Reviews for Calendarium festorum

The average rating for Calendarium festorum based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-08 00:00:00 Kris Sanders Collins, John F. A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991 [1985]. The book is exactly what the title claims. It introduces the student to the structure of the Latin language with an eye towards medieval church sources. It's set up similar to most Latin textbooks, except that the practice exercises have a more "churchly" flavor. If the student has had some other foreign language (preferably Greek or German), then this book won't present any difficulties as concepts like "declensions" will be quite familiar. The beginning of the book is quite user-friendly. The practice exercises are very basic and there aren't many. By the end of the book, however, the student will be translating 50-70 one sentence verses from the Vulgate. The book claims that you can translate medieval Latin after one year of study. I think that is mostly true. However, the book needs supplementing by other Latin texts. While there are useful morphology charts at the end of the book, by the last part of the book the author stops translating new concepts and verb forms. Other texts like Henle's will fix this quite nicely.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-06 00:00:00 Anthony Parker Excellent introduction to Church Latin with useful drill, English-to-Latin translation, and an increasing amount of Latin from the Vulgate and liturgical texts in every chapter. By ch. 35 you are reading Latin, and lots of it, without first mentally translating into English. Collins' organization and discussions of vocabulary are perceptive, and his offered 'standard translation' of different subjunctive usages very helpful. Good selection of additional readings follows the 35 chapters of textbook grammar. Sitzfleisch was required, but I worked through every exercise and reading in the textbook in 28 days of the Christmas break, making cards for vocabulary I simply could not remember. (My progress was eased because I already knew the Latin paradigms.) I referenced the answer key for the last 8 chapters, when the English-to-Latin translation became more difficult. Highly recommended.