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I’ve come to the last chapter of Cardinal Wiseman’s Recollections of the Last Four Popes. The second to last chapter of the book is dedicated, not to Gregory XVI, but to a man whom Gregory made first Prefect of Propaganda and then Cardinal librarian, Angelo Mai. I don’t know which is the more brilliant, Mai, or the dazzling way in which Wiseman writes about him. Working first at the Ambrosian Library in Milan (chiefly endowed by Frederick Cardinal Borromeo, nephew of the inimitable St. Charles Borromeo) and then at the Vatican’s own library, Angelo Mai found long lost texts by reading palimpsests. Wiseman:
He found in the Milanese library an unexplored mine. No doubt its manuscripts had been catalogued, perhaps described, and that accurately. But those who had preceded him had only cultivated the upper soil in this literary field. They had not discovered the exuberantly precious “royalties” which lay hidden beneath the surface. Under the letter of the writing there slumbered a spirit which had long lain there spell-bound, awaiting a master-magician to free it: a spirit of poetry sometimes, sometimes of eloquence; a Muse of history, a genius of philosophy, a sprite of merest unsubstantial elegance.
Mai is most famous for his discovery of Cicero’s De Re Publica; but the list of his publications and original finds could go on for pages. Throughout Europe, all recognized his scholarly ability and the brilliance of his discoveries. Cardinal Wiseman knew him personally and so, unlike many of the trite summaries of Mai’s life which can be found on the internet, Wiseman can relate something of his personal habits; Mai was an holy ecclesiastic besides being a brilliant scholar.
His habits were most simple and temperate. He rose very early, and after Mass sat down to his books before six, and studied the whole morning, with the interruption of a light meal. . . . He rarely went into society, except for a few minutes, where courteous duty imperatively demanded it. A solitary drive, which I have sometimes counted it an honour to deprive of that epithet, perhaps a short walk, was almost all the robbery that he permitted recreation to make from his domestic converse at home, with that chaste wisdom that had early captivated his heart. Soon after dusk his servants were dismissed, his outer door was inexorably bolted, and alone with his codices he was lavish of his midnight oil, protracting his studies to an unknown hour.
Wiseman’s prose is almost too much for me, “which I have sometimes counted it an honour to deprive of that epithet”! Where did he learn to write like that?!
These verses were written by Mai and can be found on his monument in his titular church of St. Anastasia - if any enterprising soul sees this post and happens to be in Rome, we’d be happy to have a picture of it!
Qui doctis vigilans studiis mea tempora trivi,
Bergomatum soboles, Angelus, hic jaceo.
Purpureum mihi syrma dedit rubrumque galerum
Roma, sed empyreum das mihi, CHRISTE, polum.
Te exspectans, longos potui tolerare labores;
Nunc mihi sit tecum dulcis et alta quies!
I like that use of “terere” at the end of the first line to give it an alliterative finish, besides being a common signification of the word in good prose, and which seems particularly apt here on a funeral monument. At first I wondered what that “Angelus” was all about, but then I realized, “Hey, that’s his name!”
Wisemen then applies to Mai some poetry from Ausonius; Wiseman calls it an amalgamation and adaptation of two eulogies by Ausonius - but I can’t find the original text online, so I don’t know, besides the initial words, what is Wiseman’s adaptation and what Ausonius’ original. At any rate, it fits Mai perfectly and is loftly praise for a man whom Wiseman greatly admired. (Wiseman strongly disagrees with the characterization expressed in the lines one finds at the end of the Catholic Encyclopedia article about Mai, wherever they came from.)
Angele Mai, studiose, memor, celer, ignoratis
Assidue in libris, nec nisi operta legens;
Exesas tineis opicasque evolvere chartas
Major quam promptis cura tibi in studiis.
Aurea mens, vox suada tibi, tum sermo quietus:
Nec cunctator eras, nec properante sono.
Pulchra senecta, nitens habitus, procul ira dolusque,
Et placidae vitae congrua meta tibi.
