5. Linguistic “Simplicity” and the Means of its Realization

Abstract

Traditional Slavic book culture confronted the idea of linguistic “simplicity” in the sixteenth century. Although the issue of the comprehensibility of bookish texts could have been posed earlier it was in this century that it acquired fundamental importance and became a motivating factor in linguistic change in the framework of Slavia Orthodoxa. It entered into complex interaction with other factors in creating a new attitude both toward the traditional bookish language and toward the learned linguistic tradition, provoking changes in the functioning of particular variants of the bookish language and, ultimately, the rejection of traditional bookishness as the principal medium for the expression of cultural values. The transformation of linguistic thought was common throughout Europe, although in various regions it proceeded differently, at different speeds, influenced by the specifics of national traditions and their starting points, and produced diverse, at times dissimilar, results. The cause of this transformative process was religious conflict, which gripped all of Europe to a greater or lesser extent and radically altered the traditional social organization of religious life; if earlier continuity of religious convictions from generation to generation had been the norm, now to a significant extent they were a