Blog: a don's life by Mary Beard

Students at a Cambridge college want to jettison their traditional Grace before dinner because they believe it “too religious”. But according to a leading classicist, the secular replacement that they have written is an “insult” to Latin.

The Christian Grace said at the start of the formal evening meals that are held at Newnham College once a week in term-time reads: “Benedic nobis Domine Deus et his donis quae de liberalitate tua sumpturi sumus per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.”

Put together by the late Jocelyn Toynbee, it translates as: “Bless us Lord God and bless these gifts which by your generosity we are about to eat, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

The new Grace reads: “Pro cibo inter esurientes, pro comitate inter desolatos, pro pace inter bellantes, gratias agimus”. It means: “For food in a hungry world, for companionship in a world of loneliness, for peace in an age of violence, we give thanks.”

The new version will be tested to ensure it has the approval of other students but Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the university, said that while the new Grace was well intentioned it was an “insult” to Latin.

Professor Beard, a Fellow of Newnham, wrote in her Times Online blog that although “there were no obvious grammatical howlers in the Latin”, she just “couldn’t stomach it”. She continued: “The undergraduates’ rewrite was a classic case of disguising a load of well-meaning platitudes in some posh dead language, which was actually an insult to that dead language.” However, she admitted it was difficult to have a Grace that satisfied students of all faiths.

She said: “It’s a very interesting case. The college was founded not to be religious, in the 19th century. It’s not atheistical, but includes all faiths.”

The students rightly thought it therefore odd that the college should have a traditional Christian Grace and came up with their own alternative, she said. “There was a debate whether one could devise a Grace that fitted all purposes, and it is a very complicated issue whether one can have a multicultural, multifaith grace.”

Jocelyn Toynbee was an art historian and archaeologist who in 1962 was named an honorary Fellow of the college.

According to tradition, the person presiding over a Formal Hall has the discretion to choose what form of Grace to use.

Dr Terri Apter, a senior tutor at Newnham, said that the college was considering alternatives for Grace. She said: “We have been thinking about whether we should have a Grace, and what kind of Grace it should be, and whether it should be a particular college Grace.

“We have to consider how comfortable students are, as well as whether a Grace is in keeping with college tradition.”

The Bishop of Ely, Dr Anthony Russell, said that Grace should be said with sincerity.

He said: “Clearly this is a matter for Newnham to decide.

“There are a great variety of formal Graces within the university and it would seem entirely appropriate for a Fellow who is saying the Grace to be able to do so with sincerity.”

Canon John Binns, vicar of the University Church, Great St Mary’s, in the city, said that students had the right to devise an appropriate Grace.

He said: “It is important that members of the college are free to work out what expresses their common life.”

There are 400 undergraduates and 150 postgraduates at Newnham, which was founded in 1871.

Philip Howard, The Times Latin expert, also defended the students. He said: “The new Latin contains no howlers, and I quite like its rhetorical triptych form. Not sure that Cicero would have liked those ‘inters’.

“Perhaps it is a bit pious, when all we are doing is waiting to get down to the Brown Windsor. But Newnham is a college for high-minded ladies, and I dare say that they want to think about peace and world poverty as well as pudding before sitting down.”