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destielshippingnews · 3 years ago

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Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x04 Phantom Traveler

In this week’s analysis, I’ll be discussing the unfortunate introduction of Abrahamic mythology, the lamentable gender politics of Dean in his nightwear, and magic languages.

Supernatural’s fourth offering, 1x04 Phantom Traveler, (not a misspelling, 'traveller' is spelt like that in America) is a solid episode. It’s not fantastic, and Supernatural certainly has better to offer, but it’s still an entertaining watch which introduces demons into the Supernatural universe and continues developing Dean and Sam’s characters, making them more distinct.

It is also the first episode Robert Singer directed for Supernatural. I didn’t see much to particularly comment on in the direction for this episode (my two years of Media Studies were not wasted on me at all), but one interesting choice, however, is the tracking shot of Dean’s sleeping form straight after the title card. EscapingPurgatory podcast had a shrewd postulation: the intended audience was heterosexual educated men between the ages of roughly 15 and 39, but a lot of them would be watching with their girlfriends and wives etc, and Dean is the brother who’s available at the moment.

Returning to the plot of the show, the script does itself a major disservice as early as the cold open. This episode was broadcast in America four years after 9/11 (almost four and a half in Britain) and was right in the middle of the decades-long and still ongoing war on drugs. The atmosphere surrounding airfare has changed fundamentally. The air hostess clearly saw the man’s black eyes and was affected by it, and should have alerted somebody on the plane to her worries, because she would have thought he was on drugs of some variety at the very least, and possibly smuggling drugs on the plane. However, for the purposes of the plot she does not act on her misgivings, but simply gasps and goes about her day.

This raises the question of why the demon revealed its presence like that. Demons are usually incredibly stupid on Supernatural, but this level of dumb is difficult for me to believe. The air hostess could have very easily had the man thrown off the aeroplane, and then its plan would be scuppered. The most likely reason was to show the audience that the man was possessed, but the audience was going to find that out in about a minute’s time anyway, so why reveal it there? It breaks the fourth wall in a bad way.

Whilst on the aeroplane and the demon’s plan, the episode never makes the demon’s motivations explicit. Sure, Sam claims that demons like death and destruction for their own sake, but this doesn’t fit well with how demons behave later in the show. They are, forsooth, as thick as poo, but they usually have higher ups telling them what to do. Was the demon’s repeated downing of aeroplanes part of a higher up’s plan?

Before I go on, it’s worthwhile mentioning that this episode is the first one to introduce the idea of an actual Abrahamic Hell in the Supernatural universe. It’s not the only genre show of its kind to have included something like this, with Charmed having the Underworld where the Source of All Evil resided, and Buffy having various Hell dimensions, but those two examples weren’t Hell as depicted in the Bible.

Joss Whedon specifically avoided the idea of a Hell and employed dimensions ruled by demons and demon gods rather than Archangel Lucifer. Charmed used the Underworld as an equivalent of Hell, but it was not a place of punishment for human souls. While Charmed is definitely my least favourite fantasy/horror/sci-fi genre show (Prue notwithstanding), I appreciated that it took a step away from Abrahamic mythology. Buffy/Angel were even better, having their own mythology that had precious little to do with Middle Eastern religions and more to do with Dunsany, Lovecraft or sometimes even Tolkien.

Kripke, however, took the lazy route with Abrahamic, specifically Christian, mythology, a choice which I believe was to the show’s detriment. It’s supposed to be a show about American folklore and urban legends, but that stuff eventually gets thrown under the bus. Forget Native Americans, screw the Americanised versions of Scandiwegian lore, screw the Old West and the Gold Rush and all the tales revolving around America’s history. And Canada? Pfft. What even is Canada? And don’t even think about Mexico. Let’s just have yet more desert myths from 2-3000 years ago.

My distaste aside, this universe has a Hell (and a Heaven), and demons are made by torturing humans until all humanity is gone from them, or by letting the humans off the torture rack if they agree to become the torturers.

Knowing this, two possibilities come to mind. One is that this demon is repeating its own human death for some reason, and another is that it kills people and drags their souls to Hell to make more demons.

Repeating its own death is entirely speculative, but this episode mixes up demons with traits later associated with ghosts and death echoes. Never again is an EMF reader used to detect demonic activity, and unless I’ve forgotten a certain example, demons aren’t shown to act as specifically as this again.

The second option, that of dragging souls to Hell, doesn’t seem likely as it’s made clear that demon deals or trades are required in order for Hell to get its claws on human souls, at least in usual circumstances. There’s nothing saying that demons can’t just decide to drag certain souls to Hell, and there is an implication at the end of this episode that this might actually be the case, but it’s a stretch. If this were the case, however, it would give the demon a real motive and make the episode less of a stand-alone bit of fun with overt X-Files vibes.

Sticking with Hell events on the aeroplane for now, let’s skip to the end and the exorcism. Whilst trying to exorcise the demon, it tells Sam that Jessica is burning in Hell. Dean tries to reassure Sam by saying that demons read minds and that it was trying to get to him, but demons can only know the minds of people they possess. This then leaves three options: the demon was lying and Jess is in Heaven, it was telling the truth and Jess is in Hell, or the demon was just trying to get to Sam, but unbeknownst to him Jess actually was in Hell.

Technically speaking, Jess shouldn’t be in Hell. She didn’t make a deal (that we know of) and it’s established later in the show that most people go to Heaven anyway. But Kevin didn’t, neither did Eileen or Bobby. Mary did, even though she made a deal with Azazel, and she died under the same circumstances as Jess. As Jess is never mentioned as being in Hell by another demon in the show, and as Dean, Sam and Cas eventually visit Hell and find nothing of her there, we can assume Jessica went to Heaven.

The exorcism in this episode is strange compared to exorcisms in the rest of the show. The Doyle (external to the text) explanation is clearly that the writers didn’t know exactly how they wanted things to work yet, but the Watson (within the text) explanation could be that they used a different exorcism ritual. Later in the show, there is no intermediate stage between being expelled from the host body and being banished to Hell: they just go directly down. This version, though, forces the demon to manifest and thereby makes it much stronger and more dangerous. I personally think the version in this episode makes the demons more of a threat because it’s harder to exorcise them, but I can see why it became streamlined later in the show.

The fact the demon possessed the aeroplane, however, raises the question of why it didn’t do so in the first place. Maybe it’s more fun to possess a human first.

Speaking of the ritual, Jared tells us on the commentary that he had to have a Latin teacher from a local university instruct him in Ecclesiastical Latin because he learnt Classical Latin at school. As a language person, I’m left wondering why. It’s the same language, just pronounced differently. Does the spell need to be pronounced in a certain way in order to work? If so, would the Ancient Romans have been completely incapable of expelling demons with their own language? Would they have had to rely on Greek, Etruscan, Gaulish or Sumerian for the rituals? It’s just completely unnecessary, especially as we later see Rowena casting spells in Scottish Gaelic, Irish witches casting spells in Irish, Celtic ‛demons’ performing rituals in Gaulish…

At least the university teacher got a little bit of extra money, I suppose.

Sticking with the aeroplane a little bit longer, Dean’s fear of flying is a welcome expansion to his character, though it was clearly included with the intent of making fun of him. It could easily have been played as such, but Jensen’s comments on the commentary indicate he saw it as an opportunity to provide more depth to Dean, as his connection with Lucas through their shared childhood trauma did in 1x03 Dead in the Water. In these two episodes, Jensen begins taking Dean away from the writers and making him his own: he was supposed to be the sidekick, but Jensen said nope.

