From My Email Box

[carocrow]

Happily forwarded from my old friend Howard, a High School chum who lives in Texas and has one of the most beautiful voices on Earth, IMNSHO. He was ubergeek when geek wasn't cool. He carried a briefcase to school ;-) But nevermind about Howard. This is gold, and should be appreciated by some particular members of my FL:


Admonitory verses to the new Bishop of Rome
(in latina medievali):

O BENEDICTE, si velis vere benedictus esse,
Misericordiae fonti vos debes subesse.
Doctrina nimis rigida non dicitur benedicta
Qua innocentia percutitur velut vitiis victa.
O sis Benedictus in iudicio
Aut vobis sit maledictio.


[O Well-spoken, if truly you wish to be well spoken of
You ought to be near to the source of mercy.
An excessively harsh doctrine is not called 'well-spoken'
By which innocence is beaten as if [it were] conquered by vice.
O may you be well-spoken in judgment
Or else may you be evil-spoken of.]



EDIT: Thanks to quislibet I now have the corrected version and attribution:

Admonitory verses to the new Bishop of Rome
(in latina medievali):

O BENEDICTE, si velis vere benedictus esse,
Misericordiae fonti te debes subesse.
Doctrina nimis rigida non dicitur benedicta
Qua innocentia percutitur velut vitiis victa.
O sis Benedictus in iudicio
Aut tibi sit maledictio.

[O Well-spoken, if truly you wish to be well spoken of
You ought to be near to the source of mercy.
An excessively harsh doctrine is not called 'well-spoken'
By which innocence is beaten as if [it were] conquered by vice.
O may you be well-spoken in judgment
Or else may you be evil-spoken of.]

By cataptromancer, poor scholar and clerk
Please feel free to copy or spread around in the form of pamphlets and broadsides

[update: pronoun problems corrected, now it's 'tu' all the way through]