Surgeon or Lexicographer? The Latin-German Glossaries in Addendum to Hans von Gersdorff's Feldtbuch der Wundarzney

At the end of his Feldtbuch der Wundarzney (Strasburg, Schott, 1517), Hans von Gersdorff inserts three Latin-German glossaries (anatomy, pathology and medical herbs). It’s the first time a printed German surgical handbook includes a glossary, thus explicitly recognizing the existence of a potential understanding problem posed by the abundance of classical terminology in these specific semantic fields. In this study, the structure and organization of these three glossaries are analysed, paying particular attention not only to the selection of the Latin headwords and the choice of the vernacular rendering(s) of the Latin headwords, but also to their relation to the surgical technical terminology employed by the author in the treatise itself. In this way, it is possible to ascertain whether this, in nuce, specialized dictionary had been conceived as simply instrumental to the didactic purposes of the handbook, or aimed at pursuing a more universal goal, in the same way as today’s technical dictionaries.