Let us examine another stanza.
Mentem gubernet et regat Our mind be in his keeping placed,
casto, fideli corpore, Our body true to him and chaste,
fides calore ferveat, Where only faith her fire shall feed,
fraudis venena nesciat. To burn the tares of Satan's seed.
More literally:
Let him direct and rule the soul,
With body chaste and faithful,
Let faith burn with warmth,
let it not know the poisons of deceit.
'mentem' is better translated 'soul' than 'mind'; it is balanced with
'corpore' in the next line - mens sano in corpore sano. 'guberno' means
literally, to steer or pilot a ship; there are many images of the Christian
soul arriving safely in heaven like a ship arriving safely in port:
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide,
O receive my soul at last. (Charles Wesley)
The imagery goes back ultimately to the several stories of Christ with his
disciples on the Sea of Galilee, stilling the storm or walking on the
waters. Notice especially John 6:21,
Voluerunt ergo accipere eum in navim et statim navis fuit ad terram, in quam
ibant - 'They wished therefore to receive him into the boat, and immediately
the boat was at the land to which they were going'. Bring Christ on board,
and immediately you are in safe harbour.
'rego' is simply 'rule'; it is moreover the activity of the Good Shepherd
in Ps 22 (23):
Dominus regit me, et nihil mihi deerit The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not
want.
So God is both the helmsman, steering the ship into harbour, and the
shepherd, leading the sheep safely into good pasture.
I can't find any mention in the original of the tares mentioned in our verse
translation. This of course would be an allusion to the parable of the
tares in the wheat (Matthew 13:24 ff.) However there is perhaps a hint of
Satanic activity in 'venena', 'poisons' - the serpent's venom.
Notice the interlinked alliteration:
casto . . . corpore . . . calore; fideli . . . fides . . . ferveat . . .
fraudis.
'with chaste heat of body' - the normal associations of a body burning are
those of lust; cf. St Paul, 'It is better to marry than to burn' (1 Cor.
7:0). But this is chaste heat; our verse translation gets the nuance about
right: 'where only faith her fire shall feed'.
More tomorrow. Oriens.
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