On course

The Latin Mass Society’s Latin Course 2018, with Fr John Hunwicke and Jean Van Der Stegen, 30 July to 3 August, at Boars Hill, Oxford

It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.

-- Pope John Paul II, quoting Cicero

By Joseph Shaw

It was from Boars Hill that Matthew Arnold saw Oxford, ‘that fair city with her dreaming spires’; it was home to Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, and Robert Bridges. The house of the last of those now contains a Carmelite Friary, which has twice hosted the Guild of St Clare ‘Sewing Retreat’. This year it will also be the venue for the Latin Mass Society’s Residential Latin Course, from Monday 30 July to Friday 3 August, following the closure of its venue of the last few years, the Franciscan Retreat Centre at Pantasaph in North Wales.

It will, as for many years, be looked after by Fr John Hunwicke of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, who, following an Open Scholarship to Oxford, taught Latin for thirty years in Lancing College in Sussex. He will be joined this year by a second tutor, layman Jean Van Der Stegen, whose linguistic interests include Farsi, Classical Arabic, Biblical Greek, and Medieval Italian, as well as Latin, and teaches in the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London.

We hope to help clergy who wish to learn or improve their Latin for the liturgy, and for all who want to learn from devotional, cultural, or scholarly motives. It focuses on the Latin of the traditional Catholic liturgy, and with the help of the Latin Mass Society’s course book, Simplicissimus, it makes use of examples, exercises, and reading passages from the Missal. As well as introducing students to the cadences of the liturgy, this enables it to make maximum use of whatever Latin students may have picked up from the liturgy.

The course is for those who are beginners, together with those who need to learn or revise from the beginning; and also for those who know the basic conjugations and declensions and want to go on from there. The two tutors are able to divide the students into separate groups to enable them to proceed at different speeds.

Naturally, the Traditional Mass will be celebrated each day during the course for all participants who wish to attend. At least one of these Masses will be sung.

There is a substantial discount for clergy, students, and seminarians, and for Latin Mass Society members. It is also possible to attend as a ‘day student’ staying elsewhere.