In making Dean afraid of flying, but having him so insistent upon flying in spite of it, The Show perhaps did itself a bit of a disservice in its mission of making Sam The Hero and Dean The Sidekick. Dean was terrified, but flew anyway. That is bravery, and it’s what the audience wants to see in a hero.

Sam, however, does not miss an opportunity to make me dislike him (you knew this was coming at some point, don’t look surprised). Not only is he incredibly unappreciative and derisive of Dean’s talents, such as making his own EMF from an old Walkman, but he was also derisive of Dean’s fear of flying.

Sorry, let me reword that. Derisive of Dean for being scared of flying. It’s perfectly rational to be afraid of being in a giant metal bird suspended miles above the ground, but Dean agreed to it anyway in order to save people. And Sam treats him like a child because he’s scared of take-off and turbulence. Dean’s fear is a rational one, something that a person who hasn’t been sheltered from reality would have. Sam’s greatest fear, however, is…

Clowns.

I get it, they’re brothers, and siblings are supposed to rib on each other like this (the siblings I still talk to aren’t like this with me or each other, so I find it difficult to relate to Dean and Sam’s relationship) but it makes Sam come across as an utter cunny-hole. If somebody is clearly terrified of something and on the edge of a panic attack, you don’t sneer and mock, and then demand he calm down. Sure, Dean needed to calm down and Sam was the only one who could do it, but talking to him like a child just reveals how little Sam knows of taking care of other people. He’s the pampered younger brother, and it really shows.

He also shows a lack of judgement when roughly putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder while he was distracted. Dean’s essentially a war child (and suffers C-PTSD) and you just shouldn’t do things like this to somebody like that. That’s how you trigger panic attacks or flashbacks. Ask a veteran, I’m sure s/he’ll agree.

Aside from that, the middle-aged man on the aeroplane winked at Dean – winked – when Dean was walking down the aisle with his EMF reader. A man winking at a man has sexual overtones nowadays, and has done for a long time. How many men wink at a built guy standing over them like that unless they’re sure they won’t be punched in the face? Dean had his EMF reader out at that moment, but he was simultaneously on somebody else’s radar. Something about Dean set sexual bells ringing in cameo middle-aged man’s head. Regarding Sam, there’s two important moments for him in this episode (Jess aside): when he discovers John talked about and praised him in his absence, and when he exorcises the demon. It’s made clear in a few episodes’ time that Sam never felt like he fit in with his family, and that he believed John was disappointed in him. Exactly how he came to this conclusion is uncertain, since John doted on Sam and afforded him liberties he never would have allowed Dean, but it’s clear their relationship is difficult. Going away to university was Sam’s attempt to run away from the dysfunctional family he felt an outsider in and to escape John (and Dean): that he apparently didn’t speak to either John or Dean during his time there says a lot.

He finds out, however, that John praised him, undermining somewhat Sam’s belief that John regarded him as a disappointment. Episode 1x05 Bloody Mary provides another moment of character growth for Sam that subtly changes the way he perceives himself, but all in due course.

Praise from parents is important for children, and it really shouldn’t be hard for parents to tell their children they’re proud of them, even if they don’t say it in as many words. In spite of his difficult relationship with John, Sam gets that by proxy in this episode (whilst Dean’s happily checking out all the men in the hangar) and it changes the way he sees himself and John, even if only slightly.

The other moment – discussed above – is his exorcism of the demon. I don’t mince my words about disliking Sam, but even I can see he had potential. He’s the weird kid who wanted a normal life, but because of cursed blood had that hope denied him. Series 4 shows us the beginning of what Sam could have turned into when his blood magic arc truly kicks off, and it could have been a riveting plotline if written and handled well. Think for example of Willow in Buffy and the journey she went on with her magic powers: there was real darkness in there, and a gargantuan struggle to overcome it and become stronger.

This exorcism reminds me of Willow’s first steps at witchcraft in 2x22 when she casts the spell to restore a certain character’s soul and we see the potential for true strength as she performs the spell with ease. This exorcism of Sam’s should have been something similar, and his demonic powers should not have been completely removed and forgotten about in 8x23. He could have been Supernatural’s answer to Willow, and the Dark!Sam arc in series 3-7 could have been the first in his descent into darkness and his fight back out to take control of his own powers and become the opposite of what Azazel wanted him to be.

But – and not for the last time – three words come to mind. Such potential, Supernatural.

You might remember I mentioned the tracking shot of Dean (and neglected to mention the revealing shot of his thighs and underwear). Paula R. Stiles’ suggestion that the fact the writers and director for this episode were men doesn’t cheapen it is one I don’t understand. Jensen is in my 100% objective and unbiased opinion one of the finest men alive, but exploiting that in order to draw in an audience does cheapen the show.

To be fair, Supernatural is hardly high culture and commercial television is about revenue, but things like that break the illusion of artistic integrity, just like not making Dean explicitly bisexual does because that’d scare away too much of the audience. If having scantily-clad women in a show or film is there for the male gaze and drawing in money, then so too are Dean’s thighs and buttocks, similarly cheapening the show. If the male gaze objectifies women, stripping them of their power and subjecting them to male desires, then the female gaze objectifies and strips men of any power they might have and subjects them to female desires.

If it’s bad for the gander, it should also be bad for the goose.

Neither do I think it matters one bit that the writer and director are men, or am I supposed to believe a woman has never encouraged or coerced another woman to flash a bit of boob in order to get men to empty their pockets? Claiming that presenting a person as an object of possible sexual attraction turns him into an ‛object’ is strange, and that claim’s only ever made when women are being presented for men’s enjoyment.

But let’s stick to Supernatural because I have work in the morning. To be honest, I never notice if a woman on screen is being subjected to a ‛male’ gaze because I have no sexual or romantic interest in women whatsoever: if a woman is supposed to be portrayed as appealing to men’s eyes, it’ll usually go straight over my head because it just doesn’t register as having anything to do with sex. Interesting, however, is that this begins the trend of treating Dean in certain ways that women are usually treated, or associating him with ‛feminine’ traits.

Some people go overboard with for example Dean’s association with and likeness to Mary, his taking on the parental (maternal?) role in Sam’s upbringing, his knack with children etc, and use it as evidence to suggest that any traditionally masculine behaviour – or masculine behaviour at all – from Dean is a performance to keep up an act so that he can hide how feminine he really is.

My take on this is quite different than the condescending viewpoint that a man behaving like a man is performing and pretending. Dean’s ‛feminine’ traits are not his ‛true’ self in opposition to his feigned masculine behaviour. There is absolutely no contradiction between Dean exhibiting ‛feminine’ traits such as being good with children, cooking, or trying his hardest to fill the role Mary would have filled, and being a masculine man who identifies very strongly with being male.

I do think it’s fascinating, though, and the complexity and depth of Dean as a male character is one of the reasons he is one of my favourite characters. We rarely get to see men who are very manly and also incredibly loving, loyal and paternal and who exhibit a normal range of human behaviours and interests, including ‛masculine’ and ‛feminine’. That’s what normal men are like, something television and film seem to have forgotten.

Regarding Dean in bed, note that he is a stomach sleeper (sleeping on your stomach keeps your tummy safe), and this is consistent throughout all fifteen years of the show. However, this early in the show he takes his trousers, outer shirts and shoes off, in contrast to sleeping fully dressed as he begins doing sometime rather soon. He’s alert and cautious this early in the show, but not yet quite so worn down that he can’t be bothered to get ready for bed.

