Salve, Thoma, virga iustitiae, mundi iubar, robur Ecclesiae, plebis amor, cleri deliciae. Salve, gregis tutor egregie, salva tuae gaudentes gloriae.
I thought docti lectores would appreciate the very elegant jingles of alliteration and assonance ... not heavy and plodding like Ennius, but quite Neoteric or Virgilian. The word-play 'gregis ... egregie' seems to me to span the chronological and cultural divides between Ovid and the author of the Akathist Hymn.
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13 comments:
What on earth are you talking about?
Writing esoteric stuff serves no purpose and hardly builds up the body of Christ.
I wonder if the 'Roman Catholic Vespers' at 8pm in the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral used it; there was no details on the music list; it may have been modern English,Tridentine or said.
5 hours earlier this happened
3.15 EVENSONG with procession to the Martyrdom and Crypt
SUNG BY THE MEN OF THE CATHEDRAL CHOIR
Plainsong Canticles Responses – Sarum
Opem nobis, O Thoma – Palestrina Psalm 61
Hymn NEH208 In our day of thanksgiving
At least this is commemorated as is the translation in July with some dignity
Dear Mr Hellyer
I will, I assure you, write "esoteric stuff" as often as I like, for as long as I am writing this blog. You have inspired me hereafter to do so with enhanced and hyperbolic relish.
It seems to me, if I may be personal, that your Nanny was less than totally successful in teaching you good manners. So my New Year Message to you is:
"Kausprountos ede, gloiskhra dia periskias
strublounta kai stromphount' an heuriskois topha
Deine d'epeskhe sothria borugrophas."
May you, in 2019, have many happy hours the other side of the Looking-Glass. May your Crosswords always magnificently defeat you and may your Sudokus frustrate you. May your gin bottle never lack the most exquisitely perfect vacuum.
John Hunwicke
The amusing exchange above reminds me of someone's imagined Aussie version of an Arab curse: "May your chooks grow up to be emus, and kick the door off your dunny!"
A Merry Christmastide and Happy New Year to all, remembering always that laughter is the best medicine, and that anti-intellectual philistinism is a vice, not a virtue (whatever too many modern Catholics tend to believe).
PS I tend to think of the trickier Sudokus as "pseudo-clues". Once years ago, when I was working as an invigilator, I did so many such puzzles - in between patrolling up and down and fulfilling all my other duties of course - that I dreamt of Sudokus, which so terrified me that I've hardly attempted them again ever since.
There you go again. Writing in an unintelligible language. Then end by wishing misfortune on me. May you be blessed in 2019 with lots of humility.
God bless you father.
P.
PS. I am not posh enough to have a nanny.
Never too late to take a nanny, Mr Hellyer. You share a surname, I believe, with the infuriatingly self-righteous social-worker in “Mrs Doubtfire”. Now you must know that, it was entirely in the vernacular.
Father's language is perfectly intelligible, more so than yours. It is the making of false accusations along with cranky anti-intellectualism which serves no purpose and hardly builds up the body of Christ.
I quote 'elegant jingles of alliteration and assonance ... not heavy and plodding like Ennius, but quite Neoteric or Virgilian. The word-play 'gregis ... egregie'
Now seriously does this intellectual entertainment add anything to the advance of Christianity? Is it not just plain vanity?
I thought a priest's job was to imitate Christ.
There are many, many subjects of which I know next to nothing, and whose technical language goes right over my head. I would never presume to suggest that discussion of them was “intellectual entertainment” or “plain vanity”, still less that a priest was failing to “imitate Christ” by writing on the subject. I think Mr Hellyer should reflect carefully on the reasons for his reaction, and then either apologise to our host or (if that is beyond him) to keep a decent silence on the matter, in this forum at least.
There are quite enough real sins without inventing imaginary ones. I detect a sad note of Jansenistic rigorism in Mr Hellyer's comments. By his theory, teaching or studying poetry, let alone appreciating it, would be sinful, as would any mere (!) 'intellectual entertainment' – but not, one assumes, the playing or watching of sports. What philistine boorishness!
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