Bill White is tracking down the freely available translations done by the Loeb Classical Library. I mentioned the Loeb in the post A Handbook for Latin Clubs, from 1916. Bill also notes that the Loeb will soon publish its five-hundredth volume, and he links to Sir Peter Stothard's column in the Times, Harvard and the money men, and the Telegraph's Wrestling with Latin and Greek by A.N. Wilson. PaleoJudaica.com notes the five-hundredth as well, at The Loeb Classical Library is Celebrating its 500th Volume.

The Loeb is on the 'net at Loeb Classical Library.


Loeb Classical Library books
The green are Greek, red, Latin.
English translations are on facing pages.

The BBC Radio Four programme In Our Time (was 'At That Time' taken?) airs Thursdays at 9.00-9.45 a.m., repeated 9.30 p.m. (all times GMT*). It's one of the podcasts to which I listen regularly (podcast subscription file here).

There aren't details about the program yet at the show's site, e.g., who the contributors will be, but the shows have all been of high quality, and they've been of the few which I've actually kept and not deleted after listening. Perhaps later today, details will be posted to the site.

For a week after the show being broadcast, it is available in mp3 format. After that time, the show is only available in .ram format, so for those shows, you'll need a computer program to do ram to mp3 or convert ram to mp3.

It feels peculiar to be blogging about something in the future.

* The site incorrectly calls it Daylight Savings Time.

Last Saturday, March 25, the Internet Archive released in .pdf, .djvu and FlipBook formats, the English translation of Pierre Battiffol's 1892 History of the Roman Breviary. This is before Pope St Pius X's revision, and I came across this on pages 237 and 238, in chapter V, 'The Breviary of the Council of Trent', discussing Cardinal Quignonez's 1535 tentative, proposed revision, to be used only for private devotion (footnote omitted). (Some other searches about this work here on google.) The 1527 Sack of Rome had dispersed the humanists engaged in an earlier revision of the Breviary.

But what a singular novelty, and no less dangerous than singular, to speak of reforms to be carried out by a return to antiquity, while what antiquity is meant is not expressed ! Was not this just such a way of speaking as had been employed by the German Protestant reformers? And this echo of their protestations, met with at Rome, is one indication among many of the fact that at a particular moment in its history this Roman Curia, itself so fiercely attacked by these violent theorists, was, after all, the medium in the whole of Catholicity the most attentive to their grievances, the most ready to listen to them, and to respond to their reproaches in a spirit of fairness. But it is also allowable to see in the liturgical experiment made by Cardinal Quignonez an individual approach on his part towards the spirit of the German reformers. It is this which gives its special interest to his work : this also which constitutes its secret and fatal vice.

Later, large numbers of priests in Italy, France, Spain and Germany were allowed this revision. St Peter Canisius propagated the revised Breviary in Germany, where Luther's influence was growing. The Jesuits adopted it on its publication.

From page 244 (footnote omitted):

[I]n Spain it was introduced into the choirs of several cathedrals : thus from private recitation it passed into solemn and public celebration. It was under these circumstances that the people of Saragossa, unable to recognise the office of Tenebrae one Maundy Thursday, and no doubt thinking that the Chapter had turned Huguenots, made an uproar in the cathedral itself, and went near to making an auto da fe of the canons and their new breviary. Thus these good folk defended in their own fashion the just rights of liturgical tradition.

On pages 246 and 247, Battifol quotes the Spanish theologian John de Arze's 1551 memorandum to the Fathers of the Council of Trent, urging repudiation of Quignonez's work:

Worse still, is it in this iron age, an age in love with the most dangerous novelties, when the ecclesiastical chant is mocked at, the canonical hours proscribed, the ceremonies of the Church despised, and her laws treated as mere human inventions, and that, too, all over the world, in Germany, in Switzerland, in England ; when even among ourselves, who adhere to the old faith, we see disgust for the usages of the Church freely expressed, a growing contempt for holy things, a more and more widespread audacity in judging, each man for himself, of dogmas and canons : is this the time to give up our liturgical traditions and seem tacitly to allow that our adversaries are right, when our first duty is to stand firm, and the more the state of ruin manifests itself among them, the more on our part to exert ourselves to uphold the tottering edifice (et quo plura apud eos cadunt, plura a nobis sunt substituenda)?

Battifol continues, on page 248:

[de Arze] conjures the Fathers of the Council to be on their guard against that innovating spirit which despises antiquity and takes up with novelties, some of them positively erroneous, all of them worthy of being suspected -the spirit which was so applauded in that century, and which, not content with giving birth in Germany to new rites, new chants, new hymns, new sacraments, new canons, new breviaries, was now endeavouring to gain credit among the orthodox themselves, and to bring to its full development among them also the mystery of iniquity : Caveant pastores !

The chapter continues with much interesting detail. Nihil sub sole novum.

It's Sunday, which means the funny pages (or funny papers, or comics, or, if you really want to be antiquarian, the rotogravure section). Thanks to Zadok's post Comic Books..., I took a look at the Arcadius Press web site. (Navigation by annoyingFlash.)