Note also that both brothers have sleeping problems here. Dean knew Sam was still up at 3am, meaning Dean likely slept for less than three hours, having been woken up by Sam at 5:45.

The end of the episode presents the brothers with something to be hopeful about. John has a new mobile phone number, the first evidence they’ve had so far that he is very probably still alive. It’s not much to go on, and John does not answer Dean and Sam’s call, but it’s something the boys can latch on to and keep them searching for John. Whether or not they should be searching for John is another question altogether, though, but at least it got the plot going in 1x01.,

Phantom Traveler is a strong but flawed episode which builds on last week’s expansion of Dean’s character and role, as well as introducing demons and Hell into the lore. The cut scene where Dean has to remove all his concealed weapons before going into the airport really should have been kept in because it says a lot about his character, as does his sleeping with a blade under his pillow, but other than that, I’m happy to leave this episode now on a positive note.

#Michael's Supernatural Rewatch #SPN Rewatch #spn 1x04 #phantom traveler #sam winchester #john winchester #dean winchester #demons #hell #male gaze #female gaze #christian mythology

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antiquatus · 5 years ago

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✧ ━━ the courts of switzerland present GIULIO DE MEDICI of THE PAPAL STATES, a CARDINAL of THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. the THIRTY-THREE year old had been LEARNED and CHARITABLE before the break of war but have now become RUTHLESS and ZEALOUS. HE is often remembered by their likeness to JAMES NORTON and THE SMELL OF INCENSE IN HIGH-CEILINGED CATHEDRALS AS THE SOUND OF LATIN ENUNCIATIONS SPILL FORTH FROM HIS LIPS ; A RED GALERO TO KEEP THE GLARE OF THE SUN AWAY , WHICH NONETHELESS SPARKLES OFF A BEJEWELED PECTORAL CROSS ; and ANTIQUATED TEXTS SMUGGLED AWAY FOR PERSONAL PLEASURE . the rumor mills of europe claim that his allegiance lies with THE CHURCH and that he is for WAR.

yes, hello, i am henry ( twenty, gmt+8, they/them ) and this is my bastard supreme catholic crusader-king wannabe : giulio michele cardinal de medici, archbishop of esztergom and cardinal of the ( one, holy, catholic, and apostolic and bigoted ) church. here is his about page , his biography ( which is basically just the headcanons section of the app ) , some wanted connections, and ( if you care to read a whole buncha words ) here’s the whole application. read down the cut if you want it summarised + the first task! :) if u wanna plot, send me a dm @ i am a mushroom! 🍄#9146 or hmu here on tumblr ims.

content warning for usual mediaeval church brand of bigotry + mentions of: disordered eating, scrupulosity, obsessive-compulsive tendencies

SUMMARY

hhhhhhhhh

crusader-king wannabe, what else do u need 2 know?

hashtag only 1099 kids will remember

CHARACTER SHEET

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME : giulio michele de medici

MEANING :

giulio — from latin, a cognate of julius, the meaning of which is irrelevant, as it was chosen more to invoke julius caesar

michele — italian form of michael, meaning who is like god?

de medici — medici, plural form of medico, meaning doctor, physician

MONIKERS / NICKNAMES : giulio, papabile

TITLE :

commander of several abbeys, scattered throughout the italian peninsula (multiple dates to present)

administrator of bozen (1538 to present)

archbishop of esztergom-budapest (1540 to present)

cardinal of the roman catholic church (1544 to present)

prelate of the roman inquisition (1550 to present)

vice-camerlengo of the apostolic camera (1556 to present)

GENDER & PRONOUNS : listen... he’s actually Agender but do u rlly expect the church/himself to like... accept anything beyond the gender binary... that being said, the imago dei is inclusive and also inherently non-binary so... there is that... (one day, giulio...... one day...........) — pronouns are he/him

ETHNICITY : white

DATE OF BIRTH & AGE: 25th december 1526, thirty-three

ZODIAC SIGN : capricorn sun / virgo moon / sagittarius rising

ORIENTATION : do u know that playlist in spotify that’s just like is this sufjan stevens song gay or just about god? ... yeah, like that exactly.

MARITAL STATUS : married to the LORD

OCCUPATION : cardinal, archbishop, crusader LARPer

CURRENT LOCATION :

switzerland...?

BACKGROUND

PLACE OF BIRTH : florence, tuscany

RESIDENCES :

basilica cattedrale metropolitana di santa maria nascente, milan, lombardy villa d’este, tivoli, lazio

RELIGIOUS VIEWS : roman catholicism, somewhat of a catholic mystic in the vein of pseudo-dionysius, hildegard von bingen, and meister eckhart (hashtag eckhart did nothing wrong!!!)

EDUCATION : private tutoring, ecclesiastical catechism, autodidact in a great deal many things

LANGUAGES SPOKEN : italian, latin, ancient greek, hungarian, bulgarian, serbian, russian, arabic, hebrew, french, german, spanish, english, old church slavonic

ALLEGIANCES : the church & himself (to him? there is no difference)

the house of de medici: only nominally loyal, he thinks there are far better things to pay attention to than temporal matters such as these

the one holy catholic and apostolic church: his #1 bae

FAMILY :

papa & mama medici: parents

piero de medici, older brother

francesco de medici, younger brother

giovanna de medici, younger sister

OTHER FAMILIAL RELATIONS :

—

APPEARANCE

FACECLAIM : james norton

HAIR COLOUR / STYLE : i’m so mad abt this... but yes... he has a tonsure... press F in the chat pls // though he has stopped shearing his hair in switzerland

EYE COLOUR / SHAPE : blue, and idk... eye-shaped?

HEIGHT : 1.85m / 6′1″

BUILD : fluctates: for reasons specified in the neurological conditions section below, this isn’t very consistent; however, if this was modern day, redditors would just spam him with “delete facebook, hit the gym, lawyer up!!!!”

SPEECH STYLE : mellifluous to the point of inane verbosity, uses more words than he should; that being said, he possesses the uncanny ability to pick up a language easily and quickly, inserting local colloquialisms to the point that he sounds like a native speaker; nevertheless, he consistently speaks in a formal register (sometimes! even to family members!) and has a very blunted affect, diminishing the effect if only slightly

RECOGNIZABLE MARKINGS : n/a

BEAUTY HABITS : for a mediaeval european, he is actually very hygienic; takes baths obsessively, definitely more than once a week, which does link to his fixation with purity both metaphysical and temporal; hates public bathhouses with a passion; combs his hair and parts it to the side, favouring his left

PERSONALITY

TROPES : the chessmaster, bookworm, our angels are different, knight templar, lack of empathy, lonely rich kid, affably evil, & raised catholic (duh).

