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<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">Pozdrave,</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">pred kratkim sem izvedel za nadvse intenziven latinski tecaj, ki ga ima vsako leto v Rimu pater Reginald Foster, sloviti vatikanski latinist. Tecaj traja dva meseca, od junija do avgusta, priblizno tri ure na dan. Slusatelji se delijo na dve skupini, iuniores in seniores; za sprejem med slednje je menda pogoj diploma iz latinscine, domnevam, da so potemtakem iuniores studenti. Pouk poteka ob branju tekstov iz najrazlicnejsih obdobij, Foster predava v latinscini, obcasno tudi v anglescini, ko gre denimo za razlaganje stilisticnih fines. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">Se dva kljucna podatka: tecaj je zastonj, za hrano in bivanje poskrbi vsak sam. Pred sprejemom je treba po posti opraviti izpit; med prijavljenimi potem Foster izbere kakih sedemdeset udelezencev. Ker moz ne uporablja e-poste, mu je treba pisati na naslov:</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">P. Reginald Foster OCD<BR>Teresianum<BR>Piazza San Pancrazio 5A<BR>I-00152 Rome ITALY</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">Zveni silno mikavno.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">David Movrin</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">PS: V spodbudo prilagam nekaj detajlov z interneta. </FONT></P>
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<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">FAQ de Aestiva Romae Latinitatis</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">A necessary disclaimer. Read this, folks. </FONT>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">The information and opinions expressed below are strictly my own, based primarily on my recollections of studying with Reginald Foster in his summer school and at the Gregorian University in the years 1989-1991. They are also based on information from friends and colleagues who have worked with him more recently, and on occasional contacts with Reginald from 1991 to the present. Fr. Foster has seen the SALVI website and knows it includes this "Alumni Space" but he bears no responsibility for its contents. My aim in creating this FAQ is not to provide information about Fr. Foster, but rather, to provide information useful to aspiring participants in his summer programme. Most of the questions below come from actual correspondence this site has received, and we get several letters per year asking the same questions. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>Who is Reginald Foster?</B> Father Reginald Foster is a Roman Catholic priest and monk of the order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD). He is an American citizen, born about 60 years ago in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For more than 30 years he has lived in Rome and worked in the Vatican, writing or translating Papal documents and official correspondence into Latin. He is a world-class expert on the Latin language, with a fervent commitment to helping others who love Latin improve their knowledge and appreciation of the language. To this end, he has taught an intensive Latin course in Rome every summer since the 1970's. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>Is Reginald Foster the Pope's Secretary?</B> No. Reginald works with six or seven colleagues who together make up the "Latin Letters" department of the Vatican Secretariat of State, whose offices are in the Apostolic Palace. The Vatican Secretary of State is His Eminence Angelo Cardinal Sodano. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>What is Fr. Foster's summer program like?</B> He calls the program "Aestiva Romae Latinitatis" or Summer Latin in Rome. It lasts about six weeks, from early June to mid-July. Classes are held six days a week, in the afternoons, beginning around 2 PM. The student body is divided in two groups (the "Iuniores" and the "Seniores", a distinction based on demonstrated experience with the language), each group receiving a total of about 3 hours of classroom instruction per day. A typical schedule is: (2-4 PM, "Iuniores" only; 4-5 PM all students; 5-7 PM "Seniores" only). Optional sessions "sub arboribus" (under the trees in his monastery's gardens) sometimes happen after 8 PM. In addition to classroom time, extensive homework assignments (see question 16, below) are given, which are collected and corrected once or twice a week. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>Do you have to be a priest, monk, or nun to study with Father Foster? Do you have to be Catholic? Do you have to be Christian?</B> No, no and no. Reginald's only requirements of his students are that they possess knowledge of Latin (see above), love of the language, and the maturity to work consistently at learning more. Additionally, it is *not* necessary to be a genius. Reginald is fond of pointing out that discipline and tenacity give a student much better odds of success in Latin than intelligence alone. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>How much does it cost?</B> Reginald's summer program is tuition free, although he does accept voluntary donations which help defray copying costs and other expenses of running the program. If you attend, your main expenses will be getting yourself to Rome and keeping yourself housed and fed once there. There is no dormitory housing available nor any kind of cafeteria access (and you'd be nuts to want cafeteria food in Rome, anyway!). </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>How do I apply?</B> Write to Reginald directly for application materials. His postal address is: </FONT>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">P. Reginald Foster OCD<BR>Teresianum<BR>Piazza San Pancrazio 5A<BR>I-00152 Rome ITALY<BR></FONT>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">To my knowledge, he does not use e-mail. The best time to apply is in early Fall before the summer you'd like to take the course. The course has been attracting increasing numbers of applicants in recent years and space is limited. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>I'd like to take the summer course, but how do I know if my Latin is good enough?</B> Your Latin may be good enough if, at an absolute minimum, you've had the equivalent of two years of reading courses in a fairly scholarly American college. This is, of course, *after* finishing the entire slab of basic Latin vocabulary and grammar -- from the first declension through subordinate clauses in indirect discourse. Your memory of these things needs to be reasonably fresh, or recently re-freshed. Many of the people in Fr. Foster's courses are either folks who teach Latin at the high school or college level, or advanced graduate students in Classics, Archaeology, History, Religion, and related disciplines. I understand that in the past three or four years Reginald has taken to sending out a diagnostic exercise to prospective students. Once you get yours, do it as well as you can and send it back. He'll then let you know if you've done well enough to get into the course. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>I don't know any Latin yet. Should I try to do the summer course?