Can a text in Latin be understood by an educated Italian who never had any formal teaching of that language?

Question

Of all Latin derived languages, I presume Italian is the closest to Latin. This is just an assumption which I presume is correct. For this reason, I've always wondered whether an average educated Italian can read and understand a text in Latin. I speak a Latin-derived language and when I see a text in Latin and its translation, I don't find it difficult to recognize which words in Latin correspond to those in Portuguese. Of course in this case the translation makes things easier. Then again, Portuguese isn't as similar to Latin as Italian is.

Answer 1

I imagine they would be able to pick out some of the vocabulary, just as an English speaker is able to identify cognates that are derived - either directly or indirectly - from Latin. Making sense of the cases is where things get difficult. Latin is a highly inflected language with no real word order per se, whereas Italian relies more on word placement to convey meaning and less on cases. It would also depend on the Latin text. Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars? They might have a vague idea of what is going on. Lucretius' De Rerum Natura or Cicero's letters? Probably not so much.