Fédération Internationale Des Instituts D'études Médiévales

Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales
TEXTES ET ETUDES DU MOYEN AGE, 54
RETHINKING AND RECONTEXTUALIZING GLOSSES

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE STUDY OF
LATE ANGLO-SAXON GLOSSOGRAPHY
FEDERATION INTERNATIONALE DES INSTITUTS D'ETUDES MEDIEVALES
Présidents honoraires :
L.E. BOYLE (t) (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana e Commissio
Leonina, 1987 -1999)
L. HOLTZ (Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, Paris,
1999-2003)
Président:
J. HAMESSE (Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve)
Vice-Président:
O. MERISALO (University of Jyvaskyla)
Secrétaire :
J. MEIRINHOS (Universidade do Porto)
Membres du Comité :
0. R. CONSTABLE (University ofNotre Dame)
G. DINKOVA BRUUN (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
Toronto)
M. J. MuNOZ JIMÉNEZ (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
A. OLIVA (Commissio Leonina, Paris)
O. PECERE (Università degli Studi di Cassino)
P. E. SZARMACH (Medieval Academy of America)
Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales
TEXTES ET ETUDES DU MOYEN AGE, 54
RETHINKING AND RECONTEXTUALIZING GLOSSES

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE STUDY OF
LATE ANGLO-SAXON GLOSSOGRAPHY
Edited by
PATRIZIA LENDINARA
LOREDANA LAZZARI
CLAUDIA DI SCIACCA
PORTO
2011
Published with the contribution of
Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca Scientifica, Italy
(PRIN 2007)
University of Palermo
LUMSA of Rome
University of Udine
ISBN: 978-2-503-54253-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publisher.
© 2011 Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales.

Gabinete de Filosofia Medieval- Faculdade de Letras. P-4150-564 Porto
CONTENTS
Illustrations vii
Abbreviations vm
Preface xi
ANTONETTE DIPAOLO HEALEY (University of Toronto), Late

Anglo-Saxon Glossography: The Lexicographie View 1
MARIKEN TEEUWEN (Huygens Institute - KNAW, Den Haag),
Marginal Scholarship: Rethinking the Function of Latin
Glosses in Early Medieval Manuscripts 19
REBECCA RUSHFORTH (The Fitzwilliarn Museum, Cambridge),
Annotated Psalters and Psalm Study in Late Anglo-Saxon
England: The Manuscript Evidence 39
MALCOLM GODDEN (University of Oxford), Glosses to the
Consolation of Philosophy in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Their
Origins and their Uses 67
ROHINI JAYATILAKA (University of Oxford), Descriptio Terrae:
Geographical Glos ses on Boethius' s Consolation of
Philosophy 93
CONCETTA GILIBERTO (Università di Palermo), Precious Stones in
Anglo-Saxon Glosses 119
DAVID W. PORTER (Southern University, Baton Rouge), The
Antwerp-London Glossaries and the First English School Text 153
LOREDANA LAZZARI (LUMSA, Roma), Learning Tools and
Learned Lexicographers: The Antwerp-London and the Junius
71 Latin-Old English Glossaries 179
PAOLO VACIAGO (Università di Roma III), Updating the Lemma:
The Case of the St Galien Biblical Glossaries 209
MARIA AMALIA D' ARONCO (Università di Udine), Anglo-Saxon
Medical and Botanical Texts, Glosses and Glossaries after the
Norman Conquest: Continuations and Beginnings. An
Overview 229
JOYCE HILL (University of Leeds), The Regularis Concordia
Glossed and Translated 249
MARIA CATERINA DE BONIS (Università di Potenza), The
Interlinear Glosses to the Regula Sancti Benedicti in London,
British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii: A Specimen of a New
Edition 269
vi
CLAUDIA DI SCIACCA (Università di Udine), Glossing in Late

Anglo-Saxon England: A Sample Study of the Glosses in
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 448 and London, British
Library, Harley 110 299
FABRIZIO D. RASCHELLÀ (Università di Siena), The Latin-
Icelandic Glossary in AM 249 1 fol and its Counterpart in GKS
1812410 337
ALESSANDRO ZIRONI (Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di
Balogna), Marginal Alphabets in the Carolingian Age:
Philological and Codicological Considerations 353
MARIA RITA DIGILIO (Università di Siena), The Fortune of Old
English Glosses in Early Medieval Germany 371
PHILIP G. RUSCHE (University of Nevada), The Translation of
Plant Names in the Old English Herbarium and the Durham
Glossary 395
LOREDANA TERESI (Università di Palermo ), Mak:ing Sense of
Apparent Chaos: Recontextualising the So-Called «Note on 415
the Names of the Winds» (B 24.5)
GIUSEPPE D. DE BONIS (Università di Cosenza), Glossing the
Adjectives in the Interlinear Gloss to the Regularis Concordia
in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii 443
PATRIZIA LENDINARA (Università di Palermo), Glossing Abbo in
Latin and the Vernacular 475
FILIPPA ALCAMESI (Università di Palermo), The Old English
Entries in the First Corpus Glossary (CCCC 144, ff. 1r-3v) 509
Indices
Index of manuscripts 545

Index of authors and works 551
ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate 1 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 411, f. 4v

Plate II Worcester, Cathedral Library, F. 173, f. 1r
Plate III [Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.2 +] London,
British Library, Additional32246, f. 2v
Plate IV London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii, f. 121 v
Plate V The Rule of S. Benet: Latin and Anglo-Saxon Interlinear
Version, ed. by H. Logeman, Trübner, London 1888, p. 9
Plate VI The Rule of S. Benet: Latin and Anglo-Saxon Interlinear
Version, ed. by H. Logeman, Trübner, London 1888, p. 10
Plate VII London, British Library, Harley 110, f. 3r23-32
Plate VIII London, British Library, Harley 110, f. 3r
Plate IX Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 448, f. 1r
Plate X Reykjavik, Stofnun Ama Magnussonar, AM 2491 fol, f. 4r
Plate XI Reykjavik, Stofnun Ama Magnussonar, AM 2491 fol, f. 4v
Plate XII Bem, Burgerbibliothek 207, f. 264v
Plate XIII Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19410, p. 58
Plate XIV Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19410, p. 59
Plate XV London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius C.i, f. 11r
Plate XVI Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 144, f. 1r
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Permission to publish photographs has been granted by Bayerische

Staatsbibliothek, München (pls. XIII and XIV), the British Library,
London (pls. III, IV, VII, VIII, and XV), Burgerbibliothek, Bem (pl. XII),
the Chapter of Worcester Cathedral (pl. II [Photograph by Mr.
Christopher Guy]), the Mas ter and Fellows of Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge (pls. 1, IX, and XVI), and Stofnun Ârna Magnussonar,
Reykjavik (pls. X and Xl).
viii
ABBRBVIATIONS
CGL Corpus glossariorum Latinorum a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum,

ed. by G. Goetz, 7 vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1888-1923, repr.
Hakkert, Amsterdam 1965
CCCM Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, Brepols,

Turnhout 1966-
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, series Latina, Brepols, Turnhout 1954-
CPL Clavis Patrum Latinorum, ed. byE. Dekkers and B. Gaar, 3rd
edn., Brepols, Turnhout 1995
CPPM Clavis Patristica Pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevi, ed. by J.

Machielsen, Brepols, Turnhout 1990-
CSASB Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon Bngland, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge 1990-
CSBL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, various

publishers, Vienna 1866-
BBMF Barly Bnglish Manuscripts in Facsimile, Rosenkilde and

Bagger, Copenhagen 1951-
BBTS Barly Bnglish Text Society Publications, published for the

Society, London
os Original Series ( 1864-)
ss Supplementary Series (1970-)
MGH Monumenta Germaniae historica, Weidmann, Hannover,

Leipzig and Berlin 1826-
AA Auctores antiquissimi
PLAC Poetae latini aevi Carolini
SRG Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum
MRTS Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Center for

Medieval and Barly Renaissance Studies [= CBMBRS], State
ix
University of New York, Binghamton, from 1978 until 1996;

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies [=
ACMRS], Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 1996-
PL Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, ed. by J.-P. Migne,

221 vols., Garnier, Paris 1844-1864
SettSpol Settimane di Studio del Centra ltaliano di Studi sull' Alto

Medioevo, Centra Italiano di Studi sull' Alto Medioevo,
Spoleto 1954-
TUEPh Münchener Universitatsschriften. Texte und Untersuchungen

zur Englischen Philologie, Pink, Munich, from 1973 until
1997; Lang, Frankfurt a.M. 2000-
VCSS Variorum Collected Studies Series, Ashgate, Aldershot 1970-

PREFACE
Glossing was a scribal practice in use since antiquity, but it was in the
Middle Ages that it acquired a wider meaning and a different role,
becoming one of the most widespread forms of literacy in the Germanie
West, including the British Isles.
Since the thirties of the nineteenth century 1, Anglo-Saxon glossarial
production in the vernacular has progressively been edited and is now
well charted. More recently, sorne medieval corpora of glosses have been
studied within large projects and with the aid of new technologies, which
are not only an excellent support to the actual research work, but also a
stimulus to think anew how to collect and present data. Against this
background the present volume purports to offer an overall survey of the
status quaestionis and attempts at sketching new perspectives in the field
of Anglo-Saxon glossography.
A common aim of the papers collected in this volume is the re-
contextualization of the glosses in their respective manuscript setting.
Much attention has also been given to the processes involved in glossing,
in order to ascertain and recreate the glossators' strategies and evaluate
how successful they were in their endeavour.
Glosses have afforded invaluable insights into the contemporary
approaches to texts and into the range of Anglo-Saxon scholarship which
underlies both glossaries and interlinear glosses. The majority of the
essays focus on the late Anglo-Saxon period, that is a well-identified
time-frame spanning from the Benedictine Reform to the eleventh
century and beyond. As recent scholarship has convincingly established,
the second half of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh saw
the blooming of Anglo-Saxon scholarship and a remarkable advance of
educational practices. Within this cultural resurgence, glossing
undoubtedly played an important role and was particularly vital in centres
such as Abingdon, Canterbury, and Winchester.
1
In 1830 Franz Joseph Mone published, among others excerpts from glossaries and
interlinear glosses, a large share of the Old English glosses to Aldhelm' s prose De
virginitate in Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 1650: Quellen und Forschungen zur
Geschichte der teutschen Literatur und Sprache, Mayer, Aachen and Leipzig 1830, pp.
323-442. Quite a few editions dating to the second half of the century have not yet been
superseded, such as W.W. Skeat's edition of the Lindisfarne and Rushworth interlinear
glosses.
xii PREFACE
Anglo-Saxon glossaries from the tenth and eleventh centuries,

however, indisputably built on the achievements of the glossarial activity
which had been going on in England since the late seventh century.
Thereby the research results presented in this volume aim to contribute to
an improved overall assessment of the significance of glosses and
glossaries within English cultural history.
The volume is one of the outputs of the research project 'Rethinking

and Recontextualizing Glosses: New Perspectives in the Study of Late
Anglo-Saxon Glossography', funded by the Ministero dell'Istruzione,
dell'Università e della Ricerca Scientifica and the Universities of
Palermo, Roma LUMSA, and Udine (PRIN 2007). The contributions that
constitute the core of this book were originally presented at a meeting
hosted by the University of Roma LUMSA from 11 th to 13th February,
2010. Their order of succession maintains the original sequence of the
presentations.
The first two essays focus on the twofold perspective from which
glosses were approached in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: their
uniqueness and their marginality, both factors contributing to make
glossography a discrete field of research. Antonette diPaolo Healey
focuses on the value attributed to Old English glosses by lexicographers
such as Henry Sweet («Late Anglo-Saxon Glossography: The
Lexicographie View» ). The approach to glos ses as mere lexicographie
items has prevailed for more than a century. Glosses were studied
independently of their manuscript and literary context and only for as
much as they could tell of the Old English language, with a special focus
on the hapax legomena and rare words. This approach highlighted the
difficulties intrinsic to the study of glosses and focused on their
"exceptional" character. Reversing the attitude prevalent in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, new lexicographie tools, such as the Toronto
Dictionary of Old English and the Toronto Web Corpus, allow a
comprehensive scrutiny of the Old English corpus and foster a new
understanding of the real role and value of glosses. The examples drawn
from the interlinear glosses to the Liber Scintillarum and a few homilies
demonstrate the merits of a wholesome approach to Old English glosses,
not excised from the Latin text (or lemma) they accompany.
Mariken Teeuwen addresses the status of gloss studies highlighting a
turning point or rather a new approach to the research in the field
(«Marginal Scholarship: Rethinking the Function of Latin Glosses in
Earl y Medieval Manuscripts»). The essay focuses on the glosses as
PREFACE Xlll
physical realities which have often been disregarded as a result of the

marginal position they actually occupy on manuscript pages. The essay
underscores the importance of new editions of all the glossarial
apparatuses to the same author or work as well as of a re-evaluation of
the content of glosses and the classical and late antique scholarship which
looms behind the interpretamenta. The future lines of research are clearly
pointed out by Teeuwen, also on the basis of a former project of hers
conceming the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella.
This project bas resulted in the innovative web edition of all the glossarial
material in Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. F. 48, a
manuscript where Martianus's text is accompanied by multifarious and
complex layers of glosses.
The primary importance of the Psalter within liturgical practices and
scriptural studies is weil documented in Anglo-Saxon England. In a
relevant number of manuscripts, the text of the Psalter is accompanied by
a continuous interlinear gloss in Old English. These vemacular glosses
are all published and have long since received due scholarly attention.
Relevant research, originally devoted mainly to their linguistic
peculiarities, bas now begun to appreciate also their exegetical
dimension. Rebecca Rushforth addresses the much less explored field of
Latin glos ses to the Psalms ( «Annotated Psalters and Psalm Study in Late
Anglo-Saxon England: The Manuscript Evidence»). These glosses attest
to a higher level of Psalm study than their vemacular counterpart. The
essay takes into examination the surviving manuscript evidence by
looking, first, into Psalters accompanied by Latin glosses and, then, by
examining the codices of the Psalter commentaries which may have been
the sources of such glosses.
Two essays are devoted to one of the main research projects
underway in the field of medieval glossography, namely the project
conceming the glosses, both in Latin and the vemacular, in ali the pre-
1100 manu scripts of Boethius' s De consolatione Philosophiae. This
research venture is presented by Malcolm Godden in his essay «Glosses
to the Consolation of Philosophy in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Their
Origins and their Uses». The comprehensiveness of the project is in line
with the new approach to gloss studies, that tend to chart and make
available old and new material, both Latin and vemacular glosses, and,
taking into account the whole manuscript tradition, both English and
Continental witnesses. The majority of glosses which were added to the
Boethian manuscripts provide lexical equivalents to the lemmata; the
interpretamenta usually comment on the word or phrase of the text and
xiv PREFACE
explain points of interest. The essay focuses on the late Anglo-Saxon

manuscripts which record many of the same glosses as the Continental
ones, but also feature significant additions. The English glossators'
reaction to the difficulties posed by the Boethian work was at times
personal and indeed shaped by the available sources.
Moving from the same, in large part still unprinted, corpus of glosses
to the De consolatione Philosophiae, Rohini Jayatilaka examines the
annotations on a number of geographical indications in Boethius's text,
such as Vesuvius or Caucasus and other names of mountains and rivers
(«Descriptio Terrae: Geographical Notes on Boethius's Consolation of
Philosophy»). The majority of these glosses accompany the text of the
Metres, but there are also a few commenting on passages of the Proses.
The glosses on geographical place names are taken into examination for
what they can tell us about the glossators' knowledge of the world and
the sources they may have used. In several instances the glossators add
supplementary information to Boethius' s references which are often
allusive and indeterminate. The geographical elements provided by the
Latin glosses, which generally take the form of fairly long comments,
include several antique and medieval authors and the source-texts
identified in the essay complement the other geographical sources
available in late Anglo-Saxon England. The dialectical relationship which
the glossators engaged with a text such as Boethius' s will be full y
understood - to the benefit of many fields of research - once this corpus
of glosses will be entirely charted.
Taking advantage of contemporary lexicographie tools such as the
Toronto Web Corpus2, Concetta Giliberto studies the entire corpus of
Anglo-Saxon glosses looking for the entries dedicated to precious stones
(«Precious Stones in Anglo-Saxon Glosses»). This is the only specimen
in the volume of an analysis devoted to a coherent group of glosses
belonging to a specifie semantic field. The research attains original and
significant results, all the more so as it deals with a lexical field barely
represented in the vernacular texts and often by stereotyped expressions.
Like in many essays in the volume, equal relevance is granted to Old
English and Latin glosses, and this approach permits to ground the results
on a solid foundation. The nuanced typology of the collected data
features a low number of one-word renderings (this category including
2
Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, 2009 release at: http://tapor.library.
utoronto.ca/doecorpus/.
PREFACE xv
few native words and many loanwords), besides a variety of (more or

less) general definitions of the gem, its colour, and properties.
David W. Porter connects the Antwerp-London glossaries to a
putative (and now) lost epitome of Isidore's Etymologiae and Theodore
and Hadrian's Canterbury school («The Antwerp-London Glossaries and
the First English School Text»). The thread of the Isidorian material
clearly detectable in the early glossaries is traced from one compilation to
another up to three glossaries of Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.2
+London, British Library, Additional 32246: the bilingual class glossary,
the a-order list, and the ab-order list. The role of Isidore of Seville as a
source for the Anglo-Saxon glossarial tradition cannot be overlooked.
Firstly, he provided the very theoretical framework for glossarial activity,
since glossa is one of the four grammatical categories that underlie the
whole of Isidore's leaming and literary production. Secondly, Isidore
was, together with Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory, one of the four major
patristic authorities for the Anglo-Saxons.
Loredana Lazzari deals with a still unsolved problem which has long
affected the study of both the (bilingual) Antwerp-London Glossary and
!Elfric's Glossary («Leaming Tools and Learned Lexicographers: The
Antwerp-London and the Junius 71 Latin-Old English Glossaries»). This
is the first close study of the glossarial compilation transcribed by Francis
Junius and printed by Wright and Wülcker in their famous Anglo-Saxon
and Old English Vocabularies 3 , alongside genuine medieval glossaries.
The essay highlights the strategies adopted by the seventeenth-century
scholar in copying a class glossary which largely overlaps with the
Antwerp-London Glossary. The common characteristics are so many that
it is not unlikely that Junius had this very glossary at hand. The
meticulous analysis throws light also on the Antwerp-London Glossary
itself, which is characterized by a keen attention to the meaning, however
specialized, and the structure of the lemmata. These were painstakingly
rendered in the vemacular, also with the help of the Isidorian
encyclopaedia which seems to underlie both the content and the very
structure of several interpretamenta of the Antwerp-London Glossary.
Paolo Vaciago addresses a peculiar phenomenon of the lemmata of
glossaries composed by glossae collectae from a set text, drawing
attention to a so far neglected aspect of gloss studies («Updating the
Lemma: The Case of the St Gallen Biblical Glossaries»). The glossary in
3
Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. by T. Wright and R.P. Wülcker, 2
vols., 2nd edn., Trübner, London 1884.
xvi PREFACE
St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 295, a codex produced at St Galien in the late

ninth- or early tenth century, is compared with other biblical glossaries
originating from the same scriptorium and the analysis focuses on the
lemma, rather than on the interpretamentum as is usually the case.
Vaciago detects the processes by which a number of lemmata have been
updated. Sometimes this updating of the lemma involves a fuller
quo tati on of the source text. In other cases, these additions were meant to
make the relevant items more reader-friendly. This updating of the lemma
is far from haphazard, as other glossarial practices analysed in the essays
of the volume.
Glosses to herbaria and medical compilations played a major role in
late Anglo-Saxon England, testifying to the level of knowledge achieved
in this field. Maria Amalia D' Aronco sketches a vivid picture of medico-
botanical works in circulation at the eve of the Norman Conquest
(«Anglo-Saxon Medical and Botanical Texts, Glosses and Glossaries
after the Norman Conquest: Continuations and Beginnings. An
Overview»). London, BL, Sloane 475 is a crucial witness from this
transitional period, since it combines traditional medical material
(recipes, charms, prognostics) with Latin treatises by the great medical
authorities of the past. The transmission and interpretation of this
imported scholarship in late Anglo-Saxon England also passes through
the glosses, which, within such a specialized field, allow us to get very
close to both the recipients and the authors of these medico-botanical
texts. It should be kept in mind that the transmission of medical
knowledge did not follow the same channels as other forms of
institutionalized instruction.
Though specialised in their contents, Anglo-Saxon plant glossaries
should not be considered independently from the rest of the glossographic
corpus, as is shown by Philip G. Rusche («The Translation of Plant Names
in the Old English Herbarium and the Durham Glossary»). The glossarial
compilations in question are closely linked not only with the Old English
version of the Herbarius of Pseudo-Apuleius, but also with the Latin
translation of the Greek original. The subsequent stages from the
Herbarius to excerpts and glossae collectae and, finally, the compilation
of late Anglo-Saxon glossaries, are taken into account and elucidated.
Three articles address the continuous interlinear glosses in Old
English accompanying Latin texts pertinent to monastic life, such as the
Regula Sancti Benedicti and a monastic customary, the Regularis
Concordia. Tenth-century England also produced a translation of these
two works which played a pivotai role within the Benedictine Reform.
PREFACE XVll
Joyce Hill compares the discrete strategies of the interlinear glos ses and
the translation of the Regularis Concordia («The Regularis Concordia
Glossed and Translated»). The close investigation deals with a number of
divergent lexical choices of the translation and the glosses. Whereas
translation reveals an intimate understanding of the Regularis Concordia
and conveys the sense of the customary as a lived experience, the gloss
only responds to the words on the page.
Maria Caterina De Bonis offers a sample of her forthcoming edition
of the interlinear glos ses to the Benedictine Rule («The Interlinear
Glosses to the Regula Sancti Benedicti in London, British Library, Cotton
Tiberius A.iii: A Specimen of a New Edition»). The copy of the Rule in
Cotton Tiberius A.iii is characterized by several layers of glosses. The
Latin text is accompanied not only by a continuons gloss in Old English,
but also by glosses in Latin and a complex system of syntactical glosses,
consisting of letters from a to z. The new edition by De Bonis will
hopefully supersede the 1888 edition by Henry Logeman. Here De Bonis
expounds her opinion on the mutual relationship between the text and the
apparatuses of glosses and discusses Logeman's editorial choices. A
comparison between the two editions and the features of the future
edition are illustrated by means of a sample passage from the forthcoming
volume.
The apparatus of glosses accompanying the other fundamental text of
the Benedictine Reform movement, the Regularis Concordia is taken into
examination by Giuseppe D. De Bonis («Glossing the Adjectives in the
Interlinear Gloss to the Regularis Concordia in London, British Library,
Cotton Tiberius A. iii»). In this case, the vernacular glos ses are examined
for as much as they can tell not only of the glossator' s choices, but of Old
English grammar. The techniques of glossing the adjectives of the Latin
text are the subject of a close analysis that takes advantage of the strict
relationship between the text and its Old English glosses. As interlinear
glosses regularly combine a grammatical and a semantic function, the
analysis of a linguistic aspect of the interlinear glosses to the Regularis
Concordia also sheds light on the sum of the glossator's strategies.
The glosses studied by Claudia Di Sciacca are rather a response to
(meta)linguistic and rhetorical concerns («Glossing in Late Anglo-Saxon
England: A Sample Study of the Glosses in Cambridge, Corpus Christi
College 448 and London, British Library, Harley 110»). The essay
focuses on the interlinear glosses to the Epigrammata by Prosper of
Aquitaine and the Synonyma by Isidore of Seville contained in two tenth-
century manuscripts, CCCC 448 and Harley 110. A specifie analysis is
xviii PREFACE
devoted to the id est-glosses, the uel-glosses, and the scilicet-glosses, that

is the lexical and morpho-syntactical glosses introduced by these tags.
According to a by now iconic definition, glosses in late Anglo-Saxon
manuscripts are «repositories of learning» 4 rather than ad hoc or
spontaneous responses to teacher-student interaction. As more recent
scholarship and indeed this survey of the CCCC 448 and Harley 110
glosses have put forward, however, this traditional dichotomy which has
long encumbered research in Anglo-Saxon glossography should finally
make room to a more versatile, nuanced approach. The «repositories of
learning» which given corpora of glosses grew into, gradually developed
through a complex, at times devious, process of accumulation and
blending of bath past and present scholarship. The glosses in CCCC 448
and, even more so, th ose in Harley 110 are a pertinent case in point of
this intrinsically dynamic and diverse process. Whereas the core of shared
glosses in bath codices clearly points to a common derivative origin, the
glosses not shared by the two manuscripts could instead hint at a more
spontaneous response to or a personal engagement with the text.
Two essays are devoted to the Old Narse and Old Saxon glossarial
production. Fabrizio D. Raschellà offers a new edition of two Latin-
Icelandic glossaries, which originally formed a single compilation («The
Latin-Icelandic Glossary in AM 249 1 fol and its Counterpart in GKS
1812 4t0 »). The detailed analysis of the entries succeeds in unravelling
even the most corrupt items of one of the earliest Icelandic texts. The
items include lemmata belonging to the most disparate lexical fields,
from household utensils to domestic animais, furniture and parts of the
house, games and entertainment, officinal plants, and the names of stars
and planets. A significant number of verbs and adjectives, equally
disparate, are also represented. Sorne of these items are also attested in
Old English glosses, but their combined occurrence has no counterpart in
either English or German compilations.
The relationship between the earliest Anglo-Saxon glossaries and a
number of Continental compilations, still in part unprinted, form the
abject of a new investigation by Maria Rita Digilio («The Fortune of Old
English Glosses in Barly Medieval Germany»). This kind of contrastive
analysis is yet another largely unexploited tool which can offer most
4
Lapidge, M., <<The Study of Latin Texts in Late Ang1o-Saxon Eng1and, I. The
Evidence of Latin Glosses», in N. Brooks (ed.), Latin and the Vemacular Languages in
Early Medieval Britain (Studies in the Ear1y History of Britain), Leicester University
Press, Leicester 1982, pp. 99-140, at 137.
PREFACE xix
relevant data to the study Anglo-Saxon glossography. The role and the
influence of the early Anglo-Saxon glossaries on German glossaries
emerge clearly from the study of the entries of glossaries such as the
Varia glosemata of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F.1.16. Underscored
is also the importance of the so-called Werden glossaries, written c. 825
in the W estphalian monastery of Werden. This codex was dismembered
and the glossaries have long since been available in excerpts. The three
Werden glossaries represent one of the main links between Continental
and early Insular glossography and their contents clearly show the
relevance of the Anglo-Saxon glossographic legacy for early medieval
Germany.
Alessandro Zironi' s essay is devoted to the alphabetical series copied
onto the margins of manuscript leaves («Marginal Alphabets in the
Carolingian Age: Philological and Codicological Considerations»). The
relationship between these marginal texts and the codex bears severa!
parallels with that existing between glosses and the text they accompany.
This essay too proceeds from a correct definition of marginality to
identify regular trends and consistent choices on the part of the scribes.
The marginal text, be it an alphabetical series or one or more glosses,
complements the main texts. It is along these lines of enquiry that the
physical lay-out of glosses needs to be studied, including voluntary or
involuntary textual hierarchies.
Loredana Teresi studies a few "minor" texts preserved in late Anglo-
Saxon manuscripts, which contain the names of the winds in Latin and
Old English («Making Sense of Apparent Chaos: Recontextualising the
So-Called "Note on the Names of the Winds" [B 24.5]»). A punctual
analysis of these texts is carried out moving from a re-examination of
their manuscript context. Overcoming past generalizations, the study
shows that there were in circulation distinct typologies of wind names
recorded in different kind of texts. Striving to illuminate the sense of the
wind diagrams' legends and their additional glosses- often jumbled and
not devoid of corruptions -, the author widens her inquiry to the wind
names included in the most important Anglo-Saxon glossaries and their
sources. This comparison provides a solid foothold whence to raise
doubts on the actual proficiency in wind-lore of the glossators at work on
the texts under examination.
The third book of the Bella Parisiacae urbis offers the quite
unparalleled occasion to compare two different apparatuses of glosses to
the same work: the original one in Latin and a new one in Old English.
Patrizia Lendinara compares the Latin glosses which accompanied the
xx PREFACE
text throughout its transmission with the vernacular glosses which were
devised in England in the tenth century («Glossing Abbo in Latin and the
Vernacular»). The analysis of the two corpora of interlinear glosses
confirms Abbo's ali-Latin glossing as a unique and quite idiosyncratic
creation, drawing on severa! glossaries. On the other hand, the Old
English apparatus shows that the glossator strove to provide a regular set
of vernacular renderings, supported by a number of strong internai cross-
references.
The bilingual entries of the First Corpus Glossary are the object of a
detailed study by Filippa Alcamesi («The Old English Entries in the First
Corpus Glossary [CCCC 144, ff. lr-3v]»). This essay combines, once
again, a linguistic analysis of the single entries with a study of their
possible sources, also through a comparison with a group of Anglo-Saxon
glossaries and ultimately with the entire corpus of glosses in Old English.
These bilingual entries, which represent one tenth of the First Corpus
Glossary, appear to have been drawn from a now lost class glossary. The
semantic classification of the bilingual items recaptures sorne glimpses of
this putative glossary which may weil have been the earliest class
glossary in Anglo-Saxon England.
Patrizia Lendinara
Loredana Lazzari
Claudia Di Sciacca
LATE ANGLO-SAXON GLOSSOGRAPHY:
THE LEXICOGRAPHIC VIEW
Antonette diPaolo Healey
Henry Sweet is not a comforting lexicographer. Anyone looking to

him for inspiring guidance to devise strategies for the lexicographie
treatment of late glossography will find none. Instead, he offers a
penetratingly bleak view of sorne of the challenges in handling «the
glossaries of detached words» in his Student's Dictionary of Anglo-
Saxon, a subject which he treats under the stark heading «Difficulties» in
his Preface to that work 1• The difficulties are various. First, there is the
basic issue of finding the Old English glosses. As Sweet knew so well
from his own editorial experience, in many of the glossaries, the
«English (that is, Anglo-Saxon) explanations of the Latin words are only
occasionally interspersed among Latin renderings». On an even more
fundamentallevel it is not easy, he states, «to determine whether a word
is English or a miswritten word in Latin or in sorne other language». But
even knowing a word is English is cold consolation to Sweet, for, as he
remarks, «We cannat be sure that it has not been displaced so that it
really has nothing to do with the Latin word it follows». And even if it
has not been displaced, the link between the English glass and its Latin
lemma is, he deplores, «often very vague». And further, protests Sweet,
if we examine the Latin words, they are «often misspelt beyond
recognition, and even when correctly spelt often cannat be found in any
Latin dictionary, either classical or mediaeval».
This is indeed a catalogue of experiential woes: difficulty in locating
the Old English glosses among a morass of Latin; uncertainty in
determining the language of the word in question; the possible
disassociation of the Old English interpretamentum from the Latin it
originally glossed, or at least the tenuousness of the connection between
English glass and Latin lemma; and the occasional incomprehensibility
of the Latin lemma (or even if it is not utterly incomprehensible, the
absence of a lexicographie record for the lemma in the standard
dictionaries). Sweet, who then self-identifies as an «investigator»,
describes how he proceeds «by guesswork», till his guesswork is
1
Sweet, H., The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon Press, Oxford
1896, pp. vi-vii; the quotations which follow are drawn from these two pages.
2 ANTONETTE DIP AOLO HEALEY
superseded by the better guesses of another. His final stance seems one
of grudging gratitude «for an occasional ray of light».
Sweet' s recitation of problems, although characteristically and
singularly morose, is not without parallel. Toller too, like Sweet, refers to
sorne of the difficulties he faced in compiling his enlarged version of
Bosworth's Dictionary in his Preface to the 1898 edition2 • After
mentioning the need for specialized knowledge in order to treat
adequately technical vocabulary, such as found in law, and the many
complexities presented by the poetry, ToUer turns to the subject of
glosses. Interestingly, he seems to have approached glosses at least
initially with sorne faint hope of success, unlike Sweet' s immediate sense
of frustration and disappointment. However ToUer' s hope is not al ways
fulfilled, and he points to a difficulty not explicitly mentioned by Sweet,
that both the Latin and the Old English may be unique occurrences in
their respective languages so that neither can elucidate the other. He
writes: «Even where at frrst sight it might seem that the solution of
difficulties would be most certainly furnished - in the case of glosses to
Latin words - the expectation is not always realized, and at times the
gloss is the only authority for both the English and the Latin word».
Alistair Campbell touches upon yet another problem facing the
lexicographer not explicitly articulated by either Sweet or Toller, the
critical question of inclusion and exclusion in the lexicon. In the front
matter of his «Additions and Corrections» to Toller's Supplement,
although he mentions with gratitude the many new editions of glosses
and glossaries since ToUer' s time which have aided his enlargement, he
also notes his decision not to incorporate fully «recent re-interpretations
of glosses» treated in Meritt's supplement to Clark Hall's Anglo-Saxon
Dictionary. As Campbell states, «entries have [ ... ] been more charily
made than in that work» 3 . In this polite and circumspect statement, we
infer Campbell's unwillingness to admit into his Enlarged addenda to
Bosworth-Toiler truly problematic interpretations of the glosses with
their speculative headwords. This was a concern of which Meritt himself
was obviously aware, for he remarked: «Once a word is placed in a
2
Bosworth, J. and Toiler, T.N., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript
Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth[ ... ]. Edited and Enlarged by T.N. Taller, Oxford
University Press, Oxford 1898, p. ii.
3
Toiler, T.N., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of
the Late Joseph Bosworth. Supplement, Oxford University Press, London 1921;
Campbell, A., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Enlarged Addenda and Corrigenda,
Clarendon Press, Oxford 1972, p. v.
LATE ANGLO-SAXON GLOSSOGRAPHY 3
dictionary, the very fact of its niche there tends to induce its inclusion in
later dictionaries and to give it a usually quite fitting garb of authenticity;
not all of them deserve it» 4 • This worry is not a trivial one in the
contested terrain of the recording and interpretation of glos ses.
Statements such as these evince the notion of "exceptionalism", a
thread which runs through lexicographie opinion about Old English
glossed material, for it is seen as a corpus set apart (as is poetry with its
dazzlingly playful ambiguities) from the usual genres of literature.
Christopher Ball, for example, when he contemplated the possibility of a
new Dictionary of Old English (hereafter DOE) at a conference at the
University of Toronto in March 1969, identified as one of the «special
problems» for lexicographers «the fact that most of the material consists
of direct or indirect glosses of Latin texts» 5 . Although by ~~indirect
glosses of Latin texts» Ball is referring more generally to translated texts,
in addition to the glossed texts which are our present subject, he is
obviously preoccupied with, as he says, the «complex difficulty of the
place of Latin in Old English lexicography». One of his arguments for
the inclusion of Latin lemmata in any database of Old English, an
argument in which he prevailed, is the necessity that the relevant context,
bath Latin and Old English, be taken into account. He elaborates: «ln the
case of interlinear glosses it is obvious that the Latin ward and context is
usually more important than the Old English context for the
determination of the sense of the Old English ward», a sentiment which
sounds like common sense, although there are times when the opposite is
true. One can only sympathize with Christopher Ball when he confesses
a few years later «to possessing a healthy suspicion of glosses as
indicators of normal usage» 6 - another manifest instance of
"excepti onalism".
Angus Cameron, when he reconfigured Ker's Catalogue7 by text
instead of retaining the original arrangement by manuscript in arder to
4
Meritt, H.D., Fact and Lore about Old English Words, Stanford University Press,
Stanford, CA 1954, p. viii.
5
A. Cameron, R. Frank and J. Leyerle (eds.), Computers and Old English
Concordances (Toronto Old English Series 1), University of Toronto Press, Toronto
1970, p. 90; the other two «special problems» were the paucity of the material and the
uncertainty of dating of many of the texts.
6
R. Frank and A. Cameron (eds.), A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English
(Toronto Old English Series 2), University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1973, p. 6.
7
Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon Press,
Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl., 1990.
4 ANTONETTE DIPAOLO HEALEY
construct his «List of Texts» for inclusion in the Dictionary of Old

English Corpus, deliberately organized the glosses as a genre set apart
from the poetry, the prose, and the inscriptions 8 • Within the genre of
glosses, he introduced refinements, treating the interlinear glosses (his
category C) in two parts: first, the continuous interlinear glosses,
followed by the occasional interlinear glosses. Their arder is alphabetical
by au thor or text title, and conforms to the organization of Ker' s Index 1:
«Index of the Contents of the Manuscripts»9 • The glossaries appear
separately (Cameron's category D) and are listed according to the arder
of manuscripts in Ker 10 •
As Christopher Bali and Angus Cameron, the original co-editors of
the DOE, clearly saw, the distinctiveness and the heterogeneity of the
glosses were going to present particular challenges in both presentation
and treatment for any lexicographie endeavour. René Derolez seems to
concur, but from the perspective of a textual editor, for he thought it was
«difficult, if not impossible» to map «an all-embracing editorial policy
with strict guidelines» for any type of glass, for each kind seemingly
requires a different strategy 11 • To illustrate his point, Derolez asserts the
primary and significant distinction between interlinear glosses and
glossaries. Interlinear glosses, Cameron's C category, are context-bound,
and as Derolez notes, were originally intended to correspond to their
lemmata in a particular context; that is, we expect that they will be both
formally and lexically compliant with their context. Glosses in
glossaries, Cameron's D category, on the other hand, are context-free,
and Derolez sees them as unconstrained «in the same way as the head-
words of our dictionaries» 12 • In the ideal situation, they ought to appear
in standard head-word format (Derolez uses the terms «neutralized» and
8
Cameron, A., «A List of Old English Texts», in Frank and Cameron (eds.), A Plan
for the Dictionary of Old English, pp. 25-267. The list of glosses is found on pp. 224-47;
the list of glossaries is found on pp. 248-54. An explanation of the ordering of the glossed
material is given on p. 27.
9
Ker, Catalogue, pp. 524-6.
10
An updated list of these materials can now be accessed on the DOE website
(http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/st/index.html). The additions do not preserve the alphabetical
and manuscript order of the original entries.
11
Derolez, R., «Anglo-Saxon Glossography: A Brief Introduction», in R. Derolez
(ed.), Anglo-Saxon Glossography. Papers Read at the International Conference Held in
Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België,
Brussels, 8 and 9 September 1986, Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren
en Schone Kunsten van België, Brussels 1992, pp. 9-42, at 12-13.
12
Ibid., p. 13.
«lexicalized» to describe these base forms) 13 , nominative singular for

nouns, nominative singular masculine for adjectives, present first person
singular for verbs, etc. The best-known examples of this type are the
class glossaries, either restricted to one subject, such as the glossary of
plant names in Durham, Cathedral Library, Hunter 100 which Ker dates
to the beginning of the twelfth century 14 or the slightly later Laud herbai
Glossary, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Mise. 567, which records
many Old English interpretations found also in the Durham Glossary 15 ;
or glossaries of an encyclopaedic type, which treat a variety of subjects,
such as the glossary accompanying lElfric's Grammar with its clustering
headings: Nomina membrorum, Nomina avium, Nomina piscium, Nomina
ferarum, Nomina herbarum, Nomina arborum, and Nomina domorum 16 •
The third main category, identified by Derolez, is a hybrid type, the
material found in the alphabetical glossaries which contains both
context-bound entries, detected by their inflected forms which can be
helpful to the scholar looking for sources, and context-free entries, where
the glos ses appear unmarked in any way and which makes the scholar' s
hunt for origins a laborious task 17 , and the lexicographer's task of
defining fraught with uncertainty. Adding to the complexity are the
glossae collectae, forming an intermediate stage between the occasional
interlinear glosses and the alphabetical glossaries 18 , such as the batch from
the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the
even larger batch from Aldhelm' s De virginitate, prose and verse, found,
respectively, in the second and third glossary of London, British Library,
13
1bid., p. 14.
14
Ker, Catalogue, no. 110 (s. xii in.); see Das Durhamer Pflanzenglossar, ed. by B.
von Lindheim (Beitrage zur englischen Philologie 35), Poppinghaus, Bochum-
Langendreer 1941.
15
Ker, Catalogue, no. 345 (s. xii); see The Laud Herbai Glossary, ed. by J.R.
Stracke, Rodopi, Amsterdam 1974.
16
Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar. Text und Varianten, ed. by J. Zupitza,
(Sammlung englischer Denkmaler in kritischen Ausgaben 1), Weidmann, Berlin 1880,
repr. with preface by H. Gneuss, Berlin 1966; 2nd repr. with new introd. by H. Gneuss,
Olms, Hildesheim 2001, pp. 297-322. The headings can be found on pp. 297, 307, 308,
310, 312, and 313. All oftheheadings exceptthe1ast (which is editorial) appear in Oxford,
St John's College 154, Zupitza's base text, on ff. 146v, 152r, 152v, 153r, 153v, and 154v.
17
Derolez, «Anglo-Saxon Glossography: A Brief Introduction», p. 15.
18
Ibid., pp. 23-24.
6 ANTONEITE DIPAOLO HEALEY
Cotton Cleopatra A.iii 19 • Derolez is right, I am sure. There is no universal

paradigm for the presentation and analysis of such disparate materials.
Part of the problem, as Michael Lapidge perceptively noted, is how
the subject developed under the direction of its nineteenth-century editors
from Franz Mone on. According to Lapidge, Mone's 1830 edition of
extracts from the Old English glosses in what is now Brussels,
Bibliothèque Royale 1650 (Aldhelm's prose De virginitate) launched the
subject, and he and those who followed after him established the
convention of displaying in their editions only the Latin lemmata and
their Old English glosses without fumishing the Latin context in which
the glosses are found 20 • Lapidge attributes this «'selective' editing» to the
desire of glossologists to supply as quickly as possible «raw material for
dictionary makers» 2 \ the results of which we can see in Bosworth's
Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language (1838) 22 , Ettmüller's Lexicon
Anglosaxonicum ( 1851 )23 , Leo' s Angelsiichsisches Glossar ( 1872-1877)24 ,
Clark Hall's A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1894) 25 , Sweet's The
Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon (1896), and of course Toller's
19
The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in MS. Cotton Cleopatra A Ill, ed. by J.J.
Quinn, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University 1956, pp. 74-92 for the New Testament
batch, corresponding to ff. 88r-91 v; pp. 92-170 for the prose De virginitate batch,
corresponding to ff. 92r-108v; pp. 170-219 for the verse De virginitate batch, corresponding
to ff. 108v-117r, at which point the manuscript ends.
20
Lapidge, M., <<Old Eng1ish Glossography: The Latin Context>>, in Dero1ez (ed.),
Anglo-Saxon Glossography, pp. 43-57, at 45-46, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature 600-
899, The Hamb1edon Press, London and Rio Grande, OH 1996, pp. 167-81.
21
Ibid, pp. 46-47.
22
Bosworth, J., A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, containing the
accentuation - the grammatical inflections - the irregular words referred to their themes
- the parallel terms, from the other Gothie languages - the meaning of the Anglo-Saxon
in English and Latin- and copious English and Latin indexes, serving as a dictionary of
English and Anglo-Saxon, as well as of Latin and Anglo-Saxon; with a preface on the
origin and connexion of the Germanie tangues - a map of languages - and the essentials
of Anglo-Saxon grammar, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, London
1838.
23
Ettmüller, L., Varda vealhstôd Engla and Seaxna. Lexicon Anglosaxonicum ex
poëtarum scriptorumque prosaicorum operibus nec non Lexicis Anglosaxonicis collectum
cum synopsi grammatica, Basse, Quedlinburg and Leipzig 1 Williams & Norgate, London
1851.
24
Leo, H., Angelsiichsisches Glossar. Alphabetischer Index dazu von W. Biszegger,
Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, Halle 1872-1877.
25
Clark Hall, J.R., A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary for the Use of Students,
Sonnenschein & Co., London 1 Macmillan & Co., New York 1894; 4th edn. with a suppl.
by H.D. Meritt, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1960.
enlargement and revision of Bosworth's Dictionary between 1882 and

1898. Unless there is a major new find of glossed material, the editors of
the Dictionary of Old English, unlike earlier lexicographers of Old
English, are in the fortunate position of drawing on a database of
relatively stable material. This does not mean, of course, that there are no
new additions. Since Cameron published his «List of Texts» in 1973, a
number of interlinear glosses have been added to the DOE Corpus as they
are discovered and published. Among these are the glosses to Tatwine's
Ars grammatica, edited by Vivien Law from four Continental
manuscripts of the eighth century and later26, scratched glosses to
Smaragdus' s Diadema monachorum edited by Ray Page from
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 57, an early eleventh-century
Abingdon manuscript27 , and glosses to Byrhtferth's Manual edited by
Peter Baker and Michael Lapidge 28 • We have also added several
occasional glosses found in both English and Continental manuscripts.
Sorne of these have been published; a few exist in DOE transcripts onll9•
Although the DOE has tried to be comprehensive in its treatment of
the glossed material, our work has been hampered by the fact that we
draw on a number of unpublished dissertations for our texts. Grateful as
we are to have edited texts, these dissertations frequently do not provide
the amount of information we need to help us determine sense securely.
The single most useful aid to lexicographie work is a superb edition
which accurately renders the text, anticipates the reader' s questions, and
provides a clear statement about the ambiguities and problems which
surround individual glosses. My colleagues at the DOE, Dave and lan
McDougall, in a paper read at the Brussels Anglo-Saxon Glossography
conference in 1986, gave a number of illustrative examples suggesting
the kind of commentary that is most helpful: drawing attention to
peculiarities of certain manuscript forms which affect the interpretation
of a gloss; using punctuation to distinguish lemma from gloss and one
gloss from another in a layered manuscript, as Goos sens' s edition of
26
Law, V., «The Latin and Old English Glosses in the Ars Tatuini», Anglo-Saxon
England 6 (1977), pp. 77-89, at 77-79.
27
Page, R.l., «More Old English Seratehed Glosses», Anglia 97 (1979), pp. 27-45, at
29-32.
28
Byrhtferth's Enchiridion, ed. by P.S. Baker and M. Lapidge (EETS ss 15), Oxford
University Press, Oxford 1995.
29
They have been given the short titles OeeGl 101 through OeeGl 105. Full
bibliographie information on these oeeasional glosses ean be aeeessed through the DOE
bibliographie tool at http://www.doe.utoronto.ealstlindex.html.
Aldhelm does 30 ; focusing on difficulties in the Latin text which have a

bearing on the interpretation of a vemacular gloss; paying sufficient
attention to the context of a gloss to avoid serions misunderstandings31 •
The McDougalls' intent was to show how a dictionary entry treating
glossed material might be written, but their remarks have a wider
application to the creation of new editions of glosses and glossaries.
Three of the dissertations upon which we have relied for our
coverage of glossaries all came out of Stanford in the 1950s with the
luminescence of Meritt surrounding them: William G. Stryker's 1951
dissertation editing the major glossary in London, British Library, Cotton
Cleopatra A.iii 32 ; Lowell Kindschi's 1955 dissertation editing the
Antwerp-London glossaries in Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.2
and London, British Library, Additional 3224633 ; and John J. Quinn's
1956 dissertation editing the minor glossaries in Cotton Cleopatra A.iii 34 •
Although these dissertations were undoubtedly an advance, they are not
without errors, and generons colleagues have provided us since with
corrections prior to the publication of their own studies, Philip Rusche35
and the late Manfred Voss on the Cleopatra glossaries 36 and David
Porter37 on the Antwerp-London Glossary. Perhaps we might not be able
to create another hive of glossarial industry as Stanford was in the fifties,
but it would be very useful to have these texts re-edited in a systematic
30
The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library, 1650 (Aldhelm's De
Laudibus Virginitatis), ed. by L. Goossens (Verhandelingen van de koninklijke Academie
voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en schone Kunsten van België. Klasse der Letteren 36, n.
74), Paleis der Academiën, Brussels 1974.
31
McDougall, D. and McDougall, 1., «Sorne Notes on Notes on Glosses in the
Dictionary of Old English», in Derolez (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Glossography, pp. 115-38.
32
The Latin-Old English Glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra A lll, ed. by W.G.
Stryker, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University 1951.
33
The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus MS 32 and British Museum
MS Additional 32,246, ed. by L. Kindschi, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University
1955.
34
The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in MS. Cotton Cleopatra A 111, ed. by
Quinn.
35
The Cleopatra Glossaries. An Edition with Commentary on the Glosses and their
Sources, ed. by Ph.G. Rusche, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Yale University 1996.
36
Voss, M., «Strykers Edition des alphabetischen C1eopatraglossars: Corrigenda und
Addenda», Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 13 (1988), pp. 123-38, and «Quinns
Edition der kleineren C1eopatraglossare: Corrigenda und Addenda», Arbeiten aus
Anglistik und Amerikanistik 14 (1989), pp. 127-39.
37
1 am p1eased to report that David Porter's new edition of the Antwerp-London
Glossary appeared in the Publications of the Dictionary of Old English series in 2011.
program to make them compliant with twenty-first-century standards. I

envision this program as one which would not only provide accurate
editions but would also help establish more fully the origins, contexts,
and uses of the glosses.
I would like to concentrate on one particular glass in the interlinear
Liber Scintillarum to suggest the more encompassing range our thinking
about glosses might take. Here too we rely on a dissertation for the DOE
corpus edition of this text found in London, British Library, Royal
7.C.iv, a mid-eleventh-century manuscript from Christ Church,
Canterbury38 . Sarah Getty's 1969 University of Pennsylvania
dissertation 39 provides a much more accurate edition of bath the Latin
and Old English texts than Rhodes's unsatisfactory edition for EETS 40 •
However, her dissertation does not reference Rochais's edition of
Defensor's Latin text41 except briefly in the introduction42 , nor does it
identify the quotations as Rochais so successfully does for the majority
of them.
Identification of sources together with an index of sources would
seem to be essential editorial features in a new edition of the Liber
Scintillarum, a text that René Derolez describes as «a sort of dictionary
of quotations useful in a variety of contexts»43 . Take, for example, Liber
Scintillarum, ch. 29.7 which the DOE cited un der the letter G for its use
of gafol 'tribute' from Getty's edition: LibSc 29.7: «Augustinus dixit
decim? enim tributa sunt egentium animarum : srede teopunge soôlice
gafelu synd bepurfendra sawla» (said, tithes truly are tributes for the
38
Ker, Catalogue, no. 256, dates the main gloss <<S. xi med.>>.
39
An Edition with Commentary of the Latin!Anglo-Saxon Liber Scintillarum, ed. by
S.S. Getty, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania 1969.
40
Defensor's Liber Scintillarum, ed. by E.W. Rhodes (EETS os 93), Trübner,
London 1889. For sorne of the insufficiencies of Rhodes' s edition, see Derolez, R., <<Sorne
Notes on the Liber Scintillarum and its Old English Gloss (B.M., Ms. Royal 7 C iv)>>, in
J.L. Rosier (ed.), Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and
Literature in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt (Janua Linguarum. Series Major 37),
Mouton, The Hague 1970, pp. 142-51.
41
Defensoris Locogiacensis monachi Liber Scintillarum, ed. by H.M. Rochais
(CCSL 117), Brepols, Turnhout 1957.
42
An Edition with Commentary of the Latin!Anglo-Saxon Liber Scintillarum, ed. by
Getty, p. vii.
43
Derolez, <<Sorne Notes on the Liber Scintillarum and its Old English Gloss>>, p.
150.
souls of the needy) 44 • Here Defensor incorrectly ascribes the quotation to

Augustine, in one sense a fortunate mistake for, as Rudolf Willard notes,
it adds authorial weight45 . However, to find an accurate identification of
the quotation, we must tum to Rochais's edition of the Latin Liber
Scintillarum, the standard authority, which identifies the proximate
source as Caesarius of Arles's Sermo 33 ('De reddendis decimis') 46 •
Neither Rhodes's nor Getty's Old English editions offers any guidance
on this point so consultation of the Latin is essential.
In addition to identifying sources, a new edition of the Liber
Scintillarum ideally should invite wider speculation about the
relationship between the Liber Scintillarum gloss and other Old English
texts. More than sixty years ago, Willard identified Sermo 33 of
Caesarius of Arles as a source for Blickling Homily 4, for the Third
Sunday in Lent, and for its variant text in Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Junius 8647 • Fortunately, both the Blickling and Junius manuscripts have
passages corresponding to the Old English gloss of Defensor' s Liber
Scintillarum, ch. 27. Blickling appears in this way: HomS 14 45: «On
pissum godspelle sregp pret ure teopan sceattas syn earmra manna gafol»
'in this gospel it says that our tithes are tributes for the poor' (cf.
CAES.ARELAT. Serm. 33.1 decimae enim [ ... ] tributa sunt egentium
animarum). Although the Blickling manuscript is dated by Ker as the
tum from the tenth to the eleventh century, and Junius is dated as mid-
44
Cameron, A., Amos, A.C., diPaolo Healey, A. et al., Dictionary of Old English: A
to G online, Dictionary of Old English Project, Toronto 2007. Ali Old English citations
are drawn from diPaolo Healey, A., Wilkin, J.P. and Xiang, X., The Dictionary of Old
English Web Corpus, Dictionary of Old English Project, Toronto 2009. The short titles
and systems of reference for both the Old English texts and Latin sources are those used
by the DOE project and available at: http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/st/index.html.
45
Willard, R., «The Blickling-Junius Tithing Homily and Caesarius of Arles», in
T.A. Kirby and H.B. Woolf (eds.), Philologica: The Malone Anniversary Studies, Johns
Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1949, pp. 65-78, at 68.
46
Defensoris Locogiacensis monachi Liber Scintillarum, ed. by Rochais, p. 117, note
to ch. 29,7.
47
Willard, «The Blickling-Junius Tithing Homily», pp. 65-78; see The Blickling
Homilies of the Tenth Century, ed. by R. Morris (EETS os 58, 63, 73), Trübner, London
1874-1880; repr. Oxford University Press, London 1997, pp. 39-53; and Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Junius 86, ff. 40v-61 v. The sections of Junius 86 based on Caesarius and printed
by Willard are found on ff. 40v, line 1 to 43v, line 4; 54v, line 2 to 58r, line 6; 59v, line 5
to 60v, line 14; in Morris's edition these correspond to pp. 39 to 41, line 28; 49, line 27 to
53, line 2, continuing on p. 195, lines 1-6 [for the misbound leaf]; and concluding back on
p. 53, lines 2-19.
eleventh century48 , the later Junius text was not copied from Blickling.
As Willard demonstrates, the two homilies, «though ultimately of
common origin are independent»49 •
If we line up the three texts in sequence, we can compare them more
easily:
LibSc 29.7: «Augustinus dixit decim? enim tributa sunt egentium animarum : sœde
teopunge soôlice gafe1u synd bepurfendra saw1a»
HomS 14 (BI Hom 4) 45: «on pissum godspelle sœgp pœt ure teopan sceattas syn
earmra manna gafol» (cf. CAES.ARELAT. Serm. 33.1 decimae enim [... ] tributa
sunt egentium animarum)
Junius 86, f. 43r: «swa hit on ôysum godspelle sœgô pœt ure teoôan sceatas sien
earmra manna gafol 7 wœdliendra»
As is evident, although Junius 86 is more expansive, the translations

of Caesarius in Blickling 4 and Junius 86 are very close. Except for
minor variations in spelling, their sole divergences are the addition of
swa hit at the start of the sentence in Junius, and at the end of the
sentence the addition of the conjunction with another genitive plural
noun, wœdliendra, in parallel variation with Blickling-Junius earmra.
However, most striking is the degree to which the Liber Scintillarum
gloss differs from the Blickling-Junius translation. I use the spellings of
Blickling in my comparison. For the unglossed attribution of the source,
«Augustinus dixit», in the Liber Scintillarum, Blickling-Junius shows the
generically anonymous on jJissum godspelle 'in this gospel'; for the -ung
noun teojJung in the gloss (the same lexical preference JElfric shows to
denote 'tithe', 'tenth part', 'tithing'), Blickling-Junius uses instead the
adjective plus noun combination teopan sceattas (a phrasai expression
not found in JElfric ), and precedes it by the inclusive! y communal ure
'our'; for bepuifendra sawla in the gloss, Blickling-Junius supplies
earmra manna (with Junius adding the expansion «7 wredliendra»). And
even for the one noun the gloss and the homilies share in common, the
inflections vary: the Liber Scintillarum shows neuter nominative plural
gafelu vs. endingless Blickling-Junius gafol.
I would like to focus for a moment on the teojJunge/teojJan sceattas
variation. The glossator of the Liber Scintillarum in selecting teopung
48
Ker, Catalogue, no. 382, dates Blickling «S. x/xi»; no. 336 dates Junius 85-86 «S.
xi med.>>.
49
Willard, «The Blickling-Junius Tithing Homily>>, p. 67.
conforms to standard late Old English in his lexical choice, as this is the
predominant expression for the sense 'tithe', 'tithing', 'tenth part',
occurring about 110 times in the DOE Corpus across a range of texts,
including lElfric, Wulfstan, the Rule of Chrodegang, Theodulf's
Capitula, and the laws, among others 50 • Its closest rival is the phrasai
expression se teopa dœl, in its various forms occurring around 45 times 51 .
By contrast, se teopa sceatt in its various inflections occurs in the DOE
Corpus only eleven times, six of them in Blickling Homily 452 • The
expression almost functions, we might say, as a signature for Blickling
Homily 4 as its appearance in each of the other texts is limited to one
time only. Single occurrences are found in: Genesis A, the only poetic
use53 ; the Confessionale Pseudo-Egberti54 from Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Junius 121 55 ; the glosses to the titles of Prudentius's
50
The varions forms of teo]Jung, together with their number of occurrences, in the
DOE Corpus are the following: teojJincga (xl), teo]Jingan (xl), teo]Juncge (xl), teo]Jung
(xl), teo]Junga (x12), teo]Junge (x25), teo]Jungum (x4), teoôinga (xl), teoôinge (x4),
teoôuncga (x2), teoôung (x4), teoôunga (x13), teoôunge (x33), teoôungum (x2),
tio]Junge (x7), tioôunge (xl), ti]Junge (x2); accessed 15 July 2010 at http://tapor.library.
utoronto.ca/doecorpus/.
51
The varions forms of the expression, together with the number of occurrences, in
the DOE Corpus are the following: teo]Jan dœl (x12), teo]Jan dœles (x2), teo]Jan dçl (xl),
teo]Je dœl (x2), teoôa dœl (x5), teoôan dœl (x20), teoôan dœle (xl), teoôe dœl (xl),
teoôum dœlum (xl); accessed 15 July 2010 at http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus/.
The homilist of Blickling 4 uses this expression seven times: teo]Jan dœl (6x; The Blickling
Homilies, ed. by Morris, pp. 39 [x2], 41,49 [x2], 51), teo]Jan dœles (xl; ibid., p. 51).
52
The varions forms of the expression, together with the number of occurrences, in
the DOE Corpus are the following: teo]Jan sceat (xl), teo]Jan sceattas (x5), teoôan sceat
(x3), teoôan sceattas (x2). The occurrences specifically in Blickling 4 can be found under
the spellings teo]Jan sceat (xl; The Blickling Homilies, ed. by Morris, p. 53), teo]Jan
sceattas (x4; ibid., pp. 41, 43, 49, and 51), and teoôan sceat (xl; ibid., p. 39). Omitted
from this count are the five occurrences of the phrase in Junius 86 as it is treated as a
variant of Blickling 4 and does not appear in the DOE Corpus. A related compound,
teo]Jungsceatt, is found 4 times in the DOE Corpus in varions spellings and inflections:
teo]Jingsceatt (x2), teo]Jungsceatta (xl), teoôingcsceattum (xl); the second form is found
in Blickling 4 (ibid., p. 53).
53
GenA 2120-23a: «Him pa se beom bletsunga lean 1 purh hand ageaf, and pœs
hereteames 1 ealles teoôan sceat Abraham sealed 1 godes bisceope>>: see The Junius
Manuscript, ed. by G.Ph. Krapp (The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 1), Columbia
University Press, New York 1 Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1931.
54
Das altenglische Bussbuch (sog. Confessionale Pseudo-Egberti), ed. by R.
Spindler, Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1934.
55
Conf 1.1 301: «Dreo œfesteno syndon on geare, an ofer eall folc, swa pœt XL nihta
foran to Eastran, ponne we ôone teoôan sceat pœs geares lysaô, and pœt XL nihta œr
Psychomachia 56 in London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra C.viii

(where, like the Liber Scintillarum, it glosses decimai 7 ; the introduction
to the Laws of Alfred in the Parker Chronicle, Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College 17358 ; and a composite homily in Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College 162 using extracts from JElfric's Easter homill 9 .
This last example requires further comment. The passage in which
teopa sceatt occurs is not the JElfrician part of the homily but appears
immediately after that material60 ; it reads:
Forôan ponne men ôa leofestan micel neadpearf us is ]:n:et we us geomlice cla:nsien

and gemedemien a:r ]:mm tocyme pa:s halgan husles purh hreowsunge and purh
a:lmyssan and <purh> fa:sten and ne agymeleasien we pa teoôan sceattas to syllanne
for godes lufan swa se apostol cwa:ô. (HomS 27 127)
(Therefore, dearest men, there is great need for us that we eagerly purify and humble
ourselves before coming to the holy Eucharist by means of repentance, and by alms
and by fasting, and let us not neglect to give tithes for the love of God as the apostle
said.) 61 .
It is, moreover, tantalizing to think that the reference here to se

apostol at the very end of the sentence is another mistaken attribution,
like the Liber Scintillarum 29.7 attribution to Augustine, and is, instead,
Geolum, ponne gebiddeô hine eall pa:t werod fore and orationes ra:deô, and pa:t feowertig
nihta ofer Pentecosten.»: see Das altenglische Bussbuch, ed. by Spindler, p. 189.
56
Aurelii Prudentii Clementis carmina, ed. by M.P. Cunningham (CCSL 126),
Brepols, Turnhout 1966, pp. 149-81.
57
PrudT 2 5: «Ubi Abram decimas offert et Melchisedech Habrahae panem et vinum,
Melchisedech rex et sacerdos dei summi : Rer Abram his teopan sceattas offrede and
Melchisedec offrede Habrahe hlaf and win, Melchisedec wa:s cyningc and ma:ssepreost
pa:s hean godes»: see Zupitza, J., «Englisches aus Prudentiushandschriften», Zeitschrift
für deutsches Alterthum und deutsche Litteratur 20 (1876), pp. 36-45, at 36.
58
LawAfE1 38: «Pine teoôan sceattas 7 pine frumripan gongendes 7 weaxendes agif
pu Gode>>: see Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. by F. Liebermann, 3 vols., Niemeyer,
Halle a.d.S. 1903-1916; repr. Scientia, Aalen 1960,1, p. 40.
59
Ker, Catalogue, no. 38, art. 32; the extracts with abridgement correspond to Sermo
15 in L"Elfric's Catholic Homilies: The Second Series. Text, ed. by M. Godden (EETS ss
5), Oxford University Press, London 1979, pp. 154,159 to 155,173.
60
It follows the exemplum of the communion wafer being transformed into a bloody
finger joint to convince an unbelieving woman. See An Edition of Five Old English
Homilies for Palm Sunday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, ed. by K.G. Schaefer,
unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Columbia University 1972, p. 256, lines 121-6.
61
1bid., pp. 256-7, lines 127-31.
an allusion to Caesarius. However, a quotation from Sir III.33 62 follows

immediately after: HomS 27 131: «Efne swa pret wreter fyr adwresct swa
deô eac seo relmysse pa synne» 'Just as water quenches fire, so does
alms, sin'. Therefore, we cannat be sure whether the reference to se
aposta! should be read backwards or forwards. The painting in the
manuscript does not help us determine in which direction we should read
as there is a point before swa and after cwœô, and so the phrase can be
read in either direction63 . Kenneth G. Schaefer, who edited this text for
his 1972 Columbia University dissertation, reads se aposta! forward,
taking it as introducing the biblical passage. However, as the designation
'apostle' is not appropriate for an author of an Old Testament book, and
as the handling of biblical material in the following section appears «too
casual» to him to be taken directly from a source, Schaefer speculates
that the homilist must have been «relying on his memory or on a non-
biblical source, perhaps a Latin homily or commentary»64• However, we
should note that Schaefer' s comments on the role of memory or of a non-
biblical source apply equally as well reading backwards, to the injunction
not to neglect giving tithes for the love of God. For although there is no
evidence in Caesarius's Sermo 33 for our precise quotation, the whole
thrust of the sermon is certainly in this direction.
There is one other piece of information worth mentioning conceming
the manuscript in which this homily is found. Ker observes that in the
numerous alterations and additions in later bands of the eleventh century
found in CCCC 162, south-eastern spellings occur65 . He cautiously
makes no claims about the origin of the manuscript but only its later
geographical disposition. This infrequent phrase teojJa sceatt, found in
the Blickling-Junius tithing homily, and five other texts (the most
62
Sir III.33: «ignem ardentem extinguit aqua et elemosyna resistit peccatis>>: see
Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed. by R. Weber et al., 5th edn., Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart 2007.
63
64
ecce 162, p. 389, line 9.
An Edition of Five Old English Homilies, ed. by Schaefer, pp. 242-3.
65
Ker, Catalogue, no. 38. Ker's examples show Kentish -yo- for West-Saxon -eo-
(jJyode, p. 299; gebyoton, p. 359); Kentish -e- for West-Saxon -y- (astered, p. 331,
geberad, p. 412, gelt, p. 528); south-eastern œ before a nasal for West-Saxon e (mœn, p.
458). For these characteristics, see Brunner, K., Altenglische Grammatik: nach der
angelsiichsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers (Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken
germanischer Dialekte. A. Hauptreihe 3), 3rd edn., Niemeyer, Tübingen 1965, § 38, Anm.
4, and Campbell, A., Old English Grammar, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1959; repr. 1977,
§§ 288, 291. Ker, Catalogue, p. xliv, note 2 observes that decoration as weil as spelling
suggests that ecce 162 is from the southeast.
interesting of which appears to be ecce 162 with its unnamed

'apostle'), - ali to which the Liber Scintillarum glass has astonishingly
led us - may help us cluster texts and their manuscripts together for
further investigation.
The lack of correspondence between the readings of the Liber
Scintillarum glass and Blickling-Junius tithing homily we noticed earlier
may perhaps be attributable to the use of differing Latin versions of the
Liber Scintillarum or of Caesarius's Sermo 33 by glossator and homilist.
Apparently, none of the variants listed in the apparatus of Rochais's
edition for ch. 29, sentence 7 of Defensor affect the readings of the glass
or the translations we have just examined66 • However, we should recall
that although there are more than 350 surviving manuscripts of the Liber
Scintillarum, Rochais based his edition on six manuscripts older than the
ninth century, and it is only those readings which appear as variants in
his critical apparatus 67 . Therefore, Rochais's apparatus is a very limited
record; nor does Morin' s apparatus pro vide any variants for the same
passage in the source of Defensor, Caesarius's Sermo 33 68 • This is not to
say that a Latin text may not have circulated which might account for
sorne of the variations between the glass and the Blickling-Junius
translation. According to Gneuss's Handlist there are three Anglo-Saxon
manuscripts of Defensor's Liber Scintillarum 69 : the fully glossed text in
London, British Library, Royal 7.C.iv; excerpts on two pages (pp. 265-6)
of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190, which furnish three Old
English glosses noted by Ker70 ( only one of which is common to the two
manuscripts: «perspicuus: jJUrhbeorht») 71 ; and a Latin manuscript in
Clare College, Cambridge. As Derolez notes, the three glosses in CCCC
190 are hardly sufficient to establish a relationship with those in Royal72 .
66
Defensoris Locogiacensis monachi Liber Scintillarum, ed. by Rochais, p. 117,
bottom tier of apparatus: variants to ch. 29,7.
67
Derolez, «Sorne Notes on the Liber Scintillarum and its Old English Gloss>>, pp.
142, 144.
68
Caesarius Arelantensis. Sermones, ed. by G. Morin, 2 vols. (CCSL 103-104),
Brepols, Turnhout 1953, 1, p. 144, apparatus.
69
Gneuss, H., Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and
Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up ta 1100 (MRTS 241), Arizona
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2001, nos. 34.1, 59, and 4 70.
°
7
71
Ker, Catalogue, no. 45, Part A, d.
The other glosses noted by Ker from CCCC 190 are: (2) «huic seculo: fram pys re
worulde>>, (3) «discretus: ascyred l asyndrod>>.
72
Derolez, «Sorne Notes on the Liber Scintillarum and its Old English Gloss>>, p.
144.
According to Gneuss, there was an incomplete copy of Caesarius' s

Sermones in Anglo-Saxon England73 . He does not record, however, a
copy of Sermo 33 existing independently in England, and perhaps there
never was one. For in addition to the Liber Scintillarum gloss, the
influence of Sermo 33 has been detected so far on only three homilies:
Blickling 4 and the Junius 86 tithing homily, as we have seen, and
LElfric's homily 'De virginitate' which, according to Pope, uses a
shortened and altered version of Sermo 33, identified as Homilia 16, 'De
decimis' 74 • Although there are frequent allusions to tithing in the extant
homilies, as Willard notes, there is «very little actual discussion» of the
practice within them75 • Despite this seant evidence for the influence of
Sermo 33, it is worth noting that Blickling and Junius are separated in
time by at least a half-century, and it may not be unreasonable to assume
that perhaps more than one copy of 'De reddendis decimis' may have
existed. If so, there is no record of Latin variants which might prompt the
differences we have noticed between the Liber Scintillarum gloss and the
Blickling-Junius homily.
Michael Lapidge has urged us to attend to the wider Latin context in
which glosses occur in order to understand the intellectual world of the
Anglo-Saxons 76• Equal attention to the wider Old English context of
which glosses form a singular part will alert us to the varying ways
glossators and translators respond to the same (or a similar) Latin source.
Derolez suggested that the rich vocabulary of the Liber Scintillarum
especially deserved «doser study by lexicologists» for he thought it
would present «many points of contact with other O.E. texts» 77 •
Our examination of a quotation from Caesarius's 'De reddendis
decimis' may have brought together for the first time the Liber
Scintillarum and the Blickling-Junius tithing homily. The «point of
contact», to borrow Derolez's phrase, is their Latin source. The different
73
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 9850-52: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 808.2. See also
Lapidge, M., The Anglo-Saxon Library, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, p. 295,
74
Homilies of !Elfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. by J. Pope, 2 vols. (EETS os
259, 260), Oxford University Press, London 1967-1968, I, p. 168; for JElfric's use of this
sermon, see ibid. II, pp. 806-8; see also Trahem, J., «Caesarius of Arles and Old English
Literature: Sorne Contributions and a Recapitulation», Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1976), pp.
105-19, at 114.
75
Willard, «The Blickling-Junius Tithing Homily», p. 72.
76
Lapidge, «Old English Glossography: The Latin Context>>, p. 47.
77
Derolez, «Sorne Notes on the Liber Scintillarum and its Old English Gloss>>, p.
145.
lexical choices made by the glossator and translator in rendering their

source suggests how different scribes manifest clear linguistic
preferences - the selection of teofJUng by the glossator and teopa sceatt
by the translators is particularly striking. A possible influence on their
choice is the scriptorium in which each writes. The gloss, we believe, is
the product of a major cultural centre, ChristChurch, Canterbury, on the
evidence of its appearance in the medieval catalogue of Christ Church,
compiled during the tenure of Henry of Eastry, Prior between 1284-
133178. The Blickling Collection, as Robert Getz has suggested in his
2008 Toronto dissertation, is perhaps a witness to scribal activity in the
southeast or possibly further north, i.e. north of the Thames (perhaps
Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire area) on the basis of
phonologica1 evidence - admittedly, an area not known for the
production of manuscripts but, in its favour, closer to the Mercian origin
of sorne of the texts 79 • Finally, Junius 86, together with its companion
volume, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 85, has notable south-eastern
spellings, although its Anglo-Saxon provenance is not known 80 •
Reading the Liber Scintillarum gloss in relation to the Blickling-
Junius translation places two independent renderings of Caesarius side-
by-side, and foregrounds the differences between them. It especially calls
to our attention the infrequent use of teopa sceatt in Old English to
denote the sense 'tithe', 'tithing', 'tenth part' in contrast with the ten
times more frequent teopunl 1• The teopung of the Liber Scintillarum
gloss clearly represents the majority view, the standard expression, not
unexpected from a major centre of book production. The teopa sceatt of
Blickling-Junius, however, is an outlier, a less popular tum of speech,
perhaps even idiosyncratic, found in a mere handful of other texts. The
78
Ker, Catalogue, no. 256, p. 324; James, M.R., Ancient Libraries of Canterbury
and Dover. The Catalogues of the Libraries of ChristChurch Priory and St Augustine's
Abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin's Priory at Dover, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1903, pp. xxxv and 45, no. 246.
79
Four Blickling Homilies, ed. by R.R. Getz, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., University of
Toronto 2008, pp. 40-41.
80
Recently it has been suggested that Junius 85-86 may have had French connections
in the later Middle Ages, see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Junius 85 and 86: An
Edition of a Witness to the Old English Homiletic Tradition, ed. by J.N. Chadbon, unpubl.
diss., University of Leeds 1995, pp. 36-40; cited in The Old English Boethius: An Edition
of the Old English Versions of Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. by M.
Godden and S. Irvine, 2 vols., Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, 1, p. 40.
81
In its various spellings and inflections, teofmng appears 110 times vs. 11 times for
the various spellings and infiections of teopa sceatt.
expression may also reflect the linguistic preference of one or several

communities.
By reading late Old English glosses globally, we will find the
evidence to construct a truer, denser history of scribal practice, lexical
choice, and possibly intriguing elues to the scriptoria responsible for
Anglo-Saxon book production. This practice also bas the advantage of
reducing, if not eliminating, the notion of "exceptionalism" which
surrounds lexicographie thinking about glosses, for the glosses can then
be seen as participating in the wider cultural conversation. The
«occasional ray of light» Sweet was looking for may not appear where
we immediately wish it, but it may shine in unexpected directions if we
are alert to possibilities 82 •
82
The research of the Dictionary of Old English has been supported by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Canada Foundation for
Innovation through the TAPoR project; the National Endowment for the Humanities,
Washington, an independent federal agency; the British Academy; the Gladys Krieble
Delmas Foundation, New York; the Jackrnan Foundation, Toronto; the McLean
Foundation, Toronto; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York; the Salamander
Foundation, Toronto; the St George's Society, Toronto; the Triangle Community
Foundation, Raleigh-Durham; the Angus Cameron Memorial Fund, the Office of the
Dean of Arts and Science, and the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto;
and the various private donations to the Dictionary of Old English from colleagues and
friends. I am grateful to my colleague, Dave McDougall, for reading an earlier draft of
this paper and catching several errors and for his very helpful suggestions.
MARGINAL SCHOLARSHIP: RETHINKING THE FUNCTION
OF LATIN GLOSSES IN EARLY MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS
Mariken Teeuwen
Marginal and interlinear texts: a plea for new research
Marginal annotations in early medieval manuscripts are a true terra

incognita in the field of medieval studies 1• A limited number of editions
have been published of marginal (and interlinear) texts. In the past,
scholarship has mainly focused on editing only those that recorded the
earliest attestations of vernacular words or phrases2 . The majority of
marginal texts, however, have been neglected up to now for different
reasons. First of all, the material itself is difficult. Marginalia are written
on the fringes of manuscripts that survived for so many centuries; by
definition, therefore, they are preserved in the most vulnerable part of
them. They are often written in tiny script, in less careful hands than
those used for the main text, thick with abbreviations. Second, they are
slippery and difficult to pin down, because their transmission allows for
1
As was already noted by Dionisotti, A.C., «Ün the Nature and Transmission of
Latin Glossaries», in J. Hamesse (ed.), Les manuscrits de lexiques et glossaires de
l'antiquité au moyen âge (Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales.
Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 4), Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études
Médiévales, Louvain-la-Neuve 1996, pp. 202-52.
2
The interest in Latin-Latin glossaries was inaugurated by Gustav Loewe, the
founding editor of the seven-volume Corpus glossariorum Latinorum (published in 1888-
1923), eventually completed by Georg Goetz. Wallace M. Lindsay continued to work in
the field, which resulted in severa! editions (among others the five-volume edition of
Glossaria Latina, published between 1926-1930) and a series of studies, which have been
recently reprinted and collected in the volume Wallace Martin Lindsay: Studies in Early
Mediaeval Latin Glossaries, ed. by M. Lapidge (VCSS 467), Variorum, Aldershot and
Brookfield, VT 1996. For medieval (and Renaissance) commentary traditions, the
standard reference work is the eight-volume Catalogus translationum et
commentarorium: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries. In
the series, medieval and Renaissance commentaries on classical and late antique authors
are inventoried and their manuscript traditions are described. The first volume appeared in
1960, the last in 2003. The series was edited by P.O. Kristeller, F.E. Cranz and V. Brown
and published by the Catholic University of America Press.
20 MARIKEN TEEUWEN
far more variation than an 'ordinary' texe. Severallayers of annotations

were often stacked upon each other, mixed into one new text, or
reworked into a new commentary. Their shape and fuzzy transmission
left text editors in the dark as to how to approach them and publish them.
Modem textual scholarship has not yet developed good models to cast
them into editions which will allow modem researchers to fully
investigate their contents, textual relationships, and transmission
histories 4 • Third, they are often anonymous, giving only tiny elues to their
authorship, date, and purpose. To dig for these elues is hard, time-
consuming, and often tedious work. Moreover, in the case of many
medieval manuscripts and especially those containing the works of
antique or late antique authors, elassical philologists - the traditional
editors of these texts - have tended to see the medieval scribblings in the
margins as a layer of dirt, dulling the picture of the 'pure' text. They
strived to elean their ancient texts from the medieval marginal and
interlinear annotations, just as tarnished vamish has to be eleared of an
old painting in order to restore it toits original beauty5 •
Yet, in recent years, the interest in marginal texts has been growing,
as testified by several large scale projects determined to work on the
edition of glosses or the re-evaluation of their content and scholarship.
For the Carolingian period, for example, our grasp of biblical exegesis
has greatly profited from the editions and studies of John Contreni,
Padraig O'Neill, Édouard Jeauneau, Beda Paulus, and Bengt Lofstedt, to
name but a few 6 . The Latin gloss tradition added to Boethius's De
3
See Zetzel, J.E.G., Marginal Scholarship and Textual Deviance: The «Commentum
Cornuti» and the Early Scholia on Persius (Bulletin of the lnstitute of Classical Studies
Supplement 84 ), lnstitute of Classical Studies, London 2005.
4
Teeuwen, M., «The Impossible Task of Editing a Ninth-Century Commentary. The
Case of Martianus Capella», Variants: Journal of the European Society for Textual
Scholarship 6 (2007), pp. 191-208.
5
See, for example, Willis's derogatory words about the commentaries of John
Scottus Eriugena and Remigius of Auxerre on Martianus's De nuptiis: Willis, J., De
Martiano Capella emendando, Brill, Leiden 1971, p. 23: «Sed videmus jam, quales
fuerint Johannes Scotti et Remigii in Martiano exponendo. Non quidem omni doctrina
destituti erant: poetas aliquot Latinos in manibus habuerant, Scripturas Sacrosanctas et
Patrum scripta selecta satis bene noverant, sed ex scriptoribus sermonis pedestris
veteribus vix unum vel alterum inspexerant».
6
Glossae divinae Historiae: The Biblical Glosses of John Scottus Eriugena, ed. by
J.J. Contreni and P.P. O'Neill (Millenio Medievale I. Testi 1), SISMEL-Edizioni del
Galluzzo, Florence 1997; Jean Scot. Commentaire sur l'évangile de Jean, ed. by É.
Jeauneau (Sources chrétiennes 180), Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1972; Homélie sur le
prologue de Jean, ed. by É. Jeauneau (Sources chrétiennes 151), Éditions du Cerf, Paris
MARGINAL SCHOLARSHIP 21
institutione musica has been published by Michael Bernhard and Calvin

M. Bower7 , the Latin glosses added to his De consolatione Philosophiae
are currently researched by Malcolm Godden and Rohini Jayatilaka, and
an edition is forthcoming 8. Tenth- and eleventh-century glosses on
Prudentius's Psychomachia have been edited by Sinead O'Sullivan9, the
glos ses on Arator' s Historia apostolica have been published by Ârpad P.
Orban in a separate volume of the Corpus Christianorum series 10 .
Ekkehart' s glos ses on Orosius, recorded in St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek
621, have recently been published by Heidi Eisenhut, and are also
available on the internet in an electronic edition 11 . Severa! early medieval
commentary traditions on Martianus have been published from the 1930s
onwards, first by Cora Lutz, but also by Édouard Jeauneau and myself12 .
1969. Beda Paulus edited the commentaries of Pascasius Radbertus: De benedictionibus

patriarcharum Jacob et Moysi (CCCM 96), Brepols, Turnhout 1993; Expositio in
Lamentationes Hieremiae libri quinque (CCCM 85), Brepols, Turnhout 1988; Expositio
in Matheo libri XII, 3 vols. (CCCM 56, 56A and 56B), Brepols, Turnhout 1984; Expositio
in Psalmum XLN (CCCM 94), Brepols, Turnhout 1991. Bengt Lüfstedt edited Hrabanus
Maurus and Sedulius Scottus on Matthew: Hrabanus Maurus. Expositio in Matthaeum
(CCCM 174-174A), Brepols, Turnhout 2000 and Sedulius Scottus. Kommentar zum
Evangelium nach Matthiius, Herder, Freiburg 1989-1991. For a more complete overview,
see Chazelle, C. and Van Name Edwards, B., «Introduction: The Study of the Bible and
Carolingian Culture», in their The Study of the Bible in the Carolingian Era (Medieval
Church Series 3), Brepols, Turnhout 2003, pp. 1-16.
7
Glossa maior in institutionem musicam Boethii, l-Ill [IV in preparation], ed. by M.
Bernhard and C.M. Bower (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Veri:iffentlichungen
der Musikhistorischen Kommission 9-11), Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Munich, 1993, 1994, 1996.
8
For information on their project, see their website at http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/
boethius/, Boethius in Early Medieval Europe. Commentary on The Consolation of
Philosophy from the 9th to the Il th centuries (last accessed August 2010). See also below
the contributions to this volume by M. Godden, pp. 67-92, and R. Jayatilaka, pp. 93-117.
9
Early Medieval Glosses on Prudentius' Psychomachia: The Weitz Tradition, ed. by
S. D'Sullivan (Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 31), Brill, Leiden and Boston 2004.
10
Aratoris subdiaconi Historia apostolica, II, ed. by A.P. Orban (CCSL 130A),
Brepols, Turnhout 2006.
11
Die Glossen Ekkeharts IV. von St. Galien im Codex Sangallensis 621, ed. by H.
Eisenhut (Monasterium Sancti Galli 4), Verlag am Klosterhof, St Galien 2009. The
electronic edition is available at http://orosius.monumenta.ch/ (last accessed August
2010).
12
Cora Lutz edited a small part of the oldest commentary tradition, which she
attributed to Dunchad: Dunchad, Glossae in Martianum, ed. by C. Lutz (Philological
Monographs 12), American Philological Association, Lancaster, PA and Oxford 1944.
Other parts of the oldest tradition have been edited by Teeuwen, M., Harmony and the
Music of the Spheres: The ars musica in Ninth-Century Commentaries on Martianus
22 MARIKEN TEEUWEN
As the result of a collaborative effort involving Sinead 0' Sullivan, Mary

Garrison, Natalia Lozovsky, Jean-Yves Guillaumin, Bruce Eastwood, and
myself, the oldest commentary tradition on Martianus De nuptiis is now
available in an electronic edition, giving access to the glosses as found in
the central manuscript, Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. F.
48 13 • More editions and projects could be mentioned here, but I have no
doubt that any scholar who is farniliar with Carolingian manuscripts will
agree that there is still a great deal more to disco ver. We have begun to
uncover only a tin y corner of a huge archaeological site, just large enough
to see that its dimensions stretch out indeed a great deal further than we
previously assumed.
This paper contains my thoughts and observations on early medieval
glossed manuscripts, based on my research of glossed Martianus Capella
manuscripts from the ninth century. Its nature is preliminary, setting out
the lines along which, to my mind, further research should be done 14 . It
raises questions rather than answering them, while trying to convince that
glosses offer a new and yet undiscovered insight into early medieval
intellectual life. Marginal texts, I want to argue here, are important
witnesses of the transmission and transformation of learning on a wide
Capella (Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 30), Brill, Leiden, Boston and Cologne
2002. Recently, a cumulative and critical edition of the whole oldest commentary tradition
on Books I-II of De nuptiis has been prepared by S. O'Sullivan: Glossae aeui Carolini in
libros I-II Martiani Capella "De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii", ed. by S. O'Sullivan
(CCCM 237), Brepols, Turnhout 2010. Cora Lutz also edited a version of John Scottus's
commentary on De nuptiis: Johannes Scottus. Annotationes in Marcianum, ed. by C.
Lutz, The Mediaeval Acade my of America, Cambridge, MA 1939. Another version of his
glosses to Book I was edited by É. Jeauneau: «Le commentaire érigénien sur Martianus
Capella (De nuptiis, Lib. I) d'après le manuscrit d'Oxford (Bodl. Libr. Auct.T.2.19, fol. 1-
31)», in his Quatre thèmes érigéniens. Conférence Albert-le-Grand 1974, Institut
d'Études Médiévales Albert-le-Grand, Vrin, Montréal and Paris 1978, pp. 91-166. Lutz
also edited the commentary attributed to Remigius of Auxerre: Remigius Autissiodorensis.
Commentum in Martianum Capellam, Libri I-ll, Libri III-IX, ed. by C. Lutz, Brill, Leiden
1962 and 1965. Edited commentaries have been brought together in one volume and
translated into Italian by Ramelli, 1., Tutti i commenti a Marziano Capella. Scoto
Eriugena, Remigio di Auxerre, Bernardo Silvestre e Anonimi (Il pensiero occidentale),
Bompiani, Milan 2006.
13
http://martianus.huygens.knaw.nl. Ali quotations are either from this online edition
or from Teeuwen, Harmony and the Music of the Spheres. Ail translations are mine.
14
My main train of thoughts here is part of a research project recently subsidized by
the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research: «Marginal Scholarship. The Practice
of Leaming in the Barly Middle Ages (c. 800- c. 1000)>> (file number 016.114.309,
running from 2011-2015).
variety of subjects, ranging from Neoplatonic ideas about creation to the

natural phenomena of the cosmos. They reveal the methods and interests
of scholarship of the period. They deserve the spotlight, essential as they
are for our understanding of intellectual life in early medieval Europe,
when the practices of scholarship and leaming were formed for centuries
to come.
A new hypothesis on the purpose and function of glosses
Since Arthur Rigg's and Gernot Wieland's research on glosses, the

expounding of older texts has mainly been seen as driven by an
educational goal 15 • Too often, I would argue, has the presence of glosses
in a manuscript has led scholars to mark them as schoolbooks, in which
the glosses were either written by the master (who used them for his
teaching) or by his students (who noted down the words of the master).
The model of a master teaching his students, however, does not always fit
the characteristics of glossed manuscripts. In fact, in the case of glossed
manuscripts of classical or late antique authors of the ninth century, I
would argue that it fits only in a very few cases. The nature of the oldest
gloss traditions on Martianus Capella, for example, reveals that their first
goal is not to educate, but to collect: they generated new learning based
on the ancient building blocks found in the main text 16 . They connected
15
Rigg, A.G. and Wieland, G.R., «A Canterbury Classbook of the Mid-Eleventh
Century>>, Anglo-Saxon England 4 (1975), pp. 113-30; Wieland, G.R., The Latin Glosses
on Arator and Prudentius in Cambridge University Library MS Gg. 5.35 (Studies and
Texts 61), Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto 1983; id., <<The Glossed
Manuscript: Classbook or Library Book?>>, Anglo-Saxon England 14 (1985), pp. 153-73.
The last paper was published in answer to a challenging essay published by M. Lapidge,
«The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, I. The Evidence of Latin
Glosses>>, in N. Brooks (ed.), Latin and the Vernacular Languages in Early Medieval
Britain (Studies in the Early History of Britain), Leicester University Press, Leicester
1982, pp. 99-140, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature 600-899, The Hambledon Press,
London and Rio Grande, OH 1996, pp. 455-98 and addenda p. 516. See also Reynolds,
S., «Glossing Horace: Using the Classics in the Medieval Classroom>>, in C.A.
Chavannes-Mazel and M.M. Smith (eds.), Medieval Manuscripts of the Latin Classics:
Production and Use, Anderson-Lovelace, The Red Gull Press, Los Altos Hills, CA and
London 1996, pp. 103-17.
16
I have already argued this in Teeuwen, M., «Glossing in Close Co-operation:
Examples from Ninth-Century Martianus Capella Manuscripts>>, in R.H. Bremmer Jr. and
K. Dekker (eds.), Practice in Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the
Early Middle Ages (Storehouses of Wholesome Learning II. Mediaevalia Groningana ns
16) Peeters, Paris, Leuven and Walpole, MA 2010, pp. 85-100; see also ead., «Writing
24 MARIKEN TEEUWEN
thematically related texts, and marked their differences and

contradictions. The marginal and interlinear glosses thus show us not
only which texts belonged to the shared intellectual background of early
medieval scholars, but also what their methods were to make the ancient
cultural heritage their own, and how ancient texts and contemporary
issues were linked in intellectual discussions. Thus they are not
educational texts, but rather scholarly collections, containing the seeds of
new, medieval learning. I am aware of the fact that the two genres,
educational and scholarly, are perfectly able to overlap, and that it is
often difficult to pry them apart, but still the emphasis should be, on their
goal to generate new learning rather than to teach old learning.
For example, the subject of the harmony of the spheres, the idea that
the planets bring forth a perfect music in their revolutions around the
earth reflecting the harmony of God's creation, is heavily discussed in the
De nuptiis commentary traditions 17 • It is a subject greatly appealing to the
Carolingian scholars. All the elements for an in-depth exploration of the
subject are present in Martianus's text: it has a description of the cosmos
and a description of the ars musica. It offers, moreover, a cosmography in
which the ordering of the cosmos occurs according to numerical
principles, and in which these numbers are full of meaning. The cosmos,
in other words, is created according to rational principles, and in order to
reach wisdom or enlightenment - which is the essence of the allegory of
De nuptiis - it is the obligation of mankind to study these principles as a
means to get doser to the truth of God and creation 18 .
However, Martianus's De nuptiis is not only an excellent source for
ideas on the harmony of the spheres, it is also a very confusing one. The
Between the Lines: Reflections of Scholarly Debate in a Carolingian Commentary

Tradition», in M. Teeuwen and S. O'Sullivan (eds.), Carolingian Scholarship and
Martianus Capella: Ninth-Century Commentary Traditions on 'De nuptiis' in Context
(Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 12), Brepols, Turnhout 2011,
pp. 11-34. The physica1 appearance of the glossed manuscripts, the density of the
glossing, and the nature of their scholarship argue for a scholarly nature rather than an
educationalgoal.
17
Teeuwen, Harmony and the Music of the Spheres, pp. 190-232; ead., «L'armonia
delle sfere ne! nono secolo: nuove prospettive su fonti antiche», in M. Cristiani, C. Panti
and G. Perillo (eds.), 'Harmonia mundi'. Musica mondana e musica celeste fra Antichità
e Medioevo. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi (Roma, 14-15 dicembre 2005)
(Micrologus' Library 19), SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, Florence 2007, pp. 95-113.
18
Bower, C.M., «The Transmission of Ancient Music Theory into the Middle Ages»,
in T. Christensen (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 2002, pp. 136-67, at 146-7.
theme pops up in different parts of the work, and is treated in

inconsistent, sometimes even contradictory ways. For instance, the idea
of the music of the spheres is based on a worldview in which the earth
stands still in the centre of the uni verse, and the planets revolve around it.
But in Martianus's treatment of the ars astronomia (Book VIII of De
nuptiis), two planets (Venus and Mercury) revolve around the Sun instead
of the earth 19 • The centrality of the Sun for the planets Venus and
Mercury is, however, not reflected in other parts of the work. In Book II,
where the planetary spheres are described as a part of the story of
Philology's ascension into heaven, the orbits of the planets are arranged
in a simple, successive order. The earth is in the centre of the universe,
and there is no centrality of the Sun for any of the planets20 •
Other discrepancies are on a less obvious level. It is clear that
Martianus collected his material for the treatment of the seven liberal arts
from different sources. As a compiler he used the classical and
Hellenistic Greek sources for his own handbook21 • For astronomy, he
used, presumably and among others, Varro, Aulus Gellius (Noctes
Atticae), and also Heraclides of Pontus- whence the heliocentric element
in his description of the planetary orbits. For music he used, again,
19
Eastwood, B.S., «Astronomical Images and Planetary Theory in Carolingian
Studies of Martianus Capella>>, Journal for the History of Astronomy 31 (2000), pp. 1-28;
id., Ordering the Heavens: Roman Astronomy and Cosmology in the Carolingian
Renaissance (History of Science and Medicine Library 4. Medieval and Early Modem
Science 8), Brill, Leiden and Boston 2007, pp. 179-311.
20
In De nuptiis II.169-99, Philology climbs up through the planetary spheres as if
they were steps of a staircase. The distance between the planets is measured in tones.
21
An overview of the sources used can be found in Stahl, W.H. and Johnson, R.H.,
Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, I: The Quadrivium of Martianus Capella,
Columbia University Press, New York 1971; repr. 1991. See also Grebe, S., Martianus
Capella 'De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii'. Darstellung der Sieben Freien Künste und
ihrer Beziehungen zueinander (Beitdige zur Altertumskunde 119), Teubner, Stuttgart and
Leipzig 1999; Ramelli, 1., Marziano Capella. Le nozze di Filologia e Mercurio (Il
pensiero occidentale), Bompiani, Milan 2001, pp. xix-xci. Studies of the sources for the
individual artes include Shanzer, D., A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on
Martianus Capella's 'De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii' Book I (Classical Studies 32),
University of Ca1ifomia Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA and London 1986; Martiani
Capellae De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii Liber secundus, ed. by L. Lenaz, Liviana,
Padua 1975; Martianus Capella. Les noces de Philologie et de Mercure. Tome IV: La
dialectique, ed. by M. Ferré, Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2007; Martianus Capella. Les noces
de Philologie et de Mercure, VII. L'arithmétique, ed. by J.-Y. Guillaumin, Les Belles
Lettres, Paris 2003; Martiani Capellae De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. Liber IX, ed.
by L. Cristante (Medioevo e Umanesimo 64), Antenore, Padua 1987.
26 MARIKEN TEEUWEN
presumably Varra, and certainly Aristides Quintilianus's Ilcpi f..tOUatKfîç

But when alluding to the numerical principles according to which God
created the cosmos and which underlie the consonant intervals in music,
he refers more generally to Pythagorean philosophy.
lt will be clear that when the Carolingian scholars explored the
richness of Martianus' s work in their commentaries, they were also
forced to deal with the many problems his text raises. They do that not
only by painting out the difficulties of the text itself, but also by referring
to other texts, that offer other interpretations. Expressions such as
«philosophi dicunt», «alii doctores aliter dicunt», or «quamvis e contrario
quidam ista repugnent» show that the glossators knew that other
authorities had other opinions on the subjece2 . They quoted Boethius (De
institutione musica, I.27), who in fact presented not one but two
interpretations: one in which the planets form a scale rising from the earth
to the highest sphere of Saturn, and one in which they form a descending
scale, with the moon (closest to the earth) holding the highest pitch, and
Saturn (furthest from the earth) the lowese3 . They also presented material
which agreed with Pliny' s interpretation of the music of the cosmos
(Naturalis historia, II,84). Their glosses refer to the Platonic story of the
creation of the W orld Soul, according to the numerical, musically
significant series 1:2:3:4:8:9:27, for which Calcidius's translation of the
Timaeus and Macrobius's commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis
must have served as their sources. Long glosses ruminate on the central
position and gui ding role of the Sun (= Apollo) in the harmony of the
spheres24 . John Scottus Eriugena, who composed his own sets of glosses
on De nuptiis, goes so far as to give the Sun the power to attract and
22
The phrase <<philosophi dicunt» is quite frequent in the g1osses added to Martianus
Capella. See, for examp1e, the online edition of Lei den, Voss. Lat. F. 48, f. Sr, gl. 99; f. 9r,
gl. 27 and 55; f. 18r, gl. 8. For «alii doctores aliter dicunt>>, see f. 18r, gl. 55; for «quamvis
e contrario quidam ista repugnent>>, see f. 3v, gl. 127.
23
Anicii Manlii Torquati Severini Boethii De institutione arithmetica libri duo, De
institutione musica libri quinque, ed. by G. Fried1ein, Teubner, Leipzig !867, p. 219. See
Teeuwen, Harmony and the Music of the Spheres, pp. 190-204. The harmony and music
of the spheres in the ancient and medieva11earned traditions are exp1ored by Leo Spitzer,
«C1assical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony: Prolegomena to an Interpretation of
the Word 'Stimmung', l», Traditio 2 (1944), pp. 409-64; id., «Classical and Christian
Ideas of World Harmony: Prolegomena to an Interpretation of the W ord 'Stimmung', Il»,
Traditio 3 (1945), pp. 307-64; and Godwin, J., Harmonies of Heaven and Earth:
Mysticism in Music from Antiquity to the Avant-Garde, Thames and Hudson, London
1987.
24
Teeuwen, Harmony and the Music of the Spheres, pp. 207-16.
reject planets, orchestrating their pitches into an ever changing harmony,

encompassing all possible intervals, yet never inharmonious25 :
Et ne mireris Solem caeteris planetis multiplici proportione convenire. Diximus enim

eum tribus modis concinere Satumo, in dupla videlicet et sesquitercia et sesqualtera
copulatione. Cum videas non eisdem intervallis semper soni appropinquare sed
secundum absidarum altitudinem, quid ergo mirum si Sol Satumo diapason in duplo
concinat dum in logissimis ab eo distantiis currit; ubi vero ceperit ei appropinquare,
diapente in sesqualtera; at si ei proxime accesserit, diatessaron in sesquitercia
sonabit.
(It should not surprise you that the Sun joins the other planets in manifold ratios. For
we have said that it resounds with Satum in three different manners, viz. in a ratio of
2:1 (octave), 4:3 (fourth), and 3:2 (fifth). When you see that (the planets) do not
always approach each other with the same intervals of sound, but according to the
heights of their orbits, why then should you be surprised that the Sun resounds in a
double ratio with Satum when it revolves around the Sun in the furthest position?
When it begins to approach the Sun, it will resound in the ratio 3:2, with a fifth; and
when it has approached the Sun closest, it will resound in the ratio 4:3, with a
fourth).
Exploring the scholarship attached to particular themes or subjects in

the glosses on Martianus Capella, it has become clear that many of the
glosses created links to other texts. They referred the reader to other texts,
other authorities, different interpretations. I have shown examples of this
phenomenon for the theme of the harmony of the spheres; more examples
are available in abundance. When explaining certain elements of
Martianus' s exposition of the ars arithmetica, for instance, the glossator
links his set of technical terms to those used by Boethius in his De
institutione arithmetica26 :
INCIPIT IGITUR Numerus qui duplex sesqualter vocatur secundum Boetium, secundum
istum duplex superdimidius.
Qui secundum Boetium triplex sesqualter, secundum istum triplus superdimidius.
25
Jeauneau, «Le commentaire engemen sur Martianus Capella>>, pp. 125-6;
Teeuwen, Harrnony and the Music of the Spheres, pp. 218-31. The gloss is added to De
nuptiis I.ll-12 (Martianus Capella. De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. by J. Willis,
Teubner, Leipzig 1983, pp. 6-7).
26
Gloss added to De nuptiis VII.765 (Martianus Capella. De nuptiis Philologiae et
Mercurii, ed. by Willis, p. 282) in Voss. Lat. F. 48, f. 70v, gl. 49. It refers to Boethius's
De institutione arithrnetica !.22 (Anicii Manlii Torquati Severini Boethii De institutione
arithrnetica libri duo, ed. by Friedlein, p. 46). See also Martianus Capella. Les noces de
Philologie et de Mercure, VII. L'arithmétique, ed. by Guillaumin, p. 115.
28 MARIKEN TEEUWEN
Qui secundum ilium quadruplus sesqualter, secundum istum quadruplus super-

dimidius.
Qui secundum [ilium] duplex sesquitertius, secundum istum duplus supertertius.
Qui secundum ilium triplex sesquitertius, secundum istum trip lus supertertius.
Et qui secundum Boetium quadruplex sesquitertius, secundum istum quadruplus
supertertius.
Qui secundum illum duplex sesquiquartus, secundum istum du plus superquartus.
Qui secundum illum trip lus sesquiquartus, secundum istum trip lus superquartus.
(The number that is caUed duplex sesqualter according to Boethius, is called

according to him [i.e. Martianus] duplex superdimidius.
What Boethius caUs triplex sesqualter, he caUs trip lus superdimidius.
What one [i.e. Boethius] caUs quadruplus sesqualter, the other caUs quadruplus
superdimidius.
What one caUs duplex sesquitertius, the other caUs duplus supertertius.
What one caUs triplex sesquitertius, the other caUs trip lus supertertius.
And what Boethius caUs quadruplex sesquitertius, the other caUs quadruplus
supertertius.
What one caUs duplex sesquiquartus, the other caUs duplus superquartus.
What one caUs triplus sesquiquartus, the other caUs trip/us superquartus).
Boethius's treatises on the arts of arithmetic and music may indeed

be very obvious works of reference when one is expounding Martianus's
books on arithmetic or music. Less obvious authorities, however, are also
used to add depth to Martianus's text. Central concepts in Martianus's
exposition of the ars arithmetica are manas, unity or the number one, and
dyas, duality or the number two; when reflecting on it, the glossators
echo Augustine's De musica or Confessionei7 .
Another subject on which the glosses show how the glossators wove
a network of authorities around a certain statement and moved on from
there is the physics of the cosmos,- a subject which has been analysed in
depth by Bruce Eastwood28 • In Martianus's description, as we noted
above, the position of the planets is not consistent. In general, the cosmos
is described with a central earth standing still in the middle of the
27
F. 66v, gl. 30; f. 67r, gl. 67; f. 68v, gl. 47. F. 66v, gl. 30, for example, reads:
«Secundum Agustinum monas et dias non sunt numeri, sed principia numerorum, i. a quo
et quod [ ... ]» (According to Augustine, monas (unity) and dias (duality) are not numbers,
but the princip le of numbers, that is, from which and by which [ ... ]). This is a reference to
Augustine's De musica, see for example at 1,12,25 (PL 32, col. 1098): «sive quia unum et
duo principia sunt, et quasi semina numerorum» (or because one and two are principles,
and like the seeds of numbers): Guillaumin, J.-Y., «Quelques thèmes récurrents dans les
gloses du 'plus ancien commentaire' sur Martianus Capella VII (manuscrit de Leyde,
VLF 48)», in Carolingian Scholarship, pp. 177-92, at 180.
28
Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, pp. 179-311.
universe and the planets revolving around it, but in Book VIII, On
Astronomy, Martianus also introduces a heliocentric element for at least
two planets: Mercury and Venus. The glossators were puzzled by this,
brought in other authorities, and introduced a new, powerful instrument
to compare them: the diagram. With simple diagrams, depicting the
different models created by several authorities, they structured knowledge
in an unprecedented way, giving birth to new theories 29 . Similarly
revolutionary was the glossator' s transformation of the ancient on the ars
musica. The theoretical tradition of ancient Greek music, which was
shaped to accommodate a system of scales on string instruments, was
transformed into a modal system, consolidating the rules and boundaries
of Gregorian chane0 . A model was created to regulate the flexible voice,
almost unlimited in its possibilities, but this model was still based on the
ancient theoretical model, created to encompass a set of rules for plucked
strings, with tuning systems and finger positions.
A final observation that must be made is that the network of cross-
references created by the glossators in the commentary tradition on De
nuptiis is not without a counterpart: in the glosses added to Boethius's De
institutione musica, we likewise find references to Martianus' s De
nuptiis 31 • The glosses on Persius mention Martianus when the horse
Pegasus features in the texe 2 . De nuptiis is even unexpectedly referred to
in the glosses added to Arator' s Historia apostolica (II.724, 747), where
the concept of sapientia triggered a reference to the allegorical marriage
of Mercury and Philology, of Eloquence and Learning, the two elements
needed for wisdom33 . Further research is needed to establish the relations
29
Id., «The Power of Diagrams: The Place of the Anonymous Commentary in the
Development of Carolingian Astronomy and Cosmogony», in Carolingian Scholarship,
pp. 193-220. For pictures of the diagrams, see id., Ordering the Heavens, figs. 4.1-4.
30
Teeuwen, Harmony and the Music of the Spheres, pp. 233-313; Bower, «The
Transmission», p. 164.
31
Teeuwen, Harmony and the Music of the Spheres, pp. 162-83 (Boethius' De
institutione musica and Martianus Capella's De nuptiis: related reception of the two main
sources on antique music theory).
32
Hellmann, M., Tironische Noten in der Karolingerzeit am Beispiel eines Persius-
Kommentars aus der Schule von Tours (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Studien und
Texte 27), Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 2000, p. 133; Teeuwen, M., «The Pursuit
of Secular Learning: the Oldest Commentary Tradition on Martianus Capella», The
Journal of Medieval Latin 18 (2008), pp. 36-51, at 47-48.
33
Aratoris subdiaconi Historia apostolica, II, ed. by Orbân, pp. 573, 577. The glass
is not only found in the manuscripts mentioned in this edition (Paris, Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, lat. 2773 and Trier, Stadtsbiblio~ek 109311694), but also in a ninth-
30 MARIKEN TEEUWEN
between these (and other) texts, but they seem to reveal a common
background of learning which formed the core of a Carolingian scholar' s
intellectual baggage.
A new approach: a focus on monastic centres and themes
A thorough study of more gloss traditions would give us a better grip

on the set of authorities glossators used to explore their texts and expand
their scope. We could identify the texts that stocked their libraries or their
heads. It would give us insight into the scholarly practices of the early
Middle Ages: which texts they studied, and how and why they studied
them. A close study of glosses and marginal texts would give us insight
into which topics received extensive glossing, and which scholars or
which monastic centres played a leading role. Furthermore, the method of
their scholarship, their purpose and audience may become clearer. It will
be important to establish the connection to previous commentary
traditions (e.g. Servius on Virgil), and contemporary genres of
scholarship such as glossaria and encyclopaedias. Research data gathered
on these aspects will make it possible to re-evaluate the imprint of
Carolingian scholarship on the transformation of knowledge and
scholarly methods. In fact, I believe that an exploration of the marginal
material in ninth- and tenth-century manuscripts will lead to a drastic
revision of our view of Carolingian scholarship, which has mainly been
stressing, so far, its pursuit of the preservation of ancient texts, and its
chase after uniformity (in liturgy, the textual transmission of the Bible
and the Fathers, the making of the book, to name just a few examples).
However, so many research data are needed to fill the gap: a complete
inventory of glossed manuscripts from the early Middle Ages, editions (a
difficult and time-consuming task), comparative studies linking one
commentary tradition to another (or others), analyses of their
transmission histories and textual relations. In order to make a sensible
start for research in this area, one must be selective. I would propose,
therefore, a focus on particular centres, and on particular topics or
century Arator fragment from Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. F. 12y: «Sed
qui simul habuerit sapientiam et eloquentiam, ipse perfectus est. Haec sunt nuptiae
Mercurii et Philologiae, quas Marcianus commemorat. Per Mercurium enim intelligitur
[s]eloquentia, per Philologiam intellectus vel sapientia.» (But he who would have bath
wisdom and eloquence, he is perfect. This is the marriage of Mercury and Philology,
about which Martianus speaks. For Mercury is to be understood as eloquence, Philology
as wisdom.); see also Teeuwen, «W!jting Between the Lines>>.
themes, which could yield coherent and telling comparative collections of

glos ses.
The most promising intellectual centres for this area of research are
Corbie, Laon, and Auxerre-Fleury. These centres surface again and again
when one researches the transmission of classical texts in the early
Middle Ages and the scholarship that surrounds them. At Corbie,
Hadoard, Paschasius Radbertus, and Ratramnus were the great masters
whose names ring with fame in the ninth centurl4 • The production of
manuscripts with classical or late-antique authors is particularly large,
illustrating the avid interest in the ancient literary and learned tradition.
At Laon, Martin, Manno, Bernard, and Adelhelm established a stable and
prominent school which is especially well-known for its interest in Greek
vocabularl 5 • At Auxerre, Murethach, Haimo, Heiric, and Remigius are
famous for their production of scholarly texts and commentaries36 . Fleury
was closely linked to Auxerre, and, with Abbo of Fleury, played an
important role in the intellectual life of the tenth centurl 7 • The
manuscript production of each of these centres has been researched, but
never in relation to each other, and never with a special focus on their
scholarly production and their "marginal scholarship". Their manuscripts
with glosses should be studied to fill this lacuna.
Such an investigation could concentrate, for example, on an
inventory of texts that received marginal scholarship. The Latin classics
(including late antique texts) can certainly be singled out as a textual
genre that yielded strong gloss traditions, but are there other genres that
had a similar impact on Carolingian scholars? Perhaps it will be possible
to trace the transmission history of a set of glosses from one centre to the
other, giving us a view on how influential certain gloss traditions actually
were. Glossed manuscripts travelled around and fed other library
34
Bischoff, B., «Hadoardus and the Manuscripts of C1assica1 Authors from Corbie»,
in S. Prete (ed.), Didascaliae: Studies in Honor of Anselm M. Albareda, Prefect of the
Vatican Library, Rosentha1, New York 1961, pp. 41-57; Ganz, D., Corbie in the
Carolingian Renaissance (Beihefte der Francia 20), Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1990.
35
Contreni, J.J., The Cathedral School of Laon from 850 ta 930: Its Manuscripts and
Masters (Münchener Beitrage zur Mediavistik und Renaissance-Forschung 29), Arbeo
Gesellschaft, Munich 1978. See also his articles collected in Carolingian Learning:
Masters and Manuscripts (VCSS 363), Ashgate, Aldershot 1992.
36
D. Iogna-Prat, C. Jeudy and G. Lobrichon (eds.), L'école carolingienne d'Auxerre.
De Murethach à Remi, 830-908, Beauchesne, Paris 1991.
37
Mostert, M., The Library of Fleury: A Provisional List of Manuscripts
(Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen 3), Verloren, Hilversum 1989.
32 MARIKEN TEEUWEN
collections. It would be useful to study their traces, and see if certain

patterns emerge. All of the centres mentioned had good relations with the
Carolingian royal family, but the monastery of St Peter in Corbie was
particularly well connected. It is worth researching whether this royal
association is also visible in the nature of the marginal scholarship we
encounter in the manuscripts.
This first focus on particular intellectual centres should yield new
data as to the material aspect of marginal scholarship: which glossed
manuscripts were manufactured where and when. The second focus, on
specifie tapies or themes, should give us more insight into the nature and
content of marginal scholarship. lt puts the hypothesis to the test that the
expounding of older texts was not primarily driven by an educational
goal, but that scholars first used these older texts to generate new
learning. This hypothesis is based on my experience with the Martianus
commentary traditions, in which marginal texts are seen to reflect
intellectual discussions on contemporary issues, and are, as such,
essential for our understanding of the dynamics of intellectual life in that
period. In arder to ascertain if this is not only the case with the
particularly rich commentary traditions on Martianus, it would be
necessary to take samples from other glass traditions as well, to see if a
similar level of cross-reference and intertextuality can be found there. It
will be important to test whether the marginal texts indeed share the same
sources, make the same interconnections, and use similar scholarly
methods. Topical collections of glass material, taken from a body of
manuscripts and texts, would make it possible revise earlier observations
Three general themes seem particularly apt to guide further exploration:
the friction between the ancient secular heritage and Carolingian
Christian identity; the pursuit of knowledge in the ancient leamed
tradition on the seven liberal arts; and the admiration for the ancient
literary heritage.
1. Friction between two worlds
The reverence and admiration Carolingian culture showed for texts

and images from classical and late antique authors had a reverse side. The
pre- or even anti -Christian character of sorne ancient and late antique
texts was also noticed, and readers were wamed not to trust them or not
to overindulge in them. The Carolingians inherited this ambiguity
towards the classics from the Fathers, who distanced themselves from the
ancient leamed and literary tradition, trying to establish a new, Christian
one38 • Ancient learning or mythology was often treated and explained

without qualms, its pagan nature set aside in a pursuit of wisdom, but it
was also scorned, criticized, and feared. Alcuin, Charlemagne's right
hand in intellectual matters, praised the ancient disciplines transmitted to
the Middle Ages as a standard set of the seven liberal arts, but he also
warned against overindulgence in them at the cost of a humble and deep
immersion in the Bible or the writings of the Fathers.
In the marginal texts that are attached to ancient and late antique
texts, a similar ambiguity shines through. The pagan nature of a text did
not always form an objection to the students of the text in the ninth
century. Martianus' s pagan learning was even characterized as a
shadowy, hidden form of Christian learning, the secret nature of it
making it even more attractive39 . At the same time, however, a friction
cao be observed between old cultures and new ones. With expressions
such as the above-mentioned «philosophi dicunt» or «antiqui ponebant»
the Carolingian scholars distanced themselves from ancient views and
theories. Topics such as ancient philosophical ideas about the soul, life
after death, or the story of creation may have provoked them to 'put
things right', and may uncover painful areas of friction between ancient
and medieval cultural traditions. Long glosses, for example, ponder the
nature of the soul, or the nature of knowledge, learning, and wisdom in
the oldest commentary tradition on Martianus Capella40 • A collection of
38
This ambiguity is beautifully addressed in several of John Contreni's articles: see,
for example, Contreni, J.J., <<The Carolingian Renaissance: Education and Literary
Culture>>, in R. McKitterick (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Il. c. 700-c.
900, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995, pp. 709-57, at 712 and 728: id.,
<<lnharmonious Harmony: Education in the Carolingian World>>, The Annals of
Scholarship. Metastudies of the Humanities and Social Sciences 1 (1980), pp. 81-96; id.,
<<The Carolingian School: Letters from the Classroom>>, in C. Leonardi and E. Menesto
(eds.), Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'Organizzazione del sapere in età carolingia (Atti
dei Convegni dell' Accademia Tudertina e del Centro di Studi sulla Spiritualità Medievale
ns 1), Centro italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, Spoleto 1989, pp. 81-111. The latter
two papers are reprinted in Contreni, Carolingian Learning: Masters and Manuscripts,
nos. IV and XI. See also Nees, L., A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical
Tradition at the Carolingian Court, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA
1991, which studies the same ambiguity towards the art of the ancient world.
39
Mayr-Harting, H., Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany: The View
from Cologne, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, pp. 223-5; O'Sullivan, S.,
<<Obscurity, Pagan Lore and Secrecy in Glosses to Books 1-11 from the Oldest Gloss
Tradition>>, in Carolingian Scholarship, pp. 99-121.
°
4
For example, Voss. Lat. F 48, f. 32r, gl. 57, <<accidens>>, a gloss on De nuptiis
IV.347 (Martianus Capella. De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. by Willis, p. 112). See
34 MARIKEN TEEUWEN
such glosses would show us on which sources they feed, how they in
their tum relate to each other and to contemporary treatises on the soul or
on learning and wisdom.
2. The transformation of the ancient leamed tradition
As illustrated above, the glosses that surround scholarly works such

as Pliny's Natural History, Boethius's books on philosophy, arithmetic,
and music, and the works of Macrobius and Calcidius, reflecting
Pythagorean cosmology are excellent sources to follow the reception of
these works in the medieval world, and the transformation of leaming
that ensued. Sorne sample studies have shown how revolutionary these
texts were in transforming the ancient heritage of learning. In the above
discussion, 1 already alluded to the Carolingian annotations on Boethius's
and Martianus' s treatises on the art of music, which revealed how the
theoretical tradition of ancient Greek music was transformed into a
theoretical system that would consolidate the Gregorian chant repertoire.
The Pythagorean idea of cosmic harmony based on ideal relationships
between numbers, gave music a reigning importance in the whole of
creation, and principles based on this way of thinking shaped ideas on the
cosmos for centuries to come41 . 1 have already mentioned the powerful
new instrument of scholarship used on unprecedented scale by ninth-
century scholars: the diagram, built to schematize learning or to visualize
dissenting voices. The margins of Martianus's and Boethius's works
convincingly show that there is still a great treasure to be found in the
margins of other, yet unexplored texts. Topical collections could be built
on, for example, theories on the movements of the planets, the nature of
numbers, diagrams charting dialectical, geometrical or astronomical
theories.
3. Literary themes
lt is well known that the literary heritage of ancient times was avidly
explored in the Carolingian period. Previous studies have investigated the
Bower, C.M., «Quadrivial Reasoning and Allegorical Revelation: 'Meta-Knowledge' and

Carolingian Approaches to Knowing», in Carolingian Scholarship, pp. 57-74.
41
Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, pp. 180-7; Joost-Gaugier, C.L., Measuring
Heaven: Pythagoras and His Influence on Thought and Art in Antiquity and the Middle
Ages, Comell University Press, lthaca, NY and London, 2006, pp. 116-33.
phenomenon of intellectual play in, for example, court circles of

Charlemagne. Implicit references to Horace or Virgil have been laid bare
in the poetry or art of the court, and it has been pointed out that this kind
of play could only work when these 'courtiers' shared a common
knowledge of ancient texts 42 . The libraries of Corbie, Tours, Laon,
Auxerre, and Fleury have been explored for the presence of both
expected and unexpected ancient authors43 . It has been shown how
Alcuin' s habit to give his pupils and friends nicknames illustrates a deep
familiarity with the ancient literary tradition44 ; how new layers of
meaning can be recognized in historical or polemical works when a
shared knowledge of Terence's plays is acknowledged in subtle and
implicit references45 ; how scholars who show their familiarity with the
ancient literary tradition in a fashion which is all too flashy are warned
and scorned by their contemporaries46 . AU of these implicit references to
the Carolingian evaluation, transformation, and use of the ancient literary
tradition have been explored in occasional studies, but the most obvious
42
Schaller, D., «Poetic Rivalries at the Court of Charlemagne», in R.R. Bolgar (ed.),
Classical Influences on European Culture, A.D. 500- I 500, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1973, pp. 151-8; Godman, P., Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance,
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK 1985; Garrison, M., «The Emergence of
Carolingian Latin Literature and the Court of Charlemagne (780-814)>>, in R. McKitterick
(ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1994, pp. 111-40.
43
Ganz, Corbie; Contreni, The Cathedral School; Iogna-Prat et al. (eds.), L'école
carolingienne d'Auxerre; Mostert, The Library of Fleury. See also the catalogue of an
exhibition held in the Vatican Library: Buonocore, M., Vedere i Classici. L'illustrazione
libraria dei testi antichi dall'età romana al tarda medioevo, Palombi, Vatican City 1996.
44
Garrison, M., <<The Social World of Alcuin: Nicknames at York and at the
Carolingian Court>>, in L.A.J.R. Houwen and A.A. MacDonald (eds.), Alcuin of York:
Germania Latina III (Mediaevalia Groningana 22), Forsten, Groningen 1998, pp. 59-80.
See also ead., <<Alcuin and Tibullus>>, in M.C. Diaz Y Diaz and J.M. Diaz de Bustamante
(eds.), Poes{a Latina Medieval (Siglos V-XV). Actas del IV Congreso del Internationales
Mittellateinerkomitee, SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo, Florence 2005, pp. 749-59.
Garrison shows how implicit references to the poetry of Tibullus colour two poems of
Alcuin (carm. 39 and 40), in which he uses the name 'Delia' (Tibullus's muse) to address
one of the women from Char1emagne's courtly circle: MGH, PLAC 1, ed. byE. Dümmler,
Weidmann, Berlin 1881, pp. 252-3.
45
Ganz, D., <<The Epitaphium Arsenii and Opposition to Louis the Pions>>, in P.
Godman and R. Collins (eds.), Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of
Louis the Pious, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, pp. 786-808; de Jong, M.B., The
Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009, pp. 105-11.
46
Contreni, <<Inharmonious Harmony>>.
36 MARIKEN TEEUWEN
sources that reflect their first and direct contact with ancient authors have
largely been neglected by modem scholarship: the margins of the
Carolingian manuscripts of Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Terence and many
others. It is time, to my mind, to set the record straight, and finally give
marginal glosses and annotations the attention they deserve. In this
category, furthermore, it will be easy to create coherent collections from a
sample of texts. The horse Pegasus, for example, or the myth of Orpheus
and Eurydice are lively and recurrent themes in both antique and
Carolingian literature. A comparative study will reveal textual relations,
and perhaps even give elues conceming the identity of the glossators,
their intended audience, purpose, and methods.
Glosses and commentary traditions are a difficult field of research.
Not enough material is available in easy to use, readily available
publications to make broad observations, to establish clear categories, to
signal regional differences or processes of change over time. A short
immersion in the ample gloss traditions on Martianus's De nuptiis,
however, has opened my eyes to their richness as sources for the
intellectual history of the early Middle Ages. Despite the many
difficulties it poses, it seems to me that the field is ready to be broken up,
and that it will yield a rich crop. The digital platform offers new
possibilities to cope with these texts, which are fluid, ever-changing,
multi-layered, including non-textual material such as drawings or non-
alphabetic signs, and which are with indeterminate contours and unclear
functions. In fact, the electronic environment seems to me to be the only
platform which offers enough flexibility to deal with them. The
development of the necessary digital tools for text editions, textual
analysis, and text comparison, however, will probably be the greatest
challenge of the project47 • But if it succeeds, it will not only benefit the
47
Several completed or nearly completed online projects show the promise of a
digital edition format: 1. The Huygens Institute developed the online collaboratory
eLaborate, in which not only the oldest comrnentary tradition on Martianus was
published, but also the edition of about ten other texts, ranging from the letters of Hugo
Grotius to the Middle Dutch Lancelot text Walewein ende Keye: see http://www.e-
laborate.nl/en/; 2. Heidi Eisenhut built an electronic edition of the glosses added to
Orosius in St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 621: see http://orosius.monumenta.ch/; 3. The
project Editing Glosses/Glossenedition from the Ludwig Maximiliansuniversitat
München, run by Prof. Dr. Marc-Aeilko Aris, Prof. Dr. Claudia Wiener, Dr. Martin
Hellmann, Monika Isépy, M. A., Bernd Posselt, and Stefan Ullrich, M. A., is preparing
electronic editions of glosses on Persius and Martianus Capella (based on Cologne,
Dombibliothek 193). They developed a set of TEl codes (Gloss Commentary Mark-up
Language) in the process, see http://www.mueze.uni-muenchen.de/; 4. In a project
international community of early medieval studies, but also the growing

community of textual scholars working with digital tools, loo king for new
ways of presenting flexible medieval traditions and researching their
treasures.
involving Padraic Moran and Rijcklof Hofman an online electronic edition has been
created of the Latin and Irish glosses in the Priscian manuscript, St Galien,
Stiftsbibliothek 904; see http://www.stgallpriscian.ie/.
ANNOTATED PSALTERS AND PSALM STUDY IN LATE
ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND: THE MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE
Rebecca Rushforth
The Psalms' role as the starting text for medieval education is well
known. Their position at the heart of monastic worship meant that they
quick:ly became familiar texts to anyone who attended services, and this,
together with their straightforward structure and phraseology, made them
appropriate texts for learning elementary Latin grammar and syntax 1• But
the allusive nature of the Psalms' poetry is capable of bearing many
different levels of interpretation, making them ripe for deeper and more
wide-ranging analysis both scholarly and spiritual. Cassiodorus in his
Expositio Psalmorum was keen to demonstrate that examples of every
discipline needed for a proper education could be found in the Psalms,
something on which he remarked in his commentary to Psalm CL:
Ecce de grammatica et de etymologiis, de schematibus, de arte rhetorica, de topicis,

de arte dialectica, de definitionibus, de musica, de geometria, de astronomia, et de
propriis locutionibus legis diuinae, seriem refertam esse monstrauimus, quantum
Dominus praestare dignatus est, ut qui talia legerint, gratanter agnoscant et qui adhuc
rudes sunt, planissime dicta sine offensione percipiant.
(Indeed, we have shown that the series of psalms is crammed with points of
grammar, etymologies, figures, rhetoric, topics, dialectic, definitions, music,
geometry, astronomy, expressions peculiar to divine Scripture, in so far as the Lord
has deigned to grant this. Thus those who have already read these features may
gladly acknowledge them, and those who are as yet novices may observe them most
clearly delineated without coming to grieti.
1
See, for example, Brown, G.H., «The Psalms as the Foundation of Anglo-Saxon
Learning», inN. Van Deusen (ed.), The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of
the Middle Ages, State University of New York, Albany, NY 1999, pp. 1-24.
2
Magni Aurelii Cassiodori Expositio Psalmorum, ed. by M. Adriaen, 2 vols. (CCSL
97-98), Brepols, Turnhout 1958, Il, p. 1329. Translation from Cassiodorus. Explanation
of the Psalms, trans. by P.G. Walsh, 3 vols., Paulist Press, New York 1990, III, p. 465. Ail
other translations are mine. Cassiodorus came up with a series of marginal symbols to
represent these different disciplines in manuscripts of his Expositio Psalmorum, so that
they could be easily found by a reader who wished to use the Psalms for educational
purposes; see Halporn, J.W., «Methods of Reference in Cassiodorus>>, The Journal of
Library History 16 (1981), pp. 71-91.
40 REBECCA RUSHFORTH
In this paper I will examine the surviving manuscript evidence for

higher-level Psalm study in later Anglo-Saxon England by look:ing at
Psalters annotated with Latin glosses and then by examining surviving
manuscripts of the Psalter commentaries which may have been their
sources.
Annotated Psalters of late Anglo-Saxon England
The famous and well-studied interlinear Old English glosses to the

Psalter, which translate and sometimes interpret the words of the Latin
text, fall outside my remit because their glosses are usually focussed on a
basic understanding of the plain meaning of the Latin words. However,
sorne of the manuscripts which contain Old English Psalter glosses also
contain accompanying Latin glosses, often written by the same scribe.
The importance of the Old English Psalter glosses for understanding of
late Anglo-Saxon scholarship, education, and cultural life, has shed on
these Latin glosses a reflected lustre, and they have received far more
scholarly attention than those Latin Psalter glosses which are not
accompanied by Old English material. Consequently I will treat them the
more briefly in this paper.
London, British Library, Royal2.B.v, the Royal Psalter
The Royal Psalter, which is associated with Bishop LEthelwold is the

most famous of these manuscripts containing Old English glass with
accompanying Latin scholia3 • This copy of the Romanum version of
Psalter was written in the middle of the tenth century, probably in the
940s or 950s during the reign of Edmund, Eadred, or Eadwig, in the
script which David Dumville has designated «Phase III» Square
minuscule, the decorative phase4 • Its place of origin has been contested,
3
Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl., 1990, no. 249; Gneuss, H., Handlist of Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in
England up to 1100 (MRTS 241), Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
Tempe, AZ 2001, no. 451. This Psalter has been very well studied in a number of articles
and monographs, including Gretsch, M., The lntellectual Foundations of the English
Benedictine Reform (CSASE 25), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999,
especially at pp. 261-331.
4
Dumville, D.N., <<English Square Minuscule Script: The Mid-Century Phases>>,
Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994), pp. 133-64, at 146-51.
ANNOTATED PSALTERS AND PSALM STUDY 41
but it was probably written either at Winchester or at sorne other

Benedictine centre, perhaps Glastonbury or Abingdon5 ; it seems to have
spent time at Winchester whether or not it was written there, possibly at
the Nunnaminster6 , and was taken to Canterbury in the eleventh century,
where it seems to have been used by the famous scribe Eadwig Basan7 •
The manuscript follows the typical layout of Psalters glossed in Old
English, with the vernacular material written between the lines of the
Latin Psalm text in a smaller script. The Latin material is written in the
margins and linked to the main text by a repertoire of those small
symbols, including Greek letters, which are often found used for this
purpose in manuscripts with substantial glossing8 • The Latin scholia were
written by the same scribe as the Old English glass and the Latin Psalter.
William Davey's unpublished PhD dissertation of 1979 included an
edition of the Psalter text, the Old English glosses, and the Latin
annotations from this manuscripë. He also examined the sources of the
Latin commentary, and the relationship between the Latin commentary
and the Old English glosses, and he published an article on these findings
in 1987 10 • Davey found that there were three types of Latin glass: those
which clarify the sense of the Latin, for example supplying the
understood meaning of a pronoun; biblical quotations from both the Old
and New Testaments; and, most commonly, traditional exegetical glosses,
often explaining Hebrew names or giving Christological interpretations.
Davey's analysis showed that this exegesis was often taken from
Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum, sometimes word for word. Davey
also suggested that the same scribe might have continued adding material
5
Ker, Catalogue, no. 249; The Salisbury Psalter, ed. by C. Sisam and K. Sisam
(EETS os 242), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1959, pp. 53-56; Gretsch, The
Intellectual Foundations, pp. 264-7; Dumville, D.N., «On the Dating of Sorne Late
Anglo-Saxon Liturgical Manuscripts», Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical
Society 10 (1991-1995), pp. 40-57, at 48.
6
Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations, p. 265.
7
Ibid., pp. 430-1: 'Appendix A: The Royal Psa1ter at Canterbury'.
8
Rumble, A., «Cues and Clues: Palaeographical Aspects of Anglo-Saxon
Scholarship», in P. Lendinara, L. Lazzari and M.A. D' Aronco (eds.), Form and Content
of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England in the Light of Contemporary Manuscript
Evidence (Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales. Textes et Études
du Moyen Âge 39), Brepols, Turnhout 2007, pp. 114-30.
9
An Edition of the Regius Psalter and its Latin Commentary, ed. by W.J. Davey,
unpubl. PhD. diss., Carleton University, Ottawa 1979.
10
Id., «The Commentary of the Regi us Psa1ter: Its Main Source and Influence on the
Old English Gloss», Mediaeval Studies 49 (1987), pp. 335-51.
to the Psalter over time; but Gretsch thought that Royal2.B.v was itself a
copy 11 .
The Latin gloss of the Royal Psalter bas been shown to have been
influential on the Old English gloss, which was in tum influential on the
tradition of Old English Psalter glossing. The material it contains seems
to have been compiled by one person, but intended not only for persona!
scholarship but for teaching and other forms of dissemination.
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library 776, the Blickling or Lothian Psalter
The Blicking Psalter is a rnid-eighth-century copy of the Romanum

text written in Insular Half-uncial with Insular decoration 12 • It belonged at
the end of the Middle Ages to the City of Lincoln; its origin and early
provenance are obscure, but Julian Brown thought it likely that it was
written in Mercia 13 . In the eleventh century it received additions by a
single scribe of Old English and Latin glosses, which Pulsiano bas
suggested were directly copied from the Royal Psalter14 • This would
imply that these additions were made at Canterbury, which is probably
where the Royal Psalter was at this date. It is an interesting question
whether the copying of the glosses was driven by an urge to augment the
handsome Blickling Psalter, which already contained a few Latin glosses;
or whether the impetus was instead to propagate the useful Royal Psalter
gloss material, for which the Blickling Psalter' s wide margins provided
an appropriate repository.
London, Lambeth Palace 427, the Lambeth Psalter
The Lambeth Psalter contains the Gallicanum text. It was written in

the early eleventh century, perhaps at Winchester, although like many
11
Davey, «The Commentary of the Regi us Psalter>>, p. 350; Gretsch, The Intellectual
Foundations, p. 264.
12
Ker, Catalogue, no. 287; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 862. The manuscript is reproduced
in E.M. Thompson et al. (eds.), The New Palaeographical Society Facsimiles of Ancient
Manuscripts, Series One, New Palaeographical Society, London 1903, plates 231-2.
13
Brown, T.J., <<Tradition, Imitation and Invention in Insular Handwriting>>, in J.
Bately, M. Brown and J. Roberts (eds.), A Palaeographer's View: Selected Writings of
Julian Brown, Harvey Miller, London 1993, pp. 179-200, at 197; and id., <<The Irish
Element in the Insular System of Scripts to circa AD. 850>>, in A Palaeographer"s View,
pp. 201-20, at 209.
14
Pulsiano, Ph., <<The Latin and Old English Glosses in the 'Blickling' and 'Regius'
Psalters>>, Traditio 41 (1985), pp. 79-115.
Lambeth manuscripts it has later medieval provenance at the Augustinian

priory of Llanthony Secunda in Gloucestershire 15 . It contains a few
glosses in Latin, usually very short, which have been thoroughly
exarnined, together with the other texts in the manuscript, by Patrick
O'Neill 16 • The following summary is largely dependent on his work.
These brief glosses are often of a grammatical or syntactical nature; for
example the frequent gloss «S. O» above the word domine, standing for
scilicet o, indicates that the word is in the vocative case. Lexical glosses
to help with vocabulary are also found, as are glosses giving alternative
textual readings. Sorne few glosses explicate the text, and show
dependence on Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum, Augustine's
Enarrationes in Psalmos, and Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos,
or more unusually the exegesis of Theodore of Mopsuestia. The most
substantial part of the Lambeth Psalter' s gloss material consists of severa!
incomplete series of Psalter tituli, written in red, black, blue, green, and
violet inks, sorne in majuscules. But in general the glossing activity of
this manuscript is directed towards Old English material, so much so that
the gloss «S. ë» for scilicet est is usually itself glossed is.
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 272, the Achadeus Psalter
The Achadeus Psalter was written at or near Rheims towards the end
of the ninth century 17• From the inscription on f. 150r we know that it was
ordered to be made by one Count Achadeus; we know that this was
during the brief reign of Karloman (d. 884), son of Louis the Stammerer,
because Karloman's prosperity is prayed for in the litany. Nick Orchard's
analysis of the Psalter' s liturgical contents has shown that it was made to
be used by the Archbishop of Rheims in his capacity as abbot of the
community there; and Peter Kidd has pointed out that the name of the
archbishop Fulconem in the litany has been added by the original scribe
15
Ker, Catalogue, no. 280; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 517; Roberts, J., «An Anglo-Saxon
Glossed Psalter», in R. Palmer and M.P. Brown (eds.), Lambeth Palace Library:
Treasures from the Collection of the Archbishops of Canterbury, Scala Press, London
2009, pp. 34-35.
16
0' Neill, P.P., «Latin Learning at Winchester in the Early Eleventh Century: The
Evidence of the Lambeth Psalter», Anglo-Saxon England 20 (1991), pp. 143-66.
17
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 77; Morgan, N.J. and Panayotova, S., llluminated
Manuscripts in Cambridge, 1. The Frankish Kingdoms, Northern Netherlands, Germany,
Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, Meuse Region, Southern Netherlands, 2 vols., Brepols,
Turnhout 2009, no. 1.
into a space initially left blank18 . These two points combine to suggest
that the Psalter could have been commissioned by Achadeus as a present
for the next Archbishop and Abbot of Rheims. The Psalter would then
presumably have been made either during the last illness of Archbishop
Hincmar, who was in his late seventies when the Vikings approached
Rheims in 882 and had to leave the city in a litter, or after Hincmar' s
death in December 882 but before the election of Archbishop Fulk in 883.
Achadeus already had close links with the Abbey of Rheims, having
given his son to the bouse in 881 as its most prominent oblate 19 •
CCCC 272 was in England by the middle of the eleventh century,
when a very full gloss was added in its margins; I have examined the
script, text, and codicology of this gloss in detail elsewhere20 . This gloss
is a pre-existing text, composed at St Galien in the mid-ninth centurl 1.
Textually it is based on Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum, but with
sorne material from Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos. The gloss
was copied by four collaborating scribes, presumably from an exemplar
much like the surviving St Galien copies of the text: Gottweig,
Stiftsbibliothek 30, St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 27, and fragments now in
Munich, Regensburg, and Prague22 . These St Galien Psalters were
specially made to incorporate the gloss, and have the Psalm text in a
single column down the middle of the page, with blocks of gloss-text
18
A space originally intended for the name of Karloman's queen was never filled in:
see Kidd, P., «The Psalter of Count Achadeus>>, forthcoming. I am very grateful to Peter
Kidd and Nick Orchard for showing me their work-in-progress on this manuscript, and for
much helpful discussion about ecce 272.
19
De long, M., In Samuel's Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West, Brill,
Lei den, Cologne and New York 1996, p. 110 and passim.
2
° For a full examination, see Rushforth, R., «The Script and Text of the Achadeus-
Psalter Gloss: Reusing Continental Materials in Eleventh-Century England>>, Transactions
of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 14 (2009), pp. 89-114.
21
On this text, see Gibson, M., «Carolingian Glossed Psalters>>, in R. Gameson (ed.),
The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration, and Use, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge 1994, pp. 78-100, and also Rushforth, «The Script and Text>>. This
gloss survives in several manuscripts including sorne from Germany, and it was probably
a misunderstanding of a colophon in one manuscript which led to its early modem
publication with an anachronistic attribution to Bruno of Würzburg (d. 1045). It was
included under this inscription in PL 142. Davey, <<The Commentary of the Regius
Psalter>>, uses the text attributed to Bruno of Würzburg in his analysis of commonplace
Psalter-exegesis elements in the Royal Psalter, but 1 do not think he means to suggest that
Pseudo-Bruno was used by the Royal-Psalter scholar.
22
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 29315/3; Regensburg, Bischofliche
Zentralbibliothek, Cim. 3; and Prague, Narodni Galerie, Inv. Nr. K 7314.
ANNOTATEDPSALTERSANDPSALMSTUDY 45
alternating between the left- and right-hand margins. ecce 272 does not
seem to have been originally designed to have a gloss added, but its large
margins enabled the later addition of the St Galien gloss text, although
with the loss of sorne of the separation between separate blocks of gloss.
The division of labour between the hands suggests that both CCCC 272
and the exemplar were disbound when the gloss was copied23 . This must
have taken place at a well established scriptorium, perhaps at Canterbury,
where CCCC 272 has provenance at the end of the Middle Ages. Another
possibility is Abingdon, since one of the glossing hands of CCCC 272 has
an unusual form of abbreviation for the letters em which is also found in a
manuscript with Abingdon connections24 • CCCC 272 shows a very
formai and co-ordinated level of glossing, with the gloss as a distinct and
stable text, copied by scribes in the same way that they might copy a
whole book. Although it is an interesting witness to the reuse of
Continental materials in eleventh century England - a south German text
added to a northern French manuscript - it does not tell us as much about
late Anglo-Saxon Psalm scholarship as a more informai gloss would. It is
an interesting possibility that the gloss was added to ecce 272 in order
to enhance its value as a gift; Bernhard Bischoff suggested that the
original manuscripts of the St Galien gloss were made as gifts for
intellectuallaymen25 •
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 411
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 411 seems, like the Royal Psalter,
to show an attempt by one person to produce a work of Psalter exegesis
through careful annotation, in this case solely in Latin. The origin of this
manuscript has been debated, largely on art-historical grounds. On f. 1v,
facing the start of Psalm I, there is an embellished frame containing a
line-drawing of King David: the figure of David is quite clearly Anglo-
Saxon in style, with the fine agitated drapery often seen as typical of
Canterbury work; but the heavy, coloured frame consists largely of
interlace material in a very Franco-Saxon style. Consequently art-
23
See Rushforth, «The Script and Text>>.
24
Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.8 (190), for example f. 35v.
25
Bischoff, B., «Bücher am Hofe Ludwigs des Deutschen und die Privatbibliothek
des Kanzlers Grimait>>, in his Mittelalterliche Studien. Ausgewiihlte Aufsiitze zur
Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols., Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1966-1981, III, pp.
187-212, at 190.
historians have suggested that the manuscript was made on the Continent,
perhaps at Tours, with the frame left empty, and that it travelled early to
England, where the figure of David was added. I-iowever, although the
script of the manuscript is of a type which could have originated either in
England or on the Continent, T.A.M. Bishop pointed out that this Psalter
was written by the same scribe as the main text of Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College 214, an important Canterbury manuscript of Boethius
with both Latin and Old English glosses 26 . A litany was added to the
manuscript in the eleventh century, either at Abingdon, or at Canterbury,
where it has probable medieval provenance27 •
The first few Psalms in CCCC 411 have quite heavy interlinear
glosses in Latin (see Plate I for an image off. 4v, showing Psalm VI).
The glosses are written above the phrase or word to which they refer, and
they consist of several varieties of comment. One frequent type of gloss
invokes another verse of the Bible, usually either from another Psalm, or
from the New Testament. Ps VI.5 can be seen on lines 8-9 of Plate I. The
verse itself reads 28 :
Conuertere domine et eripe animam meam; sa1uum me fac propter rnisericordiam

tu am.
The last two words, misericordiam tuam, are glossed qui saluas Jacis
sperantes in te, in a clear reference toPs XVI.7, which reads in full:
Mirifica rnisericordias tuas, qui sa1uos facis sperantes in te.
This gloss makes a connection between Psalms VI and XVI, and

emphasises the reference to God' s mercy by enlarging on it. One of the
values which Augustine saw in the Psalms was their use as therapeutic,
26
Bishop, T.A.M., «Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts, Part Il», Transactions of the
Cambridge Bibliographical Society 2 (1955), pp. 185-192, at 187.
27
See Lapidge, M., «LEthelwold and the Vita S. Eustachii>>, in S. Kramer and M.
Bernhard (eds.), Scire litteras. Forschungen zum mittelalterlichen Geistesleben
(Abhand1ungen der Bayerischen Akadernie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische
Klasse N.F. 99), Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich 1988,
pp. 255-65, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature 900-1066, The Hambledon Press, London
and Rio Grande, OH 1993, pp. 213-23 and addenda p. 483, at 218.
28
Numeration and versification of Psalms follows the edition of Biblia sacra iuxta
Vulgatam versionem, ed. by R. Weber et al., 5th edn., Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft,
Stuttgart 2007. Psalm quotations are given as they appear in the relevant manuscript when
possible, or otherwise from Weber's edition, Iuxta LXX; other biblica1 quotations are also
from Weber's edition of the Vulgate.
one might almost say psychological, exercises, where the person who
prayed them was taken through a process of rage, complaint, or
lamentation, to end up turning his or her affections towards God29 . There
is a hint of this attitude in this gloss and others like it, where the
complaints of Ps VI.5 are referred forwards to the more hopeful tone of
Ps XVI.7. There are also New Testament references, usually to the
Gospels. Ps 11!.9 reads:
Domini est salus: et super populum tuum benedictio tua.
«Benedictio tua» is glossed «Cum dixerit uenite benedicti patris

mei», in reference to Mt XXV.34:
Tune dicet rex his qui a dextris eius erunt uenite benedicti patris mei possidete
paratum uobis regnum a constitutione mundi.
This is the conclusion of the parable of the division of the sheep and
the goats at the last judgement, and here the gloss supplies an
eschatological meaning to the Psalm. References are also made to the
Epistles: for example, Ps V.13 ends:
Domine ut scuto bonae uoluntatis tue coronasti nos.
This is glossed «sicut apostolus ait, non enim a nobis sed suficentia
nostra ex Deo est», in reference to II Cor 11!.5:
Non quod sufficientes simus cogitare aliquid a nobis quasi ex nobis sed sufficientia
nostra ex Deo est.
lt is possible that these biblical quotations were derived from another

source; but it is at least equally as likely that the mind of the glossator,
presumably working in a monastic milieu where the Psalms and other
biblical books were the material of daily observance, made its own
connections between the biblical verses.
As well as references to other Psalms or New Testament verses, with
their implied comments on the Psalm, there are frequent glosses of a
29
Fiedrowicz, M., General Introduction, in J.E. Rotelle (ed.), Saint Augustine:
Expositions of the Psalms, I. Psalms 1-32 (The Works of St Augustine. A Translation for
the Twenty-First Century III/15), New City Press, Hyde Park, NY 2000, pp. 13-66, at 39-
43.
more straightforwardly exegetical nature. The voice of the Psalm is often

recorded: for example, the start of Psalm N is glossed «Vox sancte
ecclesie cum martyribus et confessoribus». Notes are also given about the
usage of the Psalm: for example the start of Psalm VI is glossed «ln isto
psalmo semina diuersarum doctrinarum sunt, et tamen datur penitentibus
dum se cupiunt absoluere»; while Ps N.2:
Miserere mei Deus; et exaudi orationem meam
is glossed «Hic uersus cantandus est omnibus».
Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum seems to have served as the

basic reference work for the glossator, and the majority of non-biblical
glosses can be traced to this work. The glossator does not abject to
Cassiodorus's typical wordplay, glossing geminatus in Ps VI.7 with
«gemitus est geminatus luctus, qui diabolum fugat et christum conciliat»,
a précis of Cassiodorus's commene 0 :
Gemitus enim dictus est gerninatus luctus. Quem merito fideles appetunt, quoniam
lu gentes consolatur, paenitentes emundat, diabolum fu gat, Christo conciliat.
Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos, and Augustine's

Enarrationes in Psalmos, were also used31 . But there are also sorne
glosses drawing on more obscure authors. Ps VI.4 reads:
Et anima mea turbata est ualde: sed tu, Domine, usquequo?
The words «turbata est ualde» have been glossed «propter inminentes
tribulationes». This Christological interpretation, referring to Io XII.27,
seems to derive its wording from Theodore of Mopsuestia's commentary
on this Psalm32 :
30
Magni Aurelii Cassiodori Expositio Psalmorum, ed. by Adriaen, 1, p. 76.
31
For examples of glosses taken from Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos, and
Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos, see Ps VI.3 (Plate 1). The gloss on the second half
of the verse certainly cornes from Augustine, while the gloss on the first part seems to
come from Pseudo-Jerome - Augustine says something sirnilar, but in the commentary on
Psalm VII rather than Psalm VI. The gloss on Ps X.6 (f. Sr) is certainly from Pseudo-
Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos.
32
Theodori Mopsuesteni Expositionis in Psalmos Juliana Aeclanensi interprete in
Latinum versae quae supersunt, ed. by L. De Coninck and M.J. D'Hont (CCSL 88A),
Brepols, Turnhout 1977, p. 31.
Quod autem addit et auima mea turbata est ualde, ita posuit ac si diceret: tribulatio
ista, quam patior, excesso .corpore usque ad auimae interiora peruenit.
It is unfortunate that sustained glossing in this manuscript only lasts

for the first quire. After that there are only a very few occasional glosses,
by the same hand: it seems that we have here an unfinished work.
Analysis of the isolated glosses found later in the manuscript may allow
us a glimpse of the glossator' s working methods. It is striking that the
isolated glosses tend to be from more obscure sources than those in the
sustained glossing on the first quire. For example, Ps LXXIII.12 reads:
Deus autem rex noster ante secula: operatus est salutem in medio terrae.
The words «in medio terrae» have been given the gloss «in utero
uirginis». This does not come from Cassiodorus, or from any of the
common Psalter commentaries, but seems to be from Book 1 of
Eucherius of Lyon's Instructiones 33 :
Et aliter: Operatus est salutem in medio terrae, id est in utero uirginali.
These later isolated glosses include material from Isidore of Seville,

both his In Gene sim and his Sententiae; and from Gregory the Great' s
Moralia in lob (perhaps via Bede's In epistulas septem Catholicas). The
historical interpretation of the boar and wild beast in Ps LXX1X.14 as the
emperors Vespasian and Titus probably derives from book 3 of
Paschasius Radbertus's Expositio in Lamentationes Hieremiae, or sorne
related source34 . Of course these texts may not have been used directly,
but through intermediaries such as patristic florilegia or quotations in
other works: but it is strik:ing that the isolated glosses in ecce 411 tend
to come from sources which mention the Psalms in passing, rather than
from Psalter commentaries. We seem to see here a glossator work:ing
with a two-pronged approach: on the one hand he started work at the
beginning of the Psalter using the most obvious sources for Psalm
commentary, relying primarily on Cassiodorus; but on the other he used
33
'De Psalmorum Libro' ch. XXXI; Eucherii Lugdunensis Formulae spiritalis
intelligentiae. Instructionum libri duo, ed. by C. Mandolfo (CCSL 66), Brepols, Turnhout
2004, p. 123.
34
Pascasius Radbertus. Expositio in Lamentationes Hieremiae libri quinque, ed. by
B. Paulus (CCCM 85), Brepols, Turnhout 1988, p. 161.
ecce 411 as a place to record pieces of information about the

interpretation of the Psalms which he probably came across in sources not
ostensibly dedicated to Psalm exegesis.
The tone of the glosses in CCCC 411 contrasts with those in the
Royal Psalter, in that it does not include glosses about implied verbs or
subjects, or similar material useful for those with only an elementary
understanding of Latin. Nor are the CCCC 411 glosses directed towards
Cassiodorus's project of learning about various scholarly disciplines
through the Psalm texts. The glosses in CCCC 411 are more suitable for a
spiritual study of the Psalms, probably as part of the process of lectio
diuina, and suggest a personal study rather than a work which was
created for use in teaching. Its unfinished nature certainly implies that it
was a personal rather than an institutional project, because at this period
we have a lot of examples of highly organised, very co-operative
manuscript production at Canterbury. The extreme sparsity of glosses
after the effort of the first quire is regrettable, because this manuscript
could have given us an insight into Psalter scholarship at Canterbury in
the late tenth or early eleventh century, a time when Canterbury's
intellectual activities are attested by a large number of surviving
manuscripts.
Worcester, Cathedral Library, F. 173, fol. 1
The Achadeus Psalter was probably chosen as a repository for a copy

of this gloss-commentary because it had wide margins and, furthermore,
contains the Gallicanum text for which the gloss was written. Although
the Royal Psalter was probably always intended to bear a gloss, and
ecce 411 may likewise have been written with this use in mind, neither
of these is especially tailored in their layout to receive the gloss, and
without the glass the Psalter text of both would look much the same. But
there is evidence of the production of an Anglo-Saxon Psalter with
integral gloss, where the layout of the main text was adjusted line by line
to fit the amount of glossing material accompanying it. Unfortunately it
only survives as a fragment of one folio, preserved as a flyleaf attached to
an incomplete eleventh-century missal at Worcester; see Plate Il35 • This
fragment contains the Gallicanum text of the end of Psalm XXXIII and
the start of Psalm XXXIV. It is clear that this folio, written by a single
35
Warren, F.E., «An Anglo-Saxon Missal Fragment at Worcester>>, The Academy 28
(1885), pp. 394-5.
scribe, was carefully laid out to incorporate the gloss, because the
distance between the lines of Psalm text varies according to the size of
the amount of glossing material. Gretsch has argued that we cannot know
how much glossing there was in this Psalter manuscript, and how far it
extended beyond the surviving fragment, because glosses were often
applied to Psalters in varying amounts, as in CCCC 411 discussed
above 36 • While this is strictly speaking true, in that we cannot know
anything absolutely for certain about the lost remainder of the book, the
Worcester fragment differs from ali other surviving Anglo-Saxon Psalters
with Latin glosses in that the gloss is not separable from the text. If one
were to remove the gloss from these folios one would not be left with a
normally-laid-out Psalter, but with a Psalter with strange differences in
spacing between lines of text. This shows that the gloss was always an
integral part of the production of this book; and 1 therefore think it a
reasonable assumption that for as much of the Psalms as were written of
this manuscript, the gloss was written in tandem. The gloss was not only
intrinsic to the concept of the manuscript, but must have been
meticulously planned out as the copying proceeded, to keep the gloss and
main text in step. This is an achievement of book-production
craftsmanship comparable with that found in the Psalter in London,
British Library, Harley 603, where the text is carefully laid out to march
in step with the images 37 .
This fragment is usually dated to the tenth century, presumably
because it contains Latin written in Insular script, which is uncommon
after the start of the eleventh century. However, sorne specimens do
survive of Latin texts in Insular script which show the palaeographical
developments of the eleventh century, and 1 think this should probably be
numbered among them. The general aspect of the script, as weil as the
forms of certain letters, particularly a ande, make it difficult to see this as
an example of tenth-century Square minuscule; these details fit better into
the development of eleventh-century Vernacular minuscule. Although we
do not know where the fragment originated, its later provenance at
Worcester hints that it cornes from the West Midlands region, and it is
36
Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations, pp. 31-32, note 72.
37
See Noel, W., The Harley Psalter, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995,
for an examination of the logistics of producing the Harley 603 Psalter.
notable that specimens of Latin written in eleventh-century Insular

minuscule survive from nearby Leominster and Winchcombe38 •
Two main levels of gloss can be distinguished in the Worcester
fragment: the main gloss text, intrinsic to the page layout, written in long
lines in smaller script than the Psalm text, mostly on the same ruling but
often spilling into the margins; and little, perhaps ad hoc, glosses written
in smaller script again, above the words of the Psalm text to which they
refer. Most of the latter are concerned with syntax and are at quite a basic
level, perhaps suggesting the possibility of use in lessons on elementary
Latin. For example, on line 4 of the recto (Plate II) the start of Ps
XXXIII.20, «Multae tribulationes iustorum», is glossed «S. st» (scilicet
sunt), to supply the implied form of the verb 'to be' . These little glosses
sometimes pro vide textual material. On the verso in Ps XXXIV. 7,
«Quoniam gratis absconderunt mihi interitum laquei sui; superuacue
exprobrauerunt animam meam», the words interitum and superuacue
have both been supplied with textual variants. Interitum is glossed with
the variant insidias from the Hebraicum text, and superuacue with the
variant uanae from the Romanum. Other small interlinear glosses supply
basic symbolic interpretations, for example the gloss «.i. uirtutem» to the
word ossa in Ps XXXIII.21, from Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in
Psalmos. The simple gloss discerne above the start of Ps XXXIV.l,
«ludica domine nocentes me», may be a reference to the Pseudo-Jerome
comment «discerne inter me et Judaeos, inter Ecclesiam et persecutores»,
or it may be meant to invoke the start of Ps XXXXII, «ludica me Deus et
discerne causam meam de gente non sancta».
Most of the material in the main gloss is taken from Pseudo-Jerome's
Breviarium in Psalmos. For example, the marginal gloss by the start of
Psalm XXXIV, «Vox Christi in pas si one, et uox Ecclesiae in
tribulatione», cornes from Pseudo-Jerome 39 • The gloss-text for the start of
Ps XXXIII.20, «Multae tribulationes iustorum», reads:
Temptantur enim iusti ut probatim manifesti fiant, sed in tempore erit respectus [text
lost] nationes, et dominati fuerint populis. Aliter: Qui tribulationem [text lost] latio
iustorum morte finitur, supplicia peccatorum post mortem incipiunt.
38
The prayerbook which survives as London, British Library, Cotton Nero A.ii and
London, British Library, Cotton Galba A.xvi is from Leominster, while the Winchcombe
Psalter is now Cambridge, University Library, Ff.2.33.
39
PL 26, cols. 821-1270, at 923.
This is clearly taken directly from Pseudo-Jerome, although the order

of the two comments has been reversed40 :
Multae tribulationes justorum. Ergo qui tribulationem non patitur, justus non est.
Mors peccatorum pessima est. Justorum tribulatio morte finitur, peccatorum vero
supplicia post mortem incipiunt. Vel, multae tribulationes justorum, et de omnibus
his liberavit eos Dominus. Tentantur enim, ut probati manifesti fiant. Sed in tempore
erit respectus ipsorum, cum judicaverint nationes, et dominati fuerint populis.
(Many are the tribulations of the just. Therefore he who does not suffer tribulation, is
not just. The death of sinners is worst. The tribulation of the just is finished by death,
but the entreaties of sinners begin after death. Or, many are the tribulations of the just
and the Lord has delivered them from all of these. For they are tested so that they
should be clearly proven. But in time it will be considered of them, when they will
have judged the nations and will have dominion over the people).
The main gloss text often consists in this way of several small pieces
of information joined together; the glossator quite liked to give two or
three alternative short interpretations linked by the word uel or aliter. In
this it mirrors the structure of Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos
itself, which frequently repeats lemmata in order to give a different
interpretation, ranging from very short id est identifications to longer
phrases or sentences. It is noticeable in the Pseudo-Jerome work that
there is frequent repetition of Psalm text: unlike Cassiodorus's Expositio
Psalmorum, which is very much a polished work meant to be read
through continuously, or the orally-delivered parts of Augustine's
Enarrationes in Psalmos, which repeat material for rhetorical effect, the
Pseudo-Jerome work gives the impression that it may have been
compiled from a source not unlike that attested by the Worcester
fragment, a sort of 'scrap-book' of Psalter comments of varying length41 •
This glossator seems to have used Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in
Psalmos in the same way that the composer of the St Galien Psalter gloss
40
PL 26, col. 922. The first of the two explanations given in Pseudo-Jerome's
Breviarium is taken directly from Jerome's Commentarioli: S. Hieronymi presbyteri
Commentarioli in Psalmos, in S. Hieronymi presbyteri Opera, I. Opera exegetica, ed. by
G. Morin (CCSL 72), Brepols, Turnhout 1959, pp. 163-245, at 204-5. Psalms XXXIII and
XXXIV are not included in Jerome's Tractatus lix in Psalmos.
41
For comments on the nature of Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos and its
relationship with glosses in a Psalter now in Stuttgart, see Fischer, B., «Die Texte», in B.
Bischoff et al. (eds.), Der Stuttgarter Bilderpsalter, Bibl. Fol. 23 Württembergische
Landesbibliothek Stuttgart, II. Untersuchungen, E. Schreiber Graphische Kunstanstalten,
Stuttgart 1968, pp. 223-88, at 254-6.
and the glossator of CCCC 411 drew on Cassiodorus' s Expositio

Psalmorum as the basis of their work. But even though such a small
sample of the W oreester fragment gloss survives, it is clear that this
glossator likewise was able to call on a number of other texts. These
include the obvious: Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum is responsible
for the statement «timor cum amore, hoc est reuerentia» glossing the start
of Ps XXXIV.4 42 ; and Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos provides the
identification of the boues in Ps XXXIII.21 with tolerantia and
patientia43 . But other sources are also used. For example, the first part of
Ps XXXIV.6, «Fiat uia illorum tenebrae et lubricum», has been given
quite a long gloss in the Worcester fragment:
[illegible] dum tenetur ut piscis uel serpens, uel regnum huius seculi; ignorantiae, uel
cecitas cordis, scilicet iter id est luxuria.
([ ... ] when it is held, like a fish or snake, or the kingdom of this world; ignorance, or
blindness of the heart, clearly again that is luxury).
The first part of this refers to the word lubricum, and draws on
Isidore of Seville44 :
Nam lubricum dicitur quidquid labitur dum tenetur, ut piscis, serpens.
(For a thing is said to be slippery which slips when it is held, like a fish, snake).
The further definition of lubricum as «regnum huius seculi» probably

cornes from Ambrose's comment on Ps XXXVI.30 45 :
lubricum est saeculum, cito labimur; ideo rogemus ut nos dominus stabilire et
confirmare dignetur.
(slippery is the world, we pass away soon; therefore we should ask that the Lord
should deign to establish and strengthen us).
42
This statement is given by Cassiodorus as part of his commentary on this psalm,
but for a later verse: Magni Aurelii Cassiodori Expositio Psalmorum, ed. by Adriaen, I, p.
480.
43
Second commentary on Psalm XXXIII: Augustinus. Enarrationes in Psalmos, ed.
byE. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, 3 vols. (CCSL 38-40), Brepols, Turnhout 1956, I, p. 297.
44
Isidore, Etymologiae XII.iv: Isidori Hispaliensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive
Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical Texts), Clarendon
Press, Oxford 1911.
45
Sancti Ambrosii opera, 6. Explanatio psalmorum XII, ed. by M. Petschenig (CSEL
64), Tempsky, Vienna and Leipzig 1919, p. 95.
The gloss ignorantiae is a straightforward comment on tenebrae,

taken from Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos: «tenebrae:
ignorantiae»46 . The gloss «cecitas cordis» relates to Eph IV.18:
tenebris obscuratum habentes intellectum a1ienati a uita Dei per ignorantiam quae est
in illis propter caecitatem cordis ipsorum
(Having their understanding darkened, being a1ienated from the 1ife of God through
the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts).
and probably cornes from Gregory the Great's statement (quoted in

many subsequent works) in his Homiliae in Euangelia (book II, ch .
... ) 47
XXXVlll :
Interiores quippe tenebras dicimus caecitatem cordis, exteriores uero tenebras

aeternam noctem damnationis.
(Obvious1y interior shadows we call blindness of the heart, but exterior shadows we
call the eterna1 night of damnation).
The last comment in this gloss cornes from Pseudo-Jerome:

«Lubricum, id est luxuria». The glossator seems to be drawing on a
number of sources, sorne of which are not ostensibly Psalter
commentaries; the inclusion of Insular favourite Isidore of Seville is
worthy of note. Since it is qui te likely that this fragment originated in the
West of England, and that CCCC 411 was made in the East at
Canterbury, it is interesting to speculate that the dependence of the one on
the Hiberno-Latin text of Pseudo-Jerome, and of the other on
Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum, might have something to do with
the different spheres of scholarly influences in which they were produced.
It is obviously impossible to know how much of this manuscript has
been lost, but the fact that the surviving fragment is from Psalms XXXIII
and XXXIV suggests that at least that many Psalms had been copied with
their gloss. If the whole Psalter had been produced then it must have been
an immense achievement both of scholarship and of book design and
production.
46
PL 26, col. 924.
47
Gregorius Magnus. Homiliae in Evangelia, ed. by R. Étaix (CCSL 141), Brepo1s,
Turnhout 1999,p.372.
Conclusion
The evidence of glosses for higher-level Psalm study in later Anglo-

Saxon England may only involve a handful of manuscripts, but it is
sufficient to suggest that this type of study was well-established. Further
evidence could be gathered from other sources: quotations from Psalter-
commentaries in Anglo-Saxon texts; references to Psalm exegesis in
Psalter illustration; and surviving manuscripts of the Psalm commentaries
themselves (which 1 have listed and briefly examined in the Appendix to
this paper). The gloss evidence relates to the use of the Psalms for a
variety of different intellectual pursuits; not only elementary Latin
teaching, but higher-level study as advocated by Cassiodorus, and the
persona! spiritual understanding emphasised by Augustine. We see the
reuse of existing materials: the Blickling Psalter, a Romanum text,
receives a copy of Romanum-appropriate glosses in Old English and
Latin; CCCC 272, a Gallicanum Psalter from northem France, receives a
Latin Gallicanum gloss text from southern Germany. In both these cases
the gloss may be adding value to the manuscript, as when Aldred glossed
the Lindisfarne Gospels. In the Royal and Lambeth Psalters we see
scholars tuming their hands to Psalm-glossing with a large Old English
component: likewise both ecce 411 and the worcester fragment show
attempts, each it seems the work of a single scholar, to produce annotated
compendia of Psalter knowledge. The unfinished gloss in CCCC 411
gives an insight into how the glossator, probably at Canterbury, went
about his work both by using Psalter commentaries and making
occasional notes from other sources. The Worcester fragment shows us a
scholar who, unlike most glossators discussed in this paper, relied on
Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos rather than Cassiodorus's
Expositio Psalmorum. Did he use this Hibemo-Latin text because he was
at work in the West of England, far from Winchester and Canterbury, in
an area which felt more Welsh or Irish influence? The unhappy loss of
the rest of this manuscript deprives of us what might have been an
interesting example of the scholarly culture of late Anglo-Saxon Mercia.
At least in its surviving state it is a striking witness to the depth of
analysis which might be applied to the Psalms in late Anglo-Saxon
England.
Appendix
Notes on the surv1vmg Psalm-commentary manuscripts of Anglo-

Saxon England and their availability in the later Anglo-Saxon period
The following lists of manuscripts of Psalter commentaries derive

from the Indexes to Helmut Gneuss's Handlist of Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts. It seeks to answer the question: What surviving manuscript
evidence do we have for which Psalter-commentaries were available in
late Anglo-Saxon England?
I have excluded those manuscripts which were clearly part of the
widespread drive to improve patristic holdings of English libraries after
the Norman Conquest. The first two lists below are both of manuscripts
which are to be dismissed from consideration: the first because they are
associable with the Insular mission-fields; and the second because they
were written on the Continent and cannot be shown to have been in
England in the later Anglo-Saxon period. The third section treats
manuscripts of Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum, which present a
difficult case. After this, the three remaining Psalter-commentary
manuscripts which we know to have been available in later Anglo-Saxon
England are discussed separately in tum.
1. Early manuscripts associable with the Insular mission-fields
Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin- Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Grimm

132,2 and 139,2, Gneuss no. 792, and
Würzburg, Universitatsbibliothek, M.p.th. f. 43, Gneuss no. 944.5e
These fragments contain material from Augustine's Enarrationes in
Psalmos. They were written in the mid-eighth-century and are both
associable with the Insular mission-fields on the Continent.
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 68, ff. 1-46,
Gneuss no. 909
This eighth-century manuscript contains the interesting (incomplete)
text edited as Glossa in Psalmos by Martin McNamara, which was
probably composed by an English scholar with an Irish education; but

this manuscript seems to have been in Germany by the ninth centur/ 8 .
Wrisbergholzen, Archiv des Grafen von Goertz-Wrisberg, Nr. 3,

Gneuss no. 943.6
This fragment of Jerome's Tractatus in Psalmos from the first third
of the ninth century is also probably a product of the Insular mission-
fields on the Continent.
2. Manuscripts of Continental origin not necessarily available in late

Anglo-Saxon England
Cambridge, Pembroke College 91, Gneuss no. 136

This ninth-century French copy of Jerome's Tractatus in Psalmos
seems to have been imported to England in the Anglo-Norman period by
Abbot Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds (1065-1097), and cannot therefore
be used as evidence for late Anglo-Saxon reading49 .
Cambridge, Trinity College, B.14.3 (289), flyleaves, Gneuss no.

