In the Latin Vulgate, Luke 2:13 is translated:
Et subito facta est cum angelo multitudo militiæ cælestis laudantium Deum, et dicentium ...
"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying ..." (ESV)
We've been trying to understand why laudantium and dicentium are plural in number. They agree in genitive case with militiæ cælestis, the heavenly army. But I don't see any plural noun in the clause to agree with laudantium and dicentium in number.
Is this because militia could be considered a collective noun, plural in meaning but singular in form? I didn't think that sort of meaning led to plural forms in agreeing modifiers, but maybe I'm wrong about that?
Multitudo obviously also is a collective noun, but I don't think that affects the participles laudantium and dicentium since they are genitive, agreeing with militiæ, not with multitudo (nominative).
Why are laudantium and dicentium plural in number here?
Related: Can a morphologically singular collective noun be syntactically plural?