Last Friday, Professor Jasper Griffin, Fellow of Balliol, died, aged 82. His wife Miriam nata Dressler, who taught Pam, died last year.
Griffin was of the generation which mediated to a new generation the Classicism of the great Jewish refugee scholars who escaped to Oxford in the 1930s. He enabled many people to enjoy Classical Literature as he enjoyed it himself. Not least among his achievements was his vindication of Homer by putting the skhizontes to flight.
He was Public Orator, a successor of S Edmund Campion. Please God, they will be able to converse together in "Heaven's own native Latin".
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4 comments:
AMEN.
I read somewhere that St Francis de Sales thought the language of Heaven is Hebrew.
"Heaven's own native Latin". I wonder if those of us that were daydreaming in Latin Class will have to go through remedial Latin classes in Purgatory before we are considered ready to "move on" so that we too can converse once we reach the beatific vision. That would certainly be a purifying step for some of us.
I guess that our ordo recitandi is going to have to be pure Westmonasteriensis, as well.
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