Latin Text Selections

I think. This is a difficult project to stick to. Now begins a series on the penitential psalms, which will end in Holy Week. Beginning with Psalm 6.

…and I didn’t mean it to be. I’ll wake up the Latin starting Ash Wednesday. I’ll make it a Lenten resolution at least.

I would like to invite someone who can explain Latin grammar based on selected texts. As can be seen, I can select texts but cannot make adequate grammatical notes. This blog needs to be more instructional. Of course, you can select your own texts too. Any other suggestions are always welcome.

I’ve been playing with the HTML. Suggestion and criticism are always welcome.

I’m studying NT Greek and this is helping me take the sentences apart. So, it’s mostly for my own use, but I’m delighted if any readers are finding it useful also.

…making a conscious decision to put more thought into these entries. That’s going to take some work. Time to rediscover the library.

Five days. I haven’t skipped so badly before. It has been far from my mind for a while. Beginning last week, I’m learning Greek. I’m still far from understanding properly, but there’s the possibility of this becoming the Daily Latin and Greek, for the Bible quotations that is, if I can find some way to display the Greek.

The Latin:

56. Lectiones sanctas libenter audire,
56. orationi frequenter incumbere,
57. mala sua praeterita cum lacrimis vel gemitu cotidie in oratione Deo confiteri, de ipsis malis de cetero emendare.
59. Desideria carnis non efficere,
60. voluntatem propriam odire,

The English:

56. To listen willingly to holy reading.
57. To apply one’s self often to prayer.
58. To confess one’s past sins to God daily in prayer with sighs and tears, and to amend them for the future.
59. Not to fulfil the desires of the flesh.
60. To hate one’s own will.

The Latin:

Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam ;
et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.
Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea,
et a peccato meo munda me.
Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco,
et peccatum meum contra me est semper.

The English:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy.
And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my iniquity.
Wash me yet more from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my iniquity,
and my sin is always before me.

[A good commentary on psalm 50 is presented by Thomas Aquinas, here translated and available online: The Aquinas translation project. A small sample:
"Now the manner of speaking in the title, When Nathan came, must be noted: where it designates pardon about which he is moved in the Psalm because through it the Lord heard him and bore away his sin; but when he says, When he sinned with Bersabee, guilt is designated. Whence two things have been shown. The first which he calls guilt when he says, And he sinned. Psalm 11 "The words of the Lord are pure words." "]

The Latin:

Fit ergo in oratione conversio cordis ad eum, qui semper dare paratus est, si nos capiamus quod dederit: et in ipsa conversione purgatio interioris oculi, cum excluduntur ea quae temporaliter cupiebantur; ut acies cordis simplicis ferre possit simplicem lucem, divinitus sine ullo occasu aut immutatione fulgentem: nec solum ferre, sed etiam manere in illa; non tantum sine molestia, sed etiam cum ineffabili gaudio, quo vere ac sinceriter beata vita perficitur.

The English:

For in prayer there occurs a turning of the heart to he who is always ready to give if we will but take what he gives: and in that turning is the purification of the inner eye when the things we crave in the temporal world are shut out; so that the vision of the pure heart can bear the pure light that shines divinely without setting or wavering: and not only bear it, but abide in it; not only without difficulty, but even with unspeakable joy, with which the blessed life is truly and genuinely brought to fulfillment.[From On the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, taken directly from here.]

The Latin:

Sed rursus quaeri potest, sive rebus, sive verbis orandum sit, quid opus sit ipsa oratione, si Deus iam novit quid nobis necessarium sit: nisi quia ipsa orationis intentio cor nostrum serenat et purgat, capaciusque efficit ad excipienda divina munera, quae spiritaliter nobis infunduntur. Non enim ambitione precum nos exaudit Deus, qui semper paratus est dare suam lucem nobis, non visibilem, sed intelligibilem et spiritalem: sed nos non semper parati sumus accipere, cum inclinamur in alia, et rerum temporalium cupiditate tenebrarum.

The English:

But again one might ask whether we are to pray by words or deeds and what need there is for prayer, if God already knows what is needful for us. But it is because the act of prayer clarifies and purges our heart and makes it more capable of receiving the divine gifts that are poured out for us in the spirit. God does not give heed to the ambitiousness of our prayers, because he is always ready to give to us his light, not a visible light but an intellectual and spiritual one: but we are not always ready to receive it when we turn aside and down to other things out of a desire for temporal things.

[From On the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, taken directly from here.]

In the process of updating the category tags, several old posts got republished, sometimes several times, because I was not careful enough. This will be more of an annoyance in RSS readers.

I realised that I don’t have many categories here and there may be hundreds of Bible extracts, since more posts come out of the Vulgate than from any other place.

Therefore, I shall spend the next couple of days cracking the Bible extracts into OT, NT and poetry. That should be a nice way to kill any spare time I may find.

Having just returned from business training in China, the posts will start again. Watch out for four or more, today. I still seem to have only one reader, although two well known blogs have this one blogrolled. If you are reading this, please type up at least a one word comment on improving the blog. Thank you.

The Latin is little and far apart these days. It should remain so for about a week more. My reading has slowed down a bit due to location. More on that later.

…the bold script in recent posts is meant to break the longer word strings into little bits. Rather than provide emphasis. This bold script corresponds, of course, in both English and Latin translations. That’s half the reason; it helps correlate the two languages.

Let me know if it helps any.

They are not pronunciation marks, but emphasis marks on the syllables. Classical Latin had a fixed sound on each alphabet and modern Latin has a more-or-less Italian use for pronunciation, again fairly fixed.

They are not pronunciation marks, but emphasis marks on the syllables. Classical Latin had a fixed sound on each alphabet and modern Latin has a more-or-less Italian use for pronunciation, again fairly fixed.

This blog has already been started very nicely. It will continue to provide Roman prayers and now quotations from the Vulgate which I find interesting. There will be links to web resources in the sidebar for those thinking of learning Latin and/or studying it. It should be updated fairly frequently, as I try to read the Vulgate daily. Let’s see where it goes.

Latin has a unique place in our world. While most people will agree that it is a ‘dead’ language (and it is dead in the sense that it doesn’t change anymore), Latin is so buried in our English language that with a basic grounding an English reader can follow with minimal reference to a dictionary. I can read the Psalms after studying Latin for only a few months.

Other than its academic use in medicine and law etc., Latin was known as the language of the Roman Church. A few decades ago, that changed somewhat. While the liturgy and prayers in the vernacular are nice and all, Latin would bring about a sort of unity between Roman Catholics.

I have not studied Latin in schools. I have read primers, with the idea first of better understanding the Mass (which I now do) and then reading the Vulgate (which I am struggling with) and finally, perhaps reading Virgil fluently (looks quite impossible).

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