Learning Latin

Clare Bowskill gets to grips with grammar

Oro, Oras, Orat, Oramus, Oratis, Or or or …… Nunc, I should know this.

I will let you into a secret. I have been singing in Latin at Mass for nearly ten years. I have studied Gregorian Chant at Solesmes and at St Cecilia’s on the Isle of Wight, I ran a parish choir who sang mostly in Latin, I even work for the Latin Mass Society…. I should know my fundus from my cubitum.

I could say in my defence, that for many children born in the 1970s, like me, Latin was ‘declined’ shall we say, from the curriculum, certainly if you went to a Catholic state school. Really though I am running out of excuses. Carpe Diem, it was time for me to start conjugating those verbs and to turn over a ‘ tabula rasa’, you could say.

Every year in conjunction with the St Catherine’s Trust Summer School, the Latin Mass Society runs a weeklong Latin Course in the beautiful Arcadian location of the Franciscan Friary in Pantasaph near Holywell in North Wales. The tutors this year, our dramatis personae, were the inimitable Fr John Hunwicke, former Latin and Greek Master at Lancing College and a man who could probably recite The Aenied backwards if called upon. His fellow colleague was Fr Richard Bailey from the Manchester Oratory, an equally great and learned scholar.

There were 15 pupils this year, willing to be thrown to the lions. We were split into two groups according to ability and, thankfully, not pitted against each other in gladiatorial combat.

I will let you guess which group l chose to join, but needless to say led by the formidable force of Fr Hunwicke we started at the very beginning, a very good place to start, with the course manual ‘Simplicissimus.’

Blum, blum, blum, bli blo, blo…..

Ad rem, Simplicissimus is an incredibly comprehensive programme of learning, a magnum opus one could say, for those interested in Ecclesiastical Latin from the point of view of the Traditional Roman Missal. Caveat: No Cicero obviously, but plenty of useful exercises in translating the texts we hear so often at Mass.

Mea culpa…

My fellow learned Latinists (et al) came from far and wide to hear our tutors. Several were from Ireland, one from America, and we counted among us, a seminarian, a priest, a couple of directors of scholas, and many others. While the core emphasis was on understanding that to have good Latin you ultimately have to grasp your grammar, there were opportunities to translate well-known Latin texts such as the Angelus, the Salve Regina and the Credo and then to pray them in their correct context. Lessons stopped mid-morning each day for a Missa Solemnis (Deo Gratias!) and each evening there was the chance to return to the Friary for Compline in the Extraordinary Form (more Latin to digest.)

The writer making light work of it…

Rex ipsa loquitur

The chance to get a good grounding in Latin with such fine scholars is an opportunity not to be missed. While you can only scratch the surface and master the basics of Latin in a week, you get to take your own copy of the course manual home with you and then it is time to do your homework. There is no getting round it, if you want to really know your Panis Angelicus from your Pange Lingua you have to start with the basics. So if you, like me, feel your Latin is not up to scratch, nil desperandum, sign up, next year. It could be an annus mirabilis!

Post scriptum

Keep an eye out on the LMS website for details of next year’s course.