Wiseman concludes of Mai: “Well might Niebuhr say of him, that he was ‘a man divinely granted to our age, to whom no one citizen or stranger, - to use the words of Ennius, - will be able to repay the fruit of his labors.’”
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
I wonder if he would say the same thing of Dom Prosper Gueranger?
I remember Angelo Mais´s epitaph a bit differently:
Qui doctis vigilans studiis mea tempora trivi
Bergamatum suboles, Angelus hic iaceo.
Purpuram mihi Smyrna dedit rubrum galerum
Roma sed empyrium das bone Christe polum.
Te spectans potui longos tolerare labores
nunc mihi sit tecum dulcis et alta quies.
It is “Bergamatum suboles” (offspring of Bergamo, an Italian town), not Bergomatum soboles.
It is “Purpuram mihi Smyrna dedit” (Smyrna, a town now in Turkey, gave me the purple, i.e. the bishopric) not “Purpureum mihi syrma dedit”, and Rome gave him the red hat (rubrumque galerum)i.e. made him a cardinal.
It is “Te spectans…” (looking at you, not “Te expectans” - which doesn´t fit in with the rhythm.
There was a mistake in my last comment.
In the third line of Angelo Mai´s epitaph it must read “rubrumque”, not “rubrum”.
Sorry.
Syntactice, thank you for your very interesting comments. I’m glad that I linked to this post again!
Most unfortunately, I do not have my copy of Wiseman’s Recollections of the Last Four Popes with me and worse, perhaps, the only copies I can find in the catalogue here at Oxford are in college libraries. I’m amazed that the Bodleian doesn’t have it since it was published during the 19th century, and here in England.
Which is all to say that I can’t double check the text in the book to see whether I copied it correctly. Certainly, Wiseman himself wouldn’t have made any mistake of the type you point out, though the printers might have.
So instead of looking again at the text, I’ll make my remarks based on the Latin.
First, as to your correction of “Bergomatum soboles” to “Bergamatum suboles” I disagree. Soboles/suboles gives the same meter - short, short, long - and the difference is simply a spelling variation, with “suboles” being the more “correct” form. But you commonly see Roman things, at least from the 19th century, with the less preferred spelling. Leo XIII does it all the time in his Latin writings.
Bergomatum/Bergamatum is more of a mystery to me. The meter in the word has to be long, short, short, long to tie into the soboles which comes after it. The first and last syllables of the word aren’t in question. You say “a” and not an “o” in the second syllable. But if you look up the word in Lewis & Short, you’ll see that the adjective is “Bergomas, Bergomatis”. The modern name of the town is Bergamo, yes. I don’t know anything about Italian, but I imagine that the “a” is Bergamo is pronounced considerably longer than the “o” in the Latin Bergomas, which is short by nature.
So if it’s licit, as it were, to spell the Latin name either Bergomas (classical) or Bergamas (some later period), Mai may have gone with the classical spelling because the “o” in it is clearly short.
The reason I say that the word is a bit of a mystery to me is beacuse the “a” in the third syllable is long, at least classically. But that doesn’t fit the meter. My guess is that, using his poetic license, he ignored that fact, because if he doesn’t ignore it, there’s no way to get any form of “Bergomas, Bergomatis” into a line of dactylic hexameter or elegiac meter (this epitaph being in the latter).
Or, if your “Bergamatum” points to a correct Latin spelling variation, perhaps in it, the third syllable “a” came to be short. I don’t know.
Second, you’re both right and wrong about the third line. Again, I wish that I could see the book, but “purpuram” doesn’t fit the meter because it’s long, short, long. “Purpureum” does fit with long, short, short, long, follwed by “mihi” (short, short) for the first two dactyls. Both words can be used to say what he wants, which is, you’re right, a reference to the sacred purple.
It’s not “Smyrna”, though. At the same time, my comments about the rare Latin word “syrma” no longer fit, for it’s not that word at all, which, if I had been paying closer attention, I would have seen before makes no sense.