175.1
This fragment of Ambrose's Expositio de Psalmo CXVIII was
certainly in England in the tenth century, but it is written in difficult
Nonantolan script; the existence of tenth-century English scribbles at
right-angles to the text shows that it was already being used as scrap
parchment at this date, and opens the possibility that it was not read as a
manuscript in England50 .
48
See Glossa in Psalmos: The Hiberna-Latin Glass on the Psalms of Codex
Palatinus Latinus 68 (Psalms 39:11-151:7), ed. by M. McNamara (Studi e Testi 310),
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City 1986.
49
James, M.R. and Minns, E. H., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the
Library of Pembroke Colle ge, Cambridge, with a Hand List of the Printed Books to the
Year 1500, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1905. On the probable importation of
a number of French manu scripts to Bury St Edmunds by Abbot Baldwin, see Rushforth,
R.J., The Eleventh- and Early Twelfth-Century Manuscripts of Bury St Edmunds Abbey,
unpubl. diss., University of Cambridge, 2003, pp. 99-104.
50
Bischoff, B., Katalog der festliindischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts
(mit Ausnahme der wisigotischen), Teil 1: Aachen-Lambach, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden,
1998, no. 837; Keynes, S., Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and Other Items of Related Interest
in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (Old English Newsletter Subsidia 18),
CEMERS, Binghamton, NY 1992, no. 16.
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 338, ff. 64-
126, Gneuss no. 914
This copy of Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos was written in
northern France or Germany in the tenth century, and although it contains
two short added Old English notes on the use of charms, Neil Ker said
that there is «no evidence the manuscript has ever been in England» 51 .
Winchester, Winchester College 40A, Gneuss no. 759.5

This eighth-century Uncial fragment of Rufinus' s translation of
Basil's Homiliae in Psalmos is probably French, and may not have been
in England much before its use as a binding fragment in the sixteenth
century52 .
3. Manuscripts of Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum
It is very striking that there is little surviving manuscript evidence for

the availability of Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum in late Anglo-
Saxon England. This is surprising since this text was so influential on the
Latin glosses found in the Royal and Blickling Psalters, on the wider Old
English Psalter gloss tradition, and on the glos ses in CCCC 411, and was
also used by the Worcester fragment glossator53 . Gneuss's Index lists four
manuscripts under this work: nos. 77e and 154f; and nos. 237 and 822f of
the breviate version. No. 77 is Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 272,
discussed above, and attests to knowledge of the St Galien Psalter
commentary rather than of Cassiodorus directly.
The abbreviated version of Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum,
produced in Northumbria, survives in one incomplete manuscript,
Durham, Cathedral Library, B.II.30, Gneuss no. 23754 • This is the famous
Durham Cassiodorus, written in the second quarter of the eighth century
in Northumbria. Düsseldorf, Universitlitsbibliothek, Fragm. K16: Z.3/l,
Gneuss no. 822, is a roughly contemporary fragment which is probably
51
Ker, Catalogue, no. 390. The manuscript entered Queen Christina's collection via
that of Alexandre Pétau.
52
Ker, N.R. and Piper, A.J., Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Oxford
University Press, Oxford 1969-2003, IV, p. 628; Lowe, E.A., Codices Latini Antiquiores,
II. Great Britain and Ireland, 2nd edn., Clarendon Press, Oxford 1972, no. 261.
53
Davey, «The Commentary of the Regi us Psalter>>, pp. 348-9.
54
Bede knew the full unexcerpted text: see Bailey, R.N., <<Bede's Text of
Cassiodorus' Commentary on the Psalms», Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983), pp.
189-93.
from a sister manuscript, although sorne people have suggested that it is

one of the lost leaves of the Durham Cassiodorus55 • The method of
excerption in the Durham Cassiodorus has not received the attention it
deserves, largely because there is no modern edition of Cassiodorus
Expositio Psalmorum with sufficient detail for the task56 .
Cambridge, St John's College, Aa.5.1, f. 67, Gneuss no. 154, is the
only surviving manuscript witness for knowledge of the full text of
Cassiodorus in Anglo-Saxon England. lt consists of a fragment of a
single folio, and was taken from a binding, described by James simply as
«old» and no longer extant, of Cambridge, St John's College, H.6 (209) 57 .
This manuscript has a sixteenth-century inscription locating it at St
Benedict's Abbey, Ramsey - although it is not in any of the surviving
Ramsey library catalogues - and also contains a life of Abbot Botulph of
Thorney; but there is no way of knowing when the fragment became
attached to H.6, and it may have been in the early modern period rather
than the Middle Ages. This eighth- or ninth-century fragment of
Cassiodorus' s text may be from Southumbrian England; but sorne
palaeographical features hint strongly at an origin in the Continental
mission-fields. Particularly suggestive in this regard are the theta-shaped
e, the 3-shaped g, and the looped and hooked ascenders. Unfortunately
many of the palaeographical features which indicate West-Saxon origin
for a script are also commonly found in the script of the Insular mission-
fields, and rather more specimens survive from the Insular mission-fields
than from the West-Saxon homelands at this time 58 . The possibility that
55
'see Halpom, J.W., <<A New Fragment of Durham, Cathedral Library B. II. 30>>,
Classical Philo/ogy 69 (1974), pp. 124-5; and Bailey, R.N. and Handley, R., «Early
English Manuscripts of Cassiodorus' Expositio Psalmorum>>, Classical Philo/ogy 78
(1983), pp. 51-55. The format of the fragment suggests that it does not come from the
Durham Cassiodorus; but it does con tain a part of the text now missing from the Durham
manuscript, and although unlikely, it is not impossible that this part of the manuscript was
in a slightly different layout from the rest.
56
For a critique of editions of Cassiodorus, showing how the editio princeps of 1491
has remained the textus receptus, see Halpom, J.W., <<The Editing of Patristic Texts: The
Case ofCassiodoruS>>, Revue des études augustiniennes 30 (1984), pp. 107-26.
57
James, M.R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of St
John's College, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1913, no. 209.
58
For discussion, see Crick, J., «The Case for a West-Saxon Minuscule>>, Anglo-
Saxon England 26 (1997), pp. 63-79; ead., «An Anglo-Saxon Fragment of Justinus'
Epitome», Anglo-Saxon England 16 (1987), pp. 181-96; and Rushforth, R.J., «A
Cambridge Fragment of Aldhelm: Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional4219>>,
Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 11 ( 1996-1999), pp. 449-62.
this fragment originated on the Insular mission-fields must therefore be

allowed59 .
The Durham Cassiodorus, and the manuscript now represented by the
fragment at St John's (which together seem to be the earliest witnesses to
Cassiodorus's text) may both have been available to be read in later
Anglo-Saxon England60 . But as far as we know, the Durham Cassiodorus
remained in Northumbria, far from the West Saxon and Mercian
glossators who were at work in the annotated Psalm manuscripts which I
have examined.
4. London, British Library, Royal 2.E.xiii and 2.E.xiv, Gneuss no.

453: Pseudo-Jerome
Although this manuscript is a single physical volume at present, it has

two separate classmarks: London, British Library, Royal 2.E.xiii and
Royal 2.E.xiv. These contain Pseudo-Jerome' s Breviarium in Psalmos,
Psalms I-L and LI-C respectively; a third volume containing the
commentary on the final quinquagene has been lost. In Casley' s
catalogue of the Royal collection made in 1734 these two volumes seem
to have still been separate, but in the W arner and Gilson catalogue of
1921 they are recorded as one physical volume 61 • A note by Sir Frederic
Madden (1801-1873) at the front of Royal 2.E.xiii suggests that the two
volumes had been bound together before they came into the British
Museum' s possession in the 17 50s - he was perhaps eager to disassociate
his institution from the loss of sorne very interesting flyleaves which
seem to have beenjettisoned when the two parts were bound together62 •
59
This fragment contains an «RT>> monogram in the margin by the rubric «Cogitaui
dies antiquos et aunos aeternos» (Ps LXXVI.6); this is one of the symbols used by
Cassiodorus to mark out particular points of interest, in this case a rhetorical deviee. It is
not clear if this has implications for the fragment's place in the textual transmission. On
these marks, see Halporn, <<Methods of Reference». Bailey and Handley have suggested
that this fragment has readings in common with the Durham Cassiodorus, but the modern
edition of Cassiodorus is not sufficiently detailed to allow this type of analysis to be
made; Bailey and Handley, <<Early English Manuscripts of Cassiodorus' Expositio
Psalmorum>>, but see Halporn, <<The Editing ofPatristic Texts>>.
60
See Halporn, J.W., <<The Manuscripts of Cassidorus' Expositio Psalmorum»,
Traditio 37 (1981), pp. 388-96.
61
Warner, G.F. and Gilson, J.P., British Museum Catalogue of Western Manuscripts
in the Old Royal and King's Collections, British Museum, London 1921.
62
See Casley, D., A Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the King's Library, Gosling and
Brindley, London 1734, p. 39.
Codicological examination of the manuscript makes it clear that this

amalgamation was in fact a reversion to the original state of the book.
The text was written in the tenth century in a plain and highly-legible
Caroline minuscule, and seems at that time to have been one continuous
volume. The production of the manuscript is usually attributed to
England. There is nothing about the script to preclude its having been
written in England, but nothing either which suggests that it was; it would
not be easy to find parallels in English material for the inclusion of
correction marks at the end of quires, but this is probably not conclusive.
Consequently the question of whether it was produced in England or
abroad should probably remain an open one for the moment63 . However,
the manuscript does seem to have been in England in the eleventh century
when it was split into three volumes. The logical division of a
commentary on the Psalms is into three fifties - both Cassiodorus' s
Expositio Psalmorum and Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos were
often transmitted in three such volumes - and this is the way the
manuscript was divided. It would have been a straightforward procedure
if the commentaries on Psalms LI and CI had each started at the top of the
first recto of a quire, but unsurprisingly they did not: therefore material
on Psalm L which was going to end up in volume 2, and on Psalm C
which would be in volume 3, was recopied by an eleventh-century scribe
in English Caroline minuscule and added to the ends of volumes 1 and 2,
respectively. Consequently there is sorne repetition within the manuscript
as it stands now, at the point where the two volumes join. Unfortunately
the English Caroline minuscule is not sufficiently distinctive to enable a
closer location. Nor does the manuscript' s later provenance help with a
medievallocation64 .
63
There are no small number of manuscripts written in script which could, in our
current state of knowledge, be attributed either to England or the Continent in the tenth
century, and plenty with later English provenance which have been attributed to one of
the two on grounds which would arguably benefit from further explication (to give just a
few immediate examples, these would include Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 88;
Cambridge, St John's College, F.27 (164); and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Barlow 25 (SC
6463). While this is certainly a topic in need of sustained study, a high degree of logistical
difficulty would be caused by the sheer number of ninth- and tenth-century Continental
manuscripts which would need to be examined in order to make comparisons between the
surviving materials.
64
It was owned by Thomas Cranmer, on whose books see Selwyn, D.G., The Library
of Thomas Cranmer, Oxford Bibliographical Society, Oxford 1996.
It is striking that this division of the original large manuscript into

three parts seems to have occurred at around the same date as the division
of Royal 4.A.xiv discussed below (assuming that the division of Royal
4.A.xiv was contemporary with the addition of the rubric to f. lr). These
might both be linked with the renovation of libraries which took place in
late eleventh-century and early twelfth-century England65 .
S. London, British Library, Royal4.A.xiv, Gneuss no. 455: Jerome
London, British Library, Royal 4.A.xiv presents a number of points

of interest, not least the fact that it was written by the same scribe as the
Royal Psalter, discussed above 66 . This manuscript contains a mixed text:
it is essentially a copy of Jerome's Tractatus lix in Psalmos, but with
sorne interpolations from Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos. These
two texts are very closely related. The Tractatus !ix in Psalmos, although
it only covers fifty-nine Psalms, is the most sustained work of Psalm
exegesis surviving from the authoritative hand of the editor and translator
of the three Latin versions of the Psalter67 . This work was used as the
base for the Pseudo-Jerome's Breviarium in Psalmos, a much longer text
with material for every Psalm, probably composed in the seventh century
in a Hiberna-Latin milieu on the Continent68 . For those Psalms included
in Jerome's Tractatus the Breviarium often augments the exegesis which
Jerome provided; sometimes it substitutes completely new material; and
sometimes it simply incorporates the Tractatus text. The Breviarium also
incorporates material from Jerome's very brief Commentarioli in
Psalmos, and from other works. The Pseudo-Jerome Breviarium had a
much wider circulation in the Middle Ages than the genuine Jerome
65
Webber, T., <<Monastic and Cathedral Book Collections in the Late Eleventh and
Twelfth Centuries», in E. Leedham-Green and T. Webber (eds.), The Cambridge History
of Libraries in Britain and freland to 1640, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
2006, pp. 109-25.
66
Salisbury Psalter, ed. by Sisam and Sisam, pp. 52-53; Ker, Catalogue, nos. 249
and 250; Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations, pp. 28-29, 265-7.
67
S. Hieronymi Opera homiletica, ed. by G. Morin (CCSL 78), Brepols, Turnhout
1958, pp. 3-352.
68
PL 26, cols. 821-1270. See Lapidge, M. and Sharpe, R., A Bibliography of Ce/tic-
Latin Literature 400-1200 (Royal Irish Academy Dictionary of Medieval Latin from
Celtic Sources. Ancillary Publications 1), Royal Irish Academy, Dublin 1985, no. 343;
Fischer, «Die Texte», pp. 254-6.
work69 . Consequently disentangling what the compiler of the Royal

Jerome manuscript drew from the Jerome Tractatus, and what from the
Pseudo-Jerome Breviarium, is a complicated matter, not made any the
less so by the lack of a critical edition of the Pseudo-Jerome Breviarium,
and by the restricted number of manuscripts used in Morin's edition of
the Jerome Tractatus. With these caveats in mind, it can be broadly stated
that the Royal Jerome contains the text of Jerome's Tractatus, but with
interpolations usually consisting of the first sentence or so of Psalm
commentary from the Pseudo-Jerome Breviarium, which acts as a type of
Psalm titulus. These lines are often written in somewhat smaller script
than the main text, emphasising its secondary status70 . However, the use
of materi al from the Pseudo-Jerome text is not consistent, and it seems
likely that the scribe was justifiably uncertain about the relationship
between the two texts. Although this manuscript was written by the same
scribe as Royal 2.B.v, the Royal Psalter, Jerome's text is not much used
in the Royal Psalter-gloss, perhaps implying that the commentary
manuscript was produced later than the glossed psalter, or that the
commentary was meant to accompany the Psalter as a separate resource 71 .
Royal 4.A.xiv bas certain medieval provenance at Worcester, which bas
complicated discussion of the Royal Psalter' s place of origin; but it seems
less likely, especially on linguistic grounds, that the Royal Psalter and
Royal 4.A.xiv were written at Worcester and later moved to Winchester
and Canterbury, than that both manuscripts originated in Wessex and that
Royal 4.A.xiv was acquired later by Worcester, which obtained several
books and texts from Winchester in the eleventh century72 .
The manuscript as it stands bas clearly been thinned down from a
much thicker book. The first of Royal4.A.xiv's thirteen quires is labelled
xxvii on the bottom of the last verso, and this quire numbering continues
69
On surviVmg manuscripts of these works, see Lambert, B., Bibliotheca
Hieronymiana manuscripta, 6 vols. (Instrumenta patristica 4), Nijhoff, Steenbrugge 1969-
1972, II, pp. 295-306 (no. 220; Jerome, Tractatus); IIIB, pp. 314-20 (no. 427; Pseudo-
Jerome, Breviarium).
°
7
For an example see Plate 34, showing f. 36r, in volume 4 of Wamer and Gilson,
British Museum Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King's
Collections.
71
Davey, <<The Commentary of the Regius Psalter», p. 340.
72
See Gameson, R., <<Book Production and Decoration at Worcester in the Tenth and
Eleventh Centuries», inN. Brooks and C. Cubitt (eds.), St Oswald of Worcester: Life and
Influence (Studies in the Barly History of Britain), Leicester University Press, Leicester
1996, pp. l94-243,at 232,notell8and 240.
throughout the manuscript. The previous twenty-six quires presumably

contained the first part of Jerome's Tractatus. The division of the
manuscript is probably datable to the addition of the current rubric on f.
lr; this seems to be in a hand of the second half of the eleventh century or
beginning of the twelfth, with a higher probability that was written late
within that span rather thau early. Psalm CIX is a traditional Benedictine
place of Psalter division because it is the start of the Psalms sung at
Vespers 73 . The manuscript may have been divided at this point for this
reason, or the choice of a place to split the text may have been driven by
the happy correspondence of the start of a Psalm commentary with the
top of the first recto of a quire74 .
6. Oxford, Trinity College 54, Gneuss no. 692: Augustine
Oxford, Trinity College 54 contains Augustine's Enarrationes in

Psalmos, Psalms L-LXXII (roughly one sixth of the entire text). The
opening pages of this manuscript are damaged and have undergone
conservation; the last folios are also damaged, and it seems likely that the
manuscript originally continued further. It was written by severa! scribes
in an elegant late Square minuscule script, from the period when Caroline
minuscule was becoming increasingly preferred in England for writing
Latin texts. This type of script was labelled as «Phase V» by Dumville,
and dated by him to the 960s onwards75 . Very occasionally, for example
on f. 6, it is possible to see that there are drypoint rulings at the top of
minims as well as at the baseline. A new rubric was added to f. lr in the
twelfth or thirteenth century, suggesting that this manuscript, like the
Royal Jerome and Pseudo-Jerome manuscripts discussed above, was once
part of a larger manuscript which was split into more manageable
sections - though in this case probably at a later date thau the other two.
This manuscript has several oddities, and a detailed analysis and
textual collation might be able to disentangle their implications for the
manuscript' s exemplar and place of production. There are gaps le ft blank
73
Kidd, P., «Contents and Codicology>>, in J. Bepler, P. Kidd and J. Geddes (eds.),
The St Albans Psalter (Albani Psalter), Müller & Schindler, Simbach am Inn 2008, pp.
41-155, at 51-52.
74
I am grateful to Peter Kidd for painting out that this co-incidence might have been
a deliberate feature of the original manuscript, since in English Psalters Psalm CIX is
often begun on a new quire.
75
Dumville, «English Square Minuscule Script: The Mid-Century Phases>>, p. 150,
note 100.
within the writing, sometimes corresponding to omissions of words from

the received text, sometimes not; a long erasure on ff. 30r-31r, partly of
repeated material; and a short anonymous colophon at the end of Psalm
LXX. There are also sorne marks showing that the manuscript was used
for lections, for example on f. 126r. The script has severa! quite
distinctive features, including theta-shaped e, the abbreviation nrt for
noster, and an odd est abbreviation which includes a wobbly downwards
stroke. It may be possible to suggest a place of origin for this manuscript
once more study has been made of the Square minuscule script which
was being written in those places which were late to switch over to
Caroline minuscule in the second half of the tenth century.
Plate 1
Cambridge, Corpus Christi Colle ge 441, f. 4v
-.anü
htfn\'ttfonrq,nt
CDrotpt'Cùlrtr.t pdln'·(~ · t'i ''
, l'nt •ftdiU.PI
f.uf.'l'"'~c),~"' hH1r '·t4) ml,odèto u

txno1 ôdinqutbt-oln quœn:tl!b
,..,~n • pst (·t. \ftÔ
~""f~• tta"('Jntl!l~,~· f:tl''J'IJJrh:IJ;I~ l~ll:l.l'I<~&JIQ

atCàqtn~·
ubt "-"11t>: n'J ·

A..diba\'..a •rtlfd~
ÇXpt[Ol(\.lln
Plate II
Worcester, Cathedral Library, F. 173, f. Ir
GLOSSES TO THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY
IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND:
THEIR ORIGINS AND THEIR USES
Malcolm Godden
Latin glosses in late Anglo-Saxon copies of Latin school-texts such

as the works of Boethius, Prudentius, Sedulius and Arator have produced
a great deal of debate, both about their origins and their use. Were the
glosses new work by Anglo-Saxons and representative of Anglo-Saxon
scholarship, or merely copies of older, Carolingian scholarship? Were
they for scholarly readers, or for novice readers, or for students, or for
teachers 1?
Back in 1982, Michael Lapidge produced a characteristically
provocative paper arguing that such glosses were primarily derived from
ninth-century Continental commentaries, reproduced along with the text
with little addition, «the repositories of leaming which was (in sorne
cases at least) already a century old»2 . Gernot Wieland published a reply
in 1985, arguing that though many glosses were indeed derived from
earlier Continental commentaries a significant number were newly
added3 • Neither as it happened mentioned manuscripts of Boethius, but
Diane Bolton in 1977 had published a very detailed study of the Anglo-
Saxon manuscripts of the Consolation of Philosophy, in which she
reached conclusions that are hard to disentangle but seemed to hesitate
between the two positions: she thought that the glosses in English
manuscripts were ultimately based on a commentary of Remigius of
Auxerre supposedly written early in the tenth century, but showed
1
In addition to the studies cited below, see Early Medieval Glosses on Prudentius'
Psychomachia: The Weitz Tradition, ed. by S. O'Sullivan (Mittellateinische Studien und
Texte 31), Brill, Leiden and Boston 2004; Mayr-Harting, H., Church and Cosmos in Early
Ottonian Germany: The View from Cologne, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007.
2
Lapidge, M., «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, 1. The
Evidence of Latin Glosses», in N. Brooks (ed.), Latin and the Vernacular Languages in
Early Medieval Britain (Studies in the Early History of Britain), Leicester University
Press, Leicester 1982, pp. 99-140, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature, 600-899, The
Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, OH 1996, pp. 455-98 and addenda p. 516.
3
Wieland, G., «The Glossed Manuscript: Classbook or Library Book?», Anglo-
Saxon England 14 (1985), pp. 153-73. For a response see Lapidge, Anglo-Latin
Literature, 600-899, p. 516.
68 MALCOLM GODDEN
evidence of conflation with several other lost early cornrnentaries and

possibly the addition of new glosses, and although it was possible that the
whole process of conflating and supplementing glosses was a Continental
phenomenon and merely copied by Anglo-Saxon scribes, the probability
was that sorne part at least of this process took place in England4 .
The uncertainty over origins was matched by equal disagreement
over the uses of the glosses. Lapidge argued that such glos ses had nothing
to do with the activities of the Anglo-Saxon classroom, whether as the
responses of the students or as aids to the teacher, but if they had any
contemporary function at all, which he doubted, were aids for private
reading, while Wieland argued that they were records of, and aids for, the
activities and concerns of the Anglo-Saxon teacher. Specifically on
Boethius, Bolton concluded cautiously that «the glossed texts of the
Consolation of Philosophy seem to have been used in teaching» but R.I.
Page in 2001 looked again at the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of Boethius
and concluded on the basis of the vernacular glossing that «it does not
look strong evidence of elementary, or indeed advanced, schooling in this
major Boethius text in later Anglo-Saxon times» 5 .
All four scholars noted that they were drawing their conclusions on a
limited number of manuscripts and a limited sample of the text, and that
reliable conclusions would require full collations; as Bolton put it with
reference to the Boethius text, «Without an exhaustive comparison with
the Continental manuscripts it is impossible to say with any certainty
whether this process took place on the Continent and was merely copied
by Anglo-Saxon scribes or whether sorne of the resulting cornrnentaries
were indigenous» 6 . Bolton, together with Joseph Wittig, embarked on
such a process with the manuscripts of the Consolation, as preparation for
a new edition, in the late 1970s, but apparently abandoned it soon
afterwards 7 . In 2002 Dr J ayatilaka and I began anew to collate all the pre-
4
Bolton, D.K., «The Study of the Consolation of Philosophy in Anglo-Saxon
England>>, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 44 (1977), pp. 33-78.
5
Bolton, «The Study», p. 48; Page, R.I., «Recent Work on Old English Glosses: The
Case of Boethius>>, in R. Bergmann, E. Glaser and C. Moulin-Fankhanel (eds.),
Mittelalterliche volkssprachige Glossen. Internationale Fachkonferenz des Zentrums für
Mittelalterstudien der Otto-Friedrich-Universitat Bamberg, 2. bis 4. August 1999
(Germanistische Bibliothek 13), Winter, Heidelberg 2001, pp. 217-42, at 219.
6
Bolton, «The Study», p. 39.
7
Wittig has now published an article based on the analysis of the material that he
collected up to 1980 or so; see Wittig, J., <<The "Remigian" Glosses on Boethius's
Consolatio Philosophiae in Context», in C.D. Wright, F.M. Biggs and T.N. Hall (eds.),
GLOSSES TO THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY 69
1100 glos ses to the Consolation, initially as material for use in a new
edition of the Old English Boethius which I was undertaking with
Professor Susan lrvine and which was completed in 2007 and published
in 2009 8 . Since 2007 Dr Jayatilaka and 1 have continued work on the
Boethius glosses, together with Dr Rosalind Love and Dr Paolo Vaciago,
and we will be publishing the complete corpus when the project ends in
2012 9• Now that we have full collations of all the glosses in nearly all the
pre-1100 manuscripts of the Consolation of Philosophy, it is no longer
possible to evade the issue or offer tentative conclusions: we are not
going to get much more evidence than we have now, and we should be
able to confront these issues with more confidence, at least as they apply
to the study of Boethius.
Altogether we are dealing with more than eighty witnesses to
Boethian glosses from the period up to 1100. There are about seventy-
four manuscripts containing the text with glosses, thirteen of them
fragments. Then there are ten copies of what are sometimes called
commentaries but are really just collections of lemmata and glosses
without the text but almost certainly compiled from glossed copies;
sometimes they are bound up with copies of the whole glossed text,
sometimes separate. A further eleven manuscripts contain excerpts from
the text without glosses, all but one restricted to the metres, and there are
also a number of separate commentaries just on 3m9. The manuscripts
come from many different places but about a fifth of the surviving
glossed copies are from Anglo-Saxon England - thirteen copies of the
complete text and three glossed fragments 10 . Several of these are
preserved in Continental libraries, which rnight suggest that there were
many more such manuscripts in Anglo-Saxon England and that those that
remained in England had a poor survival rate in the sixteenth century.
They are generally very heavily glossed, with substantially more glosses
than we find in manuscripts from elsewhere in Europe.
Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas
D. Hill, University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2007, pp. 168-200.
8
The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius's De
Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. by M. Godden and S. Irvine, 2 vols., Oxford University
Press, Oxford 2009.
9
The initial project, 2002-2007, was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council, aud the present one, 2007-2012, by the Leverhulme Trust. 1 would like to
express my gratitude to both bodies for their generous support, without which this work
could not have been contemplated.
10
For a list of the mauuscripts cited in this paper, and their sigla, see below, p. 92.
70 MALCOLM GODDEN
The manuscripts produced in England are aU from late in the period,

from 950 to 1050 or so, many of them from Canterbury, others apparently
in use at Abingdon, but there is good evidence that the Consolation was
being studied and glossed in England earlier in the tenth century as weil:
I. Excerpts from four of the metres were copied on to the flyleaves of
an Isidore manuscript in England around the year 9I2, possibly at Christ
Church, Canterbury 11 .
2. VI, an early copy of the Consolation produced in France and
glossed there and in Cornwall, had reached Glastonbury by the 940s and
was further glossed there by Dunstan and others. And they were able to
consult at least one other copy and compare readings 12 •
3. The author of the Old English Boethius, writing at the end of the
ninth century or early in the tenth, made extensive use of at least one
glossed text of the Consolation, as weil as showing detailed knowledge of
the text and its background generally 13 .
It is clear then that glossed copies of the Consolation were available
and in use in England by at least the first half of the tenth century and that
there was intensive study of the text, even though VI is the only glossed
manuscript to survive from that period.
Nature of the glosses
As with most school-texts, the glosses are of many different kinds.

There are short glosses, often single words, that seem intended just to
explain the meaning of words or perhaps the particular sense of
multivalent words, orto show how to construe a sentence. But there are
also many longer glos ses that take issue with Boethius' s argument or
extrapolate it or offer analogies or provide the full story behind an
allusion; or simply offer an etymology or describe the figure of speech in
use. They seem, that is, both to help the understanding of the text and to
use it as a basis for accumulating knowledge of ali kinds.
11
London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.xiv. For the date and later
provenance, see Dumville, D., «English Square Minuscule Script: The Background and
Early Phases», Anglo-Saxon England 16 (1987), pp. 147-79, at 172. The account of the
contents there needs sorne revision.
12
Godden, M.R., «Alfred, Asser, and Boethius», in K. O'Brien O'Keeffe and A.
Orchard (eds.), Latin Leaming and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for
Michael Lapidge, 2 vols. (Toronto Old English Series 14), University of Toronto Press,
Toronto, Buffalo and London 2005, 1, pp. 326-48.
13
The Old English Boethius, ed. by Godden and Irvine, 1, pp. 55-58.
The origins of the glosses
What then can we say about the ongms of the glosses in these
English manuscripts? Were they new, old, or a mixture of the two? An
analysis of that question is inevitably complicated. Firstly, though there is
much agreement among the manuscripts, no two have an identical set of
glosses, and in most cases, perhaps ali, the glosses in a manuscript were
added by severa! roughly contemporary hands, using severa! different
reference systems, so we are evidently dealing with a complex
transmission history and probably multiple origins for the glosses in any
particular manuscript. Secondly, the glosses are very numerous, running
up to twelve thousand in sorne manuscripts. In analysing their origins we
can distinguish at least four strands.
Glosses in Old English
The vast majority of glosses in these manuscripts are in Latin, but

nearly ali the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts have a few in Old English,
ranging in most cases from just two to sixteen. Similar tendencies are
evident in manuscripts from other non-Romance regions: a sprinkling of
Old High German glosses is often found in Boethius manuscripts from
German-speaking regions, a few in Irish are found in one probably
twelfth-century manuscript from Ireland 14 , and there is a single Britonnic
(Cornish or Welsh) gloss in VI, which was evidently glossed in south-
western Britain 15 . Generally in these Anglo-Saxon manuscripts the
vernacular glosses are in different hands from the Latin glosses, though
not always, and there is no overlap between the manuscripts: each one
has a different set of Old English glosses and they gloss different
lemmata (with one exception). They seem, then, to be independent of
each other, though showing common tendencies. The general paucity of
Old English glosses in these manuscripts is a striking feature. lt is
especialiy noteworthy in the case of the Antwerp manuscript (A in our
list). This has just two Old English glosses and about twelve thousand
Latin glosses, whereas the companion manuscript, probably produced in
14
Ô Néill, P.P., «Irish Glosses in a Twelfth-Century Copy of Boethius's Consolatio
Philosophiae>>, Ériu 55 (2005), pp. 1-17.
15
Godden, «Alfred, Asser, and Boethius»; Sims-Williams, P., «A New Brittonic
Gloss on Boethius: ud rocashaas>>, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 50 (2005), pp. 77-
86.
72 MALCOLM GODDEN
the same scriptorium and perhaps once bound with it (Brussels,

Bibliothèque Royale 1650), has a copy of Aldhelm' s De virginitate with
more than five thousand Old English glosses 16 • It suggests that those who
studied Boethius had less need of an Old English gloss, perhaps because
they were more advanced students, or perhaps because the vocabulary of
Boethius was less challenging than that of Aldhelm.
One partial exception among Anglo-Saxon manuscripts is our
manuscript C. This seems to be from the same stable as the others,
produced around 1000, probably at Canterbury. It provides a series of
Latin glosses of the usual kind to the first two books of the Consolation
but then switches to a fairly continuous Old English gloss to the first part
of Book 3, up to prose 9. After that both Latin and Old English glosses
disappear and it just has syntactic glosses. C4 also is something of an
exception. There are just two Old English glosses in ink, neither matching
anything in other manuscripts: steordalce glossing clava at 3p 12.17 and
ing gehid (for ingehyd) glossing scientiae at 5p5 .12. But it also has about
a hundred Old English glosses in drypoint, concentrated on the last three
books 17 . These seem to have been added by more than one hand, after the
Latin glosses (though the dry-point glosses include a few in Latin
themselves). There is no agreement with the other manuscripts that have
occasional Old English glosses, and where they overlap with the
continuous gloss in C, in the first part of Book 3, there is sorne agreement
in gloss words but probably no more than would be reached by chance.
Thus at 3p8.10, in the sentence «nonne introspectis uisceribus illud
Alcibiadis superficie pulcherrimum corpus turpissimum uideretur?»
(Would not the body of Alcibiades, so handsome on the surface, seem
most vile if you could see his insides?), both manuscripts gloss superficie
16
For a description of the Brussels manuscript, see Ker, N.R., Catalogue of
Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1957, reissued with
suppl., 1990, pp. 6-7. On the relationship to A, see further Excerptiones de Prisciano: The
Source for /Elfric's Latin-Old English Grammar, ed. by D.W. Porter (Anglo-Saxon Texts
4), Brewer, Cambridge 2002, pp. 7-9.
17
They were mostly printed by H.D. Meritt in «Old English Glosses, Mostly
Drypoint», Journal of English and Germanie Philology 60 (1961), pp. 441-50, but a few
more were added by R.I. Page in <<New Work on Old English Scratched Glosses>>, in P.M.
Tilling (ed.), Studies in English Language and Early Literature in Honour of Paul
Christophersen (Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Teaching 8), New
University of Ulster, Coleraine 1981, pp. 105-14, and id., <<Recent Work on Old English
Glosses>>.
with on ansyne «in appearance» 18 . The lack of agreement generally is ali

the more surprising because of the close match in the Latin glos ses of the
two manuscripts; indeed William Hale, who edited the C glosses for a
dissertation, thought that C and C4 were the product of the same
scriptorium 19 .
Although the Old English scratched glosses in C4 seem to belong to a
distinct stage from the Latin glosses, they perhaps serve the same
function or reflect the same concerns. That is, they provide one-word
equivalents or occasionally phrases for words that are generally glossed
in other manuscripts (and sometimes in C4 too) with Latin synonyms or
near-synonyms as weil, perhaps to pin down the meaning of a polyvalent
word or to explain a rarer one. So the rather obscure word porismata at
3p10.22 is glossed with a whole string of Latin words in the various
manuscripts and also, in C4, with gesweotolung 'revelation':
porismata: meatus; sirnilitudines; questus; lucra; illationes; illurninationes;

adquisitio; forarnina; superadiectum; demonstrationes uel subtiles sententias;
geswe<oto>lung.
At the other extreme the very simple word ire 'to go' at 4m6.38 is
glossed with Old English faran in C4 but it is also glossed with an
assortment of Latin words and phrases in other manuscripts, suggesting
that readers and commentators found a need for sorne elucidation and
disambiguation here:
ire: pergere; ut eant; ad eundem; cursu suo; ad deum;faran.
And sometimes the gloss may really be clarifying the case and syntax
rather than the sense of the word, as in this instance at 4p5.3 where the
glosses in the different manuscripts are both pointing to the genitive case
of the lemma:
sapientiae: cuius rei; wisdomes.
18
Text of the Consolation is quoted from Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii
Philosophiae consolatio, ed. by L. Bieler (CCSL 94), Brepols, Turnhout 1957; revised
edn. 1984; translations are my own.
19
Hale, W.C., An Edition and Codicological Study of Cambridge, Corpus Christi
College MS 214, unpubl. PhD. diss., University of Pennsylvania 1978.
74 MALCOLM GODDEN
The Old English glosses in C4 are more common on prose than on

verse, even though the verse is generally more difficult to construe. So
there is much Old English glossing in C4 on 3p9 and 3p10 but nothing on
the notoriously challenging 3m9 that cornes between them. Whether that
means that the commentators who used the vernacular did not attempt to
read 3m9, or that its problems were of a different kind, is a moot point.
But generally these vernacular glosses seem to represent the activities of
readers engaging closely with the text and responding to it, rather than the
work of scribes copying glosses from one manuscript to another20 . If the
Old English glosses in C4 are indeed in more than one band, and if the
manuscript was indeed in use at Abingdon like A, or indeed at
Canterbury like C, it is ali the more intriguing that similar scratched
glosses do not occur in these other manuscripts 21 .
Latin glosses
The story with the Latin glosses is quite different. To make the
discussion manageable, I will focus on one manuscript, but it is fairly
representative and I will be drawing comparisons and parallels with the
others as I go along. The manuscript is one of the best known, C4 in our
list. It was produced and glossed around the year 1000 and early additions
on the flyleaves suggest a connection with Abingdon22 but the affiliations
with other manuscripts suggest it may have been written and glossed at
Canterbury before moving to Abingdon. The text was written with ample
space between the lines and in the margins for glosses, and the glosses
were added in severa! bands generally sirnilar to that of the text, with the
marginal glosses linked to the text by severa! different systems. Further
glosses were added early in the twelfth century but those are ignored
here.
C4 has about ten thousand Latin glosses of the eleventh century,
written in a variety of bands from roughly the same date as the text. Very
few of these glosses are unique to this manuscript: they mostly appear in
other manuscripts, especially English manuscripts. This might suggest
20
It is of course possible that scratched glosses were more difficult to read and so
ignored by copyists, but that would not explain the inked glosses in Old English, which
seem not to have been copied either.
21
One scratched gloss has been observed in the closely related Ge but that is in Latin
(see Sotheby's catalogue, Western Manuscripts and Miniatures: London, Tuesday 5 July
2005, Sotheby's, London 2005, Lot 80).
22
Ker, Catalogue, p. 38.
that they were ali copies rather than original glosses, but we need caution
here, since there is a fair amount of evidence, none of it certain, that
glosses were sometimes copied from C4 into other contemporary
manuscripts, such as A and Ge, and of course possibly vice versa. So, for
instance, in the gloss to 3p 1.3 reading «Ut attentus raperes uerba mea»,
shared by several English manuscripts, Ge has mistakenly rapes for
raperes and tent for attentus, and in C4 the abbreviation mark for the -er-
is obscured and that for -us is easily overlooked, which suggests it might
have been the source for Ge's gloss. Generally there appears to have been
much collation and conflation amongst these English manuscripts, and
sorne of the glosses may have been unique when they were entered in C4,
though there is no regular pattern that might point to one manuscript
being wholly dependent for its glosses on another. Moreover, the variety
of hands and the use of different reference systems for linking the
marginal glosses to the text in C4 suggest several different sources for
those that were copied from other manuscripts. So on f. 41 v of C4, to take
a fairly random example, there are ten substantial glosses to 3p4 entered
in the margins. Pive of them are marked with the Greek letters a, ~' 8, c
and cp to key them to the text. The same glosses appear in other English
manuscripts, such as Ge, but marked with the Roman letters S, T, U, X,
Y. Interspersed with these in C4 are others using different reference
symbols. Two of these are found in a more limited group of English
manuscripts, just A and P9. Another is found only in C4. Then there are
two in the right margin marked with Aliter. They also occur in MS A,
twice on the same page (45v), once in the left margin marked with cp and
x, and again at the foot in a different hand, marked with Aliter, and
looking as if they may have been copied from C4 (both manuscripts
appear to have been at Abingdon early in the eleventh century).
Trying to capture this bewildering variety of connections in any kind
of stemma or summary is difficult enough, but often one finds a quite
different picture in the next book or even the next prose or metre.
Glossing in Boethius manuscripts was patchy, in terms of the degree of
glossing in different sections but also in terms of the work of individual
contributors. Dunstan started his glossing at Glastonbury in V1 at or near
the beginning, but largely gave up by the end of Book 1 and glossed only
sporadically thereafter. The glossators who supplied the Old English
glosses in C4 focused on Books 3-5, and particular bits in that, while the
Old English glossators in C just did Book 3. That kind of selective focus
when copying Latin glosses, especially when the difference of hands is
lost in subsequent copies, could produce quite different pictures of
76 MALCOLM GODDEN
transmission histories for different parts of the work. The

interconnections of manuscripts, reflected in the use of different sources
and systems, are so complicated, and so variable from one section to the
next, that any attempt to draw up a precise analysis produces something
that is impossibly complex23 •
If we ignore for now these different affiliations among the English
manuscripts and focus instead on the larger question of the relations of
their glosses to non-English manuscripts, we can distinguish three main
strands among the Latin glosses in C4, in addition to the Old English
strand:
1. E-type. These are glosses in C4 that also occur widely among

English manuscripts but do not occur at all in other manuscripts. They are
very variable in number: in sorne parts of the text, especially from Book 3
onwards, they amount to about 40 per cent of all the Latin glosses in C4
(for instance, in 3pl sorne thirty-five glosses are of this type, out of a
total of eighty-six in C4), but under 20 per cent in other parts, especially
in the early books. A typical example is this commentary gloss (from
3p1.2), occurring in eight of the English manuscripts but none of the fifty
or so non-English complete manuscripts:
Philosophia solamen et iuuamen est lassorum quoniam quibus inseritur non sinit
tristari pro temporalibus si uere quilibet sapiens est si caduca amiserit ad caelestia
spem erigit ridens iras aeris A C2 C4 Es Ge P P6 P9.
(Philosophy is the consolation and support of the tired, because it does not permit
those in whom it is implanted to be grieved because of temporal things; if such a man
is truly wise, if he has lost transient things he lifts his hope to heavenly things while
laughing at the anger of the sky).
2. V -type. A further small but significant strand are glos ses that are
found widely in English manuscripts and also in Vl but not elsewhere.
These include glosses that were entered in Vl in the second half of the
ninth century, before it left France, and glosses that were entered in an
Insular hand at the end of the ninth century, in Cornwall or Wales, and
glosses that were entered in a hybrid hand at Glastonbury in the 940s. Vl
23
One might cite, for instance, the analyses by Diane Bolton («The Study>>) and
Joseph Wittig («The "Remigian" Glosses>>), which are both very complex but even so
based on just a few samples of text.
then remained in England until near the end of the Middle Ages. So it
seems very probable that the English manuscripts got these glosses
directly or indirectly from Vl itself. These amount to about 5 percent of
the glosses in C4 (though it should be noted that much of the glossing in
Vl is badly faded or scraped and difficult to read). A representative
example is the following:
imago ista pro falsitate intellegitur quia sicut imaginibus non cernitur plenus homo.
sic nec in falsitate ueritas A C4 P9 VI.
(That image is understood as falseness because just as the complete man is not
perceived in images, so truth is not perceived in falseness).
3. C-type. The remainder are glosses that are found widely in English
manuscripts but also occur in Continental ones. There is no particular
pattern or grouping among those Continental manuscripts that share a
gloss with English ones; sometimes it is just a single one of them, but
generally it involves quite a few manuscripts. These glosses amount to
about 60 per cent of the total in C4. One might cite as an example this
gloss on 3p2.2, occurring in four English manuscripts but also in ten
Continental manuscripts:
mortalium cura: curae mortalium multae sunt. sed unusquisque suum officium ideo
exercet. ut per illud quod agit pertingat ad summum bonum. et in hoc omnium
intentio consumatur. sed quia inrationabiliter illud querunt. minime comprehendere
ualent. quia propter captandam solam beatitudinem omnem agunt homines. licet non
semper recte studio A C2 C4 P9; An Le L4 Ma P5 P7 P8 P16 T V2.
(the anxiety of mortals: there are many anxieties of mortal men but everyone
exercises his own office in order that he may attain the supreme good through that
which he does, and in this the intention of ali men is consumed; but because they
seek it irrationally, they are not able to attain it, because men act in order to attain the
sole blessedness, although not always by the right path).
One might imagine that these three strands - glosses with a solely
English circulation, glosses derived from Vl and glosses with a
Continental presence - reflect three different sources used by the scribes
or glossators of C4, but the different strands do not match up with
different hands in C4 and the same mix of strands also appears in other
English manuscripts, as the examples indicate. It is not, then, a question
of the three sources feeding directly into C4 but rather of the English
manuscripts generally drawing selectively on a collection or corpus of
78 MALCOLM GODDEN
glosses which already combined these three strands - a corpus which

might have come into being in a single manuscript or in two or more
available at the same place, and which might have been used by the
extant manuscripts directly or at sorne remove.
Is it possible to locate and date this collection on which the English
manuscripts draw? lt was evidently in existence by about the 970s, since
glosses derived from it already appear in 0, whose glosses were entered
from about the middle of the second half of the tenth century. But the V-
type glosses in the collection, derived from Vl, cannot have been
incorporated into the collection much before that date, since they include
glosses entered by Dunstan in Vl, apparently in the 940s, and possibly
even later glos ses in that manuscript. These V-type glos ses were added to
the main collection roughly around the middle of the tenth century. But
the other two strands (E-type and C-type) can be traced further back in
England, since both were available, at least in part, to the author of the
Old English Boethius, who evidently made considerable use of the
glosses that he found in his copy (or copies) of the Consolation. Nearly
all the glosses that he can be shown to have used occur in the later
English manuscripts, such as C4, as in this example:
Gif se an weald ponne of his agenre gecynde and his agenes gewealdes god w~re ne
underfenge he n~fre pa yfelan ac pa godan 24 .
This corresponds very closely to a gloss on the relevant sentence in

Boethius 2p6.14:
si per se esset bona saecularis dignitas numquam malos reciperet sed bonos. ldeo
recipit malos quia per se non bona est ideo si dignitas natura bona fuisset tune boni
soli habuissent A C4 Ge P9.
(If secular office was good in itself it would never accept the wicked but only the
good; it accepts the wicked because it is not good in itself; and so if office was good
by nature then the good alone would have had it).
Many of the most telling cases of glosses used by the Old English
author occur only in English manuscripts, as in this example; that is, they
are E-type glosses. Sorne though appear in Continental manuscripts as
well (= C-type) and a very few appear only in Continental manuscripts.
But although there are a few interesting parallels with glosses found in
24
The Old English Boethius, ed. by Godden and lrvine, 1, B 16.100-102.
GLOS SES TO THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY 79
Vl there are no really telling examples of the translator's use of glosses

of the V-type, derived from Vl. That of course is what we would expect,
given the late date at which V 1's glos ses would have fed into the
mainstream English tradition.
The traditional date for the Old English Boethius has been the 890s
because of the supposed authorship of King Alfred. His authorship is
unlikely, however, and there is no reliable evidence that it was produced
in his reign, or indeed in his lifetime or earlier25 . The latest possible date
of composition is that of the earliest manuscript of the Old English
Boethius, c. 950, though the degree oftransrnission and adaptation by that
stage would make it a bit earlier. Ali we can say at this stage is that at
sorne time before 950 the author of the Old English Boethius was using a
collection of E-type and C-type glosses, a collection that fed into the
main English tradition of glos ses recorded in manuscripts of the late tenth
century, and that the Vl glosses were added later. A likely scenario,
given the early evidence of Canterbury interest in Boethius, is that
Dunstan brought Vl or a copy of it from Glastonbury to Canterbury
around 950 and found there an already substantial collection of glosses to
which those in Vl were added. But there are no doubt other possible
explanations.
If this is the story of the earlier history of the Boethius glosses in
tenth-century England, can we say more about their ultimate origins -
where and when they originated?
This is much more difficult, since it is very rare to be able to catch a
commentator in the act of composing an original gloss, with the
interesting exception of the drypoint vernacular glosses in C4. Ali our
evidence and analyses so far suggest that the Boethius glosses in early
medieval manuscripts originated in many places over the ninth and tenth
centuries and were the work of many commentators, accumulating by
copying and conflation and new glossing as manuscripts (and perhaps
commentators) moved around Europe. But we can make sorne useful
distinctions.
The V -type glosses came into the English tradition from Vl itself, in
which they accumulated in the course of a century in France, Cornwall
and England. Sorne of them, of ali three types, probably did not originate
in Vl but were copied from elsewhere, since they appear in other,
Continental manuscripts that are unlikely to have got them from Vl. It is
25
See ibid., I, pp. 140-51.
80 MALCOLM GODDEN
clear in any case that the glossators of Vl were consulting other copies of
the Latin text, for bath the main Cornish commentator, operating
probably in the late ninth century, and Dunstan, working in the 930s or
940s, refer to variant readings of Boethius's text which they say occur in
other copies, and it seems likely enough that as weil as comparing textual
readings they compared and borrowed glosses. But much of the glossing
in Vl is found only in that manuscript or the English manuscripts derived
from it, so it seems likely that the Insular glossators of Vl, in Cornwall
and England, were originating a fair amount of new material, in the late
ninth and early tenth centuries respectively.
As for the C-type glosses, which are found in Continental
manuscripts as weil as the English manuscripts of the later tenth century,
it would seem natural to suppose that they originated on the Continent
and came to England in the late ninth century and the tenth, and thence
fed into the English tradition, given ali we know, or think we know, about
the transmission of scholarship in the period. If that is so, the question
naturally arises whether they originated in the much-discussed
commentary which was supposedly produced by Remigius of Auxerre in
the first decade of the tenth century. W ere they indeed conceived and
composed by Remigius? That was Diane Bolton's view, reflected in her
description of the English manuscripts as representing a «revised
Remigius», an expression which has become standard in subsequent
references to the Boethian manuscripts in England. W e can however
dismiss that idea, for various reasons.
In the first place, the commentary by Remigius is entirely
hypothetical. It does not survive in any manuscript, and its existence has
simply been posited as the ultimate source for sorne of the glosses found
in profusion over a wide range of manuscripts from many regions. The
attribution of this presumed commentary to Remigius arase from an
ascription to him at the beginning of the accessus material in just one
manuscript out of the eighty-five or so early manuscripts, and a relatively
late one at that, from Trier26 , and the ascription of a further comment in
3p12 in the same manuscript. Joseph Wittig has recently challenged that
evidence, concluding that ~~Trier' s attribution is, I think, too oddly placed
and too solitary to carry very much weight» 27 • As it turns out, the
attribution is not quite as solitary as it had long seemed. In 5m4 the
opening reference to the ancient philosophers prompts a very long glass
26
Trier, Stadtbibliothek 1093.
27
Wittig, «The "Remigian" Glosses», p. 172.
GLOS SES TO THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY 81
which includes a reference to the peripatetics and the meaning of their

name:
peripathetici inde uocati sunt .1. deambulantes seu ut Hieronimo placet

circumcalcantes.
(for that reason they are called Peripatetici, i.e. walking around, or as Jerome prefers,
treading around).
The gloss occurs in at least seventeen early manuscripts, and in just

one of them we find Remigio instead of Hieronimo. The manuscript in
question is Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 5956,
written around 1000, and of unknown provenance; the gloss is in an
eleventh-century hand. The gloss deambulantes for peripatetici is found
in Isidore 28 , and repeated in the commentary on Martianus attributed to
John the Scot29 , but I have not found the gloss circumcalcantes in either
Jerome or Remigius or anywhere else. The attribution to Remigius here is
hard to explain, and is perhaps a casual misreading, but it does suggest
that in the eleventh century Remigius was an authority who might be
cited in support of an etymology or an occasional commene0 . But the
ascription here is only for a single gloss out of many thousands in the
same manuscript, and has no authority in the light of the testimony of the
other sixteen manuscripts which attribute the etymology to Jerome. There
is no other evidence that Remigius wrote a commentary on Boethius and
nothing in our analysis of the glosses suggests that a full and coherent
commentary by any individual played a significant part in the
development of the glossing tradition.
Secondly, given Courcelle's late dating of Remigius's commentary,
after 900, if it existed it would have had to proliferate very quickly to
have influenced the Old English Boethius even if the latter is not
Alfredian (hence perhaps Bolton's speculation that Remigius was
working from the lecture notes of Hericus and that those reached England
independently of Remigius).
28
Etym. VIII.vi.13: lsidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri
XX, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical Texts), Clarendon Press, Oxford
1911.
29
Iohannis Scotti Annotationes in Marcianum, ed. by C.E. Lutz, The Mediaeval
Academy of America, Cambridge, MA 1939, p. 178.
30
A possible source is a gloss on another text, since Remigius's name also became
associated with glosses on Martianus, Persius and Prudentius.
82 MALCOLM GODDEN
Thirdly, although the supposed commentary of Remigius does not

survive, varions manuscripts have over the last century or so been picked
on as the major witness to it. Stewart and Silk chose a Berlin manuscript,
Courcelle chose a Paris manu script, our P7, Otten used the Trier
manuscript cited above 31 . But none ofthese actually includes a significant
proportion of the C-type glosses found in the English manuscripts. For
instance, only a small fraction of the C-type glosses in C4, perhaps 15 per
cent, appear in P7, the manuscript which Courcelle identified as the best
witness to the commentary of Remigius. In other words, if the
commentary of Remigius is represented by the glos ses in P7, as Courcelle
and Bolton suggested, then the notion that C4 represents a «revised
Remigius» is quite incomprehensible: if we consider ali the Latin glosses
in C4, P7 witnesses barely 10 per cent of the total.
Setting aside Remigius and his comrnentary, there is evidence even
so that sorne of the C-type glosses in the English manuscripts do indeed
have Continental origins. Probably our earliest datable glosses to the
Consolation appear in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut.
XIV.l5, an early ninth-century copy used by Lupus of Ferrières and quite
possibly glossed by him. It has only a few glosses Gust twenty-seven in
the whole manuscript) but they do appear to be early and sorne of those
do appear in later manuscripts, including the English ones. It is plausible
to believe that they originated in France in the middle of the nin th century
and found their way to England in the course of the ninth or tenth
centuries. Whether the same is true for ali these C-type glosses in C4, that
is that they ali have Continental origins, is unclear: it is a reasonable
hypothesis but it is possible that sorne originated in England and went the
other way, given the generally late date of the glosses in Continental
manuscripts. That is especially likely for the glosses which occur in a
wide range of English manuscripts and only in a single Continental one.
31
Stewart, H.F., <<A Commentary by Remigius Autissiodorensis on the De
Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius», Journal of Theological Studies 17 (1916), pp.
22-42, focusing on what was then Berlin. Staatsbibliothek der Stiftung Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, lat. 4°, 939, and previously Maihingen, Bibliotheca Wallersteiniana, I, 2, lat.
4°, 3, but is now Krakow, Biblioteka Jagiellonska, Berol. lat. 4°, 939, ff. 60-112; Saeculi
Noni Auctoris in Boetii Consolationem Philosophiae Commentarius, ed. by E.T. Silk,
American Academy in Rome, Rome 1935, citing the same manuscript; Courcelle, P., La
Consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire. Antécédents et postérité de Boèce,
Études augustiniennes, Paris 1967, identifying Remigius especially with the glosses in
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 15090 (P7); and Otten, K., Konig Alfreds
Boethius (Studien zur englischen Philologie. Neue Folge 3), Niemeyer, Tübingen 1964.
The key question is with the E-type glosses, found only in English
manuscripts and amounting to perhaps a third of all the Latin glosses in
C4, several thousands in total. As we have seen, the evidence of the Old
English Boethius suggests that a significant proportion of them were in
circulation in England by the earl y decades of the tenth century. Are they
then of English origin, and therefore reflective of Anglo-Saxon
scholarship, or are they derived from sorne Continental tradition which
just fails to show up in any Continental manuscripts, or perhaps from an
Insular but non-English source? I have found just a single hint of English
origin in one gloss. In 2p7, in the course of her argument that fame is
meaningless, Philosophia points out that fame is limited because practices
which are thought good and praiseworthy in one country are often
thought bad and disreputable in others. The glossators generally give
examples of strange cultural practices among the Scythians and the Jews
but the English manuscripts also have an example from Britain, glossing
2p7.10:
ut sunt Scotti et habitatores Brittaniae in distantia uestimentorum.
(such as the Scotti and the inhabitants of Brittania in their difference of clothing).
It is not entirely dear how to translate these geographical and ethnie

terms. If Brittania means Britain induding England then it is perhaps the
view of a Continental; but if as I think the gloss means «such as the Irish
and the inhabitants of W ales in difference of dothing» then it looks like
an English observation, commenting on the very strange dothing worn by
Irish and Welsh. But nothing else identifies the source of these glosses as
either Insular or not.
The case against an English origin for these glosses is the
circumstantial argument that scholarship in England was generally at a
low ebb from the middle of the ninth century to around the middle of the
tenth, which indudes the period when their presence can first be
identified in England. That argument in turn takes its origin largely from
King Alfred's daim, in the 890s, that learning and the knowledge of
Latin had largely disappeared by the time of his accession in 871, and
that the books had soon afterwards been destroyed in Viking raids,
followed by ~lfric's very similar daim, around 995, that learning had so
dedined «a few years ago» that no English deric could compose or
understand a Latin letter until Dunstan and ~thelwold restored learning
84 MALCOLM GODDEN
again in the monasteries, meaning presumably around 960 32 . LElfric was

clearly recasting Alfred's preface and just substituting a different set of
names and a different time-frame, and both have the appearance of
rhetorical tropes. The roll-call of English texts composed in the century in
question give the lie to these claims of England as a scholarly wasteland:
the Old English Martyrology drawing on an enormous range of
hagiographical and other books; the Old English prose psalm adaptation,
using sorne rare and distinctly heterodox sources of interpretation; the
Old English Orosius, using a remarkable range of sources on geography
and classical history; the Old English Soliloquies translating a text
unrecorded in England until much later, and using a range of other
sources, sorne quite rare; and of course the Old English Boethius itself,
showing a remarkable familiarity with classical legend and history and
natural science. To those might be added the Salomon and Saturn
dialogues which Anlezark has shown to derive from a leamed Latinate
circle active in the early decades of the tenth century33 . And Philip
Rusche has demonstrated that the work of Aldhelm was being copied,
studied and glossed in the decades before and after 900, and that the
4
glosses in tum were used in the Old English Martyrolog/ . The Old
English Boethius in particular is testimony that the glosses could well
have been generated in England by Anglo-Saxon scholars: its author was
evidently able to draw on a body of knowledge and range of sources, in
science, classical history and legend, very similar to that used for the
glosses, in order to supplement what they provided. And the case for the
English origin of these glosses is their failure to appear in non-English
manuscripts, given the sheer number of glossed manuscripts that survive.
But this is not to say that the E-type glosses in C4 and contemporary
manuscripts all go back to the Alfredian period or soon after. We should
probably think of the body of glosses that was available in the early tenth
century as the core of the collection seen in C4 and other English
32
King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, ed. by H. Sweet
(EETS os 45, 50), Oxford University Press, London 1871-1872; repr. 1988, pp. 3-9;
Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar. Text und Varianten, ed. by J. Zupitza (Sammlung
englischer Denkmaler in kritischen Ausgaben 1), Weidmann, Berlin 1880; repr. with a
preface by H. Gneuss, Berlin 1966; 2nd repr. with new introd. by H. Gneuss, Olms,
Hildesheim 2001, p. 3.
33
The Old English Dialogues of Salomon and Saturn, ed. and trans. by D. An1ezark
(Anglo-Saxon Texts 7), Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 2009.
34
Rusche, Ph.G., <<Isidore's Etymologiae and the Canterbury Aldhelm Scholia>>,
Journal of English and Germanie Philology 104 (2005), pp. 437-55.
manuscripts, not the whole of it. That is, the C4 glosses are not simply a
late copy of what was available to the author of the Old English Boethius
a century earlier, but that collection had been steadily supplemented by
new glosses through the century. It is hard to prove this, but it is
suggested by the evidence of Dunstan in the 940s adding glosses that are
not recorded elsewhere. One might note too the evidence of C3, the
Cambridge Songs manuscript. Most of the English manuscripts cluster
around the year 1000 and Canterbury, and seem to have influenced each
other a great deal. But C3 was produced and glossed a half-century later
and one might expect it to have acquired more glosses in that period if
they were still being created in England. Diane Bolton said of this
manuscript: «The glosses are too sparse and fragmentary to be identified
with one of the main types. There is one recognisable K gloss [meaning a
gloss related to those in C4]»35 . It is not clear what she meant by that,
since there are in fact about five thousand glosses in C3. Many of those
are found in C4 and related manuscripts and one can see it as a selection
from that earlier corpus. But there are also quite a lot of new glosses in
C3, unique to that manuscript. New glossing was then continuing through
the eleventh century, as it no doubt had through the tenth.
One final point needs to be made on the origins and dissemination of
these glosses before we tum to the question of users. Our familiar
narratives about late Anglo-Saxon scholarship and education tell us that
everything came from France and the Low Countries, in the late ninth
century, and in the monastic reform period, and again with Flemish
scholars in the eleventh century. The glosses to Boethius have similarly
been generally seen as largely derived from France. But if one consults
Dumville's article on manuscripts that were stolen from England after
1066 and given to Continentallibraries, one thing that stands out among
the many bibles and liturgical books is the presence of three copies of the
Consolation with glosses - P, P6 and P9 in our list, all removed from
England to France in or after the eleventh centur/6 . Other school-texts
scarcely appear in this list: there is one copy of Prudentius, possibly two,
but none of Arator or Aldhelm. And Dumville's post-Conquest date may
be too late: Gameson has demonstrated that P had moved to St-Vaast in
Arras before the Norman Conquest because it influenced the initiais of
35
Bolton, «The Study>>, p. 55.
36
Dumville, D., <<Anglo-Saxon Books: Treasure in Norman Hands>>, Anglo-Norman
Studies 16 (1993), pp. 83-99.
86 MALCOLM GODDEN
the Bible of St-Vaast, produced in 106037 . Anglo-Saxon copies of the

Consolation with glosses were evidently valuable acquisitions on the
Continent in the eleventh century, and that may have been true earlier as
weiL Glosses that appear in both English and Continental manuscripts
may themselves have been of English origin.
To sum up on the origins of the glosses, there seems to have been a
vigorous tradition of studying and glossing the Consolation in Britain
from the end of the ninth century and in England itself from at least the
early decades of the tenth century, and it continued through the tenth and
eleventh centuries. That included a fair amount of collation and
conflation, it is true, but very probably a substantial element of new
glossing as well. A significant proportion of the Latin glosses to Boethius
found in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts are witnessed only in Insular
manuscripts, and are in the main probably of Insular origin. There is
certainly a significant strand also of glosses that had a Continental
circulation, but most of those are not recorded in Continental manuscripts
before the tenth century, and even sorne of those glosses may have
originated in England.
A probable example of a Continental Boethius manuscript containing
glosses derived from Anglo-Saxon England is Valenciennes, Bibliothèque
Municipale 298. It was written and glossed in France, s. xi, but many of
its glosses are otherwise found only in English manuscripts and VI. The
clinching evidence is the mysterious «fossa dio» glossing valla (fortifying
wall or ditch) at lp5.5. Given the pair <1ossa die» in the Latin-Old
English glossary of JElfric 38 , diois best explained as a miscopying of OE
die 'ditch' by a non-English-speaking scribe.
The users of the glosses
Though much of the evidence for the use of Latin glosses to early
medieval school-texts is inevitably circumstantial, in the case of the
glosses to Boethius we are in the fortunate position of being able to
identify four known tenth-century scholars who used them.
37
Gameson, R., <<La Bible de Saint-Vaast d'Arras et un manuscrit anglo-saxon de
Boece», Scriptorium 52 (1996), pp. 316-21.
38
Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar, ed. by Zupitza, p. 318,13.
1) B yrhtferth of Ramsey
Byrhtferth was an obsessive quoter of the Consolation in his own

works: Michael Lapidge counted twenty-one examples in his study of
199839 . Most of the quotations are from the metres, but a few are from the
prose: he twice quotes 1p4.5 on Plato's notion of the desirability of
philosopher-kings 40 • The quotations are often connected to his own text in
rather inventive ways. So, when reporting in his Chronicle the outbreak
of peace between the Mercians and Northumbrians he quotes 3m1, lines
7-10 on the departure of night and the arrivai of rosy dawn41 . Again, he
daims, rather imaginatively, that whenever King Alfred's subjects and
nobles made him depressed and frustrated by their failure to share his
enthusiasms, the king would recall the verses on the wise man building a
house on a rock, citing the opening and closing lines of 2m442 . But
Byrhtferth never attributes the quotations to Boethius by name, referring
to him if at ail as scholasticus, a learned man, or just quidam, a certain
person. He perhaps expected his more learned readers to spot the author.
Lapidge pointed out that three of Byrhtferth's citations showed use of the
Latin glosses found in contemporary manuscripts of the Consolation, and
he added at least one more in his recent edition of the Vita S. Oswaldi43 .
There are sorne more uses of the glosses in the Vita that have not so far
been noted, and sorne evidence of their influence on Byrhtferth's
vocabulary. So, for example, in Book 5 he quotes a line of Greek and
gives the Latin translation. The Greek verse is the beginning of 3p6, as
Lapidge notes, and the Latin translation agrees verbatim with a common
gloss on it:
o gloria gloria milibus mortalium - nihil aliud facta quam aurium inflatio magna
(Byrhtferth, Vita Oswaldi, v.l5)
0 gloria gloria milibus mortalium nihil aliud facta quam aurium inflatio magna
(Glass to Boethius 3p6.1)
39
Lapidge, L., «Byrhtferth at Work>>, in P. Baker and N. Howe (eds.), Words and
Works: Studies in Medieval Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson,
University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1998, pp. 25-73.
40
Byrhtferth's Northumbrian Chronicle: An Edition and Translation of the Old
English and Latin Annals, ed. and trans. by C.R. Hart, Mellen, Lewiston, NY 2006, pp.
166 and 210 (anna1s 800 and 871).
41
Ibid., p. 168 (annal 801).
42
Ibid., p. 230 (annal 887).
43
Byrhtferth of Ramsey: The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. and trans. by M.
Lapidge (Oxford Medieval Texts), Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009.
88 MALCOLM GODDEN
Again, Lapidge notes that the word infortunium is unrecorded before

Byrhtferth and questions whether he may have coined it44 ; but it occurs
several times in glosses to Boethius, which were probably his source.
Byrhtferth clearly knew the text and its glosses very well.
2) Ratherius of Verona
Ratherius of Verona, also known as Rather and Rathier of Liège, is a

similar case from somewhat earlier in the tenth century, and on the
Continent. He apparent! y wrote his long, rambling text the Praeloquia, on
the iniquities of contemporary society, mainly in prison in Pavia in the
930s, but finished it in the 950s, when he was at Cologne and then briefly
bishop of Liège. He too was an obsessive quoter of Boethius, and of
many other writers from the past. Like Byrhtferth he never identifies
Boethius by name. He liked to show off by quoting and naming older
authors, but his quotations from them are often lifted from Boethius and
other later writers. A nice example is the passage citing the Fables of
Avianus:
Ut enim potens esse possis, non in te sed in seruientium manibus situm ueracissime
noueris; unde et quos terres, ipse plus metuis. Metiri autem sese quemque decet, ut
Auianus dicit, propriisque iuuari Jaudibus nec alterius bona ferre, id est computare
sibi 45 .
(For you know perfectly weil that to be able to be powerful rests not in you but in the
hands ofthose who serve you; hence those whom you terrify, terrify you more. But it
is proper for everyone to measure himself, as Avianus says, and be pleased with his
own praise and not take the goods of another, that is, attribute it to himself).
The first sentence is taken from the Consolation 3p5.8, just slightly
rearranged:
potentem censes qui satellite latus ambit, qui quos terret ipse plus metuit, qui ut
potens esse uideatur in seruientium manu situm est?
The next sentence is a quotation from the Fables of A vianus, the

opening lines of Fable 5, on the donkey wearing a lion's skin, but it is
actually taken from a gloss on Boethius:
44
Ibid., p. 21.
45
Ratherii Veronensis Praeloquiorurn libri VI, ed. by P.L.D. Reid (CCCM 46A),
Brepols, Turnhout 1984, IV, par. 29, !ines 1162-5.
Unde Auienus 46 : metiri se quemque decet propriisque iuuari laudabis, nec alterius
bona ferre sibi.
This appears as a marginal gloss to 3p6 in at least ten manuscripts, but

it also appears in one as a gloss to 3p5.11, close to the sentence of
Boethius used by Ratherius. It is perhaps there by mistake, since it does
not relate to the text at that point, on the faU of Seneca, and scribes often
put glosses in the wrong place. But it does fit quite well at this point in
Ratherius's text, following the barbed point taken from Boethius 3p5.8
about a king's power depending on his supporters: it implies that a king
should not measure himself by the size of his entourage. The manuscript
in question is significant. It is London, British Library, Harley 3095,
suspected to be from Cologne, written and glossed in the first half of the
tenth century. Ratherius was there when he was finishing the Praeloquia,
about the time when Bruno of Cologne was trying to establish him as
bishop of Liège. So it seems almost certain that Ratherius got his citation
of A vian us from a glossed copy of the Consolation, and very probably
one related to this manuscript. So in making his point about the
vulnerability of power, he steals a neat but unascribed formulation from
Boethius but adds the quo tati on from Avian us, including the ascription,
which a glossator bas added to his copy of Boethius.
The other two tenth-century scholars who used Boethian glosses are
Anglo-Saxons whom we have met already in this paper.
3) Dunstan
It is not possible to show that Dunstan used Boethius glosses in his

own work, not least because very little of his own work is known, but we
can see him in V 1 comparing different copies of the Consolation and
copying glosses from one to the other, and probably adding sorne of his
own.
4) The Old English Boethius
Though still nameless, the author of the Old English version of

Boethius is more productive for our purposes. He used at least one
glossed copy of the Consolation, and incorporated a substantial number
46
So in two manuscripts; others spell the name Auienus, Auientius, Auigerius.
90 MALCOLM GODDEN
of the glosses invisibly in his own vernacular version. Often those glosses
themselves became triggers for free expansion and development within
the Old English text. So, for instance, when Boethius mentions in passing
the rebellion of the giants against Jupiter, the glossators cite the parallel
story of the Tower of Babel, as a Biblical account of giants rebelling
against God. The Old English version does likewise but at much greater
length and adds additional material apparently drawn from Biblical
commentarl7 .
What can we learn from these four brief case-studies? These four
were all established scholars when they worked with and used the
Boethius glosses, not students struggling to understand the text.
Byrhtferth was certainly a teacher, and Ratherius apparently had served
as one at sorne point in his life, but not when he was writing the
Praeloquia, and Dunstan was perhaps a teacher of sorts when he was
abbot of Glastonbury, since St LEthelwold is said to have studied under
him there. For all we know the author of the Old English Boethius may
have been a teacher too. So all four may have come to know Boethius and
the glosses well through their own studies or through their own teaching
activities. But their actual use of Boethius glosses is not as far as we can
tell associated with school-teaching activities: only one of Byrhtferth's
quotations of a Boethian text or gloss is in his main classroom text, the
Enchiridion, the others are in his historical and hagiographical writings,
and they do not function there as an explanation of Boethius, quite the
reverse. Generally, these scholars used Boethius and the glosses in
pursuit of their own scholarly interests, in writing or study or adaptation.
The glosses were for them an extension of the Boethian argument and
stories, a source of additional material not just an explanation of what
Boethius meant.
This does not prove that glossed copies of Boethius were not also
used in Anglo-Saxon England in the classroom or for beginners' study of
the text. A close association with the classroom is perhaps suggested by
one of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, the one preserved at Antwerp (MS
A). This is closely related to, and perhaps once bound with, two other
manuscripts with a clear educational function: a copy of Aldhelm' s De
virginitate heavily glossed in Old English and a copy of a grammatical
work, the Excerptiones de Prisciano, supplemented with Latin-Old
English glossaries and other useful material in the margins, though as
47
See The Old English Boethius, ed. by Godden and Irvine, I, B 35.126-40, and for
commentary II, pp. 407-11.
noted above, the fact that there are only two Old English glosses in the
Boethius text in contrast to the Aldhelm rnight suggest that it was a more
advanced text. However, the general paucity of vemacular glosses in
manuscripts of Boethius and the evidence of our four specifie readers
does suggest a direction in which we should be thinking. The Consolation
was a difficult text and a dangerous one, as contemporaries
ack:nowledged, not the sort of thing that young students should be
exposed to, with all its heterodox ideas and invocation of pagan
philosophers. The study of texts continued well into adulthood in this
period - lEthelwold was after ail in his thirties or more when he studied
under Dunstan at Glastonbury, at the time when Dunstan was glossing
Boethius - and we should think of the Consolation with its glosses as
primarily a text for advanced study by scholars, though parts of it rnight
be studied at earlier stages, especially the metres.
The number of glossed copies of the full text shows that the whole
text of the Consolation was being intensively studied in tenth-century
England, but it was perhaps at a fairly advanced level of scholarship
when readers could be expected to cope with the celebration of the
wisdom of pagan philosophers and the unguarded repetition of stories
from pagan legend. They are then testimony to Anglo-Saxon scholarship
in the tenth and eleventh centuries, not just to ninth-century Carolingian
scholarship, and not just to the activities of the classroom.
92 MALCOLM GODDEN
Manuscripts glossed in England before 1100, with sigla
A Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.8 (olim lat. 190)

C Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 214
C2 Cambridge, Trinity College, 0.3.7
C3 Cambridge, University Library, Gg.5.35
C4 Cambridge, University Library, Kk.3.21
Es El Escorial, Real Biblioteca, E.II.1
Ge olim Geneva (Cologny-Genève), Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, Cod.
175 (now in a private collection)
L2 London, British Library, Egerton 267, fol. 37 (fragment)
0 Oxford, BodleianLibrary, AuctariumF.1.15 (2455), ff. 1-77
02 Oxford, Corpus Christi College 74
03 Oxford, Merton College, E.3.12 (fragment)
04 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 174 (1775), fol. iii (fragment)
P Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 6401A
P6 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 14380
V1 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 3363
Other manuscripts cited above by sigla
An Alençon, Bibliothèque Municipale 12

Le London, British Library, Additional15601, ff. 1r-16v
L4 London, British Library, Harley 3095
Ma Krakow, Biblioteka Jagiellonska, Berol. Lat. 4°, 939, ff. 60r-112v
[previously: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek der Stiftung Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, lat. 4°, 939 (olim Maihingen, Bibliotheca
Wallersteiniana, 1, 2, lat. 4°, 3)]
T Trier, Stadtbibliothek 1093
DESCRIPTIO TERRAE: GEOGRAPHICAL GLOSSES ON
BOETHIUS'S CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY
Rohini Jayatilaka
The starting point for this paper is the research project on the early
medieval Latin commentaries on Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy,
based at the University of Oxford and funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
That in turn developed out of an earlier project focusing on the Old
English versions of Boethius, funded by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council of Great Britain, leading to an edition which Malcolm
Godden and Susan Irvine published in 2009 1. As part of that project we
set out to discover to what extent the comrnentary tradition was used by
the Old English author. Despite severa! attempts to edit the material since
the early twentieth century, the glosses and comments to the Consolation
had never been printed, apart from a few extracts from single
manuscripts. As a result, we began systematically recording every gloss
from every manuscript that feil within our date span: since there are
severa! hundred extant manuscripts of the Latin text we limited our study
to the evidence contained in the earl y manuscripts, and therefore set 1100
as our eut-off date. Even so, this leaves us with more than 80 manuscripts
from the earl y period. Since we had collected much of the material by the
time we completed the Old English Boethius, we wanted to make the
material available to others. We began the present project in October
2007 when we received a generous grant from the Leverhulme Trust to
transcribe and collate the remaining glosses and edit the whole corpus
with a view to making the material publicly available by the end of the
project in 20122.
The types of glosses that are added to Boethius's De consolatione
Philosophiae are wide-ranging 3 . To give a brief overview, sorne glosses
1
The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius's De
Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. by M. Godden and S. lrvine, 2 vols., Oxford University
Press, Oxford 2009.
2
More recently we have enlisted Dr Rosalind Love and Dr Paolo Vaciago to help us
complete the edition.
3
The classification of glosses 1 use here draws on Gernot Wieland's very helpful
study, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius in Cambridge University Library MS
Gg.5.35 (Studies and Texts 61), Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto 1983;
and on a more recent discussion on the function of glosses by S. O'Sullivan in Early
94 ROHINI JAYATILAKA
provide lexical equivalents to the !emma (primarily in Latin, but also in

the vernacular in many manuscripts), alternative prefixes or suffixes, and
variant readings to the text, or indicate the etymology of words; others
function as grammatical or morphological glosses identifying the parts of
speech or the grammatical properties of words; sorne glosses provide help
construing difficult sentences, or sense units - these syntax glosses are
sometimes recorded in the form of construe marks, but others take the
form of explanatory words which identify the speakers, or suppletive
glosses, supplying parts of a sentence omitted through ellipsis. But
perhaps the majority of glosses comment on or explain historical,
geographical, mythological, scientific, and philosophical points of
interest. Of the various glosses added to manuscripts of Boethius's
Consolation in England the annotations on geographical place names are
particularly interesting for what they can tell us about the Anglo-Saxons'
knowledge of the world, what sources they may have learned this
knowledge from, and how widespread this knowledge may have been in
other texts and commentaries copied in the early Middle Ages.
As a recent book on geographical knowledge in the Latin West from
about 400 to 1000 by Natalia Lozovsky has shown, the modern term
geography is a rather value-laden one that is somewhat difficult to
define4 . For classical and medieval authors, geography covered a variety
of concepts such as the form and size, or measurement, of the earth, its
division into three continents, and detailed descriptions of regions.
Medieval writers drew heavily on the geographical legacy left by their
classical predecessors, such as Strabo, Pliny, Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy,
and Solinus, and though they often presented geographical information in
the context of their philosophical and theological interests, they also
transmitted their knowledge of geography as purely practical information.
Barly writers like Augustine and Cassiodorus treated geographical
information as part of their discussions of physica, or knowledge about
the natural world5 ; and Orosius, in his Historiae adversum paganos tells
us that he wants first to describe the world inhabited by humans so that
Medieval Glosses on Prudentius' Psychomachia: The Weitz Tradition (Mittellateinische

Studien und Texte 31 ), Brill, Lei den and Boston 2004, pp. 80-101.
4
Lozovsky, N., "The Earth Is Our Book": Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West
ca. 400-1000, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI 2000. Though Lozovsky
emphasises the philosophical and theological interests underlying early geographical
knowledge at the expense of the practical information this body of knowledge conveyed,
she provides a useful overview of early medieval geographical tradition.
5
Ibid., pp. 20-22.
GEOGRAPHICAL GLOSSES ON BOETHIUS 95
when he goes on to describe the location of wars and the devastation of

diseases, those eager for this information will have not only knowledge of
the events, but also of their location6 . In his encyclopaedic De nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii on the seven liberal arts Martianus Capella
devoted Book VIto the subject of Geometry, including in geometry not
only the measure of the surface of the earth, but also its description7 . In
the sixth century Isidore of Seville continued in this classical tradition of
compiling material on the physical description of the world as part of a
larger plan. In his encyclopaedic work, the Etymologiae, Isidore treats
geographical information as and when it relates to the etymologies or
origins of various elements making up the natural world. As a result of
their subject coverage, Books XIII and XN become the repository of
much geographical information: in Book XIII he focuses on the world
(De mundo) and its various elements, including the heavens, seas, rivers,
and lakes, and in Book XIV he treats the earth (De terra) and its
component parts, including its various regions and nations, islands,
promontories, mountains and other terms for land forms. And unlike his
earlier works, Isidore generally adheres to literai, rather than allegorical,
explanations or interpretations in the Etymologiae.
In the ninth century Hrabanus Maurus continued this tradition of
devoting a few books in an encyclopaedic work to matters of
geographical interest; so in Books XI to XIII of his De rerum naturis,
also known as De universo, and heavily indebted to Isidore, he provided
physical descriptions of geographical features, as well as providing
historical information and, unlike Isidore, he added allegorical
interpretations. Though one could not define geography as a separate
discipline in the early Middle Ages, there are also a variety of treatises
that are entirely devoted to geographical descriptions of the world. Thus
we have De mensura orbis terrae, composed by the Irish writer Dicuil in
the early ninth century and drawing on a plethora of classical and early
medieval authorities, and two anonymous works: De situ orbis terre veZ
regionum, which survives in a ninth-century manuscript (but may have
been composed earlier), is a collection of extracts from Orosius's
Historiae and Isidore' s Etymologiae; and De situ orbis, composed in the
second half of the ninth century, is primarily a collection of extracts from
6
Paulus Orosius, Historiae adversum paganos, I.i.16-17: Pauli Orosii historiarum
adversum paganos lib ri VII, ed. by K. Zangemeister (CSEL 5), Gerold, Vienna 1882.
7
Martianus Capella, De nuptiis, VI.588: Martianus Capella. De nuptiis Philologiae
et Mercurii, ed. by J. Willis, Teubner, Leipzig 1983, p. 206.
a range of early writers, including Pomponius Mela, Solinus, Martianus

Capella, Orosius and Isidore8 .
Alongside these tracts specifically addressing geographical
knowledge there is an early tradition of annotating classical sources, such
as we find by the fourth-century writer Servius and others commenting on
the works of Virgil, which include numerous geographical references.
This interest in commenting on geographical terms in classical texts is
well-evidenced in the ninth to the eleventh centuries, and these
annotations give us an insight into a glossator' s view of the world during
the period. For instance, we find that Book VI of Martianus's De nuptiis,
Orosius's Historiae and, of course, Boethius's De consolatione, all of
which contain geographical terms, are further described and explained to
readers unfamiliar with these references first recorded several centuries
earlier.
For the purpose of this paper, 1 take the term geography to mean the
description of the earth, and look at a few examples of the way
geographical references to a place or region in Boethius's text are
elucidated by the glossators generally, and more specifically by the
Anglo-Saxon glossators, to tell us what sorts of challenges the glossators
faced, and how they used the sources accessible to them to meet these
challenges.
There are about thirty place names specified in the text of the
Consolation and, so far, roughly the same number are embedded in the
glosses elucidating a passage or point in the text. The majority of
geographical references that are included in Boethius' s text are in the
metres, but just occasionally they occur in the proses. Boethius's
references are always allusive or at least undefined, and in most cases,
especially in the verse, their location is not crucial to the sense and their
function appears to be ornamental. And though Boethius is not himself a
source of geographical information, the glossators often felt the need to
add more information to understand the terms he used.
8
Dicuili Liber de mensura arbis terrae, ed. by J.J. Tiemey, with contributions by L.
Bieler, Dublin Institute for Advances Studies, Dublin 1967; Gautier Dalché, P., «Situs
orbis terre vel regionum: un traité de géographie inédit du haut Moyen Âge (Paris, B.N.
latin 4841)», Revue d'histoire des textes 12-13 (1982-1983), pp. 149-79; Anonymi
Leidensis De situ arbis libri duo, ed. by R. Quadri (Thesaurus Mundi 13), Antenore,
Padua 1974. [For the Anonymus Leidensis and DicuiL see also Clavis des auteurs latins
du Moyen Age. Territoire français, 735-987. I: Abbon de Saint-Germain - Ermold le Noir,
ed. by M.-H. Jullien and F. Perelman (CCCM), Brepols, Turnhout 1994, pp. 181-3 and
302].
Here I shalllook primarily at the geographical references specified in

Boethius's text, keeping in mind that there were at least three general
difficulties that the Anglo-Saxon glossators may have had to grapple
with:
1. the geographical references used by Boethius are often classical
terms that were no longer current in the tenth and eleventh centuries, or
place names whose locations may not have been commonly known to the
Anglo-Saxons;
2. there are also references made to place names of regions that were
ambiguous, or at least not clearly defined, even in the classical period;
3. and sorne terms in the metres are often cryptic and require further
explanation.
Vesuvius
One of the place names we encounter early on in the Consolation is

Vesuvius, which is referred to in lm4. In this metre Philosophy
emphasises that man should keep his composure and face tyranny with
equanimity. To support Boethius's courage she says:
Quisquis composito serenus aeuo

fatum sub pedibus egit superbum
fortunamque tuens utrarnque rectus
inuictum potuit tenere uultum,
non illum rabies minaeque ponti
uersum funditus exagitantis aestum
nec ruptis quotiens uagus caminis
torquet fumificos Vesaeuus ignes
aut celsas soli ti ferire turres
ardentis uia fulminis mouebit.
(He who keeps composure in a life well-ordered,

Who thrusts underfoot fate's arrogant incursions,
Confronts with integrity both good and evil fortune,
Succeeds in maintaining an undefeated outlook-
He will not be moved by the wild threats of ocean
Spilling out and churning up waves from deep recesses;
Nor by Vesuvius, exploding from its forges,
Issuing its smoking fires over wide expanses;
Nor by the thunderbolt, which often blazing fiercely,
Reduces to rubble the loftiest towerd.
Vesaeuus in line 8 of lm4 attracts numerous annotations, ranging

from one-word glosses to a couple of sentences in length. Sorne identify
it as 'a mountain', 'the name of a mountain', 'a belching mountain', 'a
mountain that is always burning', even 'a mountain in hell' 10 . In V1 11 , a
ninth-century manuscript that was copied on the Continent, but which
circulated in England, and to which glosses were added in England and
Cornwall or Wales, we find the gloss «sc. pontus» or 'namely, the sea',
which seems curious, but it is just conceivable that the glossator was
explicating the second element saeuus or 'raging, fierce', since the
!emma, as written in this manuscript, is divided after the first element
«Ue»; so line 8 of the metre reads «torquet fumificosue saeuus ignes».
Another manuscript glossed in England (Es) con tains the glos ses «ignis»
and «maris», and in this manuscript the !emma has been altered from
uesaeuus to saeuus. So it looks as if this gloss was also intended to
explain saeuus. And such explanatory glosses would fit with what
Philosophy has said already about the rage and threats of the sea a few
lines earlier.
Other glosses are slightly more specifie about Vesuvius and most
identify its general location correctly as 'a mountain of Italy', 'a
sulphurous Italian mountain', and 'a burning Italian mountain' 12 • Of the
longer glosses severa! manuscripts, including six English ones, contain
the gloss: «Vesaeuus mons Italiae sulphureus ubi infernus eructuare
dicitur» (V esuvius is a sulphurous mo un tain in Ital y where Hell is said to
gush forth). Though there is a fairly well-known tradition of Etna being
associated with hell, its association with Vesuvius appears to be less
common; but the eleventh-century Peter Damian associates the erupting
Vesuvius with hell 13 . So far only a few manuscripts of Continental origin
9
Quotations are from Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Philosophiae consolatio, ed. by
L. Bieler (CCSL 94), Brepols, Turnhout 1957; rev. edn. 1984. Translations are from
Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. with an introd. and notes by P.G. Walsh,
Oxford University Press, Oxford 1999.
10
For example: «mons»; «mons est>>; «nomen montis»; «mons eructuans>>; «mons
est semper ardens>>; «mons in gehenna>>.
11
For a list of the manuscripts cited in this paper, and their sigla, see belo w.
12
For example: «mons Italiae>>; «mons Italicus sulphureus>>; «mons Italiae ardens».
13
Peter Damian, Ep. 72, lines 8-12: «Quo mortuo mons Vesuvius, unde videlicet
gehenna frequenter eructat, in flammas erupit, ut liquido probaretur, quia foenum, quod a
daemonibus parabatur, nil aliud fuit, nisi ignis trucis incendii, qui pravis ac reprobis
hominibus debebatur»: Petrus Damiani, Epistolae CLXXX, in Die Briefe des Petrus
correctly identify the precise location in Italy for Vesuvius; these are E2
and P14, which note that Vesuvius is 'a mountain in Campania'(«mons in
Campania»); and El, which was produced and glossed at St Gall, tells us
«Veseuus in Campania mons est sulphureus, unde dicitur ignis exire»
(Vesuvius is a sulphurous mountain in Campania, whence fire is said to
emerge). Gl, which is thought to be a copy of El, contains the same
glos s.
Most manuscripts, however, get the location wrong. A couple of
glosses place Vesuvius in Sicily, and three manuscripts glossed in
England place it in the province of Apulia, on the south-eastern side of
Italy. The most common location given for Vesuvius in both Continental
and English manuscripts is in Liguria, which is a region in the vicinity of
the Alps in northern Italy. So in addition to a couple of short glosses
noting that it is 'a mountain of Liguria' («mons Liguriae»), we find the
gloss «Vesaeuus mons Liguriae sub montibus alpinis ignem eructans»
(Vesuvius is a mountain of Liguria under the Alpine mountains violently
discharging fire), or versions of it, in well over a dozen manuscripts,
including three English manuscripts. One of the English manuscripts, P9,
which is very heavily glossed by numerous glossators, contains severa!
glosses on Vesuvius; two of these correctly place it in Italy, but one
locates it in Liguria, and another one locates it in Apulia.
Clearly there was a problem identifying the precise location of
Vesuvius in both the Continental and English manuscripts, and looking
for a source for these glosses one discovers that the confusion may have
been caused by a problem over similar names. Numerous early writers,
such as Pliny, Cassiodorus, Aurelius Victor, Florus, Suetonius, Hrabanus
Maurus, the Second Vatican Mythographer and Isidore correctly locate
Vesuvius in the province of Campania. And Servius, commenting on
Virgil's Aeneid, refers to Campania as the place where Vesuvius and the
Gaurus mountains are located 14 . However, what is striking when looking
Damiani, ed. by K. Reindel, 8 vols. (MGH, Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit IV, 1-4),
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Munich 1983-1993, IV, part 2, p. 358. Here and
elsewhere in the quotations Italics are mine.
14
Servius, ad Aen., III. 57!: «tonat Aetna ruinis. [[sensus est: portus quidem securos
nos faciebat, deest enim 'quidem', sed Aetna terrebat. et]] causa huius incendii secundum
Aetnam Vergilii haec est: sunt terrae desudantes sulpur, ut paene totus tractus Campaniae,
ubi est Vesuvius et Gaurus montes, quod indicat aquarum odor calentium». (The words or
phrases in double square brackets are those thought to be later additions to the
commentary of Servius). Quotations from Servius are from Servii grammatici quiferuntur
at these sources is that Vesuvius was spelt in numerous different ways: so

we find Vesuvius, Vesaevus, and even Vesuvinus and Vesulis 15 . The
difficulty is highlighted by Servius in a comment on Vesaevo in Virgil's
Georgics, where he remarks that
Vesaevus mons est Liguriae, sub Alpibus positus: nam Campaniae Vesuvius dicitur,
pro quo multi Vesaevum positum volunt.
(Vesaevus is a mountain in Liguria, situated under the Alps: for Vesuvius is said to
be in Campania, on account ofwhich many wish to put Vesaevum.) 16
In an anonymous verse text we find a reference to «in Sicilia ut

Ethna, Vesulis Campania», where Vesulis appears to refer to what we
know of as Vesuvius 17 • This last spelling may give rise to another
explanation for the confusion; that is, that Vesuvius may have been
confused with Vesulus or present-day Monviso, which is in fact a
mountain in the Alps. And we find that Servius glosses Vesulus: «mons
Liguriae iuxta Alpes» (a mountain in Liguria, next to the Alps) in his
Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid18 •
The location of Vesuvius in Apulia, as in sorne of the English
manuscripts, is less easy to trace to sources but, given that orthography
may have been problematic when it came to place names, it is just
conceivable that it may have been confused with the town of Venusia or
Venusina, which sorne sources tell us is in or near Apulia 19 . The placing
of Vesuvius in Sicily may be explained by a confused or corrupt reading
of a source-text where the two volcanic mountains Etna and Vesuvius are
in Vergilii carmina commentarii, ed. by G. Thilo and H. Hagen, 3 vols., Teubner, Leipzig
1878-1902.
15
The Peter Damian letter also records manuscript variants that read Vesinus for
Vesuvius, and Vesine and Vesuvo for Vesuvio; manuscript variants in Jordanes's Romana,
in the passage quoted below, include Vesubius and Besubius.
16
Servius, ad Georg., 11.224.
17
Versus de Asia et de uniuersi mundi rota, line 41: Itineraria et alia geographica,
ed. by F. Glorie, 2 vols. (CCSL 175 and 176), Brepols, Turnhout 1965, 1, pp. 441-54, at
445; also in Rhythmi aevi Merovingici et Carolini, ed. by K. Strecker (MGH, PLAC
IV.2), Weidmann, Berlin 1914, no. 39, pp. 545-59, at 552.
18
Servius, ad Aen., X.709.
19
See for example, the commentary on Horace's Saturae by Pomponius Porphyrio at
1.28.25-27 and IV.8.20: Pomponi Porfyrionis Commentum in Horatium Flaccum, ed. by
A. Holder, Wagner, Innsbruck 1894; repr. Arno Press, New York 1979, pp. 38 and 151;
and the scholia on Horace attributed to Aero at 1.28.26-27: Pseudacronis scholia in
Horatium vetustiora, ed. by O. Keller, 2 vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1902-1904,1, p. 109.
compared with one another, as often happens; for example Isidore

(probably drawing on Solinus) in his Etymologiae, and referring to yet
another volcanic mountain, Chimera, says «ibi est mons Chimaera, qui
noctumis aestibus ignem exhalat: sicut in Sicilia Aetna et Vesuuius in
Campania»20 (there lies Mount Chimera, which exhales fire in nightly
surges, like Etna in Sicily and Vesuvius in Campania).
Pive English manuscripts specifically make a connection between
Etna and Vesuvius, where the uagus of lm4, line 7, referring to the
wandering nature of Vesuvius, is glossed Aethna. Classical authors, such
as Lucretius and Ovid, describe Etna in similar terms to Vesuvius, and
others make direct comparisons between the two volcanic mountains, as
Florus does: «pulcherrimus omnium Vesuvius Aetnaei ignis imitator»21
(Vesuvius, the most beautiful of all, resembles the fire of Etna). Jordanes,
drawing on Florus in the sixth century, quotes the same passage in his
Romana22 • But as modem commentators have suggested, Boethius's
reference to erupting Vesuvius in this metre closely echoes Virgil' s
various descriptions of Etna in the Aeneid and the Georgici 3• Virgil's
detailed description of Etna in Book 3 (lines 570-80) of the Aeneid
perhaps cornes closest to Boethius's description of Vesuvius, especially
where at lines 579-80 Virgil says: «ingentemque insuper Aetnam 1
impositam ruptis flammam expirare caminis»24 . O'Daly, following
Gruber, notes «Boethius' description of Vesuvius may derive from
Virgil's description of Etna, but he gives it his own distinctive colouring.
Thus the volcano is uagus because its apparently irregular and
unpredictable behaviour is symptomatic of unreliable, fickle fortune» 25 •
20
Isidore, Etym., XIV .iii.46. Quotations are from lsidori Hispalensis Episcopi
Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical
Texts ), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1911. Translations are from The Etymologies of Isidore
of Seville, trans. by S.A. Barney et al., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006. See
also Solinus, Collectanea, XXXIX.1: C. Iulii Solini Collectanea rerum memorabilium, ed.
by T. Mommsen, 2nd edn., Weidmann, Berlin 1895.
21
Annius Florns, Epitoma bellorum, I.xi.5: L. Annaei Flori. Epitomae libri II et P.
Annii Flori fragmentum De Vergilio oratore an poeta, ed. by O. Rossbach, Teubner,
Leipzig 1896.
22
Iordanes, Romana, sect. 143, !ines 22-23: «pulcherrimus cunctornm Vesubius
Aetnaei ignis imitator»: Iordanis Romana et Getica, ed. by T. Mommsen (MGH, AA 5.1),
Weidmann, Berlin 1882, pp. 1-52, at 17.
23
See Walsh, Consolation, p. 118, and especially O'Daly, G., The Poetry of
Boethius, Duckworth, London 1991, pp. 123-4.
24
O'Daly, The Poetry of Boethius, p. 124.
25
Ibid.
102 ROHINIJAYATILAKA
Not surprisingly Virgil's descriptions of the erupting and thundering

Etna are subsequently drawn on and commented upon by later writers.
Servius comments on Virgil's «tonat aetna ruinis» in Book 3, line 571 of
the Aeneid, describing how the waves of the sea rush into the caves and
create a wind, which when agitated, sets the sulphur in the caves on fire
and causes the fire that is visible. And Servius's comment is reproduced
almost verbatim by Isidore, the Second Vatican Mythographer, and
Dicuif6 • So the English glossators making the connection between Etna
and Vesuvius could have been influenced by any number of sources.
But one further gloss that might be significant in pinning down their
source, even though it too is a single-word gloss, is fornacibus, which
only the English glossators use to explain the caminis or 'smelting-
furnaces' of Vesuvius, whilst the Continental manuscripts gloss it with
foraminibus. The fornaces of Etna are referred to by several authors
including Ovid, Lucretius, Virgil, Servius, and later by Walahfrid Strabo.
But it appears that only Servius uses fornacibus to explain caminis in
Book 3, line 580 of the Aeneid27 • As we have seen, the connection
between Vesuvius and Etna was commonly made, but that the English
glossators also gloss caminis with fornacibus might just point to
Servius' s commentary as their source.
Caucasus
Another mountain specifically mentioned by Boethius is the

Caucasus range. After her attack on the desire for wealth and ambition
Philosophy goes on in 2p7 to impress on Boethius the triviality and
unimportance of the pursuit of fame and glory. To emphasise the
unsubstantial nature of fame and glory and the narrow limits within
which men can achieve it, Philosophy tells him that compared with the
extent of the celestial sphere the entire circumference of the earth is a
mere point, and that of this insignificant part of the uni verse, that portion
of the earth inhabited by men is even smaller. And given that even this
tiny segment of the earth is inhabited by several nations differing in
language and customs, compounded by difficulties of travel and limited
26
Isidore, Etym., XIV.viii.14; for the text of the so-called Second Vatican
Mythographer, see Mythographus Il, ch. 62: Mythographi vaticani 1 et Il, ed. by P.
Kulcsâr (CCSL 91C), Brepols, Turnhout 1987, pp. 95-292, at 146; Dicuil, De mensura
arbis terrae, VIII. lü.
27
Servius, ad Aen., III.580: «Carninis fomacibus. Graece dixit».
GEOGRAPHICAL GLOS SES ON BOETHIUS 103
trading contacts, the fame of cities, let alone individuals, would not reach
them all. To illustrate this point she says
aetate denique M. Tullii, sicut ipse quodam loco significat, nondum Caucasum
montem Romanae rei pub1icae fama transcenderat et erat tune adulta Parthis etiam
ceterisque id 1ocorum gentibus formidolosa. (2p7.8)
(thus in the days of Marcus Tullius, as he himself points out in sorne passage, the
glory of the Roman state had not as yet reached beyond the mountain-range of the
Caucasus, though by then Rome was at its zenith, inspiring fear in the Parthians and
in the other nations of that region).
Boethius is evidently referring to Cicero's De re publica (VI.22),

though Macrobius's Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (11.10) is
thought to be Boethius's immediate source. Macrobius does not locate the
Caucasus range precisely, but it appears from early sources such as Pliny,
Mela, Orosius and others to be understood as the northern boundary of
India, and part of the long mountain range known as the Taurus range,
extending from the eastern Ocean to the Mediterranean. Pomponius Mela,
and later Solinus, note that Caucasus is one of many names for this long
mountain range, which is called by as many names as there are tribes or
nations beside it. Solinus adds that where this mountain range is highest it
is called Caucasus 28 . Isidore also says that the Taurus range is called
Caucasus by many, and that 'the Caucasus range [... ] has many different
names because of the variety of peoples and of languages in every
direction through which it passes'; he notes too that the Scythians 'live
next to this mountain range' 29 . But it appears that the region known as
Scythia covered a vast expanse of land, extending from the area north of
the Black Sea pretty well to the eastern Ocean, and evidently the territory
known as Scythia kept changing over time 30 .
28
Pliny, Naturalis historia, VI.30-60, esp. VI.60: C. Plinius Secundus. Naturalis
historia libri XXXVII, ed. by L. Jan and C. Mayhoff, 6 vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1892-1909,
I, pp. 441-55; Mela, De chorographia, 1.81 and 109: Pomponii Melae De chorographia
libri tres, ed. by C. Frick, Teubner, Leipzig 1880; Solinus, Collectanea, XXXVIII.l0-12;
Orosius, Historiae, I.ii.15; Isidore, Etym., XIV.iii.5 and XIV.viii.2-3.
29
Isidore, Etym. XIV.viii.2-3: «Mons Caucasus [... ] pro gentium ac linguarum
uarietate quoquo uersum uadit, diuersis nominibus nuncupatur [ ... ]. Vnde et eum Scythae,
qui eidem monti iunguntur [ ... ] Mons Taurus a plerisque idem uocatur et Caucasus>>.
30
See for example, Claudius Ptolemaeus, Tetrabiblos, II.3: Ptolemy. Tetrabiblos, ed.
and trans. by F.E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library), Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA 1940; Mela, De chorographia, I.ll and 18; Isidore, Etym., XIV.iii.31-32
and XIV.iv.3.
Caucasum montem in the Consolation attracts a fair amount of

annotation, and given the lack of a precise location in any of the early
sources the glosses are, on the whole, surprisingly accurate. The
Continental manuscripts associate it with Scythia, a few say it is 'in
Syria', one says it is 'in India', as does the only Irish manuscript we have
partialiy transcribed (thought to be a twelfth-century copy), Florence,
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. LXXVIII.19 31 ; another describes it
as 'a large mountain dividing Scythia from Parthia', a few more note that
it is 'a mountain between India and the north'. As with Vesuvius, we find
that Scythia is spelt in numerous different ways in the manuscripts, and in
fact one Continental manuscript (To) has the gloss «Scicilie»; I shali
return to this below32 •
A few Continental manuscripts contain longer descriptions of
Caucasus: «Caucacus mons est Scithiae altissimus, in cuius parte australi
magnus est calor, in aquilonali parte frigus nimium» (Caucasus is the
highest mountain in Scythia, in whose southern region the heat is great,
whilst in the northern part the cold is excessive) and «Caucasus mons
orientalis, et orientali lingua candidus interpretatur propter niues
inmanentes, guern et Croacasin uocant, hoc est niuium» (Caucasus is an
eastern mountain range, and in an eastern tongue it means white because
of the snow lying on it; they also cali it Croacasin, that is snowy). Other
manuscripts contain a gloss that adds more detail on the etymology of
Caucasus:
ab India usque montem Taurum porrectus qui propter niuium candorem Caucasus
nuncupatur. Nam orientali lingua Caucasum significat candidum id est niuibus
densissimis candicantem. Unde et eum Scithie qui eidem monti iunguntur Croacasim
uocauerunt. Casim enim apud eos candor siue nix dicitur.
(It stretches from India to Mount Taurus which is called Caucasus due to the
whiteness of its snow. For in an eastern language Caucasus means 'white', that is.
shining with very thick snow. And so the Scythians who live next to that same
mountain called it Croacasim. For casim amongst them means 'whiteness' or
'snow').
Solinus says that the Scythians cali the Caucasus mountain
31
6 Néill, P.P., <<Irish Glosses in a Twelfth-Century Copy of Boethius's Consolatio
Philosophiae>>, Ériu 55 (2005), pp. 1-17.
32
For example: «SC. Scithie>>; «Scicie>>; «Sithiae>>; «in Scitia>>; «mons Scithiae>>;
«ultra Scythiam>>; «Syriae>>; «in India>>; «mons in India>>; «mons magnus dirimens
Schitiam a Parthia>>; «mons est inter Indiam et septemtrionem>>; «Scicilie>>.
Croucasim, that is 'shining with snow' 33 , but not surprisingly the gloss
above is nearly verbatim from Isidore's Etymologiae (XIV.viii.2):
Mons Caucasus ab India usque ad Taurum porrectus, pro gentium ac linguarum

uarietate quoquo uersum uadit, diuersis nominibus nuncupatur. Vbi autem ad
orientem in excelsiorem consurgit sublimitatem, pro niuium candore Caucasus
nuncupatur. Nam orientali Zingua 'caucasum' significat candidum, id est niuibus
densissimis candicantem. Vnde et eum Scythae, qui eidem monti iunguntur,
Croacasim uocauerunt. 'Casim' enim apud eos candor siue nix dicitur.
(The Caucasus range stretches from India to the Taurus and has many different
names because of the variety of peoples and of languages in every direction through
which it passes. Thus, toward the east, where it rises to greater height, it is called
Caucasus, due to the whiteness of its snow, for in an eastern language, caucasus
means 'white' that is, shining white with a very thick snow cover. For the same
reason the Scythians, who live next to this mountain range, call it Croacasim, for
among them whiteness or snow is called casim).
The glosses in the English manuscripts are similar to those found in

the Continental manuscripts. Four English manuscripts (C3 C4 Ge P9)
correctly locate Caucasus in Scythia, and one (A) contains the gloss
«mons Scithie Sicilie», which appears to have been written by a single
scribe. But this Antwerp manuscript and three other English manuscripts
locating Caucasus in Scythia (C4 Ge P9) also contain the gloss «qui est
mons Siciliae» (it is a mountain in Sicily). Two further manuscripts of
English origin contain this gloss (P and P6) but do not have the gloss
locating Caucasus in Scythia.
The confusion between Scythia and Sicily in the English manuscripts
that we also noted in the Tours manuscript could weil have been an
orthographie corruption that entered the transmission history with a
misreading of Scithie as Scicilie. Given the variety of spellings used for
place names, another possibility is that the glossators thought Sicilie to be
a variant spelling of Cilicia in Asia Minor; this would imply that they had
sorne sense of the extent of the Caucasus range reaching as far as the
Mediterranean Sea. But since it was not corrected in any of the six
manuscripts in which it was recorded, we would have to allow for the
possibility that the English glossators, and even later readers, might
genuinely have believed that the Caucasus mountain was in Sicily.
33
Solinus, Collectanea, XLIX.6: «quos Scythas Persae lingua sua Sacas dicunt et
inuicem Scythae Persas Chorsacos nominant montemque Caucasum Croucasim, id est
niuibus candicantem».
Poeni/Marmarica
We find two references in Boethius' s text to lions that are said to be

from specifie geographie regions: in 3m2 the lions are referred to as
Poeni leones and in 4m3 we find the Marmaricus leo. In each case the
geographical identification seems to have been added by Boethius to fit
the metre, but clearly the ninth-, tenth- and eleventh-century readers of
the text needed sorne explanation of these terms.
The reference to Punie lions attracts fewer glosses than the
Marmarican lions, and the most common one in both the Continental and
English manuscripts simply notes that the Poeni are African (Africani;
Affrici; Affricam), but none provides a more specifie geographieal
location in Africa. In two English manuscripts (C3 and P9) we find a
vague attempt at providing an etymological explanation for Poeni; so
these two note «Poeni hic dicuntur quasi Foeni. a Foenissa .i. Didone». I
have not yet found a source with the exact or even similar wording of this
gloss, but that the Poeni were Phoenicians or Carthaginians, and the
tradition that Dido had founded Carthage was fairly commonplace.
Isidore in his Etymologiae tells us that «Poeni autem Carthaginenses sunt
a Phoenicibus nuncupati, qui cum Didone profecti sunt» 34 (the Punie
people are the Carthaginians, named after the Phoenicians who emigrated
with Dido). The spelling Foeni is less commonly used than Phoeni, and
Phoenissa is common enough, but Foenissa is evidently rare. Servius
commenting on Phoenissa in Book 1 of Virgil's Aeneid, glosses it «de
Phoenice» 35 • Perhaps it is worth noting that writers such as Bede and
Dicuil preferred the form Foenice or Foenicia, when referring to
Phoenicia or the Phoenicians. It appears too that Foeni was more familiar
to the glossator and that he was attempting to explain that it was an
alternative for Poeni. Given that this gloss so far only appears in two
English manuscripts, it might suggest that it originated in England.
Though there are severa! references to it in early sources, the precise
location of Marmarica is quite difficult to pin down. Marmarica was
evidently a province in Africa, west of Egypt and east of Cyrenaica, but
like Scythia its boundaries shifted over time 36 . Writers such as Pliny,
34
Isidore, Etym., IX.ii.ll6.
35
Servius, ad Aen., 1.670.
36
Claudius Ptolemaeus, Geography, IV.5: Klaudios Ptolemaios Handbuch der
Geographie. Griechisch-Deutsch, ed. by A. Stückelberger and G. GraBhoff, 2 vols.,
Schwabe, Base! 2006.
Lucan and Florus mention Marmarica and the Marmaridae, who gave the
name to the region, but only provide a vague location for Marmarica to
the west of Egypt. The geographical accounts by Pomponius Mela,
Orosius, Isidore and others make no mention of Marmarica. Again the
Boethius glossators provide a range of explanations, identifying the
'what' and the 'where'. So a few manuscripts simply gloss Marmaricus
as 'a place', and one gloss in an early Continental manuscript describes it
as being 'coastal', but the majority of glosses note that it is 'in Africa', or
that 'it is a province in Africa'; others say that it is 'a place in Africa,
where lions abound', or 'from a place in Africa where they have larger
lions'; or 'from a forest in Africa which is so named.3 7 • Other glosses
attempt to be somewhat more specifie about its location, so we find: 'out
of Mauritania', or 'the Marmaric district of Getulia is a region of Africa',
to which others add that 'Marmaricus is therefore African'; another notes
that 'Marmarica is Greek for Africa.3 8 . If the glossators had sorne notion
from classical sources, such as Lucan, that Marmarica was associated
with Africa, these locations may well have been deduced from any
number of sources. And though he makes no mention of Marmarica in his
Etymologiae, Isidore lists Mauretania as a province in northern Africa; he
tells us that Getulia is in the interior region of Africa and, that Getulia is
between the territories of Carthage and Ethiopia39 . Likewise Dicuil
describes the areas of Getulia and Mauretania within his description of
Africa40 •
One lone English manuscript (C3) glosses Marmaricus with
«Affricanus uel Libicus». Its glossator may have been drawing on the
knowledge that though the Greeks evidently called the entire continent
Libya41 , the Romans used Africa first to refer to the northern portion of
Africa (also known as Africa prouincia), and thereafter to the continent as
a whole. When Pomponius Mela wrote in the first century AD, he drew
37
For example: <<loca»; <<a loco»; <<maritimus»; <<Africanus»; <<a loco in Africa>>; <<a
loco qui est in Africa>>; <<Marmarica prouincia est affricae>>; «a loco Affrico ubi habundant
leones»; <<a loco Africe ubi maiores habentur leones>>; <<a saltu qui est in Affrica sicut
nominatus>>.
38
For example: <<ex mauritania>>; <<Marmarica pars Getuliae est regionis Affricae>>;
<<Marmaricus ergo Affricanus>>; <<Marmaricus Greee Africanus>>.
39
Isidore, Etym., XIV.v.3, 8 and 17.
40
Dicuil, De mensura orbis terrae, III.l.
41
See for example, Strabo, Geography, XVII.3.1: The Geography of Strabo, with an
English transi. by H.L. Jones, 8 vols. (Loeb Classical Library), Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA 1917-1932, VIII, pp. 154-7.
attention to the distinction between the Roman province of Africa and the
entire continent of Africa42 . Isidore explains the etymology of Libya and
Africa, describes the extent of the region known as Africa, and lists Libya
Cyrenensis as a province of Africa; and Dicuil uses Africa and Libya
interchangeably to describe one of the three sections into which the world
was divided by classical authors 43 •
On the whole, the glosses in the English manuscripts mostly agree
with those in the Continental ones, and may have been derived from
them, but a few of them include a gloss that we have not yet recorded
from any Continental manuscripts: these gloss Marmaricus with «a loco
Affrice ubi habundant leones et meliores et amatores herbarum et per
excellentiam posuit» (from the place in Africa where lions abound, which
are both better and lovers of grasses; and he said it because of their
excellence); but this is a somewhat baffling annotation, for which I have
not yet discovered a source.
Ri vers
Here I shalllook at the glosses that annotate the names of a few rivers
that Boethius specifies in his text. In 3ml 0, Philosophy urges men to
abandon the earthly riches found in the depths of rivers and the deepest
caverns for the brightness of heavenly things. Three rivers are named in
this context: the Tagus, which was apparently an important source of gold
for the Romans; the Hermus, which was also a known source of alluvial
gold; and the Indus, which was thought to yield up emeralds and other
precious stones.
The glosses on the whole correctly locate the Tagus in Spain, the
Hermus in Asia, and the Indus in India. In all three cases, the glosses in
the Continental and the English manuscripts range from the general to the
specifie. So we find identifications such as 'a river', 'the name of a river',
and 'a proper name for a river'; others give us a bit more information,
such as 'a river flowing with gold and gems', or 'carrying golden sands',
or 'overflowing with an abundance of gems and precious metals', or 'an
42
Mela, De chorographia, 1.22: «in ea parte quae Libyco adiacet proxima Nilo
provincia quam Cyrenas vocant; dein cui totius regionis vocabulo cognomen inditum est
Africa».
43
See Isidore, Etym., XN.v.I-3; Dicuil, De mensura arbis terrae, 1.2.
eastern river bringing gold and gems' 44 .

In sorne cases, the longer glosses on the Tagus and the Hermus are
descriptions that appear to have been taken verbatim from Isidore. One of
these glosses concerns the Hermus, which is strictly in Asia Minor, or
present-day Turkey. Isidore says that
Hermus fluuius Asiae qui Smymeos secat campos, et ipse fluctibus aureis et harenis
plenus; a quo et Smyma uocata est45 •
(Hermus is a river in Asia that divides the Smymean plains, and its currents are filled
with gold and sand; Smyma is named from it).
One Continental manu script (Po) cites the identical passage. Six
English manuscripts transrllit a slightly mangled version of it: three of
them (C2 C4 P6) have the reading Smyrtenis and the other three (A Ge P)
have Sinyrtensis for Smyrneos. Pive of these manuscripts add that it is a
river in Asia and Lydia, and the sixth says it is in Asia and Libya, and
clearly the latter is incorrect, and must be a corruption of Lydia. It is
possible that Lydia, which was in Asia Minor, was added to distinguish
between Asia and Asia Minor. The reference to Lydia also appears in a
few other manuscripts, one of which is the Irish manuscript cited above,
Florence, BML, Plut. LXXVIII.l9, and the others are El, Gl and P14.
Certainly the glossators of these manuscripts could have picked up this
information about the Hermus being in Lydia independently of each
other. We find that Servius, commenting on Virgil's Georgics, and at two
points on the Aeneid, identifies the Hermus as a river in Lydia46 ; another
early collection of glosses on Virgil's Georgics, known as the Brevis
expositio, which draws on various classical authors and contains Old Irish
glosses, also identifies the Hermus as a river in Lydia47 • Perhaps it is also
worth noting that both El and G 1 have a marginal note that simply says
44
Tagus: «fluuius»; «nomen fluuii»; «quoddam flumen>>; «fluuius Hispaniae
aurifluus>>; «fluuius Hispaniae gemmarum et metallarum copia redundans>>; «fluuius
Hispaniae aureas trahens arenas>>; «fluuius Hispanie arenis auriferis abundans>>.
Hermus: «flumen>>; «proprium nomen fluminis>>; «Hermus fluuius est aurifluus et
gemmae fluuius>>; «fluuius Asiae aurifluus atque gemmifluus>>.
Indus: «fluuius>>; «proprium nomen fluminis>>; «fluuius orientis aurum ferens et
gemmas>>.
45
Isidore, Etym., XIII.xxi.22.
46
Servius, ad Georg., II.l37, and ad Aen., VII.721 and X.l42.
47
Breuis expositio Vergilii Georgicorum, II.l37, in Servii grammatici quiferuntur in
Vergilii carmina commentarii, ed. by Thilo and Hagen, III, 2, pp. 193-320, at 294.
«Seruius» next to this gloss.

The longer glosses on the Indus mostly contain information that is
readily available in various sources. The glosses in both the Continental
and English manuscripts tell us that the Indus is a river in the east from
which India takes its name, or that it is a river that flows through India,
and empties into the Red Sea48 . Orosius says that the Indus River bounds
India on the west and that it empties into the Red Sea49 . Isidore notes that
«Indus fluuius orientis, qui Rubro mari accipitur» 50 (the Indus is a river of
the Orient, which empties into the Red Sea) and that «lndia uocata ab
Indo flumine, quo ex parte occidentali clauditur» 51 (India is so called
from the river Indus, by which it is bounded on the west).
Sorne glosses, however, give more detail about India itself and create
sorne problems of interpretation. One gloss which occurs in many
manuscripts says «propter regionis feruorem fert populos Ethiopes»
(because of the heat of the region it produces Ethiopian peoples) 52 •
Pomponius Mela explains, «a Gange ad Colida, nisi ubi magis quam ut
habitetur exaestuat, atrae gentes et quodammodo Aethiopes» 53 (from the
Ganges to Colida, except where it is too hot for people to live, dwell
black people and Ethiopians of a sort). And Isidore has a fuller
explanation for the dark skin col our of the Ethiopians:
Aethiopia dicta a colore populorum, quos solis uicinitas torret. Denique uim sideris
prodit hominum color; est enim ibi iugis aestus; nam quidquid eius est, sub
meridiano cardine est54 .
(Ethiopia is so called after the colour of its inhabitants, who are scorched by the
proximity of the sun. lndeed, the colouring of the people demonstrates the force of
the sun, for it is al ways hot there, because all of its territory is under the South Pole.)
48
For example: «a quo tota India diriuatur»; «fluuius a quo India dicitur»; «fluuius
est orientis a quo India dicitur>>; <<fluuius orientis per Indiam qui a Rubro mari accipitur a
quo lndia nomen traxit>>; <<Indus dicitur fluuius orientis a quo accepit nomen lndia et hic
amnis est diffiniens lndiam ab occasu et Rubro mari terminatur>>.
49
Orosius, Historiae, l.ii.l5: «<n his finibus India est quae habet ab occidente flumen
lndum quod Rubro mari accipitur>>.
50
Isidore, Etym., XIII.xxi.ll.
51
Isidore, Etym., XIV.iii.5.
52
«Aut Indus fluuius est similiter orientis aurifluus .i. aurum ferens et gemmas qui
oritur iuxta montem Ariobarzanis exit in mare rubrum et propter regionis feruorem fert
populos Ethiopes>>.
53
Mela, De chorographia, 111.67.
54
Isidore, Etym., XIV.v.l4.
Pliny makes a specifie connection between the Indians and the

Ethiopians, but also makes a clear distinction between them, when he
notes
a Gange versa ad meridiem plaga tinguntur sole populi, iam quidem infecti, nondum
tamen Aethiopum modo exusti; quantum ad Indum accedunt, tantum colore
praeferunt55 .
(in the region tuming from the Ganges towards the south the people are coloured by
the sun, for indeed they are darkened, but nevertheless not yet bumt up in the manner
of the Ethiopians; the cl oser they come to the Indus the more colour they display.)
There was however sorne confusion over India and Ethiopia in the
early medieval period. Isidore reports that 'there are two Ethiopias: one to
the east, another to the west, in Mauretania', and JElfric reports that
'historians say that three countries are called India: the first India lies
next to the country of the Ethiopians; the second lies next to the Medes;
the third lies next to the great ocean. This third India has darkness on one
side and the savage ocean on the other' 56 .
Another glass appears to suggest that India was an island. It is
recorded in El and Gl, which contain what one might describe as a
collection of glosses separate from the Latin text of the Consolation, laid
out on the page as if it were a single continuous text, but which is in fact
a compilation of interlinear and marginal glosses, sometimes recorded
with the relevant lemma or lemmata and sometimes without. As I have
mentioned already, Gl is thought to be a copy of El. In bath manuscripts
the glass to lndica from 3m5 is written thus: «lndica significat Indiam in
orientali parte sita. oceano cincta». And in bath manuscripts, Indica is
glossed insula above the line. This might well be interpreted as a reading
or misreading of a source text, but another manuscript that is thought to
be closely related to these two manuscripts, N, appears to provide a
different explanation for this glass. Unlike El and Gl, N contains the
Latin text of the Consolation to which glosses have been added in the
margins and between the lines. In it the geographical reference to Thyle,
55
Pliny, Naturalis historia, VI.70.
56
Isidore, Etym., XIV.v.l6: «Duae sunt autem Aethiopiae: una circa ortum solis,
altera circa occasum in Mauretania»; JElfric, CH I.xxxi,l-4: «Wyrdwriteras secgaô ]xet
]xy leodscipas sin gehatene India: seo forme India liô to pœra silhearwena rice: seo oper
liô to Medos. seo pridde to pam micclum garsecge peos ôridde India hœfô on anre sidan
peostru and on opre ôone grirnlican garsecg»: /Elfric 's Catholic Homilies. The First Series.
Text, ed. by P. Clemoes (EETS ss 17), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1997, p. 439.
which appears two lines later in the same metre, is glossed «oceano cincta
in occidente», and Indica is simply glossed «in orientali parte». So it
appears that the gloss recorded in El and Gl for lndica conflated two
separate glosses, one of which was referring to the island of Thyle;
somewhere in the transmission of this conflated gloss, therefore, another
reader or glossator probably added insula above Indica in order to clarify
the phrase oceano cincta, which to him appeared to be part of the
annotation. Such mangling of glosses is rife in the glosses to the
Consolation and, of course, exacerbates the way in which misinformation
about geographical place names can enter the corpus of glosses.
Sometimes, the glosses provide details that are not widely available
in early sources: so a further annotation that is incorporated into one of
the glosses on the Indus says that it rises near the Ariobarzanes mountain
and goes out into the Red Sea57 • These glosses are mainly recorded in the
Continental manuscripts, but versions of them also get into two English
manuscripts (C2 and P9), which were probably drawing on the
Continental glosses here. 1 have thus far been able to find sorne
knowledge regarding the source of the Indus only in Vitruvius, Pliny,
Mela, Solinus, and Isidore, but even so the information they provide does
not specify the Ariobarzanes directly. Vitruvius says that the «Ganges et
Indus ab Caucaso monte oriuntur», and Pliny notes that the Indus rises on
the east side of a ridge of Mount Caucasus called the Paropanisus58 • In the
context of his description of the Taurus range, Pomponius Mela describes
the source of the Indus in the Caroparnaso mountain («<ndus ex monte
Caroparnaso exortus»), which appears to be another name for the
Propanisus (or the Paropanisus) mountain59 ; and Isidore refers to the
source of the Indus, but only in a rather circuitous manner: in the context
of describing the Bactrus river he says that 'the parts of it that are further
out are surrounded by the range of the Propanisus, while those facing us
terminate at the source of the river Indus' 60 . A gloss attributed to
57
«Aut Indus fluuius est sirrùliter orientis aurifluus .i. aurum ferens et gemmas qui
oritur iuxta montem Ariobarzanis exit in mare rubrum et propter regionis feruorem fert
populos Ethiopes>>.
58
Vitruvius, De architectura, VIII.ii.6: Vitruvii de architectura libri decem, ed. by F.
Krohn, Teubner, Leipzig 1912; Pliny, Naturalis historia, Vl.71: «Indus, incolis Sindus
appellatus, in iugo Caucasi montis quod vocatur Paropanisus adversus solis ortum
effusus>>.
59
Mela, De chorographia, III.69.
60
Isidore, Etym., XIV.iii.30: «Partes huius quae pone sunt Propanisi iugis ambiuntur,
quae aduersae sunt lndi fluuii fontibus terminantur;>>.
Remigius of Auxerre, in a commentary on Priscian's Institutio de nomine

et pronomine et uerbo, notes that Ariobarzanes is the proper name of a
mountain or a leader («Ariobarzanes proprium nomen montis vel
ducis» )61 • Indeed the majority of earl y references I have found to
Ariobarzanes have been to the Persian leader, who was famed for fighting
Alexander the Great, or to various ancient kings of the same name. As far
as I have been able to discover, only Orosius refers to the Ariobarzanes as
a mountain, but even he does not link it directly with the source of the
Indus river: in his description of the Taurian!Caucasian range Orosius
says «a fonte Tigridis usque ad Carras ciuitatem inter Massagetas et
Parthos mons Ariobarzanes» 62 . All this information taken together might
suggest that the Ariobarzanes mountain is a name given to a part of the
Caucasian range, and that the source of the Indus is somewhere in this
mountain range.
It may well be that the knowledge that the glossators of the Boethius
manuscripts were recording on the source of the Indus river being near
the Ariobarzanes mountain was derived from an account provided by
another early writer, but I have not yet found such a source. lt is also
possible that the various bits of geographical knowledge available to the
glossators were sufficient for them to make this link between that part of
the Caucasus range whence the Indus rose, and the Ariobarzanes
mountain. Whatever the ultimate source of this information, since the
earliest manuscript that records this gloss is of Continental origin and the
gloss appears in nine Continental manuscripts, it is quite likely that the
two English manuscripts were drawing on the Continental tradition of
glossing in this particular instance at least.
Winds
One final example shows an Anglo-Saxon glossator producing new

geographical information and apparently using an unexpected source. In
lm5 Boethius uses the Greek name Boreas for the north wind, and
amongst numerous glosses is the word biza in four English manuscripts
61
Commentary on Priscian, Institutio de nomine et pronomine et verbo, 444.3: «Le
commentaire de Remi d'Auxerre sur Priscien, De nomine», in Serta Mediaevalia. Textus
varii saeculorum X-XIII, ed. by R.B.C. Huygens, 2 vols. (CCCM 171 and 171A),
Turnhout, Brepols 2000, 1, pp. 12-23, at 17. The page and line reference of the Institutio is
to the text printed in Grammatici Latini, ed. by H. Keil, III, Teubner, Leipzig, 1859, repr.
Olms, Hildesheim 1961, pp. 443-56.
62
Orosius, Historiae, I.ii.41.
(A C4 Ge 0). It is a rare word and of uncertain derivation, possibly

Frankish originally. But a likely source here is the Cosmographia of
Aethicus Ister, probably written in the seventh century by a Frankish
scholar with English and Irish connections. He describes a cold and fierce
wind blowing from the mountains, apparently in northem Europe, as
being called biza by the locals63 • Like the earliest English manuscript of
the Consolation, the earliest English manuscript of the Cosmographia
was written at Canterbury in the second half of the tenth century, and the
word is picked out in the margin with the rubric «De Biza Vento» 64 .
Conclusion
As we have seen, the glosses on the geographical place names in

Boethius's text are wide-ranging. We have the very simple identifications
of what the term being glossed is: a place, a mountain, a river, and so on;
and slightly more informative material indicating what a place might be
famed for, such as a river carrying golden sands. Then we have glosses
that identify a region, or a country, or even a province in which a place
may be located. And just occasionally we are given an etymological
explanation for a particular geographical place name. Though it would be
tempting to say that sorne manuscripts were consistently more accurate
than others, or that their glossators had more correct information to
transmit, or that they only recorded a certain type of information, just as
with the rest of the glosses to Boethius, there are no certain patterns that
one can easily identify; each section and each term being glossed seems
to have a life of its own, and certainly the geographical knowledge that
was preserved and transmitted in these manuscripts was quite variable.
On the whole the geographical identifications are accurate, and when
we do find errors, we sometimes find that they are fairly widespread in
the sources. Clearly at least two of the difficulties that the glossators
faced are problems that we still face today: place names changed over
time and they were often spelt in different ways. The glossators may also
63
See the Cosmographia attributed to Aethicus lster, ch. 4: <<Ventum, qui ab ipsis
montibus flat, nimis acerrimum et frigidum bizam vocitant>>: Die Kosmographie des
Aethicus, ed. by O. Prinz (MGH, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 14),
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Munich 1993, p. 136.
64
See ch. xxxviii, f. 29r in the facsimile edition Aethici Istrici Cosmographia.
Vergilio Salisburgensi rectius adscripta: Codex Leidensis Scaligeranus 69, introd. by
T.A.M. Bishop (Umbrae codicum occidentalium 10), North-Rolland Publishing
Company, Amsterdam 1966.
have been faced with the problem of not being able to read the script of
an exemplar weil enough to transmit the details accurately. And if the
source that a glossator was drawing on was an annotated text, the
uncertainty of copying information from annotations that may not have
clear boundaries between the end of one statement and the beginning of
another, no doubt increased the chances of corrupt transmissions and
misunderstandings, as we saw with the description of India as an island.
The glossators of the Boethius manuscripts appear to have drawn on
a wide range of sources to explain and describe the geographical
references in Boethius's text. These may have included Lucretius, Virgil,
Ovid, Pliny, Pomponius Mela, Solinus, Servius, Martianus Capella,
Orosius, Isidore, Aethicus Ister, Dicuil, and no doubt others. With the
exception of Mela, Aethicus Ister and Dicuil, these authors are explicitly
named as sources for glosses elsewhere in the corpus of glosses we have
compiled thus far from the manuscripts of Boethius's Consolation. And
manuscript copies of many of these early works were known in Anglo-
Saxon England65 . Perhaps it is also noteworthy, that though the glossators
of the Consolation may have drawn on the texts of Martianus's De
Nuptiis and Orosius's Historiae for their information, as far as I can tell
from checking sorne of the glossed manuscripts of these texts, they did
not draw on the glosses that were added to these texts in the ninth and
tenth centuries.
The English manuscripts recorded many of the same glosses as the
Continental manuscripts, but they often made significant additions to this
body of geographie knowledge. They drew on a variety of sources to
provide new information about places; orto explain terms that were no
longer current or familiar to them in the tenth and eleventh centuries; or
to clarify information in the glosses that bad already been transmitted
through the Continental manuscripts. As we have seen, the English
glossators did get sorne identifications wrong, and though sometimes the
mistakes suggest that their geographical knowledge may have been
limited, often they were place names that were problematic in many of
the sources. Clearly the Anglo-Saxon glossators were sufficiently
interested in the geographical references in Boethius's text to annotate
65
See Gneuss, H., Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and
Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (MRTS 241), Arizona
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2001, and id., «Addenda and
Corrigenda to the Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts», Anglo-Saxon England 32
(2003),pp.293-305.
them, and thought it important enough to pass on their own knowledge of

the locations he either specified or alluded to, in arder to understand his
text better. Their work helped elucidate Boethius's text for their readers,
but more particularly to pass on to them a body of geographicallore that
complemented the other sources of geographical knowledge available in
late Anglo-Saxon England.
Select pre-1100 Boethius manuscripts cited above by sigla66
Manu scripts glossed in England, before 1100:
A Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.8 (olim lat. 190)

C2 Cambridge, Trinity College, 0.3.7
C3 Cambridge, University Library, Gg.5.35
C4 Cambridge, University Library, Kk.3.21
Es El Escorial, Real Biblioteca, E.II.l
Ge olim Geneva (Cologny-Genève), Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, Cod.
175 (now in a private collection)
0 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F.l.15 (2455), fols. 1-77
P Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 6401A
Manu scripts glossed elsewhere, before 1100:
El Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek 179

E2 Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek 302
G1 St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 845
N Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, IV G.68
Po Pommersfelden, Graf von Schünbornsche Schlossbibliothek 39
To Tours, Bibliothèque Municipale 803
66
The sigla are based on the list devised and printed by J.S. Wittig in «King A1fred's
Boethius and its Latin Sources: a Reconsideration>>, Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1983), pp.
157-98.
PRECIOUS STONES IN ANGLO-SAXON GLOSSES
Concetta Giliberto
Introduction
A number of names of precious stones are variously attested in the

Anglo-Saxon glossographic tradition. Sometimes, Latin names of gems
are rendered by an Old English lexical gloss, which can in tum be a
native word or a loanword. However, in most cases, the
interpretamentum consists of a Latin synonym or an explanatory gloss,
providing a more or less general definition of the gem, its colour, and
properties. Such definitions are mostly in Latin, even though vemacular
explanations are also recorded. Sometimes, the same Latin name of a
stone is rendered with different interpretamenta, trying to match the
polysemy of the Latin headword.
The paucity of vemacular interpretamenta to the Latin names of
gems and jewels is possibly due to the defective knowledge and limited
circulation of precious stones in Anglo-Saxon England. Most of the gems
and minerais described in classical and patristic literature, as well as in
the Bible, come from countries far away from the British Isles, especially
the East or southem Europe. In his seminal study on stone lore in Anglo-
Saxon England, Peter Kitson states that: «Ünly the basic properties of
only the best-known gems can be regarded as common ground even
among the learned. Pearl, magnet and adamant would have been matters
of general knowledge, as would crystal, whose whiteness was a by-
word» 1. It was not until the Middle English period that lapidary lore
1
Kitson, P., <<Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: PartI, The Background;
The Old English Lapidary>>, Anglo-Saxon England 7 (1979), pp. 9-60, at 30. Medical
lapidaries too had a limited circulation in Anglo-Saxon England; moreover, works such as
Bald's Lœceboc listed and described remedies mostly based on the use of herbs and
plants, rather than of stones, see Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early
England. Being a Collection of Documents, for the most Part never before Printed,
Illustrating the History of Science in this Country before the Norman Conquest, ed. by O.
Cockayne, 3 vols. (Rolls Series 35), Longman, London 1864-1866; repr. Kraus, Nendeln
1965. The Lœceboc only mentions three stones. The first one is an unidentified hwit stan,
effective against stings and venoms, see Leechdoms, II, p. 290 and Evans, J., Magical
Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, particularly in England, Clarendon Press,
Oxford 1922, pp. 52-53. This 'white stone' has been identified as a rock crystal with
healing properties, see Meaney, A., «Alfred, the Patriarch and the White Stone>>, Bulletin
120 CONCETTA GILIBERTO
would begin to thrive in England, thanks also to Marbod's De lapidibus,

written shortly before 10962 .
In spite of their limited acquaintance with stone lore, the Anglo-
Saxons were fond of gemstones and ornamental minerais, as their
jewellery art demonstrates. A number of artefacts adorned with gems,
such as rings, fibulae, brooches, bracelets, and necklaces, are noteworthy
for their magnificence and beauty. A splendid specimen of these
ornaments is the well-known œstel or 'Alfred Jewel' dated to the ninth
century and now preserved in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It is
made of gold and cloisonné enamel and features a pear-shaped frame
surrounding a transparent piece of rock crystal3 . The importance
attributed by the Anglo-Saxons to precious stones is also witnessed by
severalliterary sources, such as The Phoenix4 andBeowul/, which contain
of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6
(1971), pp. 22-23, and ead., Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones (British
Archaeological Reports 96), British Archaeologica1 Reports, Oxford 1981, pp. 92-93. The
second stone is the so-called chelidonius or 'swal1ow-stone', powerfu1 against headache,
see Leechdoms, II, p. 306. The third one is the gagates, to which eight different virtues are
ascribed (Leechdoms, II, pp. 174 and 296), and, which, according to Meaney, Anglo-
Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones, pp. 71-73, shou1d be identified with the jet and not
with the agate.
2
See Marbodo de Rennes, Liber Lapidum. Lapidario, ed. by M.E. Herrera (Auteurs
Latins du Moyen Âge 15), Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2006, and Marbode of Rennes' (1035-
1123) De Lapidibus: Considered as a Medical Treatise, with Text, Commentary and C.
W King's Translation, together with Text and Translation of Marbode's Minor Works on
Stones, ed. by J.M. Riddle, Steiner, Wiesbaden 1977. Marbod's 1apidary, which is
preserved in over a hundred manuscripts, was trans1ated into many languages and inspired
most of the following works on mineral ogy.
3
This object has been associated with King Alfred a1so on the basis of the inscription
«+AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN» (Alfred ordered me to be made), see Alfred the Great:
Asser's Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, transi., with an introd. and
notes, by S. Keynes and M. Lapidge, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1983, pp. 203-6, and
Hinton, D.A., A Catalogue of the Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork 700-1100 in the
Department of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1974, pp. 29-48.
See also Webster, L., <<.!Edificia nova: Treasures of A1fred's Reign>>, in T. Reuter (ed.),
Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences, Ashgate, Burlington,
VT 2003, pp. 79-103.
4
See the representation of the wondrous bird (!ines 291-306) and that of the blessed
on Doomsday (!ines 602-5a): The Exeter Book, ed. by G.Ph. Krapp and E.v.K. Dobbie
(Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3), Columbia University Press, New York 1 Routledge and
Kegan Paul, London 1936, pp. 102 and 111.
5
See the description of the dragon's treasure (!ines 2756-71): Beowulf and Judith,
ed. by E.v.K. Dobbie (Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 4), Columbia University Press, New
York 1 Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1953, pp. 85-86.
PRECIOUS STONES IN ANGLO-SAXON GLOSSES 121
references to jewellery and costly omaments. Finally, this penchant is

attested in other kinds of documents, including, significantly, a number of
Anglo-Saxon wills of the tenth and eleventh centurl.
This paper will provide a survey of the occurrences of the names of
stones and minerais in Anglo-Saxon glosses and glossaries, in order to
shed light on the different approaches of the glossators to this semantic
field. A study of the interpretamenta to the names of precious stones
provides sorne interesting insights into the level and dissemination of
stone lore in Anglo-Saxon England, showing how a share of the
renderings of sorne Latin lemmata denoting gems was likely motivated
by specifie didactic aims 7 .
The lapidary terminology in Anglo-Saxon England
The scanty knowledge of stone lore in Anglo-Saxon England also

emerges from the mineralogical terminology. According to Kitson, «the
distinction of gems by name was to the Anglo-Saxons an imported art» 8•
Before examining the names of stones in the corpus of Anglo-Saxon
glosses, it may be useful to provide sorne preliminary information on the
lapidary terminology.
1. The words for 'precious stone'
In Anglo-Saxon England, 'jewels' and 'gemstones' in general are

denoted by a number of vemacular terms, sorne of which are of Germanie
origin, while others are loanwords from Latin.
The native word eorcnanstan 'precious stone' (cf. ON iarknasteinn)
- which is recorded both in poetry and prose - is a compound, the second
element of which is clearly the word for 'stone'. The first element,
6
Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. with transi. and notes by D. White1ock, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 1930; repr. Gaunt, Holmes Beach, FL 1986, pp. 14, 20, 50,
and 63. On jewellery in Anglo-Saxon England, see, among others, Hinton, D.A., «Anglo-
Saxon Smiths and Myths», in D. Scragg (ed.), Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-
Saxon En gland: Thomas Northcote Taller and the Taller Memorial Lectures (Publications
of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 1), Brewer, Cambridge 2003, pp. 261-
82, and Dodwell, C.R., Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective, Manchester University
Press, Manchester 1982.
7
AH lexical concordances have been searched on the Dictionary of Old English Web
Corpus: http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus/ (last accessed January 2011).
8
Kitson, «Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: Part l», p. 25.
eorcnan-, is possibly a cognate of Goth. -airkns 'holy' and OHG erchan

'genuin, right' 9 •
The hapax maôôumsigle, occurring in Beowulf (line 2757) with the
meaning of 'costly ornament, precious jewel', is also a compound,
formed by maôum 'object of value, jewel' (cf. Go th. maipms, OS methom
'jewel, gem', and ON meiômar 'gifts, presents') and sigle 'jewel, brooch,
necklace' 10 • OE sincstan 'precious stone' is a compound formed by sine
'treasure' and stan, and is recorded only in the verse translation of one
Metre of Boethius' s De consolatione Philosophiae 11 •
An Old English phrase used to denote a 'precious stone' is stan
deorwierôe, which, in the glossarial tradition, is the common rendering of
the Latin lapis pretiosus. This phrase is attested in the glosses to the Book
of Proverbs in London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.vi (ff. 2-37) 12
9
The word occurs in Beowulf, line 1208, where it refers to the precious stones
adoming Wealhtheow's necklace; it is also used in Christ, line 1195, Elene, line 1024,
The Phoenix, line 603, and The Ruin, line 36 as well as in a few homilies. In the
interlinear gloss to the Rushworth Gospels (Mt VII.6, XIII.45 and XIII.46) and in The
Letter of Alexander (§§ 8 and 10), eorcnanstan renders the Latin margarita 'pearl'. On
the relation of OE eorcnanstan with ON jarknasteinn as well as of OE eorcnan- with
Goth. -airkns and OHG erchan, see, among others, Sievers, E., <<Altnordisches im
Beowulf>>, Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 12 (1887), pp.
168-200, at 182-3, and Carr, C.T., Nominal Compounds in Germanie, Oxford University
Press, London 1939, p. 32. On the Old Norse word, which has also been reckoned among
the borrowings from Old English, see De Vries, J., Altnordisches Etymologisches
Worterbuch, 2nd edn., Brill, Leiden 1977, s. v., and Nerman, B., «Eddadiktemas
'iarknasteinn'>>, Arkiv for Nordisk Filologi 77 (1962), pp. 48-52.
10
Sigle occurs three times in Beowulf, lines 1157, 1200, 3163, and in a few prose
texts. The cognate word, OE sigil, has a few occurrences, mostly in glosses, as an
interpretamentum of Latin fibula 'clasp, buckle'. In a few cases, it renders Latin bulla
(any object swelling up, and thus becoming round, a kind of amulet wom upon the neck,
mostly of gold), and in a couple of cases it also g1osses Latin gimma (Harley Glossary B
411: «Bulla . gemma . flumen . ue1 sigl>>). On the base of these occurrences, it is not
possible to surrnise the meaning 'precious stone' for OE sigil.
11
Met. 21, line 21 (Bk. III, met. 10): The Paris Psalter and the Meters of Boethius,
ed. by G.Ph. Krapp (Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 5), Columbia University Press, New
York 1 Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1932, p. 185.
12
Lapide pretiosa is rendered as diorweorôum stane in the glosses to Prv VIII.19,
see Kalbhen, U., Kentische Glossen und kentischer Dialekt im Altenglischen. Mit einer
kommentierten Edition der altenglischen Glossen in der Handschrift London, British
Library, Cotton Vespasian D.vi (TUEPh 28), Lang, Frankfurt a.M. 2003. For these
glosses see Zupitza, J., «Kentische Glossen des neunten Jahrhunderts>>, Zeitschrift für
deutsches Alterthum und deutsche Litteratur 21 (1877), pp. 1-59, and id., «Zu den
kentischen Glossen Zs. 21, lff.>>, Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum und deutsche
Litteratur 22 ( 1878), pp. 223-6.
and is the common rendering of «de lapide pretioso» (Ps XX.4) 13 in the
Anglo-Saxon glossed Psalms 14 . Also the Eadwine Psalter (E), which is
the latest glossed psalter and dates to the twelfth century, has «of prem
diorweorpestren strenum» (ofthe most precious stone) (Ps XX.4) 15 .
Undoubtedly, the most frequently attested word for 'jewel' in both
Old English prose and poetry is gimm, a transparent borrowing from
Latin gemma. The considerable number of occurrences of this word, as
well as of its compounds and derivative nouns 16, testifies to the antiquity
of the loanword 17 • OE gimm is found as the interpretamentum for Latin
13
Vespasian (A), Junius (B), Cambridge (C), Regius (D), Stowe (F), Vitellius (G),
Tiberius (H), Lambeth (1), and Arundel Psalter (J): see The Vespasian Psalter, ed. by S.M.
Kuhn, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI 1965, p. 17; Der altenglische Junius-
Psalter. Die Interlinear-Glosse zu der Handschrift Junius 27 der Bodleiana zu Oxford, ed.
by E. Brenner, Winter, Heidelberg 1908, p. 22; Der Cambridger Psalter (Hs. Ff 1,23
University Libr. Cambridge), ed. by K. Wildhagen, Grand, Hamburg 1910; repr.
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1964, p. 42; Der altenglische Regius-
Psalter. Eine Interlinearversion in Hs. Royal 2.B.5 des Brit. Mus, ed. by F. Raeder,
Niemeyer, Halle a.d.S. 1904, p. 33; The Stowe Psalter, ed. by A.C. Kimmens, University
of Toronto Press, Toronto 1979, p. 35; The Vitellius Psalter, ed. by J.L. Rosier, Cornell
University Press, ltbaca, NY 1962, p. 42; The Tiberius Psalter edited from British
Museum MS Cotton Tiberius C vi, ed. by A.P. Campbell, University of Ottawa Press,
Ottawa 1974, p. 45; Der Lambeth-Psalter, ed. by U. Lindelüf, 2 vols. (Acta Societatis
Scientiarum Fennicae 35,1 and 43,3), Druckerei der Finnischen Litteraturgesellschaft,
Helsingfors 1909-1914, 1, p. 30; Der altenglische Arundel-Psalter. Eine Interlinear-
version in der Handschrift Arundel 60 des Britischen Museums, ed. by G. Oess, Winter,
Heidelberg 1910; repr. Swets & Zeitlinger, Amsterdam 1968, p. 50.
14
A significant number of manuscripts of the Psalters contain a continuons glass in
Old English. A network of affiliations between these glossed Psalters has been
discovered, from which two types emerge: type A (including A, B, and C, with B and C
dependent on A) and type D (including D, F, G, H, J, K, and L, with D as tbe oldest
witness, from which ail the others are derived): see Bierbaumer, P., «On tbe
Interrelationship of the Old English Psalter-Glosses», Arbeiten aus Anglistik und
Amerikanistik 2 (1977), pp. 123-48; Berghaus, F.-G., Die Verwandtschaftsverhiiltnisse
der altenglischen lnterlinearversionen des Psalters und der Cantica (Palaestra 272),
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen 1979, pp. 44-64 and table 18; Pulsiano, Ph.,
<<Defining the A-Type (Vespasian) and D-Type (Regius) Psalter-gloss Traditions>>,
English Studies 72 (1991), pp. 308-27; and Old English Glossed Psalters, ed. by Ph.
Pulsiano, University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2001.
15
Eadwine's Canterbury Psalter, ed. by F. Harsley (EETS os 92), Trübner, London
1889; repr. Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 2000, p. 30.
16
See gimcynn 'gem-kind', gimstan 'gem, jewel', searogim 'ski1fully wrought gem',
sincgim 'precious gem', gimwyrhta 'a worker in gems', gimmisc 'jewelled', gimmian 'to
adorn witb gem', and gimreced 'bejeweled hall'.
17
See Wollmann, A., Untersuchungen zu den frühen lateinischen Lehnwortern im
Altenglischen. Phonologie und Datierung (TUEPh 15), Fink, Munich 1990, p. 159. It is a
gemma in a number of glossaries and interlinear glosses to literary texts.

