30 November 2019

Mindgames Spot the Latin Howler (3)

Here, as authorised by CDW decree published in Notitiae, is the Collect for S Augustine Zhao Rong.

Deus, qui per sanctoum martyrum Augustini et sociorum confessionem Ecclesiam tuam mirabili dispensatione roborasti, ut populus tuus, missioni sibi creditae fidelis, et incrementa libertatis accipiat et veritatem coram mundo testificetur.

13 comments:

Joshua said...

The word "sanctoum" is missing the expected "r" between the last two vowels.

Stephen v.B. said...

The typo in sancto[r]um is bad, but mainly one wonders: where is the main verb? The whole ut-clause, as it is, seems to be suspended in mid-air. Something along the lines of tribue, quaesumus, inserted after roborasti, should suffice.

Evie said...

Isn’t there spellcheck for Latin? Sanctoum? Really?

Matthew said...

sanctoRum

Bertie Wooster said...

One supposes that a mere lapsus calami is a relief.
Sancoum.

Andreas Meszaros said...

"Deus ... ut populus tuus ... incrementa libertatis accipiat ..."

A word of petition is missing, such as "concede ... ut accipiat". And also the typo of "sanctoum" needs to be corrected to "sanctorum".

Unknown said...

sanctoom --> sanctorum

missing main verb, e.g. da, ut ...

Fr Alban osb
Westminster Abbey, Mission, BC, Canada

Jesse said...

Dear me. Well, for sanctoum we must read sanctorum. And as written, the prayer contains no actual petition or request. Presumably an imperative has been left out before ut populus tuus, such as da or concede (perhaps adding propitius).

Without wishing in any way to excuse the functionaries of the CDW, I would observe that this sort of mending had to be done all the time in medieval service books, where scribes made all sorts of errors and omissions. (And that not necessarily because they had poor Latin, though many probably did. I read somewhere that when one is copying a text the brain works very differently from when one is reading it for comprehension.)

In his 2016 Cambridge PhD dissertation on the creation and dissemination of the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon, Dr. Zachary Guiliano draws our attention to an interesting letter of Paul to Abbot Adalhard of Corbie (written ca. 782-786, ed. E. Duemmler in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae in quarto 4 = Epistolae Karolini aevi 2, pp. 508-509). Paul is sending to Adalhard a copy of the letters of Pope Gregory I. He has been prevented by illness from correcting the text of the whole collection, but he has perused and corrected the first thirty-four letters. In a few places he has discovered that there is text missing (in quibus minus inveni). Although he's pretty sure he can guess from the context what word is required, he has not supplied these deficiencies himself, lest he be thought to be meddling with the texts of so great a theologian (et tamen meo ea sensu supplere nolui, ne viderer tanti doctoris verba inmutare). Instead, he has marked these places in the margin with a "zeta" (quod est vitium signii), and he asks that Adalhard himself would correct the rest of the letters and supply all the missing words.

David Newberry said...

The missing r which should be in sanctoum (for sanctorum) stands out. Also there seems to be a missing verb, such as da or tribue.

Jesse said...

Goodness! As if to illustrate my point about scribal errors, in my comment above I typed quod est vitium signii while staring right at the correct text in the MGH, which is quod est vitii signum. QED.

John Vasc said...

What happened to 'tribue quaesumus' after the first interminable adjectival clause in that tone-deaf, ungainly juggernaut of a Latin sentence?
And doesn't "incrementa libertatis accipiat" seem unliturgically pushy and political? The secular meaning is blatantly obvious.
Traditionally Catholics have always prayed and worked for 'the liberty of Holy Mother Church' - never (at least, not in liturgical prayers) as a demand for the liberalisation of the state.
(That of course was before Vat II turned 'liberty of worship' into an indifferentist ecumenical free-for-all, and also gave the word 'ecumenical' a new, watered-down meaning.)

Josephus Muris Saliensis said...

What is then fascinating is that, at the point at which these texts are translated into the vernacular, the missing verb is not noticed. It is incapable of translation meaningfully.

On can only infer that these prayers are not composed in Latin at all, but that the Latin and the other vernacular texts are translated from Italian or English originals, in which to languages precision is so much less necessary. And thus the Faith suffers.

Lex orandi lex credendi.

Lyle Dunne. said...

So in this case, two (w)rongs...