INSPIRATIONS : lenny belardo (the young pope), crusader kings ii (the game), pope julius ii (history), adso (the name of the rose), john the beloved (history, the bible), jacopo belbo (foucault’s pendulum), henry winter (the secret history), the prince (the prince, niccolo macchiaveli)

MBTI : intj-t (the architect)

ENNEAGRAM: 5w4 1w9 4w3 (the researcher) sp/sx

ALIGNMENT : lawful good, insofar as goodness is aligned to catholicism

TEMPERAMENT : choleric but perhaps more arguably a choleric-sanguine hybrid

HOGWARTS HOUSE : slytherin

POSITIVE TRAITS : charitable (to catholics), brilliant, prodigious

NEGATIVE TRAITS : manipulative, narcissistic, self-serving, self-righteous

HABITS : has a tendency to fidget his fingers; gnaws on his lower lip to the point of bleeding when thinking, not that he realises it

HOBBIES : reading, writing, playing this new thing called chess

USUAL DEMEANOR : affable to the point of boring people, charming to catholics but cooler against non-catholics, somewhat easy to talk to but one has the niggling feeling that he’s not as invested in the conversation as he should be, people hear the word cardinal and thinks he’s bigoted to the extreme (which he is) but he always deflects and he can be agreeable (but probably slips by still calling istanbul constantinople though!), very learned and nerdy and will talk about theology all the goddamn day if nobody stops him, presents as a very non-threatening (affably bland) cardinal who albeit has very fixed opinions about All The Things

HEALTH

PHYSICAL AILMENTS : n/a

NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION : thinks of himself and presents as neurotypical but probably has szpd (schizoid personality disorder), a form of scrupulosity in the vein of alissa (in strait is the gate by andré gide); also arguably has some form of disordered eating, cycling between binging and extreme fasting, which gives him a weight leaning toward lanky

PHOBIAS : haphephobia, fear of touch; his scrupulosity can also be arguably defined as a phobia of sinning, but that’s basically a whole other complex

ALLERGIES : allergic to SIN!!!! n/a

SLEEPING HABITS : an insomniac, though he thinks it a common affliction; has a habit of reading until late as a way of staving off boredom; may sleep a grand total of only three to four hours at nighttime, though he makes up for it through a post-lunch siesta (which is a habit he picked up from the pope)

SOCIABILITY : presents as a social butterfly, if albeit sterner than most; can slip into conversations of any kind easily, but always ever in a professional context; has no real friends, but can lay claim to easy acquaintanceships; forever holding people at an arm’s length, which is just the way he likes it

ADDICTIONS : drinks the communion wine more often than he should; other than that, he can be almost puritanically temperate, to the point of self-affliction (?); addicted to the idea of purity

#bgintro #'but henry cigs weren't even a Thing in the 1500s!' ye i know but also this was Aesthetic ok let me live

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helshades · 5 years ago

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Howdy! Are all Europeans speaking really crappy Latin today? Might English speakers today be speaking really crappy German? 🙂

Depends on how you’d define ‘crappy’, of course. English today contains a solid third of (Middle) French, from when a certain bastard Duke of Normandy got a tad antsy and decided to cross the Channel. It also derives from Latin directly, as a matter of fact, albeit in a much smaller capacity. The rest, of course, is of Germanic origin, via Old English, which derived from Anglo-Saxon dialects...

French itself is the most Germanic of all Romance (Latin-based) languages; first, its very name hails from the name of the Frankish tribes that crossed the Rhine river after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 A.D.) and invaded and colonised Western Europe. French’s Germanic substrate is around 17%, which is a ginormous lot. Basically, modern French is Latin plus a sizeable amount of ‘Germanic’ after being spoken by people whose first languages were continental Celtic dialects.

But let me rewind that a bit.

A schematic map of the expansion of Indo-European languages according to the Kurgan model, or steppe theory, which is the (prudently) conventional hypothesis on the way languages evolved in Europe from a mother-language referred to as ‘Proto-Indo-European’, which would have been spoken by people living in the Pontic-Caspian steppe near the end of the Stone Age era (around 6,000 B.C.), who spread across Eurasia, creating peoples who spoke various languages issued from the same origin.

Generally, the Indo-European languages are divided into 8 branches:

Albanian

Armenian

Balto-Slavic

Celtic (Gallic, Breton, Welsh, Irish, etc.)

Germanic (> German, Frankish, Old English)

Hellenic (> Greek)

Indo-Iranian/Aryan

Italic (> Latin > Romanic languages > Italian, French, Spanish...)

In addition to these eight, two have been long extinct: the Anatolian & Tokharian branches; and then you’ve got a few languages linguists aren’t sure how to place (yet?) since they’re only attested in a fragmented capacity, like Phrygian and Illyrian dialects, for instance.

One of the fundamental oppositions between the Western-Central branches and the rest is the way they form the word for ‘hundred’: this permits to distinguish between the satem languages (eastern & south-eastern: Albanian, Anatolian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic & Indo-Iranian languages) and the centum languages (Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Italic & Tokharian languages—the latter being the only centum language spoken in Central Asia). Note that Germanic (centum) and Balto-Slavic (satem) languages both hold distinctive syntactic traits setting them apart from all other Indo-European languages. And yes, hundred actually is a form of centum.

I won’t go into more details as it’s best to keep things simple here, and as you can see I only listed the branches alphabetically. Bolded above are the Western branches, not out of chauvinism, I hope you’ll understand, but as I intend to focus on languages issued from Latin.

(Actually readable version here)

Now, this is a map showing the repartition of Latin-based languages across Europe, also known as the ‘Romance languages’ (sometimes even as ‘Neo-Latin languages’). The term ‘romance’ derives from the Late Latin adverb romanice, literally ‘in Roman’, referring to the vernacular (popular, non-written) language, as opposed to the literary language, referred to as Latin, spoken by the elite and the clergy, and which was more conservative because it had a written form and fixed grammar rules. The Romance languages descend from Vulgar/popular Latin, as spoken by the inhabitants of the Western Roman Empire, and which evolved into distinct languages after centuries of foreign invasions as well as relative geographical and political isolation.

Timeline of Latin:

6th–4th centuries B.C., the Archaic period (’Proto-Latin’), from which several inscriptions, fragments of the oldest laws and from sacral anthems were preserved.

3rd–2nd c. B.C., the Pre-Classical period. The literary Latin language (the comedies of Plautus and Terence, the agricultural treatise of Cato the Elder, fragments of works by a number of other authors) was based on the dialect of Rome.

1st c. B.C.–1st c. A.D., Classical Latin. The development of vocabulary, the development of terminology, the elimination of old morphological doublets, the flowering of literature: Cicero, Caesar, Sallust, Virgil, Horace, Ovid) was particularly distinguished. In the late period, the phonetic, morphological and spelling norms were finally formed.

As the Roman Republic (509–27 B.C.) extended its political dominion over the whole of the Italian peninsula, Latin became dominant over the other Italic languages, which ceased to be spoken perhaps sometime in the 1st century A.D.—Latin was originally used (from the 8th century B.C.) by the tribe of the Latins, who inhabited Latium, the region around Rome, in west-central Italy; it belonged to the Western Italic subgroup (the Latino-Faliscan languages), which was rather diminutive, but no other Italic idiom survived Rome’s expansion.The Romanisation of the Italian Peninsula was basically complete by the 1st century B.C.; except for the south of Italy and Sicily, where the dominance of Greek was preserved.

Rome’s massive territorial expansion ensured Latin of a vast diffusion, larger and larger still after the 3rd century A.D., when it was the Roman Empire’s official language, used in all administration (legal, civil, military) spreading in most of Western Euope, North Africa, Middle Asia and the Danubian regions, where it cohabited with local dialects as well as Greek, the former ‘universal’ language. Some even speak of this period as Imperial Latin (1st–5th centuries A.D.)

2nd–6th c., Late Latin. a period mostly characterised by a gap between written and folk-spoken language: the regional differentiation of popular Latin(s) was accelerated, the formation of Romance languages, finally separated by the 9th century, began on its basis; meanwhile, written Latin continued to be used for a long time in the administrative sphere, religion, diplomacy, trade, school, medicine, science and literature.

