Customer Reviews

DICTIONARY OF ECCLESIASTICAL LATIN

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This is a great dictionary for those who have trouble putting together words and phrases common in many Ecclesiastical books such as the Vulgate Bible, the Latin Denzinger, and other Catholic books primarily in Latin. Although, I would not use this dictionary as your exclusive reference, it is handy to keep along with your regular Latin dictionary.

It can be difficult to use a classical dictionary when translating ecclesiastical texts. This dictionary makes it so much easier by focusing on the words that are more common in later, ecclesiastical Latin. The translation of common ecclesiastical phrases is wonderful, too.

I highly recommend it for those who are interested in Catholic theology, liturgy, or Canon Law.

I bought this dictionary solely for reading the Latin Vulgate, for the on-line Vulgate reading group that I run. Although I have some knowledge of Greek, I wanted a good and easy-to-use resource that provides the Latin translations. This dictionary succeeds admirably, although you should have a decent basic Latin dictionary like Cassell's also. I have never found a word in the Vulgate that was not defined in either Cassell's or this dictionary. Even "problem words" (usually directly transliterated into Latin from Greek) are there - for example, "telonium".

In addition to good word coverage, it also explains idiomatic usages of words, especially with prepositions. Look at the example pages and you'll some examples of idiomatic uses of words with the preposition "ad".

If you want to read the Vulgate and don't have 180 dollars to spend on Lewis & Short, this is the dictionary for you. Neither Cassel's nor the Chambers-Murray nor even the Oxford Latin dictionary will suffice; their vocabularies are restricted to classical authors. This is the best inexpensive Latin-English dictionary I've seen that lists words from after the 5th century AD. It simply has no competition!

For a small dictionary this book has proven extremely useful for working on medieval ecclesiastical texts. I picked it up at random and was soon using in preference to the more unwieldy Niermayr (still best for tough terms). DEL is particularly good at giving short definitions that are significantly different from classical usage such as found in Lewis and Short. Highly recommended.

This is a very fine dictionary for scholarly or ecclesiastical use. Is is useful in working on Church documents and particularly the Vulgate. I highly recommend it for any persons working on Latin texts of an ecclesiastical nature.