Threefold Illumination: A Nun’s Prayer After Communion

The spiritual quest for three-fold illumination -- knowledge of self; knowledge of God’s love; and knowledge of (and surrender to) God’s will -- is mapped out in the most ornate of the Thalbach Prayerbooks, ÖNB Cod. 11750, at the very end of a long mass prayer cycle. This prayer is seated firmly within a Franciscan orbit with its characteristic affective spirituality, reflective of late 16th-century habits of thought. The text is staunchly Catholic in perspective, for it assumes a very concrete Eucharistic theology: grace is mediated through the sacrament itself (durch krafft dis Sacraments), not just through prayer. Here we see a Catholic woman at the conclusion of a Catholic liturgy, participating in deeply rooted and very specifically Catholic devotional practices.We are anchored here to faith.

The prayer starts with a kind of self-abasement which may read as uncomfortable to modern eyes. The abnegations pile up: wickedness, vileness, worthlessness, ingratitude, insult, shame: through such self-knowledge (!) she asks to come to humility, repentance, and sorrow for my sins. Seeing the bad in order to correct her faults is strategic, a spiritual confession that moves toward the relief of forgiveness. This is classic penitential piety shaping belief and practice in practical, implementable ways. Yet for our modern eyes, the absence of positive self-knowledge is a gap here; this first illumination only tangentially touches on love and forgiveness, making it harder for the passage to resonate with in a more self-affirming age.

The second illumination focuses on love (liebe), used five times in as many lines, matching it with her heart, which must be enlightened, wounded, filled, and then come to thirst. Thus, God’s love toward “us” becomes her love towards God, loved “at all times, in all things, and above all things.” This is lyricism at its finest, repetitiveness deployed as a metaphor of spiritual growth on a properly chosen model. Very Franciscan, and with echoes of Thomas à Kempis or pseudo-Bonaventure in its patternings:

O God, my Lord, I beg you once again through your tender mercy, enlighten my heart to recognize and love your goodness and love for us. I beg you, wound my heart with the purest, most faithful, and fervent love towards us, O sweet Jesus, fill my heart with your most perfect, fervent, and unquenchable love, so that I may always thirst for you with all my heart, and that I may love you at all times, in all things, and above all things.

The enlightened heart, then, comes to fulfill the third illumination: self-denial and self-surrender, a self-rededication to the monastic calling from which she prays. She wants strengthened the scope of her devotion to encompass “all the actions and powers” of both body and soul. By moving from abnegation through love to action, she is transforming herself here at this moment, repurposing her spirit to accomplish God’s ends.

The sacrament, then, has accomplished its function. It does not merely forgive sin; it illuminates the mind, reshapes the affections, and reorders the will toward God’s action, serving as an agent of interior transformation. In this brief prayer we see how sacramental devotion worked in practice: not as a single moment of absolution, but as an ongoing process of spiritual formation rooted in Franciscan ideals of humility, love, and surrender.

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“O Ewiger liebhabender barmhertziger Gott erleucht mein hertz,” Thalbach Prayerbook, ÖNB Cod. 11750, fol. 47v-48v, Transcription and Translation CC-BY-NC Cynthia J. Cyrus

Du magſt auch bitten vmb dreifaltige erleichtung/ dz dir ſolche / durch krafft dis Sacraments mitgetailt werde.

[3-line initial] O Ewiger liebhabender barmhertziger Gott erleucht mein hertz/ Dz ich meīn aigne bossheit ſchnödigkeit nichtigkeith vnnd vndanckbarkeit moͤg erkennen/ also dz ich ab ſolchem ein geburenden mÿsfallenn hab • Laß mich erkennen. O Guettiger Jeſu wie ich ſo gar nichts bin noch kan, vnd dz ich mich ſelbs veracht. Gib mir aüch, dz ich von hertzen von der Welt beger uerarcht zu werdenn, dz ich wünsch diemüettig zu sein: vnd vnbild vnd schmach zu leiden mich erfrewe. Eya du mein guettigſter herr Jhesu, geůſin mich ware erkantnus meiner ſelbſt auch volkomne demůott, rew vnd laid v̈ber meine begangne Sünnd.

