Collect for Trinity XXI

Patricius

New Member

If, as is likely, this is a stupid question, I apologize in advance.

"Largire, quaesumus, Domine, fidelibus tuis indulgentiam placatus et pacem...."

The English version is "Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace...."

What is the function of "placatus" here? If it is modifying "Domine" and translating "merciful," why does it not have to be in vocative form? And for that matter is "placatus" a reasonable translation for "merciful" (or "merciful" for "placatus," since I'm not sure whether the English or Latin Prayer Book came first)?
 

Pacifica

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Placatus is in the nominative because it agrees with the implied subject of largire rather than with the vocative. The meaning is literally "Having been placated, grant, O Lord, to thy faithful..." He is to grant forgiveness and peace (while/after) having been placated: placatus goes with the verb and agrees with the subject thereof. Largire, Domine placate..., on the other hand, would have meant literally "Grant, O placated Lord..."

The translation of placatus to "merciful" and especially as a vocative is free-ish, I would say, but perhaps acceptable.
 

Pacifica

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The sense is basically that you are asking the Lord to be placated and, thus placated, to grant forgiveness etc.

Placatus has adverbial force inasmuch as it denotes the circumstances in which the action of the verb is to be done.

Maybe the difference between this and a vocative will be made clearer if I transpose the same concept into a simpler sentence, so take this, for example:

Cane laetus, Marce! = "Sing joyous, Marcus!" i.e "Sing (while being) joyous, Marcus!", "Be joyous and sing, Marcus!", "Sing joyously, Marcus!"

whereas

Cane, laete Marce! = "Sing, O joyous Marcus!"
 

Patricius

New Member

First of all, thank very much for your thoughtful and illuminating reply. So, to be sure that I understand, let me ask, is "largire" then infinitive, effecting the sense "We beseech Thee, [Thou] being merciful to grant to thy faithful indulgence and peace...."? Is "Placatus" nominative because it acts as predicate nominative to the clause subject [Thou] in the clause "[Thou being] merciful." That is some fancy syntax. Latin is so absolutely seductive, that I fear it is destroying my character.
 

Clemens

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Sorry, what day is this collect for? My Roman missal counts Sundays after Pentecost, not Trinity.
 

Issacus Divus

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The Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity. (Terry S.)
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

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I have an idea that Anglicans count from Trinity instead of Pentecost for obscure reasons to do with various rites, but I suspect that Terry knows more about this sort of thing than I ever will.
 
 

Terry S.

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This guy is the real expert - and a :) classicist, too!

Post Trinitatem, Post Pentecosten


The members of the Prayer Book Society, and adherents of SSPX, pray the same prayers, and are fed by the same scriptural readings, between Trinity and Advent. But not, regrettably, on the same Sundays.

These readings are first found in Roman lectionary books going back to the seventh and eighth centuries. The Prayers - collects, secrets ["over the Offerings"], postcommunions, are found in the ancient sacramentaries containing formulae which the liturgical scholars of the first half of the twentieth century were in many cases able to identify as written by particular Roman Pontiffs - not least S Leo the Great and S Gelasius. But neither readings nor prayers seem to have been selected to 'go with' each other, nor is it easy to detect the grounds upon which they were chosen at all - except in a few cases, such as the Gospels for Trinity III and Trinity V, which probably relate to the nearby feast of SS Peter and Paul. (Indeed, in early days Sundays were often thought of as 'before' or 'after' important feasts, such as that of S Lawrence, rather than as forming part of a relentless series marching from Pentecost all the way to Advent). It was this lack of strong control which gave the post-conciliar revisers their excuse to disregard their inheritance. I suspect that the jury is still out on whether discarding what the Western Church had possessed for 1300 years was a good idea.

