Once in a while, at a given situation, an old Italian saying pops into my mind, and I am always struck of how deep the Catholic roots of my Country are. Last year I mentioned a few, and this year I’ll expand on the theme. You’ll notice that there are some for all occasions: some even go back to the time when in Italy we spoke Latin (which, no matter what Fr. Hilton says, was WAAAY before my time!). Let’s start with a very oldie but always goodie:

In Cymbalis = with cymbals. These two short Latin words are taken from the 150th Psalm in which the Psalmist exhorts us to “… praise Him with the loudsounding cymbals…” In Latin, that goes: “Laudate Deum in cymbalis bene sonantibus.” In small Italian towns, old men used to gather in a wine pub at the end of the day; play cards and… have a few glasses.  By the time they were done, they thought they were opera singers; unfortunately, to those who were sober it sounded like… clanging cymbals, and when they spoke they made no sense at all. To this day, when someone is loud and nonsensical, we say that they are in cymbalis.

Refugium Peccatorum = Refuge of Sinners. This is one of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s titles. To this day the usual comedians, among which I number my own mother, use these two words to indicate a very messy place. For instance, my bedroom. But also the closet where everyone tosses stuff that doesn’t seem to belong anywhere, or the last box to remain unpacked after a move etc. etc.

Il Cavallo di San Francesco = St. Francis’ Horse. As we all know, St. Francis gave his horse back to his father when he converted and decided to follow the Lord. After that, he travelled everywhere on foot.  Therefore, when we say that we are going to go a long way on foot, we say “I’m going there on St. Francis’ horse.”

Segnarsi col gomito = Making the sign of the Cross with your elbow. I think this is strictly a saying in my part of Italy, the Lake Como region. Go ahead, give it a try and see if you succeed. We use this sentence to say that someone has received an incredible blessing.  For instance, when one of my future uncle’s mother wanted to know more about the woman he was about to marry (one of my aunts), she asked around the town where my mother’s family lived for suitable references on the character of her prospective daughter-in-law. After the wedding, the mother-in-law herself told us that more than one person answered her: “If your son is marrying a Calvetti, he can make the sign of the Cross with his elbow.” Meaning, he was very, very, very fortunate (and so he was, because he married a wonderful, holy woman).

Passa il Vescovo = The Bishop goes by. Those of you who are older than… will remember that, as part of the Confirmation ceremony, the Bishop would go by every confirmand, anoint our foreheads with Crism and then with two fingers gave a light slap on our cheeks. Why did he do that? Because we are taught that on receiving Confirmation we became “soldiers of Christ” and as such we were expected to undergo trials on His behalf. So, the usual comedians, my mother for example, used to warn us if we were misbehaving with the words: Passa il Vescovo? Which was enough to calm us down pretty quickly.

Scherza coi fanti ma lascia stare I Santi = Joke with people but don’t mess with the Saints. The word “fanti” literally means the foot soldier, but in common use, it means all those of us who are still walking the earth. In this proverb, Saints does not necessarily mean only those who are official residents of Heaven.  When our folks taught us to respect the elderly, our teachers, bosses and everyone else whom we met, they would often use this sentence.

For instance, we would NEVER dare “horse around” with out parents: their persons were sacred to us, so unless we kissed or hugged them, we would not dream of touching them. For the same reason, the thought of “sassing” our teachers would never even enter the back of our minds: it was simply unthinkable. I remember how shocked I was when I first came to the U.S. and kids who did not even come up to my knees would call me Nicoletta, instead of Mrs. MacKenzie. Now I’m used to it, but I would NEVER, EVER have called anyone who was not a particular friend or a relative by their first name.  Thinking back on it, I realize the wisdom of that sentence: it is a lot easier to be disrespectful when we call someone by their first name, isn’t it? It is for that reason that, if my children ever took it into their heads to call me anything but mother I think I’d warn them that Passa il Vescovo and he’s coming right now!

Ite Missa Est = Go, the Mass is ended. We still use this Latin sentence to signify that whatever we were doing is done. Or, in the translation of my mother, the comedienne: “Time to go to bed.”