Courses

Students in this course will study a variety of Latin sources for medieval religious history. These will include religious rules, saint’s lives, papal bulls, episcopal legislation, liturgical texts, confraternity statutes, sermons, papal council decrees, theological texts, and penitential handbooks. All selected texts will be in Latin. The main aim of the course is to create an affinity for the different types of sources, and to learn how to read them by paying attention to their authors, specific rhetorical elements, formatting, the kind of Latin abbreviations that are used etc. The course will also incorporate beginning level Latin paleography, with some of the sources being examined by way images of medieval manuscripts. Overall, the course intends “to get the students’ hands dirty” by teaching them how to transcribe, translate and interpret a medieval text.