P. Terentius Afer Redux: Sheltered In The Arms Of God

Just a little more Gospel for you. The first week of Gesimatide emphasises sola fide, by grace alone.

Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

What Does This Mean? It means You should pray for a sound mind in a sound body. The line comes from Decimus Junius Juvenalis' Satire Ten, line 356. It's important to understand that Juvenal goes on to say you should ask for a strong heart that sees long life as the least thing giving the ability to endure anything, a heart that has neither wrath nor desire, and would prefer the hard labours of Hercules to the self-indulgent pleasures and luxuries of Sardanapalus, the decadent Assyrian king of legend. The satire laments that Rome has abandoned the true Roman values of the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire, people now caring only for food and entertainment (panem et circenses, line 81) and leaders who will provide it to them.

Semper idem sed non eodem modo.

What Does This Mean? It means Always the same but not in the same way. The line is a motto used by the Austrian (the part where he was born is now in the Ukraine) music theorist Heinrich Schenker. He may have based it on lines from either or both of Augustine's Confessions or Irenaeus' Against Heresies, that say God is always the same knowing in the same way things that are not the same nor in the same way. He saw tonality as the composing-out through structural levels in music of this divine attribute, for which the Nazis rejected him as having corrupted music theory with Jewish monotheism. He died in 1935 before Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, but his wife Jeanette ended up in Theresienstadt, which the Nazis tried to make a showcase for how the camps weren't so bad (the same one from which Dr Viktor Frankl survived to give Man his greatest psychology, logotherapy), and died there four months to the day before the Soviet Army liberated the camp 8 May 1945.

P. Terentius Afer Redux

Pages

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Sheltered In The Arms Of God

No comments:

Post a Comment