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Checkback: This spring's print edition of the magazine carried a translation of the Latin inscription on the monument to Notre Dame's founder, Father Edward Sorin, CSC, located at the head of the Main Quad. A few readers wrote in to point out apparent error in the date listed for Sorin's birth and another in the age at which he died. The inscription says Sorin was born "VIII ID. Feb. A.D. MDCCCXIV," which many read as February 8, 1814. Sorin was actually born February 6, 1814, and that's how it read in the English translation done for the magazine by Daniel Sheerin, professor of classics and theology. The confusion stems from the abbreviation "VIII ID," which refers not to February 8 but to the eighth day before the Ides of February. This was the classical Roman way of designating days in mid-month. Starting at the Ides of February, the 13th, and counting back eight days (with the 13th being Day 1), brings you to February 6, Sorin's true birthday. So the inscription is right in that respect, if a little confusing. The inscription is wrong, however, where it states that Sorin lived for "78 years and 10 months." When the priest died on October 31 -- Halloween -- of 1893, he had lived 79 years, 10 months (and 25 days). Apparently no one in the University's administration was aware of the error, no one knows how it happened, and there are no immediate plans to correct the monument. The Sorin flub brings to mind the inscription on the campus's Founders Monument near the Log Chapel. For decades it had four names wrong on its list of Holy Cross brothers who journeyed to northern Indiana with Sorin in 1842 to found Notre Dame. * * * Notre Dame Magazine, summer 2002
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