Follow-Up: Papal Arms

Official versions of the Papal coat of arms of Pope Francis have now been released. I note they’ve retained the weird “triple mitre” from the arms of Pope Benedict XVI.

There’s been a minor kerfuffle about how to translate the motto, with the Vatican spokesman offering a version that was clearly not well thought out.

When you need your Latin, you need to head over to the expert:

What we have here is a fairly straight forward use of ablative gerunds. The ablative conveys the manner or even instrumental dimension of what is being done. We ask, when reading about what Christ did, “How did Jesus come to pick Matthew?” He called Matthew by a) having compassion and b) by making a decision.

So the new Bishop Bergoglio, back in the day, chose a motto to describe how he would go about being a bishop: he would be a bishop by showing compassion and by making decisions… miserando atque eligendo. He was probably thinking about how he felt himself to have been selected by God to follow Him: because God was merciful to Him and because God selected Him. Thus, as a bishop, He would do the same: show mercy and make choices.

A good motto for a reformer.

“By showing compassion and by choosing”. Nice.

For the record, I’d never heard of an ablative gerund until this morning.