16 April 2022
Knox's Exsultet
Here is a section of the translation of the Exsultet done by Mgr R A Knox, while he was still an Anglican:
The night is come, wherein, when our fathers, the children of Israel, were led forth from Egypt, thou dividest the Sea and madest them pass over as on dry land. Yea, the night is come, that with the fiery pillar hath purged away the darkness of our condemnation. The night is come, whereby all that believe in Christ on all the face of the earth, delivered from this naughty world and out of the shadow of death, are renewed unto grace and are made partakers of eternal life. The night is come, wherein the bonds of death are loosed, and Christ harrowing Hell rose again in triumph. For wherefore should man be born into this world, save that being born he might be redeemed? How wonderful then, O God, is thy loving-kindness unto us thy children! Behold, what manner of love he hath bestowed upon us: who, to redeem a servant, delivered up his only Son! O wonderful providence of Adam's transgression, that by such a death sin might be done away! O blessed iniquity [O felix culpa], for whose redemption such a price was paid by such a Saviour! ...
This has now been restored to use in the Ordinariate Missal. A couple of textual details:
(1) line 2: the Missal reads dividest; should it be dividedst?
(2) line 4: the Missal replaces naughty with wicked.
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7 comments:
"line 4: the Missal replaces naughty with wicked." As I read it I automatically made that change.
Good that he renders both talem and tantum. Many renderings do not
Using "naughty" forces one to think of "naught." Was that his objective?
Dad29: I agree. An alternative would be worthless, as in something set at naught
Naughty has nothing to do with naught. It is cognate with nasty, and comes from nestig, yucky like the innards of a bird's nest.
(This means one in current use and in something like a cave of immemorial guano, not a clean one made of nice dried grass, like the ones which will shortly be falling from trees after the US songbirds are done with them).
The world can be nasty, and I suppose it evokes the possibility of cleaning it up.
Banshee - I think Knox would have been well aware of the origins of 'naughty'
Dictionary.com says :-
The first records of the word naughty come from around the 1400s. It comes from the word naught, meaning “nothing.” Naught comes from Middle English word nāwiht, from the parts nā, meaning “no,” and wiht, meaning “thing” or “person.” The earliest recorded uses of naughty refer to having nothing—being poor. It then took on senses meaning “evil” or “immoral.” In the 1500s, it took on its sexual meaning—at first more literal and later more ironic or euphemistic. It wasn’t until the 1600s or after that it was popularly used to describe misbehaving children.
"The night is come,"
Not just midnight mass, but this too explains : velika noč, Wielkanoc (and a few other - I suppose - Slavic translations for Easter)
Which I hope the whole week thereof to be blessed, btw!
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