Sunday, April 15, 2012

Quasimodo


Anyone know why the hunchback of Notre Dame is called Quasimodo??

This Sunday's entrance antiphon is "Quasi modo geniti infantes, rationabile, sine dolo lac concupiscite ut in eo crescatis in salutem si gustastis quoniam dulcis Dominus," the beginning of which translates as, "Like newborn babes..." -- a reference to the newly baptized who, in the ancient church, wore their baptismal robes for the entire octave of Easter.  The day they took off their robes and deposited them in the cathedral treasury was the first Sunday after Easter, which became known as Quasimodo Sunday.  And Quasimodo was found by Claude Frollo on the steps of the church on that very day!


"It was at the moment when he was returning, on Quasimodo Sunday, from saying mass at ‘the altar of the lazy,' which stood by the door of the choir on the right, near the image of the Blessed Virgin, that his attention was attracted by the group of old women cackling around the  bed of the foundlings. He approached the unfortunate little creature, so hated and so threatened. […] When he had taken the child out of the sack, he found him to be, in fact, a monster of deformity. [… His] extreme ugliness only served to increase the compassion of Claude; and he vowed in his  heart to bring up this boy for the love of his brother, … He baptized his adopted child and named him Quasimodo, either to commemorate the clay on which he had found him, or to express the incomplete and scarcely finished state of the poor little creature. In truth. Quasimodo, with one eye, hunchback, and crooked legs, was but an apology for a human being."  (Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, trans. Frederic Shoberl.)



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