Tag: translation

Another bit of medieval Latin today, this bit is from the Chronicon Johannis de Reading.

Postea, transiens per patrias latitudine XX miliarium omnia devastavit.

Again, let’s break it down.

Postea – adv.; afterwards

transiens (transeo, transire, transivii, transitus) – verb; go over, cross

per– acc. prep.; through, during, by, by means of

patrias – noun;  fatherland, country, nation

latitudine– noun; width, breadth, extent, latitude

XX – This is the number 20

miliarium – thousands OR a roman mile (1000 paces); another meaning for this is milestone

omnia – all, totally, completely

devastavit (devasto, devastare, devastavi, devastatus) – verb; devastate, lay waste (to a territory or people), ravage, slaughter

In this case, I’m taking transiens per as an accusative phrase, “crossing through.”

My translation of the phrase?

Afterwards, passing through our homeland he destroyed totally the breadth of twenty miles.

Now…this is probably a little hinky.  If you find it to be so, please let me know!  This one gave me some trouble and I’m still very rusty at this, but I find it to be good practice, at least!  Parsing phrases properly has always been hard for me…so are cases of words, to be honest.  In English, for some reason it’s very easy to construct language…probably because we lack endings the way Romance languages have.  The only case that’s really easy for me to remember is the genitive possessive!

The phrase of the day is another header out of a medieval source; this time from the Continuatio Chronicarum of Adam of Murimuth.  Are we sensing a theme here?  Oh, maybe.  I have a selection of Latin sources floating around my room and hard drive thanks to thesis research.

“Robertus le Bruys castrum Berwici cum villa acquisivit.”

Robertus le Bruys is a phonetic Latinization of “Robert the Bruce.”

castrum – noun; fort/fortress, camp (in its plural form), army, war service, a day’s march, a castle, fortress, fortified town

Berwici – noun; Berwick

cum – adv; with, together with

villa – noun; manor, house, farm/country estate, village

acquisivit (acquiro, acquiere, acquisivi, acquistus) – verb in its perfect active third person singular form; acquire, obtain, gain, get, add to stock, accrue

Robert the Bruce obtained the castle at Berwick with the village [at Berwick].

Strangely enough, this was hard to find in the text–almost everything was very long.

Stay tuned tomorrow!

This one was kind of a pain, I’ll admit.  You’ll see why.  It’s from the Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough.

Scoti inierunt fedus cum Rege Francorum

Scoti – noun, nom. plural; Scot, Scotsman

inierunt (ineo, inire, inivii, initus) – verb, third person perfect; enter, undertake, begin, go in, enter upon

fedus – noun, nom. singular; kid, young goat OR two stars in the Charioteer constellation – this a really strange and unusual word.

cum – adverb OR ablative preposition; with, together with OR jointly, uner the command of, at the head of, having, containing, inlcuding, by means of

Rege – this one is tricky.  It could either be a dative or ablative form of the noun rex, regis, which means King, or it could be the present active imperfect form of the verb rego, regere, rexi, rectus, which means to rule, guide, manage, or direct

Francorum – noun, gen. plural; the Franks, the French (though some will translate this as neoLatin “franc”)

The Scots enter upon….something to do with a goat?

Yeah, that doesn’t make sense.  The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the transcriber or the author himself made a mistake and the term that should be where fedus is is actually a form of foedus, foederis, which means “treaty, league, formal agreement OR, between states, Alliance, peace, amity.”

That would make a lot more sense, wouldn’t it?

That would mean the phrase is really

Scoti inierunt foedus cum Rege Francorum

Which would translate to

The Scots having entered upon an alliance with the King of the Franks

…yeah, there’s no really good translation for the past perfect into English sometimes.

And there you have it!  Stay tuned for more….

Today’s Latin phrase of the day is a fragment from a manuscript in the British Public Records Office (PRO E32/30, m. 14) found in Peter Coss’s 1994 article, “Knights, Esquires and the Origins of Social Gradation in England” from Transactions of the Royal Historical Society sixth series, Vol. 5, published in 1995 by the Royal Historical Society.

qui tunc fuit armiger eius et modo est miles

Let’s break this down.

qui – pronoun; who, that, which, what

tunc – adverb; then, thereupon, at that time

fuit (sum, esse, fui, futurus) – verb; to be, exist (this is the verb to be and gives students of Latin fits until they figure it out)

armiger – noun; armor bearer, squire

eius (also appears as ejus in some texts – is, ea, id)- they, them (this is he/she/it)

et – and, and even, also

modo – adverb; just now, recently, lately, presently, only, merely

est (sum, esse, fui, futurus) – verb; the verb to be again, this time in the third person singular form.

miles – noun; knight

My translation?  “who at that time had been squires and presently are knights.”

Whew!  I’m rusty at this…