(09-03-2020, 12:21 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've been thinking about the syntactic possibilities for this sentence. It smells of second person, someone being addressed (...dabas, maybe portas, te).
So the N in these charms, I guess will usually be a name of someone talked about on the third person? Like the object or subject of the sentence? Or might it be the same person who is being addressed in the second person? Is there some type of sentence we are more likely to expect?
Hi Koen,
I can think of two major classes for "N texts", but maybe there are more. [BTW, could M be corrected into N in the thread title?]
1. An "invocation", like the one in Anton's first post, or those (English and Latin) discussed You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view.. In this case, the invocation is addressed to a non-human entity (e.g. fever, Saturn of Christ) expressed in the second person. N is the object of the invoked intervention and corresponds to the third person.
2. A "recipe": here it is the officiant who is expressed in the second person. The role of N is identical to the previous case. The Florentine charm discussed You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. is an example of a "recipe" (it actually begins with the imperative "Recipe"). By this I only mean that it describes steps to be taken, not that it is less magical or more scientific than an invocation.
In both cases, the second person is used in a mix of imperative and subjunctive sentences: I think this is the type of sentence that one can expect. The Florentine recipe features imperatives like
recipe, accipe, scribe, pone and subjunctives like
habeas, ponas, caveas. In all the examples discussed in this thread, the N-text is preceded by a Latin title / usage indication.
I am afraid that the sentences in 116v will only be readable if someone finds a close and less corrupted parallel. If such a parallel does not exist, I don't believe the meaning (if any) is recoverable (but meaningless pseudo-Latin in charms appears elsewhere). Helmut suggested that "cere"(?) in line 2 could be "tere", which indeed is an imperative that often appears in recipes, but the four consecutive -x words in line 3 are quite suggestive of meaningless pseudo-Latin.
Thanks, Marco! You are right that our only hope is probably to find a similar sentence elsewhere. Still I must say that through threads like these, I have gained more confidence that these marginalia correspond to some medieval practice. We can strongly suspect that the first line is some invocation or instruction where a person's name was to be inserted. That's more firm footing than we had before, as far as I'm concerned.
I also think that for the first line, we might still learn more by focusing on grammar and syntax. For example, if "dabas" is the Latin tense it appears to be, then it's a second person but not an imperative. But I don't quite see how to fit the perfect tense into this. Unless it's some kind of future tense. Or no verb at all..
(09-03-2020, 12:21 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've been thinking about the syntactic possibilities for this sentence. It smells of second person, someone being addressed (...dabas, maybe portas, te).
So the N in these charms, I guess will usually be a name of someone talked about on the third person? Like the object or subject of the sentence? Or might it be the same person who is being addressed in the second person? Is there some type of sentence we are more likely to expect?
I suggested one possible construction in You are not allowed to view links.
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In such construction, the invocation is to anchiton, while M still stands for some person (Alexander? Christ? Can "M" be a shortcut for "Alexander Magnus"?)
The stuff between "anchiton" and "te" then exists on its own and should somehow relate to anchiton, e.g. "anchiton [tu] ola dabas multos"
Since this thread, I'm putting all my confidence in the "N" representing "fill in name here". It's just too good of a fit in what seems like an invocation-like context.
The first line seems like it could have some coherence, while the second devolves into magic speak. Looking at the crosses, at least "anchiton oldabas" seems to have been a word group, all other individual words are between two crosses. Apart from "fix" on the second line, maybe suggesting that indeed both lines belong together.
(09-03-2020, 06:37 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thanks, Marco! You are right that our only hope is probably to find a similar sentence elsewhere. Still I must say that through threads like these, I have gained more confidence that these marginalia correspond to some medieval practice. We can strongly suspect that the first line is some invocation or instruction where a person's name was to be inserted. That's more firm footing than we had before, as far as I'm concerned.
I also think that for the first line, we might still learn more by focusing on grammar and syntax. For example, if "dabas" is the Latin tense it appears to be, then it's a second person but not an imperative. But I don't quite see how to fit the perfect tense into this. Unless it's some kind of future tense. Or no verb at all..
If this of some help: dabas is second person imperfect of do, dedi, datum dare, to give imperfect dabam, dabas, dabat, dabamus, dabatis, dabant,
(09-03-2020, 09:37 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."anchiton oldabas" seems to have been a word group
Yes, that's a valid point, although it's not clear why exactly it is (it's the only "word group" in the whole set, provided "tartere/carcere" is a single word). I've long been thinking that's because it's an anagrammed rendering of something.
(09-03-2020, 09:57 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If this of some help: dabas is second person imperfect of do, dedi, datum dare, to give imperfect dabam, dabas, dabat, dabamus, dabatis, dabant,
And with "ola" as "gift" or "offering" (discussed somewhere in the depths of You are not allowed to view links.
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with 2nd person, it's anchiton who's being addressed or invoked
"anchiton, [you] give many offerings"
I'm not sure if there's much sense in that though
What was the root form of "ola" as "offering" again?
Anyway as Helmut says we are looking at an imperfectum so "Anchiton you gave ola".
Let's approach it the other way around.
Suppose the "M/N" is where the spell-caster is to fill their name. The result that is expected is that the person N shall have some positive output from the spell being cast. That output would be defined in the form of request.
Like, "cure N from something" or "help N to do something", etc.
The "request" would not be far from its object, the N, in the sentence. It would be adjacent.
Let's answer the following questions:
a) in Latin (since it's all closer to Latin than to another language), would the request be expressed before or after the word N?
b) us having located the "request-candidate" words, what could they express in the context of a request? Like, take "fix", or maybe fix[it], does that make sense in medical, religious or other appropriate contexts? There are not that many possible contexts. One is wishing to be:
healthy
wealthy
wise
young
beautiful
and his enemies and competitors to be all to the contrary.
That's your spell in a nutshell.
(09-03-2020, 10:10 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What was the root form of "ola" as "offering" again?
Need to dig the thread, that was
Searcher's finding.
EDIT: You are not allowed to view links.
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(09-03-2020, 10:10 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Anyway as Helmut says we are looking at an imperfectum so "Anchiton you gave ola".
Yes, correct.