The company has released, it seems, eight comic books of saints' stories, one of whom is St Stanislaus of Krakow. The nose is a touch too broad.

On The Lion & the Cardinal.

By the way, what happened to his RSS feed? I get a 404 when trying it since March 21, so almost missed his request for information about the TLM at Baltimore's St Alphonsus.

Bill White, Lisp programmer, schola member, nearsighted(?) husband and father, etc., alerts us to the Project Gutenberg edition of this work.

I've been to A Casa de Sarto before, but this morning when my logs showed someone visiting here from that blog, I added it to the listing of trad blogs on the right, as well as tradblogs.com.br, which is described as

O TRADBLOGS é uma comunidade de blogs, fiel à Tradição Católica, ou seja, sua liturgia latina tradicional (Missa tridentina, também dita de São Pio V) e toda sua Doutrina e Magistério.

Para fazer parte de nossa comunidade os membros são convidados, sob a promessa de não ferirem a Fé e os bons costumes.

Seven blogs are in the community, some of which haven't been updated in a while.

This 1852 work, Manual of ceremonies for the use of the Catholic Churches in the United States, is made available today by the Internet Archive. It is the revised second edition, and was published by order of the First Council of Baltimore. There are ceremonies described for

• Candlemas,
• Ash Wednesday,
• Palm Sunday,
• Maundy Thursday (which growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I always knew as Holy Thursday),
• Good Friday and
• Holy Saturday, as well as
• High Mass with two acolytes,
• Low Mass with the Blessed Sacrament exposed (uh oh),
• Low Mass in the presence of Prelates,
• Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament,
• serving a priest at Low Mass and
• serving a bishop at Low Mass.

The Archive makes it available in .pdf and .djvu formats, as well as FlipBook.The Archive throttles downloads, so expect saving the 10M .pdf file or 3.6M .djvu file to take a while. The individual pages in the .djvu file can be exported to .ppm format and then, with a program such as the gimp, saved in .jpg and other formats. Two pages are below the break.

On the right is a list of traditional blogs, which list I added today. The eviltrads section is in no particular order. The othertrads section is pretty much alphabetical. If I've mischaracterized someone's blog, or if I've overlooked someone, please let me know by leaving a comment to this post.

Instead, the Crusades were 'defensive wars, never aggressive', 'defend[ing] the faith and the civilisation of the Christian west against Islam', and the knights were 'inflamed by an ardour for charity and a love of God', according to participants in the conference, as reported by the Italian news agency ANSA, at Crusades hailed as 'noble' ventures. Why the scary quotes?

Yesterday, the Maria Lectrix blog began podcasting Belloc's Europe and the Faith. #162: Ch. 1, Europe and the Faith by Hilaire Belloc.

There's also an article in the Times: Vatican change of heart over 'barbaric' Crusades.

From my ScrapBook grab of the old catholichaven.org site, part of Dom Guéranger's commentary for this Sunday is on this blog at The Second Sunday of Lent, and I reprduce it below the break. Today's Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory and Communion in mp3 format, chanted, can be downloaded from or listened to at Hebdomada tertia quadragesimæ Dominica.

I was reading Matthew Meloche's blog this morning. He is the organist for the Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Tridentine Mass, and his blog is The Dusty Choir Loft. Today's post, Tridentine Mass this Sunday, mentioned that he'll not be in Windsor this Sunday, but in London, Ontario, and he pointed to a post at the Thirsty Scribe, Efforts are underway in London, Ontario about the Mass there. That blog has another post, Video: Medieval Mass in Denmark.

Fellow eviltrad Mr Fitzpatrick's post St Patrick mentions it, and the Catholic Encyclopedia has an article here. I mention it, because Banshee at the Maria Lectrix blog is reading it in her podcast. She wrote in the post #152: Act I, Part 1 of The Purgatory of St. Patrick by Pedro Calderon de la Barca:

One of Spain’s two Shakespeares from their Golden Age of drama, Pedro Calderon de la Barca was both a poet and a prolific dramatist. He wrote literally hundreds of plays, many of which are still performed today; Life Is a Dream is probably his best-known work.

The Purgatory of St. Patrick is one of his plays on religious themes. This one deals simultaneously with the life of St. Patrick and the legend of the pilgrim shrine/mortification gym known as St. Patrick’s Purgatory. It’s fun stuff, IMHO, especially since it was translated into English with a lot of verve.

She concluded the reading yesterday. 'Life is a Dream' is the translation she gives of 'La vida es sueño', with the well known

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño:
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.

Today is Hilary's birthday. She blogs at The Devout Life.

In looking for something appropriate to recognize the day and to entertain her, I came across these two images.


The Grand Feast
Right mouse click and 'view image' to see full size


Feast, from Il Cuoco Segreto Di Papa Pio V (The Private [Secret] Chef of Pope Pius V),
by Bartolomeo Scappi, Venice, 1570

Source for both images: Medieval/Renaissance Food Clip-Art Collection. At the same doman is also the Medieval/Renaissance Brewing Homepage.

