Monday, July 4, 2016

caelestis vitae actio

Cod. Vat. Reg. lat. 316, fol. 88r
"May this oblation dedicated to your name, purify us, O Lord, and day by day bring our conduct closer to the life of heaven.  Through. . . ."

"Oblatio nos, Domine, tuo nomini dicata purificet, et de die in diem ad caelestis vitae transferat actionem.  Per. . . ."


[This] oblation dedicated to your name, O Lord:  may it purify us and from day to day bear [us] across [in]to the action [(i.e. performance)] of heavenly life.  Through. . . .


     Prayer over the offerings, Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman missal.  Early 8th-century Gelasian sacramentary (Corpus orationum nos. 3604a-b (vol. 5, pp. 272-273; Bruylants no. 727 (vol. 2, p. 204)).  Ed. Mohlberg (1960):  no. 563:  nos + decata; no. 588:  <nos> + decanda.

     Is caelestis vitae actio supposed to allude to the heavenly eucharist (gratiarum actio)?  No. 4 in Blaise is celebration/canon of the mass; prayer; and no. 1 in Blaise is perpetuation.  Lewis & Short:  doing, performing, acting, action, performance, etc.  Contra the new translation, actionem, rather than caelestis vitae, has to be in any case the object of ad.
     Looks like the pre-Vatican II Latin-English missals (Secret, Second Sunday after Pentecost) struggled with this, too (I could add many more):

"what help is there in Greek, what in Hebrew, what in the Latin language?"

Historic England
"Here lies tongueless a man who used many languages, and was the official reader of Hebrew [at Christ Church, Oxford].  But what help is there in Greek, what in Hebrew, what in the Latin language?  If his skill in languages ever gave succour to others, that alone gives him protection now.  You, therefore, whom the tongue of Thomas Neale used to help him, help him, voiceless as he now is, with your holy tongue.  Subscription of the author himself:  While still healthy, I placed these verses here for myself, so that an image of my death might thereby be seen by me in advance.  Even if he kills me, I shall still put my hope in him.  Job. c. 13.  A.D. 1590, my 71st year."

"Hic iacet elinguis qui linguis pluribus olim
Usus, Hebraismi publica lingua fuit.
Graeca quid hic?  quid Hebraea iuvat?  quid lingua Latina?
Si qua alios iuvit, nunc ea sola iuvat.
Vos ergo Thomae Neli quos lingua iuvabat,
Elinguem lingua (quaeso) iuvate pia.
Subscriptio ipsi authoris
Hos egomet versus posuit mihi sanus, ut esset
Hinc praevisa mihi mortis imago meae.
Etiam si occiderit me
In ipsum tamen sperabo.  Job, ca. 13.
Anno. Domini. 1590.  aetatis vero meae. 71."

     Shroud brass for the Rev. Thomas Neale, a recusant ordained under Queen Mary, and placed by him above a side-altar in St. Peter's, Cassington, Oxfordshire (where the Rev. Neale may have continued to say Mass), "At a time when prayers for the dead had been forbidden".  Gerard Kilroy, Edmund Campion:  a scholarly life (London and New York:  Routledge, 2016 [2015]), 48-50.  Translation Kilroy's.