medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Jim,
You write:
> The inscription, which reads "FILIIS HOMINU[M] P[AR]S ERIT IN
> E[TERNO]" is, I
> now believe, faulty, which explains why any literal translation is
> a bit tortured.
I suspect you would be better off if you were to read "IN ETERNUM" instead.
"erit in aeternum" is a fairly common phrase, occurring, e.g., at 2 Jn
1:2, _propter veritatem quae permanet in nobis et nobiscum erit in
aeternum_. Besides, _in_ with the accusative is standard in temporal
constructions expressing futurity; do a Google search for the phrase "in
futurum" and see for yourself.
What
> I perhaps should have mentioned last time is that the inscription
> is in a small panel
> of stained glass of c.1500, perhaps from southern Germany, and
> accompanies
> images of God the Father and the dove of the Holy Spirit. It
> probably occupied a
> small tracery light above the main fields of the window. A similar
> arrangement can
> be seen in a larger composition of stained glass in the Schnutgen
> Museum in
> Cologne, where God the Father and the dove, accompanied by an
> inscription, are
> located above a scene of the Baptism of Christ. In that case, the
> inscription is
> clearly biblical: "Erit filius meus delectus". And it relates
> directly to the Baptism
> below. As in my inscription, the verb "erit" crops up, even though
> Luke 9:35, inter
> alia, has "Hic est filius meus delectus" (is the change to "erit"
> some sort of
> inscriptional rhetoric?).
One, you're assuming a "change" here. To make that assumption credible,
you would have to demonstrate a relation between the two texts other
than that produced by chance or by general Christian context. Since the
similarity between the two consists of A) a common form of the most
commonly occurring verb in the Latin language (_esse_) and B) the also
common word _filius_, this will not be an easy task to accomplish.
Especially as many would think it circular, and thus unpersuasive, to A)
emend oblique plural _filiis_ into nominative singular _filius_ because
the latter better fits your sense of the inscription's meaning as
informed by the Cologne text and then B) use this emended reading to
sustain a proposed intertextuality between the Cologne text and that of
your inscription.
Two, there's no special inscriptional rhetoric here. It's merely
ordinary good Latin to use the future tense to indicate futurity.
> I would similarly imagine that my small panel accompanied a
> Christological scene,
> such as the Crucifixion or Ascension, and as in the Schnutgen
> Museum piece, the
> inscription would represent the "speech" of God the Father. If
> this is the case, it is
> easy to imagine "filiis hominum" being an incorrect version of
> "filius hominis", giving
> the sense of "The Son of Man will be part of the altar forever".
"Easy to imagine", perhaps. "Necessarily what has occurred", probably
not (or, at least, not shown). And what part of the inscription
authorizes "altar"?
> Does such a
> sentiment remind anyone of anything? Any other comments or leads?
A literal translation of the inscription would be: TO THE SONS OF MEN,
PART WILL BE FOR ETERNITY.
Another, taking _filiis_ as dat. of reference, would be: FOR THE SONS OF
MEN, PART WILL BE FOREVER. That _could_ be construed as a reference to
man's immortal soul. I'm not arguing that that's the meaning, though.
It's unfortunate that you have P[AR]S and not P[A]X. "Eternal peace to
the sons of men" is a nice sentiment and certainly an appropriate one in
some ecclesiastical contexts.
Good luck,
John Dillon
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