The Low German Translation of Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Buch der Cirurgia and its Rendering of Surgical Lexicon

Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Buch der Cirurgia is the first surgical handbook printed in German. It is transmitted in five different editions, the first of which was printed in 1497 by Johannes Grüninger in Strasburg. This compilation of Classical, Arabic, Medieval and Late Medieval sources, integrated by the personal experience of the author had an extraordinary success in 16th-century Europe, as witnessed by the existence, in addition to the Low German one, of various other translations: English (London, 1525), Dutch (Utrecht, 1535) and Czech (Olmütz, 1559). The High German surgical compendium became also popular in Northern Germany, where in 1518 a Low German translation, the still inedited Boek der Wundenartzstedye, was produced and printed by Ludwig Dietz in Rostock. In this study, I focus on this Low German translation of Brunschwig’s handbook, contrasting it with its High German source as far as the rendering of the surgical lexicon connected to the semantic fields of anatomy, pathology, surgical technique and instruments is concerned. The comparison of the two texts allows focusing on similarities and differences in the linguistic and terminological treatment of this subject in High and Low German. Particular attention will also be paid to the relationship between vernacular and Latin (or Greek) terms both in Brunschwig’s original and in its Low German translation. The need of complete transparency connected to the very genre of medical and surgical literature guarantees that each time the translator/author of the Boek der Wundenartzstedye chose those lexemes which he perceived as absolute unequivocal and unequivocable.