Konrad von Megenberg ... translated the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré's encyclopedia, Liber de natura rerum, into German in 1350. He gave this translation the title Buch der Natur. And he—his real achievement—thereby "secularized the concept of the world as a book... in 14th-century Germany ... he alienated it from its theological origins." Strictly speaking: Konrad did not translate his main source in the strict sense, as Curtius suggests, using a number of other sources, but rather he presented the scientia naturalis independently in German as a specialist. Konrad does not call his work 'Buch der Natur consciously so, but rather Buch von den natürlichen Dingen'. Only the fifteenth-century editions call it 'Book of Nature', notably in conscious reference to the Latin original, Liber de natura rerum by Thomas Cantimpratensis... 'Book of Nature' is thus the genuine German title for Thomas's Latin work. ... Finally, it is questionable whether Konrad actually removed his 'Book of Natural Things' from the confines of theological discourse by wrapping it in the foreign garb of the vernacular. - [Author]

Language: German