Lectio Ecclesiae

The method

How the books work

You learn a language by reading a lot of it. Each book gives you real texts you can mostly follow, with the harder words explained right on the page, so you rarely need a dictionary.

The notes in the margin

Any word a reader fresh from a first course might not know is explained beside its line, in the language of the book. A compound word is broken into its parts. A rare word is paired with a more common one that means the same. Often a word is also shown in a short sentence from Scripture or another classic text, with the reference.

Every note comes from the word itself or from a public-domain text, never from guesswork.

A text you can trust

Each book is newly read from a public-domain printing, checked against an independent transcription, and corrected at the page. In the Latin readers every long vowel is marked, as in the best modern courses.

Who the books are for

The books are for readers who have finished a first course and want to keep reading real Latin or Greek. They suit homeschool families and classrooms, and any Christian who wants to read the Church's own texts with ease.

A page of the Life of Saint Antony in Greek, with notes in Greek in the margin

The Greek readers work the same way: The Life of Saint Antony, with its notes in Greek.