[Bell Historians] Gloucester

[edward martin]

I mentioned this to Ann who says:
"I think John has got this right, but might note that the masculine CAELUS
was the older form, and it is used in the plural (CAELI) in classical
poetry, e.g. Lucretius.  The earliest ref my dictionary gives for the
ecclesiastical form CAElI is Tertullian (2nd-3rd cent). "

mew

On 15/04/07, John Camp <camp at BiiZY93WKUjpE-_QrHzDAu7fV9YN8nwkkGOUUj6CvX15f0f3Bc7LKSA5RxUeV65dmYe3wW-4-q1ulDY.yahoo.invalid> wrote:
>
>   At 08:53 on 13 April 2007, Humpers wrote:
>
> > It bears an inscription in Latin - Celis Nomen Gabrielis - but reads
> > in reverse as it was cast back to front.
>
> > Cathedral press officer, the Reverend Geoff Crago, said: "It is a very
> > long time since I did Latin at school.
>
> > "I can manage Nomen Gabrielis - the name of Gabriel - but I'm not sure
> > about Celis. Even an online Latin dictionary on the web couldn't help
> > me with that word."
>
> It's an alternative way of writing 'caelis' or 'coelis' and therefore
> means 'in heaven' or 'heavenly'. So '[My] name is [the name of] of
> Gabriel in Heaven'.*
>
> It's not classical Latin, though. 'Caelum' is neuter singular in
> classical Latin and (as far as I can check) not used in the plural. In
> the 'Te Deum' (written well after classical times, though no-one seems
> at all sure when), we get 'Pleni sunt caeli et terra maiestatis gloriae
> tuae' ['Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory'], which
> suggests that the word was by then used in the plural. This fits with
> 'celis' or 'caelis/coelis' in the bell inscription. ('Caeli' also
> suggests that it was treated as masculine.)
>
> *It could also be dative and mean something like '[I send] the name of
> Gabriel to heaven', but we don't want to get bogged down.
>
> Should be grateful to know if my analysis is wrong or if anyone can
> propose an alternative translation of the inscription, but I can't see
> one myself (unless there's a bloke called 'Celis').
>
> John Camp
>
>  
>
           
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ringingworld.co.uk/pipermail/bell-historians/attachments/20070415/f49910fd/attachment.html>