Collect of the Week - 33
Dominica in Septuagesima
The Latin word for Lent is "Quadragesima" and the first Sunday in Lent is
called "Dominica prima in Quadragesima". The penitential season of forty
days was gradually lengthened by the addition of three further weeks. The
Sunday before Lent was known as "Quinquagesima" ("fiftieth" - and in fact it
is exactly fifty days before Easter), the one before that as "Sexagesima"
("sixtieth" - a bit of an approximation) and the one before that,
"Septuagesima" ("seventieth" - obviously, the fellow who devised the term
wasn't very good at sums). The term "Septuagesima" is first found in the
Gelasian Sacramentary.
These three weeks preparatory to Lent, althought they were not a period of
strict fasting, partook of some of the austerity of Lent. Purple vestments
were worn (though perhaps not in our period - colour-coded vestments were, I
think, a post-medieval invention. If one looks at medieval depictions of
the Mass in, say, a book of hours, the priests are wearing all the colours
of the rainbow). The "Alleluia" chant was omitted, and there is a hymn,
"Alleluia, dulce carmen" for the Sunday before Septuagesima, bidding
farewell to the Alleluia. Would you like me to do an exposition of it?
Anyway, Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima were all swept away by
the reforms of Vatican II, being abolished in 1969. Yesterday was however
'Septuagesima' in the old reckoning, and here is the collect for the day as
found in the Sarum Missal:
Preces populi tui, quaesumus domine, clementer exaudi: ut qui juste pro
peccatis nostris affligimur, pro tui nominis gloria misericorditer
liberemur. Per Dominum.
This is translated quite well in the BCP:
O Lord, we beseech thee favourably to hear the prayers of thy people; that
we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by
thy goodness, for the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Saviour,
who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world
without end.
This is probably as well as one can do without doing violence to the
word-order of the English language. In Latin, where the word-order is much
more flexible, one can move the object to the front of the sentence,
sticking our prayers, as it were, right under God's nose, and move the verb
to the end of the clause, in a position of some emphasis. In the English,
the stress (especially when the collect is sung - try it!) falls chiefly
upon "O Lord" and "people"; but in the Latin, these words are tucked away
into the middle of the clause, and the stressed words are "Preces . . .
exaudi" - "Hear . . . the prayers" - giving the prayers a greater sense of
urgency, perhaps, than it is possible to convey in translation.
The reformers were great believers in punishment for sins, but actually
"affligo" is not so much "to punish" as "to dash down". It is used of ships
being blown off course by the wind - an image of some importance to the
Collector, who often uses metaphors of steering a ship through the storms of
life, to safe harbour in heaven. Metaphorically, it can mean "to deject,
cast down".
"Affligimur" and "liberemur", both at the end of their clause, are set up as
an antithesis. We have got ourselves into a fine mess by our sins, and we
ask God to get us out of it. The reformers set up a different antithesis,
"our offences" . . . "thy goodness", and had to add on - perhaps a little
clumsily - another phrase, "for the glory of thy Name", thus climaxing the
prayer with God's Name - not a bad climax, but not that of the original
collect, where God's name (I won't capitalise it here, as there isn't any
particular stress on it) is tucked away inside and the climax is "liberemur."
I'll do the "Alleluia, dulce carmen" as a separate note.
Oriens.
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