Meaning of University Motto???
MG
My Dear Cantabs:
Does anyone know the meaning of the University Motto in Latin:
HINC LUCEM ET POCULA SACRA?
I found it is so hard to find a translation/meaning.
If you know it by accident, please reply to this account.
MG Chen
Andrew Loan
MG <mgc...@netcom.ca> wrote:
>Does anyone know the meaning of the University Motto in Latin:
>
>HINC LUCEM ET POCULA SACRA?
Well, you could have tried searching at somewhere like Altavista
<URL:http://www.altavista.digital.com/ > for these words. There really
is quite a lot of useful info on the WWW. The first reference I found
<URL:http://dta.med.harvard.edu/wai/cu.html>
translates this phrase as follows:
hinc lucem et pocula sacra
"From here (we receive) light and sacred libations."
which sounds about right from my limited knowledge of Latin.
[posted and mailed, 'cos I am a nice guy]
--
* Andy Loan, Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HA, UK *
* <al...@ast.cam.ac.uk> <http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~aloan/> +44 1223 337502 *
Tony Finch
In article <4q3dbi$587@theory0>, Andrew Loan <al...@ast.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> MG <mgc...@netcom.ca> wrote:
> >
> >Does anyone know the meaning of the University Motto in Latin:
> >
> >HINC LUCEM ET POCULA SACRA?
>
>
> which sounds about right from my limited knowledge of Latin.
Frank Stubbings says, in his excellent "Bedders, Bulldogs & Bedells: A
Cambridge Glossary":
(quote)
Emblem: An emblematic portrayal of Cambridge seems first to have been
used as a title-page device in a book (William Perkins, "A Golden
Chaine") produced in 1600 by the University Printer John Legate.
Cambridge is represented by a three-quarter-length nude female statue
with flowing breasts, supported on a square pedestal inscribed "Alma
Mater Cantabrigia" ('Cambridge our nursing mother'). She wears a
mural crown (traditional for personifications of cities) and holds in
her outstretches right hand a sun, and in her left a chalice into
which drops fall from heaven. Flanking the pedestal grow a pair of
small trees, perhaps to be read as the tree of life and the tree of
knowledge. The whole is surrounded by a border inscribed "Hinc lucem
et pocula sacra" -- 'Hence [we receive] light and sacred draughts'.
The mutually explanatory text and image obviously symbolise the
University as a source of intellectual and spiritual enlightenment and
sustenance. Such pictorial emblematic conceits, with a motto that
might or might not be a quotation, were much favoured in 17th century
England, and sometimes published with accompanying verses elaborating
the themes illustrated.
This device, with various modifications, has been used by the
Cambridge University Press, on and off, almost ever since John
Legate's day. Only from the 19th century do we sometimes find it
quite improperly combined with the University arms, and the Hinc lucem
text displayed on a scroll like a heraldic motto, which it is not.
The words are in metrical form the seond half of a Latin hexameter;
but attempts to trace its source in calssical of renaissance Latin
poets have had no success. It seems likely, therefore, that it was
composed ad hoc, as an integral part of the device for the printer's
use. The emblem is referred to in Michael Drayton's "Polyolbion"
(1622), where the poet, addressing his 'most beloved town' of
Cambridge, writes:
The woman's perfect shape still be thy embleme right,
Whose one hand holds a Cup, the other bears a Light.
The lady herself, free of her pedestal, stalks strong and tall by the
stream of "Granta flumen" in his acompanying pictorial map of the
county. A modern version (1904), carved in stone, can be seen above
the columned entrance to the Downing Site.
(unquote)
I thorougly recommend this book if you're at all interested in the
history and/or language of this University.
Tony.
--
"What it all amounts to is that english
is chiefly a matter of marksmanship."