It occurs in the glosses to Boethius's De consolatione Philosophiae in
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 214 18 , to a prognostic in London,
British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii 19 , to a prayer in London, British
Library, Arundel 155 20 , and to the Book of Proverbs (XVII.8) in Cotton
Vespasian D.vi21 . The compound gymstan renders gemma in the glosses
to Aldhelm's prose De virginitate in Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 1650
and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 14622 , as weil as in lElfric's
Grammar and Glossary23 .
pre-migration loanword, reflecting the superiority of the Roman jeweller' s art, according
to Kitson, «Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: Part 1», p. 26.
18
The gloss gimmas renders gemmas in Bk. III, met. 8: An Edition and
Codicological Study of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 214, ed. by W.C. Hale,
unpubl. PhD. diss., University of Pennsylvania 1978.
19
OE gimm glosses Latin gemmam and OE gimmas renders Latin gemmas:
Chardonnens, L.S., Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900-1100: Study and Texts (Brill's Studies
in Intellectual History 153. Brill's Texts and Sources in Intellectual History 3), Brill,
Leiden and Boston, MA 2007, pp. 312 and 321, and Forster, M., «Beitrage zur
mittelalterlichen Volkskunde IV>>, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und
Literaturen 125 (1910), pp. 39-70, at 50 and 68.
20
Gym glosses the word gemma in the Prayer entitled 'Oratio de Sancto LElfuego'
(incipit «Cogitationum et voluntatum ... >>): Campbell, J.J., <<Prayers from MS. Arundel
155>>, Anglia 81 (1963), pp. 82-117, at 98.
21
Gim glosses gemma in Prv XVII.8.
22
The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library, 1650 (Aldhelm's De
Laudibus Virginitatis), ed. by L. Goossens (Verhandelingen van de koninklijke Academie
voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en schone Kunsten van België. Kiasse der Letteren 36, n.
74), Paleis der Academiën, Brussels 1974, nos. 1126: «gemmarum gemstana>> and 3088:
«gemmis of gimstanum>>; Old English Glos ses, ed. by A. S. Napier (Anecdota Oxoniensia.
Mediaeval and Modern Series 11), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1900; repr. Olms, Hildesheim
1969, nos. 1,1073: «gemmarum, gymstana>> and 1,3194: «gemmis, of gimstanum>>. For
Aldhelm's writings, see Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by R. Ehwald (MGH, AA 15), Weidmann,
Berlin 1919.
23
See, respectively, Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar. Text und Varianten, ed. by J.
Zupitza (Sammlung englischer Denkmiiler in kritischen Ausgaben 1), Weidmann, Berlin
1880; repr. with a preface by H. Gneuss, Berlin 1966; 2nd repr. with new introd. by H.
Gneuss, Olms, Hildesheim 2001, p. 14,5-6: «gemma, œlces cynne gymstan>>; p. 14,12:
«gemma, gimstan>>; p. 257,6: «gemma, gimstan, gemmatus gegymmod>> (Grammar); p.
319,6: «gemma, gymstan>> (Glossary). The glosses to LElfric's Colloquy rather use gymm:
«pretiosas gemmas: deorwyrpe gymmas>>: /Elfric's Colloquy, ed. by G.N. Garmonsway
(Methuen's Old English Library Prose Selections 2), Methuen, London 1939; 2nd rev.
edn., University of Exeter, Exeter 1978; repr. 1991, p. 33,159.
2. The terminology for specifie gemstones
2.1 Vernacular terminology
The only word of Anglo-Saxon origin indicating a particular gem is

saxol, which glosses Latin gagates in the First Cleopatra Glossarl4 and
in the glossary contained in London, British Library, Cotton Otho E.i
badly damaged in the Cottonian fire 25 . The stone named sœcol, literally
'sea-coal', is traditionally identified with the jet or gagate 26 , a lustrous
black mineral which is indigenous to Britain and well known there since
ancient times.
This gem is mentioned by Bede in his description of Britain which
opens the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Li):
Quae etiam uenis metallorum, aeris ferri et plumbi et argenti, fecunda gignit et
lapidem gagatem plurimum optimumque; est autem nigrogemmeus, et ardens igni
admotus, incensus serpentes fugat.
(The land has also rich veins of metal, copper, iron, lead, and silver. It produces a
great deal of excellent jet, which is glossy black and burns when put into the fire and,
when kindled, it drives away serpents.) 27
24
The Latin-Old English Glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra A Ill, ed. by W.G.
Stryker, unpubl. Ph.D diss., Stanford University 1951 (G 160). The First Cleopatra
Glossary, preserved in London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A.iii, ff. 5r-75v (s. x
med.), is an alphabetical glossary, breaking off at the letter p. The most recent edition of
this glossary is The Cleopatra Glossaries. An Edition with Commentary on the Glosses
and their Sources, ed. by Ph.G. Rusche, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Yale University 1996.
25
The Glossary in London, British Library, Cotton Otho E.i is connected with the
First Cleopatra Glossary, see Voss, M .• «Altenglische Glossen aus MS. British Library,
Cotton Otho E.i>>, Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 21 (1996), pp. 179-203, at
184-6.
26
For OE sœcol, see Bosworth, J. and Toiler, T.N., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary
Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth [ ... ]. Edited and
Enlarged by T.N. Taller, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1898, p. 808; Clark Hall, J.R.,
A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Sonnenschein & Co., London 1 Macmillan & Co.,
New York 1894; 4th edn. with suppl. by H.D. Meritt, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1960, s. v. For the identification of the gagates with the jet (OE sœcol), see
Kitson, «Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: Part l», p. 26 and note 4, and
Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Cu ring Stones, pp. 71-73.
27
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. by B. Colgrave
and R.A.B. Mynors, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1969, pp. 16-17.
Notably, however, in the Old English version of the Historia

ecclesiastica the name of this stone is not the native sœcol but a loanword
from Latin, namely gagatei 8 • Gagates also occurs in composition with
stan in an entry of the Antwerp-London Glossary «Gazates, gagat
stan» 29 • In the translation of the Historia ecclesiastica, the gagates is
described as a blaec gym. Indeed a number of minerais were named in
Old English according to their colour (hwit stan, read stan, grœg stan,
blac stan) 30 •
2.2. Loanwords and Latin names
Like gagates a few specifie gemstones are designated by a Latin

loanword, such as aôamans (borrowed from Latin adamas), iacincô
(from Latin hyacinthus), and carbunculus (from Latin carbunculus), ali
occurring in the translation of the Regula pastoralis of pope Gregory ! 31 .
Other borrowings from Latin are geaspis (from Latin }aspis), which
occurs in the Old English Lapidary, preserved in London, British Library,
Cotton Tiberius A.iie 2 , and cristalla (from Latin crystallumi 3 .
28
<<Her bip eac gemeted gagates: se stan biô blœc gym; gif mon bine on fyr dep,
ponne fleop pœr neddran onweg>> (Jet is also found here, which is a black gem; if put in
the fire, adders fly from it): The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of
the English People, ed. by T. Miller, 4 vols. (EETS os 95, 96, 110 and 111), Trübner,
London 1890-1898, I, pp. 26-27. See also Garrett, R.M., Precious Stones in Old English
Literature, Deichert, Leipzig 1909, pp. 17 and 59-60.
29
MS Additional 32,246, ed. by L. Kindschi, unpubl. PhD. diss., Stanford University 1955,
p. 141,5. The most recent edition is The Antwerp-London Glossaries. The Latin and
Latin-Old English Vocabularies from Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus 16.2 -London,
British Library Add. 32246, I. Texts and Indices, ed. by D.W. Porter (Publications of the
Dictionary of Old English 8), Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto 2011.
30
Kitson, <<Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: PartI>>, pp. 26-27.
31
King Alfred's West-Saxon Version ofGregory's Pastoral Care, ed. by H. Sweet, 2
vols. (EETS os 45 and 50), Trübner, London 1871-1872, I, p. 83: <<mid [ôœm] stane
iacincta>>; p. 85: <<Se giem iacinctus>>; p. 270: <<se hearda stan se pe aôamans batte>>; p.
271: <<se hearda stan, se ôe aôamans batte>>; p. 411: <<iacintes>>; p. 411: <<on gimma
gecynde carbunculus>> (line 27), <<Ôœs blacan carbuncules>> (line 29), and <<Ôœs
carbuncules>> (line 31). Carbunculus occurs also in the Old English Letter of Alexander:
Orchard, A., Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript,
University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1985, p. 228 (§ 8).
32
The Old English Lapidary has been edited by R. von Fleischhacker, <<Ein
altenglischer Lapidar>>, Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum und deutsche Litteratur 34
(1890), pp. 229-35; Garrett, Precious Stones, pp. 35-40; English Mediaeval Lapidaries,
ed. by J. Evans and M.S. Serjeantson (EETS os 190), Oxford University Press, London
The gems designated by their Latin names are the saphiros, occurring
in the translation of the Book of Exodus XXIV.lO, and the smaragdus
attested in the Old English Letter of Alexander34 • Also the topaz is
occasionally called by the corresponding Latin word topazius35 • The
widespread use of the Latin names is witnessed by a phrase of JElfric's
Grammar: «gemrenelice gemma gimstan; synderlice cristallum, topazius,
be rillus» 36 •
Latin names of the gems can be followed by a paraphrase, which
clarifies the basic features of the stone in question. Such is the case with
the entries of the Old English Lapidary. Likewise, in several glossaries
the interpretamenta to names of precious stones and minerais often
consist of either a generic definition or a sort of brief description of the
stone, which can be either in Latin or in the vemacular.
In the Harley Glossary 37 , several headwords referring to specifie
gemstones are followed by the generic interpretation nomen gemme 38 ,
while, in other entries, the Latin lemma is glossed with nomen lapidis 39 •
The phrase nomen gemmae is recorded in the Épinal Glossary (CGL
1933, pp. 13-15 and 131-2; and Kitson, <<Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England:
Part l», pp. 31-33. See also Giliberto, C., <<Stone Lore in Miscellany Manuscripts: The
Old English Lapidary>>, in R.H. Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker (eds.), Foundations of
Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages
(Storehouses of Wholesome Leaming I. Mediaevalia Groningana ns 9), Peeters, Paris,
Leuven and Dudley, MA 2007, pp. 253-78.
33
See below, p. 131.
34
The Old English Heptateuch and JElfric's Libellus de veteri testamento et novo,
ed. by R. Marsden (EETS os 330), Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008, p. 121 ( <<j:nes
stanes ôe man 'saphiros' on Leden nemÔ>>); Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the
Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript, p. 228 (§ 8). On the names of these gems, see
Garrett, Precious Stones, pp. 57-79.
35
See below, p. 141.
36
Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar, ed. by Zupitza, p. 14,11-13.
37
The Harley Glossary (London, British Library, Harley 3376) is an alphabetical
glossary which, in the present state, co vers the letters from a to f The Harley Latin-Old
English Glossary edited from British Museum MS Harley 3376, ed. by R.T. Oliphant
(Janua Linguarum. Series Practica 20), Mouton, The Hague and Paris 1966, must be
integrated with the review of Hans Schabram in Anglia 86 (1968), pp. 495-500.
38
The phrase nomen gemmae accompanies the following lemmata: bronia (B 525),
calcitis (C 52), calcofanus (C 61), cilonitis (C 1005), cimedia (C 1048), cianea (C 1063),
coaspitis (C 1389), corallius (C 1865), crisopis (C 2111), echites (E 24), efestitis (E 105),
andflogites (F 508).
39
The phrase nomen lapidis occurs in the following interpretamenta: <<Croso . nomen
lapidis .i. catmia>> (C 2122), <<Ematides . nomen lapidis in egipto>> (E 224), and <<Fingites.
nomen lapidis cappadociae>> (F 333).
V,367,52 in note) 40 and in the First (CGL V,367,52t 1 and Second Erfurt
Glossary (CGL V,301,9)42 as interpretamentum for iaspis, as well as, in
the Second Corpus Glossary, as interpretamentum for heuotropeum (a
mispelling of heliotropium, H 78), iaspis (I 3), and saga (for sagda, S
94) 43 . Moreover, in the latter glossary, onyx is rendered simply with
gemma (0 171). A comparable gloss is found in the Third Erfurt
Glossary: «iaspis gemma» (CGL II,582,11) 44 .
The phrase gemmae genus (or genus gemmae) is also used as
interpretamentum for berulus (presumably a variant of birillus) in the
Second Corpus Glossary (B 82), the First Erfurt, and the Épinal glossaries
(CGL V,348,41t5 .
Names of stones according to the colour
In Anglo-Saxon England, a number of stones are named after their

colour and examples of this type of classification of minerais and stones
are found in the glosses too. Such is the case with onyx, a gem mentioned
in the Bible (Ex XXVIII.17-20 and XXXIX.10-13, Ez XXVIII.l3, and I
Par XXIX.2). The Leiden Glossar/6 records the name of this stone in the
gloss: «Lapides onichinos . dunm; .» (Leiden VII,4) occurring in the
40
The Épinal Glossary is preserved in Épinal, Bibliothèque Municipale 72 (ff. 94-
107), written in England in the last quarter of the seventh century. All the en tries with an
Old English interpretamentum will be quoted from Old English Glosses in the Épinal-
Erfurt Glossary, ed. by J.D. Pheifer, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1974. For the aH-Latin
entries, see Corpus glossariorum Latinorum a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum, ed. by G.
Goetz, 7 vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1888-1923; repr. Hakkert, Amsterdam 1965 (hereafter
CGL), V, where Épinal is printed in the apparatus of First Erfurt.
41
The glossary is contained in Erfurt/Gotha, Universitats- und Forschungsbibliothek,
Dep. Erf., Cod. Ampl. 2° 42, written c. 820 at the cathedral of Cologne. It occupies ff. 1r-
14v of the manuscript and is closely connected with the Épinal Glossary.
42
The Second Erfurt Glossary occupies ff. 14v-34v of the manuscript.
43
The g1ossary, contained in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 144, ff. 4r-64v, is
printed in The Corpus Glossary, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1921; see also id., The Corpus, Épinal, Erfurt and Leyden Glossaries
(Publications of the Philological Society 8), Oxford University Press, London 1921.
44
The Third Erfurt Glossary is on ff. 34v-37v of the Erfurt manuscript.
45
Second Corpus: Berulus (i.e. beryllus): geminae (for gemmae) genus>>; Épinal
«Berulus genus gemmae»; First Erfurt <<Berulus genus gemmç».
46
The Leiden Glossary is on ff. 20r-36r of Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss.
Lat. Q. 69, written at St Gallen c. 800: see A Late Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon
Glossary Preserved in the Library of the Leiden University (Ms. Voss. Q 0 Lat. N°. 69), ed.
by J.H. Hessels, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1906.
chapter collecting the glosses from the Book of Paralipomenon. This

entry contains a clear reference to the colour of the gem, since the
meaning of the Old English adjective dunn is 'dingy brown, bark-
coloured'47. Onyx occurs again in the Second Corpus Glossary (0 171),
generically rendered as gemma, and in the Second Erfurt Glossary ( CGL
V ,316,25), where it is followed by the interpretamentum «genus
marmoris». This stone is also listed in the Old English Lapidary, where it
is described as a brown and blue gem: «Syxta onichinus is haten se is ge
brun 7 hrewen» (The sixth is called onychin. It is both brown and blue) 48 .
The practice of naming gems by their colour is also applied in the
case of prase, a light green variety of translucent chalcedony, which was
described by Pliny (Naturalis historia XXXVII.xxxiv.113) 49 and Isidore
(Etymologiae XVI.vii.4) 50 . The Münster fragment of the so-called
Werden Glossary I features the glass «prassus (recte prasius) groeni» 51 •
Another green gem is the chrysoprase, usually described as green like
a leek and shining like a golden star. Such features were mentioned in the
description of this stone in Isidore's Etymologiae (XVI.vii.7):
Chrysoprasus Indicus est, colore porri succum referens, aureis intervenientibus

guttis, unde et nomen accepit.
(Chrysoprase is an lndian stone, with a colour recalling that of the sap of a leek, with
47
On the adjective dunn modifying onyx, see also Biggam, C.P., «Old English
Colour Lexemes Used of Textiles in Anglo-Saxon England», in G.D. Caie, C. Hough and
l. Wotherspoon (eds.), The Power of Words: Essays in Lexicography, Lexicology and
Semantics in Honour of Christian J. Kay, Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York 2006, pp. 1-
21.
48
Giliberto, «Stone Lore in Miscellany Manuscripts>>, pp. 260-1.
49
Pliny, Natural History: With an English Translation, X, ed. by D.E. Eichholz
(Loeb Classical Library 419), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 1962.
50
lsidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M.
Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical Texts), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1911.
51
Altsachsische Sprachdenkmaler, ed. by J.H. Gallée, Brill, Leiden 1894, p. 342,
glass no. 188. The manuscript, written in Werden c. 825, which survives today in
fragments, contained three glossaries, known as Werden l, II, and Ill. On the relationships
between the Anglo-Saxon glossaries and the Werden fragments, see Pheifer, J.D., <<Early
Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of Canterbury», Anglo-Saxon England 16 (1987),
pp. 17-44, at 18-19 and 30-37, and B. Bischoff, M. Budny, G. Harlow, M.B. Parkes and
J.D. Pheifer (eds.), The Épinal, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries (EEMF 22), Rosenkilde
and Bagger, Copenhagen 1988, pp. 55-60. See also below M.R. Digilio's contribution to
the present volume, pp. 371-94.
130 CONCETT A GILIBERTO
intervening gold spots, whence it took its name.) 52
An analogous description is found in Bede's Explanatio Apocalypsis,

a biblical commentary written between 703 and 709, which includes the
account of the gems adorning the foundations of the Holy City in Apc
XXI.19-20: «Chrysoprasus est viridis aureaeque commixturae» (The
chrysoprase is a mixture of green and gold) 53 , and in the Old English
Lapidary:
Nigopa is crisoprassus haten se is grenum Ieee gelic 7 swilce him grene steorran of
scinan54 .
(The ninth is called chrysoprase. It is like a green leek, and as if green stars were
shining from it.) 55
The description of the stone offered in the Old English Lapidary is

quite close to the corresponding entry in the Leiden Glossary:
Cypressus . uiridem habet colorem ut est porrus et stellas aureas habet: Leiden (XLI,
16).
Further examples of gems described on the basis of their colour and

brightness are provided by the following glosses concerning the jasper
and the chrysolite:
!aspis nigrum et uiridem colorem habet: Épinal (CGL V,365,21 in note)
Iaspis nigrum et uiridum colorem habet: First Erfurt (CGL V,365,21)
!aspis nigrum et uiridem colorem habet: Leiden (XLI,7)
Crysolitus auri colorem et stella habet: Épinal (CGL V,352,22 in note)

Crysolitus colorem aureum habet et stellas: First Erfurt (CGL V,352,22).
C<h>risolit<h>us auri colorem et stellas habet: Second Corpus (C 886)
Among the glosses which define gems by their colour is also

«Cyanea lapis . hœwenstan» 'blue-stone', a compound formed with OE
52
English translation from The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, transi., with introd.
and notes, by S.A., Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach and O. Berghof, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 2006, p. 322.
53
Bedae Venerabilis Opera, II. Opera exegetica, 5. Bedae presbyteri Expositio
Apocalypseos, ed. by R. Gryson (CCSL 121A), Brepols, Turnhout 2001, p. 551 (my
translation).
54
Giliberto, «Stone Lore in Miscellany Manuscripts», p. 260.
55
Ibid., p. 261.
hœwen 'azure, green, blue, grey', which occurs in the Harley Glossary (C
2265)56 •
As far as beryl is concemed, there are glosses recorded which refer to
both the white colour and the transparency of this mineral. One is
«berulus genus saxi candidi», attested in Second Erfurt (CGL V,270,53),
whereas Épinal and First Erfurt have «birillus tantum ut aqua splendet»
(CGL V,347,5), which is quite close to the entry «Birillus ut aqua
splendet» of Second Corpus (B 97).
Also crystallus is once given an interpretation referring to its colour.
The entry in question occurs in Second Corpus and reads: «C[h]ristallus:
genus saxi candidi» (C 376). However, in the glossarial tradition, the
name of this gem is rendered by the loanword cristalla in the glosses to
Prudentius' s Cathemerinon 57 and to the Eadwine Psalter (Ps CXLVII.
6)58 . Finally, cristallum, crystallum is glossed by OE gimstan in the
Vitellius Psalter (Ps CXLVII.6) 59 and in the Lambeth Psalter (Ps
CXLVII.6) 60 . Moreover, in the latter Psalter, gimstan is found as an
alternative to gycelstan 'hailstone' (gycelstan his vel gimstan); OE
gicelstan for cristallum occurs also in the Royal Psalter (Ps CXLVII.6) 61
and in the Salisbury Psalter (Ps CXLVII.6) 62 • The choice of the Lambeth,
Royal and Salisbury glossators is quite interesting, since the use of OE
gycelstan seems to point back to a very old legend found in a number of
classical and patristic sources (Pliny, Isidore, Bede, and Augustine),
according to which the crystal would be made of petrified ice63 •
56
«Cyanea lapis . hwœnenstan»: on this gloss, see also Biggam, C.P., Blue in Old
English: An Interdisciplinary Semantic Study, Rodopi, Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA 1997,
p. 198.
57
<<ebenoque crystallum facis», Cathemerinon II,101: The Old English Prudentius
Glosses at Boulogne-sur-Mer, ed. by H.D. Meritt, Stanford University Press, Stanford,
CA 1959, p. 11.
58
Eadwine's Canterbury Psalter, ed. by Harsley, p. 242. In the Arundel Psalter (Ps.
CXLVII.6) cristallum is repeated over the lemma cristallum of the text: Der altenglische
Arundel-Psalter, ed. by Oess, p. 229.
59
The Vitellius Psalter, ed. by Rosier, p. 359.
60
Der Lambeth-Psalter, ed. by Lindelôf, p. 231.
61
Der altenglische Regius-Psalter, ed. by Roeder, p. 271.
62
The Salisbury Psalter, ed. by C. Sisam and K. Sisam (EETS os 242), Oxford
University Press, London 1959, p. 281.
63
See Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXVII.ix.23; Isidore, Etym. XVI.xiii.l; Bede, In
Genesim I.i.6-8: Beda Venerabilis Opera, II. Opera exegetica, 1. Libri quatuor in
principium Genesis usque ad nativitatem Isaac et eiectionem Ismahelis adnotationum, ed.
by. C.W. Jones (CCSL 118A), Brepols, Turnhout 1976, pp. 10-12; and Augustine,
Names of stones referring to both the mineral and the object made
from it: alabastrum
The glossarial tradition occasionally records names of stones which

refer to both the mineral and the object made from it, as is the case with
alabastrum 'alabaster'. The name of this stone is attested in the Leiden,
Épinal-Erfurt, Second Corpus, and Antwerp-London glossaries. It occurs
also in the interlinear glosses to the Lindisfame and Rushworth
Gospels 64 . In the Leiden and Second Corpus glossaries, the headword
alabastrum is followed by a Latin definition that explains exactly the
etymological meaning of the lemma and also refers to the use to which
this mineral was put in ancient times:
Alabastrum proprium nomen lapidis et uas sic nominatur de illo lapide factum:
Leiden (XXIV,13: a gloss to Mt XXVI.7)
Alabastrum: vas de gemma; proprium nomen lapidis; et vas nominat<ur> de illo

lapide factum: Second Corpus (A 442).
Actually, the alabaster was often employed to manufacture pots and

vases to store ointments. The Greek sources attest to two words deriving
from the same etymological root: Greek ÙÀapacrrpoç, denoting the pot,
and ÙÀapmnptTrJç, denoting the stone65 • In his Commentary on Mark,
Bede gives a detailed description of the stone and of its uses:
Est autem alabastrum genus marmoris candidi, variisque maculis intertincti, quod ad
vasa unguentaria cavari solet eo quod optime servare ea incorrupta dicatur66 .
(Alabaster is a kind of shining white marble, and spotted with variegated stains,
which is usually hollowed out to make jars for ointments because it is said to
preserve them uncorrupted.r
Enarratio in Psalmum CXL VII: Augustinus Enarrationes in Psalmos CI-CL, ed. by E.
Dekkers and J. Fraipont (CCSL 40), Brepols, Turnhout 1956, p. 2139.
64
Mc XN.3, see The Gospel According to Saint Matthew and According to Saint
Mark in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian and Old Mercian Versions, ed. by W.W. Skeat,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1871-1887; repr. Wissenschaftliche Buch-
gesellschaft, Darmstadt 1970.
65
Garrett, Precious Stones, p. 9.
66
Beda Venerabilis Opera exegetica, 3. In Lucae evangelium expositio. In Marci
evangelium expositio, ed. by D. Hurst (CCSL 120), Brepols, Turnhout 1960, p. 609.
67
My translation.
The Latin interpretamentum provided in the Épinal and First Erfurt

glossaries refers only to the vase, not to the material's name: «alabastrum
vas de gemma» (CGLV,340,53). Similarly, theAntwerp-London Glossary
features the gloss «Alabastrum, stœnen elefœt» 68 , where the first element
of the compound elefœt 'ointment-pot' clearly conveys the specifie use
the vessel was intended for.
In the glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels, alabastrum is rendered
with stœnna (Mt XXVI.7), stœnne fœt, stanfœt (Mc XIV.3), œlefœt (Le
VII.37), and in the glosses to the Rushworth Gospels with stanfœt (Mc
XIV.3). These passages from the Gospels all recount the story of the
woman carrying a small alabaster jar full of precious perfumed oil, who
poured it over the head of Jesus while he was in Bethany, visiting Simon
the Ieper. In these occurrences, the equivalence between the Latin !emma
and its Old English explanations is approximate, since the
interpretamenta provided for alabastrum always refer to a vase made of
stone (rather than to the material itself), whereas the exact name of the
mineral is not rendered. The glossators use instead the generic OE stan in
alllikelihood because there was no native word for alabastrum.
Glosses with multiple lemmata and/or interpretamenta
A number of glos ses concerning stones' names are characterized by a

lack of homogeneity in both the lemmata and the interpretamenta. The
glosses for 'amber' belong to this group, as they feature two Latin
headwords: electrum and succinum.
1. Electrum
Latin electrum is a polysemous word. In the antique and late antique

world, electrum denoted several substances and Isidore explained that
there are three kinds of electrum (Etym. XVI.xxiv.l-3):
1. Electrum vocatum quod ad radium solis darius auro argentoque reluceat; sol enim
a poetis Elector vocatur. Defaecatius est enim hoc metallum omnibus metallis. 2.
Huius tria genera: unum, quod ex pini arboribus fluit, quod sucinum dicitur; alterum
metallum, quod naturaliter invenitur et in pretio habetur; tertium, quod fit de tribus
partibus auri et argenti una. Quas partes, etiam si naturale solvas, invenies. Unde
nihil interesse natum an factum; utrumque enim eiusdem naturae esse. 3. Electrum,
68
The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus MS 32, ed. by Kindschi, p.
82,13. The gloss is found in a section of the glossary entitled 'No mina vasorum'.
quod est naturale, eiusmodi naturae est ut in convivio et ad lumina clarius cunctis
metallis fulgeat, et venenum prodat. Nam si eo infundas venenum, stridorem edit et
colores varios in modum arcus caelestis emittit.
(1. Electrum (electrum) is so named because it reflects in the sun's ray more clearly
than silver or gold; for the sun is called Elector ("the Shining one") by poets. This
metal is more refined than all the other metals. 2. There are three kinds. The first
kind, which flows from pine branches (i.e. amber, the primary meaning of electrum),
is called 'liquid electrum'. The second, which is found naturally and held in esteem,
is 'metallic electrum'. The third kind is made from three parts gold and one part
silver. You will find the same proportions if you melt natural electrum, for there is no
difference between natural electrum and manufactured; both have the same nature. 3.
Electrum that is natural has a character such that at a banquet it gleams even more
brightly by lamplight than all the other metals. It also reveals poison, for if you pour
sorne poison into a vessel made from it, it makes a harsh noise and gives off a variety
of colors like a rainbow.) 69
The first kind of electrum described by Isidore is the resin, that is the
substance (called also succinite), which is secreted from coniferous trees.
After a long process of fossilization, this resin tums into amber, which
has been appreciated for its colour and beauty since time immemorial and
used for the manufacture of omamental objects and jewelry. According to
Isidore, electrum is also the name of a precious alloy of gold and silver
found in nature; finally, it denotes a mixture of metals artificially made
by three parts of gold and one of silver. To sum up, electrum denotes both
'amber' and an alloy of precious metals70 •
In the Old English glosses, electrum is accompanied by several
interpretamenta: smylting, eolhsand, glœr, mœstling, and cwicseolfo?'.
The last one, which means 'quicksilver', is attested only once in the
Harley Glossary (E 174) and is possibly the result of a misinterpretation
69
English translation from The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, transl. by Barney et
al., p. 332.
70
See Lendinara, P., «Dalla Grecia alla Germania: fili di mito e grani d'ambra», in
A. Dino and L.A. Callari (eds.), Coscienza e potere. Narrazioni attraverso il mita,
Mimesis, Milan and Udine 2009, pp. 111-31.
71
On the Old English interpretamenta of Latin electrum, see Schabram, H., «Ae.
smylting 'electrum'. Polysemie lat. Wi.irter als Problem der ae. Lexikographie», in A.
Bammesberger (ed.), Problems ofOld English Lexicography: Studies in Memory of Angus
Cameron, Pustet, Regensburg 1985, pp. 317-30; id., «The Latin and Old English Glosses
to electrum in the Harley Glossary», in K. Oshitari et al. (eds.), Philologia Anglica:
Essays Presented to Professor Yoshio Terasawa on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday,
Kenkyusha, Tokyo 1988, pp. 29-34; id., «Ae. eolhsand 'electrum'. Über den Umgang mit
Glossenbelegen», in A. Fischer (ed.), The History and the Dialects of English: Festschrift
for Eduard Kolb, Winter, Heidelberg 1989, pp. 115-30.
of the glossator72 • OE smylting (also attested in the variant spellings

smelting and smilting) glosses electrum in lElfric's Glossary73 • However,
the exact meaning of this word is difficult to pinpoint, also because the
section of lElfric's Glossary where this gloss occurs, that is the 'Nomina
domorum', is made up of a heterogeneous group of entries, including
names of metals. The word smylting is also found in the Antwerp-London
Glossary as the interpretamentum for electrum, together with glœr74 :
«Electrum, smylting uel glœr»75 .
OE eolhsand 'amber' occurs uniquely in the interlinear glosses to
Aldhelm's prose De virginitate 76 : «electri eolc((s))anges» (recte
eolhsandes) in Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 165077 and «electri,
eolcsandes» in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 14678 • The same
Aldhelmian entry «Electri: eolhsandes» is found in the First Cleopatra
Glossar/9 and in the Third Cleopatra Glossarl0 . The etymology of OE
72
The Latin !emma electrum is also rendered in the Anglo-Saxon glosses with
electre, elehtre, a word which denotes a kind of lupine. Such glosses will not be taken into
consideration in this essay, since they have nothing to do with the terrninology on
precious stones. For a discussion on electrum as a plant name, see below M.A.
D' Aronco's contribution to the present volume, pp. 229-49.
73
Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar, ed. by Zupitza, p. 319,3.
74
OE glœr, which denotes 'amber, resin', otherwise renders the Latin succinum, see
below pp. 139-40.
75
133,15.
76
«En, ipsius auri obriza lammina, quod cetera argenti et electri stagnique metalla
praecellit, sine topazio et carbunculo et rubicunda gemmarum gloria vel sucini dracontia
quodammodo vilescere videbitur!>>: Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by Ehwald, p. 244,20-22.
(Clearly, the pure sheet of gold itself, which excels ali the other metals of silver and brass
and tin, will seem somehow to lose its gloss without the topaz and the garnet and the ruby
glory of jewels or the precious stone of amber): Aldhelm: The Prose Works, trans. by M.
Lapidge and M. Herren, Brewer, Cambridge 1979, p. 72.
77
The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library, 1650, ed. by Goossens,
no. 1124. There are three erased glos ses before eolc(( s) )anges. According to Goossens
they might have been: eolcsandes, smeltincges, and mœstlinges (ibid., p. 221 in note).
78
Old English Glosses, ed. by Napier, no. 1,1071.
79
The Latin-Old English Glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra A l/1, ed. by Stryker (E
150).
80
The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in MS. Cotton Cleopatra A 111, ed. by J.J.
Quinn, unpubl. Ph.D diss., Stanford University 1956, p. 107,1. The Third Cleopatra
Glossary, preserved in London, BL, Cotton Cleopatra, A.iii (ff. 92r-117r), is made up of a
series of words drawn from Aldhelm's prose and verse De virginitate. The most recent
edition of Third Cleopatra is The Cleopatra Glossaries. An Edition with Commentary, ed.
byRusche.
eolhsand is a matter of debate 81 . It could be interpreted as a compound,

the first element of which is eolh (eolc, elh, elch) 'elk', and the second is
sand 'sand, gravel', with a possible reference to the place where amber is
usually found 82 . A fascinating theorl 3 suggests that OE eolhsand evokes
an ancient legend known from classical sources, pertaining to a gem
called lyncurius (or lyncurium) which - like the electrum - has
electrostatic properties. According to this legend, the lyncurius would
derive its name from the bizarre notion that it was made up of the frozen
urine of the lynx. This lyncurius was described by Theophrastus as a
wondrous stone, with the property to attract not only straws and small
pieces of wood, but even copper and iron, in the same way as the amber
does 84 . Theophrastus's description of the lyncurius was, in turn, the
source of Pliny, Solinus (Collectanea 11.38) 85 , and Isidore (Etym.
XVI.viii.8). According to Pliny (Naturalis historia XXXVII.xiii.52-53):
De lyncurio proxime dici cogit auctorum pertinacia, quippe, etiamsi non electrum id,
tamen gemmam esse contendunt, fieri autem ex urina quidem lyncis, sed et genere
terrae, protinus eo animali urinam operiente, quoniam invideat homini, ibique
lapidescere. esse autem, qualem in sucinis, colorem igneum, scalpique nec folia
tantum aut stramenta ad se rapere, sed aeris etiam ac ferri larnnas, quod Diocli
cuidam Theophrastus quoque credit. ego falsum id tatum arbitror nec visam in aevo
nostro gemmam ullam ea appellatione. falsum et quod de medicina simul proditur,
calculas vesicae poto eo elidi et morbo regio succurri, si ex vino bibatur aut spectetur
etiam.
(It is the obstinacy of our authorities that compels me to speak next of lyncurium,
since even when they refrain from asserting that this lyncurium is amber, they still
claim that it is a gemstone, stating that it is fonned indeed from the urine of the lynx,
but also from a particular kind of earth. They say that the creature, bearing a grudge
towards mankind, immediately conceals its urine, which forms a stone in the same
place. The stone is said to have the same fiery colour as amber, to be capable of
being engraved and to attract not merely leaves or straws, but also shavings of copper
and iron, a belief which even Theophrastus accepts on the authority of a certain
81
See Garrett, Precious Stones, pp. 48-49, and Schneider, K., «Zur Etymologie von
ae. eolhsand 'Bernstein' und elehtre 'Lupine' im Lichte bronzezeitlichen Handels», in G.
Heintz and P. Schmitter (eds.), Collectanea Philo1ogica: Festschrift für Helmut Gipper
zum 65. Geburtstag, Koemer, Baden-Baden 1985, II, pp. 669-81.
82
Garrett, Precious Stones, pp. 48-49.
83
Ibid.
84
Theophrastus: On Stones, Introduction, Greek Text, English Translation, and
Commentary by E.R. Caley and J.F.C. Richards, Ohio State University Press, Columbus,
OH 1956, pp. 23 and 216.
85
C. Iulii Solini Collectanea rerum memorabilium, ed. by T. Mommsen, 2nd edn.,
Weidmann, Berlin 1895, pp. 40-41.
Diodes. 1 for my part am of the opinion that the whole story is false and that no
gemstone bearing this name has been seen in our time there. Also false are the
statements made simultaneously about its medical properties, to the effect that when
it is taken in liquid it breaks up stone in the bladder, and that it relieves jaundice if it
is swallowed in wine or even looked at.) 86
Therefore, the occurrence of OE eohlsand 'amber' as an

interpretamentum of Latin electrum might be explained by the
association of the amber with the lyncurius, because of their common
electrostatic properties and because - according to an old belief - like the
lyncurius, amber too was produced by the crystallized urine of the lynx 87 .
The major flaw in such an appealing interpretation of eolhsand lies in the
identification of the animal: the elk - the name of which would make up
the first part of the compound - was well known in England, and could
hardly be confused with the lynx 88 .
A further interpretation of electrum as a mineral somehow connected
to an animal is represented by the gloss in the Antwerp-London Glossary:
«Electria, gim pe biô on coches micga», that is 'gem which is found in
the urine of the cock' 89 . Maybe the glossator has mistaken the electrum
for the stone called alectoria by Pliny and electria by Isidore, which -
according to an ancient legend - was supposedly found in the maw or in
the gizzard of a cock. Alternatively, this explanatory gloss of the
Antwerp-London Glossary might be put down to the possible interference
with the lyncurius, which, as mentioned above, allegedly stemmed from
the urine of the lynx. Indeed, the alectoria is said to be derived from the
cock, although not from its urine, but from its stomach. A comparison
between Pliny and Isidore on this regard is enlightening90 :
Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXVII.liv.l44: Alectorias vocant in ventriculis

gallinaceorum inventas crystallina specie, magnitudine fabae, quibus Milonem
Crotoniensem usum in certaminibus invictum fuisse videri volunt.
(' Alectoriae', or 'cock stones' is the name given to stones found in the gizzard of
86
English translation from Pliny, Natural History, X, ed. by Eichholz, pp. 202-5.
87
Cf. Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXVII.xi.34.
88
On the Latin lemma lynx in the Anglo-Saxon glossary tradition, see Thombury,
E.V., «Strange Hybrids: JElfric, Vergil and the Lynx in Anglo-Saxon England», Notes
and Queries ns 56 (2009), pp. 163-6.
89
141,9.
°
9
Cf. also Meritt, H.D., Fact and Lore about Old English Words, Stanford
University Press, Stanford, CA 1954, p. 105.
cocks. In appearance they are like rock crystal, and in size like beans; and it is
claimed that Milo of Croton owes to his use of these stones his reputation as one who
was never worsted in a contest.) 91
Isidore, Etym. XVI.xiii.8: Electria, quasi alectoria: in ventriculis enim gallinaceis

invenitur, crystallina specie, magnitudine fabae. Hac in certaminibus invictos fieri
magi volunt, si credimus.
(Electria, as if the word were alectoria, for it is found in the stomach of poultry [cf.
ÙÀéKTcop, 'cock']. It has the appearance of a crystal and the size of a bean. Magicians
would have it that this stone makes people invulnerable in battle, if we may believe
it.)92
In the glos ses to Aldhelm' s prose De virginitate 93 in London, British

Library, Royal 6.B.vii, electrum is glossed by mœstling: «electri,
mœstlinges» 94 • In Aldhelm's text, electrum indicates a 'kind of brass'
and, consequently, mœstling should be understood as an alloy. The idea
of electrum as a mixture of precious metals is clearly expressed also in
the glosses of the Épinal, First Erfurt and Second Erfurt, Leiden, and
Second Corpus glossaries:
Electrum aurum et argentum mixtum: Épinal (CGL V,359,9 in note)

Electrum aurum et argentum mixtum: First Erfurt (CGL V,359,9)
Electrum aurum et argentum incoctum vel ignis aeraqua terra: Second Erfurt (CGL
V,288,71).
Electrum; de auro : et argento et çrç: Leiden (xv,37: the ch. contains glosses to Ez
I.l-28)
Electrum: aurum et argentum mixtum: Second Corpus (E 118)
Finally, it is worth mentioning the gloss «Electrum .i. sucus arboris

cwicseolfer uel mœstling», that occurs in Harley (E 174). This gloss
shows a double Latin headword and a double Old English
interpretamentum, and is probably the result of a misunderstanding on the
part of the glossator. Here, the second !emma «sucus arboris» obviously
suggests the interpretation of electrum as 'resin, amber'. Consequently,
one should expect an Old English rendition eolhsand. The glossator,
91
92
English translation from The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, transi. by Barney et
al., p. 326.
93
Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by Ehwald, p. 244,21.
94
Old English Glosses, ed. by Napier, no. 2,27. See also above, note 77.
however, has wrongly chosen the interpretamentum mœstling, which

usually indicates a kind of brass or an alloy of different metal s.
2. Succinum
In the classical sources, amber is also known by the name succinum,

sucinum95 'resin, amber' which, in the Anglo-Saxon glossarial tradition is
mostly rendered by OE glœr 'resin, amber'. In the glosses to Aldhelm's
prose De virginitate96 in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 146, OE
glœres renders the Latin sucini97 • The same rendering is found in the
Second Corpus Glossary («Sucini: glaeres»: S 688), in the glosses to
Prudentius's Peristephanon III.21 («glœras») 98 , and in the Third
Cleopatra Glossary, where it follows immediately the electri entry
mentioned above:
Electri: eolhsandes
Sucine: glœres99
The electrostatic properties of amber are described in another gloss to

Aldhelm's prose De virginitate 100 in Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 1650,
where the entry «su(.)cini glœres» is accompanied by a further note in
Latin: «Sucinus lapis qui ferrum trahit» 101 • The same gloss occurs in the
Second Corpus Glossary (S 633): «Sucinus: lapis qui ferrum trahit». In
the Second Cleopatra Glossary, which is mostly a class glossary, the
entry «Succinum: glœr» occurs in the section bearing the rubric 'Incipit
de metallis' :
Aes: ar
Succinum: glœr
95
The etymology of Latin succinum is obscure; maybe it is related to sucus, with
reference to the phenomenon of resin exudation.
96
97
Old English Glosses, ed. by Napier, no. 1,1074.
98
«spemere sucina, flere rosas», Peristephanon III,21: The Old English Prudentius
Glosses at Boulogne-sur-Mer, ed. by Meritt, p. 70.
99
The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in Ms. Cotton Cleopatra A Ill, ed. by
Quinn, p. 107,1-2.
100
101
The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library, 1650, ed. by Goossens,
no. 1127.
Ferrum: isen 102 •
As remarked above, Latin electrum could either mean 'amber' or a

blend of gold and silver. Now, although succinum is a synonym of
electrum, it does not cover also the meaning 'alloy'. Therefore, the
occurrence of the gloss «Succinum: glœr» in the section of the Second
Cleopatra Glossary devoted to metals, could be put down to a
rnisunderstanding of the compiler, who extended the meaning of electrum
as 'blend of precious metals' to succinum.
Finally, the gloss «succinum uel electuum (recte electrum), sap,
smelting», found in the Antwerp-London Glossary 103 , where it
immediately precedes the gloss «Electria, gim ]Je bio on coches micga»,
has both a double lemma and a double OE interpretamentum. The use of
OE sap 'sap', to gloss succinum/electrum is in fact improper, because sap
is the watery fluid that circulates through a plant, whereas amber is a
fossilized tree resin. The choice of OE sap as interpretamentum of
succinum may be due to a wrong identification of the sap with the
resinous material produced by trees, which in due course has fossilized
and changed into amber 104 .
The word for topaz in the glosses to the Psalters
A number of glosses to the names of gemstones is found in the

interlinear translations of the Psalters. As in the rest of medieval Europe,
in Anglo-Saxon England too the Psalter was used for basic instruction in
Latin 105 , and therefore it was among the most intensively glossed works
102
The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in Ms. Cotton Cleopatra A Ill, ed. by
Quinn, p. 43,6-8. The Second C1eopatra Glossary, contained in London, BL, Cotton
Cleopatra A.iii (ff. 76r-91v), is a subject glossary, which also includes a few alphabetical
sections and batches of lemmata from the Gospels. The most recent edition is The
Cleopatra Glossaries. An Edition with Commentary, ed. by Rusche.
103
141,8.
104
On OE sap rendering Latin succinum/electrum, see Schabram, H., «Altenglisch
sap: ein altes germanisches Wort für 'Bernstein'?», in R. Bergmann, H. Tiefenbach and L.
Voetz (eds.), Althochdeutsch, II. Worter und Namen, Winter, Heidelberg 1987, pp. 1210-
5.
105
Riché, P., «Le Livre Psautier, livre de lecture élémentaire d'après les Vies des
saints mérovingiens», in Etudes Mérovingiennes. Actes des Journées de Poitiers, 1-3 Mai
1952, Picard, Paris 1953, pp. 253-6.
of the period 106 •

Most glossators held fast to the glossing tradition of the Psalter which
developed and thrived in Anglo-Saxon England, although sorne of them
revealed an original approach to the text and a more creative method of
glossing 107 • This is probably the case with the Latin topation (Ps
CXVIII.127) which is rendered with a number of interpretamenta that are
of particular interest. Generally speaking, in the A-type Psalters 108 , the
Latin lemma mostly receives a generic rendering, such as gim (Vespasian
Psalter), gimcyn (Junius Psalter), and gymcynn vel eorcnanstan
(Cambridge Psalter). The Lambeth Psalter features the interpretation
deorwyrôan stan and the Eadwine Psalter has seœrogim.
In the gloss to the Bosworth Psalter (L), which belongs to the D-type,
topation is glossed «Ôœt gymcyn topazion» 109 • Apart from the latter gloss,
a conspicuous number of glossed Psalters of the D-type feature a quite
interesting rendering for topation. The Royal Psalter (D), Arundel Psalter
(J), Stowe Psalter (F), and the Salisbury Psalter (K) gloss the Latin
headword by means of the phrase «basewan stan» (with minor spelling
variants: basowan, baswon, basuwan) 110 • The Old English adjective basu
means 'purple, scarlet, crimson' and se baswa stan therefore denotes a
'precious stone of a purple colour'. The description of the topaz as a
purple-red gem is quite anomalous, since this stone is either described as
a golden gem in ancient Greek sources 111 or as a green one by Latin
au thors, such as Pliny (Naturalis historia XXXVII.xxxii.107 -9) and
Isidore (Etym. XVI.vii.9). In the Old English Lapidary the topaz is
likewise depicted as a golden gem: «iEndlyfta is topazius haten se is
106
On the importance of the g1ossed Psa1ters, see Gretsch, M., The Intellectual
Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (CSASE 25), Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge 1999, pp. 26-34.
107
See Lendinara, P., Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Glossaries (VCSS 622), Ashgate,
A1dershot 1999, pp. 19-20.
108
On the affiliations of the g1ossed Psa1ters with A- or D-type g1osses, see above,
note 14.
109
Lindelüf, U., «Die altenglischen Glossen im Bosworth-Psa1ter>>, Mémoires de la
société neophilologique de Helsingfors 5 (1909), pp. 137-230, at 171.
110
Der altenglische Regius-Psalter, ed. by Roeder, p. 234: <<pone basowan stan>>;
Der altenglische Arundel-Psalter, ed. by Oess, p. 201: <<pone basewan stan»; The Stowe
Psalter, ed. by Kimmens, p. 240: <<pone baswon stan>>; The Salisbury Psalter, ed. by
Sisam and Sisam, p. 253: <<pone basuwan stan>>.
111
Les Lapidaires grecs: Lapidaire orphique. Kérygmes lapidaires d'Orphée.
Socrate et Denys. Lapidaire nautique. Damigéron-Évax, ed. by R. Halleux and J. Schamp,
Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1985, pp. 97 and 306-7.
golde gelic» (The eleventh is called topaz. It is like gold) 112 . In turn, this
description is quite close to the topaz entry in the Leiden Glossary:
«Topation. ut aurum micat .» (Leiden xu,l5).
The use of se baswa stan in the Old English Psalters could perhaps be
an echo of the description of the topaz found in Bede's Explanatio
Apocalypsis:
Topazius lapis quantum inventione rarus, tantum mercium quantitate pretiosus est.
Qui duos habere fertur colores, unum auri purissimi et alterum aetheria claritate
relucentem. Pinguedo rosea [ ... ] 113 .
(The opportunity to find this stone is as rare as the quantity of the commodity is
scanty. It is said to have two colours, one of the purest gold, the other shining with
ethereal brightness. There is a rosy plumpness [ ... ].) 114
The description of the topaz as a 'purple-red gem', could possibly

stem from Bede's very phrase «pinguedo rosea».
Another possible source might be identified in the treatise Ilcpi -r&v
t~' À.i8mv (On the twelve stones), written shortly before 394 by
Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus 115 • Composed as an epistle
addressed to Diodorus, bishop of Tyre, the tract deals with the twelve
stones of the High Priest's breastplate listed in Ex XXVIII.l7-20. The
physical description of the gems, according to their colour, place of
origin, curative and magic properties, is accompanied by an illustration of
their allegorical meaning. Epiphanius' s work is considered as the
fprerunner of the later Christian lapidary literature, including also the
commentary contained in Bede' s Explanatio Apocalypsis or in Hrabanus
Maurus's De universo. In Epiphanius's treatise the topaz is described as a
112
Giliberto, <<Stone Lore in Miscellany Manuscripts>>, pp. 260-1.
113
Bedae Opera, II. Opera exegetica, 5. Expositio Apokalypseos, ed. by Gryson, p.
547.
114
My translation.
115
The original Greek text, of which only a few fragments survive, was partially
translated into Latin in the fifth century; severa! parts of the text are known only in the
Armenian, Georgian, and Coptic versions. For the Greek version, see De Mély, F., <<Les
Lapidaires grecs: textes>>, in his Les Lapidaires de l'antiquité et du moyen âge II, Leroux,
Paris 1898, pp. 193-8; for the Latin version, see Epistulae imperatorum, pontificum,
aliorum, ed. by O. Guenther (CSEL 35), Tempsky, Prague and Vienna 1 Freytag, Leipzig
1898, pp. 743-73 (no. 244); the most complete edition is Epiphanius De Gemmis: The Old
Georgian Version and the Fragments of the Armenian Version and the Coptic-Sahidic
Fragments, ed. by R.P. Blake and H. de Vis, Christophers, London 1934.
PRECIOUS STONES IN ANGLO-SAXON GLOS SES 143
'ruddy' gem: «Topazium rubrum est specie post lapidem, qui carbunclus
appellatur» 116 •
The different Old English renderings of the Latin !emma topation in
the Psalter glosses reveal the bookish approach of sorne glossator, which
is reflected, for example, in the choice to draw on patristic sources (such
as Epiphanius) 117 • The problematic translation of the Latin topation into
Old English can very likely be put down to the limited knowledge of this
stone in Anglo-Saxon England. Anyhow, se baswa stan pro vides further
evidence of a tendency to classify gemstones according to their colour,
which was quite common in early medieval England 118 .
Gems and fabulons animais: the case of the dracontia
The dracontia is the so-called 'snakestone', to which an ancient

legend attributed magical properties 119 . In the antique world, two kinds of
snakestones were known: one believed to originate from the East and the
other from the West, and both were described by Pliny. The snakestone
of eastern origin was named dracontia and was believed to be found in
the brain of the dragons. In his Naturalis historia (XXXVII.lvii.158),
Pliny says that:
Draconitis sive dracontias e cerebro fit draconum, sed nisi viventibus absciso capite
non gemmescit invidia animalis mori se sentientis. [igitur dormientibus amputant].
Sotacus, qui visam eam gemmam sibi apud regem scripsit, bigis vehi quaerentes
tradit et viso dracone spargere somni medicamenta atque ita sopiti praecidere. Esse
candore tralucido, nec postea poliri aut artem admittere.
(The 'draconitis', otherwise known as 'dracontias', the 'snake stone', is obtained

from the brains of snakes, but unless the head is eut off from a live snake, the
substance fails to turn into a gem, owing to the spite of the creature, as it perceives
that it is doomed. Consequently, the beast's head is lopped off while it is asleep.
Sotacus, who writes that he saw such a gem in the possession of a king, states that
those who go in search of it ride in two-horsed chariots, and that when they see the
snake, they scatter sleeping-drugs and so put it to sleep before they eut off its head.
116
Epistulae imperatorum, ed. by Guenther, p. 746.
117
On knowledge of the Greek text of the treatise on the twelve stones in Canterbury,
see Bischoff, B. and Lapidge, M., Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of
Theodore and Hadrian (CSASE 10), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 199, pp.
213-4 and Kitson, «Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: Part l», pp. 41-42.
118
Kitson, «Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: Part 1», pp. 26-27.
119
Halliday, W.R., Folklore Studies: Ancient and Modern, Methuen, London 1921,
pp. 143-4, and id., «Snake Stones>>, Folklore 32 (1921), pp. 262-71.
According to him, the stone is co1ourless and transparent, and cannot subsequently
be polished or subrnitted to any other skilful process.) 120
In his Collectanea rerum memorabilium (XXX.16-18), Solinus gives

the same account, with only slight modifications. As to the western kind
of snakestone, it is known to Pliny (Naturalis historia XXIX.xii.52-54) as
ovum anguinum ('snake's egg') and, in mediaeval lapidaries, is
sometimes given the name dreconides. It can be identified with the so-
called 'adderstone'.
In the Old English glossarial tradition, the Latin /emma dracontia is
always rendered with the compound gimrodor: the Second Corpus
Glossary features the gloss «Dracontia: gimrodn> (D 364) and the First
Erfurt Glossary has grimrodr (Pheifer, no. 345a). The name of this stone
also occurs in the glosses to Aldhelm's prose De virginitate 121 and the
gloss «Dracontia: gimrodon> is attested in the First 122 and Third Cleopatra
glossaries 123 . The Second Corpus Glossary also records the variant
draconitas followed by the interpretamentum «gemma ex cerebro
serpentes» (D 365).
The interpretation of OE gimrodor and its variants is quite
problematic. On the basis of the explanation «gemma ex cerebro
serpentes» of the Second Corpus Glossary, which echoes the description
in Pliny's Naturalis historia XXXVII.lvii.158, the term gimrodor should
be interpreted as a compound meaning 'snakestone' or 'adderstone'. As
far as the first element gim is concemed, it is perfectly intelligible; on the
other hand, OE rodor does not mean 'adder' nor 'snake', but rather 'sky,
heaven, firmament'. Therefore, the interpretation of gimrodor as 'stone of
the adder' - as the interpretamentum «gemma ex cerebro serpentes» in
the Second Corpus Glossary seems to suggest - is not satisfactory. A
possible explanation is that the glossator uses OE rodor to express the
120
121
Aldhelrni Opera, ed. by Ehwald, p. 244,22. The g1oss «dracontia, girnroder>>
occurs in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 146: Old English Glosses, ed. by Napier, no.
1,1075; «dracontia, girnrodur>> in London, British Library, Royal 6.A.vi: Old English
Glosses, ed. by Napier, no. 7,73; «dracontia girnrodor>> in London, British Library, Royal
S.E.xi: Old English Glosses (A Collection), ed. by H.D. Meritt (Modern Language
Association of America. General Series 16), Oxford University Press, New York, NY and
London 1945; repr. 1971, no. 2,118.
122
The Latin-Old English Glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra A Ill, ed. by Stryker (D
59); here the Latin lernrna is attested in the variant spelling dracantia.
123
The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in MS. Cotton Cleopatra A Ill, ed. by
Quinn, p. 107,4.
PRECIOUS STONES IN ANGLO-SAXON GLOS SES 145
idea of a gem 'radiant like the sky'. Consequent!y, OE gimrodor may be

interpreted as a 'sparkling or very luminous gem', in other terms, a gem
which is glowing like the sky 124 .
Stones and minerais with special properties
Among the stones and minerais which show either special properties
or wondrous qualities is the pyrites. The Antwerp-London Glossary
features the entry: «Pirites uel focaris lapis, fYrsta» 125 • This stone is also
described in the second part of the Old English Lapidary, which is
devoted to stones and minerais with wondrous properties:
Sum stan is on Persa rice; gif pu hine mid handa ahrinest he bimeô sona. Se stan is
haten piriten 126 .
(There is one stone in the Persian Empire: if you touch it with your hand it will bum
at once. That stone is ca!led pyrites.) 127
Two stones are compared to marble: one is the ontax, which occurs
both in the Second Corpus (0 173) and Épinal and First Erfurt glossaries
(CGL V,377,3): «ontax genus marmoris». The other is the parius, which
is also found in the Second Corpus Glossary: «Parius genus lapis
marmor<is>» (P 17).
Also the ceraunia should be included in this category of glosses. This
stone was otherwise known as 'thunderstone' because it was believed to
be produced by thunderbolts, as the following entry in the Harley
Glossary attests: «Ceraunia .i. gemma smaragdina. quae de cadente
fulmine efficitur» (C 659).
This category of minerais includes also the magnet. The gloss
«Magne[ti]s: lapis qui ferrum rupit» is found in the Second Corpus
124
See Schlutter, O.B., «On Old English Glosses. Il», Journal of Germanie
Philo/ogy 1 (1897), pp. 312-33, at 320, and Garrett, Precious Stones, pp. 47-48, who also
argues that the g1ossator could have associated the stone name with the constellation
'Draco'. It has also been suggested that OE radar may be considered a variant spelling of
OE hroàor, a term which could be associated with the concept of 'splendour, glory', cf.
Meritt, Fact and Lore, pp. 72-73. On OE gimrodor, see also Gretsch, The lntellectual
Foundations, pp. 155-8.
125
141,6.
126
Giliberto, «Stone Lore in Miscellany Manuscripts», p. 260.
127
Ibid., p. 261.
Glossary (M 96). This stone is also listed and described in the second part
of the Old English Lapidary:
Sum stan hatte magneten; gif ]Jœt isem bi ô bufan prem stane hit wyle feallan on pane
stan, gyf se stan bi ô bu fan hit wile spimgan up on gean pre ne stan 128 •
(One stone is called magnet. If the iron is above the stone it will faU upon the stone,
if the stone is above it will spring up against the stone. ) 129
An interesting explanatory gloss which gives details on the attracting

property of the magnet occurs in the Second Erfurt Glossary (CGL
V,309,57), where this mineral is also compared with the most precious
stone of this category, namely the diamond:
Magnites lapis qui ferrum rapit sed praesente adamante lapide non solum non rapit
sed si iam rapuerat ut ei adpropinquarit mox remittit 130 •
128
Ibid., p. 260.
129
Ibid., p. 261.
130
The long interpretamentum of magnites follows verbatim the words of
Augustine's De civitate Dei XXI.iv.4: 'Mirabilia de magnete et adamante dicuntur':
«Adamantem lapidem multi apud nos habent et maxime aurifices insignitoresque
gemmarum, qui lapis nec ferro nec igni nec a1ia vi ulla perhibetur praeter hircinum
sanguinem vinci [... ] Magnetem lapidem novimus mirabilem ferri esse raptorem; quod
cum primum vidi, vehementer inhorrui. [... ] Dixi quod ipse conspexi, dixi quod ab illo
audivi, cui tamquam ipse viderim credidi. Quid etiam de isto magnete legerim dicam.
Quando iuxta eum ponitur adamans, non rapit ferrum, et si iam rapuerat, ut ei
propinquaverit, mox remittit.>>: Sancti Aurelii Augustini episcopi De civitate Dei, ed. by
B. Dombart and A. Kalb, 2 vols., 5th edn., Teubner, Stuttgart and Leipzig 1981, Il, pp.
494-5 (There are many among us who have diamonds, especially the goldsmiths and
jewellers; and the diamond is a stone which neither iron nor fire nor any other force
whatsoever can overcome, except the blood of a goat. [... ] We know that the lodestone has
the marvellous power of attracting iron. When first I saw it done, I was absolutely
amazed. [... ] I have related what I have seen for myself, and I have related what I heard
from someone whom 1 be!ieve as rouch as I believe my own eyes. Let me now say what
else I have read of this magnetic substance. When a diamond is placed near it, it does not
attract iron; or, if it has already attracted it, it drops it as soon as the diamond
approaches.): English translation from Augustine. The City of Gad against the Pagans, ed.
and trans. by R.W. Dyson, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, pp. 1050-1.
Augustine draws on Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXVII.xv.61: «adamas dissidet cum
magnete in tantum, ut iuxta positus ferrum non patiatur abstrahi aut, si admotus magnes
adprehenderit, rapiat atque auferat.>> (The 'adamas' has so strong an aversion to the
magnet that when it is placed close to the iron it prevents the iron from being attracted
away from itself. Or again, if the magnet is moved towards the iron and seizes it, the
'adamas' snatches the iron and takes it away): English translation from Pliny, Natural
History, X, ed. by Eichholz, p. 111.
The Second Corpus Glossary features a gloss conceming the

diamond, which is basically a definition of the stone itself: «Adamans:
genus lapidis ferro durior>> (A 245). A description of the diamond is also
found in the second part of the Old English Lapidary, where the stone is
called by the Latin name:
Sum stan is pe adamans hatte; nele hine isem ne style ne awiht heardes gretan, ac re le
biô pe forcuôra pe hine greteô 131 .
(There is one stone which is called diamond. Neither iron nor steel nor any hard
substance will make any impression on it, but everything that touches it will be the
worse.) 132
The corresponding Old English word, aôamans, is an obvions

loanword from Latin, and is attested in the translation of Gregory' s
Regula pastoralis (XXXVIII) 133 .
The names of precious stones in the Leiden, Corpus, Épinal, and

Erfurt glossaries and in the Old English Lapidary
A topic relevant to this discussion is the development of batches of

glosses conceming precious stones, such as those occurring in the four
glossaries of Leiden, Second Corpus, Épinal and First Erfurt, and which
include the names of the gems mentioned in Apc XXI.l9-20 134 . The
entries of these batches show a number of relevant analogies with the
corresponding items in the Old English Lapidary preserved in London,
British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii. Such analogies - which were
meticulously scrutinized by Kitson 135 - are quite compelling, to the extent
that the first section of the Old English Lapidary (which contains the
names of the apocalyptic gems) 136 might have derived from the same
131
Giliberto, <<Stone Lore in Miscellany Manuscripts>>, p. 260.
132
Ibid., p. 261.
133
King Alfred's West-Saxon Version ofGregory's Pastoral Care, ed. by Sweet, I, p.
271.
134
The Bible features three passages conceming gems: the account of the jewels on
the High Priest's breastplate (Ex XXVIII.17-20 and XXXIX.l0-13), the passage on the
nine precious stones of the king of Tyre (Ez XXVIII.l3), and the description of the twelve
jewels which decorate the foundations of the Holy City (Apc XXI.19-20).
135
Kitson, «Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England. Part 1».
136
The Old English Lapidary is made up of two distinct parts. The former includes a
list of gems which, for the most part, coïncide with the twelve stones of the Holy City
source as the four glossaries. In particular, it may be speculated that such

a source presumably stemmed from a list of Latin-Latin items, which was
compiled probably in Kent, around 680, in order to supply sorne
explanations for the names of gemstones mentioned in Apc XXI.19-20,
most of which were unknown in Anglo-Saxon England. These glosses
were originally copied on the margins of sorne English manuscripts
containing the text of the Book of Revelation, in order to provide sorne
information on the minerais unknown to Anglo-Saxon students. Later on,
the entire entries (lemma plus interpretamentum) were excerpted from the
manuscript where they had been copied, and collected together, keeping
their original order.
The result was a set of glossae collectae, which - in all probability -
can be identified as the common source from which the first part of the
Old English Lapidary, on the one hand, and the four glossaries, on the
other, have all derived, albeit independently and at different times, the
description ofthe 'apocalyptic' stones.
As has long been established, the earliest English compilation of
glossae collectae ensues from the cultural environment of the archbishop
of Canterbury Theodore of Tarsus (602-690) and of Abbot Hadrian (c.
630-709) and the most significant glossary descending from this now lost
compilation is the Leiden Glossary 137 . This glossary is arranged in forty-
eight chapters, with entries drawn from source-texts as diverse as church
canons and papal decretais, the Regula Sancti Benedicti, Rufinus's
translation of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, Gildas's De excidio
Britanniae, various books of the Bible, Isidore's De ecclesiasticis officiis
and Denatura rerum, Orosius's Historiae adversum paganos, Gregory's
Dialogi and Regula pastoralis.
Chapter XLI of the Leiden Glossary, bearing the title 'Item de
nominibus di versis', includes, among others, the names of the precious
stones listed in the Book of Revelation (XXI.19-20) 138 . The analysis of
mentioned in Apc XXI.19-20, that is jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonix,

onyx, sard (or sardius), beryl, chrysoprase, topaz, and carbuncle. The latter part is a
descriptive catalogue of other stones and minerais (not just jewels) with extraordinary
properties, such as the diamond, the magnet, and the agate.
137
Lapidge, M., <<The School of Theodore and Hadrian», Anglo-Saxon England 15
(1986), pp. 45-72; Pheifer, «Early Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of
Canterbury>>; Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School,
pp. 173-9. See also Lendinara, Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Glossaries, p. 10.
138
<<19. Fundamentà muri civitatis omni lapide pretioso omata fundamentum primum
iaspis secundus sapphyrus tertius carcedonius quartus zmaragdus 20. quintus sardonix
this chapter - in which the entries are stilllisted according to the order in
which the lemmata occurred in the original text - allows us to retrace the
original sequence and to identify the ultimate source, that is the Book of
Revelation. In turn, the identification of this source, on which the Old
English Lapidary also draws, allows us to appreciate better the parallels
between the latter and the Leiden Glossary. The list of the Leiden gems
includes: byrillus, calcidon, crisolitus, cypressus, iaspis, saphirus,
sardius, sardonix, smaragdus, and topation. This list tallies with that of
the Book of Revelation, except for the last two items of the biblical
source (jacinth and amethyst), which are missing in the glossary as we
know it, but which should have been included in the original batch of
glossae collectae (from which Leiden derives its material). In the Old
English Lapidary, there are two stones which feature neither in the Book
of Revelation nor in the Leiden Glossary, namely onyx and carbuncle,
while another three, namely chrysolite, jacinth and amethyst, which occur
in the Book of Revelation, have been left out.
The descriptions of the precious stones in the Old English Lapidary
are also quite close to the entries of the alphabetical glossaries Second
Corpus, Épinal and First Erfurt. As has already been ascertained, these
four glossaries are closely related to each other and, in turn, draw part of
their lexical material from a source related to the Leiden Glossary too 139 .
Conclusion
The present work has revealed that the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon
glosses to the names of precious stones is concentrated in the oldest
alphabetical glossaries, namely the Épinal, Erfurt and Corpus, as well as
in the Leiden Glossary, which is the earliest surviving glossary deriving
from the compilation of glossae collectae proceeding from the school of
Theodore and Hadrian. A number of glosses pertaining to the names of
gems and wondrous minerais is also found in the three Cleopatra
glossaries. On the other hand, these glosses are quite rare in class
sextus sardinus septimus chrysolitus octavus berillus nonus topazius decimus

chrysoprassus undecimus hyacinthus duodecimus amethistus»: from Biblia sacra iuxta
Vulgatam versionem, ed. by R. Weber et al., 5th edn., Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft,
Stuttgart 2007.
139
For an analysis of the relationships between the names of stones occurring in the
Old English Lapidary and the entries recorded in the four glossaries of Leiden, Second
Corpus, Épinal and Erfurt, see Kitson, «Lapidary Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England:
Part l>> and Giliberto, «Stone Lore in Miscellany Manuscripts>>.
glossaries, such as lElfric' s Glossary, unsurprisingly so, given the

specialist character of this kind of glossaries. The Psalter contains a few
names of gemstones and minerais and these words received a good
number of interlinear glosses in the vernacular. Finally, a limited group of
vernacular names of stones occurs in the glos ses to Aldhelm' s prose De
virginitate.
Especially in glossaries, the renderings of this kind of lemmata show
a noticeable dependence from Latin. For a lot of foreign or exotic jewels
the glossators choose a generic interpretamentum, such as nomen
gemmae or nomen lapidis, as - for example - in several entries in the
Harley Glossary. This practice was also evident in the Second Corpus
Glossary, where it was applied to words such as heliotropium, iaspis, and
sagda. In the Second Corpus Glossary, the Latin interpretation gemmae
genus is also used to render berulus. All these examples yield proof that
the range of lapidary vocabulary in Old English was quite scarce.
Nonetheless, vernacular interpretamenta to names of stones are
indeed attested and they afford interesting data. These Old English
glosses may be generic, such as OE eorcnanstan, which is used for a
number of different stones and also for pearls. In the Cambridge Psalter,
for example, Latin topation is translated with the double vernacular
rendering gymcynn vel eorcnanstan, and, in the Eadwine Psalter, the
same word is rendered with the equally generic seœrogim.
On the other hand, Old English interpretamenta can also be more
specifie. Such is the case with sucinum, which, in the Second Corpus
Glossary, the Aldhelm glosses, the Prudentius glosses, and in the Second
and Third Cleopatra glossaries is rendered by OE glœr. A limited number
of vernacular interpretamenta takes the form of a longer explanatory
gloss, such as, for example, the gloss of the Antwerp-London Glossary:
«Electria, gim ]Je bio on coches micga». Finally, in a few instances, the
glossators evidently strive to find the most appropriate Old English
rendering, as is the case with the interpretation baswa stan 'purple-red
gem' glossing topation in the interlinear version of a number of Psalters.
Such a choice confirms the widespread preference given to names of
gems based on colour. Another peculiar rendering is that of cristallum,
which, in the Lambeth, Royal and Salisbury Psalters is rendered by OE
gycelstan, with a choice which reminds of the legend according to which
the crystal would allegedly be made of petrified ice, and which is clearly
derived from classical and patristic authorities.
Appendix
Old English names for precious stones

Old English No. of No. of
occurrences occurrences in
in the OE theOE
corpus ~tosses
eorcnanstan, 'gern, precious stone' xl3 x3
gimm 'gem, precious stone' xll9 xli
gimcynn 'kind of gem' xl8 x4
gimstan 'gem, precious stone' x35 x7
maooumsigle 'costly gem' xl
searogim 'gem, precious stone' x8 xl
sincgim 'gem, precious stone' xl
sine stan 'gem, precious stone' xl
Old English words for specifie gems

Old English No. of No. of
occurrences occurrences
in the OE in the OE
corpus glosses
aoamans 'diamond' xl
se baswa stan 'purple-red gem' (topaz) x4 x4
blœc gimm 'black gem' (gagate, jet) xl
carbunculus 'carbuncle' x5
cris talla 'crystal' xl2 x7
gagates 'gagate, jet' x4
gagatstan 'gagate, jet' xl xl
geaspis 'jasper' xl
gimrodor 'snakestone, adderstone' x8 x8
(dracontia)
glœr 'amber' x6 x6
hwit stan 'white stone' x5
iacinco 'jacinth' x3
read stan 'red stone' x6
sœcol 'jet, agate' x2 x2
THE ANTWERP-LONDON GLOSSARIES AND THE FIRST
ENGLISH SCHOOL TEXT
David W. Porter
The Antwerp-London glossaries are a fascinating collection of

vocabularies holding severa! thousand entries. I cali them a collection:
five distinguishable components vary greatly but hold a common core of
stuff which surfaces again and again in differing form 1. These repeated
showings spring from no editorial oversight. The randomness of chance
has transmitted entries in greater or lesser stages of evolution, and
comparison must be our watchword, for a comparative view will show
how a Latin text was transformed through stages into what might be
called the first English encyclopaedia. However we describe the lost
ancestor of this varied corpus, it had great influence, leaving its imprint
everywhere among early Anglo-Saxon school texts. Our quest here is to
reconstruct as far as we can this lost but very important ancestral text and
to document its contributions to early English writings.
The story of this seminal text will range across centuries, yet it is
very much a seventh century affair, for the glossaries trace their origin to
the first century of written English and record the earliest chapter of
intellectual history to be expressed in the English language. The context
of the glossaries was the famous Canterbury school where Hadrian and
Theodore instructed the first generation of English students 2 . Among the
1
The Antwerp-London Glossaries. The Latin and Latin-Old English Vocabularies
from (Antwerp) Museum Plantin-Moretus 16.2- (London) British Library, Add. 32246, 1:
Texts and Indices, ed. by D.W. Porter (Publications of the Dictionary of Old English),
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto 2011; en tries are cited from this edition.
The glossaries are described in my «On the Antwerp-London G1ossaries>>, Journal of
English and Germanie Philology 98 (1999), pp. 170-92. The three longest lists appear in
The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus MS 32 and British Museum MS
Additional 32,246, ed. by L. Kindschi, unpubl. PhD. diss., Stanford University 1955.
Images of the Antwerp fragment are in Bremmer, R.H. Jr. and Dekker, K., Manuscripts in
the Law Countries (Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 13), Arizona
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2006, no. 4.
2
See Lapidge, M., «The School of Hadrian and Theodore>>, Anglo-Saxon En gland 15
(1986), pp. 45-72, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature 600-899, The Hamb1edon Press,
London and Rio Grande, OH 1996, pp. 141-68 and addenda pp. 502-503, and, for the
evidence of glossaries, Pheifer, J.D., «Early Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of
Canterbury>>, Anglo-Saxon England 16 (1987), pp. 17-44. On the Canterbury school, see
154 DAVID W. PORTER
books of Roman learning taught by those Eastern scholars, there must

have been a glossed copy of that great compendium on myriad topics,
Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae3 • Such a manuscript became the source
for a long, predominantly Isidorian glossary in Latin and English. This
vocabulary was unfortunately lost, and survives only through its
descendants, the Antwerp-London glossaries and siblings. The discovery
that these glossaries reflect the earliest use of English in an educational
setting promises a more intimate view of the first Anglo-Saxon classroom
than has before been possible. As we shall see, an especially telling piece
of evidence will be the oeuvre of the Canterbury school' s most illustrious
alumnus, Aldhelm, so intimately and intricately does the glossary
material intertwine within his work.
Let us begin our story at the end. In the early eleventh century a team
of Anglo-Saxon schoolmen entered a series of glossaries, Latin-Latin and
Latin-English, into the margins and endpages of a Latin grammar, the
Excerptiones de Prisciano4 . Their overall plan, if one existed, is not
apparent. To be sure, the earliest layer set down was remarkably orderly:
an alphabetical glossary in a-order (alphabetized by the first letter of the
word only), letters a through s, entered marginally on the first and fifth
page of each quire. This glossary amounted to just under a thousand
entries, 982 to be exact, almost ali in Latin only. Below the batches of the
first list, a second alphabetical list, in ab-order, that is, alphabetized by
the first two letters of the word, began to be entered in the same logical
way, but this plan quickly broke down, and only 133 entries (a good
many with English), letters a through e, were entered. Next, a Latin-
English glossary arranged by semantic groupings, namely a class
glossary, was crowded into the empty spaces and pages between the
Bischoff, B. and Lapidge, M., Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of
Theodore and Hadrian (CSASE 10), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994; see
also the collection of essays M. Lapidge (ed.), Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative
Studies in his Life and Influence (CSASE 11), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
1995.
3
Noting the widespread and rapid diffusion of the Etymologiae in the seventh
century, M. Lapidge in «An lsidorian Epitome from Ear1y Anglo-Saxon England»,
Romanobarbarica 10 (1988-1989), pp. 443-83 repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature 600-
899, pp. 183-223, brings convincing evidence for a glossed copy at Canterbury and
adduces textual ties with the glossaries connected to the school of Hadrian and Theodore.
4
Excerptiones de Prisciano: The Source for /Elfric's Latin-Old English Grammar,
ed. by D.W. Porter (Anglo-Saxon Texts 4), Brewer, Cambridge 2002.
THE ANTWERP-LONDON GLOSSARIES 155
alphabetical batches. This large list with almost 3,000 entries (exactly
2,992) was perhaps meant to be larger. The untidy crowding looks to be a
space saving strategy, yet the last entry occurs less than midway through
the book, and great swaths of empty margin fill the second half. The
remaining two glossaries are easily described: a Latin-Latin list of a
dozen architectural terms added marginally, and on the endpage a corrupt
and disorganized list of 106 items, of which two are interpreted in
English. To sum up, the manuscript holds 4,225 glossary entries: 2,992 in
the bilingual class list, 982 in the a-arder list, 133 in the ab-order list, 106
in the endpage list, and 12 in the architectural list. Though the manuscript
dates from the eleventh century, the glossaries it contains are surely much
older, for they contributed material to what was thought to be the two
earliest Anglo-Saxon school texts, the Leiden Glossary and the Épinal-
Erfurt Glossary. Leiden (Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. Q.
69) is a later Continental copy of a Canterbury original. Its chapters
record glossae collectae of Canterbury school texts, among which those
of Isidore figure rather prominently5 • Épinal and Erfurt (Épinal,
Bibliothèque Municipale 72 and Erfurt/Gotha, Universitats- und
Forschungsbibliothek, Dep. Erf., Cod. Ampl. 2° 42) are sister copies of a
glossary in which much Leiden material has been alphabetized. Erfurt is
like Leiden a later Continental copy, but the antiquity of its exemplar may
be gauged by the sibling Épinal, which is dated to the end of the seventh
century.
The class list
The long bilingual class list, what I referred to as the first English
encyclopaedia, preserves the structural framework of the lost seventh-
century ancestral text. Its series of headwords come largely (about 85
percent) in arder from Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae 6 • The
organization by category is advertised by prominent headings
corresponding to books, or sections of books, in Isidore's encyclopaedic
work: tools, people, beasts, insects, containers, drinks, birds, plants, trees,
weapons, winds, cereal products, fish, and ships. Sorne books of the
5
Lapidge, M., The Anglo-Saxon Library, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, p.
176 names the De ecclesiasticis officiis, the Denatura rerum and the Etymologiae.
6
Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum siue Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M.
Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical Texts), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1911. A searchable
version is at Intratext.com/y/LAT0706.htm.
156 DAVID W. PORTER
Etymologiae hardly make an appearance, e.g., Books l-Ili, on grammar,

rhetoric, and mathematics, while the books on natural history are lavishly
presented, e.g., Book XI (anatomy), Book XII (animais), Book XVII
(trees). This emphasis likely reflects that of the seventh century originaC.
Though the class list is by far the longest of the surviving descendants of
the lost Canterbury vocabulary, three other Anglo-Saxon glossaries
preserve to sorne degree the original organization by semantic field: the
second Cleopatra Glossary, certain class glossary sections of the Brussels
Glossarl, and, the closest relative to Antwerp-London, .tElfric's
Glossary. These and ali the extant reflexes of the Canterbury glossary
will be discussed in tum.
Let us retum to the glossaries of the Antwerp-London manuscript. If
the class list is conservative in terms of structure, it nevertheless
represents a final stage of evolution. The innovation here is English:
where English is rare or sporadic in the other Antwerp-London lists, the
nearly three thousand entries of the class list almost uniformly present an
English translation. Many of these definitions are hapax legomena, and as
a consequence the class list is frequently cited in dictionaries and ward
studies. The following example from the class list, a series of animal
terms drawn from Isidore' s Book XII, is typical in the concentration on
biological terrninology and in the almost constant use of English
definitions 9 •
NOMI~A FERARUM
Unicornis . l monocerus . l Rinocerus . anhyrne deor .

Pecus . animal .
Griffes . eow . fiàerfote fu gel .
415 Elephans. ylp
7
Porter, D.W., <<The Antwerp-London Glossary and JElfric's Glossary: A Record of
the Earliest English Scholarship», Notes and Queries 57 (2010), pp. 305-10. The same
preference occurs in the early tenth-century Second Cleopatra Glossary (part of which is
closely related to the Antwerp-London class list), see Rusche, Ph.G., <<lsidore's
Etymologiae and the Canterbury Aldhelm Scholia», Journal of English and Germanie
Philology 104 (2005), pp. 437-55, at 453.
8
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 1828-30 (Manuscripts in the Low Countries, ed. by
Bremmer and Dekker, no. 19) holds a varied collection of glossaries. The class glossary
components discussed here occur on f. 50r and ff. 94r-95r. They are an appendix in The
Cleopatra Glossaries. An Edition with Commentary on the Glosses and their Sources, ed.
by Ph.G. Rusche, unpubl. PhD. diss., Yale University 1996, pp. 554-66.
9
(Unicorn, animal, griffin, elephant, elephant's trunk, wild animal, bison, ox, beaver,
rat, otter). Ail translations are mine.
PIQmuscida . ylpes bile . l wrot .

Fera . wildeor .
Urus . wesend .
Buba1us . wilde oxa .
420 Fiber . Castor. Ponticus . befer
Raturus . rœt.
Lutria . otor.
Fortunately for our reconstruction of the seventh-century ancestor,

there exists a close sibling of the class list, lElfric's Glossary 10 • This is a
shorter glossary, numbering only about 1,270 entries, yet again the
Etymologiae is the preponderant contributor, and many entries, both
lemma and interpretamentum, are identical to Antwerp-London. The
following example, a list of astronomical terms and miscellanea,
illustrates this relationship.
JE!fric's Glossary, p. 304 Antwerp-London class list, 1686-94
caelum, heofen Celum . l uranon . g . heofen

angelus, engel Angs:lgs . l nuntius . encgel
archangelus, heahengel Archangs:lgs . heah encgel
stella, steorra Stella . steorra .
sol, sunne Sidus . tungel
luna, mona Sol . l Phebus. l Titan . sunne
firmamentum, rodor Luna . l Cinthia . mona .
cursus, ryne Firmamentum . roder
Cursus .ryn~ 1
As shown previously, lElfric edited a larger Isidorian glossary by

combining entries from «discrete and quite separate and weil defined
Isidorian sections which are preserved intact in Antwerp-London» 12• An
example illustrates lElfric's method. Antwerp-London items are from the
class list.
Pila. pilstoc ('pestel', in a batch from Etym. Bk IV) Antw-Lond 1228
10
Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar. Text und Varianten, ed. by J. Zupitza (Sammlung
englischer Denkmaler in kritischen Ausgaben 1), Weidmann, Berlin 1880; repr. with a
preface by H. Gneuss, Berlin 1966; 2nd repr. with new introd. by H. Gneuss, Olms,
Hildesheim 2001; An Edition of Abbot lE!fric's Old Eng lish-Latin Glossary with
Commentary, ed. by R. Gillingham, unpubl. PhD. diss., Ohio State University, 1981, lists
1269 entries.
11
(Sky or heaven, angel, archange!, star, [constellation], sun, moon, firmament,
course).
12
Porter, «The Antwerp-London Glossary and JE!fric's Glossary», p. 306.
158 DAVID W. PORTER
pila l sfera, ôo]Jer ('ball', in a batch from Bk XVIII) Antw-Lond 1533
pila, pilstoc oôôe ôoôer .tElfric' s Glossary, p. 320
Similar instances, I believe, prove that for brevity' s sake .!Elfric

followed a general strategy of combining entries. In the following
example, two contiguous entries from the class list, in a batch of
headwords from Isidore's Book XIII, are so combined:
Latex. burna. ('brook' or 'spring', in a batch from Bk XIII) Antw-Lond 2516

Torrens . broc ('brook', also from Bk XIII) Antw-Lond 2517
latex, burna oôôe broc lElfric's Glossary, p. 313
as are these two contiguous entries in a batch from Book XVII:
Iuncus . risc . ('rush' in a batch from Bk XVII) Antw-Lond 1041

Scirpus œrisc . ('rush, reed' also from Bk XVII) Antw-Lond 1042
iuncus l scirpus, risc lElfric's Glossary, p. 311
Thus .!Elfric's Glossary and the Antwerp-London class list are close
siblings. In our attempt to reconstruct their ancestral text, to specify its
reflexes and its influence, .!Elfric's Glossary holds a special place relative
to the best witness, Antwerp-London, and therefore will appear often in
our collations.
Glossarial reflexes of the seventh-century Isidorian glossary
Though the seventh-century original, a long Latin-English glossary

based on Isidore, has not survived, its many descendants will allow a
partial reconstruction. Here are those descendants, in rough chronological
order:
Leiden Glossary, ch. XLVII 13

Épinal-Erfurt Glossary 14 , especially the hermeneumata (class glossary)
material in the a-order sections
13
A Late Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the Library of
the Leiden University, ed. by J.H. Hessels, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1906.
As mentioned, Leiden is a later copy but textually prior to Épinal-Erfurt, which
incorporates and rearranges Leiden material.
German Glossaries 15
Corpus Glossary 16
Cleopatra Glossaries 1 and II 17
Brussels Glossary 18
.tElfric' s Glossary 19
Antwerp-London Glossary
And, as mentioned, we can trace the influence of the lost glossary in

writings of Aldhelm of Malmesbury, especially the prose De virginitate
and Enigmata, which date from around the year 700.
At this point let us reconstruct the editorial process that produced the
varied glossarial collections above from the Etymologiae of Isidore of
Seville (along with a small amount of additional material).
The first step was to make a shortened copy or epitome, if we may
judge from the contents of the Antwerp-London class list, .tElfric's
Glossary, and the Cleopatra Glossaries 20 . The omission of sorne Isidorian
books would no doubt have made a gigantic task less onerous. The entries
of this epitome would have been solely or largely Latin, and presumably
they closely resembled Isidore's original where entries may be as short as
a phrase but more often run as long as severa! sentences or a paragraph.
In Isidore's discursive entries, organization is loose, headwords being
followed by definitions, etymologies and derivations, explanations,
narratives, and so forth. An example from the a-order section of the
Antwerp-London alphabetical list (no. 563), a long commentary on the
14
In Corpus glossariorum Latinorum a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum, ed. by G. Goetz,
7 vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1888-1923; repr. Hakkert, Amsterdam 1965, V, pp. 337-401.
For glosses with Old English interpretamenta, see Old English Glosses in the Épinal-
Eifurt Glossary, ed. by J.D. Pheifer, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1974.
15
Die Althochdeutschen Glossen, ed. by E. Steinmeyer and E. Sievers, 5 vols.,
Weidmann, Berlin 1879-1922; repr. Weidmann, Dublin and Zurich 1968-1969. This is a
varied collection. The vocabularies cognate with Antwerp-London, including the two St
Gallen texts discussed below, are in vol. III, Sachlich geordnete glossare.
16
The Corpus Glossary, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1921.
17
The Cleopatra Glossaries, ed. by Rusche.
18
Ibid., pp. 554-66.
19
Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar, ed. by Zupitza.
20
Sorne of Isidore' s books are not used in the glossaries. The assumption is that a
partial text, or epitome, was the source, Rusche, «<sidore's Etymologiae», p. 453; Porter,
«The Antwerp-London Glossary and JElfric's Glossary», p. 307.
160 DAVID W. PORTER
dormouse, repeats much of Isidore's rambling original from Etymologiae

XII.iii.6.
Glis . species muris . q!!i toto uerno tempore dormit . lEstiuo euigilat . et ex somno
efficit!!! pinguis . dictus a crescendo . quia Gliscere crescere dicimus . Et dicitur eo
quod dormiendo gliscit .i. crescit . Gliscere enim crescere dicitur l ardere.
(The dormouse is a type of mouse that sleeps al! Spring and stays awake ail Summer.
It grows fat from sleep. Itis named from 'growing' because gliscere means 'to grow'.
And it is so called because by sleeping it grows (gliscit). Gliscere means to grow or
to burn.)
One of the reflexes preserves a group of similarly discursive entries

to which short English translations have been added (First Cleopatra
Glossary, letter f, 422-66; here are 423-30):
Frenesis. weding. Gneci mentem frenas dicunt hinc & freneticus.

Fleumon. magan untrymnes dictum apoplegi. quod interpretatur inflammans
425 Frunculus, quasi ferunculus. id est ongseta. grrece antrax ab igne.
Frenus: mupbersting
Farmacida. in latinum medicamina sonat. id est sealflœcnung. id est formantur
nomina farmaceaticus & farmaceatica & farmaceaticum
Flebotomum. blodseax œdderseax. grrece namque fleps. uena. tomum uero
incisio nominatur.
Foedus fecerunt: wœre genoman
430 Familia erciscundre yrfegedal. quia rerciscunda enim apud ueteres diuisio
nuncupabatur 1.
The presence of English complicates the analysis, but the important

point here is evidence for a lightly redacted Isidorian text still in
existence in the early tenth century. Back in the seventh century, an
Isidorian text of similarly discursive entries, perhaps all Latin, must have
given rise to a list of abbreviated ali-Latin entries such as we see in the
Antwerp-London a-order list. A subsequent step was to add or substitute
an English interpretation, to produce entries like the 3,000 in the class list
or the 1,270 in lElfric's Glossary. This two-step process is illustrated by
pairs of cognate entries from the Antwerp-London a-order and class lists
(in that order):
942 ami ta est soror patris tui
21
(Madness, inflammation of the stomach, pustule, eruption of the mou th, treatment
with salves, lancet, having made a contract, division of inheritance). The medical terms
are from Isidore's Etymologiae Book IV, the legal ones from Book V.
2395 Ami ta mea . min fapu
76 hoc Ancile .i. breue scutum

1508 Ancile . sincryndel lytel scyld
163 Bipennis e§! securis ex utraque parte acuta

1274 Bipennis. twibille. l stanœx
243 Cassis .i. galea. sed cassis ex ferro . galea . ex corio

1236 Cassis . isenhelm
205 Corpus .i. soma

1741 Corpus. lichama
473 Elixus .i. coctus in aqua

720 Elixus cibus . gesoden mete on wœtere
454 Exilium .i. peregrinatio

2327 Exilium . wrœcsip 22
The resulting long list of mostly short bilingual entries would then
have been the ancestral source for the Antwerp-London class list, for
lElfric' s Glossary, for Lei den ch. XLVII, for the hermeneumata
components of Épinal-Erfurt, and for the other reflexes. By the early
ninth century at the latest, both Latin-Latin and Latin-English items were
incorporated into an ab-order glossary compiled from many sources, the
Corpus Glossary. A century later, in the early tenth century, bilingual
entries made their way into the alphabetical First Cleopatra Glossary,
and, still organized by category, into the Second Cleopatra Glossary.
Ironically, the most representative and most complete of the reflexes, the
Antwerp-London class list, is also the latest in time, early eleventh
century.
Let us examine in chronological order the reflexes of the Canterbury
glossary.
The Leiden Glossary
The Leiden Glossary, a later Continental copy of a seventh-century

Canterbury original, shows the unmistakable influence of the lost
bilingual glossary we are now analysing. 1 should stress the importance of
Leiden, which is in sorne ways the most informative of the early
22
The headwords: patemal aunt, shield, double-bit axe, helmet, body, boiled, exile.
162 DAVID W. PORTER
glossaries. Its individual chapters are glossae collectae of texts studied at

Canterbury, and so furnish a guide to the mainly patristic curriculum
taught by Hadrian and Theodore: Rufinus's Historia Ecclesiastica, the
Bible, Sulpicius Severus's Vita S. Martini and Dialogi, Isidore's De
ecclesiasticis officiis and De natura rerum, the grammar of Phocas,
commentaries by Jerome and Cassiodorus, and so on. Lei den ch. XLVII
was first identified by Lindsay as a hermeneumata list23 • A good deal of
its material, both Isidorian and not, is shared with the Antwerp-London
class list. Of its 103 headwords, of which a large majority are translated
in English, twenty-nine have exact or nearly exact matches of Latin
!emma and English interpretamentum in Antwerp-London and/or LElfric's
Glossary.
The Leiden Glossary and Antwerp-London/iElfric's Glossary
1 Abellana hel Abellane hœsl [ ... ] 1165

7 Calomaucus het Calamauca . hœt 2086
13 Perna flicci pema, flicce lEGl. p. 320
17 Buculus nordbaeg Umbo . randbeh . l Bucula 1507
23 Alga uuac Alga . sœwaur 1046
27 Colostrum beust Colostrum . bystinc 740
31 Reuma streum Reuma . gytestream 2710
36 Berruca uaertç Uerruca wearte 255
37 Argella laam Argilla . laam 1391
51 Garallus hroe Cracculus . l Garrulus . hroc 933
53 Stumus stçr Beacita . l Stumus . stearn 884
56 Ciconia storhe Ciconia . store 900
57 Arpa arngeus Arpa œrengeat 375
63 Turdus serue Turdus . serie 914
71 Tinct slii Tinca. sliw 2630
74 Sardinus heringas [ ... ] Sardina. hœring 2639
76 Furunculas maerth [ ... ] ferunculus . mearô 424
77 Netila herma Netila. hearma 423
78 Musiranus seraeua Mus araneus . sceawa 561
79 Talpa uoond Talpa. l palpo. wandewurpe434
87 Castorius bebor [ ... ] Castor Ponticus. bejer 420
88 Scira aeurna Scirra. aquilin us [... ] aewern 425
91 Maialis bçrg Magalis . bearh 448
92 Porcastrum joar Porcastor joar 446
93 Scrufa sugu Scrofa . sugu 449
94 Btrrrus haar Verres . tarn bar 447
23
Lindsay, W.M., The Corpus, Épinal, Erfurt, and Leyden Glossaries, Oxford
University Press, Oxford 1921, pp. 17-20. Hermeneumata originally were the bilingual
class glossaries attached to certain late classical grammars. Severa! are edited in CGL III.
96 Acrifolium holera Acrifolus . holen 1196

99 Alnus alaer Alnus. alr 1154
100 Tilio lind [ ... ] Tilia . lind 1131
The dependence of Leiden on the Isidorian ancestor is shawn by the

ten items which come from Isidore's Etymologiae Book XII, De
animalibus: nos. 51 (read graculus), 53, 56, 71, 74, 76, 78, 79, 87, 9424 •
Their close counterparts in Antwerp-London are without exception firmly
contextualized in long, coherent batches from the same Book XII. It is
interesting, however, that a full dozen entries of undetermined origin are
also shared with Antwerp-London: nos. 7, 13, 17, 31, 57, 63, 77, 88, 91,
92, 93, and 9625 • 1t seems to be that earl y on a second, unidentified
hermeneumata list was incorporated into the semantic framework of the
Isidorian glossary. The Leiden batches cognate to batches in Antwerp-
London (nos. 76-77, 87-88, 91-94), combining as they do Isidorian with
other material, would then be excerpts from this hybrid list. That the
remaining 74 unsourced Leiden entries not listed here derive from that
same hypothetical ancestor is a logical hypothesis, but a definitive answer
must wait un til we find the origin for the 300 sorne odd non-Isidorian
items in the Antwerp-London class list.
What is absolutely clear, however, is that the lost Canterbury glossary
was already substantially "Englished" when it contributed the items to ch.
XLVII: almost a third of Leiden' s 250 Latin-English entries come from ch.
XLVII, a short chapter which, uniquely among the 48 chapters of Lei den,
is nearly bilingual. This finding overtums the view of Leiden as the first
Anglo-Saxon school text with extensive English: a big part of its
vemacular content came from an existing Latin-English forerunner that
must have been a long time in the making. 1 assume that thousands of
English words saw their first written form in the lost Canterbury class
glossary.
Épinal-Erfurt hermeneumata material
In his 1921 study The Corpus, Épinal, Erfurt, and Leyden Glossaries,
W.M. Lindsay identified specifie batches in the alphabetical Épinal-
Erfurt Glossary which come from an unknown hermeneumata, or class
list. 1 previously demonstrated the great overlap between Lindsay' s
24
(Jackdaw, ? tem, stork, tinch [fish], herring, marten, shrew, mole, beaver, boar).
25
(Hat, flitch, shield boss, current, vulture, shrike [bird], ? mouse, squirrel, pig, hog,
sow, holly).
164 DAVID W. PORTER
hermeneumata entries under c and the Antwerp-London class

list/tElfric's Glossary 26 • To reinforce that earlier proof let me extend that
sample a bit and offer a collation of Lindsay' s hermeneumata batch for
letter a.
Lindsay's Épinal-Erfurt hermeneumata entries beginning with letter a and Antwerp-

London/LElfric's Glossary
Acerabulus
Acrifolius Acrifolus . halen . 1196
holegn
Alnus aler Alnus. alr. 1154 lEGl. p. 312
Alnetum
Abies sepae Abies . l Gallica . 1146 abies, œps
gyrtreow lEGl. p. 312
Axilla
Auriculum dros Auricalcum, LEGl. p. 319
goldmœstlingc
Harpa aerngeup Arpa œrengeat 375
Acceia holtana Aceia . snite . l 938
wudecocc.
Ardea et Ardea . hragra 886 lEGl. p. 307
dieperdulum
hragra
Aculeum anga Aculeus . sticels . l 17 aculeus, sticels
gadisen LEGl. p. 304
Auriculum
Aureola
Alneta
Alga uar Alga . sœwaur 1046
Argilla laam Argilla . laam 1391
Aciarium
Abellanus
An cones
Altrinsecus
Addictus
Argutiae thrauu Argutiç . gleawnys 2967
Asphaltum
Albipedius
Alveolum
[Alveum] meeli Alueus . stream . l 2521 alveus stream
streamracu lEGl. p. 313
Al ga Alga . sœwaur 1046
saldthyblas
Acci tula
26
Porter, «The Antwerp-London Glossary and lElfric's Glossary», pp. 306-7.
Accituum
Variusfaag Uarius . l Disco1or. 1980 varius,fah lEGl.
fah p.306
Asca1onium
Accitu1ium
Ambila
Arnig1ossa
Absinthium Absinthium lEGl. p. 311
uermodae wermod
Armus boog Ramus. boga 1191 lEGl. p 312
An guens
Acinumhind Acinum . mealwurt 799
bergen
And Lindsay suggests as probable contributions from the same

source the following:
[Abellana] Abellane hœsl . l 1165

hnutu hœselhnutu
Alium garlec Allia . garleac 1007 allium, leac lEGl.
p.309
Anita aenid a Anans . ened . 898 aneta, ened lEGl.
natan do p. 307
Armilausia
Alba spina Alba spina 1180
hagudorn hœgporn
Apiastrum Apiaster . wude 1018
buuyrt merce
Apiago. beowyrt 1471
Anethum dil Anetum . dile 994 lEGl. p. 310
Aesculus Aesculus . boe . 1120
boeccae
Slightly more than half, that is 24 of the 46 E-E a-headwords, are

found in either .tElfric's Glossary or Antwerp-London or in both. Again,
for many of these items, the origin in an Isidorian class glossary is
irrefutably indicated by their anchoring among coherent, continuous
Isidorian batches: alnus and abies in a batch of two dozen entries from
Book XVII.vii (Antw-Lond 1112-1157); auricalcum in a batch of sixteen
items from Book XVI (.tElfric's Glossary, p. 319); ardea in a batch of
seven items from Book XII. vii (Antw-Lond 880-891); alga in a batch of
8 items from Book XVII.ix (Antw-Lond 1038-1046); uarius in a batch of
more than a dozen items from Book XII.i (Antw-Lond 1962-1977);
absinthium in a batch of three items from Book XVII (.tElfric's Glossary,
p. 311 ), and so forth. As with Leiden ch. XLVII, however, it is clear that
166 DAVID W. PORTER
Isidore was not the only source for the hermeneumata material in Épinal-
Erfurt. A good many non-Isidorian items among the semantic groups of
JElfric's Glossary and Antwerp-London appear again in Épinal-Erfurt:
acrifolius (ÉE 340.2, Antw-Lond 1196), arpa (ÉE 340.8, Antw-Lond
375), aceia (ÉE 340.9, Antw-Lond 938), acinum (ÉE 340.38, Antw-Lond
799). On the other hand, it is also very likely that sorne of Lindsay's
headwords were in the original Isidorian glossary but dropped out
because of selective copying. In the list above, ancones, for example, is
found at Etym. IX.iv.44; in Antwerp-London headwords both before and
after this section are numerous. Addictus occurs in Book X of the
Etymologiae, the source for dozens of entries in both JElfric and
Antwerp-London. Ascalonium, an herb name, is found in Book XVII
adjacent to allium, which is in Lindsay's list of conjectural lemmata.
Accitula (for acetula) cornes from Etym. XX.iii.9 next to uinum
conditum, which is found at Antwerp-London 786. Arniglossa (for
arnoglossa) is from Etym. XVII.ix.50, where it is an alternative name for
plantago. It has, I believe, been altered at Antwerp-London 998:
«Cinaglossa . l plantago . lapatium . wegbrœde». Armilausia cornes from
Book XIX.xxii, a section that contributed a coherent batch of more than
20 items to Antwerp-London (nos. 1550-1576). Were these missing items
found, almost 75 percent ofLindsay's lemmata would be accounted for.
A propos of the 50 percent of items certainly attributed to an
Isidorian class glossary, let me quote Lindsay again on the variability of
glosses: «All these splits and re-castings, intentional and unintentional,
make glosses very productive of other glosses; and an investigator who
traces fifty per cent of a glossary' s items to their source may be sure that
he has really accounted for seventy-five percent» 27 • On this basis, I take it
as settled that the lost Canterbury class glossary contributed substantial
material to the seventh-century original of Épinal-Erfurt. And with
Épinal-Erfurt just as with Leiden, that lost text was the single largest
supplier of English28 , further evidence that the compilation and
translation of the bilingual class glossary was a very early, perhaps the
earliest, effort of the Canterbury school.
27
Lindsay, The Corpus, Épinal, Erfurt and Leyden Glossaries, p. 95.
28
Porter, «The Antwerp-London Glossary and LElfric's Glossary», p. 310.
CJernnan glossaries
Assennbling books for the school they would establish in 678 at the
pagan edge of Europe, Hadrian and Theodore nnust have found Isidore's
encyclopaedic work a natural choice. In addition to a wealth of
vocabulary, a bit of grannnnar, of nnath, and of rhetoric, it also held a
thunnbnail introduction to ali of Ronnan knowledge - history, science,
literature, technology, ali of it associated with a safely orthodox Church
Father. Sonne of those sanne attractions nnust have appealed to Anglo-
Saxon nnissionaries a hundred years later as they left England to
proselytise the pagan CJernnanic tribes in north central Europe. In their
store of books were copies of the Canterbury glossary. Perusing
Steinnneyer's and Sievers's collection of glosses and glossaries in Old
High CJernnan, one finds nunnerous glosses, individually and in coherent
batches, cognate to those in the Antwerp-London class list. A connplete
analysis of this textual relationship would entail a long study in its own
right, so for now let a single exannple illustrate how the bilingual
Isidorian glossary was adapted in a new linguistic setting. The following
list of headwords connes fronn Book XIII of the Etymologiae 29 •
Steinmeyer-Sievers III, p. 14 Antwerp-London/JElfric' s Glossary
10 Aer luft Aer. lyft 2432

Nops uuolcan Nubes. wolc 2435 wolcn
lEGZ. p. 306
Tonitruus thonar [ ... ] Tonitrus. punor 2422
Fulmen plecca [ ... ] Fulmen. l Fulgus ligit 2423
zunga
Irus reganpogo Yris. renboga 2419
15 Pluvia regana Pluuia. ren 2420
Imber regan [ ... ] imber .fœrlic ren 2439
Tempestas uunst
Grando hagal Grando . hagol 2426
Nix sneo Nix. snaw 2424
20 Frigus frost Frigus . cyle 2555
29
Althochdeutschen Glossen, ed. by Steinmeyer and Sievers, III, p. 14 (air, cloud,
thunder, lightning, rainbow, rain [x2], storm, hail, snow, cold, ice, frost, moisture, mist,
wind). This tenth-century manuscript, St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 242, not only holds
many cognate batches of glosses but also preserves roughly the same order as the
Antwerp-London class list. The late eighth-century St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 913, the
'Vocabularius Sancti Galli', pp. 1-8, considerably overlaps Antwerp-London but with
more rearrangement. Both manuscripts are on-line, with references, at www.e-
codices.unifr.ch/enlshelfmark/20/0.
168 DAVID W. PORTER
Glacies is Glacies. is 2430

Pruina riffo Pruina . hrim 2429
Ros tou
Nebu1a nebul Nebula . mist . l genip 2438
25 Uentus uuint Uentus. wind 2434
The close phonetic similarity between the English and German

interpretamenta suggests that the original German glossators were
strongly influenced by the vernacular interpretations of the texts they
were adapting as they copied30 •
Corpus Glossary
The early ninth-century Corpus Glossary, to which the Antwerp-

London ab-order list is cognate, is a large compilation from many
sources. Even though it is earlier in time, Corpus with its complex ab-
order alphabetization represents a more developed phase than the simpler
a-order or class arrangements in Antwerp-London. Comparison of
Corpus-cognate ab-order items with corresponding entries in the other
Antwerp-London lists therefore allows us to view glosses at differing
stages of development. By chance, a gloss on abra/ancilla 'female
slave/servant' has been preserved at each of the three phases in the
evolution of the original material, as a Latin-Latin gloss in the end-page
list (no. 68), as a bilingual gloss with additional material in the class list
(no. 2239), and again as a bilingual gloss in the Corpus cognate ab-order
list (no. 129):
68 Abra .i. ancilla
2239 Ancilla . Serna . Abra . l Dula . g . wyln
129 Abra .i. ancilla . pinen . wyln 31
Another gloss, on Latin calo, occurs in the Antwerp-London a-order

list (no. 667), class list (no 1535), and Corpus cognate ab-order list (no.
327), with sorne confusion of materiae 2 .
30
An idea discussed in a different context by Gretsch, M. and Gneuss, H., «Anglo-
Saxon Glosses to a Theodorean Poem?», in K. O'Brien O'Keeffe and A. Orchard (eds.),
Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge,
2 vols. (Toronto Old English Series 14), University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo
and London 2005, 1, pp. 9-46, at 21-22.
31
Corpus A 10: «Abra ancella».
32
Something has been !ost. The gloss understands the meaning 'wood carrier', but
calo in Isidore is a boat: Etym. XIX.i.15: «Classis dicta est a Graeco vocabulo, àno TÛJV
667 Lixa .i. mercennarius militis qui et calo dicitur

1535 Calones . wudigeras
327 Calones . wudieras33
Comparison of Corpus cognate items with the aU-Latin a-order list

items illustrates how glosses were abbreviated and simplified across time.
A-order items are given first, Corpus cognate items second.
'club'
315 Claua. huius claue .i. genus maximi teli. quo usus est Hercules
339 Claua. stynl 4
'wink' or 'connive'
248 Coniueo . es .i. oculos claudo . uel consentio . tractum a palpebris quae salent
inuicem sibi consentire
358 c-;niueo . ic wincige35
A similar simplification is often seen when Corpus cognate items

from the ab-order list are compared with those in the class list. Class
items are given first, Corpus cognate items second.
'alms'
850 Elemosina . l Agapis . œlmesse
141 Agapem. œlmessœ 36
'dolphin'
2619 Delphin . l bocharius . l Simones . mereswin
184 Bacharus . mereswyn 37
'advocate'
2745 Aduocatus. Patronus . l interpellator .forspeca l mundbora.
323 Causidicus .i. aduocatus .forespreca38
KÛÀWV, id est lignis; unde et calones naviculae quae ligna militibus portant>>. Lixa occurs
in Bk XX.ii.22 where it denotes water.
33
Corpus C 190: «Calones gabar militum>>.
34
Corpus 150: «Claua steng>>.
35
Corpus 519: «Conuentio. consentio [ ... ]>>.
36
Corpus A 405: «Agapen suoesendo>>.
37
Corpus B 166: «Bacarius. meresuin>>.
38
Corpus C 177: «Causidicus . atuocatus>>.
170 DAVID W. PORTER
Sometimes, however, Corpus cognate items simply repeat class

items, as in the gloss on calo above, or in the following examples (where
class items are again first, Corpus cognate items second):
'ear locks'
1611 Antie . earloccas
144 Antit<. earloccas 39
'fold'
25 Bobellum . fald
179 Bobellum . fald" 0
Frequently the ab-order list rejects the English interpretations of the

class list in favour of Latin interpretations.
'haze1nut'
1165 Abellane hœsl. l hœselhnutu
128 Abilina .i. parua nux . ex corilo .41
'absternious'
2299 Abstemus . syfre
130 Abscenus .i. non sobrius42
'? unhappy'
2939 Accidiosus . l Tediosus . asolcen
136 Accidiosus .i. inquietus mente43
And in at least one instance, a gloss on dolones ('sword canes'), the

ab-list shows a preference for an extended discursive interpretation:
1504 Do1ones. stœfsweord

429 Do1ones (picas) .i. gladii in bacu1is positi qui in manu geruntur44
Cleopatra glossaries
The Cleopatra glossaries have been placed narrowly at St

Augustine's, Canterbury in the 930s45 • They are a series of three
39
Corpus A 527: «Antiae. loccas».
4
°Corpus B 148: «Bofellum .falud>>.
41
Corpus A 2: «Abe1ena . haeselhnutu>>.
42
Corpus A 35: «Abstenus sobrius>>.
43
Corpus A 137: «Accidiosus . mente inquietus>>.
44
Corpus D 351: <<Do1ones. tela arma. absconsa>>.
Corpus D 356: «Do lones . hunsporan>>.
glossaries, the first an alphabeticallist, the second a mixed or hybrid list

with, among other things, a class and an alphabetical component, and the
third an Aldhelm glossary. The class or hermeneumata segment of the
Second Cleopatra Glossary46 (which ironically is a source for Cleopatra 1
and therefore logically prior) shows strong influence from the Isidorian
glossary47 •
Cleopatra II
For simplicity' s sake 1 will look at just items 1-581, a pure class list
organized by headings for birds, fish, textiles, people, fire, dice, vehicles,
beds, wood, plants, swine, and metals. Rusche has identified sorne 170
entries dependent on Isidore, especially the unbroken suite no. 134
through no. 286 listed under De homine et de partibus eius, a series of
anatomical terms which come directly and mostly in order from Book XI
of the Etymologiae.
The Isidorian contribution is much larger, however. In the 83 words
under Cleopatra ll's first heading, De auibus, no fewer than 45 are from
Isidore's Book XII: 32 glosses from section vii (birds), followed by 12
from section viii (insects), in which one bird term has been interpolated.
This fin ding is fairly typical. The list of fish, nos. 84-106, is mostly from
Book XII, section vi; the list of textiles, nos. 107 to 132, has twelve items
from Book XIX and two from Book X. The anatomical list, nos. 133 to
289, we have discussed above. The entries relating to fire, no. 290 to no.
308, include two items from Book XVII, four from Book XIX, and four
from Book XX. Briefly, the bed-related vocabulary, no. 337 to no. 375,
contains a batch from Book XIX; De lignis, a list of trees (nos. 376-444),
is mostly drawn from Book XVII; plants, nos. 445 to 479, also from
Book XVII; swine (nos. 481-99) from Book XII, sections i and ii; the
metals (nos. 500-532) from Books XVI and XIX; the cereals (nos. 533-
40) from Book XII; the next section (nos. 541-81 a list, mostly of
animais, without a heading) from Book XII. In ali about 70 percent (by
my count 400 of 581 entries) of this part of Cleopatra II depends on
45
The Cleopatra Glossaries, ed. by Rusche, pp. 3-11. Item numbers are Rusche' s.
46
Ibid., pp. 411-41.
47
This Isidorian content is noted by Lendinara, P., <<The Glossaries in London, BL,
Cotton C1eopatra A.iii», in R. Bergmann, E. Glaser and C. Moulin-Fankhanel (eds.),
Mittelalterstudien der Otto-Friedrich-Universitiit Bamberg 2. bis 4. August /999
172 DAVID W. PORTER
Isidore. The Isidorian structure is apparent in the sequential ordering

which matches the Etymologiae, while glosses identical to those in
Antwerp-London reveal a common descent from the same ancestor. The
hermeneumata section of Cleopatra II, preserving as it does the structure
of the original, is after Antwerp-London the best representative of our
lost Canterbury glossary.
Cleopatra I
With 4,939 entries, the First Cleopatra Glossary is a large a-order

alphabetical glossary compiled from many sources. This simple
alphabetization frequently excerpts headwords in original order, so source
texts are easy to identify. Rusche names a dozen or more. As in Cleopatra
II, the Isidorian content is frequent. For each letter of the alphabet, it is
found in three of Rusche's segments: in the hermeneumata material from
Cleopatra II, in the Isidorian material, and in the class glossary material.
Cleopatra II was discussed above and the Isidorian material has been
thoroughly sourced by Rusche, so I will address only the class glossary
segments.
Let us take the component listed under letter c as an example. Rusche
identifies the class glossary material under c as the 62 entries from no.
686 to no. 747. Of these he counts 30 headwords from the Etymologiae,
but I find no fewer than 37, or about 60 percent48 • Now let us add the
non-Isidorian entries shared with Antwerp-London (or LElfric's Glossary)
on the assumption they came from the same original glossarial
compilation. I count 14 lemmata: commonitorium, colobysta, corbus,
cultrum, ceruellum, chautrum, cuba, catacrinis, centumpellis, capitosus,
cintus, capo, cerua, and caprile49• If we attribute all these glosses to one
lost source, it must have contributed 51 items, or a full 80 percent of the
entries in this batch under letter c. lt is not certain, therefore, whether
Rusche's categories hermeneumata, class glossary, and Isidorian reflect
any very significant difference. For the most part the entries seem to
descend from the same lost source, a bilingual Isidorian glossary into
48
1 add no. 691 ceruleas, cf. Etym. XIX.xvii.14; no. 695 carduus, cf. Etym.
XVII.x.20; no. 702 circinnum, cf. Etym. XIX.xix.lO; no. 709 cartilago, cf. Etym. Xl.i.88;
723 calcanosus (read calcaneus), cf. Etym. Xl.i.114; no. 729 ceruus, cf. Etym. XII.i.18;
and no. 743 caulç, cf. Etym. XV.ix.6.
49
I.e., nos. 686,689,698,701,706,710,711,713,714,719,724,732,742, and 744;
the cognate items in Antwerp-London (or LElfric's Glossary): nos. 2962, 2735, 474,
LElfric's Glossary, p. 304, 1808, 1817, 1829,2004, 1992, 1957,945,951,438, and 2791.
which non-Isidorian entries had been interpolated. Rusche's three

categories hermeneumata, class glossary, and Isidorian have sorne 839
entries in toto, or about 17 percent of Cleopatra I, and this is not counting
any Isidorian material that came indirectly via the hermeneumata batches
of Épinal-Erfurt. To conclude, a good many hundreds of Cleopatra I
entries must descend from the Canterbury glossary.
Brussels Glossary
The manuscript Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 1828-30, of the early

eleventh century, contains a complex and varied collection of glossaries.
Fortunately for our purposes, the class glossary component has been
excerpted and edited by Philip Rusche in an appendix to his above-cited
edition of the Cleopatra glossaries50 . The edition of Brussels contains 509
entries under eight headings (three of them supplied by the editor). The
bulk of the entries in each category are easily matched to corresponding
sections of Antwerp-London. As an example, Brussels's list of birds,
Nomina uolucrum, mostly from Isidore's Book XII, repeats several dozen
entries under Antwerp-London's Nomina auium, nos. 880-957 51 .
Brussels's list of fish, Nomina piscum, 217-241 (from Etymologiae
XII. vi), repeats Antwerp-London's Nomina piscium, no. 2619-2645. Only
five of the Brussels items make no appearance in Antwerp-London and/or
JElfric's Glossary52 • The textual relationship is similar with the remaining
categories (with the exception of De igne). Because the evidence is easily
accessible, I simply list the corresponding sections of the two glossaries.
Square brackets indicate supplied headings.
Brussels Antwerp-London
(Etym. XII.vii) Nomina uolucrum 1-75 Nomina auium 880-957

(Etym. Xl) De Membris hominum 76-216 no heading 1733-1945
(Etym. XII. vi) Nomina piscum 217-240 Nomina piscium 2619-2645
(Etym. XIX) [De textrinalibus] 241-268 no heading 2845-2881
[De igne] 269-282 no heading 744-45; 759
(Etym. XVIII) [De alea] 283-285 no heading 1529-1530
(Etym. XX, Bible) [De plaustris] 286-292 no heading 199; 43-48
50
The Cleopatra Glossaries, ed. by Rusche, pp. 554-66.
51
1 count 48 Isidorian headwords, 14 non-Isidorian headwords shared by both lists;
most English interpretations are also identical.
52
I.e., nos. 221, 226, 229, 236, 239, and 240.
174 DAVID W. PORTER
(Etym. XVII) Nomina herbarum 294-509 Nomina herbarum53 962-1110
Aldhelm' s prose De virginitate and Enigmata
The most prominent English name associated with the Canterbury

school is that of Aldhelm54 . A cleric of great learning, he advanced to a
bishopric, and as a writer he produced a large and impressive corpus of
work that was copied and imitated straight through the Anglo-Saxon
period. He spent years of his young adulthood under the tutorship of
Hadrian and Theodore, an education which in his Epistola ad Heahfridum
he touts over that of the Irish55 • From pure probability, therefore, we
would assume Aldhelm' s familiarity with a Canterbury school text as
broadly influential as the lost Isidorian glossary in Latin and English that
we have examined here. Logic would likewise argue for his participation
in the research and production of this large and detailed encyclopaedia.
This idea is emphatically supported by the pervasive Isidorian element
incorporated within Aldhelm's Enigmata and prose De virginitate.
In an important article Nicholas Howe demonstrated with many
examples the great degree to which Aldhelm' s riddles, the Enigmata, rely
on the Etymologiae 56• Without further specifies in the same vein, suffice
it here to give evidence from collation to show a persistent Isidorian
influence. Absolute certainty is unattainable in all cases, since sorne of
Aldhelm' s titles occur ag ain in other proven sources, but of 100 riddle
titles, a majority are Isidore's headwords from the Etymologiae: 27 from
Book XII (on animais), bombex, pava, salamandra, luligo, formica, leo,
apis, ciconia, locusta, nicticorax, scniphis, cancer, leo, strutio,
sanguisuga, castor, aquila, monoceros, corvus, columba, piscis, crabro,
53
Most of the Antwerp-London items are incorporated in Brussels's longer list of
plant names.
54
Lapidge, M., «The Career of Aldhelm», Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), pp. 15-
69. For Aldhelm's writings see Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by R. Ehwald (MGR, AA 15),
Weidmann, Berlin 1919. The prose De virginitate has been partially re-edited in Aldhelmi
Malmesbiriensis Prosa de Virginitate cum Glosa Latina atque Anglosaxonica, ed. by S.
Gwara (CCSL 124 and 124A), Brepols, Turnhout 2001. The Enigmata are edited from an
Anglo-Saxon manuscript by Porter Stork, N., Through a Glass Darkly: Aldhelm's Riddles
in the British Library MS Royal 12. C.xxiii, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
Toronto 1990.
55
Gwara, S., «A Record of Anglo-Saxon Pedagogy: Aldhe1m's Epistola ad
Heahfridum and its Gloss», The Journal of Medieval Latin 6 (1996), pp. 84-134.
56
Howe, N., «Aldhelm's Enigmata and Isidorian Etymo1ogy>>, Anglo-Saxon England
14 (1985), pp. 37-59.
mustela, iuvencus, aries, elefans, camelus57 ; six from Book XVII (on
plants), piper, urtica, hirundo, heliotropus, taxus, palma58 , five from
Book XIII (on natural phenomena), nubes, natura, iris ,fons, Scilla 59 ; four
from Book XIV (on geography) terra, ventus, co/ossus, and perhaps arca
libraria 60 . Other books of the Etymologiae make smaller contributions:
two from Book XI (minotaurus, puerpuera) 61 , three from Book XVI (sal,
magnes, trutina) 62 , and so on. What stands out is not just the fact of an
Isidorian substrate to the riddles, but also the remarkably sirnilar
emphasis on natural history which is shared by the Antwerp-London class
list. In this regard let us recall as weil the many Leiden items that also
originated in Isidore's Book XII63 , as weil as the heavy concentration of
Book XII headwords in the Épinal-Erfurt hermeneumata batch.
Turning to the prose De virginitate, etymological content from
Isidore is again immediately apparent. So prorninent is it, in fact, that
Gwara' s edition documents it with a running apparatus at the foot of each
page. For the sake of comparison, I tabulated a sample of Gwara' s entries
by the book of the Etymologiae in which they originated. Following are
the figures for chapters I through XX, a third of Aldhelm' s 60 chapters.
Percentage of Isidorian items, by book, in the prose De virginitate chs. ii-xx
Etym. Bk No. ofEntries Percent of En tries

(n = 1250)
18 1.44
II 13 1.04
III 13 1.04
IV 11 0.88
v 42 3.36
VI 34 2.72
VII 37 2.96
VIII 60 4.8
IX 133 10.64
x 116 9.28
57
(Silk worm, peacock, salamander, flying fish, ant lion, bee, stork, locust, night
raven, fly, crab, lion, ostrich, leech, beaver, eagle, unicom, raven, dove, fish, homet,
weasel, bullock, ram, elephant, carnel).
58
(Pepper, nettle, reed, heliotrope, yew, palm).
59
(Cloud, nature, rainbow, spring, Scilla).
60
(Earth, wind, colossus, book chest).
61
(Minotaur, birth).
62
(Salt, magnet, scale).
63
Ch. XLVII, nos. 51, 53, 56, 71, 74, 76, 78, 79, 87, 94.
176 DAVID W. PORTER
XI 169 13.52
XII 54 4.32
XIII 58 4.64
XIV 36 2.88
xv 86 6.88
XVI 44 3.52
XVII 70 5.6
XVIII 83 6.64
XIX 94 7.52
xx 79 6.32
The apparatus to the prose De virginitate shows a type of textual

dependence on Isidore different from that of the glossaries, since
headwords may appear any number of times in the literary work while
they generally appear just once in a glossary. Nevertheless, the
comparison with Antwerp-London and the other Isidorian glossaries is
quite interesting. Sorne of the Etymologiae books heavily used in the
glossaries are again frequently used in the prose De virginitate,
specifically Books IX, X, and XI, the three most productive contributors
to .tElfric's Glossary, and Books XVII, XIX, and XX, the three most
productive contributors to Antwerp-London. Conversely, Books I-IV,
almost unused in the glossaries, make the smallest contribution here.
The glossaries and the works of Aldhelm make the same selections
from the Etymologiae, but how are we to interpret these
correspondences? Aldhelm's borrowing from glossaries is well
documented64 , so it would be easy to see his use of Isidore as merely
reflecting his glossarial source. The evidence of the Enigmata, however,
suggests a different explanation. The riddles reveal their author's
penetrating interest not just in Isidorian terminology but in the lore of
natural history derived from the Etymologiae and elsewhere. There is
much more to the riddles than the simple lexical equivalences found in
the glossaries. Can we then assign the similar emphases on natural history
found in the riddles and in the glossaries to the same guiding band? This
would be to say that the original Canterbury glossary was the glossary of
Aldhelm himself. I have found nothing to disprove this hypothesis, but it
would be rash to make too sweeping a claim.
Caution is needed. A buge obstacle to understanding the seventh-
century Canterbury glossary is the lack of an accurate copy. Even the size
64
Lapidge, M., «Aldhe1m and the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary», in K. Barker and N.
Brooks (eds.), Aldhelm and Sherborne: Essays to Celebrate the Foundation of the
Bishopric, British Archaeological Reports, Oxford 2007, pp. 129-63.
is unknown, since ali of its descendants offer partial views only. The
Antwerp-Lonclon class list is the largest and best of the reflexes, but even
the relatively small .tElfric's Glossary contains about 270 entries which
Antwerp-Lomlon ornits, and of fifteen Isidorian glosses printed by
Rusche from Cleopatra II, only five occur in the Antwerp-London class
list65 • The ha(lhazard manner of Antwerp-London's copying, moreover,
has introduced much disordering. A second problem with assigning the
Canterbury original to Aldhelm is that such a large task looks to have
been beyond the capacity of a single individual. The complexity of
finding equivalents in English for many hundreds of Mediterranean
species of bir<is, fish, insects, plants, and trees must have necessarily
involved lengthy and close interaction between the interpreter/glossator
and native informants, in this case, one assumes, Hadrian and Theodore.
With alien species never occurring in Britain, moreover, the task would
have involved a negotiation among more or less unsatisfactory
alternatives - a possible explanation for the great variability of English
interpretations for the Latin bird names in the reflexes. Differing
interpretations may weil have been applied at different times and by
different glossators. However the original glossary was produced, though,
it seems reas()nable to assume Aldhelm's active participation. The real
question is to what degree the editorial direction was his. Aldhelm' s
writings show he has drunk Isidore's eup to the bottom, that the
Etymologiae hélve shaped his perceptions and have given him his voice66 .
Does the natllie lore of the glossaries proceed from the same editorial
choice that pu_t it into the prose De virginitate and especially into the
Enigmata? T<J believe so is a natural step, and that is my current working
hypothesis.
The way forward is clear: to produce an accurate picture of the
seventh-centurJ glossary by collating all the descendants with the source
text, Isidore' s Etymologiae. My tally of reflexes above contained nine
components, of which one, the German glossaries, has many examples.
The task is tllerefore a huge one, but one with great promise for
elucidating the birth of written English at the Canterbury school.
65
Rusche, <<lsidore's Etymologiae», p. 441.
66
For the Isi.<Jorian vocabulary of the prose De virginitate, see Marenbon, J., «Les
sources du vocabulaire d' Aldhelm», Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 41 (1979), pp. 75-
90.
LEARNING TOOLS AND LEARNED LEXICOGRAPHERS:
THE ANTWERP-LONDON AND THE JUNIUS 71
LATIN-OLD ENGLISH GLOSSARIES
Loredana Lazzari
When the two parts of the dismembered manuscript, now Antwerp,

Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.2 and London, British Library, Additional
32246, were discovered, the bilingual glossary written on the margin of
sorne folios immediately drew scholars' attention. The study of the
London manuscript began in 1885 when Edward Maude Thompson
noticed the relationship existing between the bilingual glosses on the
folios of the manuscript recently acquired by the British Library and the
glossary in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 71 1. However, in the light of
the evident differences, errors, and rearrangements, Thompson did not
surmise that Additional 32246 was the one from which Francis Junius
(1591-1677) 2 had made his transcript.
Two years later Julius Zupitza announced the recovery of the missing
folios of the manuscript in the Plantin-Moretus Librarl, and in 1917
Max Forster published his edition of the bilingual glosses copied on the
margins of the folios of the Antwerp portion of the manuscript4 .
However significant these first studies may have been for the
knowledge of the dismembered manuscript, its content and history, they
nevertheless failed to clarify the nature of the connections between the
bilingual Antwerp-London (hereafter A-L) Glossary and the transcript
made by Francis Junius. Indeed, this problem has not yet been solved.
1
Thompson, E.M., «.tElfric's Vocabulary>>, The Journal of the British Archaeological
Association 41 (1885), pp. 144-6.
2
In his endless activity as a copyist and philologist, Francis Junius devoted a special
attention to interlinear glosses and glossaries. His work is preserved in the collection of
one hundred and twenty-two manuscripts now in the Oxford Bodleian Library: see
Stanley, E.G., «The Sources of Junius's Learning as Revealed in the Junius Manuscripts
in the Bodleian Library>>, in Bremmer, R.H. Jr. (ed.), Franciscus Junius F.F. and his
Circle, Rodopi, Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA 1998, pp. 159-76, at 159.
3
Zupitza, J., «Sitzungen der Berliner Gesellschaft. Sitzung vom 29 Miirz 1887>>, in
Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen 19 (1887), pp. 88-89.
4
Forster, M., «Die altenglische Glossenhandschrift Plantinus 32 (Antwerpen) und
Additional32246 (London)>>, Anglia 41 (1917), pp. 94-161.
180 LOREDANA LAZZARI
Junius's Glossary is available in the out-of-date edition by Thomas

Wright5, which was eventually reprinted in the revised edition by Richard
Paul Wül[c]ker6 . It was only in 1955 that Lowell Kindschi provided a
diplomatie edition of both the bilingual class glossary and the
alphabetical glossary, mostly Latin-Latin, made up of two lists of glosses
copied on the margins of the manuscript in his unpublished doctoral
dissertation. Kindschi did not discuss the features and the origin of the
glossaries he printed7 , thereby hampering the import of his contribution.
The bilingual A-L Glossary and the manuscript
The bilingual A-L Glossary represents the most important glossarial

item of the A-L manuscript, which was written at Abingdon in the first
half of the eleventh century by a variety of hands 8 . The main text in the
codex is the Excerptiones de Prisciano, an abridgement of Priscian's
5
A Volume ofVocabularies [... ], ed. by T. Wright, priv. ptd., [?London]1857, nos. II
and III, cols. 15-61. It was foliowed by A Second Volume of Vocabularies [... ], priv. ptd.,
[?London]1873.
6
Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. by T. Wright, edited and coliated
by R.P. Wülcker, 2 vols., Trübner, London 1883; 2nd edn., 1884; repr. Wissenschaftliche
Buchgeselischaft, Darmstadt 1968, I, nos. IV and V, cols. 104-191.
7
MS Additional 32,246, ed. by L. Kindschi, unpubl. PhD. diss., Stanford 1955. On the
Antwerp glosses on the A folios, see Forster, <<Die altenglische Glossenhandschrift
Plantinus 32>>, pp. 104-46, and Porter, D.W., «On the Antwerp-London Glossaries>>,
Journal of English and Germanie Philology 98 (1999), pp. 170-92. Ali the references to
the glosses of both A-L Glossary and Junius's Glossary are from the manuscripts; the
glosses are numbered according to my own counting. Ali the abbreviations have been
silently expanded.
8
The original foliation, described by Forster, consisted of 74 folios in nine quires
with a missing folio at the beginning of the last quire. 50 folios (1-19, 19*, 20-49) now
belong to the Antwerp fragment, while 24 folios belong to the London fragment; A, f. 19*
is a half folio eut verticaliy, which was inserted to enlarge the original quire. See
Thompson, E.M. et al., Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum
in the Years 1882-1887, The Trustees of the British Library, London 1889; repr. 1968, p.
96; Forster, <<Die altenglische Glossenhandschrift Plantinus 32>>, pp. 96-99; Dénucé, J.,
Musaeum Plantin-Moretus, catalogue des manuscrits, Bracke-van Geert, Antwerp 1927,
pp. 45-46; Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon
Press, Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl., 1990, no. 2; Gneuss, H., Handlist of Anglo-
Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned
in England up to 1100 (MRTS 241), Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, Tempe, AZ 2001, no. 775.
LEARNING TOOLS AND LEARNED LEXICOGRAPHERS 1S1
Institutiones grammaticae 9 • The treatise is followed by a glossary of 103

items and by a letter to an unidentified priest, .tElf, written by an
anonymous correspondent 10 •
A number of different works were copied onto the margins of the
manuscript, firstly an alphabetical glossary of about one thousand Latin-
Latin items in a-order from letter a to s. Another list of 133 items in ab-
order, was conflated with the former one, by copying five distinct batches
of entries at the end of the first five batches of the previous glossary (i.e.
the batches from letter a to e). Out of the 133 items of the ab-list, 96 have
an Old English interpretamentum 11 • Onto the margin of the manuscript
there were also copied a short aU-Latin glossary with twelve items
concerning the parts of a Roman house 12 , an excerpt from Remigius of
Auxerre's commentary on Donatus's Ars minor13 , an incomplete version
of .tElfric's Colloquy revised by .tElfric Bata14 , and, finally, the bilingual
A-L Glossary 15 .
9
Excerptiones de Prisciano: The Source of JElfric's Latin-Old English Grammar, ed.
by D.W. Porter (Anglo-Saxon Texts 4), Brewer, Cambridge 2002.
10
See Forster, «Die altenglische Glossenhandschrift Plantinus 32>>, pp. 1S3-4.
11
The a-order list of Latin glosses is found into the margins of A[ntwerp], f. 2rv;
L[ondon], ff. 3r, Sr, Srv, 9rv,12rv; A, ff. 4rv, Sr, 12r, 16r; L, ff. 16rv, 21r; A, ff. 20r, 24rv,
2Sr, 32r, 36rv, 37r, 40r, 47rv, 4Sr; while the ab-order glosses are found in the margins of
L, ff. 3r, Sr, 9v, 12v; A, f. 4v: see The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus
MS 32, ed. by Kindschi, pp. 3S-274. In his edition Kindschi did not distinguish between
the alphabetical and bilingual glossaries and simply reproduced the progression of the
glosses on the A-L manuscript.
12
A, f. 43v: see Porter, D.W., «Old Eng1ish Goldhordhus: A Privy or Just a
Treasurehouse?>>, Notes and Queries ns 41 (1996), pp. 2S7-S.
13
A, ff. 4v-17v: see Remigii Autissiodorensis in artem Donati minorem commentum,
ed. by W. Fox, Teubner, Leipzig 1902.
14
A, ff. 1Sr-19v, and L, ff. 16v-17v: see Early Scholastic Colloquies, ed. by W.H.
Stevenson, with introd. by W.M. Lindsay (Anectoda Oxoniensia. Mediaeval and Modem
Series 1S), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1929; repr. AMS Press, New York 19S9, pp. 7S-102.
For the edition of the Antwerp fragment, see also Forster, «Die altenglische
Glossenhandschrift Plantinus 32>>, pp. 149-S2, and Hill, J., «LElfric's Colloquy: The
Antwerp/London Version>>, in K. O'Brien O'Keeffe and A. Orchard (eds.), Latin
Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, 2
vols. (Toronto Old English Series 14), University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo and
London 200S, Il, pp. 331-4S.
15
L, ff. 2v-7v; A, f. 3rv; L, ff. Sr, 9r-1Sv; A, f. 4r; L, ff. 17v-21v. For the edition of
the bilingual glossary, see The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus MS 32,
ed. by Kindschi.
Two added folios (L, f. 24; A, f. 19*) contain scholia to the

Excerptiones de Prisciano whereas L, f. 1, and A, f. 1, are two fly-leaves
with five additions dating to the first half of the eleventh century.
A catalogue of the Plantin Library confirms that the manuscript
belonged to the Plantin Collection by 1650 16 • In 1884 twenty-four folios
came into possession of the British Museum (Additional 32246), while
the remaining part of the manuscript stayed in Antwerp. The reason why
and the method according to which the manuscript was dismembered are
not known. Probably the unbundling of the folios was quite casual. As a
result, the first two quires of eight folios 17 are now in London, alongside
with the fifth quire and the first of the two added folios (L, f. 24) for a
total of 24 leaves. As a consequence of this division, 19 out of the 21
folios containing the bilingual glossary are now in the London fragment,
while the remaining two folios belong to the Antwerp fragment. As to the
two alphabetical lists of glosses, two thirds of them are in the Antwerp
folios. The bilingual A-L Glossary is the 1atest addition on the margins of
the codex. It is a class glossary, topically arranged under Latin headings
and it was added on the margins by a different hand, after the two
alphabeticallists of glosses had been copied (see Plate III).
Nothing is known of the origin and transmission of the A-L Glossary,
nor of the two alphabeticallists. However, the bilingual class glossary is
certainly a copy, considering the large number of errors which mar the
entries and affect both Latin and Old English forms. Such mistakes
include omissions, misspellings, transpositions of letters, and dropping of
the endings of words. The numerous instances of misplacements of letters
or groups of letters seem to show such a poor command of the English
language that Thompson presumed that the copyist was an English monk
living in sorne foreign house, who had either forgotten or half-learned his
mother tongue 18 .
The scribe copied the entries of the A-L Glossary following a very
irregular progression. Consequently, it is an arduous task to reconstruct
16
Catalogus manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Balthasaris Moreti in Officina
Plantiniana Antverpie, compiled on 11 July 1650, where the manuscript is recorded as no.
69: «Priscianus; parvo f[olio], charactere mediocre vetustatis», in Stein, H., <<Les
manuscrits du Musée Plantin-Moretus (Catalogues de 1592 et de 1650)», Messager des
sciences historiques, ou Archives des arts et de la bibliographie de Belgique 60 (1886),
pp. 211-31, at214-8.
17
It should be reminded that the first quire is lacking the extemal bifolium.
18
Thompson, <<LElfric's Vocabulary>>, p. 146.
LEARNING TOOLS AND LEARNED LEXICOGRAPHERS 183
the original sequence of the glosses and even to identify their precise
number 19 •
The scribe who copied the A-L Glossary had thirty-eight margins (of
twenty-one folios) at his disposai. As we can see in the table below, in
twenty-six instances he copied the entries of the glossary beginning with
the left margin, but, in twelve cases, the starting point was the top margin.
Layout of the glos ses No. of Folio

copied in the margins occurrences
left, bottom, top 8 L4v, L5v, L6v, LlOv, L14v, L15v,
Ll8v, L 19v
left, bottom, top, right 5 L11r, L13r, L15r, L18r, L19r
left, top, right, bottom 4 L4r, L7r, A3r, LlOr
left, bottom 3 Ll2v, A4r, L17v
left 2 L8r, L12r
left, top, bottom 1 L13v
left, top, left/lower, bottom 1 Ll1v
left, bottom, right, top 1 L3r
left, bottom, right 1 L5r
top, left, bottom 5 L2v, L3v, A3v, L20v, L2lv
top, right, bottom 3 L6r, L20r, L 2lr
top, right, bottom, left 1 L14r
top, left 1 L7v
top, left, bottom, right 1 L9r
top 1 L9v
In sorne cases, we can suppose that the layout of the glosses on the
margins was different from Kindschi's edition20 • In particular, in L, f. 3r,
the more consistent layout of the script on the margins seems to be: left,
bottom, right, top, instead of top, left, bottom, right as Kindschi assumed.
19
Identifying and separating the glosses is often a difficult task, owing to the lay out
of the entries crammed in the margins. A comparison of the entries with those of other
glossaries (both earlier and contemporary) as weil as the identification of the source of the
individual lemmata play a crucial role in the editor's choice. This explains why my
numbering of the Antwerp-London bilingual glosses (2,993) differs from that indicated by
Porter, i.e. 2,992: see above D.W. Porter's contribution to this volume, pp. 153-77, at 154.
20
The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus MS 32, ed. by Kindschi.
This different evaluation is based on the evidence supplied by

Isidore's Etymologiae, the principal source of the A-L Glossary 21 ,
combined with the lay out of the script, since if we look at the position of
the writing at the beginning of the top-left margins, it seems unrealistic
that the top side was filled before the left side.
Moreover, the connection of the A-L Glossary with the Isidorian
encyclopaedia yields proof that the sequence in the left margin, ending
with «Augur . vel aspe x fugelweohlœre» (cf. Etym. VIII.ix.18) 22 , is the
direct antecedent of the batch in the bottom margin, starting with
«Astrologus. vel magus . tungelwitega. geberdwihlœre. vel mathematicus
. geberdwiglœre» (cf. Etym. VIII.ix.22).
21
The A-L G1ossary is built on a large core, i.e. more than two thirds, of entries
which go back to Isidore's Etymologiae. Both the Isidorian en tries and a part of the entries
drawn from other sources were already represented in earlier Anglo-Saxon glossaries: see
Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, ed. by J.D. Pheifer, Clarendon Press,
Oxford 1974, pp. xxxvii-xxxviii. The Second Corpus Glossary and the First and Second
Cleopatra Glossaries are the compilations with the largest number of overlaps with the A-
L Glossary: see Lazzari, L., <<lsidore's Etymologiae in Anglo-Saxon Glossaries», in R.H.
Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker (eds.), Foundations of Learning: The Transfer of
Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Storehouses of Wholesome
Learning I. Mediaevalia Groningana ns 9), Peeters, Paris 2007, pp. 63-93, at 75-77 and
91, and ead., <<lsidore's Etymologiae and the Bilingual Antwerp-London Glossary>>, in
R.H. Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker (eds.), Fruits of Learning: The Transfer of
Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Storehouses of Wholesome
Learning IV. Mediaevalia Groningana ns), Peeters, Paris, Leuven and Walpole, MA,
forthcorning.
22
Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M.
Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Medieval Texts), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1911.
By the same token, the last gloss of the bottom margin «Burdo. hors
of steden vel of asrenne» is connected to both «Centaurus vel
ippocentaurus healf man . vel healf as sa» and «Ünocentaurus . healf man
and healf assa» (cf. Etym. XI.jii.37 and 39) in the lower right margin of
the folio.
The relationship between burdo, centaurus, and onocentaurus can
again be traced to the Etymologiae, in particular to that kind of portenta,
originating, in part, «ex permixtione diversi generis» (Etym. XII.i.56):
scinodens, satiri, burdo, centaurus, onocentaurus (L, f. 3r); unicornis,
griffes (L, f. 5v); linx, onager (L, f. 6r); hermafroditus (L, f. 15r);
pigmeus (L, f. 21 v) 23 .
L, f. 3r bottom and right margins
The glossary in Junius 71
The glossary compiled by Junius is contained in what is now Oxford,

Bodleian Library, Junius 71 24 , pp. 1-116, where it is followed by a copy
of the glosses to the Book of Proverbs occurring in London, British
23
Lazzari, L., «1 portenta dalle Etymologiae di Isidoro al glossario latino-inglese
antico di Anversa e Londra», in C. Rizzo (ed.), Fabelwesen, mostri e portenti
nell 'immaginario occidentale: Medioevo germanico e altro (Bibliotheca Germanica.
Studi e testi 15), Edizioni dell'Orso, Alessandria 2004, pp. 199-244, at 208.
24
Madan, F., et al., A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford, 7 vols. in 8 [vol. II in 2 parts], Oxford 1895-1953; repr. with
corrections in 7 vols., Munich 1980, II, no. 5182.
Library, Cotton Vespasian D.vi, ff. 2-37, of the second half of the tenth
century25 .
In the opening pages of the Oxford manuscript, Francis Junius wrote
that the glossary was taken «ex membranis ..... Rubenii» [the dots are
Junius's own], namely from a manuscript that the learned Peter Paul
Rubens of Antwerp had obtained from the Plantin-Moretus family 26 •
Moreover, in the heading of the glossary, a further note clarified that the
glossary was a work by .tElfric and referred to as «gl. R>>, not only in
memory of Rubens, but also in order to distinguish it from another
glossary by .tElfric, contained in a Cottonian manuscript (that is London,
British Library, Cotton Julius A.ii) 27 , where it follows the Grammar
written by the same author28 •
The glossary transcribed by Junius is not of course the Glossary by
.tElfric, but another class glossary which, in spite of a number of
differences, is quite close to the A-L Glossary. However, in 1659, when
25
Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. by Wright and Wülcker, no. II;
see also Zupitza, J., «Kentische Glossen des neunten Jahrhunderts>>, Zeitschrift für
deutsches Alterthum und deutsche Litteratur 21 (1887), pp. 1-59; id., «Zu den kentischen
Glossen Zs. 21, lff.>>, Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum und deutsche Litteratur 22
(1878), pp. 223-6.
26
In turn, Junius received the manuscript from Rubens's son Albert: see Ladd, C.A.,
«The 'Rubens' Manuscript and Archbishop /Eifric's Vocabulary>>, The Review of English
Studies 11 (1960), pp. 353-64.
27
«LElfrici praesulis luculentum valde glossarium, rnihi passim dicitur gl. R; non
modo in gratam memoriam docti illius generosique Rubenii Antwerpiani, rnihi benigne
prorsus venerabiles membranas indulgentis & communicantis: verum etiam ut pnesens
hoc glossarium commodius distinguatur ab altero .A<:lfrici glossario, quod in bibliotheca
Cottoniana sic adnexum ipsi Grammaticœ deprehenditur, ut cuivis liquere possit ipsum
LElfricum has Glossas sua: addidisse Grammaticœ>>: see Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius
71, opening page.
28
The Glossary in Julius A.ii is also preserved in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
449; London, British Library, Cotton Faustina A.x; London, British Library, Harley 107;
Oxford, St. John's College 154; Cambridge, University Library, Hh.l.lO; Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Barlow 35; and Worcester, Cathedral Library, F.174. This glossary was
composed by LElfric to accompany his Grammar: see Aeifrics Grammatik und Glossar.
Text und Varianten, ed. by J. Zupitza (Sammlung englischer Denkmaler in kritischen
Ausgaben 1), Weidmann, Berlin 1880; repr. with a preface by H. Gneuss, Berlin 1966;
2nd repr. with new introd. by H. Gneuss, Olms, Hildesheim 2001, pp. iv-vii. On the
manuscripts and transcripts of LElfric's Glossary, see Buckalew, R.E., «Leland's
transcript of LElfric's Glossary>>, Anglo-Saxon England 7 (1978), pp. 149-64; Hill, J.,
<<LElfric's Grammatical Triad>> in P. Lendinara, L. Lazzari, and M.A D' Aronco (eds.),
Form and Content of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England in the Light of Contemporary
Manuscript Evidence (Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales. Textes
et Études du Moyen Âge 39), Brepols, Turnhout 2007, pp. 285-307, at 303-7.
William Somner published JElfric's Grammar in the appendix to his

Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum29 , he had at his disposai a
manuscript, namely London, British Library, Royal 15.B.xxii, where the
Grammar was not accompanied by the Glossary; hence he made use of
the transcript he had obtained from Junius. This choice resulted in a long
series of misunderstandings, which eventually marred severa! other
lexicographie compilations.
In his preface to the glossary, Somner repeated Junius's foreword to
the transcript30 , whereas, in the general introduction to his Dictionarium,
he added sorne further details. In particular, Somner stated that the
glossary had been copied by Francis Junius, who had known of the
manuscript through a son of Rubens. In other words, the copy in question
was apparently made after the death of Rubens (tl640), and not before,
as assumed by Forster31 . In particular, according to Ladd' s reconstruction,
«([i]t must be admitted that [... ] the manuscript belonged to the Plantin-
Moretus collection, that Rubens had borrowed it and not returned it at the
time of his death, and that his son, after Iending the manuscript to Junius
for copying, discovered its origin and returned it to the collection [... ] .
However, the manuscript was pretty certainly back in the Plantin-Moretus
collection by 1650»32 . The latter circumstance is confirmed by the
catalogue where the manuscript is recorded as item no. 69. However,
although these considerations prove a number of revealing connections
between the glossarial compilations under examination, they are not
sufficient to guarantee that the A-L manuscript can be identified beyond
doubt with the Rubens's manuscript from which Junius copied his
glossary.
A comparison of the A-L Glossary with Junius's Glossary will shed
light on this crucial question.
Analogies and differences between the A-L Glossary and Junius's

Glossary
In bath the A-L Glossary and Junius's Glossary entries are gathered
together in heterogeneous batches, since the items often do not match
29
Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum ed. by W. Somner, Hall, Oxford 1659,
pp. 1-52.
30
Ibid., p. 53.
31
Forster, «Die altenglische Glossenhandschrift Plantinus 32>>, pp. 156-7.
32
Ladd, «The 'Rubens' Manuscript and Archbishop JElfric's Vocabulary», p. 358.
their headings, except for the entries conceming plants and animais.
Indeed, in many a batch glosses follow each other without any logical
connection.
The headings of the A-L Glossary are replicated in Junius's Glossary,
essentially in the same position, but the latter features three more
headings- 'Vestium nominum', 'Nomina colorum', 'Nomina navium' -
the last repeated twice, the latter with the addition of further clarification,
and twenty-two subheadings written on the left side of the leaves,
probably in order to offer a more detailed classification of the entries.
Notably, in the section 'Omnia nomina tritici sunt' of the A-L Glossary
more than one third of the glos ses belong to various semantic fields, with
entries concerning agriculture, kinship, family relationships, anatomy,
geographical and topographical features, ships, buildings, clothing,
colours, and so on. Conversely, Junius's Glossary subdivides this section
under four headings and nine subheadings.
Headings in Headings and subheadings in

A-L Glossary Junius's Glossary
De instrumentis De instrumentis agricolarum (p. 1)
agricolarum Dies festi, ceremoniae, vestimenta religiosorum, alia
(p. 3)
Nomina omnium hominum No mina omnium hominum communiter (p. 6)
communiter Morborum varia genera et medicinae (p. 9)
Iura, leges, supplicia (p. 12)
Nomina ferarum Nominaferarum (p. 18)
De nominibus metallorum 33 De nominibus insectorum (p. 22)
Nomina vasorum Nomina vasorum (p. 24)
Domus ac domestica quotidiani usus vestimenta (p.
27)
Mensa dapibusque inservientia (p. 31)
De generibus potionum De generibus potionum (p. 32)
Ecclesia cantus et sacrificia (p. 33)
Nomina avium Nomina avium (p. 36)
Nomina herbarum Nomina herbarum (p. 39)
Nomina arborum Nomina arborum (p. 45)
Plurima variae supellectilis nomina (p. 48)
Nomina armorum Nomina armorum (p. 51)
Nomina XII. ventorum Nomina XII ventorum (p. 54)
Nomina locorum ac terrarum pro ingenio soli (p. 54)
Omnia nomina tritici sunt Nomina tritici sunt (p. 59)
Gymnastica cartamina atque alia ludicra (p. 61)
33
Metallorum was erased and above it was written muscarum. Ail the entries of this
section are insect names.
Vestium nomina (p. 62)

Mensam lectulumque spectantia (p. 65)
Partes totius universi (p. 67)
Dignitates ecclesiasticae et politicae (p. 68)
De homine ac partibus eius (p. 69)
Infirmitates ac morbi hominum (p.76)
Nomina colorum (p. 79)
Doctrina, disciplina et multipex hominum at hoc vel
illud propensio (p. 80)
Nomina navium (p. 83)
Varia hominum genera, praecipue tamen vitium
atque ignominiosorum (p. 84 i 4
Gradus et nomina cognationum (p. 90)
Temporis atque anni variae vices (p. 93)
De diversitatibus terrae atque aquae (p. 96)
Nomina piscium Nomina piscium (p. 101)
Nomina navium et Nomina navium et instrumenta earum (p. 102)
instrumenta earum De variis aedificiorum generibus et partibus (p. 106)
Textrinalia (p. llO)
V ariae hominum dignitates ac munia (p. 112)
The entries in the A-L Glossary are 2,993 in total, while Junius's
Glossary contains 2,978 glosses. The arrangement of the various items
varies considerably from section to section. In fact, Junius's glossary also
includes a large number of the bilingual entries of the second alphabetical
list (that is 65 out of a total of 96 entries that were provided with an Old
English interpretamentum besides the Latin one). Within the Junius's
Glossary, these entries maintained the same position they had in the
margins of the folios of the A-L manuscript when compared to the entries
of the A-L Glossary that were once placed adjacently, so that the former
alternated with the latter. This means, for example, that glosses which
correspond to entries of the A-L Glossary occurring in the right margin of
L, f. 3r, are located at short distance from entries which correspond to the
bilingual glosses of the second list that also occur in the margin of the
same folio of A-L. In other words, the whole arrangement of Junius's
Glossary looks as if the transcriber had at his disposai the very page of
34
In the middle of p. 84, Junius added a note according to which the subsequent
en tries - starting from «reus scyldig» - were part of an addition to the former glossary. As
a result of this statement, both Wright and Wülcker printed the entries in question as a
separate compilation under the title «Supplement to lElfric's Vocabulary of the tenth or
eleventh century>>: Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. by Wright and
Wülcker, 1, col. 168.1.
the manuscript containing two different set of glosses - copied one after
the other - on the margin of the same folio.
The first and most common kind of difference 35 between the A-L
Glossary and Junius's Glossary is represented by simple variant spellings
of the entries, which cannat be considered remarkable since medieval
scribes were hardly concemed with consistency of spelling, and even
within the A-L manuscript a ward occurring more than once may be
spelled differently. Therefore, such variations have not been taken into
consideration in the present survey of the differences between the two
glossaries:
No. A-L Glossary
125 Diadema. kynegerd
126 Sceptrum. cynegerd
246 Orificium . œlces kynnes muô . ve1 pyrl
1104 Oxilapatium graece. anes cynnes clate
Likewise, I have not recorded the altemation of Old English jJ/ô and
Latin u/v, the different treatment of compounds, frequently written by
Junius as two words, the absence of veZ, and the different use of
abbreviations. The A-L Glossary had plenty of abbreviations, whereas the
transcript prefers to expand them.
a) Variant spellings
There are sixty-two variant spellings of the Latin lemmata, for

example:
No. A-L Glossary No. J Glossary

428 Belua . reôe deor 435 Bellua . reôe deor
746 Lagoena . lœmen fœt 640 Lagena lœmen fœt
747 Caccabus . cytel 631 Cacabus . cytel
843 Omelia . folclic !ar 864 Omilia . folclic !ar
1675 Storia . ve1 psiata . meatta 1680 Storea vel psiata. Meatta
2951 Lana sucida . unawœscen wull . 2937 Lana succida vel sucilenta
vel sucilenta unawœscen wull
There are one hundred fifteen variant spellings within the Old
English interpretamenta, for example:
35
For a first survey on the subject, see The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-
Moretus MS 32, ed. by Kindschi, pp. 13-37.

272 Colliria. egsealfe 284 Colliria . eagsealfe
295 Senatus consultum . riccra 326 Senatus consultum . riccra
gesetness gesetnes
317 Familie erciscunde . yrfegedaal 307 Farnilie erciscunde yrfegedal
534 Gurgulio . cawelwynn 551 Gurgulio . cawelwunn
1051 Malva . maluwe .vel geonnenleaf 1055 Malva . malwe vel
geonnenletic
2934 Citharistria . hœrpestre 2921 Citharistria . hearpestre
2943 Pigmeus . vel nanus . vel pumilio . 2930 Pygmaeus vel nanus vel
dweorh pumilio . dweorg
b) Corrections
As already stated, the script of the A-L Glossary was very faulty;
consequently, the amount of errors was large. A substantial number of the
variant spellings between the two texts is due to Junius's attempt to add
omitted letters, to restore transposed ones to their original position, and to
correct other sort of mistakes, such as the confusion between letters of
similar form and the dropping of the endings in a number of words.
Junius's Glossary features one hundred and eighty-nine corrections of
errors within the Latin lemmata, for example:

20 Procissio . landbrœce 20 Proscissio . landbrœce
426 Taxus et melos . cuniculus . broc 448 Taxus et meles cuniculus . broc
248 Parotride . earcopu 260 Parotide . earcopu
525 Locus< .. >36 astaco . gœrstapa 543 Locusta astaco . gœrstapa
822 Resposorium . reps 843 Responsorium . reps
1196 Acrifolus . halen 1175 Acrifolius . halen
1523 Orcista. vel pulpitus. gligmanna 1547 Orcestra vel pulpitus . gligmanna
yppe yppe
1607 Cidarim . vel mitra . hufe 1628 Cidaris vel mitra . hufe
2325 Clastus . clœne 2315 Castus . clœne
As far as Old English interpretamenta are concerned, the corrections

amount to one hundred and eight, for example:

27 Repagulum . salpanra 27 Repagulum . salpanna
36
Angled brackets enclose space for letters which are now lost because of fading of
the ink, erasure, or other.
127 Ducatus . ealdor <... > 139 Ducatus . ealdordom

312 Hereditas . yrfewearnes 296 Hereditas yrfeweardnes
341 Seditio . flocslite . vel œswicung 361 Seditio . folcslite vel œswicung
. sacu . ceast sacu ceast
856 Mortuus . deaiJ 880 Mortuus . dead
1561 Laneum . fyllen 1590 Laneum wyllen
2110 Nauclerus . scipes hlarord 2149 Nauclerus . scipes hlaford
2429 Gelu .fort 2413 Gelu .forst
c) Erroneous transcriptions of the A-L Glossary's entries
There is a number of items in Junius ' s Glossary which differ from the
corresponding entries in the A-L Glossary only as a result of rnisreading.
These divergences are frequently due to the peculiarities and inaccuracies
of the script in the A-L Glossary or to the difficulty of reading a ward
because of its position on the folio. In many cases the rnisreading of the
Old English interpretamenta resulted in the creation of ghost words, as
demonstrated by Herbert Dean Meritt who solved sorne of the cruces of
the A-L Glossarl 7 sorne twenty years before work was begun on the
Dictionary of Old English in Toronto38 .
In Junius's Glossary twenty-four such errors concern the Latin
lemmata, for example:

102 Satiri . vel fauni . vel selini . 110 Satiri vel fauni vel sehni vel fauni
vel fauni ficarii . unfœle men . ficarii . unfœle men vel wudewasan
vel udewasan . unfœle wihtu unfœle wihtu
In this case the !emma was not clearly written and was read «sehni»
instead of «seleni», which is the correct form.
37
Meritt, H.D., Fact and Lore about Old English Words, Stanford University Press,
Stanford, CA 1954.
38
The project began in December 1968 and has ever since been based in Toronto.
Among the publications so far available, there are the Dictionary of Old English: A to G
on CD-ROM, ed. by A. Cameron, A.C. Amos, A. diPaolo Healey et al., Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies for the Dictionary of Old English Project, Toronto 2008,
and the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto 2009.

1209 Amigdala . vel nucicla 1186 Amigdala vel . nutida
. magdalatreow magdalatreow
, ..J .. I: .. -r, -- --·--- -- -·-

Am-~:fNtmdd.. ~d2'1Ut17
· . . • _·-~--r L,t f.··-·• -~;:_~Yc::i.'I-:...'· ·
lOr right margin
In A-L 1209 «nucicla», the two letters -clare merged together and
rather look like a -d-, a feature that produced the form «nutida» in
J uni us' s trans cri pt.

509 Agnus cinifi . lamb 530 Agnus cinist . lamb
The lemma «cinifi» (L, f. 6r left margin) is misspelled «cinist» in J

530, a Latin word that Wright and Wülcker interpreted as an Old English
one 39 . Actually, the correct form is «Cinyphii» as in Etym. XII.i.l4.
The errors introduced in the transcription of the Old English
interpretamenta are forty-six, and in these cases too most of them are due
to a misreading of the A-L manuscript.

38 Fossorium . fostere . vel 38 Fossorium . costere vel delfisen
delfisen . vel spadu . vel pal vel spadu vel pal
In A-L 38 the descender off- in fostere, a borrowing from Latin

fossorium 40 , is quite faint, so that the letter can be mistaken for ac-. The
result in Junius 38 was the ghost word costere, which was eventually
39
Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. by Wright and Wülcker, I, col.
121.4.
40
Meritt, Fact and Lore, p. 42.
entered into the most important Old English dictionaries with the
meaning 'spade' 41 .

642 Arcus . et for . bigels 704 Arcus etforbigels
In A-L 642 Junius read forbigel, a term which was entered into the
Old English dictionaries with the meaning of 'arch, vault'. In fact, in A-L
between for and bigel there is an evident space and, according to Meritt,
for is an incomplete form of fomix, a Latin word which is rendered with
bigels in .tElfric's Glossary: «arcus l fomix bigels»42 .

1478 Eruca . cawlwyrm 1086 Eruca . caflwyrt
.E~·~rr~ L, f. 11 v left margin
In A-L 1478 the first -w- of cawlwyrm has a square top and was tak:en
for an 1-.
41
Bosworth, J. and Toiler, T.N., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the
Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth [ .. .]. Edited and Enlarged by T.N.
Taller, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1898, s. v.; Toiler, T.N., An Anglo-Saxon
Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth.
Supplement, Oxford University Press, London 1921 , s.v.; Clark Hall, J.R., A Concise
Anglo-Saxon Dictionary for the Use of Students, Sonnenschein & Co., London 1
Macmillan & Co., New York 1894; 4th edn. with a supplement by H.D. Meritt, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 1960, s. v.
42
Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar, ed. by Zupitza, p. 314,2-3. The entry should be
compared with «Arcus dicti quod sint arta conclusione curvati; ipsi et fornices» (Etym .
XV.viii.9); see Meritt, Fact and Lore, p. 44.
d) Omissions and additions of lemmata
Junius's Glossary differs from the A-L Glossary for a wide range of
modifications introduced into either the lemmata or the interpretamenta.
In particular, in seventy-eight entries part of the lemmata is omitted.
Particularly frequent is the omission of words of Greek origin, as in the
examples below:
369 Lustrum . graece. penteresin .i. 389 Lustrum [... ] quinquennium
quinquennium .fifwintra fœc fi! wintra fœc
883 Aqui1a . xthon . graece. eam 895 Aquila [... ] eam
1686 Ce1um. ve1 uranon. graece. heofen 1700 Ce1um [...] heofen
1695 Mundus. ve1 cosmus. middaneard 1709 Mundus [... ] middaneard
1708 Rex . ve1 basileus . cyncg 1724 Rex[ ... ] cyncg
1797 Auris . ota . graece. eare 1815 Auris[ ... ] eare
1814 Mentum . ve1 imes . graece. cin 1832 Mentum [... ] cin
On the other hand, in thirteen instances further lemmata were added

by Junius, and in several cases the additionallemma was placed side by
side to a loanword or a transcription from Greek, as in the examples
below:

571 Crater . canne 587 Crater ve1 canna canne
2241 Du1us . jJeowa 2229 Servus du1us graece . jJeowa
2266 Alogos . graece . unsprecede 2255 Infans ve1 a1ogos . graece .
cild unsprecende cild
e) Omissions and additions of interpretamenta
Sorne of Junius's entries differ from the corresponding ones in A-L

for additions, omissions or substitutions affecting the interpretamenta.
In twenty-five instances Junius's interpretations were implemented
with the addition of an alternative word. These cases also include the
entries which lacked any interpretamentum at all in the original, as the
following examples show:
No. Glossary in A-L No. Glossary in J

437 Cervus . ve1 eripes . heort 458 Cervus ve1 eripes . heort buc
1639 C1ibanius . ofenbacen 1671 Clibanius . ofenbacen hlaf
1094 Salvi a 1033 Sa1via . fenfearn
1102 Astu1a 984 Astu1a regia . wuderofe
1898 Extales . snœdel 1908 Exta1es . snœdel ve1 bœrcjJearm
On the other band, in nine instances part of the interpretamenta was

omitted by Junius, as in the examples below:

211 Yleos . hrifwerc . vel hrifteung . 225 Yleos . hrifwerc vel hrifteung
vel hrifadl .
796 Acidum lac . sur meolc 814 Acidum . lac .
1856 Medicus . vel anularis . lœce 1867 Medicus vel annularis .
vel goldfinger goldfinger
2720 Recessus . ebbe . vel gytestream 2709 Recessus . ebbe
Nine interpretamenta are replaced by their respective synonyms in

Junius's Glossary, as in the examples below:
136 Ciliarcus . fJUsendrica 147 Ciliarcus .jJUsendes ealdor
2267 Paranimphus . brydguma . vel 2256 Paranymphus . dryhtguma vel
dryhtealdor dryhtealdor
2261 Sponsalia . brytgifta . vel brydegifa 2249 Sponsalia . brytofta vel brydgifa
2390 Privignus . steopsunu 2261 Privignus . steopcild
f) Splitting of glosses
Sorne glosses which in the A-L Glossary consisted of two or more

lemmata or interpretamenta were transcribed splitting either the lemmata
or the interpretamenta. In particular, twenty-two such A-L entries,
originally made up of two or more lemmata or interpretamenta,
correspond to forty-four simple glosses in the transcript, as in the
following examples:

222 Raucedo . hasnys . vel arteriasis . 233 Raucedo . hasnys
sweorcofJU 234 Arteriasis sweorcopu
356 Exilium postliminium . wrœcsip edcyr 352 Exilium . wrœcsip
ofwrœcsiàe 353 Postliminium . edcyr of
wrœcsioe
602 Lagena . œscen . vel anfora . crocca 615 Lagena œscen
616 Anfora . crocca
2114 Nauta . roàer. vel remex . reàra 2153 Nauta. roàer
2154 Remex . reàra .
2493 Fertilitas . westmbœmys .i. ubertas . 2477 Fertilitas . westmbœmys
genihtsumnys 2478 Ubertas . genyhtsumnys
g) Blending of glosses
Conversely, twenty-two A-L entries were blended into eleven glosses

in Junius's Glossary. The merging was carried out both in cases in which
two different lemmata bad the same Old English interpretamentum, and,
albeit less frequently, in cases in which a lemma occurs with two different
interpretamenta in the A-L Glossary. The examples below are
representative of these two typologies:

146 Excubitor . dœgweard 158 Excubitor vigil . dœgweard
147 Vigil . dœgweard
478 Bagula . brydeZ 496 Bagula . salivare . brideZ
479 Salivare . brideZ
571 Crater . canne 587 Crater vel canna canne
601 Canna . canne
780 Caupo . winbrytta 822 Caupo, tabemarius .
802 Caupo . tœppere . vel tabeo . tœppere . winbrytta
tabemarius
h) Different word-order within either the lemma or the interpretamentum
Five entries in Junius's Glossary feature a rearrangement ofthe word-

order of both the Old English and Latin interpretamenta, as in the
examples below:

1472 Ampelos leuce . vel brionia . 967 Brionia vel ampelos leuce graece .
hwit wilde wingeard . hwit wilde wingeard .
1800 Plectrum . vellingua tunge . 1819 Lingua vel plectrum . tunge vel
vel hearpnœgeZ . hearpnœgeZ
2449 Crepusculum . dœgred . vel 2434 Crepusculum . tweone Zeoht vel
tweoneZeoht . vel ]Jeorcung . ôeorcung.
In another thirty-eight instances, Junius's Glossary features a new

layout of the entire entry, with a misplacement of the second Latin
lemma, which becomes part of the interpretamentum. More frequent! y the
opposite may occur, with a segment of the interpretamentum being
moved to become part of the lemma, as in the examples below:

970Adriatica . galluc . vel malum 975 Adriatica vel malum terrae . galluc
terrae
1062 Fungus . metteswam . vel tuber 1066 Fungus vel tuber . metteswam
1762 Odor . stengc . vel olfactus 1780 Odor, olfactus . stengc
2185 Vigil . wacul . vel vigilans 2009 Vigil vel vigilans . wacul
1984 Succinacius vel croceus 2060 Succinaceus vel croceus vel flavus .
geolu . vel flavus geolu
2214 Mauso1eum . kyninga byrgen . 2202 Mausoleum vel bustum . kyninga
vel bustum byrgen
2443 Tenebre . jJrystru . ve1 2428 Tenebrae vel furfuraculum . àystru
furfuraculum
2896 Poeta . leoàwyrhta . vel vates 2884 Poeta vel vates . leoàwyrhta
i) Addition of entries
Junius's Glossary features 75 more entries than the A-L Glossary. A

part of these additions can easily be explained by considering that
Junius's Glossary includes 65 entries provided with an Old English
interpretamentum of the 96 bilingual entries belonging to the ab-order list
of glosses of A-L. The entries from the alphabeticallist usually maintain
the same position they originally occupied in the manuscript, when
compared to the entries of the bilingual A-L glossary, even if they do not
always maintain the same order they had in the alphabeticallist.
For example, the additional glosses follow the same order they have
in the right margin of L, f. 3r, where they were copied between the entries
«Burdo . hors of steden vel of asrenne» and «Centaurus vel ippocentaurus
healf man vel healf assa». These two glosses correspond respectively to
the last entry of the A-L Glossary, written on the bottom margin of L, f.
3r, and to the first item of the A-L Glossary whose copying was resumed
in the right margin of the folio 43 •
A-L Latin ab-order list
No. J Glossary
on L, f. 3r right margin
Alfa .i. initium an gin 114 Alfa .i. initium. angina
Abra .i. ancilla . jJinen . wyln 115 Abra .i. ancilla. jJinen wyln
Acha .i. virtus . strengà 116 Acha .i. virtus. strengjJ
Acer .i. vehemens . strang 117 Acer .i. vehemens . strang
Achor .i. conturbatio . drefing 118 Achor .i. conturbatio . drefing
Actionator .folcgerefa 119 Actionator .folegerefa
Acisculum . pic 120 Acisculum. pic
43
See the image, above p. 185.
Asscopa . flaxe . oppe cylle 121 Ascora .flaxe oppe cylle

(the entry does not occur in the 122 Agape. œlmesse
alphabetical glossary but in the (also J 850)
bilingual glossary «Eleemosyna vel
agape œlmess>> (867)
Alcanus . poden 123 Altanus. poden
Antiae . earloccas
Anastasis . dygelnyssum 124 Anastasis . dygelnyssum
Angiportus .i. refrigerium navium . hyô 125 Angiportus .i. refrigerium navium . hyp
Ardamo .i. gusto . ic gesmecge 126 Ardamo .i. gusto . ic gesmecge
Anareporesis .1. homo utriusque 127 Anareporesis .i. homo utriusque generis .
generis bœddel bœddel
The ten additional glosses in Junius's Glossary, which are not drawn
from the Latin alphabeticallist, are the following:
No. J Glossary No. A-L
407 Flebotomarius . blodlœtere
656 Vestis, clarnis . scrud
814 Colustrum . byrsting ôicce meolc
1139 Cariscus . cwicbeam
1223 Tribus . cneores
1356 Eurus . Euroauster norôan eastan wind
1374 Conciliabula. manna gegaderung
1520 Capreoli. wingearda gewind
1557 Aleae . tœfelstanas
1741 Sacellanus . handpreost
j) Omission of entries
Eighty-three glosses included in the A-L Glossary do not have a

counterpart in the transcript. lt is quite hard to provide a general
explanation for their absence, because the typology of the glosses in
question is very different.
In sorne instances, the rnissing entries are in fact mere repetitions of
already existing items of A-L, therefore they may well have been deemed
unnecessary. Other entries are characterized by having a Greek loanword
as their lemma. Finally, there are also cases of very common words, such
as names of animais or plants as well as adjectives. You may consider the
examples below:
No. A-L Glossary No.J

81 Cuphia. hufe. ve1 mitra
297 Edictum. geban
387 Mensorium . dise
463 Sagmarium . seam
758 Sartago . isenpanne.
(see A-L 593 «Sartago. vel frixorium. hyrstingpanne» and
J 608)
860 Nobilis . ingenuus . œpelboren
899 Omithogonia . graece Juge las
902 Omitha . graece hem
1332 Canon . graece regula
2391 Filiaster. steopdohter
(see A-L 2363 «Filiaster . steopdohter» and J 2350)
2716 Arula. heorô. velfirpanne
(see A-L 762 «Arula. batilla .fyrpanne>> and J 642)
k) Different order of the en tries
The last major discrepancy between the A-L Glossary and Junius's
Glossary is the different sequence of the entries. Displacements are very
common, but, again they are not subject to the same rule.
In a number of instances, such as at the beginning of the two
glossaries, the change involves only a little shift in the order of the entries
as they occur in A-L:

14 Stimulus . ga 14 Stimulus . ga
15 Veractum . lencten erôe 15 Aculeus . sticel vel gadisen
16 Sulcus . furh 16 Veractum . lencten erôe
17 Aculeus . sticels . vel gadisen 17 Sulcus .furh
In sorne cases, the rearrangement apparently represents an

improvement of the order of the entries. This is, for example, the case
with entries that are rearranged by placing a term of more general
meaning before a more specifie one:

1307 Menia . burhweal 1379 Murus . weall
1308 Murus . weall 1380 Menia . burhweal
The same can be said of the cases when a word is placed before one
of its derivates:

893 Aucarius . goshafuc 905 Auca. gos
894 Auca. gos 906 Aucarius . goshafuc
450 Suilla . vel sucula . gilte 469 Sus. swyn
451 Sus. swyn 470 Suilla vel sucula . gilte
452 Suilli et porcelli . vel nefrendes 471 Suilli vel porcelli vel nefrendes
fe aras .fearas
A similar strategy is at work when the transcript attempts a partial

redeployment of the glosses. The section 'Omnia nomina tritici sunt' in
the A-L Glossary contains more than one third of the glosses of the entire
compilation, and features words belonging to several semantic fields. In
Junius's Glossary this section was reorganized with the addition of a few
subheadings and a partial redeployment of the entries. For example, a
batch of glosses concerning clothes and female ornaments was moved
from the aH-inclusive section of 'Omnia nomina tritici sunt' to the section
'Vestium nomina', which was introduced anew in Junius's transcript and
headed by a new rubric (cf. table pp. 188-9).

