Latin IV Visits UVA Special Collections Library

In September, Mrs. Koon's Latin IV students spent the month learning about medieval Latin, the creation of manuscripts, and how manuscripts helped to preserve Latin and works written in Latin by Romans. Students also read The Voyage of St. Brendan and selections from the Carmina Burana.

[At UVA] students were able to see, touch, and smell the manuscripts. They saw clay tablets in cuneiform (a receipt for a lamentation singer!), a papyrus from Egypt written in Greek, several Books of Hours, a miniature book (a 2"x 2" cube), a medieval copy of Vergil's Aeneid, and a Nuremberg Chronicle, amongst others. They compared vellum and parchment manuscripts; they saw the differences in style and artistry between expensive and uber-expensive books; they saw real gold-leafed manuscripts from all over Italy and Germany. Students also talked with the UVA curator about the invention of the printing press and how it made books more widely available, including getting to touch type metal movable type pieces of a printing press.