9th–14th c., Mediaeval Latin. One may argue that Ecclesiastic Latin began in the 4th century with the writings of the ‘Fathers of the Church’, but from a linguistic standpoint I’d rather focus on the great reform of Latin that took place in 800, which aimed to ‘reclassicalise’ Latin—the language of the learnèd elite—to distinguish it from popular dialects. It was also the Church’s only language for a long while, and the one that was spoken in universities (the first of which were created in the 12th century).

The first mention we’ve ever found of Romance languages distinct from Latin dates back to the 813 Council of Tours, during which it was officially decided that decided that priests in Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire should preach their sermons to the ordinary folk in a ‘rustic romance language’ (rusticam romanam linguam) or in ‘Tudisc’ (Theodiscam, commonly referring in the Middle Ages to Germanic dialects), which only they could understand.

The first ever complete text written in a Romance dialect dates back to 842, when two of Charlemagne’s grandsons, half-brothers Louis II the German (king of Bavaria) and Charles II the Bald (king of Aquitaine), met in Strasbourg to make a pledge of mutual allegiance against their older half-brother Lothair I (king of Italy), whose supreme authority they refused to recognise (wanting their fair share of their father’s heritage, rather than leaving the whole empire to their eldest). Both allied kings came to the meeting at the head of an army: Louis of Bavaria commanded men who spoke in Germanic (Frankish) dialects, whereas the soldiers of Charles of Aquitaine spoke in a ‘Gallo-Romance’ idiom, still very close to Latin, but unmistakably distinct from it. And each in his turn, the kings and their armies swore their oaths in the others’ language, Charles in a Rhine Franconian dialect, and Louis/Ludwig in this Romance dialect that announced French and the northern langues d’oïl.

200–400 A.D., Vulgar Latin is spoken everywhere around the Roman Empire, with many regional variants;

500–600: the variants are beginning to sound more or less different;

early 800s: ordinary people have become largely unable to understand Latin the way it is written, which is the way it used to be spoken;

842: first sizeable evidence of a distinct Romance language, written down by a clerk who provides a Latin translation of the text.

Romance languages are characterised by the following common traits:

their lexicon, mostly stemming from late Vulgar Latin;

a massive reshaping of Latin’s vowel system;

great changes to the way certain consonants are articulated (palatalisation)

the complete eradication of the neutral grammatical gender (with the exception of Rumanian)

a massive reorganisation of the verbal system, through the suppression of the Latin future tense, replaced by a periphrastic future formed with verb ‘to have’; the development of a conditional mode; the development of auxiliary verbs...

the development of articles, which didn’t exist in Latin.

The first to propose a classification system for the Romance languages was Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (of Divine Comedy fame) in the 13th century. He divided them into three subgroups: the oïl languages; the oc languages; and the sì languages (which he separates from the Germanic jo languages, about which he unfortunately no further details), based on the word the idioms within these three subgroups use to say ‘yes’.

oïl languages: Old French (from Gallo-Roman o-il (‘this one’), from Latin pronouns hoc (‘this’) & ille (‘that’)

oc languages: Occitan & Catalan

sì languages: Italian dialects (from Latin sic, ‘as such’, ‘so’)

Dante’s main idea was to replace Latin as a literary language with one of these three ‘languages’ (to him, each ensemble of dialects was a single idiom, but to modern linguists, they are not). In the Middle Ages, oïl was the language used traditionally to write epics, while what Dante referred to as lingua d’oco was the language of the troubadours, lyrical poets of Occitania. As for sì languages, well, in the end Dante famously opted, for the composition of the illustrious Divine Comedy, for a local Florentine Toscan dialect—and the success of the poem was such that it was the act of foundation of modern Italian.

Parallel evolution of southwestern European languages, 1000–2000 A.D.:

Classification of the Romance languages:

Ibero-Romance: Portuguese, Galician, Mirandese, Asturian, Leonese, Spanish (Castilian), Aragonese, Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish);

Occitano-Romance: Catalan/Valencian, Occitan (langue d'oc), Gascon;

Gallo-Romance: French/Oïl languages, Franco-Provençal (Arpitan);

Rhaeto-Romance: Romansh, Ladin, Friulian;

Gallo-Italic: Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian-Romagnol;

Italo-Dalmatian: Italian, Tuscan and Corsican, Sassarese, Sicilian, Neapolitan, Dalmatian (extinct in 1898), Venetian, Istriot;

Sardinian;

Eastern Romance: Romanian (standard known as Daco-Romanian), Istro-Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian.

Mutual intelligibility in Europe:

Details and a bigger map here.

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Still alive? Well, allow me to remedy that to pursue.

Roman territories during the 1st century B.C. civil war, after the conquest of the Gauls. Larger map here.

The Roman Empire at its greatest extent. Larger map here.

Following the death of emperor Theodosius I the Great in 395, the Empire was divided into the Western Roman Empire, whose capital was Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, whose capital was Constantinople (once named Byzantium, and which used to be a Greek colony). In those times, Rome had long ceased to be the political capital of the Roman Empire anyway, officially replaced with Constantinople by the action of Constantine I the Great in 330—who also was the first emperor to convert to Christianity, albeit on his deathbed (yet his influence was decisive for the rise of Christian faith across Europe). The Byzantine Empire eventually fell in 1453 when Constantinople was conquered by the powerful Ottoman Empire.

‘Barbarian’ Invasions of the Roman Empire:

As you see, we’re circling back to what I was saying earlier concerning the emergence of the Romance and Germanic languages; and seeing all these maps, you’ll easily understand how, at the same time, very distinct languages came into being, and how mutual influences could happen. You’ll also see why French ended up being so influenced by Germanic languages, especially in its pronunciation, even though the lexicon remained largely Latin-based. I’ll come back in details to the evolution of French itself from Latin, as I’ve got a previous Ask on the topic which I really must answer, but in the meantime, I can make a few other remarks concerning the linguistic influences at play in Western Europe, because so far I’ve conscientiously avoided the subject of Celtic languages, haven’t I.

Rome all but annihilated Celtic cultures, although this wasn’t necessarily regarded by the Celts themselves as a loss; there was no sense of a ‘Celtic nation’ and continental Celts were organised in tribes with pretty distinct systems of government, some of them collaborating freely with Rome long before Caesar’s conquest of the Gauls. Latin was the Empire’s official language, in a sense playing the role that English plays today, but it also was the language of Roman law and administration, meaning that if a person wanted to have a political career within the Empire, he must follow a certain number of steps which led to near-complete acculturation. Gaulish elites assimilated with fair ease, like the rest of the world. They all spoke Latin. On the other hand, ordinary folk, even though they ended up speaking Latin as well, spoke much less ‘pure’ variants, heavily accentuated, mixed with words borrowed from their ancestral idioms. A very similar thing occurred later on after the Frankish conquest of the former Western Roman territories.

Entertainingly enough for the amateur linguist, if the Celtic influences are practically absent from the French language, many French patois and, of course, toponomy, carry transparent traces of the Gaulish peopling. A number of surnames even bear that heritage, usually because they were given to people in the Middle Ages after places where they family dwelt.

