Does this idiom make sense to native English speakers?
It’s archaic. The modern variant would be like “Please, for goodness’s sake, consider that you could be mistaken,” or “Please, for fuck’s sake”, or “Please, for the love of God,” or so on.
I read it as a flowery, archaic way of saying something along the lines of “in the name of God”, without needing to map it away from a modern meaning, so that’s one data point for you. I don’t recall hearing the phrase elsewhere, but there are lots of religious invocations along similar lines from various eras, and I may unconsciously be drawing an inference between them.
(My favorite might be “God’s teeth!”, although that conveys shock rather than supplication.)
Yes, but do people actually read it as that without looking it up, instead of just thinking of the quite different modern meaning?
When I say the quote I use “in the bowels of Christ” and go directly to the concept/emotion I believe Cromwell wanted to evoke without going through another phrase first. But I have far more familiarity with English works written in Cromwell’s time than the average person, so I can’t say. (Similarly, “beseech” is a word rarely used undeliberately in modern times, but I don’t feel a need to translate it.)
Yes, but do people actually read it as that without looking it up, instead of just thinking of the quite different modern meaning?
There is a modern meaning? Once you drew attention to it above it occurred to me that the closest literal interpretation would be to “Holy Shit!” but that’s not a euphamism I’ve ever actually heard...
It’s archaic. The modern variant would be like “Please, for goodness’s sake, consider that you could be mistaken,” or “Please, for fuck’s sake”, or “Please, for the love of God,” or so on.
Yes, but do people actually read it as that without looking it up, instead of just thinking of the quite different modern meaning?
I read it as a flowery, archaic way of saying something along the lines of “in the name of God”, without needing to map it away from a modern meaning, so that’s one data point for you. I don’t recall hearing the phrase elsewhere, but there are lots of religious invocations along similar lines from various eras, and I may unconsciously be drawing an inference between them.
(My favorite might be “God’s teeth!”, although that conveys shock rather than supplication.)
In Henry V, Shakespeare has the Duke of Exeter say:
So it seems to have been a fairly common idiom in 17th C English.
When I say the quote I use “in the bowels of Christ” and go directly to the concept/emotion I believe Cromwell wanted to evoke without going through another phrase first. But I have far more familiarity with English works written in Cromwell’s time than the average person, so I can’t say. (Similarly, “beseech” is a word rarely used undeliberately in modern times, but I don’t feel a need to translate it.)
There is a modern meaning? Once you drew attention to it above it occurred to me that the closest literal interpretation would be to “Holy Shit!” but that’s not a euphamism I’ve ever actually heard...