Posted on 10/31/2011 11:49:08 AM PDT by marshmallow
A British historian's nomination for the most important document ever issued by a pope.
When Eamon Duffy mentioned “the most important document ever issued by a pope”, I thought it was about time I found out what it said.
Professor Duffy, who in 1992 changed the way we looked at Christian life at the eve of the Reformation in The Stripping of the Altars, in 2007 broadcast an engaging series on Radio 4 called Ten Popes Who Shook the World. Now it is in book form (Yale, £14.99), and very well it reads.
The “important document” was written by one of his world-shaking popes, Leo the Great, who was born about 391 and reigned from 440 to 461. So on November 10 we shall be celebrating his 1550th anniversary. It’s also the 1540th anniversary of the Council of Chalcedon, at which Christians from East and West came to a less confusing formulation of what they believed about Jesus. Without Leo, the council could hardly have brought the clarity it did to the creed that Anglican and Catholics still recite Sunday by Sunday.
The document Professor Duffy cites was nicknamed the Tome of Leo, but it is a blessedly untomelike tome, since it fits on four sides of A4 paper. “A brilliant distillation of the no-nonsense conservatism of Latin Christianity,” says Professor Duffy, “the Tome restated the paradoxes of the New Testament in starkly simple yet eloquent language.”
Indeed, Leo takes to task a monk called Eutyches for not paying attention to the Bible but making up his own version of what to believe about Jesus. Every ordinary Christian believed that Jesus was God and a man, but how did the two things relate? Leo blames Eutyches for not following the basic words of the creed, “and what is uttered all the........
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
My question is why say that instead of 'it reads very well'? It just seems so awkward and obtuse. I am interested in your thoughts or guidance.
“’...very well it reads’
‘It just seems so awkward and obtuse’”
Are you calling Yoda obtuse? Because he was the wisest thing in the universe. He could be awkward, I admit, but I think that was on purpose.
Actually, it's passive-speak which is often employed by the British for use in maintaining an understated tone. Not used as much in the US because we're impetuous, arrogant Yanks.
Yoda he is.
Hell yeah! And rebs too!
Interesting. I thought it made the phrase more emphatic, but then something novel gets noticed.
I thought this was going to be a thread about Leo Durocher.
Passive and understated, indeed. LOL
And he was born on the Marine Corps birthday.
It’s a hat trick for me, by gum!
They have a little trouble with arithmetic--the Council of Chalcedon was 10 years earlier, in 451, so this year is not 1540 years since the council.
ping
Born, died. At least he chose a most propitious date.
Hmmmmm. That didn’t sound very understated, did it?
Thanks for the update.
Well, if it’s Yodaspeak, then
My mouth to shut it must.
St. Leo still remains controversial in relations with the Oriental Orthodox.
“I thought it made the phrase more emphatic, but then something novel gets noticed.”
Yes, but you can’t base your style on novelty, as eventually you’ll fall into the sort of sub-English used by advertisers, where syntax is indecipherable, distinctions between parts of speech vanish, and worst of all I get really, really annoyed.
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