Two Months with Reginald Foster
by John P. Piazza
December,2002
It has been almost four months since I returned from Reginald
FosterÕs summer Latin program in Rome, and only now, as I get some distance
from that amazing experience, am I able to even begin to express in words and
ideas what that trip meant for me in terms of how I see myself, my education,
my career, and my religion. I have been to Rome a few times now, and I have had
some opportunity to take in the sights. On this trip, however, I got to
experience the city in a very different and perhaps more subtle way, not so
much through the physical monuments themselves, for indeed, much of my time was
spent indoors staring at books, but rather through a mental and perhaps
spiritual awareness of the history and culture which surrounded me, not only in
the physical vestiges of the ancient city itself, but in the immaterial
continuity of the spirit of the culture, the so-called ÒghostsÓ which inhabit
any city, but Rome in particular, considering how much has happened within its
walls since its founding in 753 BC. Carl Jung, in his autobiography, says that
he was never able to go to Rome, for every time he would even think of planning
a trip, the sheer history, the ghosts of that city, would overwhelm him. My
point is that you donÕt have to be in the Pantheon to have a genuine experience
of Rome. But one might say that I could read Latin texts and history books
anywhere, and still get a sense of the history of a remote time and place,
without having to leave the comfort of oneÕs home and family and friends. But
this was truly an immersion experience in more ways than I can even explain,
and truly unique, in particular because of the personalities of those around
me. For one thing, the Greek and Latin literary tradition which I study is much
more present to Italians than it is to Americans; indeed, it is their direct
cultural and ethnic heritage. We have our founding fathers, Washington,
Jefferson, and the like; and they have theirs: Romulus and Remus. Great
leaders: we have Lincoln etc, and they have Caesar and Marcus Aurelius.
Literature: We have Shakespeare, Melville, Steinbeck; they have Cicero, Virgil,
Dante, etc. Most people you meet on the street have some knowledge of these
classics, if not an intimate knowledge, because it is their tradition in a much
more direct way than it is ours as Americans. As a result, you find a greater
interest in these works. The bookstore at RomeÕs central train station has more
Latin and Greek texts as you would find at your average academic or specialty
shop here in the states. After spending a good part of the day reading Latin, I
could go for a walk and see the remains of what was reading about, in the architecture,
monuments, and inscriptions which were all over the city.
As for the
class itself, where to begin? With the personality of the teacher, probably,
since he alone makes this program happen year after year. The man is Reginald
Foster, known affectionately as Reggie by his students, a Carmelite Friar in
his mid 60Õs who has lived in a monastery in Rome on Piazza San Pancrazio since
he was 18. Last summer, he told us that 2002 marked the fiftieth year that he
has been studying Latin, and from his enthusiasm, it is clear that he loves the
language as much as when he first began, if not more. During the school year he
teaches Latin at the Gregorian University, and works in the Latin office in the
Vatican, where he and four or five others compose and translate Latin
documents. During the summer he offers this advanced Latin course, free of
charge, for those who have basic Latin skills, and are willing to devote two
months of their lives to Latin. As a seminary student before the Second Vatican
Council, it was assumed, and required, that Reggie acquire a fluency in Latin,
which it was believed could not be done not merely through grammar and reading
exercises, but also required writing and speaking and hearing the language, as
if it were a modern, living, useful language. Thus Latin, for Reggie and his
classmates, was not something that was only used during class, but was
pervasive in every aspect of his life. Latin was not simply used to express the
more elevated ideas in the study of scripture, literature and the like, but
also in basic communication concerning common daily activities with his
teachers and colleagues. Knowing the ÒOur FatherÓ in Latin is all well, but it
is of no use when you need to go to the bathroom during class, and must make
your request in Latin. The result of all this education, or at least the ideal
result, is that Latin becomes more than a school exercise, but is rather
assimilated into the mind of the student, and becomes the framework in and by
which they express their own thoughts, as well as relate to the ideas conveyed
in the vast body of Latin literature, secular as well as religious. Of course
for many students this did not happen, and, far from instilling a casual
fluency and love for Latin, the traditional methods only caused miserable
students to associate the harshness, if not cruelty, of their teachers with the
language itself. For Reggie, however, the experience of Latin, for whatever
reason, came much closer to the ideal than was the case for many others.
Although he had had some bad teachers, he obviously never let it affect his
relationship to the language, and his critical reflection upon his own
education has allowed him to perfect his own teaching methods. He seems to have
taken what he found to be most beneficial in the more traditional method,
namely, immersion in Latin, not only reading, but hearing, writing and
speakingÑmaking the language oneÕs
own through use, as one would use a modern language. It is amazing how learning
to say even the simplest thing in Latin can effect a real transformation in how
one views this very intimidating language. This is something worth expanding on
in terms of my own experience.
