You Fail at Latin

The other day, my mother, who works in our church's office, emailed me for some help with a Latin translation. There's a song in Latin being sung on Sunday, and she needed a translation to print in the worship folder. The text was Panis Angelicus:

Panis angelicus
Fit panis hominum;
Dat panis coelicus
Figures terminum;
O res mirabilis!
Manducat Dominum
Pauper, pauper
Servus et humilis.

I found a lot of sloppy translations. As a general rule, I hate English translations of Latin hymns. Oftentimes, liberties will be taken with word mean. For example, a number of translations take "panis angelicus" as "the bread of heaven," when the word for heaven is nowhere to be found in the text. Also, "coelicus" is translated as "heaven," when in reality it means "inhabitants of heaven." Clearly, this text is referring to heavenly beings, not merely heaven as a place. Furthermore, the phrase "dat figures terminum" is translated as "puts an end to symbols," which, for one thing, sounds really awkward. But I think there's some context that is missing. Number one thing I remember from Dr. Heckel's Latin I class: Context is king. "Figures" can also be translated as "forms." Ah, forms! Plato! The allegory of the cave! This is a foundational term in classical philosophy. In this context, Christ is the fulfillment of the prophets, the covenant, and, indeed, all creation. Earthly forms. The one redeeming factor in all of the translations I found is their treatment of "O res mirabilis." Well, thank God for that, I'd have been really worried, otherwise. O wonderful thing! Not too complicated. But now we run into some basic adjective/noun agreement issues. The next three lines are one sentence: "Pauper servus et humilis Dominum manducat." Pauper is the subject, servus and humilis are its modifying adjectives, Dominum is an accusative direct object, manducat is a verb, third person singular. For some ridiculous reason, somebody thought it would be proper to connect the adjectives with Dominum, like so: "The Lord becomes our food, poor, a servant, and humble." Now, although all of those adjectives can be used to describe our lord and saviour, and it might sound good in English, it is very, very bad Latin, given that both the adjectives are nominative, and Dominum is quite obviously accusative. Grrr. The intent of this text is to show that everyone, even the poor and humble, are able to partake of the Lord's body, the bread of angels, at the table. THAT is the wonderful thing mention earlier in the passage! So, after all that, here's my treatment of the passage.

The bread of angels
Becomes the bread of men;
The bread of the children of heaven
Gives an end to [earthly] forms.
O wonderful thing!
The poor man, the poor man,
Humble and servile,
Partakes of the Lord.

Latin nerd, away! *whoosh*