Ecclesia et regnum

Ecclesia at rank 219 is the most revealing word in this course. Classical Rome barely used it. It is Greek, ekklesia, an assembly of citizens called out to meet, and classical Latin borrows it only to describe that Greek institution; it becomes common only when the Christians need a word for what they are. That it outranks most of Cicero's vocabulary tells you exactly whose Latin you are learning to read.

The five that are the church

Sanctus is the perfect participle of sancio, to make inviolable: something made sacred rather than born so. It gives saint, sanctity, sanctuary and, oddly, sanction - which is why a sanction can be a blessing or a punishment depending on who is holding it.

Fides is fifth declension (fides, fidei) and it lived two lives. To a Roman it was good faith, the thing that makes a contract stand: hence bona fide, confide, affidavit, fidelity, perfidy. To a Christian writer it is the faith, a body of belief. The word did not change; the world around it did.

Crux is worse than it looks in a dictionary. Before it was a symbol it was an execution stake, and the second gloss - torment - is the older feeling. English kept both temperatures: crucial and crucifix from one end, excruciating from the other.

ius, lex, mos: three different things called law

This is the distinction worth taking away.

• lex, legis - a statute. Somebody passed it, on a date.
• ius, iuris - right, law as a system, what is owed. ius gentium is the law of nations; iure means rightfully.
• mos, moris - custom. What people simply do, with no statute behind it and more force than one.

Mos maiorum, the custom of the ancestors, was the strongest of the three in practice, which is a properly Roman joke.

The words that change meaning in the plural

Three of this session's twelve behave differently once they are plural, and this is the sort of thing that quietly wrecks a translation.

Litterae is the one you will meet daily. A Roman wrote litteras mittere, to send a letter, always plural, because a letter is a handful of characters. The same plural also means literature and learning in general, as the table says. English literal and literacy are built on the same stem, and literature comes through litteratura, a noun made from it.

magister has a twin

Magister is built on magis, more. Its exact opposite, minister, is built on minus, less. One is the man who has more say, the other the man who has less, and Latin says so out loud. Magister gives master, mister, maestro, magistrate; minister gives minister and administration.

Honor is not only honour in the abstract. In Roman public life it is a public office: the cursus honorum was the ladder of magistracies. When a text says a man sought honores, he was standing for election, not fishing for compliments.

Two traps in one session

Populus (masculine, second declension, short o: pŏpulus) is the people. Populus (feminine, second declension, long o: pōpulus) is a poplar tree. They differ in vowel length as well as gender, but this course, like most texts, prints no long marks, so on the page they look identical: the gender of an adjective beside it, or simply the sense, tells you which one is standing in the sentence.

Liber is worse:

• liber, libri (masculine noun) - book. Gives library, libretto.
• liber, libera, liberum (adjective) - free. Gives liberty, liberal, deliver.
• liberi, liberorum (plural noun) - children, from the adjective: the free-born ones of the household.

The book sense is the older meaning gone specific: liber was the inner bark of a tree, and bark is what you wrote on before parchment. Littera, liber, magister, ecclesia - the whole session is the vocabulary of people whose job was writing things down and keeping them.

Try it

Populus in ecclesia est. - The people are in the church.

Fides sine operibus mortua est. - Faith without works is dead.

Magister litteras pueris dedit. - The teacher gave the boys a letter.

Ius et mos non eadem sunt. - Law and custom are not the same thing.

Sanctus rex honorem non quaesivit. - The holy king did not seek office.