[B-Greek] Mumpsimus and Sumpsimus
Wieland Willker
willker at chemie.uni-bremen.de
Fri Nov 19 08:36:11 EST 2004
Marginally on-topic "Google scholar" also came up with the following
article:
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 52 (2001) 512f.
"Mumpsimus and Sumpsimus: The Intellectual Origins of a Henrician Bon
Mot"
by PETER MARSHALL
http://journals.cambridge.org/bin/bladerunner?30REQEVENT=&REQAUTH=0&5000
01REQSUB=&REQSTR1=S0022046901005978
(limited access!)
The author writes:
"Credit for introducing mumpsimus and sumpsimus to the language is given
by the Oxford English dictionary to the humanist and diplomat Richard
Pace, but in fact the origins of the phrase can be traced further back,
to the lodestar of the early sixteenth-century humanist movement,
Desiderius Erasmus. In a letter of August 1516 to an English
correspondent, Henry Bullock, Erasmus railed against the opponents of
his recent edition of the New Testament, specifically those who were
arguing that no textual changes to Scripture were permissible unless it
were on the authority of a general council. This seemed to Erasmus
willfully block-headed; the corruption in some passages were too obvious
to be overlooked, and by way of analogy he brought in a personal
reminiscence. A printer in Paris, possessed of a mere smattering of
learning, had confessed to him that twenty years earlier his press had
produced service books and books of hours according to the use of Trier,
which were subsequently found to have a great many discrepancies and
errors. Of course, Erasmus noted, the printer corrected them all for
subsequent editions, just as the leaders of the Church should now be
willing to allow necessary corrections to the far more important text of
holy writ itself. If they opposed this, they would resemble `the
mass-priest who refused to change the word mumpsimus which he had used
for twenty years, when someone told him that sumpsimus was what he ought
to say'.( The context for the malapropism is the postcommunio prayer in
the canon of the mass, where `sumpsimus' (the first-person plural
perfect indicative of `sumere', to take up) appears in numerous ariant
settings.) Erasmus does not claim directly that this priest had been
using one of the defective Trevisan missals, though the implication is
that some such corrupted text (a simile for the Vulgate) must have come
into his hands. Whether such a priest ever really existed must remain
questionable."
There are things on earth that you just HAVE TO KNOW!
Best wishes
Wieland
<><
------------------------------------------------
Wieland Willker, Bremen, Germany
mailto:willker at chemie.uni-bremen.de
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie
Textcritical commentary:
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/index.html
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