Hi! Welcome to “Dusty Phrases.” You will find below an ancient phrase in one language or another, along with its English translation. You may also find the power to inspire your friends or provoke dread among your enemies.
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Latin:
Media vita in morte sumus
English:
In the midst of life we are in death
This line is over a thousand years old, currently part of the Anglican Book of Common prayer. Originally, the phrase was part of a Gregorian Chant. From wiki:
Media vita in morte sumus (Latin for “In the midst of life we are in death”) is a Gregorian chant, known by its incipit, written in the form of a response, and known as “Antiphona pro Peccatis” or “de Morte”. The most accepted source is a New Year’s Eve religious service in the 1300s. Reference has been made to a source originating in a battle song of the year 912 by Notker the Stammerer, a monk of the Abbey of Saint Gall: however, the Synod of Cologne declared in 1316 no one should sing this without prior permission of the residing bishop.
Text
Media vita in morte sumus
quem quaerimus adjutorem
nisi te, Domine,
qui pro peccatis nostris
juste irasceris?
Sancte Deus,
sancte fortis,
sancte et misericors Salvator:
amarae morti ne tradas nos.___________________________________
The English translation is a poetic adaption from the Book of Common Prayer.
In the midst of life we are in death
of whom may we seek for succour,
but of thee, O Lord,
who for our sins
art justly displeased?
Holy God,
Holy mighty,
Holy and merciful Saviour,
deliver us not unto bitter death.Latin liturgical use
In the York Breviary “Media vita” was sung as an antiphon at Compline on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare. In the Sarum Breviary it was the antiphon from the Third (Oculi) to the Fifth (Judica) Sundays of Lent, a position it also occupies (in reduced format) in the Dominican Rite.
In addition to its uses in the liturgy, “Media vita” was sung as a hymn to ask God for aid in times of public need, and sometimes even as a sort of curse. In 1455 a group of nuns in Wennigsen, resisting the attempt of the Augustinian canon Johannes Busch and Duke William of Brunswick to reform their house, “lay down on their bellies in the choir with the arms and legs stretched out in the form of a cross, and bawled all through, at the top of their voices, the anthem “In the midst of life we are in death” … Wherefore the Duke was afraid, and feared lest his whole land should go to ruin.” Busch assured the Duke that no harm could come from the chant, so he responded to the nuns: “How were ye not afraid to sing the anthem “Media vita” over me? I stretch my fingers to God’s holy gospels, and swear that ye must reform yourselves, or I will not suffer you in my land.”
In the Ambrosian Rite, “Media vita” was said with the Litany of the Saints on the Tuesday before Christmas, the Wednesday before Palm Sunday, and the Greater Rogation on 25 April.
English
The Latin phrase was translated by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, whose English-language version became part of the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer’s contemporary and fellow Anglican bishop Miles Coverdale wrote a poetic rendering of Luther’s “Mytten wir ym leben synd”, beginning “In the myddest of our lyvynge.” Catherine Winkworth made another English version of “Mytten wir ym leben synd” in her Lyra Germanica: Hymns for the Sundays and Chief Festivals of the Christian Year, beginning “In the midst of life, behold.”
The lines, sung in Gregorian Chant, is enough to give goosebumps.
