Magna Carta Latina: The Privilege of Singing, Articulating and Reading a Language and of Keeping It Alive

by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Ford Lewis Battles, Anne Thomas Paolucci

Why another Latin grammar? The history of Latin studies is strewn with the dead bones of textbooks, conceived in enthusiasm, published in hope, and interred in despair. 'Magna Carta Latina' began in Professor Rosenstock-Huessy's son's failure in high school Latin, it flourished in teaching generations of Dartmouth students the mother-tongue of Western culture, and it found its way at long last into the precincts of theology. Can a generation that knows no Latin reason, philosophize, theologize, sing, pray, or worship? The authors of 'Magna Carta Latina' answer No to that question and set out to supply the missing language. In Latin's family tree, they assert, there are no black sheep or poor from its earliest fragments to its latest use in our day, Latin is an organic whole. And the texts offered for study in this book bespeak this conviction. In one semester the basic grammar is learned, within a year a variety of Latin styles of moderate difficulty is mastered.

322 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1975

About the author

Eugen Rosenstock-Hüssy (July 6, 1888 – February 24, 1973) was a historian and social philosopher, whose work spanned the disciplines of history, theology, sociology, linguistics and beyond. Born in Berlin, Germany into a non-observant Jewish family, the son of a prosperous banker, he converted to Christianity in his late teens, and thereafter the interpretation and reinterpretation of Christianity was a consistent theme in his writings. He met and married Margrit Hüssy in 1914. In 1925, the couple legally combined their names. They had a son, Hans, in 1921.

Rosenstock-Huessy served as an officer in the German army during World War I. His experience caused him to reexamine the foundations of liberal Western culture. He then pursued an academic career in Germany as a specialist in medieval law, which was disrupted by the rise of Nazism. In 1933, after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, he emigrated to the United States where he began a new academic career, initially at Harvard University and then at Dartmouth College, where he taught from 1935 to 1957.

Although never part of the mainstream of intellectual discussion during his lifetime, his work drew the attention of W. H. Auden, Harold Berman, Martin Marty, Lewis Mumford, Page Smith, and others. Rosenstock-Huessy may be best known as the close friend of and correspondent with Franz Rosenzweig. Their exchange of letters is considered by scholars of religion and theology to be indispensable in the study of the modern encounter of Jews with Christianity. In his work, Rosenstock-Huessy discussed speech and language as the dominant shaper of human character and abilities in every social context. He is viewed as belonging to a group of thinkers who revived post-Nietzschean religious thought.