The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis: To Don Giovanni Calabria of Verona and to Members of His Congregation, 1947 to 1961 [Paperback]

C. S. Lewis (Author), Martin Moynihan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1987

In September 1947, after reading The Screwtape Letters in Italian, Fr. Giovanni Calabria was moved to write the author, but he knew no English, so he addressed his letter in Latin. Therein began a correspondence that was to outlive Fr. Calabria himself (he died in December 1954 and was succeeded in the correspondence by Fr. Luigi Pedrollo).

Translator/editor Martin Moynihan calls these letters "limpid, fluent and deeply refreshing. There was a charm about them, too, and not least in the way they were 'topped and tailed' - that is, in their ever-slightly-varied formalities of address and of farewell."

More than any other of his published works, The Latin Letters shows the strong devotional side of Lewis, and contains letters on topics ranging from Christian unity and modern European history to liturgical worship and general ethical behavior. Moreover, these letters are often intimate and personal.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Latin (translation)
Original Language: Latin --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Good News Pub (March 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891074430
• ISBN-13: 978-0891074434
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,380,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mainly for completionists, November 1, 2001

By A Customer

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This review is from: Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis (Hardcover)

I'm glad I bought this book. The layout and binding are attractive, and it is interesting how well the Lewis style comes across in Moynihan's translation. Nevertheless, I would rank _Latin Letters_ relatively low in importance among Lewis's books, somewhere below _Letters to an American Lady_. The letters are not terribly "meaty", and most of the substantial comments in the letters were also made by Lewis elsewhere. The book is only a little over a hundred pages, and taking into account the fact that roughly half those pages are taken up by the original Latin and that the remaining half has a generous amount of white space, there's really not a whole lot there.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A footnote, February 4, 2010

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F. W. Brownlow (Holyoke, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis (Hardcover)

As a footnote to these reviews, I thought I should mention that a quite extraordinary fact bearing upon the historical as well as personal interest of this book is that Don Giovanni Calabria, having been beatified on 17 April 1988, was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 18 April 1999 as St. John Calabria. One can't help thinking it a pity that Lewis, on the principle that all his correspondents needed to be protected from the hounds of publicity, destroyed St. John's letters.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A curiosity with plenty of good features, September 3, 2003

By 

F. P. Barbieri "Fabio Paolo Barbieri" (London UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis (Hardcover)

It is a pity that more of Lewis' correspondents did not address him in Latin, for his is really delightful, and he proves certainly as able to convey his thoughts easily and eloquently in the older language as in English. The letters of this collection really do not add up to a full book, and there is a certain amount of dead wood on both sides - but there is enough of the real Lewis in numerous comments (such as one about Ireland sectarianism for which his correspondent, Don Giovanni Calabria, felt compelled to tell him that "the Holy Spirit has dictated that sentence to you!") that we would not want to be without them. Remarkable also, and interesting, is the way in which Lewis, the holder of an Oxford triple First and one of the best-read men of his generation, addresses the only moderately well educated Father Calabria as a superior, purely because he is a priest - and not an Anglican priest either, mind you, but a Catholic. It is symptomatic of the seriousness with which he accepted the claims, not only of his religion, but of the Church.