Our Father, also called Lord’s Prayer, is the best known Christian prayer. According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ gave it as an answer to the apostles as they asked how to pray. It appears in the gospels of Luke and Matthew. The final doxology must be an old addition; it is lacking in many manuscripts of the Bible, and Catholics usually do not use it in their personal prayer.

The text is the traditional Latin version, composed after the Vulgate. Facing it is is the traditional English version from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, still used by the Catholic Church - with the final doxology not included, but used afterwards as a liturgical element during the mass. This must have been the version familiar to Tolkien.

Note that the two languages do not put the fifth request in the same words: the Latin text follows the gospel of Matthew and literally reads “Remit us our debts, as we also remit to our debtors”. On the other hand, the English version rather follows the gospel of Luke and refers to trespasses rather than debts.

We have supplemented the text with macrons to mark etymologically long vowels.

The text’s transcription emulates the capitalis rustica, a style of the Latin alphabet that was in use in the imperial Rome and Late Antiquity for writing on papyrus or parchment with a reed pen. We made use of Hasan Guven’s typeface Vatican Rough Letters.