Friday, April 28, 2017

If the Devil's Minion's Hate Latin - Maybe he Does so Himself?


When I was a small boy and read Dracula, I learned that:

"vampires fear three things : a crucifix, garlic and beans in Latin"

I asked what "beans in Latin" meant, beans being obviously sth you put into your mouth, and Latin seemed to be rather something which came out of it.

It seems the word "bönor" in Swedish resembled the word I was reading, "böner", especially as in my native pronunciation - since then somewhat poshed up - I had learned about "bönor" in a way which sounded more like "böner". Now, "bönor" is the plural of "böna" which means bean. While, "böner" is the plural of "bön" which means prayer. In other words, the sentence really meant:

"vampires fear three things : a crucifix, garlic and prayers in Latin"

And that was when I learned the word "prayer" - this first time as "bön", later as "Gebet", "prayer", "bønn", "Gebeed", "prière", and as you may guess, sooner or later "prex" and "oratio".

I also learned to note tiny differences in spelling, like between "böner" and "bönor".

Now, I don't really think the Devil hates all Latin. After all, one of the Greek names which add up to 666 is ΛΑΤΕΙΝΟΣ, and King Latinus, the father in law of Aeneas was son of Picus, son of Saturn - a man, but one who shares the name of the Satanic rebel in Greek myths about origins. Also, Cicero wrote some nonsense, as did Lucretius in that language, and some have also called Codex Iuris Civilis "the Devil's Bible" - at least its study in last few centuries of Middle Ages made things worse for some categories, women becoming more dependent on men, poor beggars becoming less likely to remain free (though the application was not half as bad as the original decree, "in incertum vagantes", where a man begging while able bodied, even if not a runaway slave, would be treated like one and made a slave, that of whoever denounced him - no, Western Late Middle Ages did not get as bad as all that, it was modified to mean he was obliged to take work as a journeyman in whatever trade he knew, and if he didn't know one was obliged to take up one or two trades until he had a living - he was even free to beg rather than take up a third one, if he didn't manage on either of the two), also, perhaps certain expressions about relations between State and Church got into fuelling secularisation, which by now amounts to a secularism which neither the Late Middle Ages nor Justinian could have foreseen, a world in which "secular values" are an idol, and state recognition of a university is its difference to a "diploma mill".

But the Devil does - like Dracula - hate Latin prayers. So, a certain title "The Devil Hates Latin", it possibly might be short for the Devil hating Latin prayers and some other holy things in Latin (lika Summa Theologica and Vulgate Bible and Canon Law too).

Anyway, here is a novel which according to preview and blurb promises to be a bit saner than the Dracula I was reading back then:

The Devil Hates Latin Paperback – December 29, 2016
by Katharine Galgano (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Hates-Latin-Katharine-Galgano/dp/0996647902/


Since the preview is available there, I don't copy the blurb even. Suffice it to say, demons don't always possess dead corpses turning them into vampires, or if that is really suspended animation and there is some real soul left along with the demon, they also have a thing or two about possessing living people, and the exorcists who try to help them are very much into Latin - there is also a love story, I suppose.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Paul of the Cross
28.IV.2017

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