The Vernacular Reception of Lanfranc of Milan’s Surgical Works in Late Medieval Europe

Lanfranc of Milan is one of the most influential medieval surgeons and his Latin works informed surgical practice until the seventeenth century. Both his Chirurgia parva and Chirurgia magna were repeatedly translated into vernacular languages and contributed to the dissemination of surgical knowledge throughout late medieval Europe. Addressing a public of scholars and graduate students in the fields of philology, historical linguistics and history of medicine, this volume aims at analyzing in depth some key-aspects of the Romance and the Germanic translations of Lanfranc’s works from both a philological and lexical perspective. In this, it focuses on some relevant questions concerning the aim of these vernacular versions, their authors, and their intended audience. Including contributions by experts in the field in both the Romance and the Germanic areas, this volume enhances a comparative approach toward the study of the development of a vernacular surgical tradition.