The Collect for the Solemnity today is an impressively inverted piece of Latin. Anybody want to help me parse it?
Deus, qui huius diei venerandam sanctamque laetitiam in apostolorum Petri et Pauli sollemnitate tribuisti, da Ecclesiae tuae eorum in omnibus sequi praeceptum, per quos religionis sumpsit exordium.
The petition is pretty straightforward:”grant to thy Church to follow their teaching in all things, by whom (She) took up the beginning (i.e., the introduction) of religion.”
The tough part is the first long clause (up to tribuisti). I’m not really confident about venerandam — does it modify laetitiam along with sanctam? What does venerandam laetitiam mean? And where does the genitive huius diei fit in?
How about this?
O God, who gave, in the solemnity of apostles P and P, the holy and to-be-venerated joy of this day, grant to your church to follow their teaching in all those things through which she took up the beginning of religion.
A second try, I had to run
O God, who apportioned (to the church), in the solemnity of apostles P and P, the holy and to-be-venerated joy of this day, grant to your church to follow in all things the initial teaching of those through whom she took up the beginning of religion.
The old rite Collect is much easier to construe:
“Deus, qui hodiernam diem Apostolorum tuorum Petri et Pauli martyrio consecrasti: da Ecclesiae tuae, eorum in omnibus sequi praeceptum, per quos religionis sumpsit exordium.”
There are many origins for the Collects of the NO, some of them old, so I pass no necessary judgment on the Latin or the theology. “Venerandam” must modify “laetitiam”, which looks funny because it is a gerundive form that has become fixed as an adjective. I find no classical parallel for it modifying something as abstract as “happiness”; it almost seems like an epithet transferred from “diei”, although that would be rather fancy for ecclesiastical Latin. “Huius dei” must surely depend on “laetitiam.”
I said I wouldn’t pass any judgment on the theology of the new Collect, but it is interesting that it substitutes happiness for martyrdom. It was a published goal of the reform to remove from the orations anything that was “excessively moralizing” — I suppose being killed for the Faith would have qualified, although it seems a little churlish to hold that against Sts. Peter and Paul.
At one point I was trying to read the prayer as if huius diei were dependent on sollemnitate, but that imposes quite a strain on the reader.
Charles’ second version looks very reasonable; I’ll take most of that, and keep some of my ‘petition’.
I like that word ‘exordium’: the phrase sounds like it’s about Holy Mother Church launching the initial marketing campaign of our religion into the world.
Thank you, Charles and David!
You’ve got to feel bad for those of us who are post-Vatican II babies. The only Latin I know is: Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.
Actually, I’ve picked up a few Catholic phrases in Latin, and can say the “Hail Mary” and most of “The Lord’s Prayer” in it as well.
You’re not alone, Chris: I’m post-V2 too: converted in 1980, and didn’t know any Latin until I took a night course at a local college. So wanna get a Latin textbook and make it your summer reading?
I took three years of classical Latin in HS. I found it dreadfully dull. After all who reads Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus, etc in translation. Church Latin is a different matter but it was long after my conversion that I encountered much Church Latin.
This collect is not the best example of the power of Latin. Even so there are gems in this collect. The root concept of tribuisti is tribe, so tribuisti has connotations of splitting something up as well as merely giving. Exordium is literally the warp of a web – which suggests the initial setup of the Church. Praeceptum also is initial teaching.
The syntax of Church Latin is much closer to English than classical Latin is. So if you have learned the Bible from a more literal translation (e.g., the RSV), the neo-vulgate is easy to read and is very helpful in understanding the original Greek.
I would welcome the more frequent use of Latin in the liturgy. The first step however is translations that are faithful to the Latin originals.
Are the mass collects available somewhere on the Internet?
Classicist Gord Nixon has some of the collects, with translations on the web. Michael Martin’s Thesaurus doesn’t seem to have them yet, so I should ask him about it.