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.

Autorentext
Bernhard Schnell, geboren 1942, Studium der Germanistik und Geschichte an der Universität München, 1974-1990 wiss. Mitarbeiter (Forschergruppe Prosa des deutschen Mittelalters , Sonderforschungsbereich Wissensorganisierende und wissensvermittelnde Literatur im Mittelalter ) in Würzburg, 1980 Dr. phil., 1990 Priv.-Doz. für Geschichte der Medizin, 1990 - 1994 akad. Oberrat am Institut für Geschichte der Medizin an der Univ. Würzburg, 1995 - 2007 Leiter der Arbeitsstelle des Mittelhochdeutschen Wörterbuchs an der Göttinger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind: Mittelhochdeutsche Lexikographie, deutsche Medizinliteratur des Mittelalters, Text- und Überlieferungsgeschichte.