The reasons why the rite of S Pius V - the traditional or Tridentine rite - and the Anglican Prayer Books are not quite in sync', is twofold. (1) The first Mass in the series for the 'green' Sundays was used differently in different places. Pius V inherited a tradition which used it on the weekdays after Trinity Sunday. The English medieval usage which the Prayer Book inherited and perpetuated used it on the first Sunday after Trinity and the weekdays which followed that Sunday. Hence, English custom puts all the Masses one week later than the Pian custom: the Mass of Trinity V, for example, is the Mass for Pentecost V (a Sunday after Trinity comes obviously a week later than the Sunday with the same number after Pentecost because Trinity is a week later than Pentecost).
(2) The English medieval missals used, on TrinityIII, an ancient Roman collect (which had its secret and postcommunion attached to it) which had dropped out of the books used by the revisers of Pius V. And on Trinity IV they used an ancient Roman Gospel which did not make it into the Pian Missal.

So on and after TrinityV, the Prayer Book is a week later than the Tridentine Missal as regards most of the Mass, but two weeks behind with regard to the Prayers and Gospels. If you are still reading this, apply for your £1m reward. (There are one or two disruptions as regards the graduals, but, O gawd, let's not go into that.)

So if you want to use a Tridentine Missal but keep in sync' with what your Prayer Book fellow Anglicans are doing, not to mention, of course, the pre-reformation English missals, you have otch about a bit in the book. Things are, incidentally, a bit easier if you say the Sunday Office from a Tridentine Breviary; on and after Trinity V all you need to do is to use the collect, third nocturn readings, and the antiphons for the Benedictus and Magnificat, according to this formula: Trinity x = Pentecost x-1.

Anglican revisers in 1980 abandoned the ancient series of collects but around 2000 adopted a series which included many of the old collects on their old (Prayer Book) Sundays. The post-conciliar Roman Rite retains a fair number of the old collects but higglety pigglety, according to an enumeration 'per annum' rather than 'post Pentecosten', and (at the moment in Anglophone countries) in 'translations' which render them unrecognisable.
https://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2009/07/post-trinitatem-post-pentecosten.html
 

Patricius

New Member

Sorry, what day is this collect for? My Roman missal counts Sundays after Pentecost, not Trinity.
The origin of the collect is the Gelasian Sacramentary. I encountered it in the Latin BCP. The 1971 "BCP" cannot rationally be so called since its sacramentology and dogmatics are obviously intentionally hostile to those of the historic book. Some of the "revisers" have now publicly admitted (not repentantly, but with a smirk) that they were never trying to revise the book, but to force a new theology on the Anglican Church. It didn't work: a third of Anglicans quit the Church immediately upon the suppression of the historic book, and most of the rest have drifted away over time. Dr. Ratzinger, at the time his papacy came to an end, was working on a compassionate program to provide haven to those fleeing the Anglican Church.
 

Issacus Divus

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I'm sorry to hear it. I haven't heard of something like that before.
 

Clemens

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The origin of the collect is the Gelasian Sacramentary. I encountered it in the Latin BCP. The 1971 "BCP" cannot rationally be so called since its sacramentology and dogmatics are obviously intentionally hostile to those of the historic book. Some of the "revisers" have now publicly admitted (not repentantly, but with a smirk) that they were never trying to revise the book, but to force a new theology on the Anglican Church. It didn't work: a third of Anglicans quit the Church immediately upon the suppression of the historic book, and most of the rest have drifted away over time. Dr. Ratzinger, at the time his papacy came to an end, was working on a compassionate program to provide haven to those fleeing the Anglican Church.

Understood. I have the 1920 Missale Romanum, and was trying to look it up in that. I didn't know there was a Latin BCP.
 

Pacifica

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Because an ablative absolute refers to someone or something else than the subject.
 

Abbatiſſæ Scriptor

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Pacifica's ſecond ſuggeſtion invited the queſtion of why an adverbial form of 'placatus' was not uſed. (Then again, the adverbial forms of thematic adjectives may be veſtiges of an inſtrumental caſe which did not completely abdicate in favour of the ablative. Ablative abſolutes equate to inſtrumental absolutes in other languages anyway.) My own firſt thought was to recall a recent diſcuſſion here on the occaſional fluidity of the relationſhip between the nominative and the vocatice. In any caſe, the original question was very far from 'ſtupid'.
 

Pacifica

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Yes, I'm not sure the adverb would have been very idiomatic. The adjective has adverbial force in this case, though (or you can also call it predicative; it's the same).
 

Abbatiſſæ Scriptor

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