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. 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. Through writers like Boëthius and Cassiodorus, Gregory of Tours and Isidore of Seville, Latin managed to survive the fall of the Roman Empire, and continued to be used throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, as the language of jurisprudence, philosophy and theology, culminating with Thomas Aquinas. Latin bounced back with renewed strength in the Renaissance, hand in hand with the extraordinary flourishing of the arts and the sciences, as a perennial vehicle of communication among nations, 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, have been led to 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 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 or taught without genuine motivation. The legacy of ancient Greece being much more ample, as well as incomparably and undeniably richer, than that of the Romans, the reason why the teaching of Latin has always been more widespread than that of Greek stems from the fact that Latin, not Greek, became the perennial and unique expression of our common culture. Latin teachers and professors now wonder how come they struggle so much to motivate anyone to apply themselves to the study of our language, when for a couple of centuries they have been proclaiming the lie that Latinity lay dead in remote antiquity, and refuse to embrace its most valuable virtue, which is its perennial vigour as a universal language. Secondly, treating Latin as a dead language and teaching it as if it was Egyptian, makes didactic methodology so unnecessarily dry that it is a miracle if anyone actually manages to learn anything at all that way. Teachers and professors don’t seem to want to remember that language learning is an innate capacity of humans, which 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, sound and efficient manner, and it is taught this way here, at the Schola Latina Universalis, by motivated and 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. CSB/SJU Latin Language and Literature, from the Clemens Library & Alcuin Library. About network search for "Latin" 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, many people think that Latin is a dead language, as dead as the universal culture it conveys. We are persuaded that it doesn't have to be like that, not for the culture, and not for the language on which it genuinely stands. 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 without difficulty 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, is usually provided 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. The Schola Latina Universalis will be starting its 8th academic year of life in September 2011. Students' Feedback «I cannot repeat enough how this course has marvelously exceeded expectations [...] It has just been a great course and so enlightening! I have learned more specifically about the active use of the Latin language in this course than I did in all of graduate school. I found the sections on pronunciation and the coinage of neologisms throughout the long history of the Latin language to be particularly instructive and interesting.» (D. Griffinus, Latin teacher, completed SL I&II 2010-2011) Scholæ conditor: Albinus Flaccus Cursuum auctor: A. Gratius Avitus Réctríx: A. Tullia Scholastica Magistrí: A. Tullia Scholastica & Canicus Buckus Interpres Hispánicus: Federico de Ceballos Cabrillo Adjútor technicus: C. Sentius Leoninus Further information on the courses and enrolment