# Latin help-- a short one **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 1, 2007, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latin-help-a-short-one/428469 "2007-12-01T18:12:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2007, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latin-help-a-short-one/428469/1 "2007-12-01T18:12:45Z")
And I promise that this time it’s not to translate a modern pop phrase into Latin! “In qualibet illarum ductionum speciales poenas acceptit, quas ut fideles repraesentent, solent hodie tot visitare ecclesias.” Whereever one accepts those ductus [ignore this particular term-- very specific meaning in context here] . . . oh, Hell. I give up. My Latin’s horrible and it hurts my brain. I should have taken more in college. Anyway, help with this? It’s instructions or a description of an old devotional practice in which one visits a number of churches to commemorate Christ’s . . . moments of being dragged from one place to another (ductus here) but the grammar confounds me (it’s 16th c so it might be a bit stinkbuggy stylistically). Thanks in advance, learned classicists! ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2007, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latin-help-a-short-one/428469/2 "2007-12-02T06:40:30Z")
What’s the source of this text **capybara**? Presumably some sort of Good Friday devotion? Stations of the Cross? Here’s my somewhat free attempt at a translation, for what it’s worth. I’m guessing a bit because I don’t recognise the root form of _ductionum_, although as you note it’s clearly related to the verb \*ducere \* (to draw or drag): In every place where He (i.e. Christ) suffered the particular punishments of those draggings, the faithful today are accustomed to visit so many of those churches in order to re-enact them. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2007, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latin-help-a-short-one/428469/3 "2007-12-02T15:09:55Z")
Cunctator-- thanks! That sounds just about right. It’s from a variant very closely related to the stations of the cross but now pretty extinct. You’re awesome. ---
**Author:** ![DaphneBlack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daphneblack/32/5389_2.png) [@DaphneBlack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaphneBlack)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2007, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latin-help-a-short-one/428469/4 "2007-12-02T15:28:18Z")
That’s interesting… ‘quas ut’ wouldn’t be good classical grammar, rather it should be one or the other plus subjunctive. Presumably both are included to make it clear that it’s a relative clause of purpose. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2007, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latin-help-a-short-one/428469/5 "2007-12-02T16:33:52Z")
I always give the Medieval and Renaissance Latinists a break, because it wasn’t a first language for them, either, and if I had a rough time with it in school, I’m sure a lot of them did, too. OTOH when they’re writing more or less correctly sometimes it’s a lot easier to understand because it’s such simple little LST (Latin as a Second Language) sentences.