Language of the Catholic Church and Western Civilization
I found Gwynne's Latin a delightful read. I have a Victorian-era mindset and tastes, and I will always be a huge fan of the Grammar-Translation pedagogy (called 'Drill-and-Kill' by non-fans) that I started my Via LatÃna with. This book is a direct and concise explanation of the most important rules of Latin, with stern and... Continue Reading →
Studying Latin on your own, and wish you had a professor you could ask questions? Studying with a class, but the grammar still seems murky and you are too intimidated to ask questions? This book is for you. I wish I had written this book!
It's another anthology that should be very useful to Church Latinists. The short introduction is excellent: a helpful summary of Church Latin's history, vocabulary, forms, syntax, and metric. Each author has a paragraph or two of interesting introductory material, and lots of photographs and reproductions of art and artifacts are nicely tucked in throughout.
Guess what? There are old books that were specifically written to teach the Latin texts found in the Traditional Divine Office.
This just in! Newly in the Public Domain in the USA as of 2021, Medieval and Late Latin Selections (for the Use of College Students) by Charles Upson Clark and Josiah Bethea Game. My waiting to share this treasure is finally over!
After your first year or year-and-a-half of Latin , particularly if you have used Fr. Most's books, you will be ready for a Latin Reader supplement. An excellent choice for visitors to this site would be Charles Beeson's A Primer of Medieval Latin from 1925 which is now out of copyright and available, scanned and... Continue Reading →
Latin Grammar for the Reading of the Missal and the Breviary by Cora Carroll Scanlon, A.M., and Charles L. Scanlon, A.M. (1944, 1976) 334pp. "This Latin grammar is intended for students who are entering seminaries or religious novitiates without previous study of Latin..." says the first sentence of the preface. However, the authors of these... Continue Reading →
I've found this wonderful piece (poetry? prose? something else?) in a couple places and just love it: AT FIRST I did not know PRIMO and ALMOST despaired of PAENE; BUT I knew SED; and WHILE I was studying DUM, I SUDDENLY recognized SUBITO and IMMEDIATELY STATIM became familiar. AT THAT TIME TUM seemed hard and... Continue Reading →
This is a perfect guide to the very basic first steps of Latin, particularly for the fearful beginner.
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