Read the New Testament in Latin — one Gospel at a time, starting from zero.
Fifteen centuries ago Jerome gave the Latin West its Bible. This book teaches you to read it — not in translation, not simplified beyond recognition, but climbing step by step until you are reading Jerome's own words. No prior Latin is required: the first pages assume nothing but curiosity, and every sentence is built from simple words explained in Latin right beside the text, the proven method of Ørberg's Lingua Latina.
And here is the book's signature: whenever the real words of the Vulgate come within reach, they are set apart in a gilded panel marked hoc ipsum legis — "this, you are truly reading." You always know the moment the training wheels are off and Scripture itself is on the page. The Pater Noster. The Beatitudes. Words Latin Christendom carried for fifteen hundred years, arriving in your own reading.
"Ignōrātiō Scrīptūrārum ignōrātiō Chrīstī est."
— St. Jerome: to be ignorant of the Scriptures is to be ignorant of Christ
The Whole Gospel, Two Ways
The graded chapters walk the full arc of Matthew — the Nativity and the Magi, John the Baptist, the Sermon on the Mount, the miracles and parables, the Passion and Resurrection — each opening with a full-page photorealistic plate. And in the back, the entire Gospel of Matthew is reprinted in the unaltered Clementine Vulgate, so that when you are ready, you can read it straight through with nothing between you and Jerome.
For Every Tradition
The book adds language help only — never doctrinal commentary. Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox readers, classical-education families, and secular students of Latin all read the same page the same way. It is published by our sister imprint, Contemplative Sciences Press, and built on the same explain-it-in-Latin method as the whole Lingua Latina collection — the Vulgate's famously clear Latin makes it one of the best "first real texts" a learner can read.
