Ecclesiastical Latin, called Church Latin, Liturgical Latin or Italianate Latin, is a form of Latin initially developed to discuss Christian thought and later used as a lingua franca by the Medieval and Early Modern upper class of Europe.
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Ecclesiastical Latin was the language of liturgical rites in the Latin Church, as well as the Anglican Church, Lutheran Church, Methodist Church, and in the Western Rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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Today, ecclesiastical Latin is primarily used in official documents of the Catholic Church, in the Tridentine Mass, and it is still learned by clergy.
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Ecclesiastical Latin that is used in theological works, liturgical rites and dogmatic proclamations varies in style: syntactically simple in the Vulgate Bible, hieratic in the Roman Canon of the Mass, terse and technical in Thomas Aquinas's, and Ciceronian in Pope John Paul II's encyclical letter.
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The English scholar Alcuin, tasked by Charlemagne with improving the standards of Ecclesiastical Latin writing in France, prescribed a pronunciation based on a fairly literal interpretation of Ecclesiastical Latin spelling.
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Ecclesiastical Latin continues to be the official language of the Catholic Church.
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The Second Vatican Council decided to allow languages other than Ecclesiastical Latin to be used in Mass in order to relate the Church and its values to modern culture.
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However, the Church still produces its official liturgical texts in Ecclesiastical Latin, which provide a single clear point of reference for translations into all other languages.
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The Ecclesiastical Latin text appeared only five years later, in 1997, and the French text was corrected to match the Ecclesiastical Latin version, which is regarded as the official text.
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One can understand Church Ecclesiastical Latin knowing the Ecclesiastical Latin of classical texts, as the main differences between the two are in pronunciation and spelling, as well as vocabulary.
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Ecclesiastical Latin remains the official language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.
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