The Latin term res has a wide range of meanings that lived on in medieval and early modern Latin literature and also influenced vernacular usage. The most common translation for res in German – Sache (thing, object) – was used in Middle High German as a legal term, meaning a “(judicial) case,” “dispute,” or even – reflecting the Latin causa, sometimes used synonymously with res – “cause” [1]. This usage of Sache became generalized in scholarly early modern German literature, as Sache replaced the technical Latin terms res and …