Joannis Scapulae Lexicon Graeco-Latinum e probatis auctoribus locupletatum, cum idicibus auctis et correctis.

Title

Joannis Scapulae Lexicon Graeco-Latinum e probatis auctoribus locupletatum, cum idicibus auctis et correctis.

Description

Scapula's Greek-Latin Lexicon on 1792 pages. With title page printed in red and black letters and an engraving by Oxfort; Index Vocabulorum, Index Dictionum and Index Autorum on several 100 pages (without numbering).

c. 1820

Artist

Scapula (1540-1600)

Historical Description

In late antiquity and the Middle Ages, lexicon was used for various dictionaries in Greek. In contrast, this term was not used in Latin either in antiquity or throughout the High and Late Middle Ages. The early medieval Greek term - similar to the term encyclopaedia - was reintroduced by the humanists in Italy at the end of the Middle Ages around 1480 and initially only applied to scholarly Greek works. The first designation of a German-language reference work as a "lexicon" did not occur until 1660 with Gotthilf Treuer's Poetisch Lexicon und Wörter-Buch. The first dictionary of the early modern period to bear this name was the bilingual Greek-Latin dictionary by Johannes Crastonus, which was entitled Lexicon Graeco-latinum in the 1483 edition, whereas earlier editions were still referred to as Dictionarium. The synonymy of lexicon and dictionarium or dictionary is evidenced by the Lexicon sive dictionarium utriusque iuris by Alberich von Rosate (Pavia 1498), the above-mentioned lexicon by Gotthilf Treuer (Frankfurt an der Oder 1660) and the Vollständiges Deutsches Wörter-Buch vel Lexicon germanico-latinum by Christoph Ernst Steinbach (Breslau 1734). The real dictionaries published in Germany since the beginning of the 18th century all bear the title Lexicon.