There are elites within elites within elites within elites. If you say the Divine Office ... in Latin ... according to the Old Rite ... but using the text of the hymns as they were before Urban VIII debauched those texts in the 1630s ... then:
You will know that the Office Hymn at Mattins last week was Iam Christus astra ascenderat. In the post-conciliar reforms, Dom Anselmo Lentini kept it as the hymn for Terce; but, as well as adding a new stanza (Descende ...), he eliminated several of those in the original. Not surprisingly, one of these was an unpleasant stanza about the Jews (Iudaea ... vesana ...). But that stanza had already been neutered by Barberini. The original contained the line "ructare musti crapulam" - belching the drunkenness/drunken hang-over of the Must. But belching, although Horace uses ructare in the Ars, is not the sort of vocab you expect in the Odes - and it was the Odes which Urban VIII's merry men took as their stylistic bench-mark. So they changed it to "... madere ...". (I know what you're thinking: Quod barbari non coinquinaverunt, stupraverunt Barberini.)
You may have wondered at Mass yesterday how the disciples could have been drunk on Must: unfermented grapejuice. Sometimes, mustum seems to mean partially fermented wine, and S Jerome certainly thought that it was a fair translation for the gleukous of the original.
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was for nearly three decades at Lancing College; where he taught Latin and Greek language and literature, was Head of Theology, and Assistant Chaplain. He has served three curacies, been a Parish Priest, and Senior Research Fellow at Pusey House in Oxford. Since 2011, he has been in full communion with the See of S Peter. The opinions expressed on this Blog are not asserted as being those of the Magisterium of the Church, but as the writer's opinions as a private individual. Nevertheless, the writer strives, hopes, and prays that the views he expresses are conformable with and supportive of the Magisterium. In this blog, the letters PF stand for Pope Francis. On this blog, 'Argumentum ad hominem' refers solely to the Lockean definition, Pressing a man with the consequences of his own concessions'.
... once graced the high altar of the church of Sancta Maria in Ara Coeli on the Capitoline Hill.
Fr John Hunwicke
was for nearly three decades at Lancing College; where he taught Latin and Greek language and literature, was Head of Theology, and Assistant Chaplain. He has served three curacies, been a Parish Priest, and Senior Research Fellow at Pusey House in Oxford. Since 2011, he has been in full communion with the See of S Peter. The opinions expressed on this Blog are not asserted as being those of the Magisterium of the Church, but as the writer's opinions as a private individual. Nevertheless, the writer strives, hopes, and prays that the views he expresses are conformable with and supportive of the Magisterium. In this blog, the letters PF stand for Pope Francis. On this blog, 'Argumentum ad hominem' refers solely to the Lockean definition, Pressing a man with the consequences of his own concessions'.
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... once graced the high altar of the church of Sancta Maria in Ara Coeli on the Capitoline Hill.
6 comments:
On an unrelated topic, please tell me what you thought of the Presiding Bishop's sermon at the royal wedding this past weekend. Personally, I thought it was out-of-place: it sounded like a civil rights speech--a speech that has no place at a wedding.
Father, how do get hold of the breviary hymns in their pre-Urban VIII texts? Do you use the breviarium monasticum? Or is there a hymnal which has them in liturgical order? Those liturgical companions I have seen, such as Britt, use the revised texts. Literary anthologies often have the original texts, but not arranged liturgically and so with omissions.
Mr Barber, you may find helpful the insert "Hymni Antiqui", published by "Nova et Vetera", which accompanies their edition of the breviary. I don't own that insert but I do have the breviary, which is itself clear and quite sturdy, though not without the odd misprint (little things like "tamem" instead of "tamen"). I would expect the hymns to be of similar quality.
http://www.novaetvetera.de/nova/reihen_10006.html
Father Hunwicke, you know more than I do about the language. But, strictly speaking, is it not the "crapula" on which they are supposed to be drunk - perhaps a sort of alcoholic resin, which you might add to just about anything? Resinated wine must surely have been popular, perhaps more popular than the stuff we would touch... A quick dive into the concordances suggests the hymnographers would have had to dig up Pliny for this sense, and yet Ambrose (and Isidore) certainly read Pliny, and he himself is only reproducing winemakers' jargon.
The meaning of "gleukos" itself seems to be up for grabs - Menander means something partially fermented by it, but often it is unfermented (Plutarch, Nicander etc.). But, seeing that the Essenes held their "new wine" festival 100 days after Passover, the likelihood that any unfermented or even partially fermented must whatsoever was available at Pentecost-time seems nil. I don't believe the ancients had any means of arresting wine at a certain stage of fermentation, other than drinking it! If neither sense really works in the context, do we then think that what is referred to by both the "gleukos" of the NT and the "mustum" of the hymn is precisely this alcoholic resin, which is made from boiled-down must and which presumably could be kept as long as you like - and did Urban VIII, by deleting the word "crapulam", deny this all-important Christian truth to every future generation?
I do have the Hymni antiqui, but this convenient little pamphlet contains only about half the hymns in my breviary.
Thanks for the link Ivan.
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