Medieval | parochianus

Note: I don’t know if this is a homily written by the Blessed Rabanus Maurus himself, or just one he added to his collection of homilies, but it seemed very appropriate to translate it and make it available as we quickly approach Pascha.

Our Pascha, dearly beloved, is the resurrection of Christ, for Pascha means a passing over, clearly from death to life, from passion to glory, from Hades to Paradise. For, in that Christ died, our death was destroyed; in that He arose, He granted us the means of arising and made us cross over from infidelity to the Catholic Faith, from idolatry to the worship of the One God, from sin to righteousness, from error to truth, from discord to peace, from useless servants sold into slavery to the devil to being counted among the children of God, from exile to the homeland, from punishment to a crown.

And therefore, dearly beloved, the Pascha of Christ is the Kingdom of Heaven, the salvation of the world, the death of Hades, the glory of Heaven, the life of believers, the resurrection of the dead, the evidence of divine compassion, the price of human redemption, and the abolition of death’s sorrow. This feast, by a holy mystery of God, through the angels reveals, through the people manifests, and through the good hearts of believers multiplies the power of the Lord’s resurrection. So this is that day that the Psalmist once foretold, saying, “This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us be glad and rejoice therein” (Ps 117:24); higher than everything, brighter than all things, on which the Lord arose; on which, as you can see, He acquired a new people for himself through the spirit of regeneration; on which He imbued the minds of each one with joy and exultation. Therefore, this day of the resurrection of Christ is life for the dead, pardon for sinners, and glory for the saints.

How, then, does the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Lord, retain first place among all women, and likewise this feast day is the chief among all days on earth? Just as we read the “Holy of Holies” or the “Song of Songs” in the Scriptures, we rightly call this the solemnity of solemnities.

Only Christ with the thief opened that fiery spear and door of paradise that no one could break open (Gen 3:24). The gate of paradise, which no one before the Passion of the Lord uncovered, has been both closed and open from the time when the Lord suffered until the present day; it is closed to sinners and unbelievers; it is open for the righteous and believers. Through it, the Apostle Peter entered; through it, the Apostle Paul entered; through it, all the holy martyrs entered; through it, the souls of the righteous from the whole world daily enter.

However, there are two gates: the gate of Paradise and the gate of the Church. We entered through the gate of the Church first, through faith and baptism, because we will certainly enter the gate of paradise after our exit from life if we faithfully continue laboring well. Without a doubt, the Holy Church is the house of God, and so we ought to live in such a way that we are not cast out of that house; cast forth and devoured by wild beasts, which are evil spirits. The prophet says of this, “Deliver not up to beasts,” oh Lord, “the souls that confess to thee” (Ps 73:19). Therefore, let us constantly dwell in her who is our mother the Church so that we may deserve to reach the kingdom of the eternal Father; the Father for whom she gave birth to us who are children by adoption.

Let us celebrate this holiest of solemnities as the Apostle Paul taught us, saying, “not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness” (1 Cor 5:8), in other words, not in the bitterness of human malice, but in the sincerity of divine holiness, which is chastity, humility, goodness, compassion, kindness, righteousness, gentleness, patience, truth, peace, and generosity. This is the dough of Christian sanctity, which is corrupted by the leaven of human wickedness, which is lust, arrogance, envy, unfairness, greed, intemperance, lying, bickering, hatred, vainglory, cruelty, and injustice. It causes all alien kinds of corruption for us, and yet the sincerity of His truth in us is kept safe by Him, the author and bestower of all good things and the originator of this holiest of feasts, Jesus Christ, our Savior, who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God throughout all the ages of ages.

Amen.

My usual approach during the Judith project is to focus on the devotional aspects of Hrabanus’ commentary. That is after all the main purpose of the book. However, today I’d like to look more closely at the life of the Blessed Hrabanus himself.

Back in chapter 10, I discovered a discrepancy between how the Douay-Rheims translation rendered a word and what Hrabanus himself thought a word meant. Today my primary purpose is not to discuss the correctness or incorrectness of either (though we might as well explore that a little while we’re here). What I find most interesting is that we can see a little piece of the world of Hrabanus’ times.

In chapter 10 verse 11, we find the following paragraph. I have highlighted the word of interest in bold.

Of course this maid—that is to say, a multitude of corporeal ones—does bear things, the Holy Church giving her a bottle of wine and a vessel of oil, parched corn and bread, whenever she reverently observes the holy sacraments prepared in grain, wine and oil, clearly the body and blood of the Lord and the anointing of unction. [12] She also bears pottage and cheese whenever she stores up the verdure of faith and the richness of love in her heart. For they say that pottage is food made with vegetables and cheese is curdled milk, which can each represent, in faith and in love, food for souls.

There is a word in Hrabanus’ writing, lapates, which in the Clementine Vulgate is palathas. Palathas was basically borrowed from the Greek παλάθη, and through metathesis (i.e. the transposition of sounds or letters in a word) seems to have evolved into a homonym of lapates. (It’s not too hard to imagine our contemporaries transposing a few letters to turn Pilates into lipates.) The Douay-Rheims translates this word (from the Clementine Vulgate) as dried figs whereas Hrabanus seems to interpret it as pottage. The fact that he talks about it as food made from vegetables and uses it as a metaphor for the verdancy of the faith is a good indicator.

Out of curiosity, I looked up Judith 10:5 and found it in the oldest extant manuscript of the Vulgate (p. 715v), which was produced around 700 AD. In this Codex Amiatinus, we find lapates as I have underlined above. Consequently, it is clear that there were editions of the Vulgate at that time that provided lapates where the Clementine edition provides palathas.

The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources provides both definitions for lapates, noting that, as I said above, the second definition came from metathesis of the Greek word. So, while Hrabanus was probably just following the most common definition of the word, it is probably anachronistic in the Book of Judith. It is, after all, hard to imagine the poor maid carrying a pot of green soup across the no man’s land between Bethulia and the camp of the Assyrians. On the other hand, scholars consider many other things in the book to be anachronistic, so this would not be the first.

I find medieval times to be fascinating and this is just a tidbit that helps me get into the mindset. The following video, produced by Modern History TV, is a delightful exploration into what a peasant might have eaten in the middle ages. Keep in mind that the middle ages are a fairly lengthy span of time and that Hrabanus Maurus lived very early in this span. What is shown in the video is probably close to what might have been true during the middle or later middle ages. But what you see here probably evolved from what was true in Hrabanus’ time. Be sure to watch for the peas pottage (or maybe “peas porridge hot”) at about 3.5 minutes into the video.

Through the process of figuring all of this out, I also took a fun detour to learn a little more about the Codex Amiatinus. Khan Academy has the following brief introduction to it. The miracle of the internet has made it possible for amateurs like myself to access these treasures from the comfort of our own homes.