A Medieval Latin Reader: An Intermediate Latin Commentary (Latin text with vocabulary and notes)

The goal of this anthology is twofold: (1) to build confidence in the student’s ability to read unaltered Latin texts as soon as possible after (or even during) the first year of instruction in the language; (2) to put into the hands of Latin students a number of engaging and lively texts that reflect different aspects of the culture of Western Europe during the Middle Ages.

To accomplish the above, this book provides vocabulary and commentary to a selection of texts taken from Charles H. Beeson’s A Primer of Medieval Latin: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose (Chicago, 1925). Now nearly a century old, Beeson’s anthology is still, perhaps, the single best collection of Medieval Latin texts available, at least in terms of its breadth, accessibility, and success at achieving its stated goal of “provid[ing] a collection of material that will prepare students, who have had at least four years of high-school Latin, to read ordinary medieval Latin texts with a fair degree of ease and assurance.” (Beeson, 1)

Beeson’s Primer has aged incredibly well, with one exception: its intended audience of “students, who have had at least four years of high-school Latin,” is now largely a thing of the past. Today’s undergraduates, if they took Latin in high school, will most likely have studied only 1-2 years of the language before matriculation. Indeed, the majority of college Latin students will only on rare occasions pursue the language beyond two semesters. For these reasons, I have chosen from Beeson’s anthology texts which I believe are both the most engaging and the most accessible. Admittedly, this is a very personal selection, but one that I have found success with in the classroom for over two decades. What is most sorely lacking for today’s students in terms of Beeson’s original anthology is its extremely limited assistance with vocabulary (due to the fact that the undergraduates of Beeson’s day had already had at least four years of exposure to the language). On the understanding that the presumed audience for this text has only studied Latin, on average, for one year, this edition remedies that deficiency by providing significant vocabulary assistance.

The notes of this anthology also explicate certain syntactical and grammatical aspects that may be challenging for beginning-intermediate students, point out some of the more striking literary/rhetorical figures and tropes that are employed, and supply basic information on historical, social, cultural, and literary issues raised by these texts.

With the exception of the two poems from the Carmina Burana, which lose much of their power, charm, wit, and in the case of the second poem—the last selection in this anthology—manic energy if not performed out loud with all of the rhymes intact, the words of the texts follow Classical Latin spelling norms. Thus in the prose selections of this anthology one will find mihi, not the common Medieval Latin spelling of michi, aetas instead of etas, etc. This too is in line with Beeson’s practice, for he thought it best “to avoid adding to the troubles of the beginner… by “adopt[ing] the classical orthography throughout,…” (Beeson, 3)