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‘Legatus a latere’: Addenda varia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Franz Wasner*
Affiliation:
Catholic Mission Naiserelagi, P.O. Suva, Fiji

Extract

In 343 A. D. the Synod of Sardica, speaking of priests to be sent by the pope e latere suo or, in the equally authoritative Greek version, used a figure of speech which, in its Latin form as a latere or de latere—both variants are already attested in the early transmission of the Sardican canons — became in time an important canonical concept. Although the bishops assembled at Sardica might at first seem to have coined a striking neologism, the phrase employed by them actually echoes certain passages of the Greek and Latin Bibles and the use made of those passages in some of the homilies of the Fathers. As we listen to the biblico-patristical overtones with which the term a latere resounds, the theological source of early canonical language becomes, for this one instance, perceptible again.

Type
Miscellany
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 Traditio 14.296-7. For Latin as the principal language at the sessions in Sardica and the probability of two sets of minutes, one Latin and one Greek, having been taken down, see now Hess, H., The Canons of the Council of Sardica (Oxford 1958) 46–7, 55-60; in the main this marks a return to the solution of the priority problem proposed in the eighteenth century by the brothers Ballerini. The variants mentioned above for the Latin text are found in Turner's edition, Ecclesiae occidentalis Monumenta iuris antiquissima 1.2.iii (1930) 461 ad lin. 16; for the Greek text see ibid. 498b.Google Scholar

2 Vetus Latina 2 (Genesis) ed. Fischer, B. (Freiburg i. Br. 1951-54) 51-52. All other OL texts will be cited from the Versio Antiqua of Sabatier, P. (Paris 1743).Google Scholar

3 Ed. Fischer, 2.110.Google Scholar

4 The meaning of πλευρά as ‘latus corporis humani’ is stressed by Zerwick, M., Analysis philologica Novi Testamenti graeci (Rome 1953), on John 19.34 and passim.Google Scholar

5 Tractatus in Ioannem 120.2, ed. R. Willems, D., CCL 36 (1954) 661.12-20.Google Scholar

6 St. John Chrysostom, Homilia ad neophytos 17-18, ed. Wenger, Antoine, Huit Catéchèses baptismales inédites (Sources chrétiennes 50 [Paris 1957]) 161-2. The translation given below is taken from [Anon.] ‘A Newly Found Easter Homily by St. John Chrysostom,’ Worship 34 [1960] 244-5. — The Homilia ad neophytos has long been known in the Latin translation of the fifth-century author Annianus of Celeda. The lessons of the second nocturn for the Feast of the Most Precious Blood (July 1), which incorporate the above quoted passages, derive from this translation. The question of its authenticity was dealt with some fifty years ago, by Haidacher, S., ‘Eine unbeachtete Rede des hl. Chrysostomus an Neugetaufte, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 28 (1904) 168193. Haidacher (p. 183) also comments upon an interesting variant in the Latin text of our passage: for the reference to Gen. 2.23 a reference to Eph. 5.30 is substituted. The original Greek text was known only in fragments until 1909, through quotations made by other authors; in that year the first edition of the Greek text was published in St. Petersburg, Russia, from a Moscow MS, by the Greek scholar Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia graeca sacra, a publication rarely found in the West. In October 1955, the French Assumptionist, Father Antoine Wenger, rediscovered the Greek text on Mount Athos (Stavronikita Cod. 6) as the third of eight baptismal instructions, of which seven were entirely unknown and the one in question hardly accessible, ‘one of the most important discoveries of patristic texts in modern times’ (Worship, loc. cit. 240 n. 1). All of them are authentic works of St. John Chrysostom. Their original text can now be read, together with a French translation — the Homilia ad neophytos also with the old Latin translation — and a splendid commentary, in Father Wenger's publication.Google Scholar

7 Cf. Traditio 14.297. — The process by which the legatus a latere came to be regarded as a revival of the Roman proconsul and his imperium, and the college of cardinals as the Roman senatus, is analyzed by Schramm, P. E., ‘Sacerdotium und Regnum im Austausch ihrer Vorrechte,’ Studi Gregoriani 2 (Rome 1947) 439440. Of interest in connection with the ceremonial of the legatus a latere are the same author's comments on red as the specific color of the pope, in Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik: Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte vom dritten bis zum sechszehnten Jahrhundert (Schriften der MGH 13; Stuttgart 1954-1956) I 57 and his pointing out (ibid. I 59 n. 6) that the word ‘infulatus’ in Thangmar's vita of St. Bernward of Hildesheim (cf. Traditio 14.300) refers to vestments in general and could not be interpreted as indicating the papal headdress, the phrygium. Google Scholar

8 Cf. Traditio 14.298 n. 21.Google Scholar

9 Cod. 9.8.5, which was also incorporated into Gratian's Decretum, C. 6 q. 1 c. 22. Both passages are expressly cited, e.g., in the Glossa ordinaria on X 1.30.9 v. commissum, to bear out the statement, ‘… de latere domini papae, quia et ipsi pars corporis eius esse intelliguntur.’ For the application of Cod. 9.8.5 in medieval political thought, see H. Kantorowicz, E., The King's Two Bodies (Princeton 1957) 154, 208 n. 42 (where Joannes Andreae on pope and cardinals is quoted), 362 n. 166; cf. also Ullmann, W., in Journal of Theological Studies N. S. 11 (1960) 41 n.Google Scholar