2083 Anellus . lytel hring 1656 Anellus . lytel hring
2084 Monile . myne . vel sweorbeh 1633 Monile vel serpentinum . myne vel
sweorbeh
2085 Inauris . earpreon . vel earring 1657 Inauris . earpreon vel earring
2086 Calamauca . hœt 1658 Calamauca . hœt
Likewise, sorne glosses that occurred at the end of 'Nomina avium'

in A-L were moved to a following section, namely the one concerning the
'Partes totius universi', a sub-heading newly introduced in Junius' s
transcript:

958 Oceanus . garsecg 1714 Oceanus . garsecg
959 Sinus . sœœbbung 1713 Sinus. sœœbbung
960 Promunctorium . clif 1717 Promuntorium . clif
These changes can easily be spotted in Junius's Glossary. Each page

of Junius's manuscript features a single column of entries which are
regularly written. Fifty-three of the extra entries were added between the
lines, as in J, p. 21:
.s--- --<4r··
c .....~. ~--
c~ - 17ec3~--
~ -r "'""'""~. rr.._.,,."C'c.t. ..
M-o-t. !I--r· rr~a..
l~·~ ;.,.q.. "r.•"'"~-
c~ - ,......~~ 1=t~....;s ... -·
1\.~...,.. 1tu.n.bcr fk-<>3..:: .•
Eor . o~;\ ••
Alternatively, fifteen further entries were added to the columns as in

J, p. 18:
. ~. -le ~-..,. jHtoi; N -j..-- ..

f'u..,r , f..-,.. ............. ~1-r ~-ft · ...;·~·.r-n.. ·
"'~ • .,.tz,~.,.,.}':-• ·~ ~ ,.~ ·~,. .•
'EL~. ;.•f'·· . .
'e.f"-~L.-. ,...,«r ...k--1" tJt'*-~-
In sorne instances these additional glosses were placed many pages
away from their original location in A-L, generally ahead of the latter:
No. J Glossary p. 32 No. A-L

782 Medo . meôu vel medus 772
783 Mellicratum . geswet win 1647
784 Y dromellum . beor vel ofetes wos 774
785 Oximellum . geswet eced 1646
[ ... ]
792 Falemum . pœt se leste win 1647
793 Infertum vinum . messe win 781
794 Limpidum vinum . scir win 1646
The entries of the central part of the A-L Glossary (that is the glosses
which go from L, f. 9v to f. 15v, with the exception of those on f. 12v)
have undergone a substantial rearrangement in Junius's Glossary.
However, this misplacement of entries does not follow a consistent
pattern and does not represent a real improvement with regard to the
sometimes jumbled arrangement of the A-L Glossary.
The reason why this part of the glossary was most extensively
reordered is a matter for speculation. No evident explanation is at hand,
as, for instance, in the case of the 'Nomina arborum' on L, f. 9v, whose
sequence in Junius appears to have been deeply rearranged.
Sorne folios of L, particularly from f. 7v onwards, feature a number
of marginal marks written beside sorne of the lemmata. These marks are
made up of small strokes or dots, which can sometimes be easily
mistaken for the lineation dots at the edge of the page. Most of these
marks accompany the entries which have been moved ahead in Junius. In
the example below, taken from L, f. 15v, severa! lemmata are preceded
by a small mark but two marked entries, «Diadema» and «Spinther»,
have not been entered in Junius's Glossary.
No. A-L G1ossary No. J

2080 Diadema . k:ynehelm .
2081 Fibula . oferfeng . vel dale . 1636
2082 Spinther . preon .
2083 Anellus . lytel hring . 1656
2084 Monile . myne . vel sweorbeh . 1633
2085 Inauris . earpreon . vel earring . 1657
2086 Calamauca . hœt . 1658
As has been highlighted above, we must also take into consideration

the difficulty of determining the margin from which to start comparing
the order of the glosses in A-L with that in Junius's Glossary. While the
reconstruction of the original order of the entries represents one of the
hardest problems modern editors have to face, when working with the
large and jumbled glossarial material of A-L, the seventeenth-century
transcriber does not seem to have been troubled by this task.
In L, f. lOr, the order of entries follows the progression left, top,
right, and bottom margin. In Junius the first entry in the right margin of
the folio «Amigdala vel . nuticla magdalatreow» cornes before «Nux . vel
nucarius hnutbeam», which inA-Lis the first entry on the left margin and
of the relevant batch of glosses.
No. J Glossary No. A-L

1185 Coquimella . plumtreow . vel prunus . vel nixa 1208 (L, f. 1Or top margin)
1186 Amigdala . vel nuticla . magdalatreow 1209 (L, f. lOr right margin)
1187 Nux . vel nucarius . hnutbeam 1159 (L, f. lOr left margin)
1188 Buxus . box 1160 (L, f. 1Or left margin)
1189 Ornus . eow 1161 (L, f. 1Or left mar gin)
Conclusions
In conclusion, the possibility that both the A-L Glossary and Junius's
Glossary derive from a common archetype can indeed be ruled out,
because the transcript also contain 65 glosses with an Old English
interpretamentum occurring in the ab-order alphabetical list. Moreover,
in the transcript the bilingual items drawn from this list maintain the same
relative distance from entries of the A-L Glossary they were once placed
adjacently to44 . We are then left with two choices: either the A-L
Glossary was the direct source of the transcript, or the latter was derived
from a manuscript which was, in its turn, a copy of the A-L Glossary.
Therefore, the transcript must have been derived from the A-L Glossary,
whether directly or at one remove.
The evidence discussed so far points to the former suggestion.
Indeed, this solution is strengthened by the peculiarity of Junius's
44
See above, p. 189.
working method. As Phillip Pulsiano and Joseph McGowan suggest,

Junius may be considered «an early inconsistent editor rather than a
simple copyist»45 • In the preface to his edition of glos ses to the Book of
Proverbs, Julius Zupitza compared the original glosses in London, British
Library, Cotton Vespasian D.vi with those copied in Junius 71, remarking
that Junius had been very inaccurate in his transcript. Zupitza also
recommended caution when assessing the bilingual glossary contained in
Junius 71, the original of which had not yet been discovered at the time46 .
When sorne folios of the original manuscript came to light, Forster,
considering the numerous variants, pointed out the unreliability of
Junius's Glossar/7 .
In the course of time, Junius's approach as a copyist has gradually
met a more favourable attitude. For example, in his edition of the Meters
of Boethius, partly based on Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 12, George
Krapp affirmed that Junius was «a careful transcriber who achieved a
high degree of accuracy in his work» 48 . According to Kees Dekker,
«Junius's method of transcribing [... ] Old English can be found in his
idea about language. [... ] In Junius's evaluation [... ] the degree of
antiquity was an important criterion for purity and quality» 49 . Junius in
several instances highlighted the importance of a complete understanding
of the spelling of an ancient language and the need to reintroduce its true
spelling50 . However, this criterion is not applied consistently to his
transcripts. The Old English facet of the texts in Junius 71 - both the
glossary and the glosses to the Book of Proverbs - show a certain amount
of inconsistency, also with regard to the respective source, as far as the
latter transcription is concerned. The changes introduced by Junius can be
mostly explained as an adaptation to the forms which were considered the
correct ones, for example, the West Saxon or late West Saxon forms.
ln J uni us' s transcript of the A-L Glossary the effort to reorganize the
material is evident, as shown by: 1) the addition of the en tries drawn from
the ab-order alphabetical list and the position they occupy in the
45
Pulsiano, Ph. and McGowan, J., «Four Unedited Prayers in London, British
Library Cotton Tiberius A. iii>>, Mediaeval Studies 56 (1994), pp. 189-216, at 193-4.
46
Zupitza, «Kentische Glossen des neunten Jahrhunderts>>, pp. 2-3.
47
Forster, <<Die altenglische Glossenhandschrift Plantinus 32>>, pp. 94-96.
48
The Paris Psalter and the Meters of Boethius, ed. by G.Ph. Krapp (Anglo-Saxon
Poetic Records 5), Columbia University Press, New York 1932, pp. xli-xliv.
49
Dekker, K., «Francis Junius (1591-1677): Copyist or Editor?», Anglo-Saxon
En gland 29 (2000), pp. 279-96, at 282-3.
50
Ibid., p. 287.
transcript; 2) the marginal or interlinear additions; 3) the corrections of

evident mistakes; 4) the exclusion of en tries occurring more than once in
the A-L Glossary; 5) the attempts to improve the organization of the
glossarial entries; 6) the marginal marks which usually point out the
replacement or the shifting of the glosses in the transcript; 7) finally, the
reference, added to nine entries, to analogous glosses in «gl. Cott.» (that
is Junius 77). The latter is a transcript of a Latin-Old English glossary in
London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A.iii, namely the First
Cleopatra Glossary, which covers only as far as to letter i', as, for
example:
No. A-L entries J entries with a reference to Junius 77

373 Prestrigium . scinhiw Fantasma. scinhiw gl. Cott. 82 (Rusche 279.51)
496 Bagula salivare . brydel Bagula. bridels gl. Cott. 23 (Rusche 193.3)
571 Lacerta . vel stilio . efete Lacertus. efete gl. Cott. 123 (Rusche 347.189)
578 Mus araneus . screawa Mus iranus . screawa gl. Cott. 131 (Rusche 362.
129)
The unquestionably high probability that Junius's Glossary is based

on the A-L Glossary is fostered by another consideration of a different
nature, but nevertheless significant. The two texts in question are the
result of the work of two learned glossographers who, severa! centuries
apart, in different contexts and with different motivations, display an
uncommon lexicographie interest.
The anonymous compiler of the A-L Glossary was a profound expert
of both Latin and Old English, gifted with a great lexicographie talent and
a conspicuous etymological bent52 , as his astonishing understanding of
Isidore's teachings regarding the importance of etymologies show. On
this front the A-L glossator appears to be at ease. He also seems to have
been endowed with a rare ability to coin neologisms, often hapax
legomena, based on Latin. Thereby the Old English interpretamenta
served the primary purpose of assisting in the understanding of Latin
vocabulary, especially in the case of technical terms. In fact many of the
vemacular interpretamenta, especially in the case of compounds or
phrases, do not seem to provide an Old English equivalent of the Latin
lemma but, rather, to ensure its correct comprehension, exploiting the
51
The Cleopatra Glossaries. An Edition with Commentary on the Glosses and their
Sources ed. by Ph.G. Rusche, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1996, pp. 160-410.
52
See above, note 21.
numerous possibilities offered by the definitions contained in Isidore's

encyclopaedia53 .
Junius's considerable lexicographical interest did not only drive him
to transcribe Latin texts provided with glosses in the vemacular, but also
fostered a rich production of lexicographical compilations - for example,
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 2-6 and 113-116 - not only in Old
English, but also in Old High German and Old Frisian. In particular,
attention must be drawn to his Old English Dictionary in Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Junius 2 and 3 with entries of different length formed
by words or short phrases in Old English followed by Latin
interpretamenta. Sorne entries include cognate forms in Gothie and
Icelandic which testify to his deep interest in the etymology of the
Germanie languages 54 •
Denying these two glossaries, both stemmed from the pen of learned
lexicographers, the scholarly attention they deserve, does not do justice to
the perspicacity of their compilers, but above ali to Anglo-Saxon
glossography. In order to highlight thoroughly the relationship existing
between the A-L Glossary and Junius's Glossary, it would be necessary
to realize a synoptic edition of the two texts. This would mean being able
to record and evaluate ali the existing variants and clarify the points
which are still obscure, but first and foremost, benefit from the new
edition of both glossaries which the scholars of Old English glossography
have long been waiting for. The publication of the edition of A-L
glossaries by David Porter55 is indeed welcome news as a first step
towards a full comprehension of the relationship between the leamed
glossarial material in A-L and its seventeenth century erudite estimator.
53
Lazzari, «lsidore's Etymologiae and the Bilingual Antwerp-London Glossary».
54
Dekker, K., «"That Most Elaborate One of Fr. Junius": An Investigation of Francis
Junius's Manuscript Old English Dictionary>>, in T. Graham (ed.), The Recovery of Old
English. Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Western
Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, Kalamazoo, MI 2000, pp. 301-43.
55
The Antwerp-London Glossaries. The Latin and Latin-Old English Vocabularies
from (Antwerp) Museum Plantin-Moretus 16.2- (London) British Library, Add. 32246, I.
Text and Indices, ed. by D.W. Porter (Publications of the Dictionary of Old English 8),
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto 2011.
Plate III
Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.2 +London, British Library, Add. 32246, f. 2v
UPDATING THE LEMMA:
THE CASE OF THE ST GALLEN BIBLICAL GLOSSARIES
Paolo V aciago
In the last two or three decades the work of a number of scholars has
contributed to the development of an increasingly articulate picture of the
glossator' s approaches and strategies, whether in Latin or in the
vernacular, whether working afresh or drawing from pre-existing
material. A much wider typology of material has been explored, and the
range of questions that are now being asked has likewise widened as a
consequence.
But if we are in a much better position to evaluate the glossator in his
construction of interpretations, much fewer seem to be, on the other band,
the opportunities to assess his work on the lemmata. Of course, when it
cornes to glossaries, the question of how the lemmata are organized as
weil as of which sources they are ultimately derived from should be given
priority. In what follows, however, rather than focussing on such issues,
the lemmata will be considered specifically as segments of the source text
from which they are drawn.
When it cornes to the textual form of the lemmata there is rarely
much more to say than that they are either left inflected as found in the
source text or turned into the nominative in the case of a noun, or into the
first person singular if it is a verb. That this should be so is probably a
reflection of the fact that the compiler of glossaries, and specifically the
compiler of batches of glossae collectae, has generally much less scope
for action, let alone creativity, with the lemma than with the.
interpretation. In his handling of the latter the compiler can choose
whether to display his cultural background, learning, skills, and acumen.
The lemma, on the other band, is in a sense a given entity from the outset:
it is the word or group of words as found in the source text, and any
further scribal intervention could turn out to be not only pointless but also
quite easily counterproductive.
But is there really nothing a compiler can do to improve the lemmata
of his glossary? And what if the source text itself evolves in the course of
its history? This paper will focus on a biblical glossary, where what have
undergone changes are not only the organisation of the material and the
contents of the interpretations but also the lemmata. In particular, it looks
as though the lemmata have been updated, as the title of this paper
210 PAOLO VACIAGO
indicates. 1 will therefore examine not so much how specifie lemmata

have been interpreted, but, on the contrary, how a number of
interpretations have been lemmatized. And while the manuscripts that
will be examined are neither Anglo-Saxon nor late, but rather South
German and ninth-tenth century, sorne of the considerations that follow
may nonetheless be pertinent to the specifie domain of this volume.
The St Galien biblical glossaries
The following analysis will deal with the biblical glossary which
occupies pp. 96-240 of St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 295 (G\ a manuscript
produced at St Gallen in the late ninth- or early tenth century, and will
focus in particular on the sections running from Gn to IV Rg 1• As far as
these sections of the glossary are concerned, G1 is closely connected to
two other compilations, namely the glossary imperfectly preserved in St
Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 9 (G), a manuscript likewise produced at St
Gallen in the second half of the ninth century2, and the glossary preserved
in St Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek 8211 (G*), dating from the tenth
century3 .
The nature of the connection between these three glossaries has been
thoroughly investigated by Elias Steinmeyer who presents the results of
his research in the 300 hundred tightly printed pages of Rz und sein
Einflussbereich which occupies the best part of vol. V of Die
althochdeutschen Glossen4. Although each of the three glossaries
1
For a description of the manuscript and up-to-date bibliography, see Bergmann, R.
and Stricker, S., Katalog der althochdeutschen und altsachsischen Glossenhandschriften,
6 vols., de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2005, II, no. 223.
2
See Bergmann and Stricker, Katalog, I, no. 173. One or more quires would appear
to have been !ost at the beginning as the glossary now begins with a gloss to Gn L.22; it
also ends abrupt! y with a gloss to III Rg XVII.l, similarly suggesting sorne quires may
have been !ost at the end.
3
See Bergmann and Stricker, Katalog, III, no. 779. The origin of this manuscript has
not been established with certainty.
4
Die althochdeutschen Glossen, ed. by E. Steinmeyer and E. Sievers, 5 vols.,
Weidmann, Berlin 1879-1922; repr. Weidmann, Dublin and Zurich 1968-1969. Rz und
sein Einflussbereich (V, pp. 108-407) represents the first pioneering attempt to chart the
Continental tradition of biblical glossaries; it deals specifically with ci (Sg 295) in
relation to G (Sg 9) and G* (P) (from Gn to IV Rg) at pp. 227/40-232/7 (Gn); 237/6-
239/17 (Ex); 243/24-245/24 (Lv); 247/28-248/33 (Nm); 249/37-250/20 (Dt); 252114-
253117 (los); 254/5-36 (Ide); 256/8-12 (Rt); 257/33-260/20 (I Sm); 265/33-266/29 (II
Sm); 270/3-272/23 (III Rg); 275/30-277/8 (IV Rg). For sorne addenda and corrigenda,
see Vaciago, P., «From Canterbury to Sankt Galien, On the Transmission of Early
UPDATING THE LEMMA 211
presents a variable amount of material that sets it apart from the other
two, they nonetheless share a substantial common nucleus indicating
beyond any reasonable doubt a common origin. This original nucleus,
which at least since 1924 has been generally referred to as *PSi,
represents a combination of materia1 derived from more than one source.
In a* and a it is still possible to recognize evident traces of this process
of rather disorderly accumulation because material from different sources
is still imperfectly combined to the extent that at times it seems to lack
any rationale. a', on the other hand, represents an attempt, mostly
successful, to reorder into a single, coherent series - «in arithmetischer
Folge», in Steinmeyer's words - the idiosyncratic sequence of material
shared by a* and a.
As far as the *PSg material is concerned, therefore, a* and a witness
to the early stage of the collection before the compiler of a' intervened.
Accordingly, a comparison between a* and a, on the one hand, and a',
on the other, can highlight the procedures followed by the compiler of the
latter. In what follows an attempt will be made to define such procedures
with a particular focus on the treatment of the lemmata.
The treatment of the lemmata by the compiler of G1
A comparison between the three glossaries reveals that, in a

considerable number of cases, the lemma of d differs, more or less
substantially, from that of a* and/or a. On the whole it can be estimated
that approximately l out of 10, or perhaps, according to a more
conservative estimate, 1 out of 12 items in a' diverges, at least as far as
the lemma is concerned, from the corresponding item in a* and a. This
rate is very high indeed, the more so if compared with the prevalent
stability of a glossary' s lemmata.
Divergences can also be detected when comparing the lemmata of a*
with those of a, but the latter tend to be much less frequent, and above all
much less significant. For, while the differences between a* and a are
fairly random, on the other hand those that set a1 against a* and/or a
Medieval Glosses to the Octateuch and the Books of Kings», Romanobarbarica 17 (2000-
2002), pp. 237-308.
5
The siglum first occurs in Baesecke, G., «Die deutschen Genesisglossen der
Familie *Rz>>, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Litteratur 61 (1924), pp.
222-33.
212 PAOLO VACIAGO
seem, in the overwhelming maJonty of instances, to follow recurrent

patterns and to reflect a consistent strategy.
For practical purposes it will be appropriate to distinguish initially
two main typological categories which, however artificial, may help to
put the data in sorne arder and which for convenience may be labelled
additions and alterations.
Additions
In a very considerable number of instances the lemma in G1 provides

a fuller quotation of the source text thanG and G*. A further distinction
might, however arbitrarily, be introduced between instances where the
addition in G1 is minimal (e.g., a conjunction or a preposition), and
instances where, on the other band, the additions are more substantial.
Thus, for instance, whereas G and G* have, as a lemma for Dt VI.8 (no.
19), «ligabis ea quasi signum in manu tua», G1 has «et ligabis ea quasi
signum in manu tua». By the same token, whereas G and G* have, at I
Sm XVI. lü (no. 39), «adduxit isai», G1 has «adduxit itaque isai»; whereas
G and G* have, at I Sm XVI.12 (no. 40), «rufus», d has «erat autem
rufus», and so on. As regards more substantial- additions, whereas G* for
Gn XII.6 (no. 4) has «lnlustrem», G1 has «ad conuallem illustrem»;
whereas G and G* have, at Lv XXIII.40 (no. 13), «spatulas», G1 has
«spatulasque palmarum»; whereas G and G* have, at Dt XXIV.l (no.
20), «libellum repudii», d has «scribet libellum repudii». Throughout the
sections from Gn to IV Rg similar examples are extremely frequent 6 .
Occasionally matters stand the other way round: thus, for instance, at
IV Rg 11.23 (no. 68) rather than dit is G* that presents the fuller lemma
(«pueri parui egressi sunt et inludebant ei» ), but instances like this are
definitely exceptional.
It could hardly be argued that the alterations made to the lemma in
these and analogous cases represent a crucial improvement to the overall
sense of the glass. For instance, the interpretation of the gloss to II Sm
XXIII.20 (no. 62), duos leones, in G1 is not modified because of the
addition of Ipse percussit to the lemma. Never does a gloss as a whole
develop a significantly new meaning because of such additions within the
lemma. The most substantial change is that found in the glass to Gn
6
For further examples of minor additions cf., for instance, nos. 10, 26, 29, 33, 34, 43,
69, and 70. For more substantial additions cf. nos. 6, 8, 12, 14, 17, 18, 27, 28, 31, 37, 50,
51, 53, 54, 61, 62, 64, 65, and 66.
XXXIV.27 (no. 6) where the addition of sunt makes it explicit that a

verbal form, namely a perfect, rather than an adjective is intended, but
where, in any case, the correspondence between depopulati and uastati is
not modified. In ali the above-mentioned instances it is evident that the
changes in the lemmata were not carried out because the compiler
intended to produce a different interpretation.
These additions, on the other hand, do often make the items
concerned more reader-friendly. The additions can contribute to clarify
the context of the lemma and make it easier to remember: for instance,
the addition of ignium to receptacula at Ex XXVII.3 (no. 12) or the
addition of manibus to complosis at Nm XXN.lO (no. 17) arguably
contribute to focus more precisely on the context and the meaning of the
lemma proper. In other cases the additions in d would seem to contribute
exclusively to locating more easily the position of the lemma in the
source text. This is especially evident where the addition in d amounts to
the conjunction et, as, for instance, in «et scatere» (Ex XVI.20) (no. 10)
or, also, in «et ligabis ea quasi signum» (Dt VI.8) (no. 19), where the
conjunction does not add much to the overall content and purpose of the
glass. It may be noted in passing that in these and in a number of other
instances the addition in G1 coïncides with the beginning of the colon
where the lemma proper is found. Thus for instance the same happens
with «erat autem rufus» (I Sm XVI.l2) (no. 40); «et sex milia aureos»
(N Rg V.5) (no. 69); «scribet libellum repudii» (Dt XXN.1) (no. 20);
«ipse percussit duos leones» (Il Sm XXIII.20) (no. 62); «ego ingredior
uiam uniuersae terrae» (III Rg II.2) (no. 64), and elsewhere.
Keeping in mind that G1 represents a reworking of the *PSg material,
it is clear that, whatever the specifie purpose of these minor and major
additions may have been, the source text has been referred to afresh,
carefully and frequently.
The latter point is further confirmed when we turn to the second
major category of material under review here.
This analysis has so far dealt with cases where the lemma in d has
been subject to additions and integrations, thus providing what amounts
to a fuller quotation of the source text. Quite often, however, G1
introduces a reading which is alternative to that found in G* and/or G.
Again, considering that the compilation in d represents a revision of
*PSg, the alternative form of the lemma found in G1 represents a
correction of the lemma as inherited from *PSg.
The alternative reading of the lemma found in G1 in most cases
follows the predominant Vulgate reading, while G* and G feature either a
214 PAOLO VACIAGO
less common Vulgate variant or, frequently, a reading which at present

seems to be otherwise unattested. The alternative reading in G1 may
represent a minor correction: for instance, at Ex III.5 (no. 9) G* and G
have «calciamenta», while G1 corrects into «calciamentum»; at Ide V.4
(no. 23) G* and G have «distillauerunt» (a variant reading attested in L,
the Toletanus), while G1 opts for «stillauerunt». In a number of cases the
corrections introduced in G1 can also be quite substantial. Such is the
case, for example, with the glass to Nm X.21 (no. 15) where G* and G
have «directionis locus» while G1 has rather «ad erectionis locus». The
same happens with the glosses to II Sm XVIII.l7 -18 (nos. 55-56), where
G* and G have «posuerunt» and «erexit» while G1 corrects respectively
into «comportauerunt» and «erexerat sibi». Only very rarely is the
compiler of ci willing to maintain the reading inherited from *PSg as a
possible alternative to his own reading. This is the case, for instance, with
the glass to I Sm XVI.5 (no. 38), where G* and G have the lemma
«sanctificauit se isai et filios eius» while G 1, as usual, modifies its lemma
into ~~sanctificauit ergo isai et filios eius». However, in this instance the
1
G glossator also records, unusually in interlinear position above ergo,
«aliter se», that is the variant that he had presumably found in his *PSg
exemplar7 .
While the overwhelming majority of cases where G1 presents a
reading alternative to G* and G falls within the category we have been
considering in the previous paragraph, in a small number of instances the
alternative reading in G1 may prove to be slightly more distinctive and
significant because, rather than following the common Vulgate reading, it
follows a variant reading, more or less weil attested. This also happens in
those cases when G* and G themselves present the common Vulgate
reading. For instance, at Ide XIV.6 (no. 24), where G* and G have
«concerpens», a reading attested in L 8 and T9 , G1 corrects into
7
For further examples of ci introducing a reading in line with the common Vulgate
reading, while G* and/or G either present a variant reading or an otherwise unparalleled
one, cf. nos. 1, 7, 11, 16, 25, 41, 45, 47, 48, 57, 58, 59, 63, and 67. Occasionally, however,
it may be more plausible to argue for the presence of a corrupt reading in G* and/or G
rather than a correct one in G1: for instance, at II Sm VII.7 (no. 47) there is no way of
establishing whether the form precepit was already present in *PSg or represents a
corruption introduced in G. The correct lemma consists of the verb in the first person
singular and is found in G1 «Cui precepi ut pasceret populum>>. The corrupt form precepit
has most plausibly resulted from assimilation by the following verb pasceret.
8
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. lat. 92, a Würzburg manuscript of the mid-ninth
century.
«discerpens», itself a reading attested in A (the Codex Amiatinus). At I

Sm XIV.2 «in magron» (no. 35), I Sm XIV.18 «applica arcam dei» (no.
36), II Sm 1.25 «Jonathan in excelsis tuis occisus est» (no. 46), and in
other instances, G* and G present a lemma that matches the common
Vulgate reading, while d resorts to variant readings which, as far as
these cases are concerned, are attested primarily in ~ and/or <D (the
Alcuin Bibles) 10•
The compiler of G1, therefore, proceeds either by adding new
elements to the lemma or by altering it. Both these procedures clearly
reflect the thorough attention paid not only to the reordering of the
material or to the revising of the contents of the individual interpretations,
as illustrated by Steinmeyer, but also to the updating of the lemmata. In
other words, they were brought in line with the source text, namely the
Vulgate.
Needless to say, however, the picture is not as clear and
straightforward as it may seem, because in a number of cases the
compiler appears to depart from his usually scrupulous practice. Such
instances are admittedly not frequent, but they nonetheless deserve our
attention. Occasionally, for instance, the lemma in G1 adds one or more
words to provide what apparently looks like a fuller quotation of the
source text, but actually these additions find no counterpart in the text of
the Vulgate. For instance, at I Sm XXVIII.19 (no. 44), G1 adds enim in
«cras enim mecum eritis», but the Vulgate has autem; at II Sm XXIII.16
(no. 60) G1 adds ergo in «noluit ergo bibere» but again there is no trace of
ergo in the Vulgate; ditto for I Sm XXIII.19 (no. 42) where d adds
partem in «ad dexteram partem deserti», whereas the Vulgate has «ad
dexteram deserti», as in G* and G. Elsewhere the lemma in G1 represents
an alternative to the glosses in G* and/or G, but, once again, has no
counterpart in the text of the Vulgate. For instance, at Gn IV.5 (no. 3), G1
modifies «concidit uultus eius» as attested in G* into «et concidit uulnus
eius», with a choice which has no counterpart in the Vulgate. At Gn
XXIII.? (no. 5), «adorauit» becomes «adorabat», once more at variance
with the Vulgate.
9
Tours, Bibliothèque Municipale 10, a Tours manuscript contemporary with, but not
belonging to, the Alcuinian group.
°
1
For other analogons instances, cf. nos. 22, 52, 71. On the Alcuin Bibles, as weil as
on the other witnesses of the biblical text mentioned here, see Fischer, B., Lateinische
Bibelhandschriften im frühen Mittelalter (Aus der Geschichte der Lateinischen Bi bel 11),
Herder Verlag, Freiburg i.E. 1985.
216 PAOLO VACIAGO
Particularly intriguing are those cases where G1 introduces a

correction that to sorne extent brings the lemma in line with the text of the
Vulgate, while at the same time leaving unaltered elements which are at
odds with the latter. For instance, at Ide III.26 «Ad loca idolorum» (no.
21), the pluralloca, attested in G* and G, is replaced by locum, which is
the reading of the Vulgate («et pertransiit locum Idolorum unde reuersus
fuerat»), but the preposition ad is left standing (see Appendix). The same
happens at II Sm VII.19 «Vsque in longeuum» (no. 49), where G1 corrects
longeuum into longinquum, leaving usque unchanged. Similarly, at I Sm
II.36 (no. 30), whereas G* and G present the /emma «Ut comedat
buccellam», the compiler of d evident1y felt it should be necessary to
specify that the buccella is made up of bread. At the same time, however,
he left the verb comedat unchanged, whereas a first person singular
comedam would have been required (see Appendix).
For sorne of these peculiar cases an explanation, or at least a partial
explanation, may be found quite readily: at Gn III.17 (no. 2), for instance,
G1 clearly picks the plural in operibus tuis from Jerome's Quaestiones in
libro Geneseos 11 , from which also the interpretation of the gloss is drawn.
This commentary, or indeed also other similar works, may well provide
the source for sorne of the other glosses which diverge from the text of
the Vulgate.
In other cases, an oversight on the part of the compiler or, possibly, a
later copyist, may be suspected: the confusion between enim and autem at
I Sm XXVIII.19 (no. 44), for instance, may have easily resulted from a
misunderstanding of the respective abbreviations, and a momentary
scribal distraction seems to be the most likely explanation for the above-
mentioned lemma drawn from Gn IV.5 (no. 3), where G1 has «et concidit
uulnus eius» (p. 100, line 23), instead of the Vulgate uultus. In G1 this
gloss is followed at short distance by an entry referring to Gn IV.23
«occidi uirum in uulnus meum» (p. 101, line 1), whence the word uulnus
might have erroneously been drawn.
Finally, in sorne other cases an explanation may perhaps be found in
the more recondite folds of the history of the biblical text. A systematic
collation between the more distinctive readings found in G1 and sorne of
11
See Jerome, Hebraicae Quaestiones in libro Geneseos, ad loc.: S. Hieronymi
Presbyteri Opera,!. Opera exegetica, 1. Hebraicae quaestiones in libro Geneseos. Liber
interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum. Commentarioli in psalmos. Commentarius in
Ecclesiasten, ed. by P. de Lagarde, G. Morin and M. Adriaen (CCSL 72), Brepo1s,
Turnhout 1959.
the biblical manuscripts known to have been available at St Galien in the

ninth and tenth centuries may possibly yield sorne results in this respect.
Conclusions
Without being exhaustive, the foregoing analysis clearly shows that

the textual elements of the lemmata of a glossary are not necessarily fixed
in time once the glossary has come into being and the textual segments of
the lemmata are detached, so to speak, from their original context. A
lemma can be modified in the course of the transmission of the glossary,
and, whatever the ultimate underlying factors or motives, it can be
updated with reference to the source text from which it derives.
Phenomena of revision and adaptation of this kind are not unheard of:
they are found, for example, in a number of Byzantine catenae. Closer to
home, Rebecca Rushforth has recently illustrated how a mid-ninth
century St Galien compiler would have no difficulty in making the
necessary adjustments when drawing from a commentary to the
Psalterium Romanum in order to gloss a Gallicanum text 12•
But whereas both in the case of the catenae and in that of the glossed
Psalters the glosses literally surround the text, so that a certain degree of
osmosis between the latter and the glosses is almost encouraged by the
layout of the page, in the case of the glossae collectae of G1, or indeed of
batches of glossae collectae in general, the glosses stand on their own,
detached from their source text also physically.
The treatment of the lemmata in G1 raises a whole range of questions
that it may be worthwhile to outline, at least in general terms, even
though for the time being they might be left unanswered.
Modus operandi: One needs to ask, for instance, to what extent the
compiler may have resorted to written versions of texts, whether
manuscripts of the Vulgate and/or exegetical works, or have instead
relied on memory, albeit occasionally a faulty one.
Purpose: Another question that needs to be raised is to what extent
the revised lemmata in G1 really reflect specifie editorial aims on the part
of the compiler of the glossary. In other words, it would be interesting to
12
The Psalter in question is that contained in St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 27; for the
gloss the compiler relied heavily on Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum; see Rushforth,
R.J., <<The Script and Text of the Achadeus-Psa1ter Gloss: Reusing Continental Materials
in Eleventh-Century England», Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society
14/2 (2009), pp. 89-114.
218 PAOLO V ACIAGO
ascertain whether the compiler meant to offer a correct text, or to make

the context of certain lemmata more explicit and recognizable. On the
other hand, it would also be interesting to assess to what extent this
revision of the lemmata may simply have been a casual by-product, that
is an involuntary consequence of the reorganising and tidying up the
*PSg material on the part of the compiler of G1.
Competence: Finally, a question worth addressing is whether these
revised lemmata in G1 reflect the extraordinary skills and competence, or
perhaps simply an attempt at precision on the part of an individual
compiler, or whether it should rather be supposed that these skills and
competence were more widespread than generally assumed among
medieval compilers but seldom put to use. Or even whether they were in
fact regularly putto use, but seldom evident to us as clearly as in the case
of the *PSg group that has been examined here. For it is undeniable that
in the case of this group of glossaries the connections between the three
witnesses may be traced with sorne precision, and thus also the direction
taken by the process of revision in d may be outlined accordingly,
whereas in other contexts the diachronie dimension is frequently much
harder to recover and establish with any certainty.
That a medieval copyist, let alone a glossary compiler, should be
aware of the existence of textual variants seems quite likely, given the
amount of evidence found for these in manuscripts, also in the form of
interlinear or marginal glosses. But whether he would normally be
interested in checking variant readings when copying batches of glossae
collectae is another question. It could be argued that it would come to
him more naturally when handling glosses to fundamental and very
familiar texts, such as the Bible, obviously, or the Benedictine Rule,
while he might be less prone to perform this operation with less familiar
texts. It would be worth investigating, in other words, whether there
could be sorne correlation between the centrality of a text in the life of
compilers of glossaries and the likelihood of more or less self-conscious
revision of the lemmata.
Use of lemmata as evidence: Sorne further thought should also be
given to the use of glosses as evidence for the reconstruction of the
tradition of the text from which they are drawn. The Leiden Glossary and
the Milan biblical glosses are a case in point since they have been studied
in the past in this perspective. Given the procedures followed by the
compiler of G1 it is perhaps appropriate to reconsider the criteria which
may enable us to establish whether glosses - the lemmata of batches of
glossae collectae in this specifie case - even though preserved in
manuscripts of the late eighth and of the eleventh century respectively,

may nonetheless be employed as evidence for the circulation of texts in
Anglo-Saxon England in the seventh century. It must be said that going
back to the work done in this field towards the end of last century not
much could be found on this specifie point, and the one explicit statement
in the relevant literature, namely in the analysis of the Milan Pentateuch
lemmata, did not seem particularly compelling. The criteria that were
employed for the Milan Pentateuch glosses, for instance, if applied to the
lemmata of G1 in isolation, that is to say independently from the other
members of the *PSg group, would lead to conclusions at variance with
those which are suggested by the additional evidence of G* and G 13 . It is
13
On the Pentateuch lemmata, see Marsden, R., <<Theodore's Bible: The Pentateuch>>,
in M. Lapidge (ed.), Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on His Life and
Influence (CSASE 11), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995, pp. 236-54, esp. at
237-8. As compelling reasons for optimism Marsden mentions inter alia the accuracy of a
very large proportion of the text and the fact that whatever the form of a name adopted in
the Milan manuscript, it does not vary if it is repeated; but one may ask whether these
traits might not simply be indicative of the conscientiousness of a later copyist. Marsden
equally notes that the same high standard of consistency is evident also in those cases
where the wording of the lemma is repeated in the glos s. On this specifie point, however,
the St Galien glosses seem to invite sorne caution as they present instances where e.g. a
change of tense in the lemma is accompanied by sorne more or Jess appropriate
adjustment of the interpretation: cf., for instance, no. 16 where the correspondence pergit
(lemma)- migrauit (interpretation) in G becomes pergat- migret in d. At the same time,
what has al! the appearance of an idiosyncratic corruption, such as, for instance, the shift
from the dative to the ablative in the lemma of a gloss to Gn XXXVII.8 in G* (cf. no. 7)
produces the same alteration in the interpretation, so that dicioni = potestati becomes
dicione = potestate.
Conceming the glosses drawn from the Regula Sancti Benedicti in the Leiden
Glossary and the alleged evidence they would pro vide for the textual transmission of that
text in Canterbury cf. Lapidge, M., <<The School of Theodore and Hadrian>>, Anglo-Saxon
England 15 (1986), pp. 45-72, esp. at 62-64, and id., The Anglo-Saxon Library, Oxford
University Press, Oxford 2006, pp. 33 and 88. The lemmata in the Regula section of the
Leiden Glossary have been drawn from the textus interpolatus of the Rule. Of ali the
earliest witnesses of the textus interpolatus, the glosses match most close! y the variants of
S (St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 916) and not those of 0 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton
48, the earliest known English exemplar of the Regula). This coïncidence, it has been
argued, pro vides evidence for the existence of a manuscript belonging to the same branch
as S at Canterbury at the time of Theodore. Since S was produced at St Galien
approximately at the tum of the ninth century, however, and the Leiden Glossary was
copied in the same centre more or Jess at the same time, it may perhaps be more
economical to suppose that the copyist/compiler of the Leiden Glossary may have revised,
or updated, the lemmata of the Regula g1osses on the basis of S or of its exemplar (that
must at sorne point have been avai1able at St Galien).
220 PAOLO V ACIAGO
to be hoped therefore that in due course more stringent criteria will be

found to explore to the full these and other potentially precious sources of
information.
Appendix
The following list represents a sample of the glosses where the !emma in G1
diverges from that found in G* and/or G. Quotations are generaliy confined to
the lemmata but in sorne specifie cases, which have been discussed above, the
relevant interpretations have also been included. References in round brackets
indicate the section and item number of the individual glosses within the
glossaries, and correspond to the system employed in the edition of G1 and G* 14 .
The sig la employed for biblical manuscripts are those adopted elsewhere (e.g. by
Weber, R. et al., Biblia Sacra ütxta Vulgatam Versionem, 5th edn., Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart 2007).
Glossaries 15
Ab: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, M 79 sup., ff. 67v-80v

Ac: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, M 79 sup., ff. 69r-80r
1
A: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, M 79 sup., ff. 81r-89r
A 11: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, M 79 sup., ff. 92v-124r
F: Fulda, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek, Aa 2, ff. 38r-117v
F': Fulda, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek, Aa 2, ff. 40r-108v
G: St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 9, pp. 264-315
G*: St Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek 82/l, ff. l1r-162r
d: St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 295, pp. 96-240
1
K : Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. 99, ff. 37r-52v
Gn
l) G vacat 16 ; G* (2.16) «ln ipso cessauit et reliqua: cessauit a nouis
faciendis creaturis non a gubernandis creatis»; d (2.14) «ln ipso cessauerat et
reliqua: cessauit a nouis faciendis creaturis non a gubernandis creatis»; [Gn 11.3
«quia in ipso cessauerat ab omni opere suo quod creauit Deus ut faceret»]
14
Vaciago, P., Clossae Biblicae, (CCCM 189A, 189B), Brepols, Turnhout 2004 (C
has not been included in the edition, but will feature in the forthcorning Index volume that
will complete it). In addition, a digitalised facsirnile of C 1 is now available online thanks
to the Projekt e-codices - Virtuelle Handschriftenbibliothek der Schweiz (http://www.e-
codices.unifr.ch).
15
Correspondences with sigla employed previously: Ab= Pent II; Ac= Pent III; A 1 =
OT I; AII = OT II in Bischoff, B. and Lapidge, M., Biblical Commentaries from the
Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian (CSASE 10), Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1994. pr = Randglossar; C = Sg 9; C* = P; C 1 = Sg 295; K1 = Rz in Die
althochdeutschen Clossen, ed. by Steinmeyer and Sievers.
16
The term vacat is used where the evidence of G is not available due to the loss of
sorne leaves at the beginning and at the end of the glossary, cf. above, note 2.
222 PAOLO V ACIAGO
2) C vac at; C* (2.31) «Ma1edicta terra in opere tua: hic non opere colendi
sed peccata exprimit.»; ci (2.27) «Maledicta terra in operibus tuis: hic non opere
colendi sed peccata exprimit», so also KI (1.48); F (2.21); A" (15.21) [Gn III.17
«maledicta terra in opere tuo»; see Jerome's Hebraicae quaestiones in libro
Ceneseos, ad loc. «Maledicta terra in operibus tuis: opera hic non ruris colendi,
ut plerique putant, sed peccata significant, ut in hebraeo habet»]
3) C vacat; C* (2.30) «Concidit uultus eius .i. mutauit colorem uultus sui»;
ci (2.29) «Et concidit uulnus eius. idest mutauit colorem uultus sui»; cf. KI
(1.47); F (2.20); A" (15.20) «Concidit» only: «mutauit colorem uultus sui» [Gn
IV.5 «iratusque est Cain uehementer et concidit uultus eius»; cf. Gn IV.23
«occidi uirum in uulnus meum»]
4) C vacat; C* (2.51) «lnlustrem .i. magnificum», so also KI (1.63); A"
(15.30); CI (2.58) <<Ad conuallem illustrem .i. magnificum» [Gn XII.6 «usque ad
conuallem Inlustrem»]
5) C vacat; C* (2.89) <<Adorauit populum terry . .i. gratias agebat illis»; cf.
Ac (17.78) «Adorauit populum .i. gratias egit»; ci (2.95) <<Adorabat populum
terry. gratias agebat illis» [Gn XXIII.7 «surrexit Abraham et adorauit populum
terrae filios uidelicet He th»]
6) C vacat; C* (2.205) «Depopulati: uastati», so also KI (1.131), A"
(15.77); ci (2.157) «Depopulati sunt. uastati sunt» [Gn XXXIV.27 «et
depopulati sunt urbem in ultionem stupri»]
7) C vacat; C* (2.210) «Dicione. Potestate», cf. KI (1.136), A" (15.81)
«Dicioni: potestati»; CI (2.165) «Subiciemur dicioni. potestati» [Gn XXXVII.8
«numquid rex nos ter eris aut subiciemur dicioni tuae»]
8) C (1.6) 1 C* (2.262) «Ad predam», so also Ac (17.166); CI (2.214) «Ad
predamfili mi» [Gn XLIX.9 «catulus leonis Iuda a praeda (a praeda G, cf. textus
hebraicus, textus graecus; ad praedam cet.) fili mi ascendisti»]
Ex
9) C (2.14) 1 C* (3.15) «Solue calciamenta», so also A' (23.6); CI (3.17)
«Solue calciamentum», so also F" (1.8) [Ex 111.5 «solue calciamentum de
pedibus tuis»]
10) C (2.44) 1 C* (3.66) «Scatere», so also KI (2.58), F (3.49), A" (22.55);
CI (3. 74) «Et scatêre» [Ex 16, 20 «et scatere coepit uermibus atque conputruit»]
11) C (2.61) 1 C* (3.99) «Quinquagenos»; ci (3.82) «Quinquagenarios»
[Ex XVIII.21 «et constitue ex eis tribunos et centuriones et quinquagenarios et
decanos»]
12) C (2.117) 1 C* (3.206) «Receptacula»; ci (3.149) «lgnium receptacula»
[Ex XXVII.3 «et forcipes atque fuscinulas et ignium receptacula»]
Lv
13) C (3.119) 1 C* (4.179) «Spatu1as»; d (4.143) «Spatulasque palmarum»
[Lv XXIII.40 «spatulasque palmarum et ramos ligni densarum frondium»]
Nm
14) C (4.20) 1 C* (5.27) «Plaustra tecta», so also F (5.8), A' (43.19); d
(5.19) «Sex plaustra tecta» [Nm VII.3 «munera coram Domino sex plaustra tecta
cum duodecim bu bus»]
15) C (4.23) 1 C* (5.30) «Directionis locus»; d (5.23) <<Ad erectionis
locum» and no interpretation [Nm X.21 «tamdiu tabernaculum portabatur donec
uenirent ad erectionis locum»]
16) C (4.57) 1 C* (5.79) «Pergit aaron. migrauit»; d (5.56) «Pergat aaron.
migret» [Nm XX.24 «pergat inquit Aaron ad populos suos»]
17) C (4.69) 1 C* (5.99) «Conplosis», so also KI (4.42), F (5.42), Ab (42.37);
d (5.72) «Complosis manibus» [Nm XXIV. lü «iratusque Balac contra Balaam
conplosis manibus ait»]
18) C (4.35) 1 C* (5.44) «Principium gentium», so alsoA' (43.72); d (5.74)
«Principium gentium amalehc» [Nm XXIV.20 «principium gentium Amalech
cui us extrema perdentur»]
Dt
19) C (5.20) 1 C* (6.22) «Ligabis ea quasi signum in manu tua»; d (6.21)
«Et ligabis ea quasi signum in manu tua» [Dt VI.8 «et ligabis ea quasi signum in
manu tua»]
20) C (5.49) 1 C* (6.57) «Libellum repudii»; d (6.56) «Scribet libellum
repudii» [Dt XXIV .1 «scribet libellum repudii et dabit in manu illius»]
Ide
21) C (7.11) 1 C* (9.18) <<Ad loca idolorum»; d (9.12) <<Ad locum
idolorum» [Ide Il1.26 «et pertransiit locum Idolorum unde reuersus fuerat»]
22) C (7 .17) 1 C * (9 .25) «En ipse ductor tuus»; d (9 .18) «En ipse est ductor
tuus» [Ide IV.l4 «en ipse ductor est (est ductor O~SM) tuus»]
23) C (7.25) 1 C* (9.36) «Caeli ac nubes. distillauerunt»; CI (9.22) «Celique
ac nubes stillauerunt» [Ide V.4 «caelique ac nubes stillauerunt (distillauerunt ~;
destillauerunt T<D) aquis»]
24) C (7.40) 1 C* (9.68) «Concerpens»; d (9.44) «Discerpens» [Ide XIV.6
«quasi hedum in frusta concerperet (decerperet <D; concerpens LT; decerperet M;
discerpens A)»]
25) C (7.56) «Ducentos choros», so also AI (2.49), A 11 (3.26), cf. «Ducentes
choros» KI (8.40), F (9.39); C* (9.97) <<A choros»; d (9.62) <<Ad ducendos
choros» [Ide XX1.21 «cumque uideritis filias Silo ad ducendos choros ex more
procedere»]
Rt
26) C (8.5) 1 C* (10.6) «Sarcinulas», so also F (10.6), cf. AI (3.2)
«Sarcinula»; CI (10.5) <<Ad sarcinulas» [Rt Il.9 «sed etiam si sitieris uade ad
sarcinulas»]
224 PAOLO VACIAGO
ISm
27) G (10.14) 1 G* (12.18) «Tantum labia mouebuntur»; d (12.11)
«Tantumque labia illius mouebuntur» [I Sm 1.13 «tamtumque labia illius
mouebantur»]
28) G (10.19) 1 G* (12.27) «Commodaui»; G1 (12.20) «Commodaui eum
domino» [I Sm 1.28 «idcirco et ego commodaui eum Domino»]
29) G (10.23) 1 G* (12.61) «Virilem aetatem», so also K 1 (11.34), F (12.43),
Ail (6.39); d (12.29) «Ad uirilem ytatem» [I Sm II.33 «et pars magna domus tuae
morietur cum ad uirilem aetatem uenerit»]
30) G (10.26) 1 G* (12.64) «Ut comedat buccellam»; d (12.33) «Ut
comedat buccellam panis»; cf. K 1 (11.37), F (12.46), Ail (6.41) «Ut comedam
buccellam» [I Sm 11.36 «ut comedam buccellam panis»]
31) G (10.49) «Et requieuit omnis israhel», so also K (11.62), F (12.78); G*
(12.96) <<requieuit omnis israhel», so also Ail (6.68); d (12.53) «Et requieuit
omnis domus israhel» [I Sm VII.2 «et requieuit omnis domus Israhel post
Dominum»]
32) G (10.67) 1 G* (12.277) «Collem domini», so also K (11.79), F
(12.105), A 1 (4.33); d (12.71) «Ad collem domini» [I Sm X.5 «post haec uenies
in collem Domini»]
33) G (10.131) 1 G* (12.240) «Quis pater eorum»; d (12.75) «Et quis pater
eorum?» [I Sm X.12 «responditque alius ad a1terum dicens et quis pater eorum»]
34) G (10.76) 1 G* (12.135) «Clamauit populus post saul», so also K1
(11.96); G1 (12.85) «Clamauit ergo populus post saul», so also A 1 (4.43) [I Sm
XIII.4 «clamauit ergo (autem R) populus post Saul in Galgala»]
35) G om.; G* (12.141) «ln magro», so also K 1 (11.102), F (12.128), cf. Ail
(6.103) «Magron»; d (12.91) «In agro gabaa» [I Sm XIV.2 «porro Saul
morabatur in extrema parte Gabaa sub malogranato quae erat in Magron (in
agrum Gabaa R; in agro Gabaa L<D )»]
36) G (10.82) 1 G* (12.150) «Applica arcam dei», so also K 1 (11.110), Ail
(6.108); d (12.92) «Applica arcam domini», so also F (12.137) [I Sm XIV.18
«et ait Saul ad Ahiam adplica arcam Dei (Do mini RL<D )»]
37) G (10.84) 1 G* (12.151) «Contrahe manum», so also K (11.111), F
(12.138), Ail (6.109); G1 (12.93) «Contrahe manum tuam» [I Sm XIV.19 «et ait
Saul ad sacerdotem contrahe manum tuam»]
38) G (10.96) 1 G* (12.170) «Sanctificauit se isai et filios eius»; G1 (12.111)
«Sanctificauit ergo 'aliter se' isai et filios eius», cf. K1 (11.129), A 11 (6.117)
«Sanctificauit Isai et filios eius» [I Sm XVI.5 «sanctificauit ergo Isai et filios
eius et uocauit eos ad sacrificium»]
39) G (10.137) 1 G* (12.254) «Adduxit isai septem filios»; G1 (12.113)
«Adduxit itaque isai septem filios» [1 Sm XVI.1 0 «adduxit itaque lsai septem
filios suos coram Samuhel>>]
40) G (10.138) 1 G* (12.255) «Rufus>>; d (12.115) «Erat autem rufus>> [1
Sm XVI.12 «erat autem rufus et pulcher aspectu decoraque facie>>]
41) G (10.109) «Et prophetauit», so also AII (6.128); G* (12.198) «et

prophetauit. i[n] m[edio]. d[o].m[us]. s[uae].», so also K (11.152); d (12.131)
«Et prophetabat>> [1 Sm XVIII.l 0 «et prophetabat in medio domus suae>>]
42) G (10.124) 1 G* (12.233) «Ad dexteram deserti>>, so also K1 (11.187); d
(12.154) «ad dexteram partem deserti>> [1 Sm XXIII.19 «in colle Achilae quae est
ad dexteram deserti>>]
43) G (10.127) 1 G* (12.236) «Mortuus est samuhel», so also K1 (11.190);
1
G (12.159) «Mortuus est autem samuhel>> [1 Sm XXV.l «mortuus est autem
Samuhel>>]
44) G (10.154) 1 G* (12.304) «Cras mecum eritis>>; d (12.170) «Cras enim
mecum eritis>> [1 Sm XXVIII.19 «cras autem tu et filii tui mecum eritis>>]
II Sm
45) G (11.2) 1 G* (13.2) «Stans super ilium occidi eum>>, so also K 1 (12.2), F
(13.1), A 11 (7.2); d (13.2) «Stansque super eum occidi ilium>> [Il Sm 1.10
«stansque super eum occidi ilium (eum Rm)»]
46) G (11.26) «lonathan in excelsis tuis occisus est>>; G* om.; G1 (13.7)
«lonathas in excelsis tuis occisus es» [Il Sm 1.25 «lonathan in excelsis tuis
occisus est (es RCLAD)>>]
47) G (11.27) «Cui precepit ut pasceret>>, cf. K1 (12.37) «Cui precepi ut
pasceret»; G* om.; d (13.31) «Cui precepi ut pasceret populum» [Il Sm VII.7
«cui praecepi ut pasceret populum meum Israhel dicens>>]
48) G (11.51) 1 G* (13.55) «luxta nomen maiorum>>; d (13.32) «luxta
nomen magnorum>> [Il Sm VII.9 «fecique tibi nomen grande iuxta nomen
magnorum qui sunt in terra>>]
49) G (11.28) «Vsque in longeuum>>, so also K1 (12.38); G* om.; d (13.33)
«V sque in longinquum>> [Il Sm VII.19 «ni si loquereris etiam de domo serui tui in
longinquum>>; cf. Mi IV.3 «et corripiet gentes fortes usque in longinquum>>; see
also the recurrent phrase «usque in sempiternum>>, «usque in aeternum>>]
50) G (11.58) «Recordetur rex domine>>; G* (13.77) «Recordetur Rex
domini>>; d (13.61) «Recordetur rex domini dei sui>> [Il Sm XIV.ll «quae ait
recordetur rex Do mini Dei sui>>]
51) G (11.48) 1 G* (13.49) «Et locutus est>>, so also K 1 (12.63); G1 (13.62)
«Et locutus est rex>> [Il Sm XIV .13 «et locutus est rex uerbum istud>>]
52) G (11.60) «Ut fiat uerbum domini mei quasi sacrificium>>; G* (13.80)
1
«Ut fiat uerbum domini mei regis. quasi sacrificium>>, so also K (12.66); d
(13.640) «Ut fiat uerbum domini mei regis sicut sacrificium» [Il Sm XIV.17 «ut
fiat uerbum domini mei regis quasi (sicut D<D) sacrificium>>]
53) G (11.62) «Sollicitabat corde>>; G* (13.85) «sollicitabat corda>>; d
(13.66) «Sollicitabat corda uirorum israhel>> [II Sm XV.6 «et sollicitabat corda
uirorum Israhel>>]
54) G (11.66) «Per iugum>>; G* (13.95) «Per iugium>>; d (13.70) «Per
iugum montis>> [Il Sm XVI.13 «Semei autem per iugum montis ex latere contra
ilium gradiebatur>>]
226 PAOLO V ACIAGO
55) G (11.76) 1 G* (13.111) «Et posuerunt super eum aceruum»; d (13.80)

«Et comportauerunt super eum aceruum» [II Sm XVIII.17 «et conportauerunt
super eum aceruum lapidum magnum nimis»]
56) G (11.77) 1 G* (13.112) «Absalon erexit titulum», cf. KI (12.83), F
(13.67), Au (7.51) «Titulum»; d (13.81) «Absalon erexerat sibi titulum» [II Sm
XVIII.18 «porro Absalom erexerat sibi cum adhuc uiueret titulum»]
57) G (11.82) 1 G* (13.123) «Tu et siba diuidite possessionem»; d (13.86)
«Tu et siba diuidite possessiones» [II Sm XIX.29 «tu et Siba diuidite
possessiones»]
58) G (11.102) 1 G* (13.244) «Spiritus dei»; d (13.104) «Spiritus domini»
[II Sm XXII1.2 «spiritus Domini locutus est per me et sermo eius per linguam
meam»]
59) G (11.107) 1 G* (13.249) «Sicutpluuiae .g[erminat]. e[rba]. d[e].
t[erra].»; d (13.109) «Sicutpluuiis germinat herba de terra» [Il Sm XXIII.4 «et
sicut pluuiis germinat herba de terra»]
60) G (11.115) 1 G* (13.257) «Noluit bibere»; d (13.117) «Noluit ergo
bibere» [II Sm XXIII.l6 «at ille noluit bibere sed libauit illam Domino»]
61) G (11.116) 1 G* (13.258) «Ad tres primos»; d (13.118) «Ad tres
primos non peruenerat» [II Sm XXIII.l9 «sed usque ad tres primos non
peruenerat»]
62) G (11.118) 1 G* (13.260) «Duos leones: duos reges»; d (13.120) «lpse
percussit duos leones: duos reges» [II Sm XXIII.20 «ipse percussit duos leones
Moab»]
63) G (11.122) 1 G* (13.267) «Usque ad tempus constitutionis»; d (13.126)
«Vsque ad tempus constitutum» [Il Sm XXIV.15 «de mane usque ad tempus
constitutum»]
III Rg
64) G (XII.7) 1 G* (14.9) «Viam uniuersie terree»; d (14.7) «Ego ingredior
uiam uniuerstt terry» [III Rg 11.2 «ego ingredior uiam uniuersae terrae»)
65) G (12.10) 1 G* (14.14) «Sepultus in ciuitate dauid»; GI (14.9) «Sepultus
est in ciuitate dauid», cf. AI (4.128) «ln ciuitate dauid» [III Rg 11.10 «et sepultus
est in ciuitate Dauid»]
66) G (12.47) 1 G* (14.108) «Uiuit dominus in cuius conspectu sto»; d
(14.103) «Uiuit dominus deus israhel in cuius conspectu sto» [III Rg XVII.1
«uiuit Dominus Deus Israhel in cuius conspectu sto»]
67) G vacat; G* (14.145) «Quod acceperunt uiri pro homine»; G1 (14.114)
«Quod acceperunt uiri pro amine» [Ill Rg XX.33 «quod acceperunt uiri pro
omine (pro homine R~D<Dm; pro nomine C)»]
IVRg
68) G vacat; G* (15.8) «Pueri parui egressi sunt et inludebant ei»; d (15.3)
«Pueri parui egressi sunt» [IV Rg 11.23 «pueri parui egressi sunt de ciuitate et
inludebant ei dicentes»]
69) G vacat 1 G* (15.17) «Vi. mi1ia aureos»; d (15.11) «Et sex milia
aureos» [IV Rg V.5 «et sex milia aureos et decem mutatoria uestimentorum»]
70) G vacat 1 G* (15.24) «Per preceps graditur»; d (15.19) «Preceps enim
graditur» [IV Rg IX.20 «praeceps enim graditur»]
71) G vacat; G* (15.47) «in terram armeniorum»; d (15.35) «ln terra
armeniorum» [IV Rg XIX.37 «fugeruntque in terram (in terra C) Armeniorum»]
ANGLO-SAXON MEDICAL AND BOTANICAL TEXTS,
GLOSSES AND GLOSSARIES AFTER
THE NORMAN CONQUEST:
CONTINUATIONS AND BEGINNINGS. AN OVERVIEW
Maria Amalia D' Aronco
The first centuries after the Norman Conquest - from the late eleventh
century to the end of the thirteenth century - can appear almost marginal in
the history of medicine in England since the medical production was
mostly written in Latin or in French. The Norman Conquest, with its shift
in the use of vemacular, put an end to the Anglo-Saxon medical experience
in Old English.
The end, however, was not quite as abrupt as it might seem; the
change, although irreversible, took time. In the end, however, it was the
vemacular of the Country that won. Its victory was silently carried out by
patient and capable scribes. They copied texts, compiled lists of remedies
and glosses, and produced glossaries of medical and botanical terms in the
three current languages of the country, thus giving little by little a new
weight to the English vemacular. Consequently, as Irma Taavitsainen and
Paivi Pahta have suggested, from the fourteenth century onwards, scientific
texts in English were produced on a larger scale in a «continuous line of
development [that] can be traced up to the present in the field of
medicine» 1.
Late Anglo-Saxon and Early Norman medical production
Recent scholarship has definitely cleared the ground of obsolete

prejudices about early medieval medicine being nothing else but a
concoction of barbarian beliefs and practices, and has highlighted the full
range and calibre of Anglo-Saxon medical lore. Indeed the medical works
composed or translated during the Anglo-Saxon period show a level of
1
Taavitsainen, I. and Pahta, P., «Vemacularisation of Scientific and Medical Writing
in its Sociohistorical Context>>, in I. Taavitsainen and P. Pahta (eds.), Medical and
Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
2004, pp. l-22, at 1.
230 MARIA AMALIA D' ARONCO
attention to and knowledge of medical practices easily on a par with the

rest of Western Europe2 • Under ali respects, in the centuries-old history of
Anglo-Saxon medical leaming, the eleventh century is downright
remarkable. In fact, out of the circa three hundred Old English items of
medical content listed in manuscripts from the ninth to the twelfth century,
the majority dates from the eleventh. These entries are represented by
medical texts in the traditional form of remedy book, by smaller collections
of remedies, herbais, astrological and computational treatises together with
texts meant to be used in the teaching of medicine - such as glosses and
glossaries intended for the elucidation of obscure technical vocabulary -
and, finally, question-and-answer texts or master-student medical
dialogues 3 .
The eleventh-century production is characterized, in particular, by the
circulation of new medico-botanical material and by the use of Latin to an
increasing extent. The combination of these two circumstances marks a
visible innovation in Anglo-Saxon medical studies. On these grounds
Debby Banham has argued that there is an evident difference between
medical writings in the Anglo-Saxon period and those from post-Conquest
times. Consequently, she has come to the conclusion that, only in the
eleventh century, England had «become part of the mainstream European
medical culture in a way it had not been in the tenth»4 •
However, it should be taken into account that not ali Anglo-Saxon
manuscripts of the eleventh century were written in the post-Conquest
period. Therefore, in assessing the real significance of the surviving
manuscript corpus in the study of Anglo-Saxon medical leaming, we need
to consider the chronology of textual production. In particular, when
2
Full bibliography in D' Aronco, M.A., «How 'English' is Anglo-Saxon Medicine?
The Latin Sources for Anglo-Saxon Medical Texts>>, in C. Bumett and N. Mann (eds.),
Britannia Latina: Latin in the Culture of Great Britain from the Middle Ages to the
Twentieth Century (Warburg Institute Colloquia 8), The Warburg Institute, London 1
Aragno, Turin 2005, pp. 27-41.
3
See eVK2: an on-line expanded and rev. version of L.E. Voigts and P.D. Kurtz
(eds.), Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic
Reference, CD, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2000: http://cctrl.urnkc.edu/cgi-
bin/search.
4
Banham, D., «A Millennium in Medicine? New Medical Texts and Ideas in
England in the Eleventh Century>>, in S. Keynes and A.P. Smyth (eds.), Anglo-Saxons:
Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart, Four Courts Press, Dublin 2006, pp. 230-42, at 236.
ANGLO-SAXON MEDICAL AND BOTANICAL TEXTS 231
dealing with the eleventh-century manuscript production, one of the main

issues regards the precise dating of the codices in order to define whether
late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were produced in the first part of the century
or in the second, that is after the Conquest. Recently, much attention has
been given to Anglo-Saxon manuscript production. Thanks to scholarly
catalogues such as those by Ker, Gneuss, and Gameson5 , we can now date
these manuscripts with fairly good precision thus tracing the evolution of
Anglo-Saxon culture from the earlier times to the Norman Conquest.
In the second half of the tenth and in the earl y eleventh century the rate
of production of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts is indeed remarkable, an
important place being taken by educational texts. Educational manuscripts
provide abundant evidence of Anglo-Saxon pedagogy and its indebtedness
to Continental programs of study together with its own innovative peculiar
characteristics6 . With regard to medical education, the Anglo-Saxon
situation does not seem to be very different from that of the Continent.
Here, according to Eliza Glaze, «prior to the early twelfth century there
appears to have been no established, continuously-functional center [... ]
where generations of students could go to pursue textually-based training
as a collective body under the tutelage of an acknowledged series of
masters» 7.
There are, nonetheless, traces that sorne sort of medical teaching was
imparted in Anglo-Saxon England since medical texts appear in
5
Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl., 1990; Gneuss, H., Handlist of Anglo-Saxon
Tempe, AZ 2001; Gameson, R., The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066-
1130), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1999. Further and extensive bibliography in
Lendinara, P., «Instructional Manuscripts in England: the Tenth- and Eleventh-Century
Codices and the Early Norman Ones>>, in P. Lendinara, L. Lazzari and M.A. D' Aronco
(eds.), Form and Content of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England in the Light of
Contemporary Manuscripts Evidence (Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études
Médiévales. Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 39), Brepols, Turnhout 2007, pp. 59-113, in
particular at 66-67 and notes 26-35.
6
See the collected studies in Lendinara, Lazzari and D'Aron co (eds.), Form and
Content of Instruction.
7
Glaze, F.E., «Master-Student Medical Dialogues: The Evidence of London, British
Library, Sloane 2839», in Lendinara, Lazzari and D' Aronco (eds.), Form and Content of
Instruction, pp. 467-94, at 468-9.
miscellaneous codices intended for educational purposes 8 . One of these is

the famous 'Canterbury Classbook', Cambridge, University Library,
Gg.5.35, written around the middle of the eleventh century, likely at St
Augustine's, Canterbury9 • The codex contains a range of curriculum texts
planned to answer scholastic needs or interests. As has been pointed out, it
presents «a sylloge of ali the texts one teacher had to master, and which in
part occur, in smaller clusters, elsewhere» 10 • Among the materials here
assembled, there are sorne medical texts, that is two hexametrical poems
consisting of Greek medical terminology 11 . In the first of these poems a
master challenges a student to explain a series of Greek medical terms with
their Latin equivalents, which in the codex are «linked to the riddle by call-
letters»12. The second consists of «a string of Greek medical terms
ingeniously set in hexameters» 13 • Although most of their medical
vocabulary can be found in a medical glossary 14 preserved in two
manuscripts, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 1260,
ff. 165-179 (at ff. 177r-178r) 15 and Bem, Burgerbibliothek 337 (at ff. 8r-
8
Lendinara, «lnstructional Manuscripts in England>>, pp. 59-64.
9
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 12; Ker, Catalogue, no. 16; Doane, A.N. and Grade, T.J.,
Deluxe and Illustrated Manuscripts containing Technical and Literary Texts (Anglo-
Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 9), Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2001, no. 96; Rigg, A.G. and Wieland, G.R., «A
Canterbury Classbook of the Mid-Eleventh Century (the Cambridge Songs Manuscript)>>,
Anglo-Saxon England 4 (1975), pp. 113-30.
10
Lendinara, «lnstructional Manuscripts in England>>, p. 80.
11
Published by Lapidge, M., «The Hermeneutic Style in Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin
Literature>>, Anglo-Saxon England 4 (1975), pp. 67-112, repr. in his Anglo-Latin
Literature, 900-1066, The Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, OH 1993, pp. 105-
50 and addenda pp. 474-9. See also Glaze, «Master-Student Medical Dialogues>>, pp. 470-
1.
12
Ibid., p. 470.
13
Lapidge, «The Hermeneutic Style>>, p. 122.
14
Ibid., p. 122 and notes 2-3. This glossary, or Antrix (i.e. Anthrax) Glossary is
preserved together with a botanical glossary, the Anesus Glossary, that seems to have
been used by the compiler of the Laud Glossary, see Rusche, Ph.G., «The Source for Plant
Names in Anglo-Saxon England and the Laud Herbai Glossary>>, in P. Dendle and A.
Touwaide (eds.), Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, The Boydell Press,
Woodbridge 2008, pp. 128-45, at 137-8 and notes 35-38.
15
s. x/xi, prov. prob. Fleury: Mostert, M., The Library of Fleury: A Provisional List
of Manuscripts (Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen 3), Verloren, Hilversum 1989, no.
1486. See also Beccaria, A., 1 codici di medicina del periodo presalernitano (secoli IX, X,
e Xl) (Storia e letteratura 53), Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, Rome 1956, no. 107.
14v) 16 , the ultimate source of the two poems are the Quaestiones
medicinales of Pseudo-Sorarms 17 • Consequently, the two pieces in Gg.5.35
derive from a much older Continental tradition, possibly dating back to
Late Antiquity. Usually these two poems are considered to be «a witty,
hermeneutic jeu d'esprit, the doubtful end-product of years of study of
glossaries and absorption of arcane vocabulary» 18 . Nonetheless, sorne later,
post-Conquest reader of the 'Canterbury Classbook' seems to have
recognized their value as medical information. fu fact, a later hand (scribe
E, c. 1100 according to Rigg and Wieland) 19 added to ff. 425v-431 v and
continuing on to ff. 444v-446v a Latin collection of recipes and sorne tracts
«that complete the empirical treatments with theoretical indications, thus
creating a small compendium that covers the spectrum of medicalleaming
as it was defined in the Barly Middle Ages» 20 .
In fact, these additions of medical material bear a number of significant
21
coïncidences with the so-called Practica Petrocelli Salernitani , in
particular with the remedies of Book !. This book is preserved in a medical
miscellany of probable English origin: London, British Library, Sloane
2839 (ff. 7r-110v) 22, dated to the late eleventh or early twelfth century.
Thus, the Sloane codex is almost contemporary with the latest (and last)
16
s. xi: Hagen, H., Catalogus codicum Bernensium (Bibliotheca Bongarsiana),
Haller, Bem 1875; repr. Olms, Hildesheim and New York 1974, p. 333. The glossary has
been printed in Corpus glossariorum Latinomm a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum, ed. by G.
Goetz, 7 vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1888-1923; repr. Hakkert, Amsterdam 1965 (hereafter
CCL), III, pp. 596-607. See also Lapidge, <<The Hermeneutic Style», p. 122, note 2.
17
Lapidge, <<The Hermeneutic Style», addenda, pp. 476-7, and Glaze, <<Master-
Student Medical Dialogues», pp. 470-1.
18
Lapidge, <<The Hermeneutic Style>>, p. 123.
19
Rigg and Wieland, <<A Canterbury Classbook>>, pp. 128-9.
20
Maion, D., «The Fortune of the So-Called Practica Petrocelli Salernitani in
England: New Evidence and Sorne Considerations>>, in Lendinara, Lazzari and D' Aronco
(eds.), Form and Content of lnstmction, pp. 495-512, at 505.
21
On the questionable attribution to the Salemitan 'Petrocellus', see Glaze, <<Master-
Student Medical Dialogues>>, pp. 4 71-7, with a list of manuscripts at 4 77-8.
22
s. xi/xii or xii in., England or Continent: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 498.9; Gameson,
The Manuscripts of Early Norman England, no. 578; Hunt, T., Popular Medicine in
Thirteenth-Century England, Brewer, Cambridge 1990; repr. 1994, pp. 64-65; Glaze,
«Master-Student Medical Dialogues>>, pp. 485-8; and Maion, <<The Fortune of the So-
Called Practica Petrocelli>>, pp. 498-504. Description and reproductions in the British
Library on-line Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/
illuminated manuscripts/record.asp ?MS ID= 1236&ColliD=9&NStart=2839.
endeavour of the Anglo-Saxon medical tradition in the vemacular, the Peri

23
Didaxeon, that is the partial Old English translation of the Practica •
The presence of the two medical poems in a late tenth-century
Worcester codex of Anglo-Saxon origin24 , of the Tereoperica (that is
Epistola I and Book I of the Practica) in Sloane 2839, besides the Peri
Didaxeon, bears witness, as Eliza Glaze has pointed out, «of the long-
surviving influence [... ] of late antique scholastic methods that had been
transplanted into northem Europe in the Carolingian period»25 • It is
therefore clear that in the second half of the tenth century both medical
leaming and the actual practice of medicine in Anglo-Saxon England were
fully participating in the new trend in medical studies triggered by the
Carolingian revival throughout Western Europe 26 .
23
The Peri Didaxeon has come down to us in a single manuscript, London, British
Library, Harley 6258B (ff. 51 v-66v), dated to the late-twelfth century, although the
translation was very probably carried out at !east sorne hundred years earlier. On the
Harley manuscript, see Doane, A.N., [Books of Prayers and Healing] (Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 1), Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance
Studies, State University of New York, Binghamton, NY 1994, no. 278; and Maion, D.,
«Iilessico tecnico del Peri Didaxeon. Elementi per una datazione>>, Il Bianco e il Nera 6
(2003), pp. 179-86. The text of the Peri Dida.xeon was first edited in Leechdoms,
Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England. Being a Collection of Documents for the
most Part never before Printed, Illustrating the History of Science in this Country before
the Norman Conquest, ed. by O. Cockayne, 3 vols. (Rolls Series 35), Longman, London
1864-1866; repr. Kraus, Nendeln 1965, III, pp. 82-145; and later on in Peri Didaxeon.
Eine Sammlung von Rezepten in Englischer Sprache aus dem ll./12. Jahrhundert. Nach
einer Handschrift des Britischen Museums, ed. by M. Loweneck (Erlanger Beitrage zur
Englischen Philologie und Vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte 12), Junge, Erlangen 1896;
repr. Rodopi, Amsterdam 1970. Recent critica1 edition in Maion, D., Edizione, traduzione
e commenta del Peri Didaxeon, Tesi di Dottorato deli'Università degli Studi Roma Tre.
Dottorato di ricerca in «Cultura e tradizioni letterarie del mondo germanico antico e
medievale>>, cielo XI, 1999.
24
Worcester, Cathedra!Library, Q.5 (ff. 69r-70r): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 765, and Ker,
Catalogue, no. 399. The two poems are also preserved in St Petersburg, Russian National
Library F.v.VI.3, see Lapidge, M., <<Israel the Grammarian in Anglo-Saxon England>>, in
H.J. Westra (ed.), From Athens to Chartres: Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought, Brill,
Leiden 1992, pp. 97-114, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature, 900-1066, pp. 87-104 and
addenda p. 473, at 99; and Glaze, <<Master-Student Medical Dialogues>>, p. 470, note 11.
25
Ibid., p. 477.
26
D' Aronco, M. A., <<The Benedictine Rule and the Care of the Sick: The Case of
Anglo-Saxon England>>, in B.S. Bowers (ed.), The Medieval Hospital and Medical
Practice (AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art 3),
Ashgate, Aldershot 2007, pp. 235-51.
The twelfth-century Renaissance
«Expanded health care is one of the unheralded glories of twelfth

century England. In fact, the country may have enjoyed better access to
medical service between 1100 and 1154 than any other time until the
twentieth century». With these words Edward Kea1ey opens his work on
Anglo-Norman medicine 27 . However, when dealing with this advancement
in both the study and practice of medicine in medieval England, it should
be borne in mind that such achievements are correlated with that rapid
development of Western European society which took place between
around 1050 and 1225 and is often referred to as the 'twelfth-century
Renaissance'. As Nancy Siraisi remarks, «population increase, economie
growth, urbanization, the development of more sophisticated form of
secular and ecclesiastical government and administration, the growth of
professional specialization and of occupation requiring literacy, the
multiplication of schools and the enlargement of philosophical, scientific
and technical learning were interwoven and interdependent phenomena
[that had] a marked impact on the study and practice of medicine» 28 .
In the course of the twelfth century there was a proliferation of healers
ali over Europe while the growth of centres of medical studies29 was
connected with the increased availability of medical writings in Latin after
27
Kealey, E.J., Medieval Medicus: A Social History of Anglo-Norman Medicine, The
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 1981, p. 1.
28
Siraisi, N.G., Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to
Knowledge and Practice, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1990, p.
13.
29
Salemo had already been an active centre of medical practice since the mid-tenth
century, see Panebianco, V., «Le origini della Scuola Medica Salemitana nella tradizione
dei codici altomedievali di medicina>>, in I. Gallo (ed.), Studi salemitani in memoria di
Raffaele Cantarella, Laveglia, Salemo 1981, pp. 537-52; Kristeller, P.O., Studi sulla
Scuola medica salernitana, Istituto ltaliano per gli studi filosofici, Naples 1986; Oldoni,
M., «La Scuola medica di Salerno nella cultura europea fra IX e XIII secolo>>, Quaderni
medievali 23 (1987), pp. 74-93; M. Pasca (ed.), La Scuola Medica Salernitana. Storia,
immagini, manoscritti, Electa, Naples 1988; and Cuna, A., Per una bibliografia della
Scuola medica salernitana. Secoli XI-XIII (Hippocratica civitas 3), Guerini e Associati,
Milan and Naples 1993.
such medical texts were translated from Arabie and eventually from
Greek30 .
The Norman Conquest did produce great changes in English public
health. Kealey' s research into post-Conquest medical practice and into the
history of the beginnings of institutional care has provided interesting
evidence of the progress made in this period. The changes and the
improvements are unquestionable and they are also the outcome of the
great Norman genius for administration together with the new medical
learning that was spreading throughout W estem Europe by the end of the
eleventh century. The increase of identifiable physicians and of hospitals in
the twelfth century England corresponds to the increase of medical book
production. It is a clear sign that the medical community was keeping up
with the new trends in the learning during the twelfth century when the
translations from the Arabie of Constantine the African gave access to the
scientific lore of Greek medicine.
Kealey lists eleven identifiable physicians active in the years 1066-
1100 and ninety in 1100-1154. Among these physicians, Saxon
practitioners are unquestionably a rninority, or at least most names seem to
belong to Normans 31 . However, the continuons use of the English
vemacular in tracts, in glossaries, and in the glossing of Latin texts together
with the fact that the Normans were a rninority in England allow to assume
that a large number of practitioners were Saxons. On the other hand, it is
worth remembering that in the last years of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom
there were already foreign physicians operating in England. Outstanding
among these is Baldwin, the abbot of Bury St Edmunds (1065-1097) who
had been a monk at Saint-Denis and then a physician of the last Saxon
30
According to Wickersheimer, the scientific literature of the Middle Ages can be
divided into two periods, one preceding and the other following the circulation in Western
Europe of the translations from the Arabie. While the translations of astronomie and
mathematical texts had already begun by the middle of the tenth century, medicine came
later as the result of the translations by Constantine the African, see Wickersheimer, E.,
Les manuscrits latins de médecine du Haut Moyen Âge dans les bibliothèques de France
(Documents, études et répertoires publiés par l'Istitut de Recherche et d'Histoire des
Textes 11), Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris 1966, p. 9.
31
Kealey, Medieval Medicus, pp. 29-56: full list of known physicians, pp. 30-33;
directory of Anglo-Norman physicians (1100-1154), pp. 121-51; register of Anglo-
Norman hospitals, pp. 152-60.
King Edward the Confessor32 . A foreigner was also Master Adelard, a

Flemish secular canon attached to the collegiate church of the Holy Cross
in W altham, Exeter33 , as weil as the physician who grew medical plants in
the herb garden mentioned in one of lElfric Bata' s colloquies. To the
mas ter' s question whether there was a herb garden (viridarium) in their
monastery and who tended it, the students reply that the gardner is the
abbot' s doctor, who is not English or Greek, as supposed by the mas ter, but
Frankish:
Est Angligena siue Grecigena?

Non, sed Francigena34 .
(Is your master an Englishman or a Greek?

No, he is a Frank)
The shift from Anglo-Saxon to Norman physicians had consequences

also in the textual tradition of the Latin Pseudo-Apuleius herbai circulating
in England35 . As is weil known, the Herbarius complex was translated into
Old English towards the end of the tenth century from Latin originals that
belonged to the a-recension of the textual tradition36 . The translation must
32
Knowles, D., The Monastic Order in England, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1940, 2nd edn., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1963, pp. 122 and
496.
33
Kealey, Medieval Medicus, pp. 122-3.
34
Anglo-Saxon Conversations: The Colloquies of JElfric Bata, ed. by S. Gwara,
transi. with an introd. by D.W. Porter, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 1997, p. 156.
35
The textual tradition of the Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius is tripartite. Manuscripts
are classified as belonging to the a-, (J- and y-recensions, see Antonii Musae de herba
vettonica liber. Pseudoapulei Herbarius. Anonymi de taxone liber. Sexti Placiti liber
medicinae ex animalibus [... ], ed. byE. Howald and H.E. Sigerist (Corpus Medicorum
Latinorum 4), Teubner, Leipzig and Berlin 1927, pp. v-xiv. This threefold division is
mirrored by a corresponding tripartite division in the illustration of the plants of the a-
recension, i.e. class a, class b, and class c, see Grape-Albers, H., Spatantike Bilder aus der
Welt des Arztes. Medizinische Bilderhandschriften der Spatantike und ihre mittelalterliche
Überlieferung, Pressier, Wiesbaden 1977, pp. 13-21 and 164-6.
36
See D'Aron co, M.A., <<Introduction>>, in M.A. D' Aronco and M.L. Cameron
(eds.), The Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia: British Library Cotton Vitellius C.iii
(EEMF 27), Rosenkilde and Bagger, Copenhagen 1998, pp. 13-43, and ead., «L'erbario
anglosassone, un'ipotesi sulla data della traduzione>>, Romanobarbarica 13 (1994-1995),
pp. 325-65. The two pharrnacopoeias were first published in Leechdoms, ed. by Cockayne,
1, pp. 1-373, and later on in The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus,
238 MARIA AMALIA D'ARON CO
have been a matter of what can be termed a nationalistic pride, as testified

by the lavishly decorated manuscript now London, British Library, Cotton
Vitellius C.iii, fols. 11-85, which bears comparison with the greatest
illustrated herbais from Italy and France, as weil as by Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Hatton 76 intended for illustration but left unfinished37 . The
Conquest put an end to this trend. Luxury copies, however, were requested
also by the Norman abbots who brought to England new Latin exemplars
of the Herbarius (belonging to the /3-recension of the textual tradition) and
even had them copied there. The earliest of these, now Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Bodley 130, was copied by an English hand at Bury St Edmund's
under abbot Baldwin whose personal influence and expertise can perhaps
be detected in sorne additions made to the text that «show Continental
characteristics»38 • To the same Latin textual tradition belongs the slightly
ed. by H.J. de Vriend (EETS os 286), Oxford University Press, London, Oxford and
Toronto 1984.
37
On Vitellius C.iii (s. xi 1 or xi med., Canterbury, Christ Church?), see Gneuss,
Handlist, no. 402; Ker, Catalogue, no. 219; The Old English Herbarium, ed. by de
Vriend, pp. xi-xx; and Doane, [Books of Prayers and Healing], no. 96; facsimile in
D'Aronco and Cameron (eds.), The Old English Illustrated Phannacopoeia. On Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Hatton 76 (s. xi med., Worcester?), see Gneuss, Handlist, no. 633; Ker,
Catalogue, no. 328; and The Old English Herbarium, ed. by de Vriend, pp. xx-xxiii.
There are another two manuscript witnesses of the translation, namely London, British
Library, Harley 585 and 6258B. On Harley 585 (s. xlxi and s. xi 1 ; not illustrated), see
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 421; Ker, Catalogue, no. 231; The Old English Herbarium, ed. by
de Vriend, pp. xxiii-xxviii; Doane, [Books of Prayers and Healing], no. 265; and Anglo-
Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library Ms Harley 585. The
Lacnunga, ed. and transi. by E. Pettit, 2 vols. (Mellen Critical Editions and Translations
6A and 6B), Edwin Mellen Press, Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales 2001, 1, pp. 134-5. On
Harley 6258B (s. xii ex.), see Ker, Catalogue, p. xix; The Old English Herbarium, ed. by
de Vriend, pp. xxviii-xxxviii; Doane, [Books of Prayers and Healing], no. 278; and
Maion, «<llessico tecnico del Peri Didaxeon>>. For the textual tradition of the Old English
translation, see D' Aronco, M.A., «The Transmission of Medical Knowledge in Anglo-
Saxon England: The Voices ofManuscripts>>, in Lendinara, Lazzari and D'Aronco (eds.),
Form and Content of Instruction, pp. 38-48.
38
Thomson, R.M., «The Library of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in the Eleventh and
Twelfth Centuries>>, Speculum 47 (1972), 617-45, at 629. On this manuscript (s. xi ex.,
prob. Bury St Edmunds), see Gneuss, Handlist, no. 549; Ker, Catalogue, no. 302;
Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England, no. 636; Franzen, C., Worcester
Manuscripts (Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 6), Arizona Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 1998, no. 371; and Beccaria, 1 codici, no.
86. Both its text and iconographie apparatus belong to the fJ class (without human figures)
more recent Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole 1431, written at

Canterbury, St Augustine's 39 , where, at the end of the e1eventh century,
under archbishop Lanfranc (1070-1089), we find two physicians, the
monks Albert of Bec and Maurice, listed among the thirteen practitioners
identified by Kealey for the years 1066-110040 .
This trend did not change in the following century when at least four
outstanding illuminated manuscripts of the Latin herbais and animal
pharmacopoeias were made available to the Norman and English
physicians. These codices do not derive from Bodley 130 or Ashmole
1431, although their Latin texts also belong to the fi-tradition. The main
difference consists of the cycle of illustrations in the Pseudo-Apuleius
Latin tract where the pictures of plants are enriched with lively scenes
depicting doctors treating patients, mad dogs or snakes being speared,
mandrakes being uprooted and so on. The ultimate source of these cycles
of illustrations goes back to a late antique tradition of the Pseudo-Apuleius
as documented by two sumptuously illuminated South Italian thirteenth-
century codices, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut.
LVXXIII.16, and Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek 93 41 , and by
the more modest codex from Montecassino, now Florence, BML, Plut.
LVXXIII.41 of the late ninth century42 .
of the Pseudo-Apuleius, see Pseudoapulei Herbarius, ed. by Howald and Sigerist, p. xi,
and Grape-Albers, Spatantike Bilder, p. 18. Index of illustrated manuscripts of the
Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius in D' Aronco, M.A., «Gardens on Vellum: Plants and Herbs
in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts>>, in Dendle and Touwaide (eds.), Health and Healing, pp.
101-27, at 125-7. Facsimile in Gunther, R.T., The Herbal of Apuleius Barbarus from the
Early Twelfth-Century Manuscript formerly in the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds (MS
Bodley 130) (Roxburghe Club Publications 182), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1925.
39
s. xi/xii, Canterbury, St Augustine's: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 527; Ker, Catalogue,
no. 350; Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England, no. 622; and Doane and
Grade, Deluxe and Illustrated Manuscripts containing Technical and Literary Texts, no.
341. The version of this codex belongs to the fJ class (without human figures) of the
Pseudo-Apuleius, and is iconographically very close to Bodley 130, see Grape-Albers,
Spatantike Bilder, p. 18. Old English glosses were added by a twelfth-century Caroline
hand. Reproductions and description in the Bodleian Library on-line Catalogue:
http://www. bodley.ox.ac. uk! dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/mss/ashmole/ 1431.htm.
°
4
41
Kealey, Medieval Medicus, p. 31.
Full description of this illustrative cycle in Grape-Albers, Spiitantike Bilder.
42
Beccaria, 1 codici, no. 89.
London, British Library, Harley 5294 of English provenance is the

earliest of the four manuscripts being dated to the second half of the twelfth
century43 . lts sketchy pen drawings bear strong affinity with Plut.
LV:XXIII.41, evidently going back to the same Benedictine tradition. The
other three codices are enriched by more elegant and higher-quality
illumination and show strong common affinities.
London, British Library, Harley 1585 is dated to the third quarter of the
twelfth century (c. 1150-1175) and, according to a recent survey of the
Harleian manuscripts44 , seems to come from either the Netherlands (Mosan
region) or England. To sorne twenty/thirty years later (last quarter of the
twelfth century) is dated London, British Library, Sloane 1975, the other
medical and herbai collection including the same Latin pharmacopoeias.
According to current scholarship, this splendid codex might have been
produced either in England or in France since, at f. 91, there is an effaced
fourteenth-century ex libris of the Cistercian abbey of St Mary, Ourscamps,
Picardy45 . The fourth manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole
1462, was copied in England and is dated to the late twelfth or early
thirteenth century46 •
Nigel Morgan and Minta Collins noticed the affinities in the
iconographie apparatus of Harley 1585, Sloane 1975 and Ashmole 1462-
same form of plants, and same corresponding scenes illustrating the
43
Description and reproductions in the British Library on-line Catalogue of
Illunùnated Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illunùnatedmanuscripts/record.
asp? MSID=8796&ColliD=8&NStart=5294.
44
Nuvoloni, L., <<The Harleian Medical Manuscripts», The Electronic British Library
Journal, Article 7 (2008). Description and reproductions of the codex in the British
Library on-line Catalogue of Illunùnated Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/
illunùnatedmanuscripts/record.asp ?MSID=7970&ColliD=8&NStart= 15 85.
45
See Schneider, A., <<Deutsche und franzôsische Cistercienser-Handschriften in
eng1ischen Bibliotheken», Cistercienserchronik 61-62 (1962), pp. 43-54, at 46 and note
10. Description and reproductions in the British Library on-line Catalogue of Illunùnated
Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illunùnatedmanuscripts/record.asp?SID=8792
& ColliD=9&NStart=1975.
46
Black, W.H., A Descriptive, Analytical, and Critical Catalogue of the Manuscripts
Bequeathed unto the University of Oxford by Elias Ashmole, Esq., M.D., F.R.S., Windsor
Herald, also of sorne additional Mss. Contributed by Kingsley, Lhuyd, Borlase and others,
2 vols., Oxford University Press, Oxford 1845, cols. 1266-8. Description and
reproductions in the Bodleian Library on-line Catalogue: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/
dept/scwmss/wmss/medievallmss/ashmole/1462.htm#catinfo.
treatments in the Pseudo-Apuleius section. Moreover the three codices

contain a number of similar tables dedicated to cautery and surgery
treatments47 • The two scholars, however, failed to detect two conjunctive
errors that set the three manuscripts apart from the remaining Latin
tradition of the Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius. The three codices share a) the
inverted arder of ch. 43 Herba cotuledon and ch. 44 Herba gallicrus48 ; b)
the displacing of Herba camepitis, ch. 26 of the Pseudo-Apuleius49 , to the
end of the Herbarius, that is after the mandrake (ch. 131 Herba
mandragora) 50 • Ashmole 1462 is the latest of the three codices; Sloane
1975, however, could not have been its antecedent since it bears a peculiar
significant error, the omission of the first cure of Herba xifion51 • I would,
therefore, tentatively suggest that these significant mistakes were already in
Harley 1585 (or in its antecedent) and spread from it into the other Norman
codices.
Although these codices are luxury copies made for an audience of great
consequence and wealth, they were read, used, and glossed by Englishmen
who inserted Old English plant names clearly connected with the Old
English botanical lore and maybe with the vernacular translation of the
herbals 52 . On the other hand, in the two centuries that followed the
47
According to Morgan, Sloane 1975 cornes from the same workshop as Ashmole
1462, see Morgan, N., Early Gothie Manuscripts, 2 vols. (A Survey of Manuscripts
Illurninated in the British Isles 4), Harvey Miller, London 1982-1988, 1, pp. 1190-250,
note 10, pls. nos. 26 and 28 (with additional bibliography). On the other hand, Minta
Collins suggests that Sloane 1975 is a direct copy of Harley 1585, see Collins, M.,
Medieval Herbais. The Illustrative Traditions, The British Library, London 1 University of
Toronto Press, Toronto 2000, p. 205.
48
Pseudoapulei Herbarius, ed. by Howald and Sigerist, pp. 92-93. The inversion is
found, respectively, in Harley 1585, ff. 32ra-32va; Sloane 1975, ff. 26ra-b; and Ashmole
1462, f. 25v.
49
Pseudoapulei Herbarius, ed. by Howald and Sigerist, p. 67.
50
Ibid., pp. 122-5; the displacing of this chapter is attested, respectively, in Harley
1585, f. 57r; Sloane 1975, f. 49r; and Ashmole 1462, f. 44v.
51
Pseudoapulei Herbarius, ed. by Howald and Sigerist, p. 96: for this passage, see
Sloane 1975, f. 27vb, ]ines 13-24.
52
The Old English glosses in Ashmole 1431 are conveniently listed in Bierbaumer,
P., Der botanische Wortschatz des Altenglischen. III Teil: Der botanische Wortschatz in
altenglischen Glossen (Grazer Beitrage zur englischen Philologie 3), Lang, Frankfurt
a.M., Bern and Las Vegas 1979, p. xvii. See also D'Aronco, M.A., «Il viaggio delle erbe
dall'Inghilterra anglosassone a quella norrnanna (e ritorno?)», in R. Del Pezzo, S. Luongo,
V. Micillo, D. Piacentino and M. Raffa (eds.), Intrecci di motivi e terni nel Medioevo
Conquest, Old English texts were never forgotten. The extant manuscript
copies of the original Old English translation - Harley 585, Vitellius C.iii
and Hatton 76 - were repeatedly glossed and revised by French and
English readers who used fi-recension copies of the Herbarius for their
corrections and additions 53 • These were not sterile exercises, however. The
Old English Herbarium must have been considered a useful tool for the
practice of medicine if, sorne time after the Conquest, it was re-arranged
alphabetically (to my knowledge, for the first time in Western Europe), that
is its chapters were re-ordered alphabetically according to the Latin names
of the herbs. This alphabetical redaction (ff. lr-5lr), together with the last
Old English book of medicine, the Peri Didaxeon (ff. 51v-66v), has come
down to us in a late twelfth century manuscript, now London, British
Library Harley 6258B, a codex that is the copy of a now lost exemplar
composed at least sorne hundred years earlier according to its linguistic
features 54 . Its vernacular content - an alphabetical index of useful
medicinal herbs and a 'modern' treatise on medicine with specifie remedies
- and its look - a small handy copy which could be easily carried in a
pouch and shows signs of long usage - point to having been used by an
Anglo-Saxon physician. The codex - or its exemplar - is more or less
contemporary with the other great achievement of late Anglo-Saxon
medicine, i.e. the two plant name glossaries, now Durham, Cathedral
Library, Hunter 10055 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Mise. 56i 6 •
These two glossaries preserve and enhance the plant lore accumulated
during the previous four (or even five) centuries in Anglo-Saxon England.
germanico e romanzo. Atti del Convegno Napoli, 27-28 novembre 2007, Università degli
Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale". Dipartimento di Studi Letterari e Linguistici dell'Europa,
Naples 2010, pp. 83-98.
53
See D' Aronco, «The Transmission of Medical Knowledge>>.
54
See above, note 23.
55
s. xii in., Durham: Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England, nos.
278-81; Ker, Catalogue, no. 110; and Doane, AN., Keefer, S.L. and Rollason, D.,
Manuscripts of Durham, Ripon, and York (Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche
Facsimile 14), Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2007,
no. 123. The glossary was published in Das Durhamer Pflanzenglossar. Lateinisch und
Altenglisch, ed. by B. von Lindheim (Beitrage zur englische Philologie 35), Poppinghaus,
Bochum-Langendreer 1941; repr. Johnson Repr. Corporation, New York 1967.
56
s. xii in., unknown English centre: Ker, Catalogue, no. 345, and Doane and Grade,
De luxe and Illustrated Manuscripts containing Technical and Literary Texts, no. 400.
Hunter 100 is an extraordinary witness of the comp1ex relationship

between Anglo-Saxon and Norman scholarship in the wake of the
Conquest. lt was copied at Durham, around the first years of the twelfth
century, from an Old English antecedent by a copyist who at times shows
problems in understanding the script of his model. The codex seems to
have been destined to educational use57 . It contains a rniscellany of
scientific texts that range from computus material to medical tracts
completed by sorne tables illustrating the location of cautery points on
human figures (ff. 119r-120v). The plant glossary (ff. 82r-84v) is inserted
after the tract De ponderibus and before the theoretical medical treatise De
quattuor humoribus corporis 58 •
The contemporary English interest in scholastic medicine is weil
represented by Laud Mise. 567. Besides preserving the largest plant name
Latin-Old English glossary59 , the codex contains a number of medical
tracts among which the Viaticum peregrinantis by Constantine the African.
Since Constantine died in 1087, the presence of one of his works in
England at this early date is perfectly coherent with what was happening in
the recently established medical schools on the Continent, in particular, at
Salemo where a few Englishmen can be identified in the twelfth century,
including the two Cambridgeshire brothers, Matthew and Warin (d. 1195),
who later became monks at Saint Albans 60 . Anyhow, by the second half of
the century, most physicians were putting together specialised libraries.
Kealey records a Master Herbert who, according to the twelfth-century
catalogue of Durham, Cathedral Library, gave the monks a substantial gift
of books that consisted of sorne twenty-six classical medical texts
comprising works by Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, Isaac Judaeus,
Roger of Salemo, Reginald of Montpellier, Johannes Platearius of Salemo,
Philippe de Thaon, and Constantine the African61 .
57
In the margin off. 44r, containing Helperie' s De computa, there is even a drawing
of a pupil being flogged.
58
See Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England, nos. 279-80.
59
The glossary (ff. 67 -73) was published in The Laud Herba[ Glossary, ed. by J.R.
Stracke, Rodopi, Amsterdam 1974. Philip Rusche is currently preparing a critical edition,
see Rusche, «The Source for Plant Names>>, p. 130, note 7.
°
6
61
Kealey, Medieval Medicus, p. 18.
Durham, Cathedral Library, B.iv.24: see Botfield, B., Catalogi Veteres Librorum
Ecclesiae Cathedralis Dunelm. Catalogues of the Library of Durham Cathedral, at
various periodsfrom the Conquest to the Dissolution, including Catalogues of the Library
The Norman and English physicians, who seem to have chiefly written
in Latin, were thus keeping abreast of the latest scientific literature. The
first remedies in French appear already at the end of the eleventh century in
Sloane 283962 ; and later, in the twelfth century, in London, British Library,
Royal 5.E.vi63 and Royal 12.C.xix which provides also the earliest
attestations of sorne plant names 64 . By the thirteenth century Anglo-
Norman begins to be used to a fairly large extent side by side with English
and Latin. The earliest Norman version of one of the most influential
Pseudo-Hippocratic treatises put together in the Middle Ages, the so-called
'Lettre d'Hippocrate', is preserved in a codex copied in England c. 1240-
1250, London, British Library, Harley 978, which is approximately
contemporary with its Latin version in London, British Library, Royal
12.B.xii (s. xiii 2) 65 . Harley 978 66 , a musical, medical, and literary
miscellany in Latin, French, and English, contains also a trilingual glossary
(ff. 26ra-27rb) that shows definite similarities with the one in London,
British Library, Sloane 146, ff. 69v-72v.
Sloane 146, a medical miscellany written towards the end of the
thirteenth century, is remarkable for its collection of recipes in Latin,
of the Abbey of Hulne and of the Mss. Preserved in the Library of Bishop Cosin at
Durham (The Publications of the Surtees Society 7), Nichols, London 1838, pp. iii-iv and
7; and Mynors, R.A.B., Durham Cathedral Manuscripts, Oxford, Oxford University Press
1939, p. 2 and nos. 91, 93. See also Kealey, Medieval Medicus, pp. 44-47, and notes 27-
30.
62
The codex contains, among other texts, the earliest remedies in French, see Hunt,
Popular Medicine, pp. 64-65. See note 22 above.
63
Ibid., p. 65.
64
It is a medical miscellany containing an impressive collection of medical recipes,
written in England in the second half of the twelfth century, see Hunt, Popular Medicine,
p. 66. For a full survey of medieval botanical glossaries from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth centuries, see id., Plant Names of Medieval England, Brewer, Cambridge 1989.
65
The Latin text of the 'Lettre' is edited in Hunt, Popular Medicine, pp. 124-36.
66
This manuscript is the famous thirteenth-century miscellany or 'manual' from
Reading Abbey including the song 'Sumer is icumen in', alongside medical texts. Written
in England (Oxford?) in third quarter of the thirteenth century, possibly between 1261 and
1265, see Nuvoloni, <<The Harleian Medical Manuscripts>>, and Hunt, Popular Medicine,
pp. 100-41. Description and reproduction in the British Library on-line Catalogue of
illuminated manuscripts, http ://www. bl. uk/catalogues!illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?
MSID=8682& ColliD=8&NStart=978.
French, and English67 • Also the glossary it contains is noteworthy: written

in the second half of the thirteenth century, it begins with a batch of
trilingual glosses labelled in red gallice and anglice. It then continues with
entries in Latin and interpretamenta in English that show a marked
resemblance with the glossary in Hunter 10068 .
In the early post-Conquest centuries, monolingual Latin botanical
glossaries are also present in a number of manuscripts. Among these one
worth remembering is the glossary in London, British Library, Sloane
475 69 , ff. 143r-160r, that is the so-calledAnesus Glossary which, according
to Philip Rusche, was one of the sources for the Laud Glossary70 . Also
another Latin glossary, the Salernitan plant name glossary Alphita, was
circulating in these centuries 71 . A fourteenth-century exemplar of Alphita
67
The codex contains about 530 recipes in Latin, French, and English, arranged
according to the varions complaints and covering a great variety of conditions, see Hunt,
Popular Medicine, p. 264; the remedies are published ibid., at 265-96.
68
The two glossaries in Harley 978 and Sloane 146 were first printed in Leechdoms,
ed. by Cockayne, III, pp. 299-305 and pp. 311-50, respectively. A more recent edition is
Hunt, T., «The Trilingual Glossary in MS London BL Sloane 146 ff. 69v-72r>>, English
Studies 70 (1989), pp. 289-310, and id., Popular Medicine, pp. 107-24
69
s. xi ex. or xi/xii: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 498.1, and Gameson, The Manuscripts of
Early Norman England, no. 567. The manuscript is a relevant medical miscellany that
combines traditional medical material (recipes, charms, prognostics) with treatises by the
great medical authorities of the past such as Galen's Epistola de febribus. Description in
the British Library on-line Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts: http//www.
bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=l244&ColliD=9&NStart=475. The
codex also contains a copy of the Practica which is textually very close to the putative
exemplar of its Old English version: see Maion, «The Fortune of the So-Called Practica
Petrocelli>>, pp. 504-5 and 507-11.
70
Rusche, «The Source for Plant Names>>, p. 137 and note 36.
71
Alphita was first published by S. De Renzi (ed.), Collectio salernitana, 5 vols.,
Filatre-Sebezio, Naples 1852-1859; repr. Fomi, Bologna 1967, III, pp. 272-322, and later
on in Alphita: A Medico-Botanical Glossary from the Bodleian Manuscript Selden B. 35,
ed. by J.L.G. Mowat (Anecdota Oxoniensia. Mediaeval and Modern Series I,ii),
Clarendon Press, Oxford 1887; repr. Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprints, LaVergne,
TN 2009. A new edition of the glossary has just been published, Alphita, ediciôn cr{tica y
comentario, ed. by A. Garcîa Gonzâles (Edizione nazionale 'La Scuola Medica
Salernitana' 2), SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, Florence 2007. See also Mandrin, I.,
Griechische und griechisch vermittelte Elemente in der Synonymenliste Alphita. Ein
Beitrag zur Geschichte der medizinischen Fachterminologie im lateinischen Mittelalter
(Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters 44), Lang, Bern 2008. Both Garcîa
Gonzâles and Mandrin's volumes were reviewed by K.-D. Fischer in Medical History
October 53,4 (2009), pp. 613-6.
produced in England, now London, British Library, Sloane 28472 , preserves

the following glosses:
Elacterium succus cucurbite agrestis idem, sed elacterides sunt cucumeres agrestes, tarn
fructus eorum quam ipsa erba. Item lacterides sunt cathapucie.
(Elaterium is the juice of wild cucumber; elacterides are wild cucumbers, both the fruit
and the plant itself. Lacterides are caper-spurges).
Electrum multos habet stipites, folia virida et flores croceos.
(Electrum has many twigs, green leaves and yellow flowers) 73 .
The second gloss that describes electrum as a plant is unique in the

textual tradition of Alphita where electrum is never mentioned74 . The gloss
is also unique in the Latin Continental glossary tradition that draws upon
Isidore's encyclopaedia75 • In fact, in the Continental glossaries, electrum,
can mean either 'alloy' (generally gold and silver, but also other metals) or
'amber' 76 , though, never, a plant. Things are quite different in the Old
English glossographic tradition77 . In Anglo-Saxon glossaries, besides the
72
Alphita is at ff. lr-48v: see Alphita, ed. by Garda Gonzales, pp. 99-100. The same
recension is preserved in another manu script of English origin, dated to the late fourteenth
century, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. Selden. B.35 (ff. 53r-82v). See the on-line
Catalogue of the Bodleian Library: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/
online/medieval/selden/selden-b.html. The codex contains an incomplete version of
Alphita (letters a-s). Mowat based his edition on Arch. Selden B.35 with integrations from
Sloane 284. The two witnesses seem to derive from a common ancestor: see Alphita, ed.
by Garda Gonzâles, pp. 116-7.
73
Alphita, ed. by Mowat, pp. 53-54.
74
Alphita, ed. by Garda Gonzales, pp. 202-12.
75
Etym. XVI.xxiv.1-3 ('De electro'): Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum
sive Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical Texts), Clarendon
Press, Oxford 19ll; see also XVI.xv.3 ('De aureis'). Amber (also sucinum) is dealt with
in Etym. XVI.viii.6-7 ('De rubris gemmis') and XVII.vii.31 ('De propriis nominibus
arborum').
76
Electrum with the denotation of 'alloy' is documented in the Abstrusa (CGL
IV,61,39), Affatim (CGL IV,510,9 and 10), Abavus (CGL IV,335,20), and AA glossaries
(CGL V,453,5). With the denotation of 'amber', the !emma is preserved in the
Hermeneumata Pseudo-Dositheana (e.g. CGL 111,202,59 and 274,28) as weil as in the
Asaru (CGL 111,560,75; 562,35) and Asphaltum glossaries ( CGL III,583,56).
77
Full discussion on elehtre and its meanings in D' Aronco, M.A., «A Problematic
Plant-Name: elehtre, a Reconsideration», in A. Touwaide and A. Van Arsdall (eds.),
standard interpretations of electrum as smylting or eolhsand 'alloy', and

glœr/sap 'arnber' 78 , there occurs the loanword elehtre79 . Old English
elehtre is documented as early as in the First Erfurt Glossary80 •
It seems, therefore, evident that the Alphita glass, electrum, was
entered in the exemplar of the two English recensions by a copyist who
was familiar with the medicinal plant lore as transmitted by the Anglo-
Saxon vernacular glossaries. Accordingly, I would tentatively suggest that
the glass regarding elacterium might have ignited a connection with
electrum that the copyist knew to be recorded in the Nomina herbarum
section of glossaries such as the Antwerp-London or lElfric's Glossary:
Antwerp-London Glossary: «Electrum elehtre» 81
Rooted in the Mediterranean Tradition: Essays on Early Western Medicine in Honour of

John Riddle, forthcoming in the Ashgate series, Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean.
78
See D' Aronco, «A Problematic Plant-Name>>, notes 47, 48 and 60 and C.
Giliberto's contribution to the present volume, pp. 119-51.
79
According to the Toronto Dictionary of Old English, Old English elehtre is the
name of «a plant, probably lupin», but it also denotes sorne other plants such as malum
terrae, maura, maurella, and walupia: see A. diPaolo Healey (ed.), Dictionary of Old
English: A to G on CD-ROM, Version 2, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
Toronto 2008, s. v. elehtre. See, however D' Aronco, «A Problematic Plant-Name».
°
8
CGL V,359,20 in note. The entry is also found in the Épinal Glossary. The two
glossaries occur in Erfurt/Gotha, Universitiits- und Forschungsbibliothek, Dep. Erf. Cod.
Ampl. 2° 42, ff. lr-14v (s. viii/ix, Cologne), and Épinal, Bibliothèque Municipale 72, ff.
94r-107v (s. vii ex. or vii/viii, England: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 824). Old English Glosses
in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, ed. by J.D. Pheifer, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1974, only
published the entries with an Old English interpretamentum. The First Erfurt Glossary is
printed in CGL V, pp. 337-401 (with the variant readings of the Épinal Glossary in note).
On the possible connection of these glossaries with seventh-century Canterbury, see
Lapidge, M., «The School of Theodore and Hadrian>>, Anglo-Saxon England 15 (1986),
pp. 45-72, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature 600-899, The Hambledon Press, London
and Rio Grande, OH 1996, pp. 141-68 and addenda pp. 502-3; Pheifer, J.D., «Early
Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of Canterbury», Anglo-Saxon England 16 (1987),
pp. 17-44; and Rusche, «The Source for Plant Names», p. 131.
81
MS Additional 32,246, ed. by L. Kindschi, unpubl. PhD. diss., Stanford University 1955,
p. 109, 7. This entry belongs to the main bilingual glossary in Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus
Museum 16.2 and London, British Library, Additional 32246 (s. xi 1, prob. Abingdon [or
Continent?]): Gneuss, Handlist, no. 775, and Ker, Catalogue, no. 2. See also Forster, M.,
«Die altenglische Glossenhandschrift Plantinus 32 (Antwerpen) und Additional 32246
(London)», Anglia 41 (1917), pp. 94-161.
LElfric's Glossary: <<Electrum, electre>> 82
Also it is not too far-fetched to sunnise that elacterium and electrum

could have been interpreted as being etymologically connected, the former
being the name of the product, the latter the name of the plant from which
elacterium is produced. The product, elacterium or more commonly
elaterium (or -ius), a strong purgative much used from antiquity onwards 83 ,
is the extract of the fruit of cucumis agrestis or si/vestris, that is the
squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium Rich.). Thus, the copyist simply
described the plant that has many traits in common with common
cucumber: a tuft from which raise numerous thick, fleshy stems, with thick,
fleshy leaves, and pale yellow flowers with a brighter yellow centre84 •
1 would like to close this inevitably incomplete survey of the medical
literature in post-Conquest England stressing the high level of her
physicians, their learning, the earnestness of their approach to the
discipline, and, last but not least, the continuons and uninterrupted tradition
of Anglo-Saxon learning. The amount of medical and botanical treatises,
remedies, glosses and glossaries, imported and subsequently produced in
the country in the three current languages, Latin, French, and English,
testifies to the remarkable level of both medical knowledge and practice of
healthcare in the somehow dimly lit centuries after the Conquest. Centuries
that were seminal for the development of England, of its language and of
its culture.
82
(Sammlung englischer Denkmiiler in kritischen Ausgaben 1), Weidmann, Berlin 1880;
Olms, Hildesheim 2001, p. 310,11.
83
See Opsomer, C., Index de la pharmacopée du !" au X" siècle, 2 vols., Olms,
Hildesheim 1 Weidmann, Zürich and New York 1989, I, pp. 232-4 and 262-3, s.vv.
cucumis and elaterium.
84
See Grieve, M., A Modern Herbai, 2 vols., Dover Publications Inc., New York
1982, p. 241.
THE REGULARIS CONCORD/A
GLOSSED AND TRANSLATED
Joyce Hill
The glossed text of my title is the version of the Regularis Concordia on

ff. 3r-27v of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii, which has a
virtually continuo us interlinear gloss in Old English 1. This is a mid-
eleventh-century Canterbury manuscript, and the Old English gloss,
which is unique to this manuscript, probably originated there, although
the extant copy was taken, together with the Latin text, from an earlier
exemplar; it is not an intervention made when this version of the Latin
text was written out2 • The translation of the Regularis Concordia to
which the title refers is found on pp. 1-7 of Part A of Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College 201 3 • This is in a hand of the beginning of the eleventh
century but, as I have argued elsewhere, there was at least one antecedent
copy since the surviving text incorporates, sometimes rather awkwardly
in terms of syntax but indistinguishably in terms of the mise-en-page,
adaptations for female use which, in an earlier manuscript, must have
1
Die Regularis Concordia und ihre altenglische Interlinearversion, ed. by L.
Komexl (TUEPh 17), Fink, Munich 1993. References to this text will be by Komexl's
line numbers, within the body of the article.
2
On the date and origin of the manuscript, see Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts
Containing Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl., 1990, pp.
240-8 (no. 186), and Gneuss, H., «Origin and Provenance of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts:
The Case of Cotton Tiberius A.III>>, in P.R. Robinson and R. Zim (eds.), Of the Making of
Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented ta M.B.
Parkes, Scolar Press, Aldershot 1997, pp. 13-48. On the origin of the gloss and its
relationship to the Latin text, see Komexl, L., «The Regularis Concordia and its Old
English Gloss>>, Anglo-Saxon England 24 (1995), pp. 95-130, at 118, 122-3.
3
Ker, Catalogue, pp. 82-90 (no. 49). 1 am grateful to the Master and Fellows of
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge for giving me access to this manuscript. The only
edition of this Regularis Concordia text is th at of J. Zupitza, «Ein weiteres Bruchstück der
Regularis Concordia in altenglischer Sprache>>, Archiv für das Studium der neueren
Sprachen und Litteraturen 84 (1890), pp. 1-24. My analysis is based on this text and the
original manuscript. However, Zupitza' s line numbers cannot be used for reference
because, although the numbers are printed in increments of five, they are often printed at
four rather than five 1ine intervals. My line references, which will be within the body of
the article, will therefore follow the practice of the Dictionary of Old English, which has
renumbered the lines of Zupitza's text in order to produce a workable sequence both for
the Dictionary itself (see below, note 20) and the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus
(see below, note 14).
250 JOYCE HILL
existed as non-authorial interlineations and marginalia4 • This means that

the original translation must have been made not long after the issue of
the Latin text in 970x973. Where the translation was made, where it
gained its adaptations for female use, and where the present copy was
written are all unknown, although the intimate understanding of the
Regularis Concordia revealed throughout the translation and the sense
that it conveys of the Regularis Concordia as a lived experience makes it
certain that it came from within the centre of the Benedictine Reform,
both temporally and geographically. Part A of CCCC 201 (to be
distinguished from other material in a slightly later band, with which it
was joined by Matthew Parker in the sixteenth century) has sorne
linguistic traits which might suggest a south-eastern origin, perhaps
Canterbury; on the other hand, the contents allow an equally good case
(or, perhaps more accurately, an equally uncertain case) to be made for
York or Worcester5 . York, however, could not possibly have been the
point of origin for the Regularis Concordia text, nor a locale in which the
CCCC 201 copy would have been needed since the Reform was
essentially a southern phenomenon. As Budny notes, there are additions
in Part A by a scribe of New Minster, Winchester, and perhaps, after all,
it originated there, although of course, as she acknowledges, the
manuscript could have brought together material from a number of
different centres6 . We can be certain about one thing, however: the
female bouse or bouses following the elaborate ritual of the Regularis
Concordia so closely that they required precise adaptations to be made
were few and were in the south, within the orbit of Winchester since, as
Sarah Foot reminds us, it was at best only a handful of West-Saxon royal
foundations for female religious that were organised this way 7 . Beyond
4
Hill, J., «Making Women Visible: An Adaptation of the Regularis Concordia in
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 201>>, in C.E. Karkov and N. Howe (eds.),
Conversion and Colonization in Anglo-Saxon En gland (Essays in Anglo-Saxon Studies 2.
MRTS 318), Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2006, pp.
153-67.
5
The Old English Poem Judgement Day II: A Critical Edition with editions ofDe die
iudicii and the Hatton 113 Homily Be dornes drege, ed. by G.D. Caie (Anglo-Saxon Texts
2), Brewer, Cambridge 2000, pp. 7-9.
6
Budny, M., Insular, Anglo-Saxon and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2 vols., Medieval Institute Publications, Kalamazoo,
MI 1997, I, p. 478.
7
Foot, S., Veiled Women I. The Disappearance of Nuns from Anglo-Saxon England,
Ashgate, Aldershot 2000, particularly ch. 4 (pp. 85-110), ch. 6 (pp. 145-98) and ch. 7 (pp.
199-208).
THE REGULARIS CONCORDIA GLOSSED AND TRANSLATED 251
this, we cannat go.

The Old English translation in CCCC 201 is only part of the
Regularis Concordia text, covering the period from Palm Sunday to part
way through Good Friday, corresponding in Symons' edition8 with ch.
36, p. 34 «Dominica die Palmarum» through to ch. 43, p. 42 «dicat
primam». What preceded this was evidently lost before it passed into the
bands of Matthew Parker, who then erased the first thirty-eight lines of
what is now p. 1 in arder to give the surviving text a tidy starting-point
with the beginning of the rituals for Palm Sunday. The text terminates,
abruptly and inexplicably, in mid-sentence on line 19 of p. 7, which is a
fully ruled up page. The brevity of the extant text limits the amount of
direct lexical comparison that can be made with the interlinear glass in
Cotton Tiberius A.iii but, as this article will show, it is a comparison that
is nevertheless tantalisingly productive. In making this analysis, I shall
not be discussing the translation's interpolated adaptations for female use,
since these are not the work of the original translator. I am also not
concerned with grammar, syntax or, in any direct sense, with style. It
goes without saying that there is a marked contrast between the Tiberius
and Corpus texts in these respects, given that one is driven by the Latin in
being a verbatim rendering, while the other displays a confident
command of clear and precise Old English prose, which is at once
idiomatic and appropriately formai. In fact, as will be demonstrated, there
is a marked difference between the glossator's text-only frame of
reference and the translator's broader horizon, in which the text as lived
informs his understanding of the text as written. Thus, despite the limited
opportunity for direct comparison, the examinati on of these two texts si de
by side raises sorne interesting questions about glossing and translation
practice and illuminates aspects of Old English lexis, sorne of which
present problems to modern lexicographers.
In his study of Winchester vocabulary, Walter Hofstetter
demonstrated (with all due caveats for the limited statistical evidence
available from the short Corpus text), that the two vernacular renderings
of the Regularis Concordia were strongly differentiated: the vocabulary
of the translation is clearly marked by Winchester usage; and that of the
8
I refer here and elsewhere in this article to Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis
Monachorum Sanctimonialiumque. The Monastic Agreement of the Monks and Nuns of
the English Nation, ed. by T. Symons, Nelson, London 1953 since, although it is not the
most recent edition, it is by far the most widely available.
252 JOYCE HILL
gloss most definitely is noë. Indeed, as his analysis shows, they stand at
opposite ends of the spectrum, with the Regularis Concordia gloss being
more emphatically non-Winchester than most other texts in this group.
The two texts display further lexical differentiation beyond the ward-
range explored by Hofstetter. For example, the CCCC 201 translation
invariably uses palmtwig for Latin palma (lines 9, 16, 19, 26) whereas
Tiberius A.iii never does, always choosing instead the simple form
palma, which is predictably inflected as an Old English weak noun (lines
839, 846, 853, 856, 863) 10 . ecce 201 uses forms of ontendan when
describing the New Pire ceremonies (lines 129, 131), but Tiberius A.iii
prefers forms of onœlan (line 962) and onlihtan (line 965), the use of two
verbs rather than one perhaps being driven by the fact that the Latin also
uses two different verbs, accendere and illuminare (accendatur and
illuminetur). In their respective renderings of the Maundy, CCCC 201
consistently uses the verb wipian for the drying of the feet (lines 120,
150), while Tiberius A.iii uses the more common drygan (lines 951, 990).
For Latin silenter Tiberius A.iii prefers stillice (line 921, two
occurrences, and line 927 in the passage under consideration, but also
consistently elsewhere, at lines 368, 743, and 1151). By contrast, stillice
is not used in ecce 201 where, at lines 85-86, 87, 94, and 99, we find
swilunge/swiglunge instead, a ward which is in fact unique to this text.
Such differentiated choices may be nothing more than persona!
preference or ingrained translation habit but, as we have learnt from
Gneuss 11 and Hofstetter 12 , and subsequently from Mechthild Gretsch 13 ,
choices may also point to traditions and habits traceable to particular
communities or intellectual traditions. It is noteworthy, for example, in
relation to the examples I have cited here, that the Dictionary of Old
English Web Corpus (hereafter DOE Web Corpus) shows that JElfric,
9
Hofstetter, W., «Winchester and the Standardization of Old English Vocabulary>>,
Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988), pp. 139-61 and, in more detail, id., Winchester und der
spiitaltenglische Sprachgebrauch. Untersuchungen zur geographischen und zeitlichen
Verbreitung altenglischer Synonyme (TUEPh 14), Fink, Munich 1987.
10
Later, at line 1087, palmas is not glossed, but this is in the midst of one of the rare
unglossed passages, so no inferences can be drawn from it. The other instance, at 1ine
1227, is clearly glossed with Old English palmam for Latin palmam, but is marked with a
following asterisk by Kornexl as defective.
11
Gneuss, H., «The Origin of Standard Old English and JEthelwold's School at
Winchester», Anglo-Saxon En gland 1 (1972), pp. 63-83.
12
Hofstetter, «Winchester and the Standardization of Old English Vocabulary».
13
Gretsch, M., The lntellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform
(CSASE 25), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999.
THE REGULARIS CONCORD/A GLOSSED AND TRANSLATED 253
firmly within the Winchester tradition of lexis, chooses palmtwig more

often than palma; and conversely that stillice for 'silently', which the
glossator uses, is never used in texts identified by Hofstetter as marked by
Winchester vocabulary 14 .
There is a further differentiation in the way that the glossator and
translator deal with the idea of a sign. In the part of the Regularis
Concordia text that is available for comparison, there are two kinds of
sign: the practical sort, in which sorne kind of signal is given for
something to be doue; and the figurative sort, in which there is reference
to a spiritual mystery or its meaning. The translator is sensitive to these
distinctions. On the three occasions when he refers to the spiritual
signification he uses tacnung or getacnung:
On sumra œfœstra manna cyrican gewislice we onfundon hwœthwara, j:Jœt to micelre

sauwla anbryrdnesse and to getacnunge gastlices ]:linges weorô begunnen (lines 38-
40)
Pes gewuna pisse cyriclican anbryrdnesse, j:Jœs ]Je ic wene, fram rihtgelyfedum
mannum for pi wearô aredod and to gewunan geset, j:Jœt se micla hoga para j:Jystra,
]Je j:Jisne j:Jrydœledon middangeard ures drihtnes j:Jrowunge mid ungewunelicum ege
j:Jearle swiôe bregde, gewislice getacnod wœre and eac swylce se frofer j:Jœre
apostolican bodunge, ]Je geond ealne middangeard bodude ume drihten for ealles
mancynnes hœle his fœder hyrsurnne oô deaôes j:Jrowunge, hluttorlice j:Jurh pas
tacnunge wœre onwrigen. (lines 56-63)
Pam gesungenum for digelre getacnunge sumes gerynes, gif hit swa gelicaô,
gescryden hy pa gebroôra, gif hit munecas synd. and gan to j:Jœre cyrican dura sceaft
mid nœdran anlicnysse mid him berende, and j:Jœr niwe fyr of flinte sy geslœgen.
(lines 124-28)
In the first of these examples getacnunge is an editorial emendation

of the scribe's ge eacnunge, but there is no doubt that this emendation is
correct. The Old English word translates Latin indicium in the phrase rei
indicium. In the second example purh pas tacnunge has no equivalent in
Latin; the phrase is an addition by the translator to underscore the fact
that what is being referred to is a spiritual sign. In the third example the
Latin word being translated is again indicium in the phrase mysterii
indicium. By contrast, when dealing with the practical sign, the translator
sometimes provides an interpretative gloss which specifies how the signal
14
Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, 2009 re1ease, last accessed July 2010 at:
http ://tapor .library. utoronto.ca/doecorpus/.
254 JOYCE HILL
is made and so does not invariably use a word for 'sign' - a point to
which I shall retum 15 - but on those occasions where there is a lexical
item for the practical sign, he chooses tacen or beacen:
And œt pœre priddan geendunge ealle endemes to cneowgebedum feallan and mid
dihlum gebedum gewunelice mid micelre anbryrdnesse him to Criste geœrendian and
ealle endemes mid tacne pœs ealdres arisen. (lines 51-54)
JEfter pam Pater noster swilunge cweôen Viuet anima mea et laudabit te oô pœs
sealmes eude and œfter pam Credo in deum, and on pœm precem, ponne hy cumen
toefnes pan, pœr hy heora andetnysse don sculon, se ealdor mid beacne on pœre
formellan pœt getacnige, and swa œfter gewunan heora confessionem don, pœt is
heora andetnesse. (lines 86-91)
Mid munecum ponne ongemang pœs abbodes handpweale gange se diacon, pe pœre
wucan wicpen is, and hine mid dalmatican gescryde and pa oôre wicpenas mid alban,
and gecnylledum beacne gan hi in, and se diacon mid dalmatican gescryd bere pa
Cristes boe. (lines 156-60)
In the first of these examples, the whole of the phrase «mid micelre
anbryrdnesse him to Criste gererendian and ealle endemes mid tacne pres
ealdres arisen» is an explanatory comment by the translator, which has no
equivalent in the Latin. For the second and third example, where beacne
is used, it translates Latin signa. The glossator, however, never uses
tacnung or getacnung in the passage under scrutiny or anywhere else in
the text but, as we see from the DOE Web Corpus, most commonly
employs tacen (x35), occasionally beacen (x3) and once gebicnung (with
the spelling gebicnucge, here in the dative) without making any
distinctions between the kinds of sign being referred to. The careful
precision of the translator, which is ali the more marked when set
alongside the practice of the glossator, may be compared with that of
JElfric who, as the DOE Web Corpus confirms, favours getacnung to
designate spiritual signification. This use of getacnung (and to a lesser
extent tacnung) is not included in Hofstetter's analysis of Winchester
words.
Another example of the translator's alert attentiveness, by contrast
with the glossator' s more mechanical approach is to be found in the
description of the actions accompanying the reading of the account of the
tearing of Christ's raiment on Good Friday. According to the Regularis
Concordia, the deacon reads the account of the Passion in John's Gospel,
15
See below, pp. 257-8.
and when he cornes to the words «Partiti sunt uestimenta mea» (Io
XIX.24), two other deacons «in modum furantis», 'like thieves', strip
from the altar the cloth «quae prius fuerat sub euangelio posita», 'which
had before been placed under the gospel', meaning of course, placed
under the gospel book, as Symons made clear in his modern English
translation 16 . The Tiberius gloss simply gives «under godspelle» (line
1034), with godspell, here as elsewhere, being the gloss's standard
equivalent for euangelium. But in the Corpus translation, which in any
case describes a more dramatic version of this enactment, «sub
euangelio» is rendered as «under prere Cristes bec» (line 204) 17• It is,
after all, an actual gospel-book that is in question here, clearly
differentiated from the gospellection that is being read simultaneously.
The naming of the Hours, which are of course frequently referred to
in connection with Holy Week, is a further point of contrastive practice.
The translator has a decided preference for the compound form with the
second element -sang; tidsang for the generic hora, and uhtsang,
primsang, undernsang, middœgsang, nonsang, œfensang, and nihtsang
for Matins with Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, and
Compline. Only on three occasions does he use the simplex forms: non
(line 124), nones (line 185) and œfen (line 149, where the reference is
clearly to Vespers, named again in the phrase «refter refensange» later in
the same line). Several of the simplex forms without -sang are potentially
ambiguous (uht, middœg, œfen, niht) since they also function as part of
everyday, non-ecclesiastical vocabulary. Even so, there would not be
much room for ambiguity within a vernacular rendering of the Regularis
Concordia, and indeed throughout the whole of the Tiberius gloss the
choice is commonly in favour of the simplex forms. But the marked
preference for -sang forms is not the only means by which the Corpus
translator emphasises singing. When referring to the recitation of the
Hours, he almost always uses singan even when singing is not indicated
in the Latin text. The glossator, in these instances, follows the Latin
literally in using «beon geendude» (line 912) for «fuerint finite» («biô
gesungen» in line 78 of the translation), and «si gedon» (lines 872 and
16
Regularis Concordia, ed. by Symons, p. 42.
17
For a detailed analysis of the ritual described in CCCC 201, which is notably more
vivid than in the Latin text of the Regularis Concordia, see Hill, J., «Rending the Garment
and Reading by the Rood: Regularis concordia Rituals for Men and Women», in H.
Gittos and M.B. Bedingfield (eds.), The Liturgy of the Anglo-Saxon Church (Henry
Bradshaw Society Subsidia 5), Boydell for the Henry Bradshaw Society, Woodbridge
2005, pp. 53-64, at 56-59.
256 JOYCE HILL
1013) for «agatur» («sy [ ... ] gesungen»: in lines 37 and 182 of the
translation). Similarly, «Domine, miserere nobis» is said in the Latin,
«qui dicant», and this is literally rendered as «]:>a cwepan» by the
glossator (line 884), even though the context is clearly that of antiphonal
singing; the translator chooses to follow the sense of the passage - and
doubtless also his familiarity with actual practice - in using «pe pis
singen» at lines 47-48. At line 878 of the gloss, when there is a reference
to the gospel antiphon being ended, the Old English gives the precise
equivalent of the Latin, «7 godspelle antefen geendedum» for
«euuangeliique antiphona finita», whereas the trans1ator expands the
source and in the process includes the detail that the antiphon is sung:
«and refter geendunge pres antifenes, pe mon on ende be pan halgan
godspelle singp» (lines 42-43). Prayers are likewise sung in the
translation, and simply performed, done, in the gloss, reflecting the Latin
verb agere: compare «Singan heora gebed» in line 12 of the translation
with «don gebed» in line 849 of the gloss for Latin «agant orationem».
Singing is even made explicit in the translation for the phrase «maioribus
antiphonis initiatis», rendered as «pa lengran antifenas singende» (lines
19-20 of the translation), by contrast with the gloss, with its literai
«maran antefnum ongunnenum» (lines 856-57 of the gloss).
Of course, singing was what it was all about, whatever the words
were in the Latin, but the gloss provides a literai rendering, as an item of
lexical equivalence, while the translator reflects the reality of practice,
regardless of the Latin word at a given moment, and perhaps also, dare
one suggest, echoing the phrase that he was accustomed to hearing: that
the monks always went to sing the Hours, rather than to say or recite
them. Certainly, he gives a strong indication that he was familiar with
more elaborate singing performance than the Latin text specifies.
According to the Regularis Concordia proper, on Maundy Thursday two
boys on the right of the choir sing the ~~Kyrie eleison», two boys on the
left respond «Chris te eleison», two more in the western part (of the who le
church or just of the choir is not clear) reply «Domine miserere nobis»
and the whole choir then responds «Dorninus factus est oboediens usque
ad mortem». AU of this is given its Old English lexical equivalents in the
gloss (lines 879-89). But in the translation in CCCC 201 (lines 43-51)
several details are changed. It is children who sing «Kyrie eleison» and
«Christe eleison», not simply from the right and left of the choir but,
more ethereally, from the right and left porticus; while the voices to the
west are at the far end of the church in sorne kind of a gallery and, in
being monks, brothers, provide a contrast with the unbroken voices of the
children 18 . For this to be successful, the children, out of sight and singing
only in pairs, must, of course, have good voices, as the translator
recognises in specifying that they are to be «welgestemnede» (line 44).
They must sing in a loud voice, «hludre stefne» (line 45), a phrase which
translates sonore in the Latin text. However, this detail follows
immediately after the translator' s independent specification that they do
so «mid gedremum swege» (lines 44-45). One cannot avoid seeing this as
a further indication of his interest in and experience of good singing. The
Tiberius gloss at this point simply has «be sone», doing no more than
follow the Latin in specifying that the singing is to be out loud. We find
the same independent insistence on melodious singing on the part of the
translator at lines 83-84 «and œne mid gedremum swege hlude œfter
canonica peawe gesingen pœt mid gewisse, "Deus in nomine tuo"»,
which renders the Latin «qua sonore dicta et canonico more, scilicet
"Deus in nomine tuo"», and again at lines 99-100 «nihtsang sy eac mid
gedremum swege gesungen», rendering Latin «Completorium aeque
sonore». The glossator simply has «be sone» for sonore on both
occasions (li nes 917-18 and 931). In each instance, not only is the
reference to a melodious sound a detail of the translator al one, but so also
is the explicit reference to singing, an added detail that we also find, for
example, at lines 71-72, 74-75, 76, 93, and 94 (compare the gloss lines
907 «synd gecwedene» for Latin dicantur, 909 «synd gecwedene» for
Latin dicuntur and 910, 924-25, and 926, where there are no verbs in the
Latin or the gloss). Nowhere does the glossator use «mid gedremum
swege» to specify that the sound should be melodious, but that is not
surprising because although, across the Latin text as a whole, we find
occasional references to singing, the quality of the singing in the
liturgical performance is never addressed.
The contrast noted so far between the approach in the translation,
evidently informed by community practice, and that of the gloss, which
responds to the words on the page, can be further exemplified, as 1 have
shown elsewhere, by their respective treatment of how practical signs are
made 19 • There are points where the Latin text is specifie about the nature
18
For a more thorough examination of the details in the translation and the ways in
which they differ from those in the Regularis Concordia proper and lElfric's Letter to the
Monks of Eynsham, see Hill, J., «Lexical Choices for Holy Week: Studies in Old English
Ecclesiastical Vocabulary», in C.J. Kay and L.M. Sylvester (eds.), Lexis and Texts in
Early English: Studies Presented to Jane Roberts, Rodopi, Amsterdam 2001, pp. 116-27,
at 122-3.
19
Hill, «Lexical Choices for Holy Week», pp. 120-2.
258 JOYCE HILL
of the sign to be made, but it is often irritatingly imprecise, the text being
peppered by uninformative phrases such as «facto signo». The glossator
follows his base-text, being specifie where the Latin text is precise but,
where it is not, giving a literai rendering by using the verb gedon and
either tacen or beacen. That is not good enough for the translator who
instead specifies what k:ind of sign is made, and how: ringing a bell, using
a wooden tabulum or clapper, strik:ing a small gong, and so on. It is not
that there is anything unusual about the literalism of the glosses; but the
contrast with the approach of the translator, who clearly reflects extra-
textual experience, has the useful effect of throwing into sharp relief the
evidence that the translation affords about living the Regularis
Concordia, rather than simply responding to it as a text.
It is worth examining the literalism of the Tiberius gloss a little more
closely. One of the techniques employed is element-by-element
translation. Examples from the relatively short passage under
consideration here are beforaneodon for Latin precesserunt (line 858)
(compare the translation's more natural «pe pider forô eodan» line 21),
and «eftsceogian hi» for Latin «recalcient se» (line 946) (compare the
translation' s «hy eft hy gescogen» lines 114-15). As the Dictionary of
Old English (hereafter DOE) entry for beforangan shows, there are only
six occurrences of this verb, and all are glosses 20 ; while the Regularis
Concordia gloss is the only recorded instance of eftscogian (although
admittedly it is only in this context that one reads of people putting on
their shoes again; so the opportunities for recorded instances would be
extremely limited). The DOE draws attention to the formation of both of
these words as element-by-element translations. Cneowbigincg, in the
phrase «mid cneowbigincge» for Latin «cum genuflectione» (line 1025)
(compare the translation's «mid cneowunge» lines 195-96), cornes in the
same category, although for this word the DOE does not draw attention to
its element-by-element characteristics. It is similarly a word occurring
only in glosses: twice in the Regularis Concordia, and once in the
Lindisfarne Gospels. These morphological glosses are relatively common
20
Dictionary of Old English: A to G on CD-ROM, ed. by A. Cameron, A.C. Amos,
A. diPaolo Healey et al., Pontifical lnstitute of Mediaeval Studies for the Dictionary of
Old English Project, Toronto 2008. All subsequent references to the DOE are to this 2008
release on CD-ROM. The DOE's line references indicate where the quoted passage
begins. Here, where my focus is on one word or short phrase, 1 give the line references for
the particular textual material under discussion.
in the Regularis Concordia and, as Kornexl has pointed out, should

probably be seen as deriving from classroom techniques 21 •
The meaning of these glosses is, of course, perfectly transparent,
even if the words themselves are a glossator' s neologisms. And there is
nothing difficult about the glossator' s doggedly literai rendering of
«Dominica die palmarum» as «on drihtenlicum drege palmena» (line
839), unnatural though it is. Predictably, the translator uses the normal
«on ]:>one palmsunnandreg» (line 2). But what was going through the
glossator's mind when he used «to gefyllednysse» (line 1012) for what is
clearly a reference to the monks going to Compline? The translator is in
no doubt that it is Compline: he uses nihtsang (line 180), which he
additionally describes as being sung, even though there is no verb in the
Latin. Symons' modern English translation of the Latin Regularis
Concordia also agrees: for him it is Compline, and there is no
explanatory footnote 22 . The normal Latin word for Compline is
completorium, but here, uniquely for this text, the phrase is «ad
complendum». As we see from manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon hymns, this
is not unknown in Latin as a way of referring to Compline23 • But it is
nevertheless relatively uncommon, and when used with this meaning it
has the effect of drawing attention to the etymology of Compline/
completorium, which derives from complere, 'to complete', 'to make
full' - Compline being the last Office, which completes, rounds out the
monastic day. No doubt the familiar completorium was used on a daily
basis with little conscious thought being given to its etymology. But the
much more unusual complendum in the phrase «ad complendum» is a
different matter, and the glossator, in using to gefyllednysse, gives its
literai equivalent. Out of context gefyllednyss would not convey
Compline: nihtsang was needed for that. One could argue that the
glossator was acting thoughtlessly at this point, responding to the Latin in
a mechanical fashion. But his rendering could equally weil be seen as an
etymological glass, comparable to what we find in the Harley Glossary,
21
Komexl, «The Regularis Concordia and its Old English Gloss», pp. 125-28 and, in
more detail, Die Regularis Concordia und ihre lnterlinearversion, ed. by Komexl, pp.
ccxxvi-ccxxxi, ccxxxvii-ccxxxviii.
22
23
The Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church: A Study and Edition of the 'Durham
Hymnal', ed. by LB. Milfull (CSASE 17), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1996,
p. 135, textual variants for the heading.
260 JOYCE HILL
where completorium itself is etymologically glossed as gefyllingtid24 . In

either case, he was responding to the pressure of his base-text. There was
certainly no automatic link in his mind between gefylldenyss and the last
Office of the day, since he uses this ward elsewhere without reference to
Compline: at line 686 when dealing with what is customary as an
augmentation of Ves pers at Christmastide («gedafenlice be ]:nere
gefyllednysse tide» glossing «congrue de ipsa completione temporis» 25 ),
and at line 819, where «refter gefyllednysse» translates a temporal phrase
«post expletionem».
For the remainder of this article I would like to tum to the sometimes
challenging question of Latin loanwords. Of course, bath versions are full
of ecclesiastical loans, sorne highly assirnilated into the vemacular by
frequency of usage and modification of spelling, others noticeably less
so. I am not going to go through these, since they are unremarkable. I
want rather to take advantage of the comparative opportunities presented
by the two versions of the Regularis Concordia in arder to confront the
issue of what constitutes an evidential threshold for whether we should or
should not count a particular Latin ward as a loan. My first example
concems one of the few words not glossed in the Tiberius version:
mandatum. It is the origin of the modern English Maundy in Maundy
Thursday, the Thursday of Holy Week, or Cena Domini, to give it its
liturgical name, the name for the day that is indeed used in the Latin
Regularis Concordia. The association of the ward with this particular day
derives from the fact that mandatum is the opening ward of Christ's
discourse to the disciples after he has washed their feet at the Last Supper
and Judas has departed: «Mandatum nouum do uobis ut diligatis
inuicem» (Io XIII.34). While in English it eventually came to denote the
day as a whole, in the Regularis Concordia it is used in the Latin to refer
quite specifically to the Maundy of the Poor (which involves the washing,
drying and kissing of the feet of sorne poor men, plus the distribution of
money to them); the abbot's Maundy (the same set of actions, but
performed separately by the abbot, a custom peculiar to the Regularis
Concordia); and the general Maundy within the community, when the
abbot and his selected assistants wash, dry and kiss the feet of the monks,
an act which the community then performs for him in return, after which
24
The Harley Latin-Old English Glossary, ed. by R.T. Oliphant (Janua Linguarum.
Series Practica 20), Mouton, The Hague and Paris 1966, C 1340.
25
For an explanation of what the Regularis Concordia is seeking to convey at this
point, see Regularis Concordia, ed. by Symons, p. 28, note 3.
the ab bot offers water for the hands of the monks, they offer water to him
in turn, and there is further community ritual, before they proceed to
Compline. In specifying these sequences, mandatum is used five times in
the Latin and is never glossed in the Tiberius text (lines 946-55, 979-
1012). The Corpus translator likewise uses mandatum for these rituals,
although it occurs there only twice because he phrases the passages rather
less repetitively than does his Latin source:
.t'Efter pam geg~deredum pearfum on p~slicere stowe gan pa gebroôra oppe pa

geswystema and heora mandatum gefremman, p~r singende antifenas pam selfan
weorce gedafene pwean and wipian para pearfena fet and eac cyssen, and gesealdum
w~tere to heora handum sy him bigleofa geseald and penega gedal ~fier p~s
abbodes oôôe p~re abbodyssan dome and dihte (!ines 117-23)
.t'Efter geendunge p~re m~ssan gan hi ealle endemes to sn~dinge, and ~fier p~re
sn~dinge nime se abbod oôôe seo abbodisse pa gebroôra oôôe pa geswystema, pe hi
wyllen, and gan to heora syndrian mandatum para pearfena, pe hi to pam gecorene
habbaô (!ines 145-8)
As will be illustrated below, the Corpus translator sometimes

explains technical Latin words which he nevertheless feels it is proper to
employ, but he does not do this when he uses mandatum, just as the
Regularis Concordia glossator does not provide a gloss. We should not
see this as a casual oversight on the glossator' s part since his gloss to the
Regularis Concordia, considered as a whole, displays a strong
commitment to providing an equivalent for everything that it is humanly
possible to treat (barring of course the lectional and antiphonal incipits,
which are not given English equivalents in either version). For example,
although altare is a frequently attested Old English loanword, traceable
as early as the reign of Alfred, and is used by the Corpus translator as a
stylistic alternate to weofod (compare lines 4, 191, 203 two examples
with 112, 113, 189), there is a decided preference in the Regularis
Concordia gloss for using weofod/weofud (lines 794, 942, 1041, 1135,
1136, 1254); the instances where altare is left unglossed are notably
fewer (lines 1161 and 1179, to which can be added 1183, where ad
altarem is glossed as to pam). Collecta, which occurs frequently, is
resolutely glossed as gebed, as we can easily see from the DOE Web
Corpus, even though the Corpus translator regarded collecta as
sufficiently familiar within the English lexicon to serve in one instance as
rendering of oratio (line 195). The DOE in fact notes forty occurrences of
this word. Similarly, again as the DOE Web Corpus reveals, the gloss
always provides gebed for oratio, even though the translator chooses to
262 JOYCE HILL
retain the orationes of his source as a word capable of being used in a

natural Old English sentence (line 205), despite the one instance when he
opts instead for collecta as a rendering of oratio and his repeated
willingness to use the vernacular gebed as a stylistic variant, as in lines
14, 53, 86, 187, and 188. In the light of these choices there is a case for
seeing the consistent practice of not glossing mandatum, together with its
unassuming use in ecce 201, as indicating that it should be regarded as
a technical Latin loanword. The DOE Web Corpus shows that, apart from
the Regularis Concordia examples I have just discussed, mandatum is
regularly glossed or translated as bebod. But we should not be misled by
these since they are all instances where the word is being used in its
normal Latin sense of 'command', not as a technical term for a particular
set of rituals. In this latter sense mandatum appears to be the only
available word in monastic circles, either in Latin or Old English, for
particular sets of actions performed on the Thursday of Holy Week.
For a second indicative example of the issues raised by technical
Latin loanwords with a marginal status in Old English, the CCCC 201
translation is my starting point. There we read, as part of the description
of activity on Good Friday, that the abbot and the ministers of the altar
robe according to custom and, coming from the sacristy, they pray before
the altar, after which the abbot goes silently to his seat and the subdeacon,
at the lectern, reads from the prophet Hosea. The Latin for 'coming from
the sacristy' is «ueniens de sacrario», which the translator renders as «of
pan sacrario cumende» (lines 189-90), as if, despite being Latin, this is an
acceptable word to use, even in a vernacular context. But then, before
continuing, he does what he often does elsewhere when using a technical
Latin word: he provides an explanatory interpretation: «pret is, of ]::>am
dihlan and halgan scrudelshuse cumende» (lines 190-1). Scrudelshus is a
hapax legomenon, but scrud (together with the verb scrydan/scrudan) is
very common, as is hus, of course, and both elements occur in a wide
variety of compounds, so it is transparent morphologically and
semantically: it effectively describes the nature and function of the
sacrarium in this context, independently of the etymology of the Latin
word. Symons translates this occurrence as 'sacristy' without comment26 ,
but in fact sacrarium, from sacer 'sacred', could be used for a variety of
holy places or even things, from a cemetery to an ecclesiastical piscina.
Perhaps its possible breadth of reference is why the translator thought it
26
THE REGUIARIS CONCORD/A GLOSSED AND TRANSLATED 263
wise to explain what precisely was meant here, removing any possible
ambiguity, using a «pret is» clause as he does in similar situations
elsewhere. The implication in ali of these instances is that, for him at
least, the Latin term is the proper one to use, even if the linguistic context
is English. The Tiberius gloss, in which sacrario is rendered as secretario
(line 1019), presents an interesting comparison. In her edition, Kornexl
marks this with a following asterisk, indicating that it is a «fehlerhafte
Form», but since the gloss is perfectly clear in the manuscript, it is
difficult to understand what is faulty about it, unless Kornexl means to
draw attention to the apparently unsatisfactory choice of secretario27 • The
gloss is odd, however, because it is Latin on Latin, which is not
characteristic. Furthermore, it is not a very informative rendering of the
sacrario of the Latin text, since it does not express which particular holy
space or secret place is being referred to, relying instead on the general
context. It does, nevertheless, convey the idea, found in the explanatory
clause in the Corpus translation, that the place where the robing occurs is
a private place, in the sense, presumably, that it is a place apart from the
general community. In the translation, however, it is explicitly the place
for robing: the notion of its being private is not the explanatory noun-
compound, but one of two adjectives. While the Dictionary of Medieval
Latin from British Sources has not yet reached the letter S, the citations in
Latham's Medieval Latin Word-LisP 8 suggest that words for sacristy such
as secrestaria, sacrista and sacristaria, together with sacristarius for the
sacristan, are post-Conquest, so perhaps, in late Anglo-Saxon England,
more than one term was used for this ecclesiastical space reflecting, in the
etymology of the words used, its holiness or its private nature. This could
account for the glossator' s resort to secretario as at least a recognisable
alternative term, and for the translator feeling the need to make clear what
was meant by sacrario at this point in the rituals for Good Friday. Later
on in the glossed text, beyond where we can draw comparisons with the
Corpus translation, there is one other instance of sacrario, and on this
occasion it is rendered as «haligdomhuse» (line 1133). This is a hapax
legomenon also, although not, as in sorne other instances in this text, a
27
Die Regularis Concordia und ihre lnterlinearversion, ed. by Komexl, p. 87, with
the interpretation of the following asterisk on p. xiv. I am grateful to the Dictionary of Old
English in Toronto, where I gave a version of this paper in May 2010, for drawing my
attention to this issue, and allowing me to check their copy of the manuscript.
28
Latham, RE., Revised Medieval Latin Ward-List from British and Irish Sources,
Oxford University Press for the British Academy, London 1965.
264 JOYCE HILL
simple element-by-element translation. As in the translator's scrudelshus,

the final element -hus indicates that the sacrarium is a defined space; but
haligdom- reflects something of the etymology of the Latin word. It may
also indicate that what we would normally call the sacristy was a
particularly secure area, housing the precious robes and ecclesiastical
vessels and also, therefore, available as a place in which relies and
reliquaries could be stored. If that were ever the case, the room could thus
in practice be referred to as the relie-bouse, all the more so if there was
not at this date a more specialised term for what came to be called the
sacristy. Perhaps this was what the glossator had in mind when using
haligdomhuse (inflected in the dative) in this later instance since
haligdom was commonly used for holy objects, including relies; it was
not solely a word expressing the abstract notion of holiness. On the other
band, it could be a matter of the glossator's thought-process being driven
by etymology rather than practical semantics. Of course the DOE will
include haligdomhus and scrudelshus. But what about sacrarium itself?
Is that to be seen as a technical loanword on the basis of the usage in the
translation of the Regularis Concordia in CCCC 201? The DOE Web
Corpus does not take us any farther forward because the examples are
precisely the ones that have just been discussed. There are no others.
Sacrarium is by no means the only Latin word that the translator
determinedly uses, even if he sometimes (though not always) finds it
necessary to provide sorne kind of interpretative explanation. 1 wish now
to look at sorne of these in detail because they are commonly a point of
contrast with the practices of the glossator and because, as will be seen,
the contrasts that they reveal support the arguments about word-choices
that 1 have put forward in discussing mandatum and sacrarium.
My first example is processio, a Latin feminine noun. In the
translation, it is used on its own, without explanation, as the normal word
for an ecclesiastical procession. There are three instances in the surviving
part of the text: in all three instances it is nominative, and so is
uninflected; and in two of the three instances it is correctly regarded as
feminine: «seo processio» (line 1), «seo mare processio» (line 6). The
third instance gives it the masculine definite article: «Se processio» (line
178). But since it was a common noun in ecclesiastical Latin, and since
the other instances in the Corpus text observe its Latin gender, this may
be a scribal error. Processio is also found in the professional
ecclesiastical context of .tElfric' s Second Old English Pastoral Letter for
Wulfstan where, on three occasions, in the phrase «to processionem», it is
used without explanation within a vernacular sentence but is nevertheless
given a Latin inflection29 • Nonetheless, it is rare in Old English contexts,

the DOE Web Corpus otherwise only offering three examples, all from
the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: ~~mid procession» (s.a.
1103), «mid mare processionem» (s.a. 1125), and «mid processionem»
(s.a. 1131). All three Chronicle instances are in relation to ecclesiastical
processions. A hundred or so years earlier, in the era of the Regularis
Concordia renditions, however, it seems to have been a word transferable
into a vernacular context only within the professional circles of the
church, if we may judge from the ecce 201 translation and the
examples of LElfric's use in the Pastoral Letter. His homilies provide a
contrastive confirmation of this restriction, for here, with a lay audience
in view, LElfric avoids the technical term when preaching on the
Purification of the Blessed Virgin and on Palm Sunday, where he
nevertheless comments on the processions in which the laity take pareo -
the very issue, indeed, that he was dealing with in the Pastoral Letter for
Wulfstan when he repeatedly used processio. The Regularis Concordia
glossator, by contrast, true to his resolute practice of providing a lexical
equivalent wherever possible, invariably glosses processio with
embegang, an indigenous compound literally meaning 'a going around'.
This is the case throughout the gloss, not simply in the passage that can
be compared with the Corpus translation: see lines 760, 774, 776, 791,
795, 840, 844, 1001, and 1011. Outside of this gloss, as the DOE Web
Corpus shows, embegang/ymbegang is most commonly used for other
kinds of 'going around', such as charter bounds, the procession of the
moon, the cycle of the liturgical year, and the dimensions of a building.
The treatment of canon/canonicus provides a similar contrast. The
translator, in common with other writers as the DOE makes very clear, is
happy to treat this, in its somewhat assimilated form, as a loanword (with
which Old English elements can also be compounded), as in lines 72, 83,
and 100. But the Regularis Concordia glossator, responding to what one
might call glossator' s imperative, ne ver uses it. Instead, he gets around its
many occurrences in the Latin text with a variety of vernacular
29
Die Hirtenbriefe lE/frics in altenglischer und lateinischer Fassung, ed. by B. Fehr,
reprinted with a suppl. to the introd. by P. C1emoes (Bib1iothek der ange1siichsischen
Prosa 9), Grand, Hamburg 1914; repr. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt
1966, pp. 214-217, §§ 178, 180, 181.
30
/Elfric's Catholic Homilies: The First Series. Text, ed. by P. C1emoes (EETS ss
17), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1997, pp. 256-7, !ines 244-50 (Homi1y IX, for the
Purification), and p. 297, !ines 195-209 (Homi1y XIV, for Pa1m Sunday).
266 JOYCE HILL
renderings, depending on the immediate context: see lines 371, 500, 567,
907,918,932,1151,1205,1206,1266,1291.
A third example is provided by subdiaconus. As the DOE shows, the
loanword diacon, from Latin diaconus 'deacon', is a common ward in
Old English, with around three hundred recorded uses, and occurring also
in compounds formed with vernacular elements. Subdiacon is predictably
less common, but given the linguistic familiarity provided by diacon it is
hardly likely to have presented any problems of comprehension within an
Old English ecclesiastical context - the only kind of context in which a
subdeacon is likely to be referred to. And indeed the DOE Web Corpus
shows that subdiacon, on the basis no doubt of the familiarity of its
second element, was inflected according to the Old English system. The
Corpus translator, as we might expect, is happy to use subdiacon (line
193), but the glossator, equally predictably, never does. He prefers
pistolrœdere!pistelrœdere throughout (lines 798, 801, 1021, 1044, 1053,
1057, 1133, 1170, 1614), even though, as JElfric more than once makes
very clear, the subdeacon's duties are not confined to reading the
epistle31 •
I turn finally to further instances where the translator uses a Latin
ward but then explains it, as has already been seen with his treatment of
sacrario. He does this when rendering Latin confessio, retaining the Latin
ward in his translation with the correct Latin accusative inflection, but
providing a «pret is» explanation: «and swa refter gewunan heora
confessionem don, pret is heora andetnesse» (lines 90-91). As the DOE
shows, and as is confirmed by the DOE Web Corpus, «andetnyss» is the
normal Old English ward for confession, and it is the ward used by the
Regularis Concordia glossator. For parasceue the translator likewise uses
the ward itself and then follows it with an explanation, «parasceue, pret is
gearcunge drege, pe we nemnaô pane langan frigedreg» (lines 32-33), and
again, «on pane dreg, pe is parasceue gehaten, pret is se langa frigedreg rer
eastron». His wish to retain parasceue, even in an idiomatic vernacular
sentence, is understandable since it is the normal liturgical term for what
we now know as Good Friday: it is New Testament Greek for the
preparation day before the Jewish Sabbath, and is retained in the Latin
Bible. Even so, his desire to achieve complete clarity leads him to
translate it on one occasion, and then, in bath instances, to give the
common vernacular name of Long Friday. The glossator similarly draws
31
Die Hirtenbriefe /Elfrics, ed. by Fehr, p. 10, § 35 (Pastoral Letter for Wulfsige)
and pp. 108-9, § 105 (First Old English Pastoral Letter for Wulfstan).
THE REGULARIS CONCORDIA GLOSSED AND TRANSLATED 267
upon the popular name for the day when glossing «excepta parasceutt
passione», as «buton langan frigedreges prowunge» (line 868), but at line
1013 he is equally prepared to leave this technical liturgical term
unglossed, so paralleling his treatment of mandatum. Probably each of
them, as ecclesiastics, most easily thought of the day as parasceue, and
each, while being prepared to identify the day by its popular vernacular
name, was prepared to let the liturgical term stand, even in the vernacular
contexts that they were creating. With this may be compared their
treatment of the names for what we now call Maundy Thursday. The
translator gives a full explanation: «Ün Cena Domini, pret is on drihtenes
gereorde, pe we hataà pone punresdreg rer eastran» (lines 36-37); the
glossator translates the Latin name as «gereord drihtnes» (line 871) but,
being faithful to his base-text, he does no more than this.
The contrast between the Regularis Concordia glossator and the
translator who produced the text in ecce 201 in regard to their treatment
of specialised ecclesiastical Latin lexis may be exaggerated by the
glossator's professional commitment to finding a vernacular alternative
where possible on the one hand, and his lexical compliance with his base-
text on the other. It is ali the more striking, then, that there are times
when he is prepared to let the Latin stand without a gloss, as in one
instance of parasceue, and in ali five instances of mandatum. The
translator' s relationship to his source was altogether different and so his
text is likely to be a more secure indicator of normal lexical practice. Yet
he does seem positively to favour Latin words in certain contexts.
Perhaps this reflects the custom of his own community environment; or
perhaps it is an indication of his own scholarly turn of mind which would
not aliow him easily to surrender what he might have felt to be the real
terms for technical matters even when translating.
Comparisons, as I have already noted, allow us to see detail in
sharper relief and thus to pose focused questions: in this case questions
about why, in identical contexts, different lexical choices are made. Of
course, we cannot possibly argue that every single choice is loaded with
significance. But I hope that the comparative scrutiny of two treatments
of the same text, even with the restrictions imposed by the brevity of
what survives from the ecce 201 translation, can lead to a clearer
understanding of the subtleties of textual practice and ecclesiastical
culture, and can help us find our way towards solving sorne lexical
con un drums.
THE INTERLINEAR GLOSSES TO THE
REGULA SANCTI BENEDICT/ IN
LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, COTTON TIBERIUS A.III:
A SPECIMEN OF A NEW EDITION
Maria Caterina De Bonis
London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii contains a copy of the

Rule of St Benedict with a continuous interlinear gloss in Old English.
The text of the Regula Sancti Benedicti (henceforth RB) is also
accompanied by glosses in Latin and features a complex system of letters
from a to z, which represent a kind of syntactical glos ses 1.
Before being joined together in T, the RB and its interlinear glosses
were transmitted through two separate manuscript traditions. Their paths
crossed when someone, probably a reformed monk or abbot, decided to
provide the RB with a prop, not only in the vemacular and not only of a
mere lexical sort, to fos ter a deeper comprehension of such a vital text2•
In fact, within the vast manuscript tradition of the Latin RB3 , T is the only
witness where the Latin RB is accompanied by interlinear glosses. At the
same time, the glosses to the RB witnessed by T, although unique to this
manuscript, imply a prior tradition that goes back to both scattered
glosses and batches of entries in earlier glossaries 4 •
1
On Tiberius A.iii (hereafter T), see Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts
Containing Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl., 1990, no.
186 and Gneuss, H., Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and
Manuscripts Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (MRTS 241), Arizona
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2001, no. 363. See also the
dedicated study by Helmut Gneuss, «Origin and Provenance of Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts: The Case of Cotton Tiberius A.III», in P.R. Robinson and R. Zim (eds.), Of
the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, the ir Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented
to M.B. Parkes, Scolar Press, Aldershot 1997, pp. 13-48.
2
De Bonis, M.C., «The Grammatical Glosses to Three Texts in London, British
Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii: A Systematic Mode! in the Study of Latin», in R.H.
Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker (eds.), The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early
Middle Ages: Fruits of Learning (Storehouses of Wholesome Learning IV. Mediaevalia
Groningana ns), Peeters, Paris, Leuven, and Walpole, MA (forthcoming).
3
4
See below, p. 278.
270 MARIA CATERINA DE BONIS
This paper proposes to present an update of my ongoing research5 on

the interlinear glosses to the RB in T and, in particular, to present a
sample of my forthcoming edition.
I will, firstly, focus on both the Latin text of the RB in T and its Old
English interlinear glosses in order to clarify the mutual relationship
between the two. Secondly, I will describe Henri Logeman's edition and
introduce my new edition of the interlinear glosses. Thirdly, a
comparison between the two editions and the distinctiveness of my
editorial choices will be illustrated by means of a sample passage of the
interlinear version of the RB.
The Latin text of the RB
The Latin text of the RB in T (ff. 118r-163v) belongs to the complex

manuscript tradition of the monastic rule par excellence, which enjoyed a
wide circulation from the seventh to the eleventh century throughout
Europe.
Ludwig Traube grouped the manuscript tradition of the RB in textus
purus, textus interpolatus, and textus receptus 6 •
The textus purus, which is thought to go back to St Benedict's
original, is represented by St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 914 (A), which was
copied by two monks from Reichenau in 817 7 .
The textus interpolatus differs from the textus purus for its numerous
corrections, which aimed to bring St Benedict' s Latin in conformity with
standard medieval Latin, but also features a number of alterations of
5
De Bonis, M.C., «La funzione delle lettere alfabetiche nella glossa interlineare alla
Regula Sancti Benedicti del manoscritto London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.III»,
Linguistica e Filologia 22 (2006), pp. 55-98; also available on http://dspace-unibg.
cilea.it/bitstream/1 0446/13112/LeF22(2006)DeBonis.pdf; ead., «Learning Latin through
the Regula Sancti Benedicti: The Interlinear Glosses in London, British Library, Cotton
Tiberius A. iii», in P. Lendinara, L. Lazzari and M.A. D' Aronco (eds.), Form and Content
of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England in the Light of Contemporary Manuscript
Evidence (Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales. Textes et Études
du Moyen Âge 39), Brepols, Turnhout 2007, pp. 187-216; and ead. <<The Grammatical
Glosses to Three Texts>>.
6
Traube, L., Textgeschichte der Regula S. Benedicti (Abhandlungen der koniglich
bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-philologische und historische
Klasse 21.3), Konigliche Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich 1898; 2nd
edn. by H. Plenkers (Abhandlungen der koniglich bayerischen Akademie der
Wissenshaften. Phi1osophisch-philologische und historische Klasse 25.2), Konigliche
Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich 1910.
7
It is possible to view the manuscript directly at http:/www.cesg.unifr.ch.
THE INTERLINEAR GLOS SES TO THE REGULA SANCT! BENEDICT! 271
different kinds. The oldest surviving witness of this recension, as well as

the oldest manuscript of the RB in general, is Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Hatton 48 (0), which was probably written in Southumbria in the first
half of the eighth centurl.
Finally, the textus receptus is the outcome of the contamination
between the textus purus and the textus interpolatus, which had been in
use up to the Carolingian age. The textus receptus may be dated to the
period of ecclesiastic and monastic reforms of the Carolingian church
fostered by Benedict of Aniane (c. 750-821), at the time of the emperor
Louis the Pious (814-840), Charlemagne's successor. This version
originated in a number of monasteries all over the Carolingian empire and
beyond. It conflates the purus and the interpolatus, but it also features
idiosyncratic readings, that is, it contains readings that cannot be assigned
either to the interpolatus or the purus text-forms 9 • The Latin RB in T
belongs to the receptus tradition.
Traube' s analysis of the textus receptus has been revised by Paul
Meyvaert 10 . Moreover, the heterogeneous and intricate genesis of the
textus receptus has led sorne scholars, such as Rudolf Hanslik, to argue
that regional groupings might have played a pre-eminent role in this
recensionll. However, the RB threefold classification of the manuscript
tradition proposed by Traube is still widely accepted by scholars such as
Hanslik himself12 as well as Adalbert de Vogüé and Jean Neufville
8 1
s. viii , possibly even s. viii rned.: Lowe, E.A., Codices Latini Antiquiores: A
Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century, II: Great Britain
and freland, 2nd edn., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972, no. 240, pp. 34, 53 and 59; Wright,
D., «Sorne Notes on English Uncial», Traditio 17 (1961), pp. 441-56, at 449-50.
9
Traube, Textgeschichte, pp. 61-63. On the role played by Benedict of Aniane in the
revival and diffusion of the RB, see Schmitz, P., «L'influence de saint Benoît d'Aniane
dans l'histoire de l'ordre de Saint-Benoît>>, in Il Monachesimo nell'alto Medioevo e la
formazione della civiltà occidentale (SettSpol 4), Centro Italiano di Studi sull' Alto
Medioevo, Spoleto 1957, pp. 401-15; Grégoire, R., «Benedetto di Aniane nella riforrna
rnonastica carolingia>>, Studi medievali 3rd ser., 26 (1985), pp. 573-610.
10
Meyvaert, P., <<Towards a History of the Textual Transmission of the Regula S.
Benedicti>>, Scriptorium 17 (1963), pp. 83-110.
11
See, for exarnple, Hanslik' s detailed account of the receptus rnanuscripts, which he
collated for the critical apparatus of Benedicti Regula, ed. by R. Hanslik (CSEL 75),
Hoelder, Pichler, and Ternpsky, Vienna 1960, 2nd edn., Hoelder, Pichler, and Ternpsky,
Vienna 1977, pp. lv-lxiv. Hanslik's critical edition of the RB is based on A, whose
orthographical features are faithfully reproduced. This edition is the result of the collation
of about three hundred rnanuscripts; however, only the variant readings of sixty-three
rnanuscripts are given in the critical apparatus.
12
Benedicti Regula, ed. by Hanslik, pp. xxii-lxiv. In the second edition Hanslik
acknowledged that the so-called Regula Magistri was the direct source of at !east sorne
(henceforth de Vogüé-Neufville) 13 , the editors of the two best-reputed

editions of the Latin RB so far.
The thorough study of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the RB
carried out by Mechthild Gretsch has led her to agree with Hanslik' s
conclusions about T and its belonging to the receptus recension. At the
same time, Gretsch has remarked that T is the Anglo-Saxon codex that
mostly disagrees with the other manuscripts of the receptus tradition and,
in particular, with those attesting the Latin version used for the Old
English translation of the RB 14 •
The Latin text of the RB in T has been collated in the editions of the
RB by Edmund Schmidt15 , Benno Linderbauer 16 , and Rudolf Hanslik 17 •
Both the critical editions by Hanslik and de Vogüé-Neufville have
been chosen as base texts of the Latin RB in my critical edition. The plus
point of the Hanslik' s edition is that it has collated T (i), while the edition
parts of the RB, whereas in the first edition he had argued that the RB predated the Regula
Magistri; see Benedicti Regula, ed. by Hanslik, pp. xiv-xv. For the Regula Magistri, see
La Règle du Maître, by A. de Vogüé, 3 vols. (Sources chrétiennes 105-107), Les Éditions
du Cerf, Paris 1964-1965.
13
La Règle de Saint Benoît, ed. by A. de Vogüé and J. Neufville, 7 vols. (Sources
chrétiennes 181-186), Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1971-1977, de Vogüé is responsible for
the French translation of the RB, for the footnotes, the introduction and the historical and
critical comment, while Neufville is responsible for the critical edition of the RB. The
critical edition of the RB by de Vogüé and Neufville, whose base text is that in A, but with
a normalised spelling, has received great consensus among scholars chiefly for two
reasons: firstly, because it has definitely shown that the Regula Magistri predates the RB;
secondly, because it is based on thirty manuscripts, which are divided in three groups
following Traube's textual recension of the RB. These thirty manuscripts, however, do not
include T. Variant readings, including spelling variants, are listed in a specifie section, the
Tableaux synoptique, in volume III, pp. 1-386, while the critical apparatus records the
variant readings of A and O. On the relationship between the Regula Magistri and the RB,
see La Règle de Saint Benoît, ed. by de Vogüé and Neufville, I, pp. 173-314.
14
Gretsch, M., Die Regula Sancti Benedicti in England und ihre altenglische
Übersetzung (TUEPh 2), Fink, Munich 1973, pp. 63-121 and 170.
15
Regula Sancti Patris Benedicti iuxta antiquissimos codices recognita, ed. by E.
Schmidt, Pustet, Regensburg 1880.
16
S. Benedicti Regula Monachorum, ed. by B. Linderbauer, Verlag des Benediktiner-
stiftes, Metten 1922; id., S. Benedicti Regula Monasteriorum (Florilegium Patristicum
17), Hanstein, Bonn 1928.
17
Gretsch has pointed out sorne shortcomings in Hanslik's stemma conceming the
Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the RB, see Gretsch, Die Regula Sancti Benedicti in
England, pp. 88-121.
by de Vogüé-Neufville has benefited from the latest research on the

tradition of the Latin text of the RB 18 •
The Latin text of the RB in T
The Latin text of the RB in T features severa! corrupt readings. Sorne

erroneous forms are easily explained as transcription mistakes, such as
conversionis for conversationis at f. 121 v7 19 . However, the Latin text has
been partly corrected during the copying. The RB in T was copied by one
single scribe 20 who, on severa! occasions, realized the transcription
mistakes he had made and corrected them. For example, at f. 121 vl4, T
reads sabaitarum, with ra added above the line between sa and ba by the
same hand who had written sabaitarum in order to correct the initial
sabaitarum into sarabaitarum. On line 20 of the same folium eis has been
added above the line between lege and est, after that the same scribe had
written lege est21 •
In spite of the numerous corrections, sorne mistakes were left
unemended and it took the two scribes who copied the glosses to correct
them22 . However, sorne mistakes, such as the above-mentioned
conversionis, were obviously overlooked.
The interlinear glosses to the RB in T
The interlinear glosses are closely related to the Latin text they
accompany. They are mostly a word-for-word translation of the Latin
text, and their main aim is to give information about the lexical,
morphological, and syntactical structures of the language of the RB. On
the whole, however, the glosses are quite far from being a translation
proper, and, therefore, 1 will refer to them as «interlinear glosses» rather
18
Among the most important editions of the RB, it is worth mentioning La Regala:
testa, versione e commenta, ed. by A. Lentini, s.n., Montecassino 1947, 2nd edn., Pisani,
Isola Liri 1980. This is the first edition to divide the chapters of the RB into verses, a
division which has been followed by all subsequent editors. Another valuable edition is
Sancti Benedicti Regula, ed. by G. Penco (Biblioteca di studi superiori 39), La Nuova
Italia, Florence 1958.
19
La Règle de Saint Benoît, ed. by de Vogüé and Neufville, I, ch. 1.3, p. 436 and III,
p. 76; Benedicti Regula, ed. by Hanslik, p. 18.
2
21
°Ker, Catalogue, no. 186.
La Règle de Saint Benoît, ed. by de Vogüé and Neufville, I, ch. 1.6, p. 438 and III,
p. 79; and Benedicti Regula, ed. by Hanslik, p. 19.
22
See below, p. 278.
thanas «interlinear version». Unlike .tEthelwold's translation of the RB23 ,

which was intended independently of the Latin counterpart, the
interlinear glosses to the RB in T depend on the Latin text to such an
extent that they need it to be fully intelligible24 • As a consequence, the
study of the interlinear glosses cannat exclude the knowledge of the Latin
RB, in general, and the analysis of the Latin RB in T, in particular.
The interlinear glosses were written above the Latin text by two
bands different from the scribe who copied the Latin RB25 • The layout of
the interlinear glosses to the RB in T is rather complex and unusual in
comparison with other glossed texts produced in Anglo-Saxon England26 .
23
The Old English translation of the RB has been transmitted by eight manuscripts
dated between the eleventh and the twelfth centuries. Six of them con tain both the Latin
text and the Old English translation: T, which, in addition to the Latin text of the RB and
its Old English glosses, contains, at ff. l03r-105r, the Latin text and the Old English
translation of ch. 4 of the RB (i*), see above, note l, p. 269; Cambridge, Corpus Christi
College 178, pp. 287-457 (w), s. xi 2 , prob. Worcester, prov. Worcester; London, British
Library, Cotton Titus A.iv (j), s. xi med., Winchester? Canterbury, St Augustine's?;
Oxford, Corpus Christi College 197 (x), s. x 414 , Worcester?, prov. Bury St Edmund by s.
xi med.; Wells, Cathedral Library 7 (u) (which contains only chs. xlix-lxv), s. xi med.;
Durham, Cathedral Library, B.IV.24 (s), s. x? or xi/xii, see, respectively, Ker, Catalogue,
nos. 186, 41, 200, 353, 395, and 109; Gneuss, Handlist, nos. 363, 55, 379, 672, 758, and
248. Two manuscripts feature only the Old English version of the RB: Gloucester,
Cathedral Library 35 (G), containing ch. 4 of the RB, s. xi 2, pro v. Gloucester; and London,
British Library, Cotton Faustina A.x (F), s. xii 2: Ker, Catalogue, nos. 117 and 154b, and
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 262. The sigla of the manuscripts are those employed in Benedicti
Regula, ed. by Hanslik, pp. lxvii-lxix, at lxix, and, for the manuscripts not collated by
Hanslik, the sigla are those used by Gretsch, M., «lEthelwold's Translation of the Regula
Sancti Benedicti and its Latin Exemplar>>, Anglo-Saxon England 3 (1974), pp. 125-51, at
126. For a critical edition of the Old English translation of the RB, see Die
angelsachsischen Prosabearbeitungen der Benediktinerregel, ed. by A. Schri:ier
(Bibliothek der angelsachsischen Prosa 2), Wigand, Kassel 1885-1888; 2nd repr. with
appendix by H. Gneuss, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1964.
24
De Bonis, «Learning Latin through the Regula Sancti Benedicti>>, pp. 188-91.
25
Ker distinguished two hands responsible for the RB glosses: the first belongs to the
scribe who copied only ff. ll8r and l24v3-9, while the second belongs to the scribe who
copied almost all the glosses to the RB, see Ker, Catalogue, no. 186. However, the two
scribes seem to have had the same approach to both the Latin text in T and the bilingual
exemplar (see below, pp. 278-80). ln fact, both scribes provided the Latin text with
different types of glosses; both of them interacted with the Latin text by correcting it and
inserted glosses which do not match the wrong Latin readings in T, but the corresponding
correct Latin readings witnessed in the manuscript tradition of the RB. For a detailed
analysis of the relationship between Latin text of the RB and interlinear glosses in T, see
De Bonis, <Œhe Grammatical Glosses to Three Texts>>.
26
On the layout of glosses in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, see Lendinara, P., Anglo-
Saxon Glosses and Glossaries (VCSS 622), Ashgate, Aldershot 1999, pp. 4-6.
THE INTERLINEAR GLOSSES TO THE REGULA SANCTI BENEDICT/ 275
The glosses, including the alphabetic letters, were not always

accommodated in the same positions: sorne of them occur above the Latin
lemmata; sorne others are written above another gloss, which, in its tum,
is above the Latin lemma; others still occur next to each other above the
Latin lemma. On several instances, glosses are arranged so that each line
of the folium containing one line of the Latin text actually consists of four
lines: Latin lemma, a gloss, another gloss, and yet another gloss (see
Plate IV [f. 12lv]).
The text of the RB has been glossed throughout, although there is a
heterogeneous distribution of the different kinds of glosses. In fact,
numerous passages feature different kinds of glosses, as it can be seen at
f. 121 v3-4:
feower lcynna.b c.beon asutol is 1

MONACHORUM QUATTUOR GENERA ESSE MANIFESTUM /est
Here ali the Latin lemmata except monachorum have been glossed
with their lexical counterpart in Old English: quattuor has been glossed
with feower, genera with kynna, esse with beon, manifestum est with
sutol is. Moreover, the same lemmata have also been provided syntactical
glosses, in that letter a points to the verb phrase of the main clause sutol
is27 , b to the subject of the secondary clause feower kynna, and c to the
verb of the secondary clause beon.
Sorne passages of the RB have been provided only with lexical

glosses, as at f. 121 v4:
pœtforme mynstermanna pœt is mynsterlic

est. Primum coenobitarum . hoc est monaste
On the contrary, other phrases feature only syntactical glosses, as at f.

