et mon entendement...

Sonet-Sinclair 993


Jhesus soit en mon ame et en mon entendement;
Jhesus soit en ma bouche et en mon parlement...

Sonet-Sinclair 992

And in this one, at least, possibly Sonet-Sinclair 993, other words (fin) did as well: 

Jhesus soit en mon chef et mo[n] entendement.
Jhesus soit en ma bouche et mon parlement.
Jhesus soit en mon cueur et en mon pensement.
Jhesus soit en ma fin et a mon trespasseme[n]t.

Paris. Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Ms. 2879 (15th cent.), fol. 73r-73v (whence the image above).

From the 1514 Sarum primer cited by the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology (colophon at the back gives what the Internet Archive gives, namely:  Impresse in ciuitate London[iis] : Per (Richardu[m] Pynson) Regium Impressorem in vico dicto the fletestrete ad signum georgii commorantem):

God be in my heed
And in myn understandynge
God be in myn eyen
And in my lokynge
God be in my mouthe
And in my spekynge
God be in my herte
And in my thynkynge
God be at myn ende
And my departynge.  

"Sleepwalking into the Abyss"

"Denial, a tendency to conformism, a willingness to disregard the evidence, a habit of ducking responsibility, a blindness to mere experience in the face of the overwhelming evidence of theory:  these [left-brain] characteristics might sound ominously familiar to observers of contemporary Western life."

"if I am right, that the story of the Western world is one of increasing left-hemisphere domination, we would not expect insight to be the key note.  Instead we would expect a sort of insouciant optimism, the sleepwalker whistling a happy tune as he ambles towards the abyss."

     Iain McGilchrist, The master and his emissary:  the divided brain and the making of the western world, New expanded edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2019), 235, 237.

"the bishop of Syria shall be found at the setting of the sun, having [been] fetched . . . from the sun's rising"

Timothy A. Gonsalves

"God has vouchsafed that the bishop of Syria shall be found at the setting of the sun, having fetched him from the sun's rising.  It is good to set to the world towards God, that I may rise to him."

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Romans II.2, as trans. Lake.

"I seek Him who died for our sake. I desire Him who rose for us."

"It is better for me to die in Christ Jesus than to be king over the ends of the earth.  I seek Him who died for our sake.  I desire Him who rose for us.  The pains of birth are upon me.  Suffer me, my brethren; hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die.  Do not give to the world one who desires to belong to God, nor deceive him with material things.  Suffer me to receive the pure light; when I have come thither I shall become a man [(ἄνθρωπος)].  Suffer me to follow the example of the Passion of my God."

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Romans VI.1-3, as trans. Lake.

Being vs. being called

"pray for me or strength, both inward and outward, that I may not merely speak, but also have the will, that I may not only be called a Christian, but may also be found to be one."

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Romans III.1, as trans. Lake. 

"In the beginning was. . . . Jesus Christ"

"by reading [the] houtos [of Jn 1:2] forward . . . as an anticipatory reference to Jesus of Nazareth . . . Barth is able then to claim that the identity of the one called provisionally the Word in v. 1 is an identity that is only finally disclosed in v. 15.  The concept of the Word appears in v. 1 as a 'placeholder' for the one whose identity is only made clear in v. 15. . . .  [T]he Word is a predicate of Jesus.  Jesus is not the predicate of a Word whose identity is already secure in himself without reference to Jesus.
Barth has thus “close[d] the door firmly on any attempt to find in John 1:1 a wholly abstract conception of the Word and, with that, an equally abstract conception of the Father’s relation to a Son who is not, in himself and as such, Jesus.  For John, there is no eternal Word as such, no eternal Word in himself that is not already defined by his relation to the Jesus who is still to come.  And that means too that the only-begotten Son is already in himself, in pretemporal eternity, Jesus Christ by way of anticipation of the event of the incarnation in time.
     "The Christological subject in [even] John’s Gospel has here been shown to be 'Jesus Christ.'  Jesus is the Word both in eternity (by anticipation) and in time (in concrete realization).  'Preexistence' is a less doubtful concept when speaking of the Johannine Prologue than it was in relation to the Synoptics.  A step [(or 'development' (238))] has been taken by John towards greater clarification.  But it is a step that remains in contact with the solutions provided in the Synoptics and ensures their commensurability with him.  For here, too, it is a human being of whom all these things are said, a human being who is proper to the identity of the eternal God. . . . As a relation already proper to the Son in pretemporal eternity, . . . Jesus Christ is something like 'the hypostatic realization in God of His electing purposes' [(McCormack himself)].  He is the second person of the Trinity.  So even when Jesus prays 'So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in our presence before the world existed,' this ['I'] is not to be understood in terms of a Logos who bears in himself no relation to Jesus but who is now speaking in the voice of the human Jesus as his instrument. . . . No, it is the human Jesus who prays this prayer.  And he can do so meaningfully because he is present by way of anticipation in the electing purposes of God that define him as a 'person' of the Trinity."

     Bruce Lindley McCormack, The humility of the eternal Son:  Reformed kenoticism and the repair of Chalcedon (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 2021), 243-245, underscoring mine.  Not sure yet what I think of this considered as a project of Chalcedonian "repair," I do nonetheless resonate with the specificity with which it rejects the diffusely "cosmic" character of certain Christologies.