Mumpsimus

Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life, but one who rejects a rebuke goes astray. – Proverbs 10:17 (NRSV) 

Once upon a time in the Middle Ages, there was a poorly educated priest. Not really understanding the Latin he was using to celebrate Mass, instead of saying “Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine,” (“What we have taken with our mouths, Lord”), he had been saying “Mumpsimus” for years. Eventually someone with more education than he noticed and pointed it out. He refused to be corrected, saying, “I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus.” 

So the story goes. If you ask me, it fits a little too neatly into certain parties’ simplistic narratives about the clergy of the day. But since you didn’t ask me, I’ll just tell you that the first written account of it is in a letter with an agenda: a scholar uses the story to complain to his buddy about people who didn’t like the corrections to previous errors he made in his newly-released edition of the New Testament. 

Anyway, the story passed into legend, and you’ll be delighted to learn that “mumpsimus” came to mean any incorrect or unsupportable action, custom, or practice in which someone persists despite having been shown better. From thence, it also came to refer to the kind of intractable old fogey who might do such persisting.  

No surprise that such a word came into being in the context of church. Of course it did; it’s so us. 

The only real question is which is more common in church today: mumpsimuses, or people who delight in accusing others of being one. At least now you have a word to use while you try to figure it out. 

Prayer
Don’t let me be one, don’t let me meet one. Amen.

About the Author
Quinn G. Caldwell is Chaplain of the Protestant Cooperative Ministry at Cornell University. His most recent book is a series of daily reflections for Advent and Christmas called All I Really Want: Readings for a Modern Christmas. Learn more about it and find him on Facebook at Quinn G. Caldwell.