›Vocabularius Ex quo‹
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Edited by:
Bernhard Schnell
The Latin-German »Vocabularis Ex quo« was, to judge from the more than 270 surviving manuscripts and some fifty incunabula editions, the most commonly used late medieval alphabetical dictionary on German soil. It was meant by its anonymous compiler-author to enable pauperes scolares to read and literally understand the Scriptures and other Latin texts. It dates from the late 14th century and, spreading all over the then German speaking countries, kept being copied until the last decades of the 15th century. During that very productive tradition it was subject to continuous change: almost every manuscript reveals different text. Yet, groups of manuscripts can be classified as descendants of nine major and most widely used revisions, eight of which are synoptically represented in the present edition. The text itself is accompanied by an introductory volume containing an up-to-date review of the research done on that subject, the lists of manuscripts and 15th century editions, an account of the überlieferungsgeschichtliche (K. Ruh) editorial principles, the classification of the text's tradition, and an alphabetical index of the more than 20.000 Latin entries.
The Index gives ready access to the German vocabulary of the edition of the "Vocabularius Ex quo". With its high contemporary incidence and broad dissemination, the dictionary supplies a representative picture of vocabulary organization and vocabulary movement in the 15th century. The Index provides access to the vocabulary via standardized Early High German forms. As such it can stand in its own right as a dictionary of 15th century German.
