Do you know the Latin version of The Twelve Days of Christmas? 

MANY PEOPLE ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE CHRISTMAS CAROL The Twelve Days of Christmas.  But many people do not know that this carol was based on an earlier Latin hymn (itself based on an earlier Hebrew version) the lyrics of which were almost entirely different than today's carol.  Like the modern carol, the song has twelve verses, each of which build on the one before: 

Mic mihi quid duodecim?
Duodecim apostele;
Undecim stelle
A Josepho visae;
Decem mandata Dei;
Novem angelorum chori;
Octo beatitudines;
Septem sacramenta;
Sex hydriae positae
In Cana Galileae;
Quinque libri Moyses;
Quartuor evangelistae;
Tres patriarchae;
Duo testimenta;
Unus est Deus,
Qui regnat in Coelis.  

This medieval version of the Twelve Days of Christmas was a dialogue between a leader and singers, and was sung to the tune of "This is the House that Jack Built."  See if your Latin student can translate this medieval hymn. 

"What you cannot find a substitute for is the classics as literature; and there can be no first hand contact with that literature if you will not master the grammar and the syntax which convey its subtle power."
           —Woodrow Wilson

     CottageSchool.net is a website project our monks have been working on for over a year and just finished!  It is a homeschooling and education community that allows you to search for resources and people in your area.  

     We hope that you will use it to find help, share ideas, and create cottage schools or homeschool communities.  Cottageschool.net works by mapping your zip code to its Latitude and Longitude and then searching for other registered users in your area within a certain radius.  To try it out, go to Cottageschool.net.  You can search the following categories in your area.

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CottageSchool.net does much more than help you find homeschoolers, schools, teachers, and tutors.  You can also use it to find nearby catalog companies (to reduce your shipping), local education bookstores, conventions in your area, publishers, useful education websites, and much more.

CottageSchool.net is only as useful as the teachers, parents, and companies who register for it. We hope you will join this free service at www.CottageSchool.net  Each month, this newsletter is read by over 10,000 homeschooler and teachers.  If each one of them signed up you would be able to find over 200 other resource people in your state.  Please register today at www.CottageSchool.net.

CottageSchool.net also has useful user forums, and we will posting model cottage school articles in the next few days.  If you would like to write articles for CottageSchool.net about your experiences starting a school or homeschooling, please send an email to info@cottageschool.net

CottageSchool.net is a free service provided by Memoria Press.  Other members can only contact you through the site so your e-mail is never revealed to the public and it only your zip code is required to searching.  

 "I do not see how anybody can use English well without some knowledge of Latin."
          —James M. Morton, Jr. (late U. S. District Judge in Massachusetts)

What are
the Seven Reasons People Do Things?

Our monks find the answer in Memoria Press's new Classical Rhetoric program 

   Our monks were quietly sitting around the fire recently trying to stay warm (the insulation in the monastery is not very good), when one of the brothers broke the silence by asking the question, "Why do people do things?"  This caused a lot of head-scratching among the rest of the brothers.  "Why do people do things?"  they wondered.  "Every minute of every day of our lives is spent doing something, but why?" they thought.  "All of these actions must have a reason, but what is it?  Every action must stem from something, but what can it be?  Why do we bother to do what we do?"  And among the questions they asked themselves was ... why they were asking themselves this question?

They pondered all this for some time, and lacking an answer, decided to go see the abbot.  So they climbed the long spiral stairway and burst into the abbot's chambers.  After taking a few moments to catch their breath, they explained to him their question.  With his hands folded calmly in front of him, the abbot surveyed the small gathering of panting monks in front of him and asked grimly if they had ever considered whether they might not have entirely too much time on their hands.

But the brothers insisted on an answer.

So the abbot suggested that they might take another look at the manuscript of Memoria Press's new book on classical rhetoric, which was written as a companion to Aristotle's classic work, Rhetoric.  He explained that Aristotle's book was not only the greatest treatise on communication ever written, but was also one of the greatest works on human psychology ever penned.

The now somewhat chastened brothers asked if they shouldn't scourge themselves for not having thought of this in the first place, but the abbot assured them that self-flagellation was no longer encouraged at the abbey.  He suggested instead that they simply go consult the manuscript that they had recently helped complete in order to find an answer to their question.

It didn't take them long.  There, in Lesson VII of Classical Rhetoric I: A Companion to Aristotle's Rhetoric, was the key to the answer they were looking for.

In Book I, chapter 10 of Aristotle's Rhetoric, the following passage is found:

In other words, there are seven reasons people do things, and they can be put under two general headings: There are four which are voluntary reasons: habit, rational desire, anger and appetite.  In addition, there are three which are involuntary: chance, nature and compulsion.  Seven in all.

Now the brothers had the answer to their question.  Why do people do things?  For one of seven reasons: habit, rational desire, anger, appetite, chance, nature or compulsion.  As to why someone would want Memoria Press's new rhetoric program as part of their child's classical education, the brothers all agreed that there was only one reason: rational desire.