Tea at Trianon: Learning Latin the Medieval Way

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, May 9, 2020

Learning Latin the Medieval Way

From The Imaginative Conservative:

Despite the myriad arguments for the language, of which I have listed above only those which seem to me most salient, there has never been a period in history less literate in Latin than ours since the very dawn of the Roman Republic. Not a century ago, anyone with an education could be counted on to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the language, and a few to have even a great command of it. You would be hard-pressed today to find anyone in your social circle with a real proficiency in Latin. And, what is more, very few students take up the language in the 21st century, though I concede that the numbers are rising.

But even the 20th century could be said to be marked by a widespread lapse in Latin literacy. Latin had long enjoyed a status as the language of scholarship in Europe, and was widely spoken, written, and read well into the 19th century. The rise of vernacular usage during and following the renaissance did little to weaken its position. Even being supplanted as the Lingua Franca was not enough to knock it from its pedestal. What, then, accounts for the decline in literacy within the last two centuries?

I would argue that Latin is the first victim of modernism, its decline analogous to the worst fears surrounding such educational reform as Common Core. The early modern period saw a break in tradition; the pedagogy of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance gave way to modern techniques and innovations, and for the past two centuries we have let our students wallow in the mire they created. (Read more.)