(And speaking of patois, French people over 80 had to be taught French in school like a foreign language. Nowadays many local dialects have gone extinct for lack of practice but mid-20th century, regional languages were still very much alive, overall. Although it should be noted that Occitan has been revived in the recent decades, and seems to be thriving... [Breton and Corsican are outliers, definitely.] In any case, the French situation isn’t necessarily universal. In Italy, for instance, regional dialects are still frequently spoken.)

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As a temporary conclusion... I reckon we could say that the Latin peoples of Europe are speaking super-crappy Latin with a heavy Gaulish redneck accent, mixed with slurry Rhenan. English speakers are really speaking very crappy French.

#the terrifying thing about this is that i could have written so much more #la linguistique c'est chic #european history #europe #european culture #roman empire #roman history #latin

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upennmanuscripts · 5 years ago

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A Leopard that Changes its Spots: A Hand-Decorated Incunable from the Library of Jean Chardalle

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 28/52

Saint Augustine, De civitate Dei (City of God), University of Pennsylvania, Inc A-1232 Folio, fol. 13r

This week’s BiblioPhilly manuscript “discovery” is a bit of a misnomer on all three counts, as it A) amplifies an observation previously made by another scholar, B) relates to an item held at the University of Pennsylvania–an institution not officially included in the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis grant–and C) concerns an early printed book, rather than a manuscript! Nevertheless, it is worth including in the blog since A) the discovery was enabled by an innovative online project, B) the item will be included in next year’s post-BiblioPhilly exhibition at Penn, and C) the incunable in question was decorated by hand with high quality initials and bar borders.

So, we are still dealing with an illuminated book, even though it is printed. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, the advent of the printing press did not diminish the demand for skilled illuminators. In fact, there was an explosion of available work, as innumerable inset spaces left for initials in printed works still had to be completed by hand. The book we are looking at today is an example of the involvement of traditional illuminators with the new technology, a phenomenon well studied by Lilian Armstrong and others. It is a copy of Saint Augustine’s City of God from 1470, the third edition of the work to be printed in Italy, by the German printers Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz (a fourth had been produced by Johann Mentelin, the first printer to settle in Strasbourg, in 1468). These two business partners were the first to establish a press outside of German-speaking lands, at the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco in 1464/65. By 1467, they had moved in search of greater economic opportunities to Rome, where our volume was printed. Adapting to their trans-alpine audience, Sweynheym and Pannartz abandoned the Gothic typeface used in Northern Europe, developing a semi-Roman font at Subiaco and finally a fully Roman version upon their move to the Papal city (you can see that this is the typeface they used here).

Inc A-1232 Folio, fol. 13r (detail of illuminated initial G)

Unusually, and perhaps uniquely, this incunable’s secondary decoration was added not in Italy but in France. The bar borders and illuminated initials in deep blue and reddish-mauve are all typical of northern French illumination of the 1470s. The single historiated initial G on the first page of the prologue depicts the mitred Saint Augustine blessing the kneeling Marcellinus of Carthage, his friend and the dedicatee of the City of God, who is shown holding a heart in his hands indicative of their bond. In style, the two figures are reminiscent of miniatures produced in Paris by the workshop of François Le Barbier, a prolific artist (previously known as “Maître François”) responsible for illuminating a large number of Books of Hours and theological manuscripts in a somewhat rote style.1 Le Barbier and his associates illuminated three much more elaborate French translations of the City of God: one for the lieutenant general of Paris, Charles de Gaucourt (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 18–19); one for the king’s secretary, Mathieu Beauvarlet (Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 246); and one for the recalcitrant Duke of Nemours, Jacques d’Armagnac (vol. 1: The Hague, Museum Meermanno, 10 A 11; vol. 2: Nantes, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 181).

In the lower margin of the prologue page, a rectangular strip of paper has been excised and replaced with a patch bearing an armorial escutcheon surrounded by a green wreath. The arms appear to show a Lion’s golden face against a blue background. This would seem to be a potentially popular choice for a coat-of-arms, but a head-on lion’s head is almost unheard of in European heraldry, and my first instinct was that this was a fictitious emblem, added to enhance the appearance or price of the book at a later date.

Inc A-1232 Folio, fol. 13r (detail of coat-of-arms)

However, I noticed that the book’s heraldry had previously been discussed on the web as part of the Provenance Online Project. This is a lightweight crowdsourced initiative started at the University of Pennsylvania whereby simple, cellphone photos of unknown annotations, bookstamps, bookplates and other heraldic identifiers are shared online via Flickr, a free photo posting utility. Users around the world are then encouraged to identify the owners. Luckily, the arms in our book were identified by none other than Martin Davies, former curator of incunabula at the British Library and a leading authority on early printing.

As Davies pointed out in a reply to the POP posting, the arms display the face of a leopard, not a lion! They are, in heraldic terms: azure, a leopard’s face or (in French: d’azur à la tête de léopard d’or). This unique animal iconography belongs to Jean Chardalle of Marville, (Johannes Chardallus in Latin) who served as Canon of the Cathedral of Metz from 1475 to 1502. Described as a “noble seigneur d’Église, homme sage docte et scientifique personne” by the contemporary chronicler Philippe de Vigneulles, Chardalle was a prolific book collector, and around thirty-five incunables and fifteen manuscripts have been identified as belonging to him by Pierre-Édouard Wagner.2 This copy of the City of God represents a new addition to this impressive tally, and is all the more important owing to the devastating loss of nearly half of the Municipal Library of Metz’s manuscript and incunable holdings during the Second World War, incuding many books that had belonged to Chardalle. This is indeed a case where prior dispersal has led to survival.

Among the incunables Chardalle owned, most are Italian and bear Italian decoration. Chardalle presumably purchased these on ecclesiastical trips to Rome. The style of the roundel in the City of God is also Italian, contrasting with the Parisian initials. It closely resembles the heraldic devices on other books he brought back from Italy, for example two separate texts by Juan de Torquemada, a Commentum in psalmos David (Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 84), and a De potestate Ecclesia (Metz, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 104). The evidence from our book suggests that Chardalle purchased extra versions of his coat-of-arms while abroad for insertion into his books.

Juan de Torquemada, Commentum in psalmos David, Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 84 (image tweeted by Michaël George) and Juan de Torquemada, De potestate Ecclesia, Metz, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 104, fol. 1r (image from Pierre-Édouard Wagner in Pierre Louis, ed., Épreuves du temps, 200 ans de la bibliothèque de Metz, 1804–2004 (Metz: Bibliothèques-Médiathèques de la Ville de Metz, 2004), 126.

Though most versions of his coat of arms show five thistles issuing from the Leopard’s mouth (the word for thistle in French is chardon, a play on his surname), here this feature is absent. The same is true of the arms in a fine manuscript copy of Augustine’s works (comprising the Meditationes, Manuale, Enchiridion, and De fide, but not the De civitate dei) from the Cathedral Treasury of Metz, where it accompanies a striking image of Chardalle in prayer before the Crucifixion (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9545, fol. 1r).

Saint Augustine, Meditationes, Manuale, Enchiridion, and De fide, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9545, fol. 1r (with detail of coat-of-arms)

from WordPress http://bibliophilly.pacscl.org/a-leopard-that-changes-its-spots-a-hand-decorated-incunable-from-the-library-of-jean-chardalle/

#Fifty-two discoveries #University of Pennsylvania

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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years ago

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One, Holy, Catholic, and Neuter

The Church today suffers from a deficiency in her identity, lacking awareness of both her Marian and Petrine dimensions. I borrow these concepts from Hans Urs von Balthasar to explore the feminine and masculine aspects of the Church. In some ways we have become a neuter Church, lacking both Mary’s feminine receptivity toward Christ and Peter’s masculine boldness toward the world. (This is not to say that men are incapable of accessing the feminine dimension in their soul or that women cannot exhibit a masculine boldness vis-à-vis the world).

