There is a 1923 book titled “Church Latin for Beginners: An Elementary Course of Exercises in Ecclesiastical Latin” by Miss J. I. Lowe (online here) which contains two prefaces, as well as an appendix with a handy list of syntactical usages. At the time Catholic services were still held in Latin, so such a book had an obvious value.
The first preface, by a Canon William Barry, opens with the words:
I was very glad to see in print this little volume, which deals with our Church Latin; and I hope that it will be widely read and studied. The want of such a help has long been evident. Classical or heathen Latin is a beautiful creation of genius ; but as a language it is dead. The Latin of Catholic Christendom is a living literature; great portions of it are every day read and recited all over the world, by thousands on thousands of priests, seminarists, religious orders of men and women. But they have never been taught the grammar of it, seldom have learned by reflection how marvellous a transformation it is of a language singularly hard to refashion ; yet the miracle stands perfect in their sight.
Perfect I call it, and take my position close to such masters of style as Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, and J. A. Symonds, whose hearty recognition of what another has termed “baptized Latin” was enhanced by their Oxford training in the classics. Not a degenerate offspring of Roman speech in decay, but a most original and happy adaptation of the popular idiom to sacred uses, our literature of sanctuary, cloister, and the schools is a world in itself.
This is followed by a preface by Ronald Knox, which makes many interesting points, but begins with this:
There is a story told in one of our Catholic Colleges (and probably in all of them) which throws, it is to be feared, a sinister light upon the easy familiarity with which altar-boys, choirs, and even congregations patter out their ecclesiastical Latin. A boy in Latin class was exhibiting a mulish ignorance as to the meaning of the word tantus, and the class master, with that fatal tendency we all have to adopt the method of cross-examination, was trying to get the right meaning out of him. At last in despair he suggested: “Well, you have met the words Tantum ergo Sacramentum before; at least you know what that means.” At which a great light dawned upon the boy, and he said : “Oh, yes, sir, I know that : it means ‘Down in adoration falling.'” Most Catholic schoolmasters have had similar, if not quite so poignant, experiences .
No doubt it was ever so. All the same, we are the poorer for the loss of this kind of Latin.
Coincidentally, I republished it last week, with the answer key for the first time.
https://amzn.eu/d/bBITL2B
Excellent! Thank you!
“Well, you have met the words Tantum ergo Sacramentum before; at least you know what that means.” At which a great light dawned upon the boy, and he said : “Oh, yes, sir, I know that : it means ‘Down in adoration falling.’” Most Catholic schoolmasters have had similar, if not quite so poignant, experiences.”
I don’t get it. Tantum ergo Sacramentum as far as I understand it, means something like “so much therefore sacrament”. How does this end up as “down in adoration falling”?
Now, as you note in a later post at https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/10/29/the-latin-hymn-tantum-ergo-sacramentum-and-its-19th-century-translation-by-edward-caswall/ that was how it was translated in a hymn book, but the translation seems very loose… and even an alternate more accurate translation renders it at “Let us worship, humbly bending,” despite the fact I don’t see how any of that comes from it given the lack of any apparent mention of worship/adoration or bending/falling in “tantum ergo sacramentum”. Is there something I am missing?
I’m sorry for the confusion. The story relies on some knowledge of the English school system, and I don’t quite know which bits people will know. Let me lay it out a bit more.
“Tantum ergo sacramentum” = “So great, therefore, sacrament”. The next line, “Veneremur cernui” = “Let us worship, face down/bowing”. So these two lines make up one sentence, and in English it’s back to front.
These lines are the first two lines, and the first sentence, of a Latin hymn. This hymn would be sung aloud as part of a service, to some tune or other. (If you know the melody in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, that will work.)
Here we are looking at a late 19th century Catholic school which has a daily service at the start of each day. Being Catholic, the service is in Latin. The boys have a printed service book to sing from, possibly the “Golden Manual” that I gave a screen grab from in the next post. This has an English translation printed next to the Latin.
So the boy has seen this Latin text and Caswall’s English translation many many times. But he has never tried to see how the two are related. He has assumed that each line of English translates the same line of Latin, and thought no more about it. As we have seen, this is not true.
The translation into English is not line by line, but a piece of English poetry itself. Caswall wanted to create a piece of poetry that corresponded to the Latin. So he swapped lines one and two, so that it would sound better as English verse. Because hymns are made to be sung, and he wanted to make it possible to sing the hymn in English to the same tune. So a certain amount of rearrangement and looseness was necessary. (The second translation I included made a stronger effort to connect to the Latin, but still reversed the lines).
If we look at translations of Latin hymns, or indeed poems, made in this period, it is very common to swap lines like this in order to get better poetry in the English version.
Of course staring at a screen, we cannot see any of this.
Poetry is the melody of words, as David Owen wrote. So what I suggest is reading the lines aloud, in Latin and in English, and hearing the words rather than looking at them.
Does that help, or have I missed the point? Sorry for the confusion.
“Does that help, or have I missed the point? Sorry for the confusion.”
Well, after I left my comment I looked back at the other post and then realized that the lines were indeed swapped in the translation; that is “Tantum ergo sacramentum/veneremur cernui” was translated as “Down in adoration falling/Lo! the sacred Host we hail” While both lines are translated rather loosely, they end up applying to the other line; “lo! the sacred Host we hail” is what corresponds to “tentum ero sacramentum” and “down in adoration falling” is what corresponds to “veneremur cernui”. The order might have been swapped to make the rhymes work better.
That means that in the somewhat literal translation (but one that still tries to come up with rhymes that require it to change things a little), we should still swap the order and thus “Let us worship, humbly bending” correponds to “veneremur cernui” (which makes some sense) and “This so glorious sacrament” for “Tantum ergo sacramentum”–even if I’m still a bit confused as to what “ergo” is supposed to be doing in this phrase, though maybe if I knew Latin better I could.
Anyway, my confusion was about how “Tantum ergo sacramentum” somehow turned into “down in adoration falling” but it turns out it doesn’t exactly, the hymn had “lo! the sacred Host we hail” instead due to the reversal. I should have looked at the next line to figure it out. Though unfortunately this post didn’t have any of the information, it was only in another one; if it had been in here I might’ve taken a closer look.
I also see now that the phrasing of “At which a great light dawned upon the boy” is apparently supposed to be sarcastic–I thought it was genuine, which only reinforced the idea that tantum ergo sacramentum was supposed to line up with down in adoration falling.