Medical Synonym Lists from Medieval Provence

Medieval synonym literature is a comprehensive field, which, as a text genre, has not received due attention in philological scholarship until now. This volume contains the first critical edition of Book 29 of Shem Tov ben Isaac's Sefer ha-Shimmush and a lexicological analysis of the medico-botanical terms in the first of the two synonym lists of this book. The Sefer ha-Shimmush was compiled in Southern France in the middle of the thirteenth century. The list edited in this volume consists of Hebrew or Aramaic lemmas, which are glossed by Arabic, Latin and Romance (Old Occitan and, in part, Old Catalan) synonyms written in Hebrew characters. Containing over 700 entries, this edition is one of the most extensive glossaries of its kind. It gives scholars a wide overview of the formation of medieval medical terminology in the Romance languages and Hebrew, as well as within the Arabic and Latin traditions.