Ecclesiastical Latin in the context of Protestant

A sacred language, liturgical language or holy language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons (like church service) by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.

Some religions, or parts of them, regard the language of their sacred texts as in itself sacred. These include Ecclesiastical Latin in Roman Catholicism, Hebrew in Judaism, Arabic in Islam, Avestan in Zoroastrianism, Sanskrit in Hinduism, and Punjabi in Sikhism. By contrast Buddhism and Christian denominations outside of Catholicism do not generally regard their sacred languages as sacred in themselves.

Latin liturgical rites, or Western liturgical rites, is a large family of liturgical rites and uses of public worship employed by the Latin Church, the largest particular church sui iuris of the Catholic Church, that originated in Europe where the Latin language once dominated and further by Western Rite Orthodoxy and Independent and Old Catholicism. Its language is now known as Ecclesiastical Latin. The most used rite is the Roman Rite.

The Latin rites were for many centuries no less numerous than the modern Eastern Catholic liturgical rites. The number of Latin rites and uses is now much reduced. In the aftermath of the Council of Trent, in 1568 and 1570 Pope Pius V suppressed the breviaries and missals that could not be shown to have an antiquity of at least two centuries in favor of the Roman Missal and Roman Breviary. Many local rites that remained legitimate even after this decree were abandoned voluntarily, especially in the 19th century, in favor of the Tridentine Mass and other Roman Rite rituals. In the second half of the 20th century, most of the religious orders that had a distinct liturgical rite chose to adopt in its place the Roman Rite as revised in accordance with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council (see Mass of Paul VI). A few such liturgical rites persist today for the celebration of Mass, since 1965–1970 in revised forms, but the distinct liturgical rites for celebrating the other sacraments have been almost completely abandoned.

Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidia and Africa Proconsularis under the Vandals, the Byzantines and the Romano-Berber Kingdoms, until it declined after the Arab Conquest. Medieval Latin in Southern and Central Visigothic Hispania, conquered by the Arabs immediately after North Africa, experienced a similar fate, only recovering its importance after the Reconquista by the Northern Christian Kingdoms. In this region, it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned as the main medium of scholarly exchange, as the liturgical language of the Church, and as the working language of science, literature, law, and administration.

Medieval Latin represented a continuation of Classical Latin and Late Latin, with enhancements for new concepts as well as for the increasing integration of Christianity. Despite some meaningful differences from Classical Latin, its writers did not regard it as a fundamentally different language. There is no real consensus on the exact boundary where Late Latin ends and Medieval Latin begins. Some scholarly surveys begin with the rise of early Ecclesiastical Latin in the middle of the 4th century, others around 500, and still others with the replacement of written Late Latin by written Romance languages starting around the year 900.

In the Roman Empire, Mare Nostrum was a term that referred to the Mediterranean Sea. Meaning "Our Sea" in Latin, it denoted the body of water in the context of borders and policy; Rome remains the only state in history to have controlled the entire Mediterranean coast. The phrase would have been pronounced [ˈma.rɛ ˈnɔs.t̪rʊ̃ː] in Classical Latin, while it is pronounced [ˈmaː.rɛ ˈnɔs.t̪rum] in Ecclesiastical Latin.

The concept of "Mare Nostrum" is noteworthy for having risen to political significance after the unification of Italy in the 19th century, particularly among Italian nationalists and classical fascists, who attempted to revive the term with the connotation of Italy (and the Italian Empire shortly thereafter) being Rome's successor.

Contemporary Latin is the form of the Literary Latin used since the end of the 19th century. Various kinds of contemporary Latin can be distinguished, including the use of Neo-Latin words in taxonomy and in science generally, and the fuller ecclesiastical use in the Catholic Church – but Living, or Spoken, Latin (Latin used as a language in its own right as a full-fledged means of expression) is the primary subject of this article.

The Roman Breviary (Latin: Breviarium Romanum) is a breviary of the Roman Rite in the Catholic Church. A liturgical book, it contains public or canonical prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notations for everyday use, especially by bishops, priests, and deacons in the Divine Office (i.e., at the canonical hours, the Christians' daily prayer).

The volume containing the daily hours of Catholic prayer was published as the Breviarium Romanum (Roman Breviary) from its editio princeps in 1568 under Pope Pius V until the reforms of Paul VI (1974), when replaced by the Liturgy of the Hours.

The Tridentine Mass, also known as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, the usus antiquior (Latin for 'more ancient use'), the Vetus Ordo ('Old Order'), the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), or the Traditional Rite, is the form of Mass found in the Roman Missal of the Catholic Church codified in 1570 and published thereafter with amendments up to 1962. Celebrated almost exclusively in Ecclesiastical Latin, it was the most widely used Eucharistic liturgy in the world from its issuance in 1570 until its replacement by the Mass of Paul VI promulgated in 1969 (with the revised Roman Missal appearing in 1970).

"Tridentine" is derived from the Latin Tridentinus, lit. 'relating to the city of Trent', where the Council of Trent was held at the height of the Counter-Reformation. In response to a decision of that council, Pope Pius V promulgated the 1570 Roman Missal, making it mandatory throughout the Latin Church, except in places and religious orders with rites or uses from before 1370.

