The Sybils in Catholicism

[narrowpath]

I was on the traditionalist ‘fish eaters’ website the other day and they had an article about the sybils. I had not known that these oracles had any place in Catholicism. Could someone please tell me about these women.

Here is the link:
fisheaters.com/sybils.html

 

[yinekka]

The site you linked has a very full account of these women. I don’t know that they have any place in Catholicism; they aren’t mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Check out the Original Catholic Encyclopedia on
newadvent.org/cathen/13770a.htm for some info in them.

 

[Ridgerunner]

This probably won’t be very helpful, but here goes.

The only Catholic reference to the Sybils I have ever seen (other than historical stuff) is in the Latin version of the “Dies Irae”, one of the old hymns at Catholic funerals. If I can remember it properly.

Dies Irae (day of wrath)
Dies Ila (day of mourning)
Solvet Saeclum (when the world is reduced)
In favila (to ashes)
Testae David (foretold by David)
Cum Sybila (and the Sybil)

It was kind of terrifying; about the end of the world and our judgment. It was, however, both preceded by the comforting “Requiem” (rest) and followed by the “Voca me” (hear me). Mozart wrote a Requiem Mass, and it’s beautiful. There are others, but the words are always the same.

Anyway, my belief is based on my experiences with medieval and renaissance literature. Literate people back then were enormously educated in the classics; far more than now. Chaucer himself was a wool merchant by trade, yet his mastery of the classics was vastly greater than that of most classics professors today. (We’re not half as smart nowadays as we think we are.)

Anyway, they utilized many, many classic references in all kinds of ways, including in purely Christian sacred works. They did that, not to affirm, e.g., whether there were Sybils (there were) or that they somehow were truly prophetic. (Though there were some prophecies of the Cumaean Sybil that seemed to foretell Christ, and the Church has always wondered about that.) but as a sort of shorthand way of expressing a lot more.

So, in the Dies Irae, for example, the point was not to say some Sybil or other was truly prophetic, but more to say that certain kinds of knowledge of sacred things were accessible to human beings even without Revelation. It’s like an affirmation of human reason’s ability to know something of God and His will and plans.

So, if even the pagan Sybil could figure there would someday be an end, and that we would be judged by whatever Divinity the Sybil believed in, how much more should we, who have Revelation, know? The reference to both David (a true prophet of God) and the Sybil (natural reason) unite faith and reason in the knowledge that we shall be judged for our lives.

Clever folk, those ancestors of ours. They said lots of things like that.

A more recent example of the same thing is T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” in which the explanations of his references to other works are massively bigger than the poem itself. Again, it’s a “shorthand” way of expressing a lot in a compressed sort of way.

That’s my best explanation.

 

[Cider]

Interesting timing, I’m listening to Verdi’s Requiem as I type

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’ll quit after this, but I love the general subject.

I remember in college studying Shakespeare. Shakespeare is very difficult if one takes a sort of modern approach to it. But he’s easy if one understands what he’s doing with drama.

A perfect example is the opening scene (and the later scene) in MacBeth where the three witches meet and direct MacBeth’s doom. Reams have been written about whether Shakespeare really believed in witches or not. But that’s beside the point. The witches represent a whole library of concepts, whether they are literal witches or not at any level. “MacBeth” is fundamentally about presumption, despair and Providence, and the witches represent the deception, including self-deception that rejection of Providence brings about. Witches are precisely rejectees of Providence and projectors of lies; their “consort”, Satan, being the “Father of Lies” and also a “Murderer from the beginning.” It’s fascinating that MacBeth contains an astoundingly Catholic “message” regarding rejection of Providence and its relationship to sin; the true nature of penitence and the voluntarism of hell. Just fascinating!

It just knocks me out that people who went to Shakespeare’s plays way back then, knew all that stuff. True, nobles and the wealthy inhabited the boxes and upper levels; people one would expect to be educated. But the “goundlings”, the ones standing on the ground, were just ordinary people.

I often think we, in our time, are both incredibly arrogant and incredibly stupid to suppose that we are smarter or understand life better than those people did, just because we move around in automobiles.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Interesting timing, I’m listening to Verdi’s Requiem as I type

Okay, I really will quit after this. My daughter wrote what I thought was a knockout paper for a psychology course in college. She compared and constrasted Mozart’s “Requiem” (it could have been another, but she wanted to illustrate with a tape) with Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ books on death and dying. My daughter pointed out that the progression of the Requiem Mass includes every element of Kubler-Ross’ analysis of the human confrontation with death. However, my daughter pointed out, the Requiem Mass actually contains much more and, at a point, bests Kubler-Ross in its understanding of the psychology of death.

Remarkable, huh? I was impressed. So was her professor.

Oh yes, the “Dies Irae” is usually expressed muscially as a terrifying thing, as the words are. I don’t know about Verdi’s “Dies Irae”, but both Mozart’s “Dies Irae” and Faure’s are hair-raising. But they are psychologically legitimate, expressing the terror of death all experience psychologically when confronted with it unexpectedly. But further hymns develop and explicate other stages.

 

[narrowpath]

I am asking because I always thouht they were false pagan prophetesses, but this sight seems to say they were either speaking with some God-given authority.

Does anyone know of any other resources?

PS
The Dies Irae is a beatiful poem, but it somehow send a chill down my spine.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The Dies Irae is a beatiful poem, but it somehow send a chill down my spine.

It’s supposed to. Death and judgment are, in themselves, terrifying notions. The purpose of the Requiem Mass is to face that, but also to take us past that terorr by invoking God’s mercy, but without denying its reality.

 

[richardwy]

The Dies Irae is a beatiful poem, but it somehow send a chill down my spine.

Oh my . . .

Dies Irae

Day of wrath! O day of mourning! See fulfilled the prophets’ warning, Heaven and earth in ashes burning! 2 Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth, when from heaven the Judge descendeth, on whose sentence all dependeth. 3 Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth; through earth’s sepulchers it ringeth; all before the throne it bringeth. 4 Death is struck, and nature quaking, all creation is awaking,
to its Judge an answer making. 5 Lo! the book, exactly worded, wherein all hath been recorded: thence shall judgment be awarded. 6 When the Judge his seat attaineth, and each hidden deed arraigneth, nothing unavenged remaineth. 7 What shall I, frail man, be pleading? Who for me be interceding, when the just are mercy needing? 8 King of Majesty tremendous, who dost free salvation send us, Fount of pity, then befriend us! 9 Think, good Jesus, my salvation cost thy wondrous Incarnation; leave me not to reprobation! 10 Faint and weary, thou hast sought me, on the cross of suffering bought me. shall such grace be vainly brought me? 11 Righteous Judge! for sin’s pollution grant thy gift of absolution,
ere the day of retribution. 12 Guilty, now I pour my moaning, all my shame with anguish owning; spare, O God, thy suppliant groaning! 13 Thou the sinful woman savedst; thou the dying thief forgavest; and to me a hope vouchsafest. 14 Worthless are my prayers and sighing, yet, good Lord, in grace complying, rescue me from fires undying! 15 With thy favored sheep O place me; nor among the goats abase me; but to thy right hand upraise me. 16 While the wicked are confounded, doomed to flames of woe unbounded call me with thy saints surrounded. 17 Low I kneel, with heart submission, see, like ashes, my contrition; help me in my last condition.