WDTPRS: A charming translation for the Feast of St. Charles Borromeo – 4 November

Today, 4 November, Holy Church honors St. Charles Borromeo (+1584), the great Archbishop of Milan and champion of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.  His heart is “warded” not far from where I write, in the great church San Carlo al Corso.

The Collect for his feast asks that the pastoral solicitude which distinguished Charles in life may continue to benefit the Church through his heavenly intercession.

Ecclésiam tuam, Dómine,
sancti Cároli Confessóris tui atque Pontíficis
contínua protectióne custódi:
ut, sicut illum pastorális sollicitúdo gloriósum réddidit;
ita nos eius intercéssio in tuo semper fáciat amóre fervéntes.

When I looked at the office of Lauds for St. Charles at the wonderful Divinum Officium I found a charming English rendering:

O Lord, give unto thy Church for an unsleeping warder thine holy Confessor Bishop Charles; upon earth his carefulness did make him glorious as a shepherd, there where he is may his prayerfulness make him effectual as a bedesman, pleading with thee to make us to love thee more.

Delightful.  This is attributed to John, Marquess of Bute (+1900), whose translation of the Roman Breviary first appeared in 1879.  It strays from the literal meaning but that’s okay.

There is something evocative about an “unsleeping warder” and a “bedesman”.  The latter is an old English word for one who prays on behalf of another, from bede, meaning prayer. Our English word “bead” comes from the same root, since prayers were counted on beads. A “warder” is a “guardian, watchman, sentinel, or keeper; one charged with protecting or guarding a person, place, or institution” from Middle English “to ward” meaning “to guard, protect, or keep watch.”  Hence, in the Collect the Latin “continua protectione custodi… guard by (his) continual protection”, is converted into “unsleeping warder”.

Pastoralis sollicitudo is his “pastoral care” becomes “prayerfulness” and his intercessio is morphed into “effectual as a bedesman”.

I suppose this can be counted as a “dynamic rendering” which presents the sense of the prayer without being confined to the Latin literally.  Effective?  I think so, but I am a sucker for archaic language and imagery.

The final Latin petition deserves attention: “in tuo semper faciat amore ferventes… may (his intercession) make us always fervent in Your love.”    Ferveo is “to be boiling hot, to boil, ferment, glow”.  English “fervent” obviously comes from this.

Ferventes!  Would that we were as we beg to be, through the intercession of St. Charles Borromeo, truly “glowing” in our state of life with the love of God.