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Natural Science and Real Life: Linguistic Decisions of the German Incunabula Herbals

The first German illustrated herbals printed in Mainz by Peter Schöffer were intended for ordinary lay readers including the poorer classes. While the Hortus Sanitatis of March 1485 presented a full German translation of the text, the Herbarius of 1484 was Latin with only German plant names added in the chapter titles along with the Latin ones. The popularizing impact of this minimal vernacular adaptation is questioned and the inserted plant names are analysed to estimate their role in making scientific knowledge understandable and accessible for the broad public. The study showed surprisingly, that in the majority of cases these ‘vernacular' lexemes were of Latin origin (loanwords or loan translations). The native terms used by the publisher proved to be regional or dialect words from his Rhine area; in reprints made in Passau they were substituted by Bavarian forms. Both tendencies allowed an insight into the linguistic choices which had an effect on later language usage.