One truly
unique aspect of this summer trip in Rome was the drastic change in my
relationship with technology on a daily basis. For almost two months, my tools
were no different than those of students who lived hundreds of years ago. Sure,
we have access to more ÒadvancedÓ lexicons and grammars thanks to the 18th C.
Germans, but for most of the time it was just me, Latin texts, reference
books(Lewis and Short, Gildersleeve and Lodge), pen and paper. That was it, and
that was all I needed in order to study. I would read and write for hours each
day, and then I would walk to an outdoor market for some food, or wander Rome
and try to decipher the inscriptions which seemed to be everywhere, with their
strange abbreviations. I did have access to e-mail, but I had little reason to
check it. I hand-wrote letters to friends and family. For that time, I felt
like I had a deeper bond with the tradition that I was studying, for not only
was I reading their words in this vast and rich language, but I was living a
life of study which was not all that different from any student who lived at
any point along that broad spectrum of the Latin cultural and literary
tradition. Back here in our normal lives, we are surrounded by the products of
technological advances of the past hundred years: television and automobiles,
of course, but also the computer, a tool which has become an integra1 part of
the academicÕs life or lifestyle in the past two decades. I am one of the last generation which was not born after
the computer became a part of everyday life, and, being a person who is
somewhat suspicious of all the great advances around us, I have tried in my own
way not to be consumed by the pervasive notion that the newest gadget is going
to make my life better. Perhaps this attitude is at the root of my interest in
the Classics. First of all, I must admit that Italy is no Luddite colony: the
Italians have embraced technology as much as anybodyÑI was told that the average Italian owns three
wireless phones. But at the same time,
their history, or at least reminders of that history, which date as far back
as the founding of the city, lie
all around them. So, in a sense, one is at least able to choose what aspects of
the city to pay attention to. Reggie is not a fan of the latest technology. He
still bangs out homework assignments and readings on an all-caps Olympia
typewriter which he got back in the 1960Õs. Because of his immersion in things
ancient, as well as a bit of stubbornness, Reggie tends to view many
technological innovations as superfluous, and perhaps even a hindrance to his
ideal of the education process. One day in class, he got to thinking about
computers or overhead projectors or something like that, as he was writing on his
old blackboard, and he blurted out: Òyou donÕt need anything to do Latin. You
could do this with lipstick and a roll of toilet paper!Ó
In
conversation, he once lamented that most people, even some of his past students
and colleagues, are so preoccupied with the modern world around them and its
distractions, that they do not have the time or ability to think of studying
and learning as a truly pleasurable pursuit. Perhaps it is because students are
under more pressure to turn their education into marketable skills, but the
result is that this becomes nothing more than workÑa source of stress and anxiety, in short,
the last thing one would want to do in oneÕs free time. Reggie, on the other
hand, had been raised in a different world, and as a result, viewed his subject
matter in an entirely different way. He said that in his early years, when he
had decided to become a priest, the prospect of finding a vocation, i.e. going
out to work in a small parish, did not worry him, for he knew that he could
spend long winter evenings immersed in study. ÒIÕve never been bored for a
minute, as long as IÕve had all
this to read and study.Ó What I recognized in that brief conversation during a
walk to a train station in the Roman countryside, was one of the last vestiges
or manifestations of the ideal of a liberal education, and the self sufficiency
of the truly educated person first articulated by Aristotle, later embraced by
Cicero and the Roman philosophic and civic ideal, and later carried over into
the educational tradition of the Church, to which Reggie was heir. It was at
this point in my trip that the continuity of such an ideal of education and
life which Reggie exposed us to in the form of a two-thousand year unbroken
tradition of Latin literature really hit home for me.
I think that
because everything around us, especially in such a new country as America, is
so new and modern and feeding us the message that newer is better, we tend to
(or perhaps try to) forget that we are not all that different from those who
came and went before us. Just like them, we are on this earth for a limited
time. And within that allotted span of time, we still have to figure out what
we are going to do, how we are going to find meaning and purpose, and how we
want to be remembered. Perhaps itÕs not our devices which can solve these
constant problems, these eternal questions, but rather immersion in the expression, literary, artistic or
otherwise, of those who have wrestled with these same questions, and have found
some comfort and meaning in participating in this two thousand year unbroken
chain. Reggie refuses to be the end of a chain, and this is what drives him
every day to show students how to learn and teach.
But no matter
how intensely one studies a subject, seven weeks is not a significant amount of
time, especially when it comes to the lifelong task of learning a language.
That said, however, it is enough time, when rightly used, to put one into a
different frame of mindÑto cultivate new habits and rid oneself of bad ones.
