Sorry ...

... I don't often indulge my affection for Literary Criticicism of passages in the Latin Language, because I know that this is not everybody's Cup of Tea. Er ... But ...

In the First Christian Millennium, there was scope for clerics whose pens had an elegant bias, to show what they were made of. Episcopal Benedictions galore were needed; more conclamantly, Proper Prefaces seemed to demand composition for every single Mass-formula. Loads'a'texts! Of course, a fair bit of what got onto the market was dross ... platitudinous statements of the obvious. But not everything.

There may have been elegant pens at Winchester, particularly in the building now known to historians as the New Minster. Among the Saints whose relics they had 'translated' there, was the S Birinus who had evangelised the whole East of England from Winchester to Lincoln ... our own East Midlands Apostle. The Proper Preface which somebody composed for one of his feasts began with a sentence including the phrase Vivificae incarnationis assumpta mortalitas ... nos expiavit. The way this brackets the Incarnation with Christ's Life and Death seems to me very happy. And the credal summary "Christ assumed flesh which implied death so as to bring us life" is plain smart. The writer does not repeat terms without having a good reason for doing so: so when he takes up mortalitas with immortalitatem the device is pleasing. 

Having described the the College of Bishops as rutilae sanctitatis collegium, he identifies S Birinus with this College by assigning to him the same term sanctus. 

Perhaps most strikingly, the writer describes him as strengthened (roboratus) by his wonderful constancy of preaching, and then tells us that S Birinus subjugated the common folk uniquely (sola) by the power of this preaching. This remark appears to allude to a strong tradition that S Birinus was an extraordinary powerful preacher. Thus a pontifical Benediction on S Birinus' Feast Day refers to his Evangelicum ... ministerium; his work plurimorum pro salute; and how innumeros salvavit per praedicationem. See also the remarks of S Bede; and surviving medieval glass at Dorchester which appears to show theSaint preaching with a vigorous gesture.

The author of the Ptreface is not averse to using words with weight in order to bring a period to its dignified conclusion: immarcescibilem iucunditatis aeternae coronam percepit.  

I could go on for quite a time...