An enquiry to “The Academy” literary magazine in 1904 (30th April, p. 502) concerning a memorial with an indecipherable inscription in St. Dunstan-in-the-East, now a public garden after the church was destroyed in the Blitz:

A variant of the same, also from “The Academy” (17th September 1904, p. 203) this time set out by Percy Selver (if this (Percy) Paul Selver, at the age of 16) to make the solution to the riddle clear:

The top and bottom lines share the word-endings in the middle line, so this one reads, Quos anguis dirus tristi dulcedine pavit,/ Hos sanguis mirus Christi mulcedine lavit, two dactylic hexameters meaning, “Whom the dreadful serpent fed with baneful sweetness,/ these the miraculous blood of Christ has bathed with consolation.”

And the original in St Dunstan’s reads, Quos anguis tristi diro cum vulnere stravit,/ Hos sanguis Christi miro tum munere lavit, “Whom the serpent laid low with grim and dreadful wound,/ These thereafter the blood of Christ has bathed with its miraculous gift.”

These might be described as two lines bound together by the ultimate in rhyming systems. Every single word rhymes with its counterpart in the other line. But when laid out as they were at St Dunstan’s, the relationship between the lines is more interesting, I think, and theologically meaningful. The fall of man described in the first line is bound up with, is actually inseparable from, the redemption described in the second, and vice versa. It makes me think of George Herbert’s perfect, alliterative lyric expressing the felix culpa in “Easter Wings”, “Then shall the fall further the flight in me.”

The origins of this Latin couplet seem pretty obscure to me, although having spent a sum total of two hours investigating this phenomenon, I’m prepared to be told they’re actually as clear as clear can be. Francesco Pipini (13-14th century), at Chronicon 1.47 (Muratori IX.628) attributes the verses to Hugh Primas (12th century), and presents them as an encapsulation of the Old and New Testaments achieved in the shortest possible space–which I think, in my theologically untutored way, amounts from a Christian perspective to the same principle as addressed in the last paragraph, fall and redemption. Pipini also records that these intertwined lines were called versus intercalares, “intercalary verses”, which I like.

Pipini offers yet another variation, Quos anguis tristi virus mulcedine pavit,/ Hos sanguis Christi mirus dulcedine lavit, “Whom the serpent’s venom fed with baneful temptation,/ These the miraculous blood of Christ has bathed in sweetness.” Other accounts (e.g. this one, and obliquely this one) of the St. Dunstan version, I should say, locate it in another City church hit during the Blitz, St. Anne and St. Agnes on Gresham Street.