Course description: The course is designed as an upper-level Latin reading seminar. We will focus on reading Christian Latin texts of the fourth to the sixth centuries CE, including such authors as Augustine, Jerome, John Cassian, Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great. The reading of the original texts will be combined with the analysis of the literary and historical contexts out of which those texts emerged. The suggested topics for the discussions and the bibliography are provided below. The course invites the students to think about the challenges of working with the religious narratives as historical sources, on the importance of proper contextualization of these texts, and on their subsequent reception. We will start the course with the discussion of the term "Christian Latin, " and at our final meeting we will summarize the stylistic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features of the texts we read. Course Objectives In this course, students will be introduced to: • extensive readings of Latin prose • the term “Christian Latin,” and the stylistic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features associated with it • the challenges of working with the religious narratives as historical sources