Faxit Deus

[villafane55]

Hello forum members:
I am translating an Italian manuscript written by a Roman Catholic priest. His preface ends with the phrase "Faxit Deus!"
I have searched high and low and have found this translation: "God grant." I have no doubt about God (Deus). The problem is the verb form "faxit". This form is not included in conjugations of the verb "facio". Would this phrase mean "May God let it be so"?
Perhaps it is a pseudo Latin phrase or a quote from somewhere? I found this also, attributed to Italian poet Torquato Tasso: Faxit Deus, ut calestia omnia tibi felicia ... No translation.
I am grateful for any help.
Diana

 

[Imber Ranae]

It's an archaic subjunctive form. Here it functions as a wish: "God grant it!" or "May God make it so!".

That such an ancient form would be used in an ecclesiastical setting is interesting. Perhaps because these sorts of archaisms were common in solemn rituals it was felt appropriate.

 

[villafane55]

Thank you very much Imber Ranae! My mother's uncle was born in 1900, so I'm not surprised he would use an archaism.
Sincerely,
Diana

 

[Imber Ranae]

Er, I meant that it was an archaism already by the time of Cicero and Julius Caesar, more than two thousand years ago. That was the golden age of Latin literature and the period upon which the classical standard of the language was set. But in reference to today, or even 1900, all Latin is archaic.

 

[Pacifica]

LOL a few years later.

 

[Callaina]

Er, I meant that it was an archaism already by the time of Cicero and Julius Caesar, more than two thousand years ago. That was the golden age of Latin literature and the period upon which the classical standard of the language was set. But in reference to today, or even 1900, all Latin is archaic.

...Except in an office setting under particular circumstances.

"Boss, how should I send the document?"
"Faxit!"

(...Sorry, couldn't resist...)

 

[Pacifica]

Lol. Better than facit.

 

[Abbatiſſæ Scriptor]

It looks a bit like a ſigmatic aorist/future formation.

 

[Callaina]

It looks a bit like a ſigmatic aorist/future formation.

Sounds interesting, but say more?

 

[Imber Ranae]

It looks a bit like a ſigmatic aorist/future formation.

It's a sigmatic future, not aorist.

Sounds interesting, but say more?

I talked about it in the first paragraph of this post.

 

[Abbatiſſæ Scriptor]

It's a sigmatic future, not aorist.

Same ſtem.

 

[Imber Ranae]

Same ſtem.

No, they're distinct.

 

[Blackfriar]

Hello forum members:
I am translating an Italian manuscript written by a Roman Catholic priest. His preface ends with the phrase "Faxit Deus!"
I have searched high and low and have found this translation: "God grant." I have no doubt about God (Deus). The problem is the verb form "faxit". This form is not included in conjugations of the verb "facio". Would this phrase mean "May God let it be so"?
Perhaps it is a pseudo Latin phrase or a quote from somewhere? I found this also, attributed to Italian poet Torquato Tasso: Faxit Deus, ut calestia omnia tibi felicia ... No translation.
I am grateful for any help.
Diana

As someone else has said, it is an archaic form of the Latin subjunctive: "May God grant..." However, it is one of those archaisms which endured. According to Lewis and Short, it is found in Cicero (Leg. 2.8.19), Livy and Plautus, among others. It is also common in Christian Latin - in Erasmus, for example, right down to Vatican II (at the end of the Declaration on Religious Freedom). A Vatican book of Gregorian chant, 'Jubilate Deo', published in 1974, has a preface ending, "Faxit Deus ut ..." And for what it's worth, I occasionally use it myself - in the expression 'Quod faxit Deus!' - in letters written otherwise in English to friends - if they know Latin, of course. It's not at all surprising to find it in your Italian priest's manuscript.

It is not unlike the survival of a few archaisms in English, such as 'thee', 'thy', 'thine' etc, which exist mainly in a religious context, or in proverbs such as "to thine own self be true", or certain other words which tend to be used jocularly ('sweetmeat', 'potation', 'certes', 'rapscallion' etc.) or in specific professions like medicine (e.g. 'crepitus' for the scratching noise of broken bones) or law (e.g. 'demesne' for 'domain'). Every language has them, I think! I think immediately of " l'huis", the door, in French, which survives in the nursery rhyme "Un grand cerf", but is rarely encountered otherwise, as far as I know.

In short, then, 'faxit' is a variant of the present subjunctive 3rd person singular, 'faciat'; it may be called 'archaic', but it remains in use even today amongst those - lamentably few - who write Latin.

 

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

proverbs such as "to thine own self be true"

To be pedantic, that one's a quotation, and it's part of a set of platitudes that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of a rather dreary old buffoon, which tends to be forgotten when people quote it.

 

[Blackfriar]

To be pedantic, that one's a quotation, and it's part of a set of platitudes that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of a rather dreary old buffoon, which tends to be forgotten when people quote it.

To be equally pedantic, who is to say that a quotation cannot become a proverb, that is, "a short, well-known pithy saying, stating a general truth or piece of advice"? I think that this line from Polonius - which has become enormously popular - is a case in point. If you must have another example, however, consider the maxim "Know thyself", which goes back to and inscription at Delphi, it seems, where (according to H. Parke and D. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle, (Basil Blackwell, 1956), vol. 1, p. 389) it was probably derived from an ancient proverb. In English, it generally retains the archaic "thyself" even when quoted today.