a stanza touches on the reason why the Creator thus became creature. It would be impossible to render its feeling in English, and much circumlocution would be needed to express even its literal meaning in any language but mediaeval Latin. This stanza has twelve lines:
"Causam quaeris, modum rei:
Causa prius omnes rei,
Modus justum velle Dei,
Sed conditum gratia."
"Thou askest cause and modus of the fact: the causa rei was before all, the modus was God's righteous willing, but seasoned with grace."
These lines are scholastic. In the next four, the feeling begins to rise, yet the phrases repel rather than attract us:
"O quam dulce condimentum
Nobis mutans in pigmentum,
Cum aceto fel cruentum
Degustante Messya!"
"Oh! how sweet the condiment changing for us into juice, as the Messiah tastes the bloody gall and vinegar."
The feeling touches its climax with the four concluding lines, in which the parable of the Good Samaritan is invested with the special allegorical significance set forth in the sermon of Honorius:[1]
"O salubre sacramentum,
Quod nos ponit in jumentum
Plagis nostris dans unguentum
Ille de Samaria."
"O health-giving sacrament which sets us on a beast, giving ointment for our stripes,—he of Samaria."[2]
Two stanzas from another of Adam's Christmas hymns
- ↑ Ante, Chapter XXVII.
- ↑ In these closing lines the "salubre sacramentum" is in apposition to "Ille de Samaria"—i.e. the "sacramentum" is the Saviour, who is also typified by the Good Samaritan. In another hymn for Christmas, Adam speaks of the concurrence in one persona of Word, flesh, and spirit, and then uses the phrase "Tantae rei sacramentum" (Gautier, o.c. p. 5). Here the sacramentum designates the visible human person of Christ, which was the life-giving signum or symbol of so great a marvel (tantae rei) as the Incarnation. Adam has Hugo's teaching in mind, and the full significance of his phrase will appear by taking it in connection with Hugo's definition of the Sacrament, ante, Chapter XXVIII.