The Marian dimension of the Church precedes the Petrine. The Petrine dimension of the Church includes ecclesiastical structures that are necessary: the pope, bishops, and priests who are ordained to govern the Church, celebrate the sacraments, and preach the Gospel. But these activities cannot be limited to externals. The Marian, feminine dimension of the Church reminds us that receptivity precedes activity. Jesus praised another Mary for sitting at his feet and listening to him, in contrast with Martha who was preoccupied with the human activity of serving the Lord.

Pope Emeritus Benedict has written about a misplaced masculinity in our approach to the Church. He has in mind our own internal relationship with the Church and not the masculine boldness we need in preaching the Gospel in a secular culture. In Mary, the Church at the Source, he writes, “In today’s intellectual climate, only the masculine principle counts. And that means doing, achieving results, actively planning and producing the world oneself … this attitude characterizes our whole approach to the Church. We treat the Church almost like some technological device that we plan and make … this is why the Church needs the Marian mystery; this is why the Church herself is a Marian mystery.”

The Marian mystery is one of humble, feminine receptivity to the grace of God and the love of Christ. It is modeled on Mary’s fiat in the Annunciation: “Let it be done to me according to your word,” followed by the Incarnation of Christ in the womb of Mary. All of us are first called to imitate this Marian fiat before receiving the grace of Peter’s boldness in proclaiming the Gospel. As the Latin legal maxim reminds us, Nemo dat quod non habet. “No one can give what he does not have.” Applying this phrase to the spiritual life, it is clear that no one can give to others what he has not first received from God. As Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “What do you have that you did not receive?”

Peter himself possessed a dimension of Marian receptivity to Christ’s love. When the risen Christ appeared to Peter and several other apostles by the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter replied three times, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” We can assume that Jesus was looking intently at Peter and loving him. Peter received this love and reciprocated. Only then did Jesus say, “Feed my sheep.”

Later, Peter and the apostles received the Spirit at Pentecost to proclaim the Gospel with power, performing miracles and converting thousands of people. Many passages in the Acts of the Apostles are a study in parrhesia, the Greek word that is entering the English language as a technical term for boldness in preaching the Gospel. In chapter 4, we read that the Jewish leaders arrested Peter and the apostles for teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the Resurrection of the dead. Peter preached to the gathered assembly of the elders, scribes and the high-priestly family, who were amazed at the parrhesia of both Peter and John, noticing they were uneducated and ordinary men. The council threatened them and ordered them not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. Once released, however, they gathered together and prayed, “Lord … grant your servants to speak your word with all parrhesia,” and they continued to fearlessly proclaim the Resurrection of Christ. In comparison with Peter and the apostles, something is definitely lacking in our boldness in sharing the Gospel with our contemporaries.

One reason for the absence of masculine boldness in the Church’s proclamation is precisely the lack of feminine receptivity to Christ’s love within the Church and in the Eucharist. (Recall that Peter first received Christ’s love by the Sea of Tiberias before he proclaimed the Gospel in Jerusalem). What happens in the sanctuary affects the strength of the Church’s witness in the world. In every Eucharist, we should be able to repeat the lovers’ dialogue from the Song of Songs, and apply it to our soul’s relationship with Christ: “My beloved belongs to me and I to him.” It is impossible to have a spiritual and emotional experience of Christ’s love in the Eucharist and to remain the same, to keep quiet. Those who fall in love always tell their friends.

In a sense, every Christian must learn to imitate Mary at the Annunciation, and Peter on Pentecost. Obviously, in the history of salvation, there is no Pentecost and no Church without the Annunciation and the Incarnation. But the same is true with every Christian. Without first accepting the gift of Christ’s love with a Marian receptivity, we will have no personal Pentecost and no Gospel to share.

How can we become more Marian? In part, through consecration to her and by praying the Rosary. Many saints such as St. Louis de Montfort, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and St. John Paul II have promoted personal consecration to Mary as a sure and certain means of sanctification. Through our consecration, and by praying the Rosary with a reverent and recollected spirit, we are asking for Our Lady’s constant intercession to give us a heart like hers to listen to the Word of God and receive the gift of Christ’s love.

How do we imitate Peter’s boldness in preaching the Gospel? Each one of us can pray for the grace of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit’s gift of boldness. The Charismatic Renewal is evidence that the same Holy Spirit that inspired Peter and the Apostles is alive, active, and powerfully present in the Church today. Those ordained to formally preach the Gospel—the pope, bishops, priests and deacons—should be on our knees begging for a spirit of boldness and courage to meet the challenge of proclaiming Christ in a secular environment that is at times indifferent or even hostile. However, the same is true for the people of God who are called to share the Gospel with their family, friends, and colleagues.

The Marian fiat and the Petrine parrhesia, the feminine and masculine, are both essential to the spiritual health and strength of the Church. Western secular culture may be hurtling further into the abyss of absurd ideologies, for instance gender theory on the sameness and interchangeability of men and women, but now is the time for the Church to be more clearly masculine and feminine rightly understood. In God’s providential plan, perhaps it is the very prevalence of gender ideology in our secular culture that can drive us deeper into our own identity, and make us more effective witnesses in the world.

I wonder if the Church may also need an element of masculine strength in imitating the men who rebuilt Jerusalem after the Exile. They built with one hand, while the other was ready to grab a sword. We need to protect the tender, vulnerable, feminine, and Marian dimension of our souls and of the Church, so that in safety and security, we can enjoy the embrace of the Beloved, without fear of being disturbed by our enemies. Subsequently, when the soul has been deeply nourished and revived by the food of love, then we have the stamina, courage and parrhesia to go out into the world to proclaim the Good News.

BY: FR. TIM MCCAULEY

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

#one holy catholic and neuter

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mathsandcomedydotcom · 2 years ago

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I am reading John F. Collins’s (1937-2002) ‘A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin’ (1985).

Learning this dialect of Latin really gives one a sense of what the spirit of the early Latin-speaking Roman Church might have been like. One gets a sense of what the Roman Church that Saint Paul wrote an Epistle to might have been like.

This is perhaps what Zacchaeus was thinking to himself in the Clementine Vulgate version of the Bible:

‘Egō̆ volō Iēsum vidēre!’

‘I want to see Jesus!’

But, alas, Zacchaeus was too short to see Jesus. Therefore he climbed a tree so as to assist him in seeing Jesus.

‘Zacchaeus voluit Iēsum vidēre, sed is erat nimis brevis. Ergō Zacchaeus arborem cōnscendit Iēsum vidēre.’

‘Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but he was too short. Therefore Zacchaeus climbed a tree so as to see Jesus.’

The more Latin that one composes—and Google Translate is great for this activity—the better at Latin that he/she becomes.

#latin #education #translation #language #christianity #linguistics #classics #bible

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thatscarletflycatcher · 3 years ago

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So, I had my little Latin studies, I'm not a latinist, to be certain, but there are two things here:

1) Restituta is what scholars, starting from Renaissance tried to patch as how Latin was spoken in Ancient times, which is different from saying "this is how it was spoken" (mostly because you don't have any recordings and such). It's speculative, whereas the so called ecclesiastic way of speaking it is really how Latin as a living language evolved to be spoken by people that spoke it until the evolution of the romance languages. I always find this ecclesiastic/restituta classification to be disingenuous, because it presents it like The Church™ came in and messed with Latin and then came the heroes to restore it to its original purity, which is nonsense.

