Causam Prose Dicet Apud Deum

Cracking the Code of Spy Movies Channel

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Mar 6, 2021, 1:57:20 PM3/6/21

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I saw this phrase on a wall in the movie Thunderball. I'm trying to determine it's meaning and am struggling. I get the last three words are something akin to "say with God" but the Causam and Prose throw me off when I got to the online translators.

Can someone help me out here?

A.T. Murray

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Mar 6, 2021, 9:05:53 PM3/6/21

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On Saturday, March 6, 2021 at 10:57:20 AM UTC-8, Cracking the Code of Spy Movies Channel wrote:
> I saw this phrase on a wall in the movie Thunderball. I'm trying to determine it's meaning and am struggling. I get the last three words are something akin to "say with God" but the Causam and Prose throw me off when I got to the online translators.
>
> Can someone help me out here?

I think it means, "He will argue his case before God." My reasoning follows.

The Latin word "causa" means a legal case. In English, when the U.S. attorney general "recuses" himself, it means that he removes himself from a case, usually because of a conflict of interest.

The word "dicet" is the future tense for "he will say."

The expression "apud Deum" is like "chez Dieu" in French, or "in the company of God."

Your post reminds me of when the James Bond film "Thunderball" came out and I went downtown all by myself to see it at a theater. (Oh, weird! As I write this message, the TV Golden Oldies channel is playing the music from the James Bond movie "Goldfinger.") I was almost alone in the audience on a weekday night, and the manager of the theater turned out to be the brother of my great college romance, code-named "Kommissarin" because I met her in my Russian class, and she was like a Soviet commissar. After the movie, the manager in the lobby helped me find the correct exit, and I was sure that he would file a report on me that I was so hard up for thrills in life that I went all by myself to see a James Bond movie. And now Sean Connery has died, and John le Carre has died, so what do we have left?
Years later, a friend told me that "Q" in the James Bond movies stands for "Quartermaster." the person who supplies all the fancy weapons and doodads. Nunc satis feci verborum. ("I've said enough.")

Ed Cryer

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Mar 7, 2021, 4:32:26 AM3/7/21

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One last point.
Pro se = on his own behalf

God bless John le Carre. I’ve just read two of his books under lockdown.
Quite brilliant! I should have read him earlier.

--
Ed

Btraven

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Mar 7, 2021, 3:55:28 PM3/7/21

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Edus Americanus (B. T. Raven) Edo Britanno sal.:

"Nostrum quisque causam pro se dicet apud Deum" can be found at bottom of page 120 in Castellione's _De haereticis, an sint persequendi, et omnino quomodo sit cum eis agendum...

https://books.google.com/books?id=wH5kAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=nostrum+quisque+causam+pro+se+dicet+apud+deum&source=bl&ots=MTU_oi80Hu&sig=ACfU3U04BCkHilBBFOn6xQeSvnCUrHkvNg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiR9rWNgZ_vAhXZHc0KHSkvCC4Q6AEwA3oECA8QAw#v=onepage&q=nostrum%20quisque%20causam%20pro%20se%20dicet%20apud%20deum&f=false

_ Castellione was the one who translated the whole Bible (directly from Hebrew and Greek) into what was considered then to be a more classical flavor of Latin that what Jerome had used.
Also, he was the one Erasmus chose to finish some of his works if Erasmus himself were unable to do it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Castellio

Btw, are you able to search alt.language.latin's archives? Do they still exist? I see that the search conversations function on google groups goes all the way back to 1800 even though few emails were being written at that time. I tried to find out from Arthur (Andrew?) Murray if he remembered the origin of his nick, Mentifex. I thought I had suggested that to him but I could be mistaken.

vale

A.T. Murray

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Mar 7, 2021, 8:13:28 PM3/7/21

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On Sunday, March 7, 2021 at 12:55:28 PM UTC-8, Btraven wrote:
[...].

> I tried to find out from Arthur (Andrew?) Murray if he remembered the origin of his nick, Mentifex. I thought I had suggested that to him but I could be mistaken.

The origin of the nick Mentifex is from a book I found in the 1980s using the term "mentefact" as a thing made by a mind, suggesting to me the relationship between "artefact" and "artifex."

Valete,

Arthur

Ed Cryer

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Mar 8, 2021, 7:15:16 AM3/8/21

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Hello man. It's good to hear from you again. I was getting worried that
maybe this pestis universalis had taken you.
Evertjan, too. We haven't had him in here for some time.

I just love the non-PC in those book titles. To be honest, I had a damn
good laugh. They seem so far away; Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, to quote Aristophanes.
Damn the heretics; damn the small souls who can't see that God has three
persons in one!!
Ah, ah, ah!

Yes, I can still search alt.language.latin's archives. It's been years
since I last did so but I went to;
https://groups.google.com/my-groups
and did a search.

Vale et salve

Ed

Btraven

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Mar 8, 2021, 10:41:30 PM3/8/21

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Virus coroniferum me nondum cepit sed id aut aliud serius ocius interimet. Opus est patientia. Alius hospes huius fori fuit Ioannes Londiniensis (Avunculus) qui diu abhinc exemplar Latinum Corani praestinavit pro pretio redemptionis Crassi.

Cura ut valeas

Patricio

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Mar 11, 2021, 10:21:03 PM3/11/21

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Alludisne ad quandam historiam? Mihi ignota est.

--Patricio

> Cura ut valeas