Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses/Scylla and Charybdis/206

Annotations

Summa contra Gentiles     (Latin) Comprehensive Treatise Against the Unbelievers. This is the usual title of a work by St Thomas Aquinas also known as Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei Contra Errores Infidelium (Book on the Truth of the Catholic Faith Against the Errors of the Infidels). Allegedly written for Raymond of Peñafort, the head of Thomas's religious order the Dominicans, it was an attempt to demonstrate the truth of Catholic theology without having recourse to so-called revealed truths; the Jews and Islamic Moors of Spain were the intended audience.

Stephen quotes from this compendium at 197.08-09.

Notre ami Moore     (French) Our friend Moore. Thornton believes this is an allusion to the words Mon ami Moore (My friend Moore) used by the Irish playwright Edward Martyn, a cousin of George Moore's, when rescuing Moore from a potentially compromising situation. The phrase became a standing joke between the two men, and whenever Martyn was exasperated by Moore's excesses, he would shake his head in resignation and mutter, Mon ami Moore, mon ami Moore.

While Gifford agrees that the phrase alludes to this remark of Edward Martyn, he cites another use as being most relevant to this passage: Mon ami Moore yearns to be le génie de l'amitié, but unfortunately he can never be looked upon as a friend. For he suffers from ... a perennial condition of mental diarrhoea.