The Romish Bible in the Romish tongue

I’ve been reading Matthew in the Vulgate and rather like it. The Latin is simple—the vulgar tongue after all—and familiarity with it helps with the language of the Tridentine mass. Also, it means something that the words are words that some people in the Palestine of Jesus’ time might have used. It seems to bring me closer to the events when they are talked about in ways that they might have been talked about then.

Incidentally, if anyone’s interested there’s a super-duper free downloadable Latin dictionary program, Words, that seems to cover everything in the Vulgate and analyzes inflections as well as giving definitions.