</B> No. Reginald's program is in no way designed for beginners. If you're just starting out, or if you took one semester of Latin several years ago, enroll in the best elementary Latin program you can find. If no classroom course is available in your area, check out web-based instruction or self-teaching CD-ROM courses. When you've finished that, look around for reading courses and reading groups where you can get the experience outlined in my answer to question 7. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>Does Fr. Foster teach Latin during the regular academic year too?</B> Yes. He teaches October-May at the Gregorian University in Rome, one of several Pontifical Universities in the city. His courses there cover beginning through advanced Latin and are divided up into five levels, or five "Experiences of the Latin Language." These courses are much larger than the summer courses (ca. 150 students in Latin I). They meet less frequently (twice or three times weekly for 90 minutes) and are correspondingly less intensive than the summer course. A large percentage of Fr. Foster's students in these classes are seminarians and male and female religious of various Roman Catholic orders; nevertheless, lay people and non-Catholics are allowed to enroll and attend. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>What are those weekend trips Fr. Foster leads?</B> On Sundays during the program Reginald leads optional excursions within and outside Rome. These trips are usually full-day affairs in which students read ancient and medieval Latin texts in or near the places they describe. All transportation is by the cheapest possible public means -- bus, train, or foot. Students bring or buy their own lunches. Some common destinations for these tours are Pompeii (plenty of Pliny), Frosinone (the Thomas Aquinas tour), the Castelli Romani (Alba Longa, Tusculum, Horace's Sabine Farm, etc.), and the Roman Obelisks. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>I'm going to Italy this summer and I would like to do some traveling as well as attend the class. Would he mind if I attended for just a couple of weeks, or dropped in from time to time?</B> I strongly advise against trying this, but only Reginald can say for sure how he feels about it. On the basis of what I've observed in his classes, it's ok for visitors to come and observe the class for a day or two, but when it comes to actual course participants, he wants his students in with both feet or out altogether. Reginald quite naturally wants all his students to get maximum benefit from the course; you are much more likely to do so if you stay the full six weeks, do your homework and attend class consistently. So do your sightseeing before or save it for after. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>How can I find housing once I'm in Rome? Can Fr. Foster help me with that?</B> Reginald used to have an informal arrangement with a nearby convent of Lebanese nuns to provide bed and breakfast to a limited number of students. My understanding is that this option is no longer available. Unless you will be one of the fortunate few living in the American Academy (or any other national Academy or priestly House of Studies) you'll have to find your own digs. Look for them either on the Gianicolo (the Janiculum Hill) just west of the Tiber or somewhere close by with good bus connections. The Roman youth hostels are, sadly, in rough parts of town nowhere near the Gianicolo. Still, take heart! Rooms in private dwellings, short-term apartment rentals, housesitting situations, and moderate-cost pensione accommodations are out there to be found, but be sure to get confirmed reservations before you arrive in Rome. Rome's various expatriate communities can be of help, especially to their own nationals. US, Canadian and British citizens in particular may get help through the publication Wanted in Rome. Alternatively, get to Rome several days early and expect to work on the problem full-time until classes start. You do NOT want to be dealing with this stuff while you are trying to study Latin! </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>Where do the classes meet?</B> Classes meet in a classroom at a convent quite near Fr. Foster's own Carmelite house, the Teresianum in Piazza San Pancrazio. Both buildings are on the top of the Gianicolo (the Janiculum Hill), near the ancient Basilica of San Pancrazio (with its own catacombs!) and a very large public park, the Villa Doria Pamphili. The best and cheapest way to get there from central Rome is by public bus and foot. The #44 goes up the hill from Piazza Venezia, while the #75 line starts at the main train station, Stazione Termini (where the airport bus stops). Get off at the first stop on Via G. Carini, just after the bus has crested the hill, and walk from there. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>How large are the classes?</B> More and more people in the past decade have been trying to get to Rome to work with Reginald, so classes these days seem to averaging about 40-50 people, about 25 apiece of "Iuniores" and "Seniores." </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>What sort of dictionary should I take with me?</B> Reginald likes his students to bring the largest, most comprehensive dictionaries they can manage, and strongly recommends Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary. The big hardback one. It costs about $100 at Oxford University Press and you will mess up your back toting it around. But do it anyway. It's absolutely worth it if you're going to do serious Latin. Try not to bring the Oxford Latin Dictionary as is is compiled from sources in a much more limited time-frame than L&S. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>What are the "Sheets"?</B> The famous "Sheets" are Reginald Foster's homework assignments. These are legal-size pieces of paper packed with excerpts of Latin texts and shot through with dense, emphatic lines of majuscule type. You will be asked to read the excerpts carefully, and answer a wide range of stylistic and grammatical questions all designed to make you THINK and MANIPULATE THE LANGUAGE instead of just translating or regurgitating it. Sheets are given out new and collected once or twice a week. Reginald considers doing the sheets an indispensible part of the entire Summer Latin experience, fully as important as classroom attendance. </FONT>
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<LI><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif"><B>Does Fr. Foster teach in Latin?</B> Fr. Foster uses both English and Latin as his languages of instruction. When discussing grammar and style, he tends to use English for his students' convenience. You will, however, generally hear him speaking Latin several times a week during class sessions devoted to "Latinitas Recentissima." Here, the class reads samples of the most recent work produced in the Vatican's "Latin Letters" office where Reginald works, translates portions of the day's newspaper into Latin, or discusses various "How do you say in Latin...?" questions proposed by the class. </FONT></LI></OL>
<P><FONT face="Garamond, Times, Serif">Nancy E. Llewellyn<BR>Los Angeles, CA 30 December 2000 <BR></FONT></P>
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