And I think that this was ReggieÕs goalÑa
modest, but at the same time extremely ambitious goal. He is realistic
about the limitations of such a short program, but with these limitations in
mind, he tries to focus on what can be conveyed in the context of a summer
class, namely to get us to think about Latin in a new way. The only way that I
can describe my own experience of this change is in spatial terms, which may or
may not correspond to the reality. Up to this point in my education, Latin had
pretty much occupied a specific place in my brain, the same place as Greek and
perhaps mathematics and logic. This region is concerned mostly with somewhat
abstract and analytic thought. Although I can derive, and have derived, much
pleasure and meaning from these things, it is a different approach than say,
reading or communicating in English, or even Italian, of which I know enough to
find directions in Rome, but not much more. Through the process of dealing with
Latin on an everyday, and sometimes even casual level, in class and in
conversation, I feel as though Latin has migrated from that analytic region in
my brain, and has taken up residence alongside English and a few modern
languages, in that Chomskyean region where knowledge of a language is a natural
faculty rather than an esoteric knack, or puzzle-solving skill. Chomsky once
said that to say that a person is good at learning a language is like saying that a person
is good at having two arms. This ability is built into us, and if we think
about it this way, then real language acquisition consists in making use of
that faculty that we have in us naturally. This is the part of the brain that I
am referring to. And Reggie seems to hold a similar assumption when he says
that anybody can learn Latin, without relying on memorization. No native speaker
of English begins by memorizing grammar and vocabulary charts; we learn through
use, and students of ReggieÕs program learn Latin through the same sort of use.
My experience
in Rome also served to make me aware of, and put me in touch with, people from
all over the world who approach the Latin language in a very different way.
Call them Òliving LatinÓ or Òspoken LatinÓ enthusiasts, they are often very eccentric, but very dedicated individuals, for whom Latin is more than
a line of work, and is definitely not something to be left at the office at the
end of the work day, or semester. They come from all walks of life: lawyers,
priests, screenwriters, add even professors and teachers of Latin and the
classics. What they share, however, is not only an interest in Latin, but a
particular perspective and approach: by not only reading, but writing and
speaking the language, they are making an effort to really internalize the
beauty, structure, and history of that language, not observing as an outsider
so much as participating from inside the tradition, taking their place in a
long line of enthusiasts, from the earliest Romans to Cicero and Virgil, to the
Church Fathers, to the Renaissance scholars, to the modern world with Newton
and Descartes. These are people who see a continuity, and take it very
seriously, as an entire spectrum, not just a peak and decline, but as a common
thread to the changes and developments of western civilization, as well as a
still necessary key to a better understanding of that 2000-plus year process.
One aspect of
ReggieÕs program which might make some scholars uncomfortable is the role
religion plays in his program. Many
in the program this summer were not Catholic, or even religious. Reggie dealt
with us in a way that respected the role the Church played in the survival and
development of Latin literature in the post-classical world, without making
anyone feel excluded. If one is going to cover later Latin, meaning later than
300 AD, one is inevitably going to encounter religious texts. As far as the
selection process is concerned, Reggie simply picks whatever he feels like
reading, from all periods. When the class was reading a religious text, Reggie
had some amusing ways of diffusing any potential tension. Especially when we were
reading a text which he liked, he would not hesitate to give us his opinion,
but he would preface it with a comment like, ÒWell, you might say ÔIÕm an
atheistÕ. Me too, but this is worth looking at,Ó or ÒYou donÕt believe in God?
well neither do I, so letÕs look at this.Ó That Reggie had been a Carmelite
friar most of his life, and immersed in the Latin tradition of the Church,
meant that he was as devout as any, but he is also secure in his faith, and is
willing to make such comments if it will bring the class together. Related to
this is ReggieÕs use of song, often religious hymns. Again, he was quick to
point out that a given hymn was worth looking at even if one is not a believer.
He taught us a few Gregorian chant melodies, and when we came across a text
that fit the meter, we would sing it together. One melody, for example works
for any Sapphic meter poetry, so when we came across a poem of, say, Horace, we
could sing it after translating. Often on the train coming back from a Sunday
field trip, when we had some wine in us, we would break into song, to the
horror and/or delight of those around us on the train. IÕm sure they didnÕt
know what to make of such an odd group of people led by an intense bald man in
work clothes, singing Latin songs.
But this was
just one more way in which we were all, consciously or not, cultivating a
personal relationship with the language, making it our own. I can definitely
say that I came away Rome with a deepened relationship to the Latin language
and literary tradition. As a lover, and potential teacher, of Latin, I am
convinced that those seven weeks with Reggie will positively influence the rest
of my life.
back to John PiazzaÕs
Home Page