Word-Hoard Treasures: From The Manuscripts Club by Christopher de Hamel (2023)
LEGE FELICITER: literal translation: “read happily” {Latin} (pg. 99)
I have often closed an email or a post with “Happy reading!,” but now I may feel the need to incorporate the Latin phrase as well!
swógende lég, wópe bewunden: From the closing lines of Beowulf describing the funeral pyre: “roaring flame, woven with weeping”
{Old English} (pg. 179)
Altertumswissenschaft: “antiquity science” {German} (pg. 386)
Mommsen was a passionate advocate of what the Germans called Altertumswissenschaft, literally 'antiquity science', a new approach involving the all-embracing study of every aspect of ancient civilization, including the evidence of literature, linguistics, mythology, archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics and, of course, the witness transmitted through the medium of manuscripts.
Towards a definition of Love:
When writing about the correspondence and friendship and shared loved of manuscripts between the collector Sir Sydney Cockerell and the Abbess Laurentia McLachlan, Christopher de Hamel offers one of the most refreshing takes on the definition of love I have heard in a long time (and that includes Italo Calvino, but that’s another quote for another time):
{English } (pg. 451)
There is no suggestion or possibility whatsoever of impropriety. Their affection was uncomplicated by any doubt about her spiritual vows or his faithfulness to a lonely marriage. The elusive definition of love is probably the oldest subject in literature, not to be resolved here, but if it is an intense sharing of minds and an enduring and reciprocal preoccupation with the thoughts and heartbeats of another person, then this was as close to love as any in human experience.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9796a6e6-1b84-4dc2-8948-150eeade9293_1470x1469.webp)