Reddit reviews Reading Medieval Latin

There's a book called Reading Medieval Latin by Keith Sidwell in which he goes into the cultural & historical context of that particular variation of Latin. However it starts at an intermediate level & does assume you already know basic Latin.

So I suggest to get up to the level expected in this book, read it's predecessor Reading Latin by Keith Sidwell or read Hans Ørberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illvstrata

If you don't mind reading snippets, Keith Sidwell's Reading Medieval Latin is an excellent anthology of medieval texts. It assumes about your level of preparation. If you want a whole work, Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni (Life of Charlemagne) is interesting and of manageable length. The text is available in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.

Edit: I see /u/symmetricaltiger already mentioned Sidwell.

Actually, I've never really used that book. I teach Medieval Latin almost every semester, and in general I just use whatever texts I'm working on at the moment.

For English, Harrington's "Medieval Latin" is pretty good, BUT the reprint is riddle with OCR errors. It's as if University of Chicago Press just scanned the old copy in and didn't check for errors. Really, it's unusable. But if you can find a copy of the first edition, you're in luck.

http://amzn.com/0226317137

I would recommend Sidwell's "Reading Medieval Latin," which will give you a pretty good grammatical overview, and it has an excellent selection of texts.

http://amzn.com/052144747X

Really, though, having a good dictionary is essential, but there unfortunately isn't one easily available. I make constant use of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources--just finished!--but it's expensive. I hear they are going to put the entire thing online soon, which would be amazing, but I'm not sure when that will be.

Uhhh...yea...I can clearly go on and on here about Medieval Latin, but I'll stop. PM me if you have any more questions.

Edit: If you have access to an academic library and can read German, Peter Stotz's work is amazing in the holy-shit-how-did-one-man-do-that kind of way.

http://www.chbeck.de/Stotz-Handbuch-Altertumswissenschaft-Band-II51-II55-Handbuch-lateinischen-Sprache-Mittelalters-Gesamtwerk-5-Baenden/productview.aspx?product=20489

If it's medieval Latin you want, here is a great text: http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Medieval-Latin-Keith-Sidwell/dp/052144747X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410568960&sr=8-1&keywords=medieval+latin