Quite unexpectedly, Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas brought me back to my time years ago studying with the much-beloved papal Latinist Reginald Foster.
Much of Magnifica Humanitas explicitly hearkens back to Leo XIII’s seminal social encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), including its use of the Latin phrase res novae to introduce the “new things” to which current generations must respond (4, 17).
However, as Reginald Foster used to teach, this Latin phrase res novae is not just literally “new things,” but also a euphemism meaning “revolution.” This usage is mentioned under the dictionary entries for both res and novus, –a, –um in Foster’s recommended Latin dictionary of Lewis and Short, with the latter entry even specifying that “in gen[eral], novae res signifies political innovations, a revolution” (italics added).
Foster also used to assess good “Latinity” in the present day by looking to Classical examples like those collected under the dictionary entries of Lewis and Short. Among the passages quoted there, perhaps the clearest use of this euphemism is seen in Cicero’s Catilinarian Orations (1.1.3):
Q. Servilius Ahala Sp. Maelium novis rebus studentem manu sua occidit…
“Caius Servilius Ahala with his own hand slew Spurius Maelius when plotting a revolution…”
Interestingly, this common euphemism res novae carries through to Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, which Foster even said could be properly translated as “Of Revolution,” if I remember correctly. In that encyclical, a document search of the Latin turns up two uses of the phrase. Each time, the English translation on the Vatican website employs the defensible translation “revolutionary change,” in those larger passages that look back to the Age of Revolutions and that describe the then-current threat of militant labor agitators, respectively (1, 38):
Rerum novarum semel excitata cupidine, quae diu quidem commovet civitates, illud erat consecuturum ut commutationum studia a rationibus politicis in oeconomicarum cognatum genus aliquando defluerent.
“That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising.”
…verum tamen non pauci numerantur pravis imbuti opinionibus rerumque novarum cupidi, quid id agunt omni ratione ut turbas moveant, ac ceteros ad vim impellant.
“But there are not a few who are imbued with evil principles and eager for revolutionary change, whose main purpose is to stir up disorder and incite their fellows to acts of violence.”
Of course, the opening words of Rerum Novarum immediately starts talking about other social manifestations of this broader spirit of revolution, so Magnifica Humanitas’s transferred application of the Latin phrase res novae fits with this way of speaking, sort of like how some talk today of the AI “revolution.” Still, however, even though the rote translation of novae res as “new things” is a common misunderstanding, and even though the Latin is tangential to the encyclical’s larger project, one nevertheless wishes that the sense of novae res as “revolution” would have been acknowledged at least once.
Pope Leo knows that languages matter. He is proficient in Spanish and has made sure to use it at important appearances, and he has reportedly studied German on DuoLingo. In this regard, Reginald Foster was a kind and open-minded person, and by no means any sort of traditionalist reactionary. Undoubtedly, he would have whole-heartedly endorsed the pontiff’s personal choices about language study, in addition to the larger project of Magnifica Humanitas.
However, just like he did with everyone, Reginald Foster would have also encouraged Pope Leo to study more Latin. He also probably would have welcomed if this Latin snag somehow spurred Pope Leo to validate and encourage the broader study of languages of Christian history, whether as part of a healthy humanistic curiosity or even a lifelong calling.
This validation and encouragement could be through a visit to a classroom of school children learning Latin or to a university seminar studying Augustine’s Confessions or City of God in the original. It could be through a reception of relevant specialists from the Pontifical Biblical Institute or the Pontifical Oriental Institute or their equivalents from other corners of the Christian and secular world, like those scholars in Münster and Göttingen who work on the text of the New Testament and the Septuagint. It could even be through further modelling healthy uses of technological advances. The Vatican library is already digitizing its manuscript holdings. Perhaps Pope Leo should start an initiative to make all scholarship by the Vatican #OpenAccess, alongside the implementation of at-cost print-on-demand for very important works. Although many do not realize it, even core reference grammars like Elmar Edel’s two-volume Altägyptische Grammatik (1955, 1964) can be very difficult to access. Many scholars would gladly get any e-copies and hard copies made available, especially those from countries with newer and less-resourced universities and library systems. In this sense, digitally liberating these properties would exemplify purposeful use of the internet to redress economic inequality and forge a more global community, at least in the world of higher learning.
At this time of great change, Pope Leo of course has more important priorities from among all the many things that demand his time and attention. But yet, in his spare moments, one can only hope that he somehow finds time for addressing these (should we say) desiderata.
Image: A Latin inscription in a Jesuit school in Istanbul. From Wikimedia Commons.
David Mihalyfy received his Ph.D. in the History of Christianity from the University of Chicago Divinity School. His writing on New Religious Movements (popularly known as “cults”) has appeared in venues like the Atlantic Monthly online and the scholarly journal Nova Religio.
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