Hebrew as "lingua simplicissima": complexity in orations on the Hebrew language at the sixteenth-century Louvain Collegium Trilingue

In the sixteenth century, Hebrew became part of the linguistic horizon of humanists, being taught in university curricula. Yet, professors of Hebrew felt the need to defend the study of the language from critics, using a varied array of arguments. One of these arguments was the language’s simplicity, contrary to its reputation as a difficult language. This article investigates how these orations dealt with the language’s simplicity. An interesting case is an anonymous speech delivered in the context of the Hebrew lessons of the Louvain Collegium Trilingue. Its author describes the character of Hebrew as “simple yet perfect”. Here, we see that the complexity of the language is strictly connected to the theological aspect.