A little bit of detective work, I think, gets us to the bottom of this one. I looked Mai up on Catholic Hierarchy.org and found that he was the Cardinal Priest of St. Anastasia. In a poetic way, it was St. Anastasia who gave him the sacred purple. St. Anastasia was martyred at a place called Sirmium. Change the “i” to a “y” and make it kinda plural like, and voila, you have “Syrmia”. Drop the “i” and you have what I originally wrote. In any case, Sirmium is not the same place as Smyrna - or did you have reason to think that Smyrna was connected with Mai’s becoming a cardinal?
As far as I can see, you’re definitely right about “rubrumque galerum”.
I don’t see the basis on which to correct “exspectans” to “spectans”. Metrically, it’s the same because “te_exspectans” elides. In terms of the difference in meaning between “expectans” and “spectans”, I think that it could go either way; no clear argument to be made. Both fit well into the context. Though I would say this: it’s not very likely that I mistakenly inserted an “ex-” out of thin air, but I might have. In any case, it works.
I’m going to correct the “rubrumque galerum” bit now.
Oh, I already had “rubrumque” in there.
Buon giorno iosephe,
I have ordered a book with Latin inscriptions in Rome which may contain Angelo Mai´s epitaph but I won´t know till next week. Then I´ll speak up again.
Apart from that, thinking things over, I came to the conclusion that you are probably correct in almost everything you said.
I’m glad that you’re on the case.
May I inquire after this book’s title? Is it an Italian work or English?
Bonjour Iosephe
I found the epitaph in:
Walter Buchowiecki (1967) “Handbuch der Kirchen Roms” Band 1, pp. 330-331.Vienna: Hollinek
This is a four volume work with about 5000 pages that has very detailed descriptions of Roman churches.
This is the text (there are no punctuation marks):
Qui doctis vigilans studiis mea tempora trivi
Bergomatum soboles Angelus hic iaceo
Purpereum mihi Syrma dedit rubrumque galerum
Roma sed Empyreum das bone Christe polum
Te spectans longos potui tolerare labores
Nunc mihi sit tecum dulcis et alta quies
So you were right except for the “te expectans”. This in my view would bust the hexameter, as Te and exp.. are both considered long syllables, and also having two identical vowels following each other at the end of one and the beginning of the following word is not permissible or at least considered highly unelegant.
“Te spectans” refers to the fact that a priest, working at his desk, usually has a crucifix on it or on the wall beyond to look at.
If you give me an email address I´ll send you photos of the text.
You can write to
ck25@georgetown.edu
Salve
S
Correction: it must be “Purpureum”, not “Purpereum” - just a typing mistake
S
Syntactice, thank you for this research.
I don’t dispute your “te spectans” correction according to this - it sounds like - encyclopaedic German text of the Latin inscriptions in Rome.
But as far as I know, Latin verse does the thing which you say is not done all the time, I mean, elision between two vowels, one at the end of the word and the other at the beginning of the next, even if they’re both e’s, say.
I was just reading some verses in Cicero’s De Divinatione with lines like the following:
“atque etiam ventos praemonstrat saepe futuros” and again in another place:
“saepe etiam pertriste canit de pectore carmen”
both “atque/etiam” and “saepe/etiam” elide for a long, short, short, long beginning to the line.
When I’m back to America - or perhaps you can investigate this point at an earlier date - I’d be curious to know what’s printed in Wiseman’s Recollections of the Last Four Popes.
It certainly could have been my mistake, as I said before, but I’d just want to double check. Again, I’m not at all questioning what you found in that German text.
Hi!
I can get the book by Cardinal Wiseman but as they have to dig it out of some remote archive it will take about a week. Then you will hear from me.
Salve
S.
Great
Ave Iosephe
Just as you said Cardinal Wiseman has “Te expectans…” in his book (page 497). It seems he has copied it from a manuscript he refers to and not from the actual monument. He also uses punctuation marks which the inscription on the tomb certainly does not feature. As you trust in Cardinal Wiseman and I trust in Buchowiecki we will have to go to S. Anastasia and look for ourselves. In my case, this will not be before 2008, if at all.
So, I say good bye to you and thanks for all the corrections.
Salve
S.