O Gott mein herr ich bitte dich abermals durch dem Jimierliche barmhertzigkeit erleüchte mein hertz dem guettigkeit vnnd liebe gegen vns zu erkennen vnd zu lieben Jch bitte verwunde mein hertz mit keuschister getrewester vnd inbrünstiger liebe gegen vns O ſueſſer Jeſu, erfulle mein hertz mit deiner volkomesten, inbrünstigen vnd vnauſloͤſchkichen liebe / damit mich allzeit vongantzem hertzenn nach dür dürste, vnd dz ich dich ieder zeit in allem vnd vber alles liebe /

O Guettigster Jhesu, mein Gott vnnd alles in allem / Ich bitte dich / erleicht mein hertz/ deinen wolgefallen zu erkennen, zu lieben vnd volbrüngen. Gib mir vollkomesten erlaugnüng vnd aufergebüng meiner ſelbſt / darmit ich mich, selbs aüff Alle weiSS uerlaSS / aus mir gehe / vnd mich auffer gebe zuallem deinē wolgefallenn, Gib mir / dz ich mich ganz vnd gar deiner für ſehüng vertrawe / alle ding von deiner Hannd mit dancksagung annemmen vnd in allem dich lob vnd benedeÿe. Verschaffe O guettiger Gott/dz ich all mein leben alle zeit alles thunvnnd krefften meiner leibs vnd meiner Seelen und alles wz ich bin vnd vermag zu deinem lob Lieb vnd wolgefallen darraiche vnnd dargebe, Amen.

You may also ask for threefold illumination, that this may be imparted to you through the power of this sacrament.

O eternal, loving, merciful God, enlighten my heart, that I may recognize my own wickedness, vileness, worthlessness, and ingratitude, so that I may have a proper displeasure at it. Let me recognize, O good Jesus, how completely I am nothing and can do nothing, and that I may hold myself in contempt. Grant me also that I may wholeheartedly desire to be despised by the world, that I may wish to be humble, and that I may rejoice in suffering insult and shame. O my most gracious Lord Jesus, grant me true knowledge of myself, also perfect humility, repentance, and sorrow for my sins.

O God, my Lord, I beg you once again through your tender mercy, enlighten my heart to recognize and love your goodness and love for us. I beg you, wound my heart with the purest, most faithful, and fervent love towards us, O sweet Jesus, fill my heart with your most perfect, fervent, and unquenchable love, so that I may always thirst for you with all my heart, and that I may love you at all times, in all things, and above all things.

O most gracious Jesus, my God and all in all, I beg you, enlighten my heart to recognize, love, and carry out your good pleasure. Grant me perfect self-denial and self-surrender, so that I may completely abandon myself in every way, go out of myself, and surrender myself to all your good pleasure. Grant me that I may completely trust in your providence, receiving all things from your Hand; Receive all things from your hand with thanksgiving, and praise and bless you in all things. Grant, O gracious God, that all my life, at all times, I may dedicate and offer all the actions and powers of my body and soul, and all that I am and can do, to your praise, honor, and good pleasure. Amen.

In praise of janky translations: an anti-google diatribe

Once upon a time as recently as yesterday, I lived in a world in which Google Translate was an imperfect but useful tool. I could ask it my best guess of what someone had said to me, and it would spit out a decent explantion of what we were talking about. I could point my phone camera at a wall-label in a museum, and out would come the information I was reading about in a language I can speak. This all was incredibly useful, particularly on my Asian trip last summer.

Another thing I happened to use Google Translate for was as a short-cut in my research. Now, I’ve been trained up with the best of them. I know that looking at the original language of, say, a medieval charter is the best and most accurate way to understand that document’s meaning. Nevertheless, when working at volume, it can be handy to skim, and while I can get in the groove with modern German, my medieval Alemannic dialect reading is slower-paced. If I want a really fast assessment of something, there’s nothing like my native tongue, which is English, as you’ve probably guessed by now.

So, when looking over the roughly 200 charters relevant to the current chapter, I’ve been going through them quickly via google translate to see if there’s utility in doing the close-up work of line-by-line and word-by-word reading. About one out of every 5 will have a topic of particular interest. I can skim a 69-line whole-side-of-a-cow sized parchment charter in its janky English translation in about 10 minutes. I can read said document directly in something more like 45 minutes.

Let’s think about the math:

• To skim English: 10x200 = 2,000 minutes, or roughly 30 hours of reading.
• To read medieval Alemannic: 45x200=9,000, or roughly 150 hours of reading

Okay, I’ll even be fair; add back another 20 hours for going through the targeted documents in detail and I’m still looking at the difference between 50 hours of work and 150 hours of work.

Why am I heated up about this topic? Well, they broke google translate last night.

Let me say that again, with all the feels:

THEY BROKE GOOGLE TRANSLATE LAST NIGHT.

I have receipts, of course. I’m going to share just one, because it’s been a long and stressful day this morning (bwahaha).

Here’s a clause out of one of my documents:

3. brieff Alsz dann der vorgemelt keb hailig Santgall unnser hußsatter Jarlichen ain Suma gebt Im den vigrechten der gestifften Jorlichen Jarzeten

Here’s its translation, as of yesterday:

3. Furthermore, the aforementioned abbey of Saint Gall, our patron, shall pay annually a sum to the vicar for the proper observance of the established annual memorial services.

