Sorry if this post doesn’t make the most sense; I’m a little
stuffy in the head. Either the flu shot gave me a tiny case of the flu, or I
have a slight cold, but this sure seems to be more than just allergies. Anyway,
today’s blog post is about the Vatican’s boo-boo when minting a commemorative
medal for Pope Francis’s first anniversary. As some of my readers are well
aware, in classical Latin there is no J or U, so I and V are used to represent
them. This means Jesus is spelled IESVS. According to this story, the new medal
misspelled it as LESVS, so everyone is joking that “Lesus saves” and “Lesus is
Jord.” I am wondering if someone misinterpreted the capital I as a lowercase L,
which is the same in this font: l. (This is why, when I handwrite things, I put
a little top and bottom bar on my capital I.) If you saw something written as
Iesvs, you might not know whether that first letter is supposed to be an L or
an I. Still, you have to wonder, who is this person at the mint who has never
heard of Jesus? This person must have no understanding of Latin whatsoever,
which is odd, because his native language is undoubtedly Italian, and there is
at least a little family resemblance there. Unfortunately the Vatican caught on
right away, so all but four of the medals were recalled. Can you imagine what popular
collector items they would have been?
Famous Hat
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