Nipson anomemata me monan opsin

ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ (meaning "Wash the sins, not only the face").

Nipson anomēmata mē monan opsin (Greek: Νίψον ἀνομήματα, μὴ μόναν ὄψιν), meaning "Wash the sins, not only the face,"^[1] or "Wash my transgressions, not only my face,"^[2] is a Greek palindrome^{[fn 1]} which was inscribed upon a holy water font outside the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople:^[3]

The phrase is attributed to Saint Gregory of Nazianzus.^[2]

The inscription can also be found in the following places:

• above the Hagiasma ("Holy Spring") of the Church of St. Mary of Blachernae in Istanbul;
• around the baptismal font at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham;
• the font of several churches in Paris, e.g.,
  • St. Stephen d’Egres,
  • Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Paris,
  • St. Martin des Champs,
  • St. Pierre de Chaillot,
  • Basilica of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, Paris;
• at St. Menin’s Abbey, Orléans;
• at Dulwich College;
• at the following churches of the UK: Tewkesbury Abbey (Gloucestershire), Worlingworth (Suffolk), Harlow (Essex), Knapton (Norfolk), St Martin, Ludgate (London), and Hadleigh (Suffolk);
• at the Vlatadon Monastery, Thessaloniki, Greece.^[4]

See also

• List of Greek phrases

Footnotes

1. The Romanization is not a palindrome, because the Greek letter ψ (psi) is transcribed by the digraph ps. The modern diacritics, which are not symmetrical, are usually omitted from inscriptions of the sentence.

References

1. Barry J. Blake, Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN 0-19-957928-8, p. 15.
2. Alex Preminger, Terry V.F. Brogan, and Frank J. Warnke, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 3rd ed., Princeton University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-691-02123-6, p. 874.
3. R. Langford-James, A Dictionary of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Ayer Publishing, ISBN 0-8337-5047-X, p. 61.
4. "< palindromo > ... Wash the sins, not only the face | Flickr - Photo Sharing!". Flickr. 2012-07-20. Retrieved 2013-10-01.