12lvl4:
c d
vero monachorum
27
On the erroneous interpretation of asutol as a lexical gloss to manifestum, see The
Rule of S. Benet: Latin and Anglo-Saxon Interlinear Version, ed. by H. Logeman (EETS
os 90), Trübner, London 1888; repr. Kraus, New York 1975, pp. xxxvii-xxxviii, IV, and
below, p. 296.
Other words, phrases, and clauses have not been glossed at all, such
as the above-mentioned monachorum at f. 121 v3.
Moreover, there are words which have been glossed only randomly.
For example, at f. 121v7 monasterii has been glossed mynstres,
monasterio has been glossed on mynstre at f. 122r11, but in monasterio
has been left unglossed at f. 122r13.
Several phenomena demonstrate that the interlinear glosses were
added after the Latin text of the RB had been copied, a conclusion that
contradicts Logeman's assumption that the Latin and Old English glosses
«have been copied from another text or from other texts, most likely at
the same time, and possibly by the same scribe» 28 . In fact, numerous
glosses were written one next to the other continuously, creating sorne
strings of phrases that do not exactly parallel the underlying Latin text, as
is the case with f. 121 v2f 9 :
panne hi hwœt wenaô tellaô

cum quicquid putaverint
Here the two Old English interpretamenta wenaô tellaô, which

render the single Latin !emma putaverint, are written close to panne hi
hwœt, leaving the space immediate! y above putaverint blank.
As far as the line break is concerned, at f. 121 v the scribe wrote the
Old English glos ses following the line break of the Latin text:
f. 121 v7-8 f. 121v16-17

mid mynstres 1 o fadunge Onge 1 kynde
monasterii 1 probatione Natu 1 ra
However, on several occasions, when the Latin !emma breaks

between two lines, he wrote the entire Old English ward in the former
line:
f. 121v4-5 f. 121vl4-15
mynsterlic 1 sylfdemera 1
monaste 1 riale sarabai 1 tarum
28
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. xxxiv, IV. The same assumption led
Logeman to state that sorne misreadings could only be explained as a result of the
influence by the lemma on the Old English interpretamentum, and vice versa. However,
my research has proved only the influence of the lemmata on the interpretamenta, see
below, p. 279.
29
When I refer to the T text, I propose my own transcription of the RB and the
interlinear glosses.
THE INTERLINEAR GLOSSES TO THE REGULA SANCTI BENEDICT! 277
Sometimes the whole interpretamentum may occur on a line different

from that hosting the entire respective lemma 30 , as it happens at f. 121 v3-
4:
asutol is 1
MANIFESTUM / est
In sum, the above-quoted examples further strengthen the case that

the Latin text of the RB was copied first, while the interlinear glosses
were added later on.
Both Henri Logeman and Wilhelm Hermanns have taken a
noteworthy number of obscure readings (in fact, transcription mistakes)
as evidence of the glosses being copied from an exemplar, now lost.
However, while Hermanns simply states that the glosses have been
copied31 , Logeman goes as far as to speculate that the last copyist had an
interlinear translation before him and that he copied the glosses from that
very translation. In other words, without explicitly mentioning it,
Logeman implies the use of a bilingual exemplar. Moreover, Logeman
believes that the interlinear glosses to the RB in T developed out of a few
interlinear glosses that multiplied gradually, because every copyist
contributed sorne more glosses to those which he found in his original32 .
Logeman seems to have focused only on the interlinear glosses, therefore,
even when he deals with the graduai development of the interlinear
glosses witnessed in the exemplar, several questions are left open. It is
not clear how the original small corpus of glosses developed, namely
whether new entries were gradually added to the first glosses in the same
original manuscript, or whether glosses were subsequently added at
different stages of the transmission. If the latter were true, the glosses
copied in the earliest manuscript would have been copied, alongside or
without the main text, onto another manuscript. In turn this second
30
Hans Sauer has noticed these phenomena in the Admonition conceming the
observation of the RB, but I have noticed them also in the RB and in the Memoriale
qualiter, see Sauer, H., «Die Ermahnung des Pseudo-Fulgentius zur Benediktregel und
ihre altenglische Glossierung», Anglia 102 (1984), pp. 419-25, at 422, and De Bonis,
«The Grammatical Glosses to Three Texts». Sorne of these phenomena have been
detected in the interlinear gloss to the Regularis Concordia in T, see below G.D. De
Bonis' s contribution to the present volume, pp. 443-73.
31
Hermanns, W., Lautlehre und dialektische Untersuchung der altenglischen
Interlinearversion der Benediktinerregel, Hanstein, Bonn 1906, p. 107.
32
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, pp. xxxiv-xxxv, IV.
manuscript, which might have included additional glosses, was the model
for another codex, where new glosses would have been added, and so on.
My own analysis of the relationship between the interlinear glosses
and the Latin text has confirmed that the glosses were copied from a
bilingual model, which, in turn, probably went back to batches of glosses.
A significant number of the interlinear glosses under examination provide
the Latin version of the RB in T with variant readings 33 . Furthermore, a
relevant number of glosses do not match the Latin readings in T, but
correspond instead to variant readings witnessed by other codices of the
Rule 34, and, on sorne occasions, the same band responsible for the glosses
also corrected the Latin misreading in T and provided the Old English
equivalent for the correct Latin reading. Obviously the copyists drew the
interlinear glosses from a bilingual exemplar, whose Latin version of the
RB was less corrupt than that in T 35 . In turn, the bilingual exemplar
probably went back to a bilingual antecedent and, possibly, also to
batches of glosses. One has also to allow room for the possibility that the
copyist who added the glosses to the RB in T had more than one bilingual
exemplar in front of him. Indeed, sorne of the variant readings of the
Latin text, which originally matched the Old English glosses as they now
stand in T, belong to the receptus, while others belong to the interpolatus
or to the purus tradition.
The same two scribes who copied the interlinear glosses also left
traces of their persona! interventions in T. In fact, they did not only copy
the glosses from the above-mentioned exemplar, but they also translated
nonsense singular Latin readings of T by producing sorne Old English
33
Logeman noticed this phenomenon, but he considered it occasional, see The Rule
of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. xxxv, IV. However, it is weil known that medieval texts,
especially the liturgical ones, glossaries and colloquies, were not stable and each scribe
was the au thor of the redaction he was copying, see Lapidge, M., «Textual Criticism and
the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England», Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 73 (1991),
pp. 17-45, at 29-30. About the active role played by scribes in Middle Ages, see also
Rigg, A.G., «Medieval Latin>>, in his Editing Medieval Texts: English, French, and Latin
written in England: Papers Given at the Twelfth Annual Conference on Editorial
Problems. University of Toronto, 5-6 November 1976, Garland, New York and London
1977, pp. 107-25, at 121-2, and Canfora, L., Il copista come autore, Sellerio, Palermo
2002, pp. 9-33.
34
See below, pp. 292-4, where I just give a few examples of these discrepancies
occurring at f. 121 v.
35
The same holds true for the two texts that follow the RB in T and that are
accompanied by glosses typologically similar to the RB glosses, see De Bonis, «The
Grammatical Glosses to Three Texts>>.
THE INTERLINEAR GLOSSES TO THE REGULA SANCT! BENEDICT! 279
clauses that do not make sense36 • It is also likely that they were
responsible for a number of interpretamenta where the interference of the
lemmata gave rise to atypical forms featuring an Old English root and a
Latin ending37 . In sum, these scribes acted as both copyists and glossators
and, as such, I propose to call them glossator-scribes.
The interlinear glosses feature a conspicuous number of atypical
forms that lie somewhat in between transcription mistakes and non-
standard forms due to sorne phonetic changes which probably took place
at the time of the transcription, such as frore for frofre 38 • Several
'unusual' Old English forms attested in the glosses under exarnination,
but not documented elsewhere, probably offer evidence of the glossator-
scribes' idiosyncracies39 and could be interpreted as the breaking down of
36
The Latin RB in T features nonsense singular readings that were translated
accordingly and that as such appear as the result of the translation made by the same
persons who copied the glosses in T. For example, at f. 147v12, the nonsense singular
reading ait, which is a misspelling for aut, has been translated sœgde. Thus, the correct
Latin text says «no one may presume to take any food or drink before the appointed time
or 1ater>>, whereas the interlinear glosses say <<no one may presume to take any food also
said drink before the appointed time or later>>. See La Règle de Saint Benoît, ed. by de
Vogüé and Neufville, II, ch. 43.18, pp. 590-91, and Benedicti Regula, ed. by Hanslik, p.
120. Since Logeman did not know that ait was a singular Latin reading in T, he wrote <<ait
must be a very old mistake for aut, since a glossator, meaning1ess, has provided it with the
gloss sœgde>>, see The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. 78.1 and the critical apparatus.
For other glosses that offer evidence of this same phenomenon, see De Bonis, <<The
Grammatical Glosses to Three Texts>>.
37
For example, at f. 125r3 (ch. 4.1) the Latin noun phrase tata anima, which is made
by the ablative singular of both the feminine adjective tata and the feminine noun anima,
has been glossed with eallra sawla, instead of eallre sawle, because the Latin inflectional
ending -a 1ikely influenced the corresponding Old English interpretamentum. In fact, the
Old English prepositional phrase mid eallra sawla is grammatically incongruous because
mid is followed by a genitive plural rather than the required dative singular. For this and
other similar examples, see The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, pp. lx-xi, V,§§ 75, 79,
80, 82, and De Bonis, <<The Grammatical Glosses to Three Texts>>.
38
See below, p. 295.
39
Since the range of idiosyncratic forms is rather wide, here I will provide only a
few examples; for a more detailed analysis, see the introduction to my forthcoming
edition. Sorne glosses show the omission of <r>, such as hicce (dorsa, f. 130rl) for
hricce; other glosses show the omission of <h> ofreow (penitebis, f. 125r2) for ofhreow,
but there are also glosses with an extra <h>, such as hogan (metum, f. 126r20) for ogan.
Severa! interpretamenta show the omission of <n>, such as fadunge (probatione, f.
121 vS), for fandunge, or windrucen (vinolentum, f. 125r22) for windruncen, whereas
others feature an additional <n>, such as gepeondan (iungere, f. 139v9) for gepeodan.
There are also interpretamenta whose consonants are erroneously doubled, such as
dœgges (die, f. 126r9) for dœges.
the Late West Saxon seribal and orthographie traditions, which was
characteristic of the so-called transitional Old English40 •
On severa! occasions, the interlinear glosses erroneousLy translated
the Latin, thereby revealing the glossator-scribes' faultr Latin and
distorting the meaning of the RB as a result41 .
Whether the glossator-scribes simply reproduced the different kinds
of mistakes from their model(s) or they were personally resJPcnsible for
them, those mistakes are to be blamed on the glossator-scribes anyway,
because they were either not able to detect the wrong forms, oc they were
directly responsible for them.
The persons engaged with the glosses must have had an intermediate
level of knowledge of Latin and a fairly good ability to grasp the complex
strategies behind the glosses, especially considering that these were
written in both Latin and Old English. Despite sorne lack ofuniformity, a
rationale is easily detectable throughout the glosses, namel' the aim to
illustrate the syntactical features of the RB. Such a clarify7ing strategy
could likely be traced back to a teacher. In other words, a tt::acher could
have devised these glosses in the immediate bilingual exemplar, but then
40
Hogg, R.M., A Grammar of Old English, !. Phonology, Black\Vell, Oxford and
Cambridge, MA 1992, § 1.4.
41
A blatant translation mistake is that of on middanearde which rend.ers munda at f.
132rl (ch. 7.70). The lemma munda is the ablative singular of the adjective mundus
'clean, pure', but it was mistaken for the ablative singular of the noun rr11~ndus 'world,
earth'. The Latin text of T reads «que dominus iam in operario suo mcn<lo a vitiis et
peccatis spiritu sancto dignabit (sic) demonstrare» (ff. 131v21-132r2), cf. de Vogüé-
Neufville and Hanslik: «quae dominus iam in operarium suum mundl\lm a uitiis et
peccatis spiritu sancto dignabitur demonstrare» (which the Lord will deig:n Himself to
show by the Holy Spirit in His labourer now cleansed from vices and s;ins). For the
individual orthographical choices as weil as for the variant readings of ciL. 7 .70, such as
mundum/ munda, dignabitur!dignabitldignatus est, see La Règle de Saint Senoît, ed. by
de Vogüé and Neufville, I, pp. 490-1 and III, p. 257, and Benedicti l'\egula, ed. by
Hanslik, p. 57. Following the variant readings and the corrupt text of T, tl:!e interlinear
Old English glosses read «on his wyrhtan on middanearde fram leahtruŒ ond synnum
mid pam haligan pa gemedemode geswutulian>> (verbatim: to His labourer on earth from
vices and sins by the Holy [Ghost] then [He] deigned Himself to show') (f. 132rl-2).
Severa! translation mistakes are due to the misunderstanding of the genit::in singular of
Latin nouns for the nominative plural. For example, in ch. 9.10, letanie is the genitive
singular of the feminine noun letania («et versus et supplicatio letanie id est Kyrieleison>>
[and the verse and the supplication of the litany, which is Kyrie Eleison] L 132v17-18);
cf. La Règle de Saint Benoît, ed. by de Vogüé and Neufville, II, pp. 512-3~ and Benedicti
Regula, ed. by Hanslik, p. 61. However, the glossator evidently mistool /etanie for the
nominative plural and glossed it with gebedu, both nominative and accusative plural of
the neuter noun gebed: «ond halsung gebedu pœt is drihten gemildsa us>• (and the verse
and the supplication the litanies, which is Kyrie Eleison) (my emphasis).
it befell two students, with an intermediate level of knowledge of Latin,

to copy them in T.
Logeman's edition
Logeman is the author of the only extant critical edition of both the
Latin and Old English text of the RB in T, which dates back to 1888.
The edition proper is prefaced by a comprehensive introduction
detailing several aspects of the text, such as the diffusion of Benedictine
monasticism in Anglo-Saxon England; the manuscript tradition of the RB;
the differences, especially in vocabulary, between the interlinear glosses,
which Logeman calls «interlinear translation», and JEthelwold' s
translation, which he calls «paraphrastical translation»; finally, the
peculiarities of the Latin and of the Old English language of the RB in T.
He also explains his editorial procedures concerning the Latin text and
the Old English glosses 42 .
However, Logeman could obviously not benefit from all the
twentieth-century scholarship devoted to textual criticism, in general, and
to the manuscript tradition of the RB, in particular. In fact, in Logeman's
days the manuscript tradition of the RB in Latin was limited to nineteen
manuscripts, that is, the fifteen manuscripts collated by Schmidt, which
include T43 , plus the four manuscripts collated by Schroer including the
so-called Winteney Version 44 .
Logeman simply states that the Latin RB in T «occurs in an
exceedingly corrupt state»45 and although Logeman's base-text is clearly
T, he does not explicitly declare so. Logeman mentions several critical
editions of the Latin RB published during the nineteenth century,
including Schmidt's Regula Sancti Patris Benedicti and Schroer's
Winteney Version of the RB46 , although he does not specify which critical
edition of the Latin RB, among those mentioned, he trusts more.
42
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, pp. xv-lxiii, I-IV.
43
Regula Sancti Patris Benedicti iuxta antiquissimos codices recognita, ed. by
Schmidt.
44
Die Winteney- Version der Regula S. Benedicti, ed. by A. Schroer, Niemeyer, Halle
1888, repr. with appendix by M. Gretsch, Niemeyer, Tübingen 1978. In this edition the
Latin text of the Winteney version is collated with the Latin text in x, w, j, and u (for the
sigla of the manuscripts, see above note 23, p. 274). However, Logeman admitted that «It
must not be supposed that there are no more Latin texts than those enumerated»: The Rule
of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, pp. xxviii-xxix, III.
45
Ibid., p. xxix, III.
46
Ibid., pp. xxvi-xxvii, III.
However, in general, Logeman relies on Schmidt' s Regula Sancti Patris

Benedicti and Schroer's Winteney Version whenever he is unable to solve
a corrupt Latin reading of T47 •
In Logeman's edition, the Latin text and the interlinear glosses are
arranged into two lines: the main line contains the Latin text, while the
line above hosts the Old English glosses. The critical apparatus is
accordingly divided into two sections: the first section is devoted to the
interlinear glosses; the second concerns the Latin text.
The Latin grammatical and syntactical glosses, which Logeman calls
«Latin glosses», are placed in the same line as the Old English glosses48 .
In contrast, the Latin words that the glossators have added to the Latin
text of the RB, and that they have probably drawn from another Latin
version of the RB, as Logeman himself rightly supposes - implying that
they are intervention on the Latin RB in Tex libro 49 - are often printed in
the line hosting the Latin text of the RB. In the section of the critical
apparatus devoted to the Latin text, it is pointed out that these words have
been «added» or «supplied» by the glossator. However, because of this
unfortunate layout, the Latin words added by the glossators often appear
to belong to the original Latin text50, and the reader is not enabled to
distinguish immediately the Latin RB originally copied in T from the
subsequent interventions of the glossator-scribes. Therefore, Logeman's
edition obscures the work of the glossator-scribes and hinders the correct
comprehension of the actual Latin RB in T and of the relevant interlinear
glosses51 •
Throughout the pages of Logeman's edition, whenever T has a
corrupt form but the Old English gloss translates the corresponding
correct reading, Logeman încludes the Latin reading which matches the
47
See, as an example, ibid., p. 27.11 in the cri ti cal apparatus. As far as the table of
contents is concerned, Logeman supplies missing words and missing headings from
Schroer, Der Winteney- Version der Regula S. Benedicti, see The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by
Logeman, pp. 8-9 in the critica1 apparatus.
48
Ibid., p. xxx, III. On each occasion, Logeman observes that such Latin readings are
«in the glossator's hand>>, sometimes adding that they have not been found in other Latin
manuscripts of the RB, but he never explains their function, see, for example, ibid., p.
1.13, in the critica1 apparatus, or 10.11, in the critical apparatus.
49
Ibid., p. xxx, III.
50
See below, p. 293.
51
Cammarota has recently underlined that a1though introduction, critical apparatus,
and notes are an integral part of any critical edition, the information included only in the
introduction or in a note is actually destined to be ignored; see Cammarota, M.G.,
«L'invisibilità dell'editore>>, in F. Ferrari and M. Bampi (eds.), Storicità del testa,
storicità dell'edizione, Università degli Studi di Trento, Trento 2009, pp. 229-48, at 236.
Old English interpretamentum, without specifying where that reading

cornes from 52 , while in the critical apparatus devoted to the Latin text he
reports the actual reading of T. What is more, Logeman does not discuss
the manuscripts from which the Latin words added by the glossator(s)
were drawn or the discrepancies between the Old English glosses and the
T text of RB.
Logeman observes that the «paving letters» or «gloss-letters» are
located over the Latin words in the manuscript, sometimes next to the Old
English gloss, either before or after it, sometimes under it, or even above
it53 . However, Logeman decided to print them in the same line as the Old
English glosses because to print the «paving letters» in exactly the same
place as they occur in the manuscript would have taken up too much
space54 . Each «gloss-letter» has been enclosed in square brackets, but this
editorial choice does not elucidate the relationship between the letters and
the relevant words of the Latin text; as a result, the reader is not given the
opportunity to understand the function of the syntacticalletters.
Nearly forty years ago, Fred Robinson detected sorne inaccuracies in
Logeman' s edition, especially when it came to the syntactical letters.
Sorne syntactical letters were misunderstood as part of the Old English
glosses and sorne initial letters of the Old English glosses were
misinterpreted as syntactical letters. Therefore, Robinson observed that
Logeman had himself made the same mistakes that he attributed to the
glossator-scribes55 .
Logeman's edition also shows other kinds of inaccuracies.
Sometimes words or syntactical letters that are present in the manuscript
have not been recorded. A working example can be found at f. 126r15-16,
where there are a conjunction (et), an Old English verb (beon) and a
syntacticalletter (j) omitted by Logeman:
f. !26r15-16
clysunga et mynstres 1 f ond staôolfœstnys g
d a beon e 1
claustra sunt monasterii 1 et stabilitas in congregatione
Loge man
[d.] clysunga [a.] [e.] mynstres 7 1 staôolfœstnys [g.]
23.2-3 claustra sunt monasterii ; et 1 stabilitas in congregatione;
52
See above, pp. 281-2.
53
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. xxxviii, IV.
54
Ibid., p. xxxviii, IV.
55
Robinson, F., <<Syntactica1 Glosses in Latin Manuscripts of Ang1o-Saxon
Provenance», Speculum 48 (1973), pp. 443-75, at 445-7.
In spite of Logeman's explicit intent to abide closely by the

manuscript readings, especially as far as the Old English is concerned56 ,
his editorial procedures blatantly contradicts his purpose. In fact, he
excluded the unintelligible Latin words, giving them in the critical
apparatus, and he faithfully included the misspellt Latin readings whose
correct counterpart was obvious 57 • Moreover, Logeman left even the most
obvions errors affecting the Old English glosses unchanged. He just
marked the readings that are clearly copying errors with an asterisk and
clarified peculiar forms in the critical apparatus or in the notes at the end
of the volume58 . Finally, he proposed emendations only when a given
corrupted reading could be accounted for, whether as a misspelling or a
scribal conjecture59 •
On several occasions, the reader cannot understand obscure and
atypical forms printed in the edited text, because those forms are
discussed only in the Introduction. For example, the reading goddra
(boni, f. 138r5) stands for godra 60 , but Logeman deals with it only in the
Introduction61 , while nowhere in the edition or in the apparatus is the
peculiarity of the form of the Old English word commented upon62 .
Finally, Logeman attributes the glosses generically to a glossator
whereas he speaks of a scribe in case of transcription mistakes. On just
56
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, pp. xxix and xxxii, III-IV; for concrete
examples of this aspect of Logeman' s edition, see below, pp. 292-5.
57
Ibid., p. xxix, III.
58
Ibid., pp. xxxii-xxxiii, IV.
59
Ibid., p. xxxiv, IV.
60
The reading goddra poses severa! problems of interpretation for both its spelling
and morphological function. The doubling of -d- appears as one of the peculiarities of the
glosses under examination (see above, note 39, p. 279). Moreover, goddra seems
grammatically incongruous because it is the genitive plural of the Old English adjective
gad. Here, however, the adjective gad modifies gecyônesse, i.e. the genitive singular of
the feminine strong noun gecyôness, and should therefore be inflected accordingly. In
fact, the Old English noun phrase goddra gecyônesse translates the Latin noun phrase
boni testimonii, where both the neuter noun testimonium and adjective bonum are in the
genitive singular. The expected Old English adjective here would be the genitive singular
feminine of gad, which should be inflected strong (godre), because it is not preceded by
any modifier. Thus, there are reasons to believe that goddra in fact stands for godre.
Finally, from an orthographical point of view, it is more likely that godre, rather than
godan, i.e. the genitive singular feminine inflected weak, was miscopied as goddra. On
the morpho-syntactical features of the strong and weak adjectives in Old English, see
below G.D. De Bonis' s contribution to the present volume, pp. 443-73.
61
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. !ix, V, § 73.
62
Ibid., p. 53.17.
one single occasion Logeman considers the scribes of T not as merely

mechanical copyists, but as active ones63 .
In conclusion, Logeman' s edition appears as a compromise between a
Lachmannian critical edition64 of the Latin RB in T and an almost
diplomatie edition of the interlinear glosses according to the principles of
the New Philologl5 . The actual aim of Logeman's edition appears to be
the matching of the interlinear glosses and the Latin text of the RB in
general, and not specifically the Latin RB in T.
Introducing a new edition
Since Logeman's times, textual criticism has been at the centre of a

lively debate that has alternated between two opposite poles. In line with
Lachmann's method, sorne editors have aimed at reconstructing a given
text by taking into consideration the variant readings witnessed by the
manuscript tradition and intervening on the latter by means of
emendations. Following the tenets of the so-called New Philology, others
have adhered to an absolute conservatism that has led them to reproduce
the manuscript versions of a given text, thereby publishing diplomatie
rather than real critical editions66 .
Michael Lapidge's words seemed to bridge the gap between these
two contrasting approaches in textual criticism, in that he encouraged
critical editions, especially of Old English verse, to be text-oriented rather
than manuscript-oriented and to restore what the author wrote 67 .
However, texts written in Old Germanie languages, in general, and in
Old English, in particular, are mainly anonymous and quite often
63
At f. 124v7-8, see ibid., p. xxxv, IV; the question is dealt with above, pp. 278-9.
64
See Timpanaro, S., La genesi del metodo del Lachmann, lst edn., Le Monnier,
Florence 1963; 2nd edn. (with a Presentazione and a Pastilla byE. Montanari), U.T.E.T.,
Turin 2003; English translation by Most, G.W., The Genesis of Lachmann 's Method, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 2005.
65
See Cerquiglini, B., Éloge de la variante. Histoire critique de la philologie, Seuil,
Paris 1989; the special issue of Speculum published in 1990 and, in particular, the
introductory essay: Nichols, S.G., «Philology in a Manuscript Culture», Speculum 65
(1990), pp. 1-10.
66
For a historical and critical survey of textual criticism related to Old English texts,
see Lapidge, M., <<Ün the Emendation of Old English Texts>>, in D.G. Scragg and P.E.
Szarmach (eds.), The Editing of Old English: Papers From the 1990 Manchester
Conference, Brewer, Cambridge 1994, pp. 53-67. For an up-to-date debate on a variety of
issues related of textual criticism, see Ferrari and Bampi, Storicità del testa, storicità
dell' edizione.
67
Lapidge, <<Textual Criticism and the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England>>.
documented by one manuscript alone 68 • The manuscript tradition of

glosses and glossaries is even more complicated, because the textual
tradition was not fixed in any way and each scribe may be considered the
author of the redaction he was copying69 . Moreover, if glossaries
presuppose glossed texts from which glosses were selected70 , interlinear
glosses, in turn, presuppose, at least partially, the use of glossaries. This
means that, in the case of glosses, the scribes rnight manipulate the text of
their models.
With the increasing application of new technologies to textual
criticism, it initially appeared that digital editions could solve any
problem related to any kind of text, since they allow the handling of a
huge amount of information that a 'paper' edition could hardly show
without drawbacks 71 • However, several scholars have pointed out that
digital editions cannot offer real solutions to textual criticism, in
general72 . Certainly they do not answer the questions posed by the Latin
RB and its interlinear glosses in T, insofar as a digital edition does not per
se offer a ready-made solution for the visualization of the text. Hypertext
can certainly be useful in contextualising variant readings as well as in
giving several kinds of data to the reader73 . However, the editor's task is
not only to provide information about the edited text, but also, and
mainly, to produce a reliable text for a reading public made up by
scholars and students 74 . Therefore, be it a paper or a digital edition, the
68
About the peculiarities of the manuscript tradition of Old Germanie texts, see
Luiselli Fadda, A.M., Tradiziani manascritte e critica del testa neZ Mediaeva germanica,
Laterza, Rome and Bari 1994.
69
See above, note 33.
70
Lendinara, Angla-Saxan Classes and Glassaries, p. 8.
71
Several scholars have pointed out that digital editions can include data about the
manuscript tradition of a text as well as data concerning the possible sources used, all of
them made easily accessible through the hypertext; see Stella, F., «Metodi e prospettive
dell'edizione digitale di testi mediolatini>>, Filalagia medialatina 14 (2007), pp. 149-80.
72
See Saibene, M.G., <<Edizioni elettroniche e valorizzazione della storicità del testo:
risultati, problemi e prospettive (1 Parte)>>; Buzzoni, M., «Edizioni elettroniche e
valorizzazione della storicità del testo: risultati, problemi, prospettive (Parte II)>>, in
Ferrari and Bampi, Staricità del testa, staricità dell'ediziane, respectively, pp. 81-100, at
96 and pp. 105-123, at 105 and 118.
73
Buzzoni, «Edizioni elettroniche e valorizzazione della storicità del testo>>, pp. 106-
7 and 117.
74
Chiesa, P., «Non-neutralità dell'editore e storicità dell'edizione>>, in Ferrari and
Bampi, Staricità del testa, staricità dell'ediziane, pp. 285-98, at 292-3.
editor has to propose a reliable text that will be an intermediary between

the manuscript tradition and the modem readers 75 •
Since the RB in T consists of two texts with two separate manuscript

traditions 76 , and since the main aim of the present edition is to display the
relationship between the Old English glosses as they appear in T and the
underlying Latin text of the RB, I have chosen two different approaches:
one for the Latin RB, another for the interlinear glosses.
As to the Latin text, I have chosen a conservative approach, in line
with the principles of the New Philology. The Latin text of the RB is of
interest for its relationship with the interlinear glosses, not in itself.
Therefore, the forthcoming edition is not meant to find out the exact
position of T within the tradition of the RB. As mentioned above, it has
already been established that the Latin text of the RB in T is corrupt when
compared to bothA, which is representative of the textus purus, and to 0,
which is representative of the textus interpolatus of the RB77 . In my new
edition, the Latin RB in T will be presented as it arguably was at the time
of the addition of the vemacular interlinear glosses. Whenever the Old
English interpretamentum and the Latin !emma differ, the discrepancy
has been maintained, because if the glossator-scribes did not realise that
inconsistency, the editor has to make the reader immediately aware of it.
As to the Old English glosses, their text is maintained as attested by
the manuscript, save for transcription mistakes. Therefore, the linguistic
features of the glosses are reproduced faithfully without any attempt at
normalisation. Most of the numerous non-standard forms in the
interlinear glosses seem to reflect a transitional phase between Late Old
English and Middle English showing the graduai development of forms
which will become standard later on78 . Other anomalous forms can be
explained as idiosyncrasies of the glossator-scribes. 79 Likewise the
translation mistakes and the Old English interpretamenta influenced by
the Latin lemmata are not emended.
75
Mengozzi, A., «Scrittura e oralità, diasistemi ed archetipi», in Ferrari and Bampi,
Storicità del testa, storicità dell'edizione, pp. 59-79, at 69.
76
77
78
Hogg, A Grammar of Old English, I. Phonology, § 1.4.
79
See above, note 39, p. 279.
On the other band, I have decided to emend transcription mistakes,

because they are obviously mechanical 80 , since this edition does not aim
to be a manuscript-oriented one 81 • Admittedly «to watch the mistakes of
scribes is not without interest, for the study of culture in a given
period» 82 , but the glosses under examination show such a variety of
unusual forms for the most different reasons, that to retain also the
ascertained transcription mistakes would really make these glosses
unintelligible even to the most experienced readers 83 .
Editorial procedures
The text is presented according to its layout in the manuscript. The

content of each manuscript page is reproduced faithfully and the different
typologies of interlinear glosses are printed as they occur in the
manuscript. As a consequence, it will not be unusual to have even three
lines of glos ses for one line of Latin text84 •
Since in T the letter size of the glos ses is one third of the letter size of
the Latin text, the present edition accordingly uses different font sizes for
the Latin text and the interlinear glosses. The former has been printed in a
°
8
For a detailed analysis of the conditions under which the scribes worked and the
circumstances that favoured transcription mistakes, see Havet, L., Manuel de critique
verbale appliquée aux textes latins, Hachette, Paris 1911; despite its title, this study offers
a wide range of phenomena affecting also Old English texts. On the Anglo-Saxon context
in particular, see Parkes, M.B., «The Contribution of Insular Scribes of the Seventh and
Eighth Centuries to the 'Grammar of Legibility'», in his Scribes, Scripts and Reader:
Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of Medieval Texts, The
Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, OH 1991, pp. 1-18, and id., <<Rœdan, areccan,
smeagan: How the Anglo-Saxons Read», Anglo-Saxon England 26 (1997), pp. 1-22.
81
See Lapidge, «Textual Criticism and the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England>>, pp.
39-40.
82
See The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. xxxiii, IV.
83
I agree with Lapidge when he maintains that conservative criticism «Can be no
benefit to the text, and certainly none to the reader, if the editor on principle refuses to
intervene in the text even where it 'obviously seems to be disturbed'>>, see Lapidge, «On
the Emendation of Old English Texts>>, p. 66. Moreover, Contini has underlined that
textual criticism looks for what is true by finding out what is false; therefore, it does not
propose an absolute truth, but it approaches the truth by reducing the errors, see Contini,
G., «La critica testuale come studio di strutture>>, in La Critica del testa. Atti del seconda
congresso internazionale della Società !tatiana di Storia del Diritto, 2 vols., Olschki,
Florence 1971, I, pp. 11-23, at 23, and id., «Filologia>>, in Enciclopedia del Novecento,
Istituto Enciclopedia ltaliana, Rome 1977, I, pp. 954-72, at 963.
84
See above, p. 275.
THE INTERLINEAR GLOSSES TO THE REGULA SANCT/ BENEDICT! 289
bigger size than the latter, but taking care to accommodate each Latin
!emma below its Old English interpretamentum 85 •
Modern spacing between words has been introduced both within the
Latin text and the interlinear glosses. The manuscript occasionally shows
examples of scriptio continua and irregular word-breaks, but, given the
scribes' inconsistency, I have decided to follow the principle that will
help the reading and comprehension of the multi-layered page86 .
Abbreviations have been silently expanded both for the Latin and the
Old English.
Editorial interventions are not signalled in the text save for a few
exceptions, for example, when they refer to the addition of letters that
have been lost due to physical damage, in which case they have been
enclosed in round brackets. Secondly, the addition of letters that the
scribe (of the Latin text) or the glossator-scribe (of the interlinear glosses)
forgot to write have been enclosed in angle brackets. Thirdly, the deletion
of letters that the glossator-scribe wrote by mistake have been enclosed in
square brackets. Unintelligible forms are marked with an asterisk.
The critical apparatus actually conflates a diplomatie and a critical
apparatus, because it gives information about the material aspect of
manuscript readings as well as information about editorial interventions
and it refers to the Notes following the edition for further discussion
about particularly ambiguous readings.
The Latin text
The manuscript spelling of the Latin text is faithfully reproduced in

plain roman. The only exception is , which in the manuscript is the
equivalent ofboth [u] and [v], whereas in my edition I have used for
[u] and <v> for [v] respectivell 7 . Thus, the reader will be enabled to
85
Obviously, this page-setting has implied sorne alteration of the original manuscript
layout.
86
This principle is in line with Gneuss, H., «Guide to the Editing and Preparation of
Texts for the Dictionary of Old English>>, in Scragg and Szarmach (eds.), The Editing of
Old English, pp. 7-26, at 19.
87
Medieval Latin orthography was far from regular for several reasons, one being
that of expressing the phonetic deve1opment of the language. Therefore, following the
caveats of Medieval Latinists, standardisation of the manuscript orthography has
generally been avoided, see Harrington, K.P., Pucci, J. and Elliott, A.G., Medieval Latin,
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1997; 2nd edn.; original edition by
P. Harrington published by Allyn and Bacon, Chicago 1925; reissued by The University
of Chicago Press, Chicago 1962, pp. 2-3. For a thorough discussion of the phonetic and
fully understand the attitude of the glossator-scribes and their level of

accuracy or, conversely, their carelessness in relation to the Latin text.
Although misspellings as well as utterly corrupt Latin readings have been
maintained, the corresponding correct Latin readings have been reported
in section I of the critical apparatus, both whether the Latin lemma has an
Old English equivalent or not88 . When T witnesses an adiaphoric variant
reading of any nature, be it orthographical or morphological or
syntactical, the corresponding reading from the two above-mentioned
critical editions of the RB is not provided.
Letters or words lost because of the fire in the Cottonian Library have
been restored, because they were legible to the glossator-scribes.
Punctuation and capitalisation have been modernised. Capitals have
also been used for the headings and the first line of each chapter,
following the manuscript. The numbers of the chapters, which are often
missing in T, have been added. I have also inserted the superscript
numbers of the verses of each chapter throughout the text, and the
indication of the chapters and verses contained in each page of the edition
on the upper right hand corner of the page.
The adoption of modern punctuation and the numbering of chapters
and verses are meant to assist the reader in the identification of given
passages of the text, especially when it cornes to compare the T text of
the RB with the versions attested in other manuscripts.
The interlinear glosses
The manuscript lettering of the Old English text is faithfully

reproduced except for the runic symbol which is avoided and
replaced by <w>.
Interlinear glosses are printed in italics. Syntactical letters and the
Latin words added by the Old English glossator-scribes (morphological
glosses, syntactical suppletive glosses, syntacticalletters, suppletive Latin
readings, correct Latin readings that substitute wrong Latin readings) are
in bold.
concomitant orthographie evolution of Latin, see Lôfstedt, E., Late Latin (Instituttet for
sammenlignende kulturforskning. Serie A Forelesninger 25), Aschehoug, Oslo 1959 1
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1959; Grandgent, C.H., An Introduction to
Vulgar Latin (Heath's Modem Language Series), Heath, Boston 1907; and Norberg, D.,
Manuel pratique de latin médiéval (Connaissances des langues 4), Picard, Paris 1968.
88
See below, p. 28.
THE INTERLINEAR GLOS SES TO THE REGULA SANCT! BENEDICT/ 291
Although syntactical letters are often preceded and/or followed by a

dot, I have not reproduced it, because it does not appear as a regular
phenomenon.
Editorial interventions are limited to cases of evident transcription
mistakes, but the actual manuscript readings as weil as information about
erasures or other material features are always supplied in the critical
apparatus. The unusual forms peculiar to the interlinear glosses, the Old
English interpretamenta showing the endings influenced by the Latin
lemmata, and mistaken renderings of the Latin text have not been
emended. The corresponding correct forms are supplied in the critical
apparatus.
The critical apparatus
The critical apparatus is divided into three separate sections:

I) the first section is devoted to the Latin text. This section reports the
peculiarities of the readings in T and it records Logeman's (Lg), as weil
as de Vogüé-Neufville (Ne) and Hanslik's (Hk) readings, when they
enable to restore manuscript readings which are either lost or incomplete
because of physical damage. Logeman's as weil as de Vogüé-Neufville
and Hanslik' s readings are also supplied, preceded by scil. (= scilicet),
when they emend patent corrupt Latin readings. Whenever the reading in
T is wrong, because of a misspelling, the correct reading is restored on
the basis of other manuscript witnesses recorded in the critical editions by
de Vogüé-Neufville and Hanslik89 . If the Latin correct reading is
witnessed by more than one manuscript I report the first manuscript in the
list drawn from de Vogüé-Neufville and/or Hanslik followed by et alii.
II) The second section is devoted to the interlinear glosses: it offers
an explanation for the editorial interventions and identifies the glossator-
scribes' emendations to the Latin text. Finally, the second section
provides the standard form for ali the idiosyncratic readings which are
exclusive to T. Whenever individual readings or editorial interventions
require further discussion, they are dealt with in the Notes.
III) The third section provides evidence for the use of the bilingual
exemplar(s), by collating significant Latin variant readings witnessed in
the manuscript tradition of the RB. It collects the Latin variant readings
which likely were the original match for the Old English glosses in T but
which do no longer feature in T. In this section there are also recorded the
89
Latin variant readings introduced by the glossator-scribes to correct

questionable Latin readings of T. The Latin variant readings are those
recorded in the critical editions by de Vogüé-Neufville and Hanslik90 . If a
given Latin variant reading is witnessed by more than one manuscript I
report the first manuscript in the list drawn from de Vogüé-Neufville
and/or Hanslik followed by et alii.
The new edition compared to Logeman's
I will now try and exemplify my approach as opposed to Logeman's

(Plates V-VI [Logeman 1888: pp. 9-10]) through the analysis off. 121v1-
13, which is one of the passages that show a considerable variety of the
problems discussed so far.
Latin anachoritarum (f. 121 v6) has been g1ossed by Old English dan.
orseclena. Logeman includes dan. *orseclena in the text, while, in the
critical apparatus dedicated to the interlinear glosses, he explains that
there is an erasure before dan. In the Notes following the edition, he then
suggests to consider d as a «paving letter» and an as a variant spelling of
on in the compound onsetlena, of which orseclena is an obvious
.
mtsspe 11'mg91 .
The new edition proposes the reading d an onsetlena, whereas the
second section of the critical apparatus records the manuscript reading
and Loge man's opinion about it. The reader is further directed to the
Notes, where it is explained that there is an erasure before d, and that, for
this reason, it is not sure whether d could stand for id as a Latin
syntactical g1oss related to est underneath, or cou1d be a syntacticalletter,
as Logeman suspects. Logeman is right when he considers orseclena as a
transcription mistake for onsetlena and an as an alternative prefix to on-.
On the left margin off. 127v7, the glossator-scribe has added horum,
which is a Latin reading witnessed by other manuscripts of the RB, but
which had not been originally part of the Latin RB in T92 • Logeman
inserts horum in the line hosting the main Latin text, but, in the critical
apparatus devoted to the Latin text, he points out that horum had been
«possibly added by glossator»93 .
In my forthcoming edition, horum has been printed in the 1eft margin,
name1y in the same position as the manuscript, and in bold to earmark it
90
91
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. 9.18 and the critical apparatus, p. 121.
92
See above, p. 278.
93
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Log eman, p. 9.18 and the critica1 apparatus.
as an addition by the glossator-scribe. In the second section of the critical

apparatus, the reader is directed to the Notes, where the implications of
that integration as well as Logeman's relevant editorial choice will be
discussed. Horum is a suppletive reading witnessed by a considerable
number of codices of the RB, which was inserted by the glossator-scribe
to mak:e the Latin RB in T conform to his exemplar94 • Besides adding this
suppletive reading, the glossator-scribe also provided it with an
«ordinary» gloss and a syntactical letter. In this case all the manuscripts
used by de Vogüé-Nuefville and Hanslik share the same reading, which
matches the addition by the glossator-scribe in T. Thus the third section
of the critical apparatus records the reading proposed by these critical
editions of the RB.
At f. 121 v7, the Latin text reads conversionis, as Logeman records in
the critical apparatus. However, Logeman's edition reads
95
conversationis • The new edition re tains the manuscript reading
conversionis (f. 121 v7), but the first section of the critical apparatus
records the corresponding correct Latin reading conversationis, preceded
by scil., which matches the Old English interpretamentum drohtnunge.
This editorial solution aims to highlight the discrepancy between the Old
English gloss drohtnunge 'of the conversation' and the manuscript Latin
reading conversionis 'of the conversion'. The possible reasons and
implications of such a divergence are then discussed at length in the
Notes. The glossator-scribe very likely read conversationis glossed with
drohtnunge in his bilingual exemplar, but he inserted drohtnunge above
conversionis in T without correcting conversionis into conversationis,
while, on other occasions, he corrected the wrong reading in T96 .
However, it should not be excluded that conversionis is a misreading for
conversationis. This supposition is indeed supported by the
interpretamenta that do not translate the Latin readings in T and that
relate to Latin lemmata that could have been easily misread97 .
94
La Règle de Saint Benoît, ed. by de Vogüé and Neufville, 1, ch. 1.3, p. 436, and III,
p. 76, and Benedicti Regula, ed. by Hanslik, p. 18.
95
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. 9.19 and the critical apparatus; about
conversionis for conversationis, see above, p. 273.
96
At f. 128v20, the glossator-scribe corrected prohibetur into prohibemur by adding
a dot under t and an rn above it, probably relying on a bilingual exemplar whose reading
was proibemus instead of prohibemur; see La Règle de Saint Benoît, ed. by de Vogüé and
Neufville, 1, ch. 7.19, p. 476 and III, p. 207, and Benedicti Regula, ed. by Hanslik, p. 47.
97
A relevant example is conservationem glossed with drohtnunge at f. 120r6, as if
conservationem were conversationem. The Latin reading in T conservationem is the
genuine reading within the manuscript tradition of the RB, but conversationem occurs in
My new edition reads wylme in the text, because the manuscript

reading wylne (f. 121 v7) is clearly a transcription mistake and as such it
is listed in the relevant section of the Introduction. By contrast, Logeman
records *wylne, with the asterisk pointing to the oddity of the manuscript
reading, but in the critical apparatus devoted to the interlinear glosses the
reader is invited to read it as wylme98 .
The manuscript reading fadunge (f. 121 v8) is accepted by Logeman
without any explanation in the critical apparatus, but, in the Introduction,
it is listed among the numerous Old English interpretamenta without the
expected n, and Logeman maintains that those forms can be due to the
omission of the linea nasalis. At the same time, he admits that the high
frequency of vowels not followed by the expected nasal consonants could
be evidence of nasalised vowels 99 , which I consider rather unlikely. Thus,
the new edition proposes fa<n>dunge, because it is very likely that -n-
was omitted because the glossator-scribe had not noticed the linea nasalis
over -a-.
My edition proposes lancsumere for the manuscript reading
landsumere (f. 121 v8). In the second section of the critical apparatus I
refer to the Notes, where the case is made that the glossator-scribe may
have misread his exemplar confusing c with d, probably because the
ascender of d was very short. The proposed reading lancsumere, standing
for langsumere, is evidence of the development of -ng- into -nc- 100 • In
Logeman' s edition, instead, we read *landsumere in the text, but
lancsumere in the critical apparatus 101 •
Finally, the new edition accepts the manuscript readingfrore (f. 12v
9), because, although it looks like a transcription mistake for frofre, I
believe that the formfrore could provide graphie evidence of the phonetic
phenomenon of the merging of [v] (< [f]) into o, as suggested in the
sorne of the manuscripts collated by de Vogüé-Neufville and Hanslik, see La Règle de

Saint Benoît, ed. by de Vogüé and Neufville, I, pral. 47, p. 424 and III, p. 42, and
Benedicti Regula, ed. by Hanslik, p. 9. A possible explanation could either be that this
drohtnunge is due to an exemplar reading «conversationem drohtnunge>> or that the
glossator-scribe was influenced by drohtnunga rightly glossing conversationis at l. 9 in T.
Further evidence supporting that wrong interpretamenta were sometimes occasioned by
the misreading of Latin lemmata is offered by ubi glossed with metes at f. 147v12: here
ubi was very likely misread as cibi.
98
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. 9.19.
99
Ibid., p. 9.19 and pp. xlviii-xlix, V,§ 41.
100
Brunner, K., Altenglische Grammatik nach der Angelsiichsischen Grammatik von
E. Sievers, Niemeyer, Halle 1942, 3rd edn., Niemeyer, Tübingen 1965, § 215.
101
The Rule of S. Benet, ed. by Logeman, p. 9.20.
THE INTERLINEAR GLOS SES TO THE REGULA SANCT! BENEDICT/ 295
former edition 102 . Logeman, too, accepts the manuscript readingfrore (f.
121 v9), but in the critical apparatus he writes <ifrore, i.e. frofre» 103 and
refers to the textual note for further discussion. Therein Logeman
explains that the dropping of f, after it had become voiced, may be a
phonetic process 104 ; however, in the Introduction, he mentions this same
frore as an example ofjdropped within a word 105 .
Conclusions
The multi-layered density of the RB glosses in T leads to a three-

dimensional edition that will hopefully open new perspectives on the
interlinear glosses and unveil the attitude of the glossator-scribes towards
both the Latin text in T and their exemplar(s). The layout helps
understand the multifarious functions of the glosses and highlights the
intervention of the glossator-scribes on the Latin text. The reasons behind
transcription mistakes, atypical and hybrid Latin-Old English forms
betray the glossator-scribes' discontinuous performance, alternating
between thorough and careless copying. The forthcoming edition
proposes sorne plausible suggestions as to the exemplar(s) used by the
glossator-scribes, in general, and shows that they used at least one
bilingual exemplar, in particular.
102
Ibid., p. 121.
103
Ibid., p. 10.1 and the critical apparatus.
104
Ibid .• p. 121.
105
Ibid., p. l, V, § 48.
Specimen from my forthcoming edition of the interlinear glosses to the

RB in T: ff.121rl9-121v18
ff. 121r19-121v7 Chh HH 71-73 Hl 1, 1-3

<LXXI> Ut oboedientes sibi sint invicem fratres;
20 <LXXII> De zelo bono quem debent monachi habere;
<LXXIII> De eo quod non omnis iustitie observatio in hac sit re-
gula constituta. EXPLICIT CAPITULA .INCIPIT LIBER
f. 121v
BEATI BENEDICT! ABBATIS PATRIS EXIMI MONACHORUM
MILITUM CHRISTI. DE GENERIBUS EORUM VEL VITA. 
feower kynna b c beon a sutol is
1
MONACHORUM QUATTUOR GENERA ESSE MANIFESTUM
pœt forme mynstermanna pœt is mynsterlic
est. 2 Primum coenobitarum, hoc est monaste-
campiende h under regule oààe abbude b syààan pœt oàer
5 riale, militans sub regula vel abbate. 3 Deinde secun-
kyn is d an onsetlena jJœt is west /Jen setlena
dum genus est anachoritarum, id est heremitarum,
gpissera h pa àe na drohtnunge wylme mid niwum p ac mid mynstres
horum qui non conversionis fervore novitio, sed monasterii
19 <LXXI>] omitted in T, (LXXI) Lg, LXXI Ne Hk; 20 <LXXII>] omitted in T, (LXXII)
Lg, LXXII Ne Hk; 21 <LXXIII>] omitted in T, (LXXIII) Lg, LXXIII Ne Hk; 22 EXPLICITT
on! y] sei!. EXPLICIUNT Lg A et alii; letters in red ink from this ward till the end off.
121r; INCIPITT only Lg] alii aliter, see Notes; f. 121v 1 BEAT!] ali words in capital
letters in red ink in this line; ABBATIS] Logeman wrongly identifies this as the first
ward off. 121 v 1; 2 MILITUM] the who le line is in capitals, letters in red ink in the
first half line, in black ink but -profiled in red in the second half; ] omitted in T
and in Lg; 3 MoNACHORUM] initial capitalletter three !ines deep (Il. 3-5), half in red
ink half in a brownish ink; ali words in this line in capitalletters in a brownish ink,
see Notes; 7 conversionis T K et alii] sei!. conversationis Lg A et alii;
II f. 121 v3 b] the first syntacticalletter in the interlinear glosses to the RB in T; a]

this syntacticalletter is written so close to sutol in T that it would appear that the
glossator-scribe was not aware it was a syntacticalletter rather than the first letter
of an «ordinary>> glass; 6 d an onsetlena] dan. orseclena T, dan. *orseclena Lg,
see Notes; west jJen setlena T] westpensetlena Lg, see Notes; 7 horum] added in
the margin possibly by the glossator LgN, suppletive reading, in the line of the
main Latin text in Lg, see III and Notes; pa àe] paàe T Lg; drohtnunge] as a glass
to conversationis, see 1 and Notes; wylme LgN] wylne T, *wylne Lg, wylme LgN;
ac mid Lg] c of ac has been made into the first stroke of rn of mid, which now
looks like rn with four strokes in T;
III f. 121 v6-7 heremitarum/qui T] heremitarum horum qui Lg Ne Hk;

THE INTERLINEAR GLOSSES TO THE REGULA SANCTI BENEDICT! 297
f. 121v8-18 1, 4-8
o fa<n>dunge u lancsumere h leomodon ongean pane deoful

4
probatione diutuma didicerunt contra diabolum
mœnigra l mid frore eallunga gelœrede i winnan q bene
multorum solacio iam docti pugnare, 5 et bene
getyde of broôorlicere fœrrœdene to anfealdan gewinne
10 Instructi fratema ex acie ad singularem pugnam
westenes ge orsorgi ge buton frofre oôres mid anre
heremi, securi iam sine consolatione alterius, sola
T
hand u oôôe u earme agean leahtras flœsces i oôôe gepohta
manu vel brachio contra vitia camis vel cogitatio-
gode gefultumiandum v winnan q ond hi nihtsumiaô pœt pridde
6
num, Deo auxiliante, pugnare sufficiunt. Tertium
1 11 heremi] erasure after heremi? Lg;
II 8fa<n>dunge]fadunge T Lg, see Notes; u] likely a transcription mistake for o, see

Notes; lancsumere LgN] landsumere T, *landsumere Lg, lancsumere LgN, see
Notes; 9 frore] for frofre, see Notes; bene] Latin LgN, see Notes; 11 ge orsorgi ge]
for ge orsorge ge, georsorgi ge T Lg, see Notes; 12 hand] North. for WS handa;
13 nihtsumiaô] for genihtsumiaô, see Notes;
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
'j
j
j
j
j
-j
j
j
j
j
j
j
Plate IV
London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii, f. 12lv
l"ov o - . - of monb: 1. ThoM •ho Uv• Wlder a 1'1lla; [9
S. Knmit.;
LXIII. De ordi>N ~atio•i•.

LX/liT. D~ ortlinwlllo abl>ati.
LXV. De preJM#Îl~ m<mtUUrii.
L r f"l. 1h o.citwiil motltlllûrii.
LXY/1. De fratriJN..J in 1'iam dw~il. 5
LXVIII. IH:fralri ~ia~.)
(LXVIIIl.) ut l'Il ~non prüt'm<~( aUer ~~~~,_~mdwe.
(LXX.) Ut- pruer.mt11 pa.tl8im p • ._ almm C«kr,.
(LXXI.) Ut tiboedieAûlllilJi .mt intcicem/mtr•f·
(LXXIl.) »• ztdo bono qu.em. tlel!em monaclti ha~n. xo
(LXXIII.) DtJ eo <]lu1d fl<m fYI'MIIi• ju#itit ~io i11 lt.0.e lit
r'fl'lla. (JOIUtit.uta.
1 b.) EXl>l.JClttiiT C4l'ft"(1L.A. bcll'tt Ull.llB Bun BnliNCTI 1
AtluTJS. P..t.'nllll Ex:uu l!olf..t.~HoauH Mu.ITVX CsaJsn.
teower k~IUl& lb.] (c.) bton [a;{sutol is

M()tJ(I(:/IOI"Ufn ~ - manfft~t~mn ut. 15
fiiJII"'a
~ forme myD&f:ermaUJ18 )'œl iB mynsterlic campiende (h.J
Pn- ~iùwum !wc el!l m.~ militdtiiJ
under regule. otme abbuda, [b. hyt5&n )>m o&r kyn iB
wh 'l"ttgfiia tti!Z ~; 1>/JÙII/8 ~ ,_, ut
dan. • oraeclena )'œt is weatpmsetlena. (g.l Jli811Bra. (h.J j:!a& DA
tJrlal:1rorita1"111n id ut l~~~r~ ~m qui non
drohtnunge '"wylne Dlid niwum [p.] aclJlid myDJJtres [o.Jfadunge
~u fen..- tlWitio; ud mo111UUrii piobaiiuM
[u.] '"lambnlmere [b.lleoruodon OngéiUI ~e deoful Dl81niçr.
dive- t!idiurum ttmtra diallolum f'lllti!t~m~.m ,,
Plate V
The Rule ofS. Benet: Latin and Anglo-Saxon Interlinear Version,
ed. by H. Logeman, Trübner, London 1888, p. 9
10] 3. Sarabaite-. who llva &part, f'olli>wing t.hol:t own inolin&.ton•;
(1.) mid frore, 4lnllunga geJœrede (i.J WÏllllnll (q.) 00ll8 getyde
stlacio jam d.octi pugnan; ~t. bene i11Mrmti
of bro'l!'orlicere fre:rrœdene to anfealdan gewinne weshmes
jratern.a e;:ç tWie ml llinsruJaT'IIm pu.gnam hrt1mi
georliQrgî. ge bnton frofra o'l!'rell nüd I!.Îl.N [t..] hancl
tmm'l'i jam sine crmsolatitme alttriul!: fl(Jla malffi
[11.) oml'e [ u.] eanne agean le~~.htras flœsces [î.J o'li& ge)>ohta
1-'fll bracllio comra I!Ùia ooMW! oo cogiult«mwm,
gode gefultumiandtlm (v.) winnan [ q.J 7 ili nihtsnn>i&1S
s dea o;u:t:iliama pw,pw.re wJ/(ciunt ;
pœt pridde [c.] [tl.] )>mt atelic~ [b.] kin [a.J sylfde-
Ti!rtfum. tl!li'o m(ma<!/un"Wn ttt~rrt'mtlm g.mus Ul. san:Wai-
mers [a.] ):>a on œnlgum regole nR afandode nel 'l5ti'e af'nndennessa
'Qr!<m, qJ"ieniia
lllreowas [h.J ln.] [m.] ofenee. [n.] ahge .. d~ on gelcynda
magiSlri 81cut attf't6m fomncis; url i'A #umbi i'Wttwa
nexode [i.]pa git. [r.] mid weoreum. healdende [o.J weorulde.
molliti adhutJ opel'Ü>te6 strtra'l\111$ seetdo
(p.] tTnwl\n: leognn. [b.) gode )>nrh sce.-e [a.] sj"nd acnawene
to fidem. '17111mti'l'i dw per tOMUmm 'IW~ur.: .
]:>a. twyféalde pr«>feald4l oWS~> soties a.nlepie gaPgende l'ltnbulantes
Qt•i bini au! emù. atlt cJ!'I'!<I ~i tÎ'IU
butan llfrde big on drihtenlicnm heordum. ac beora agenum
pastO'I'IJ, non ®mimciB Md IIUis
hoolysde fore 11ft heom is gewilnunp. Just
inr;tusi O?Jililnu pro lege €1's est tbtJideriorwm t:muptatl.
}'>on'l\6 hi bwœt wenn1S tellalS oNSe g e - n pœt aecgal' halig
cum quicrJ1dil putawrim 'Dili elegwi-nt. },t)c tà"ctmt MlntJtum
7 pm ]'œl hi nella'l!' )>œe 7 hl wenntl 1 na beon alyfooe. pœt
t;. et qtrod noZturim. noe ptàam fWI'i licw-e. Qtwr- (!Jalla.;
feortle .. omice kin is [a.] J:>a~t is genemned wilS
t""" 1.'61'0 fltt'WII est monacl.!onun qu.od 7lbminahw gipo-
scripel ]:>a on eallon heor~~o Jife ~nd mialice eeirn prim
ttagv.m. qui toto. vita ma per diwreatJ protli'AtJÎatl. terni•
1. fror~t, i. "· ft'iifre, "nd ""e note cm this word,

gl<lli!l.
z,,,,,
L.mn oopiod htto
7. n ln œnig- of il'1"'8'olar llhaps. ""'• Latin; see n!À<I.
lt. g4•!JI!I'Id• lu thé MS, la gl- to M.llbtll4111tu, whioh hall been Pli' ID 1>y
g'lœ•ator "J''DUont>OP&ly. n io not found in Ibo otb... tate. 17. Uo..m.ain
wlumher ...,,,.,. <>r ,.,.,.,.. ·
~- F..r•u,.. o.ftor itJ·-i' t 13. <rÛ obove the line. 16. u:e o.bon th"
liDo and ...-"""""·
Plate VI
The Rule ofS. Benet: Latin and Anglo-Saxon Interlinear Version,
ed. by H. Logeman, Trübner, London 1888, p. 10
GLOSSING IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON EN GLAND:
A SAMPLE STUDY OF THE GLOSSES IN CAMBRIDGE,
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE 448 AND
LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, HARLEY 110
Claudia Di Sciacca
The putative didactic role of glossed manuscripts has been the subject
of an animated scholarly debate within Anglo-Saxon studies, a debate
whose central dilemma is perhaps best epitomised in the title of Gernot
Wieland's study of 1985 «The Glossed Manuscript: Classbook or Library
Book?» 1• While attempting to compromise between the two as not
mutually exclusive concepts and to set a taxonomy of glosses which can
be taken as «cogent proof» of classroom use, Wieland frankly concluded
that «in all probability most of [glossed manuscripts] actually served as
teaching texts» 2 . More recently, Patrizia Lendinara has cautioned that
glosses are not necessarily «pedagogical deviees [and] might also stem
from the hand of a lonely reader», and has recommended that «every set
of glosses [should] be evaluated in terms of its individual features» 3 .
This paper is going to present a survey of the glossing of two late
Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 448, Part
I, and London, British Library, Harley 110. Previous scholarship has
dealt with only given aspects of the Latin glosses in these two
manuscripts 4 , while the few vemacular glosses in Harley 110 have been
published separatell. Now, in the spirit of the research project
sponsoring this volume, the present analysis will attempt a more
wholesome or holistic approach to the Corpus and Harley glosses, the
texts they accompany, and the manuscript contexts of them both, thereby
trying to highlight the distinctive characteristics of these glosses and to
1
Wieland, G.R., «The Glossed Manuscript: Classbook or Library Book?», Anglo-
Saxon England 14 (1985), pp. 153-73.
2
Ibid., pp. 164 and 173.
3
Lendinara, P., «Was the Glossator a Teacher?», Quaestio 3 (2002), pp. 1-27,
quotations at 26-27 and 1, respectively. See also ead., «Anglo-Saxon Glosses and
Glossaries: An Introduction>>, in her Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Glossaries (VCSS 622),
Ashgate, Aldershot 1999, pp. 1-2 and 5-6.
4
5
300 CLAUDIA DI SCIACCA
assess whether the Corpus and Harley codices could have been put to
sorne classroom use.
CCCC 448 and Harley 110
CCCC 448 6 and Harley 1107 have often been associated on the basis
of the striking similarities in their content and glosses, as weil as in their
layout, rubrication and capitalisation8 .
The Corpus codex is a composite manuscript, consisting of three
parts. The first one, which is the part that concerns us here, comprises ff.
1-86 of the present manuscripë. This section has been dated to the first
half of or mid-tenth century and its origin has been traced to South
England, or possibly Worcester; the codex was eventually moved to
Winchester after 1100. Part I contains three texts in ali: the first two are
the Epigrammata ex sententiis S. Augustini 10 (ff. 1rl-36r13), and the
Poema coniugis ad uxorem, though bearing the title Versus ad coniugem
suam in the actual codex (ff. 36r14-39r8) 11 • In the manuscript both texts
are attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, but while the Epigrammata are
6
Gneuss, H., Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and
Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (MRTS 241), Arizona
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2001, no. 114; Budny, M.O.,
Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College: An Illustrated Catalogue, 2 vols., Medieval Institute Publications,
Kalamazoo, MI 1997, no. 17; James, M.R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in
the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2 vols., Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1912, II, pp. 360-3.
7
Gneuss, Handlist, nos. 415 and 416; Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts
Containing Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl. 1990, no.
228.
8
Di Sciacca, C., <<The Manuscript Tradition, Presentation, and Glossing of Isidore's
Synonyma in Anglo-Saxon England: The Case of CCCC 448, Harley 110 and Cotton
Tiberius A. iii», in R.H. Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker (eds.), Foundations of Learning: The
Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Storehouses of
Wholesome Learning II. Mediaevalia Groningana ns 9), Peeters, Paris, Leuven and
Dudley, MA 2007, pp. 95-124, at 106-13.
9
On Parts II and III of the Corpus manuscript, see below, notes 11 and 12.
10
CPL, no. 526; ptd. PL 51, cols. 497-532.
11
CPL, no. 531; Sancti Pontii Meropii Pavlini Nolani Carmina, ed. by W.A. Hartel
(CSEL 30), Tempsky, Vienna 1894, pp. 344-8. A sixteenth-century anonymous English
translation of the Poema coniugis makes up Part II of CCCC 448; it is printed on paper
leaves and sandwiched between f. 40v and 41r of Part I: see above, note 6.
GLOSSING IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 301
authentic, the Poema coniugis is placed among the dubia et spuria in

CPL. Thirdly come the Synonyma by Isidore of Seville (ff. 41rl-86vl4) 12 •
Harley 110 is a little later and slimmer codex than its Corpus
counterpart, being dated to the end of the tenth century, and its origin has
firrnly been located in Canterbury, Christ Church 13 . Strikingly, the Harley
manuscript contains exactly the same texts as Part I of the Corpus codex,
in the same order, namely the Epigrammata (ff. 3rl-22v32), the Poema
coniugis (ff. 22v33-24v7), and the Synonyma (ff. 25rl-53r7) 14 •
These three works can be said to make up a coherent collection
combining devotional content and elementary grammatical instruction.
Prosper' s Epigrammata are verse renderings of selected sententiae by St
Augustine on a variety of subjects of Christian ethics and theology, and
because of their content and simple language, they were one of the most
popular textbooks for elementary grammatical and moral instruction
12
CPL, no. 1203; Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Synonyma, ed. by J. Elfassi (CCSL
lllB), Brepols, Turnhout 2010. The Synonyma are followed by Part III of the present
manuscript (ff. 87-103). This section is made up of a vellum codex dated to s. xi/xii and
written in South England (or Worcester?); it contains Sybilline prophecies; the
Physiologus (lion, unicom, panther only); Latin poems; a note on the languages of the
world; Prosper, Sententiae ex operibus S. Augustini, no. 390; Prudentius, Peristephanon
(prologue only), Dittochaeon; and the Septem miracula mundi: see above, note 6.
13
Two flyleaves (i.e. ff. 1 and 56 of the present manuscript) contain a graduai of the
mid-eleventh century, probably from Old Minster Winchester: see Gneuss, Handlist, no.
416; the Latin text is accompanied by extensive neumatic notations. The current fol. 2r is
occupied by what looks like a school exercise or a page copied from a parsing grammar,
consisting of the full declension of the adjectives malus and doctus in the positive,
comparative, and superlative forms. The hand responsible for this page is different from
the one responsible for the rest of the manuscript and presumably later, and it would be
tempting to see in this page a further hint at the didactic use of the manuscript.
14
For a survey of the Anglo-Saxon manuscript tradition of Prosper' s Epigrammata,
particularly the glossed witnesses, see Lapidge, M., «The Study of Latin Texts in Late
Anglo-Saxon England, I. The Evidence of Latin Glosses», inN. Brooks (ed.), Latin and
the Vernacular Languages in Early Medieval Britain (Studies in the Early History of
Britain), Leicester University Press, Leicester 1982, pp. 99-140, repr. in his Anglo-Latin
Literature 600--899, The Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, OH 1996, pp. 455-
98, addenda p. 516, at 465-70; and Ruff, «Misunderstanding Rhetorico-Syntactical
Glosses to Two Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts>>, Notes and Queries ns 45 (1998), pp. 163-6.
On the Synonyma in Anglo-Saxon England, see Di Sciacca, C., Finding the Right Words:
Isidore's Synonyma in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto Old English Series 19), University
of Toronto Press, Toronto 2008, pp. 68-76; ead., «lsidorian Scholarship at the School of
Theodore and Hadrian: The Case of the Synonyma>>, Quaestio 3 (2002), pp. 76-106; and
Russey, M., Ascetics and Aesthetics: The Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts of Isidore of Seville's
Synonyma, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison 2005.
throughout the Anglo-Saxon period 15 . Likewise, the Poema coniugis

contains musings on the benefits of Christian life. Finally, the Synonyma
combine penitential lament and hortatory consolation with a most
idiosyncratic style, namely the stilus ysydorianus, a rhymed, rhythmical
prose the main feature of which is the pervasive use of synonymical
variation and paraphrase 16 . This combination of eloquium and uotum (to
put it in Isidore's own words) 17 secured the Synonyma a vast and
enduring popularity throughout the western Middle Ages chiefly as a
spiritual primer and, secondarily, as a grammatical handbook with a focus
on the exercise of synonymical paraphrase which was already widely
practised and recommended in the antique schools of rhetoric in order to
. copza
acqmre . uerb arum 18.
The glossing in CCCC 448 and Harley 110: a preliminary survey
The glosses in the Corpus manuscript are exclusively in Latin, while

Harley 110 also features a total of eighteen Old English glosses 19 • Most
of the Corpus glosses are written in the same hand as the text, although at
least a number of glosses are by a later hand also found in Part 0
. Asto ne
the Harley codex, while the Old English glosses have already been
15
Lapidge, «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, l>>, pp. 459 and
465-70, and id., «Schools», in M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes and D. Scragg (eds.), The
Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, Blackwell, Oxford 1999, pp. 407-9.
See also Lendinara, P., <<The World of Anglo-Saxon Leaming>>, in M. Godden and M.
Lapidge (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 1991, pp. 264-81, at 276.
16
See at least the classic study by Fontaine, J., <<Théorie et pratique du style chez
Isidore de Séville>>, Vigiliae Christianae 14 (1960), pp. 65-101. See a1so Elfassi, J.,
<<Genèse et originalité du style synonymique dans les Synonyma d'Isidore de Séville>>,
Revue des études latines 83 (2005), pp. 226-45, and Di Sciacca, Finding the Right Words,
pp. 24-31.
17
Jsidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. 5, line 21.
18
See Elfassi, J., <<La réception des Synonyma d'Isidore de Séville aux XIVe-XVIe
siècles: les raisons d'un success exceptionnel>>, Cahiers de recherches médiévales 16
(2008), pp. 107-18; id., «Les Synonyma d'Isidore de Séville: un manuel de granunaire ou
de morale? La réception medieval de l'œuvre>>, Revue d'études augustiniennes et
patristiques 52 (2006), pp. 167-98; and Di Sciacca, Finding the Right Words, pp. 34-36
and 176-80.
19
20
Budny, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art, I, p. 220.
For a comparison between the two hands, see especially ff. 16v, 23r, 26r, and 51r.
studied in sorne detail and attributed to more thau one glossator21 , the
Latin glosses have been briefly assigned to «several hands» 22 • My own
consultation of Harley 110 has shawn that most of the Latin g1ossing was
accomplished by the scribe and is contemporary with the text, as is
evident not on1y from the script but a1so from the use of the same ink as
weil as from the very orderly layout of the g1osses, with the
interpretamenta neatly written in the interlinear space without any
clashes with the ascenders or descenders of the underlying text. The
manuscript must, however, have undergone more glossing campaigns by
other hands, during which new glosses were added and old ones were
corrected or replaced by erasing and (re )writing over them23 . This process
is evident in the juxtaposition on the same page of glosses written by
different hands using different (generally lighter) kinds of ink24 ; also, the
layout and presentation of these 1ater glosses definitely look untidier25 .
Interestingly, the symptoms of this multi-layering of glosses are
concentrated on the Prosper' s texts, while the glossing to the Synonyma
looks more uniform throughout, although, as we shall see, there the
alternation of more Old English glossators has been detected26 .
Typically, while the vernacular glosses in Harley 110 have long been
edited, the Latin glosses in bath codices are still unpublished 27 . The Latin
glosses to Prosper were first discussed by Michael Lapidge in his essay
on the study of Latin texts in late Anglo-Saxon England 28 , while two
21
Page, R.I., «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, II. The
Evidence of English Glosses>>, in Brooks (ed.), Latin and the Vernacular Languages in
Early Medieval Britain, pp. 141-65, at 150, and Hussey, Ascetics and Aesthetics, pp. 257-
70.
22
Page, «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon En gland, Il», p. 150.
23
See, for example, the two glosses ope s. adiutt and ipse : œger on f. 20v3 and 5,
where the two interpretamenta are clearly written on erasures.
24
Compare, for example, ff. 7v, Sr-v, lOr-v, 16r, 23v, and 24v.
25
See, for example, the gloss tendens s. o homo on f. 8v35.
26
27
On the persistent neglect affecting monolingual Latin gloss studies, see Wieland,
G.R., «Latin Lemma - Latin Gloss: The Stepchild of Glossologists>>, Mittellateinisches
Jahrbuch 19 (1984), pp. 91-9, and Lapidge, M., «Old English Glossography: The Latin
Context», in R. Derolez (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Glossography: Papers Read at the
International Conference Held in Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en
Schone Kunsten van België, Brussels, 8 and 9 September 1986, Koninklijke Academie
voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Brussels 1992, pp. 45-57. I
intend to produce the first edition of the Latin glosses in CCCC 448 and Harley llO
myself as a final contribution to the research project sponsoring this volume.
28
«The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, l», pp. 465-70.
studies on the Corpus and Harley glosses to the Synonyma have recently
been published by Matthew Russey and myself, with somewhat different
conclusions29 •
In spite of their many similarities, the two manuscripts strikingly
differ from one another when it cornes to the thickness of the glossing,
with the Harley codex being definitely more intensely glossed than its
Corpus counterpart, especially as far as the Prosper texts are concemed.
Furthermore, a disparity in the number of glosses is clearly noticeable
within each individual manuscript between the Epigrammata and the
Poema coniugis, on the one hand, and the Synonyma, on the other.
As to CCCC 448, the glossing to the Prosper texts is on the whole
sparse and unsystematic. I have counted a total of 231 glosses to both the
Epigrammata and the Poema coniugis, with an average of 3 glosses per
page (6 per folio). The Synonyma are more intensely glossed, with a total
of 386 glosses and an average of 4,2 glosses per page (8,4 per folio).
Interestingly, the glosses to the Synonyma are concentrated in the first
book, with an average of 7,4 glosses per page (14,8 per folio), while the
second book is decidedly more sparsely glossed, with an average of 1,75
glosses per page (3,5 per folio).
Harley 110 is more densely glossed throughout, the disproportion
with CCCC 448 being especially noticeable as far as the Prosper texts are
concerned. Here I counted a total of 861 Latin glosses, which makes an
average of 20,5 glosses per page (41 per folio). Not only are the Prosper
glosses in the Harley manuscript decidedly more numerous than the
Corpus ones, but they are also more consistently distributed, although at
times a certain degree of haphazardness is noticeable30 . As far as the
Synonyma are concerned, here too the glossing is thicker than in CCCC
448, with a total of 441 glosses and an average of 8,01 glosses per page
(16,02 per folio). However, like in the Corpus codex, in the Harley one
too the glossing is definitely more intense in the first book, with an
average of 13,5 glosses per page (27 per folio) as opposed to an average
of 4,03 glos ses per page (8,06 per folio) in the second book.
29
Ascetics and Aesthetics, pp. 239-70, and Di Sciacca, <<The Manuscript Tradition,
Presentation, and Glossing>>.
3
° For example, the facing ff. 4v and, especially, Sr show very thick glossing, quite
unlike the folios immediate!y preceding and following them.
The following transcript of Prosper' s epi gram De uera laudatione

Dei from both manuscripts provides a straightforward sample of the
disproportion in the number of glosses between the two manuscripts 31 :
De uera laudatione dei (CCCC 448, ff. 3r20-3vl-8)

s. tune
Vera est confessio benedicentis cum idem son us
Est et oris, et cordis. bene autem loqui, et male uiuere
Nihil aliud est quam sua se uoce damnare. EPIGRAMMA32 .
Laus uera in dominum depromitur ore precantis,
.s. ea
Si qut( uoce fluunt intima cordis habent
.i. quia .s. homini
Non prodest cuiquam solis bona dicere uerbis
Hoc pia mens habeat quod bene lingua sonat
Nam fari recte miserum est et uiuere praue
Damnat nota malum regula iustititt
De uera laudatione dei (Harley 110, f. 4v3-ll)
.i. laudantis
Vera est confessio benedicentis, cum idem son us
Sic faciunt ypochrite. Locuntur enim sancte et uiuunt peruerse
est et oris et cordis. Bene autem loqui et male
uiuere, nihil est aliud quam sua se uoce dampnare. EPIGRAMMA 33 .
.i.laudatio .i. exprimitur .i. uoce .i. orantis alicuius
Laus uera in Dominum depromitur ore precantis,
.i. illa scilicet qut( ex ore alicuius procedunt
Si qua uoce fluunt, intima cordis habent.
31
The transcript shows originallineation and spelling, while abbreviations have been
silently expanded and punctuation has been modemised.
32
In the manuscript, the short prose introduction to the verse lines proper is
consistent! y followed by the word 'epigram', which is generally shortened by means of
various abbreviations; here, for example, it is abbreviated 'EPIGRA' with a short stroke
above the i. Notably, whenever the word occurs complete in the manuscript, it oddly reads
epigram(m)ata, i.e. the nominative plural; therefore, in the present transcript, the
abbreviated form has preferably been expanded into the singular epigramma.
33
In the manuscript, the word is abbreviated as 'EPG' with a short stroke above the p
and like the corresponding form in ecce 448 has been expanded into epigramma: see
above, note 32.
.i. proficit .i. loqui

Non prodest cuiquam solis bona dicere uerbis,
.i. bona .i. recte .i. loquitur
Ni pia mens habeat, quod bene lingua sonat.
.i. loqui aduerbialiter .i. miserabile
Nam fari recte, miserum est, et uiuere praue .
.i. peccatorem
Damnat nota malum regula iustitüe.
As can be seen, Harley 110 counts fifteen glos ses in total against the
four in CCCC 448. Ali the Harley interpretamenta are introduced by id
est, with the only exception of the gloss <<sic faciunt ypochrite. Locuntur
enim sancte et uiuunt peruerse» (so do hypocrites. Indeed they talk
piously and live perversely) commenting on the clause «bene autem loqui
et male uiuere» (but talking weil and living evilly), which is not
introduced by any eue. Ali the Harley id est-glosses can be said to
provide lexical equivalents to the lemmata, and in one case, that is the
interpretamentum «ilia scilicet quy ex ore alicuius procedunt» (namely
those things (words) that proceed from someone's mouth), the gloss
provides a synonymous paraphrase of the underlying clause «qua uoce
fluunt» (those things (words) that flow in (someone's) voice). On the
other hand, the Corpus glosses consist of one id est-gloss and three
scilicet-glosses. The former does not introduces a synonym but adds
instead the conjunction quia 'because', in order to clarify the key concept
of the epigram, namely that one would better be sincere in praising the
Lord because it does not benefit anyone to talk virtuous and then act
otherwise. As to the scilicet-glosses, two introduce the referent of the
underlying relative pronoun (qwç .s. ea and cuiquam .s. homini), while
one adds the adverb tune 'then' as an introductory prompt to the whole
epi gram.
More relevant than the plain disparity in the number of glosses,

however, is the fact that the Corpus and Harley glossing to the above-
quoted epigram does not show any overlap. This circumstance cannot be
said to be characteristic of the Prosper glossing in CCCC 448 and Harley
11034 • Nevertheless, an epigram like De uera laudatione Dei may
34
See the sample comparisons made by Lapidge, «The Study of Latin Texts in Late
Anglo-Saxon England, 1>>, pp. 467-9; further overlaps in the glosses of the two codices
will also be presented in this paper.
represent a stimulating introduction to a more in-depth assessment of the

relationship between the glossing in the two manuscripts in question.
In his classic study of the Latin glosses in the four surviving Anglo-
Saxon witnesses of Prosper' s Epigrammata, Lapidge argued that, in spite
of the obvious discrepancies, these glosses share a common core, which
~~can only be explained by assuming that these [glosses] all derive from a
common source- say, a set of interlinear glosses accompanying a text of
Prosper which may have been the ancestor of all four [Anglo-Saxon]
manuscripts» 35 • Not unlike other sets of Latin glosses to what might
cautiously be termed 'curriculum' authors in manuscripts written or
circulating in Anglo-Saxon England, the Prosper glosses were ascribed a
ninth-century Carolingian origin36 .
Recently, Malcolm Godden has challenged «the familiar narratives»
about the pervasive debt of late Anglo-Saxon scholarship to France and
the Low Countries, arguing that the glossing in late Anglo-Saxon
manuscripts are more likely the result of an on-going process of
accumulation of glosses «by copying and conflation and new glossing as
manuscripts (and perhaps commentators) moved around Europe» 37 •
Godden's observations have resulted from his study of the glosses to
Boethius's De consolatione Philosophiae in manuscripts written or
circulating in late Anglo-Saxon England, but they could also suggest a
plausible model of interpretation of the glosses in the Corpus and Harley
manuscripts. As has been pointed out, the glossing in both manuscripts
bears witness to the activity of more than one glossator38 . In particular,
the much thicker and apparently sequential glossing to Prosper' s
Epigrammata and Poema coniugis in Harle y 110 could also be explained
as a result of successive accumulation of different layers glosses of
multiple origin. In other words, a pre-existent, shared core of glosses -
possibly traceable to a commentary-type of source, as envisaged by
Lapidge- could have been progressively supplemented by collation with
other glossed exemplars (themselves possibly of different origin, namely
both Continental and Insular), as well as by new, spontaneous glossing.
This putative process seems all the more credible when considering that
35
«The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, l>>, p. 469.
36
Ibid., pp. 494-5.
37
See above M. Godden's contribution to this volume, pp. 67-92, quotations at 85
and 79, respectively.
38
Prosper' s Epigrammata were a curriculum text in Anglo-Saxon England,

hence a widely-circulating and brooded-over work.
It could then be concluded that CCCC 448 and Harley 110 would
attest to two different, successive stages in the development of the Anglo-
Saxon glossing tradition of Prosper's Epigrammata. That Harley 110
would document a further phase than its Corpus counterpart in this
incrementai glossing process could be argued not only on the basis of the
sheer ratio of Latin glosses in the two codices, but also because of the
(albeit few) Old English glosses in Harley 110.
As to the Synonyma, the discrepancy in the glossing between the two

codices is far less marked, although again Harley 110 is more intensely
glossed than the Corpus manuscript and unlike the latter contains a few
Old English glosses. 1 have already shown that about two thirds of the
Latin glos ses to the Synonyma in CCCC 448 and Harle y 110 are identical,
and this circumstance led me to conclude that the glosses were most
likely copied down together with the main text of the Synonyma from a
common, though not direct, glossed ancestor39 • If the higher number of
Latin glosses as well as the presence of vernacular glosses in Harley 110
again suggests a supplementing of this common stock of glosses whether
as a result of collation with other glossed copies or of a spontaneous
engagement with the text or both, the ultimate origin of the corpus of
Latin glosses shared with CCCC 448 is at the present stage of research
most elusive. While there is ample evidence for a wide and enduring
popularity of the Synonyma throughout the Middle Ages and beyond40 ,
they do not seem to have triggered a commentary tradition. In other
words, the Synonyma were widely copied and epitomised but not so much
commented upon, therefore, unlike the Prosper glosses, the Corpus and
Harley glosses to the Synonyma cannot ultimately be traced to a putative
commentary on the Isidorian text. On the other hand, the very existence
of this substantial corpus of glosses could open up a new tantalising field
of research, in that it could bear indirect witness to an otherwise
unattested commentary on the Synonyma. This would-be commentary
could perhaps be of Continental origin or, more intriguingly, of a
distinctively Anglo-Saxon brand, thereby adding to the special
receptiveness that the Synonyma seem to have enjoyed in early medieval
39
Di Sciacca, <<The Manuscript Tradition, Presentation, and Glossing>>, pp. 106-1 O.
See also below, p. 320.
40
See above, p. 302.
GLOSSING IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON EN GLAND 309
England41 . Until a complete survey of the Continental glossed witnesses

of the Synonyma is carried out, ali this speculation is obviously destined
to remain mere guesswork. Certainly, the fact that in both codices the
glossing to the Synonyma is concentrated on the first book while it
decreases dramatically in the second seems to confirm the popularity of
the Isidorian text chiefly as a spiritual and devotional read42 • In other
words, the Synonyma were primarily appreciated for the penitential
lament of the first book rather than for the gnomic precepts of the
second43 , and the sheer distribution of the Corpus and Harley glos ses
seem to mirror the approach of a typical medieval reader of the
Synonyma.
The glossing in CCCC 448 and Harley 110: a doser scrutiny
Generally speaking, the Corpus and Harley glosses fall into two main
categories, namely the lexical glosses and the morpho-syntactical ones 44 .
The former are introduced by either id est or, though much less
frequently, by uel, and their interpretamentum mostly consists of a
lexeme (at times two) in the same grammatical formas the !emma. The
morpho-syntactical glosses are generaily introduced by scilicet and
provide morphological and syntactical eues to clarify further the meaning
as weil as the grammatical function of a word. Thirdly, there are a few
commentary glosses 45 which can be introduced by either id est or scilicet.
At times, however, ail the three categories of glosses, namely lexical,
morpho-syntactical, and commentary glosses, can also occur without any
introductory eues. Finally, I have found out sorne sporadic use of
construe marks in Harley 110 and the first hemistich of the first line of
the Poema coniugis in this manuscript shows signs of metrical scansion46 .
41
Di Sciacca, Finding the Right Words.
42
See above, p. 302 and note 18.
43
Di Sciacca, Finding the Right Words, p. 17.
44
For an introduction to these two categories of glosses, see Wieland, G.R., The
Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius in Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.5.35
(Studies and Texts 61), Pontifical lnstitute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto 1983, pp. 26-
146. Under the label 'morpho-syntactical' I understand Wieland's both grammatical and
syntactical glosses.
45
Ibid., pp. 147-89.
46
1. The id est-glosses
The vast majority of the lexical glosses in both CCCC 448 and
Harley 110 are introduced by id est. Ali the four subgroups of lexical
glosses identified by Wieland, namely synonyms, differentiae, negated
antonyms, and paraphrases47 , can be found among the id est-glosses of
both manuscripts, as the examples listed below show48 :
a) synonyms:
telis .i. sagittis (CCCC 448, f. 16v7);
crimina .i. delicta CHarley llO, f. 4r20);
molestias .i. grauidines uel tristitias (CCCC 448, f. 46v6; Harley llO, f. 28v35);
b) differentiae:
laus .i. laudatio (Harley llO, f. 4v6);
munera .i. dona (Harley llO, f. 5rl4);
metus .i. timor (CCCC 448, f. 43r2);
c) negated antonyms:
iniuste .i. non recte (Harley llO, f. 14r35);
nulla est non œqua potestas .i. omnis po testas est œqua (Harley llO, f. 22v22);
careat .i. non habeat (CCCC 448, f. 47vl6; Harley 110, f. 29vl6);
d) paraphrases:
uerbum patris .i.filius (CCCC 448, f. 2v2; Harley 110, f. 3v33);
quae uoce fluunt .i. illa scilicet qu? ex ore alicuius procedunt (Harle y 110, f. 4v7);
synonima .i. multa uerba sub una significatione (Harley 110, f. 26rl).
The id est-glosses generally provide a word with a similar or nuanced

meaning and an equivalent grammatical function. The interpretamenta
consistent!y reflect the simple vocabulary of both the Prosper' s texts and
the Synonyma49 , so also the lexical equivalent provided by the glosses
belong to an average register.
In particular, the interpretamenta can consist of synonyms proper, as
shown in a), or of words which belong to the same semantic field but are
not entirely synonymous. In other words, lemma and interpretamentum
47
Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius, pp. 26-46.
48
ln my transcription of the glosses from both manuscripts, abbreviations have been
silently expanded but original spelling has not been standardised.
49
«Le vocabulaire des Synonyma est généralement courant>>: see Elfassi, J., «La
langue des Synonyma d'Isidore de Séville>>, Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 62 (2004),
pp. 59-lOO, quotation at 94; Elfassi counts only three rare terms and only three terms with
a rare connotation in the Synonyma: see ibid., pp. 94-96.
can make up pairs of differentiae cons1stmg of a hypernym and a

hyponym or of two hyponyms of the same hypernym, although the
glossator ultimately neglects the original distinction and treats them as
synonyms 50 . Indeed, the lemma and interpretamentum of all the three
glos ses listed in b) are paired in one of the earliest and most successful
collection of differentiae of the Middle Ages, namely De differentiis
uerborum by Isidore of Seville51 . Here a distinction is drawn between
laus and laudatio (the former being the feeling of admiration for
someone, while the latter is more properly the panegyric or the actual
expression of such an admiration lavished on them) 52 , munus and donum
(the former being something we owe, for example to a patron, while the
latter is something purely complimentary) 53 , and metus and timor (the
former being a sudden intimate reaction of our heart or soul triggered by
a sad memory, while the latter is an affliction of the mind caused by sorne
external and new circumstance)54 . Such a use of differentiae to produce
what ultimately are synonymous interpretamenta seems especially
revealing of the urge to provide additional words and to aid the
acquisition of new vocabulary, which can be pinpointed as the main
concern underlying the glossing in the Corpus and Harley manuscripts 55 .
°
5
Cf. Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius, pp. 39-41. On the fine
line separating the three grammatical categories of differentia, analogy and gloss, see
lsidore's definition of the three in his Etymologiae, Lxxxi and II.xxv.2; l.xxxviii.1; and
Lxxx, respectively, and my discussion in Finding the Right Words, pp. 11-12.
51
CPL, no. 1187; Differentiae de Isidoro de Sevilla. Libro /, ed. by C. Codofier-
Merino, Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1992.
52
«Inter laudem et laudationem. Laus est eius qui laudatur, laudatio eius qui laudat.
Item laus est ipsa uirtus enitens, laudatio ipsa laudantis oratio. Nam laus enim laetitia sine
celebratione uocis in anirni adrniratione consistit, laudatio uero rei cuiusque praedicatio
est adrniniculo orationis omata»: ibid.,§ 158, p. 166.
53
«Inter munus et donum. Munus est debitum ut patrono; donum honorarium est.
Item donum dantis est, munus accipientis. Dictum autem donum a dando, munus a
muniendo uel a monendo>>: ibid.,§ 162, p. 166.
54
<<Inter[ ... ] metum siue timorem. [ ... ] Item metus motus interior anirni subitus siue
cordis, factus ex aliqua tristi recordatione. Timor uero est accedens dolor mentis
extrinsecus ex aliqua accidenti occasione»: ibid.,§ 99, p. 136.
55
See below, pp. 326-7 and 334. On the ro1e of differentiae in the acquisition of
vocabulary, see Gneuss, H., «The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England», Bulletin
of the John Rylands Library 72 (1990), pp. 3-32; repr. with the author's Postscript and
additional notes in D.G. Scragg (ed.), Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon
En gland: Thomas Northcote Taller and the Taller Memorial Lectures (Publications of the
Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 1), Brewer, Cambridge and Rochester, NY
2003, pp. 75-105, at 95-97.
Thirdly, lexical equivalence can also be achieved by means of

negated antonyms, as the self-explanatory examples in c) show56 .
Finally, the id est-glosses can also consist of a rewording of the
lemma, as the examples in d) show. The result is a paraphrase which has
an equivalent meaning and grammatical function as the lemma. Thus, in
the gloss uerbum patris .i. filius, lemma and interpretamentum consist of
two attributes of Jesus, who as second person of the Trinity is both the
Word of the Father and the Son of God. In the second gloss, the
metaphoric image of human utterances as things that flow in someone's
voice is given a more explicit and concrete rephrasing. Finally, in the
third gloss, the lemma consisting of a learned Greek loanword, namely
synonima57 , is clarified by means of a noun phrase. Notably, the
interpretamentum of this gloss is almost verbatim derived from the
corresponding phrase of the anonymous prologue, conventionally known
as the Prologus prior, which, according to a tradition dating since the
eighth century, precedes the authentic Isidorian prologue, also known as
the Prologus alter58• In particular, the passage in question on f. 25r5-6 of
Harle y 110 reads: «synonima id est multa uerba in unam significationem
coeuntia», which corresponds verbatim to the reading of the critical
edition of the Synonyma 59 •
Finally, id est can occasionally introduce commentary glosses too.
Such is the case with the lemma inde 'thence, since' of the Harley text of
Prosper's epigram De doctrina apostolica60 (Harley 110, f. 5r4) which
has been glossed by a long interpretamentum summarising the whole
argument: .i. quia ex illa doctrina qua fuerit quisque imbutus ad bona
opera agenda incitatur ac sic crescendo paulatim ad summam
intelligentiae plerumque progreditur (because by that doctrine is incited
whoever has been instructed to do good works and thus, when growing
up, he most often progresses little by little to the top of intelligence).
56
Cf. Wieland, The Latin Glos ses on Arator and Prudentius, p. 27.
57
Converse! y, id est introduces a Greek loanword as interpretamentum twice, that is
two words of the Synonyma, auaritia and exemplum, are glossed in both manuscripts as
phi/argia and paradigma, respectively: see CCCC 448, f. 42vl9, and Harley 110, f.
26vl4; and CCCC 448, f. 66vl, and Harley 110, f. 41rl.
58
On the two prologues and their association with the two recensions of the Isidorian
text established in the modem critical edition, see Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by
Elfassi, pp. lxiv-v and cxxxv; see also below, p. 316.
59
Cf. Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. 3, lines 1-2.
60
PL 51, col. 501 C.
2. The uel-glosses
The uel-glosses apparently function like the id est-glosses, in that the

interpretamentum introduced by uel is by and large a semantic and
grammatical equivalent to the lemma 61 • However, while the id est-
interpretamenta are essentially synonymous with their respective
lemmata, the uel-glosses seem to supply what may be taken as alternative
readings orto provide an editorial emendation to the text62 .
Firstly, the uel-glosses can mark minor corrections, as is the case
with the gloss in ecce 448, f. 3r4, where the lemma castigans of
Prosper's epigram De patientia Dei has been glossed by [casti]gat63 .
Likewise, the obviously erroneous lemma seperat of Synonyma II, 3664 in
ecce 448, f. 70v2, has been amended by an a introduced by uel above
the second e, or the equally mistaken lemma crudiliter of Synonyma I,
65 65 in Harley 110, f. 35v2, has been corrected by a uel-gloss consisting
of an e written above the first i. Perhaps, the most significant instance of
such a use of the uel-glosses is represented by a wh ole line of Prosper' s
epigram De uenia, qua etiam iusti indigenl6, which has been corrected
by means of four uel-glosses in both manuscripts (CCCC 448, f. 30r14,
and Harley 110, f. 19vl0):
lo lm le lam
Non esse hçc plena tempora iustitia
Notably, these corrections match the readings of the current edition,

namely «Non esse hoc plenam tempore iustitiam» (that nowadays justice
is not complete) 67 •
Otherwise, the uel-glosses supply a proper interpretamentum, namely
a lexical and grammatical alternative to the lemma which can often be
traced elsewhere in the manuscript tradition. In his study of the Arator
61
Vel can also introduce the second interpretamentum in a "double" gloss, as is the
case with the two interpretamenta to molestias: see above, p. 310, a).
62
<<The introductory uel suggests that the glossator engaged in critical reading of at
least one other manuscript while glossing his own»: Wieland, The Latin Glosses on
Arator and Prudentius, p. 31.
63
Castigans is also the PL reading: PL 51, col. 500 B.
64
Cf. Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. 91, line 358.
65
Cf. ibid., p. 52, line 646.
66
PL 51, cols. 525-6. In both manuscripts the title of the epi gram is slightly different
and reads De uenia qua iusti etiam indigent.
67
PL 51, col. 526 A.
and Prudentius' glosses in Cambridge, University Library, Gg.5.35,

Wieland argued that the uel-glosses supply textual variants and their
interpretamenta can usually be found as readings in other manuscripts 68 .
In other words, such glosses could be seen as the result of a collation
between at least two exemplars carried out by the glossator(s) and
provide crucial insights into their approach to the text. It would therefore
be tempting to put Wieland' s conclusions to the test by applying them to
the Corpus and Harley uel-glosses, although bearing in mind that, unlike
Arator and Prudentius, no modern criti cal edition of Prosper' s
Epigrammata and Poema coniugis is available as yet69 , thereby inevitably
hampering our understanding of the manus cript tradition.
One might consider the following uel-glosses to Prosper's
Epigrammata and Poema coniugis:
1) mutantur l uincuntur (Harley 110, f. 7v15);

2) et l nec (CCCC 448, f. 5r7);
3) est iniuria l sunt iurgia (Harley 110, f. 7v32);
4) statuens l studens (CCCC 448, f. 38r4).
The first example concerns the reading mutantur from the last line of
Prosper's epigram De passione sanctorum70 . This reading is in fact
attested in both manuscripts - notably, it is also the PL reading-, and in
both codices it has been glossed by uincuntur, the only difference being
that the interpretamentum is introduced by uel only in Harley 110, while
in CCCC 448, f. 8v19, it stands on its own. What is most relevant here,
however, is that this shared gloss is indeed a variant reading recorded in
the manuscript tradition71 . Second1y, the Corpus text of Prosper' s
epigram De bonorum et malorum finibus 72 attests the reading et nihil-
which, again, is also the PL reading -, glossed by nec placed right above
et, an interpretamentum that is attested as a variant in the manuscript
tradition73 • Third1y, the Harley text of Prosper's epigram De scrutandis
mandatis DeF 4 features the reading abicienda est iniuria (injury is to be
68
Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius, pp. 83-84, 89, and 195; see
also above, note 62.
69
See above, notes 10-11.
70
PL 51, col. 506 A. In both manuscripts the epigram title is slightly different and
reads De passionibus sanctorum.
71
PL 51, col. 506 Co.
72
PL 51, col. 502 B.
73
PL 51, col. 502 Band Dr.
74
PL 51, col. 506.
given up) glossed by sunt iurgia (disputes are [to be given up]). Notably,
this time the corresponding PL reading, namely abicienda sunt iorgia,
corresponds to the interpretamentum rather than to the lemma of the
Anglo-Saxon codex. However, the lemma is attested elsewhere in the
manuscript tradition75 , thereby suggesting that in this case too lemma and
interpretametum were probably drawn from a set of variant readings
available to the copyists/glossators involved in the transmission of the
text and related glosses. Fourthly, the Corpus text of the Poema coniugis
features the reading statuens, corresponding to the reading in Hartel' s
edition76, which has been glossed by l studens, again apparently a variant
attested in the tradition of the poem77 .
Finally, it may be interesting to point out a gloss such as ipsis qu? l
ipso quo in the Corpus text (f. 2vll) of Prosper's epigram De uera
aeternitate78 • Both the lemma (ipsis qu?) and interpretamentum (ipso
quo) of this gloss differ from the PL reading, namely ipsi quod, but are
attested elsewhere in the manuscript tradition 79 , thereby attesting to what
was probably a problematic point in the textual transmission. The same
could be said for the gloss internis l interioribus in the Corpus version (f.
30r8) of Prosper' s epi gram De uenia, qua etiam iusti indigent80, where
again both the lemma and interpretamentum differ from the relevant PL
reading, that is interius, although the Corpus lemma (internis) was
apparently widely attested in the manuscript tradition81 .
As far as the Synonyma are concemed, the uel-glosses in both CCCC

448 and Harley 110 seem on the who le different from the Prosper' s texts,
probably as a reflex of the distinctive features of the Isidorian work. First
of all, it can be noted that the uel-glosses to the Synonyma are
occasionally derived from the text itself, that is they draw on the very
synonyms which are the hallmark of the Synonyma style82 • Such is the
case, for example, with the verb circumscribere 'to entrap, to take in'
within the comma «nullum circumscribas uerbis» (you will not entrap
75
PL 51, col. 506 D v.
76
Sancti Pontii Meropii Pavlini Nolani Carmina, ed. by Hartel, p. 346, line 78.
77
See Hartel's apparatus, ibid., p. 346.
78
PL 51, cols. 499-500.
79
PL 51, cols. 500 A and C j.
80
See above, note 66.
81
PL 51, cols. 526 A and 525 D k.
82
For a similar use of the Isidorian text to make up the interpretamentum of a given
gloss, see the interpretamentum to the id est-gloss synonima above, p. 312.
anyone with words), which in both CCCC 448, f. 75v7, and Harley 110,
f. 46r29, is glossed by l decipias, namely by the (synonymous) verb
decipere 'to deceive' occurring in the immediately preceding comma
«neminem mendacio fallente decipias» (you will not deceive anyone by
lying).
Notably, the !emma circumscribas corresponds with the reading in
the critical edition83 , which seems indeed to be the rule with the Corpus
and Harley uel-glosses to the Synonyma. In other words, it can be said
that the lemmata of the uel-glosses in CCCC 448 and Harley 110
consistently match the readings of the modern critical edition (especially
those of one of the two recensions of the Synonyma therein identified,
namely the A recension) 84 , while their interpretamenta are hardly ever
attested elsewhere in the manuscripts collated. The only exception is
represented by the gloss fartasse l forsitan (CCCC 448, f. 42v3; Harley
110, f. 26r34), the !emma of which corresponds to the reading of the
edited text, while the interpretamentum is recorded as a variant attested in
St. Petersburg, Russian National Library, Lat. Q.v.I.l5 (L in Elfassi's
stemma) 85 , an eighth-century codex of Anglo-Saxon origin which is one
of the two earliest witnesses of the A recension of the Synonyma 86•
Finally, another two uel-glosses could be mentioned since their
interpretamentum seems to echo similar readings attested in the
manuscript tradition, though not matching exactly any of them. The first
is the gloss inrigate l humidate (CCCC 448, f. 55v8; Harley 110, f.
34r26), where the interpretamentum recalls both the reading of the edited
text, namely humectate, and variants attested elsewhere (umi et date, uni
83
Cf. Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. 108, lines 587-9. Both the two
commata in question are distinctive of the A recension: see ibid., pp. lviii-lxv and cxxxiii-
viii, and below, note 84.
84
The Corpus and Harley manuscripts have not been included in Elfassi's stemma,
but the comparison 1 have carried out between the text attested in the two codices and
Elfassi's edition has shown that both CCCC 448 and Harley 110 belong to the A-branch
of the transmission.
85
Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. 7, lines 52-3.
86
Ibid., pp. xxxvii and lviii-ix. See also id., «Una ediciôn critica de los Synonyma de
Isidoro de Sevilla: primeras conclusiones>>, in M. Pérez Gonzalez (ed.), Actas del III
Congreso Hispémico de Latîn Medieval, Leôn, 27-9 septiembre 2001, Universidad de
Leôn. Segretariado de Publicaciones y Medios Audiovisuales, Leôn 2002, pp. 105-13, at
106, and Gneuss, Handlist, no. 845. The other early witness of the A recension is
Würzburg, Universitatsbibliothek, M. p. th. f. 79 (Win Elfassi's stemma), like Lan eighth-
century codex of Anglo-Saxon origin: see Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi,
pp. xliii-iv. See also Gneuss, Handlist, no. 946, and Ker, Catalogue, no. 400.
et date, humata a te, and humate) 87 • The second gloss is miserationis l

misericordiae (CCCC 448, f. 58vll; Harley 110, f. 36r21), where the
lemma corresponds to the reading of the critical edition88 , while the
interpretamentum is otherwise unattested within the manuscript tradition,
although it evokes sorne variant readings, such as misericors or deus tu
multe misericori9•
3. The scilicet-glosses
CCCC 448 and Harley 110 contain a high number of morpho-

syntactical glosses introduced by scilicet. One might consider the
examples below:
Glosses to Prosper:
1) cui s. trinitati (CCCC 448, f. 2r12; Harley 110, f. 3v22);
2) bonus est s. ille homo (CCCC 448, f. 1vlO);
3) prato s. de (CCCC 448, f. lr16);
Glosses to the Synonyma:

4) quae s. arma (CCCC 448, f. 49r15; Harley 110, f. 30v7);
5) infuturo s. saeculo (Harley 110, f. 30r21);
6) homo s. o homo (Harley 110, f. 30r5 and 24).
Here scilicet is employed to remind the reader of the antecedent of a

pronoun or of a nominalised adjective, to restate the understood subject
of a given verb or, vice versa, the understood verb of a given subject) as
well asto act as a case-marker, that is to disambiguate the case of a noun
by means of a preposition (particularly often in our two manuscripts, an o
is introduced to distinguish the vocative from the nominative).
Sometimes, scilicet-glosses also provide semantic or explanatory
eues. Such is the case with the noun na tura in Prosper' s epigram De uera
aeternitate90 , which is glossed in both manuscripts by a genitive
introduced by scilicet (s. diuinitatis, ecce 448, f. 2r12; s. trinitatis,
Harle y 110, f. 3v23), specifying which nature is meant, namely that of the
divinity and of the trinity, respective! y.
A most recurrent use of the scilicet-glosses in the Corpus and Harley
codices is that of making up for the ellipses of the subject or the object
87
Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. 48, line 582.
88
Ibid., p. 55, lines 690-1.
89
Ibid.
90
PL 51, cols. 499-500.
(whether direct or indirect) or of the verb sum. This kind of suppletive

glosses91 are found throughout the two codices but, as I have already
shown, are particularly frequent in the Synonyma section92 , because one
of the "side-effects", as it were, of the synonymical style consists of the
many ellipses of the verb, subject, object, or sometimes even brief noun-
or verb phrases, which repeatedly occur within a colon and are
subsequently left understood93 . Because these scilicet-glosses help 'fill in
the gaps' of the Latin syntax and thereby solve the possible ambiguities
generated by its frequent ellipses, they can be classified as syntactical
glosses 94 . The following two examples may illustrate the point:
utinam non fuisset artus super me s. dies ille (CCCC 448, f. 57r7-8; Harley 110, f.
35r19-20)
dies illa [sic] s. in qua [sic] artus sum (CCCC 448, f. 57r12; Harley 110, f. 35r26)
The above-quoted phrases both occur within a colon in Synonyma 1,

64 where the penitent regrets ever having been born, reviling the very day
when he was brought to life. As can be seen, the two scilicet-glosses in
question refer precisely to the speaker' s day of birth, in that the first
interpretamentum restates it as the understood subject of the verb phrase
fuisset ortus, while the second gloss is a (redundant) reminder that the
day (dies illa) which is being grieved over is the one when the penitent
was born.
Finally, commentary glosses could also be introduced by scilicet.
Such is the case with the only commentary gloss to the Synonyma found
in both the Corpus and the Harley manuscripts. The gloss in question
re fers to a comma in Synonyma 1, 7, lamenting the hypocritical behaviour
of those who conceal their hostility behind kind words and amiable
countenance. Renee the interpretamentum exemplifies such an attitude by
mentioning the most archetypical of hypocrites for Christians, namely
Judas. In both manuscripts the comma in question reads «ostendunt uultu
quod in corde non gestant» 95 (they show on [their] face what they do not
have in [their] heart), while the relevant scilicet-gloss reads «sic fecit
91
Wieland, The Latin Glos ses on Arator and Prudentius, pp. 109-43.
92
Di Sciacca, «The Manuscript Tradition, Presentation, and Glossing», pp. 107-10.
93
On the style of the Synonyma, see above, note 16.
94
Cf. above, note 91.
95
Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. 8, lines 58-9.
Iudas quando [os]eulatus est Iesum» (CCCC 448, f. 42v13; Harley 110, f.
26v8) (so did Judas when he kissed Jesus) 96 •
4. Glosses not introdueed by any eue
Sometimes glosses are not introduced by any prefatory eue or

symbol97 . The lack of sueh a symbollooks quite random, that is it does
not seem to follow any specifie pattern or to be characteristic of a given
glossing hand. I have counted 47 of sueh glosses in CCCC 448, most of
whieh, that is 42, are to the Prosper texts, while only four to the
Synonyma. Asto Harley 110, they are 90 in total, of which 71 to Prosper
and 19 to the Synonyma. They are seattered randomly throughout the
manuscripts, although sometimes they seem to cluster on certain sections,
for example on the Poema coniugis in Harley 110 or on a folio towards
the end of the second book of the Synonyma (Harley 110, f. 49r), again
for no apparent reason.
These glosses fall into ali the categories outlined above, that is they
can be lexical, morpho-syntactical or eommentary glosses. lt can be said
that the un-prefaeed glosses to the Synonyma are almost exclusively
lexical, in particular they eonsist of synonyms or near-synonyms (e.g.,
seuiunt : irascuntur, CCCC 448, f. 44r17, and Harle y 110, f. 27v4;
exagerat: multiplicat, CCCC 448, f. 48r11, and Harley 110, f. 29v31;
affectus : amor, Harley 110, f. 49r31), while the glosses to Prosper are
more varied. They can be lexical (censura : iudicium, Harley 110, f.
5v13; non idem est : œqualis, ecce 448, f. 16v16); morpho-syntaetieal
(qui : ille homo, CCCC 448, f. 3v19; placidum : deum, Harley 110, f.
5v10; benignus : sit, Harley 110, f. 23v12), and commentary glosses
(such as the commentary gloss on the hypocrites in the Harley text of
Proper's epigram De uera laudatione Dei discussed previously)98 •
96
In fact the two glosses are slightly different in that in CCCC 448 the past participle
osculatus actually reads sculatus, while in Harley 110 culatus. I have here proposed an
emendation on the basis of the Vulgate text in Mt XXVI.48-9 («Quemcumque osculatus
fuero, ipse est, tenete eum. [ ... ] Et confestim accedens ad Iesum, [Iudas] dixit: Aue, rabbi.
Et osculatus est eum>>); Mc XIV.44-45 (<<Quemcumque osculatus fuero, ipse est, tenete
eum, et ducite cau te. [... ] Et cum [Iudas] uenisset, statim accedens ad eum [Iesum] ait:
Aue, rabbi; et osculatus est eum>>); and Le XXII.47-48 (<<et [Iudas] appropinquauit Iesu ut
oscularetur eum. [ ... ] Iesus autem dixit illi: Iuda, osculo Pilum hominis tradit?>>) (my
emphasis).
97
Cf. Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius, p. 12.
98
See above, pp. 305-6. This gloss in particular occurs in Harley 110, f. 4v4.
Finally, it is worth noting that there are also instances when the two
manuscripts actually feature the same gloss, whether to Prosper or the
Synonyma, but while in one codex the interpretamentum is introduced by
a symbol, in the other it is not. Such is the case with the already
mentioned Prosper gloss mutantur : uincuntur, which is introduced by uel
in Harley 110 (f. 7v15), while in the Corpus manuscript it has no
prefatory eue (f. 8v19) 99 . Another example could be again a gloss to
Prosper reintroducing the understood verb est to the subject hoc (CCCC
448, f. 2v2; Harley 110, f. 3v33): in this case, the interpretamentum is
introduced by scilicet in the Harley manuscript, while it has no prefatory
eue in CCCC 448. Finally, a similar example from the glosses to the
Synonyma is the gloss inruit: cecidit (CCCC 448, f. 58r18; Harley 110, f.
36r8), where the interpretamentum is introduced by id est in Harley 110
but by nothing at ail in the Corpus codex. Such minor discrepancies
between glosses shared by the two manuscripts might have been
spontaneously introduced by their respective scribes/glossators. However,
I would argue that these small incongruities more likely contribute to
show that the common ancestor of the shared body of the Corpus and
Harley glosses cannot have been their direct exemplar but must instead
have been drawn on at one or more removes.
Trying to sum up this survey of the glossing in the Corpus and Harley
manuscripts, it can be said that the id est- and scilicet-glosses have on the
whole an elementary and explanatory character, providing synonyms or
paraphrases of the !emma, on the one hand, and simple morphological or
syntactical information, on the other. As to the uel-glosses, they seem to
attest to a more sophisticated approach on the part of the glossators, in
that they introduce minor corrections, restoring the correct spelling or
emending grammatical mistakes, as weil as what may be taken as
editorial interventions resulting from a collation between exemplars.
Finally, the glosses which are not introduced by any eue do not represent
any specifie type of glosses and can be lexical, morpho-syntactical or
commentary glosses.
99
See above, p. 314.
Construe marks in Harley 110
As has already been pointed out, both CCCC 448 and Harle y 110
contain a high number of syntactical glosses, which are chiefly
represented by suppletive glosses. The latter are generally introduced by
scilicet and make up for the frequent ellipses of Latin, especially of the
synonymical style 100 . In addition to this kind of syntactical glosses
consisting of proper interpretamenta, 1 have found out that Harley 110
also features another kind of syntactical glosses which consist of linking
symbols made up of dots and strokes and which 1 will preferably refer to
as construe marks 101 . These symbols serve the function to highlight and
clarify the grammatical relationship between two (or more) words, for
example adjectives and nouns, nouns and pronouns, subject and
predicate, etc, thereby elucidating the possibly abstruse Latin word-order.
The relationship between two (or more) words is established by means of
identical symbols, which are normally placed either above or below the
lemmata, thereby drawing attention to their syntactical connection, as can
be seen in Plate VII reproducing two line from the preface to Prosper' s
Epigrammata in Harley 110, f. 3r25-6.
The distich in question reads: «Ut quod in affectum cordis pietate
magistra 1 uenerit hoc promat carmine lreta fides» (so that what has come
into the heart's affection with the aid of piety, faith will gladly express it
by means of poetry), which corresponds to the PL reading 102 • With the aid
of the construe marks, the word-order of the two lines can be rearranged
into the more straightforward sequence: «Ut lreta fides hoc promat
100
101
These linking symbols are the last type of syntactical glosses considered in P.C.
Robinson's classic study <<Syntactical Glosses in Latin Manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon
Provenance>>, Speculum 48 (1973), pp. 443-75, at 457-61. See also Draak, M., <<Construe
Marks in Hibemo-Latin Manuscripts>>, Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse
Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe reeks, 20/X (1957), pp. 261-82;
Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius, pp. 98-107; Korhamrner, M.,
<<Mittelalterliche Kostrutionshilfen und Altenglische Wortstellung>>, Scriptorium 34
(1980), pp. 18-58; and Ruff, C., The Hidden Curriculum: Syntax in Anglo-Saxon Latin
Teaching, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Toronto 2011, pp. 210-9. On the (fine)
terminological distinction between 'syntactical glosses' and 'construe marks', see
Wieland, <<Latin Lemma - Latin Gloss>>, pp. 95-96; I agree with Wieland that construe
marks are syntactical glosses but prefer to use this definition to distinguish conveniently
the linking symbols from the other category of syntactical glos ses discussed in this paper,
i.e. the suppletive glosses.
102
PL 51, cols. 497-8.
carmine, quod uenerit in affectum cordis pietate magistra». Although the

correspondences between the construe marks are puzzling, when not
clearly defective, at times 103 , the most important syntactical connections
within the sentence are highlighted. In particular, the relationship
between the subject of the long relative clause, quod, and its widely
separate predicate, uenerit, is clarified, and so is the sequence of the two
phrases in affectum cordis and pietate magistra. Interestingly, in the PL
edited text the function of the construe marks is served by the modem
convention of commas: «Ut quod in affectum cordis, pietate magistra, 1
Venerit, hoc promat carmine lreta fides».
The construe marks in Harley 110 are altogether very sparse and
random, as they occur on twelve folios only 104 , and eleven out of these
twelve contain Prosper' s epigrams, while only one belongs to the
Synonyma. This ratio is hardly surprising since syntax tends to be more
complex in verse rather than in prose as a result of metrical requirements:
bence a greater need to provide a blueprint to decode the tricky Latin
poets' word-order. Since the path-breaking studies of construe marks in
Hiberna-Latin manuscripts by Maartje Draak105 , scholars have
consistently emphasised the intrinsically didactic function of this kind of
103
It is not clear, for example, why the conjunction introducing the consecutive
clause, ut, should be marked by the same symbol as hoc, namely the object of that very
clause (possibly the glossator had mistaken it for the subject?). Also, the symbol made up
of three dots and a stroke which marks the verb promat is unmatched in the sentence and
so is the symbol marking lœta, the adjective modifying the subject fides. Finally, it is
quite puzzling that the prepositional phrase in affectum should be connected by the same
construe mark with the noun phrase in the ablative pietate magistra, while the genitive
cordis modifying in affectum is instead marked by a different symbol. Faulty
correspondences and oddities of the construe marks are noticeable elsewhere in Harley
llO; see also Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius, p. 105. Finally, the
three-dot symbol following lœta is not a construe mark but a positura marking the end of
the verse prologue to the Epigrammata: see Parkes, M., Pause and Effect: An Introduction
to the History of Punctuation in the West, Scolar Press, Aldershot 1992, p. 301; on the
smart use of punctuation in both CCCC 448 and Harley llO, see below, pp. 324-5.
104
The folios showing construe marks are: 3r10-l2 and 25-6; 3v16; 4r3-4; 12v9-12;
15r16-17, 27-8, 30-1, and 36; 18r22; 18v9, 12, and 27-30; l9r8, 31, and 34-35; l9v6, 18,
and 33-4; 21r16; 21v17; 27r3-5. Linking symbols seem to be sporadic also in other
manuscripts: see Robinson, <<Syntactical Glosses>>, p. 258.
105
<<Construe Marks in Hiberno-Latin Manuscripts», and ead., <<The Higher Teaching
of Latin Gramrnar in Ireland during the Ninth Century», Mededelingen der Koninklijke
Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe reeks, 30/IV
(1967), pp. 109-44.
glosses 106 , although somehow disagreeing about whether they were

«more sophisticated than the other [syntactical glossing] codes» 107 or
reflected instead «an elementary stage of the learning process» 108 .
However, the sparseness and randomness of the construe marks in Harley
110 would suggest caution 109 . Moreover, the didactic vocation of
construe mark does not perse evoke an impromptu classroom context nor
does it exclude that, like other types of glosses, they too could have
gradually evolved into what Fred Robinson has defined as a «[useful]
apparatus criticus» to the text, that is a helpful complement weil worth
being preserved, adapted, and supplemented by copyists 110 .
The defective pairing and oddities of the Harley construe marks could
indeed themselves be the consequence of sorne mishap in the
transmission process, such as the inertial copying from a faulty exemplar,
or, on the other hand, sorne alterations - whether accidentai or deliberate
- introduced into the new copy, possibly because of a conscious attempt
at revision or simplification of the symbols found in the exemplar 111 .
Either way, it seems unlikely that these faulty correspondences may be
due to sorne sort of spontaneous classroom activity. Once again, then, we
should be wary of establishing any easy and direct equation between
"didactic" glosses and classroom use.
Finally, a single example of prosodical glossing is found in Harley
110 (f. 22v34), where relevant marks identify the length of the syllables
of the first hemistich of the first line of Prosper' s Poe ma coniugis.
Layout, rubrication, and capitalisation
Finally, there is another distinctive communal aspect of CCCC 448

and Harley 110 that deserves sorne comments, name1y their layout,
106
Robinson, «Syntactical Glosses», pp. 262-8; id., «The Glossed Manuscript», pp.
165-7; id., «Latin Lemma- Latin Gloss>>, p. 96; Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator
and Prudentius, p. 107; and Korhammer, «Mittelalterliche Kostrutionshilfen», p. 55.
107
Robinson, <<Syntactical Glosses>>, p. 457.
108
Wieland, The Latin Glos ses on Arator and Prudentius, p. 107.
109
Regarding the construe marks to Arator and Prudentius, Wieland remarked that
<<the [sparse quantity] and arbitrary nature with which they are distributed throughout the
texts make a defini te judgement impossible>>: ibid.
110
<<Syntactical Glosses>>, pp. 466-7, quotation at 466. Indeed Robinson himself
provides evidence of the copying down of construe marks within the manu script tradition
ofBede's Vita S. Cuthberti: ibid., pp. 459-61.
111
See above, note llO.
rubrication, and capitalisation. The Epigrammata and Poema coniugis are

definitely verse texts, while the Synonyma are in a kind of rhymed,
rhythmical prose arranged per cola et commata 112• Indeed, bath
manuscripts display throughout a clear sense of the distinctive layout as
well as of the internai subdivisions of these texts.
As far as Prosper' s Epigrammata are concemed, the distichs are
clearly marked by capitals which are written in red ink in Harley 110,
while in ecce 448 they are decorated by sorne red within the body of
the letter. Also, in bath codices the opening of the epigram proper is
signalled and separated from the brief prose introduction prefacing the
verse by the ward epigrammata [sic], though often abbreviated 113 , written
in capitals and, again, in red ink 114 . In the folios containing the Synonyma,
the letter-sign K in the left margin is systematically used to mark the
cola, that is rhetoric and semantic units made up of a given number of
commata, and capitals of different sizes consistently earmark the opening
of each comma and colon 115 • In CCCC 448 these capitals are again
highlighted in that the body of the letter is coloured in red ink, and the
rubrics introducing the two putative speakers altemating in the Isidorian
text, namely homo and ratio, are also written in red as are the incipits of
book one and two. This decorative use of red was apparently originally
shared by the Harley codex too, but today the capitals and rubrics of the
Synonyma section of this manuscript appear as though they have been
written over in the same brown ink as the text and only vestiges of the old
red show through.
Finally, the ponctuation in bath Prosper and Isidore contributes to the
careful reproduction of the prosodie, rhetoric, and semantic units of these
texts. In CCCC 448 each verse line of bath Proper' s Epigrammata and
Poema coniugis is allocated a manuscript line and its end is earmarked by
a positura consisting of a sort of colon followed by a stroke with the tail
going up and to the left, which Insular scribes generally employed at the
end of a paragraph to imply that sorne continuation was to be expected 116 .
112
Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, pp. cxlii-v, and Di Sciacca, Finding
the Right Words, pp. 24-25.
113
See above, notes 32-33.
114
lndeed, the first page of Prosper in Harley 110 (f. 3r) also shows a very elegant
decorated initial and the use of sorne green as well as red in the capitals: see Plate VIII.
115
Di Sciacca, «The Manuscript Tradition, Presentation, and Glossing», pp. 111-2.
116
See Parkes, Pause and Effect, pp. 301 and 306. On the intricacies of medieval
punctuation and its ambiguous terminology, see ibid, pp. 9-29; Hubert, M., «Le
vocabulaire de la 'ponctuation' aux temps médiévaux: un cas d'incertitude lexical>>,
In Harley 110 too a verse line coïncides with a manuscript line and its
end is marked by a media distinctio, that is a punctus placed at midway
height within the line 117 . As far as the Synonyma are concerned, commata
and cola are clearly identified and encompassed within punctuation
marks. In CCCC 448, each comma is generally delimited by a media
distinctio, while a punctus uersus, that is one of the positurae used to
indicate the end of a psalm verse or the completion of a sentence 118 ,
marks pauses between cola. In Harley 110 the individual commata are
nearly always delimited by a media distinctio, although especially in the
second book of the Synonyma the use of the punctus uersus is more
frequent. This meticulous use of punctuation certainly adds to the neat
layout of the page; it also visually expresses the verse-like nature of the
synonymical prose and naturally assists rhythmical reading.
In sum, without being de-luxe manuscripts, both ecce 448 and
Harle y 110 are pretty refined products. The overall impression is that of a
neat, skilful script and attractive presentation, thanks to the careful
planning of the writing space and bichrome embellishment. In both
codices the page is weil designed and it can be said that the glossing
seems to have been part of this smart arrangement, perhaps with the only
exception of f. 5r in Harley 110 where a few long commentary glos ses
are crammed in the upper right margin. Only extremely few glosses are
misplaced (indeed I have counted only three of them in Harley 110) 119 ,
and in only two, both contained in ecce 448, the introductory eue, that
is scilicet and id est respectively, 1s not followed by any
interpretamentum 120 •
Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 38 (1971-1972), pp. 57-167, at 94-111; and O'Brien
O'Keeffe, K., «Punctuation>>, in Lapidge at al., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-
Saxon England, pp. 381-2.
117
Parkes, Pause and Effect, pp. 303-4.
118
Ibid., p. 307.
119
The three g1osses in question are initium s. in hac uita (Harley 110, f. 30r23),
where the interpretamentum more correctly matches the adverb hic of the preceding line;
ad poenam .i. rebelles existunt (Harley 110, f. 30r30), where the interpretamentum more
correctly matches the verb aduersantur occurring immediately above; thirdly, iam tande
.i. in postremo (Harley 110, f. 31 vS), where the interpretamentum more correct! y matches
the phrase ad finem occurring immediate! y above. Ali the three glosses seem to me to be
in the same hand as the scribe and I would therefore suggest that these three misplaced
interpretamenta are ali due to eye-skip.
120
The two glosses in question are quid s. 0 and delibera .i. 0 on f. 73v6 and 7-8,
respectively; both glosses are in the same hand as the scribe. While I can offer no
explanation for the missing interpretamentum to quid, except the glossator' s
This kind of smart layout, capitalisation, and punctuation as well as

the sheer dimensions of the two codices as small format books 121 and
their quite pristine state are all factors that should be taken into account
when trying to assess the context of use of these manuscripts.
The Old English glosses in Harley 110
Harley 110 also contains a number of vernacular glosses, namely

three glos ses to Prosper' s Epigrammata and fifteen to the Synonyma 122• A
portion of another gloss to the latter text, -ntad, is visible in the
furthermost left margin of f. 26v, which probably glossed either of the
two Latin past participles on line 32, exploratum and patefactum, and was
eventually lost as a result of parchment trimming 123 • In total, three Old
English glosses (including the incomplete -ntad) are written in the
margins 124 , while all the others are interlinear like their Latin
counterparts.
Unlike the Latin glossing, the vernacular glosses can be said to be
exclusively lexical and are not distinguished by different introductory
eues such as id est, uel, or scilicet, except two glosses which are indeed
introduced by .i. 125 • These lexical glosses basically provide Old English
forgetfulness, the case of delibera is easier to justify, because the lemma occupies the
break between line 7 (de-) and 8 (-libera), with the id est abbreviation written direct! y
above de-. Obviously, the glossator/scribe forgot to insert the interpretamentum when
beginning to write the new line.
121
CCCC 448 measures 183x130 mm, and Rarley 110 262xl25 mm. On the narrow,
oblong size of the Rarley manuscript, see Szarmach, P. E., «A Retum to Cotton Tiberius
A. III, art 24, and lsidore's Synonyma», in R. Conrad-O'Briain, A.-M. D'Arcy and J.
Scattergood (eds.), Text and Glass: Studies in Insular Leaming and Literature Presented
ta Joseph Donovan Pheifer, Four Courts, Dublin and Portland, OR 1999, pp. 166-81, at
173-4, and Russey, Ascetics and Aesthetics, pp. 250-2.
122
Old English Classes (A Collection), ed. by R.D. Meritt (Modem Language
Association of America, General Series 16), Oxford University Press, New York, NY and
London 1945; repr. 1971, nos. 21 and 23, pp. 24-25.
123
Old English Classes, ed. by Meritt, no. 21, p. 24, note 1, and Russey, Ascetics
and Aesthetics, p. 262.
124
The other two marginal glosses are both to the Synonyma and are inuestigatum :
[s]crudned and discordat : wijJerat, occurring in Rarley 110, ff. 26v33 and 27r7,
respectively: see Old English Classes, ed. by Meritt, no. 21, p. 24.
125
The two glosses in question are one gloss to Prosper, namely figmenta .i. brœdas,
and one to the Synonyma, namely fœditatis .i. unclœnnisse, occurring in Rarley 110, ff.
15v3 and 35v11, respectively: see Old English Classes, ed. by Meritt, nos. 21 and 23, p.
25.
renderings for the Latin lemmata and as such they have been interpreted
as functional to the understanding and acquisition of Latin vocabulary 126 •
Increasing the reader' s stock of Latin vocabulary has indeed been put
forward as one of the main aims of the Latin glosses in the codex, and
also the vernacular glosses would apparently serve the same purpose 127 •
In particular, the Old English interpretamenta seem to show a learned
character and affiliations with the linguistic agenda of the tenth-century
Benedictine Reform 128 , so mu ch so that it has been argued that «the Old
English of Harley llO discloses the bilingual academie dynamics of the
Benedictine era in Anglo-Saxon England» 129 .
However, the role and purpose of such a «sporadic and haphazard»
Old English glossing 130 should perhaps better not be overstated. Also, the
interaction between the vernacular and Latin glossing is not easy to
pinpoint. The Old English glos ses in Harle y 110 have been attributed to a
number of hands, including the Latin glossator, who was apparently
responsible also for most of the vernacular glos ses 131 • In total, only two
Old English glos ses, both to Prosper' s Epigrammata, refer to lemmata
which are also glossed by a Latin interpretamentum, while ali the
vernacular glosses to the Synonyma occur on lines free from any Latin
glossing. The two Prosper lemmata in question are the words
126
Page, «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Il», pp. 150-1,
and Russey, Ascetics and Aesthetics, pp. 257-8.
127
Page, <<The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Il», p. 151; see
also below, p. 334.
128
See Gneuss, R., <<The Origin of Standard Old English and JEthelwold's School at
Winchester>>, Anglo-Saxon England 1 (1972), pp. 63-83, repr. with the same pagination
and addenda in id., Language and History in Early England (VCSS 559), Variorum,
Aldershot 1996; Rofstetter, W., Winchester und der spiitaltenglische Sprachgebrauch.
Untersuchungen zur geographischen und zeitlichen Verbreitung altenglischer Synonyme
(TUEPh 14), Fink, Munich 1987; id., <<Winchester and the Standardization of Old English
Vocabulary>>, Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988), pp. 139-61; Gretsch, M., <<Winchester
Vocabulary and Standard Old English: The Vemacular in Late Anglo-Saxon England»,
Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 83 (2001), pp. 41-87; ead.,
<<In Search of Standard Old English>>, in L. Komexl and U. Lenker (eds.), Bookmarks
from the Past: Studies in Early English Language and Literature in Honour of Helmut
Gneuss, Lang, Frankfurt a.M. 2003, pp. 33-67; ead., The lntellectual Foundations of the
English Benedictine Reform (CSASE 25), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999.
129
Russey, Ascetics and Aesthetics, pp. 257-70, quotation at 270.
130
<<The Old English glosses are so scanty that it is worth asking wh y these particular
words were glossed at ali, and to this I can give no reply»: Page, <<The Study of Latin
Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Il», pp. 150-1.
131
Ibid., and Russey, Ascetics and Aesthetics, pp. 257-8.
penetralibus from Prosper's epigram De quaerendo Deo 132 , which is

glossed by both Old English incofun and Latin .i. secretis (Harley 110, f.
5r16), and exilio from Prosper's epigram Quod sit esse cum Deo 133 ,
which is glossed by both Old English wrœcsiô and Latin .i.
peregrinatione (Harley 110, f. 14v17). Both glosses are interlinear, but
while in the former the two interpretamenta, incofun and secretis, are
written one on top of the other above the Latin lemma penetralibus, in the
latter gloss the two interpretamenta, wrœcsiô and peregrinatione, are
written one after the other above the lemma exilio. Remarkably, in both
cases the Old English interpretamentum is the one placed doser, that is
directly above, the Latin lemma.
This arrangement has been interpreted as evidence that the vernacular
glosses were primary, that is the Old English interpretamenta were either
written first or, if contemporary with the Latin glosses, they were of
primary importance 134 . In the case of penetralibus, this primacy of the
Old English over the Latin would be confirmed by the fact that the two
interpretamenta seem to be in different hands and while the Old English
one was written right above the lemma, the Latin interpretamentum was
squeezed into the room that was left between its vernacular equivalent
and the preceding text-line. On the other hand, in the case of exilio, the
two interpretamenta appear to have been comfortably written one after
the other above the lemma, with the Latin interpretamentum following
the Old English one at sorne distance as a result not so rouch of its being
«[pushed] out into the margin>>, 135 as of the presence of the descender and
loop of the abbreviation for pro in the preceding text-line which occupy
the space between the two interpretamenta. In other words, while the
former gloss could be seen as the product of successive glossing actions,
where the vernacular glossing would allegedly have played a primary
role, the latter gloss could rather be explained as the result of a
contemporaneous copying from a glossed exemplar.
The derivation of the Harley vernacular glosses from a glossed
antecedent has also be put forward regarding at least one of the Old
English glosses to the Synonyma. The Latin lemma inoleuerit 'it grew
into' has oddly been glossed by the Old English interpretamentum
132
PL 51, cols. 501-2.
133
PL 51, col. 517.
134
Page, «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Il>>, pp. 150-1,
and Hussey, Ascetics and Aesthetics, p. 258.
135
Ibid.
ongewuœd 'it wrapped up', where, however, the vowel œ is very similar
to an x and indeed a reading such as ongewœxô/ongewaxô 'it grows on or
into' would match the Latin !emma much more pertinently 136 . As has
been noted, the interpretamentum ongewuœd could well be explained as a
misspelling faithfully reproduced by the Harley glossator. In other words,
a misspelling such as ongewuœd for ongewœxô/ongewaxô could be put
down to a putative glossed exemplar featuring a reading that had an x
resembling an œ 137•
Finally, a further argument supporting the case of a derivation ex
libro of the vernacular glosses in Harley 110 is provided by the erasure of
an Old English gloss which had so far gone unnoticed. The gloss in
question is absit : framsy which was duly published by Meritt as item no.
13 in his edition of the Old English glosses to the Synonyma 138 • In fact,
the gloss occurs twice on two successive lines of the same folio (47v19
and 20). However, while in the former instance the Old English
interpretamentum is clearly written on top of its Latin !emma in a band
which looks identical to that of the scribe and main Latin glossator, in the
latter the interpretamentum has been erased and is now hardly visible.
Notably, the two occurrences of the Latin !emma are not due to
dittography, but are just one of the repetitions typical of the Synonyma 139 •
As to the duplication of the Old English interpretamentum, the context
would instead suggest that it can probably be put down to an eye-skip
which occurred during the copying of the exemplar and was subsequently
felt necessary to correct by erasure. Exactly why such a need would have
been felt is anybody' s guess, but it might be interpreted as a symptom of
the scrupulous abiding by the exemplar on the part of the glossator/scribe
(or, alternatively, by the pers on in charge of the revision of his work).
As has been put forward, vernacular glosses are more likely to

represent the spontaneous response of readers to the text rather than the
result of scribal copying from one manuscript to another 140 • In the case of
the Old English glos ses in Harle y 110, the evidence is perhaps too seant
136
Old English Classes, ed. by Meritt, no. 21, p. 25, note 10, and Russey, Ascetics
and Aesthetics, pp. 269-70.
137
Ibid.
138
Old English Classes, ed. by Meritt, no. 21, p. 25. The gloss is further discussed by
Russey, Ascetics and Aesthetics, pp. 264-5.
139
Cf. Synonyma, Il, 63: <<Absit in bonis remissa segnities, absit negligentia torpens>>:
lsidori Hispalensis Synanyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. 115, lines 677-8 (my emphasis).
140
See above, M. Godden's contribution to this volume, pp. 67-92, at 74.
to allow for any definitive conclusions. However, at least a few of these

vemacular glosses seem to betray a derivative rather thau a spontaneous
origin. It would therefore be safer to conclude that, like the Latin glosses,
the Old English ones too are the composite result of successive strands of
glossing, sorne presumably of derivative origin and others possibly of
spontaneous character141 •
The Corpus and Harley glosses and lElfric Bata
The role of the Corpus and Harley glosses in the textual transmission
of the Synonyma is best exemplified in the Colloquia 142 by JJjlfric Bata,
disciple of the more famous JJjlfric of Eynsham (t c. 1010) 143 • As has
been argued, in his Colloquium 28 Bata likely interpolated the text of the
Synonyma 144 with interpretamenta of glosses contained in the Corpus and
Harley codices at least five times 145 . The five glosses in question are the
following:
1) fluctuat .i. perturbatur (CCCC 448, f. 41 v12; Harley 110, f. 26r3) 146 ;
2) obsitus l obrutus (CCCC 448, f. 41 v15; f. Harley 110, f. 26r6);
3) exstiti l mansi (CCCC 448, f. 42r13; Harley 110, f. 26r23);
4) prœbet (CCCC 448, f. 42r20) prçbet (Har1ey 110, f. 26r30) .i. prestat;
5) uolutant l cogitant (CCCC 448, f. 42v8; Harley 110, f. 26v3).
ln all these five cases, the lemmata in the Corpus and Harley
manuscripts correspond to the relevant readings in the modem critical
edition of the Synonyma and cau be said to be the most widely attested
within the manuscript tradition of the Isidorian text 147 . Remarkably, in his
141
See above, pp. 307-9 and below, pp. 334-5.
142
Anglo-Saxon Conversations: The Colloquies of /Elfric Bata, ed. and trans. by S. J.
Gwara and D. W. Porter, Boydell, Woodbridge 1997; in particular, the Synonyma were
drawn on in the Colloquium 28: see ibid., pp. 164-71, and Gwara, S.J., «LElfric Bata's
Manuscripts», Revue d'histoire des textes 27 (1997), pp. 239-55, at 240-7.
143
See further Di Sciacca, «The Manuscript Tradition, Presentation, and Glossing>>,
pp. 113-6.
144
Bata's Colloquium 28 draws on Synonyma 1, 5-29: see Anglo-Saxon
Conversations, ed. by Gwara and Porter, pp. 166-71.
145
Gwara, «LE1fric Bata's Manuscripts>>, pp. 245-7.
146
In fact Gwara considers on1y the gloss in CCCC 448 and does not seem to be
aware that the same g1oss is also found in Harley 110: cf. Gwara, «LElfric Bata's
Manuscripts>>, p. 246.
147
Notably, no variants have been recorded for fluctuat, obsitus, extiti, and praebet,
while at !east one variant has been entered in the apparatus criticus for uolutant, namely
adaptation of the Synonyma, .tElfric Bata replaced such readings with the
interpretamenta from the glosses listed above. Hence the conclusion put
forward by Scott Gwara that Bata must have consulted a glossed witness
of the Synonyma closely related to Harley 110 and, especially, to CCCC
448148.
lt must be recalled that, although the evidence on .tElfric Bata's life is

extremely scanty, his floruit has been dated to the first half of the
eleventh century and his teaching activity has been associated, though
with no certainty, to Christ Church 149 . Notably, Bata may also have
played a role in the production and assemblage of the mid-eleventh-
century codex London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii, most
probably a Christ Church production 150 . This manuscript is one of the
most representative witnesses to the culture and interests of the
Benedictine Reform movement as weil as an important witness within the
Anglo-Saxon tradition of the Synonyma in that it preserves an Old
English epitome of the Isidorian text 151 . In view of the Christ Church
connection of .tElfric Bata, Gwara's claim that Bata's copy of the
Synonyma must have been closer to the Corpus manuscript than to Harley
110 is puzzling, given that Harle y 110 is indeed a Christ Church codex of
the end of the tenth century 152• Also, if we accept that uel-glosses can
attest to textual variants, in theory it is not necessary to assume that Bata
consulted a glossed manuscript of the Synonyma such as Harley 110 -
credible though such an assumption is - since it is equally possible that
Bata' s copy of the text featured such variants.
uolitant: see lsidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. 6, 1ines 28 and 30; p. 7, 1ines
43 and 50; and p. 8, line 55.
148
<<lElfric Bata's Manuscripts», pp. 245-6.
149
For a summary of the evidence on this regard, see Di Sciacca, <<The Manuscript
Tradition, Presentation, and Glossing>>, p. 119.
150
Gneuss, H., «Ürigin and Provenance of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: The Case of
Cotton Tiberius A.III>>, P. Robinson and R. Zim (eds.), Of the Making of Books: Medieval
Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented to M.B. Parkes, Scolar Press,
Aldershot 1997, pp. 13-48, at 19-43. See also Budny, M.O., British Library Manuscript
Royal 1 E. VI: The Anatomy of an Anglo-Saxon Bible Fragment, unpubl. PhD diss.,
University. of London 1984, pp. 246-53; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 363; and Ker, Catalogue,
no. 186.
151
See Di Sciacca, «The Manuscript Tradition, Presentation, and Glossing>>, pp. 116-
9. On the Tiberius codex and its role in the Benedictine Reform, see also the contributions
to this volume by M.C. De Bonis and G.D. De Bonis, above pp. 269-97, and below pp.
443-73, respectively.
152
See above, p. 301.
It should be reminded that besides Harley 110 and Tiberius A. iii,

another manuscript witness of the Synonyma has been associated with
Christ Church, namely London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.xiv,
ff. 170-224, itself a North-French codex of the first quarter of the ninth
century, which reached England by 912 and was probably housed in
Christ Church since at least the beginning of the twelfth century 153 . Once
in England, the manuscript was glossed in Old English, although most of
these glosses are now illegible 154 . Notably, the Vespasian manuscript
attests to the other recension of the Synonyma, namely recension <1> 155 ,
and it has recently been ascertained that the exemplar of the vernacular
epitome of the Synonyma in Cotton Tiberius A. iii is also a witness to this
recension, albeit independent from the Vespasian texe 56 .
While it is not possible to contrast Bata' s recast of the Synonyma to
the Tiberius epitome, since the two draw on different portions of Isidore' s
text 157 , a comparison between Bata's Colloquium 28 and the
corresponding sections of the Synonyma in Cotton Vespasian D.xiv
shows that the latter does not feature any of Bata' s interpolations
discussed above and agrees instead with both the edited text and the
Corpus and Harley codices in ali five instances 158 •
In sum, if indeed Harley 110, Tiberius A.iii, and Vespasian D.xiv
were ali written or stored in Christ Church in the pre-Conquest period and
if we allow for the Tiberius translation to have been carried out in Christ
Church from a now lost exemplar, then by Bata's alleged activity there,
the Canterbury cathedral could have housed up to four distinct copies of
153
Isidori Hispalensis Synonyma, ed. by Elfassi, p. xxxix; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 392;
and Ker, Catalogue, no. 210.
154
The Vespasian glosses have been published in different phases by Ker, Catalogue,
no. 210; Meritt, H.D., «Old English Glosses, Mostly Dry Point>>, Journal of English and
Germanie Philology 60 (1961), pp. 441-50, at 449; and Page, R.l., «New Work on Old
English Scratched Glosses>>, in P.M. Tilling (ed.), Studies in English Language and Early
Literature in Honour of Paul Christophersen (Occasional Papers in Linguistics and
Language Learning 8), New University of Ulster, Coleraine 1981, pp. 105-15, at 111-3.
155
See above, p. 316.
156
E1fassi, J., «Review of C. Di Sciacca, Finding the Right Words: Isidore's
Synonyma in Anglo-Saxon England, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2008>>,
Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 67 (2009), pp. 344-6.
157
Bata relies on Synonyma, 1, 5-29, while the Tiberius epitome is a vernacular
version of Synonyma, II, 88-96.
158
Cf. the readings fluctuat, obsitus, extiti, prebet, and uolutant at ff. 171 v5 and 10,
172r6 and 15, and 172vl of the Vespasian codex, respective1y.
the Synonyma 159• Be that as it may, none of the three surviving Christ
Church copies of the Synonyma features the distinctive readings found in
Bata' s Colloquium 28, thereby strengthening Gwara' s case that Bata must
instead have drawn on the stock of glosses preserved by the Corpus and
Harley codices 160 .
Conclusions
Trying to sum up the evidence presented so far, it can be said that

quite a few elements undoubtedly evoke sorne sort of educational setting
for the two manuscripts, but whether such a didactic element should be
read as synonymous with classroom use is much more problematic.
That Prosper' s Epigrammata were one of the curriculum texts
adopted in schools throughout the Anglo-Saxon period has long been
established. As to the Synonyma, the evidence is not as straightforward,
and I am reluctant to subscribe to Russey' s sweeping conclusions that the
Synonyma were «studied in Anglo-Saxon schools in ways similar to the
Disticha Catonis and Prosper's Epigrammata» and were «[adopted] into
the Canterbury curriculum before, during and after Dunstan' s
episcopacy» 161 . What evidence we do have more cautiously suggests that
the Synonyma were known in both crucial centres of the Benedictine
Reform, Winchester and Canterbury (both St Augustine' s and Christ
Church), and that different generations of Anglo-Saxon literati, from
Aldhelm and Boniface to Alcuin, from iEthelwold to lElfric Bata,
appreciated the Isidorian text and were well aware of its pedagogical
potential 162 .
The glossing in the Corpus and Harley manuscripts contributes sorne
precious evidence on this regard, but it hardly defines an open-and-shut
case for the classroom use of the two codices. One might say that the
elementary and explanatory character of the lexical and morpho-
syntactical glosses conjures up a readership with a modest proficiency in
Latin, with all the possible speculations this could trigger. In particular,
159
This circumstance is one of the many pieces of evidence suggesting a rather vast
and varied Anglo-Saxon tradition of the Synonyma: see Di Sciacca, Finding the Right
Words, pp. 68-76, and Szarmach, «A Retum to Cotton Tiberius A. III, art 24>>, pp. 173
and 176.
160
Gwara's argument is not flawless though: see Di Sciacca, «The Manuscript
Tradition, Presentation, and Glossing>>, p. 116.
161
Russey, Ascetics and Aesthetics, pp. 236 and 238.
162
Di Sciacca, Finding the Right Words, pp. 48-9, 51-2, and 163-74.
both codices contain a high number of syntactical glosses (including

sorne sporadic construe marks in Harley 110), which have been
pinpointed as one of the typologies of glosses most symptomatic of
classroom use 163 . However, as Ray Page has demonstrated, there is no
easy or direct proportion between the complexity level of a given set of
glosses, on the one hand, and the putative level of proficiency in Latin or
erudition in general of the recipients of those very glosses, on the other 164 .
Also, if it is true that the Latin as weil as the Old English glosses in
Harle y 110 fundamentally were «part of a scheme to teach Latin
vocabulary» 165 , then quite another scenario would emerge, namely that of
fairly advanced readers who do not so much need assistance in following
the text as in widening their Latin lexicon. Notably, the learning of new
words would plausibly have been independent of a teacher and could
have been pursued in the course of private reading instead.
In sum, going back to the dilemma with which this paper set out, that
is whether CCCC 448 and Harle y 110 are classbooks or library books, I
think that the evidence discussed above as weil as the overall rather
pristine state of the two codices points to the latter option. Having said
that, such a conclusion should by no means overshadow the complex and
diverse nature of the glosses in the two manuscripts.
According to a by now iconic definition, glosses in late Anglo-Saxon
manu scripts are «repositories of learning» 166 rather than ad hoc or
spontaneous responses to teacher-student interaction. As more recent
scholarship and indeed the present survey of the Corpus and Harley
glosses have put forward, however, this traditional dichotomy which has
long encumbered research in Anglo-Saxon glossography should finally
make room to a more versatile, nuanced approach to such multi-faceted,
multi-layered cultural abjects as glossed manuscripts. The «repositories
of learning» or, in Robinson's words, the «apparatus critic[i]» 161 which
given corpora of glosses grew into, gradually developed through a
complex, at times devious, process of accumulation and blending of both
past and present scholarship.
163
Wieland, <<The Glossed Manuscript», pp. 164-70; see above, pp. 322-3.
164
Page, R.I, «Ün the Feasibility of a Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Glosses: The View
from the Library>>, in Derolez, Anglo-Saxon Glossography, pp. 79-95, at 88-90.
165
Page, <<The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Il», p. 151.
166
Lapidge, «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, 1», p. 495.
167
See above, p. 323.
The glos ses in CCCC 448 and, even more so, th ose in Harley 110 are
a pertinent case in point of this intrinsically dynamic and diverse process.
If the core of shared glosses in both codices clearly points to a common
derivative origin of what must have been regarded as a significant, if not
indispensable, complement to the text weil worth preserving, the glosses
peculiar to each individual manuscript, especially the sparse Old English
glos ses and construe marks in Harle y 110, are much more difficult to
pinpoint, and so is the evidence of sequential glossing in both codices 168 .
The glosses specifie to each codex as weil as those inserted after the
copying of the main text could equally be derivative, namely be the result
of various operations of collation or conflation between glossed
exemplars of the Epigrammata and the Synonyma, or between glossed
copies of these texts and commentaries on them. On the other hand, the
glosses not shared by the two manuscripts could instead hint at a more
spontaneous response to or a more idiosyncratic engagement with the
text. In turn, whether this putative spontaneous element in the glossing
could be traced to classroom activity or to the individual response of a
reader privately perusing the text is an even trickier question, if not an
unanswerable one at this stage of research.
Obviously, a detailed comparison of ali the Continental and Anglo-
Saxon glossed manuscripts of both Prosper' s Epigrammata and the
Synonyma would be required in order to tackle these ambitious questions.
The present essay has, more modestly, aimed to present a case-study and
outline two different stages within a given glossing tradition, as attested
in the two codices under consideration, trying to account for both the
common strands and the idiosyncrasies of each. It has also been
attempted to highlight the different approach to a curriculum text such as
Prosper' s Epigrammata and to what more plausibly was a devotional read
with a lexicographie twist such as the Synonyma, as it emerges from the
respective glosses. With regard to the Synonyma in particular, it has been
intriguing to find out that the Corpus and Harley glosses to the Isidorian
text seem to confirm other documentary evidence as to the greater
popularity of the first book of the Synonyma over the second.
Clearly plenty still needs to be done on the glosses to Prosper's
Epigrammata and the Synonyma, but it is hoped that the present study has
offered one - however small - stepping stone to further research and has
168
At least two glossators were at work in CCCC 448 and different glossing hands
have been detected in the Latin and vemacular glosses in Harley llO: see above, pp. 302-
3 and 327.
contributed to the re-thinking and re-contextualizing of a significant body

of late Anglo-Saxon glosses 169 .
169
My sincerest thanks to prof. P. Lendinara for her help and guidance in dealing
with the tricks of glosses.
Plate VII
London, British Library, Harley Il 0, f. 3r23-32
Plate VIII
London, British Library, Harley 110, f. 3r
Plate IX
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 448, f. Ir
THE LATIN-ICELANDIC GLOSSARY IN AM 249 L FOL
AND ITS COUNTERPART IN GKS 1812 4T 0
Fabrizio D. Raschellà
The collection of Latin-Icelandic glosses contained on f. 4rv of the

manuscript fragment Reykjavik, Stofnun Âma Magmissonar (Âmi
Magnûsson Institute), AM 249 1 fol (henceforth AM 249) is, together
with the analogous collection on ff. 24r and 34v of the manuscript
Reykjavik, Stofnun Âma Magnûssonar, GKS 1812 410 (henceforth GKS
1812), one of only two ex tant examples of medieval Icelandic glossaries 1.
While this in itself is remarkable, it should be mentioned that the two
glossaries, which originally formed a single glossary, are sorne of the
earliest Icelandic writings. Dated to the end of the twelfth century or c.
12002, they were written about half a century after the supposedly oldest
extant Icelandic manuscript, an Easter table written in the second quarter
of the twelfth centuri. They are virtually contemporary with the earliest
Icelandic text of sorne length, the Icelandic 'Book of Homilies'
(Hômilîubôk) 4, which dates back to about 1200 and also contains
Icelandic glosses in a section devoted to the Credo.
Since the very beginning of research on the two manuscripts, it has
been noted that the computistical sections containing the glosses were
1
For an essential overview of gloss writing in medieval Iceland, see Raschellà, F.D.,
«Glossography>>, in Ph. Pulsiano (ed.), Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, Garland,
New York and London 1993, pp. 229-30, at 230; id., «Vemacular Gloss Writing in
Medieval Scandinavia>>, in R. Bergmann, E. Glaser and C. Moulin-Fankhanel (eds.),
Mittelalterstudien der Otto-Friedrich-Universitiit Bamberg 2. bis 4. August 1999, Winter,
Heidelberg 2001, pp. 587-99, at 588-90; Kreutzer, G., «Glossen und Glossare; §3:
Altnordische Gl[ossen]>>, in Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 2nd edn.,
XII, de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1998, pp. 231-4, at 232-3.
2
Cf. Katalog over den Arnamagnœanske héindskriftsamling, I, udg. af
Kommissionen for det Arnamagnreanske Legat, Gyldendalske Boghandel, Copenhagen
1889, p. 230 (for AM 249), and Katalog over de oldnorsk-islandske hlîndskrifter i Det
store Kongelige bibliotek og i Universitetsbiblioteket, udg. af Kommissionen for det
Amamagnreanske Legat, Gyldendalske Boghandel, Copenhagen 1900, p. 41 (for GKS
1812).
3
Reykjavik, Stofnun Ârna Magnussonar, AM 732 a VII 4to; cf. Hreinn Benediktsson,
Early Icelandic Script as Illustrated in Vernacular Texts from the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries, The Manuscript Institute of Ice1and, Reykjavik 1965, p. 13.
4
Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket (National Library of Sweden), Perg. 4to nr 15.
338 FABRIZIO D. RASCHELLÀ
written by one and the same hand and that they must originally have
belonged to a single manuscript, containing a collection of computistical
and astronomical writings 5 . The same would apply to the glossaries
themselves, which are only slightly later than the main text and may
originally have been parts of a single glossar/. A total of about 260 Latin
lemmata, mostly nouns, with their respective Icelandic interpretamenta7
are included in the two manuscripts 8 • As can be seen from the
reproductions (Plates XI-XII), in AM 249 they are inserted in the blank
spaces and in the side margins of a computistical table 9, while in GKS
1812 they appear on the first and last page of the manus cript' s oldest
section, an extensive treatise on ecclesiastical computus 10 , and are
arranged, as those in AM 249, in parallel columns. The words occurring
in the two lists are extremely diverse and refer most frequently to
5
This was first noticed by Guômundur l>orl:iksson in his edition of the glossary in
AM 249, published in 1884: Guômundur l>orl:iksson, «Islandsk-latinske gloser i et
kalendarium i AM. 249, folio>>, in Smastykker 1-16 udgivne af Samfund til Udgivelse af
Gammel Nordisk Litteratur, M(llllers Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen 1884-1891, pp. 78-99, at
79-80.
6
The part of the glossary in GKS 1812 was edited for the first time in 1878 by Hugo
Gering (Gering, H., «Islandische Glossen>>, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 9 [1878],
pp. 385-94). In 1883 a new and more accurate edition of the glosses appeared in Ludvig
Larsson's comprehensive study of the oldest part of the manuscript (ii.ldsta delen af cod.
1812 4 10 Gml. kgl. samling pa Kgl. biblioteket i Kr;Jbenhavn, i diplomatariskt aftryck utg.
af Ludvig Larsson, Mollers Boktryckeri, Copenhagen 1883, pp. 41-51), and in 1914-1916
Natanael Beckman and Kristian Kâlund published the astronomical terms contained in the
glossary's last section (Alfrœôi îslenzk. 1slandsk encyklopœdisk litteratur, II. Rîmtçl, udg.
ved N. Beckman og Kr. Kâlund, M(llllers Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen 1914-1916, pp. 72-
75); both these works made substantial improvements to Gering's edition. In 1988
Piergiuseppe Scardigli and Fabrizio D. Raschellà proposed a new edition of the glossary
with severa! emendations and additions and provided it with an extensive commentary
(Scardigli, P. and Raschellà, F.D., «A Latin-Icelandic Glossary and Sorne Remarks on
Latin in Medieval Scandinavia>>, in G.-W. Weber (ed.), Idee Gestalt Geschichte.
Festschrift Klaus von See, Odense University Press, Odense 1988, pp. 299-323). The
other part of the glossary - that in AM 249 l fol - bas only one edition to date, made by
Guômundur l>orlâksson in 1884 (see above, note 5).
7
In the following I will use the terms 'interpretamentum/-ta' and 'gloss(es)'
interchangeably, provided this does not cause confusion with the other more
comprehensive meaning of the term 'gloss' as the sum of lemma and interpretamentum.
8
This figure is necessarily approximate. In fact, well over 70 of the lemmata are
found in AM 249, while at !east 177 appear in GKS 1812. However, allowance must be
made for a number of lemmata which, due to the poor state of the parchment, are illegible
or have comp1etely disappeared (see the edition and commentary below).
9
Alfrœôi îslenzk Il, ed. by Beckman and Kâlund, pp. 67-71.
10
Aldsta delen af cod. 1812 4 10 , ed. by Larsson, pp. 1-41.
THE LATIN-ICELANDIC GLOSSARY IN AM 249 L FOL 339
household utensils, agricultural and handicraft tools, domestic animais,

furniture and parts of the house, games and entertainment, officinal
plants, and the names of stars and planets (the latter two categories occur
only in GKS 1812). A considerable number of verbs and adjectives,
equally disparate, are also represented. The lemmata are most often
grouped on the basis of semantic and metonymical relationships and,
albeit less frequently, according to their formai, i.e. graphie and phonetic,
affinity. Relevant examples taken from AM 249 will be discussed below.
The purpose of the present study is threefold. Firstly, I propose to
validate Guômundur I>orlâksson's statement that the two glossaries were
originally the constituent parts of a single glossary in such a way that the
glosses contained in AM 249 preceded, in the original manuscript, those
in GKS 1812; then I will briefly introduce the glossary in AM 249 in its
overall structure and present a new edition and commentary.
The original composition of AM 249 as weil as its connection with

GKS 1812 was effectively reconstructed and described by Guômundur
I>orlaksson (hereafter abbreviated GI>), whose arguments can be
summarized as follows 11 .
Relying on the assumption that the original quire making up the
manuscript was complete, i.e. consisting of 4 bifolia for a total of 8
leaves, it follows that 4 leaves in ali are missing. Considering that the first
preserved leaf (f. lrv) in AM 249 contains the calendar for the months of
March and April, the first conclusion to be drawn is that the original first
leaf, which should have contained the calendar for the months of January
and February, is missing. Consequently, the eighth (and final) leaf, which
formed a bifolium together with the first leaf, is also missing. The other
months contained in AM 249, on ff. 2rv and 3rv, are May-June and
November-December, respectively, which filled the third and sixth leaves
of the original manuscript. This circumstance allows us to infer that the
intermediate leaves containing the months May to October are also
missing and that these were the original fourth and fifth leaves. The
current last leaf (f. 4rv) in AM 249, containing computus tables
(calculations to determine the beginning of fasting periods) and the
collection of glosses investigated in the present study, corresponds
therefore to the seventh leaf of the original manuscript. The question
arises as to what the eighth lost leaf might have contained. Observing that
11
Cf. Gl>, p. 83.
the last part of the sixth and the whole of the seventh leaf (corresponding
to the actual ff. 3v-4v of AM 249) are filled with computus tables and
glosses, and that the tables are apparently incomplete, Gl> concludes that
the following leaf also contained in all likelihood computus tables.
Moreover, since both the last leaf in AM 249 and the first leaf in GKS
1218 contain lists of glosses, it is equally probable that the missing eighth
leaf did as well.
The hypothesis that AM 249 and GKS 1812 were closely connected
and originally part of a single manuscript, initially suggested to Gl> by the
presence of similar lists of glosses in both, was confirmed by his careful
examination of the script and the ink in the two manuscripts, which
proved to be the same for both the glosses and the computistical sections,
respectively 12 • In fact, Gl>'s thorough codicological analysis of AM 249,
together with the equally accurate investigation of the oldest part of GKS
1812 made by L. Larsson 13 , leaves no doubt as to their common origin.
This achievement has yet to be disputed and can therefore be used as a
sound premise for further and possibly combined examination of both the
main text and the glosses. On the other hand, this does not imply that the
materials collected in the two manuscripts are original. On the contrary,
the presence of orthographie variation, miswritings, lacunae, and
occasional discrepancies between lemmata and interpretamenta in the
glosses clearly testify that they are copies of one or more earlier
. 14
manuscnpts .
The glos ses in AM 249 are written on the fragment' s last two pages
(f. 4rv). They start in the blank spaces of the penultimate column off. 4r,
of which they occupy only the upper half, and continue in the right
margin of the same page. They then start again in the left margin off. 4v
and continue, as in the preceding page, in the blank spaces of the
penultimate column and in the right margin, where they come to an end
(disregarding their continuation in GKS 1812). Due to damage suffered
by the parchment in the outer margin of the leaf, several glosses,
especially those in the upper half, are now partially or completely
illegible. Moreover, they are written in a pale brownish ink (compared to
the dark brown ink of the main text), which sometimes makes them even
harder to read. As noted by Gl>, the glosses are written by a hand
12
Ibid., pp. 79-80 and 83.
13
See above, note 6.
14
Cf. GI>, pp. 84 and 88.
different from that of the main text and are also slightly later in date. It
may be further observed that the Latin lemmata are, as a rule, written in
larger letters than the Icelandic glosses and start, with very few
exceptions, with a capital letter. A glanee at the photographie
reproduction of the leaf will help the reader get a clearer picture of the
whole.
Although a valuable edition of the glossary in AM 249 is already

available within GI>'s study of 1884, it has nonetheless seemed
appropriate to undertake a new one, which, moving from GI>' s reading
and commentary of the glosses, should first of ali give a reliable picture
of the manuscript's present state 15 • As a matter of fact, sorne of the
glosses - or parts of them - which seem to have been clearly legible to
GI> have become very faint, and others which were difficult to read at
GI>' s time are now totally illegible. GI>' s reading and interpretation of
most of the words contained in the glosses (both lemmata and
interpretamenta) have seemed reliable and reasonable to me and have
therefore been accepted in the present edition. Where alternative or
contrasting positions are taken, they are discussed in footnotes to the text.
GI> presented his edition of the glossary in a semi-diplomatic form,
thus retaining the arrangement of the glos ses in columns according to the
manuscript, reproducing variant forms of one and the same letter, and
expanding most of the abbreviations. In my edition I did not think it
useful to repeat his procedure, ali the more so since I, unlike him, had the
possibility to accompany my edition with a facsimile of the manuscript.
The following criteria have been applied in the present edition:
The Latin lemmata are given in the first column on the left. These are
followed, in the second column, by their English translation (sometimes
tentative) 16 . The third and fourth columns contain the Icelandic glosses
15
1 take the opportunity to express here my deepest gratitude to the staff of the
Stofnun Ârna Magmissonar (the Icelandic Ârni Magmisson Institute), first for providing
me with excellent photographie reproductions of the manuscripts AM 249 l fol and GKS
1812 4'0 and then for allowing me to work extensively at both manuscripts during my stay
in Reykjavîk in the summer of 2010. The facsimiles included in this paper are printed
with the lnstitute' s permission.
16
For the meaning of the Latin lemmata - at least of those whose reading is
sufficiently certain - the dictionaries of medieval Latin by Charles Du Cange and Lorenz
Diefenbach have been consulted as a rule, besides other standard Latin dictionaries: Du
Cange (Du Fresne), Ch., Glossarium mediœ et infimœ Latinitatis, 10 vols., Favre, Niort
1883-1887; Diefenbach, L., Glossarium Latino-Germanicum mediae et infimae aetatis, J.
and their English equivalents, respectively. For clarity's sake, each gloss
is linked to the corresponding !emma by an arrow. When the meaning of
the Icelandic gloss corresponds closely to that of the Latin !emma, no
English equivalent is given. All abbreviations are expanded and the added
letters are written in italics. Letters or words that are no longer clearly
legible because of deterioration of the parchment are underlined. Missing
letters in partially illegible words are included in square brackets, and
dots are used to signify the presumable number of missing letters, while
angle brackets are used for conjectural additions. Question marks are
used throughout to point out uncertain readings, doubtful completions or
tentative interpretations, often with reference to an explanatory footnote.
f. 4r
col. 1
Accubito 17 '(from a?) couch'? -> af samhuilo 18 'from/of a common bed'
Baer, Frankfurt am Main 1857; id., Novum glossarium Latino-Germanicum mediae et

infimae aetatis, SauerHinder, Frankfurt am Main 1867. However, explicit reference will
not be made to them for every !emma but only for those which pose particular problems.
17
This !emma admits of severa! interpretations. If it does not contain miswritings, it
may be intended either as the dat./abl. sg. of accubitum - accubitus, a noun denoting a
(large) couch to redine on at meals or to rest, i.e. a kind of triclinium (see Du Cange,
Glossarium, 1, pp. 50-51, and Diefenbach, Glossarium, p. 8, s. v. accubitus), or as a verb
meaning 'to redine at table' or 'to rest, to sleep' (but, in this case, it usually has the form
accubo). Supposing, on the contrary, that its original form was somewhat different, we
might think of the abstract feminine noun accubitio, obviously belonging to the same
lexeme as the aforementioned words and meaning 'a lying or redining, especially at
meals'. On the basis of comparison with the lcelandic gloss, it might perhaps be inferred
that the Latin !emma is actually a masculine or neuter noun in the dative or, more
probably, ablative case and that the Icelandic glossator intended to emphasize the
grammatical case by adding the preposition af 'from; of (see below, note 18). Why the
lemma would be recorded in a form different from the nominative is a question probably
bound to remain unanswered.
18
Unless one or more words are missing at the beginning of the Icelandic gloss, the
most likely interpretation of this prepositional phrase (in normalized spelling: af
samhvilu) would seem to be the one conjectured in the preceding footnote. Samhvila, a
compound noun derived from the phrasa! verb hvîla saman 'to rest together', is a rather
infrequent word, and its meaning ranges from 'a common place to rest' to 'sexual
intercourse'; see Cleasby, R., Vigfusson, G. and Craigie, W.A., An Icelandic-English
Dictionary, 2nd ed., Clarendon Press, Oxford 1957, p. 511, and Fritzner, J. and Hf')dnebf'),
F., Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, l-Ill; rettelser og tillegg ved Finn Hf')dnebf') (IV),
Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, Bergen and Tromsf') 1972, IV, p. 299.
[ue]l occursus 19 'retum, recurrence' ---> aftr quama

20
Malona 'flood tide' ---> flop
ledona 'ebb tide' ---> fi ara
Pauimentum 'floor' ---> golf
tectum 'roof ---> pekia
Tegula 'rooftile' ---> fiol uel pekia 'board' - 'roof
col. II
Ciriatha[m?] uel ?21 - 'canvas, tent; ---> bo![?f 3 ?
cadurc[um?] bed-cover' 22
Crater 'crater' (a drinking ---> ker 'vessel, goblet'
vessel)
Catinus 'large, round dish' ---> discr 'plate'
24
Parapsid[a] 'basin, bowl' ---> bi op 'tray'
5
Patera '(libation) saucer' ---> bl!ps(c)Qt2 'drinking vessel'
19
One or more words with the same meaning of occursus are obviously missing at
the beginning of this !emma.
20
The right form would be malina. The ending -ana is probably due to analogy with
the following !emma, ledona.
21
No other occurrence of ciriatha or similar nouns seems to be attested anywhere
outside the glossary (cf. Gl>, p. 89).
22
Cf. Du Cange, Glossarium, II, p. 15, and Diefenbach, Glossarium, p. 87, s.v.
cadurcum.
23
The parchment is wrinkled and faded here, and only the sequence bo- is clearly
legible. Gl> has boil., which he interprets as bolli 'bowl'. Considering the meaning of the
second Latin !emma, cadurcum, which denotes a kind of linen or of bed-cover, possibly
used as a tent, a word like boldang (n. 'a sort of thick linen': Cleasby, Vigfusson and
Craigie, An /celandic-English Dictionary, p. 72) might originally have appeared in this
place, provided that the term was already in use in the twelfth century. In fact, its first
written record in Icelandic is dated to the seventeenth century; see Blèindal Magm1sson,
Â., fslensk orôsijjabôk, Orôab6k Hâsk6lans, Reykjavîk 1989, p. 70.
24
Cf. Du Cange, Glossarium, VI, p. 161, Diefenbach, Glossarium, p. 412, and id.,
Novum glossarium, p. 280, s. v. parapsis.
25
Gl>, pp 89-90, assumes here a miswriting for 'blipscQl', i.e. blîôsktil. This word is
attested only once in Old Norse literature, namely in Snorri Sturluson's Hdttatal, and is
rendered as «god, behagelig skâl, om drikkekarret», i.e. 'a pleasurable drinking vessel', by
Finnur J6nsson in his revised edition of Sveinbjèim Egilsson's dictionary of skaldic
poetry: see Sveinbjom Egilsson and Finnur J6nsson, Lexicon poeticum antiquœ linguœ
Septentrionalis. Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog, 2nd edn., Mollers
Ciphus uel 'bowl, go blet' - --> ker 'vesse!, goblet'

Sei athus 'ladle'
Clite!la 'pack-saddle --> !asca 'chest; basket'
pannier'
Numallo ?26 --> tQScosueinn 'chest-bearer; porter'
Pumex 'pumice' --> vier
Trunca27 'trunk' --> stofrr 'stump, trunk'
Mastigia uel 'scourge, whip, --> kylvJ! 'club'
Clau a cane' - 'club'
Clauis 'key' --> _y_
1 kil
Clauus 'nail' --> nagle
Lethargiui8 'drowsiness, --> ss;;fr ihel 'he sleeps to death'
!eth argy'
bultum uel 'missile'?- --> fOlfi: 'boit, missile'
Catapulta 'catapult, missile'
f. 4v
col. 1
Puluinar 'bolster, cushion, --> vengi 'pillow' 29
pillow'
Culcitra 30 'cushion, mattress' --> bepr 'bed; bolster, pillow'
Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen 1931, p. 53: GJ:>'s conjecture seems reasonable and is accepted
here.
26
GJ:>, p. 90, reasonably assumes for this word a derivation from num(m)us, 'money',
conjecturing the meaning «den som b::erer pengepungen, en almisseuddelers dreng», i.e.
'he who carries the purse, the assistant of an alms distributor'. Diefenbach, Glossarium, p.
385, has num(ma)rius and num(m)mularius, both with the meaning 'moneychanger'.
27
Probably a secondary feminine form for classical truncus, m.
28 For classicallethargus.
29 The neuter noun vengi (related to masc. vangi, 'cheek') is found only once with the
meaning 'pillow' in Icelandic literature, namely in Guôrunarkviôa; see Sveinbjôm
Egilsson and Finn ur Jônsson, Lexicon poeticum, p. 604, s. v. 1. vengi, and Fritzner and
Hs;;dnebs;;, Ordbog, III, p. 907, and IV, p. 418. In prose it usually occurs as a synonym of
vangr, m. 'field, ground', both words having the same etymo1ogy.
30
The parchment has become very dark in this place, and the reading of ali the words
from 'Culcitra' to '[ .. ]bbo' is, except for 'Çapulum', very uncertain.
Çapulum 'handle' (esp. a --> hialt31 '(cross-guard of the)

sword-hilt) hilt'
Acetus 32 'vinegar' --> iosg 'y east'
[ .. ]bbo33 ? --> kilpr34 'handle' (esp. of a
bucket)
Qgga35 ? --> g!ip36 'grip, grasp'
Adorgior37 ? --> [ec] mttle '[1] talk to others'
vipadra
[A]bsorbuit38 'he swallowed down, --> [sa]!!I ga '1 defile, soi!; desecrate'
devoured' ec39
Lenocinium 'pandering' --> saurliui 'dissolute !ife'
31 Reading according to GI>. The parchment is now entirely dark in this place.
32 For classical acetum.
33 The parchment has become so dark and wrinkled in this place as to make any
reading conjecture impossible. '[ .. ]bbo' is from GI>, who, however, gives up any attempt
of completion.
34 See above, note 31.
35 GI>'s reading is '[ ... ]ggo', with three presumably missing letters at the beginning
and a final-o. No conjecture, however, is made conceming the identification of the word.
36 The first letter of this word is fair! y legible, while al! the others are very faded. GI>
conjectures gri]Ji 'servant'; nevertheless, considering the meaning of the preceding word,
grip would perhaps be a more plausible reading. The Latin lemma is, of course, of no
help.
37 The Latin word most resembling this lemma is the verb adorior, which means 'to
attack, assail'. This meaning does not match, however, that of the Icelandic gloss (in
normalized spelling: [ek] mœli viô aôra). Semantically closer to the latter would certainly
be adoro, which in its wide semantic spectrum includes the meaning 'to address sb.', but
it is formally too distant from adorgior. It must be concluded that it is probably a
misinterpretation on the part of the glossator.
38 So GI>. The first letter seems in fact to be an 'A', and the reading of the following
!etters is certain enough. Nonetheless, the meaning of the Latin lemma is quite distant
from that of the corresponding Icelandic gloss. Actually, it is not unlikely that another
verb, resembling the Latin absorbeo in form but much closer to the Icelandic saurga in
meaning, that is obsordeo 'I get dirty' (Du Cange, Glossarium, VI, p. 22, s. v. obsordere:
«sordidus fio>> ), was present in the original. If so, absorbuit would be a banal miswriting
for obsorduit. Moreover, it is not clear why the perfect (3rd pers. sg.) is used in the Latin
[emma instead of the present. The Icelandic gloss is in the present form (lst pers. sg.).
39 The first letters of the gloss are now illegible; the word is completed according to
GI>.
Lupgcal uel -->

Lup;!n<l! uel 'brothel' horhus
[......... ]40 uel
Mercatoria
Manzer 'bastard' --> sonr 'whore's son'
Portcono
Postora41 'posterior, buttocks'? --> b!igzle 'shame' (i.e. pudenda?) 42
Çautirior '1 bum myself' --> lèC em '1 am bumt'
suipinn
[Tor]ris 43 'brand' --> [svi]pu '(fire)brand'
brandr44
col. II
Omen; fausta 'omen'- 'favourable --> hçill; idem
prognostics'
Sciolus 'sciolist' --> Scripgiam 'garrulous' ?45
Sciolitas 'sciolism' --> Scripgimi 'garrulity' ?46
bubo 'owl' --> vfr
Pauus 'peacock' --> Pai
Dedains 'Daedalus' --> volundr 'Wayland (the Smith)' 47
40 Gl> reads here 'Prostibulum'. As a matter of fact, none of the letters making up this
word are legible with certainty. It may weil be, however, that the parchment was in better
condition when Gl> examined it.
41 Considering the context, this word could be thought of as an alteration, possibly
due to miscopying, of postera 'back parts', i.e. 'buttocks' (cf. Gl>, p. 93, with reference to
this entry in Diefenbach's Glossarium). However, its relation with the corresponding
Icelandic gloss is rather doubtful; see below, note 42.
42 If the reading of the lcelandic gloss is correct (and it would seem to be so, in spi te
of the fading of the central part of the word), then we have a noun with the basic meaning
'biarne, shame'; see Cleasby, Vigfusson and Craigie, An Icelandic-English Dictionary,
s. v. brigzli. This is somewhat distant from the (presumed) meaning of the Latin lemma,
yet not so much as to exclude a feeble connection with it.
43 So Gl>. At present only sorne indistinct signs in a dark spot are visible.
44 Completion according to Gl>.
45 Gl>: «Scrzpg1arn] Dette ord [ ... ] findes ikke i ordb!llger, lige sii lidt som det
f!lllgende navneord S[c]npgtml. [ ... ] 1 f!lllge sin sammensa:tning skulde Scnpg1arn
na:rmest betyde: "den som let forl!llber sig" eller lignende>> (pp. 94-95).
47 The lcelandic gloss is obviously an attempt to equate the Greek mythological
figure L'laŒal-oç (Latin Daedalus) with a corresponding or similar figure in Germanie
Inter lunium48 'interlunation' ---> Ne]Jar49 'waning moon'

Malaue50 'un der bad auspices' ---> illo heille 'in a evil hour'
Altercor '1 wrangle' ---> prete ec
mixtiouis 'loaf made of mixed ---> brau]Jco(r)n 'grains for bread-
Pastiles 51 grain'? (?)52 making'
col. III
Pelta 'light, crescent shaped ---> scioldr 'shield'
shield'
Aleam 'tables' (a board game ---> taft
with dice) 53
[Tens?kra54 'checker; die' ---> [bau?]n55 'bean; pellet'
mythology, i.e. Wayland the Smith (Vçlundr in Old Norse). Both are actually represented
as skilful craftsmen in their respective traditions. This is the only proper name occurring
in the glossary. The continuation of the glossary in GKS 1812 includes several proper
names, yet all referring to stars.
48
GI> reads 'Jnter limium', stating that this is a miswriting for interlunium. However,
it seems to me that the word may be read as interlunium as well.
49 Usually: niôar.
50
I.e. mala ave, literally '(under the influence of) an ill bird', i.e. of a 'bird of ill
omen'.
51 The Latin terms nearest to the manuscript's pastiles 1 have been able to find are-
considering the possible meaning of the Icelandic gloss (see below, note 52) -pastilla,
pastillum, pastillus 'smallloaf or flat cake': Diefenbach, Glossarium, p. 415; cf. GI>, p.
97. As for mixtiouis, this is in all likelihood, as already noted by GI>, a miswriting for
mixtionis, i.e. the genitive of mixtio 'mixture, blend'. We th us have for this lemma a noun
phrase approximatel y meaning 'a small bread made by mixing varions ingredients', which
would also satisfy to sorne extent the correspondence with the Icelandic glos s.
52
GI> has braujxon in his transcription, but admits in his commentary that this gives
no plausible meaning. After discussing at sorne length the possible readings of this gloss,
he concludes that braupcorn, in which a presumably lost original ris restored between o
and n, would be the most suitable one.
53 Cf. Du Cange, Glossarium, 1, p. 173, and Diefenbach, Glossarium, p. 21, s. v. alea.
54 I.e. tessera. Completion according to GI>. See further below, note 55.
55 Completion according to GI>. Actually, the initial part of both the Latin lemma and
the Icelandic gloss are illegible at present, and, to judge from GI>'s words («Dette ord er
meget utydeligt i hdskr., og hesningen er ingenlunde sikker», p. 97), the situation must not
have been much better in his times. While GI>' s completion of the Latin word is plausible
in consideration of the adjacent glosses, the same cannat be said about the Icelandic one,
the meaning of which is considerably different from that of the former - unless beans
were occasionally used as checkers (less probably as dice).
Pirgum 'game board' -+ !!!flbom

Largus 'lavish' -+ çrr
Prodigus 'prodigal, spendthrift' -+ glapgiof(ull?>56 'reck:lessl y
generous'
Dilapidator 'squanderer' -+ glotronar map?7
Corbanas 'treasure chamber' 58 -+ fe hirzla 'treasury'
Erarium 'public treasury' -+ fe hus 'treasury'
Crumena 'moneybag' -+ sio]x
Marsupium 'pouch, purse' -+ Pungr '(small) bag, purse'
bursa 'purse' -+ sciopa 'small skin bag'
Furulus uel 'sheath'-? -+ malr 'knapsack'
Far[r?]ago 59
Loculus 'coffer, casket' -+ fe hirzla 'treasury'
60
Fenerator 'money-lender, -+ leigo sçl(ing?>r 'one who gets rich
usurer' from lending
money'?
56
The form glapgiof (in normalized spelling, glapgjçj) is not found as such
anywhere else. Moreover, its second component, gjçf 'gift', identifies it as a noun
denoting a thing, while the Latin !emma is an adjective referring to a persan. On the other
hand, no letter seems to be missing here. GI> suggests completing it as glapgjçfull. In fact,
although not even this word is found outside the glossary, it would nicely match the Latin
!emma.
57
The word (or noun phrase) is composed of glotronar- gen. of glotran, a variant of
glutran 'squandering' - and maôr 'man'. The latter is represented by the typical
abbreviation 'l', i.e. the rn-rune, whose name was, indeed, 'maôr'. GI> does not note this
fact and does not expand the abbreviation.
58
Cf. Du Cange, Glossarium, II, p. 560, and Diefenbach, Glossarium, p. 150, s. v.
corban and corbana. The word is from Greek Kop~avàç, a terrn of Hebrew origin
denoting the treasury of the temple at Jerusalem; see Liddel, H.G. and Scott, R., A Greek-
English Lexicon, with a Supplement, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1968, s. v. Kop~àv.
59
No ward resembling the manuscript' s farago seems to exist denoting a 'sack' or
something of the kind, as we would expect here. On the other hand, farrago, apparent! y
the nearest word, meaning 'mixed fodder for cattle', does not fit the context. GI> surmises
that the scribe may have misinterpreted his madel and/or skipped an Icelandic glass here.
60
As already stressed by GI>, p. 98, the composition of this noun is quite singular.
While its first component, leigo-, is very common in compounds meaning '(something
given or taken) on loan', the second component, -sçlr, is not found elsewhere, and must
contain sorne miswriting. GI> associates it tentatively with the verb selja 'to sell' and the
related feminine noun selja 'a female vendor' (occurring only as the second member in
compounds), thus obtaining the overall meaning 'one who lets goods (or money) out on
Fenus 'interest, usury' ---> f061 ?

