Surgical Handbooks Translated into Low German

Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Buch der Cirurgia (1497) and Hans von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundarzney (1517) are the first two surgical handbooks printed in the High German language area. During the Early Modern Age these texts enjoyed great popularity as witnessed by the high number of editions following the first ones and by the existence of, respectively, English and Dutch and Latin and Dutch translations. Moreover, these two surgical compendia became also popular in Northern Germany: in 1518 a complete Low German translation of Brunschwig’s Cirurgia – the Boek der Wundenartzstedye – was produced and printed by Ludwig Dietz in Rostock, while some twenty years later a large portion of a Low German version of Hans von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundarzney was included – under the title Dat velt bock – in the manuscript miscellanea of medical texts known as Copenhagen, Royal Library, GKS, 1663 4to (fol. 1r-86v). These Low German texts represent two different and in many respects opposite forms of reception, transmission and translation of a scientific text: while, in fact, Brunschwig’s Cirurgia has been translated and printed integrally, the fragment of translation of Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch preserved in the Copenhagen manuscript appears to be the result of the free selection of specific topics and of single prescriptions from the source, which are integrated with similar passages and recipes from other sources. In this study, these two Low German translations of High German surgical handbooks will be contrasted and discussed along with their transmission strategies paying particular attention not only to their medium (i.e. print vs. manuscript), but also to their aim, function and intended public.