From my ScrapBook grab of the catholichaven.org site, part of Dom Guéranger's commentary for this Sunday is on this blog at The Second Sunday of Lent. Today's Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory and Communion in mp3 format, chanted, can be downloaded from or listened to at Hebdomada tertia quadragesimæ Dominica.

I googled "R. & T. Washbourne" because today the Internet Archive made available The directorium asceticum, written by Giovanni Battista Scaramelli, S.J. From the linked article at the Catholic Encyclopedia:

In this work the author devotes four treatises to the study of (a) the means and helps necessary to attain Christian perfection; (b) the obstacles which hinder us and the way to surmount them; (c) the virtues to be acquired (cardinal virtues, virtues of religion, those opposed to the capital sins); (d) the theological virtues and especially charity, which is the essence of Christian perfection. His manner of dividing his subject and his method are frankly traditional and intellectualist; his unoriginal, but, as it were classic doctrines are proved by reason and authority, while the study of scruples at the end of the second treatise retains all its value after the researches of modern psychologists.

This is Volume 2, so Volume 1 ought to be available shortly. It was published by R. & T. Washbourne, and the Archive's books by that firm are here.

Another of the works returned by the google search on "R. & T. Washbourne" is the Memoriale Rituum, which 'gives directions for certain rites (the blessing of candles, ashes, palms, the Holy Week services) in small churches where there are no ministers (deacon and subdeacon).' The Holy Week ceremonies are the ones before the changes of Pope Pius XII.

This work is part of the Liturgia Latina project page.

That's the title of a book I stumbled across this afternoon. It's on the 'net at Old Truths, Not Modernist Errors, and is one of the works the Jacques Maritain Center at Notre Dame University in the United States, on its Aristotle et al., Readings for Philosophers and Catholics resource page. Published in 1908 by Benziger Brothers, it has an imprimatur of the Vicar General of the titular see of Arindelensis, pr. Palestina III; m. Petra.

How'd I Get Here? By googling the publisher R. & T. Washbourne, then following the link on that search result page.

First, go back to Recommendation: Cnytr's two posts on St Thomas Aquinas on this blog, for links explaining the fresco from Florence's S. Maria Novella, The Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas below, and with a detail from another of the images below.

Today is the feast of St Thomas Aquinas. From breviary.net, here are Lessons iv v and vi for the feast of this Saint.

A quote from G.K. Chesterton's biography:

It was the outstanding fact about St. Thomas that he loved books and lived on books; that he lived the very life of the clerk or scholar in The Canterbury Tales, who would rather have a hundred books of Aristotle and his philosophy than any wealth the world could give him. When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, "I have understood every page I ever read."

I've changed the commenting on the blog, using the Pivot-Blacklist code snippet add in.

If readers want to post a comment, they will need to answer a trivial question, currently 'What are the last two letters of the word 'tempore'?' Since yesterday's installation, it's already blocked one hundred or so poker-online gambling comment bots.

The Imitation of Christ is nearly finished on the Maria Lectrix blog, so she's issued a Call for Suggestions.

A work of Catholic fiction, like something by Chesterton or Belloc?

Church history?

A life of one of the saints?

Essays by somebody like Newman?

More spiritual/devotional classics?

The Pope waxed a little nostalgic when he spoke to the Roman clergy on Thursday last, comparing the readings for the Thursday after Ash Wednesday before the Council and after the Council. See What we have lost: Pope misses the readings of the Traditional Lenten Masses on Rorate caeli. That's 'misses', not criticizes, disparage, evaluate, give an opinion, much less grieve.

The quoted words which are the title of this post are how Benedict XVI described the elimination of the connections between the specific Stational Church for the Thursday after Ash Wednesday and the readings for that day.

Ed ero rimasto un po' male per il fatto che ci avessero tolto questo nesso tra la «stazione» e le letture. ... In questo senso, c'è un'intima continuità e mi sembra che dobbiamo impararlo da questo che è solo un piccolissimo esempio tra discontinuità e continuità. Dobbiamo accettare le novità ma anche amare la continuità e vedere il Concilio in questa ottica della continuità. Questo ci aiuterà anche nel mediare tra le generazioni nel loro modo di comunicare la fede.

The translation of these sentences at Rorate caeli is:

And I felt somewhat bad for the fact that all links between the "Stations" and the reading were removed. ... In this sense, there is an intimate continuity and it seems to me that we should observe it as a very small example of discontinuity and continuity. We should accept innovations, but also love continuity and see the Council through this light of continuity. This is helpful even in the mediation between generations in their way of passing down the faith.

The Italian is from the Holy See's website at Incontro del Santo Padre con il clero della Diocesi di Roma , 03.03.2006. Yes, yet another encounter, as if the priests came across, ran into or happened upon the Pope.

It's true that 'in questo senso', these are remarks on 'what was changed', but I think that 'lost' is too strong a word, since it implies that an effort ought to be made to recover the old, and the Pope expresses nothing of the sort. When, if ever, he begins to detail what needs to be recovered, in developing the 'hermeneutics of renewal', then we can speak of 'what we have lost'.