Censum; Diuitie 'riches, wealth' ---> aupr; item
Gazas 'treasure, riches' ---> aupr
Gathofilatium 'treasury' ---> fe hirzla
Let us now briefly consider sorne characteristics of the words

contained in the glossary.
As already mentioned, lemmata are, as a rule, grouped on the basis of
semantic affinity, although other criteria are applied as weil. In any case,
the sequence of words seems to be determined by mere association of
ideas, that is, words have apparently no other connection with each other
than their affinity or contiguity of meaning. That these glosses, at least in
their current arrangement, refer to any fully developed and coherent
written Latin text can therefore be excluded. On the contrary, more than a
few of them look as if they were taken at random from what must have
been a common and unrefined variety of spoken language. Words like
'brothel' (lupercal, lupanar, mercatoria, and another, totally illegible,
word) 62, 'pandering' (lenocinium), 'bastard' (manzer), 'squanderer'
(dilapidator), 'usurer' (jenerator) - especially if associated with couches
(accubitum), mattresses and pillows (culcitra, pulvinar), money bags and
purses (crumena, marsupium, bursa), board games and dice (alea,
pirgum, tessera) - inevitably evoke the image of a lifestyle quite
different, say, from that of monasteries, churches and schools, i.e. the
places where books were written and read. Other words denote, as
mentioned above, objects of everyday and practical use, such as
household and work tools, while still others are associated according to
interest'. In my opinion still another conjecture is conceivable, namely that sorne letters -
possibly an abbreviation - may have slipped from the pen of the scribe, and that the
second member of the compound was originally Sf?lingr 'a wealthy man'; see Cleasby.
Vigfusson and Craigie, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, s. v. sœlingr, and, on the
abbreviations for '-ing-', Hreinn Benediktsson, Early Icelandic Script, pp. 53-54 and 87.
Consequent! y, leigosf?lingr would be 'one who gets rich from lending goods or money'.
Unlike Gl>'s assumption, this explanation would, among other things, account properly
for the manuscript's spelling of the root vowel- 't;' (= 'œ')- against the 'e' of selja and
related forms.
61 This form is not found anywhere outside the glossary and is probably a miswriting
for fé 'money'. Gl>' s suggestion that it may be a neologism coined by the glossator
himself from Latin f( o )en us , i.e. the word appearing in the !emma, is scarcely tenable.
their formai similarity, that is sound structure, rather than to semantic

affinity (e.g. clava 'club', clavis 'key', clavus 'nail', on f. 4r, col. II). All
in all, it can be said that the lemmata contained in the glossary belong to a
category of words mostly used in daily and practical life, even in the
worldliest of circumstances, and therefore not likely to occur in books,
least of all in church and school books. Indeed, this must have been the
principal aim of the glossator: to make known - by occasionally filling
the blank spaces of a computus table (a typically ecclesiastical
instrument, among other things) - words and expressions that young
students and aspiring clerics would have looked up in vain in their
edificatory school readings.
Moreover, a number of the Latin lemmata show a distorted or
incomplete form, which may sometimes be due to copying mistakes on
the part of the scribe (e.g. malona for malina 'flood tide'; postora for
postera 'posterior, buttocks'; mixtiovis for mixtionis 'mixture'). Yet it
cannot be excluded that, in sorne instances at least, the 'unorthodox'
Latin forms reported in the glossary belong to an uncultivated variety of
spoken language and differ therefore to sorne extent from classical or
written standard forms. Thus, for example, nouns frequently occur in
cases other thau the nominative (accubito for accubitum 'couch', aleam
for alea 'tables' (agame with dice); pirgum for pirgus 'game board'), or
show a grammatical gender different from that usually found in literary
and formai writings (trunca for truncus 'trunk'; acetus for acetum
'vinegar'), while verbs may occur in forms other thau the first person
singular of the present indicative (as absorbuit for absorbeo 'to
swallow'). Sorne of the Icelandic interpretamenta are very approximate,
if not entirely wrong. Thus clitella 'pack-saddle pannier' is glossed by
taska, a general term for 'chest' or 'basket'; lethargius, a noun meaning
'drowsiness, lethargy', is rendered with a verb (to boot in the third person
singular!), i.e. srjJfr f hel 'he sleeps to death'; lenocinium 'pandering' is
equated to saurlifi 'dissolute life'. Sometimes, however, the comparison
is impracticable because the Latin lemma is not found anywhere else in
the same form: this is the case, among others, of numallo, which is
glossed by tr;skusveinn 'chest bearer, porter', and of the verb adorgior,
rendered as (ek) mœli viô aôra 'I talk to others' 63 .
None of these shortcomings is in any way surprising for those
familiar with the Latin-Icelandic glossary in GKS 1812, of which AM
63
See above, notes 26 and 37, respectively.
249 was originally the initial and complementary section, as stated above.
Both glossaries show ali of the characteristics previously described, and
much of what has already been observed about the glossary in GKS
181264 applies perfectly to the glossary in AM 249 as weil.
A further question which arises in considering the overall tenor of the
glosses contained in AM 249 regards the kind of Latinate culture this
vocabulary belonged to and where this variety of language was spoken.
Certainly, it was not spoken in Iceland, least of ali in Icelandic schools
and monasteries, which were the only places on the island where spoken
Latin was likely to be in use, if nothing else as a school subject. In reality,
much of such a vocabulary was of no practical use in the sober and
morally sound society of Iceland in the High Middle Ages. Rather, as
already suggested in the above-mentioned study by Scardigli and
Raschellà, the glossary - which does not show any overt reference to the
ecclesiastical milieu - «bears the imprint of eminent practicality, almost
as though it were a manual of expressions to be used in the most
mundane circumstances of daily life» 65 . In addition, it may be observed
that such a vocabulary would have proved especially useful in those
foreign countries where the Icelanders went for a long time, after their
conversion to Christianity, to acquire their higher education or on
pilgrimages to Christian holy sites. Such journeys often led to
experiences which were very different from the trip's original purposé6 .
This may, among other things, give us a hint as to the presumable origin
of the glossary and the reason why it was written. In this regard, again, I
cannot but repeat what I have already observed in commenting on the
64
Scardigli and Raschellà, «A Latin-Icelandic Glossary», pp. 309-1 O.
65
Ibid., p. 309.
66
The opinion that such a list of words might serve as a language guide for pilgrims
has been expressed with regard to the glossary in GKS 1812 by Stefân Karlsson and is
shared by other Icelandic scholars; see Stefân Karlsson, «Salerni>>, in Dagamunur ger/Jur
Arna Bjomssyni sextugum 16. janûar 1992, Menningar- og Minningarsj6ôur Mette
Magnussen, Reykjavik 1992, pp. 98-102, at 100. Besides fostering the production of the
renowned travel guide (lei/Jarvîsir) of the Icelandic ab bot Nikulâs of Munka]werâ (s. xii2),
pilgrimages are often mentioned in the Icelandic sagas as a widespread religious practice.
On this subject see, among others, Einar Arn6rsson, «Suôurgongur Îslendinga î fornold>>,
Saga. Tîmarit sogufélags 2 (1954-1958), pp. 1-45; Raschellà, F.D., <>, in 990-1990: Millenario del viaggio di Sigeric, arcivescovo di
Canterbury, Centro di Studi Romei, Florence 1990, pp. 31-40, passim; Cucina, C., <<Il
pellegrinaggio nelle saghe dell'Islanda medievale>>, in Rendiconti. Atti della Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, Serie IX, vol. IX,
fasc. 1, Rome 1998, pp. 83-155.
nature of the glossary in GKS 1812 in the previously mentioned study:

although other hypotheses on the origin of the glossary cannot be
excluded a priori, the most feasible one would seem that it is a
transcription - possibly made with an informai teaching purpose67 - of
the persona! and, therefore, originally private jottings of an Icelandic
scholar who had studied abroad in a place where Latin, in addition to
being a learned language, was also used in everyday life.
67
Cf. Scardigli and Raschellà, «A Latin-Icelandic Glossary>>, p. 309.
Plate X
Reykjavik, Stofnun Arna Magnûssonar, AM 249 1 fol, f. 4r
Plate XI
Reykjavîk, Stofnun Ama Magnussonar, AM 249 1 fol, f. 4v
MARGINAL ALPHABETS IN THE CAROLINGIAN AGE:
PHILOLOGICAL AND CODICOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Alessandro Zironi
Codicology and philology
In a recent essay, J. Peter Gumbert bas argued that «[m]any

philologists and other scholars, who use manuscripts in their research, are
insufficiently aware of [the stratigraphy of the manuscripts], so that their
use of the sources is often vitiated by serions methodological errors». At
the very end of the same article, Gumbert suggests that the majority of
those who study manuscripts is not aware of the existence of
codicological methodologies 1• Many scholars have tried to shorten the
distance between philology and codicology, approaching the text as both
a piece of handwriting and an item of written communication2 • This
should be the precondition for a better understanding of the culture in
which a book was produced and used.
Although the discussion about a definitive technical terminology in
codicological studies is still far from reaching sorne shared conclusion3 ,
1
Gumbert, J.P., «Codicological Units: Towards a Terminology for the Stratigraphy
of the Non-Homogeneous Codex», in E. Crisci and O. Pecere (eds.), Il codice miscellaneo.
Tipologie e funzioni. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Cassino, 14-17 maggio 2003 (=
«Segno e Testo. International Journal of Manuscripts and Text Transmission>> 2), Edizioni
Università di Cassino, Cassino 2004, pp. 17-42, at 18 and 38-39.
2
Diaz y Diaz, M.C., «Recursos codicol6gicos y edici6n de textos>>, in A. Ferrari
(ed.), Filologia classica e filologia romanza: esperienze a confronta. Atti del convegno,
Roma 25-27 maggio 1995, C.I.S.A.M., Spoleto 1998, pp. 67-78, at 78; Cavallo, G.,
«Caratteri materiali del manoscritto e storia della tradizione», in Ferrari (ed.), Filologia
classica e filologia romanza, pp. 389-97, at 394-5; Schneider, K., «PaHiographie und
Kodikologie als Eingang zur Literatur des Mittelalters>>, in M.G. Schubert (ed.), Deutsche
Texte des Mittelalters zwischen Handschriftennahe und Rekonstruktion. Berliner
Fachtagung 1-3 April2004, Niemeyer, Tübingen 2005, pp. 21-33, at 22.
3
The discussion about codicological terminology is still open. An English dictionary
of codicology is still a desideratum. A recent publication on manuscripts copied from
1450 to 2000 is Beal, P., A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology, 1450 to 2000,
Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008. J.P. Gumbert posted sorne useful pages about the
codico1ogical terminology on internet: Gumbert, J. P., Words for codices: A Codicological
Terminology in English, 2010, http://www.cei.lmu.de/externNocCod/WORlO-l.pdf;
http://www.cei.lmu.de/externNocCod/WOR10-2.pdf; http://www.cei.lmu.de/externNoc
Cod/WOR10-3.pdf (last accessed January 2011). In languages other than English, see
Muzerelle, D., Vocabulaire codicologique. Répertoire méthodique des termes français
354 ALESSANDRO ZIRONI
philological studies have to take into account the possibility of the new
perspectives offered by contact with codicology. This attempt to combine
material philology, codicology and Lachmann's philological method
suggests new approaches to texts, where cultural investigation plays a
considerable part in the discussion of manuscripts. The interplay between
codicology and analysis of cultural background has already been stressed
by Malcolm Godden: «[t]he primary editorial contribution to Old English
scholarship is likely to be a more historical one, providing material for a
fuller understanding of Anglo-Saxon culture as a whole. If editors can
establish when and where a work was composed and what form it had;
what texts were known to the Anglo-Saxon writers, in what form, and
how they were adapted; how a text was revised, used, adapted, and
disseminated; and finally, what kind of language was used by the author
and how it was changed by readers and copyists, we will be moving a
long way towards an understanding of Anglo-Saxon literary and
intellectual activity» 4 •
This approach, which aims to fuse Lachmannian philology,
codicology, material philology, and cultural studies, will be the
methodology I will use in investigating sorne manuscripts in which
alphabetical series occur as marginal texts 5 .
Alphabetical series in manuscripts
It was only at the end of the eighth century that an evident interest in
alphabetical series appeared in Western manuscripts6• The diffusion of
relatifs aux manuscrits, C.E.M.I., Paris 1985; Maniaci, M., Terminologia del libro
manoscritto, Istituto centrale per la patologia del libro, Editrice bibliografica, Rome and
Milan 1996; Ostos, P., Pardo, M.L. and Rodrîguez, E.E., Vocabulario de codicolog{a.
Version espafiola revisada y aumentada del Vocabulaire codicologique de Denis
Muzerelle, Arco-Libros, Madrid 1997. On codicology, see also Agati, M.L., Il libro
manoscritto. Introduzione alla codicologia, L'Erma di Bretschneider, Rome 2003.
4
Godden, M., «Old English>>, in A.G. Rigg (ed.), Editing Medieval Texts: English,
French, and Latin Written in En gland: Papers given at the Twelfth Annual Conference on
Editorial Problems, University of Toronto, 5-6 November 1976, Garland, New York and
London 1977, pp. 9-33, at 29.
5
See also Zironi, A., «Il testo, il codice, la storia. Sinergie ad uso dell'edizione
critica», in F. Ferrari and M. Bampi (eds.), Storicità del testa, storicità dell'edizione,
Università di Trento. Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Fi1ologici, Trento 2009, pp. 43-
58.
6
Seebold, E., «Die Iren und die Runen. Die Überlieferung fremder Schriften im 8.
Jahrhundert ais Hintergrund zum ersten Auftreten von Manuskript-Runen>>, in W.
Haubrichs, E. Hellgardt, R. Hildebrandt, S. Müller and K. Rieder (eds.), Theodisca.
MARGINAL ALPHABETS IN THE CAROLINGIAN AGE 355
knowledge concerning the existence of alphabets other than those used in

the superscription of Jesus's Cross (Hebrew, Greek, and Latinf came to
the Barly Middle Ages from the Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville8 , in
particular from the third chapter of the first book dedicated to
grammatica. In the De litteris communibus, Isidore cited the existence of
Chaldaic, Syrian, and Egyptian letters without reporting any grapheme.
As to the Chaldaic and Syrian alphabets, Isidore only comments that they
begin with Abraham and he argues that they agree in the number of
characters and in their sounds with the Hebrew letters 9 •
The other major source for the knowledge of alphabetical systems
was Bede's De temporum ratione, especially the first chapter, devoted to
computing with the fingers 10 • The latter work completed the information
Beitrage zur althochdeutschen und altniederdeutschen Sprache und Literatur in der

Kultur des frühen Mittelalters. Eine internationale Fachtagung in Schonmühl bei
Penzberg vom 13. bis zum 16. Marz 1997, de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2000, pp. 10-
37,at11.
7
«erat autem scriptum Iesus Nazarenus rex Iudaeorum [ ... ] et erat scriptum hebraice
graece et latine.» (Io XIX.19-20).
8
About the knowledge and use of the tres linguae sacrae, see McNally, R. E., «The
'Tres linguae sacrae' in Early Irish Bible Exegesis>>, Theological Studies 19 (1958), pp.
395-403, at 396.
9
See Etym. I.iii.5: <<Hebraeorum litteras a Lege coepisse per Moysen: Syrorum
autem et Chaldaeorum per Abraham. Unde et cum Hebraeis et numero et sono concordant,
soli characteribus discrepant. Aegyptiorum litteras Isis regina, Inachis filia, de Graecia
veniens in Aegyptum, repperit et Aegyptiis tradidit. [ ... ]»: Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi
Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W.M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical
Texts ), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1911. (The letters of the Hebrews started with the Law
transrnitted by Moses. Those of the Syrians and Chaldeans began with Abraham, so that
they agree in the number of characters and in their sounds with the Hebrew letters and
differ only in their shapes. Queen Isis, daughter of Inachus, devised the Egyptian letters
when she came from Greece into Egypt, and passed them on to the Egyptians. [ ... ]): The
Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, transi., with introd. and notes, by S.A., Barney, W.J.
Lewis, J.A. Beach and O. Berghof, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006, p. 39.
Isidore was probably inspired by Augustine (De trinitate XV,10,19; De ordine II,12,35-
in his tum depending on V arro, fragm. 235 - and De doctrina Christiana II,4,5), and on
two of Jerome's Epistles (nos. 34 and 47): see Isidoro di Siviglia, Etimologie o origini, ed.
and trans. by A. Valastro Canale, 2 vols., U.T.E.T., Turin 2004, Il, p. 681 and The
Etymologies of Isidore of Sevi/le, transi. by Barney et al., pp. 11-13.
10
Bede, De temporum ratione, in Venerabilis Opera, VI. Opera didascalica ed. by
C.W. Jones, 3 vols. (CCSL 123A-C), Brepols, Turnhout 1975-1980, Il, pp. 263-460, at
272: «Sed haec Graecorum computo literisque facilius disci simul atque agi possunt, qui
non, ut Latini, paucis hisdemque gerninatis suos numeros soient exprimere literis, verum
toto alphabeti sui charactere in numerorum figuras expenso, tres qui plus sunt numeros
notis singulis depingunt, eumdem pene numeri figurandi, quem scribendi alphabeti
provided by Isidore, as Bede explained also the numerical value of Greek

letters.
It has been pointed out that Greek alphabetical series were not copied
in manuscripts before the middle of the eighth century, and that it was
only thanks to Irish monks that Greek letters were sometimes used to
replace Latin graphemes for ornamental reasons 11 . One of the most
evident case in point is represented by the so-called Adarnnan codex, now
in Schaffhausen, but originally copied in lona at the very beginning of the
eighth century, in which Greek letters are used as display script at the end
of the second liber of the Vita S. Columbae: <PINITYP CHKYN~ YC
AIDEP (jinitur secundus liber) 12 • A similar development can be observed
with regard to the Hebrew alphabetical series, which appeared in
manuscripts only at the end of the eighth century following the
dissemination of the work De formis Hebraicarum litterarum (CPL no.
624) 13 •
This text took into account what Jerome wrote in his Prologus
galeatus, where he argued that the oldest Hebrew letters came from the
ordinem sequentes, hoc modo:[ ... ]>>. (But this can be more easily learned and manipulated
using the letters and numbers of the Greeks, who do not, like the Latins, express numbers
by a few letters and their duplicated forms; rather, they depict the figures of numbers with
individual signs, by means of all the letters of the alphabet, plus three additional numbers,
as follows: [... ]): Bede, The Reckoning of Time, transl., with introd., notes, and
commentary by F. Wallis, Liverpool University Press, Liverpooll999, pp. 11-12.
11
Bischoff, B., «Das griechische Element in der abendHindischen Bildung des
Mittelalters>>, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 44 (1951), pp. 27-55, repr. in his Mittelalterliche
Studien. Ausgewiihlte Aufsiitze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols.,
Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1966-1981, Il, pp. 246-75, at 247; Frakes, J.C., «The Knowledge of
Greek in the Early Middle Ages: The Commentaries on Boethius Consolatio>>, Studi
Medievali 3rd ser., 27 (1986), pp. 23-43; Berschin, W., «Greek Elements in Medieval
Latin Manuscripts>>, in M.W. Herren (ed.), The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: The Study of
Greek in the West in the Early Middle Ages (King's College London Medieval Studies),
King' s College, London 1988, pp. 85-104; Seebold, «Die Iren und die Runen>>, p. 11
12
Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Generalia 1, f. 103. On the Adamnan codex, see
Gamper, R. and Marti, S., Katalog der mittelalterlichen Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek
Schaffhausen, Dietikon, Zürich 1998, pp. 67-68. A facsimile of the codex is now online
at: http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/sbs/0001 (last accessed January 2011). About the
presence of Greek in the manuscript, see Seebold, «Die Iren und die Runen>>, p. 11 and
Berschin, W., Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages: From Jerome to Nicholas of
Cusa, rev. and expan. edn., Catholic University of America Press, Washington D.C. 1988,
especially ch. vi.
13
Thiel, M., Grundlagen und Gestalt der Hebriiischkenntnisse des frühen
Mittelalters, C.I.S.A.M., Spoleto 1973, pp. 118-20.
so-called Samaritan alphabet, which was the one known to Moses 14 . As

Jerome had not systematically transcribed those alphabetical series, texts
like the Tractatus provided information about the number and shape of
the letters. This text does not only instruct about the names of the Hebrew
letters, but it also gives a description of their shapes, the knowledge of
which was not yet widespread 15 . Jerome and Isidore wrote about other
alphabetical series which were somehow connected with Hebrew
characters. Eventually, further alphabets were copied and circulated,
satisfying the encyclopaedic curiosity engendered by Jerome and
Isidore' s lists.
The Irish rnissionary activity on the Continent also implied the
dissemination of these alphabets. The stronger the Irish influence, the
more intense the copying of alphabetical series in manuscripts. Elmar
Seebold singles out the Continental focus of the diffusion of these
14
<<Yiginti et duas litteras esse apud Hebraeos, Syrorum quoque et Chaldaeorum
lingua testatur, quae Hebraeae magna ex parte confinis est: nam et ipsi viginti duo
elementa habent eodem sono, sed diversis characteribus. Samaritani etiam Pentateuchum
Mosi totidem litteris scriptitant, figuris tantum et apicibus discrepantes.»: Jerome,
Praefatio in Libros Samuel et Malachim, in Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed.
by R. Weber et al., 5th edn., Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart 2007, pp. 365-6. (That
the Hebrews have twenty-two letters is testified by the Syrian and Chalda:an languages
which are nearly related to the Hebrew, for they have twenty-two elementary sounds
which are pronounced the same way, but are differently written. The Samaritans also
employ just the same number of letters in their copies of the Pentateuch of Moses, and
differ only in the shape and outline of the letters.): The Principal Works of St. Jerome, ed.
by P. Schaff, Christian Literature Publishing Co., New York 1892, p. 905.
15
<<Hebraicarum litterarum formae duae sunt: una antiqua, qua Samaritani utuntur,
altera posterior, qua Judaei. [ ... ] Sunt igitur Hebraicae litterae, quae per Moysen sunt
traditae XXII. Nomina sunt ista: [ ... ]; formae autem istae: [ ... ]. Scribuntur autem versus
no bis inverse a dextris, namque ad sinistram partem eos finiunt.»: De formis Hebraicarum
litterarum (ex codice ms. Mediol. Ambros. Biblioth.), in PL 30, cols. 307-10 [Milan,
Biblioteca Ambrosiana, D 88 su p., ff. l v-2r (s. xv)]. (Two are the Hebrew alphabets. The
first one is used by the Samaritans, the second one is more recent and it is used by the
Jews. [ ... ] Twenty-two are the Hebrew letters that were transmitted by Moses. Their
names are. [ ... ]; their shapes are: [ ... ]They are written from the right side toward us and
finish on the left). The same text occurs in earlier codices, for instance Bern,
Burgerbibliothek 417 (s. ix), ff. 94r-95v (<<Sequuntur Tractatus de Litteris Hebraeis,
Graecis, Latinis, de Ponderibus et Mensuris pauca>>: Sinner, J.R., Catalogus Codicum
Mss. Bibliothecae Bernensis [ ... ], 3 vols. Ex Officina Typographica illustr. reipublicae,
Bern 1760-1762, I, p. 351), or Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 22016, f. 63r (s.
xi) (Thiel, Grundlagen und Gestalt der Hebraischkenntnisse des frühen Mittelalters, p.
120).
alphabets in the scriptoria of north-eastern France in the last decades of

the eighth century 16 .
The typology of Carolingian manuscripts containing alphabets should
be matter of closer investigation. In this paper, I will take into
consideration alphabets which were copied onto the margins of
manuscript leaves and that were presumably transcribed in a subsequent
moment, trying to find out whether scribal activities, which, at first
instance, rnight be interpreted as randorn or accidentai episodes, rather
reveal a regular trend and betray a consistent cultural choice.
Manuscripts featuring alphabetical series
The first attempt toward a systematization of the material under

consideration must necessarily move from the recording of the
manuscript occurrences of different kinds of alphabets. At present, we
still rely on the almost sixty-year-old book Runica Manuscripta by René
Derolez, dated but still fundamental 17 • Derolez collected information
about manuscripts containing alphabetical series, both runic and
otherwise. The data recovered by Derolez have been incremented by a
number of more recent findings, as is the case with the manuscript kept in
the Archivio Capitolare in Modena and other manuscripts which were not
included in Derolez's volume 18 . Taking into account only the examples
dating to the Carolingian age, it is possible to draw the following list of
relevant manuscripts:
Bern, Burgerbibliothek 207 (s. viii-ix)
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 9311-9319 (s. ix)
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 9565-9566 (s. ixex)
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. 176 (s. ix)
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. 254 (s. ix)
16
Seebo1d, «Die Iren und die Runen», pp. 23 and 33.
17
Dero1ez, R., Runica Manuscripta. The English Tradition, De Tempe1, Brugge 1954.
18
Canedi, M., Note sulla tradizione continentale dei runica manuscripta, Fiorini,
Verona, 1983; ead., Runica manuscripta: un nuovo alfabeto runico, Fiorini, Verona 1983;
Piccinini, L., «Rune ang1osassoni in un codice latino (Archivio Capito1are di Modena,
O.I.l1)>>, Romanobarbarica 12 (1992-1993), pp. 173-88; Vigarani, G., Inventario dei
Manoscritti dell'Archivio Capitolare di Modena, Mucchi, Modena 2003, pp. 50-51;
Garuti Simone, G., <<Runica manuscripta e dintorni: l' A1fabeto runico di Modena>>, in E.
Fazzini and E. Cianci (eds.), 1 Germani e la scrittura. Atti del XXXIII Convegno
dell 'Associazione !tatiana di Filologia Germanica, Pescara, 7-9 giugno 2006, Edizioni
dell'Orso, A1essandria 2007, pp. 151-9.
Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. F. 128 (s. ix)

London, British Library, Cotton Domitian ix, f. 8 (s. viii), f. 11 (s. x in.)
Modena, Archivio Capitolare, O. 1.11 (s. ix)
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19410 (s. ix)
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 528 (s. ix)
St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 270 (s. ix)
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 266 (s. ix)
Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek 751 (s. ix)
Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek 795 (s. ix in.)
I do not intend to discuss ali the above-listed manuscripts in detail in
this essay 19 , but I will try to investigate and, if possible, to point out the
scribal typologies which might explain the reason why these sorts of
alphabetical series were copied between the eighth and ninth centuries.
The first texts I would like to analyse were copied in two folios,
subsequently bound together and now forming London, British Library,
Cotton Domitian ix20 • The leaves of the manuscript (a collection of
fragments of different date and origin) which are relevant to my argument
are f. 8r and f. 11 v. The former contains part of the Hebrew alphabet,
followed by the Chaldaic alphabet and, finally, by the Greek one with its
numerical value. The rest of the folio is occupied by different material,
beginning with a short trilingual glossary. These three series represent
one of the earliest example of alphabets' collection. Fol. 8 was possibly
written in England. On f. 11 v an Anglo-Saxon futhark was copied, with
19
1 am going to analyse the alphabetical series in Carolingian manuscripts in a
forthcoming publication.
20
Lowe, E.A., Codices Latini Antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin
Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century, II: Great Britain and Ireland, 2nd edn.,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972, no. 185 (f. 8); Derolez, Runica Manuscripta, pp. 3-16;
Ker, N.R., A Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon Press,
Oxford 1957; reissued with suppl., 1990, no. 151 (f. 11); Gneuss, H., Handlist of Anglo-
Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned
in England up to 1100 (MRTS 241), Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, Tempe, AR 2001, nos. 329.5 (f. 8) and 330 (f. 11); Page, R.I., <<Anglo-Saxon
Texts in Early Modem Transcripts: 1. The Anglo-Saxon Runic Poem», in D. Parsons
(ed.), Runes and Runic Inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon England: Collected Essays on Anglo-
Saxon and Viking Runes, Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 1995, pp. 197-206; Bauer, A.,
Runengedichte. Texte, Untersuchungen und Kommentare zur gesamten Überlieferung,
Fassbaender, Vienna 2003, pp. 89-92.
the name of each rune and its value added interlinearly, either above the
line or below. The runic material, written by a band of the beginning of
the tenth century, was supplemented by another band of the eleventh or
twelfth-centuries. In the lower part of the same leaf, a sixteenth-century
band, which has been identified with that of Robert Talbot, noted down a
sort of explanation of the names of the runes, consisting of the Old
English name of each rune followed by its interpretamentum in Latin
(e.g.: «f. feoh id est pecunia»).
One of the most fascinating instances is that of Bern,
Burgerbibliothek 207 21 . This manuscript was probably copied in the
scriptorium of Fleury and, on the evidence of the Eastern table copied on
f. 257v, it is possible to date it between 779 and 797, the latter date being
the more probable. Even if the manuscript consists of a regular series of
quires, two leaves, 257 and 264, are out of place and probably were part
of a now lost quire. Taking into account the traces of dirt and
consumption, it can be argued that f. 264 must have been the last leaf of
the manuscript over an extended period of time. Many alphabets were
copied on the verso of the folio, following the explicit of Bede's De
loquela digitorum: the Greek alphabet with its numerical values and the
Hebrew alphabet with the names of the letters (see Plate XII [Bern,
Burgerbibliothek 207, f. 264v]). The Hebrew alphabet is in turn followed
by three runic or pseudo-runic alphabets, groups of runes, rune-names,
and the letters of Aethicus Ister's alphabet with their respective names.
The original position of this material at the end of a quire, which is also
the end of a codicological unit, suggests the possibility that this
codicological unit was made up of a series of grammatical texts which are
the main component of the manuscript22 . By adding the alphabetical
series, the unit was expanded to constitute what Gumbert bas defined an
enriched codicological unit23 •
The occurrence of the alphabetical series at the very end of a quire
21
Hagen, B., Catalogus codicum Bernensium, Haller, Bern 1875, p. 255; Derolez,
R., «Ügam, 'Egyptian', 'African' and 'Gothie' Alphabets. Sorne Remarks in Connection
with Codex Bernensis 207>>, Scriptorium 5 (1951), pp. 3-19; id., Runica manuscripta, pp.
174-92; Hamburger, 0., Die illustriertren Handschriften der Burgerbibliothek Bern. Die
Vorkarolingischen und Karolingischen Handschriften, Burgerbibliothek, Bern 1962.
22
In the great majority of cases, the alphabetical series were copied to integrate other
kinds of grammatical information, see Zironi, A., L' eredità dei Go ti. Testi barbarici in età
carolingia, Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull' Alto Medioevo, Spoleto 2009, pp.
181-8.
23
Gumbert, «Codicological UnitS>>, p. 30.
which is also the end of a codicological unit, clarifies the role of

alphabets as the concluding element of a group of texts. In other words,
the grammatical texts can be considered the unifying and constituting
elements, while the alphabets represent the concluding and explanatory
note generally added within the blank space left in the quire. Pamela R.
Robinson, J. Peter Gumbert and Erik Kwakkel have provided sorne
helpful criteria to determine a codicological unit. Those criteria were
have been identified and reassessed by Eva Nystrom in her recent book
about the Codex Upsaliensis Graecus 8 [Uppsala, Universitetsbiblioteket,
Gr. 8] and many of them can be applied to our folio 24 :
Boundaries criteria25
A Quire boundary and text boundary ../
B External damage: outer leaves soiled or worn ../
c Different quire construction

D Leaf/leaves eut out at the end of a quire
E Script compressed or distended to make the text fit
F Space left open after the text end ../
G Further text(s) added on an originally blank pace at quire end ../

H Different dimensions of the leaves
1 Different set of quire signatures ../
J Different paper/watermark ../
K Different handwriting ../
L Different mise-en-page (ruling, number of !ines, etc.) ../
M Different style of decoration

N Scribal formula added in upper margin of first recto
0 Change in textual contents, genre affinity ../
24
Robinson, P.R., «The 'Booklet': A Self-Contained Unit in Composite
Manuscripts>>, Codicologica 3 (1980), pp. 46-69, at 47-48; Gumbert, P.J., «Catalogue and
Codicology: Sorne Reader's Notes>>, in M. Hedlund (ed.), A Catalogue and Its Users: A
Symposium on the Uppsala Collection of Medieval Manuscripts, Norstedts, Uppsala 1995,
pp. 57-70, at 61; Kwakkel, E., «Towards a Terminology for the Analysis of Composite
Manuscripts>>, Gazette du livre médiéval 41 (2002), pp. 12-19, at 13-14; Nystrom, E.,
Containing Multitudes: Codex Upsaliensis 8 in Perspective, Uppsala Universitet, Uppsala
2009, pp. 59-62.
25
Nystrom, Containing Multitudes, pp. 60-61.
As far as the position of alphabetical series is concerned, the codex St

Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 27026 presents sorne analogies with Bern 207.
According to Bernhard Bischoff, the Sangallensis 270 was not originaliy
produced in St Galien itself, but in Fleury27 • The St Galien manuscript is
commonly known for its Greek-Latin glosses (ff. 57, 59-62) and a few
Old High German and Latin glosses copied on f. 64. What is most
relevant to this discussion, however, is f. 52, which contains an Anglo-
Saxon runic alphabet, the so-calied isruna text, and the present indicative
of the Greek verb ypÛ<j)(ü foliowed by a scribble, possibly a sample of
Geheimschrift. Notably, here too the alphabet has been added to the end
of the quire. Derolez considered this manuscript a book used by the
magister of a schola monachorum who consulted it to teach advanced
students. The runic material could somehow be connected with the Greek
numerals present in other parts of the codex28 . If this interpretation is
plausible, it could also explain why the runic alphabet was copied at the
end of a quire, as a sort of marginal text, in the larger context of relations
between other languages and alphabets.
Even if we take into account manuscripts whose copying was not
accomplished ali at the same time, the sections connected to alphabets are
not normaliy inserted separately but as a complement to surrounding
texts. This is the case with the wide-known copy of the De inventione
litterarum in St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 876, ff. 278-285, which
immediately foliowed Bede's De schematibus et tropii 9 .
A similar procedure can be outlined for the runic alphabet copied in
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 9311-9319 30 • The alphabet was copied on
26
Scherrer, G., Verzeichnis der Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek von St. Galien,
Niemeyer, Halle 1875, pp. 101-2; Derolez, Runica manuscripta, pp. 90-94, 120-37 and
217-9; id., «Anglo-Saxon Runes in Switzerland>>, English Studies 43 (1962), pp. 297-306,
at 302-4; Bergmann, R. and Stricker, S., Katalog der althochdeutschen und altsdchsischen
Glossenhandschriften, 6 vols., de Gruyter, Berlin 2005, Il, no. 214, pp. 518-9. For further
bibliography, see Garuti Simone, G., «Die runische Quellem>, in Wilhelm Carl Grimm,
Ueber deutsche Runen und zur Literatur der Runen. Mit einer Einleitung von K. Düwel,
Olms and Weidmann, Hildesheim, Zurich and New York 2009, pp. 69-119, at 94-95.
27
Bischoff, B., Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der
Karolingerzeit, 1. Die bayerischen Diozesen, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1960, p. 220.
28
Derolez, Runica manuscripta, p. 94.
29
Scherrer, Verzeichnis der Handschriften, pp. 303-5; Derolez, Runica manuscripta,
pp. 290-5; Bergmann and Stricker, Katalog der althochdeutschen und altsdchsischen
Glossenhandschriften, Band Il, no. 247, pp. 567-9.
30
Derolez, Runica manuscripta, pp. 63-73.
f. 3v. fu the lower half of the leaf a table filled in with letters was copied.
This was probably either an acrostic poem or a sort of alphabetical code.
In the right margin of the folio a runic alphabet was copied. Folio 3,
together with the first and the second folios containing Tironian notes 31 ,
was a flyleaf bound to the codex at a later period. The position of the first
three folios was not determined by chance: all the following quires were
filled with works by Isidore of Seville. As f. 1 and f. 2 contain a list of
Tironian notes, the connection with the leaf covered with runes and
cryptograms is evident. Consequently, these three folios can be considered
a codicological unit opening a manuscript which is almost completely
devoted to Isidore.
From the examples discussed so far, it should be evident that the
alphabetical series copied in manuscripts between the eighth and ninth
centuries mostly consist of additions included in the margins of the quires
at a later date, characterized by their marginality in the quires, and in
many cases they were copied in later periods. Moreover, in the majority
of cases, the presence of alphabetical series marks the beginning, or,
more frequently, the boundary of a codicological unit.
Perhaps the most emblematic case is represented by St Galien,
Stiftsbibliothek 878, particularly famous because it contains the
Abecedarium Nordmannicum, even if it is now practically unreadable 32 .
Last, but, certainly not least, the manuscript must have belonged to
W alahfrid Strabo, who used it over a long period of time as a vademecum
or zibaldone, namely, a manuscript into which the owner progressively
added new quires and materials. Even so the manuscript has an internai
thematic coherence centred on grammar. The codex opens with the works
of Donatus (Ars maior and Ars minor), followed by grammatical works
by Bede, grammatical excerpta from authors such as Isidore, Hrabanus
31
Ibid., p. 65.
32
Bischoff, B., «Eine Samme1handschrift Wa1ahfrid Strabos (Cod. Sanga11. 878)>>, in
Aus der Welt des Buches. Festgabe zum 70. Geburtstag von Georg Leyh, dargebracht von
Freunden und Fachgenossen (Zentra1b1att für Bib1iothekswesen. Beiheft 75),
Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1950, pp. 30-48, repr. in his Mittelalterliche Studien, II, pp. 34-51;
Dero1ez, Runica manuscripta, pp. 73-83; Bergmann and Stricker, Katalog der
althochdeutschen und altsiichsischen Glossenhandschriften, II, no. 249, pp. 571-3. The
bib1iography on St Gallen 878 is particu1arly extended: see Garuti Simone, «Die
runischen Quellen>>, pp. 95-97, and Scardigli, P., «<nchoavit et grammaticam patrii
sermonis>>, in o-o-pe-ro-si. Festschrift for Ernst Risch, ed. by A. Etter, de Gruyter, Berlin
and New York, 1986, pp. 654-60, repr. in his Germanica Florentina e altre case, Parnaso,
Trieste 2002, pp. 297-312.
Maurus, Bede, and Orosius. lt must however be remarked that after sorne
excerpta from Isidore's Etymologiae, in particular the chapter De litteris,
the quire is concluded by the Hebrew alphabet (f. 320), the Greek
alphabet (f. 321), an Anguliscum alphabet, namely an Anglo-Saxon
futhark, and finally the Abecedarium Nordmannicum 33 • René Derolez
stressed that f. 321, containing the Abecedarium, was for sorne time the
last page of the manuscript, or, in codicological terms, the ending
boundary of a codicological unie 4 . It seems that Walahfrid Strabo wanted
to conclude a wide section of his manuscript conceming grammatica by
inserting the alphabetical series, unifying the Hebrew and the Greek
alphabets with the runic series in the Anglo-Saxon version, which was the
type that circulated on the European continent during the Carolingian age.
The joint occurrence of Greek and runic alphabets in early
Carolingian manuscripts is attested also by the Modena codex, in which
the compiler transcribed an Anglo-Saxon version of the futhark after
having copied the Greek alphabee 5 . As far as I know, the Modena runic
alphabet is to date the earliest runic series discovered on the Continent. It
has been already pointed out that the Modena runic series was influenced
by the Greek letters which precede it in the manuscripe 6 . lt must be
inferred that the knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon futhark was not first-
hand but derived from a madel which was passively copied without being
understood.
A similar situation, although more complex, is detectable in the
manuscript Vienna, ONB 795 37 • This codex consists of a first booklet of
20 leaves which make up a codicological unit in their own right. The
folios can be divided into four parts. The first one is constituted by the
letters of Alcuin to his dearest friend Am, Archbishop of Salzburg. The
33
On the Abecedarium Nordmannicum, see Bauer, Runengedichte, pp. 58-77, and
Birkmann, T., «Codex Sangallensis 878 und die Entwicklung der Runenreihen im
Jüngeren Futhark>>, in H.-P. Naumann (ed.), Alamannien und der Norden, de Gruyter,
Berlin and New York 2004, pp. 213-223, at 219-221.
34
Dero1ez, Runica manuscripta, p. 76.
35
For relevant bibliography, see above, note 18.
36
Garuti Simone, «Runica manuscripta>>, pp. 155-8.
37
Derolez, Runica manuscripta, pp. 52-63; Bischoff, B., «Übersicht über die
nichtdiplomatischen Geheimschriften des Mittelalters>>, Mitteilungen des Instituts für
Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung 62 (1954), pp. 1-27, repr. in his Mittelalterliche
Studien, III, pp. 120-48, at 138; Zironi, A., <<La ricezione della scrittura gotica in età
carolingia: il caso dei Gotica Vindobonensia>>, in Fazzini and Cianci (eds.), I Germanie la
scrittura, pp. 13-38; id., L'eredità dei Goti, pp. 91-147. Further bib1iography in Garuti
Simone, <<Die runischen Quellen>>, pp. 100-1.
second part preserves the copy of Alcuin' s De orthographia which is

immediately followed, in the third part of the booklet, by a Greek
alphabetical series, with the names of the letters, their pronunciation, and
the numerical value of the Greek vowels. In the following leaf an Anglo-
Saxonfuthark was transcribed. I do not intend to discuss the origin of the
runic series in the Vienna codex (probably derived from a Mercian
version circulated in the cultural area of St-Amand-les-Eaux), because
this alphabet has already been abject of several studies 38 • What it is
noteworthy here is the bottom of f. 20r, where a cryptic message was
composed and copied. It is Alcuin' s dedication of the booklet to Am. The
first compiler conceived the message to be decrypted as the end of the
booklet, that is, in codicological terms, the Geheimschrift marked the
boundary of the codicological unit. In the same folio and in the following
one, a different and later hand added a first and fragmentary Gothie
alphabet and, in f. 20v, three Gothie alphabetical series and other Gothie
material, namely sorne pronunciation rules, the numerical value of Gothie
letters, and sorne reading examples. The copying of the Gothie material is
due to a complex series of circumstances which will not be dealt with
here but it reveals how, at a later date, the codicological unit was
expanded to include new material considered pertinent to the previous
one39 . Once again the case of the Vienna manuscript confirms the role of
the alphabetical series as boundary element in a codicological unit
devoted to grammatical matters.
Another example is represented by two manuscripts, Munich,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19410 and Paris, BNF, lat. 528.
Probably, both manuscripts share similar functions. Taking into account
the texts they contain, it seems rather evident that both codices were used
as compendia in monastic schools. The Munich manuscript consists of 67
pages arranged in two distinct parts (pp. 1-62; pp. 63-67) 40 • The first part
38
See above, note 37.
39
Zironi, L'eredità dei Goti, pp. 143-7.
40
Die kleineren althochdeutschen Sprachdenlaniiler, ed. by E. Steinmeyer,
Weidmann, Berlin 1916, p. 290; Dero1ez, Runica manuscripta, pp. 206-12; Bischoff, B.,
«Palaographische Fragen deutscher Denkmiiler der Karolingerzeit», Frühmittelalterliche
Studien 5 (1971), pp. 101-34, repr. in his Mittelalterliche Studien, III, pp. 73-111, at 102;
id., Katalog der festliindischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts (mit Ausnahme
der wisigotischen), Teil II: Laon-Paderborn, Aus dem Nach1aB hg. von B. Ebersperger
(Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Verüffentlichungen der Kommission fur die
Herausgabe der mitte1a1terlichen Bib1iothekskata1oge Deutsch1ands und der Schweiz),
Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2004, nos. 3319-20; Bergmann and Stricker, Katalog der
is composed of a single codicological umt m four quires. The codex

features, among other texts 41 , Old High German material, represented by
Old High German interpretamenta to Latin words, and an interlinear
gloss to a Latin hyrnn known as Carmen ad Deum42 .
The fourth and last quire of the first part of the manuscript closes
with a runic series and three Greek alphabets (see Plates XIII and XIV
[Clm 19410, p. 58 e p. 59]). In this case, the runic alphabet covers the
sixth line of p. 58 and continues on the same line in the following page.
Also the Greek alphabets were transcribed across the two pages, while
the remaining available space of the quire is covered by glosses drawn
from Isidore's De ecclesiasticis officiis. Remarkably, the alphabets occur
once again across more pages at the very end of the manuscript. The
alphabetical series were added at the end of a quire, even if, in this
particular case, sorne more space remains and it could be speculated that
the scribe might have intended to copy therein further material.
As far as the Paris manuscript is concerned43 , the transcription of
alphabets in the margins could be considered hyperbolic44 • In the Paris
manuscript the Greek alphabet is copied in the lower margins of ff. 77v-
78r, with a specifie interest in the numerical value of the Greek
graphemes, as the titulus ('Incipiunt numeri graecarum litterarum')
althochdeutschen und altsiichsischen Glossenhandschriften, III, no. 660, pp. 1249-51. The
most recent description of the Munich codex is by E. Krotz, s. v. «München, Staatsbibl.,
C1m 19410>>, in Handschriftencensus, Paderborner Repertorium der deutschsprachigen
Textüberlieferung des 8. bis 12. Jahrhunderts: http://www.handschriftencensus.de/15708
(last accessed January 2011).
41
Ha1m, C. et al., Catalogus Codicum Latinorum Bibliothecae Regiae Monacensis, 2
vols., Bibliotheca Regia, Munich 1873-1881, II,3, p. 242.
42
Radie, F., <<Carmen ad Deum>>, in K. Ruh (ed.), Die deutschen Literatur des
Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, I, de Gruyter, Berlin 1978, cols. 1174-7.
43
BNF, lat. 528 was very probably copied in the scriptorium of Saint-Denis during
the abbacy of Fardulfus by 826: Zironi, A., <<Reading and Writing Gothie in the
Carolingian Age>>, in P.R. Robinson (ed.), Teaching Writing, Learning to Write:
Proceedings of the XV/th Colloquium of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine
(King's College London Medieval Studies), King's College London. Centre for Late
Antique & Medieval Studies, London 2010, pp. 103-110, at 107; id., <<l Gotica Parisina
nel codice Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 528>>, in L. Sinisi (ed.), Il plurilinguismo
in area germanica nel Medioevo. XXX Convegno dell'Associazione ltaliana di Filologia
Germanica, Bari, 4-6 giugno 2003, Palomar, Bari 2005, pp. 301-39, at 308-10. On the
contents of the manuscript, see Lauer, P., Catalogue général des manuscrits latins,
Bibliothèque Nationale, I, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris 1939, pp. 184-6; Zironi, «l
Gotica Parisina>>, pp. 303-6; id., L'eredità dei Goti, pp. 150-3.
44
Zironi, L'eredità dei Goti, pp. 181-8.
shows. Another copyist transcribed the Greek alphabet on ff. 119v-120r,

where the corresponding Latin letter of every Greek grapheme is
provided. Many others alphabets were also copied in the manuscript. The
Hebrew alphabet was copied three times in two leaves, ff. 78v-79r. The
first series is on the left margin of the leaf and continues on the upper
margin where also the second series occurs and is then continued onto the
right margin off. 79r. Finally, the third series is transcribed in the bottom
part of the leaves. The Hebrew alphabet is newly copied on ff. 82v-83r.
In all these Hebrew series, the pronunciation of the letters is never given,
therefore it could reasonably be inferred that the main point of interest
was the graphie features or the meaning of the letters' names rather than
their pronunciation.
In the same quire in which the last Hebrew series occurs, three other
alphabets were copied. They enjoyed great fame towards the end of
eighth century: the Chaldaic alphabet, the so-called Aethicus Ister's
alphabet and the Egyptian alphabet. In this codex the Chaldaic alphabet is
copied three times, but one series is fragmentary. On the two following
leaves (ff. 84v-85r) the Egyptian alphabet has been transcribed.
In these cases it is more complex to establish a congruent consistency
on the part of the copyists. In the Paris codex the alphabetical series are
not copied at the end of a quire and, consequently, their presence goes
over the boundaries of a codicological unit. Nevertheless, it must be
remarked that the ninth quire of the Paris manuscript is concluded by an
anonymous commentary on the chapter 'De littera' from the Ars maior of
Donatus (I, 2)45 .
BNF, lat. 528: quires IX and X

IX 73-82 - Sententiae Augustini et lsidori in laude computi [CPL no. 2312]
(73r-77v)
- Cassiodorus, Expositio psalmorum (preface) [CPL no. 900] (77v-
79v)
- Damasus ad Hieronymum ut 'Graecorum psallentiam' sibi mittat:
incipit «Dum multa corpora librorum in suo arbitrio adlata fuissent
••• >> [Hieronymi Ep. supp. 46, CPL no. 633] (79v-80r)
-Ad Damasum: incipit «Legi litteras Apostolatus tui ut secundum
simplicitatem septuaginta interpretum canentes psalmographum
... » [Hieronymi Ep. supp. 47, CPL no. 633] (SOr)
- Sermo Sancti Hieronymi de psalterio: incipit «Nunc autem
exposimus libros psalmorum [... ] Psalterium dicitur a psallentium
45
Cf. Holtz, L., Donat et la tradition de l'enseignement grammatical. Etude sur l'Ars
Donati et sa diffusion (IV-!Xe siècle) et édition critique, C.N.R.S., Paris 1981, pp. 603-5.
multorum modulamine vocis ... >> [CPL no. 627 (Pseudo-Jerome);

CPMMIIJA, no. 241la] (80r-8lr)
- Isidore, In lib ros Veteris et Novi Testamenti prooemia [ CPL no.
1192] (81r-81v)
- 'De littera': incipit «hoc querendum est[ ... ] qui in Donato
continentur ... » (82r-82v)
x 83-90 -A glossary: incipit «Bucula id est vacca ... >> (83r-83v)
- Latin alphabetical series (84r)
- Latin Hymnary [Meams no. F., B] (84v-90v) 46
Therefore, the presence of the commentary on Donatus at the end of

the ninth quire could be a sufficient reason to justify the copying of the
alphabetical series in the following leaves. It must be remarked that, after
being bound, the manuscript was heavily glossed both in the upper and
bottom margins by four bands with different interests47 . In the case of the
alphabetical series, two glossators' bands can be identified as the most
active in transcribing alphabets. The marginality of the alphabets in the
whole context of the Paris manuscript is self-evident thanks to a very
short annotation on f. 71 v, in which nine Gothie letters were copied,
presumably because they could be easily rnisunderstood by a reader who
knew the Greek letters. It must be noted that the band which copied the
Gothie letters is not the same as that which inserted the Gothie names that
precede them: to a first marginal annotation transcribed by a first
glossator another marginal annotation was added by a second band with a
different ink. The Paris manuscript is sufficiently complex in its
codicological aspects. Nevertheless, it must be underlined that at least the
first half of the manuscript is concerned with grammatical and rhetorical
topics and every text that was copied, even if pertaining to a variety of
literary genres, was included in the manuscript because it dealt with
grammatical or rhetorical themes.
After the compilation of the manuscript, the grammatical contents
were incremented by the alphabetical series, which were actually
considered essential complements of the grammatical texts. Therefore,
the alphabetical series, being so numerous, were copied in the margins of
those leaves which immediately followed the discussion on the litterae.
46
Mearns, J., Early Latin Hymnaries: An Index of Hymns and Hymnaries before
1100, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1913, p. xiv.
47
Zironi, A., «1 Gotica Parisina>>, pp. 316-322; id., L'eredità dei Goti, pp. 160-4.
Conclusions
The alphabetical series appeared in Western manu scripts from the

eighth century onwards, and were especially common toward the last
decades of the century and the first half of the ninth century. The
auctoritates of Jerome, Isidore, and Bede, together with the discussion
about the litterae in many explanatory works depending on Donatus's
grammar, obliged scholars and copyists to investigate the existence,
shape, and name of the letters from ancient alphabets48 . To these ancient
series, new ones were added: the Aethicus Ister' s alphabet and two
Germanie series: the futhark in its Anglo-Saxon form and, in two
manuscripts (Vienna, ONB 795 and Paris, BNF, lat. 528), the Gothie
alphabet.
The result of the analysis of the earliest manuscripts containing
alphabetical series shows that they were not copied onto the leaves as
probatio calami, even if their position in the page could have induced that
suspicion. The codicological analysis, which took into account the
position of those alphabets within the quires and the codicological units,
has proved crucial to reveal the most probable reason why these alphabets
were copied. The general position of the alphabetical series at the end of
quires which are in many cases also the boundaries of codicological units
shows that the alphabets were intended as a natural complement to the
preceding grammatical texts. The marginal position of these alphabets in
quires or pages testifies that, in a considerable number of cases,
integrations were inserted only after the copying of the main texts.
Therefore, the copyist used the remaining blank pages of the quire (as in
the Vienna manuscript) or was obliged to resort to the margins of the
folios, often when the manuscript had already been bound (as the Paris
case reveals ). It could be debated whether th ose alphabets were copied in
order to satisfy cryptographie or magical interests or, at least, antiquarian
curiosities. Barbara Lomagistro has recently presented a paper concerning
the Slavonie alphabetical series in Western manuscripts49 . She started by
using a similar methodology, stressing that only the position of the
48
Irvine, M., The Making ofTextual Culture: Grammatica and Literary Theory, 350-
1100, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, pp. 97-104.
49
Lomagistro, B., «Le sequenze alfabetiche nella tradizione medico-magica slava»,
Lecture given at the Conference La produzione scritta tecnica e scientifica neZ Medioevo:
libro e documenta tra scuole e professioni, held at Fisciano (Salerno), 28-30 September
2009 (publication forthcoming).
alphabetical series inside the manuscripts can explain their use. In her
case-study, Slavonie alphabets, which normally appeared in Western
manuscripts only in the Late Middle Ages, were copied for medical and
apotropaic reasons, as is revealed by their position and contiguity with
medical or magical texts.
On the contrary, the Carolingian copyist transcribing the alphabets
discussed in this essay is attracted by the idea of supplementing
grammatical texts with extra data about the shape, name, and value of
letters belonging to unknown or lost alphabetical systems. As so often
happens with glosses, also in the case of these alphabets, their material
marginality does not mean that they are either superfluous or useless, but
it implies, instead, their substantial contribution to the completeness of
the information provided by a given manuscript. In other words, their
presence in a codex is never casual or meaningless.
Plate XII
Bem, Burgerbibliothek 207, f. 264v
Plate XIII
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19410, p. 58
on-~.ua·'-'1..1 J"t·. ;/.. ,[ ntJ ~t:tvt'"· ~md
n&.frr:.uuM.·Pu ... L.,.w,((u .L. ,m'tsP· t./t ·
Il"· fr!,"'~~ •rruf r..,I,OJ.. J" ,,_.,r ~'"" . ",~,J ,
rs:~~l;"F'~ ,.p.l,......,,"J,,.· Mrfu•k1,nlf;4n
·Qf t>nJ-N'n·p ·fsl·-nr. ,.,... elcJ·uvr·
· i--· t ·ti · h · l' ·11 ·1'· n·~-A·~~
• .. ~-œrn ., ~ r. r
~~LU.J~~ Tf f
,~ fSZHt11K\X ~OlfCJ~ .X· ·'1'.- '"'cqp
'
'rltA~'I.n.\ • ~ tnC'ttJCI&~I~(pl ~:.4laWlS'
u
H 1 k k ~ o 11 ·S
~-~JMM·~..-- SF"Je-·u&WTrD·F
t'fJlf.UuDrr• :J.ÇAflr"' (~(A: m4r D'
~~- '-'P.«"· .J.er

rv·noal·~~·rOU'n~· ton cn1
P"~T.".:uJt. 04r'".:L' f~,l~r"'-· Sc~a~u(·
. JL,r- ,..J.hD· ~"'ftfur~f.
. ~- L,Junsen·,uil-· ,.,,..,...,; • Ar.Ll"f (4
l.w-na · ~.J. prauleal.ur- ~~· ,la~
~--~·f~c~ct. "'·L""~ ·fl~-. r~
· (uln~""ï·fe ·~· u{r"' .,.md(.
·
Plate XIV
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 19410, p. 59
THE FORTUNE OF OLD ENGLISH GLOSSES
IN EARLY MEDIEVAL GERMANY
Maria Rita Digilio
«Sicut inveni scripsi, ne reputes scriptori>>
With this statement the German scribe of the Leiden Glossary

(Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. Q. 69) concluded his copy
of one of the most important texts which the Anglo-Saxon missionaries
brought to Germany during the eighth and the ninth centuries as comfort,
stimulus and support in their transmission of knowledge and faith to their
'barbarous' Continental cousins. Our scribe's excusatio non petita must
certainly be interpreted as a topos of medieval literature. Scribes were
aware of the possibility of committing errors during their work, hence
they sometimes asked to be excused for what they wrote. Nevertheless,
the involuntary irony underlying the scribe's words opens up a promising
field of research, namely the investigation of what escaped the scribe's
comprehension (even though scribes' mistakes may account for only a
small percentage of the corpus of glosses that will be taken into
examination in this paper).
This paper intends to investigate sorne aspects of the Continental
reception of Insular lexicographie legacy, in particular the diffusion of
earl y Anglo-Saxon glossography in earl y medieval Germany.
lt may be convenient to begin my study from Lapidge's conclusions
about the so-called Canterbury school, of which the Leiden Glossary
represents one of the most important witnesses. In Lapidge's opinion the
earliest phase of Anglo-Saxon glossographic tradition seems to derive
from a common original English collection of glosses 1, compiled in
Canterbury at the time of Archbishop Theodore and Hadrian, Abbot of
SS Peter and Pauf. This collection originated as a corpus of glossae
collectae derived from different sources available at Canterburl.
1
Lapidge, M., <<The School of Theodore and Hadrian>>, Anglo-Saxon England 15
(1986), pp. 45-72, at 57. Lapidge, however, cautions that << it may be misleading to think
of a single archetype of the collection>> (ibid).
2
This glossographic material must postdate the mid-seventh century, owing to the
presence in the Leiden Glossary of glosses that can be brought back to two works by
Isidore of Seville (t 636), the De ecclesiasticis officiis and the De natura rerum. The
Leiden Glossary relies on a collection of glossae collectae, whereas later English
372 MARIA RITA DIGILIO
From the eighth century onwards this collection of glosses was

transmitted to Continental centres of Anglo-Saxon missionary activity
and, once on the Continent, was extensively copied and enjoyed
widespread circulation during the following four centuries. Lapidge has
provided a provisional list of twenty-seven Continental manuscripts
written between the eighth and the twelfth centuries (plus one fourteenth-
century codex)4 . At the same time, the textual transmission of this
collection of glosses was continued in England as well 5 .
The Leiden Glossary seems to be the most reliable witness to the
original collection, whose structure it partially preserves, although it is
not the earliest testimony of the relevant family of glossaries. Its entries
are arranged in forty-eight chapters in an apparently random order. Since
the Leiden Glossary best represents the original late seventh-century
collection, the manuscripts which derive (whether directly or not) from
this compilation are referred to as the 'Leiden Family' glossaries.
It is noteworthy that several early manuscripts belonging to the
Leiden Family were copied on the Continent as early as the eighth
century. Not surprisingly, no fewer than seventeen German witnesses
were copied between 775 and 900 in Cologne and in the nearby
monastery of Werden (that belonged to the same archdiocese), as well as
in the Alemannic monasteries of St Galien and Reichenau, and in
Würzburg, that is in centres where the Anglo-Saxon church made its
missionary influence felt 6 .
glossaries, Épinal (and Erfurt), Corpus and First and Second Cleopatra preserve individual
glosses ultimately derived from the «original English collection>> (Lapidge, <<The School
of Theodore and Hadrian>>, p. 57). Furthermore, the Épinal Glossary must have been
compiled not later than the last quarter of the seventh century, since it contains a number
of entries drawn from the prose version of Aldhelm's De virginitate, which should be
dated to the period preceding his appointment as abbot sorne time between 682 and 686:
see Lapidge, M., «The Career of Aldhelm>>, Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), pp. 15-69,
at 67. Note that the identified batches of Épinal (in particular the a-order parts)
correspond to batches of glossae collectae of the Leiden Glossary.
3
The chapters of the Leiden G1ossary are conveniently presented by Lapidge, <<The
Schoo1 of Theodore and Hadrian>>, pp. 54-55. See also, ibid., pp. 62-67, for a brief
analysis of the entries from the Regula Sancti Benedicti and the church canons.
4
Ibid., pp. 68-72. All these manuscripts contain batches of g1osses which are re1ated
to the «original English collection>>; however, the relationships between the many
Continental manuscripts are quite complex.
5
See Pheifer, J.D., «Early Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of Canterbury>>,
Anglo-Saxon England 16 (1987), pp. 17-44.
6
See Dietz, K., «Die früha1teng1ischen Glossen der Handschrift Staatsbibliothek zu
Berlin- PreuBischer Ku1turbesitz -, Grimm-Nachlass 132,2 + 139,2>>, in R. Bergmann, E.
THE FORTUNE OF OLD ENGLISH GLOSSES 373
A group of five manuscripts has attracted particular attention for their

close mutual relationship. They preserve nine glossaries of both Insular
and Continental origin, dating between the end of the seventh and the
middle of the ninth century7 , whose interrelatedness has been universally
agreed upon 8 :
Épinal, Bibliothèque Municipale 72, written during the last quarter of the seventh
century in England (probably in Southumbria). The glossary contains 959 glosses
with Old English interpretamenta 9 •
Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. Q. 69, written c. 800 at St Gallen. The
glossary contains about 250 glosses with Old English interpretamenta, with sorne
Old High German features 10 •
Erfurt/Gotha, Universitats- und Forschungsbibliothek, Dep. Erf., Cod. Ampl. 2° 42,
written c. 820 at the cathedral of Cologne. The manuscripts preserves three glossaries
which con tain about 1,200 glos ses with Old English interpretamenta, with sorne Old
High German features 11 .
Glaser and C. Moulin-Fankhiinel (eds.), Mittelalterliche volkssprdchige Clossen.

Internationale Fachkonferenz des Zentrums für Mittelalterstudien der Otto-Friedrich-
Universitdt Bamberg, 2. bis 4. August 1999 (Germanistische Bibliothek 13), Winter,
Heidelberg 2001, pp. 147-70, at 149-51. The fundamental reference work on the Anglo-
Saxon missions on the Continent is Baesecke, G., Der Vocabularius Sti. Calli in der
angelsdchsischen Mission, Niemeyer, Halle a.d.S. 1933. However cf. Levison, W.,
England and the Continent in the Eighth Century, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1946; Talbot,
C.H., The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Cermany, London and New York, Sheed and
Ward 1954; repr. 1981; Wallace Hadrill, J.M., «A Background toSt Boniface's Mission>>,
in his Early Medieval History, Blackwell, Oxford 1975, pp. 138-54; McKitterick, R.,
«Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany: Reflections on the Manuscript Evidence>>,
Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 9 (1986-1990), pp. 291-329, repr.
in her The Frankish Kings and Culture in the Early Middle Ages (VCSS 477), Variorum,
Aldershot 1995, no. I; ead., Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Cermany: Persona! Connections
and Local Influences (University of Leicester Vaughan Paper 36), University of Leicester,
Leicester 1991.
7
Pheifer, <<Earl y Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of Canterbury>>, pp. 17-19,
and Dietz, <<Die frühaltenglischen Glossen der Handschrift Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin>>,
pp. 147-51.
8
A complete description of the manuscripts is in B. Bischoff, M. Budny, G. Harlow,
M.B. Parkes and J.D. Pheifer (eds.), The Épinal, Werden, and Corpus Clossaries (EEMF
22), Rosenkilde and Bagger, Copenhagen 1988, pp. 13-25; the relationship between these
glossaries is discussed at 49-63.
9
All the entries from this glossary will be quoted from Old English Classes in the
Épinal-Erfurt Clossaries, ed. by J.D. Pheifer, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1974.
10
All the en tries from this glossary will be quoted from A Late Eighth Century Latin-
Anglo-Saxon Glossary preserved in the Library of the Leiden University, ed. by J.H.
Hessels, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1906.
11
All the entries from this glossary will be quoted from Old English Classes in the
Épinal-Erfurt Clossaries, ed. by Pheifer. The glosses from the so-called Erfurt 3 will be
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 144, written in the second quarter of the ninth
century England (probably in Southumbria). The glossary on ff. 4r-64v contains
about 2,180 glosses with Old English interpretamenta 12 .
The so-called Werden manuscript, was written c. 825 in the Westphalian monastery
of Werden. The codex has gone through countless vicissitudes: much of it has been
1ost and the manuscript was ultimately dismembered. As a consequence, only 26
folios have been available to modern scholars: Cologne-Rath, Sammlung Dr. Karl
Füngling s.n. (1 folio) (now rnissing); Essen-Werden, Archiv der katholischen
Propsteigemeinde St. Ludgerus s.n. (7 folios) (now rnissing); Munich, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Cgm. 187 III (e.4) (4 folios); Münster/Westfa1en,
Universitiitsbibliothek, Paulinianus 719 (271) (6 folios) (destroyed by bombing in
1945); Düsseldorf, Universitiitsbibliothek, Fragm. K19: Z09/0l (8 folios). It contains
three glossaries (Werden A, B, and C) which include about 100 bilingual entries
whose Old English interpretamenta show sorne Old Saxon features 13 .
Finally, a sixth manuscript should be added, which survives in

fragments and has been recently edited by Dietz 14 : Berlin,
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Grimm-Nachlass
132,2 + 139,2, probably written in a German monastery in an area of
Anglo-Saxon influence in the mid-eighth century. It preserves more than
seventy Old English glosses.
Obviously, the earliest Old English glosses have been particularly
studied as linguistic evidence, since they attest to an early stage of Old
English and show otherwise unrecorded dialectal features. Given the
German origin of severa! manuscripts of the Leiden Family, the study of
the possible interactions of the Old English items with the corresponding
items in Old Saxon and Old High German offers, from my point of view,
a very interesting field of research. Undoubtedly «men setting out for the
formidable wilderness of Germany must have clutched their glossaries as
talismans of Latinate culture» 15 . However, retracing the circulation of
quoted from The Oldest English Texts, ed. by H. Sweet (EETS os 83), Oxford University
Press, London 1885; repr. 1996.
12
All the entries from this glossary will be quoted from The Corpus Glossary, ed. by
W.M. Lindsay, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1921.
13
Ail the entries from this glossary will be quoted from Altsiichsische
Sprachdenkmiiler, ed. by J.H. Gallée, Brill, Leiden 1894.
14
Dietz, «Die frühaltenglischen Glossen der Handschrift Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin».
The origin and date of these fragments are still debated, see ibid., pp. 151-2, and
Tiefenbach, H., «Rückgewinnung eines zerstorten Codex: Die Handschrift der Glossaria
Werthinensia>>, in A.J. Johnston and S. Thim (eds.), Language and Text: Current
Perspectives on English and Germanie Historical Linguistics and Philology (Anglistische
Forschungen 359), Winter, Heidelberg 2006, pp. 307-15, at 307.
15
Doane, A.N., «The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources», in A.N. Doane and
K. Wolf (eds.), Beatus vir: Studies in Early English and Narse Manuscripts in Memory of
these glossaries after their arrivai on the Continent is an interesting

research topic, as is also outlining the fortune of the single words
contained in these compilations, since each item of a glossary may have
bad a specifie destiny. In other words, it may be wondered how common
was the attitude of the Leiden Glossary scribe, whose uneasy excusatio
makes up the epigraph opening this paper. Also, it is a matter of
speculation who, in early medieval Germany, might have been able to
understand and use words which were meant to disclose new cultural and
religious horizons to less cultivated people, possibly adapting or
translating them into their own vernacular.
The function and the value of the Continental glossaries of the Leiden
Family is of such relevance that it can be investigated under two main
respects. In the first place, it can provide sorne valuable information
about the intellectual concerns of early medieval England, since these
glossaries «embody the teaching of Theodore and Hadrian, and thus
represent an important source - perhaps the most important source - for
knowledge of books and learning in early Anglo-Saxon England» 16 •
Secondly, the study of these glossaries could afford a better assessment of
the real effects of Anglo-Saxon cultural influence on the Continent, by
detecting Old English glosses in manuscripts of Old Saxon and Old High
German origin In particular, the data concerning both the geographical
and chronological width of their diffusion in the two languages would be
of crucial importance. The following considerations will be devoted to
this last question.
The mutual relationships between the so-called Épinal-Erfurt-

Werden-Leiden-Corpus Glossaries (to which it must now be added the
fragmentary glossary of the Berlin manuscript) are manifold and difficult
to disentangle. In the last decades a great effort bas been devoted to the
study of their interrelatedness 17, since «they are tes timon y not only of the
Theodoran teachings in England in the 690s but to the Anglo-Saxon
missions to Germany beginning in the early eighth century» 18 • Moreover,
their very existence provides evidence of the extraordinary cultural
Phillip Pulsiano (MRTS 319), Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
Tempe, AZ 2006, pp. 41-84, at 73-74.
16
Lapidge, <<The School ofTheodore and Hadrian», p. 59.
17
Pheifer, <<Early Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of Canterbury», and
Bischoff et al. (eds.), The Épinal, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries.
18
Doane, <<The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources», p. 58.
376 MARIA RIT A DIGILIO
liveliness and eagerness which characterized the early Middle Ages,

involving severa! peoples who spoke different languages in a common
project of appropriation of the classical legacy via the Christian faith.
Though still far from being concluded, research on the Leiden Farnily
glossaries has achieved significant results in recent years. A number of
manuscripts belonging or indirectly related to the Leiden Family has
recently been edited 19 , and the facsimile edition of the Épinal, Werden
and Corpus Glossaries by Bischoff et alii20 allows to check the previous
editions of these glossaries against photos of the manuscripts 21 .
Given the 'wild' (to put it in Doane's words) cultural background of
early medieval Germany, one marvels at the large amount of Anglo-
Saxon glossaries which were copied on its soil. Possibly those books
were not intended to be brought back to England but, on the contrary,
they were aimed to introduce German monks to a cultural legacy whose
knowledge was considered necessary. Since the capacity of mutual
comprehension between the Anglo-Saxon missionaries and their German
cousins in their respective vernaculars can only be conjectured, the real
usage of the words in question and the extent of their circulation in
Germany is still to be proved.
Referring to Theodore and Hadrian, Lapidge defines them «the two
great Mediterranean masters expounding a variety of texts for the benefit
of an eager English classroom» 22 . Did it exist an equally eager Old Saxon
or Old High German classroom? Sorne hints may be gathered from the
level of Germanization which these words underwent in the Continental
copies of glossaries of Anglo-Saxon origin, since «in most cases a slight
change of spelling has been enough to gerrnanize the word» 23 .
While the Continental manuscripts of the Leiden Family have been
studied since the beginning of the twentieth centurl4 , the
19
This is the case with Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 2685, see
Lapidge, <<The School of Theodore and Hadrian», pp. 56-57. These glosses have been
studied and edited by Schreiber, H., Die Glossen des Codex Parisinus 2685 und ihre
Verwandten, unpubl. diss., Jena 1961.
20
Bischoff et al. (eds.), The Épinal, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries.
21
According to Doane, <<The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources», pp. 41-44,
this work, though a major contribution to Anglo-Saxon glossography, is not entirely
flawless.
22
Lapidge, <<The School ofTheodore and Hadrian>>, p. 62.
23
The Oldest English Texts, ed. by Sweet, p. 4.
24
See, for example, Baesecke, Der Vocabularius Sti. Galli in der angelsdchsischen
Mission, and Michiels, H., Über englische Bestandteile altdeutscher Glossenhand-
schriften, Hanstein, Bonn 1912 [Altenglisches in altdeutschen Glossen, diss. Berlin].
'Germanization' of the Leiden Family glossaries, in particular of the

Erfurt25 and Berlin26 ones, has not attracted scholars' attention until very
recently.
As a general premise to the study of the fortune of Old English
glosses in Germany, it should be remembered that they rarely render
words of common usage, since they are aimed to make comprehensible
and possibly to provide a vernacular equivalent to rare or difficult terms,
often of a very specifie kind.
Given these premises, two types of questions will be examined and
clarified through sorne examples.
1) Were any glosses, contained in the Continental manuscripts
related to the Leiden Family, translated into Old Saxon or Old High
German? If not, do they somehow show graphie, phonological or
semantic features which suggest sorne degree of hybridization, or sorne
German colouring? The W erden glossaries will pro vide matter for
relevant examples.
2) How long did these words were in existence on the Continent?
Were they also attested in other glossaries of different origin? Are they
attested in particular geographical areas? Did any of them definitively
enter the German language 27 ? As the following discussion will show, the
glossaries of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F.1.1628 and sorne
manuscripts of Middle Franconian ongm (particularly Trier,
Stadtbibliothek 4011018i9 will provide relevant examples.
25
Tiefenbach, H., <<Zu den althochdeutschen Glossen im altenglischen Erfurter
Glossar>>, in C. Bank (ed.), Language and Civilization. A Concerted Profusion of Essays
and Studies in Honour of Otto Hietsch, Lang, Frankfurt a.M. 1992, pp. 114-23. The O!d
High German features of these glosses are typical of the Ripuarian area, see Stricker, S.,
«Neues zu mittelfrankischen Glossen>>, in U. Gotz and S. Stricker (eds.), Neue
Perspektiven der Sprachgeschichte. Internationales Colloquium des Zentrums für
Mittelalterstudien der Otto-Friedrich-Universitiit Bamberg, Il. und 12. Februar 2005
26
Dietz, «Die frühaltenglischen Glossen der Handschrift Staatsbib1iothek zu Berlin>>,
pp. 161-8.
27
It would also be rewarding to investigate whether they entered in literary texts.
28
See Kleinere altsiichsische Sprachdenkmiiler. Mit Anmerkungen und Glossar, ed.
byE. Wadstein, Soltau, Norden and Leipzig 1899.
29
See Die Althochdeutschen Glossen, ed. by E. Steinmeyer and E. Sievers, 5 vols.,
Weidmann, Berlin 1879-1922; repr. Weidmann, Dublin and Zurich 1968-1969. This is the
standard edition of al! the German glosses when not otherwise specified; hereafter
abbreviated as StS, followed by the indication of volume, page, and line. On the
manuscripts here cited, which contain German glosses, see Bergmann, R., Katalog der
The linguistic features of sorne Continental manuscripts of the Leiden

Family have already been studied. At the beginning of the twentieth
century Romuald Sauer examined the Leiden Glossary 30 , while recently
Tiefenbach has studied the Erfurt Glossary31 and Dietz the Berlin
fragments 32 • The Old High German features detected in the Leiden and
Erfurt glossaries are certainly due to the German scribes who copied
them. Notably, Dietz has convincingly demonstrated the absence of such
scribal interferences in the Berlin fragments 33 •
The need for a detailed linguistic analysis of the W erden glos ses has
recently been urged by Tiefenbach34, and a new and complete edition of
these glos ses is still a desideratum. As Dietz sums up, «The W erden
glossary is one of the earliest and most important witnesses to the Anglo-
Saxon glossary tradition. However, its parlous physical condition, the
ongoing saga of its mysterious epistemologie status, and its chequered
editorial history have hampered its proper study» 35 . Thanks to the
facsimile edition published in 199836 , it is now possible to check the
readings of previous editions against photos. As Doane has pointed out,
these editions were often characterized by mis-transcriptions,
inconsistencies, and omissions37 . The combined use of Gallée's edition38
and the facsimile throws sorne light on the linguistic features of the
Werden glosses, although a new and definitive edition, at least of the so-
called W erden A, is still necessary 39 •
The Werden fragments contain three Anglo-Saxon glossaries, which
are usually referred to as Werden A, B, C, according to Gallée's
althochdeutschen und altsiichsischen Glossenhandschriften, 6 vols., de Gruyter, Berlin

and New York 2005.
30
Sauer, R., Zur Sprache des Leidener Glossare cod. Voss. lat. 4°, 69 [Diss.,
Munich], Pfeiffer, Augsburg 1917.
31
Tiefenbach, «Zu den althochdeutschen Glossen».
32
Dietz, «Die frühaltenglischen Glossen der Handschrift Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin>>.
33
Ibid., p. 168: «lm Unterschied zum Leidener und zum Erfurter Glossar fehlen auch
althochdeutsche Elemente>>.
34
Tiefenbach, «Rückgewinnung>>, p. 311.
35
Doane, «The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 41.
36
Bischoff et al., The Épinal, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries.
37
Doane, «The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 57, argues that «it
seems best to look at them not as editions in the modem sense but as continuations of the
tradition>>.
38
Altsiichsische Sprachdenkmiiler, ed. by Gallée.
39
See Doane, «The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 55.
definition40 . Werden B is clearly related to the so-called Second

Amplonian Glossary, or Erfurt 2. Werden C, preceded by the heading
Glossae nominum, can be associated with Erfurt 3. On the contrary,
W erden A does not seem to have connections with any of the surviving
Anglo-Saxon glossaries, although it is doubtless related to the Leiden
Family, particularly to the Leiden Glossary, and, albeit to a less extent, to
Épinal-Erfurt and Corpus 41 .
Due to the relations between the Ingvaeonic languages, it is not easy
to detect Old Saxon features within the vemacular facet of Anglo-Saxon
glos sari es. In Gallée' s edition, glos ses which are doubtless Old Saxon are
not marked as such. On the contrary, Old English words are marked with
a cross, and those glosses which could belong to bath languages are
marked with an asterisk42 .
In arder to establish the linguistic identity of the W erden glosses, it
should be borne in mind that the expected Old Saxon variety is the South-
Westphalian of the first quarter of the ninth century. The Old English
variety is less certain, since the glosses show the presence of archaic
43
elements, possibly characteristic of Anglian dialects .
A significant percentage of the entries contained in the W erden A
Glossary may be attributed to bath Old English and Old Saxon, since they
do not show any distinctive features, as already recognized by Gallée. An
example is provided by the entries: «torques halsberigolth» (no. 234) 44 ,
~~pugillum handful» (no. 217), «uuicus uuic» (no. 280), and «pala scoful»
(no. 119).
In my opinion, Gallée's caution is not always necessary. Such is the
case, for example, with the glass hooh (no. 200, cf. Leiden III,35 hog)
40
Altsachsische Sprachdenkmaler, ed. by Gallée; the original structure of the
manuscript has recently been investigated by Tiefenbach, H., «Rückgewinnung», and
Dietz, K., «Die frühaltenglischen Glossen der Handschrift Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin»,
who has come to analogons results.
41
Lapidge, «The School of Theodore and Hadrian», and Doane, «The Werden
Glossary: Structure and Sources».
42
Altsachsische Sprachdenkmaler, ed. by Gallée, p. 335.
43
Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossaries, ed. by Pheifer, pp. lvii-xci.
44
The entry likely goes back to Isidore's Etymologiae: see Lapidge, M., «Old
English Glossography: The Latin Context», in R. Derolez (ed.), Anglo-Saxon
Glossography. Papers Read at the International Conference Held in Koninklijke
Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Brussels, 8 and 9
September 1986, Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone
Kunsten van België, Brussels 1992, pp. 45-57, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature 600-
899, The Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, OH 1996, pp. 169-82.
which renders promontorium: the digraph <oo> used to render the long
vowel /o:/ could be a Mercian trait45 ; moreover the <h> spelling for /g/ in
final position is quite common in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts 46 , while it is
scarcely attested in Old Saxon and in manuscripts written in Werden47 •
In many cases a definitive conclusion on the linguistic features of the
glosses cannot be reached, since the glosses are incomplete, corrupt or
clearly rnisunderstood by the scribes who copied them. Renee, in these
instances, no evidence can be gained. In Gallée' s opinion many of these
glosses are Old Saxon. Such is the case with bloot (no. 209) which
renders Latin proriginem, probably to be corrected in blooc (cf. blœce
Leiden III,15 and bleci - a gloss to uiti<li>ginem Corpus V 168); bere
(no. 153) which renders pin (for Latin ptisones) and is undoubtedly
incomplete, as it is demonstrated by the parallel glosses «ptysones
berecorn beorende» (Corpus P 841), «ptysones berecorn berœndae»
.
(Epinal no. 790), and «ptysones berecorn berendœ» (Erfurt no. 790) ;
~
griec (ms. girec) (no. 59) which glosses doricus (ms. dorcus) and so on.
What Doane has defined «Gallée's happy-go-lucky approach to
resolutions and abbreviations» 49 can sometimes be rnisleading, as for the
gloss no. 261, which Gallée reads as «triplunas .g. nuge», and which is
probably to be corrected in «sciniphes micg» 50 .
A pair of glosses presents a complete different situation: «[ ... ]
fibrarum .i. dar» (no. 279) and «discolis stero lesum» (ms. discolatis)
(no. 43). The first !emma rnight be a corrupted or incomplete form for
darm 'gut, entrai!' (cf. pearm Corpus F 164 and darmana Leiden V,22).
In this case, an Old Saxon colouring could be accounted for, but it is not
possible to deny that the <a> spelling (for Gmc */al) instead of the
expected <ea> (breaking of OE */re/ < Gmc */al before /rm/) could
equally be a Northumbrian trait51 , and that the <d> spelling for fPI
45
Dietz, «Die frühaltenglischen Glossen der Handschrift Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin>>,
p. 165.
46
Brunner, K., Altenglische Grammatik, nach der angelsiichsischen Grammatik von
E. Sievers (Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte 3), Niemeyer,
Tübingen 1965, § 214.
47
See Gallée, J.H., Altsachsische Grammatik, 3. Auflage mit Berichtigungen und
Literaturnachtriigen von H. Tiefenbach, Niemeyer, Tübingen 1993, § 256.
48
See Pheifer, <<Early Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of Canterbury>>, p.
112, and Doane, <<The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 62, note 69.
49
Doane, <<The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources», p. 57.
50
Ibid., p. 69, note 94.
51
Brunner, Altenglische Grammatik, § 84, and Campbell, A., Old English Grammar,
Clarendon Press, Oxford 1959; repr. 1991, § 145.
52
frequently occurs in the Anglian area, especially in its earliest phase .
Different conclusions can be drawn from the examination of the
compound sterolesum, where the <e> spelling in stero (for Gmc */eu/) 53
and in lesum (for Gmc */au/) 54 does not match either Old Saxon or Old
English features.
Another interesting case is offered by the treatment of the gloss
«dextralia armbages» (no. 29). The expected Old English form should be
earmbeah (pl. earmbeagas). As for the already cited gloss dar<m>, the <a>
spelling instead of the expected <ea> (breaking of OE */cel< Gmc */al
before /rm/) in armbages does not necessarily indicate that this word is
Old Saxon, since it could just as well be of an Anglian (Northumbrian)
origin55 . Moreover, the <a> spelling in the second element of the compound
56
could betray what is a trait of both Old English and Old Saxon .
One wonders whether the only certainty, in such cases of incomplete,
corrupt or clearly misunderstood entries, is the evidence of the scribe's
uneasiness, stemming from his unfamiliarity with the systems of Insular
script, which puzzled him when copying both Latin and Old English. It
would therefore be more convenient to avoid definitive linguistic
attributions, as is the case of the following glosses, which Gallée
considered Old Saxon, even though they do not show any distinctive
features which can be unambiguously traced to Old Saxon as opposed to
Old English: domsedil (glossing tribunal) (no. 257), ondhlelth (glossing
discarica, ms. discarruta salue carrum) (no. 46), grona (glossing polopis
et crinitus (no. 178), thripil (glossing tripoda, ms. tr.poda) (no. 248), tene
(glossing dexe) (no. 25), and clafre (glossing trifolia) (no. 246)57 • Indeed,
these very words are classified by the great Dutch scholar as Old English
58
in his Vorstudien published sorne years after the edition .
For two glosses of W erden A, both Gallée and Doane argue for a
52
p. 166.
53
See Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossaries, ed. by Pheifer, p. lxi.
54
Ibid.
55
Retraction is practically limited to Northumbrian, see Campbell, Old English
Grammar, § 145.
56
The <a> spelling for Gmc */au/ is attested, although not very commonly, in sorne
Old Saxon manuscripts, see Gallée, Altsêichsiche Grammatik, §§ 95-96, and Krogh, S.,
Die Stellung des Altsachsischen im Rahmen der germanischen Sprachen (Studien zum
Althochdeutschen 29), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gi:ittingen 1996, pp. 268-86.
57
Doane, <<The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 72 reads claefre.
58
Gallée, J.H., Vorstudien zu einem altniederdeutschen Worterbuche, Brill, Leiden
1903; repr. 1977.
Continental colouring of an original Old English entry: theuta (glossing

tubuli [s]temn?) (no. 264)59 and uuidome (glossing dos) (no. 54). The
form theuta is considered by Doane a «Germanized version of OE peote
'pipe'»60 . Of course this word could only be Old Saxon, not High
German, because of the lack of both the change /th/ > /dl and of the Old
High German Mutation, which are typical of the Old High German
counterpart (cf. OE peota and OHG dioza). However, the digraph <eu>
for /ëo/ is attested in the Mercian dialect of the eighth centurl 1, so that
the Old English nature of this word cannat be definitively ruled out.
The glass uuidome raises quite different questions. Also in this case
Doane states: «the OE interpretant has been tumed into its OHG
counterpart»62 • The most important distinctive element between the two
forms is the <d> spelling (OHG widemo, widamo) instead of <t> (OE
wituma, weotuma) 63 . Possibly this consonantic change should not be
overrated as evidence of Germanization, also because this glass was
probably misunderstood by the W erden scribe, who actually wrote: dos
mui dome 64 • Similarly, the present participle borend? (glossing 224
terebrantes), should also be treated with caution, since it can be Old
Saxon just as weil as Old English, as already noted by Michiels 65 •
In sum, it seems that the features in the Werden Glossary A which
can be safely classified as Old Saxon are very few indeed, if any at ali.
Therefore, Doane's statement: «None of the vemacular interpretations in
Werden A, usually marked "s" or "sax" by the scribe, have escaped being
remodelled into Old Saxon, and the beginning of this process doubtless
preceded our manuscript»66 should be mitigated. Moreover, Continental
59
A hole in the parchment makes the reading controversial. On the different
hypotheses, see Doane, <<The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 73, note 114.
60
Ibid., p. 73, note 114.
61
p. 165.
62
Doane, <<The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 72, note 111.
63
The corresponding Corpus entry (D 347) reads: wituma uel wetma.
64
Doane, «The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 72, reads dos .
uuidome.
65
The corresponding gloss in the Leiden Glossary is borgenti (iv.66), see Michiels,
Über englische Bestandteile altdeutscher Glossenhandschriften, p. 24: «Borgenti geht auf
ae. boriendi zurück, was durch die in ~ angegeben Lesart bestatigt wird. Dieses ist part.
pres. (pl.) zu ae. borian 'bohren' = ne. bore>>. In Old Saxon this verb has only another
occurrence, as the 1st sg. pres. ind. form boron in Abdia' s glosses of Karlsruhe, Badische
Landesbibliothek, St Peter perg. 87.
66
Doane, <<The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 48.
THE FORTUNE OF OLD ENGLISH GLOS SES 383
scribes were commonly used to tagging the Old English words with an 's'
or 'sax' 67 •
Maybe one gloss in the Werden A Glossary is a corrupted form
which the scribe tried to adapt to the Old Saxon phonetic system: gisuop
(ms. gisupop) (no. 131) for peripsima, which can be compared with the
corresponding Leiden gloss gaesuop? (IV.71). Possibly this entry
represents a hybrid-form, to be compared with OB geswœpe and OHG
gisopfo/gasopho. Michiels suggested a complicated interpretation for the
corresponding Leiden gloss gaesuop?, which can be applied to the
Werden entry too 68 . Although the gloss is clearly corrupt, it shows the
characteristic Old Saxon prefix gi-.
Finally, the Werden A glosses mostly preserve Old English traits, due
to their Insular origin, while Old Saxon traces are very few and are
probably due to scribal interference. Renee there is no evidence that those
words became adapted and widespread within the Saxon vocabulary.
Analogous conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of the so-
called Werden C Glossary, which is closely related to the so-called Erfurt
3 Glossary69 • According to Gallée, a significant number of glosses show
Old Saxon characteristics70 . However, it can be shown that these traits
could also be due to the Anglian origin of these glosses, as the following
two examples will show. In dixl (CGL II,568,4) (a gloss to
arquamentum), the <d> spelling could render the initial voiceless
fricative, as is attested, although rarely, in the Anglian dialects 71 . In kis
67
The Oldest English Texts, ed. by Sweet, p. 5, observes that in the Leiden
manuscript «the English words are often marked by a circumflex-like tick above them, or
by word sax, as in Erf.». The habit of labelling with ans or sax (saxo nice) the Old English
words in Continental manuscripts and with f (francisee) the German ones was already
identified by Schroder, W., «Kritisches zu neuen Verfasserschaften Walahfrid Strabos
und zur 'althochdeutschen Schriftsprache'>>, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und
deutsche Literatur 87 (1956-1957), pp. 163-213, at 169-71 and 196-207.
68
Michiels, Über englische Bestandteile altdeutscher Glossenhandschriften, p. 24:
«das als Übersetzung von peripsima = nsphJIT]J.!U 'Unreinigkeit' dienende gaesuopl} beruht
auf ae. gaesuëpo 'Kehricht, Zusammengesetzes', nom. (ace.) pl. zu dem in den OEG.
verzeichneten neutralenja-St. (œ)swœpe. Allerdings hat der ad. Schreiber die Buchstaben
e und o der beiden letzen Silben un ter dem Einflusse des gleichbedeutenden ahd. gasopha
vertauscht>>.
69
The Épinal, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries, ed. by Bischoff et al.
70
In this case too, Gallée had been more cautious as to the language attribution in his
Vorstudien.
71
p. 166, and Brunner, Altenglische Grammatik, § 199.
(ms. kii) (CGL II,570,15), a gloss for Latin blandus (ms. blanx) bene
moratus, the <k> spelling does not necessarily render a velar /k/72 .
A certain degree of Old Saxon influence can be assumed only in the
case of the entry gisuetit (a gloss for ferruminatus) (CGL II,579,58),
because of the prefix gi-. Notably, Gmc *la! (OE */re/ > leal) has been
preserved in the entry scar (glossing Latin vomer, ms. bomer) (CGL
II,570,20), when compared with the parallel Erfurt 3 !emma, vomer (ms.
berner), which is glossed by scœr (no. 1154)73 .
On the basis of the linguistic analysis of Werden A and C as weil as
of the few vemacular glosses of Werden B, it can be argued that the Old
Saxon influence is not consistent. This would suggest that the diffusion of
early Anglo-Saxon glossaries and the fortune of Old English glosses in
the High and Low German-speaking areas should be treated as distinct
phenomena: despite the considerable diffusion of the former, the real
influence of the latter seems to have been quite futile in the long run.
The second section of this paper is going to discuss the presence of

glosses, originally belonging to the Leiden Farnily, in Old Saxon and
Middle Franconian manuscripts dating from the tenth to the twelfth
centuries. Although not directly related to the Leiden Farnily, the glosses
featuring in these codices are indisputably connected with the Leiden
glossographic corpus.
A good example is offered by the so-called Varia glosemata of
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F.l.16, probably copied at the end of the
tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century in the Benedictine abbey
Liesbom, in Westphalia, and containing several glosses to the works of
Virgil and sorne medieval related commentaries74 • They are arranged in
groups of glossae collectae. Among these batches of glossae collectae, in
a section headed Varia glosemata, there are fifty-nine Old Saxon items,
whose source is unknown, although it has been ascertained that they were
drawn from sorne exemplar of the Leiden Farnily and from Isidore75 •
72
Ibid., § 206.
73
The Oldest English Texts, ed. by Sweet, p. 110.
74
The standard edition is Kleinere altsiichsische Sprachdenkmiiler, ed. by Wadstein.
See also Digilio, M.R., Thesaurus dei saxonica minora (Proteo 38), Artemide, Rome
2008, pp. 56-60.
75
Michiels, Über englische Bestandteile altdeutscher Glossenhandschriften, pp. 59-
67, mentions 34 entries; he does not cite the glosses uuuloo forjlocci and bollo for cratus.
Furthermore, I have also taken into account the Oxford glosses bradigabo, ballista and
cerasius. In these instances there is not a complete correspondence between the Old
Their relationship to the Épinal-Erfurt glossaries can be easily

recognized, since the amount of common entries is considerable76 •
The Varia glosemata glosses show a full remodelling of the original
Old English forms to the Old Saxon language. The lexical
correspondences between the Old Saxon interpretamenta and their Old
English counterparts are so precise, that they provide perfect case in point
of the differences between the two Ingvaeonic languages. The lemma
megale (migale), for instance, is glossed by hearma in Épinal-Erfurt (no.
666), and Corpus (M 166), while by harmo in the Oxford manuscript
(Wadstein 111,10). Similarly, arniglossa (arnoglossa) is rendered by
uuegbradae in Épinal (no. 65), uegbradae in Erfurt (no. 65), and
wegbrade in Corpus (A 763), while by uu(i)gbrede in the Oxford
manuscript (Wadstein 112,12). Finally, isix (esox) is glossed by leax in
Épinal (no. 555), lex in Erfurt (no. 555), and laex in Corpus (1 490), while
by lahs in the Varia glosemata (Wadstein 111,13).
The relationship of the Varia glosemata to the Leiden Family is best
demonstrated in the cases in which the two compilations share an entry
otherwise unrecorded in German-speaking areas. For example, the lemma
petulans uel spurcus is glossed by uuraeni, ureni, and wraene in the
Épinal (no. 835), Erfurt (no. 835), and Corpus (P 341) glossaries,
respectively. The corresponding interpretamentum in the Oxford
manuscript is the adjective uurenisc (Wadstein 112,16), which derives
from the same Germanie root, but employs a different suffix from its Old
English cognate. This adjective is quite widespread and translates Latin
emissarius 'stallion' in about ten instances. Notably, uurenisc never
renders Latin petulans, which is normally glossed by geil, getilos,
hirtilos, huorlih, and ungistuomi. 77 Similarly the gloss flod for aestuaria
is shared by the Varia glosemata (Wadstein 111,29) and the Leiden
Family: fleotas (Épinal no. 107), fleutas (Erfurt no. 107), and fleotas
(Corpus A 319). lt would be misleading, however, to associate the
widespread Old High Germanfluot with the latter gloss, since fluot never
English and the Old Saxon entries, probably owing to sorne unknown accident which
occurred in the textual transmission, but the glosses are sure! y related to each other.
76
Langbroek, E., «Vergil im altsachsischen Unterricht? Bemerkungen zum Aufbau
der Oxforder Handschrift Codex Auct. F.l.16 und eine emeute Untersuchung der
altsachsischen Georgicaglossen>>, in A. Quak (ed.), Speculum Saxonum. Studien zu den
kleineren altsiichsischen Sprachdenkmiilern (Amsterdamer Beitrage zur alteren
Germanistik 52), Rodopi, Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA 1999, pp. 117-54, at 122.
77
See Schützeichel, R., Althochdeutscher und altsiichsischer Glossenwortschatz,
Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, XII, p. 362.
translates aestuaria, with the only exception (out of ten occurrences),

represented by a gloss in the manuscript Trier, Stadtbibliothek 40/1018
(StS V,46,1), which will be discussed later.
The correspondences between the Leiden Family manuscripts and the
Varia glosemata are much more interesting in the cases where they they
share a common error or a less widespread (or otherwise unrecorded)
reading. This is the case with Latin acinum, which is g1ossed by
hindberiœ in Épinal 69, hindbergen in Erfurt 69, hindberiae in Corpus A
132, and hindbiri in Oxford (Wadstein 111, 31). In Pheifer's opinion, the
Old English (and Old Saxon) gloss «hindberiœ 'raspberry' does not fit
acinum 'grape'»78 , and the vernacular gloss might possibly represent a
mistake for winberige. Should this be the case, it would be a corruption
shared by all the four witnesses and it wou1d have been transmitted to the
Continental manuscripts by Insular exemplars.
At least in one instance, the vernacular interpretation provided for a
lemma of the Varia glosemata differs from that of the Leiden Family
glossaries, although it is clearly connected to this glossographic tradition.
This is the case with the Oxford entry: «Flocci sunt quos nos in
uestimentis thiudisce uuuloo dicimus» (Wadstein 111,41). The Old Saxon
entry, which is probably the nom. sg. of an otherwise unrecorded strong
feminine wloh, probably corresponds to OE wloh 'fringe', which occurs
in the Leiden Family glossaries in association to Latin uillis 'fleeces'
(uulolum Épinal no. 1066, uulohum Erfurt no. 1066, and uuloum Corpus
V 179). In Pheifer's opinion, the «association [of OE wloh] with uillis
'fleeces' may have been caused by a misinterpretation of Aen. 1.702
«tonsique ferunt mantelia uillis» 79 • Latin floc eus is glossed by loca 'lock
of wool' in the Épinal (no. 448), Erfurt (no. 448), and Corpus (F 235)
glossaries. May be it was the nature of the woollen fleece of a sheep and
its locks that mislead the Anglo-Saxon scribes.
lt could also be argued that the scribe of the Varia glosemata was
able to recognize an error of its exemplar and tried to correct it by
entering a different gloss and adding a brief explanation in Latin to its
interpretation. Probably, he understood that wlohum was not the correct
interpretation for uillis. In fact, the correspondence flocci: uuloo, which
he produced, is wrong as well, but it is certainly more accurate, since a
fringe and a lock may both be used as ornaments of clothing items, as the
glossator explains in his brief further comment.
78
Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossaries, ed. by Pheifer, p. 63.
79
Ibid., p. 133.
In other instances the Old Saxon scribe shows a certain independence

from the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Despite the considerable amount of
overlapping, it is evident that all the Oxford interpretations were clearly
remodelled not only phonetically but also semantically. Indeed, their
semantic congruency is often carefully pondered to the point of
determining minor changes to the entries.
A perfect case in point is represented by the double interpretation of
aesculus as boke uel ec (Wadstein 111 ,28), corresponding to a single
gloss in Épinal boecae (no. 22), Erfurt boeccae (no. 22), and Corpus
boece (A 304). The word buohha (< Gmc. *boko) is quite widespread in
Old High German glosses (amounting to about fifty occurrences), but it
al ways translates - with only one exception- the Latin lemma fagui 0 .
Thus it could be argued that, unlike the Old English glosses, in German-
speaking-areas, Gmc. *boko was not the habituai rendering of Latin
aesculus, bence the Old Saxon scribe of the Oxford manuscript added a
second explanatory gloss to boke.
The choice of ec uel boke for aesculus clearly exemplifies the Oxford
scribe's tendency to remain on old (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) tracks, in that he
apparently takes heed of the peculiar and distinguishing features of his
own language and follows the Insular tradition faithfully, but not
slavishly.
The treatment of the glosses occurring only in the Oxford Glossary
and the Leiden Family glossaries offers, in my opinion, two points of
interest, that is while their common and exclusive employment suggests
the close relationship between the two groups of testimonies, it also
reveals that eventually they did not become established into the German
language.
The limited diffusion of glosses peculiar to the earliest Anglo-Saxon
glossography is demonstrated by instances such as the above-mentioned
petulans and aestuaria, which are glossed by words normally having
different meanings in the German-speaking area. Their limited
employment can possibly be taken as evidence for their scholastic use.
The Varia glosemata also contain glosses, common to the Leiden Family,
which are unparalleled in the German-speaking area, such as «pastellas
hunegapl» (hunaegaepl Épinal no. 830, cœnegaepl Erfurt no. 830, and
80
In the German-speaking areas aesculus is generally glossed by asc, eih, fereheih,
lateih, and wildi; asc generally glosses fraxinus, whereas eih is the most frequent
rendering of quercus. See Schützeichel, Althochdeutscher und altsiichsischer
Glossenwortschatz, Il, pp. 92-94.
hunig aeppel Corpus P 137), and «arula fiurpanne» (jyrpannae uel herth
Épinal no. 5,fyrponne uel herd Erfurt no. 5, andfyrponne Corpus A 751).
However, it must also be underscored that the diffusion of these
interpretamenta is limited in Old English too, since they only occur in the
Leiden Family glossaries 81 . Moreover, the double gloss corresponding to
arula is exclusive to the three Anglo-Saxon witnesses.
In the final part of this essay I would like to focus my analysis on the
relationships between the Leiden Family manuscripts and the Oxford
Varia glosemata, suggesting that the Old Saxon manuscript preserve, at
least in two instances, better readings thau its Anglo-Saxon close
relatives. I may best begin with the interesting interpretation of the Latin
lemma ballista, the interpretamentum of which in the Varia glosemata
partially diverges from the Leiden Family glossaries. The latter render
ballista with the compound stœfliôere (staeblidrae Épinal no. 136,
steblidrae Erfurt no. 136, and staefliôre Corpus B 8). On the other hand,
the Oxford manuscript uses the compound stafslengrie (Wadstein 112,4)
which interestingly enough is the same word as the Middle English
stafslynge. OB stœfliôere only occurs in the above-mentioned glossaries
and has not continued in Modern English 82 • Could it then be argued that
the Leiden Family manuscripts share a (partially) corrupted form, while
the scribe who entered the Varia glosemata in the Oxford manuscript was
copying from a different exemplar or possibly spotted and corrected an
apparent error? Remarkably the same word stafslengrie occurs in another
entry of the Oxford manuscript, which was entered by a different scribe83 .
The hypothesis that the Varia glosemata preserve sorne better

readings thau the Leiden Family glossaries is tempting. The second
relevant instance to be discussed, namely the Late Latin bradigabo, is, in
my opinion, very revealing. The meaning of this lemma is uncertain. The
manuscript context of the glossary into which it was entered would
suggest a plant name, maybe employed in beer production. In the related
Trier, Stadtbibliothek 40/1018, the gloss reads as follows: «bratum unde
conficitur ceruesia, bratigapo herba quae admiscetur». In the Leiden
81
See Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossaries, ed. by Pheifer, p. 59:
<<jyrpannae 'brazier' is recorded only in these glosses».
82
Ibid., p. 68.
83
The gloss to falarica (Aen. IX.705), i.e. «falarica stephstrengiere» (Wadstein
113,18-19), is probably corrupt.
Family glossaries the entries for bratium (malt) and bradigabo (jelduuop)
are in sequence84 . The renderings of the second Latin lemma are felduuop
in Épinal (no. 131), felduus in Erfurt (no. 131), felduop in Corpus (B
183), and feldhoppo in the Oxford compilation (Wadstein 112,3). The
compound word is formed by feld and a second element, which in the
Épinal and Corpus Glossaries is possibly to be identified with OB (h)wop
'whoop' 85 • The Erfurt entry is clearly a misspelling, whereas the Varia
glosemata has the rendering hoppo, possibly a cognate of the English
word hop, the name of a plant which was used to give beer a bitter
flavour. Given that bradigabo is a plant name, the element hop within the
compound used in the Oxford glosses seems more correct than the form
(h)wop used by the Leiden Family glossaries.
It could be argued, therefore, that the Varia glosemata are somehow
more correct than the Leiden Family glossaries 86 . Schlutter, who first
studied the Trier codex at the beginning of the last century, observed that
«Die Trierglosse in verein mit der Oxforder glosse zeigt, dass die
überlieferung im Epinal nicht korrekt sein kann, sondern verdorben muss
sein aus feldhop» 87 . Of course the possibility that feldhoppo is a new
entry introduced by the German scribes cannot be ruled out. In particular,
it may well be that the scribe was from the northem part of Germany,
since all the other occurrences of the gloss feldhoppo (about ten in total)
are found in manuscripts from the Middle and Low German areas 88 .
84
Épinal and Erfurt «bratium malt>> (no. 130) and <<bradigabo felduuop» (no. 131);
Corpus «Bratium malt» (B 182) and «Bradigabo felduop» (B 183). This order is not
preserved by the Oxford manuscript, which has instead the sequence «Bracinarium
brouhus» (112,1), «Bouellumfaled», 112,2), and «Bradigabo feldhoppo» (112,3).
85
See Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Eifurt Glossaries, ed. by Pheifer, p. 68:
«bradigabo may be a compound of Late Latin bradia 'campus uel ager suburbanus'
(DuCange) and Gmc. *gab(b)-, whence OF. gab, It. gabbio 'mockery' (REW [Meyer-
Lübke, W., Romanisches etymologisches Worterbuch, 3rd edn., Winter, Heidelberg 1935]
no. 3626), which would correspond semantically withfelduuop (?-hwi5p). The meaning of
both words is uncertain, but their context favours 'wild hops' over 'grasshopper' (OHG
feldhoppo )>>. See also http://oldenglish-plantnames.uni-graz.at.
86
I do not agree with the suggestion put forward by Langbroek that «Für die 'varia
glosemata', die sich aus Isidorzitaten mit eingeschobenen Kontextglossierungen
zusammensetzen, kann jedoch für die Glossen eine Variante des Épinal-Erfurtglossariums
mit altenglischen Glossen, die ins Altsachsische übersetzt wurden, Pate gestanden haben>>:
«Vergil im altsachsischen Unterricht?>>, p. 122.
87
Schlutter, O.B., «Altenglisch-Althochdeutsches aus dem Codex Trevirensis no
40», Anglia 35 (1912), pp. 145-54, at 153.
88
Feldhoppo generally glosses hypericon, eryngion, and eariston, see Schützeichel,
Althochdeutscher und altsiichsischer Glossenwortschatz, III, p. 99.
Whatever we may argue from the instances examined above, the

importance of Continental manuscripts for the reconstruction of the
textual tradition of the earliest Anglo-Saxon glossography cannot be
denied, even if such witnesses are not directly descendant of the Anglo-
Saxon glossaries and are quite recent.
The study of the diffusion of glosses having a correspondence in the
Leiden Family glossaries in medieval Germany must take into account
severa! elements. The coincidence between the Old English and the Old
Saxon/Old High German rendering of the same Latin lemma does not
necessarily mean that the Continental entry derives from the Insular
glossographic tradition. In other words, the possibility of a casual
coïncidence or of a shared continuation from the same Germanie root
cannot be ruled out.
A relevant example may be provided by the gloss for andeda:
brandrad (Épinal no. 4), brondrad (Erfurt no. 4), brandrod (Corpus A
562), and brandereda (Oxford, Wadstein 111,25), which occurs severa!
times in Old High German glossed manuscripts (brantreitar and is also
attested in Old Frisian brondrad.
It is not surprising that sorne entries of the Leiden Family glossaries
are paralleled in Continental manuscripts from specifie geographical
areas, where Anglo-Saxon missionaries were demonstrably active.
The above-mentioned vemacular rendering feldhoppo is only one
instance out of many Leiden Family glosses which are recorded only in
Old Saxon or Middle Franconian manuscripts. Let us consider the
interpretamenta lynisas (Épinal no. 8, Corpus A 962-3) and lunisas
(Oxford, Wadstein 111,19-20) for axedones. The same gloss occurs in
three German manuscripts: lunis for axedo in Trier, Stadtbibliothek
40/1018 (StS V,47,24) 90 , lunes for opex in Munich, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Clm 13090 (StS III,389,35) 91 , and lunes for umerulus in
Cologne, Dombibliothek 211 (StS 1,445,21)92 • Their Anglo-Saxon origin
is quite likely. Notably, most of the entries in the Trier manuscript have
an Old Saxon colouring. Renee it can be argued that these glosses were
89
Ibid., II, pp. 4-6.
90
Schlutter, «Altenglisch-Althochdeutsches aus dem Codex Trevirensis no 40>>, p.
145, has underscored «die wichtigkeit des Cod. Trev. No 40 fur den Épinal>>.
91
This manuscript has a Low German origin, see Schützeichel, Althochdeutscher und
altsiichsischer Glossenwortschatz, VI, p. 192.
92
Although controversial, the linguistic facies of this manuscript betrays a Low
German origin, see Tiefenbach, «Zur altsachsischen Glossographie>>, pp. 325-351, at 343.
copied into their respective glossaries from an Old Saxon exemplar93 .

Moreover, the Anglo-Saxon influence is rather evident in two glossaries
preserved in the Trier manuscript94 , that is nos. MCLXXX and
MCCXXX!e in the edition of Steinmeyer and Sievers95 . Severa! entries
of the glossaries in the Trier manuscript preserve vemacular
interpretations which are also recorded in the Leiden Family glossaries
and are not to be found elsewhere. This is the case, for instance, with
clederstico glossing anate (StS V,46,22) 96 , higara glossing berna (StS
V,47,33) 97 , quecbom glossing cariscus (StS V,48,7) 98 , mersc glossing
calmetum (StS V,48,2), ramusia and gacassura glossing acitura (StS
V,47,27) 99 , and rethiteros glossing amites (StS V,46,12) 100 • Interestingly
enough, the Trier manuscript shares a common error with the Leiden
Family glossaries, that is the interpretamentum hintbere rendering the
Latin lemma acinum (StS V,47,28), which has been discussed above.
The difficulty when not the impossibility of following ali the steps of
the textual tradition of a glossary has been pertinently summarized by
Doane: «An ancient glossary in manuscript is only the tip of a dangerous
and forbidding iceberg: beneath the cold water lies a treacherous mass of
precedent texts that have shifted and changed over the course of
· 101
copymg» .
The finding of an entry which seems to depend on the Insular
tradition does not necessarily mean that the glossary where this entry
occurs (or even the single gloss) stems more or less directly from an
English antecedent. On this regard, Lindsay has pointed out that «each
93
On this manuscript, see Klein, T., Studien zur Wechselbeziehung zwischen
altsiichsischem und althochdeutschem Schreibwesen und ihrer Sprach- und
kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung (Goppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 205), Kümmerle,
Goppingen 1977, pp. 208-16.
94
See Schlutter, «Altenglisch-Althochdeutsches aus dem Codex Trevirensis no 40>>.
95
Die althochdeutschen Glossen, ed. by Steinmeyer and Sievers, V, p. 46 and pp. 47-
48, respectively.
96
The word is Old Saxon according to Schützeichel, Althochdeutscher und
altsiichsischer Glossenwortschatz, V, p. 239.
97
On this gloss, see Schlutter, <<Die glosse ist von grosster wichtigkeit flir die
Epinalglosse berna. higrae>>: <<Altenglisch-Althochdeutsches aus dem Codex Trevirensis
n° 40>>, p. 149, note 10.
98
This interpretation is mistaken according to Old English Classes in the Épinal-
Erfurt Glossaries, ed. by Pheifer, p. 75.
99
The word gacassura is Old English according to Schützeichel, Althochdeutscher
und altsiichsischer Glossenwortschatz, XII, p. 16.
100
The word is Old English according to Schützeichel, ibid., p. 24.
101
See Doane, <<The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources>>, p. 56.
compiler selects, at his own caprice, sorne items of the mass that lies
before him and passes over others. So no argument 'ex silentio' is
possible. And the items selected are often recast at the compiler' s
caprice» 102 •
In the Trier Glossary no. MCCXXXII\ for instance, there are two
entries which are otherwise unrecorded, with the exception of the Varia
glosemata: jugeZ cloua glossing Latin aucipula 103 (StS V,47,12;
fugulclouo, Oxford Varia glosemata, Wadstein 111,24) and uuacco
glossing Latin cincindila (StS V,48,6; uuocco, Oxford Varia glosemata,
Wadstein 112,7 uuocco) 104 • These two entries, which betray an Anglo-
Saxon origin 105 , only occur in two manuscripts which are independently
related to the Leiden Farnily glossaries, but the reasons for this exclusive
overlapping are probably destined to remain unclear.
As discussed above, a number of Middle Franconian manuscripts can
be connected with the Leiden Farnily testimonies: Trier, Stadtbibliothek
4011018, Trier, Bibliothek des Priesterserninars 61, Berlin,
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz, lat. go 73, Paris,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 9344, Paris, Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, lat. 2685, and Admont, Stiftsbibliothek 508. lt has
been surrnised that the glossaries within these manuscripts were ali
copied from Old Saxon exemplars 106 . The glossaries in question share
102
The Corpus Glossary, ed. by Lindsay, p. 52.
103
A gloss vogelclob for venidica has been recently spotted in Basel,
Universitiitbibliothek, A.VI.31, see Schützeichel, Althochdeutscher und altsdchsischer
Glossenwortschatz, III, p. 230.
104
The interpretamentum uuakka glosses calus also in the Oxford Varia glosemata
(Kleinere altsdchsische Sprachdenkmdler, ed. by Wadstein, p. xiv). Moreover it occurs as
interpretamentum of calus (with the spelling woke) in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, theol. lat. 2 o 311. Schützeichel, Althochdeutscher und
altsdchsischer Glossenwortschatz, XI, p. 267, traces the origin of the latter manuscript to
the Middle Low German area.
105
Klein, Studien zur Wechselbeziehung zwischen altsdchsischem und althoch-
deutschem Schreibwesen, pp. 214-5.
106
The Old Saxon features of these manuscripts have been highlighted in the last
decades, see Klein, Studien zur Wechselbeziehung zwischen altsdchsischem und
althochdeutschem Schreibwesen. As far as the glossaries of the manuscript Trier 40/1018
are concemed, Schlutter, «Altenglisch-Althochdeutsches aus dem Codex Trevirensis no
40>>, was not aware of their Old Saxon colouring. For this reason he systematically
corrected readings which would not match the Old English phonetics and morphology
(representing, instead, good Old Saxon features): for example, see his note 1, p. 149 on
several common readings, which cannat be examined here in detail.

However, a few of them will be briefly discussed, first of all, the
rendering of aleator: teblere Épinal no. 7, tebl.re Erfurt no. 7, teblere
Corpus A 414, whereas the Franconian manuscripts have the rendering
tafleri, which occurs bath in Trier, Stadtbibliothek 4011018 (StS V,46,5)
and Admont, Stiftsbibliothek 508 (StS IV,179,9) 107 . This entry, which in
the glossary of the Admont codex (no. MCLXXX) is preceded by the
entry «alea taf/e» and followed by the entry «albeus trog», also occurs, in
a different position, in Erfurt 3 and W erden C. Erfurt 3 has the sequence
«albeus genus uasis trog», «aleator tebleri», and «aleae, alia tefil» (no.
1140), while Werden C has: «genus uasis trog» (CGL II,566,2) 108 ,
«aleator teblè'ri» (CGL II,566,8), «alea tefil» (CGL II,566,9), and «alacer
tè'fleri» (CGL II,566,9) 109 . Steinmeyer argued that the glossary of the
Admont manuscript (no. MCLXXX), where the three entries albus,
aleator and alea occur 110 , was at least related to the Corpus Glossary.
Interestingly, Michiels remarked that «Zwar stimmen die drei ersten ad.
Worte tafle (8), tafleri (9), trog (10) zu den ae. Erf.-Gll tefil (Sweet 1142)
bezw. tebleri (1141) bezw. trog (1140), doch ist für die folgenden elf Gll.
eine Übereinstimmung mit den ae. Glossaren nur in sieben Fallen
nachweisbar (nicht für 12, 25, 26, 30), die Übereinstimmung auch
vermutlich nur eine zufallige» 111 •
The possibility of a casual coïncidence and an accidentai preservation
of a given entry must always be taken into account. Possibly, I would
suggest, chance is the name we give to a situation we are unable to
disentangle. Every single ward contained in these manuscripts deserves a
scauos/sceabas, and note 2, p. 149 on lunisos/lynisas. The -os ending for the nom. pl. of
a-stems betrays an Old Saxon influence.
107
The following glosses can also be added: ?ouoldro for laquearius in Berlin,
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz, lat. go 73 (StS III,683,28), and
?oualdra for laquearius in Trier, Bib1iothek des Priesterseminars 61 (StS IV,204,46).
108
The entries from this glossary will be quoted from Corpus glossariorum
Latinorum a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum, ed. by G. Goetz, 7 vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1888-
1923; repr. Hakkert, Amsterdam 1965 (hereafter CGL), II.
109
See Michiels, Über englische Bestandteile altdeutscher Glossenhandschriften, p.
79.
110
The most interesting entry is aleator, since it is otherwise unrecorded, whereas
alea and albeus occur severa! times in Old High German (about ten and twenty
occurrences in glosses, respectively), see Schützeichel, Althochdeutscher und
altsiichsischer Glossenwortschatz, XII, pp. 104-5.
111
See Michiels, Über englische Bestandteile altdeutscher Glossenhandschriften, p.
79.
particular attention, as in the case of the Latin !emma pustula glossed by

angseta in Épinal no. 770, angreta in Erfurt no. 770, oncgseta in Corpus
P 868, and angseta in the Varia glosemata (Wadstein 112,18). The Old
High German corresponding interpretamentum occurs in three Middle
Franconian manuscripts as a rendering of the Latin lemma ferunculus,
namely ancseza in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, lat. 8° 73 (StS III,686,53), angasezo/ang[e]sezo in Trier,
Bibliothek des Priesterseminars 61 (StS IV,202,12 and note 5) 112 , and
angesezo in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 1701
(StS III,429, 14), whereas in Paris, BNF, lat. 9344 angesezo is the
interpretation of Latin papula (StS II,703,43).
Maybe a final, satisfactory reconstruction of the relationships
between the Leiden Family manuscripts and their Continental relatives
will never be attained. Since the beginnings of the last century English
and German scholars have tried to demonstrate how strong an influence
the Insular glossographic tradition exerted on the Continental one. I
would not dare challenge what seems an uncontroversial assumption.
However, I would like to draw attention to another aspect of the question,
which has not yet found the appropriate consideration, namely the extent
of the diffusion of the originally "Insular Anglo-Saxon" Leiden glosses
and the time-span of their actual use in the German-speaking areas. In
view of this last consideration, an updating and a reconsideration of the
evidence of the diffusion of English words in medieval Germany is
necessary.
As a final point, I think it can be argued that the Continental copies of
the Leiden Family glossaries which have been taken into exam show a
quite conservative Old English linguistic facies. The few Old Saxon and
Old High German features of these glosses seem to be due to scribal
influence. Moreover, their rendering into Low and High German
language is not consistent, as is also demonstrated by the high number of
corrupted forms.
The diffusion of these words in Germany seems to be restricted to
given geographical areas, particularly to the Old Saxon and Middle
Franconian regions. It can also be suggested that those glosses circulated
only in restricted entourages and were probably employed for an
exclusively didactic use.
112
Moreover, the same manuscript contains the gloss anosedo for ulcus (StS
V,107,20).
As a final point, I think it can be argued that the Continental copies of

the Leiden Family glossaries which have been taken into exam show a
quite conservative Old English linguistic facies. The few Old Saxon and
Old High German features of these glosses seem to be due to scribal
influence. Moreover, their rendering into Low and High German
language is not consistent, as is also demonstrated by the high number of
corrupted forms.
The diffusion of these words in Germany seems to be restricted to
given geographical areas, particularly to the Old Saxon and Middle
Franconian regions. It can also be suggested that those glosses circulated
only in restricted entourages and were probably employed for an
exclusively didactic use.
THE TRANSLATION OF PLANT NAMES IN THE
OLD ENGLISH HERBARIUM AND THE DURHAM GLOSSARY
Philip G. Rusche
The idea that medicine in Anglo-Saxon England was a <<mass of folly

and credulity» and «the darkest and deliquescent stage of a [sic] outdated
culture» has long been debunked, and a more nuanced appreciation has
been developed not only of the use of classical and early medieval
medical texts but also of the large and varied corpus of texts in the
vernacular 1• For example, the collection known as Bald's Leechbook
contains sections translated from such standard medical texts as the
Synopsis of Oribasius, the De medicamentis of Marcellus, the Physica
Plinii, and the Petrocellus, the last possibly even written in England2.
Another composite text, the Old English Pharmacopeia, presents a
careful compilation and translation of severa! standard early medieval
1
The first quotation is from Charles Singer in Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Magic,
Illustrated Specially from the Semi-Pagan Text 'Lacnunga', ed. by J.G. Grattan and C.
Singer (Publications of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum ns 3), Oxford
University Press, New York 1952, p. 92; the second is from his introduction to the reprint
of Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England. Being a Collection of
Documents for the most Part never before Printed, Illustrating the History of Science in
this Country before the Norman Conquest, ed. by O. Cockayne, 3 vols. (Rolls Series 35),
Longman, London 1864-1866; repr. Kraus, Nendeln 1965, I, p. xlvii. For the works
largely responsible for redressing such views, see especially Cameron, M.L., Anglo-Saxon
Medicine (CSASE 7), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993; id., <<The Sources of
Medical Knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England», Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1982), pp. 135-
55; id., <<Bald's Leechbook: Its Sources and their Use in its Compilation>>, Anglo-Saxon
England 12 (1983), pp. 153-82; and Voigts, L.E., <<Anglo-Saxon Plant Remedies and the
Anglo-Saxons>>, Isis 70 (1979), pp. 250-68.
2
Cameron, <<Bald's Leechbook>>, p. 164: <<The more I use the Petrocellus and the
Leechbook, the more I am struck by their similar forms, suggesting a common tradition in
the making of medical books, and a possible English origin for the Petrocellus>>. On the
Petrocellus, see now Glaze, F.E., <<Master-Student Medical Dialogues: The Evidence of
London, British Library, Sloane 2839>>, in P. Lendinara, L. Lazzari and M.A. D' Aronco
(eds.), Form and Content of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England in the Light of
Contemporary Manuscript Evidence (Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études
Médiévales. Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 39), Brepols, Turnhout 2007, pp. 467-94,
and, in the same volume, Maion, D., <<The Fortune of the Practica Petrocelli Salernitani
in England: New Evidence and Sorne Considerations», pp. 495-512.
396 PHILIP G. RUSCHE
collections of recipes drawn from plants and animals 3 . While most studies
of the vernacular texts have concentrated on establishing a list of their
classical and late antique sources or examining the "magical" elements in
the recipes, somewhat less attention has been given to the methods of
translating what must have been considered quite difficult technical
works. Cameron has noted that «a major problem for the Anglo-Saxon
translator of Latin medical texts must have been the vocabulary of
medical and pharmaceutical terms», and he highlighted what was
probably the most difficult task of the translator, rendering the Greek and
Latin plant names - a problem as difficult for modern researchers as it
must have been for the Anglo-Saxons, and, indeed, for the writers of the
earlier classical and late antique texts as well 4 . And yet the problem was
one that had to be dealt with by the translator, for the simple reason that
in preparing medicinal recipes, the precise plants had to be specified.
There was no possibility in this work of translating hwilum ward be
worde, hwilum andgit be andgite (sometimes word by word, sometimes
meaning by meaning), to use the famous words of King Alfred. In this
article I will concentrate on the Old English Herbarium and examine the
sources the translator could have turned to for a list of accepted
correspondences between Latin and Old English plant names, namely, the
Latin-Old English glossaries.
The Old English Herbarium is actually a translation of several
medical texts that frequently circulated together in the early Middle Ages:
ch. 1 is a translation of the De herba vettonica liber attributed to
Antonins Musa, chs. 2-132 are from the Herbarius of Pseudo-Apuleius,
chs. 133-85 are drawn from two Pseudo-Dioscoridean texts, the De
herbis femininis and the Curae herbarum5 . The Herbarium was
3
On this work, and the name Old English Phannacopeia, see most recently
D' Aronco, M.A., «The Transmission of Medical Knowledge in Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts: The Voices of Manuscripts>>, in Lendinara, Lazzari and D' Aronco (eds.),
Form and Content of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 35-58.
4
Cameron, <<Bald's Leechboolo>, pp. 172-5. Although Cameron was speaking
specifically about Bald's Leechbook, the same can be said conceming the Old English
Herbarium.
5
The first two are printed in Antonii Musae de herba vettonica liber. Pseudoapulei
Herbarius. Anonymi de taxone liber. Sexti Placiti liber medicinae ex animalibus [ ... ], ed.
byE. Howald and H.E. Sigerist (Corpus Medicorum Latinorum 4), Teubner, Leipzig and
Berlin 1927, pp. 1-11 and 13-225; the others are published in Kastner, H.F., «Pseudo-
Dioscoridis De herbis femininis», Hermes 31 (1896), pp. 578-636 and Mattei, S., Curae
herbarum. Edizione critica e traduzione, Tesi ài Dottorato dell'Università degli Studi di
Macerata, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia. Dottorato di ricerca in cultura dell'età
THE TRANSLATION OF PLANT NAMES 397
transmitted with a collection of medical recipes drawn primarily from

animal sources, known as the Medicina de quadrupedibus6 • Although the
unified collection, named the Old English Pharmacopeia, was
presumably translated as part of a single project, only the herbai part will
be considered here, since it is the translation of plant names that was
evidently so difficult for the translator7 . Plant names were never stable,
and even within a single language they varied as much from region to
region as they did through time. The Anglo-Saxon translator of the Old
English Herbarium must have recognized this problem, for he takes
special care to retain the original Latin and sometimes Greek names of
the plants alongside the Old English names 8 .
The practice of giving multiple synonyms for plant names follows a
long tradition going back at least to Pliny and Dioscorides in the first
century, both of whom incorporated variant names within their
descriptions of plants. Although in many cases they were presumably
drawing on persona! knowledge, multilingual lists of synonyms of plant
names also existed in antiquity for them to draw on9 . Words from these
lists were also added to each chapter of the Latin Herbarius of Pseudo-
Apuleius. This text forms the primary core, chs. 2-132, of the Old English
romanobarbarica, cielo VIII, triennio 1992-1995. For comments on these editions, see
D' Aronco, M.A., «The Transmission of Medical Knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England»,
pp. 36-37, note 6. The Old English texts are printed in The Old English Herbarium and
Medicina de Quadrupedibus, ed. by H.J. de Vriend (EETS os 286), Oxford University
Press, London, Oxford and Toronto 1984.
6
The work comprises the De taxone liber, in Singer's words, «a disgusting little
work on the badger>>, and the Liber medicinae ex animalibus, «an equally nauseating book
on medicines derived from animais» (from his Introduction to Cockayne, p. xxi), with De
moro, «a work on the mulberry, coming between the two».
7
De Vriend considers the two as separate works, but it seems more likely that they
were produced together in the same centre. See, for example, the discussion in D'Aron co,
«The Transmission of Medical Knowledge», where she shows that the manuscripts
descend from a single common original in both the herbai and animal portions. The name
Old English Pharmacopeia for the combined Herbarium and Medicina de quadrupedibus
is D' Aronco's and has been adopted here.
8
Throughout this article I use the masculine pronoun to refer to the translator, but it
should be noted that there is no certainty that the trans1ator was male.
9
On the lists of synonyms used by Dioscorides and Pliny, see Wellmann, M., «Die
Pflanzennamen des Dioskurides», Hermes 33 (1898), pp. 360-422; on the problem of
plant names, see the discussion and sources cited in my «The Sources for Plant Names in
Anglo-Saxon England and the Laud Herbai Glossary», in P. Dendle and A. Touwaide
(eds.), Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
2008, pp. 128-44, at 128-30.
Herbarium, and by comparison we can see how the translator handles the
multiple synonyms given in the Latin. For example, in the chapter on
horehound (Marrubium vulgare L.), the Herbarius reads
A Graecis dicitur prasion, alii eupatorion, alii filopaes, Aegyptii asteritam, profetae
erna tauru, alii afedros, alii gonos Oru, Romani marrubium, alii melissam, alii
ulceraria, alii camelopodium, alii nossotrofon dicunt.
(It is called prassion by the Greeks, others call it eupatorion, others philopaes, the
Egyptians asterita, the Prophets erna tauru, others afedros, others gonas Oru, the
Romans marrubium, others metissa, others ulceraria, others camelopodium, and
others nossotrofon) 10 .
The Anglo-Saxon translator often follows the same practice, although

he only records the Greek and Roman or Italian variants:
Wiô geposu 7 wiô pret man hefelice hrrece genim ôas wyrte ôe Grecas prassion 7
Romane marubium nemnaô 7 eac Angle harehune hataô [ ... ]11 .
(For a headcold and violent coughing, take the plant which Greeks cali prassion,
Romans call marrubium and the English also call "horehound" [ ... ]).
There are only twenty-one chapters in the Herbarium in which the

translator gives both a Greek and Latin name, and only in ten of these
does he also include an Old English name, but we can see a number of
concerns the Old English translator must have had in his approach to the
plant names of the Herbarium 12 • First, it is immediately clear that he
ignored the numerous synonyms for plants given in languages such as
Egyptian, Dacian, Punie, Gallic, and that of the "prophets". Only tho se
listed as Greek and either Roman or Italian were used. In fact, however,
this practice seems to have been a short-lived one for the translator. One
10
Antonii Musae de herba vettonica liber, ed by Howald and Sigerist, p. 95 (all
translations are my own unless otherwise noted). This passage, as are most of the lists of
synonyms in the Herbarius, is a Latin version of the Greek additions found in a number of
Dioscorides manuscripts; cf. the additions to prasion at Book III.105: npacrtov. oi ôi;
81'mm:6ptov, oi ()i; <ptÀÜrcatc; [ ... ] Aiyimnot acrn:picrna npo<pfjTUt alf.La l:UUpou, oi ()i;
a<pëÔpoc;, oi ()i; y6voc; "Qpou, "Prof.LUlot f.lUppou~tOUf.l: Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei De
materia medica libri quinque, ed. by M. Wellmann, 3 vols., Weidmann, Berlin 1907-
1914, II, p. 116.
11
The Old English Herbarium, ed. by de Vriend, p. 90 (ch. 46).
12
Chs. 42, 46, 50, 53, 54, 57, 90, 95, 98, and 118 include Greek, Latin and Old
English names; chs. 40, 44, 64, 65, 67, 71, 109, 110, 152, 179, and 185 include Greek and
Latin but no Old English.
finds trilingual names starting at ch. 40, then occurring quite frequently
until ch. 71, after which the practice seems to fail off. The translator
includes three names only rarely in the sections taken from the two
Pseudo-Dioscoridean works. In most of these chapters, we only find a
single Latin or perhaps Greek word, usually the one that heads the
chapter in the Latin Herbarius.
When we turn to the English names, we find a major difference in the
translator's approach. The translation of the Herbarium was presumably
made so that the standard works on herbai and animal pharmacology
could be available to a wider English audience, in D' Aronco's view,
«reminiscent of King Alfred' s policy of reforming Anglo-Saxon culture
by translating the books that had to be familiar to an educated man who
might not be able to understand Latin» 13 • If this is the case, then we
should expect to find English equivalents for ail the plant names given in
the text, precisely the sort of information that someone «who might not
be able to understand Latin» would require, yet this is not the case. It is
weil known that the translator omits a large number of vernacular names,
approximately sixty in ail 14 . Unlike his omission of the numerous Greek
or Latin variants found in the Latin text, however, the translator was
evidently not satisfied with the lack of an appropriate English name and
frequent! y left a blank space in the text to be filled in at a later time:
Wiô medran slite genim pas wyrte pe man scordean 7 oôrum narnan ( ... ) nemneô
[ ... ]15.
(For snake bite, take the plant which one calls scordean and by another name ( ... )
[ ... ]).
It is evident that these spaces were left by the original translator,

since in many cases they were preserved by both of the two illustrated
manuscripts of the text, London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius C.iii
13
D' Aronco, «The Transmission of Medical Knowledge», p. 56.
14
He omits Old English plant names for the following chs.: 40, 44, 55, 58, 61, 63-65,
67, 69, 72, 74, 92, 105, 108, 112, 116, 132, 134, 135, 138, 141, 143, 145-47, 149-53, 157-
64, 166-71, 173, 175-77, and 179-85. My list here differs from that given by D'Aronco,
<<The Transmission of Medical Knowledge», p. 47, note 55, in that she does not include
chs. 67 or 109, but I am taking berbenam and !ilium as Latin words rather than Old
English.
15
The Old English Herbarium, ed. by de Vriend, p. 112 (ch. 72). Of the chapters
listed in the previous footnote, ali include spaces for names to be added later except for
chs. 40, 44, 64, 65, 67, 103, 109, 110, 114, 132, 152, and 179.
and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 76 16 • A third manuscript, London,

