Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1993 14:48:27 CST

From: Jim Marchand <marchand@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU>

Reply to: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>

Subject: bite

I was reading Amadeus of Lausanne, student of St. Bernard, this morning, and I came across a nice packaging of the mousetrap, the bite, and the wound in the side themes (Amadee de Lausanne, Huit homelies mariales. Sources Chretiennes, 72). Intro. et notes par G. Bavaud, texte latin etabli par Jean Deshusses, traduction par Antoine Dumas (moines d'Haute-combe) (Paris: Edition du Cerf, 1960), 144:

O praestantissima eius vulnera quibus mundi vulnera sanata sunt! O victoriosissima eius vulnera quibus mortem occidit et inferna momordit! Mors, inquit, ero mors tua, morsus tuus ero, inferne. Captus est Leviathan hamo, et dum hiat ad escam vermis clamantis in Psalmo: Ego sum vermis et non homo, horum vulnerum ferro sauciatus inhaesit. His ergo tam pretiosis vulneribus irretitus est diabolus et homo liberatus.

Habes ergo, ecclesia, habes, columba, foramina petrae et cavernam maceriae in quibus requiescas.

"Oh, most noble His wounds by which the wounds of the world are healed! Oh, most victorious His wounds by which He slew death and bit hell! Death, He said, I will be your death, I will be your bite, Oh hell. Leviathan was caught on the hook, and, when he opened wide his mouth for the bait (food) of the Worm, Who said in Psalms: I am a worm and no man, wounded by the iron of those wounds, he was caught. Therefore, by these so precious wounds caught (note the word, from rete "net") is the devil and man liberated.

Thus you have, Church, you have, dove, clefts of the rock and and hollow places of the wall in which you may rest [note quotation of Song of Songs 2.14, a proof-text for crawling into the wounds of Christ].

[The French translator was not too careful and seems not to have known (even as I write it, I don't credit it) the meaning of sauciatus]

Jim Marchand