Department of Classics

The Department of Classics stands not only in the tradition of German philology, but also in the tradition of the medieval grammarians. These grammarians transmitted both the languages and the literatures of the ancient world to their own world of barbarization and restoration and, in so doing, created a Christian liberal arts and a Christian humanism and were responsible for the renascences of learning that marked the periods of the medieval world. We believe that Christian humanism, based on classical learning, as practiced at this University, has the same fructifying role to play in today’s world of secular barbarism as it had to play in the centuries of western European collapse and restoration after the fall of the Roman Empire.