British Library, Harley 585, which is unillustrated, ornits the spaces, and
in many chapters also ornits the words «oôrum naman», as does London,
British Library, Harley 6258B, a later copy that has been rearranged
alphabetically 17 •
The hesitation by the translator to write names that rnight be incorrect
(or not universally accepted) merely for the purposes of completing the
translation spaces reveal his conscientiousness in recognizing the need for
an authoritative and accepted Old English terrninology. And yet, in
translating such a text the translator is taking upon himself the authority
to render Latin medical vocabulary in English terrninology. W e must
wonder, therefore, at this hesitation, for an obvious solution would be
simply to anglicize the Latin plant names by replacing Latin endings with
English ones. Such is the case with Old English cerfille, cylepenie,
cymen, lilie, petersilie from Latin cerefolium, celidonia, cuminum, lilium,
and petroselinum, among many others. While it may be that these forms
had already been established in English before the translator was
working, the principle was certainly one that he must have understood,
but he nevertheless avoided it. lt may of course be simply that the
translator did not know what plant the Latin text was referring to, either
out of ignorance of medical practice or simply ignorance of non-native
plants, but 1 hesitate to ascribe so many omissions to his lack of
knowledge. D' Aronco has emphasized the intelligence of the translator in
working through the complex Latin text, and Voigts has shown that
numerous non-indigenous plants from the Mediterranean made their way
to England and were in sorne cases likely cultivated there in monastic
gardens 18 .
16
It should be noted that the scribe of Vitellius C.iii seems at first not to have
understood to leave a space, for in chs. 55, 58, 61, 63, 69, and 74, a space is found only in
Hatton 76.
17
For descriptions of these manuscripts, see The Old English Herbarium, ed. by de
Vriend, pp. xi-xxxviii. See also Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-
Saxon, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl., 1990, nos. 219, 231, and 328.
Facsimiles of ali except Hatton 76 are in vol. 1 of Doane, A.N., Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts
in Microfiche Facsimile, Center of Medieval and Earl y Renaissance Studies, Binghamton,
NY 1994. A facsimile of Vitellius C.iii is in M.A. D'Aronco and M.L. Cameron (eds.),
The Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia: British Library Cotton Vitellius C.iii (EEMF
27), Rosenkilde and Bagger, Copenhagen 1998.
18
D' Aronco, «The Transmission of Medical Knowledge», and Voigts, «Anglo-
Saxon Plant Remedies».
I think, rather, that the spaces reveal not that the translator was
unaware of what plants the text referred to or unable to anglicize a Latin
name, but that he recognized that in a text in which there was a need for
precise and specifie references between the words and the plants they
signified, he needed an authoritative and standardized list of equivalent
English terms. The heavy use of medical texts in Anglo-Saxon England,
even discounting those translated into English, would have necessitated
the existence of such accepted or authoritative equivalences between the
Latin or Greek and English plant names and the actual plant, whether
known from native plant species, grown in monastic herb gardens, or as
one of the numerous items traded across the Mediterranean and Europe 19 .
It should be emphasized too that this realization seems to have come
upon the translator slowly as he worked. It has already been pointed out
that starting at ch. 40 the translator began a new practice of including
both Greek and Latin names for plants, a practice which he kept up for
many of the next thirty chapters, and never in fact abandoned altogether.
It seems no coïncidence that it is also around this time that he first began
omitting English names and then shortly afterwards implemented the
novel solution of leaving a space in the text. In other words, it would
seem that the complexity of the plant names was a problem that he
realized only after starting the translation and one which he apparently
decided was too complex for him, leaving it for others to handle later20 .
Having said that, and recognizing that the translator was keenly
aware of the difficulties in translating the plant names, we must ask
where he could have turned for authoritative translations of Greek and
Latin plant names into Old English. There are in fact a number of bi- and
tri-lingual lists of plants known from Anglo-Saxon England that could
have supplied such a source for the translator. Latin and Greek plant
names with Old English glosses are found in the following glossaries,
almost ali of which come from Canterbury or were compiled from
Canterbury material, from the school of Theodore and Hadrian in the late
seventh century to the early twelfth century:
19
On the cultivation and trade in herbs, see especially Voigts, «Anglo-Saxon Plant
Remedies». On the trade in herbs, see Miller, J.I., The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire,
Oxford University Press, Oxford 1969.
20
More work should be done on why he decided to include certain Greek or Latin
variants and not others and why he did not universally leave a space in chapters that had
no English plant name.
'
Epinal-Erfurt Glossary (late seventh century, Canterbury) 21
Leiden Glossary (late seventh century, Canterburyi2
Corpus Glossary (early ninth century, Canterburyi3
Cleopatra Glossary (second quarter of the tenth century, Canterbury) 24
Brussels Glossary (early eleventh century, Canterbury) 25
Antwerp-London Glossary (early eleventh century, Canterbury or
Abingdoni 6
Laud Plant Glossary (early twelfth century, unknown centre)27
Durham Plant Glossary (early twelfth century, Durham) 28 •
21
Preserved in Épinal, Bibliothèque Municipale 72 and Erfurt/Gotha, Universitats-
und Forschungsbibliothek, Dep. Erf., Cod. Ampl. 2° 42, and printed in Corpus
glossariorum Latinorum a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum, ed. by G. Goetz, 7 vols., Teubner,
Leipzig 1888-1923; repr. Hakkert, Amsterdam 1965, V, pp. 337-401 (henceforth CGL);
an edition omitting the Latin-Latin entries was published in Old English Glosses in the
Épinal-Eifurt Glossary, ed. by J.D. Pheifer, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1974. Note
that the dates and centres provided in the list above refer to the glossaries and they may,
therefore, differ somewhat from the date and place of origin of the manuscripts containing
them.
22
Preserved in Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. Q. 69 and printed in A
Late Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary preserved in the Library of the Leiden
University, ed. by J.H. Hessels, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1906.
23
Preserved in Cambridge, Corpus Christ College 144 and printed in The Corpus
Glossary, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1921.
24
Preserved in London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A.iii and printed in The
Cleopatra Glossaries, ed. by Ph.G. Rusche, unpubl. PhD. diss., Yale University 1996.
25
Preserved in Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 1828-30 and printed in Anglo-Saxon
and Old English Vocabularies, ed. by T. Wright and R.P. Wülcker, 2 vols., Trübner,
London 1884; repr. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1968, 1, cols. 284-
303, and in my The Cleopatra Glossaries, pp. 562-66. Quotations and numbering here
come from the latter edition. See also Manuscripts in the Law Countries, ed. by R.H.
Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker (Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 13),
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2006.
26
Preserved in Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.2 and London, British Library,
Additional 32246 and published in The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus
MS 32 and British Museum MS Additional 32,246, ed. by L. Kindschi, unpubl. PhD. diss.,
Stanford University, 1955. A new, much corrected version by David W. Porter has
appeared: The Antwerp-London Glossaries. The Latin and Latin-Old English
Vocabularies from Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus 16.2 - London, British Library
Add. 32246, 1. Text and Indexes, ed. by D. W. Porter (Publications of the Dictionary of
Old English Series 8), Pontifical lnstitute of Medieval Studies, Toronto 2011. The
manuscript seems to have been written at Abingdon but is heavily based on Canterbury
materials.
27
Preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Mise. 567 and printed in The Laud
Herbai Glossary, ed. by J. Stracke, Rodopi, Amsterdam 1974. 1 am currently preparing a
new edition of this and the Durham Glossary.
The first two of these glossaries contain material that was evidently
compiled in the school of Theodore and Hadrian at Canterbury in the late
seventh centurl9 . In general it contains plant names only incidentally,
although there is a small group of entries taken from a chapter on plants
from the so-called Hermeneumata Pseudo-Dositheana, a late-antique
bilingual schoolbook which contained in sorne versions up to four
sections -an alphabetical glossary, a glossary arranged by subject matter
(capitula), simfole dialogues on daily life, and simple stories such as
Aesop's fables 0• There is no evidence that the alphabetical glossary, the
dialogues or the simple stories were ever known in England, but the
glossary arranged by subject matter enjoyed sorne success as a source for
English glossaries 31 • A version of it was supplied with Old English
glosses (with the original Greek headwords usually being dropped) and is
found as ch. XLVII of the Leiden Glossary as well as appearing scattered
throughout the alphabetically arranged Épinal-Erfurt Glossary32 • Sirnilar
entries from the Hermeneumata show up in the Corpus Glossary,
compiled largely from the same material as Épinal-Erfurt, though
augmented and further alphabetized, and in related sections of the
Cleopatra glossaries. Each of these preserves entries from the De herbis
or De oleribus sections of the Hermeneumata. The First Cleopatra
Glossary also includes a second list of plant names that seems to have
connections not with the Hermeneumata but with a list of medicinal herbs
28
Preserved in Durham, Cathedral Library, Hunter 100 and printed in Das Durhamer
Pflanzenglossar, ed. by B. von Lindheim, Poppinghaus, Bochum-Langendreer 1941; repr.
Johnson Repr. Corporation, New York 1967.
29
Lapidge, M., «The School of Theodore and Hadrian», Anglo-Saxon England 15
(1986), pp. 45-72, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature, 600-899, The Hambledon Press,
London and Rio Grande, OH 1996, pp. 141-68 and addenda pp. 502-3.
30
Severa! redactions of this glossary are printed in CGL III. See also Dionisotti,
A.C., «From Ausonius' Schooldays?: A Schoolbook and its Relatives», The Journal of
Roman Studies 72 (1982), pp. 83-125.
31
See Der Vocabularius Sancti Galli in der angelsachsischen Mission, ed. by G.
Baesecke, Niemeyer, Halle a.d.S. 1933 and Lindsay, W.M., The Corpus, Épinal, Erfurt
and Leyden Glossaries (Publications of the Philological Society 8), Oxford University
Press, Oxford 1921.
32
A list of the entries in Épinal-Erfurt that are taken from the Hermeneumata
Glossary can be found in Lindsay, The Corpus, Épinal, Erfurt and Leyden Glossaries, pp.
17-20.
that was also available in early Anglo-Saxon England33 . This same list is
found in fuller form in the Brussels Glossary, containing 217 plant names
under the heading Nomina herbarum greee et latine 34 • The Antwerp
Glossary has a large section of plant names drawn from Book XVII of
Isidore's Etymologiae. The two twelfth-century glossaries, the Laud and
the Durham glossaries, share material with all the earlier glossaries.
Entries going back to those in Épinal-Erfurt are found in both, and the
Laud Glossary has small groups of entries that are parallel with the
Durham Glossary.
With this amount of material preserving Old English renderings for
Greek and Latin plant names in existence from the seventh through the
twelfth century, it would seem likely that there would be sorne
connection between the terminology in the Herbarium and that in the
glossaries, and yet there has been relatively little examination of this
relationship. Perhaps the first to suggest a connection was Cockayne, who
edited the Old English medical texts, including the Herbarium. One of
Cockayne' s most difficult problems in producing his edition was the
identification of the plant names given in the medical texts, and he made
extensive use of Anglo-Saxon glossaries for elues to which plants the Old
English names referred. He suggested that the Durham, Laud and
Brussels glossaries all drew from the Herbarium, but this view led him to
discount any value in them, since his interest lay only in establishing the
text of the Herbarium 35 • On the other hand, Lindheim, the editor of the
Durham Glossary, did not think that the Herbarium was a source for the
glossary at all, though he does refer to it quite frequently in his notes to
individual entries. Lindheim preferred to see the glossary as a descendent
of a trilingual Greek-Latin Dioscorides glossary, to which English glosses
33
See my «Dioscorides' De materia medica and Late Old English Herbai
Glossaries» in C.P. Biggam (ed.), From Earth to Art: The Many Aspects of the Plant-
World in Anglo-Saxon England, Rodopi, Amsterdam 2003, pp. 181-94.
34
In addition to the Latin-Old English Brussels Glossary (ff. 94v-95v), Brussels,
Bibliothèque Royale 1828-30 also contains the Asaru Glossary (ff. 36r-46v), a Greek-
Latin medical g1ossary containing a large number of plant names; see my <<The Sources
for Plant Names in Anglo-Saxon England>>, p. 134. This glossary is related to the medico-
botanical g1ossary printed in CGL III, pp. 549-79 and will be printed in my edition of the
Durham and Laud Plant Glossaries.
35
Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, ed. by Cockayne, I, p.
lxxxvii: <<These two last [i.e., the Durham and Laud Glossaries], like the Brussels gl., have
drawn from the Herbarium, and where they agree with it are not to be accounted as
independent confirmations>>.
were added while the original Greek headwords were dropped36 . He

refers to the Hermeneumata as another example of the adaption of a
Greek-Latin glossary in England and to the Nomina herbarum greee et
latine section of the Brussels Glossary, but does not mention either of
these other glossaries as possible sources for Durham. Neither Cockayne
nor Lindheim, however, devote much space to a discussion of sources,
nor do they systematically compare entries in glossaries with each other
or with any medical text, leaving their statements seeming more like
hunches or guesswork than definitive.
More detailed comparison of the relationship between the glossaries
and the Herbarium was carried out by Maria D' Aronco, who has shown
that the later the glossary, the more overlap there is with the terminology
of the Herbarium 37 . For example, Épinal-Erfurt shares 31 and Corpus
shares 36 names out of a total of 128 Old English names in the
Herbarium. The Durham Glossary, on the other hand, shares 127 of the
128 names in the Herbarium. In the middle ofthe two extremes, we find
correspondences of 64 plant names in the Cleopatra Glossary, 69 in the
Antwerp Glossary and 84 in the Brussels Glossary 38 . These numbers lead
her to agree with Cockayne that the Brussels, Durham and Laud
glossaries are dependent on the translation of the Herbarium, and she
uses this to lend support to her hypothesis that the Herbarium was
translated in the late tenth century, the date of the earliest manuscript,
rather than the eighth as de Vriend suggested39 •
There are sorne problems with all three positions. It is quite hard to
evaluate the merits of Cockayne's or Lindheim's arguments in any detail
36
Das Durhamer Pjlanzenglossar, ed. by Lindheim, pp. 5-6. This glossary would be
presumably quite similar to the one I showed existed in England in «Dioscorides' De
materia medica and Late Old English Herbai Glossaries».
37
D'Aronco, M.A. «L'erbario anglosassone, un'ipotesi sulla data della traduzione»,
Romanobarbarica 13 (1994-1995), pp. 325-65, at 349-53.
38
It should be noted that D' Aronco counts the Épinal and the First Erfurt glossaries
individually, and she also distinguishes the plant names in the section of the Herbarium
taken from Pseudo-Apuleius (chs. 1-132) from those in the Pseudo-Dioscoridean section
(chs. 133-85). Such specifies are less important for my argument here, and so I have
conflated the numbers.
39
D' Aronco, «L'erbario anglosassone, un'ipotesi», p. 352: «Per questa ragione i
silenzi dei glossari più antichi non possono essere sottovalutati. Sembra evidente che i
!oro compilatori non potevano disporre né di trattati di medicina dell'ampiezza del
Lœceboc né delle traduzioni delle due grandi fitofarmacopee come invece si poté fare più
tardi come ben dimostrano i glossari di Bruxelles, Durham e Laud che dipendono
massicciamente dalla traduzione dell' erbario>>.
because they made little more than statements of opinion, but D' Aronco's
numbers are irrefutable in showing a growing correspondence between
the later glossaries and the Herbarium. As she notes, however, the
relationship between the glossaries is complex and intricate, and the
addition of the Herbarium only increases the complexity. The first
question that might be asked is why make the division of importance at
the Brussels Glossary' s 84 corresponding plant names, a much smaller
figure than the 127 of Durham. It helps support a late tenth-century date
for the translation of the Herbarium if it can be shown that later
glossaries have a much increased correspondence with it, but the Antwerp
Glossary is contemporary with Brussels and its correspondence with the
plant names of the Herbarium is barely greater than the early tenth-
century Cleopatra glossaries.
A larger question, however, is determining in which direction the
correspondence between the Herbarium and the glossaries points: did the
Herbarium act as a source for Brussels, Durham and Laud, or was the
reliance the other way around? D' Aronco herself notes that there seems
to have been a mutual exchange of information. For example, she shows
that both the Brussels and Durham glossaries contain the following
entries:
Brussels Glossary no. 483: Scolimbos: se umbrada pisteZ

Durham Glossary no. 312: Scolimbos . se unbrade thistel
The plant scolimbos appears in Herbarium, ch. 157, without an Old

English equivalent, but a reader of the twelfth century added «se unbrade
pistel» in the table of contents, clearly drawn from a glossary entry like
the ones quoted above40 . This is not the only later addition to the text. For
example, in ch. 135, a very early hand filled in the blank space with
suôernewuda as a translation of abrotanum (southemwood, Artemisia
abrotanum L.) and henep was added as a translation of cannane silfatica
(hemp, Cannabis sativa L.) 41 • Others were added in the twelfth century,
such as sundcorn for litospermon (common gromwell, Lithospermum
40
The English name, «the un-broad thistle», is interpreted by Bierbaumer as Cnicus
ferox L. (i.e., Cirsiumferox [L.] DC.). The Latin apparently refers to the artichoke thistle
(Cynara Cardunculus L.): Bierbaumer, P., Der botanische Wortschatz des Altenglischen.
III Teil. Der botanische Wortschatz in altenglischen Glossen (Grazer Beitrage zur
Englischen Philologie 3), Lang, Frankfurt a.M., Beru and Las Vegas 1979, s. v. pisteZ.
41
See D' Aronco, «The Transmission of Medical Knowledge>>, p. 47.
officinale L.) 42 • AU these additions correspond to entries found in

Antwerp, Brussels, Durham and Laud43 •
While these entries show that sorne readers at least were using
glossary material to fill in the blanks left by the original translator, what
of the translator himself? Did he draw on glossary material for the plant
names included in the text, or did the later glossaries drew on the
Herbarium, or is it a mixture of the two? The position of Cockayne,
supported by D' Aronco, can in sorne cases, I think, be maintained. For
example, there are a few entries in the Durham Glossary that seem to
point to the Herbarium as a direct source.
Durham Glossary no. 133: Cotiledon .i. umbilicus ueneris

Durham Glossary no. 200: Hypericon corion
Durham Glossary no. 311: Solago min or id est eliotropion
Compare these with the relevant chapters in the Herbarium:
Deos wyrt ôe Grec as co tiledon 7 Romane umbilicum ueneris nemnaô [ ... ]
Wip ô~t r~ngcwyrmas dergen ymb nafolan genim pas wyrte ]Je man solâgo minor 7
oprum naman [~liotropion] nemneô gedrigede, [ ... ]
Deos wyrt ]Je man hypericon 7 oôrum naman corion nemnep [ ... ]44 .
(The plant which the Greeks cali cotyledon and the Romans cali umbilicum ueneris)
(For ringworms harming the nave!, take the plant which one called solago minor and
by another name heliotrope)
(This plant which one calls hypericon and by another name corion)
42
As D' Aronco, «The Transmission of Medical Knowledge», p. 48, notes, the gloss
is an error for sunnancorn. Presumably the form in which the corrector of Vitellius C.iii
saw it was similar to the Laud Glossary entry «Litospermon suncorn>>. It should be noted
that the entry in Bierbaumer under sundcorn «Lituspermon .i. saxifraga: sundcorn>>, cited
by D' Aronco («The Transmission of Medical Knowledge>>, p. 48, note 58), is from an
interlinear gloss on the Asaru Glossary (see note 34 above) that is found in Brussels,
Bibliothèque Royale 1828-30, ff. 36r-46v, but is not from what we have been calling the
Brussels Glossary here, namely the Latin-Old English glossary under the heading Nomina
herbarum greee et latine.
43
See Bierbaumer, Der botanische Wortschatz, s. vv.
44
The Old English Herbarium, ed. by de Vriend, pp. 90, 108, 194, respectively (chs.
44, 65 and 152).
In these three cases, the chapters in the Herbarium have Greek and
Latin botanical terms but no Old English, and in this they agree with
Durham. Furthermore, eliotropion is not equated with solago minor in
any of the English glossaries, nor their Greek-Latin sources. It is,
however, found in both the Old English Herbarium and its source, the
Herbarius of Pseudo-Apuleius.
There is another example that seems to show a close verbal parallel
between the glossary and the Herbarium. Chs. 11 artemesia (wormwood,
Artemisia vulgare L.) and 12 artemesia tagantes (tansy, Tanacetum
vulgare L.) of the Herbarium seem originally to have been conflated into
a single chapter in the exemplar of all surviving copies. Neither Vitellius
C.iii nor Hatton 76 have illustrations for artemesia tagantes, for example,
nor do they leave a space for a title between the two chapters45 . Vitellius
C.iii also ornits the heading for ch. 12 from its table of contents. Hatton
76 and Harley 585, however, record separate headings for the two
chapters:
XI. Herba artemesia p~t is mugwyrt [ ... ]

XII. Herba artemesia tagantes p~t ys opres cynnes mucgwyrt [ .. .t 6
.
(XI. The plant artemesia, that is, mugwort

XII. The plant artemesia tagantes, that is, mugwort of a second type)
These readings are quite sirnilar to what we find in the Durham

Glossary:
Durham Glossary no. 41: Artemesia. mugvyrt

Durham Glossary no. 46: Artemesia tagantes . thet is othres cynnes mugvyrt
The wording of the index to ch. 12 is paralleled with that of the text
of the chapter itself:
Wiô bl~dran sar 7 wiô p~t man ne m~ge gemfgan genim pyss~ wyrte seaw pe man
eac mugwyrt nemneô, seo ys swapeah oôres cynnes [ ... ]47 .
(For a sore in the bladder and lest anyone be unable to urinate, take the juice of the
plant which one calls mugwort, that is, however, of the second kind).
45
See ibid., p. 290 and D' Aronco, «The Transmission of Medical Knowledge», p. 40
for detailed descriptions of the manuscripts at this point.
46
The Old English Herbarium, ed. by de Vriend, p. 4.
47
Ibid., p. 56 (ch. 12).
The agreement between index and text here seems to suggest that the
indication of artemesia tagantes as mugwort oôres cynnes is original to
the translation, and is another instance where the compiler of the Durham
glossary has borrowed from the Herbarium.
Having said this, however, I do not think that the Herbarium was in
general a source for the Durham Glossary, nor for Laud or Brussels. First,
the three Greek-Latin entries quoted above stand as exceptions to the rest
of the entries in Durham by giving no Old English glosses. There are in
fact only six en tries in Durham, out of a total of 342, that do not have Old
English glosses 48 . Another ofthese, Durham 18 aglaofotis, has no glass at
all, which perhaps reflects the H erbarium, ch. 171, where the same plant
name occurs but is accompanied by no glass in Latin or English. There is,
however, no correspondence between the Herbarium and the other two
entries in Durham that contain no English:
Durham Glossary no. 59: Beta . benedicta

Durham Glossary no. 158: Eruci. sinapis
Neither of these herbs appears in the Herbarium, although they do

appear in other glossaries49 . The entry for artemesia tagantes can be
explained as being a singular case where one plant name clearly referred
to more than one plant. In fact, there are three kinds of artemesia
specified in the Herbarium. Ch. 13 contains recipes for artemesia
leptefilos. The Durham Glossary, however, lists four types of artemesia.
In addition to the two entries quoted above, we find:
Durham Glossary no. 48: Artimesia . hilde

Durham Glossary no. 231: Leptofilos. mugvyrt
To these we can perhaps also add the following entry with yet
another name for artemesia tagantes:
Durham Glossary no. 319: Tanacetum l tanaceta. helde.
48
Besides the three already quoted, these are nos. 18 Aglaofotis, 59 Beta benedicta,
158 Eruci sinapis. I am not counting entry no. 222 Lingua bubilla, since it seems to be a
continuation of the previous entry no. 221 <<Lingua bobule . oxantunge>> rather than a
separate g1oss.
49
See CGL VI-VII, s.vv.
AU these entries can be paralleled in other Anglo-Saxon glossaries 50 ,

and this is precisely the problem for seeing the Herbarium as a major
source for the Durham Glossary. For although 127 of the 128 plant names
in the Herbarium do in fact appear in Durham, the entire Durham
Glossary contains 342 entries, and almost all of them can be traced to
other glossaries. These glossaries are much more plausible as sources for
Durham, for it would make little sense to think that the compiler chose
127 entries from the Herbarium and then went to earlier gloss material of
the same exact type for the other entries. Rather, Durham is the end of the
line that began with the Épinal-Erfurt and Leiden glossaries and grew
over the centuries, and it is this material that was put to use by the
translator of the Herbarium.
It is perhaps helpful to lay out a chronology of the growth of Old
English plant names, at least as far as glossaries and medical texts are
concemed, so that the true sources of the Durham Glossary and their
relationship with the Herbarium can be understood. First, in the late
seventh century, one or more Greek-Latin Hermeneumata glossaries were
brought to England and mined as a source of vocabulary for a multitude
of different topics, including plants. It should be noted that these entries,
whether in the original Greek-Latin Hermeneumata or the English
glossaries are not medical by nature, even though there is of course sorne
overlap with medicinal herbs, but they do represent the earliest
translations of plant names into Old English. In his study of the plant
names in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, Sauer has noted that the majority of
the words, c. 109 of them, are native. According to Sauer, «among the
native plant names, several chronological layers can be distinguished.
Only five names can be traced back to Indo-European [ ... ]. 23 [ ... ] had
their origin in Germanie [ ... ]. Ca. 22 go back to West Germanie [ ... ].
Finally 59 plant names first appear in 0E»51 • Most of the latter are
°
5
Cf. Brussels Glossary nos. 297 «Artemesia: mugwyrt>>, 300 «leptefilos: hymelic>>,
326 «Artmesia: tagantes: helde>>, 413 «Tenedissa: helde>>; First Cleopatra Glossary L343
«Leptefilos: hymlic»; Laud Glossary nos. 152 «Artemesia .i. mugwyrt . .i. neuponticum.
mater herbarum>>, 1450 «Tenesita .i. helde>>, 1479 «Tantes .i. artemesia>>. The compiler of
Durham seems to have used the authority of the Herbarium to correct the numerous
glosses to the three types of artemesia, although he does preserve the gloss hilde in no.
48.
51
Sauer, H., <<Old English Plant Names in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary: Etymology,
Ward-Formation and Semantics>>, in W. Fallmer and H.-J. Schmid (eds.), Words,
Lexemes, Concepts - Approaches to the Lexicon: Studies in Honour of Leonhard Lipka,
Narr, Tübingen 1999, pp. 23-38, at 25.
compounds formed on the basis of sorne physical characteristic of the

plant or sorne use to which it was commonly put. Sauer finds only
nineteen words showing Latin influence, whether loanwords or loan
formations, and even five of these he suggests were borrowed in the pre-
Anglo-Saxon period. These findings suggest a very different motivation
on the part of those who were responsible for composing the early
English glossaries from the translator of the Old English Herbarium: the
goal seems to have been finding a suitable existing English term that
could be appropriated to the plant, with less of an emphasis or concern
that the specifie plant would be recognized by the English term.
Whatever the intentions of the early compilers of the English glossaries,
these plant names became the common core of accepted botanical
terminology, and they are found in ali later plant name glossaries,
including the medical ones. Many of them, in fact, are still in use todal 2 .
Next, sometime between the seventh century and the early tenth- it
is unfortunately difficult to be more precise, but I think the evidence
suggests the late seventh century - medical botanical terminology was
brought to England. This may have been in the form of a list of
multilingual synonyms, primarily Greek and Latin, or perhaps a text such
as the Herbarius of Pseudo-Apuleius that included the multilingual
synonyms integrated into the text. This Greek-Latin list of plant names
was gradually transformed into a list of mostly Latin headwords with Old
English definitions and became the dominant source for plant names in
Old English. This list shows up in varions forms in glossaries such as
Cleopatra and Brussels, which also incorporate the earlier
Hermeneumata-derived words 53 • It is this glossary of medical botanical
vocabulary, with the Hermeneumata entries incorporated, that I suggest
was the primary source for the translator of the Old English Herbarium,
accounting for why so many plant names in Brussels appear in the
Herbarium as weil. If the relevant sections of the Cleopatra Glossary
included entries beginning with more letters of the alphabet than f
through o, then presumably it would have a higher rate of correspondence
as weil. This scenario also explains why the Antwerp Glossary,
contemporary with Brussels, bas a much smaller number of entries that
52
Ibid., p. 27: c. 47 herb names are still in use today.
53
This is the source designated by the marginal notation leaf in First Cleopatra and
the section in Brussels headed Nomina herbarum greee et latine. The inflected forms that
appear in the Brussels Glossary, such as felicem and gramina, may support the suggestion
that the original1ist was derived from a text as opposed to a glossary.
can be compared to the Herbarium. It drew its plant names from Isidore's
Etymologies, not from the medical botanical glossary.
This glossary was also the primary source for the Durham Glossary
and a primary source for the Laud Glossary. Since both of these
glossaries are devoted solely to plants or medical-botanical terminology,
they preserve a greater amount of the original plant glossary thau is found
in Cleopatra or Brussels, and thus, there is a large overlap in plant names
between these two glossaries and the Herbarium. It is not that they were
derived from the Herbarium but that they all drew from the same source
of plant names. This is why the Durham Glossary is also so much larger
thau it would be had it solely drawn from the Herbarium. Almost every
entry in Durham is found in the relevant sections of earlier glossaries,
whether Brussels, Cleopatra or Épinal-Erfurt. It should be emphasized
that none of this invalidates the earlier suggestion that the entries
discussed above were taken from the Herbarium, for the evidence clearly
shows that the compiler of the Durham Glossary was as conscientious as
the translator of the Herbarium. In other words, he drew on the
authoritative glossaries that he had access to, but he also cross-referenced
the entries with the Herbarium and added glosses and entries from it as
needed. This would only be expected as the Durham Glossary occurs
among several other medical texts and was clearly intended to be used in
that context.
Finally, we can turn to what this hypothesis might suggest about the
origin of the glossary. D' Aronco has sought to use the correspondence
with the glossaries as part of her proof that the Herbarium was translated
in the late tenth century. I think a date in the second half of the tenth
century has much to recommend it, given both the date of the earliest
manuscript and the general amount of translation being carried out in this
period, but 1 do not think we can use the date of the Brussels Glossary as
a terminus ante quem, since it was not drawn from the Herbarium, and
the glossary as preserved in Brussels 1828-30 is clearly a copy of a
previously existing glossary; it is impossible to know at which point it
acquired the precise form it has in that manuscript. The same, in fact, can
be said for the Durham Glossary, which seems to be a relatively
straightforward copy of an earlier glossary, in spite of its Anglo-Norman
orthography54 •
54
One sign that the Durham Glossary was not compiled, or one might say,
"composed" by the scribe of the Durham manuscript is that a version of it was used in the
Laud Glossary, which, although contemporary, was not copied at Durham.
If the glossaries provide less help in the dating of the Herbarium than
could be wished, they are perhaps more suggestive of a place of origin for
the translation project. As seen above, almost all the glossary material we
have considered, notably Épinal-Erfurt, Cleopatra and Brussels, all of
which made heavy use of the plant name entries in both the
Hermeneumata glossaries and the botanical medical glossary, are from
Canterbury. It is of course quite true that material could be disseminated
to other centres, but should be remembered that the Antwerp Glossary,
which is part of a group of manuscripts copied in Abingdon, though
heavily dependent on Canterbury materials, did not make use of the
medical botanical glossaries available at Canterbury.
Even the Durham Glossary seems to have a plausible Canterbury
connection. The manuscript in which it is found, Durham, Cathedral
Library, Hunter 100, is well known as a miscellany of medical and
computistical treatises and includes a number of illustrations, and is
perhaps most distinguished by being partly written by Symeon of
Durham55 • The manuscript is one of a number of books copied in the first
decades of the twelfth century, a time when Durham was particularly
dependent on Canterbury for sources of texts, as well as scribes and
illustrations 56 . It would seem that the Canterbury botanical glosses were
among the numerous patristic texts and service books that made their way
from Canterbury to Durham in the bishopric of William of St Carilef. If
we add to the textual connections the probability that one of the two main
manuscripts of the text, Vitellius C.iii was itself produced at Canterbury,
55
See Gullick, M., «The Scribes of the Durham Cantor's Book (Durham, Dean and
Chapter Library, MS B.IV.24) and the Durham Martyrology Scribe», in D. Rollason, M.
Harbey and M. Prestwich (eds.), Anglo-Norman Durham 1093-1193, Boydell,
Woodbridge 1994, pp. 93-109 and id., «The Hand of Symeon of Durham: Further
Observations on the Durham Martyrology Scribe» in D. Rollason (ed.), Symeon of
Durham: Historian of Durham and the North (Studies in North-Eastern History 1), Shaun
Tyas, Stamford, Lincs. 1998, pp. 14-31.
56
See Lawrence, A., «The Influence of Canterbury on the Collection and Production
of Manuscripts at Durham in the Ang1o-Norman Period>>, in A. Borg and A. Martindale
(eds.), The Vanishing Past: Studies of Medieval Art, Liturgy and Metrology Presented to
Christopher Hohler (British Archaeological Reports. International Series 3), British
Archaeological Reports, Oxford 1981, pp. 95-104; ead., «Manuscripts of Early Ang1o-
Norman Canterbury>>, in N. Coldstream and P. Draper (eds.), Medieval Art and
Architecture at Canterbury before 1220, British Archaeological Association Conference
Transactions 5 (1982), pp. 101-11; and her [A. Lawrence-Mathers] Manuscripts in
Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, Boydell, Woodbridge 2003.
I would suggest that it is there that we should look for the most plausible
home for the translation57 .
57
I would like to thank Maria Amalia D' Aronco, Patrizia Lendinara and Loredana
Lazzari for organizing the conference 'Rethinking and Recontextualizing Glosses: New
Perspectives in the Study of Late Anglo-Saxon Glossography', at which an earlier version
of this paper was given. Their comments and those of the other participants were
especially helpful. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor D' Aronco, whose work
on the Herbarium, it should be clear, is the basis for much of my own.
MAKING SENSE OF APPARENT CHAOS:
RECONTEXTUALISING THE SO-CALLED
«NOTE ON THE NAMES OF THE WINDS» (B 24.5)
Loredana Teresi
Wh en Angus Cameron compiled his «List of Old English Texts» 1 for

the Dictionary of Old English Project, he used Ker' s «Index of the
Contents of the Manuscripts» as one of the main quarries of information
for his compilation2 • One of the entries in Ker's index reads «Winds,
Names of the» and lists five manuscripts containing such an item3 :
1. Cambridge, University Library, Kk.3.21, f. 104v (s. xi medl;

2. London, British Library, Cotton Galba A.ii, iii, f. 1295 ;
1
Cameron, A., «A List of Old English Texts>>, in R. Frank and A. Cameron (eds.), A
Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
Toronto 1973, pp. 25-306. See also the digital list of texts published at:
http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/st/.
2
Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl., 1990, pp. 517-50. See Cameron, «A List of Old
English Texts>>, p. 27.
3
The date provided with each entry in the present list is the one assigned by Ker to
the relevant item. The dating of the manuscript containing the item is given in the
footnotes.
4
Ker, Catalogue, no. 24,c. Ker dates the manuscript to s. x/xi but assigns the item in
question to the middle of the eleventh century. The manuscript is no. 23 in Gneuss, H.,
Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments
Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (MRTS 241), Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2001: s. xi 1 or xi med., prob. Abingdon. It contains a
copy of Boethius' s De consolatione Philosophiae, accompanied by an English revision of
Remigius's Commentary. On this subject, see Godden, M., «The Latin Commentary
Tradition and the Old English Boethius: The Present State of the Question>>, paper given
at the first annual symposium of The Alfredian Boethius Project, University of Oxford,
July 2003 (retrieved from: http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/boethius/Symposium2003.html);
and Bolton, D.K., «The Study of the Consolation of Philosophy in Anglo-Saxon
England>>, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 44 (1977), pp. 33-78.
5
Ker, Catalogue, no. 156. Ker explains that this manuscript consisted of a collection
of sermons bound in two volumes, to which additional Old English texts (notes, recipes,
and runes) were added at sorne point. Although the codex was totally destroyed by fire,
partial descriptions remain in Wanley and Smith's catalogues. The latter, in particular,
mentions 'Nomina ventorum, Saxonice' to be found on f. 129: Smith, T., Catalogus
Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecœ Cottonianœ, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford 1696;
available in facsimile as Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library, 1696, ed.
416 LOREDANA TERESI
3. London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius C.i, f. 11r + Harley

3667, f. 7v (s. xii 1) 6 ;
4. London, British Library, Harley 1005, f. 98r (s. xii ex.) 7 ;
5. London, British Library, Royal lü.A.viii, f. 150v (s. xii/xiiil
The item in question was classified within the 'B' category of

Cameron's list (i.e. 'Prose') 9, in particular the subsection 24 (i.e. 'Notes
and Commonplaces'), and the five manuscripts mentioned by Ker were
duly recorded under the heading «B 24.5: Names of the Winds». In fact,
what was indexed under this heading was a cluster of glossarial material,
which was investigated by Pulsiano in 1994 10 • The present study follows
in his steps, and addresses both the field of late Anglo-Saxon
glossography and the history of Anglo-Saxon literary culture. This essay
will first of all examine and reassess the nature and boundaries of the
various texts encompassed by this heading. With the term 'text' I will
refer here not only to a piece of discourse in running prose or in verse,
but also to diagrams and their legends, or to batches of glosses. Each text
will then be analysed individually, taking into account its distinctive
features, and its glosses will be examined on the basis of both their
present context and - whenever possible - the original one from which
by C.G.C. Tite, Brewer, Cambridge 1984, p. 61, col. a, item no. 5. What these 'Nomina
ventorum' actually were, unfortunately, is hard to know.
6
Ker, Catalogue, no. 196. The manuscript was written at Peterborough, presumably
between 1122 and 1135 (s. xii 1-214 ): Gameson, R., The Manuscripts of Early Norman
England (c. 1066-1130), Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1999, no. 404.
Together with London, British Library, Harley 3667, which once was a part of the same
codex, the manuscript contains a miscellany of computistical texts - including excerpts
from Isidore, Bede, Pliny, and Macrobius -, followed by sorne Annals of Peterborough
Abbey. See Wilcox, J., Wulfstan Texts and Other Homiletic Materials (Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile 8), Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, Tempe, AZ 2000, pp. 30-45 and 69-71. The item indexed by Ker is in a nearly
contemporary hand.
7
Ker, Catalogue, no. 233. The manuscript itself dates to s. xiii ex. As Ker explains,
«The leaf on which the diagram [i.e. the item indexed in his catalogue] occurs looks as if
it was a flyleaf, but is actually in the middle of a manuscript of s. xiii ex., coming from
Bury St. Edmunds.>>: Catalogue, p. 307.
8
Ker, Catalogue, no. 261. It is a collection of works by Ivo of Chartres, dating to s.
xii.
9
In Cameron's list, texts were divided into six main categories: A. Poetry; B. Prose;
C. Interlinear Glosses; D. Glossaries; E. Runic Inscriptions; and F. Inscriptions in the
Latin Alphabet.
10
Pulsiano, Ph., «Oid English Nomina ventorum>>, Studia Neophilologica 66 (1994),
pp. 15-26.
MAKING SENSE OF APPARENT CHAOS 417
they were excerpted. Seribal attitudes, as they emerge from the copyists'
treatment of the material under investigation, will also be an object of
study. Finally, attention will be drawn to the issue of the relevance of this
material for lexicographical studies.
Number and nature of the texts involved
A quick look at the manuscripts shows that the cluster of texts under
examination includes three distinct types of texts:
1. two wind diagrams (found in Cotton Tiberius C.i, f. 11r, and

Harley 1005, f. 98r) with Latin and Greek names occasionally furnished
with Old English renderings- six in Tiberius C.i and a total of twelve in
Harley 1005, by two different hands and with sorne overlaps;
2. a list of fifteen Latin lemmata provided with Old English
interpretamenta, occurring in CUL, Kk.3.21, f. 104v, Cotton Tiberius C.i,
f. 11r, and Royal10.A.viii, f. 150v;
3. a rectangular dia gram of the 'Alea caeli in qua sunt nomina
XXIII! seniorum' with sorne wind names in Latin, Greek, and Old
English added in the four margins of Harle y 3667, f. 7vn.
Ali three types of texts are found together only in Cotton Tiberius C.i
+ Harley 3667, with the list of lemmata and one of the two wind
diagrams on the same page (Plate XV), while the 'Alea caeli' occurs on a
separate folio, at sorne remove. I suggest that they should be considered,
treated, and catalogued as three separate texts and, accordingly, they will
be here analysed individually. Furthermore, the two wind diagrams (entry
no. 1) differ considerably and appear to stem from divergent traditions, as
the following sections will show.
The two wind diagrams: structure and lemmata
The wind diagrams found in Cotton Tiberius C.i, f. 11r, and Harley
1005, f. 98r, differ significantly in both Latin and Old English wind
names, and are also dissimilar from a graphie point of view.
11
Logeman's edition of the texts in Tiberius C.i, f. 11r (Logeman, H., «Anglo-
Saxonica Minora>>, Anglia 11 [1889], pp. 97-120, no. N, at 103-5) was superseded by
Pulsiano's subsequent editions published in 1990 and 1994: Pulsiano, Ph., «OE Names of
Winds>>, ANQ 3.3 (1990), pp. 103-4, and id., «Old English Nomina ventorum>>, pp. 15-26.
418 LOREDANA TERESI
Cotton Tiberius C.i features a neat wind rota in red ink, made up of
five concentric circles divided into three rows of twelve sectors each by
thirteen radial segments (albeit not perfectly geometrie). The row closest
to the rim accommodates the Latin names, while the second one is largely
devoted to their Greek equivalents (with sorne exceptions). There is no
indication of a hierarchical structure, and the names of the winds are
comparable to those found in Isidore's Etymologiae 12 : Subsolanus
(Apoliotes), Eurus, Euroauster (Euronothus), Auster (Nothus),
Austroafricus (Libonothus), Africus, Fabonius (Zephirus), Chorus
(Agrestis), Circius (Trascias), Septentrio (Apartias), Aquilo (Boreas), and
Vulturnus ( Calcias) 13 .
Conversely, on f. 98r of Harley 1005 there is a rather rough, vaguely
circular diagram where the four triads of winds are drawn within a
sketchy framework made up of four, irregular, wavy lines. These lines are
in the shape of a cross and each of them is provided with a trident-shaped
end meant to accommodate the triads. This structure is intended to
illustrate the hierarchical relationships between the cardinal winds and
their side winds. Moreover, the Greek equivalents are absent, apart from
two of them, that is, Zephyrus - which has taken the place of Favonius -
and, most significantly, Euronothus, which is found in place of
Austroafricus. This detail is revealing because it sets apart two distinct
'Isidorian' traditions of wind diagrams: those stemming from the
Etymologiae 14 and those stemming from the Denatura rerum 15 •
12
/sidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M.
Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical Texts), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1911, XIII.xi.2-3:
«Ventorum quattuor principales spiritus sunt. Quorum primus ab oriente Subsolanus, a
meridie Auster, ab accidente Favonius, a septentrione eiusdem nominis ventus adspirat;
habentes geminos hinc inde ventorum spiritus. Subsolanus a latere dextro Vultumum
habet, a laevo Eurum: Auster a dextris Euroaustrum, a sinistris Austroafricum: Favonius a
parte dextra Africum, a laeva Corum: porro Septentrio a dextris Circium, a sinistris
Aquilonem.>> (The main winds are four. The first of these blows from the east,
Subsolanus, from the south Auster, from the west Favonius, from the north a wind of the
same name. These winds have kindred winds blowing on either side. Subsolanus has
Vultumus on its right and Eurus on its left; Auster has Euroauster on its right and
Austroafricus on its left; Favonius has Africus on its right and Chorus on its left; next,
Septentrio has Circius on its right and Aquilo on its left). Ali translations are mine.
13
Greek names are in parentheses.
14
See the list of winds above.
15
Isidore de Seville. Traité de la Nature, ed. by J. Fontaine, Féret et Fils, Bordeaux
1960.
Although various classification systems circulated both in Roman

times and in the early Middle Ages, comprising four, eight, twelve or
even more winds, the duodecimal classification was the dominant
tradition 16 . It was also popularised within anonymous poetic
compositions, such as the short poem «Quatuor a quadro consurgunt
limite venti ... » 17 , or the longer «Quatuor a quadris venti fiant partibus
orbis ... » 18 . Both poems contain the same twelve Latin and Greek names
as found in Isidore's Etymologiae, with the southern wind Auster/Nothus
flanked by Euroauster/Euronothus (to its right) and Austroafricusl
Libonothus (toits left) 19 . Wind rotae with these twelve names are found
in other manuscripts written or circulating in England from the tenth to
the thirteenth century -, such as London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius
E.iv, f. 30r (s. xii 1-214 [?shortly after 1122], Winchcombe) 20 ; Oxford, St
John's College 17, f. 40v (s. xii in., [c. 1110], Thorneyi 1; Cambridge, St
John's College, I.15, p. 3 (s. xii) 22 ; and London, British Library, Royal
15.B.xix, ff. 79-198, f. 106v (s. x, Rheims; in England not before s. xii or
xiii ?) 23 •
In his De natura rerum (ch. xxxvii: 'De nominibus uentorum'),
however, Isidore had put together a list of winds that differed slightly as
16
The wind systems current in the Middle Ages were based on different sources and
traditions, going back to Homer, Aristotle, Seneca, Pliny, Vitruvius, and many others, and
they ail differed not only in the number of winds they included, but also in the directions
from which the winds were meant to blow and on the names of the winds. On wind
diagrams in general, see Obrist, B., <<Wind Diagrams and Medieval Cosmology»,
Speculum 72.1 (1997), pp. 33-84; on the duodecimal system in particular, see pp. 38-41.
See also Brown, A.K., «The English Compass Points», Medium JEvum 47.2 (1978), pp.
221-46.
17
«Versus de duodecim ventis>>, in Poetae latini minores, ed. by N.E. Lemaire, IV,
Didot, Paris 1825, pp. 493-8; Schaller, D. and Konsgen, E., Initia carminum Latinorum
saeculo undecimo antiquiorum, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen 1977, no. 13113.
18
C. Suetoni Tranquilli praeter Caesarum libros reliquiae, ed. by A. Reifferscheid,
Teubner, Leipzig 1860, pp. 304-6, no. 151a; Schaller and Konsgen, Initia carminum
Latinorum, no. 13112. See Obrist, «Wind Diagrams>>, pp. 38-39.
19
Cf. the 'Versus de duodecim ventis', lines 16-21.
20
Gameson, The Manuscripts, no. 408: it is the so-called 'Winchcombe computus'.
The wind diagram accompanies Isidore's text on the winds from the Etymologiae.
21
Gameson, The Manuscripts, no. 794: a computistical miscellany. The diagram
follows Isidore's Denatura rerum ch. xxxvii.
22
A computistical miscellany. Sorne diagrams can be viewed at: http://www.joh.
cam. ac. uk!library/special~collections/manuscripts/medieval~manuscripts/medman!I~ 15 .ht
m.
23
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 493.
420 LOREDANA TERESI
to the southern sector, in that Auster was here described as flanked by

Euroauster (to its right) and a mistaken Euronothus (to its lefti4 • The
mistake is made obvions by the fact that Nothus is the Greek name of
Auster, and, as a consequence, Euronothus and Euroauster are in fact
synonyms. Isidore himself explains the equivalence of Auster and Nothus
in his De natura rerum: <<Tertius uentorum Auster, plagae meridianae
cardinalis, qui et Notus» 25 (Third cardinal wind: the one blowing from the
southern region, Auster, also called Notus). lt is hard to tell if this
mistake originated with Isidore' s own text, or if it occurred earl y in the
manuscript tradition, as the manuscripts that Fontaine collates in his
edition already attest to it, although sorne of them also feature a rota
which, in most cases, has got the correct names. Be it as it may, due to
the popularity of the De natura rerum the 'faulty' list spread across
medieval Europe and was drawn on also by Bede for his own De natura
rerum (ch. xxvii: 'Ordo uentorum') 26 . Hence, there followed a series of
24
Isidore de Seville. Traité de la Nature, ed. by Fontaine, pp. 295-9, at 297: <<Tertius
uentorum Auster, plagae meridianae cardinalis, qui et Notus, ex humili flans, humidus,
calidus atque fulmineus, generans largas nubes, et pluuias laetissimas, soluens etiam
flores. Euroauster, calidus uentus, a dextris intonat Austri. Euronotus uentus temperatus,
calidus a sinistris Austri aspirat» (Third cardinal wind: the one blowing from the southern
region, Auster, also called Notus, blowing from the bottom, humid, hot and stormy, it
produces big clouds and abundant rain; it also makes flowers blossom. Euroauster is a hot
wind thundering to the right of Auster. Euronotus is a mild, warm wind, blowing to the
left of Auster). See also Pulsiano, <<Old English Nomina ventorum>>, p. 19, and Brown,
<<The English Compass Points>>, p. 225.
25
Isidore de Seville. Traité de la Nature, ed. by Fontaine, p. 297. The uncertainty
surrounding the names of the winds that flank the southern cardinal wind can be ascribed
to the history of the duodecimal system itself. This system actually derived from
Aristotle's Meteorologica (II.vi), which featured ten winds - each with its own name-
with two empty slots to the right and left of Nothus, the southern wind. These two empty
slots were eventually filled with two further winds, presumably in order to obtain a
symmetrical, formally coherent system of twelve winds. However, the two additional
winds did not originally have proper names. As Isidore explains in the Etymologiae -
probably following Seneca -, their names were created by combining the names of the
adjacent winds. Renee, the wind between Eurus and Auster was called Euroauster
(Euronothus in Greek), whilst the wind blowing between Auster and Africus was called
Austroafricus (Libonothus in Greek): <<Euroauster dictus quod ex una parte habeat Eurum,
ex altera Austrum. Austroafricus, quod iunctus sit hinc et inde Austro et Africo. Ipse et
Libonotus, quod sit ei Libs hinc et inde Notus>>; Etym. XIII.xi.6-7 (Euroauster is so called
because it has Eurus on one side and Auster on the other. Austroafricus because it lies
between Auster and Africo. It is also called Libonotus, because it lies between Libs and
Notus). See also Obrist, «Wind Diagrams», p. 42.
26
<<Tertius cardinalis auster, qui et nothus, hurnidus, calidus, atque fulmineus. Huic a
dextris euroauster, calidus. A sinistris euronothus, temperatus calidus>>: De natura rerwn,
wind rotae featuring Euronothus as a south-west wind, like the one in

Harley 100527 • A sirnilar rota is found, for example, in Rouen,
Bibliothèque Municipale 26 (A.292), f. 193v (s. ix 1 or ix med., N France;
? prov. Jmmeges
prov. Engl an d s. x., .' .?)28 .
s. XI.
The two wind diagrams: the Old English interpretamenta
1. Cotton Tiberius C.i
As far as the Old English glosses in the two diagrams are concerned,
they also seem to point to a distinct genesis, although both contain
puzzling renderings. As mentioned above, six glosses have been written
above or below the legends of the diagram in Cotton Tiberius C.i:
«Subsolanus: est wind», «Eurus: estan suôan», «Euroauster: suôan
westan», «Euronothus: westan supan», «Africus: supan westan», and
«Zephirus: westan». Three of the glosses are correct: those for
Subsolanus (i.e. est wind), Eurus (i.e. estan suôan), and Zephyrus (i.e.
westan). A fourth one- supan westan for Africus- rnight be correct if we
do not take into account what is known as 'Charlemagne's translation
system', because otherwise it should have been westan supan.
This translation system was illustrated by Einhard in his Vita Karoli
magni (ch. xxix), and was based on the fixity of the arder of the words
denoting the directions from which the side winds were thought to blow.
As explained above, the duodecimal system required two different winds
to blow from each sector of the horizon encompassed by two cardinal
winds. For example, between Subsolanus (the east wind) and Auster (the
south wind), two winds had to be named (Eurus and Euroauster), both
blowing from the south-eastern sector. In Charlemagne' s system, the
Latin names of the winds are rendered in the vernacular by a series of
compounds, where the Old High German word wint 'wind' follows the
ed. by C.W. Jones (Bedae Venerabilis Opera, VI. Opera didascalica 2 [CCSL 123B],
Brepols, Turnhout 1977, p. 218) (The third cardinal wind is Auster, a1so called Nothus,
which is humid, hot and stormy. To its right Euroauster, hot. To its left Euronothus, mild
and warm). Cf. Oxford, St John's College 17, f. 63r.
27
As a matter of fact, a few sentences apparently drawn from Isidore's Denatura
rerum ch. xxxvii.4 have been copied above Africus, Zephyrus and Chorus, at the bottom
of the page, to describe the features of these winds (incipit «Affricus qui et libies ex
zephiri ... », «Zephirus quartus cardina1is uentus ... >> and «Chorus qui 7 argestes ex
sinistra parte ... >>).
28
Gneuss, Handlist, no. 919.3.
422 LOREDANA TERESI
names of the cardinal points (i.e., in this case, 'south' and 'east') arranged
in the appropriate combination. The 'east-south' wind (where ost 'east' is
the first member of the compound) is the wind closer to the east, while
the 'south-east' wind (with sund 'south' as first member of the
compound) is the wind closer to the south. So, between ostroniwint (the
east wind, i.e. Subsolanus) and sundroniwint (the south wind, i.e. Auster),
Charlemagne (or whoever devised this translation method) places
ostsundroniwint (the east-south wind) and sundostroniwint (the south-east
wind); ostsundroni is the wind closer to the east (i.e. Eurus), whilst
sundostroni is the wind closer to the south (i.e. Euroauster):
Ventis vero hoc modo nomina inposuit, ut subsolanum vocaret ostroniwint, eurum
ostsundroni, euroaustrum sundostroni, austrum sundroni, austroafricum
sundwestroni, africum westsundroni, zefyrum westroni, chorum westnordroni,
circium nordwestroni, septentrionem nordroni, aquilonem nordostroni, vulturnum
29
ostnordroni .
(Truly, he applied names to the winds in this way, so that he called Subsolanus 'the
eastern wind', Eurus 'the east-southern wind', Euroauster 'the south-eastern wind',
Auster 'the southern wind', Austroafricus 'the south-western wind', Africus 'the
west-southern win d', Zephyrus 'the western wind', Chorus 'the west-northern wind',
Circius 'the north-western win d', Septentrio 'the northern wind', Aquilo 'the north-
eastern wind', Vulturnus 'the east-northern wind' .)
It is hard to tell if this system was current in Anglo-Saxon England.

Einhard's Vita Karoli magni is found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud
Mise. 247 (ff. 123r-138r)30 . This manuscript, however, is not a
computistical or cosmological miscellany; it is rather an anthology of
historical and pseudo-historical works 31 , where Einhard' s text was
included presumably because of its historical content. lt is therefore hard
to believe that the Vita Karoli magni was used as a source on the names
of the winds. Charlemagne's vernacular list of wind names, however,
29
Einhardi Vita Karoli Magni, ed. by O. Holder-Egger (MGH, SRG 25), Hahn,
Hannover and Leipzig 1911, ch. xxix, p. 34. The twelve Latin names featuring in
Einhard's list are drawn from Isidore's Etymologiae XIII.xi. See above, note 12.
30
Gameson, The Manuscripts, no. 752, s. xii 1 •
31
It includes such works as Victor of Vita's Historia persecutionis Africanae
provinciae, Paul the Diacon's Historia Langobardorum, the epitome of the Res gestae
Alexandri Magni of Julius Valerius (also known as Zacher Epitome), the Epistola
Alexandri ad Aristotelem, the Collatio Alexandri Magni cum Dindimo, and, finally, the
Historia Apollonii regis Tyri. The codex also contains a Bestiary with a rich apparatus of
illustrations (ff. 139v-166v).
does appear in an English computistical rniscellany, namely London,

British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.xii, f. 60v (xi ex., Salisbury) 32 , where a
version of Einhard' s passage on winds was inserted immediately after
Isidore's Denatura rerum ch. xxxvii on fol. 60v:
DE VENTIS. Subsolanus. ostron[e] uuint. Eurus. ostsuthrone. Euroauster. suthostrone.

Auster. suthrone. Austroafricus. suthuuestrone. Africus. uuestsuthrone. Zephirus.
uuestrone. Chorus. uu[e]stnortherne. Circius. northuuestrone. Septentrio.
northerne. Aquilo. northostrone. Vulturnus. ostnortherne. 33
Interestingly, the vemacular forms in the passage are neither in Old

High German, nor in Old English, but in Old Saxon34 • This excerpt seems
to have so far gone unnoticed, as no mention of it is made in the standard
catalogues, in spite of the significance and the cross-cultural implications
of its presence in the Salisbury manuscript35 • Be it as it may, the Old
Saxon wind names prove that Charlemagne' s system definitely had sorne
circulation- specifically in a 'scientific' context- at least in late Anglo-
Saxon England, and that somebody considered it important enough to
excerpt the passage from its original context and copy it within the
relevant section of Isidore's work. Nevertheless, Charlemagne's system
probably never gained wide endorsement, as the remainder of the essay
will hopefully make clear, and the Old Saxon forms retained in this
passage rnight also point in that direction.
The gloss «Africus: supan westan» in the diagram of Cotton Tiberius
C.i, therefore, can be considered correct only if it disregards
Charlemagne's method, as Africus is closer to the west than to the south,
and should have been accordingly rendered as westan suôan.
The remaining two glosses - «Euroauster: suôan westan» and
«Euronothus: westan supan» - are unquestionably wrong, on many
accounts. First of ali, Euroauster/Euronothus is glossed twice, as if the
two names were referring to two different winds, although they appear in
32
A computistical miscellany: Gneuss, Handlist, no. 398; Gameson, The
Manuscripts, no. 419.
33
Editorial additions and emendations are included in square brackets [], whilst
deletions are within angle brackets <>; abbreviations have been expanded in italics.
34
Cf. Holthausen, F., Altenglisches Etymologisches Worterbuch, 3rd edn., Winter,
Heidelberg 1974, s. vv. siià, siiàerne, east, easterne, norô, noràerne, and westerne.
35
There is no mention of it in either Gneuss's or Gameson's catalogues, nor in
Teresa Web ber' s study of the manuscripts of Salisbury Cathedral (Scribes and Scholars at
Salisbury Cathedral c. 1075 - c. 1125, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1992) or the British
Library on-line catalogue.
424 LOREDANA TERESI
the same quadrant: Euroauster is glossed suôan westan and Euronothus

is rendered as westan supan. This double gloss cannot be explained as an
attempt on the part of the glossator to appl y Charlemagne' s system, as the
gloss for Africus does not adhere to it. Moreover, by providing two
renderings for the same diagram section (i.e. the same wind, which is
called Euronothus in Greek and Euroauster in Latin), the glossator is
showing his 36 inability to interpret the diagram correctly, all the more so
when we consider that he is placing west to the right of south. The
possibility that in interpreting Euronothus as westan supan (i.e. «a sinistris
Austri») the glossator is following Isidore's text from Denatura rerum-
in the top half of the page 37 - is ruled out by the fact that he likewise
assigns Euroauster to the western sector, although Isidore clearly explains
that Euroauster «a dextris intonat Austri» (i.e. in the south-eastern
sector). Even the fact that the remaining winds are not glossed contributes
to reveal the glossator' s puzzle ment. It is possible that he abandoned the
task of glossing the names of the rota once he came to realise that
Isidore's text on the page and the rota itself were at odds.
2. Harley 1005
A sense of confusion and uncertainty also emerges from the analysis
36
The masculine persona! pronoun will be used in this essay for the sake of brevity,
but without implying that the scribe in question was necessarily a man.
37
Tiberius C.i is a member of a large family of manuscripts containing- in variously
rearranged forms - part of the compilation of computistical works assembled by
Byrhtferth of Ramsey, and which include Oxford, St John's College 17; London, British
Library, Cotton Tiberius E.iv; London, British Library, Egerton 3088, and Baltimore,
Walters Art Gallery, W.73. Most of these manuscripts contain the wind rota, which was
probably part of Byrhtferth's compilation. However, the texts accompanying the diagrams
vary, as sorne manuscripts preserve the relevant passage from Isidore's De natura rerum
(ch. xxxvii), while others (namely, Cotton Tiberius E.iv and Baltimore W.73) have the
excerpt from Etymologiae XIII.xi. It is possible that in the ancestor of these two
manuscripts the original text (De natura rerum ch. xxxvii) was replaced with what was
deemed to be a more accurate account of the name of the winds, matching the names
actually featuring in the rota, i.e. the relevant chapter from the Etymologiae (XIII.xi). On
the relationship between these manuscripts, see Byrhtferth's Enchiridion, ed. by P.S.
Baker and M. Lapidge (EETS ss 15), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995, and Teresi,
L., «Migrating Maps: The Case of the "Three-Dimensional" Diagram for the quinque
circuli mundi>>, in R.H. Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker (eds.), Practice in Learning: The
Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Storehouses of
Walpole, MA 2010, pp. 257-83.
of the Old English interpretamenta featuring in Harley 1005, where there

are two different sets of glos ses, by two different scribes38 . One of the
scribes is responsible for four glosses; he starts at Subsolanus and works
his way down, inserting the glosses east wind, eastansuôan, suôanesten,
suôan wind, in the appropriate places, that is, below Subsolanus, Eurus,
Euroauster, and Auster, respectively. He stops when he reaches
Euronothus, which actually should not have been there. This glossator
appears to be knowledgeable about the winds, and he also seems to be
applying Charlemagne's system, as he correctly distinguishes between
eastansuôan (i.e. Eurus) and suôanesten (i.e. Euroauster) 39•
The other glossator of Harley 1005 seems less learned but more
daring. It is hard to tell where he began, but chances are he also began at
Subsolanus, as it is found at the top of the page. He started well, inserting
eastwind, eastensuô, suôaneast, and suôwind above the appropriate
winds, just like the other scribe; then he got similarly baffled by
Euronothus and skipped it. However, he resumed his work at the next
wind, Affricus, which he bizarrely rendered as westennorô40 . He then
correctly rendered Zephyrus as westwind, enigmatically skipped Chorus,
and finished his work by writing westennord over Cyrcius, and norôwind
above both Septentrio and Aquilo, probably mistaking the wind Aquilo
for the northern compass point, and so taking it for a synonym of
Septentrio. Vulturnus is also left unglossed. It is therefore a non-
systematic glossing procedure, with a few winds left unglossed -
Euronothus, Chorus, and Vulturnus, three of the less common ones- and
a couple of blunders (Affricus: westennorô; Septentrio . Aquilo:
norôwind).
The glossing shows the same uncertainty on the Old English
equivalents of the winds and on how to read the diagram that had
emerged from the analysis of the rota in Cotton Tiberius C.i. The
mistakes, however, are dissimilar, and the two scribes (the Tiberius one
and the second Harley scribe) stumble on different winds, so that no
connection can be drawn between the sets of glosses in the two
38
In Ker's words: «Eight out of twelve names of the winds attached to a rough
diagram on the verso of f. 98 are rendered in OE as weil as in Latin. Four of them are
repeated in OE by another band.>> (Catalogue, p. 307).
39
40
Perhaps the scribe's uncertainty derived from the fact that Africus was the
'northern' wind in the south-west sector.
426 LOREDANA TERESI
manuscripts (apart from a common hesitation with Euronothus, with

which, however, they deal in contrasting ways).
Summing up, the analysis of the structure, lemmata, and
interpretamenta of the two diagrams shows that the wind diagram found
in Harley 1005 does not belong to the same tradition as the one in Cotton
Tiberius C.i. The two diagrams should therefore be treated as two
separate texts. Moreover, the Old English renderings of the wind names
in the two diagrams are in no way 'systematic' and should in my opinion
be moved from the category 'prose' (B) to the category 'interlinear
glosses' (C), particularly the subsection 'occasional glosses', of the Old
English Corpus. Finally, as sorne of these glosses reveal a considerable
amount of uncertainty, they should be used with extreme caution in
determining the standard Old English equivalent for the accompanying
Latin lemmata, if at ali.
The list of glosses featuring in CUL, Kk.3.21, Cotton Tiberius C.i,

and RoyallO.A.viii
To the right of the wind diagram in Cotton Tiberius C.i we find a list
of fifteen Latin lemmata with their Old English interpretamenta.
Lemmata and interpretamenta are written in a column (one item per line ),
slightly bending around the outer circle of the diagram. The same list, as
mentioned above, also appears - written across the page - in CUL,
Kk.3.21 and RoyallO.A.viii, although with sorne slight differences.
In his edition, Logeman conflates this batch of glosses with the
occasional glosses which occur inside the diagram, concocting a single
list of twenty-two items. Conversely, Pulsiano distinguishes (in my
opinion rightly so) between the two texts, printing them as two separate
items. He then compares the marginal catalogue with the similar lists
from Royal lO.A.viii and CUL, Kk.3.21 and concludes that the three
catalogues «participate in the same tradition», and that the Cambridge
version is the most accurate, as well as the closest to the original
arrangement41 • It might be worthwhile, therefore, to examine this batch of
glosses starting with the version featuring in CUL, Kk.3.21 42 :
41
Pulsiano, «Old English Nomina ventorum>>, p. 20.
42
Here the list was copied, among other scribbles, on the original! y blank leaf at the
end of the last quire of the manuscript. It is written across the page.
Subsolanus: eastan; A circio: westan norjJan; [Ab] 43 africo: suôan westan; Nothus:
westan sujJan; Ab euro: suôan eastan; A fauonio: suôan westan; Eurus: eastan
suôan; A borea: eastan norôan; Zephirus: norôan eastan; Chaurus: eastan norôan;
Ab oriente: eastan; A meridie uel ab austro: suôan; Ab occasu uel ab accidente:
44
westan; A septentrione: norôan; Ab aquilone: norôan eastan .
1. The nature of the items in the list
Ker defines this text as «The names of fifteen winds, Latin and
0E»45 • A close scrutiny of the list, however, reveals that it is made up of
two distinct types of lemmata. Pive of them are in the nominative case
and are truly names of winds: Subsolanus, Nothus, Eurus, Zephyrus, and
Chaurus. The remaining ten lemmata are in the ablative case, and are
preceded by the preposition a, ab. In CUL, Kk.3.21, they are divided into
two groups by a punctus versus:
A circio: westan norjJan

[Ab] africo: suôan westan
Ab euro: suôan eastan
A fauonio: suôan westan
A borea: eastan noràan
Ab oriente: eastan
A meridie uel ab austro: suàan
Ab occasu uel ab accidente: westan
A septentrione: noràan
Ab aquilone: noràan eastan
The prepositions and the ablative case of these ten lemmata show that
they do not refer to winds as such, but are geographical orientation
markers, like those found in Orosius's Historiae adversum paganos, or in
book XIV of Isidore's Etymologiae. Although sorne of these markers are
ultimately based on the names of the winds, as in the case, for example,
of Ab euro or A circio, the same cannot be said for the cardinal directions
43
The preposition has been ornitted in the manuscript, but the ablative case shows
that it is not a wind name, as the comparison with the other items confirms. However, as
all three manuscripts agree in this reading, it must have been already corrupted in their
common ancestor.
44
For the sake of clarity, capitalisation and punctuation have been modernised and
normalised in all glosses. Spelling variants have been retained.
45
Ker. Catalogue, p. 38.
428 LOREDANA TERESI
(e.g. ab occidente or ab oriente), which are unrelated to the names of the

winds and yet feature here.
As far as the interpretamenta are concerned, Pulsiano asserts that the
list contains «significant and inexplicable errors» 46 , which is undoubtedly
true, especially if the accuracy of the items is judged on the basis of the
wind domain. Yet, it is possible to make sense of sorne apparent! y
erroneous items in the list, especially the Old English interpretamenta of
the compass points, by resorting to other types of texts, that is historical
and literary sources rather than 'scientific' ones.
These interpretamenta are in fact ali correct47 apart from «A fauonio:
suàan westan», which would appear to be 'wrong' as Favonius is the
cardinal west wind, the Latin equivalent of the Greek Zephyrus. The term
Aquilo also raises doubts because of its polysemy, as it refers to both the
north-east wind (Greek Boreas) and the northern cardinal point48 . In this
case, the expression «Ab aquilone» - rendered as noràan eastan - has
been placed in the section of the cardinal directions, those following the
punctus versus, and immediately after «A septentrione». It could
therefore be legitimately interpreted as a synonym of the preceding
!emma, forming a pair similar to the two preceding ones: «A septentrione
uel ab aquilone: noràan». This appears to be the case with the scribe of
Cotton Tiberius C.i - or the scribe of one of its antecedents - who leaves
the !emma «Ab aquilone» unglossed, thereby showing his perplexity, or
perhaps his conviction that it was part of the !emma immediately above
it49 . In his Historiae adversum paganos, however, Orosius clearly
distinguishes between a septentrione and ab aquilone, as he repeatedly
uses both terms within the same sentence to refer to two distinct
directions:
46
Pulsiano, «Oid English Nomina ventorum», p. 22.
47
They are correct insofar as they refer to the appropriate sectors from which the
winds in question are meant to blow, but they do not distinguish between the two side
winds occupying each intermediate sector, the way Charlemagne's system does.
48
See, for example, the gloss to Le XIII.29 in the Lindisfarne Gospels: «et uenient ab
oriente et accidente et aquilone et austro et accumbent in regno dei: 7 cymeô easta 7
woesta 7 norôa 7 suôa 7 hlinigaô l hrœstaô in rie godes>>: The Gospel According to Saint
Luke and According to Saint John in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian and Old Mercian
Versions, ed. by W.W. Skeat, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1874-1878; repr.
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1970.
49
The glossator of the list in Cotton Tiberius C.i, however, is not particularly
ace urate.
58 Achaia undique propemodum cincta est mari; nam ab oriente habet Myrtoum
mare, ab euro mare Creticum, a meridie Ionium mare, ab africo et occasu
Cephaleniam et Cassiopam insulas, a septentrione sinum Corinthium, ab aquilone
angustum terrae dorsum, quo Macedoniae coniungitur uel potins Atticae; qui locus
Isthmos uocatur, ubi est Corinthus, habens in Attica ad boream non longe Athenas
ciuitatem. 59 Dalmatia habet ab oriente Macedoniam, ab aquilone Dardaniam, a
septentrione Moesiam, ab occasu Histriam et sinum Liburnicum et insulas
Liburnicas, a meridie Hadriaticum sinum. [... ] 66 Narbonensis Provincia, pars
Galliarum, habet ab oriente Alpes Cottias, ab occidente Hispaniam, a circio
Aquitanicam, a septentrione Lugdunensem, ab aquilone Belgicam Galliam, meridie
mare Gallicum quod est inter Sardiniam et insulas Baleares, habens in fronte, qua
Rhodanus fluuius in mare exit, insulas Stoechadas. (I.ii.58-59 and 66; my
emphasis) 50
(58 Achaia is almost entirely surrounded by water, as it has the Myrtoan Sea on the
east, the Cretan Sea on the south-east, the Ionian Sea on the south, the islands of
Cephalenia and Cassiopa on the south-west and west, the Corinthian Gulf on the
north, and a narrow strip of land on the north-east, called the Isthmus, joining
Achaia to Macedonia or Attica; here is Corinth, which is not far from the city of
Athens, to the north-east. 59 Dalmatia has Macedonia to the east, Dardania to the
north-east, Moesia to the north, Histria, the Liburnian Gulf and the Liburnian Islands
to the west, and the Adriatic Gulf to the south. [ ... ] 66 The province of Narbo, a part
of Gaul, has the Cottian Alps to the east, Spain to the west, Aquitania to the north-
west, Lugdunum to the north, Belgica Gallia to the north-east, and, to the south, the
Gallic Sea, which lies between Sardinia and the Balearic Islands; here, in front of the
place where the Rhone River joins the sea, are the Stoechades Islands.)
Most remarkably, Orosius also uses the expression «a fauonio»

(once), in a sentence where he clearly intends it to refer to the south-west,
as the western direction has already been indicated in the same sentence
by means of the expression «ab occasu»:
57 Macedonia habet ab oriente Aegaeum mare, a borea Thraciam, ab euro Euboeam

et Macedonicum sinum, a meridie Achaiam, a fauonio montes Acrocerauniae in
angustiis Hadriatici sinus, qui montes sunt contra Apuliam atque Brundisium, ab
occasu Dalmatiam, a circio Dardaniam, a septentrione Moesiam. (I.ii.57)
(57 Macedonia has the Aegean Sea to the east, Thrace to the north-east, Euboea and
the Macedonian Gulf to the south-east, Achaia to the south, the Acroceraunian
Mountains to the south-west - lying by the straits of the Adriatic Gulf, opposite
Apulia and Brindisi -, Dalmatia to the west, Dardania to the north-west and Moesia
to the north.)
50
Pauli Orosii Historiarum adversus paganos libri VII, ed. by K.F.W. Zangemeister
(CSEL 5), Gerold, Vienna 1882.
430 LOREDANA TERESI
Another text where the traditional cardinal west wind (here identified
by its Greek name Zephyrus) is assigned to the south-west quarter is the
Old English translation of Boethius's De consolatione Philosophiae. In
metre 1.5, Boethius laments that God seems uninterested in human
matters, while He seems to rule Nature very weil, for example by
regulating the seasons so that spring always follows winter, and the trees
regain - thanks to Zephyrus - the leaves that they lost because of Boreas.
Here, the English translator renders Boreas as «pone stearcan wind
norpan 7 eastan» (the harsh wind from the north-east), and Zephyrus as
«pone smyltan suôanwesternan wind» (the rnild south-western wind).
Sirnilarly, when Boethius discusses the ever-changing course of Fortune
(metre 11.3), he exemplifies the idea of a sudden change of state by
describing a spring garden where beautiful roses blossom thanks to rnild
Zephyrus but are eventually spoiled by the arrivai of hot Auster.
Boethius's nice, rnild, western Zephyrus and his nasty, hot, southern
Auster are again changed, in the Old English translation, into a gentle
supanwestan wind and a stearca wind corning from the north-east,
respectively, thus creating a more fitting and realistic climatic
opposition51 .
The apparent incongruities in the catalogue of orientation markers,
therefore, could be easily explained by envisaging a 'literary' tradition
distinct from the scientific one, with slightly diverging conventions and
more flexibility. This flexibility also emerges from a comparison of the
Latin Orosius with its Old English translation. Orosius's expression «a
circio», for example, is translated as 'west-south' in the passage about
Gallia Belgica («a circio oceanum Britannicum»; «& be westansuôan se
garsecg pe man h<et Brittanisca» ), 'west' in the passage about Aquitania
(«a circio oceanum qui Aquitanicus sinus dicitur»; «& be westan
garsegc» ), and, finally, 'north-west' in the passage on the Provincia
51
See Derolez, R., «The Orientation System in the Old English Orosius>> in P.
Clemoes and K. Hughes (eds.), England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources
Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, pp. 253-
68, especially at p. 264, note 1, and Teresi, L., «Which Way ls the Wind Blowing?
Meteorology and Political Propaganda in the Metres of Boethius>>, in S. Serafin and P.
Lendinara (eds.), ... un tua serta di fiori in man recando. Scritti in onore di Maria Amalia
D'Aronco, 2 vols., Forum, Udine 2008, Il, pp. 427-46, where 1 have argued that the
change also implies sorne sort of political propaganda. For the texts see: Anicii Manlii
Severini Boetii Philosophiae consolationis libri quinque, ed. by R. Peiper, Teubner,
Leipzig 1871 and King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius De Consolatione
Philosophiae, ed. by W.J. Sedgefield, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1899.
Narbonensis («a czrcw Aquitaniam»; «& be westan him & norôan

Equitania» )52 . Of course, the relevant readings of the manuscript of the
source-text are unknown, and, as Janet Bately warns, sorne radical
changes in the text might be the result of an attempt to conform to the
ninth-century geo-political situation53 . Still, the relative fixity of the
names of the winds as they appear in the wind rotae - albeit with sorne
divergences due to different traditions and sometimes blunders - can be
contrasted with what looks like a more 'fluid' interpretation of the names
of the compass points characteristic of literary and historical texts.
A systematic analysis of the Orosian text reveals that all the compass
marks in the list can be found there, most of them occurring repeatedly,
especially throughout part I.ii: a circio (x9), ab africo (x9), ab euro (x5),
afauonio (xl), a borea (x3), ab oriente (x37), a meridie (x32), ab occasu
(x26), ab accidente (x8), a septentrione (x31), and ab aquilone (x5). Ab
austro does not occur in the text, but in austro features once. Needless to
say, these syntagms are by no means exclusive to Orosius's work. As
mentioned above, they can be found, for example, in book XN of
Isidore's Etymologiae: 'De terra et partibus': a circio (xl), ab africo (x3),
ab euro (x3), ab oriente (x21), a meridie (x31), ab accidente (x4), ab
occasu (x21), a septentrione (x32), ab aquilone (x3). They are pretty
standard set phrases found in geographical descriptions.
2. The relationship with existing glossaries
The connection between the wind Favonius and the south-western

quarter also appears in glossaries. Épinal already has the gloss «faonius:
uuestsuduuind» (no. 452) 54 and we can follow this gloss through the
Second Corpus Glossary (F 49) 55 and the First Cleopatra Glossary (F
421)56 where it retains the peculiar spelling faonius. Actually, the first
52
Orosius, Historiae adversum paganos, I.ii.63, 67 and 66, and The Old English
Orosius, ed. by J. Bately (EETS ss 6), Oxford University Press, London, New York and
Toronto 1980, p. 18,25-6, 29-30, and 32-33.
53
See The Old English Orosius, ed. by Bately, pp. lv-lx and lxvii.
54
Old English Classes in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, ed. by J.D. Pheifer, Clarendon
Press, Oxford 1974.
55
Cambridge 1921.
56
Stryker, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University 1951. It is a well-known fact that these
three glossaries are related, with material from Épinal also appearing in Second Corpus
432 LOREDANA TERESI
five geographical markers - i.e., the non-cardinal ones - have a nearly

perfect match in sorne glosses featuring in the Second Corpus and First
Cleopatra glossaries:
CUL, Kk.3.21 Second Corpus First Cleopatra

A circio: westan norJmn A circio: norôanwestan A circio: norôanwestan
(A 113) (A 126)
[Ab] africo: suôan westan Ab affrico: supanwestan Ab affric[o] 57 : suôanwestan
(A 89) (A 174)
Ab euro: suôan eastan Ab euro: eastansuôan Ab euro: eastansuôan
(A46) (A 177)
A fauonio: suôan westan A fafonio: supanwestan
(A 360)
A borea: eastan norôan Ab borea: estannorpan Ab borea: estannorôan
(A 92) (A 175)
The glosses ali agree apart from two transpositions in the Old English
compounds rendering a circio and ab euro58 • Unsurprisingly, Lindsay and
Stryker trace back these particular glosses, albeit with sorne hesitation, to
Orosius's Historiae adversum paganos59 • The peculiar rendering of a
favonio, therefore, could be easily explained if this part of the list had
been really drawn from Orosius's account of the world or, more likely,
from a glossarial tradition similar to that still preserved in the Second
Corpus or First Cleopatra glossaries, drawing partly on Orosius's
historical work60 •
and in First Cleopatra: see Old English Glosses, ed. by Pheifer, pp. xxviii-xxxv and The
Latin-Old English Glossary, ed. by Stryker, pp. 18-22. See also Lendinara, P., «Anglo-
Saxon Glosses and Glossaries: An Introduction», in her Anglo-Saxon Glosses and
Glossaries (VCSS 622), Ashgate, Aldershot 1999, pp. 1-26, at 16-17.
57
The editor prints <<Ab Affrica>>.
58
Cotton Tiberius C.i, however, has <<Ab euro: suôan westan>>. Second Corpus a1so
preserves the gloss <<Ab euronothum: eastsuth>> (A 47), which has a counterpart in First
Cleopatra <<Ad euronothum: eastsuÔ>> (A 178).
59
Stryker, however, derives «A circio: norôanwestan>> from Aldhelm' s prose De
virginitate: Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by R. Ehwald (MGH, AA 15), Weidmann, Berlin 1919,
p. 303,5.
60
The Orosian batches in Épinal, Erfurt, Second Corpus, and First Cleopatra are not
related to the Orosius section in the Leiden Glossary. On this topic, see Old English
Glos;·es, ed. by Pheifer, pp. xlvi-li, where it is stated that «there is ample evidence to show
that the Old English interpretations [of the Orosius g1osses of Épinal-Erfurt] were part of a
running gloss on the text>> (p. xlvii). These glosses were used independently by the
compiler of the Corpus Glossary, as the latter contains a large number of Orosius glosses
These alphabetical glossaries also contain sorne wind names proper,

but they do not correspond to those in the list. The Épinal Glossary has
«Affricus: westsujJwind» (no. 118), «Boreus: eastnorjJwind» (no. 162),
and the already mentioned «Faonius: uuestsuduuind» (no. 452). Erfurt
has «Affricus: uestsuduuind» (no. 118), «Boreus: eustnorduind» (no.
162), and «Circius: uuestnorduuid» (no. 311). Second Corpus has
«Affricus: westsuàwind» (A 364), «Auster: suàuuind» (A 951), «Boreus:
eastnoràwind» (B 152), «Chorus: eostnoràwind» (C 375), «Circius:
westnoràwind» (C 419), and «Faonius: westsuàwind» (F 49). First
Cleopatra61 has «Affricus: westsuàwind» (A 339), «Auster: suàwind» (A
410), «Boreus: eastnorà wind» (B 44), «Chori: eastannoràan windas» (C
81), «Circius: westnorà wind» (C 82), «Circius et Boreus: twegen
noràwindas» (C 634), «Fauonius: westsuàwind» (F 132), «Faonius:
westsujJwind» (F 421), and «Nothus: suàan wind uel dooc, hornungsunu»
(N 171/2.
The !emma Chaurus in our list, however, might be a corrupted form
for Chorus, as it shares the same puzzling rendering estan noràan found
in Second Corpus («Chorus: eostnoràwind», C 375) and First Cleopatra
(«Chori: eastannoràan windas», C 81). This shared interpretamentum
which are not attested in Épinal and Erfurt, e.g. ab euro, ad euronothum, ab affrico, ab
borea, etc. (pp. xlvii-xlviii).
61
It must be noted, however, that the First Cleopatra Glossary stops at letter p.
62
As mentioned above, the list under examination has: «Subsolanus: eastan>>,
«Nothus: westan supan>>, <<Eurus: eastan suàan>>, <<Zephirus: noràan eastan>> and
<<Chaurus: eastan noràan>>. Second Corpus also preserves the ali-Latin glosses <<Aparcias:
septemtrionum uentus>> (A 713), <<Eurus: nomen uenti; flat ab oriente>> (E 335), and <<ln
occasum: in finem>> (I 246). Pheifer tentatively traces back the wind names proper
featuring in Épinal and Erfurt to the Hermeneumata Pseudo-Dositheana: Corpus
glossariorum Latinorum a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum, III, ed. by G. Goetz, Teubner,
Leipzig 1892; repr. Hakkert, Amsterdam 1965 (hereafter CGL), pp. 11,16-27, 84,54-64,
and 172,5-28. He also notes a parallel attribution of Favonius to the south-west quarter in
the Hermeneumata Monacensia ( CGL III, 172,9-10), where an erroneous pairing of Greek
and Latin wind names was presumably caused by the dropping out of Auster. Lindsay and
Stryker suggest no possible sources for most of them, only hesitantly deriving Africus
from los XVIII.l4. Lindsay tentatively connects Circius to the Hermeneumata, while
Stryker confidently identifies the !emma <<Circius et Boreus>> (C 634) as an entry drawn
from Aldhelm's Enigma LXIX (Taxus). The odd spelling <<Boreus>> here suggests that even
the independent entries <<Circius>> and <<Boreus>> found in both the Second Corpus and
First Cleopatra glossaries might stem from this original cluster.
434 LOREDANA TERESI
also hints at a connection between the list and the two glossaries, as well
as at a presumably 'literary' origin of this interpretation63 •
The Antwerp-London Glossary includes a section on the names of the
twelve winds ('Nomina xii uentorum'), which, however, seems unrelated
to the glosses in the texts under examination. This glossary lists the four
cardinal winds (all correct), followed by the respective pairs of side
winds:
NOMINA XII. UENTORUM. Subsolanus: easten wind; Auster uel Nothus: suôen wind;
Fauonius, Zephirus: westen wind; Septentrio: norôan wind; Uultumus: easten supan
wind; Furus, furoauster: norôan easten wind; Furoaffricus: suôan easten wind;
Affricus: supan westan wind; Chorus: norpan westan wind; Circius: norôan easten
wind; Aquilo uel Boreas: norôan westan winc/54 .
In the si de winds many errors occur: Eu rus and Euroauster (which

are mispellt Purus and furoauster) have been conflated into a single
wind; the southern side winds have consequent!y lost one item of the pair,
and the residual one, the improbable Furoaffricus, has replaced the
correct Austroafricus (but with a shifted interpretamentum: suoan easten
wind rather than suoan westan wind). Moreover, the interpretamenta of
Vulturnus and Furus/furoauster are in reverse order, and so are those of
Circius and Boreas. The interpretamenta do not correspond with those of
the list under investigation: Nothus is correctly identified in the Antwerp-
London Glossary as a south wind, while the list assigns it to the south-
west; Favonius and Zephyrus are rightly considered two names of the
same western wind in Antwerp-London, while, in our list, Favonius is
glossed suoan westan and Zephyrus noroan eastan; Eurus is a north-east
wind in the Antwerp-London Glossary and a south-east one in the list;
Chorus is assigned to the north-west in the Antwerp-London Glossary
while the list assigns Chaurus (perhaps a misspelling for Chorus) to the
north-east; Circius is a north-eastern wind in Antwerp-London but a
north-western one in the list; finally, Boreas is a noroan westan wind in
63
Chorus!Argestes is a west-north wind, flanking Favonius/Zephyrus and
Circius/Trascias in most duodecimal diagrams. Chaurus is absent in the duodecimal
system, but features as a west-north wind in Vitruvius's twenty-four-wind system (De
architectura I.vi.lO) and as a south-west wind in Vegetius's account (Epitoma rei
militaris N.xxxviii).
64
MS Additional 32,246, ed. by L. Kindschi, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University 1955,
pp. 133,18-134,10.
Antwerp-London while the lemma A borea in the list has the

interpretamentum eastan norôan.
As the glossaries that have come down to us do not contain, to the
best of my knowledge, the interpretation of Zephyrus as a north-eastern
wind or of Nothus as a west-southern wind (both Greek cardinal winds
for, respectively, west and south), it is hard to tell where these glosses
come from 65 . It is possible that they also originated from a 'flexible'
interpretation derived from a literary or geographical text or commentary,
but there is no evidence that this is the case. What is clear, however, is
the fact that whoever wrote or compiled - or even passively copied - the
list of glosses was not aware of the fact that Favonius and Zephyrus were
two names for the same wind, just as Auster and Nothus, and, in the case
of Cotton Tiberius C.i, he was also trying to match two types of texts that
did not fit together.
3. The versions in Cotton Tiberius C.i and Royallü.A.viii
On the basis of a comparison with the other versions, Pulsiano quite

rightly considers the second interpretamentum in the Cotton Tiberius C.i
list (supan westan) as a later interpolation disturbing the coherence of the
remaining items. Other errors have been inserted in the interpretamenta
for Ab euro (suôan eastan > suôan westan) 66 and possibly Zephyrus, but
in this case it is hard to tell who went wrong, as both interpretamenta
appear incorrect (norôan westan in Cotton Tiberius C.i vs. norôan eastan
in both CUL, Kk.3.21 and Royal IO.A.viii). In addition, the scribe of
Cotton Tiberius C.i expands the lemma A fauonio by turning it into «A
fauonio . 7 africo 7 euro . », that is, presumably by grouping together the
items that shared the same interpretamentum (suôan westanr.
The relationship between the Old English renderings of the list as it
appears in Cotton Tiberius C.i and the diagram featuring on the same
folio is also baffling: Euroauster and Euronothus are not in the list, and
what is even more remarkable, the scribe responsible for the glosses
65
Cf., however, the Hermeneumata Monacensia (CGL III,l72,9-10), where Greek
Not hus (south wind) is erroneously paired with Latin Africus (west-south wind).
66
Cf. CUL, Kk.3.21.
67
Orosius also uses clusters of directions united by the conjunction et, e.g. ab oriente
et borea, a circio et septentrione, a meridie et africo, etc., but I could not find a match for
a favonio et africo et euro as attested in this manu script. Moreover, Orosius' s clusters are
made up of two compass points, stating beginning and end of the relevant area, while in
the Tiberius manuscript there are three markers, without any logical arrangement.
436 LOREDANA TERESI
within the diagram correctly interprets Favonius/Zephyrus as westan,

although the list renders F avonius as suôanwestan and Zephyrus as
norôan westan. It is possible that the scribe was trying to work out the
right system by combining information from the top text (i.e. Isidore, De
natura rerum ch. xxxvii), the list, his own memory, and the diagram, but
he is clearly failing to read the latter correctly. Diagrams are generally
meant as an aid to learning, but this one in particular seems to bemuse the
scribe, perhaps also due to an effort to conflate two traditions - the
scientific one of fixed winds and the fluid, decontextualised glossarial
tradition stemming from literary texts - that did not quite fit together and
could not, therefore, be successfully combined.
The version in Royal lû.A.viii is very close to the one found in CUL,
Kk.3.21 68 • Lemmata and interpretamenta are the same in the two
manuscripts, but in the Royal codex the number of glosses is reduced to
thirteen, as two items have been conflated (i.e. Subsolanus and Ab
oriente), and one has been omitted (Ab euro). The major difference,
however, consists in a complete restructuring of the whole list, which will
be discussed in the next section.
4. The overall structure of the list
The structure of the list as a whole is also puzzling. The Latin

lemmata are not exhaustive: even considering ali the various items as
homogeneous - but they clearly are not so, as shawn above -, Vulturnus,
Euroauster, and Austroafricus would still be missing, whilst other winds
are repeated various times, like Eurus. Moreover, they do not follow any
standard or logic arrangement. Three enumerating systems were used in
Anglo-Saxon England: either a 4+8 (four cardinal winds followed by side
winds) or a 3+3+3+3, where each cardinal wind was mentioned together
with its two side winds; or else a 'round-the-dock system', based on the
position on the horizon, as in the circular diagrams. Each of these systems
could start from the east or from the north. None of these systems,
however, is found in CUL, Kk.3.21, Cotton Tiberius C.i, or Royal
lO.A.viii. The Old English interpretamenta are not coherent either: supan
westan is repeated three times, and estan norpan and norpan westan are
repeated twice each. lt rather looks like an extract from something in
68
Ker specifies that the list- which he once again describes as 'names of winds' -
has been added in a blank space on the verso of the last leaf of the manuscript (Catalogue,
p. 331).
between glossae collectae and a class glossary, with a casual combination

of items derived from a couple or more sources and belonging to similar
-but not identical- semantic fields.
This issue is addressed by the scribe of RoyallO.A.viii- or the scribe
of one of its antecedents -, who rearranges and reworks the items of the
whole list, by grouping them in three different, 'sensible' categories. His
use of the paragraphus marks helps decipher the rationale for his
rearrangement. At the top he places the four cardinal directions, each
preceded by a paragraphus (here indicated by the symbol §) 69 ; he moves
clockwise, beginning from the east:
[S]ubsolanus uel ab oriente: estan; § A meridie uel ab austro: suôan; § Ab occasu uel
occidente: westen; § A septentrione: norôan;
The four cardinal directions are then followed by four intermediate

directions, as in an eight-point compass system, again moving clockwise
and beginning from the east, and again each item is preceded by a
paragraphus:
§ Eurus: eastan suôan; § A fauonio: suôan westan; § A circio: westan norjJan; § Ab

aquilone: norôan estan;
This second, 'useful' group is then followed by a third cluster, which

the scribe seems to consider a unity, as the wh ole group is introduced by
a single paragraphus, or, more precisely, included within two such
marks:
§ Affrico: suôan westan; Nothus: westen sujJan; A borea: eastan norôan; Zephirus:
norôan easten; Chaurus: eastan norôan. §
This third cluster is the 'discarded' group, whose items have been left
in the order in which they originally appeared. These are the directions
that the scribe does not need, in other words the items that, in his view,
disturb a coherent and logical compass arrangement. He copies them aU
the same, but relegates them to the bottom of the pile, the only alteration
69
The first item has no paragraphus because it was meant to be decorated with a
large initial 's', which was never supplied, as the blank space left in the manuscript
shows.
438 LOREDANA TERESI
being the deletion of «Ab euro: suôan eastan», presumably because it

was a repetition, as Eurus was already featuring in the second group.
The scribe of Royal lO.A.viii is trying to make sense of apparent
chaos, questioning his source text and restructuring it in order to obtain
an intelligible, useful system of reference. He is elever enough to
understand that the list of winds does not make any sense, but not
sufficiently learned to dare mistrusting the interpretamenta of his source
text, or to detect - and emend - the incongruous mix of wind names and
compass points, of varied grammar cases and syntactic constructions.
5. Wind names or geographical markers?
A combination of items of different nature is also typical of

alphabetical glossaries. However, these glossaries tend to distinguish
between geographical markers and wind names not only by retaining the
morpho-syntactic appearance of the lemmata in their original context -
i.e. plain nominative case for wind names drawn from wind diagrams vs.
ablative form preceded by preposition for geographical markers drawn
from geographical texts - but also by systematically including the word
wind in the interpretamentum:
Second Corpus Glossary:

Affricus: westsuàwind (A 364) vs. Ab affrico: sujJanwestan (A 89)
Boreus: eastnoràwind (B 152) vs. Ab borea: estannorjJan (A 92)
Circius: westnoràwind (C 419) vs. A circio: noràanwestan (A 113)
Faonius: westsuàwind (F 49) vs. A fofanio: sujJanwestan (A 360)
First C1eopatra Glossary:

Boreus: eastnoràwind (B 44) vs. Ab borea: estannoràan (A 175)
Circius: westnoràwind (C 82) vs. A circio: noràanwestan (A 126)
The interpretamenta found in the list featuring in CUL, Kk.3.21,

Cotton Tiberius C.i, and Royal IO.A.viii, conversely, never include the
word wind, although they clearly include sorne wind names proper. For
this reason, and also because of their bizarre order (or more exactly
'disorder'), it seems unlikely that they were simply excerpted from a
glossary. The list could rather have been made up of different layers of
glossae collectae derived from a variety of textual sources - literary or
geographical rather than 'scientific' -, sorne - but not all - of which in
common with the glossaries mentioned above, and intertwining in ways
that still need clarification.
The diagram of the 'Alea caeli in qua sont nomina XXIIII seniorum'
The diagram of the 'Alea caeli in qua sunt nomina XXIII! seniorum'
- also known as the diagram of the four evangelists and the twenty-four
eiders- is found in Harley 3667, f. 7v, immediately opposite Byrhtferth's
diagram of the 'Concordia mensium et elementorum' (f. Sr), which is also
preserved on f. 7 v of Oxford, St John's College 1770 •
Byrhtferth's diagram is made up of a vertically-oriented rhombus-
shaped structure, with a semicircle emanating from each side, and a
number of smaller circles set on the rim of the rhombus: one at each
angle (top, bottom, left and right), and one in the middle of each side of
the rhombus. As the name reveals, the diagram depicts the harmony
between the elements and the months, but also the seasons, the signs of
the Zodiacus, the ages of man, the cardinal directions (set with east at the
top), and also the winds, which are placed in the four circles at the angles
of the rhombus, where the four elements (terra, aqua, aer, and ignis) are
also included. The winds are arranged in groups of three, in the order
cardinal wind, side wind to its right and side wind to its left, and both
Latin and Greek names are mentioned.
The copy in St John's 17 has ali the twelve Latin names and only
three Greek equivalents: Apoliotes, Calcias, and Zephyrus. It is clearly
based on the tradition stemming from Isidore's De natura rerum ch.
xxxvii, as it features Euronothus as the left side wind of Auster71 • The
copy in Harley 3667 has ali Latin and Greek names apart from
Euronothus, and it is tempting to conjecture that this name was omitted
because held 'suspicious'. Another oddity of this copy is the fact that the
Greek name Agrestis [sic] is written as if it was a second synonym for
Africus rather than the Greek equivalent of Chorus.
The same wind names have been added in the margins of the diagram
of the 'Alea caeli', on f. 7v. It is easy to recognise them as related to
those featuring in Byrhtferth's diagram as they also have Agrestis [sic]
attached to Africus rather than Chorus. Here the Latin and Greek names
have been provided with Old English glosses 72 , but a few blunders have
70
On these two diagrams, see Pulsiano, «Oid English Nomina ventorum», p. 16, and
Byrhtferth of Ramsey, 'De concordia mensium atque elementorum', ed. by P.S. Baker
(electronic edition in pdf format).
71
72
According to Ker, the Old English names found in Cotton Tiberius C.i, f. 11r, and
in Harley 3667, f. 7v, «are in the same hand, which is nearly contemporary with the hand
of the text>> (Catalogue, p. 259).
440 LOREDANA TERESI
been added too. Euronothus and Euroauster both feature here, but they
appear in reverse order. A reverse order also characterises the Latin
lemmata Chorus and Africus, and the Old English interpretamenta for
Circius and Aquilo:
Subsolanus .i. orientalis uentus. dicitur & apoliotes: riht east

Vultumus uel Calcias: norô east
Eurus .i.: su th east
Euronothus: east suth

Auster: riht suth
Euroauster: suô west
Zephirus qui & Fauonius: west

Chorus: suô west
Africus qui & lipsix. 7 agrestis: norô west
Septentrio dicitur & apartias: norô wind

Circius .i. trascias: norô est
Aquilo .i. boreas: norô west
If ali these transpositions were emended without taking

Charlemagne's system into account, the result would be a set of winds
totally conforming to the De natura rerum tradition:
Subsolanus .i. orientalis uentus. dicitur & apoliotes: riht east

Vultumus uel Calcias: norô east
Eurus .i.: suth east
Auster: riht suth

Euroauster: east suth
Euronothus: suô west
Zephirus qui & Fauonius: west

Africus qui & lipsix: suô west
Chorus 7 agrestis: norô west
Septentrio dicitur & apartias: norô wind

Circius .i. trascias: norô west
Aquilo .i. boreas: norô est
The 'Alea caeli' pro vides a very good example of how Old English
interpretamenta of wind names can go astray. Misplacements often occur
when winds are moved from a round diagram, representing the horizon,
to a rhombus-shaped or quadrangular arrangement, as in this case. These
transpositions were therefore quite common, and rather than being put
right, they were passively copied over and over again, and then perhaps
entered into glossaries, creating further havoc and confusion. They
clearly show, however, that whoever was responsible for the glossing did
not know the Latin and Greek wind names, and was purely guessing their
direction on the basis of their order in the page. The vernacular
interpretamenta of these glosses, therefore, should not be taken for Old
English equivalents for the Latin or Greek names of the winds, as they
are instead pure guesses not reflecting actual knowledge or standard
practice73 •
Conclusion
A careful analysis of the cluster of texts known as «Note 24.5: Names

of the Winds» reveals that it encompasses four different texts, ali of
glossarial nature: two wind diagrams with sorne occasional Old English
glosses attached to sorne Latin and Greek wind names; a list of glosses-
preserved in three versions - randomly conflating orientation markers and
wind names, and probably drawing on other glossarial texts; and finally, a
diagram of the 'Alea caeli in qua sunt no mina XXIII! seniorum', around
which wind names in Latin, Greek, and Old English were added,
probably under the influence of the wind triads featuring in Byrhtferth's
diagram of the 'Concordia mensium et elementorum', on the facing page.
Sorne of these texts should probably be removed from the 'Prose'
category (B) of the List of Texts for the Dictionary of Old English
Project; in particular, the two diagrams should be added to the 'Interlinear
Glosses' (C) while the list of fifteen items should be moved to the
'Glossaries' section (D).
The analysis of the single glosses in the various texts shows that wind
names and orientation markers deriving from biblical, literary or
historical texts - or even from glossaries in turn drawing on this class of
texts - were less fixed than their counterparts featuring in 'scientific'
compilations (i.e. computistical miscellanies). Renee, the uncertainty
emerging from the glossing process was probably due to an unwise
73
Three additional glosses were inexplicably added in the lower margin of the page,
which was already hosting the western triad: «Circius: westan norôan>>, «Boreas: aestan
norôerne>>, and «Caurus: suôan aesterne>>. Their genesis and their rationale are obscure,
but these glosses certain! y were not part of the original arrangement, as shown not on! y by
their being superfluous and jumbled, but also by the morphological aspect of the
interpretamenta, which differs from that of other glosses.
442 LOREDANA TERESI
attempt, on the part of sorne scribes or compilers, to conflate these two

traditions.
The way in which scribes approached the wind diagrams shows that
sound knowledge of the wind names was scarce, and that a number of
interpretamenta were based on guesswork rather than familiarity with the
topic. This lack of knowledge, paired with transmission errors, should
induce lexicographers to approach this material, especially the names of
the winds, with caution. No specialised vocabulary seems to have been
current in Old English, and no standard knowledge either, although sorne
glossators appear more know ledgeable than others, and sorne wind names
less questionable than others.
Plate XV
London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius C.i, f. llr
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
-1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
GLOSSING THE ADJECTIVES IN THE INTERLINEAR GLOSS
TO THE REGULARIS CONCORD/A IN
LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, COTTON TIBERIUS A.III
Giuseppe D. De Bonis
The Regularis Concordia (hereafter RC) is the most important

surviving witness of the tenth-century Benedictine Reform movement in
England and a landmark in the religious history of England. It represents
the only effort to construct a common rule of life to be observed in ali
English reformed monastic houses, both of monks and nuns 1. The RC, as
it is preserved in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii (hereafter
T), is a crucial document for our understanding of contemporary liturgy,
history, and also language, thanks to its Old English interlinear gloss.
Indeed, T provides fundamental information not only about the attitudes,
aims, and strategies of the tenth-century reformers, but also about the
language they used in a didactic context.
After a methodological introduction, this paper will describe the
interlinear glosses to the RC in T from a codicological point of view.
Secondly, the multifarious features of the Old English gloss will be
outlined, focusing in particular on the glossing of the adjectives. Indeed,
the main aim of this study is to clarify the use and function of the two Old
English adjective declensions, namely the weak and strong declension,
also in relation to the presence or absence of the demonstrative se, pœt,
seo before or after each Old English adjective. Both the Latin text and the
1
As regards the Benedictine Reform movement, see Knowles, D., The Monastic
Order in England: A History of Its Development from the Times of St Dunstan to the
Fourth Lateran Council, 940-1216, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1940, 2nd
edn. 1963; repr. 2004, pp. 31-56; Komexl, L., «The Regularis Concordia and its Old
English Gloss», Anglo-Saxon England 24 (1995), pp. 95-130; Hill, J., «The Regularis
Concordia and its Latin and Old English Reflexes>>, Revue bénédictine 101 (1991), pp.
299-315, at 299; see also Lapidge, M., <<Schools, Leaming and Literature in Tenth-
Century Eng1and>>, in Il Secolo di ferro. Mita e realtà del secolo X (SettSpol 38), Centro
Italiano di Studi sull' Alto Medioevo, Spoleto 1991, pp. 951-1005, repr. in his Anglo-Latin
Literature 600-899, The Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, OH 1993, pp. l-48,
addenda p. 469; Gatch, M. McG., Preaching and Theo/ogy in Anglo-Saxon England:
/Elfric and Wulfstan, University of Toronto Press, Toronto and Buffalo 1977, pp. 4-11;
and Robertson, N., <<Dunstan and Monastic Reform: Tenth-Century Fact or Twelfth-
Century Fiction?>>, in C.P. Lewis (ed.) Anglo-Norman Studies 28: Proceedings of the
Battle Conference 2005, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2006, pp. 153-67.
444 GIUSEPPE D. DE BONIS
Old English gloss have been examined anew on the basis of the
manuscript readings and, in particular, the lay-out of the glosses.
Recent grammatical studies of Old English prose and verse, based on
a generative approach, have shown that the use of the weak and strong
declension is strictly related to the position of the adjective within the
sentence and to the function (defining and not-defining) played by the
adjective in relation to the noun it refers to. The (in)definiteness of the
adjective expressed by the distinctive use of the strong or the weak
declension has been analysed also in relation to the rise of a determiner
system in an historical perspective 2 • However, the results of these studies
are not wholly trustworthy, because they have analysed the Old English
texts from a modern English perspective.
On the contrary, the glosses to the RC in T offer the opportunity to
study the Old English adjective from an Old English contemporary
perspective. Thanks to its bilingual nature, Latin-Old English, an
interlinear gloss represents a metalinguistic context in which the
glossator, who is generally an Old English native speaker, strives to
render the foreign text, providing the modern reader with grammatical
information on the Old English language.
The glossator of the RC was endowed with a good command of the
Latin language and a good language awareness of Old English, as his
glossarial choices prove. As far as the rendering of adjectives is
concerned, the analysis reveals that his choice of either the strong or the
weak declension depends on the context and on the adjectives
themselves. Moreover, the addition of the Old English demonstrative
plays a significant role in the choice of the adjectival declension and
decisively contributes to the proper syntactical rendering of the Latin
adjectives.
In order to describe the contrastive use of the two Old English
adjectival declensions as determined by the Latin text of the RC in T, I
will not analyse the text in the light of the structuralistic or generative
theory, even though I will adopt a structuralistic and generative
terminology by referring to groups of words that go together as to noun
phrases, adjectival phrases and so on. A pure generative or, more in
2
Fischer, 0., «The Position of the Adjective in Old English», in R. Bermudez-Otero,
D. Denison, R.M. Hogg and C.B. McCully (eds.), Generative The01·y and Corpus Studies:
A Dialogue from JO ICEHL, de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, pp. 153-81, at 176. See also Pysz,
A., The Syntax of Prenominal and Postnominal Adjectives in Old English, Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, Newcastle 2009.
GLOSSING THE ADJECTIVES IN THE INTERLINEAR GLOSS TO THE RC 445
general, linguistic approach would not allow an appropriate analysis of

the Old English gloss in relation to the Latin text it accompanies.
Secondly, a generative approach would describe the gloss as an
independent Old English prose text, ignoring that an interlinear gloss
does not make up a text wholly independent from its Latin counterpart.
Finally, a generative analysis of the gloss would not succeed in taking
account of the manifold functions of the glosses in an Old English
perspective, as a philological analysis of it would be able to do.
The synodal council of bishops, abbots, and abbesses held at

Winchester (973) 3 fixed up a series of regulations for monks and nuns
throughout the country, which were collected under the title Regularis
Concordia Anglicae Nationis Monachorum Sanctimonialumque. This was
meant to make up for the divergent practices in the observance of the
Regula Sancti Benedicti (hereafter RB), providing the Anglo-Saxon
monasteries with the needed uniformity. The RC is the outcome of a
collective enterprise4 , but its content is the result of the religious and
cultural activity of a single person: Bishop JEthelwold of Winchester5 .
3
Symons suggested the year 973 as the most likely date for the Council of
Winchester: see Symons, D.T., «Regularis concordia: History and Derivation», in D.
Parsons (ed.), Tenth Century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the
Council of Winchester and Regularis Concordia, Phillimore, London 197 5, pp. 37-59 and
214-7, at 40-42. For the diffusion of the RC in England, see Die Regularis Concordia und
ihre altenglische lnterlinearversion, ed. by L. Kornexl (TUEPh 17), Fink, Munich 1993,
pp. li-lvi. On the date of the Reform movement, see Barrow, J., «The Chronology of the
Benedictine 'Reform'>>, in D. Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the English 959-975: New
Interpretations (Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 8), The
Boydell Press, Woodbridge and Rochester, NY 2008, pp. 211-23. About the transitory
validity of the RC as a document dependent on the persona! bond between the monasteries
and Edgar, and the nunneries and JE!fthryth, see Knowles, The Monastic Order in
England, pp. 52-5. On the movement, see Cubitt, C., «The Tenth-Century Benedictine
Reform in England>>, Early Medieval Europe 6.1 (1977), pp. 77-94, and Robertson,
«Dunstan and Monastic Reform>>, pp. 153-67.
4
In the Prologue (§ 5), the RC is compared to a small book, embodying the good
customs of monks from St Benedict' s monastery in Fleury and from St Peter' s monastery
in Ghent: see Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis Monachorum Sanctimonialiumque.
The Monastic Agreement of the Monks and Nuns of the English Nation, ed. by T. Symons,
Nelson, New York 1953; rev. by S. Spath and repr. in Consuetudinum saeculi X, Xl, XII
Monumenta non-cluniacensia (Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum 7.3), ed. by K.
Hallinger, Schmitt, Siegburg 1984, p. 3.
5
For a summary of evidence, see Lapidge, M., «lEthelwold as Scholar and Teacher>>,
in B. Yorke (ed.), Bishop /Ethelwold: His Career and Influence, Boydell, Woodbridge
1988; repr. Boydell, Ipswich 1997, pp. 89-117.
The complete Latin text of the RC is transmitted by two

manuscripts6 : London, British Library, Cotton Faustina B.iii, ff. 158r-
198r (F), and London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii, ff. 3r-27v
(T) 7 • The Latin text preserved in T is more complete than that in F8 and is
supplied by a continuous interlinear gloss in Old English9•
The Latin text of the RC in F has long been considered earlier than its
counterpart in T and scholars have dated it to the late tenth century 10 .
However, today the majority of scholars agree in dating the RC in F to the
eleventh century 11 , while, according to the most recent investigations, T
was written about the middle of the eleventh century or somewhat later 12 .
The Tiberius codex mainly transmits texts related to the Benedictine
Reform movement, and its content indeed reflects the contemporary
6
For a survey of the excerpts, partial transcriptions and translations of the RC, see
Hill, <<The Regularis Concordia and its Latin and Old English Reflexes», pp. 299-315,
and ead., «Making Women Visible: An Adaptation of the Regularis Concordia in
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 201», in C.E. Karkov and N. Howe (eds.),
Conversion and Colonization in Anglo-Sa.xon England (Essays in Anglo-Saxon Studies 2,
MRTS 318), Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2006, pp.
153-67. .
7
See Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon
Press, Oxford 1957, reissued with suppl., 1990, nos. 155 and 186; Gneuss, H., Handlist of
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or
Owned in England up ta 1100 (MRTS 241), Arizona Center for Mediaeval and
Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ 2001, nos. 332 and 363; forT, see also id., «Origin and
Provenance of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: The Case of Cotton Tiberius A.IIl», in P.R.
Robinson and R. Zim (eds.), Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their
Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented ta M.B. Parkes, Scolar Press, Aldershot 1997, pp.
13-48.
8
T preserves the title (lines 1-2), the index(§ 13) and the epilogue(§ 69), see Die
Regularis Concordia, ed. by Kornexl, pp. cxliii-cxlvii.
9
The Latin text of both F and T was written at Christ Church, Canterbury: Die
Regularis Concordia, ed. by Kornexl, pp. ci-cxi, cxxi-cxxix, ccxxxii-ccxxxvi.
1
°F is a composite manuscript formed by three parts compiled in different periods: I:
ff. 3-157, s. xiv-xv; II: ff. 158-98, s. xi med.; and III: ff. 199-279 s. xv 1; they were bound
under a single co ver when they became part of the Cottonian Library, before the death of
Sir Robert Cotton in 1631: Die Regularis Concordia, ed. by Kornexl, pp. xcvi-xcviii. The
RC is contained in part II, the oldest of the three; in particular, Bateson attributed the RC
in F to «a late tenth-century band>>: Bateson, M., «Rules for Monks and Secular Canons
after the Revival under King Edgar>>, English Historical Review 9 (1894), pp. 690-708, at
700.
11
Ker and Gneuss date part II of F to s.xi 2 : Ker, Catalogue, no. 155, and Gneuss,
Handlist, no. 332; Michelle Brown dates it after s. xi 214 : Brown, M., A Guide ta Western
Historical Scripts from Antiquity ta 1600, The British Library, London 1990, p. 59.
12
Ker, Catalogue, no. 186; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 363.
spiritual and cultural milieu 13 • Besides Benedictine items specifically

destined to a monastic audience, T preserves texts of more general
interest (for example, lElfric's works, homiletic pieces, and various
prayers). The manuscript also reveals a didactic concern 14 . It is within
this cultural frame that the interlinear glass to the RC in T should be
taken into exam.
1. The interlinear gloss to the Regularis Concordia in T
Several features of the layout of the interlinear glosses reveal that the
glass is a copy, and that the scribe of T was not a flawless copyist 15 : a
number of glosses have been misplaced, sorne glosses show transcription
mistakes, and the original meaning of a few glosses is lost owing to
wrong ward division (for example, for me instead of forme for Latin
primam in 89.1038) 16 .
However, the addition of bath missing Latin words 17 and their
corresponding Old English renderings 18 seems to prove that the scribe
13
Bateson, «Rules for Monks and Secular Canons», pp. 690-708.
14
Clayton, in particular, has suggested that T could have been used as a teaching
book, see Clayton, M., The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (CSASE 2),
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990, p. 76. However, both Clayton and
Magennis now surmise that T rnight have been a reference book, preserving texts of
interest for a monastic community, see Clayton, M. and Magennis, H., The Old English
Lives of St Margaret (CSASE 9), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, pp. 85-
86; in this respect, Gneuss highlights the role of the Examinatio in T (at ff. 93v-94v):
«Ürigin and Provenance of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts», p. 15; about the content of T and
the importance of the <<Exarnination for an incumbent bishop» to identify T as a possible
archbishop's book, see also Cooper, T.A., «The Hornilies of a Pragmatic Archbishop's
Handbook in Context: Cotton Tiberius A. iii>>, in Lewis (ed.) Anglo-Norman Studies 28,
pp. 47-64, pp. 47 and 62.
15
Die Regularis Concordia, ed. by Kornexl, pp. cxciii.
16
All references to the interlinear gloss to the RC (of T) are to Kornexl' s edition: the
first number refers to the page and the following number to the line of text quoted (Die
Regularis Concordia, ed. by Kornex1). In her edition of the RC, Kornexl has chosen not to
emend the Old English gloss: rnistakes and other irregularities are signalled by the use of
an asterisk, and discussed in the notes at the end of the edition: for the editorial
procedures, see pp. cclx-cclxix.
17
For examples, see ibid., pp. cxc-cxciii.
18
The colour of the ink shows that the added Latin words and their Old English
renderings, both written above the main Latin text, date to the same time: ibid., pp. cxciv-
cxcv.
was not that sloppy copyise 9 . On severa! occasions, the glossator noticed
the absence of a Latin counterpart for the Old English gloss he was going
to write, and decided to insert the missing Latin word alongside its Old
English rendering. Thanks to his knowledge of Latin, he could even
provide correct vernacular interpretamenta for the wrong Latin readings
of his texe 0 . It is therefore likely that the scribe who copied the Old
English gloss had at his disposai a correct and complete Latin text or at
least a text which was more correct and complete than T. He probably
had a bilingual model in which each Latin word of the text was already
glossed with its correct Old English interpretamentum21 •
In addition, I think that the presence of glosses which follow the
Latin text syllable by syllable, even at a line or a folium break, offers
further evidence that the scribe's work was not mechanical. The Latin
text of the RC in T and its Old English interlinear gloss were written by
two different hands 22 and the scribe who added the gloss must have
copied it following the layout of the Latin text in T rather than the layout
of the Latin text in his model. Indeed it seems highly improbable that the
copyist was using a bilingual model of the RC with the same layout as T.
It is very likely, instead, that, in the bilingual model, the glosses were not
accommodated on each line or page as they are now in T. For example,
the sentences edited by Kornexl as:
myslicum bruce ôeawum 7 swa peah gesyhpe mid godcundre

1.7 diuersis uteretur moribus, attamen respectu diuino
and
drohtnunge fram lenigum si gepristlœht gif soplice

12.137 conuersationis, a quoquam presu[Sr]matur. Si autem,
19
Although Komexl calls the man at work on the gloss <<Glossator>> and not either
scribe or copyist, in her opinion, it is highly improbable that the glossator would have
been able to find out by himself a word or words rnissing from the Latin sentences of the
RC, without the help of a complete Latin copy of the text: ibid., p. cxcv.
20
According to Komexl, however, the glossator cannot be considered a translator,
because his attitude towards both the Latin text and its Old English rendering is
inconsistent: ibid., pp. cxc-cxci.
21
Komexl argues that the <<Glossator>> would have noticed the Latin words missing
only in case of an empty space left in the manuscript: ibid., pp. cxcii-cxcv. In my opinion,
he was full y capable to understand and analyse the syntactical structure of the Latin text
he was glossing.
22
Ker, Catalogue, no. 186.
in Tare set, respectively, as follows 23 :
cincg <eàelboren fram ongimendre hys cyldhades ylde peah pe swa swa seo gewunap yld ruys
f.3r5 rex egregius, ab ineunte SUft puriti~t aetate, Iicet, uti ipsa solet aetas, di
licum bruce àeawum 7 swa peah gesyhpe mid godcundre <ethrinen abbude
f.3r6 uersis uteretur moribus, attamen respectu diuino attactus, abbate
and
<enigum gemete p<enne p<ere sylfan hi synt drohtnunge fram ::enigum si geprist
f.4v24 Quolibet modo, dum eiusdem sunt conuersationis, a quoquam presu
l::eht gif soplice dysigdome gelettendum oppe synnum geearnedum
f.5rl matur. Si autem, imperitia impediente uel peccatis promerentibus,
As can be seen, the Old English words myslicum and si gejJristlœht were
divided according to the respective Latin counterparts in T, diuersis and
presumatur.
Nevertheless, it is very difficult to establish if and to what extent the
person who copied the glosses was a mere copyist or if he was capable
for himself to devise and add Old English glosses that were missing or
misplaced in his model. It is only possible to conclude that the glosses to
the RC in T are the immediate result of the activity of a scribe who relied
in large part on the work of one or more glossators witnessed by his
model. Since my main interest here is in the glossing of the adjectives, in
the following pages 1 will deal with the gloss as the result of a glossator' s
work, rather than as the result of a copyist' s work.
2. Glossing methods and glosses
A number of scholars such as Robinson24 , Korhammer25 , Lapidge26 ,
23
The first number refers to the folio, the second to the line. Here and on other
occasions, 1 provide my own transcription of the manuscript.
24
Robinson, F., «Syntactical Glosses in Latin Manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon
Provenance>>, Speculum 48 (1973), pp. 443-75.
25
Korhammer, M., <<Mittelalterliche Konstruktionshilfen und altenglischen
Wortstellung>>, Speculum 34 (1980), pp. 18-58.
26
Lapidge, M., «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, I. The
Evidence of Latin Glosses>>, inN. Brooks (ed.), Latin and the Vemacular Languages in
Early Medieval Britain (Studies in the Early History of Britain), Leicester University
Press, Leicester 1982, pp. 99-140, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature 600-899, pp. 455-98,
and addenda p. 516.
Page27 , Wieland28 , and De Bonis29 , have analysed manuscripts containing

glosses that not only provide lexical interpretations for a text either in
Latin or in Old English, but also supply relevant grammatical and
syntactical information30 •
The first systematic attempt to introduce a taxonomy of Anglo-Saxon
glossing methods was made by Wieland in 1983, mainly on the basis of
Latin-Latin glosses31 • Wieland recognised five categories of glosses:
prosodical glosses, commentary glosses, lexical glosses, grammatical
glosses, and syntactical glosses 32 The RC gloss offers examples of only
the last three kinds of glosses.
In her analysis of the interlinear gloss to the RC, Kornexl follows
Wieland' s categorization of the Old English glos ses in lexical,
grammatical and syntactical, but, instead of identifying specifie kinds of
glosses pertaining to each Latin lemma, she prefers to speak of glossing
methods (lexical, grammatical and syntactical), to avoid a possible
misleading impression of a one-to-one relationship between the gloss and
its function 33 • In fact, a gloss may have more than one function: for
example, the rendering of Latin torpore with Old English mid slœwôe
cannot exclusively be classified as either a lexical or a morphological
27
Page, R.I., «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, II: The
Evidence of English Glosses>>, in Brooks (ed.), Latin and The Vernacular Languages, pp.
141-65.
28
Wieland, G.R., The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius in Cambridge
University Library, MS Gg.5.35 (Studies and Texts 61), Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, Toronto 1983; id., «Latin Lemma- Latin Gloss: The Stepchild of Glossologists>>,
Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 19 (1984), pp. 91-99; and id., «The Glossed Manuscript:
Classbook or Library Book?>>, Anglo-Saxon England 14 (1985), pp. 153-73.
29
De Bonis, M.C., «Leaming Latin through the Regula Sancti Benedicti: The
Interlinear Glosses in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.iii>>, in P. Lendinara, L.
Lazzari and M. A. D' Aronco (eds.), Form and Content of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon
England in the Light of Contemporary Manuscript Evidence (Fédération Internationale
des Instituts d'Études Médiévales. Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 39), Brepols,
Turnhout 2007, pp. 187-216; and ead., <<La funzione delle lettere alfabetiche nella glossa
interlineare alla Regula Sancti Benedicti del manoscritto London, British Library, Cotton
Tiberius A.III», Linguistica e Filologia 22 (2006), pp. 55-98.
30
It needs to be highlighted that grammatical and syntactical glosses were expressed
not only by means of words, but also through complex systems based on the letters of the
alphabet, full stops, commas, and strokes: see Korhammer, <<Mittelalterliche
Konstruktionshilfem>.
31
Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius, pp. 16-25, 26-46, 47-97,
98-107, and 147-60.
32
Wieland, <<Latin Lemma- Latin Gloss>>, pp. 96-97.
33
Komexl, <<The Regularis Concordia and its Old English Gloss>>, p. 120.
gloss alone. Indeed, this is both a morphological and a lexical gloss, that
is, mid slœwôe is an Old English interpretation meant to explain both the
meaning and the morphological value of Latin torpore.
However, although Kornexl introduces the concept of "glossing" and
"glossing method" in her study, she tends to assign only one function to
each Old English gloss. The gloss mid slœwôe, for example, is classified
as grammatical glossing34 , instead of being considered as the outcome of
both lexical and grammatical glossing. The gloss se regul, which renders
Latin regula, is classified as a grammatical gloss too 35 , but the addition of
the demonstrative se (see below, § 3) to the noun regul suggests that the
gloss se regul provided not only the meaning and the gender, but also the
syntactical role of the Latin word in question i.e. the case, number and
definiteness. In my investigation of the glossing methods of the RC,
Kornexl's three kinds of glossing will indeed be abided by, but, instead of
Kornexl' s general label "grammatical glossing", I will rather distinguish
between morphological and syntactical glossing, since they can both be
classified as grammatical glossing.
A thorough analysis of the interlinear gloss to the RC in T has
revealed that the gloss as a whole is the outcome of three different
glossing methods, which were employed simultaneously. In particular,
lexical glossing is the first and simplest step of the glossing process as a
whole, and it is the only glossing method that can either exist by itself or
be combined with both the morphological and syntactical glossing.
Morphological glossing conveys information on both the meaning and the
morphology of the Latin !emma, but may also be part of the syntactical
glossing. Syntactical glossing provides information that can guide the
reader through the structure of the Latin sentences; it also partakes of the
two previous glossing methods.
The interlinear gloss to the RC in T does not produce an autonomous
Old English text and it is a weil known fact that an interlinear gloss
cannat be considered as a translation proper. In fact, a number of
sentences of the Old English interlinear gloss to the RC cannat be
understood without the support of the Latin text. For example, the
sentence 23.257-260:
Ideoque omni tempore nocturnis horis, cum ad opus diuinum d<e> lectulo surrexerit
frater, primum si bi signum sanct<; crucis inprimat per sanct<; trinitatis inuocationem.
34
Die Regularis Concordia, ed. by Kornexl, p. ccxviii.
35
Ibid., p. ccxviii.
(Therefore at ali times when a brother arises from bed in the night hours for the work
of God, he shali first of ali sign himself with the sign of the Holy Cross, invoking the
Holy Trinity) 36
has been glossed as 23.257-260:

7 on ealium timan nihternum tidum panne to weorce godcundum of bedde aris* se
bropor ::crest him tacn p::ere halgan rode onasette purh haligre prynnesse
gecigednesse.
This sequence of Old English words provides a word by word

translation of the corresponding Latin period, but does not represent an
Old English sentence in its own righe 7 .
3. Glossing the adjectives in the interlinear gloss to the RC
In the following pages, I will try to prove that Old English adjectives
in the glass replicate both the meaning and the syntactical value of Latin
adjectives by means of a contrastive use of the weak or the strong
declension. That is to say that, while the syntactical role of Latin
adjectives is expressed by the context alone, that of Old English
adjectives is expressed through the choice of either the strong or the weak
declension. This choice is dictated by the context in which their referent
occurs. The glossator's choice to glass Latin adjectives with an Old
English counterpart in either the strong or the weak form helps the reader
understand the defining or non-defining role of Latin adjectives.
Therefore, in my opinion, the rendering of Latin adjectives can be
regarded as part of the syntactical glossing38 . Moreover, this glossing
36
Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis, ed. by Symons, p. 11.
37
A word by word translation wou1d produce (And at ali time at night hours when at
work divine from bed arises the brother first himself sign of the Holy Cross shall sign
through the invocation to the Holy Trinity).
38
Syntactical glossing supplies words or symbols that assist readers in the
understanding of the syntactical organization of the Latin text. According to Wieland, the
glosses that establish a relationship among the words of a sentence can be defined
syntactica1 glosses. These may be symbo1s (construe marks, alphabeticalletters, strokes
and commas) or words, such as subject pronouns identifying the speaker or the subject of
a sentence which is not explicitly mentioned in the main Latin text: see Wieland, <<Latin
Lemma - Latin Glass>>, pp. 97-98, and id., «The Glossed Manuscript: C1assbook or
Library Book?>>, pp. 163-8. As far as adjectives are concerned, the description of their
form (strong or weak) is part of the morphology, see, for example, Quirk, R. and Wrenn,
process is strictly related to the addition or vice versa the absence of the
demonstrative se, pœt, seo 39 , which, as remarked above, contributes to
determine the syntactical role of Latin words from an Old English
perspective.
A great number of Latin noun phrases (NPs) have been glossed with
the corresponding Old English NPs featuring the addition of se, pœt, seo
(inflected in the case required by the context). The demonstrative se, pœt,
seo can be used both independently and dependently. Se is used
independently when it is employed as a pronoun40 , and dependently when
it occurs alongside a noun to define it. The dependent use of se
corresponds to what is now called definite article. Indeed Mitchell refers
to the Old English se, pœt, seo as «definite articles», because they can
often be translated by Modern English the41 and because they play the
same role as the modern article. According to Mitchell, «modern scholars
have created for themselves the unreal problem of the Old English
'definite article'» 42 , since the dependent se occurs in clauses where it is
hard to distinguish its use as a definite article from that as a
demonstrative43 . As Quirk and Wrenn pointed out,
C.L., An Old English Grammar, Methuen, London 1955, 2nd edn., Northern Illinois
University, DeKalb, IL 1994, §§ 50-58 (ch. II under the heading «Inflexions). However,
the description of their form and function in relation to the nouns and demonstratives they
are used with is part of the syntax: see ibid., § 116 in ch. III under the heading «Syntax» ).
See also Mitchell, B., Old English Syntax, 2 vols., Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985,
I, ch. I <<The Parts of Speech and their Functions».
39
The syntactical glossing within the interlinear glass to the RC was canied out by
lexical means. On the one hand, it entailed the change of the Latin ward arder in the Old
English glass: e.g. 3.29 coniugique sur; rendered as 7 his gemœccean, and 50.599 ad
requiem suam glossed with to hyra rysta, in both cases with the possessive adjective
preceding the noun. On the other hand, syntactical glossing was achieved by adding Old
English words unparalleled in the Latin text: e.g. 9.109 canimus 'we sing' rendered by we
singaô with the addition of the subject pronoun we, or 16.181 regula glossed with se
regul, with the addition of the nominative masculine of the demonstrative se, f;œt, seo; see
Die Regularis Concordia, ed. by Kornexl, p. ccxix.
40
Mitchell, Old English Syntax, I, § 316.
41
Ibid., I, § 237.
42
Ibid., I, § 328.
43
Varions attempts to classify the uses of the dependent se have been made in the
past: see Hüllweck, A., Über den Gebrauch des Artikels in den Werken Alfreds des
Grossens, Berlin Diss., Druck von L. Reiter, Dessau 1887; Philipsen, H., Über Wesen und
Gebrauch des bestimmtenArtikels in der Prosa Konig Alfreds aufGrund des Orosius (Hs.
L) und der Cura Pastoralis, Diss., Greifswald, Abel1887; and Wülfing, J.E., Die Syntax in
den Werken Alfreds des Grossen, 2 vols., Hanstein, Bonn 1894-1901, I, pp. 277-87 and
the existence of a 'definite article' in OE is a vexed question, but it seems to

be one which has been raised largely by our desire to impose upon OE a
terminology familiar in and suitable for Mod.E.: where today we have three
contrastive and formally distinct defining words, the, that, this, each with a
name, in OE there were but two, se and pes, and we are left as it were with a
name to spare. The problem partly disappears when we reflect that in many
instances of their use today, the and that are interchangeable («Do you
remember the/that man 1 was speaking to last night?»); in OE se (jJœt, seo)
embraced practically the whole range of functions performed today, jointly
or separately, by the and thal4 .
Se, pœt, seo are generally classified as demonstrative pronouns45 , but

their dependent use suggests that this definition needs sorne adjusting.
When occurring before nouns they function as modifiers 46 : according to
the context, se can be considered either a demonstrative adjective (a
deictic) or an identifying word (an article). Insofar as they determine the
noun they precede, se, pœt, seo may be called "determiners" (D) 47 ,
371-2; see also Closs, O.E.E., A Grammar of Alfred's Orosius, unpubl. Ph.diss.,
University of Califomia, Berkeley 1964, p. 91.
44
Quirk and Wrenn, An Old English Grammar, § 117; in the quotation, OE stands
for Old English and Mod.E for Modern English.
45
At the beginning of the section devoted to pronouns Mitchell admits that
demonstratives might be called «pronoun/adjectives>> (Mitchell, Old English Syntax, I, §§
239-40) since they may function both as pronouns and adjectives, but he then adds that it
is sufficient to speak of independent and dependent use of uninflected and inflected
forms: ibid., §§ 311-45). See also Brunner, K., Altenglische Grammatik: nach der
angelsachsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers (Samrnlung kurzer Grammatiken
germanischer Dialekte, A. Hauptreihe 3), 3rd edn., Niemeyer, Tübingen 1965, §§ 337-8;
Campbell, A., Old English Grammar, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1959; repr. 1977, §§ 708-
15; and Quirk and Wrenn, An Old English Grammar, § 65 and, under the heading 'Nouns
modifiers and pronouns' § § 116-8.
46
By "modifiers" I mean all those words used to clarify the role of a noun in a
sentence. Most of them cannat occur al one, for example we can say «I saw the books in
your room>>, «l saw new books in your room>> or «l saw the new books in your room»,
with books occurring with and without articles, with and without adjective, but always
producing a correct sentence. Conversely, <<l saw the in your room»**, «< saw new in
your room>>** and «< saw the new in your room»** are incorrect sentences: the nonsense
in the last three sentences demonstrates that the and new are modifiers which are
dependent on the noun they modify/determine: see Graffi, G., Sintassi, Il Mulino,
Balogna 1994, pp. 43-4, 98; Bloomfield, L., Language, H. Holt, New York 1933, pp. 184-
206.
47
Phrases consisting of a determiner and a noun or of a determiner, an adjective, and
a noun are called «determiner phrases>> (DP). The suggestion that nominal phrases should
be analysed as maximal projections of a determiner in an X-bar scheme is attributed to
adopting the terminology of generative grammar48 . The determiner se,

jJCet, seo is one of the morphological resources of Old English, and its use
may be classified as belonging to morphological glossing. However, in
my opinion, the use of determiners in an interlinear gloss rather pertains
to syntactical glossing, because their addition to the gloss modifies the
syntactical structure of the sentence. Determiners can transform the
function of a noun from indefinite into definite, and, as a consequence,
the sentence assumes a more definite meaning49 • The glossator of the RC
used se, pœt, seo not only to mark the gender of an Old English
substantive, but also as an identifying resource.
The RC gloss features examples of Old English determiners added to
different sorts of Old English NPs which render the following types of
Latin phrases:
-Latin NPs formed by a noun:

3.27 ou es pa sceap
16.181 regula se regul
-Latin adjectival phrases (APs) formed by an adjective plus noun:

1.3 Gloriosus Eadgar se wuldorfulla [proper name not glossed]
17.197 beati BE'NE'DICTI pres eadigan benedictes
-Latin prepositional phrases (PPs) formed by preposition plus noun:

9.106 pro rege for prene cingc
Abney, S.P., The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect, unpubl. diss., MIT, 1987.
Similar suggestions may be found in earlier works such as Brame, M.K., «The General
Theory of Binding and Fusion», Linguistic Analysis 7,3 (1981), pp. 277-325; id. «The
Head-selector Theory of Lexical Specifications and the Nonexistence of Coarse
Categories», Linguistic Analysis 10,4 (1982), pp. 321-5; Hudson, R.A., Word Grammar,
Blackwell, Oxford 1984; and Szabolcsi, A., «Functional Categories in the Noun Phrase»,
in I. Kenesei (ed.), Approaches to Hungarian 2: Theories and Analysis, JATE Publishing,
Szeged 1987, pp. 167-89. I will not use the category «determiner phrase>> in my analysis,
because the Latin text does not have any determiner phrases corresponding to Old English
determiner phrases.
48
Chomsky, N., Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, MIT, Cambridge, MA 1965; id.,
Lectures on Government and Binding (Studies in Generative Grammar 9), Foris
Publications, Dordrecht 1981, 7th edn., de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1993, p. 29.
49
According to Komexl, the addition of the <<Demonstrativpronomina (bestimmte
Artikel)>> belongs to grammatical glossing only: Die Regularis Concordia, ed. by Komexl,
p. ccxviii.
The Old English NPs and APs may also feature additional markers of
the Latin case:
103.1209 antiphonario on ]:>am antefne *50

114.1338 mediante octaua hora on middre j:J::ere eahtoj:Jan tide
The use of the determiner se, jxet, seo in all these examples proves
that they do not simply function as gender indicators, but as modifiers of
the noun they precede, because it is likely that the glossator deemed
superfluous to provide the gender of the Old English nouns he was going
to write in his own language. Even an uneducated native speaker might
not have been linguistically aware that a noun with se was masculine and
that a noun with seo was feminine, but he surely knew that, for example,
bropor could be preceded by se and rode by seo, but not the opposite.
The glossator of the RC often rendered Latin adjectives, as well as

Latin nouns, with Old English interpretamenta preceded by the
determiner se, pœt, seo, showing that demonstratives could be added both
before nouns and before adjectives. The addition of a determiner before a
noun does not affect its morphology, since it simply defines it either by
identifying the gender (masculine, feminine or neuter) or by clarifying the
syntactical role in a sentence (defined or undefined subject or object),
regardless of its declension. On the contrary, the addition of se, pœt, seo
before adjectives determines a change in both the morphological and
syntactical structure of the Old English adjectives in the gloss: if
preceded by a determiner, a strong adjective changes both its
morphological aspect and its syntactical role by assuming weak endings
and defining the noun it precedes. These changes cannot be explained as
an effect of the lexical glossing of the Latin, but should be considered a
syntactical strategy meant to render both the lexical and the syntactical
value of the corresponding Latin lemma.
Before illustrating the glossing process applied to adjectives, a few
preliminary remarks about the Old English adjective would be
appropriate. First of all, a distinction should be made between those
adjectives which have a comparative and a superlative form (the
50
According to Komexl, antefne is a misspelling of antefnere: Die Regularis
Concordia, ed. by Kornexl, p. 323.
adjectives that Mitchell calls «adjectives proper>>51 ) and demonstratives

(se, jxet, seo), possessives (min, etc.), interrogatives (hwelc), and
indefinites (sum), that can ail function as both adjectives and pronouns
but do not have comparative and superlative forms. In this article, I will
deal mainly with «adjectives proper» and, in particular, with the use of
Old English sylf and ilea.
Like ali Germanie languages, Old English had two kinds of inflexion
of the adjective, the strong (or indefinite) and the weak (or definite)
inflexion52 , that could be applied to the majority of the adjectives. An
exception is represented by eall 'ail', fea(we) 'few', genog 'enough',
manig 'many', and oôer 'other', which were al ways indefinite. On the
other hand, ilca 'same', ordinal numerals (except oôer), comparatives,
and superlatives53 only took the definite inflexion.
The strong declension is used when the adjective is predicative, for
example in pœr sint swïôe micle meras fersce 'there are very large fresh-
water lakes', where no attempt is made to specify any further the item
modified by the adjective54 • An adjective used predicatively gives sorne
information about a noun without modifying it. We may say that the
strong declension is used when an adjective (or an adjectival phrase) is
not preceded by a demonstrative or when no other reason calls for the use
of the definite declension.
The weak declension represents a specifying form of the adjective,
usually painting out that the modified item is the expected one in that
specifie context or the one referred to previously, for example, se
foresprecena here 'the above-mentioned army'. The weak form of an
adjective indeed modifies a noun semantically, usually limiting its
meaning, as in the case with se foresprecena here. The word here alone
may denote any kind of army, but here preceded by se foresprecena
indicates unambiguously the army that had been mentioned above. The
weak declension gives the adjective an attributive value. This inflexion is
regularly used after deterrniners, irrespectively of whether the adjective
occurs before or after the noun or even without a noun. It is frequently
found also after possessives, for example, mid his micclan werode 'with
51
Mitchell, Old English Syntax, 1, § 97.
52
Campbell, Old English Grammar, §§ 638-60. See also Krahe, H., Germanische
Sprachwissenschaft, 3 vols., de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 1969, Il,§§ 49-55.
53
Quirk and Wrenn, An Old English Grammar, § 50. The superlative can be used
both attributively and predicatively: Mitchell, Old English Syntax, 1, §§ 187-8.
54
Quirk and Wrenn, An Old English Grammar, § 116.
his large force', after a noun genitive (group) 55 , and when adjectives are
used as nouns 56 , a syntactical function that limits the semantic value of
the adjectives. For example, in pa Iudeiscan ]Je on Crist gelyfdon 'the
Jews who believed in Christ' 57 , Iudeiscan does not give any additional
information (as predicative adjectives do), but plays the role of a defined
noun: its semantic value is restricted by its syntactical function.
The Old English equivalents of Latin adjectives occur in various
positions and in six different kinds of phrases throughout the interlinear
gloss under examination.
3.1 Adjectives occurring in Old English phrases formed by Adj plus N

whether or not preceded by determiners and translating Latin phrases
formed by Adj and N58
The analysis of the Old English renderings of Latin phrases formed

by adjectives plus nouns has revealed that Old English adjectives have
been inflected according to both the weak and the strong declension. The
choice of the inflexion depends on the syntactical definiteness of the
adjectives and nouns that constitute each phrase. However, the shift of the
phrases from definiteness to indefiniteness is not only signalled by the
inflexion chosen to render each Latin adjective, but also by the addition
of a determiner or the absence of it.
Phrases preceded by a determiner. The interlinear gloss to the RC

offers a long list of complex Old English glosses which render Latin APs
by means of APs preceded by a determiner. The Latin adjectives
occurring in these phrases have been rendered, as expected, by Old
English adjectives inflected in the case corresponding to the Latin
counterpart, as shown in the examples below. The only grammatical
(morpho-syntactical) feature that seems to be unpredictable in the gloss is
the declension according to which the Old English adjective is inflected.
In sorne instances, the choice of the weak declension depends on the
adjectives themselves, for example, in the case of ordinal numbers and
55
Mitchell, Old English Syntax, I, § § 102-41.
56
Collinson, W.E., «Sorne Recent Deve1opments of Syntactical Theory: A Critical
Survey», Transactions of the Philological Society 40 (1941), pp. 43-133, at 70 and 125.
57
CH I,vii: IElfric's Catholic Homilies. The First Series. Text, ed. by P. Clemoes
(EETS ss 17), Oxford University Press, London and New York 1997, p. 234.66.
58
Adj stands for adjective, N for noun and D for determiner.
comparatives, which are always inflected weak59 and preceded by the

determiner se, pœt, seo:
Latin text Old English rendering
23.275 IN PRIMA !TAQUE ORATIONE on pam forman witud gebede

84.978 altera die pam oprum drege
121.1406 Prima 1ectio seo forme rredincg
105.1227 tertium percelebratur responsorium se pridda byp gesungen reps
8.96 alicuius altioris (97) gradus uir uel reniges heahran (97) hades wer oppe
inferioris [comparative] neoperan
However, the choice of the adjective declension to render Latin

adjectives that are neither ordinal numbers nor comparatives depends on
the semantic context in which they occur and on the addition of
determiners that define the syntactical role to be attributed to the
adjectives in question:
1.3 Gloriosus Eadgar se wuldorfulla [the proper name is not glossed]

17.197 beati BE'NE'DICTI pres eadigan benedictes
18.200 sancte regule pres haligan regales
Phrases not preceded by a determiner. The Old English gloss also

features a series of Latin APs rendered by APs not preceded by a
determiner. In these cases the adjectives are inflected according to the
strong declension:
1.5 britannice insule brittisces iglandes

3.34 sancti patris Benedicti haliges freder --
4.47 regularia precepta regullice bebodu
11.131 sanct~t regule Haliges regales
22.260 Persanct~t trinitatis inuocationem purh haligre prynnesse gecigednesse
The last two groups of examples show that the addition of the
determiner se, pœt, seo to the AP modifies the definiteness of the
components of the Old English phrase. In particular, the change in
59
Campbell, Old English Grammar, §§ 656, 692-5.
definiteness determined by the addition of the determiners corresponds to

a change in the adjectives inflexion: a defined AP is expressed by the
weak forrn of the adjective, while a not-defined AP is expressed by the
strong forrn of the adjective.
The gloss does not provide any linguistic hint as to why the glossator
decided that sorne Latin APs had to be defined in Old English and sorne
others had not. However, it is possible to identify sorne contexts in which
the glossator always chose to use the definite declension:
- the definite declension is used with nouns indicating definite roles
and abjects and when the text refers to sornething or sorneone well
known, such as the king, the author of the Benedictine Rule, the Rule
itself, the Pope and the Holy Spirit:
1.3 Gloriosus Eadgar Se wuldorfulla [the proper name is not

glossed]
17.] 97 beati BE'NE'DICTI pres eadigan benedictes
18.200 sancte regule pres haligan regules
103.1208 beati GREGORII (1209) pape pres eadigan gregorius (1209) papan
147.1688 Sancti Spirius pres haligan gastes
It is also used in all the following instances:

- when the rneaning of the adjectives thernselves invites to limit the
sernantic value of the nouns they precede, because they refer to
sornething that has already been rnentioned before:
8.94 prefati sinodalis conuentus pres foresredan sinoplicre gegaderunge

63.739 suprascriptus ordo seo forewritene endebyrdnes
- when the adjectives indicate a position in space or in tirne:
33.383 dexter offerat chorus se swipra offrige chor

118.1381 uenturi (1382) diei pres (1382) teowerdan dreges
124.1443 dominicalis uespertt pres drihtenlican refenes
- when the nouns of the Latin APs (generally in the plural) represent
an entire category, for exarnple, 'all the minsters, all the altars':
2.15 sacra coenobia pa ha1gan mynstru

80.943 sacra a1taria pa halgan weofude
- when the superlative is used to underscore the extraordinary value

of the noun it refers to:
Latin text Old Eng1ish rendering
7.79 Excellentissimum sancte obedientiç p::ene m::erustan halige* hyrsumnysse

fructum w::estm
lt is also possible to identify the principle followed by the glossator

concerning the use of the non-definite declension. The adjectives are
inflected according to the strong declension, when they supply additional
information about the nouns (without limiting the semantic value of the
nouns):
1. 7 diuersis uteretur moribus myslicum bruce ôeawum

4.43 uerba esortatoria ac pacifica word mynegyendlice 7 gesibsume
8.90 cum bonorum operum uigilantia mid godra weorca w::eccean
However, there are severa! occurrences where the glossator has

resorted to adjectives inflected according to the strong rather than the
weak declension although the Latin adjective has an attributive value
(since it defines the semantic value of the noun):
1.5 britannice insule brittisces iglandes

1.9 catholicç fidei rihtes geleafan
3.34 sancti patris Benedicti haliges f::eder --
4.42 synodale concilium synoplice gernot
11.131 sanctç regule haliges regules
22.260 per sanctç trinitatis inuocationem purh haligre prynnesse gecigednesse
In 11.131, the rendering of sanctt; regule with haliges regules, a

Latin AP which is later glossed withpœs haligan regules (18.200), yields
proof that the glossator used the two inflexions discerningly.
The frequent oscillation between strong and weak inflexion of

adjectives occurring in analogons APs demonstrates that the strong
declension, apart from having a predicative value, offered the glossator
the possibility to provide a sort of basic translation for a Latin adjective.
In other words, he relied on the strong declension whenever he wanted to
offer only the Old English semantic equivalent of a Latin adjective, or
when he was uncertain about the adjective form to use in the gloss,
because the meaning of the Latin text was not completely clear to him.
As a result, the strong inflexion, is found in both undefined and defined
contexts, while the weak declension occurs only in defined contexts.
In the light of the glossator' s linguistic awareness, it is possible to
affirm that he used the strong inflexion whenever he wanted to be more
faithful to Latin, the source language, than to Old English, the target
language. In these instances, he provided a word-for-word translation
focused on the meaning of the lemma, rather than on its morphological
and syntactical value. Hence he switched from what might be called a
morpho-syntactical glossing to a merely lexical glossing, because he
deemed that the text was clear enough from a morpho-syntactical point
of view and that a lexical translation would have been sufficient. It is
quite likely, for example, that the would-be reader of the gloss to the RC
knew that prynness, the Old English rendering of Latin trinitas, could
only refer to the holy Trinity. Therefore the glossator did not feel the
need to add any determiner to the gloss to highlight that the text was
about the 'Holy Trinity'.
In the Old English prose translation of the RC, also preserved in T 60 ,
the phrase rendering the Latin sanctç trinitatis reads «prere haligan
prynnesse»61 , a phrase that shows the expected weak form of the
adjective (halig) referred to the Holy Trinity. A comparison between the
above-quoted RC gloss to the Latin phrase sanctç trinitatis, namely
haligre prynnesse, and the corresponding prose translation, namely pœre
haligan prynnesse, proves that, while the translator used the weak
declension in a defined context, the glossator employed the strong
inflexion as a deviee belonging to the lexical glossing, since in the phrase
haligre prynnesse the adjective haligre conveys only the meaning, not
60
It is a fragmentary Old English translation ofthe RC contained at ff. 174-176 of T:
Ker, Catalogue, no. 155, and Gneuss, Handlist, no. 332.
61
Schroer, A., «De Consuetudine Monachorum», Englische Studien 9 (1886), pp.
290-6, at 294. About the Old English prose fragments of the RC, see also Die Regularis
Concordia, ed. by Komexl, pp. cxlix-clii.
the syntactical role of the Latin adjective. However, the same glossator
used the weak declension in 18.200 fram pam foresœdon fœder benedicte
as a deviee of the syntactical glossing in order to define the AP in the
same way in which it would have been defined in a prose text.
Consequently, the glossator would have used the weak form of halig in
22.260, if he had wanted to gloss sanctç trinitatis syntactically.
The same distinction between the weak and the strong form of the
adjectives depending on the addition or the absence of se, pœt, seo is
evident also when adjectives occur in two other kinds of Old English
phrases.
3.2 Adjectives occurring in Old English phrases constituted by Prep62 ,

Adj, and N preceded or not by determiners and trans lating Latin
phrases formed by Prep, Adj, and N
Phrases preceded by determiners. Adjectives have been inflected

according to the weak declension in the Old English PPs showing the
addition of se, pœt, seo:
18.200 a predicto (201) patre Benedicto fram pam foresa:don (201) freder
ben edicte
103.1206 (§50) IN dYe sancto on da:ge pam halgum
One may consider also the following examples, because ordinal

numbers are always declined weak:
63.737 usque octauum diem oô prene eahtupan dreg

91.1069 (§ 45) IN prima quidem oratione on pam forman witudlice gebede
92.1082 IN secunda on pam opran
This group also includes examples of Latin phrases not completely

glossed, probably because they contained weil known words that were
considered easily understandable:
139.1601 coram sancto altar beforan pam halgan --
62
Prep stands for preposition.
Phrases not preceded by determiners. Old English PPs that are not
preceded by a determiner show their adjectives inflected according to the
strong declension:
2.22 per tantam sui regni amplitudinem geond swa mycele hys rices rympe
2.26 a rabidis perfido rum rictibus fram reaflum ortrywra geaglum
4.39 cum magna studuernt hilaritate mid mycelre hygdan geblissunge
6.67 in uno alueario on anre hyfe
12.133 in sede episcopali on setle bisceoplicum
22.259 per sanctç tri ni tatis purh haligre prynnesse gecigednesse
In 6.67, the gloss offers an example of the numeral an inflected

according to the strong declension. The cardinal number an is usually
declined strong63 , because cardinal numbers pro vide information about
quantity, but not about the definiteness of the quantified noun, while
ordinal numbers describe the exact position of a defined noun in a list or
in a sequence (see § 3.3 below).
3.3 Adjectives occurring in Old English PPs preceded or not by

determiners, where Preps have been added to render Latin APs that
are not introduced by Preps
Phrases preceded by determiners. The RC gloss offers examples of

PPs formed by preposition, determiner, adjective, and noun, only when
the adjective hosted by the phrase is an ordinal number; ordinal numbers
belonging to these PPs are always inflected weak:
60.705 Prima paschalis (706) on pam forman easterlices (706) freolses

sollempnitatis die d:rge
61.710 Reliquis uero tribus diebus on pam oprum prim dagum
66.773 quarta et (77 4) sexta feria on pam feorpa'n' 7 (774) pam syxtan
weorcd:cege
140.1610 trigesimo uero die on pam prittigopan (--) d:cege
63
Anis declined weak when it means 'alone': Campbell, Old English Grammar, §
683. As far as other cardinal numbers are concerned, the gloss shows examples of Latin
tres glossed with the strong form /Jry, as in 104.1219 where tres antiphomç is rendered by
/Jry antefnas.
It is evident that the use of the weak declension is linked to the

presence of the determiner se, pœt, seo, underlining the attributive and
defining value of the ordinal numbers.
Phrases not preceded by determiners. All the remaining Old English

PPs that render Latin phrases formed by adjective plus noun feature an
adjective declined strong as in the following instances:
1.7 respectu diuino (8) attactus gesyhpe mid godcundre (8) rethrinen
2.15 diuersis [ ... ] (16) 1ocis on mys1icum [ ... ] stowum
3.30 impavidi more unearges mid gewunan
4.41 diligenti cura Mid geornfulre care
The use of the strong instead of the weak declension in 1. 7, in

particular, shows that the glossator used the strong declension as the base
form of the adjective to render Latin adjectives occurring in phrases
without additional defining elements. As a matter of fact, respectu diuino
attactus means 'touched by divine regard', not 'touched by a divine
regard' or 'touched by the divine regard'.
In this same group, the numeral an has been inflected strong:
3.37 una fide mid anum geleafan

4.38 uno consuetudinis usu mid anum peawes gewunan
4. Adjectives occurring after nouns as in their corresponding Latin

APs
The interlinear gloss to the RC also shows sorne examples of Latin

APs glossed with Old English APs that imitate the syntactical structure of
their Latin counterpart placing the adjectives after the nouns:
32.378 horam tertiam tide pa priddan

40.481 missa celebretur principalis mresse si sungen seo ealdorlice
65.759 orationem dominicam gebed pœt drihtenlice
103.1209 sedis apostolicy setles pres apostolican
In these occurrences, the glossator recognised the attributive value of

the Latin adjectives, but he decided to adda determiner to the equivalent
Old English adjective in arder to render its defining role in the sentence
more explicit64 .
In the following examples, the glossator expressed the attributive
function of the adjectives by adding a determiner at the beginning of the
phrase, but leaving the adjective strong:
13.145 abbas tenet regu1aris se abbud hylt regulic

31.365 scola uni[8v]uersa seo scola eall
106.1247 locum cruce nudatum pa stowe rode abarude
The use of the strong inflexion in these glosses, despite the presence
of deterrniners and the definiteness of the glossed APs, suggests that the
addition of the determiner al one was not enough to determine a change in
the adjective inflexion. Adjectives could be declined weak only if
determiner and adjective were not separated by the noun they define.
Indeed, in the previous group, se, Jxet, seo and the respective adjectives
are close to each other and preceded by their referent (32.378: horam
tertiam: tide pa priddan); therefore, adjectives are inflected according to
the weak declension.
The three examples above feature glosses where the Old English
phrase is arranged according to the pattern 'determiner+ noun (or noun
and verb, noun and genitive) + adjective'. This pattern bas also been
identified in Old English prose and poetry. According to the principles of
generative grammar, the presence of the strong (undefined) inflexion near
64
According to a generative perspective, in a prose text, the adjectives in the
sequence noun + determiner + adjective would represent a case of false post-position.
These adjectives should be analysed as attributive adjectives pre-posed to a non-overt
nominal element (that is an unexpressed element, substituting the noun preceding the
adjective), because they have an attributive value. In other words, adjectives that are post-
posed to the noun on the surface, can be considered pre-posed at their deep structure:
Pysz, The Syntax of Prenominal and Postnominal Adjectives, p. 261. If this syntactical
explanation applies to Old English texts in general, it cannot be mechanically applied to a
glossed text. In fact, in the gloss to the RC, the choice of the adjective declension is
strictly related to both syntax and glossing method and it is not only dependent on the
position of the adjective in relation to the noun it refers to, as the examples of strong
inflected adjectives in 13.145, 31.365 and 106.1247 in this page will show.
a defined phrase is a syntactical paradox, because a defined phrase cannat

be definite and indefinite at the same time. The paradox can be explained
only if we consider the post-posed adjective as an adjective predicating
the entities that have already been identified by the determiner at the
beginning of such phrases 65 . This syntactical explanation of the pattern
'determiner + noun + strong Adj' is based on the defining role of both the
determiner and the weak (or strong) declension considered separately,
but, in my opinion, the analysis of the glass clarifies that the syntactical
value of the adjective cannat be expressed by the inflexion alone.
Determiner and inflexion can express the definiteness of a noun only if
they are employed together in an uninterrupted sequence of determiner +
adjective + noun (or noun + determiner + adjective). An adjective
occurring alone, at a distance from the determiner, loses its defining
potential. The rendering of the Latin defined phrase «abbas tenet
regularis» 66 ([the rule that] the regular ab bot follows) with the Old
English «se abbud hylt regulic» seems to prove that the glossator
intended to provide only a lexical glass for regularis, by using the strong
form regulic. However, the presence of se before abbud confirms that the
glossator was pro vi ding a syntactical glass of the Latin phrase, but he was
obliged to use the strong inflexion of the adjective, because of the
distance between the determiner and the noun, on the one hand, and the
adjective, on the other.
S. Adjectives used as nouns
The interlinear glass to the RC also includes adjectives used as nouns.

