St. Augustine School’s Approach to Latin
On the History of Latin Study since the Renaissance
In 1514, Pietro Bembo published his de imitatione where he argued that contemporary writers of Latin should imitate Cicero’s style from the first century BC, and indeed only use words that could be found in Cicero’s work. This was the beginning of a controversy that lasted two hundred years. What is interesting to note, however, is that the debate was not over whether or not to imitate Cicero and limit one’s vocabulary to his, but rather which classical authors should be imitated. There was a consensus that they were not to use later, at that time “living,” Christian grammar and vocabulary.
Already in the generation after Dante (1265-1321) there was a movement in Italy to make Latin a more archaic language, to move away from the living language of medieval schools, monasteries and legal contexts. This also affected Latin instruction throughout Europe, especially in the English Renaissance following Henry VIII and Elizabeth I’s Reformation (16th century). School children were no longer immersed in Latin in the Mass, devotions, and the Liturgy of the Hours. Instead, Latin began to be studied as a “dead” language. The focus of instruction was the more difficult classical authors rather than the simpler Christian sermons, hymns, theological texts and the Scriptures (the Vulgate).
Two Contemporary American Approaches
The “dead” or “archaic” Latin tradition defined American Protestant and public education for centuries, although Catholic schools in both America and Europe retained vestiges of an older tradition of immersing students in Christian Latin texts and liturgy. When the classical education movement in America began in the early 1980s, it revived the study of Latin as a dead language and paid little, if any attention, to Christian texts.
In the past twenty years, under the influence of the legendary professor and Papal Latin Secretary Fr. Reginald Foster, the idea of Latin as a spoken language has developed. Students in these settings learn Latin as they would French or Spanish- as a living language. The focus of the living language method, however, tends not to be historical texts, but rather artificially written texts aimed at the skill level of the student.
Our Approach at St. Augustine’s: the Medieval Method
Both approaches have their strengths. The careful, slow reading of classical texts trains the mind to think grammatically, to see the beauty of complex syntax, and to translate masterpieces of the Golden Age of classical literature. Spoken Latin has the advantage of actually engaging everyday life and thinking actively in Latin.
St. Augustine School draws largely on the medieval approach which, we believe, has some of the advantages of both modern systems. In the Middle Ages, boys as young as six or seven were sent to monasteries for their education where they would be immersed in the psalms (the Liturgy of the Hours would pray all 150 psalms every week) and liturgical Latin and only then begin the study of grammar. At St. Augustine’s we follow this pattern: we immerse the student in simple Latin texts in our Lingua Latina book as well as easier Christian Latin. This “high input” approach is similar to how a toddler learns English- by hearing a lot of it. Students at St. Augustine’s are exposed to a lot of Latin. When they first encounter a text, they are asked to guess what it might mean. In this way they develop an intuitive feel for Latin. As the unit moves on, they study it grammatically, do exercises, and by the end they are able to understand the text fully and to analyze it grammatically. They come to a mastery of the text and build a good grammatical foundation.
We do this for two reasons.
The first is to avoid two pitfalls that could beleaguer a classical school. One problem is that by focusing only on the grammatical details of a “dead” language, the wholeness and potency of a classic text can be lost. For instance, a student might spend many months translating a twenty-minute speech of Cicero but never actually read it, and never get to enjoy the beauty and significance of the text as literature. The opposite problem that might arise is that by exposing the student only to simple Latin texts such that they could learn to think and speak in Latin, they would not easily come to enjoy sophisticated Latin literature, and they would not learn how to master complex grammar.
The second, more important reason for our approach gets at the core of what we do at St. Augustine’s. We want to expose our students to many Catholic Latin texts in order to form their imaginations. We use two thousand years of the Catholic Latin tradition in order to allow students to think the way earlier Christians thought, to feel what earlier Christians felt, to broaden their experience, to develop their capacity to experience a life in Christ in new ways. While this can be done in translation, immersion in the actual Latin language brings us closer to “so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1).