Where Has God Gone in the Vernacular Renderings of Lanfranc’s Chirurgia Magna?

From the fourteenth century onward, Latin surgical treatises were more and more frequently translated into vernacular languages. This increased interest in the translation of surgical texts reflected the needs of surgeons who lacked academic training but desired to learn the techniques and the remedies of the ‘masters’ of the past. This primarily practical approach to surgery is typically reflected in the structure of the vernacular renderings of surgical works, which tend to abbreviate the Latin original by omitting all the parts considered scarcely useful in everyday-surgical practice (e.g., references to medical authorities, long discursive passages, theoretical disputes). A common feature of large Latin surgical (and, in general, medical) treatises was the presence of an initial dedication to God, in which the author invoked the divine help to be able to complete his writing endeavor, and of an explicit thanking God for allowing the accomplishment of this work. Moreover, additional invocations to God and references to faith could be inserted in other parts of the text. In this study, the English and German vernacular renderings of Lanfranc of Milan’s Chirurgia magna will be taken into consideration and contrasted with their source with respect to their treatment of the ‘religious’ passages included in the Latin original in order to outline the relationship between faith and vernacular surgery in the Late Middle Ages.