In Monstrum Vocabuli Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria (Epigr. III)
The Vanity of Novelty
The author mocks the Puritan obsession with inventing new terminology and discarding the wisdom of the past.
What a fine fellow you are! With what a clever name you invent these Anti-Tami-Cami-Categories! The Puritans only like what's new; things and words are being made over: whatever tastes of the past lies there like something rotten. Why shouldn't we be allowed to hammer out some words of our own? The workshop for inventing them isn't open only to you.
A Counter-Measure of Wit
The author adopts the opponent's own style of wordplay to expose their disruptive and irreverent behavior.
When your fury disturbs all sacred things, this writing will be an Anti-furi-Puri-Category. Or when you condemn the royal washbasin at the altar, it's an Anti-pelvi-Melvi-Category.
Read the original Latin
O quam bellus homo es! lepido quam nomine fingis Istas Anti-Tami-Cami-Categorias! Sic Catharis nova sola placent; res, verba novantur: Quae sapiunt aevum, ceu cariosa jacent. Quin liceat nobis aliquas procudere voces: Non tibi fingendi sola taberna patet. Cum sacra perturbet vester furor omnia, scriptum Hoc erit, Anti-furi-Puri-Categoria. Pollubra vel cum olim damnaris Regia in ara, Est Anti-pelvi-Melvi-Categoria.
The Latin Poems companion
Read all 57 of Herbert's Latin poems, one a day
Chosen Portion delivers a Herbert poem (or another royal-court devotional text) as your free daily reading on iOS
Herbert's short poems were written for meditative re-reading; Chosen Portion serves one per day, turning the two collections into a two-month devotional cycle
- All 57 Latin poems in modern English, roughly two months of daily readings
- One short poem a day, readable in under 5 minutes
- Includes the full Sub Rosa archive of 78 historic devotional works