Theatine Echoes, June 2020, #2
We also have the pleasure of anticipating the work that Fr. Vincenzo Cosenza, C.R., a mythical Calabrian theatine, with a pronounced whiteness and a frank smile, is preparing to publish. It is a new translation of Il Combattimento Spirituale, by our Lorenzo Scupoli. Undoubtedly, the version that Fr. Vincenzo has produced and whose copy in Microsoft Word we have received, seeks to recover the colors of the Scupolian language in tune with the use of our time. Of course, without losing its essence, aged and proverbially famous. We share the presentation that Fr. Vincenzo himself has thought for his text:
PREMISE
There are masterpieces that lie in museums or libraries and that are the object of admiration, only for “insiders”, for a few close friends, capable of “reading” their history, their time, their message.
The spiritual combat of Father Lorenzo Scupoli risks entering the number of those books of the past or those rare pieces of antiques that are “untouchable” and “illegible” for the new generations.
Personally, I consider Scupoli’s masterpiece to be a highly topical book, a book that digs deep into man and calls for its best potential; however, it must be given the opportunity to “speak”.
My intent is precisely this: to give the book of the illustrious Theatine a language suitable for our times. I do not share the idea of ??those who would like to crystallize the book in the form and style of the time in which it was born and which remained as it came out of the author’s pen. Apart from the fact that the book has been “revised” and “transcribed” several times, but for those who love the original, there is always the possibility of finding the 1600 text in libraries or archives to read and enjoy the lexicon weather. I seem to defraud today’s reader by depriving him of the understanding and taste of this text of spirituality, by giving him a difficult and contrary work to a new language to read. First of all understanding.
In order for two people to understand each other, they need to speak the same language: P. Lorenzo Scupoli speaks the language of the late 1500s, early 1600s, but the “doctrine”, as the same says, addressing Christ, “is all your doctrine” and the “doctrine” of Christ has no time. And yet, the Gospel, the Word of God, the Book of books, we translate it into language, legible, understandable. Is this a “sin”?
Reading the pages of this Spiritual Fight, I hope you will absolve me.
The edition to which I will be inspired will be that of the Typographical Establishment of A. Festa – Naples, edited by Don Carlo Di Palma, CR (1852). I will also insert the premise that Di Palma drew from some “Letters of St. Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva”.
Father Vincenzo Cosenza, C.R.
Translation editor
