Tuesday, September 2, 2014

"The whole world cannot exalt him whom the Truth has made subject to itself. . . ."

"Can a man whose heart is subject to God in truth be puffed up with empty boasting?  The whole world cannot exalt him whom the Truth has made subject to itself, nor can he who has fixed his whole hope in God be moved by the tongues of all who flatter him."

     Thomas à Kempis, The imitation of Christ III.14, trans. Leo Sherley-Price ((London:  Penguin Books, 1952), 112.

"[21] Quomodo potest erigi vaniloquio, cuius cor in veritate subiectum est Deo?
"[22] Non enim totus mundus erigeret, quem sibi subiecit Veritas, nec omnium laudantium ore movebitur qui totam spem in Deo firmavit."

     De imitatione Christi libri quatuor:  Edizione critica a cura Tiburzio Lupo, S.D.B. (Vatican City:  Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1982), 172, with many variants.

"Quomodo potest erigi vaniloquio; cuius cor in veritate subiectum est Deo?  Non eum totus mundus eriget:  quem veritas sibi subiecit; nec omnium laudantium ore movebitur:  qui totam spem suam in Deo firmavit."

     Thomae Hemerken à Kempis . . . Opera omnia, ed. Michael Joseph Pohl (Freiburg im Breisgau:  Herder, 1904), vol. 2, p. 171.
     The image in the upper right is from the other pre-1982 (or -Lupo) critical edition ed. Karl Hirsche (Thomae Kempensis De imitatione Christi libri quatuor (Berlin:  Libraria Lüderitziana Carolus Habel, 1874), 170), and the punctuation mark that looks a bit like the mirror image of a question mark is the neume called a flex (Latin:  flexa; Greek:  clivis or clinis), which Thomas used to indicate a minor pause.  Neumes were "the signs employed in the notation of plainsong beginning in about the 9th century" (Harvard dictionary of music, 4th ed. (2003), ed. Randel, s.v. neume).  Of the examples of flexae given on p. 560 of the Harvard dictionary, this one seems to me to resemble most closely the Porrectus flexus.  But I could be very wrong about that.

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