Preces Quotidianae
Rescue Your Soul
An urgent call to examine one's conscience and practice penance to form a perfect habit of virtue.
(that is, ) Look: any hope of fruit and of salvation will prove false for itself forever, unless you rescue your soul even this very night.1 And if an examination of this kind is done for several days, or at least for one month (with penance), it will be enough so that2 a perfect habit of virtue may be formed.
The Ancient Hymn and Its Sources
Notes on the morning and evening hymns, referencing ancient manuscripts and scholarly sources.
The hymn follows. Morning, in use.3 Of the most ancient in the Church; see the manuscript.4 In the Alexandrian codex of the Royal Library.5 There is also added: The evening one, because it is ancient. On both, Hev. is to be consulted.6 Ussher, pp.7 41, 45. Book8 On the Symbols.9
Read the original Latin
(i. e.) Eece spes fructus et salutis falsa sibi erit in seternum, nisi animam tuam etiam hac nocte eripueris. Et hujusmodi examen si per aliquot dies aut unum saltem mensem fiat (cum poenitentia), sufficiet ut
perfectus virtutis habitus generetur.
Sequitur Hymnus. Matutinus, usus. antiquissimi in Ecclesia, ev MS. Alexandrino Bibliothece Regie. | Accedit et. Vespertinus, quia vetus. De uiroque consulendus est Hev. Usserius, pp.
41, 45. Lib. de Symbolis.
Notes
- 1 ↩Normalized 'Eece' as Ecce and 'seternum' as aeternum (in aeternum).
- 2 ↩Sentence is incomplete by design: 'ut' continues in the next section ('perfectus virtutis habitus generetur').
- 3 ↩Telegraphic rubric: Matutinus likely marks the morning/Matins hymn; usus likely means liturgical use/custom. Expanded sense: 'the morning hymn, in customary use.'
- 4 ↩Abbreviation ev MS is opaque in the supplied text; rendered as a manuscript reference (MS). Alternatives include e v. MS / ex MS / e vetere MS.
- 5 ↩Bibliothece Regie = Bibliothecae Regiae (Royal Library), early-modern orthography with ae written as e. Alexandrino taken as ablative of place/source.
- 6 ↩uiroque normalized as utroque ('both'); Hev. left as the source's abbreviated authority (identity unresolved).
- 7 ↩Usserius = James Ussher; pp. left as the pagination abbreviation (pages), with numbers continuing in the next section.
- 8 ↩Lib. expands as Liber (Book); standard scholarly abbreviation in the surrounding citation apparatus.
- 9 ↩Symbolis: in this scholarly context, 'Symbols' means creeds (symbola fidei); rendered to preserve the treatise title sense rather than a modern generic 'symbols.'
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