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Cupio dissolvi
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Cupio dissolvi
Cupio dissolvi is a Latin locution used in translations prior to the Vulgate of the Paul's epistle to Philippians 1:23–4. The phrase, literally meaning "I wish to be dissolved", expresses the Christian desire to leave the earthly life and join Christ in eternal life. It has played an important role in discussions on the topic of suicide from the Middle Ages to the early Modern period. Over time, however, especially where national idioms derive from Romance languages, the phrase has acquired more secular and profane meanings and uses, expressing such concepts as the rejection of existence and the masochistic desire for self-destruction.
Συνέχομαι δὲ ἐκ τῶν δύο, τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἔχων εἰς τὸ ἀναλῦσαι καὶ σὺν χριστῷ εἴναι, πολλῷ μᾶλλον κρεῖσσον· τὸ δὲ ἐπιμένειν ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ ἀναγκαιότερον δι' ὑμᾶς.
Synechomai de ek tōn dyo, tēn epithymian echōn eis to analysai kai syn Christō einai, pollō gar mallon kreisson to de epimenein tē sarki anankaioteron di' hymas.
Coartor autem e duobus desiderium habens dissolvi et cum Christo esse multo magis melius / permanere autem in carne magis necessarium est propter vos.
The Douay–Rheims Bible translates:
But I am straitened between two: having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, a thing by far the better. But to abide still in the flesh, is needful for you.
The phrase occurs in one of Paul's ecstasies, the loosening of the soul from the body being a prerequisite to joining Christ. A traditional use is found, for instance, in The Seven Modes of Sacred Love, by Brabantian mystic Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268): a complete release of the soul into eternal love. A similar use is found in a twelfth-century Old English homily on St. James from Trinity College, Cambridge, MS.B.14.52: "Hateful to me is this earthly life, and I long for Christ".
For medieval theologians, the concept was unproblematic; Rabanus Maurus (780-856) clarifies that this desire is an example of an acceptable cupiditas or greed. Not until the eleventh century is a note of warning struck, by Peter Lombard (1096–1164): it does not mean that one should only tolerate earthly life instead of loving it, suggesting that the locution had been read to mean that hastening one's end is preferable over living out one's life (as a notion deriving from Seneca, for instance), a misreading offered in Hildebert's Querimonia.
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Cupio dissolvi
Cupio dissolvi is a Latin locution used in translations prior to the Vulgate of the Paul's epistle to Philippians 1:23–4. The phrase, literally meaning "I wish to be dissolved", expresses the Christian desire to leave the earthly life and join Christ in eternal life. It has played an important role in discussions on the topic of suicide from the Middle Ages to the early Modern period. Over time, however, especially where national idioms derive from Romance languages, the phrase has acquired more secular and profane meanings and uses, expressing such concepts as the rejection of existence and the masochistic desire for self-destruction.
Συνέχομαι δὲ ἐκ τῶν δύο, τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἔχων εἰς τὸ ἀναλῦσαι καὶ σὺν χριστῷ εἴναι, πολλῷ μᾶλλον κρεῖσσον· τὸ δὲ ἐπιμένειν ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ ἀναγκαιότερον δι' ὑμᾶς.
Synechomai de ek tōn dyo, tēn epithymian echōn eis to analysai kai syn Christō einai, pollō gar mallon kreisson to de epimenein tē sarki anankaioteron di' hymas.
Coartor autem e duobus desiderium habens dissolvi et cum Christo esse multo magis melius / permanere autem in carne magis necessarium est propter vos.
The Douay–Rheims Bible translates:
But I am straitened between two: having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, a thing by far the better. But to abide still in the flesh, is needful for you.
The phrase occurs in one of Paul's ecstasies, the loosening of the soul from the body being a prerequisite to joining Christ. A traditional use is found, for instance, in The Seven Modes of Sacred Love, by Brabantian mystic Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268): a complete release of the soul into eternal love. A similar use is found in a twelfth-century Old English homily on St. James from Trinity College, Cambridge, MS.B.14.52: "Hateful to me is this earthly life, and I long for Christ".
For medieval theologians, the concept was unproblematic; Rabanus Maurus (780-856) clarifies that this desire is an example of an acceptable cupiditas or greed. Not until the eleventh century is a note of warning struck, by Peter Lombard (1096–1164): it does not mean that one should only tolerate earthly life instead of loving it, suggesting that the locution had been read to mean that hastening one's end is preferable over living out one's life (as a notion deriving from Seneca, for instance), a misreading offered in Hildebert's Querimonia.
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