«Placare, Domine!»

Per una corretta ermeneutica di alcune espressioni eucologiche

Abstract

By means of a survey of the Roman and Ambrosian euchology, patristic texts (of Ambrose, Jerome and Gregory the Great) and of some passages of me-dieval Latin, this article shows how the Italian translation of the Missal, avoiding the use of the Italian word placāre, has recovered the true content of the occurrences of the Latin placatio and placāre. In fact, Placāre, is not to be traced back exclusively to the meaning of mitigation of wrath, in particu-lar divine wrath, but to the semantic field of forgiveness and reconciliation, while at the same time maintaining the various nuances attributed to the verb by the various authors.