Las Vegas Strip Catholic Church


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Las Vegas Strip Catholic Church

Las Vegas Strip Catholic Church

To trace the use of Latin in the Roman Catholic Church we must first discover the languages which were spoken at the beginning of Church History.

The Greek Empire

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) established the Greek empire throughout the area of the Mediterranean and as far south as Egypt and east to the borders of India. By 146 BC the Roman Republic had conquered most of mainland Greece and, for many, this signifies the end of the Hellenistic (Greek) period. Others say the date of the demise of the Greek Empire was 30 BC when Egypt was conquered by Rome. However, the influence of Greece in culture, art and language continued long into the Roman period.

The Roman Empire

At the time of Jesus, the Roman Empire extended throughout the Mediterranean; as far north as Britain and as far south as Northern Africa. The language of the Romans was Latin although most of the educated people spoke Greek as well. In the 3rd century BC there had been a movement by the cultured classes to introduce Greek elements into Latin and it was in this Latin that the orators, poets and historians wrote. It is now known as Classical Latin and two examples of written Classical Latin are the works of Caesar and Cicero. The masses, however, continued to speak the ‘old’ Latin known as sermo vulgaris or Vulgar Latin. ‘Vulgar’ did not have the meaning it does today, rather, it meant, ‘common’.