In the little spare time I am allowed, I am currently translating something I have always wanted to translate in toto, namely, St Leo the Great's Tome to Flavian, Bishop in Constantinople, and written in the Year of Our Lord 449. I have done parts of it before, if you remember, and enjoy doing so, since the Latin is at once both Late (one can glean this from Leo's strange use of words like ''dispensatio'' which refers to Our Lord's Incarnation: in Classical Latin, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of incarnations!) and very melodious. The Epistle was written to address the problem of Eutyches, who was an influential monk at Constantinople, who erroneously taught that ''after the [Hypostatic] Union, I confess two Natures, after the Union, I confess only one Nature.'' I have read the Epistle in English translation, and Leo rightly judged that Eutyches was an idiot. It is a masterly treatise on complex Christology. So far, however, due to want of spare time, I have only done the Synopsis, which was quite hard, particularly points IV and V:
I. Quod ignorantia Sanctarum Scripturarum Eutychen haereticum fecerit. (''Because ignorance of the Holy Scriptures made Eutyches heretic'' - I initially thought that ''fecerit'' was in the Future Perfect Tense, whose case endings are ''ero, eris, erit'' etc, but since ''quod'' introduces the sentence as a causal clause, ''fecerit'' is in the Perfect Subjunctive).
II. Contra eos qui in duos Filios dispensationis Dominicae mysterium scindere moliuntur. (This one was the easiest - ''Against those who strive to split into two Sons the mystery of the Lord's Incarnation.'')
III. Contra eos qui passibilem Divinitatem Unigeniti Filii Dei audent asserere. (''Against those who dare to assert the passibility of the Divinity of the Only-Begotten Son of God.'')
IV. Contra eos qui coelestem aut alterius cuiusque substantiae existere formam servi, quam ex nobis assumpsit, insaniendo asserunt. (This one was maddeningly difficult because on first glance, the words don't mean anything when strung together in such a manner, but the sentence says this, roughly: ''Against those who by insanity assert that there is a heavenly form or some other being of a servant he [Christ] took from us'' or perhaps better rendered: ''Against those who in their madness assert that the servant-form he [Christ] took from us is of a heavenly or other substance.''
V. Contra eos qui duas quidem ante adunationem naturas Domini delirant, unam vero post adunationem confingunt. (''Against those who babble/speak nonsense [''delirant'' is hard to translate in the context, but ''deliro'' means ''I speak deliriously,'' we get delirious from this of course] about two natures of the Lord before the union [''adunatio'', it took me a while to work this out], but fabricate/imagine a single one after the union.'')
This is an interesting view of heresy, that it comes from ignorance of the Holy Scriptures. Does this disposition exalt the Scriptures above their actual place in the Tradition of the Church? Perhaps ignorance led Eutyches into heresy, but his Pride in refusing remonstrance at Chalcedon confirmed it - if you read the Acts, the Fathers ask him to anathematize his heresy, and he responds by saying that if he does so, he will anathematize the Holy Fathers [of Nicaea, Constantinople and Ephesus]. My view is that these are very complex questions of Christology. I remember learning about the Christological controversies of the 5th century and being amazed that the philological significance of words like hypostasis, ousia, homoousion, substantia, consubstantialem Patri etc were all bitterly fought out. When I think of this, the Church's struggle for orthodoxy amidst the tempests of heresy, and that there were Martyrs for its sake, I am made very angry when I listen to people at New Rite Masses mindlessly reciting the Nicene Creed, making it all sound very boring and trivial. When I finish my translation of the Tome, I shall devote several posts to them.
May I ask how you have gone about learning Latin? Did you learn it at school? Or did you teach yourself? What works for you? I'm teaching myself at the moment and progress is painstakingly slow. I'm only able to translate very simple clauses at the moment, and I haven't even got onto things like the subjunctive etc.
ReplyDeletePaul, many thanks for your comment. In answer to your questions, I was taught ''Beginner's Latin'' and ''Intermediate Latin'' as Modular courses at University, getting Firsts in them respectively. In the absence of my teacher over the Summer, I do various things to ''teach'' myself or just keep it up. Last year, my Latin teacher and I exchanged emails in Latin as a simple exercise, but there are other things too such as reading simple stories (from the Cambridge Latin Course or from other anthologies) and translating, and more difficult tomes for the purposes of comprehension. There is also keeping up one's Grammar by following exercises in the text-book (Sidwell's Reading Latin is the best for that I have found). I also do things at church, such as set the Altar Missal, and, if I am spared any time, sit down to read the Propers of the Mass. Practice is the key - I am still frustrated when I cannot read a text, but it will take a lot more than three years to perfect my Latin!
ReplyDeleteGood luck and keep at it!