Female Polymaths in Latin for the New Millennium, 2nd Edition

Second Edition Coming Soon

We’re excited about the forthcoming Latin for the New Millennium, Second Edition. We’re especially pleased with the addition of two readings from female authors to the workbook for LNM 2. The first edition workbook already included an adapted reading loosely based on a poetic letter, Poem 5, by Sulpicia, a poet who lived toward the end of the first century BCE. The second edition workbook includes readings from the female polymaths Hildegard von Bingen and Anna Maria van Schurman.

Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), a polymath, served as leader of a monastic community and was renowned for her wisdom and her counsel was sought by kings, bishops, and popes. She authored treatises on theology, natural history, and what is today known as homeopathy. The “Sybil on the Rhine” was especially interested in musical composition and she wrote musical plays and hymns. The LNM 2 workbook features Hildegard’s hymn O quam mirābilis. Vocabulary aids assist students as they read the nine lines of unadapted Latin.

Five centuries later, Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678), was considered the most learned woman of the seventeenth century. She attended classes from behind a curtain at the University of Utrecht and became proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and ten other languages. She corresponded in Latin with scholars across Europe. The LNM 2 workbook presents an adapted excerpt from her letter to the medical doctor Johan van Beverwijck about the term of human life and the possibilities of human interference.

Through the Hildegard and van Schurman readings the other selections from the post-antique legacy of Latin literature, students experience firsthand the cornerstones of western thought.

Visit our website for more details on LNM. For specifics on LNM Second Edition, click here, and scroll to the bottom for a chapter by chapter list of changes.