Vatican recalls medal with “Jesus” misspelled

October 11, 2013 • 4:00 pm

Who’s running this railroad? According to CBS News, the Vatican has discovered, belatedly, that it misspelled the name “Jesus” on a medal struck to commemorate the ascendancy to infallibility of Pope Francis:

According to the Vatican Information Service, more than 6,000 of the medals were produced by the Italian State Mint to commemorate the beginning of Francis’ papacy.

The medal features a portrait of Francis on one side and on the other, a Latin phrase that the future pontiff says inspired him as a teenager to pursue the priesthood: “Vidit ergo Jesus publicanum et quia miserando antque eligendo vidit, ait illi sequere me.” (Translation: “Jesus, therefore, saw the publican, and because he saw by having mercy and by choosing, He said to him, ‘Follow me'”).

However, the letter “J” in Jesus was mistakenly replaced with the letter “L.”

The Telegraph reports that the medals – 200 in gold, 3,000 in silver and 3,000 in bronze – were withdrawn after being put on sale at the Vatican Publishing House in St Peter’s Square.

At least four of them are in private hands already, though, and those will be worth a pile to the lucky collectors. Praise Lesus (or is it Cieling Cat)?

The misteak:

vatican_coin_typo_2_620x350
Photo: CBS News & Catholic News Service

 

 

 

47 thoughts on “Vatican recalls medal with “Jesus” misspelled”

  1. ‘…the letter “J” in Jesus was mistakenly replaced with the letter “L.”’

    No. The letter “I” in IESVS was mistakenly replaced with the letter “L.” Oh, and look, the letter “U” was mistakenly replaced with the letter “V.” Maybe CBS News minted the coins.

    1. V for U (yep, I know there was a song about that) is not a mistake. It’s typical Roman lettering where (originally) stonecarving is involved. See for instance US Peace Dollars – which have IN G*D WE TRVST on the obverse.

      And while on that topic, some collectors are aware that the G*D on the 1926 dollars is more deeply engraved than before or after. It has been speculated that this was in subtle protest against the Scopes trial, but this has never been confirmed, and IIRC was not even noticed until relatively recently.

  2. Jeez Vatican, Jesus is spelled Iesus.. there is no “J” on Latin; even Indiana Jones knew that when he opened that door with Sean Conner! 🙂

          5. That’s the winner! I spent a while trying to come up with a good Indy/Terminator mashup and that one rocks!

          6. Sorry, that was of course “Indiana Ripley and the Temple of Cyberdyne”.

            Because a mix is never done until it is well mixed!

          7. I’ll be back to bring back a life form. Priority One. All other priorities rescinded. Time to Die.

            Ultimate synthetic human mashup: Alien Terminator Runner

  4. What always amazes me is that nearly all xians do not use the fellow’s real name, nor do most not even know that it was Yeshua. The closest translation is Joshua.

    1. No, the closest transliteration is, “Joshua.” The closest translation would be, “YHWH saves” or “YHWH’s savior” or the like. And “Christ” literally means, “anointed, as with oil.”

      So, “Jesus Christ,” translated into modern terms, might perhaps best be rendered as, “YHWH’s greasy penny-pincher.”

      …and people actually wonder why one of the most prominent Christian-owned companies is a fast fried “food” franchise….

      Cheers,

      b&

  5. The Gospel of Juke: What is written in the Jaw? Man cannot jive by Bread alone… this do, and thou shalt jive… for the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s jives.

  14. See, I don’t find that newsworthy, but I do find it kind of amusing that some reporter somewhere, actually did.

    I mean, the vatican wouldn’t know reality if it crawled up their frocks and bit them on the…leg…so misspelling the name of one of their fictional characters just seems to go hand-in-hand with the whole circus, yes?

    (Oh shut up, woman.)

  16. I’m surprised they didn’t use their normal method in such circumstances and just pretend that spelling with an L was OK, its just the rest of the world that has it wrong.

  17. Earlier today, over at The Friendly Atheist, Terry Firma quoted a translation and linked to an article at Speigel Online which was:

    “Jesus therefore sees the tax collector, and since he sees by having mercy and by choosing, he says to him, follow me.”

    Looks like someone at CBS News isn’t all that familiar with their Bible and maybe relied on Google translate which gives publican for publicanum. The dictionary says that meaning only derived from the word pub in the 18th century. Definition 2 is tax collector as used in ancient Rome and the Bible.

  18. The irony: CBS post an article about mis-spelling Latin and guess what, they mis-spell “atque” as “antque”!

    “Vidit ergo Jesus publicanum et quia miserando antque eligendo vidit, ait illi sequere me.”

  20. It’s the curse of Sans Serif fonts. With most of them, it’s easy to mistake an upper case I for a lower case l or 1. If you’re over 60, lesus and Iesus look pretty much the same.

  21. The Romans should make the miscreant write in properly in red paint on the walls of the Coliseum ( as in John Cleese in Life of Brian). Lesus Chlist!!

  22. Beautifully ironic… Can’t wait til the poop starts selling off the Vulcans gold and uses the proceeds to feed the poor… Please excuse any misspellings as I’m not the “infallible” poop…

  23. I don’t think there could be an engraving error that can top the bronze plaque given to James Earl Jones at a function celebrating MLK. The sentiment was nice: “for helping to keep the dream alive”, but the name on the plaque was James Earl Ray Thay did have a new plaque made.

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