The hazards of liturgical Latin

“At that time, the rest of Europe was reduced to a heap of ruins; one day they declared invalid all baptisms imparted by certain priests in Gaul because they baptized ‘in nomine patris et filiae’ – and not because they practiced a new heresy and considered Jesus a woman, but because they no longer knew any Latin.”

—Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (London: Minerva, 1992), p. 312.