Latin,

the living heritage of mankind, our common language Latíné | English | Español | Français | Italiano Latin has represented for the last three thousand years the most genuine expression of our civilisation, not only inasmuch as it was the language of our Roman ancestors, like Plautus and Terence, Cicero or Virgil, Seneca and Pliny, as well as Statius and Quintilian, Martial or Tacitus, Suetonius and Aulus Gellius, or, later on, Ausonius and Claudianus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Ambrose or Augustine; but also because, through writers like Boëthius, Cassiodorus, Gregory of Tours and Isidore of Seville, Latin managed finally to survive the fall of the Roman Empire. The Language of Rome remained alive throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, as the language of jurisprudence, philosophy and theology, culminating with Thomas Aquinas, and it bounced back with renewed strength in the Renaissance, hand in hand with the extraordinary flourishing of the arts and the sciences, as a vehicle of communication among all the nations of the earth, with luminaries as varied as the Duch Erasmus, the Polish Copernicus, the French Descartes, the English Newton, the German Leibniz or the Swedish Linnaeus, joined together, all of them, by our common Latin language. Despite the richness of our millenary culture, many people, dispossessed of their roots by the turbulent events and narrow-minded ideologies of the last couple of centuries, and ignorant of their place in history, believe now-a-days that the Latin language died with the last of the Romans. Correcting this mistake and re-endowing our society with its cultural patrimony is the purpose of the Schola Latina Universalis. Learning Latin As explained above, an ever greater number of people nowadays have had no previous contact with the Latin language during their education; and, of those who have had Latin as a subject before, most have ended up hating it, forgetting it, or both. This is no surprise, and shouldn't lead us to the wrong conclusions. First of all, nothing can possibly be learnt without motivation, and the adolescents that are normally subjected to the study of Latin are rarely made to feel the purpose of it all. After the disappearance of Latin from public life, even within the catholic church, one of the last bastions of Latinity, Latin teachers and professors, usually floating in the moral limbo and pervading ignorance and shallowness of our times, and too pusillanimous to show overt support for any engaging set of ideals that might attract the students to the language, fail to find any inner motivation or to motivate their students to apply themselves to the treasures of our cultural patrimony. Secondly, the teaching methodology is made so unnecessarily dry that it is a miracle if anyone actually does learn anything at all. The teachers have been so conditioned —and condition their students— to consider Latin a dead language that none of them can actually realise that language learning is an innate capacity of humans that should be ever so natural and easy if only the language was taught the natural way, that is by actively using it, through listening to it and speaking it, as all other languages that people normally do learn. They stubbornly try to teach the Latin language against the grain of any natural language learning, and they obviously fail. The Latin language can be learnt in a more pleasant and efficient manner, and it is taught this way here, at the Schola Latina Universalis, by motivated and well experienced teachers to whoever wants to learn it. Everyone interested is most encouraged to join one of our courses. Some other Latin learning resources on the Internet are: Latin Background Studies, original studies and background essays on the Latin language by William Harris. About network search for "Latin" CSB/SJU Latin Language and Literature, from the Alcuin and Clemens Libraries. Out of the virtual arena, Latin is taught in many places too; but, as we said, normally in an extremely dry fashion. Remarkable exceptions are the Fundatio Melissa, in Brussels, and the Schola Nova, an independent Belgian school where Latin is taught to the pupils from an early age. Using Latin As we said, most people think that Latin is a dead language, as dead as the culture it conveys, as dead as our own civilisation; but an ever larger number of us know that it doesn't have to be like that, not for the culture and civilisation, and not for the language on which they genuinely stand. Latin, the living language of our Roman forefathers, remained the living language of our civilisation for centuries. It is a language like all others, that can be learnt in a leisurely way and spoken in all situations of everyday life. The Schola Latina Universalis has been created to further the perennial living usage of Latin. Other ways of putting Latin into practice through the Internet can also be found: Grex Latiné Loquentium, the greatest e-mail list for living Latin, where Latin is the only language allowed, and one can read the best Latin speakers the world over, and exchange messages with them. Nuntii Latini, current news in Latin, that can be read or even directly listened to. Ephemeris, online news, completely written in Latin and including numerous sections. Out of the virtual arena, the Societas Circulorum Latinorum is a worldwide federation of Latin Circles, informal gatherings of people who meet locally to speak the language. Everyone is welcome to join their local group —or found one if there is no one close enough— and we encourage everyone to do so in order to practice the language of our forefathers with experienced people. All levels are accepted. There are also loads of summer seminars where Latin is the only language spoken. A very complete list of such seminars all over the world, updated every year, can be found in the pages of the association LVPA. The Schola Latína Úniversális The Schola Latina Universalis offers one single subject, Latin as a perennial, living language, and bases its teaching on the best available method for this purpose, Clément Desessard's Lingua Latina sine molestia, from the Assimil series. Two options are offered, a leisurely one, to be completed in two academic years, and an intensive one, in one academic year. Teaching is delivered initially either in English or in Spanish, and eventually only in Latin. Our courses, with the title of Sermo Latinus, which emphasises their active nature, are completely free of charge, and are addressed to all those who want to learn Latin, the eternal language of our ancestors, so as to be able not only to read its texts with understanding but also to write it with ease and fluently to speak it in all situations in order to bring it back to active life and everyday usage. Réctor: Albinus Flaccus Magister: A. Gratius Avitus Further information on the courses and enrolment