‘The best job in the university’ was how the post of Oxford Public Orator was described to me by one of our Bedels, those good-humoured stave-bearing stalwarts who guide the most august university ceremonies.
He meant, of course, not the best-remunerated post but the one that brings its occupant the most fun. Academics in Britain are wise not to measure enjoyment by remuneration.
And fun it is, even when I’m pulled into apparent controversy, as recently happened over the question of ‘genders’ in our Latin ceremonies.
How, asked our senior management, could we address graduands and others in our degree ceremonies with up-to-date language that neither privileges the masculine with its nouns, pronouns and adjectives nor limits the necessary formulae to masculine and feminine, but equally includes non-binary supplicants?
And why not pay the same attention to other regular events such as the admission ceremonies for senior officers – Vice-Chancellor, Proctors and so on?
News of imminent tinkering with our old ceremonial language naturally upset some traditionalists. But perhaps it warmed other hearts that, rather than our giving up on Latin altogether, it was proposed to exercise the language’s own resources and find forms that are both grammatically acceptable and compliant with modern sensibilities.
The required doctoring of the formulae was achieved, after some discussion with me and other colleagues, by one of our Deans of Degrees, my excellent Latinist colleague Dr Tristan Franklinos.
When asked to approve the result, I did so quite happily, not unduly fazed by the ideological and administrative questions underlying the changes – even if I felt there were, and perhaps remain, other possible approaches. No great violence was done to the language, and the proposed changes are very slight.
The same goes for the convenient second-person pronouns, as indeed in English and many other languages.
A masculine and feminine formula such as Magistri et Magistrae or Domini et Dominae, used to address graduands by the Vice-Chancellor or her (their?) deputy, could be changed to the simpler Scholares or Studentes – or even in places the gender-neutral pronoun vos (‘you’).
Praesento vobis hos meos et has meas scholares (‘I present to you these my male and female students’) could become the neater, gender-neutral Praesento scholares hic adstantes (‘I present to you the students here present’).
The revised form of wording was submitted for approval by Congregation, the governing body of the University.
There was, of course, some opposition. But, after a motion was tabled to accept an amended version, a good-natured debate was held in the Sheldonian.
dis volentibus, the new forms of address will come into regular use.
The Orator's normal duties are more rewarding than this. I keep an eye on all the Latin used on formal occasions. Often adjustments and updatings are needed – names for new degrees and academic titles; forms of proper names.
From time to time, I’m asked to check a Latin or Greek motto, write or translate a grace or a poem to be inscribed somewhere, or revise somebody’s translation, and I help examine for one or two of the University’s prizes.
But, more prominently, since the foundation of the office in the 16th century, the Orator has been charged with representing the University at formal events, now most notably the splendid Encaenia ceremony held in the Sheldonian Theatre just after the end of each Trinity (summer) Term.
(Printed below is the 2018 speech for Martin Scorsese.)
For each of them, I compose and deliver a five-minute oration, in something resembling 1st-century-BC Latin prose. The invited audience can follow the printed Latin text alongside an English paraphrase.
Honorands come from many areas of academic research and public service. I’ve occasionally taken a furtive look at how the Vatican – I mean merely Vatican Latin – copes with important modern concepts that figure in our everyday lives.
For example, what might be the Latin for such concepts as ‘skyscraper’ and ‘women’s ordination’, ‘renewable energy’, ‘divestment’, ‘gene editing’ or ‘gender identity’? These kinds of things may increasingly crop up both in Papal encyclicals and in our local discourse. Sometimes we share ideas; sometimes not.
Much more often, I am left to my own devices. One task is the occasional translingual pun, ie a Latin word or phrase that sounds like an English expression in the required context.
Latin eae, for instance, works rather nicely when we’re on the subject of artificial intelligence – as in AI.
Latin spelling can suggest an English concept more visually and semantically. An email could of course be a message sent per aethera. More economically, one could say simply epistula emissa and stress the first syllable.
On consulting orations by my predecessors, I found that what we now call radio was once rendered as sine filo transmissio (work that one out!), but perhaps needs adjustment now.
‘Broadcasting’ figures twice in the forthcoming orations (discretion forbids spoilers). Also appearing are terms in molecular biology, neurophysiology and Ukrainian history.
All in all, we’ll aim to show, as when addressing 21st-century groups of degree-day graduands, that Latin is surprisingly well up to the job.
And there’s another important point: it’s a beautiful language. Sed nil mirum quod hoc censeam! (‘But I suppose I would say that, wouldn’t I?’).
Dr Jonathan Katz is the Oxford University Public Orator. He was Head of Classics at Westminster School
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MARTIN SCORSESE'S DEGREE ORATION BY DR KATZ
Nunc mihi vir adstat qui ipse professus est se in theatro cinematographico didicisse quomodo ea intellegere tandemque depingere posset quae diligenda quidem sed subtilia ubique circumstent...
Picturam et poesim nonnulli maiorum nostrorum comparabant; honorandus noster ex mobilium illarum imaginum arte genus suum proprium poesis peperit; et hac lingua, ut ita dicam, tam ad gaudium quam ad dolorem praebendum usus, etiam extrema rerum humanarum praesentat inter loca et condiciones mire varias, clarissime descriptas.
Nobis enim ex huius fabulis imagines offeruntur modo tranquillitatis, modo Urbium Feritatis et violentiae minarumque.
Saepe tamen et mutantur res – illum taurum furentem revoco et autoraedarium conducticium, praedoneM OBSTinatum Henricum Hill, qui tiro se feliciorem habebat Praeside Civitatum Unitarum, et sacerdotem iuvenem Sebastianum in ‘Silentio’ versantem....
Praesento summum inter artifices magistrum, qui arte sua spectatores docet commotosque in nova transportat, Martinum Carolum Scorsese, cinematographiae auctorem et conservatorem, ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Litteris.
English Paraphrase
Beside me now stands a man to whom, in his own words, the cinema has given a means of understanding, and eventually expressing, what is precious and fragile in the world around him....
Some ancient thinkers likened poetry to painting; he has created his own kind of poetry in ‘moving pictures’ and sequences of images. It is a language that he uses to paint both joy and pain, one in which he places extremes of human experience in contexts and landscapes of extraordinary range and vividness, some of quietude, others of violence, Mean Streets and brutality.
But so often in these films there is a theme of transformation: the Raging Bull, the Taxi Driver, the
career mobster Henry Hill of Goodfellas (‘better than being President of the United States’), the young priest Rodrigues in Silence...
I present a creative master, whose art instructs, provokes and transforms his viewers, Martin Charles Scorsese, director and preserver of the art of film, to be admitted to the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
This is an extract from Dr Katz’s Honorary Degree Oration for Martin Scorsese at the Oxford Encaenia in 2018. Highlighted in bold are the references to some of Scorsese’s most famous films. Note, too, the translingual pun in the word MOBST, written in capitals – as in ‘mobster’. Such wordplay is popular in Latin orations.
