Apostolicus

Domnus apostolicus, contraction of dominus apostolicus (Latin for apostolic lord, in a literal translation), is an epithet or title historically applied to popes, especially from the 6th to the 11th centuries, and was sometimes applied to other bishops also.

A more recent sense-for-sense translation in the Litany of the Saints of the term is apostolic prelate though the 21st century. The sense-for-sense translation of the term also shifted in the same Litany of the Saints to pope since at least Pope John XXIII's 1959 encyclical Grata recordatio.

The word domnus is a shortened form of Latin dominus (lord). While the full form dominus is applied even to God and Jesus Christ, the shortened form is used only of human rulers, ecclesiastical or lay. For example, in Annales Loiseliani events concerning Tassilo III, Duke of Bavaria, Charlemagne and Pope Hadrian I are referred to as rex (king) and apostolicus (apostolic), and as domnus rex and domnus apostolicus.Domnus is used in ecclesiastical Latin as a generic title for a superior. For example, where, in the official English translation of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), 175, the deacon who is about to read the Gospel requests the presiding priest's blessing, saying in a low voice: "Your blessing, Father"; what he says in the Latin text of the General Instruction, 175 is: Iube, domne, benedicere (not domine).

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