THOMAS AQUINAS INVENTED the LIMERICK

A. N. Wilkins:

Among those identified by the ingenious as authors of prelimericks are Aristophanes, Robert Herrick and Shakespeare. Surely, though, the person whom one would least expect to find in this brotherhood is St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, the Universal Doctor, the official philosopher of the Catholic Church. His contribution occurs, of all places, in the Breviary. Since the particular item is a prayer of thanksgiving to be recited by a priest after Mass, it is not surprising that the fan of the limerick who identified it was Msgr. Ronald A. Knox. He called attention to it in a review of Langford Reed’s The Complete Limerick Book published in English Life, February 1925:

Sit vitiorum meorum evacuatio
Concupiscentae et libidinis exterminatio,
Caritatis et patientiae,
Humilitatis et obedientiae,
Omniumque virtutum augmentatio.
Seeing such lurid words as concupiscentiae and libidinis, one longs for a translation... Ms. Irene Blase, who taught Latin at the high school I attended more than 40 years ago, provides the following:

Let it be for the elimination for my sins,
For the expulsion of desire and lust,
And for the increase of charity and patience,
Humility and obedience,
As well as all the virtues.
Thus, even if St. Thomas wrote what six or seven centuries later would be called a limerick and though he used words like desire and lust, he didn’t tarnish his halo.

Proposed rhymed translations by R. J. Winkler:

Extinguish concupiscent fires,
Eliminate lustful desires;
Give patience and love,
A plentitude of
What humble obeying requires.

O strengthen my efforts to rule
My passions and help me to cool
Attractions to sin,
Then help me begin
Considering virtue a jewel.

Oh Lord, I can prove intellectual,
A Doctor, profoundly effectual,
Whose teachings are sure
If Thou keepest me pure
With thoughts that are wholly asexual.