It may or may not have been a deliberate grand conspiracy. But the medieval Church clearly enjoyed - and to some extent still enjoys - centralised power over all of Europe. There was a Party Line, and while there were plenty of internal power struggles, the Party Line was easily recognisable, persistently (some would say cynically) expedient, and had huge political influence.
The fact that people were speaking languages related to Latin is irrelevant, because most people weren't allowed to read either the Vulgate or the original texts. So the Church had a monopoly on interpretation for a millennium or so, and this was the foundation of its political influence at every level.
So your argument is undermined by the fact that this power dynamic started to fall apart as soon as translations into other languages became available.
It started to fray during the Renaissance when contact with Classical and Islamic ideas began to dilute the narrative. But political power remained centralised until the original texts were translated into German.
The fact that it was Martin Luther who translated them just makes the point more obvious.
I'm not disputing that the Church was powerful, just that there was some grand conspiracy from "encoding" it in Latin. The Vulgate came about in the 4th century simply because the people then still spoke Latin and Gutenberg himself published copies of it, etc.
The fact that people were speaking languages related to Latin is irrelevant, because most people weren't allowed to read either the Vulgate or the original texts. So the Church had a monopoly on interpretation for a millennium or so, and this was the foundation of its political influence at every level.
So your argument is undermined by the fact that this power dynamic started to fall apart as soon as translations into other languages became available.
It started to fray during the Renaissance when contact with Classical and Islamic ideas began to dilute the narrative. But political power remained centralised until the original texts were translated into German.
The fact that it was Martin Luther who translated them just makes the point more obvious.