Usable, right? Tells me the basics of what’s going on. Is it elegant? No. Is it fully accurate? Also no. It is, I think we’d all agree, a janky translation. (Oxford definition of janky: “of extremely poor or unreliable quality.”).

But here’s the thing: this janky translation is USABLE. It tells me whether or not this is a place I want to spend some of my precious minutes. I mean, I like down time just like everyone else; these translations are a shortcut!

But no, it wasn’t getting enough time-on-the-page, I guess, so Google “improved” (and I use that word with scare quotes for a reason, so be scared, be very very scared) its translation tool. Let’s look at the result, shall we?

3. When the aforementioned [name omitted], the [name omitted], gives our [name omitted] an annual sum in accordance with the established annual [terms omitted].

This is predictive technology gone bad. The AI underpinning here is obvious. The “improved” tool is happy to predict anything that’s sort of standard in a regular document of this type. But all, all, ALL of the interesting details are now redacted. Because names, and places, and specific amounts of money are NOT predictable. So I guess we shouldn’t need to see them, eh? Because everything useful in life is predictable. (Mad, me mad? Whatever do you mean???)

And this, this is what they’re calling the “classic” version of the tool. Not that it bears any resemblance to what the tool was doing yesterday, of course. But it’s a handy marketing ploy for a company that clearly Does Not Give A Shit about the user experience. The advanced version, well, it simply redacted lines 6 to 9 of my document altogether since those are just like line 5, a list of payments to particular chaplains.

But MY study is looking (in part) at exactly that. I need to know how much more the parish priest gets than the altarist at the St Mang altar. It’s part of my evidence. And it changes over time. Oh, which makes it unpredictable.

So when we premise translations on what words mean, we get one kind of information. Yesterday, I might argue with whether the “Mesner” was better translated as a “sacristan” or a “sexton.”

In the land of predictive AI, however, we premise translations on what other texts think might come next, and that means skipping the “minutiae.” The result? I can no longer tell from the translation that the Mesner, whatever his role might be, was even present in the document. A bad translation is something I can argue with; a predictive omission is something I can’t even see.

This is arguably great if you’re translating prose. It’s an absolute disaster if you’re looking at legal records and payments and guidelines for the foundations. Those kinds of documents are actually designed to deliver the very small, unpredictable details that AI wants to suppress. They are accounting devices, legal instruments, and memory machines. It’s like AI trying to tell you what flavor of icecream is your favorite based on other people’s orders. It has absolutely, positively no idea of what *you* might want, but that won’t stop it trying, using that oh-so-confident voice, though.

Janky, bad translations, in other words, are part of my world of work. They have a use. They may be inelegant, but their very bumps and hiccups are pointers to the curious oddity. They keep the text visible as a text. As a user, I still see names, sums, offices, altars, weird textual repetitions – the very things that are likely innovations in this particular textual example. Predictive smoothing, by contrast, is a lie of fluency. It gives you the shape of a charter without its substance. To put it another way, jankiness is epistemologically honest. It doesn’t pretend to understand more than it does.

Cory Doctorow has brought us the concept of “enshittification,” the reality that a captured audience is merely monetary potential to the big firms that think they own our data. And yes, this update is truly, truly, truly the enshittified version of what a translator is supposed to do. In fact, from where I’m sitting, this is not even translation anymore. It’s instead content abstraction masquerading as translation. A translator is accountable to the source text; a predictive model is accountable to statistical plausibility. In fact, I have trouble communicating just how BAD it is at the job it was perfectly adquate at yesterday, but you get the general gist.

And the reality is that an enshittified product is pretty much what you’re stuck with from here on out, unless Google changes its mind, and rolls back to yesterday’s model.

Happily for me, I can, in fact, read my texts. I have access to good dictionaries, and I do subscribe to DeepL for toggling languages with modern German. (DeepL struggles *hard* with Alemannic, but then, don’t we all?). And in a pinch, ChatGPT actuall does a decent job with the odd sentence or two.

But the fact that yesterday was easy, and today my tool is broken? This is the way of this tech-heavy world of ours. Because yesterday’s Google Translate assumed that you were the expert deciding what mattered. Today’s assumes the model knows better. That’s not just frustrating; it’s a quiet and very, very creepy reordering of authority in knowledge production. Scholars of thin archives (like the ones I work on in Bregenz, Austria and in Bischofszell, Switzerland) are exactly the ones who lose when the world (or the tech-companies) decides that unpredictability is noise. Because the unpredictable is often where the truth lies.