Vulgata

Just updating everyone on what I'm what doing language-wise: I have begun to read the Bible... in Latin! I'm at the point where I can just read the Vulgate quite smoothly, having to use a dictionary sparingly. For those not familiar with Latin, the Vulgate, as translated by St. Jerome, uses a Latin with constructions not as complex as those found with ancient authors, such as Cicero or Caesar. I'm definitely not at the point of just getting one of Cicero's texts and reading it comfortably; I will get lost soon. However, I have started reading Genesis, and I can just almost flow through it (that is, compared to reading a classical text).
More on that soon.

Let's look at how Genesis 1:1 compares throughout Latin and the Romance languages:

Latin
In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram

Portuguese
No princípio criou Deus o céu e a terra

Spanish
En el principio creó Dios el cielo y la tierra

Catalan
En el principi Déu va crear el cel i la terra

French
Au commencement Dieu créa le ciel et la terre

Italian
In principio Dio creò il cielo e la terra


Some Romance language versions have Latin caelum in the plural, i.e. Pt. os céus, Sp. los cielos, Fr. les cieux, It. i cieli.
French is the only one that doesn't use Latin principium, but instead uses a derivative of French commencer from Vulgar Latin *cuminitiare (cum + initiare). Au in the beginning comes from à + il, using Latin ad, while the others use Latin in.

Catalan is the only one here that doesn't use the perfect for Latin creavit, instead using a periphrastric past form, composed of anar + crear: va crear. This construction in most Romance languages developed into a periphrastric future, which is also found, though not used with the same frequency, in Catalan and distinguished from the periphrastric past by inserting an a between anar and the following infinitive: va a crear (cf. Sp. ). Thus, va crear does not mean "he is going to create", but rather "he created".

Notice also how the Portuguese and Spanish renderings maintain the subject, Deus, after the verb, while the other languages have moved it to the front. In Latin, as it's well known, there is no problem because of the declension endings: Deus is the subject and caelum and terram are direct objects. In the two languages that keep the Latin word order, Portuguese and Spanish, there is no confusion because the verb is singular and it's clear that Deus, Dios is the subject. In Spanish, particularly, this practice is quite common; that is, the order Verb-Subject-Object, and even Verb-Object-Subject and Object-Verb-Subject. Spanish can be as flexible as Latin in cases like this because of its own "personal a". The "personal a", which I've discussed before, acts as a direct object marker (it's used with indirect objects, but that deserves a separate discussion), called "personal" because it is to be used with animate objects, that is, to refer to people (though its uses have been extended to include more than that). This means that if in a sentence there is at least one animate object, the word order can and does vary just as in Latin, with the "personal a" functioning as an accusative-case marker, just like the Latin word ending, in this case "-m", does. Let's take the sentence Romulus saw Remus in both Spanish and Latin and compare their possible outcomes:

Spanish	Latin
Romulo vió a Remo	Romulus vidit Remum
Romulo a Remo vió	Romulus Remum vidit
A Remo Romulo vió	Remum Romulus vidit
A Remo vió Romulo	Remum vidit Romulus
Vió Romulo a Remo	Vidit Romulus Remum
Vió a Remo Romulo	Vidit Remum Romulus

Just like in Latin too, each of these has a different nuance and emphasis in Spanish. This is possible in Spanish, again, due to the use that evolved from Latin ad, in the other languages solely used with indirect objects. This "personal a" is not found in any other Romance language, at least standardly. In Catalan, is it common colloquially (e.g. No conec a ningú), though in the standard language it is avoided, labeled a castellanisme (i.e. coming from Spanish). It could actually be a feature that developed throughout, not maintained by the languages that exclude it, since in Lengadocian (Occitan) and some Italian dialects, there is record of this same "personal a", e.g. L'as vist a ton paire (also, regional French Tu l'as vu, à mon père) and Hai visto a tuo padre, compare Standard French Tu as vu ton père and Standard Italian Hai visto tuo padre, but Spanish Has visto a tu padre. In Portuguese, also, this "personal a" shows up in some liturgical texts, e.g. Amo a Deus, traditionally Amo Deus.