Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität besonders des 9.-12. Jahrhunderts

Medicine has never been restricted to one particular land or to one particular time. Moreover, medical knowledge has never acknowledged political (or linguistic) borders. That is why medial language is usually replete with loan words, foreign expressions, "arcane" signs etc. Apart from foreign influences, medical knowledge also developed within the framework of the local language, which in turn influenced the foreign vocabulary. This linguistic cradle always creates puzzles and problems for the student of the history of medicine, especially of its ancient and medieval periods. The historian must deal not only with the subject itself, but at the same time with its native descriptions which makes the task more difficult. The books under review contribute significantly to the solution of the last problem. Each is concerned with the problem of Graeco-Arabic cultural transmission. Despite the great achievements in historical research during the last few decades, the question to what extent Arabic science (medicine) was influenced by Greek science (medicine), and how strong the influence was in the opposite direction, still requires additional study. Linguistic transmission and the role which intermediaries (Syriac, Coptic, Berber, Hebrew, Latin and medieval Romance languages) played in it are also of great importance. The first of the books under review is a new dictionary. The importance of Byzantium for a scholar interested in the history of the Mediterranean world hardly requires defence. Yet researchers have frequently been hindered by the absence of suitable lexicographical aids. Generations of scholars-even those specializing in medieval Greek studies-have been obliged to use primarily the dictionaries of ancient Greek, even though this reliance has brought with it several major difficulties, not least the fact that, although many Greek words in the Byzantine written language in general were orthographically similar to those from Antiquity, their meanings had often undergone significant changes. E Trapp's new dictionary (hereafter LBG) can thus be welcomed as the first modern attempt to produce a comprehensive lexicon of Byzantine Greek. It aims to list all the words which either are not listed or are insufficiently illustrated by quotations from ancient authors. Special attention has been paid to the words found in ninth to twelfh century sources; the thirteenth-century sources have almost all been examined, and those in fourteenth-to fifteenth-century sources have been taken into account in cases were indices exist. Among the words to be found in the LBG, besides the pure "Byzantine" political entries, are many that …