This is my eighteenth "Latin without Latin" essay. For background and a link to other essays, see this page:
About the English Essays. Today's poem is from a book published in 1624 by Jean Pignewart (Iohannes Pignevvart), a Cistercian monk and scholar. He attributes his collection of distich poetry to "Cato Bernardinus," invoking both the legendary "Cato" of Latin distich fame and also Saint Bernard of Clairveax who was famously associated with the Cistercian order. The subtitle of the book explains its contents as follows:
quo sententiae valde morales, piae et sacrae, singulis distichis distinctae, continentur, the book contains thoughts that are deeply moral, pious and holy, separated into individual distich poems. There are many wonderful little poems in this book, but I don't really know anything about the author - so, if anyone has more information about Jean Pignewart, please let me know!
The poem I have chosen for this essay provides a miniature lesson in the so-called Cardinal Virtues, associating the lack of these virtues with famous Bible figures. In Latin, the four Cardinal Virtues, the
Virtútes Cardináles, are
Prudéntia (Foresight;
see this earlier essay),
Iustítia (Justice),
Temperántia (Moderation) and
Fortitúdo (Strength, Courage). Combine these with the
Virtútes Theológicae , the three Theological Virtues -
Fides (Faith),
Spes (Hope) and
Cáritas (Charity, Love) - and you get the seven virtues as expounded by Thomas Aquinas in his
Summa Theologica. Most people know the phrase "faith, hope, and charity" - but the four cardinal virtues are not as famous, so this little poem can provide a way to remember them.
Here the title of the poem:
Virtútes Cardináles Defuérunt Quáttuor. Let's see how that works:
Virtútes Cardináles. This is from the Latin noun
virtus, meaning virtue or excellence, and the adjective
cardinális, which means crucial, essential. The form is plural:
Virtútes Cardináles, the cardinal virtues. In Latin, the word
cardo refers to a hinge or joint, the thing on which something turns. In the geography of the world, there were four "cardinal" directions (north, south, east, west), so in the moral geography of the world it makes sense that there would be four cardinal virtues on which moral behavior depends:
Prudéntia, Iustítia, Temperántia, Fortitúdo.
Defuérunt. This is from the Latin verb
deésse which means to lack, to be missing. The form
defuérunt is past tense, plural, agreeing with our subject:
Virtútes Cardináles Defuérunt, the cardinal virtues were lacking, were missing. The title thus gives us a clue as to how the poet will illustrate the virtues: he will not show us Bible characters who exemplified these virtues; instead, he is going to show us Bible characters who lacked these virtues.
Quáttuor. The last word of the title reminds us that there are indeed four,
quáttuor, of these cardinal virtues (compare the English words quadrant, quatrain, etc.).
So, that gives us the title of the poem -
Virtútes Cardináles Defuérunt Quáttuor, The Four Cardinal Virtues Were Lacking. Now let's turn to the poem and see just who in the Bible lacked these four virtues.
Adae tempéries, prudéntia défuit Evae,
Firma Petro virtus, iustítia atque Caïn.
You can probably recognize some of the names here, all of which are in the dative case:
Adam,
Eva,
Petrus (Peter), and
Caïn (pronounced as two syllables: Ca-in; that's what the diaresis mark - ï - indicates). Let's see how these each of these four Bible characters, one by one, lacked a particular cardinal virtue:
Adae tempéries. Here we have the Biblical name
Adam in the dative case,
Adae, plus the noun
tempéries, which is a synonym for
temperántia. The poet faced a metrical challenge, since there is no way that the word
temperántia can fit into the elegiac meter that he has chosen for the poem. Luckily, though,
tempéries is able to fit the meter and convey the same idea as
temperántia. Both
tempéries and
temperántia are verbal nouns related to the basic notion of
tempus, time, apportioning things into their proper time or place. In other words, moderation. Of course, Adam famously lacked moderation when Eve offered him the apple!
prudéntia défuit Evae. Here we have the verb we saw in the title,
deésse, to be lacking or missing. The form is singular this time, past tense:
prudéntia défuit, foresight was lacking. The verb takes a dative complement: something was lacking to someone = someone lacked something.
Adam lacked moderation,
Adae (défuit) tempéries, and
Eva (Eve) lacked
prudéntia, foresight:
prudéntia défuit Evae. When Eve took a taste of the apple, she did not think about the consequences - not just for herself, but for the whole human race.
So, that gives us the first line of the poem, Adam and Eve, with the verb
défuit doing double duty for both halves of the line:
Adae (défuit) tempéries, prudéntia défuit Evae. The second line will cover the two other virtues,
Fortitúdo and
Iustitia.
Firma Petro virtus. Just as the virtue
temperántia did not fit the meter of the poem, the same is true of the virtue of
fortitúdo, meaning strength or courage. There is just no way to include that word in an elegiac poem. So, the poet has come up with a synonymous phrase:
firma virtus, the firm virtue, indicating the virtue of being steadfast, of standing firm. The phrase, f
irma virtus, wraps elegantly around the Bible character who lacked this virtue,
défuit Petro. The reference is to Saint Peter, who denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed (you can find the story narrated in all four gospels:
Matthew 26:69-75,
Mark 14:66-72,
Luke 22:54-62,
John 18:15-27).
iustítia atque Caïn. The Latin word
atque means and, with the specific sense of and also, and further, moreover, etc. It is used here to provide our final example of a Bible figure, Cain (pronounced Ca-in) who lacked,
défuit, a virtue:
iustítia, justice. It could be argued, in fact, that when Cain, son of Adam and Eve, murdered his brother Abel, it was the first act of injustice in the history of the world.
Unlike the other three names in the poem -
Adam,
Eva, and
Petrus - the name
Caïn does not have a special form to indicate the dative case. As often with Hebrew names, the word is "indeclinable" in Latin, which means the form of the noun does not change to indicate its grammatical role in the sentence. In context, however, with the dative forms
Adae,
Evae and
Petro, we can confidently assume that
Caïn is likewise in the dative case: there was lacking to Cain,
défuit Caïn, the virtue of justice,
iustítia.
So, that gives us our second line, which carries on with the verb,
défuit, lacked, as implied from the first line:
Firma Petro virtus (défuit), iustítia atque (défuit) Caïn.
Now put the lines back together again, and you have a negative reflection of the four cardinal virtues -
Temperántia,
Prudéntia,
Fortitúdo and
Iustítia - based on the four Bible characters who notoriously lacked these virtues:
Adae tempéries, prudéntia défuit Evae,
Firma Petro virtus, iustítia atque Caïn.
Below you will find an illustration showing the four virtues personified as women (the noun
virtus is feminine in gender, even if etymologically it is derived from the Latin word for man,
vir - for the ancient Romans,
virtus was a kind of manliness). Can you use the clues in the image to figure out which image represents which virtue?
Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed this little poem by the "Bernardine Cato" a.k.a. "Cato Bernardinus," and as I add new English essays, you will be able to find those in the
English stream at the Disticha Latina blog. The next essay is about one of these four cardinal virtues:
Iustitia.
