how the time matters
in which virtue of even
the best man happens
Proh Dolor! Quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidat.
Or …
Oh, how much does it matter into what times the virtue of even the best man falls!
Or …
O how much does the time matter in which the virtue of even the best man happens.
Or …
Even the best of men may be born in times unsuited to their virtues.
It is the Latin, Proh Dolor! Quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidat, that is carved on the tomb of Pope Adrian IV.
He got to be Pope for of one and a half years during the Reformation (January, 1522 to September, 1523).
The ONLY Dutch Pope.
Some felt he would have been a GREAT Pope but for his untimely death and that his attention during his Papacy was taken over by Protestant protests.
Thus the inscription on his tomb, Proh Dolor! Quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidat, or Even the best of men may be born in times unsuited to their virtues.
I have to say that, while I will not be counted among the best of men, I am certainly born in times unsuited to my virtues.
FDR is once wrote to Winston Churchill that it It was fun to be in the same decade with you.
Well it isn’t fun being in the same decade as that man in office.
Taking a cue from the white house, folks are crabby, folks are mean, folks are cutting and because of this folks are worried and folks are unceratain.
Americans used to and were used to living carefree lives compared to most of the world.
Care Free!
No one was going to come to our door and demand to come.
We never had to ‘show our papers’.
I didn’t even know what ‘papers’ were.
For much of what the World worried about, Americans were care free.
Not any more and all because of one man.
It isn’t fair that I have live in the same decade with that man.
Proh Dolor! Quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cujusque virtus incidat.
BTW, after Adrian VI, it was another 460 years before the Catholic Church tried out another Pope who wasn’t Italian.
Did I mention Adrian VI was Dutch?
No Haiku For You 