10 CJC (1917) can. 266.Google Scholar

11 The wording of this definition betrays the incertainties with which at the time the canonical concept of the legatus a latere was clouded. Doubts were uttered, even after the promulgation of the CJC, whether the cardinals who in modern times were frequently dispatched, for instance to International Eucharistic Congresses, were really to be considered legati a latere in the ancient and full canonical sense of the term. The CJC created the impression that a cardinal would have to be specifically called legatus a latere in his appointment in order to be considered as such. The question is discussed and answered in an emphatic affirmative sense by Joachim Nabuco, ‘De Cardinalibus, S. R. E. a Latere Legatis dissertatio,’ Ephemerides Liturgicae 12 (1938) 147–55. Nabuco's chief argument is the terminology Pius XI employed in numerous appointments of Cardinal Legates (such appointments are now generally published in the AAS). Pius XI revived, deliberately as it seems, the ancient formulations referring to the legatus a latere. In the appointment, for instance, of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli as legate to the Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, on May 12, 1938 (AAS 30 [1938] 222-23) the pope used pleonastic language which left no doubt about the rank of the legate he was about to dispatch: ‘… Legatum Nostrum eligendo, … Legatum a latere Nostro … ut … Nostram gerens personam, sacris ritibus caeremoniisque auctoritate Nostra praesideas.’Google Scholar

12 Bargellini, Piero, Pius XII: The Angelic Shepherd (Engl. translation, New York 1950) 94.Google Scholar

13 Bargellini 107. Since it did not occur to Bargellini to recognize this term as a translation of de latere, his efforts to explain the Cardinal's language are unsuccessful.Google Scholar

14 Bargellini 83-95. The German translation of this work by Uray, H. (Pastor Angelicus: Das Leben Pius’ XII. [2. Aufl. Graz 1950] 111) renders this chapter heading as ‘Zu Seiten Christi, des Königs’ (as if it read ad latus), thus missing completely the meaning of a latere. Google Scholar

15 Cf. Traditio 14.301.Google Scholar

16 Andrieu's text is based on MS 508 of the Bibliothèque municipale in Chartres. For its highly improbable reading eos no variant is to be found in Andrieu's critical apparatus. If it were correct it certainly would demand a continuation: ‘qui eos … consolaris quos …’; and even then the eos in the second part would upset the balanced euphony of sound in this noble prayer. Vat. lat. 12348 reads correctly nos. Google Scholar

17 Traditio 14.323-24.Google Scholar

18 Commentarii, lib. 7 (ed. Frankfurt 1614) 453–54.Google Scholar

19 Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste II 397 n. 3.Google Scholar

20 Traditio 14.337 n. 7.Google Scholar

21 3 vols. (Görres-Gesellschaft, Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiet der Geschichte 20, 22, 24; Paderborn 1923-42).Google Scholar

22 Mohler I 260-67; cf. also III 638.Google Scholar

23 Ibid. I 293-303; cf. also Meuthen, E., ‘Zum Itinerar der deutschen Legation Bessarions, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 37 (1957) 328–33.Google Scholar

24 Mohler I 315-6 and 419-25; of special interest is Mohler's description of the attitude of the French king, who forced Bessarion to a long wait before allowing him to enter (I 424).Google Scholar

25 I 262 n. 3; cf. also III 632.Google Scholar

26 Published by Pastor, op. cit. II 125 n. 1.Google Scholar

27 Traditio 14.304 n. 42 (in this note, loco Willemson, read Willemsen).Google Scholar

28 Pastor loc. cit. For a recent bibliography on Bessarion see the new edition of the LThK 2 (1958) 301.Google Scholar

29 This identity was already pointed out by Goeller, E., ‘Aus der Kanzlei der Päpste und ihrer Legaten, Quellen und Forschungen … 10 (1907) 301–24. Cf. also Traditio 14.318.Google Scholar

30 See Traditio 14. 337 n. 8.Google Scholar

31 Ibid. 319-21.Google Scholar

32 Ibid. 338 no. 3.Google Scholar

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34 Traditio 14.343. 35 Ed. II, Celani 15.Google Scholar

36 Traditio 14.339 n. 18.Google Scholar

37 Eubel, H., Hierarchia catholica medii aevi II 294.Google Scholar

38 Ed. I, Celani 121, 370.Google Scholar

39 Ibid. 121. Silvester was archpriest of the Lucca cathedral (Eubel loc. cit.).Google Scholar

40 Celani I 370 n. 4.Google Scholar

41 Wharton, Henry, Anglia sacra (London 1691) I 538-9.Google Scholar

42 Traditio 14.356, 357 n. 5.Google Scholar

43 Constant, G., ‘Les maîtres de cérémonies du XVIe siècle: leurs diaires,’ Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire 23 (1903) 165.Google Scholar

44 DDC 6 (1957) 371–7.Google Scholar

45 Il diritto di legazione ed i rapporti diplomatici della Santa Sede, Doctor Communis: Acta et commentationes Pont. Academiae romanae S, Thomae Aquinatis 10 (1957) 203–21.Google Scholar