100+ years is still pretty recent. The immediate predecessor to English as a world language was French. Matter of fact, my country has only dropped French translations from its passport with the most recent design update a decade ago or so.
Latin would have been used pre-Renaissance. Our grandparents might have still had to learn it as a part of an educated person's toolkit, but it was long not intended for communication anymore back then.
> The immediate predecessor to English as a world language was French
From what I remember, there was a divide between Catholicism and Protestantism, where some of the smaller countries that followed Protestantism used German as a common language due to its origins. I think knowledge of German in Norway was something that was expected of students attending the universities until the mid 1900s (due to geopolitical changes)
Latin would have been used pre-Renaissance. Our grandparents might have still had to learn it as a part of an educated person's toolkit, but it was long not intended for communication anymore back then.