Have become more frequent this morning although Phoebus is shining brightly a good part of the time. One of the Lyft drivers yesterday said that he saw one of the weather mages predicting a series of very wet days beginning Wednesday; perhaps. Now that I think of it, I felt two or three stray drops of rain (over the course of an hour) on my left arm as I sat here reading last evening.
A feria, the Mass is Misericordia Domini (Introibo). At Prime, the announcement of tomorrow's feast of the Patronage of Saint Joseph was made-- tomorrow in the calendar according to Divino afflatu, anyway. The history of the Saint Joseph feasts is one I need to look up every time one of them returns-- all I ever remember is that the feast of the Kalends of May was designed to help people abandon the Communists' May Day celebrations-- and I never have managed to keep them sorted; tomorrow's Patronage was moved or put under a different title or who knows what in 1955. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes the feasts of Saint Joseph: the principal one on the 19th March, the feast of the Espousals of Our Lady and Saint Joseph (various dates but never imposed on the entire Latin Church and more commonly treated as a feast of Our Lady alone), and then the feast of the Patronage, first granted as a favor to the Spanish Discalced Carmelites. The May Day feast replaced one of these, somehow-- presumably the Patronage. Saint-Eugène is streaming Holy Mass at the usual hour, 1000.
At Wigmore Hall, in twenty minutes or so, Mahan Esfahani will perform Book One of Das Wohltemperirte Clavier. Tomorrow, the final two of the French Suites inter alia. Wonderful!
Post Sextam. Perfectly splendid, the Esfahani Bach. Evidently, he is performing all of Bach's work for solo keyboard instrument over the course of some months. Tomorrow!
Finished the first book of Argonautika only last night; am reading the William Race translation in Loeb, and spending or wasting lots of time looking up individual words, ahem, being distracted by this meaning and that, and then Rodney Merrill's version in verse. When I finish Merrill's Book One then I'll go on to Book Two in Loeb.
Of course the 'divine nymph' Cypris carried Hylas off into the watery deeps; the poor Cians had nothing to do with his disappearance. So far Jason's little excursion has caused untoward grief for the Doliones and the Cians-- I'd guess that (if one were of that sort of mind) one might draw a parallel between what happens here and the progress of 'European Civilisation', with its attendant if unsought devastations, through the uncivilised lands.... But as for the two left behind, by Zeus’ plan Polyphemus, Eilatus’ son, was to found and build a city for the Mysians named for the river, while Heracles was to go back again and perform Eurystheus’ labors. He [Herakles; Hercules is fine, as is Herakles-- but I don't see the point of Heracles] threatened to devastate the Mysian land on the spot, if they did not discover for him the fate of Hylas, whether alive or dead. And as pledges thereof, they chose the noblest boys from the people and handed them over, and swore oaths that they would never cease their efforts in the search. Therefore, to this day the people of Cius ask after Hylas, Theiodamas’ son, and keep ties to well-built Trachis, for that is where Heracles settled the boys whom they sent him to take as pledges from their city....
Post Vesperas. Father Hunwicke posted this essay not too long ago. It includes a succinctly phrased version of his consistent thesis so far as Papa Franciscus goes.
Having examined, over and over again, historical analogies and reliable authors, I have no doubt that the correct analysis is that this disordered and uncharitable individual is pope. I know no evidence of it being suggested, in the past, that any pope had "lost" his office through heresy or any other crime. Tradition makes it clear that subsequent magisterial anathematisation is the correct procedure.
Being a Traditionalist means taking Tradition seriously, not making it up as one goes along to suit one's own fads and passions.
S John Henry Newman spoke of unworthy shepherds having voluntarily placed their authority in SUSPENSE. Precisely. That fits the facts, the precedents, and the realities of the situation. And, given the status of JHN, makes it difficult for anybody to be taken to task for employing this analysis.
God Our Lord will provide for His faithful people and does so in every century.
Ante Completorium. Not a cloud in the beautiful blue sky, not a one. While I briefly regretted spending the money on yet another Argonautika, Peter Green's commentary is quite good. Here, reading the lines (1280sqq) of Apollonius in which he asks us to believe that the 'Nauts managed not to notice that Herakles wasn't on board, Green remarks:
There are times when Apollonius severely strains his readers' credulity, leaving critics to figure out just when he is subverting our suspension of disbelief, and why (cynical deconstruction? plain mischievous fun? a mixture of the two?). This is clearly one such occasion. The idea that the crew, collectively, in the dark or not, should have failed to notice the absence of Herakles (of all outsize characters!) on reboarding Argo is really impossible to accept if we are to treat the scene as even minimally realistic.
Apollonius has to explain somehow Herakles's going off to do his own Labors. I'd opt for 'something has gone wrong somehow with the text' but of course I'm not a scholar of Hellenistic Greek et cetera.
It is also the feast of Saint Agnes (14th century), of Saint Hugo (10th century), and of Saint Theodorus (5th century).
V. Et álibi aliórum plurimórum sanctórum Mártyrum et Confessórum, atque sanctárum Vírginum. R. Deo grátias.
LDVM
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