Walter Map

Meum est propositum in taberna mori.
I propose to end my days — in a tavern drinking.

Walter Map (Latin: Gualterius Mappus; 1130 – c. 1209/1210) was a medieval writer. He wrote De nugis curialium, which takes the form of a series of anecdotes of people and places, offering insights into the history of his time.

Quotes

• Meum est propositum in taberna mori:
  Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,
  Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori,
  Deus sit propitius huic potatori!
  Poculis accenditur animi lucerna;
  Cor imbutum nectare volat ad superna:
  Mihi sapit dulcius vinum in taberna,
  Quam quod aqua miscuit præsulis pincerna.
  • I propose to end my days — in a tavern drinking,
    May some Christian hold for me — the glass when I am shrinking;
    That the Cherubim may cry, — when they see me sinking,
    God be merciful to a soul — of this gentleman's way of thinking.
    A glass of wine amazingly enlighteneth one's internals,
    'Tis wings bedewed with nectar, that fly up to supernals;
    Bottles cracked in taverns, have much the sweeter kernels,
    Than the sups allowed to us, in the College journals.
  • Drinking song, forming a portion of his poem, Confessio Goliæ, ll. 45–52. Translated by Leigh Hunt (Addit. MS. 14,343, Brit. Museum): quoted by C. W. Bingham in Notes and Queries, 2nd ser., vol. 8, no. 192 (3 September 1859), p. 185

De nugis curialium

• Numquam enim audiendi quod aliquis monachus super puerum incubuisset, quin statim post ipsum surrexisset puer.
  • 'There was a man living on the borders of Burgundy who asked him to come and heal his son. We went, and found the son dead. Dom Bernard ordered his body to be carried into a private room, turned everyone out, threw himself upon the boy, prayed, and got up again: but the boy did not get up; he lay there dead.' 'Then he was the most unlucky of monks,' said I; 'I have heard before now of a monk throwing himself upon a boy, but always, when the monk got up, the boy promptly got up too.'
  • Distinction 1, Chapter 24 (tr. M. R. James et al., 1983)

• The Cistercians...are wholly strange to the use of flesh. Yet they keep pigs to the number of many thousands, and sell the bacon—though perhaps not quite all of it. The heads, legs and feet they neither give away, throw away, nor sell. What becomes of them God knows.
  • Distinction 1, Chapter 24 (tr. M. R. James, 1923)

• Vadis quo uis, morieris ubi debes.
  • You may go where you list, but you'll die when you must.
  • Distinction 2, Chapter 19 (tr. M. R. James, 1923), quoting a 'soldier's proverb'

• Dura est manus cirurgi, sed sanans.
  • Hard is the hand of the surgeon, but healing.
  • Distinction 4, Chapter 4 (tr. M. R. James, 1923)

• Hoc solum deliqui, quod uiuo.
  • My only offence is, that I am alive.
  • Distinction 4, Chapter 5 (tr. M. R. James, 1923)

• The hatred which is the degenerate product of love is the stubbornest.
  • Distinction 4, Chapter 15 (tr. M. R. James, 1923)

See also

• Bernard of Clairvaux
• Gerald of Wales

External links

• Walter Map's "De Nugis Curialium". Translated by Montague R. James. With historical notes by John Edward Lloyd. Edited by E. Sidney Hartland (London: Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1923)
• Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers' Trifles. Edited and translated by M. R. James. Revised by C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983)
• Alice Mary Smyth (ed.) The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2nd ed. (1953), p. 329
• Una McGovern (ed.) Chambers Dictionary of Quotations, 2nd ed. (2005), p. 548