Medieval Latin

The MedLat group is coordinated by Meredith Dixon.

Useful Information

Code Tag

The MedLat group's code tag is "MedLat". Please use this tag when you mail me or when you post to the LatinStudy list. This helps other list members select the posts they're interested in, and it helps me make sure I don't lose anyone's translation!

Textbook

Our textbook is Charles H. Beeson's *Primer of Medieval Latin*, CUA, 1986.

Time and Date Due

MedLat assignments are due at 11:59 p.m., Pacific Time, every other Sunday. Pacific Time is GMT -8 from October to April and GMT -7 from April to October. They should be sent to dixonm@pobox.com, not posted to the list. Since I live in the Eastern Time zone (GMT -5/-4), I am unlikely to be up and collating at what for me is 3 a.m., so participants will usually have several hours' grace -- often as many as eight or nine hours' grace -- beyond this time. But don't count on it.

If you know your assignment will be a few hours late, let me know! I'll probably be willing to wait for you, especially if you don't make a habit of it.

If you're late....

If you finish the assignment after I've already started the collation, feel free to do a manual recollation of the week's collation, including your own work at the appropriate places, and post it to the list.

Holidays

The weeks of Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day (the last Monday in May), Independence Day (July 4th), Labor Day (first Monday in September), and Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday in November) are holidays. No MedLat assignments will be due on the Sundays closest to these dates. If a holiday falls in an off week, there will be a three-week gap between assignments to allow for it.

Standard Format

Our assignments must follow a special format because they're collated by means of a very useful Perl script created by Kirk Lougheed.

If you haven't already done so, choose a set of initials (they can be your own initials, but they don't have to be) and let me know what you've chosen.

Each assignment is collated one Latin sentence at a time. Put your initials, followed by a space, at the start of your translation of each Latin sentence. You may use as many English sentences as you like to translate a particular Latin sentence. When you finish your translation of a given Latin sentence, put a blank line between it and the start of your translation of the next sentence.

Please, please, don't include the Latin you're translating in your assignment! The collation script can't tell the difference between Latin and English, so Latin confuses it dreadfully.

By default, the collation script will wrap the lines of your translation by length and not by sense (though it won't wrap in the middle of words, or anything of that kind). If you'd like to keep the line divisions you've made, put a space, followed by an ampersand (&) at the place where each line should end.

Formatting Samples

Prose

MMD For every single day, before cock-crow, all the doors of the Anastasis are opened, and all the monks and nuns go down to sing, and not only these, but even the laity who want to keep watch so early, men and women alike.

MMD And in the hour before dawn, they sing hymns and chant psalms in unison and antiphonally, and along with every single hymn there is a sermon.

MMD For the priests, and likewise the deacons, take turns with the monks, two or three times around, to preach the sermons along with the hymns and antiphonies.

Poetry

MMD Turn unto me, Thou that rulest over Israel, &
Thou that sittest above the Cherubim, &
Reveal Thyself plainly to Ephraim, &
Bestir Thy power and come!

MMD Come, redeemer of the nations, &
Show Thyself to have been born of a virgin, &
That all of time may marvel &
At such a birth, a birth graced by God.

MMD Not by the seed of a man, &
But by a mystical breath, &
Was the word of God made flesh, &
And the fruit of the womb nurtured.