Help me decode some medieval Latin

April 18, 2009 7:36 PM

Latin scholars, please help with the translation of this wonky medieval titulus

I'm linking to a scan of the page of the Hitda Codex that has me stumped. My Latin is okay, but it's not good enough to get metaphors or subtleties. If anyone can shed light on what this means, I'd really appreciate it.

Oh, and Cdtor is, I think, Conditor.

posted by RedReplicant to writing & language (6 comments total)

I make it out to be "ille cuius imaginem hic cernis pendentem in cruce est conditor ac rector universae creaturae" -- "he whose image you see hanging on the cross is the founder and ruler of all creation," i.e. Jesus is God.
posted by gubo at 8:39 PM on April 18

on preview: gubo has the translation.
posted by palionex at 3:17 AM on April 19

I would suggest a few minor changes to gubo's translation:

"He whose image you see hanging *here [hic]* on the cross is the creator and ruler of *every creature*." I'm not 100 % certain that universae is best translated as "every," (as it usually means "universal" or "entire." But creaturae generally means "creature" rather than "creation."
posted by sarahalisonmiller at 9:58 AM on April 19

I have a couple of suggestions concerning the translation as well.

I agree that here ("hic") needs to be added, but I disagree with the placement. I think that the text is referring to an actual image in the manuscript (perhaps on the facing page).

So the translation could go "He whose image you see here hanging on the cross..."

But I'm also not convinced that "imagine" on l.2 should be rendered as "imaginem", as the bar does not hang directly over the final 'E' (and it's not the case of the scribe being sloppy, as the bars are placed perfectly elsewhere). Rather, the bar is placed in between the 'N' and the 'E', which suggests missing letters in between the two. What those letters are, I can't say (perhaps "imaginale", which also means "image"). Unfortunately palaeograpy is not an exact science.

In any event, if "imagin__e" ends in 'E', it's in the ablative case, which would make the translation something like "He who by means of the image you see here, hanging from the cross, is the founder and ruler of all creation" (I'm going with gubo's translation at the end, since "every creature" would probably be written as "omnis creaturae", not "universae creaturae".

Anyway, the Hitda Codex is known for its illuminations, so, to repeat, I think that the text is referring to an actual image, not a conceptual one, and should be interpreted as such.
posted by hiteleven at 12:43 PM on April 19

Given that imaginem makes perfect sense and there is no clear reading if the bar is interpreted as you suggest, I think Occam would say that it makes more sense to assume the bar is slightly displaced.
posted by languagehat at 2:37 PM on April 19

I would still hesitate to state unequivocally that the word is "imaginem" for two reasons. Firstly, I've read through many palaeographic plates, and I've never seen one which was so carefully crafted yet included such a drastic error (the bar is hanging more over the 'N' than the 'E', if you look again.) Scribes are usually consistently good or consistently bad at applying such marks. Secondly, you should never make a conclusion of this sort based on what makes sense to us as modern readers. Medieval Latin rarely makes "perfect sense" when compared to its Classical antecedants (that would include William of Occam's own Latin, incidentally).
posted by hiteleven at 5:34 PM on April 19