Memento quod <subjunctive>

Question

(A tangent off of a question and comment by David Charles.)

This verse from roughly the ninth century:

Memento rerum conditor,
Nostri quod olim corporis
Sacrata ab alvo Virginis
Nascendo formam sumpseris.

exhorts the creator to remember that he took human form from the womb of a virgin. Since this is taken as a known fact, why is sumpseris (thou took) in the subjunctive mood? Why not the indicative sumpsisti?

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A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, by John F. Collins, §135, “Indirect Statements: Object Clauses with Subjunctives”, offers:

Indirect statements in the form of object clauses introduced by quod, quia, quoniam ‘that’ may take the indicative; this is called the retained indicative. But the use of the subjunctive mood in such clauses emphasizes the grammatical subordination of the indirect statement:

Invēnimus quod Paulus Rōmam jam īsset.
‘We discovered that Paul had already gone to Rome.’

Crēdunt quia Chrīstus sit Dominus.
‘They believed that Christ is Lord.

(Thanks to jon for finding this.)

Medieval Latin, 2nd. ed., by Harrington and Pucci, §7.10.1, “Mood in Indirect Discourse”, says:

Greek ὅτι is followed by the indicative. Quia and quod may be followed by either the indicative or the subjunctive; quod tends to take the subjunctive, quia the indicative.

Neither explanation really clarifies what is meant by choosing the subjunctive mood in the verse above. It does not seem to be indirect discourse. The subjunctive with quod does not appear to be purely a medieval phenomenon. Jerome translates Genesis 1.4 thus:

Et vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona et divisit lucem ac tenebras.

Deuteronomy 15.15 has both subjunctive and indicative subordinated to the same quod:

Memento quod et ipse servieris in terra Aegypti et liberavit te Dominus Deus…

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So, what's the reason for the subjunctive here?

• Does memento quod customarily take the subjunctive for some reason?

• Does the indicative change the meaning or perhaps alter the shade of meaning?

• Or is the custom regarding different moods in this context so weak that the mood makes no difference here?

• Or is there something about the meaning of sumo here that calls for the subjunctive?

• Or (the worst hypothesis of all) is sumpseris ungrammatical or nonsensical, chosen only because it rhymes?

If you could provide other examples of the choice of indicative or subjunctive in similar or contrasting circumstances, that might be especially enlightening. What I'm really hoping to understand is: What does memento quod sumpseris "echo" in the mind of a listener?

Answer 1

Let us first look at the Latin Vulgate, which had an enormous influence on medieval Latin. The exact phrase memento quod occurs 5 times (of which 4, interestingly, are in Deuteronomy) and each occurrence uses the subjunctive. I unfortunately do not have a critical apparatus handy at the moment, but my text of Deut 15:15 (both here and here) uses liberaverit, not liberavit:

memento quod et ipse servieris in Aegypto et eduxerit te inde Dominus Deus tuus (Deut 5:15)

memento quod et ipse servieris in terra Aegypti et liberaverit te Dominus Deus tuus (Deut 15:15)

memento quod servieris in Aegypto et eruerit te Dominus Deus tuus (Deut 24:18)

memento quod et tu servieris in Aegypto (Deut 24:22)

memento quod ignores opus eius (Iob 36:24)

Thomas Aquinas, a towering figure of medieval philosophy and a composer of many medieval hymns, also uses memento quod with the subjunctive, though in the context of quoting others. He quotes the above verse from Job, and, interestingly, he paraphrases Ex 20:28 (memento ut diem sabbati sanctifices) putting quod instead of ut. (Super Mt. cap. 23 l. 2.) It is perhaps significant that the ut and quod both are seen as serving the same purpose: ut obviously taking the subjunctive.

Some notes taken from some ad hoc analysis of the Corpus Thomisticum:

1. The quintessential medieval form of indirect discourse, dixit quod X takes the indicative in every case I could find. The same goes for other "objective" verbs such as scio.

2. The moment we depart from such words and move on to verbs like cogito and (especially in medieval Latin!) videtur, the subjunctive predominates.

As noted in the comments, I believe the generic medieval Latin primer advice that quia takes the indicative and quod takes the subjunctive is misleading if taken as a general prescription. This is not a hard and steadfast rule: I found some examples of memini with the indicative as well in other medieval writers. If we are to talk of a shade of meaning in this specific example of sumpseris, this has much more to do with the fact that we are asking the Redeemer to recall from his memory an event that happened to him: it is not some subtle way of calling into questions the factual accuracy of that event.

Answer 2

The subjunctive emphasizes what is going on in someone's mind, whether true or not. It does not by itself imply counterfactual propositions (even though counterfactuals obviously exist only in someone's mind). For instance the sentence, "Scio qui sis" (I know who you are) does not imply that "who you are" is counterfactual, it just means that the sentence is mostly about what I know, and only secondarily about who you are. "Scio qui es" would mean something quite different, something almost nonsensical, "I know you, who are".

So memento quod sumpseris is more about God remembering what he did, and not so much about what exactly it was that he did (quod sumpsisti). "Keep this in mind", rather than "Remember that thing you did?"

Addendum (24 May 2020):

Tony asked below whether this has anything to do with indirect speech. The answer is, arguably, yes, it very well may. That is, if you view attributed causes as an implicit case of indirect speech. Woodcock in #240 gives the examples aufugit quod timebat (he ran away because, I say, he was afraid) and aufugit quod timeret (he ran away because, he says, he was afraid). Here the switch to subjunctive indicates, as always, someone's mental state, and it indicates a switch to a point of view other than the speaker's. In the case of our hymn, memento quod sumpseris could be interpreted to mean, "remember, you say, that you took up", where as memento quod sumpsisti would mean, "remember, I say, that you took up".

This is obviously not a case of explicit indirect speech. The words "you say" do not appear explicitly, but they may be present implicitly, as implied by the subjunctive.