The Jacobean era was the period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of James VI of Scotland who also inherited the crown of England in 1603 as James I. The Jacobean era succeeds the Elizabethan era and is followed by the Caroline era. The term "Jacobean" is often used for the distinctive styles of Jacobean architecture, visual arts, decorative arts, and literature which characterized that period.

The word "Jacobean" is derived from Neo-Latin Jacobaeus from Jacobus, the Ecclesiastical Latin form of the English name James.

In the canon law of the Catholic Church, an oratory is a place which is set aside by permission of an ordinary for divine worship, for the convenience of some community or group of the faithful who assemble there, but to which other members of the faithful may have access with the consent of the competent superior. The word oratory comes from the Latin verb orare, to pray.

The Apostles' Creed (Latin: Symbolum Apostolorum or Symbolum Apostolicum), sometimes titled the Apostolic Creed or the Symbol of the Apostles, is a Christian creed or "symbol of faith".

"Its title is first found c.390 (Ep. 42.5 of Ambrose). ... Th[e present] form seems to have had a Hispano-Gallic origin ...". The creed most likely originated as a development of the Old Roman Symbol: the old Latin creed of the 4th century. It has been used in the Latin liturgical rites since the 8th century and, by extension, in the various modern branches of Western Christianity, including the modern liturgy and catechesis of Roman Catholicism, Evangelical Lutheranism, Reformed (Continental Reformed, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Calvinistic Methodist and Reformed Baptist traditions), Moravianism, Anglicanism and Methodism.

The Book of Concord (1580) or Concordia (often referred to as the Lutheran Confessions) is the historic doctrinal standard recognized as authoritative by many Lutheran church bodies since the 16th century. It consists of ten creedal documents and is also known as the symbolical book of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The Book of Concord was published in German on June 25, 1580, in Dresden, the fiftieth anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession to Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg. The authoritative Latin edition was published in 1584 in Leipzig.

The Hussites (Czech: Husité or Kališníci, "Chalice People"; Latin: Hussitae) were a Czech proto-Protestant Christian movement influenced by both the Byzantine Rite and John Wycliffe that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus (fl. 1401–1415), a part of the Bohemian Reformation.

The Czech lands had originally been Christianized by Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius, who introduced the Byzantine Rite in the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language and the Byzantine tradition of Communion in both kinds administered by the holy spoon. Over the centuries that followed, however, the Roman Rite in Ecclesiastical Latin, which is less easily understood than Slavonic by native speakers of Old Czech, was imposed upon the Czech people despite considerable public resistance, by German-speaking bishops, beginning with Wiching, from the Holy Roman Empire. (See also Sázava Monastery). As a cultural memory of both communion in both kinds and the Divine Liturgy in a language closer to the vernacular is believed to have survived well into the Renaissance, the ideas of Jan Hus and others like him swiftly gained a wide public following. After the trial and execution of Hus at the Council of Constance, a series of crusades, civil wars, victories and compromises between various factions with different theological agendas broke out. At the end of the Hussite Wars (1420–1434), the now Catholic-supported Utraquist side came out victorious from protracted conflict against Jan Žižka and the Taborites, who embraced the more radical theological teachings of John Wycliffe and the Lollards, and became the dominant Hussite group in Bohemia.

The Augsburg Confession (German: Augsburger Bekenntnis), also known as the Augustan Confession or the Augustana from its Latin name, Confessio Augustana, is the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church and one of the most important documents of the Protestant Reformation. The Augsburg Confession was written in both German and Latin and was presented by a number of German rulers and free-cities at the Diet of Augsburg on 25 June 1530.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, had called on the Princes and Free Territories in Germany to explain their religious convictions in an attempt to restore religious and political unity in the Holy Roman Empire and rally support against the Ottoman invasion in the 16th-century Siege of Vienna. It is the fourth document contained in the Lutheran Book of Concord.

The legacy of the Roman Empire has been varied and significant. The Roman Empire, built upon the legacy of other cultures, has had long-lasting influence with broad geographical reach on a great range of cultural aspects, including state institutions, law, values, religious beliefs, technological advances, engineering, and language.

This legacy survived the demise of the empire (5th century AD in the West, and 15th century AD in the East) and went on to shape other civilisations, a process which continues. Rome was the civitas (reflected in the etymology of the word "civilisation") and connected with the actual western civilisation on which subsequent cultures built is the Latin language of ancient Rome, epitomized by the Classical Latin used in Latin literature, which evolved during the Middle Ages and remains in use in the Roman Catholic Church as Ecclesiastical Latin. Vulgar Latin, the common tongue used for regular social interactions, evolved simultaneously into Romance languages that still exist today, such as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Romanian. Although the Western Roman Empire fell in the 5th century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire continued until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century AD and cemented the Greek language in many parts of the Eastern Mediterranean even after the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century AD. Roman paganism was largely displaced by Roman Catholic Christianity after the 4th century AD and the Christian conversion of Roman emperor Constantine I (r. 306–337 AD). The Christian faith of the late Roman Empire continued to evolve during the Middle Ages and remains a major facet of the religion and the psyche of the modern Western world.