O sacred spirit, bless languages and those who study them; prosper godly speech; bring to nought evil speech, infected by the poison of hell.
O sancta anima, sis felix linguis, sis felix linguarum cultoribus, faveto linguis sanctis, perdito malas linguas, infectas veneno gehennae.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, February 27, 2012
Prayer for Philologists
Erasmus, The Apotheosis of That Incomparable Worthy, John Reuchlin, in The Colloquies of Erasmus, tr. Craig R. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 79-86 (at 85):