2) This is more an observation than anything, but I would have expected "Mihi nomen est Loki" to be "Nomen mihi Loki est" given that ending a sentence with the verb is a very common thing in any Latin I have read in the past, but perhaps it is something about colloquial Latin (though I'm more inclined to think it was written so to be closer to English grammar).

I don’t know who cares about this, but I really want to point something out of this second episode.

The Pompeii scene, more precisely, Loki speaking Latin.

The serie is fully of perfectly crafted details and, being a latin student, I wanted to talk about this.

The latin you hear Loki speaking is historically correct, and I am not talking about the grammar, but the pronunciation.

There are two pronunciations of the latin language: the classic, also known “restituta”, and the ecclesiastic.

The ecclesiastic pronunciation is so called because it bloomed from the spreading of Christianity, it’s considered the traditional pronunciation and it’s usually the one they teach you in school, so the most common, but it’s not the one used by Romans.

Romans talked with the classic or “restituta” pronunciation, which presents differences reguarding some specific consonants or group of letters.

The most common example is that the name “Cicero”, which you would read in the ecclesiastic pronunciation with a “c” that sounds like an “s”, was pronounced by Romans as “Kikero”.

Or, for example, the letter “v” was always pronounced as “u”.

And I am telling you this because Loki, in the serie, speaks with a “restituta” or classic pronunciation, that is historically correct.

You might overlook this, saying he should speak every language in the world due go the Allspeak or All-Tongue, but we are shown in the scene of the Gobi desert it’s not like that.

So, the fact that Loki actually knows Latin and the correct Latin pronunciation from the era he was in, as a latin student, really makes me happy.

I would like to thank whoever cured this detail, because they did a marvelous job.

#Loki #Latin

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volumina-vetustiora · 3 years ago

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Do you have any thoughts on where the "church Latin" pronunciation might come in, if at all? Might they have switched to that by the Third Era, perhaps during the decline of the Septim empire?

[I talk about real-world history in this answer and I am not a historian]

To my knowledge, church Latin or ecclesiastical Latin only came into existence after what you might call the 'death' of classical Latin.

During the very early Medieval period, when the former provinces of the Roman empire were now speaking what we would call Romance languages, they would still write down their language as Latin. They used Latin spelling but their own local Spanish, French, etc. pronunciation.

As a result, when reading from the Bible they would pronounce everything in their own dialect. Ecclesiastical Latin was created to standardise the pronunciation of Latin throughout Catholic Europe, and specifically aimed to reflect spelling as much as possible and pronounce every syllable.

Basically, they tried put Latin back together out of the pieces they had left, and ended up with something different from the original classical pronunciation.

To get back to your question, I don't feel that the people of Cyrodiil would 'switch' to an ecclesiastical pronunciation over time, as ecclesiastical Latin only came about in our world because of the complete collapse of traditional Roman culture, which, while we have seen empires fall in Tamriel, has not (yet) happened to Cyrodiil.

My suggestion that the word Cyrodiil might be pronounced with a ch sound by some speakers was inspired by Italian rather than ecclesiastical Latin.

#ask response #tes #elder scrolls #the elder scrolls #latin #languages #pronunciation #headcanon

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lifestylesbi · 3 years ago

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Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

To these walls may be applied the words in which Mr. Gladstone appraised the value»of the services rendered by the Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula, in a similar connection. “ They are like a shelving beach that restrained the ocean.

That beach, it is true, is beaten by the waves; it is laid desolate; it produces nothing; it becomes perhaps nothing save a mass of shingle, of rock, of almost useless sea-weed. But it is a fence behind which the cultivated earth can spread and escape the incoming tide. … It was that resistance which left Europe to claim the enjoyment of her own religion, and to develop her institutions and her laws.

Although inferior as military works to the other portions of the landward walls, great historical interest is associated with the fortifications between the Wall of Manuel and the Golden Horn, for they guarded the Palace of Blachemae, the favourite residence of the Byzantine Court from the time of Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) until the fall of the Empire. As already intimated, the palace stood on the terrace buttressed by the Tower of Isaac Angelus and the chambered wall to the north of the tower, where the Mosque of Aivas Effendi is now found.

The terrace was almost level with the parapet-walk of the fortifications, commanding fine views of the Golden Horn, and of the hills at the head of the harbour; and there the most splendid Court of the Middle Ages long displayed its wealth and pomp. What with the Crusades, and what with the relations, hostile and friendly, between the Italian Republics and the Government of Constantinople during the period of the Palaeologi, it was in that palace that Western and Eastern Europe came into closest contact for good or for evil On the hills and in the valleys seen from the western windows of the palace, the armies of the First Crusade encamped.

To that residence came Peter the Hermit, Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Normandy, Bohemond, Tancred, “the mirror of knighthood,” Count Robert of Paris, to wonder at the marvels of Byzantine Art, and to attempt the co-operation of the East and the West, in the great political and religious undertaking of the times. On the hill immediately in front of the walls the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade pitched their tents, and thence Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, Henry his brother, Louis of Blois and Chartres, and Hugo of Saint Paul, led four divisions of the army against the wall erected by Leo the Armenian.

Ville Hardouin

The wall was held by Varangian troops, the imperial body-guard, recruited from England, Denmark, Norway, and Russia. “The assailants,” to quote the words of Ville-Hardouin, a witness of the combat, and the historian of the Crusade, “ placed two scaling-ladders against an outer wall near the sea; the wall was furnished with Englishmen and Danes, and the attack was strong, and good, and hard. And by sheer force some knights and two sergeants mounted the ladders, and became masters of the wall Fully fifteen reached the wall, and they fought hand to hand with axes and swords.

And the men within returned to the charge and drove them (the assailants) out, right rudely, even taking two of them prisoners. And those of our men who were captured were led to the Emperor Alexis, and he was very highly delighted tour packages balkan. So ended the attack by the French. And there was a considerable number of men wounded and of maimed; and the barons were very angry about it”

The recovery of Constantinople from the Latins in 1261 did not diminish Italian influence over the life of the city. On the contrary, from that time to the close of Byzantine history that influence, modified indeed by the rival force of Ottoman power, grew stronger and stronger. Commercial interests, political necessities, schemes of ecclesiastical union, literary sympathies, possibilities of aggrandisement at the expense of an Empire hastening to ruin, made Italy, especially Genoa and Venice, take a most active part in the affairs of New Rome. A Western atmosphere, so to speak, then enveloped Constantinople, very much like that which surrounds the City of the Sultans to-day.

But the portion of the walls about which the greatest and most pathetic interest gathers is where Sultan Mehemet delivered his fatal blow upon the Byzantine Empire, and won the title of “the Conqueror.” It is the portion which stretches from Top Kapoussi (Gate of S. Romanus) to Edim£ Kapoussi (Gate of Charisius), across the ravine through which the little stream of the Lycus, on its way to the Sea of Marmora, enters the city. Owing to the depression of the ground and the impossibility of constructing a deep moat there, this was the weakest point in the Theodosian fortifications, and here the bravest of the defenders, under Gius- tiniani of Genoa and the Emperor Constantine, manned the walls to oppose the best troops under the command of the Sultan.

#Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

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istanbul-history · 3 years ago

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