My mind somehow meshes the ideas from butcher’s dresden books, where your belief in an icon as a symbol of the faith matters more than its actual connection to the religion, and lackey’s high magic (compared to the wild magic) where the collective energy of the populace can be collected and stored to be used. So I end up with this idea where the catholic church has collected a vast amount of energy to be used, and the utterance of latin is the individual’s (in this case constantine’s) personal symbolic link to the catholic church to harness that energy.
My mind somehow meshes the ideas from butcher’s dresden books, where your belief in an icon as a symbol of the faith matters more than its actual connection to the religion, and lackey’s high magic (compared to the wild magic) where the collective energy of the populace can be collected and stored to be used. So I end up with this idea where the catholic church has collected a vast amount of energy to be used, and the utterance of latin is the individual’s (in this case constantine’s) personal symbolic link to the catholic church to harness that energy.