medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Wednesday, July 19, 2006, at 11:14 pm, I wrote:
> The text is macaronic: lines 1 and 4 are in Venetian, 2 and 3 in
> Latin. A translation follows:
> 2 March 1557
> Hope and love in this pleasant
> prison keeps us
> S. M. delle Vergini
>
> Note that the verb form RETINET is third-person singular (hence the
> ungrammatical "keeps" in my translation). With a plural grammatical
> subject ("spes et amor") one would expect the corresponding plural
> form RETINENT ("keep"). The latter could have been written as
> RETINET with a suprascript line over the second E signalling the
> otherwise unexpressed nasal, in which case "Stef" has not noticed
> the line (or has noticed it but failed to grasp its significance) or
> the line is no longer clearly visible (this often happens in
> lapidary inscriptions).
I should have added that it is possible to take "spes et amor" as a
hendiadys, i.e. a double-barrelled expression of a single concept. In
that case the singular verb form RETINET would be grammatically correct.
There's an example on this page (at p. 15 of the source text):
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camena/gesner1/books/gesner1_1.html
where George, Duke of Cornwall, the future George III of England, is
addressed as the "Spes et Amor" of his British realm.
Another instance is this from Petrarch's _Contra medicum quendam_:
"et omnium quos alterius vite spes et amor tuto tramite dirigit ad
felicem metam" ("and of all those whom the hope and love of another life
draws to a blessed goal").
Text from:
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/petrarchmedicus.html
Best again,
John Dillon
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