Pax hominibus bonae volantatis

Gloria Excelsis Deo
peace to the good flying men*
more info required 

*this line was provided by Kaybee!

I suspect this might be from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem as the tinting and the very scratched up borders are similar to other slides in the same box.


The expression "Gloria Excelsis Deo, et in Terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis" translates to "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will" in English.

From the Gloria of the Latin mass.
the full phrase in Latin is “"Et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis”
this is often mistranslated as “"peace on earth and goodwill toward men”
the correct translation is “ and peace on earth to men of goodwill”

It means, literally, “(May there be) glory in the highest to God, and on Earth (may there be) peace to men of good will.”
It is the word-for-word translation of the following sentence in Greek:
Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας
All should have been in order, except that a textual corruption crept into the Greek with the passage of several centuries, and the so-called textus receptus from which both Luther and the King James translators were working had the sentence as follows:
Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίαν
Note the last letter. That changes the word in question, which means “good will”, from the genitive case into the accusative case and renders the sentence practically untranslatable. Nonetheless, the translators had to take their best shot at it, and what they came up with was the following:
“Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men”.