Medieval Latin Language and Literature

The master's degree programme in Medieval Latin language and literature provides an opportunity to learn about Latin works which have formed the European culture and its values in the course of thousand years. It evolves cultural knowledge and analytical abilities required nowadays in various disciplines.

The study of Medieval Latin language and literature is realised as a part of the main degree programme (maior) or as a single subject programme (completus). It aims to further extend and deepen language competencies and focuses on obtaining active knowledge of theoretical and methodological techniques employed in philology. With regard to the connection of the Middle Ages to Antiquity, this master's degree programme profits from the students’ knowledge of the classical Latin language and ancient Latin literature gained in the course of their bachelor studies. In contrast to the bachelor's degree, which specialises in the classical Latin language, the objective of this follow-up master's degree is to acquaint the students with all later phases of theLatin language and its development up to the late Middle Ages. Students will gain an overview of ortographic, phonological, morphological and syntactic phenomenona of the medieval Latin language, they will understand late ancient and medieval Latin differences from the normative Latin grammar and the so-called classical style. They will gain orientation in the changes of the Latin vocabulary untill the late Middle Ages. Students will also obtain detailed knowledge of the Bohemian and European medieval literature written in Latin, the plurality of the given genre, formal and content related pecularities as well as good knowledge of the history of literature, medieval libraries and writings, and a general knowledge of political history of the Middle Ages.

The study of Medieval latin language and literature as a minor study degree (minor) is suitable to students whose study degrees are based on the work with Latin primary sources. This minor degree provides students with a detailed knowledge of the development of the Latin language and literature and the related medieval sociocultural context, which are pertinent to or supplement their major fields of study. A very important part of the study is represented by reading the original texts, which leads up to the competence of multilateral interpretation of the Latin texts (i.e. from the gramatical, literary and cultural-historical point of view). These skills are also exercised by reading the medieval works in English translation.

After successfully completing his/her studies the graduate is able to:

• Describe and explain orthographic, morphological and syntactic peculiarities of the medieval Latin language in comparison with the classical Latin language;
• clarify factors that influenced the development of late and medieval Latin vocabulary and present the concrete examples of this development;
• demonstrate the main features of the Bohemian and European medieval Latin literature and explain the specifics of the reception of ancient motives in medieval literature;
• explain the genre diversity and both formal and content related pecularities of medieval prose and poetry;
• describe philosophical, historical and religious background of the development of the medieval society;
• present basic methods used by the auxiliary historical sciences (especially codicology and paleography) and textual criticism;
• read the selected medieval manuscripts and participate in preparing their modern critical editions;
• interpret selected Latin texts written in the Middle Ages;
• translate complex Latin texts into English and isolated sentences into Latin;
• independently work with foreign-language scholarly literature, electronic databases and other types of informational sources;
• compose a structured text on an academic topic.

The graduates of this study programme are well-suited for any profession in cultural institutions, e.g. museums, archives or libraries, where medieval texts and other medieval material is preserved. They will be able to independently and critically work with primary sources, use informative textual sources and deal with medieval literary material. These skills will provide an ideal basis for working at research institutes specialized in the humanities, such as the Academy of Sciences or universities. Our alumni/ae will be also ready to work as lecturers at universities or teachers of history and modern languages at high schools. Many of our graduates also work as advisors in publishing houses or various media, including the TV or radio channels.

This programme does not require an obligatory practice. In case of interest, students could pass an internship at several institution which preserve medieval manuscripts (Moravian Library, Moravian Archive in Brno, Brno City Archive) or at the Centre for Classical Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

A minimum scope of a Master's thesis is no less than 140,000 characters including footnotes, content, index, list of literature and annotations. Students choose the topic of his/her Master's thesis from the list of themes offered by advisors in the Information system of the Masaryk university or by arrangement with the advisor. The aim of the Master's thesis is to demonstrate student's ability to work critically with specialized literature relevant for the given topic and to critically assess it. Students will prove their ability to compose a scholarly text consistent with up-to-date theoretical approaches and methodology, to work with medieval Latin sources, and last but not least, to formulate and defend their own conclusions.

After completion of the Masters's degree programme, it is possible to continue further studies in the doctoral degree study programme of Medieval Latin Language and Literature (https://www.phil.muni.cz/en/studies/doctoral-degree-study-programme/24188-latinska-medievistika). This interdisciplinary programme can be studies as a single-subject programme or with specialisation in the so-called historical languages of the Czech lands (this study plan is organized on the basis of Latin-German-Czech character of medieval literature and deals with other languages that were used in written sources of Bohemian provenance).