Most of them are adjectives used in the positive or the comparative
degree 67 :
- Positive degree:
29.339 sancti pœs halgan
65
Pysz, The Syntax of Prenominal and Postnominal Adjectives, p. 231.
66
The adjective regula ris means 'according to the rule', therefore, by abbas
regularis is meant 'the abbot who lives according to the rule': Du Cange (Du Fresne),
Ch., Glossarium mediœ et infimœ Latinitatis, 10 vols., Favre, Niort 1883-1887, s.v.
regulares (3).
67
The g1oss does not feature any example of superlative adjectives used as nouns.
81.952 pauperum Jxera pearfena
These adjectives do not furnish any additional information about a

noun nor do they underline a definite quality of a noun; instead, they are
used as nouns sharing the quality expressed by the adjective. The
glossator grasped the unique and definite value of the adjectives and
hence inflected these adjectives according to the weak declension. He
also added a determiner in order to underline the definiteness of the noun
represented by the adjective.
Conversely, the adjective is inflected according to the strong
declension in phrases formed by an indefinite adjective plus a
substantivised adjective, such as 29.337 and 146.1677. In these cases the
indefiniteness of eallum and ealre called for the strong declension instead
of the weak:
29.337 de (338) omnibus sanctis be (338) eallum ha1gum

146.1677 omnium sanctorum ea1re ha1gena
- Comparative degree:
Latin text 01d English rendering
26.305 Superiors pa <erran

31.366 Seniors pa y1dran
113.1322 Priori pam ealdre
Comparatives express a definite comparison between two objects and

are usually inflected weak. As a consequence, the glossator, having
recognised the syntactical role of these adjectival forms as nouns,
inflected them according to the weak declension, adding a determiner to
each NP, as in 29.339 and 81.952. In these instances the choice of the
weak inflexion was favoured by the comparative form of the adjective.
However, when the Latin comparatives used as nouns are preceded
by a preposition, the glossator translated them using the strong
declension:
32.376 a senioribus fram yldrum

47.561 a priore fram ealdre
Probably, the glossator used the strong inflexion to create a lexical

gloss, without giving additional syntactical information about the definite
identity of these comparatives.
Other adjectival forms used as nouns are present or past participles.
Like adjectives, Old English participles could be declined strong or
weak68 . In glosses like 17.193 and 30.348, the glossator employed the
participles as nouns representing the definite objects of the action
expressed by the verb:
Latin text O!d English rendering
17.193 Subiecti pa underpeoddan

30.348 Sequentem pœne œftran
Because of their defini te syntactical role, the glossator rendered these

Latin participles by inflecting their Old English equivalent according to
the weak declension.
6. Old English adjectives rendering Latin ipse, ipsa, ipsum and idem,
eadem, idem
The interlinear gloss to the RC yields interesting data about the

different function that both ipse, ipsa, ipsum and idem, eadem, idem have
in the Latin text of the RC when compared to classical Latin. While in
classical Latin they might be used as both adjectives and pronouns69 , their
Old English renderings in the interlinear gloss to RC show that they were
used quite differently in the Latin text of the RC:
- ipse, ipsa, ipsum in the RC has al ways been used as a demonstrative

adjective 70 defining the following noun, and has always been glossed
with the Old English demonstrative se, j)(et, seo:
68
Mitchell, Old English Syntax, I, §§ 101, 974-89.
69
Vineis, E., <<Latino>>, in A. Giacalone Ramat and P. Ramat (eds.), Le lingue
indoeuropee, Il Mulino, Bologna 1993; repr. 1997, pp. 289-348, at. 320-3.
70
Ipse began to be used as a general demonstrative in Medieval Latin. It was used as
a ret1exive pronoun already in Seneca: see Medieval Latin, ed. by K.P. Harrington, Allyn
and Bacon, Boston 1925; repr. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1962; 2nd. edn.
by K.P. Harrington, revised by J. Pucci, with a grammatical introduction by A.G. Elliott,
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1997, p. 33.
35.407 ipsius diei pœs dœges

60.703 ipse abbas se abbud
89.1042 Inter ipsam et altare betwux hi 7 pam weofude
- conversely, idem, eadem, idem has been used with both its morpho-
syntactical functions of pronoun and adjective, even if its occurrences as
adjective are much more numerous than those as pronoun;
- when used as a pronoun, idem, eadem, idem has been translated
with sylf or y le preceded by the neuter pœt:
60.704 Eadem [referred to pœt sylfe [Old English ace. sing. n. for
indulgentiam and veniam] Latin ace. pl. n. eadem]
85.992 Eadem [referred to the pœt ylce [Old English ace. sing. n. for
practices mentioned in the Latin ace. pl. n. eadem]
previous sentence]
- when used as an adjective, idem, eadem, idem has been translated

with sylf or y le too, but preceded by se, pœt, seo,
12.136 eiusdem sunt conuersationis pœre sylfan hi synt drohtnunge

12.140 in eadem congregatione on pœre sylfan geferrœdene
33.387 eadem uero matutinalis missa seo sylfe capitelmœsse
53.628 [12v] [A]b eisdem kalendis fram pam sylfum kalendum
62.731 de eadem sollempnitate be pam ylcan freolse
78.909 eadem capitula pa sylfan capitulas
In both groups, Latin idem, eadem, idem has been glossed with two
different Old English pronouns and adjectives, ile and sylf, always
declined weak. If the rendering of idem with the adjective ile inflected
weae' was felt as immediate and automatic by the glossator, since ile
was generally used weak:, the rendering of idem, eadem, idem with sylf
posed sorne problems, because sylf could be declined both strong and
weak72 . When the glossator translated idem by means of sylf, he seems to
71
Ilca differs from the other indefinites because it is always declined weak and
al ways used with se and pes: Mitchell, Old English Syntax, I, § 471.
72
Campbell, Old English Grammar, § 714.
have felt the definiteness of the identity expressed by idem, and glossed it
with the weak inflexion of sylf, adding a determiner before sylf in order to
render the Latin definiteness in the Old English phrase.
Conclusions
It is evident that the Old English gloss to the RC in T as we know it is

the result of three different glossing methods which have been employed
at the same time: lexical, morphological, and syntactical. The study of the
combined use of the three methods allows us to glimpse the linguistic
relationship between the Latin text and its Old English counterpart from
an Old English perspective. In fact, the gloss does not provide only a
word-for-word rendering of the Latin text, but also supplies
morphological and syntactical information about the text.
As far as adjectives are concerned, the glossator did not simply
provide Old English intepretamenta for Latin lemmata (lexical glossing),
but also tried to offer the most appropriate renderings by adding all the
necessary grammatical information (morphological and syntactical
glossing). In particular, the glossator translated the Latin adjectives
according to their syntactical value, employing either the weak or the
strong inflexion knowingly.
Latin adjectives playing a defining/attributive role in the phrase or
sentence are glossed by an Old English equivalent inflected according to
the weak declension and preceded by a determiner. The addition of se,
jxet, seo to the gloss works as both a morphological and syntactical
marker, useful to clarify the defining value of the Latin adjective from an
Old English point of view.
Latin adjectives playing a non-defining/predicative role in phrase or
sentence are glossed with their Old English equivalent declined according
to the strong inflexion73 • Adjectives in the strong form are never preceded
by a determiner.
73
Fischer has pointed out that the strong inflexion expresses the predicative value of
Old English adjectives. Moreover, the indefiniteness of strong adjectives is linked to their
position in relation to the noun they refer to. In particular, post-nominal adjectives are
usually strong, while pre-nominal adjectives are usually weak. According to Fischer, in an
historical perspective, the use of the strong inflexion also for adjectives preceding a noun
is linked to the development of the determiner system: <<The Position of the Adjective in
Old English», p. 170 and 176. See also Fischer, 0., «The Position of the Adjective in
(Old) English from an leonie Perspective», in O. Fischer and M. Nanny (eds.), The
Motivated Sign: Iconicity in Language and Literature 2, Benjamins, Amsterdam 2001, pp.
Sometimes, however, the glossator used the Old English strong

inflexion regardless of the syntactical value of the Latin adjectives,
because he considered the strong declension of the Old English adjectives
as the basic one. The use of an adjective declined strong, without the
addition of a determiner, even when a weak form was expected, was
intended as a clear signal to the reader. In other words, both glossator and
reader might have been aware that a shift from the weak to the strong
inflexion was a shift from syntactical to lexical glossing.
The study of the distribution of the two adjective inflexions has
shown that the weak declension belonged to syntactical and
morphological glossing, playing its defining role with the help of a
determiner that underlines the attributive value of the adjective and limits
the semantic value of the following noun. On the other hand, the strong
inflexion may be used both as part of the syntactical and morphological
glossing, with its predicative value, and as part of the lexical glossing,
without the support of any other grammatical deviee. In fact, the weak
inflexion occurs only in defined contexts and is always accompanied by
se, pœt, seo. Furthermore, the fact that defining adjectives are inflected
strong also when determiners are added to the gloss, but are not placed
next to the adjectives (as in 13.145, 31.365 and 106.1247), yields proof
that the use of the weak form of the adjectives is strict!y dependent on the
immediate proximity of the adjective and its determiner. The strong
declension occurs in both defined and undefined contexts and is never
preceded by determiners, as in the examples quoted in§ 3.1.
The evidence presented thus far proves that the glossator had a good
command of the Latin language and was able to grasp correctly the
relationship between Latin and Old English. Moreover, he was able to
find the appropriate Old English linguistic deviees to explain the Latin
text lexically, morphologically, and syntactically. The gloss under
exarnination can be considered, like the other glossed texts preserved in
T, as the product of a wide-ranging glossographic programme that would
foster the understanding of the most important texts of the Benedictine
Reform movement.
249-76, at 255. Asto the deve1opment of the article in the determiner system, see Spamer,
J.B., «The Deve1opment of the Definite Article in Eng1ish: A Case Study of Syntactic
Change», Glossa 13 (1971), pp. 241-50.
In particular, the RC in T with its interlinear gloss represented a text

belonging to a library book rather thau a «teaching book» 74 , whose main
aim was to provide the Anglo-Saxon readers with a Latin version of the
RC accompanied by a series of information in Old English which could
promote an immediate comprehension of the source text. The continuity
and uniformity of the gloss confirm that the gloss was added to the Latin
text to help the Anglo-Saxon contemporary readership follow the content
of the RC both semantically and grammatically.
74
Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary, p. 76. A teaching book would have supplied
the Latin text with a different kind of glossing, graphically recognizable, as is the case
with the glosses to the RB in T (letters of the alphabet written above the lexical renderings
of the Latin words, merographies, Latin glosses for Latin words). For the interlinear gloss
to the RB in T, see above M.C. De Bonis's contribution to the present volume, pp. 269-97.
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
-j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
j
GLOSSING ABBO IN LATIN AND THE VERNACULAR
Patrizia Lendinara
The Bella Parisiacae urbis by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was

written in France between 888 and 896-897 1 and was favourably received
both on the Continent and in England. The third book of the poem, which
is quite different from the other two and had the largest circulation,
provides us with a quite unparalleled occasion to compare two different
apparatuses of glosses to the same work: the original one in Latin and a
new one in Old English.
The two apparatuses of glosses, once analysed in detail, will shed
light on the strategies of the two glossators and the milieus whence their
glosses stem. The former glossator likely coïncides with the author
himself of the BPU, Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, who, undeniably,
used pre-existing glossarial material to fit his plan, whereas the latter
glossator was a person with quite a good knowledge of Latin living in
Anglo-Saxon England in the second half of the tenth century.
Obviously Abbo and the Anglo-Saxon glossator worked in quite a
different way, their choice of glosses being conditioned by two different
aims and by the distinct literary milieus they belonged to. Moreover, in
both the ali-Latin and the Latin-OE glosses the relationship between
!emma and interpretamentum is quite different from that usually existing
between the other interlinear apparatuses and the texts they accompany.
However, whereas the following analysis confirms that Abbo's ali-Latin
glossing is a unique and quite idiosyncratic creation, the overall
examination of the Old English apparatus yields a number of interesting
data with a much larger application.
Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
The BPU is a poem in three books written at the time of the siege of
Paris by the Vikings. The first two books describe the siege that lasted
1
The beginning of the composition must be dated back to 888, since Odo (who was
crowned on 29 February 888) is called «rex [ ... ] futurus» at 1.45; Abbo apparently
completed his poem (hereafter BPU) within ten years of the siege, in 896 or 897, since
there is no allusion to Odo's death (1 January 898). lt is evident that Abbo became more
and more disappointed with the behaviour of the French rulers; Bk II ends with a moral
tirade, where the poet attacks France and her vices with bitter words (1!.596-614).
476 PATRIZIA LENDINARA
from November 885 until May 886, and sorne of the preceding and
following events up to 896. The siege, which was eyewitnessed by Abbo
(a circumstance that the poet underscores at !.25-26 and 590-7), is
carefully described, and the BPU are now generally considered a reliable
historical source2 . On the contrary, the third book of the poem has no
word about the war which took place around the walls of Paris, but Abbo
addresses himself to an unidentified cleric, speaking in rather abstract
terms of the conduct of life he needs to partake with no reference
whatsoever to the previous two books3 .
In the Scedula 4 or dedicatory epistle which prefaces the poem, Abbo
writes that he was led to compose the poem as a literary exercise;
moreover he wanted to write something which could be of use to the
defenders of other besieged towns. Abbo also explains that, to reach the
number three, the sacred number of the Trinity («supplet trinitatem
tercius» 'the third [book] fulfils the Trinity': Scedula, p. 78,6), he added a
third book to his poem5 or, may be, was asked to do so6 •
We do not know much about Abbo's life. We get glimpses from his
poem (where, in a gloss to !.624, he tells that he was born in Neustria),
and from the Scedula. Undoubtedly he was a shrewd man and possibly a
bad temper. The epithet which Abbo applies to himself, cernuus, is a
polysemous word and different levels of interpretation are possible.
Perrogitat matites liniens

Ore pedes digitosque tuos,
Cemuus Abbo tuus iugiter.
Sume botros, tibi quos tua fert
Vitis [... ]; ('Versiculi ad magistrum dactilici', 4-8)
2
For example, Abbo gives precise details on the siege and accurate descriptions of
the enemy's war engines; see Gillmor, C.M., «The Introduction of the Traction Trebuchet
into the Latin West>>, Viator 12 (1981), pp. 1-8.
3
All quotations are from Abbonis Bella Parisiacae urbis, ed. by P. von Winterfeld
(MGH, PLAC IV,l), Weidmann, Berlin 1899, pp. 77-121; citations of the Scedula are to
page and line in this edition. All translations are mine.
4
Abbonis Bella Parisiacae urbis, ed. by von Winterfeld, pp. 77-78; here the
manuscript reading, scidula, has been silently emended, whereas it bad been accepted in
all previous editions.
5
Bk III of the BPU differs from the other two not only in subject-matter, but also in
both toue, being moralizing and didactic instead of epie, and length, being 115 lines long
as against 660 and 618 lines respectively.
6
In the Scedula (p. 78,19-20), we are to1d that Abbo had shown an earlier draft of the
first two books of the poem to his teacher Aimoin but they had not meet with his
approval. Bk III might represent a reply to Aimoin' s criticism.
GLOSSING ABBO IN LATIN AND THE VERNACULAR 477
(Your student, the bending forward Abbo,

anointing your feet and fingers with mouth,
eagerly asks you: 'Pick for you the grapes that
your vine bears [... ]')
Cernuus is an adjective which means 'with the face turned towards

the earth, stooping, bowing forward' 7 ; as a substantive it also means 'a
tumbler, acrobat' 8 and Abbo, in composing Bk III of his poem, behaved
indeed as a word-acrobat. This is even more evident if we compare the
lines of Bk III of the BPU with the sober language of the sermons written
by Abbo at the request of Fulrad, bishop of Paris and Protarius, bishop of
Poitiers9 •
Bk III provides a fitting example of what has often been called
hermeneutic Latin, but should rather be called either contextualized
lexicography or "glossematischer Latinitat", resorting to an old definition
coined by Georg Goetz 10 . Bk III employs about 120 loanwords from
7
Cf. Nonius Marcellus: «CERNUUS dicitur proprie inclinatus, quasi quod terram
cemit>>: Nonii Marcelli De compendiosa doctrina libros XX, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, 3
vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1903; repr. Olms, Hildesheim 1964, p. 30; Glossary of Vatican
City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1468: «Cernuus: supplex prostratus>>:
Corpus glossariorum Latinorum a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum, ed. by G. Goetz, 7 vols.,
Teubner, Leipzig 1888-1923; repr. Hakkert, Amsterdam 1965 (= CGL), V,494,24.
8
Cf. Nonius's quotation from Lucilius, Sat. III,57 (703): «modo sursum, mod6
deorsum, tâmquam collus cérnui>>: Nonii Marcelli ed. by Lindsay, p. 31. Cf. also the
Pseudo-Philoxenus Glossary: «Cernulus: 7rtTauptcrTJlÇ>>: CGL II,100,2.
9
Abbo's homilies were known in Anglo-Saxon England: Wulfstan translated his
'Sermo in cena domini ad poenitentes' and drew material from others: see The Homilies
of Wulfstan, ed. by D. Bethurum, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1957, pp. 366-72; see also
Brown, A., Cross, J.E. and Lendinara, P., «Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés>>, in F.M.
Biggs, T.D. Hill, P.E. Szarmach and E.G. Whatley (eds.), Sources of Anglo-Saxon
Literary Culture, I, Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications,
Kalamazoo, MI 2001, pp. 15-22. The merits of Abbo's sermons have been highlighted by
Leclercq, J., «Le florilège d'Ab bon de Saint-Germain>>, Revue du moyen âge latin 3
( 194 7), pp. 113-40. Indeed his homilies share several themes with Bk III, su ch as, for
example, the severe condemnation of greed and lust, or the stress on the difference
between clerics and laymen.
10
Goetz, G., «Über Dunkel- und Geheimsprachen im spiiten und mittelalterlichen
Latein>>, Berichte über die Verhandlungen der koniglich siichsischen Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philologisch-historische Classe 48 (1896), pp. 62-92; see
Lendinara, P., «Contextualized Lexicography>>, in K. O'Brien O'Keeffe and A. Orchard
(eds.), Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael
Lapidge, 2 vols. (Toronto Old English Series 14), University of Toronto Press, Toronto,
Buffalo and London 2005, II, pp. 108-31, at 111. For a seminal definition of the
478 P ATRIZIA LENDIN ARA
Greek 11 , plus a number of transcriptions of Greek words; rare words

occurred also in the first two books, but their frequency in Bk III is
remarkable.
The first lines of Bk III of the poem will suffice as an example of the
difficulties of the text and the many layers of meaning already embedded
in the original version.
qm tabellas
Clerice, dipticas lateri ne dempseris umquam.
princeps ludi f.l1t esse

Corcula labentis fu gias ludi fore, ne te
obscenus, turpis baccaulus princeps uni us loci .i. diabolus erebi

laetetur foedus sandapila neque toparcha.
<p pugna sacer pricipatus s. sit tibi .i. fossa Tartari

12
Machia sit tibi, quo ierarchia, neque cloaca. (vv. 1-4)
(Cleric, never take the diptychs away from your side!

Avoid being the leader of the wavering game, lest
the foui bier and the toparch rejoice in you.
Let your battle be where hierarchy [the angels] is, not where the sewer [the hell] is.)
hermeneutic language as characterized by «the ostentatious parade of unusual, often very

arcane and apparently learned vocabulary», that is archaisms, neologisms and loanwords,
see Lapidge, M., «The Hermeneutic Style in Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Literature»,
Anglo-Saxon England 4 (1975), pp. 67-111, repr. in his Anglo-Latin Literature 900-1066,
The Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, OH 1993, pp. 105-49 and addenda pp.
474-9, at 105. Abbo's work is discussed at 109-110 and 113-4.
11
This number also includes items whose etymology is still disputed or unknown,
but that in medieval times were thought to come from Greek, such as aliqua (for alica)
(III.SO), on which see Isidore, Etym. XVII.iii.9: «alica Graecum nomen est». Ali
quotations from Isidore are from Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive
Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical Texts), Clarendon
Press, Oxford 1911. Unless otherwise specified, ali the Latin words and the glosses from
Abbo's poem will be given in the form in which they appear in von Winterfeld's edition.
12
In the prose passage which precedes Bk III another clue is apparently given to the
reader, by saying that Greek and Latin letters are placed over the words of Greek and
Latin origin respectively. These letters were to specify gender and declension, for instance
<p and re means feminine, first declension. This sort of glossing is quite random: there are
only seventeen instances in Paris, BNF, lat. 13833, which is the only codex containing the
entire poem, while in the other manuscripts it either becomes episodic (or was altogether
omitted) and is not used after line 64. Von Winterfeld's edition overlooks two of these
letters: the JJ over abbachus (III.33) and the <p over anodiam (III.9). Moreover, the relative
position of multiple glosses and the letters referring to the same word of the poem are
reproduced quite inconsistently and are never explained in the apparatus.
The entire poem is not an uncomplicated work but, in Bk III, the lines
of poetry were compelled to meet the requirement imposed by the "key"
words, that is the words provided with glosses, which are in the majority
substantives. Abbo fares successfully to the end of his tour de force,
which is concluded by a doxology. Severa! readings of Bk III are
possible, including that of a parody of contemporary tastes and a wink at
the idiosyncratic language of sorne representatives of the Laon school 13 •
Among other possible hints, there is a veiled allusion to John Scottus
Eriugena in one of the first lines of Bk III. The words «Machia sit tibi,
quo ierarchia, necque cloaca.» (Let your battle be where hierarchy, not
where the sewer is.) (III.4) possibly allude to The Celestial Hierarchy, a
Pseudo-Dionysian work on angelology translated by Eriugena 14 .
As regards the success accorded to the intriguing Bk III, this is
witnessed not only by the large manuscript tradition, but also by
quotations such as that in the Ecbasis captivi. In this poem, written by a
monk of Toul in the tenth century, it is said «vulpem versutam lateri non
dempseris unquam» (never do away with the shrewd fox from your side:
line 1001), with a verse which clearly echoes the very first line of Bk III
of the BPU, «Clerice, dipticas lateri ne dempseris umquam.» (Cleric,
never take the diptychs away from your side!). The Ecbasis narrates the
story of a foolish calf which goes astray and falls into the clutches of the
wolf, but is rescued by its berd. It has been surmised that the poem in fact
tells of the escape of a young monk into the world and his recovery. This
second level of interpretation of the Ecbasis provides a further link with
Bk III of the BPU, and witnesses to its success within the monastic
literature of the period 15 .
13
See Lendinara, P., «The Third Book of the Bella Parisiacae Urbis by Abbo of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés and its Old English Gloss», Anglo-Saxon England 15 (1985), pp.
73-89, repr. in her Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Glossaries (VCSS 622), Ashgate, Aldershot
1999, pp. 157-75.
14
In his Commentary on The Celestial Hierarchy, Eriugena included the entire text
of his translation of the Greek work, sentence by sentence, see /ohannis Scotti Eriugenae
Expositiones in Ierarchiam caelestem, ed. by J. Barbet (CCCM 31), Brepols, Turnhout
1975. For Eriugena' s translation of The Celestial Hierarchy, see PL 122, cols. 1029-94.
15
Abbo's poem has been recently investigated by Dass, N., Viking Attacks on Paris:
The Bella Parisiacae urbis of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Dallas Medieval Texts and
Translations 7), Peeters, Leuven 2007; id., «Temporary Otherness and Homiletic History
in the Late Carolingian Age: A Reading of the Bella Parisiacae urbis of Abbo of Saint-
Germain-des-Pres>>, in M. Cohen and J. Firnhaber-Baker (eds.), Difference and Identity in
Francia and Medieval France, Ashgate, Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT 2010, pp.
99-114. The entire poem has been translated by Adams, A. and Rigg, A.G., «A Verse
Abbos's glosses
The frequency of the glosses which accompany the lines of Bk III is

qui te regular and indeed very high 16 . About half of the words of this book
are glossed, yielding an average of three glossed lemmata per line 17 • In
the Scedula, Abbo writes that he himself has chosen to gloss the difficult
words of the poem to meet the difficulties which would face the readers:
«Quoniam mutis inheret verbis, propria manu linguas superieci» (Since it
inheres to obscure words, 1 have added glosses with my own hand: p.
78,9) 18 . As 1 have argued elsewhere, Abbo was neither sympathetic to his
readers nor moved by didactic intents 19 .
Moreover, the interlinear glosses of Bk III have an intimate
relationship to the words of the poem they accompany, in as much as
both were parts of a preordained plan. This relationship is quite peculiar
and unusual. The interpretations which are written above the words of the
poem do not stem from the pen of one or more glossators drawing on
their memory or from a set of sources, but were already in circulation
together with their lemmata and occurred, jointly, in one or more
glossarial compilations used by Abbo.
The lines typically consist of long strings of substantives which are
either linked asyndetically or with the help of conjunctions. Their
syntactical structure is very simple and repetitive, and testifies that the
verses were deliberately built around the "key" words. These words and
their respective interpretamenta come from the same source20 : the
Translation of Abbo of St. Germain's Bella Parisiacae urbis», The Journal of Medieval
Latin 14 (2004), pp. 1-68.
16
Only three lines of Bk III are not provided with glosses, 10 lines have only one
gloss, 43lines have two, 4llines have three, 15 lines have four, and 3 lines have five.
17
The words accompanied by one or more glosses are 302 out of a total of 698
(including conjunctions with the exception of the enclitic -que). Sorne words bear two
(x48) or three (x6) glosses of the same or a different typology, amounting in total to 356
glosses for 115 !ines.
18
For Bks 1 and II, see Lofstedt, B., «Zu den Glossen von Abbos Bella Parisiacae
urbis>>, Studi Medievali 3rd. ser., 22 (1981), pp. 261-6.
19
Lendinara, «The Third Book of the Bella Parisiacae Urbis>>, repr. pp. 166-9.
20
This rule applies to the lexical glosses, which are the majority. There are a few
grammatical glosses (e.g. «animç: dativus>>: 111.100) and one gloss points out the use of a
rhetorical figure («pomerium: locus vacuus. silemsis>>: 111.46). Silemsis (for syllepsis) is a
loanword from Greek <YÛÀÀT]\jlt<;. This kind of glossing falls within categories commonly
employed by medieval glossators. lt should be remarked that grammatical glosses were
dropped more often than the lexical ones in the course of the transmission of Bk III both
GLOSSING ABBO IN LA TIN AND THE VERNACULAR 481
glossary (or glossaries) to which Abbo resorted21 . In other words, Abbo

did not look for a good interpretation to clarify a hard passage in the lines
of his poem, but, on the contrary, began his work from a twofold set of
words (!emma and interpretamentum), picked up from a number of
glossaries.
There are other contemporary and later works which have circulated
with an apparatus of glosses stemming from the hand of their very
authors, such as the Gesta Berengarii imperatoris22 , but none bears
comparison with the apparatus of Abbo's Bk III.
The sources of the Latin glosses
Abbo's source cannat be identified in toto with any of the known

glossaries, also owing to the way in which such compilations were put
together from the earlier Carolingian period onwards: the compilers
selected items from various glossaries and also recast glosses to form new
entries by conflating two or more sources23 . ln many instances the
spelling (or, in a few cases, the morphology) is the best aid in sourcing
the words used in Bk III.
Abbo drew the majority of his items from well-known monolingual
glossaries circulating on the Continent. From the Abstrusa Glossarl4
might come words such as abstemius (26), agagula (18), alburnus (89),
alogia (5), amaneo (80), amenda (72), anquiro (71), appodix (for
appendix ?) (70), aprilax (for apricitas) (77), aslum (76), atratus (76),
in Continental and English manuscripts. For a special kind of "metaphorical" glosses

employed by Abbo, see below, pp. 501-2.
21
Cf. Bradley, D.R., «The Glosses on Bella Parisiacae urbis I and Il>>, Classica et
Mediaevalia 28 (1967), pp. 344-56.
22
Gesta Berengarii imperatoris, ed. by von Winterfeld (MGH, PLAC IV,1), pp. 354-
403.
23
See Lindsay, W.M., <<The Affatim Glossary and Others>>, The Classical Quarter/y
11 (1917), pp. 185-200 and Dionisotti, A.C., <<Ün the Nature and Transmission of Latin
Glossaries>>, in J. Hamesse (ed.), Les manuscrits de lexiques et glossaires de l'antiquité au
moyen âge (Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales. Textes et Études
du Moyen Âge 4), Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales, Louvain-
la-Neuve 1996, pp. 202-52.
24
Glos sa ria Latina iussu Academiae Britannicae edita, ed. by W.M. Lindsay et al., 5
vols., Les belles lettres, Paris 1926-1931; repr. Olms, Hildesheim 1965, III, pp. 1-90. On
this and other Continental glossaries, see Lindsay, W.M., <<The Abstrusa Glossary and the
Liber glossarum», The Classical Quarter/y 11 (1917), pp. 119-31; id., <<The Abolita
Glossary (Vat. lat. 3321)», Journal of Philology 34 (1915-1918), pp. 267-82, and
Dionisotti, «Ün the Nature and Transmission>>, pp. 215 and 250.
auleum (77), bidento (96), bitta (92), blatta (14), brutesco (94), burrus
(96), celebra (29), ceruleus (66), cespito (104), clandestinus (106),
comitatus (55), comiter (102, 105), concinnus (112), crama (8), fraglo
(52), ostrum (47), and probus (96) 25 . In all these cases both the !emma
and the interpretamentum correspond verbatim to the entry of Abstrusa.
Abstrusa's glosses, however, had entered the majority of the glossaries in
circulation by the time Abbo composed his poem, to begin with the Liber
glossarum. Renee, as weil as with many of the sources listed below,
attribution is far from undisputable 26 .
The following words of Bk III (and their respective interpretamenta)
have a counterpart in the AboUta Glossary, whence they might have been
taken: abutor (20), agnatus (75), albeo (89), alluo (78), arcisterium (81),
baratrum (36), blattero (93), brattea (Abbo's brathea [14]), burgus (98),
clancule (108), sector (36), and, possibly, doxa (114) 27 , which also occurs
elsewhere, including the definition of orthodoxus in Isidore's
Etymologiae (VII,xiv,5). The Placidus Glossary features a few of the rare
words used by Abbo, such as abdomen (60), ablunda (18), abutor (20),
affurcillo (91), amicaliter (90), ancile (79), antiqua (87), baba (10), buteo
(96), effebus (30), hirudo (55), and tafos (Abbo's taphius [99]) 28 .
Abbo also employs a Pseudo-Philoxenus gloss «Offa: J..LiXÇa» 29 , with
its interpretamentum, transcribed as «massa» (13). The lemmata of
25
Abstemius, agagula, alburnus, alogia, amaneo, anquiro, appodix, aprilax, aslum,
atratus, auleum, bidento, bitta, blatta, brutesco, burrus, celebra, ceruleus, cespito,
clandestinus, comiter, comitatus, concinnus, crama, fraglo, ostrum, and probus were ali
included in the Liber glossarum. In many cases the Abstrusa entries go back to Virgilian
scholia. Abstemius, alogia, crama, dogma (as weil as gimnus [28], which occurs in
Abstrusa, but is quite common also in other glossaries and lexicographie compilations),
are also found in the Scholica Graecarum glossarum, see below, pp. 485-6.
26
For example, concinnus 'neat, elegant, stylish' (line 112) is g1ossed with «breviter
et ornate compositas»; on1y one manuscript of Bk III has ordinate 'in order, in an orderly
manner', a variant reading followed by von Winterfeld in his edition. This
interpretamentum coïncides with the Liber glossarum CO 670, «Concinnum: breviter
ornateque compositum», itse1f a slight modification of the Abstrusa item: «Concinnum:
breviter arteque conpositum>> (CO 162). Abbo's source must have read ornate 'elegant! y',
with an alteration of the original Abstrusa interpretamentum arte 'cunningly' .'
27
Cf. Abolita: GIL III, pp. 97-183; the Abolita entries used by Abbo (abutor,
agnatus, albeo, alluo, baratrum, blattero, brattea, burgus, clancule, and sector) as weil as
doxa have entered into the Liber glossarum.
28
For Placidus see GlL IV, pp. 12-70 and CGL V,1-158. Abdomen, ablunda, abutor,
affurcillo, amicaliter, ancile, antiqua, baba, buteo, effebus, hirudo, and tafos also occur in
the Liber glossarum.
29
CGL II,138,6.
Pseudo-Cyrillus «Ayanft: dilectio», «'Av8pamo<;: homo», and «'Apf.lEVov:

velum» 30 , are likewise transcribed and accompanied by the original
interpretamentum, agape: dilectio (73), antropus: homo (84), and
armenum: velum (81).
A group of glosses wh ose lemma is a loanword from Greek (or a
transcription from Greek) has a counterpart in a small glossary in Vatican
City, BAY, Pal. lat. 177331 , for example, algema (71), architriclinus (82),
amartetes (87), and appodix (70) 32 . Abbo used, quite likely on purpose, a
number of Virgilian words, which pro vide his lines with further recherché
echoes. He possibly picked them up from pre-existing glossaries and not
from glossed manuscripts of Virgil.
However, the two main sources for the words of Bk III and their
respective glosses are the Liber glossarum and the Scholica Graecarum
glossarum. About half of the 302 glossed words of Bk III and their
respective gloss or glosses have a counterpart in the entries of the Liber
glossarum (lemma and interpretamentum) 33 • It should be underscored that
3
°CGL Il,215,46; 227,37; and 245,5.
31
The glossary is printed in CGL Ill, pp. 506-42, and belongs to the branch of the
Hermeneumata Montepessulana. It is found on ff. 17r-21 v of Vatican City, BAY, Pal. lat.
1773 (sec. ix 1, prov. Lorsch), just before a version of the Liber glossarum. Cf: «algema:
dolor>> (509,62). «amarcetes: miseros>> (509,63), «architriclinus: princeps domus>>
(510,32), and «appodis: socia, cornes>> (510,24). These entries also occur in other
compilations. As far as architriclinus is concemed only this glossary and Abbo provide
the interpretation «princeps domus>>.
32
A number of entries unattested elsewhere (mainly loanwords or transcriptions of
Greek words) have a counterpart in the Greek-Latin glossaries of Laon, Bibliothèque
Municipale 444 (s. ix 314 ; Laon), see Miller, E. <<Glossaire grec-latin de la bibliothèque de
Laon>>, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale et autres
bibliothèques 29, 2 (1880), pp. 1-230. The glossary drawn from Priscian's Institutiones
grammaticae (ff. 276r-287v) has OAm:, LYNE>ETA, XPYLOI, IEPOL, 1AAYKOMA,
E>HO, 0 APXON, 1 AYLAITH, ENTEAAH, L'll.!lALKYAL, MAXHN, ANTPQITOL,
ENKAITIKA, followed by the same interpretamenta as Abbo's (cf. olos, sinteca, crisis,
ieron, glaucoma, E>HO, archon, gausape, entole, didasclus, machia, antropus, and
enclitica). Priscian's glossary has also «Abacus, tabula picturae>> which matches Abbo's
abbachus and its gloss (line 33), and <<Lucar, pecunia quae ex lucis captatur>>, which is
doser to Abbo's «Lucar: pecunia de lucis>> (line 52) than ali the entries of the known
glossaries, earlier or contemporary with Abbo. The list 'De membris hominum' (ff. 288r-
289v) has 'Av8pumoç, 'Puxi], and Oùpavîaç (cf. Abbo's antropus, 'PIXH, and uranius).
Finally the glossary headed 'Item greca utilia' (ff. 291r-293r) has Tacpoç, 'lcpapxîa, and
ilôi;a (cf. Abbo's taphius, ierarchia, and doxa), and that headed 'Item alia greca' (ff.
293v-294r) has IlaÀtvcpoia (cf. Abbo's palinodia).
33
The number of overlaps might also be higher. No critical and complete edition of
the Liber glossarum is available (GlL I,15-604; excerpts in CGL V,161-255) and 1 have
484 P ATRIZIA LENDINARA
a part of these entries are commonplaces in glossaries and that the words
used by Abbo include items that the Liber glossarum drew from older
glossaries such as Abstrusa, Abolita, and Placidus.
Having said that, a number of entries of Liber glossarum and Abbo's
words remarkably show either an exclusive agreement in their
interpretation of the !emma or share peculiar readings, rnisreadings or
either kinds of errors. These items include allido (91), amicalis (82),
amplio (80), angusto (77, 87), anquina (67), aphatia (72), apoplexia (86),
aporia (69), apostata (78), Argiripa (85), atrophia (69), aulicus (19),
bimo (95) 34, buggeus (98), clivus (111), clueo (106), coagmento (104),
coalesco (105), crisostomus (24), disparo (56), eminus (49),fauste (34),
foedus (3), limphaticus (24), malum (46), and nutus (114).
A number of borrowings such as agonia, aregidia, arsippio, and
Codrus are unquestionable. Abbo's agoniam (79) is glossed with
«confidentiam, alacritatem». Both interpretations only occur in Liber
glossarum AG 169: «Agonia: fiducia, confidentia, alacritate»; moreover,
confidentia as a rendering of agonia is unattested elsewhere.
Aregidia 'rain, shower' (75) is a rnisspelling of the entry aegida of
the Liber glossarum AE 55: «Aegid[i]a: pluvia». The interpretamentum,
'rain', which looks awkward, stems from a gloss to Aeneid VIII,352-4
and Servius' s interpretation of these lines 35 .
checked Abbo's entries also against a number of manuscripts, including the incomplete
Bern, Burgerbibliothek 16, containing the letters a-e. The glossary, which was compiled
at Corbie by the end of the eighth century, is an immense if unfinished compilation with
ali-Latin entries (including transcriptions of Greek and Hebrew words). Many items come
from former glossaries as weil as from lsidore's Etymologiae, Paul the Deacon's epitome
of Festus, Virgil, Terence, Cicero, and the Church Fathers. See Bishop, T.A.M., «The
Prototype of the Liber glossarum», in M.B. Parkes and A.G. Watson (eds.), Medieval
Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays presented ta N.R. Ker, Scolar Press, London
1978, pp. 69-86, and Ganz, D., «The Liber Glossarum: A Carolingian Encyclopaedia>>, in
P.L. Butzler and D. Lohrmann (eds.), Science in Western and Eastern Civilization in
Carolingian Times, Birkhauser, Base! 1993, pp. 127-35. A large project on the Liber
glossarum has recently been started in France: http://liber-glossarum.linguist.univ-paris-
diderot.fr/.
34
The entry «Bimatur (bin-): duplicatur>> (Liber glossarum BI 100) is remarkable in
that it exclusively agrees with Abbo's line 95: «Raud ilia bittit, quo, quisquis honore
bimetur.» (He does not go there, where one's renown is doubled.). Elsewhere, as in
Abstrusa, the verb had been made into a nonce-substantive «Bimator: duplicator>> (B 17).
35
Respective! y «Arcades ipsum 1 credunt se vidisse lovem, cum saepe nigrantem 1
aegida concuteret dextra nimbosque cieret.>> (Arcadians believe they have seen Jove
himself, when he shook the dark aegis in his right hand and stirred up the clouds.) and
Servius: «AEGIDA CONCUTERET hic distinguendum: nam aegida, id est pellem Amaltheae
The nonce-ward arsippio (67) and its glass, arcus, repeat verbatim
the entry of the Liber glossarum AR 508: «Arsippio: arcus».The same,
mysterious !emma only occurs in later glossaries, such as Papias's, a
compilation which also draws on the Liber.
At line 22 the cleric is invited to behave like Codrus, a name that the
Latin glass explains as «nobilis pastor vel poeta», repeating the Liber
glossarum CO 58, «Codrus: nobilissimus pastor et poeta fuit». The
interpretamentum of bath glosses refers to a poet contemporary with
Virgil, according to the interpretations provided by the scholiasts for
Eclogues V,ll, VII,22, and VII,26 36 .
The other main source of Bk III was identified by Laistner in the
Scholica Graecarum glossarum 37 , a compilation of about 500 entries,
whose lemmata are primarily Greek loanwords or transcriptions of Greek
words; the interpretamenta generally provide an etymological or pseudo-
etymological explanation of the relevant lemma 38 • A good many entries
caprae, a qua nutritus est, in sinistra Iuppiter tenet. sane Graeci poetae turbines et
procellas KU'tatyiùaç appellant, quod haec mo ta faciat tempestates. ergo 'nigrantem'
tempestatem commoventem. ("[When] he shook his aegis", here it is necessary to draw a
distinction: indeed, Jupiter holds the aegis, that is the skin of the goat Amalthea, by which
he was fed, in his left hand. As a matter of fact the Greek poets call whirls and storms
Km:myiliaç, because this [the aegis], when shaken, arouses the storms. Therefore
'darkening' [means] "that arouses storms"): Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii
carmina commentarii, ed. by G. Thilo and H. Hagen, 3 vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1878-
1902; repr. Hildesheim, Olms, 1961, II, p. 252.
36
The Virgilian Codrus is a shepherd, but according to Servius there was a famous
poet named Codrus, contemporary with Virgil, see 'Servius auctus': <<Codrus poeta
eiusdem temporis fuit, ut Valgius in elegis suis refert>> (Codrus was a poet contemporary
[with Virgil], as is recounted by Valgius in his elegies): Servii Grammatici quiferuntur in
Vergilii carmina commentarii, ed. by Thilo and Hagen, II, p. 85. Codrus has also be taken
as a pseudonym for Virgil, see Starr, R.J., <<Vergil's Seventh Eclogue and its Readers:
Biographical Allegory as an Interpretative Strategy in Antiquity and Late Antiquity>>,
Classical Philology 90 (1995), pp. 129-38.
37
Laistner, M.L.W., <<Abbo of St-Germain-des-Prés>>, Archivum Latinitatis Medii
Aevi 1 (1924), pp. 27-31, and id., <<The Revival of Greek in Western Europe in the
Carolingian Age>>, History 9 (1924), pp. 177-87, at 185-6. On Bk III and the Scholica,
see Lendinara, <<The Third Book of the Bella Parisiacae Urbis>>, repr., p. 165 and note
41.
38
The Scholica Graecarum glossarum have been printed by Laistner, M.L.W.,
<<Notes on Greek from the Lectures of a Ninth Century Monastery Teacher>>, Bulletin of
the John Rylands Library 7 (1923), pp. 421-56. This edition is based on the collation of
two of the five known manuscripts of the Scholica.
of the Scholica, including those used by Abbo, were taken from Isidore's
Etymologiae and several have a counterpart in the Liber glossarum 39 •
A series of divergences indicate that Abbo did not draw the entries
used in the poem from any of the known manuscripts of the Scholica.
About ninety lemmata of the Scholica match the "key" words of Bk III
and 74 are accompanied by an interpretamentum which is the same as
that of the Scholica or a quite similar one. However, only in a limited
number of cases the overlapping with a Scholica entry (that is the
coïncidence of both lemma and interpretamentum) is exclusive to Bk III
glosses and not paralleled elsewhere40 .
The glossarial nature of Bk III is evident at each step. In a few
instances, the "key" words seem to have been selected on the basis of an
idiosyncratic (and even arbitrary) interpretation of the meaning of either
the originallemma or its interpretamentum by Abbo. For example, in the
case of abbaso (line 55), which is glossed with domus infirma, Abbo
specifies that a leech is needed where there is an abbaso, showing that he
is using the word in the sense of 'infirmary', a meaning that adroitly fits
the line, but not the Latin gloss, domus infirma 'unstable house' 41 •
39
The Scholica also draw on the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus
Capella and the glosses on the prologues of Jerome, a compilation attested in a number of
manuscripts and still unpublished. On the relationship with the De nuptiis, see Lendinara,
P., <<The Scholica Graecarum glossarum and Martianus Capella», in M. Teeuwen and S.
O'Sullivan (eds.), Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella: Ninth-Century
Commentary Traditions on 'De nuptiis' in Context (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity
and the Middle Ages 12), Brepols, Turnhout 2011, pp. 301-61. The comparison with the
De nuptiis has shown that there should have been still other versions of the Scholica in
circulation (containing further lemmata from the De nuptiis), which were possibly
avai1able to Abbo. A case in point is that of 1j!VX1Î (line 38), written in Greek letters in all
of Abbo's manuscripts, for which cf. De nupt. 7,12, ff. and the commentaries by John
Scottus and Remigius of Auxerre.
40
88 entries of the Scholica match Abbo's "key" words. Of the shared entries, 9
seem exclusive to the Scholica and do not occur elsewhere: anabola, biotticus, bule,
crisis, catasscopus, palinodia, teche, temeson (for Greek rà f!Écrov), and zelotipium.
Several entries, although occurring elsewhere, feature exactly the same interpretamentum
as Abbo's: amphyballum, antigraphus, apocrisarus, apozima, cliotedrum, corcula (for
choraula), cosmographus, culleum, diamoron, diametrum, diptica, effipia, emistichium,
enoforum, enteca, entole, ergastulum, oroscopus, perifrasticus, propoma, sinteca, and
toparcha. A1so Abbo's glosses to birotum and xenodochium repeat almost verbatim the
interpretamenta of the Scholica which are unattested elsewhere. In 14 instances the
overlap is limited to the lemma.
41
Ab(b )asa (line 55) is a word of obscure etymology and 1imited circulation outside
glossaries; also the original meaning is uncertain and the word was taken to mean either
'lowest house' or 'house without foundations': see Goetz, G., «Lexikalisch-kritische
The apparatus of glosses
One of the most striking aspects of the transmission of Bk III of the

BPU is the homogeneity of its apparatus of glosses, which underwent no
substantial change throughout the entire period that the poem was at the
height of its popularity. This stability is the norm with ali the versions of
Abbo' s text in English manuscripts, including the fragment (III.l-17) in
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 32642 ; the same holds true for the
43
Continental manuscripts , with the sole exception of Paris, Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, lat. 557044 • Besides being partly unglossed, this
codex contains a series of glosses that have no counterpart in the entire
tradition, for example, «vacillant» instead of «moveant» (line 48),
«mediocris» instead of «medius sons/sonus» (line 51). In the Paris
manuscript «colimbum» (line 66, used by Abbo in the meaning 'wash-
place') bears the gloss «locus ubi mundantur vestimenta», instead of the
usual «lavandariam»45 •
Not only did the text travel with its array of Latin glosses, but these
glosses present a very limited number of variant readings, changes,
additions, and omissions throughout the entire tradition, both in
Continental and English manuscripts. The handful of divergences
includes cases such as the following: badanola 'litter' (line 16) is glossed
with both lectus in itinere (Ah E, H, K, P, S, V), possibly the original
Bemerkungen», Archiv für lateinische Lexikographie und Grammatik 2 (1885), pp. 337-
48, at 346-7, and Lendinara, P., «A Difficu1t Schoo1 Text in Anglo-Saxon En gland: The
Third Book of Abbo's Bella Parisiacae urbis», in M. Swan (ed.), Essaysfor Joyce Hill on
her Sixtieth Birthday, University of Leeds, Leeds, Schoo1 of English 2006 (= Leeds
Studies in English 37), pp. 321-42, at 333-4.
42
Cambridge, University Library Gg.5.35 (C); Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
326 (K); Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. 18.6.12 (E); London, British
Library, Harley 3271 (A 1); London, BL, Harley 3826 (H); London, BL, Royal3.A.vi (R).
43
Amiens, Bibliothèque Municipale 110 (S); Erfurt/Gotha, Universitats- und
Forschungsbibliothek, Dep. Erf., Cod. Ampl. 8° 8 (Er); Paris, BNF, lat. 5570 (Q); Paris,
BNF, lat. 13833 (P); Valenciennes, Bibliothèque Municipale 298 (V).
44
Only lines 31-53 are consistently accompanied by the usual apparatus of glosses,
whereas the following lines bear a few sparse glosses.
45
The manuscripts of Bk III feature the glosses lavandariam, lavandarium; the Latin
lavandaria (pl.) 'things to be washed' was made into a sg. substantive, either feminine or
a masculine or neuter, and given the meaning 'wash-place'. The word colymbus
'swimming-bath', a loanword from Greek KÔÀDfl~OÇ, occurs in a few glossaries, including
the Scholica C 34, where it bears the same interpretamentum as the first part of the gloss
in Q: «Colimbus: locus ubi mundantur vestimenta vel aquarum lacus fluentes».
reading, and lectus itineralis (C) 46 ; stragulam 'bedcloth' (line 17) bears
the following glosses: vestem pictam (C, P, S, V), vestem puram (E, Er),
vestem purpuream (A~. R), vestem (H) 47 • These and similar cases do not
represent a radical change but are evidently the product of mistakes
engendered in the course of transmission.
Bk III in Anglo-Saxon England and its prose version
The three books of the poem are only contained in Paris,

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 13833. All the other codices
preserve the sole Bk III. This book enjoyed a vast success in England, as
witnessed by the number of English manuscripts containing it and by the
prose version ofthe same book produced there48 • Abbo's popularity dates
from the tenth century: all the evidence of his knowledge and use dates
from the second half of the tenth century, but it is likely that the poem
was introduced at the court of King ~thelstan (d. 939), alongside other
poetical compositions coming from the Continent. The BPU are listed
among the books given by ~thelwold to the monastery of
Peterborough49 .
46
Scholica B 25: «Badanola qui in itinere fertur»; badanola 'bed carried along on a
joumey' occurs for the first time in Isidore, Etym. XX.xi.2: «Baianula est lectus qui in
itinere baiolatur, a baiolando id est deportando» (ms. K of Lindsay's edn. has badanola),
which was followed verbatim by the Liber glossarum BA 58: «Badanola est lectus qui in
itinere baiolantur, a baiolando, id est deportando». Isidore connected the word to Latin
baiulare 'to carry on the back' (see also baiulus 'porter'); however see Mesa Sanz, J.F.,
«Baianula en Isidoro, Etymologiae sive origines, XX,ll,2>>, Anales de la Universidad de
Alicante. Historia Medieval 10 (1994-1995), pp. 7 -20; see also Loewe, G., Prodromus
Corporis Glossariorum Latinorum. Quaestiones de glossariorum Latinorum fontibus et
usu, Teubner, Leipzig 1876, p. 60; André, J., «Étymologies et mots rares>>, Revue de
Philologie 61 (1967), pp. 185-92, at 186.
47
P also features the gloss gùfiin (line 17), see Lendinara, P., <<Due glosse di origine
germanica ne! ms. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 13833>>, Annali dell'Istituto
Orientale di Napoli, Filologia germanica 28-29 ( 1985-1986), pp. 313-49.
48
In England, two glossaries were also excerpted from Bk III. The former is made up
almost entirely of words from Bk III and is found in London, BL, Cotton Domitian i; the
latter, where Abbo's entries have been conflated with various kinds of glosses, occurs in a
late codex, London, BL, Royal 7.D.ii, see Lendinara, P., <<The Abbo Glossary in London,
British Library, Cotton Domitian i>>, Anglo-Saxon England 19 (1990), pp. 133-49, repr. in
Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Glossaries, pp. 177-98.
49
The inventory of JEthelwold's donation (which includes twenty-one books) is
recorded in a cartulary, now London, Society of Antiquaries 60: see Lapidge, M.,
<<Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England», in M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (eds.),
Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on
It was possibly the idiosyncratic vocabulary of the poem that was

responsible for the success of Bk III in England and elsewhere. The large
amount of unusual vocabulary, already fumished with glosses, met the
tastes of tenth-century England. Moreover, the poem could also be
valuable for its content, insofar as it offered a Decalogue of behaviour for
monks.
The prose version of Bk III is preserved in two English manuscripts,
London, BL, Harley 3271 and Oxford, St John's College 15450 . In bath
codices the text is provided with interlinear glosses in Old English.
Harley 3271 is a miscellaneous collection dated to the first half of the
eleventh centurl 1. The codex contains two versions of the poem by
Abbo. On ff. 118v-120r there is the Latin text of Bk III in hexameters
with its usual apparatus of interlinear Latin glosses, which is immediately
preceded, on ff. 115v-118r, by the prose version of the same book. The
two versions of Abbo's Bk III do not forma separate unit, but are rather a
continuation of the grammatical component of the third codicological unit
of the codex, which begins with the grammatical treatise 'Beatus quid
est' 52.
the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1985,
pp. 33-89, N, item 10; repr. with the author's corrections and postscript in M.P. Richards
(ed.), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings (Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon
England 2), Garland, New York and London 1994, pp. 87-167; and id., The Anglo-Saxon
Library, pp. 134-6.
5
° Ker, Catalogue, no. 362; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 686.
51
The manuscript might have been written at Winchester, New Minster: Ker,
Catalogue, no. 239; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 435. For evidence in favour of Winchester, see
Wulfstan of Winchester: Life of St /Ethelwold, ed. by M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom
(Oxford Medieval Texts), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, p. lxxxvi; Chardonnens, L.S.,
Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900-1100: Study and Texts (Brill's Studies in Intellectual
History 153. Brill's Texts and Sources in Intellectual History 3), Brill, Leiden and Boston,
MA 2007, pp. 529-31 and Liuzza, R.M., «Anglo-Saxon Prognostics in Context: a Survey
and Handlist of Manuscripts>>, Anglo-Saxon En gland 30 (2002), pp. 181-230, at 224-5. On
the other hand, Porter, D.W., Excerptiones de Prisciano: The Sources for /Elfric's Latin-
Old English Grammar (Anglo-Saxon Texts 4), Brewer, Cambridge 2002, pp. 36-37,
associates the codex with either Abingdon or Canterbury.
52
Bayless, M., «Beatus quid est and the Study of Grammar in Late Anglo-Saxon
England>>, Historiographia Linguistica 20 (1993), pp. 67 -110; Mirto, LM., «Of the Choice
and Use of the Word beatus in the Beatus quid est: Notes by a Non-philologist>>, in P.
Lendinara, L. Lazzari and M.A. D' Aronco (eds.), Form and Content of Instruction in
Anglo-Saxon England in the Light of Contemporary Manuscript Evidence (Fédération
Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales. Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 39),
Brepols, Turnhout 2007, pp. 349-61.
Harley 3271 contains, among others, JElfric's Grammar and other

elementary grammatical works 53 • The codex bence belongs to a specifie
category of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts where the œrtes (grammar in
primis) and one or more auctores formed a coherent collection, auctores
being usually accompanied by glosses 54 .
In Harley 3271, each Latin word (or group of words) of the prose
version of Bk III is followed in the same line by the Old English
rendering. A similar arrangement of Latin and Old English is found also
in the copy of JElfric's Grammar which immediatelyprecedes the poem
in the manuscript (as well as in Oxford, St John's College 154), and
which might have influenced this unusuallayout out of the prose version
and of its gloss, although the original disposition is probably that shown
by St John's College 15455 •
St John's College 154 contains both lElfric's Grammar and Glossary,
followed by his Colloquy, in the form revised by JElfric Bata and other
Latin colloquies unique to this manuscript56 . An incomplete copy of the
prose version of Bk III of Abbo's BPU was added in tlle last folios of the
codex, originally blank (ff. 221 v-222r), ending abruptly at line 53.
The two prose versions descend from a comruon ancestor. Both
feature a number of common additions (e.g. «sit [ ... ] sit [ ... ] tibi» line 4),
omissions (e.g. 'PYXH in line 38 and E>HO in line 111), and substitutions
(e.g. obrissis instead of crisis at line 39) 57 • The two versions could not
53
For the content of the manuscript, see Chardonnens, L.S., «London, British
Library, Harley 3271: The Composition and Structure of an Ekventh-Century Ang1o-
Saxon Miscellany>>, in Lendinara, Lazzari and D' Aronco (eds.), Fvrm and Content of
Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 3-34.
54
Lendinara, P., «lnstructional Manuscripts in England: The Tenth- and Eleventh-
Century Codices and the Early Norman Ones>>, in Lendinara, Lazzari and D' Aronco
(eds.), Fonn and Content of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England, Jlj). 59-113, at 71-90.
55
This practice is quite common in Old High German glossi11g but has no parallel
among Old English continuons glossing, though there are a few isolated examples among
occasional glosses.
56
The manu script dates from the earl y eleventh century; Abbo 's Bk III was added at
the end of the century: Ker, Catalogue, no. 362; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 686. See Chiusaroli,
F., «<l percorso glottodidattico del ms. Oxford, St. John's College,n. 15-1->>, in R. Morresi
(ed.), Linguaggio - Linguaggi - Invenzione - Scoperta. Atti del Convegno, Macerata -
Fermo, 22-23 ottobre 1999, Il Calamo, Rome 2002, pp. 61-105: this interesting essay,
however, does not take into examination Bk III, which is considered an addition to the
original plan of the codex.
57
Crisis, which was glossed with aurum, is a loanword frolll Greek :xpucr6s 'gold'
(the Scholica have both crisis - within the interpretamentum of apocriphus [A 1] and
chrisis [C 6]); obrissis, standing for obrizum, obryzum 'pure g()]d', is a Late Latin
have been copied directly from one another: while the mutilated
condition of the version in St John's College 154 rules out the possibility
that this codex may have been the exemplar of Harley 3271. Omissions
(which are sometimes rectified by additions above the line: e.g. Ziba and
its Old English gloss drinc at line 43) in Harley 3271 as well as errors and
divergences (e.g. accipito for accapito at line 40: for Abbo's ac capito
'but take') which are not shared by St John's College 15458 also rule out
that Harley 3271 could have been the exemplar of St John's.
The word order of all the lines was rearranged. The vocative,
preceded by o (absent in the original text), always opens the phrase.
Otherwise it is the verb which begins the sentence, supplanted only by
conjunctions or adverbs like haud, minime or ne, and followed, in order,
by the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, and the other
complements. The genitive case always follows its referent. The adjective
precedes the substantive it refers to, but this rule does not hold for the
possessive, which is often put after the noun.
The new word order follows the same pattern as the two other
existing examples of prose version of originally verse texts from Anglo-
Saxon England, that is the Hymns and the Canticles. The so-called
Expositio hymnorum is contained in both London, British Library, Cotton
Julius A.vi and Cotton Vespasian D.xii (both from Canterbury, Christ
Church), whereas the prose rearrangement of the Canticles is found on1y
borrowing from Greek oppuÇov (xpucrôc;) 'pure gold' and its spelling clearly betrays the
interference of the word crisis employed by Abbo.
58
The language of the Old English glosses is clearly late West Saxon; the presence
of œlfremed (if it was already there in the original layer of glosses) would date them after
the middle of the tenth century: see Hofstetter, W., Winchester und der spdtaltenglische
Sprachgebrauch. Untersuchungen zur geographischen und zeitlichen Verbreitung
altenglischer Synonyme (TUEPh 14), Fink, Munich 1987, no. 210. The Old English
glosses to Abbo's Bk III have been printed from Harley 3271 by Zupitza, J.,
«Altenglische Glossen zu Abbos Clericorum Decus», Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum
und deutsche Litteratur 31 (1887), pp. 1-27; these vernacular glosses are set in colunms
and follow the respective Latin lemmata, with the variant readings from St John's 154
provided in the apparatus. Stevenson prints the Old English glosses above the prose
version of Bk III, making large use of the Harley readings and providing a much emended
edition of the whole Bk III (not only !ines 1-53 as in St John's): Early Scholastic
Colloquies, ed. by W.H. Stevenson, with introd. by W.M. Lindsay (Anectoda Oxoniensia.
Mediaeval and Modern Series 15), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1929; repr. AMS Press, New
York 1989, pp. 103-12. All quotations from the prose version and the Old English glosses
are from Zupitza's edition. At pp. 496-506 below, the Old English interpretamenta of the
prose version have been normalized.
in the latter manuscript59 . Also these prose versions are accompanied by a

continuous interlinear gloss in Old English, which, unlike Abbo's Bk III,
is in the same language as the gloss accompanying the Hymns and the
Canticles elsewhere60 .
The prose version of a poem, the more so in the case of Abbo's Bk
III, was meant to elucidate the structure of the lines and facilitate their
understanding. The author of this prose version indeed encountered a
higher number of difficulties than the authors of the prose version of the
Hymns and the Canticles, having to face Abbo's cryptic statements and
the lines of his poetry usually made up of strings of substantives. The lines
are often end-stopped and there are only a few rather lengthy or
convoluted periods (lines 5-6, 92-94, and 103-8). These seem to have
caused major difficulties and are ali misconstrued. To give just one
example of the difficulties met by the author of the prose version: line 59,
«Entole te cornat, regesque baben proceresque» (Let [God's] precept
adorn you and let the necklace61 [adorn] the kings and the nobles), is
59
See Gneuss, H., Hymnar und Hymnen im englischen Mittelalter. Studien zur
Überlieferung, Glossierung und Übersetzung lateinischer Hymnen in England. Mit einer
Textausgabe der lateinisch-altenglischen Expositio Hymnorum (Buchreihe der Anglia
12), Niemeyer, Tübingen 1968, pp. 94-95, 98, 135-41, and 194-206, and Korhammer, M.,
Die monastischen Cantica im Mittelalter und ihre altenglische Interlinearversionen.
Studien und Textausgabe (TUEPh 6), Fink, Munich 1976, pp. 128-38.
60
In the case of the prose version of the Hymns, the Old English g1osses show a
large overlapping with the Old English glosses which accompanied the original version.
Compare, for example, the beginning of Hymn 30: «Aurora iam spargit polum; 1terris dies
illabitur. 1 Lucis resultat spiculum; 1 discedat omne 1ubricum: eorendel eallunga geondstret
heofon eorjJum dœg onasihjJ leohtes swege strœle lleoma aweggewite œlc ]Jing slipores !
Jules>> (The Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church: A Study and Edition of the 'Durham
Hymnal', ed. by I.B. Milfull [CSASE 17], Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1996
p. 173) with its prose version: «Spargit iam aurora polum, illabitur dies terris, resultat
spiculum lucis, discedat omne lubricum: geondstret (eallunga) dœgrima heofonan
onaslideô dœg eorôan scylô streal leohtes gewite œlc ôingc sliperes>> (Gneuss, Hymnar
und Hymnen im englischen Mittelalter, p. 297). The interlinear glosses to the first line of
Hymn 38: «Audi, redemptor gentium, 1 natalis tui gloriam 1 Bethleem egressus a deo 1
Mariç partus virginis: Gehyr eala, 6, pu alysend peoda gebyrdtide jJinre wuldor ûtagân
fram gode geeacnung mœdenes.>> (The Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. by Milfull,
p. 196) already feature sorne of the strategies regularly employed in the Anglo-Saxon
prose versions, by adding eala to the imperative and o to the vocative, cf. <<Ü Redemptor
gentium, audi gloriam tui natalis; egressus es a deo in Bethleem, partus Mariç virginis:
eala pu alys end jJeoda gehyr wuldor jJinre gebyrdtide pu utfore fram gode to Bethleem
sunu ... mœdenes>> (Gneuss, Hymnar und Hymnen im englischen Mittelalter, p. 309).
61
I assign to baben the meaning given to the word in Scholica B 22. The lemma
stands for bahen, a transcription of Greek ~aïvf]v (Greek ~atç 'palm-rod'), a word
rearranged in the meaningless sequence «Cornat entole te regis 62 baben

proceresque» and consequently glossed «gewlitegad bebod pe kyninges
sweorbeah 7 ealdras» (be adorned with the king' s command, the necklace
and the nobles), to the effect of inviting the cleric to adorn himself with
both God's command[ments] and the king's jewels. In this new
arrangement, the opposition between clerics and seculars, which was one
of Abbo's favourite topics - both in the poem and in his homilies -, is
lost. Erroneous interpretations ultimately produced sentences which
differed from the original in meaning, though basically formed by the
same words. As a matter of fact, almost every departure from the
expected syntactical scheme of the Anglo-Saxon prose versions outlined
before, witnesses a misunderstanding of the original Latin text, which, in
sorne instances, might have been corrupt.
We are given the rare opportunity to observe how an Anglo-Saxon
reacted to a complex Latin text and what troubled him most. He clearly
had difficulties in ascertaining the syntactical relationships between the
numerous substantives which make up Abbo's verses - their unusual
frequency being due to the technique of composition adopted. Moreover,
the enigmatic quality of many of Abbo's statements facilitates
corruptions such as the transformation of «te tan gat» (line 11) into «ne
tangat» which produces a sentence albeit correct, but with quite the
opposite meaning.
The new and at times senseless sentences of the prose version end up
being marked by the same artificiality of the scholastic colloquies. Within
the context of scholastic exercises, it does not indeed make any difference
whether the original «Gripphia te tangat, carchesia togaque crebro» (Let
writing [= the Scriptures ?], cups [= pouring as an offering?] and toga [=
poetry?] often move you) 63 (line 11) has become «ne tangat griffia,
occurring in the Bible and variously transcribed as baen, bahem, or bahen (in the Vulgate,
it occurs in the form baen in I Mec XIII.37). As biblical commentaries gave bahen the
meaning of 'jewellery chain', Abbo appropriately used the word to indicate an omament
which would fit both kings and knights.
62
Abbo's reges (ace. pl.) was taken for agen. sg.
63
Gripphia stands for graphia and is a commonplace entry in glossaries, including
the Liber glossarum and the Scholica: the interpretamentum scriptura goes back to
Isidore, Etym. I,xxvii,l and VI,ix,2. Carchesium 'libation vessel' is properly glossed in
Scholica K 4 («Karkesia sunt vasa pontificum [... ]>>), with reference to members of the
highest council of priests in ancient Rome. Abbo's gloss, «Vasa pastoralia>>, which is
unparalleled elsewhere, might stem from a substitution of pontifex, in the Late Latin
connotation of 'bishop', with pastor, which had also taken the Christian meaning
'herdsman of souls'. Toga (gl. vestis poetalis), otherwise glossed vestis senatoris (Abolita
charchesia togaque crebro», glossed as «p<et ne ;:ethrine gewrita melas 7

reaf gelomlice» (Do not touch writing, cups and garment repeatedly). The
meaning of this sentence is altogether irrelevant since the sentence itself
only serves the purpose to hold three Latin words together, graphia,
carchesium, and toga, the first two of which were quite uncommon.
This interpretation may also be extended to other interlinear glosses
in the vernacular. Were the Old English glosses to the Psalter or a text
concerning monastic life primarily meant to facilitate the understanding
of this text? Were they not also or in the first place meant to prop its
memorization? What becomes evident dealing with a text with lines full
of words such as acrizimus (for acrozymus), antigraphus, and
catasscopus, just to mention a few of Abbo's lemmata, may, in my
opinion, prove valid also in other instances. As the above-mentioned
examples have shown, Abbo's sentences maintained their obscurity in the
prose version too.
On the contrary, as the following analysis will show, the Old English
glosses to the prose version of Bk III appear to be the product of a
learned, elever, and well planned project. These glosses, which substitute
the entire apparatus of Latin glosses to Bk III, were basically meant as a
tool to learn the hard words of the poem by means of equivalents of their
Latin lemmata 64 • Translation into the vernacular was likely a common
tool in Latin teaching . .tElfric's Grammar, which precedes Abbo's prose
version in both of its manuscripts, presents "Latin" grammar through the
medium of the vernacular . .tElfric's choice did not representa novelty in
actual teaching practice, but an innovation in written composition.
At a lexical level, interlinear glosses also functioned as a means to
standardize the rendering of set Latin words. The literary production of
the first generation of the Benedictine Reform was characterized by a
TO 20, Liber glossarum TO 12), receives a long interpretation in Liber glossarum T 13:
«Togam, advocationem iuridicam. Aliquotiens; de Virgilio namque sic quidam ait
"Togam est consecutus; egit causam non amplius quam unam.">>. The interpretamentum
mentions Virgil's experience as advocate, but the allusion to the toga might have been
misunderstood. The quotation is from the Vita Vergilii of Aelius Donatus (Vita Donatiana
evita Svetoniana desumpta): Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, ed. by G. Brugnoli and F. Stok,
Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Rome 1997, p. 24.
64
«English [viz. an Old English gloss] was used to give definition or equivalent of
hard words>>: see Page, R.I., «The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England, II.
The Evidence of English Glosses>>, in N. Brooks (ed.), Latin and the Vernacular
Languages in Early Medieval Britain (Studies in the Early History of Britain), Leicester
University Press, Leicester 1982, pp. 141-65, at 148.
strong interest in words. On the one hand, the hermeneutic Latin

vocabulary was eagerly studied and, on the other, a number of new Old
English words were coined (sorne of these neologisms replacing former
words in use). Interlinear glosses and glossaries betray a keen interest in a
correct rendering of specialized nuances of meaning and in the selection
of synonyms. The same aims were evident in the Old English translations 65 •
lEthelwold, in particular, contributed to develop a refined Old English
literary language to match the demanding Latin of works such as
Aldhelm' s66 .
A word-for-word rendering such as that provided by the continuous
interlinear glosses to the prose version of Abbo's Bk III offered a
perfectly suited framework where to carry on a similar exercise.
The Old English glosses
The following analysis will be limited to the semantic level of the

Old English interpretamenta and will be centred on their relationship
with the Latin !emma they accompany in the English manuscripts of the
prose version. The relationship of the vernacular interpretamenta with the
words of Abbo's poem is not the same as in other glossed works. The
Latin glos ses undoubtedly functioned as a prop for severa! of the brilliant
solutions adopted by the Anglo-Saxon glossator and this must always be
kept in mind when judging these vernacular glosses. On the other hand,
and unlike ali the other apparatuses of glosses, the glossator seems to
have had, from the very beginning of his work, a complete control over
the entire Latin text.
The Old English apparatus is marked by two sets of choices which
are only apparently diverging, that is, on the one hand, the trend to match
the same Latin !emma with the same Old English gloss, and, on the other,
the attempt to standardize the boisterous lexical variety of the original, by
pro vi ding two or more different Latin lemmata of the poem with the same
Old English gloss.
65
The Old English version of the Benedictine Rule by .tEthelwold, which dates from
the earl y decades of the second half of the tenth century, yields proof of the constant effort
toward standardization of lexical choices in translation, hence in schooling practice: see
Gretsch, M., Die Regula Sancti Benedicti in England und ihre altenglische Übersetzung
(TUEPh 2), Fink, Munich 1973.
66
See ead., The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (CSASE
25), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999.
The same Old English gloss to the same Latin word
A word occurring more than once in the Latin poem (and/or its prose
version) regularly receives the same Old English gloss. Repetitions were
not that numerous in Bk III, especially as far as the words of the text
provided with glosses were concerned, owing to Abbo's idiosyncratic
poetic technique.
œppelfœt 'apple-vesse!': apofereta (prose version apoforeta) ([gl. vasa pomis fe rendis
aptis] 83, [gl. vasa pomis aptaferendis] 89)67 ;
œtbeon 'to be present': adesse (10, 25);
begimen 'care': cura (19, 86);
beon 'to be': esse (4, ff.);
bewependlic 'lamentable': atratus ([gl. lugubris] 76, [atratum gl. lugubre]lOO);
forjleon 'to flee from':fugere (2, 49);
fylgan 'to follow, pursue': sectari (9, [sectare gl. imitare, sequere]36, 74);
geleafa 'belief, faith': fides (62, 79);
genyrwian 'to confine, repress': angustare ([angustent gl. premant] 77, [angustat gl.
artat, premit] 87);
gerœde 'trappings': effipia ([efippiam gl. omamentum ecorum]l1, 19);
god 'god': deus (9, 64);
habban 'to have': habere (30, 41);
healdan 'to hold': tenere ([teneas gl. habeas] 23, 75, [teneam gl.fruar]115);
hengest 'stallion, horse, gelding': cante rus (gl. equs) (31, 68) 68 ;
heofenlic 'heavenly': uranius ([uranium gl. u:lestem] 8, [uranei gl. celestis] 61);
lichama 'body': corpus (60, 100);
midsiàegian 'to accompany': comitari ([comitata gl. secuta]55, 63);
mod 'mind, spirit': mens (6, 7, 58, 70, 71, 101, 105);
muà 'mouth': os (25, 33, 39);
nama 'name': nomen (24, 113);
pyt 'pit'; helle pyt 'heU pit': cloaca ([gl. .i. fos sa tartari] 4, [cloacç gl. fossç] 34 );
saul (sawol) 'sou!': anima (77, 100);
67
Apophoreta (n. pl.) 'presents which guests receive at table', a loanword from
Greek Ù7to<p6pl]'ta ('to be taken away'), was given twice (lines 83, 89) a gloss with no
counterpart in published glossaries, although the Liber glossarum (AP 120) repeats the
interpretation of Isidore, Etym. XX,iv,12: «Apophoreta a Graecis a ferendo poma vel
[aliud] nominata», which was apparently echoed also by the Latin glosses to Abbo. The
Anglo-Saxon glossator apparently takes the Latin word for a feminine sg; the Old English
gloss is fostered by both the context and the Latin glosses.
68
The former line says th at the cleric needs only a horse (31) and gives instructions
on how to ride a horse. Latin cantherius, canterius means 'horse, usually of poor quality,
gelding' and was also used as a derogatory term. Whereas the entries of the glossaries,
e.g. the Placidus Glossary («Canterius: equus castratus»: CGL V,14,9), vouch for the
negative meaning of the word, Abbo used the word to refer to a horse in general and only
supplied the gloss equus. In line 23 of Bk III, there occurs the transcription of Greek,
yppos (gl. equos), which is glossed with the most common OE word, hors 'horse'.
unrot 'angry': biliosus ([gl. tristis] 98, [biliosum gl. triste] 99);
well willendlice 'much willingly': comiter (gl. decenter, benigne) (102, 105)69 .
A different solution is contrived for the glosses to a polysemous word

such as agape, when used twice with a different meaning. In these cases
the glossator is capable to render adroitly the different meanings of the
Latin lemma.
agape '(Christian) love' (gl. dilectio) (73): lufu 'love':
agape 'charity meal' (agapem gl. alienum labo rem) (73): œlfremed geswinc 'another's
toil'; in the latter case, the OE glosses are a verbatim rendering of the Latin ones;
bitte re 'to come forth' (bittunt gl. proficiscuntur) (92):foràgewitan 'to go forth':
bittere 'togo' (bittit gl. it, ambulat) (95): gan 'togo';
posee re 'to ask for urgently' (66): gewilnian 'to long for, desire':
poscere 'to ask' (115): biddan 'to ask'.
In finding different and nuanced Old English renderings the glossator

probably takes advantage of the prop provided by the Latin glos ses.
Reducing the lexical variety
The next and most relevant feature of the Old English glosses which
will be examined below should not be seen at odds with the regular
pattern of rendering pointed out above. The instances in which two or
more Latin words are given the same Old English interpretation is not
random or mistaken, but rather meant to reduce the lexical redundancy of
the poem' s lines, by showing how different Latin words could be
rendered by the same Old English gloss. The use of the same vernacular
interpretamentum regards in particular the words that were not provided
with a Latin gloss in Abbo's poem.
beran 'to bear, carry, take':ferre (34), gerere (79), gestare (66),portare (88);
cempa 'champion': miles (102), militia (15);
cleric 'clerk': clericus (1, 115), cleronomus (22?0 ;
69
As expected, the same happens with conjunctions: ac 'but': sed (20, ff.); gyj'if: si
(51, ff.); and 'and': see below, note 71; àœt (ne) 'in order that (not)': ne (2, ff.);
prepositions: fram 'from': ab (28, 62); geond 'through': per (108, 109); mid 'with': cum
(6, 115); on 'in, on': in (30, ff.); pronouns: se, seo, àœt 'he, she, it': see below, note 71;
and adverbs: eac swylce 'also, likewise': quoque (72, 75); gyt ma 'still more': immo (63,
110); swa 'so, thus': sic (84, 100); swa àeh hwœàere 'however': tamen (105, 113).
7
° Cleronomus 'heir, clerk' is a less familiar borrowing from Greek KÀT]pOVOflO<;. On
the cleric as 'Christ's heir', cf. Isidore, Etym. VII.xii.l ('De clericis'). Similar associations
drincan 'to drink': libare (43),potare (49);

ecelic 'etemal': atervus (atervam g!. perpetuam) (70), perhennis ( 114);
fear 'distant': eminus (gl. longe) (49), longe (12, 47);
forbugan 'to refrain from, avoid': declinare (40), vitare (36);
gehealdan 'to hold, keep, guard': retinere (97), servare (25);
gesettan 'to compose, set': communire (105), campanere (100), concinnus (concinnas
gl. breviter et ordinate canpositas) (112), consistere (93), statue re (48);
libban 'to live': vigere (51), vivere (65);
ma gan 'to be able, have power': passe (51), valere (113);
scinan 'to shine, flash': albere (89),fulgere (47), nitere (33);
soôes 'verily': nam (38, 105), verum (5, 71);
saôlice 'truly': vero (13), verum (98);
ôolian 'to Jack, dispense with, suffer': carere (24, 32),pati (69) 71 .
The effort to reduce the often random lexical variety of Abbo's text is
carried out also when glossing words which were accompanied by a Latin
interpretamentum in the original. The regularity of this procedure is
amazing and worth highlighting, as it has no parallel in other interlinear
versions.
œppel 'any kind of fruit, apple': malum (malis gl. pamis) (46), pomum (89);
bœr 'litter': baccaulus (g!.feretrum) (34), sandapila (gl. baccaulus) (3);
bebod 'command, order': entole (gl. mandatum) (59), teche ([gl. mandatum] 60, 64);
bediglian 'to conceal, hide': clandestinare (clandestinat g!. occultat) (103), cluere
(cluit g!. pollet, viget, excellit) (106); in the latter instance, cluere has been
possibly mistaken for celare;
cyning 'king': basileus (g!. rex) 26, rex (59);
ealdar 'prince, noble, leader': actor (prose version auctor) (28), carcula (g!. princeps
ludi) (2), procer (59), see also below;
eall 'every, who le': cunctus (90, 102), alos (along!. tatum) (50);
emwlatian 'to contemplate'; emwlatend 'contemplator': catasscopus (gl. exploratar
(27); tidemwlatend 'astrologer': arascopus (gl. horarum inspector) (29);
gecigan 'to cali, name': antiquare (g!. ad statum revacare) (87), cieri (gl. vocari) (53);
lie behind the gloss which accompanies the first occurrence of cleronomos in the Scedula
(p. 78,6): «ciericos. Cleronomia greee, latine ereditas; inde cleronomus .i. heres dei».
71
The standardization also concerns conjunctions: and 'and': ac (56, 62), ast (84),
atque (32, ff.), et (30, ff.), -que (11, ft); ne 'neither, nor': neque (3), ne (2, ff.), nec (5); ne
ne: nec (52), neque (4, ff.); ôœt 'so that': quatinus (111), quo (4, 52), ut (24, 29); pronouns:
he 'he': ille (90), is (70, 105), ipse (20, 105); se, seo, ôœt 'he, she, it': is, ea, id (8, ff.), qui,
quae, quod (115);farôam 'for the reason that': quia (6, 8), quoniam (94); swa swa 'so as':
ut (69, possibly a mistake), velut (110); interjections: eala 'oh, 1o': o (prose version 1, ff.);
and adverbs: eac swylce 'likewise': etiam (83), nec non (16, ff.), quoque (72, 75); ne 'not,
no': haud (23, ff.), non (5, ff.), ne (1, ff.).
gecweme 'pleasant': amicalis (gl. amicitiç aptus) (83), aptus (73), bosor (gl. caro)
(99) 72 ;
getimbrian 'to build': apparare ([apparat gl. adornat, construit] 98, [apparat gl.
adornat] 99), edificare (73);
gewilnian 'to ask for urgently, long for': anhelare (anheles gl. desideres) (76),
poscere (66), see also above;
gewinn 'strife, war': agonia (agoniam gl. confidentiam, alacritatem) (79), machia
(gl. pugna) (4);
gewitan 'to depart': abesse (31, 52), absistere (13);forôgewitan 'togo forth': bittere
(bittit gl. it, ambulat) (95);
gewriôan 'to fasten, torment': coagmentare ( 104), stringere (45), vexa re (vexant gl.
allidunt) (38);
gewunian 'to dwell, be want to': constare (constes gl. sis) (26), existere (prose
version 105), sistere (10, 12), solere (87), suescere (43);
hwit 'white': alburnus (alburnis gl. albidis) (89); hwit win 'white wine': amineum
(amineo gl. vina alba) (93);
lareow 'teacher': Codrus (gl. nobilis pastor vel poeta) (22) 73 , didasclus (gl. magister)
(29);
ondrœdan 'to fear': timere (53), vereri (verere gl. time) (10);
reaf 'garment': toga (gl. vestis poetalis) (11), vestis (66); brunbasu reaf: stragula
'pmple garment' ([stragulam gl. vestem pictam] 17, 19); dyrwurôe reaf 'costly
garment': pretexta (gl. genus vestis) (19);
sige 'victory, triumph': bravium (gl. coronam) (40), tropheum (gl. laudem victoriç)
(36);
tostencan 'to drive apart': disparare (disparet gl. disiungat) (56); tostencend 'one
who dissipates': prodigus (gl. dissipator) (35);
wœfels 'covering, mantel': anaboladium (anaboladia gl. amictorium lineum) (88),
armenum (gl. velum) (81);
wexbred 'writing table': abbachus (gl. tabula pictoria) (33), diptica (dipticas gl.
tabellas) (1);
win 'wine': amineum (gl. album vinum) (82), Bacchus (92);
wunian 'to abide, dwell': manere ([maneas gl. sis] 22, 111), sistere (113), stare (37);
utan wunian 'to stay far': amanere (amaneas gl. extra maneas) (80).
A similar intent to reduce the lexical variety of the Latin original may
lay behind the following pairs of glosses, occurring at short distance from
one another:
72
It is an evident mistake for carus 'dear'; bosor is the Hebrew word for the material
body, in opposition to the spirit, see CGL IV,594,4: «Bosra: caro>> and Harley Glossary B
362: «Bosor . caro>> (The Harley Latin-Old English Glossary edited from British Museum
MS Harley 3376, ed. by R.T. Oliphant, Mouton, The Hague and Paris 1966). For the
[emma (Hebrew basar) see, among others, Jerome's Commentarii in Esaiam (X,34,10 and
ff.): <<quia Bosor, caro dicitur, per victimam Domini in Bosra>>: Sancti Hieronymi
Presbyteri Opera, 1. Opera exegetica, 2. Commentariorum in Esaiam libri l-XI, ed. by M.
Adriaen (CCSL 73), Brepols, Turnhout 1963, p. 150.
73
See above, p. 485.
geleafa 'belief, faith':.fides (62, 79):

niwe on geleafan 'neophyte': neofitus (gl. novus infide) (61);
œlmihtig 'almighty': omnipotens (101):

heah œlmihtig 'high almighty': tonans (108).
In the former case the meaning of a difficult Latin word, borrowed

from Greek, neofitus, is explained in Old English, along the line of the
Latin gloss, novus infide. The latter instance concems the replacement of
an epithet of Jupiter extended to the god of the Christians.
The instances of repetition also include a few evident errors of the
Old English gloss when the same Old English interpretamentum is
mistakenly supplied for two entirely different Latin lemmata, such as
anabola 'shawl' (anabolam gl. ornamentum muliebre) (line 20) and
analogium 'lectem' (line 39), which are both glossed with OE healsmene
'necklace' 74 • OE beorht 'bright', which glosses both absidus (line 5) and
scanditus (line 39), shows that, in the latter case, the past participle
scanditus 'ascended' has been mistaken for candidus. OE hired
'household, company' glosses both aulicus 'belonging to the court'
(aulica gl. palatina) (line 19) and curtis (line 46), the latter used by Abbo
in the sense 'yard' (and left unglossed), but understood by the Anglo-
Saxon glossator as having the meaning 'retinue'.
The interference of the Latin glos ses
Sorne of the repetitions which characterize the vemacular

interpretamenta follow the lead of the Latin glosses. For example,
amphytappa is glossed with ruh hrœgl 'coarse cloth' (line 16) and
amphyballum with ruh hwitel 'coarse cloak' (line 30). The two Old
English glosses follow to the letter the Latin interpretamenta drawn from
the Scholica, which, in both cases, specified that the cloth in question was
undique villosus.
The original Latin glos ses influence the Anglo-Saxon glossator' s
choices. For example, ôearle fujian (line 17) and ôearle secan (line 71)
are clearly modelled on the glosses valde amant and valde quaerunt,
which accompanied Abbo's diamant and anquirunt.
lt is evident that the original layer of Latin glosses helped the
74
On the duplication of healsmene, see Lendinara, <<A Difficult School Text in
Anglo-Saxon England>>, p. 330.
glossator to pursue his plan of providing a well contrived apparatus full

of cross-references. For example, winfœt 'wine-vessel', glossing
enoforum (enoforo gl. vasi vinario) (line 43), was preferred to much more
common words such as OE byden, trog or tunne 'barrel, tun, cask'. The
choice of a compound word suggested by the Latin gloss had a
pedagogical advantage: in a lexical drill, winfœt could easily be either
matched or contrasted, on the one band, with œppelfœt 'apple-vessel' 75
(apofereta gl. vasa pomis ferendis apta) (lines 83 and 89), ecedfœt
'vinegar-vessel' (acitabula gl. vas, quo fertur acetum) (line 45), and
picen fœt 'vessel coated with pitch' (culleum gl. vas pice oblinitus) (line
41), and, on the other, with win 'wine' (lines 82, 93, 94).
Abbo' s metaphors
The trend toward simplification of the lexical variety of Abbo' s poem

and the influence of the Latin apparatus combine themselves in another
feature peculiar to the Old English glosses, which tend to decode the
metaphors of Bk III. There were cases in which Abbo himself
accompanied entries such as antrum or cloaca with both one of the
commonplace interpretations found in contemporary glossaries and a
gloss which pointed out the metaphorical use of the term in question.
OE hell 'bell' is used four times in the glosses to the prose version of
Bk III to render a number of different Latin words to the effect of
decoding Abbo's allusions - often quite overt - to the devil, who is a
constant menace to the cleric the poem is addressed to:
antrum 'cave' (antro gl. .i. in antrum, inferno) (103): hell;
baratrum 'abyss' (gl. infernum s. vites) (36): hell;
cloaca 'cloaca, sewer' (gl. .i. fos sa Tartari) (4): helle pyt 'heU pit';
toparcha 'toparch, govemor of a territory or district' (gl. princeps unius loci .i.
diabolus erebi) (3): helle ealdor 'prince of heU'.
These glosses too, witness to a constant trend of the vernacular

renderings, which do not only unravel Abbo's metaphors, but also prefer
to use the same Old English word, in this case, hell, over and over again,
75
/Eppelfœt on! y occurs in these glosses, whereas ecedfœt and winfœt are also found,
as interpretamenta of the same lemmata, in the Antwerp-London Glossary, which
con tains a series of en tries drawn from Abbo. Winfœt has a further occurrence in the First
Cleopatra Glossary. See note 67, above.
to gloss three Latin words, Erebus, infernus, and Tartarus76 •
Word families to be learned and figura etymologica
Another recurring pattern of the Old English glosses shows that the
glossator is following an overall plan and bas full command of the entire
Latin text. Often, in front of two or more different Latin words belonging
to the same semantic field, the glossator strives to achieve a lexical
homogeneity within the Old English glosses, by picking up a set of
etymologically related equivalents. This technique betrays a good
knowledge of the meaning of the rare Latin words used by Abbo,
including the many loanwords from Greek. The prop provided by the
Latin glosses, when extant, is undoubtedly putto good use.
A number of the glossarial choices examined below may be included
among the stylistic features of the glosses to the prose version of Abbo's
Bk III, because their overall effect is comparable to that produced by a
rhetoric feature such as the figura etymologica, which is often employed
both in Old English poetry and prose77 .
began 'to care for': colere (82, 84):
begimen 'attention': cura (19, 86);
bediglian 'to hide': clandestinare (clandestinat gl. occultat) (103)78 :
76
In Bk III, Abbo does not to call either hell or the devil by name. Consider also the
use of hostis (hostis gl. d(}monis) (76) and sinister (sinistri gl. diaboli) (91), which are
glossed, respectively, with OE feond 'fiend, devi!' and deofol 'devi!'. Conversely, the
glossator has apparently difficulties with arcisterium (prose version archisterium)
'monastery' - here 'monastic status'- (gl. monasterium .i. singularitatem dei servitii) (81)
and sacrata perora (gl. .i. per ewagelistas) (108). He rnight have chosen to render to the
letter, using, respectively, mynster 'monastery' and (gehalgod) gemœre '(blessed)
boundary', in the latter case evidently rnistaking os, oris 'mouth' for ora, orae 'boundary'.
Admittedly, the allusion to the Evangelists or the Prophets ('the holy lips') was not that
overt.
77
On this figure, in which two or more different words with the same etymological
derivation are used adjacently, see Lendinara, P., <<The figura etymologica in Old
English>>, in P. Lendinara, F.D. Raschellà and M. Dallapiazza (eds.), Saggi in onore di
Piergiuseppe Scardigli, Lang, Frankfurt a.M. 2011, pp. 155-75. The repetition of either
the same word or of different inflections of the same word at a short distance does not
constitute a figura etymologica.
78
Either Abbo or a former glossator made up a verb from the adjective clandestinus.
Cf. the entries of the Liber glossarum CL 20 <<Clandestina[t]: occulta>> and the Placidus
Glossary C 96: <<Clamdestina[t] res: occulta>>. Lindsay's emendation is based on Abstrusa
CA 95 <<Clandestina: occulta>>.
digellice 'secretly': clancule (gl. occulte) (107):

dihle (diego!) 'hidden, concealed': clandestinus (clandestina gl. occulta) (106); dihle
ôegn: apocrisarus (gl. minister secretorum) (25); dihle sprec: aforismus
(aforismos gl. breves sermones) (25); in the last instance, the choice of dihle is
possibly a mistake;
forfleon 'to flee from':fugere (2, 49):

forflygan 'to putto flight': aginare (88);
gedafenian 'to beseem, befit': convenire (21):

gedafenlic 'proper': congruus (46);
gelomlœcan 'to frequent': celebrare (celebres gl.frequentes) (29):

gelomlic 'frequent':frequens (gl. assidua) (55):
gelomlice 'repeatedly': crebro (ll),frequens (12);
gemunan 'to remember': reminisci (57):

gemyndgian 'to warn': commonere (prose version 6):
gemyndig 'mindful': memor (53):
gemyndlyst 'madness': limphaticus (limphatici gl. dementis) (24):
myndgian 'to remember, mention': monere (102);
lœran 'teach'; lœrend 'teacher': docens (39):

lar 'learning': dogma (62):
lareow 'teacher': Codrus (22), didasclus (29), see above;
libban 'to live': vigere (51), vivere (65):

lif'life': vita (100);
lufian 'to love': diligere (44):

ôearle lufian 'to love excessively': diamare (diamant gl. valde amant) (17):
lufu 'love': agape (gl. dilectio) (73);
mœgen 'might, virtue': virtus (90):

mœg<en>ôrym 'majesty': mai estas ( 114):
magan 'to be able, have power' (51, 113), see above;
scyld 'shield': ancile (gl. scutum) (79):

scyldan 'to protect': scyldend: tutor (110);
scyld 'guilt': noxa (noxam gl. culpam, prose version culpam) (103):
scyldleas 'guiltless': insons (51):
healfscyldig 'partially guilty': temeson (gl. medius sonus) (51) 79 ;
79
Temeson (a transcription of Greek TO JlÉcrov) was drawn from Scholica T2: «Ton
meson: medius sonus sive medius verbum, quod dupliciter potest intellegi [... ]». lts
orginal Latin interpretamentum, medius sonus, has been mistaken for medius sons,
possibly owing to a suspension mark for -us in the antecedent, and consequently glossed
with healfscyldig. The meaning of the new interpretamentum, however, fits the context,
strang 'strong': validus (56):

strengà 'strength, vigour' (6): acrimonia (gl. vigor animi et corporis industria).
Glosses featuring two or more etymologically related Old English

words as well as phrases and compounds sharing one component may
occur either at short or greater distance within the poem. Both typologies
prove that the glossator wants to provide a regular set of vernacular
renderings, supported by a good number of strong internai cross-
references.
œppel 'any kind of fruit, apple': malum (46), pomum (89), see above:
œppelfœt 'apple-vesser: apofereta (83, 89), see above;
bed 'bed': thorus (30):

forbed 'portable bed': badanola (gl. lectus in itinere) (16);
beorscipe 'feast, banquet'; beorscipes ealdor 'president of a banquet': architriclinus

(gl. princeps domus) (82):
gebeorscipe 'feast, banquet': sinposium (sinposia gl. convivia) (50);
brunbasu 'brownish-purple' (adj.): blatta (gl. purpura) (14) 80 :

brunbasu reaf 'purple garment': stragula ([stragulam gl. vestem pictam 17], 19);
ealdor 'prince, noble, leader' (2, 28, 59), see above:

beorscipes ealdor 'president of a banquet': architriclinus (82), see above:
halig ealdor 'holy prince' 81 : ierarchia (gl. sacer principatus) (4):
helle ealdor 'prince of hell': toparcha (gl. princeps unius loci .i. diabolus erebi) (3):
ealdordom 'authority': archon (gl. princeps) (64) 82 ;
fœt 'vessel';picenfœt 'vessel coated with pitch': culleum (gl. vas pice oblinitum) (41):
œppelfœt 'apple-vesser: apofereta (prose version apoforeta) (gl. vasa pomis ferendis
aptis!vasa pomis apta fe rendis) (83, 89):
ecedfœt 'vinegar-vessel': acitabulum (gl. vas quo fertur acetum) (45):
winfœt 'wine-vesser: enoforum (enoforo gl. vasi vinario) (43);
by suggesting the cleric to be at least 'half guilty'.

80
Blatta 'purpur' of the original was made into an adjective in the prose version that
changed «brathea blatta dehinc>> (the gold leaf, then the purple)- both words referring to
symbols of high dignity, but also of the worldly power that the cleric is supposed to flee
from- into «blataque brattea dehinc: and brunbasu platung syààan>>.
81
The Latin gloss to ierarchia, that is sacer principatus, by which Abbo meant an
angelic choir, has possibly been mistaken for sacer princeps. The expected Old English
gloss was ealdordom. The inverse error occurs at line 64 of the prose version, where
archon 'ruler' (gl. princeps) is glossed with ealdordom and not with ealdor.
82
See above, note 81.
gemet 'measure, vessel': congium (congia gl. mensuras) (45):

heaifgemet 'diameter': diametrum (diametra g!. medietatem sperç, horologium) (41);
halig 'ho1y': ieron (gl. sacer) (64):

halig ealdor 'holy prince' 83 : ierarchia (gl. sacer principatus) (4);
healffers 'hemistich': emistichium (gl. dimidium versum) (42):

heaifgemet 'diameter': diametrum (diametra g!. medietatem sperç) (41);
hiwrœden 'household, family': cliente la (110):

untrum hiwrœden 'sick household, religious house': abbaso (gl. domus infirma)(55) 84 ;
hus 'house': dama (45):

àearfana hus 'house of the poor': xenodochium (prose version zenodochium) (gl.
domus qua pauperes colliguntur) (44):
spichus 'larder': lar (gl. penus) (52) 85 :
wœschus 'wash-house': colimbus (colimbum gl. lavandariam) (66);
àrowendlic 'suffering, enduring'; àrowendlic deaà 'apop1exy': apoplexia (gl. mors

subita, passio similis paralisi) (86):
unàrowendlicnes 'impassibility': aphatia (aphatiam g!. impassibilitatem) (72);
win 'wine': amineum (gl. album vinum) (82), Bacchus (92):

hwit win 'white wine': amineum (amineo gl. vina alba) (93):
winfœt 'wine-vessel': enoforum (enoforo gl. vasi vinario) (43);
woruld 'world': seculum (109):

woruldlic 'secular': biotticus (gl. secularis, mundanus) (28) 86 .
In a number of instances, repetition takes place in the very same line

(see also above, for œppel and œppelfœt in line 89):
œàelboren 'of noble birth, free-bom': ingenuus (97):
œàelborennes 'nobility ofbirth': genitura (97);
brucan 'to use': uti (20):

scamlice brucan 'to abuse': abuti (abutor gl. male utitur) (20);
83
See above, notes 81 and 82.
84
See above, note 41.
85
The Old English gloss is suggested by the Latin g1oss penus 'cellar' as well as by
the general meaning of the line. Penus is the commonp1ace rendering of Latin cellarium.
On the contrary, the word used by Abbo, lar 'househo1d', was usually glossed with
domus. The choice of lar might have been suggested by Medieval Latin lardarium 'place
to store meat', which would not fit the hexameter itself.
86
Only the most relevant examples are cited above; however, see also gal (23):
galscipe (88); gewitan (31, 52): foràgewitan (95); gad (9, 64): godcund (33); gold (39):
gyldenmuàa (24); hors (23): horshyrde (54); lœce (55): lœcedom (9); muà (25, ff.):
gyldenmuàa (24); wif(20): wifleas (84).
fers 'verse'; twafers 'couplet': disticum (distica gl. Il versus) (42):

healffers 'hernistich': emistichium (gl. dimidium versum) (42);
hatian 'to hate': odi (44):

hatung 'hatred': zelotipium (zelotipia gl. odia) (44);
horshyrde 'ostler, groom': agason (gl. provisor equorum) (54):

mulhyrde 'mule-keeper': mulio (gl. custos mulorum) (54);
oree rd 'pomary': pomarium (pomaria gl. viridiaria) (46):

orcerdleh 'orchard': pomerium (gl.locus vacuus) (46).
The instances of etymologically related Old English glosses

occurring at short distance show how the glossator is capable to make a
brilliant use of what is indeed an ordinary didactic strategy and also to
obtain a stylistic effect in the process.
The choice that brought about the repetition of the same Old English
glass might be due to a mere coïncidence, but it is probably a didactic
option. Line 61 «Uranei neotericus atque neofitus haud sis» (Be not a
novice or a neophyte in celestial [faith]) combines two "key" words,
neotericus and neofitus, glossed respectively with novus and novus in
fide. The glossator provides a verbatim rendering of Abbo's Latin
glosses, to the detriment of the sense of the phrase, by using niwe and
niwe in geleaja. The advantage of this choice is that the two vemacular
glosses could be contrasted and, in tum, also the two Latin words;
thereby, also the structure of the latter could be highlighted. It is now
becoming more and more evident that vemacular glossing could offer
comparative information on the structural pattern of the Latin lemma and
also a sort of practical grammar in contrastive form.
The merits of the Old English gloss
The merits of the Anglo-Saxon glossator are not only those of having
produced a weil contrived apparatus for the sake of those who wanted to
cope with Abbo's hermeneutic words and eventually learn them. He also
shows a keen interest in fostering the education of his intended audience,
by providing sorne glosses with additional value.
The rendering of Argiripa (Argiripam gl. urbem) (line 85) with OE
œôelicu burh 'noble, excellent town' is indicative of the quality of the
glass. Apyupinna was a town in Apulia, afterwards called Arpi. It was a
large and flourishing town already mentioned by Strabo (Geography
V.1.9 and VI.3.9) and Virgil (Aeneid XI,246), whence possibly cornes the
gloss. This eventually entered the Liber glossarum (AR 297), where it is
glossed with urbs, and the glossary in Vatican City, BAV, Vat. lat. 1469
(CGL V,520,12), where it is provided with a long interpretation echoing
the remarks by Servius, according to whom the town had been founded
by Diomedes 87 .
In a few cases the Old English gloss succeeds in rendering the correct
meaning of the Latin word, without resorting to the original Latin gloss,
which, as it should be stressed again, was not meant to explain the
meaning of the text. For example, the Anglo-Saxon glossator provides a
correct rendering of propoma 'aperitif, appetizer': propoman (gl. claram
potionem per linteum) (line 17). In this case the source of Abbo's gloss
was a Scholica entry, «Propoma: potio clara in linteo» (P 6). On the
contrary, the glossator supplied a vernacular rendering - albeit
grammatically incorrect -, whose meaning perfectly matches that of
propoma (a loanword from Greek 1tp61tOfla) 'aperitif, drink taken before
eating', choosing to gloss with gedrefed drenc 'excited [rather than
exciting!] drink' (the OE verb gedrefan means 'to stir up, excite').
Conclusions
The Latin glosses added by Abbo to his poem and, in particular, to

Bk III of the BPU and the Old English glosses that accompany the prose
version of Bk III in two Anglo-Saxon manuscripts are the outcome of two
different strategies.
Abbo composed the lines of Bk III of his poem by using, from the
very beginning, the lemmata of one or more glossaries. Henceforth, he
used the respective interpretamenta to create a sort of interpretative
apparatus to the poem. In accomplishing his task, he did commit just a
few errors in combining the words of the text with their gloss, showing
that he perfectly mastered the glossarial material at hand. The Latin
glosses are contemporary with the text. They were meant to accompany
the lines of the poem and prop them up from the very beginning.
As a carmen figuratum cannot do without its format and maintains its
layout throughout the manuscript tradition, Abbo' s Bk III cannot do
without its Latin glosses and in ali its manuscripts it is complemented by
the same, unchanged apparatus.
87
See Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, ed. by Thilo
and Hagen, II, pp. 149 (in Aen. VII,286), 201 (in Aen. VIII,9), 503 (in Aen. XI,239), and
505-6 (in Aen. XI,46).
All the manuscripts attest exactly the same gloss above the same
lemma. This choice tells much about the degree of artificiality of the
Latin glosses which are not an ad hoc reply to the text by individual
copysts/readers, but go back to a former matching. In the case of Abbo's
Bk III the aH-Latin context hardly required exegetic glossing, to the point
of depri ving the glos ses of any raison d' etre. The Latin glos ses do not
explain the text: they supply a lexical equivalent which at times is as rare
as the lemma itself, e.g. agagula gl. lenocinator (18) or alburnus gl.
albidus (89).
In England, the hundred and so lines of Bk III were reshuffled and
turned from verse into prose, following set rules also employed
elsewhere. At the same time the original version had a large circulation
and the Latin glosses were well known and had also been excerpted and
included in English glossaries such as the Antwerp-London Glossary88 •
If my past research work had focused on the oddities of Abbo's poem
and the mistakes that glossing a text such as this would prompt, what I
want to point out now is instead the deliberate and well-contrived
regularity and the brilliant overcoming of the many obstacles involved.
Abbo' s Bk III was a storehouse of rare Latin words, which were to be
learned by advanced students. The use Bk III was put to in England,
witnessed by its presence in the hardest part of Cambridge, UL, Gg.5.35
and alongside Aldhelm in CCCC 326, is not that envisaged by those
responsible for its prose version. The latter seems to have stemmed from
the effort to enable the understanding of the actual content of Bk III.
However, in spite of the prose version, it was Abbo's very poetic version
to enjoy a vast success in Anglo-Saxon England. Moreover, there is
ample evidence for a continued interest in the very words of the poem.
The glossary in Cotton Domitian i, the many entries included in the
glossary in the late Royal 7.D.xii, but also in the Antwerp-London and
the Harley glossaries, all speak in this direction.
88
Lendinara, P., «A Storehouse of Learned Vocabulary: The Abbo Glossaries in
Anglo-Saxon England», in R.H. Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker (eds.), Practice in Leaming:
The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Storehouses of
Walpole, MA 2010, pp. 101-32.
THE OLD ENGLISH ENTRIES
IN THE FIRST CORPUS GLOSSARY (CCCC 144, FF. 1R-3V)
Filippa Alcamesi
The manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 144 1 contains

two alphabetical glossaries. The first is found at ff. lr-3v under the rubric
'Interpretatio nominum ebraicorum et grecorum' and was first published
by Hessels in 18902. In this paper it will be referred to as First Corpus
Glossary. Lindsay printed just the entries with an Old English
interpretamentum in 1921 3 . In the collective edition of Anglo-Saxon
glossaries by Thomas Wright, later implemented and corrected by
Richard P. Wülker and entitled Anglo-Saxon and Old English
Vocabularies, this glossary occurs as the first item of the collection and
occupies columns 1-24 • The First Corpus Glossary counts in total 342
entries in A-arder, 32 of which have Old English interpretamenta, while
the remainder mainil consists of either Hebrew and Greek proper names
t The manuscript dates from s. ixt and has been traced to a centre in south-west
England (prov. Canterbury, St Augustine's?), see Gneuss, H., Handlist of Anglo-Saxon
Tempe, AZ 2001, no. 45. See also Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing
Anglo-Saxon, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1957; reissued with suppl., 1990, no. 36; Lowe,
E.A., Codices Latini Antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to
the Ninth Century, II: Great Britain and freland, 2nd edn., Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1972, no. 122. A facsimile edition is in B. Bischoff, M. Budny, G. Harlow, M.B. Parkes
and J.D. Pheifer (eds.), The Épinal, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries (EEMF 22),
Rosenkilde and Bagger, Copenhagen 1988.
2
An Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary preserved in the Library of Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge (Ms n°. 144), ed. by J.H. Hessels, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge 1890 (hereafter Hessels 1890), pp. 1-8. All the g1osses from the First
Corpus Glossary will be quoted from this edition. Note, however, that the glosses are 342
and not 341 as reckoned by Hessels.
3
Cambridge 1921 (hereafter Lindsay), pp. 188-9.
4
Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. by T. Wright and R.P. Wülcker, 2
vols., Trübner, London 1883; 2nd edn., 1884; repr. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
Darmstadt 1968, I, no. I, cols.1-2.
5
The First Corpus Glossary contains 52 entries consisting of either loanwords from
Greek or mere transcriptions of a Greek word, such as either «Cola . membrum» (Hessels
1890, no. 76), «Commata ipsae incisiones pedum>> (Hessels 1890, no. 78), or «Dotice .
datiuus>> (Hessels 1890, no. 91), «Onomastice . genitiuus>> (Hessels 1890, no. 238 [no.
510 FILIPPA ALCAMESI
or Greek loanwords with Latin interpretations. These interpretamenta

were likely drawn from Jerome's Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum
nominum6 , the Instructiones ascribed to Eucherius7 , and Isidore's
Etymologiae 8•
The second of the two glossaries in CCCC 144 is found at ff. 4r-64v
under the rubric 'Incipit glosa secundum ordinem elimentorum
alphabeti'. It is a much longer list of over 8,700 entries- more thau 2,000
of which with Old English interpretations - compiled from varions
sources. This glossary is generally known as the Corpus Glossary per
excellence and in this paper it will be referred to as Second Corpus
Glossarl.
The principal purpose of this essay is to study the lemmata with a
vernacular interpretamentum occuring in the First Corpus Glossary. I will
try to clarify them by documenting the sources of as many lemmata as
possible and by giving a semantic classification that may cast light upon
the process through which the glossary came into being.
It goes without saying that identifying the source of the Latin lemma
cau help elucidate a puzzling gloss. However, in the case of the First
Corpus Glossary, the exact source of many aH-Latin glosses cannot be
239]). These entries originally be1onged to a glossary known as 'Grammaticae artis

nomina graece et latine notata', which consists of grammatical, prosodie, and rhetorical
terms and is found in a number of Continental manuscripts as well as in one Anglo-Saxon
codex, London, British Library, Harley 3826, at ff. 150r-152v. This glossary has been
edited by Gneuss, H., «A Grammarian's Greek-Latin Glossary», in M. Godden, D. Gray
and T. Hoad (eds.), From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies Presented to Eric
G. Stanley, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1994, pp. 60-86; see also Munzi, L., «Spigolature
grammaticali in una silloge scolastica carolingia>>, Bollettino dei classici. Accademia
nazionale dei Lincei 3rd ser., 14 (1993), pp. 103-32.
6
S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera, I. Opera exegetica, 1. Hebraicae quaestiones in
libro Geneseos. Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum. Commentarioli in psalmos.
Commentarius in Ecclesiasten, ed. by P. de Lagarde, G. Morin and M. Adriaen (CCSL
72), Brepols, Turnhout 1959.
7
Sancti Eucherii Lugdunensis Opera Omnia, I, ed. by K. Wotke (CSEL 31),
Tempsky, Vienna and Prague 1 Freitag, Leipzig 1894.
8
lsidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M.
Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford Classical Texts), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1911.
9
Two complete editions of this glossary are available in print, namely An Eighth-
Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary, ed. by Hessels and The Corpus Glossary, ed. by
Lindsay. For a detai1ed comment on the individual glosses of both the First and Second
Corpus glossaries, see Wynn, J.B., An Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Corpus Glosses (MS
Corpus Christi College Cambridge, No. 144), unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Oxford 1962. All the
glosses from the Second Corpus Glossary will be quoted from Lindsay' s edition.
THE OLD ENGLISH ENTRIES IN THE FIRST CORPUS GLOSSARY 511
located with absolute certainty, because of the frequent overlaps between

the three major sources mentioned above 10 •
On the other hand, the identification of the sources of the bilingual
entries in the First Corpus Glossary that have so far gone untraced, may
shed light on its composition and reveal what kind of glossarial material
was in circulation in England at the beginning of the ninth century.
Moreover, as many of the bilingual entries of the First Corpus Glossary
are also found in other Anglo-Saxon alphabetical and class glossaries, the
findings conceming the former glossary may contribute to illuminate
obscure entries in the latter.
A semantic classification of the bilinguallemmata of the First Corpus
Glossary reveals groups of entries stemming from one or more class
glossaries. Batches from different sources were conflated and their entries
were reshuffled under each letter of the alphabet. Even though the entries
are listed in alphabetical order in the First Corpus Glossary, it is evident
that they are representative of distinct semantic fields: seafaring, birds,
plants, members of family and society, tools and common objects, as well
as biblical terms.
Sorne of the entries of the First Corpus Glossary occur in a number of
later class glossaries, as the following table shows:
C1auis . helma (no. 70)
Clauus, helma Antwerp-London Glossary 11
10
See above, p. 510. For example, the entry «Farao dissipator» (Hessels 1890, no.
130) can be traced to Jerome's Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum 6,13 (ed. by
de Lagarde, p. 6): «Farao dissipans sive discoperiens eum>> (Pharaon the one who scatters
or uncovers him), commenting on Gn XII.l5; to Eucherius's Instructiones (ed. by Wotke,
p. 141,22): «Pharao denudans eum siue dissipator eius>> (Pharaon the one who uncovers
him or his scatterer); and to Isidore's Etymologiae VII.vi.43 (ed. by Lindsay):
«Exprimitur autem in Latino Pharao denegans eum, utique Deum, siue dissipator eius>>
(On the other hand, in Latin Pharaon is rendered as the one who denies him, certainly
God, or his scatterer).
11
Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.2 + London, British Library, Additional
32246 (s. xi 1,probably Abingdon,): Ker, Catalogue, no. 2; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 774. Ali
the entries from this glossary will be quoted from The Latin-Old English Glossaries in
The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus MS 32 and British Museum MS
Additional 32,246, ed. by L. Kindschi, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University 1955
(hereafter Kindschi). A new edition is underway and the first volume is already available:
The Antwerp-London Glossaries: The Latin and Latin-Old English Vocabularies from
Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus 16.2 -London, British Library Add. 32246, I. Text and
Indexes, ed. by D.W. Porter (Publications of the Dictionary of Old English Series 8),
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto 2011. Volume II is forthcoming.
('Nomina nauium et instrumenta earum')

(Kindschi, p. 231,7)
C1auus, helma ('De naue et partibus eius'>>) Brussels Glossary 12
(Wright-Wülcker I, col. 288,17)
Dasile . boor (no. 89)
Desile: bor ('Incipit de metallis') Second Cleopatra Glossary 13
(Quinn, p. 44,5)
Doleus . byden (no. 88) 1 Fundus . bodan (no. 136)
Dolium, cyf Antwerp-London Glossary
Fundum, bydenbotm ('Nomina uasorum')
(Kindschi, p. 83,3 and 4)
Doleum: byden ('Incipit de mensa') Second Cleopatra Glossary
(Quinn, p. 67,4)
Foratorium . buiris (no. 137)
Boratorium: byres ('Incipit de metallis') Second Cleopatra Glossary
(Quinn, p. 44,3)
Iungula. geocboga (no. 185)
Iugula: iucboga Second Cleopatra Glossary
('Incipit de plaustris et de partibus eius')
(Quinn, p. 33,6)
Lancola. cellae (no. 197)
Lancona: cille ('Incipit nomina secundum Second Cleopatra Glossary
ordinem litterarum')
(Quinn, p. 52,8)
Ledo. nepflod (no. 196)
Ledona, nepflod uel ebba Antwerp-London Glossary
Malina .fylledflood (no. 216)
Malina, heahflod Antwerp-London Glossary
Rastrum. raece (no. 273 [no. 274])
Rastrum uel rastellum, raca Antwerp-London Glossary
('De instrumentis agricolarum')
(Kindschi, p. 44, 10)
Trilex. àrili (no. 323 [no. 324])
Triligium: [prielig] hrœgil ('Incipit nomina Second Cleopatra Glossary
secundum ordinem litterarum')
12
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 1828-30, ff. 36-109 (s. xi in.): Ker, Catalogue, no.
9; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 807. Ali the entries from this glossary will be quoted fromAnglo-
Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. by Wright and Wülcker, I, no. IX.
13
London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra A.iii (s. x 214 or x med., Canterbury, St
Augustine's): Ker, Catalogue, no. 143; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 319. Ali the entries from
this glossary will be quoted from The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in MS. Cotton
Cleopatra A III, ed. by J.J. Quinn, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University 1956
(hereafter Quinn).
(Quinn, p. 59,11)
Verte1ium. uerua (no. 328 [no. 329])
Uertellum, hweorfa ('De arte textoria') Brussels Glossary
(Wright-Wülcker 1, col. 294,6)
Verte1um: hweorfa ('Incipit de textrinalibus') Second Cleopatra Glossary
(Quinn, p. 21,17)
Vomer. scaer (no. 329 [no. 330])
Vomer uel uomis, scear Antwerp-London Glossary
('De instrumentis agricolarum')
(Kindschi, p. 44,1)
Vomer: scer ('Incipit de metallis') Second Cleopatra Glossary
(Quinn, p. 44,1)
The First Corpus Glossary has a number of difficult lemmata with

obscure or inappropriate Old English interpretations, which have no
counterpart in other glossaries, such as «Adsida . flood» (Hessels 1890,
no. 34), «Ferula . hreod» (Hessels 1890, no. 135), «Gacila . snithstreo»
(Hessels 1890, no. 146), «Lignarium . uuidubinde» (Hessels 1890, no.
199), «Maculosus . specfaag» (Hessels 1890, no. 221), and «Tantalus .
aelbitu» (Hessels 1890, no. 325 [no. 326]). The obscurity of either the
/emma or the interpretamentum or sometimes both, can be ascribed to a
number of causes.
Sorne of the difficult lemmata and their Old English glosses become
clear in the light of the immediate context of the source in which the
/emma occurs. For example, in the entry «Tantalus . aelbitu» the /emma is
the Latin name of the father of Pelops, who was admitted to Zeus's table
in Olympus, while the interpretamentum literally means 'swan'.
According to the Etymologiae, the heron (ardea) was called Tanta/us, but
this datum still does not justify the interpretamentum 'swan'. In fact, an
explanation of the entry can be found in the preceding lines of the
Etymologiae (XII.vii.19), where the swan, cygnus, is discussed 14 . Latin
14
Cf. Isidore, Etym. XII.vii.19: «[ ... ] Olores autem Latinum nomen est; nam Graece
KÛKVot dicuntur. [ ... ] Cygnus in auspiciis semper laetissimus ales; hune optant nautae,
quia se non mergit in undas.» (But swan is the Latin name; in fact in Greek they are said
KÛKVot. [ ... ] The swan is al ways a propitious bird in auspices; sailors choose it, because it
does not submerge himself in the waves.) and 21: «Ardea uocata quasi ardua, id est
propter altos uolatus [ ... ]. Formidat enim imbres, et supra nubes euolat, ut procellas
nubium sen tire non possit. Cum autem alti us uolauerit, significat tempestatem. Hanc multi
Tantalum nominant.>> (The ardea [heron] is called as if ardua [steep], because of its high
flight. [ ... ] lt fears rainstorms, and flies above the clouds to avoid experiencing the
storms, and whenever it flies higher, this indicates a storm. Many people cali it Tantalus.)
Ali translations from Latin and Old English are my own, unless otherwise specified. The
alternative Latin name of the heron given in the Etymologiae may be based on the
cygnus is glossed with ylfete 15 , elfetu 16 , œlbitu 17 , and œbitu 18 • Thus the
Tanta/us gloss can reasonably be interpreted as the misplaced
interpretamentum of two glosses which followed one another in the
original (e.g. «olor/cygnus aelbitu», «ardea Tantalus hragra», see below).
It has not been possible to clarify all the obscure lemmata and glosses
in the glossary. Sometimes, one is able to decipher the meaning of a
gloss, but still finds the !emma incomprehensible. For instance, the entry
«Gacila . snithstreo» (Hessels 1890, no. 146) is very puzzling. The
compound snipstreaw is made up by snip- (snipan 'to eut') and streaw
'straw' and it is safe to assume that it designates the carline thistle, a plant
whose flower head rests directly upon a basalleaf rosette, without a stem.
This meaning is supported by the Dictionary of Old English Plant
Names 19 • However, as to the !emma, all sources I have been able to
consult do not seem to provide a satisfactory meaning 20 .
For one of these obscure entries, «Decurat . hornnaap» (Hessels
1890, no. 92), I have been unable to find a plausible interpretation. If one
assumes that the Latin !emma is a mistake for decurrat, then it might
stem from Isidore's chapter on lakes and pools: «Nam dictus est stagnus
ab eo quod illic aqua stet nec decurrat» 21 • As far as the puzzling Old
English interpretamentum is concerned, according to Bosworth and
Toller, it could be traced to two possible misspellings, that is naap might
be the preterit form of nipan 'to grow dark' or 'sank down', and horn a
mistake for orn (a form of rinnan). These two possible misspellings by a
glossator who «was uncertain whether to connect the word with currere
position of the heron that stands motionless on its legs in shallow water, which reminds of
Tantalus's punishment (forced to stand in water, but unable to drink from it). See also
below, pp. 527-8.
15
Antwerp-London Glossary: «Cignus et cicinus, y/fete>> (Kindschi, p. 101,9).
16
Brussels Glossary: «cignus elfetu>> (Wright-Wülcker, I, col. 284,5).
17
Second Corpus Glossary: «Olor: cicnus, aelbitu>> (Lindsay 0 152).
18
Épinal G1ossary no. 718: «olor greee latin cignus aelbitu>>; Erfurt Glossary no.
718: <<olor greee latinae cignus œbitu>>: Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt
Glossary, ed. by J.D. Pheifer, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1974 (hereafter Pheifer).
19
http://oldenglish-plantnames. uni -graz.at/about/latest_entries/1 002-sni -str-o (last
accessed January 2011).
20
See below, p. 523.
21
(So it is called stagnus [pool] because there the water stands and does not run
forth): Isidore, Etym. XIII.xix.9.
or curare» 22 demonstrate the complexities of understanding a gloss.

The examples given above illustrate the problems posed by the
bilingual entries in the First Corpus Glossary. The following pages will
attempt to give a semantic classification of all the entries of the glossary
with a vernacular interpretamentum and to solve relevant problems of
interpretation.
Seafaring terms
Adsida flood, ledo nepflod, malina fylled flood
In Lindsay's opinion23 , the three entries «Adsida [recte adsisa] .

flood» (Hessels 1890, no. 34), «Ledo . nepflod» (Hessels 1890, no. 196),
and «Malina . fylled flood» (Hessels 1890, no. 216) might have been
drawn from the seventh-century Hiberno-Latin work Liber de ordine
creaturarum. In this text, the three words occur together in chapter IX
'Denatura aquarum et cursu Oceani':
Sed ledonis assisa sex semper horas incrementi sui immutata consuetudine complet
[ ... ] Malinae autem assis a quinque horas suae inundationis agit, et per septem horas
eiusdem recessit [... ](IX, 5-7) 24 •
(But according to its unchanged custom the flow of ledo always ends after six hours
of growth. [ ... ] On the contrary, the flow of the malina sets in motion its flood for
five hours and ebbs for seven hours [ ... ])
Michael Herren 25 has suggested that ledo 26 and malina27 were quite
22
Bosworth, J. and Toller, T.N., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary based on the
Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth [ ... ]. Edited and enlarged by T.N.
Taller, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1898, p. 559.
23
Lindsay, p. 188.
24
Liber de ordine creaturarum: Un an6nimo irlandés del siglo VII. Estudio y edici6n
crîtica, ed. and transi. by M.C. Dîaz y Dîaz (Monografîas de la Universidad de Santiago
de Compostela 10), Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela
1972. See Lapidge, M. and Sharpe, R., A Bibliography of Celtic-Latin Literature 400-
1200 (Royal Irish Academy Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources. Ancillary
Publications 1), Royal Irish Academy, Dublin 1985, no. 342.
25
The Hisperica Famina, ed. and transi. by M. Herren, 2 vols., Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, Toronto 1974-1987, I, pp. 178-80.
26
Latham, R.E., Revised Medieval Latin Ward-List from British and Irish Sources,
Oxford University Press for the British Academy, London 1965; repr. with suppl. 1980,
s.v., and Du Cange (Du Fresne), Ch., Glossarium mediœ et infimœ Latinitatis, 10 vols.,
Favre, Niort 1883-1887, s. v.
27
Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Ward-List, s. v., and Du Cange, Glossarium, s. v.
current words to designate tidal phases in seventh-century Ireland28 . Latin

adsida of the First Corpus Glossary is unparalleled elsewhere and is
probably a misspelling for adsisa that occurs in yet another variant,
assisa, in the passage of the Liber de ordine creaturarum (IX,5-7)
mentioned above. Here it designates the approach of both low tide and
high tide (from ad and sed-/sid- as in adsiduus 'continuai, unceasing') 29 •
lt is worth noting that adsisa, together with malina and !edo, also
occurs in the Hispericafamina with the meaning of 'tide':
protinus spumaticam pollet in littora adsisam [ ... ]
afroniosa luteum uelicat mallina terminum, [ ... ]
Interdum tumentem plastrica<t> Nerius lidonem,
(continually, it propels the foamy tide to the shore [ ... ] the foamy tide covers the
30
muddy land, [ ... ] Sometimes, Nereus guides the burgeoning tide,)
In the De mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae, like the Liber de ordine

creaturarum and the Hisperica famina a seventh-century Hiberna-Latin
work, the malinae are described as the tides occurring after the new and
the full moon (also known as full or spring tides), while the ledones are
the tides occurring in the intervals between the latter two phases, that is
after the half-moon (neap tides):
malina [ ... ] tantam concordiam cum luna ostendit, ut antequam luna nascatur, tribus
diebus et duodecim horis semper incipiat; [ ... ] similiter et ante plenilunium tribus
diebus et duodecim horis incipit [ ... ]. Interpositiis vero spatiis iterum tantumdem
semper Ledo intermittitur.» (ch. VII) 31 •
(The malina [ ... ] shows such great agreement with the moon, that it al ways begins
three days and twelve hours before the moon rises; [ ... ] and likewise ital ways begins
three days and twelve hours before the full moon; [ ... ]. Likewise again the ledo
occurs in the very same way in the intervening intervals.)
28
The earliest recorded occurrence of the term malina is in a fourth-century medical
treatise written by Marcellus of Bordeaux, where it designates the phases of the moon
when it is convenient to gather herbs: <<Conficitur XII kal. Iul. non interest quo die vel
luna vel malina>> (It is to be prepared on the twelfth of July, regardless of which day,
moon, or malina): Marcelli de medicamentis liber, ed. by M. Niedermann (Corpus
Medicorum Latinorum 5), Teubner, Leipzig and Berlin 1916, p. 276, § 49.
29
Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Ward-List, s. v. See also Harvey, A., «Varia IV:
Sorne Terms for Tides in Celtic-Latin Literature>>, Eriu 54 (2004), pp. 259-62.
30
Lines 397, 400, and 410: The Hisperica Famina, ed. and transl. by Herren, pp. 94-
97.
31
PL 35, col. 2159. See Lapidge and Sharpe, A Bibliography of Celtic-Latin
Literature 400-1200, no. 291.
This interpretation improves on the confused idea of earlier Christian

writers that tides waxed and waned with the moon 32 . Irish works must, in
turn, have been the sources of a Bede' s passage of the De na tura rerum
on tides:
Aestus Oceani lunam sequitur, tanquam eius aspiratione retrorsum trahatur, eiusque
impulsu retracto refundatur, qui quotidie bis adfluere et remeare, unius semper horae
dodrante et semiuncia transmissa, videtur, eiusque omnis cursus in laedones et
malinas, id est, in minores aestus dividitur et maiores 33 .
(The ocean' s tide follows the moon, as if it is forced out by its exhalation and ftows
back when its impulse is withdrawn. It is seen to flow and ebb twice daily, a1ways
with a delay of 3/4 plus 1/24 of one hour.) 34
The scientific meaning of malina and !edo was known to the Anglo-
Saxons. The author of the Old English Martyrologium, for example,
shows full understanding of the two terms:
Ond on ~lcum anum geare weaxeô p~t flod ô~s s~s feower ond twentigum siôa ond
swa oft wanaô. Fyllepftod biô nemmed ond on L~den malina, ond se nepftod !edo.
(And, each year the tide of the sea waxes twenty-four times and as much often it
wanes. Full-tide is called in Latin ma/ina and the neap-tide !edo.) 35
Byrhtferth also writes about ma/ina and le don and mentions Bede' s
explanation of their meaning:
Grecas hateô malina s~ftod ponne hyt wixst, and ledon ponne hyt wanaô; and Beda
cwyô, gumena se getiddusta on Angelcynne, p~t malina onginô fif dagum ~r pam
niwan monan and ealswa ~r pam fullan monan, and ledon, p~t ys wanung, onginô
on fif nihta ealdum monan, and ~gôer pisra nama wyrceaô twa gewrix1a binnan
prittigum nihtum (3.2.132).
(The Greeks cali the tide ma/ina when it waxes and ledan when it wanes: and Bede,
most learned man among the English, says that malina begins five days before the
32
See, for example, Ambrose, Exameron IV,vii,29: Sancti Ambrosii Opera, ed. by K.
Schenkl (CSEL 32,1), Tempsky, Prague and Vienna 1897, p. 135.
33
Bede, Denatura rerum, in Bedae Venerabilis Opera, VI. Opera didascalica 2, ed.
by C.W. Jones (CCSL 123B), Brepols, Turnhout 1977, pp. 224-5.
34
Bede. On the Nature of Things and On Times, transi. by C.B. Kendall and F.
Wallis (Translated Texts for Historians 56), Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2010,
p. 95.
35
Das altenglische Martyrologium, ed. by G. Kotzor, 2 vols. (Bayerische Akademie
der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Abhandlungen. Neue Folge, Heft
88/l-2), Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich 1981, II, p. 36.
new moon and just as long before the full moon, and ledan [waning] be gins wh en the
moon is five days old, and each of these nouns makes two alternations over thirty
days.) 36
Latin malina and ledo refer respectively to full-tide and neap-tide 37 .

The former, also known as spring tide, occurs when the moon is either
full or new, and at these times the high tides are very high and the low
tides are very low because the gravitational pull of the moon and sun are
combined. A neap-tide, on the contrary, is a weak tide and it occurs
during the moon's quarter phases, when the gravitational forces of the
moon and the sun are perpendicular to one another.
The First Corpus Glossary affords a precise interpretation of malina
as fyllep flod 'filled flood' and ledo as nepflod 'neap-flood'. Conversely,
it is worth noting a certain degree of imprecision in other vernacular
glosses. In the Antwerp-London Glossary, the glossator interprets ledona
as «nepflod uel ebba» (Kindschi, p. 233,8) and malina as «heahflod»
(Kindschi, p. 233,9), but the full-tide has to be distinguished from the
high ti de. In the Harle y Glossar/ 8 , malina glos ses dodrans 'tidal wave'
together with the Old English egur 'flood, high tide, water': «dodrans .i.
malina. egur >> (D 811) 39 . Old English egor occurs only in glosses as an
independent word and it usually renders dodrans, an Hiberno-Latin word
used to refer to the waxing tide, more in particular to the very high tides40 .
Gemellus getuin
The entry «Gemellus . getuin» (Hessels 1890, no. 142) is unparalleled
36
Byrhtferth's Enchiridion, ed. by P.S. Baker and M. Lapidge (EETS ss. 15), Oxford
University Press, Oxford 1995, p. 144. Translation at 145.
37
A detailed discussion of the etymology of le do and ma lina is in Sayers, W., «The
Etymology of Late Latin malina 'spring tide' and ledo 'neap tide'>>, Mittellateinisches
Jahrbuch 40 (2005), pp. 35-43.
38
London, British Library, Harley 3376 (s. x/xi): Ker, Catalogue, no. 240; Gneuss,
Handlist, no. 436. All the entries will be quoted from The Harley Latin-Old English
Glossary, ed. by R.T. Oliphant (Janua Linguarum. Series Practica 20), Mouton, The
Hague and Paris 1966 (hereafter Oliphant). See also the corrections by Hans Schabram in
his review of The Harley Latin-Old English Glossary, in Anglia 86 (1968), pp. 495-500,
and by Voss, M., «Quinns Edition der kleineren Cleopatraglossare: Corrigenda und
Addenda>>, Arbeiten a us Anglistik und Amerikanistik 14 ( 1989), pp. 127-39.
39
OE egur (eagor) 'tidal wave, flood', in tum, glosses dodrans in a number of
glossaries, but never together with malina.
40
See Smyth, M., Understanding the Universe in Seventh-Century freland (Studies
in Celtic History 15), Boydell, Woodbridge 1996, p. 251.
in other glossaries. Getwin glosses geminus - of which gemellus is a

diminutive- in a number of glosses to Aldhelm's prose De virginitate41 •
The same interpretation is given in an entry of the First Cleopatra
Glossary which goes back to Aldhelm's Enigma XVII (Perna), line 142 :
«E geminis: of getwinnum» (Stryker E 235) 43 . On the contrary, Old
English getwis 'having the same parents' glosses both gemellus and
germanus in Aldhelmian entries of the First and Third Cleopatra
glossaries: «Germanas getwisan» 44 and «Gemellos: getwisan» 45 (Stryker
G 103 and 104) and «Gemellos: getwysan» (Quinn, p. 191, 9).
I have decided to include this gloss among the seafaring terms, even
though it seems to have nothing to do with this lexical field, because the
Latin word gemellum occurs in the Hisperica famina (line 396) in the
passage dealing with ebb and flow, alongside adsisa, mallina, and lido:
Gemellum neptunius collocat ritum fluctus

protinus spumaticam pollet in littora adsisam
refluamque prisco plicat recessam utero, [ ... ]
afroniosa luteum uelicat mallina teminum [ ... ]
Interdum tumentem plastrica<t> Neri us lidonem,
41
Cf. «gemina getwi'n'num»; «gemina dupla to ? getw'i'nre>>; <<gemina (tw .... )
duppla>>; «geminis concentibus [... ] twinnum sangum>>; «geminis [... ] getwinnum>>;
«geminis duobus getwinnum>>: The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library,
1650 (Aldhelm 's De Laudibus Virginitatis ), ed. by L. Goos sens (Verhandelingen van de
koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en schone Kunsten van België,
Klasse der Letteren 36, n. 74), Paleis der Academiën, Brussels 1974 (hereafter Goossens),
nos. 140, 1482, 1819, 2529, and 4048; «gemina, .i. dupla, getwinre>>; «gemina, .i. dupla,
twinnum>>; «geminis, getwinnum>>; «geminis, .i. duobus, getwinnum>>: Old English Classes
ed. by A.S. Napier (Anecdota Oxoniensia. Mediaeval and Modem Series 11), Clarendon
Press, Oxford 1900; repr. Olms, Hildesheim 1969 (hereafter Napier), nos. 1,1459, 1836,
2605, and 4166.
42
«E geminis nascor per ponti caerula concis>>: Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by R. Ehwald
(MGH, AA 15), Weidmann, Berlin 1919, p. 105. (I am born in the blue waters of the sea
from twin shells): Aldhelm: The Poetic Works, transi. by M. Lapidge and J.R. Rosier,
Brewer, Cambridge 1985, pp. 70-94 and 247-55.
43
Stryker, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University 1951 (hereafter Stryker).
44
The entry is drawn from Aldhelm's verse De virginitate: «Quid memorem
geminos germano foedere fratres>> (line 881): Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by Ehwald, p. 391,1:
(What shall I recount of two twin brothers): Aldhelm: The Poetic Works, transi. by
Lapidge and Rosier, p. 122.
45
The entry is drawn from Aldhelm's verse De virginitate: «Quos materna simul
matrix enixa gemellos>> (line 1077): Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by Eh wald, p. 398,1 [variant
reading germanos]. (whom the motherly womb brought forth into the world as twins):
Aldhelm: The Poetic Works, transi. by Lapidge and Rosier, p. 126.
(Neptune's flood has a double movement: continually it propels the foamy tide to the
shore and enfolds it within its ancient womb as it flows backwards. [ ... ] the foamy
tide covers the muddy land, [ ... ] Sometimes, Nereus guides the burgeoning tide.) 46
Clauis helma
The Old English gloss helma 'helm, rudder' belongs to the seafaring
semantic field. The basic meaning of the Latin lemma clauis47 is 'nail',
but the term probably occurred in a context that assigned it the extended
meaning of 'rudder, helm' 48 .
The entry has a counterpart in the Antwerp-London Glossary:
«Clauus, helma» (Kindschi, p. 231,7), where it occurs among the
'Nornina nauium et instrumenta earum', and in the Brussels Glossary:
«Clauus, helma» (Wright-Wülcker, I, col. 287, 17), where it occurs in the
section 'De naue et de partibus eius'.
Unlike the previous four entries, which seem to have an Hiberna-
Latin origin, the entry «Clauis . helma» (Hessels 1890, no. 70) can be
traced to Isidore's Etymologiae XIX.ii.12: «Clauus est quo regitur
gubernaculum. De quo Ennius [Ann. 483]: Vt clauum rectum teneam
nauemque gub ernem.» 49 .
It may be assumed that all but one of the five lemmata on seafaring
under discussion were very likely taken from Hiberno-Latin sources, in
particular from the Hisperica famina, where all of them occur in a section
on the sea ('De mari') 50 . As has already been pointed out, many bilingual
items of the First Corpus Glossary go back to a class glossary. Now, these
five lemmata would possibly provide evidence for another likely source
of this glossary, namely a batch of glossae collectae of the Hisperica
. 51
fiamma.
46
Lines 396-8,400, and 410: The Hisperica Famina, ed. and transi. by Herren, I, pp.
94-97.
47
Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s. v.
48
Cf. the Abstrusa Glossary: «Clauis manicae timonis>>: Corpus glossariorum
Latinorum a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum, ed. by G. Goetz, 7 vols., Teubner, Leipzig 1888-
1923; repr. Hakkert, Amsterdam 1965 (hereafter CGL), IV,32,2.
49
(The clavus [tiller] is what controls the rudder. Aboutit Ennius writes: "As I hold a
steady helm and pilot the ship").
50
Lines 381-425: The Hisperica Famina, ed. and transi. by Herren, pp. 92-97.
51
A number of entries, drawn (from glossae collectae) from the A-Text of the
Hisperica famina as well as from the Lorica of Laidcenn and two Hisperic poems, are
pointed out by Herren, M.W., «Hibemo-Latin Lexical Sources of Harley 3376, a Latin-
Old English Glossary>>, in M. Korhammer, K. Reichl and H. Sauer (eds.), Words, Texts
Plant names
Ferula hreod
The entry «Ferula . hreod» (Hessels 1890, no. 135) is unattested in

other glossaries52 • In severa! instances, both in translations and glosses,
the Latin counterpart of hreod is harundo, which, for example, is glossed
with hreod in the Second Corpus Glossary: «Harundo: canna, hreod»
(Lindsay H 20)53 . Harundo is therefore a general word for 'reed, cane' as
weil as for calamus, which, is also glossed with hreod in a number of
glossaries 54 . As for Latinferula, it indicates any kind of cane or stick, but
also a plant55 , as the relevant entry in the Harley Glossary reads: «Ferula
.i. harundo. uirgula. uel nomen holeris . œsprote» (Oliphant F 203).
and Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Helmut Gneuss on the

Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Brewer, Cambridge 1992, pp. 371-80.
52
Bosworth and ToUer' s dictionary gives two meanings for Old English hreod, both
based on the Latin lemmata it interprets in glossaries, i.e. 'reed' and 'a reed for writing':
Bosworth and ToUer, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s. v.; cf., for example, the Old English
Gospel of Matthew (Mt XXVII.29): «and wundon cynehelm. of pornum and asetton ofer
hys heafod. and hreod on hys swiôran. and bigdon heora cneow beforan him>> (and twisted
a crown of thorns and they put it on his head and a reed in his right hand and knelt before
him): The Old English Version of the Gospels, ed. by R.M. Liuzza, 2 vols. (EETS os 304
and 314), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1994-2000, I, p. 59.
53
See also the entry of the Durham Glossary: «Canna hreod>>. The plant glossary in
Durham, Cathedral Library, Hunter 100 (s. xii 1) is printed in Das Durhamer
Pjlanzenglossar, ed. by B. von Lindheim, Poppinghaus, Bochum-Langendreer 1941; repr.
Johnson, New York 1967 (hereafter Lindheim), no. 89.
54
Cf. the Third Cleopatra Glossary: «Kalamus: hreod>> (Quinn, p. 71,11); <<Calamus
hreod>> (Lindheim, no. 74); Harley Glossary: <<Carecta. loca caricis plena. spina curium.
secgihtig . uel hreodihtig .>> (Oliphant C 421); Erfurt Glossary: <<carectum hreod>>
(Pheifer, no. 290 ); First Cleopatra Glossary: <<Carectum: hreod>> (Stryker C 32); Harley
Glossary: <<Carectum . hreod>> (Oliphant C 422); Leiden Glossary <<Carectum ; hreod ;>> (A
Late Eighth Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the Library of the Leiden
University, ed. by J.H. Hessels, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1906 [hereafter
Hessels 1906], xrx,l6); and Second Corpus Glossary: <<Carectum: hreod>> (Lindsay C
129). See also an interlinear gloss to one of JElfric Bata's CoUoquies: <<calamus hreod>>
(Napier, no. 56,398); a gloss to lob VIII.11 in Bem, Burgerbibliothek 258: <<carectum
hreod>> (Old English Glosses. [A Collection], ed. by H.D. Meritt [Modern Language
Association, General Series 16], Oxford University Press, New York, NY and London
1945; repr. 1971, no. 52,2); finaUy, a scratched gloss occurring in a manuscript of Bede's
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (III,23) (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius
C.ii) reads <<calami hr[eodes]>> (Old English Glosses ed. by Meritt, no. 4,157).
55
Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.ferula (2), and Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Ward-
List, s. v.
Anyway, it is worth noting thatjerula is glossed by hreod uniquely in

the First Corpus Glossary, while elsewhere it is glossed by œscàrote
'ashtroath' :
Brussels Glossary
Ferula, œscôrote (Wright-Wülcker, 1, col. 298,20)
Durham Glossary
Ferutela uel ferula eascthrote (Lindheim, no. 171)
Épinal Glossary
ferula aescthrotae (Pheifer, no. 450)
Erfurt Glossary
ferola aescdrotae (Pheifer, no. 450)
First Cleopatra Glossary
Ferula: œscprote (Stryker F 414)
Second Corpus Glossary
Ferula: aescôrote (Lindsay F 138)
With œscàrote the Anglo-Saxons denoted the common vervain

(verbena officinalis), as attested by both the translation of the Herbarium
of Pseudo-Apuleius («<He>rba uermenaca pœt is œscprotu») 56 and the
Laud Herbai Glossary («vermenaca .i. escprote»)57 .
The Romans called ferula the hollow light rod made from this plant
and such rods were used as canes to punish slaves and children, just like
the harundo. This meaning of Latin ferula is implicit in Isidore's
etymology of the word: «Nonnulli a feriendo ferulam dicunt. Ad hanc
enim pueri et puellae uapulare soient» (Etym. XVII.ix.95) 58 • Sirnilarly,
Old English hreod designates both the 'reed' and the 'cane' used to beat
pupils in the schools, as is witnessed by the coupling of all these words in
JElfric's Glossary: «calamus l canna l arundo hreod» 59 • The lemmaferula
in the First Corpus Glossary was not therefore given an arbitrary
interpretation, even though the latter is unparalled in other Latin-Old
56
The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus ed. by H.J. de
Vriend (EETS os 286), Oxford University Press, London, Oxford and Toronto 1984, p. 3
(Index); see also ch. IV, p. 44: «Deos wyrt j:Je man uermenacam 7 oôrum naman rescj:Jrote
nemneô» (the herb that is called uermenacam and with another name vervain).
57
The Laud Herbai Glossary, ed. by J. Stracke, Rodopi, Amsterdam 1974, p. 65,
g1oss no. 1501.
58
(Sorne say ferula [rod] fromferire [striking]. For boys and girls are usually flogged
with it).
59
(Sammlung englischer Denkma1er in kritischen Ausgaben 1), Weidmann, Berlin 1880;
Olms, Hildesheim 2001, p. 311,2-3.
English glossaries.
Gacila snithstreo
The entry «Gacila . snithstreo» (Hessels 1890, no. 146) has no

counterpart in other glossaries. The lemma gacila is a puzzling word. In
Schlutter' s opinion, it is probably a misspelling for «g<raece> acira»,
from Greek axupa 'husks of grain, chuff' 60 , but this interpretation still
does not explain the Old English gloss.
The interpretamentum snzpstreaw, composed by snijJ- (from snipan
'to eut') and streaw 'straw', designates the stemless carline thistle
(carlina acaulis), whose flower head rests directly upon a basal leaf
rosette, without a stem or with a very short stem. It occurs in the Second
Corpus Glossary and in the Épinal and Erfurt glossaries as
interpretamentum to Latin sisca ( «Sisca: sniôstreo»: Lindsay S 358;
«sisca snidstreo», and «sista snidstreu»: Pheifer, no. 973). The latter
lemma is glossed with eoforprote in the First Corpus Glossary (Hessels
1890, no. 307 [no. 308]) instead.
Scisca eoforprote
The closest analogues to «Scisca. eoforprote» (Hessels 1890, no. 307

[no. 308]) are «Scasa: eborôrote» (Lindsay S 178) occurring in the
Second Corpus Glossary, «scasa eborthrotae» (Pheifer, no. 927) in the
Épinal and the Erfurt glossaries, and «Scasa uel scapa uel sisca eofor-
throte» (Lindheim, no. 301) in the Durham Glossary. The word scasa,
which is identified with sisca 'thistle' in the Durham Glossary, is
recorded as a plant name in the most renowned Liber glossarum «Scaria:
arbuscula spinosa; ponum rubeum affert» (SC 46) 61 .
The Old English interpretamentum certainly designates the carline
thistle (carlina vulgaris), which used to be called 'the boar's throat'
60
See Schlutter, O.B., «Ün Old English Glosses>>, The Journal of Germanie
Philology 1,3 (1897), pp. 59-65 and 312-33, at 329.
61
The glossary is edited in Glossaria Latina iussu Academiae Britannicae edita, ed.
by W.M. Lindsay et al., 5 vols., Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1926-1931; repr. Olms,
Hildesheim 1965, 1. See also Goetz, G., <<Der Liber Glossarum>>, Abhandlungen der
philologisch-historischen Classe der koniglich siichsischen Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaften 13.2 (1893), pp. 213-88, and Bishop, T.A.M., <<The Prototype of the Liber
glossarum>>, in M.B. Parkes and A.G. Watson (eds.), Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and
Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R. Ker, Scolar Press, London 1978, pp. 69-86.
because of the resemblance to the rough hair around a boar' s throat.

The word occurs in a number of glossaries as interpretamentum to
anta62 , borotium63 , and colocui4 •
Lignarium uuidubinde
The entry «Lignarium. uuidubinde» (Hessels 1890, no. 199) is quite

puzzling since the Old English wudubinde 'woodbine' 65 is not the direct
rendering of the lemma lignarium 'pile of wood' 66 •
This gloss has been interpreted by Patrizia Lendinara as the result of
a rnisplaced interpretamentum that rnight have generated the modification
of the Latin lemma 67 • In her opinion, a putative original entry «involvolus
. wudubinde» could have occurred immediately before or after the entry
«ignarium algeweorc», which is attested in the Épinal and Érfurt
glossaries68 . A rnistake in the process of copying rnight have generated a
conflated entry (for example «ignarium wudubinde») and a subsequent
correction from ignarium into lignarium in the attempt to match the Latin
lemma to its interpretamentum. Latin lignum indeed matches the first
element of the Old English compound wudu- 'wood', while the second
element -binde 'bind' somehow correspond to the meaning of the Latin
lemma lignarium as a 'pile of wood'.
Maculosus specfaag
The entry «Maculosus . specfaag» (Hessels 1890, no. 221) is

unparalleled in other glossaries. Both the lemma maculosus 'spotted,
dotted' (cf. the Abolita Glossary, «Maculosus notis plurirnis uel uarium»:
CGL N,114,28) and its interpretamentum specfaag (specfah 'speckled,
62
Durham Glossary: «Anta eoforthrote» (Lindheim, no. 29).
63
Durham Glossary: <<Borotium uel boratium eoforthrote» (Lindheim, no. 63).
64
Brussels Glossary: «Colocus eoforôrote» (Wright-Wülcker, I, col. 298, 19); Second
Cleopatra Glossary: «Colicus: eoforprote» (Quinn, p. 67,5); and Durham Glossary:
«Colitus uel colocus eoforthrote» (Lindheim, no. 125).
65
Bosworth and Toiler, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s. v. wudubind.
66
Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. lignarium (1), and Latham, Revised Medieval Latin
Word-List, s. v. lignum.
67
On «lignarium wudubinde», see Lendinara, P., «Misunderstanding a Gloss», in
English Far and Wide: A Festschrift for Inna Koskenniemi, ed. by R. Hiltunen et al.
(Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, Ser. B, Tom. 197), Turun Yliopisto, Turku 1993, pp.
131-41, repr. in her Anglo-Saxon Glos ses and Glossaries, pp. 86-98, at 88-94.
68
See «ignarium algiuueorc>> and «ignarium algiuerc>> (Pheifer, no. 556).
spotted, full of spots') are hapax legomena in Anglo-Saxon glossaries,

even though there is a number of glosses containing fag/fah 'of varying
colour'.
Latin maculosus is used as an attribute of plants by Isidore when he
speaks about the ebony that is native to India: «sed Indicum maculosum
est in paruulis distinctionibus albis ac fuluis» 69 • There is no proof that the
First Corpus Glossary entry «maculosus specfaag» stems from Isidore,
but the Etymologiae definitely are a likely source.
Menta minte
This is a very simple entry (Hessels 1890, no. 222) deriving from the
Etymologiae of Isidore: «Menta agrestis, quam Graeci KaÀa!liV8T]v, nostri
uulgo nepetam uocauerunt» 70 •
Biblical terms
The biblical terms listed in the First Corpus Glossary are ali
characterized by Latin interpretamenta but in the two cases I will discuss
below. They both occur within a batch of biblical terms under the letter
C, which includes entries such as «Cain . possessio» and «Caldei . quasi
dçmonia» (Hessels 1890, nos. 55 and 56)71 .
Caluari~ locus cualmstou
The entry «Calvariç locus . cualmstou» (Hessels 1890, no. 57) is

unattested in other glossaries. The Vulgate phrase Calvariae locus is a
literai translation of the Greek Kpaviou -r6no<; (from the Aramaic
Golgotha 'place of the skull') 72 •
Old English cwealmstow, which is also attested in prose, means
'place of execution' and offers a idiosyncratic albeit correct interpretation
of the Latin lemma73 . One might, for example, compare the West Saxon
69
(but Indian ebony is spotted with small white and tawny markings): Isidore, Etym.
XVII.vii.36.
70
(Wild mint, which the Greeks called KUÀUJ.!iV8T)V, we commonly call nepeta
[calamint]): Isidore, Etym. XVII.ix.82.
71
See above pp. 509-1 O.
72
Cf., for example, Mt XXVII.33, «et venerunt in locum qui dicitur Golgotha quod
est Calvariae locus>>.
73
Cwealmstow is used to refer to Calvary also by LElfric, in his Catholic Homily
version of the Gospels, where «calvariae locus» is literally translated by

the loan translation «heafodpannan stow»74 .
Crepidinem neopouard
This entry (Hessels 1890, no. 71) has no counterpart in other

glossaries. The Latin lemma crepidinem occurs in an inflected form,
which helps to identify the source-text of the gloss, that is, most likely the
Bible: «et venerunt per crepidinem montis usque ad apicem» (ldt VI1.3).
The identification of this source is further strengthened by the entry in the
Second Corpus Glossary «Per crepidinem: per ascensum» (Lindsay P
247).
The Old English interpretamentum neopouard (from neopan 'down'
and -weard which denotes position or direction) designates what is 'low,
situated beneath or at the bottom of something'.
The Old English word occurs with a different meaning in the Second
Cleopatra Glossary in the section 'Incipit de homine et de partibus eius'
and refers to the human body: «Planta: nipeweardfot>> (Quinn, p. 29,20).
Members of society
This group in fact comprises only one gloss likely derived from a
section of a putative class glossary listing names of members of society,
such as the 'Nomina membrorum' opening lElfric's Glossar/ 5 •
Coliferte gepofta
The entry «Coliferte . gepofta» (Hessels 1890, no. 69) is unparalleled

m other glossaries, even though Old English gepoft glosses sodalis,
II,xiv and II.xix, see JE/fric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, ed. by M.
Godden (EETS ss 5), Oxford University Press, Oxford 1979, pp. 145,222 and 175,47.
,Elfric also used cwealmstow to designate the places where martyr saints were executed.
In the anonymous Hornily for Palm Sunday, occurring in Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Bodley 340 and other manuscripts, the Calvary is referred to using both cwealmstow and
heafodbollan stow: <<he hi bœr to ôœre stowe seo is gecweden cwealmstow, and
heafodbollan stow>> (he took them to the place which is called place of execution and
place of the skull): Dictionary of Old English transcript, !ines 196-7.
74
Mt XXVII.33; Mc XV.22; Le XXIII.33; and Io XIX.17: The Old English Version
of the Gospels, ed. by Liuzza, I, pp. 59, 95, 153, and 197.
75
Aelfrics Grammatik, ed. by Zupitza, p. 297,12.
contubernalis 'tent-compaion' or contubernium 'companionship in a tent'

in a number of glossaries 76 . In a few cases it also glosses Latin cliens
'client' 77 •
The Latin !emma coliferte is a rnisspelling for collibertu/ 8 (from cum
'with' and libertus 'free man'), and it designates the fellow-freeman. It
does not occur in any other Latin-Old English glossary.
Once and again, the Latin !emma and the Old English
interpretamentum are semantically rnismatched. In this case, the
comparison with related glossaries does not help to retrace the gloss to its
original context.
Names of birds
The following entries originally belonged to a section of a class

compilation dedicated to birds.
Tantalus aelbitu
The entry «Tantalus . aelbitu» (Hessels 1890, no. 325 [no. 326]) is a
further example of lack of semantic correspondence between the !emma
and its interpretamentum. As Isidore explains, Latin tantalus79 designates
the heron («Ardea [... ]. Hanc multi Tantalum norninant») 80 , but in this
entry, the word is erroneously glossed with Old English aelbitu 'swan' 81 .
There is no doubt that the Anglo-Saxons knew both the heron and the
76
Antwerp-London Glossary «Contubernalis, gepofta>> (Kindschi, p. 125,2); Second
Corpus Glossary: «Contubernalis: gepofta>> (Lindsay C 535); and Harley Glossary
«Contubernalis .i. domesticus . cornes . conuiuia . assecla gepofta>> (Oliphant C 1685).
See also the glos ses to Aldhelm' s prose De virginitate: <<contubernalium sodalium
gepoftena>> (Goossens, no. 3040); <<contubernia, gepoften, samwistu>> (Napier, no. 1,414);
<<contubernalium, .i. sodalium, gepoftena>> (Napier, no. 1,3141); and the gloss the Regula
canonicorum of Chrodegang of Metz in Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 8558-63:
<<contubernia gepoftsc>> (Old English Classes, ed. by Meritt, no. 14,5).
77
First Cleopatra Glossary: <<Cliens gepofta>> (Stryker C 341) and Second Cleopatra
Glossary: <<Cliens: gepofta>> (Quinn, p. 69,2).
78
Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-Lists, s. v., and Du Cange, Glossarium, s. v.
colliberti.
79
Du Cange, Glossarium, s. v. tantallus.
80
(the heron [ ... ].Many people cali it Tanta! us): Isidore, Etym. XII.vii.21 (see above,
pp. 513-4). See also the ali-Latin entry: <<Tantalum: ardea auis>> (CGL V,580,29).
81
The Old English word œlbitulilfetu descends from IE *albho- 'white' (Latin albus
'white', Greek aÀ<p6ç 'white leprosy'): Pokorny, J., Indogermanisches etymologisches
Worterbuch, 2 vols., Francke, Beru and Munich 1959, 1, pp. 30-31.
swan and equated their aelbitu 'swan' with Latin cignus or olor82 , as weil
as their hragra 'heron' with Latin ardea 83 •
In a number of glossaries both aelbitu (and variants) and hragra
occur as correct interpretamenta to cignus and ardea, respectively:
Cignus et cicinus, ylfete (Kindschi, p. 101,9)
Ardea, hragra (Kindschi, p. 101,15)
Brussels Glossary
Cignus, elfetu (Wright-Wülcker, 1, col. 284,5)
Ardea, hragra (Wright-Wülcker, I, col. 287,3)
Ciciris: iluetu (Stryker C 235)
Aluor: swan f ilfutu (Stryker A 354)
Ardea: hragra (Stryker A 438 and 621)
Olor: cicnus, aelbitu (Lindsay 0 152)
Ardia: hragra et dieperdulum (Lindsay A 729)
Erfurt Glossary
olor greee latinae cignus aebitu (Pheifer, no. 718)
ardea et dieperdulum hragra (Pheifer, no. 42)
Épinal Glossary
olor greee latin cignus aelbitu (Pheifer, no. 718)
ardea et dieperdulum hragra (Pheifer, no. 42)
LElfric's Glossary
olor l cignus ylfette (Aelfrics Grammatik, ed. by Zupitza, p. 307,5-6)
ardea hrahra (Aelfrics Grammatik, ed. by Zupitza, p. 307,3)
82
See also First Cleopatra Glossary: «Olor: swan, ilfetu, swan» (Stryker 0 69); and
LElfric's Glossary: <<olor l cignus ylfette>> (Aelfrics Grammatik, ed. by Zupitza, p. 307,5-6).
83
Further lemmata glossed with hragra occur in the Leiden Glossary: «Perdvlum ;
hragra ;>> (Hessels 1906, XLVII,64); in the glossary of St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 913:
«larum hragra>> (Merritt, no. 36,16) (a g1oss to Lv XI.l6: the biblical larus 'sea-gull' is
otherwise g1ossed with OE mœw); and in LElfric' s Glossary: «ardea hrahra>> (Aelfrics
Grammatik, ed. by Zupitza, p. 307,3). For dieperdulum see Schwentner, E., «Mlat.
dieperdulum, deperdulus, dispridulus und Verwandtes>>, in Zeitschrift für vergleichende
Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen 70 (1951-1952), pp.
119-22 and id., «Nachtrag zu mlat. dieperdulum (o. LXX 119)>>, Zeitschrift für
vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen 71-72
(1953), p. 77. See also André, J., Les noms d'oiseaux en latin (Études et commentaires
LXVI), Klincksieck, Paris 1967, pp. 33 (ardea), 67 (dieperdulus), 98 (larus), and 149-50
(tantalus); Capponi, F., Ornithologia latina (Pubblicazioni dell'Istituto di Filologia Classica
e Medievale dell'Università di Genova 50), Istituto di Filologia Classica e Medievale,
Università di Genova, Genoa 1979, pp. 95 (ardea), 218 (dieperdulus), 269 (larus), and
479 (tantalus).
The entry of the First Corpus Glossary: «Tantalus . aelbitu» bas no

counterpart; even the lemma tantalus does not occur in any other Latin-
Old English glossary. However, the analysis of the manuscript context
allows us to outline the way in which the gloss under examination, as
weil as the interrelated group of glosses, was transmitted from the earliest
Anglo-Saxon glossaries to the most recent ones.
As has long been established, the entries of Épinal and Erfurt found a
place in the Second Corpus Glossary, whence they in tum passed into the
First Cleopatra Glossary84 • It can be surmised that, in the process of
copying entries from one glossary to another, the compiler of the
archetype of First Corpus Glossary was misled by two or more entries
occurring in close proximity in a class compilation and erroneously
paired the interpretamentum aelbitu with the lemma ardea in a putative
entry such as «ardea aelbitu» or rather «ardea Tantalus aelbitu», which
was henceforth simplified. A similar setting may be evoked, for example,
to account for the second entry of this batch of glosses: «Cignus et
cicinus, ylfete» (Kindschi, p. 101 ,9), «Herodios . g<raece>. swan»
(Kindschi, p. 101,14), and «Ardea, hragra» (Kindschi, p. 101,15),
occurring in the section headed 'Nomina auium' of the Antwerp-London
Glossary. In this case, it is the interpretamentum swan 'swan' which bas
been misplaced and mismatched with the lemma herodios 'heron'.
Rural tools and common objects
Dole us byden and fundus bodan
The entries «Doleus . byden» (Hessels 1890, no. 88) and «Fundus .
bodan» (Hessels 1890, no. 136) were likely part of a class compilation
listing rural tools and materials.
The first entry, which bas a counterpart in both the First (Stryker D
90) and the Second Cleopatra glossaries (Quinn, p. 67,4) 85 , is obvions. As
Isidore explains, the Latin lemma doleus (dolium) designates a jar:
«Dolium. Cupos et cupas a capiendo, id est accipiendo, aquas uel uinum
uocatas» (Etym. XX.vi.7) 86 • The Old English interpretamentum byden
84
The First Cleopatra Glossary draws on the Second Corpus Glossary: Pheifer, pp.
XXXl-XXXlV.
85
In the Third Cleopatra Glossary the Old English interpretamentum of Latin doleum
is wœterbyden 'bucket', «Doleum: wœterbyden>> (Quinn, p. 137,16).
86
(Jare [sorne text is missing]. The cupus [tub] and the cupa [tub] are so called from
capere [taking], that is receiving water or wine).
also refers to a vessel for water87 and is a frequent word in Latin-Old

English glossaries, where it renders both bunia and cupa 88 • It also occurs
among the glos ses to Aldhelm' s prose De virginitate: «dolium .i. uas,
byden, cype» (Goossens, no. 3548) and «dolium, byden, cype» (Napier, no.
1,3657).
The entry «Fundus . bodan» (Hessels 1890, no. 136) is rather
puzzling and is unattested in other glossaries, even though both the
!emma and the interpretamentum occur separately. As far as fundus is
concemed, it counts a number of occurrences and is variously glossed:

Fundum:fœtes botm (Stryker F 436)
Ad fundum: grund (Stryker A 162)
Harley Glossary
Fundamentum siue dictum quod fundus fit domui . uel fundamen . stapol»
(Oliphant F 1013)
Fundum, bydenbotm (Kindschi, p. 83,4)
Fundus, prop (Kindschi, p. 139,1)
A gloss to Aldhelm' s prose De virginitate in Digby 146
fundum, seap (Napier, no. 1,3478).
From the occurrences above, it is evident that the Latin !emma is a

polysemous word and it is therefore interpreted as diversely as 'the
bottom of a barrel' (Old Englishfœtes botm and bydenbotm) and 'piece of
87
See, for instance, Riddle 25, lines 5b-6a: «Hœleô mec sippan 1 bapedan in bydene»
(Afterwards men bathed me in a tub): The Exeter Book, ed. by G.Ph. Krapp and E.v.K.
Dobbie (Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3), Columbia University Press, New York 1
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1936; and Mc IV.21 in the Old English version of the
Gospels: «He sœde him, cwyst pu cymô pœt leohtüet pœt hit beo under bydene asett, oôôe
under bedde;>> (And he said to them, "Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or
undera bed, and not on a stand?"): The Old English Version of the Gospels, ed. by Liuzza,
1, p. 69.
88
Cf., respective1y, First Cleopatra: «Bunia: byden>> (Stryker B 62); Second Corpus:
<<Bunia: byden>> (Lindsay B 228); Harley: <<Bunia . byden>> (Oliphant B 425) and Erfurt
Glossary: <<cupa bydim> (Pheifer, no. 260); First Cleopatra: <<ln cupis: on bydenum>>
(Stryker 1 310); Second Corpus: <<Cupa: byden>> (Lindsay C 944); Antwerp-London:
<<Cuba, byden>> (Kindschi, p. 126,5); Harley: <<Cupa . uel cupo byden>> (Oliphant C 2224).
See also the glosses to Aldhelm's prose De virginitate: <<cuparum, bydena>> (Napier, no.
4,60); <<cupas, .i. bydena>> (Napier, no. 17,35); <<cuparum bydena>>: Logeman, H., <<New
Aldhelm Glosses>>, Anglia 13 (1891), pp. 26-41, at 34 (no. 194) (glosses in Salisbury,
Cathedral Library 38). The etymology of bunia is disputed, see Griffith, B., <<The Old
English Alcoholic Vocabulary: A Reexamination>>, The Durham University Journa/78-79
(1986), pp. 231-50, at 241-7.
land' (Old English grund, porp, seap).

As to the Old English interpretamentum bodan (botm), it occurs in
the Antwerp-London Glossary and in the First Cleopatra Glossary and it
al ways refers to the 'bottom' of something:
Fundum, bydenbotm (Kindschi, p. 83,4)
Tympanum, tunnebotm (Kindschi, p. 83,10)
Carina, scipes botm (Kindschi, p. 83,11)
First C1eopatra Glossary
Fundum: fœtes botm (Stryker F 436)
It is worth noting that in the Antwerp-London Glossary, the entries

«Dolium cyj>>, «Fundum, bydenbotm», and «Tympanum, tunnebotm»
(Kindschi, p. 83,3-4 and 10) occur in the section 'Nomina uasorum'. On
the contrary, the entry «Fundus, prop» (Kindschi, p. 139,1: recte porp),
which designates 'a piece of land', occurs among entries concerning
estates: «Rus, unered land», ~~Alluuius ager, wœterig œcer», «Noualis
ager, brocan land uel geworht land», etc. (Kindschi, p. 139,2-4).
The correspondence with the Antwerp-London Glossary speaks
against the possibility that the entry «Fundus bodan» may stem from the
two passages of the Etymologiae where Isidore attributes to fundus both
the generic meaning of 'base' (XV.viii.1: «Fundamentum dictum quod
fundus sit domui» ) 89 and the specialized meaning of 'piece of land,
estate' (XV.xiii.4: «Fundus dictus quod eo fundatur uel stabiliatur
patrimonium. Fundus autem et urbanum aedificium et rusticum
intellegendum est») 90 . Moreover, Patrizia Lendinara has plausibly posited
an interdependence of the two entries «Doleus . byden» and «Fundus .
91
bodan», referring respectively to the barrel and the bottom of a barrel •
Dasile boor andforatorium buiris
The entry «Dasile . boor>> (Hessels 1890, no. 89) has a counterpart in
the First and Second Cleopatra glossaries «desile: bor>> (Stryker D 88 and
Quinn, p. 44,5, respectively) and Harley Glossary: «Desile . bor»
89
(The fundamentum [foundation] is so called because it is the fundus [bottom] of
the house). See also the entry in the Harley Glossary: «Fundus .i. fundamentum>>
(Oliphant F 1013).
90
(A fundus [estate] is so called because the patrimony is founded or established
upon it).
91
Lendinara, «Misunderstanding a Gloss>>, repr. pp. 94-95.
(Oliphant D 292). The Latin lemma dasile is of uncertain origin. If it were

a misspelling for rasile (rasilis), meaning 'shaved, shom', it could have
been interpreted with bor 'borer, scalpel' by metonymy, that is 'made
polished by an edge tool' and bence 'borer'. Old English bor often
glosses Latin scalpellumlscalprum:
Leiden Glossary
Scalpeum boor (Hessels 1906, XLVIII,66)
Scalpro: bore (Lindsay S 136)
Scalpellum: bor (Lindsay S 143)
Second Cleopatra Glossary
Scalprum: bor (Quinn, p. 56,3)
As to the entry «foratorium . buiris» (Hessels 1890, no. 137), the

interpretamentum is OE byres 'borer, chisel', a word that occurs only in
glosses 92 • The same entry also occurs in three glossaries, two of which in
the form «boratorium byres»: First Cleopatra Glossary: «Boratorium:
byres» (Stryker B 79), Second Cleopatra Glossary: «Boratorium: byres»
(Quinn, p. 44,3), Harley Glossary: «Faratorium. byres» (Oliphant F 167)
and «Baratorium . byre» (Oliphant B 89). lt is worth noting that Old
English byris glosses Latin scalpellum/scalprum in the Épinal, Erfurt, and
Leiden glossaries: Erfurt Glossary: «scalbrum byris uel ut alii duœram»
(Pheifer, no. 891)93 and «scalpellum byris» (Pheifer, no. 907) 94 ; Leiden
Glossary: «Scalpellum ; biriis;» (Hessels 1906, XLvrr,48). In Pheifer' s
opinion, Old English byris designates an auger, as is suggested by its
etymology relating the word to the verb borian 'to bore, to make a
hole' 95 • The correct gloss would therefore be «foratorium byres», two
words that stem from the same IE root *bher- 'to work with a sharp
tool' 96 •
The Anglo-Saxons may not have full y grasped the difference between
the two tools, so that they may have called both bor and byres a hale-
cutting chisel (Latin scalpellum/scalprum) and an auger (Latin
foratorium). The confusion might have originated with Isidore's
92
The First Corpus interpretamentum features the early spelling <ui> for <y> (from
i-umlaut): see Campbell, A., Old English Grammar, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1959; repr.
1977, §§ 42 and 199.
93
The entry in the Épinal Glossary reads «scalprum byris uel ut ali thuearm>>.
94
The entry in the Épinal Glossary reads «scalpellum byris>>.
95
Pheifer, p. 119.
96
Cf. Latinforo: Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Worterbuch, I, pp. 133-
5.
definition of scalprum: «Scalprum dictus quod scalpturis et foraminibus

sit aptus, quasi scalforus. Cuius diminutiuum scalpellus» 97 •
Glebulum brider
The entry « Glebulum . hrider» (Hessels 1890, no. 147) is a further

piece of evidence that the First Corpus Glossary contains sections of a
class compilation listing rural tools. The lemma is unparalleled in other
glossaries, but the Old English interpretamentum glosses Latin
capisterium 'cleansing vessel for grain' in other glossaries: Antwerp-
London Glossary (Kindschi, p. 130,13), First Cleopatra Glossary (Stryker
C 476) 98 , and Third Cleopatra Glossary (Quinn, p. 187,4).
Even JElfric mentions a hridder 'sieve' that he also calls fœt 'vessel',
maybe because it bad the shape of a vat:
Ac ôa ôa he of ôam gebedum aras. ôa gemette he p::et f::et wiô hine licgende. swa
gehal p::et ô::er nan cinu on n::es gesewen; J:>a wearô pis wundor on ô::ere stowe sona
gewidm::ersod. and hi for wundrunge p::et hridder up ahengon ::et heora cyrcan geate.
(But when he arose from his prayers, he found the vessellying by him so whole that
no chink was visible in it. This miracle was soon made known in the place, and as an
object of wonder they hung up the sieve at their church gate.) 99
Iungula geocboga
The entry «lungula . geocboga» (Hessels 1890, no. 185) has a

counterpart in the First and Second Cleopatra glossaries: «lugula:
iucboga» (Stryker I 212; Quinn, p. 33,6). The entry in the Second
Cleopatra Glossary occurs in a batch of words about the parts of the
wagon, headed 'Incipit de plaustris et de partibus eius'. As a matter of
fact, the meaning of both the Latin lemma iungula (iugulum 'collar-
bone')100 and its Old English interpretamentum geocboga/iucboga 'curved
part of a yoke' suggests that the gloss refers to something connected to
97
(Scalprum [chisel] is so called because it is apt to make engravings and holes, as if
it were scalforus. Its diminutive is scalpellus [scalpel]): Isidore, Etym. XIX.xix.l3.
98
The entry is drawn from Aldhelm's verse De virginitate: «Nam capisterium
rimarum fragmine ruptum 1 innovat>> (lines 864-5): Aldhelmi Opera, ed. by Ehwald, p.
390,1. (Once he renewed a vessel broken in a shatter of fragments): Aldhelm: The Poetic
Works, transl. by Lapidge and Rosier, p. 122.
99
CH II,xi: /Elfric's Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, ed. by Godden, p. 92,16-
20.
100
the plough or to the cart.
Lancola cellae
The entry «Lancola. cellae» (Hessels 1890, no. 197) is again part of
a section listing rural tools and common objects. This gloss has a
counterpart in the First Cleopatra Glossary: «Lancona: cylle» (Stryker L
174), but the relationship between the lemma and its interpretamentum
needs an explanation. Latin lancola (lancla or lanculallangula) is a
diminutive of lanx 'plate, scales' and refers to a 'small dish' or 'scales'. It
does not entirely match the Old English interpretamentum cellae, which
stands for cyll, probably a loanword from Latin culleus 'leather bag' 101 .
As a matter of fact, Latin ascopa (ascopera 'leather bag') is glossed with
cyll in the Second Corpus Glossary: («Ascopa[m]: kylle», Lindsay A 852)
and the Antwerp-London Glossary: («Asscopa, flaxe oppe cylle»,
Kindschi, p. 51,9). The latter instances occur in a section headed 'De
instrumentis agricolarum'.
From the original meaning of 'skin sewed up and used as a water-
bag', Old English cylle came to mean 'flask, bottle, eup'. Therefore it is
not necessary to propose, as Quinn does, an emendation of the entry of
the Second Cleopatra Glossary «Lancona: cille» (Quinn, p. 52,8) to
lagoena, as in the Erfurt Glossary entry «lagoena croog» (CGL V,369,4).
Latin lagoena designates a carafe, a water-jug (from Greek Àayuvoç), as
explained by Isidore in his Etymologiae XX.vi.3 102 , but it does not match
the Old English interpretamentum anyway.
Libitorium saa
The entry (Hessels 1890, no. 198) has no counterpart in other

glossaries. On the basis of the Latin lemma libatorium, which clearly
refers to 'a vessel in which a libation is offeredd 03 , the Old English
interpretamentum is a variant spelling of sa 'tub' and may be located
within a section about 'Nornina uasorum'.
101
See the Third Erfurt Glossary: «Culleum cylli» ( CGL II,575,54 ).
102
«Lagoena et Sicula Graeca nomina sunt, inflexa ex parte ut fierent Latina. Illi
enim Àayl]voç, nos lagoena; illi LlKEÀTJ, nos Siculam dicimus» (Lagoena and sicula are
Greek names, partially changed to become Latin. In fact they say Àayuvoç and we say
lagoena; they say crtKEÀTJ and we say sicula).
103
Du Cange, s. v. libatorium.
Mantega taeg
The entry «Mantega . taeg» (Hessels 1890, no. 215) is paralleled in

the Second Corpus Glossary: «Mantega: taeg» (Lindsay M 118) and in
the First Cleopatra Glossary: «Mantega: tig» (Stryker M 106). This gloss
is quite puzzling, in that both the Latin lemma and its Old English
interpretamentum are problematic to interpret.
If mantega is a rnisspelling for mantica 'a bag for the hand' 104 , then
taeg could be related to Old Irish tiag, which indicates the book-satchel
that scholars and rnissionaries slung over their shoulders to carry their
Gospel or Psalter texts 105 .
lt is worth noting that the Second Corpus Glossary and the First
Cleopatra Glossary feature both manticum and mantega:
First C1eopatra Glossary

Manticum: handfulbeowœs (Stryker M 94)
Mantega: tig (Stryker M 106)
Manticum: hondful beowes (Lindsay M 32)
Mantega: taeg (Lindsay M 118)
The word regularly used in Hiberno-Latin for 'book-satchel' is

scetha, variously spelled, which is interpreted with teag/teah in a number
of glossaries: Second Corpus Glossary: «Sc<h>eda: taeg» (Lindsay S
183), Second Cleopatra Glossary: «Sceda: teah» (Quinn, p. 58,9), and
Épinal and Erfurt glossaries: «sceda teac» and «sceda teag» (Pheifer, no.
964).
Mappa cneoribt
The entry «Mappa . cneoribt» (Hessels 1890, no. 220) is not

paralleled in other glossaries. The Latin lemma mappa 'table-cloth,
104
See, for instance, <<Manticum: hondful beowes» in the Second Corpus G1ossary
(Lindsay M 32), which has a counterpart in a number of g1ossaries: Épinal and Erfurt
g1ossaries: «manticum handful beouuas>>, «manticum handful beouaes>> (Pheifer, no.
645); First C1eopatra Glossary: «Manticum: handfulbeowœs>> (Stryker M 94); Third
C1eopatra Glossary: «Manticum: hadful>> (Quinn, p. 73,2); and Leiden Glossary:
«Manticum: hondful baeues ;>> (Hesse1s 1906, XLVII, 34).
105
See Sharpe, R., «Latin and Irish Words for 'Book-Satchel'>>, Peritia 4 (1985), pp.
152-6.
canopy' 106 occurs in the Antwerp-London Glossary (Kindschi, p. 92,4),

where it is glossed with wœtersceat (from wœter 'water' and sceat
'sheet'). The interpretamentum cneoribt (from cneow 'knee' and rift
'cloak', with a substitution of for <f> ), is a hapax.
Mappa might be drawn from Isidore's Etymologiae XIX.xxvi.6:
«Mappae conuiuii et epularum appositarum sunt, quasi manupae, atque
ob id nominatae» 107 .
Rastrum raece
The entry «Rastrum. raece» (Hessels 1890, no. 273 [no. 274]) has a
counterpart in the Antwerp-London Glossary: «Rastrum uel rastellum,
raca» (Kindschi, p. 44,1 0), occurring in the section 'De instrumentis
agricolarum'.
Isidore includes the rastrum among the rural implements in
Etymologiae XX.xiv.6: «Rastra quoque aut a radendo terram aut a raritate
dentium dicta» 108 •
Sublatorium bloestbaelg
The entry ~~sublatorium . bloestbaelg» (Hessels 1890, no. 308 [no.

309]) designates the bellows used to blow air into a fire to make it burn
more fiercely.
The Old English interpretamentum, blœstbelg is a compound where
the first element derives from the verb blawan 'blow, inflate' and the
second element is the noun belg 'bag'. Blœstbelg also occurs as
interpretamentum of follis 'a pair of bellows' in the First and Second
Cleopatra glossaries and in the Second Corpus Glossary 109 .
Trilex ôrili
The entry «Trilex . ôrili» (Hessels 1890, no. 322 [323]) has a
counterpart in the Leiden Glossary: «Triplex . drili ;» (Hessels 1906,
106
107
(Napkins belong to the banquet and to the served dishes, just as manupae, and on
account of it they are called so).
108
(Rastra [rakes], too, are so called either from radere [scraping] the ground or
from the looseness of their teeth).
109
First Cleopatra Glossary: <<FoUis: blastbelg» (Stryker F 202); Second Cleopatra
Glossary: <<FoUis: blœstbelg» (Quinn, p. 43,15); and Second Corpus Glossary: <<Follis:
blaesbaelg» (Lindsay F 305).
XLVI, 41), and in the Second Cleopatra Glossary: «Triligium: [)Jrielig]

hrregil» (Quinn, p. 59,11) 110 •
Both the Latin lemma trilex 111 an its Old English interpretamentum
ôrili are adjectives. The Leiden manuscript entry clarifies its meaning
because the gloss occurs within a chapter entitled 'Item alia' after
«Simplex . aenli» and «Bilex . tili» (Hessels 1906, XLVI,39-40). An
examination of sorne of the contexts in which they occur suggest that
these adjectives described different kinds of cloth and referred to the
times the weft passed over a specified number of warp threads 112 . In
Virgil' s Aeneid III,467, for example, trilix refers to a cuirass with three-
leash golden weave: «loricam consertam hamis auroque trilicem» 113 ; in
Aeneid XII,375, bilix again denotes a two-leashed cuirass: «lancea
consequitur rumpitque infixa bilicem 1 loricam» 114 .
The entry in the Second Cleopatra Glossary, where prielig is used as
a modifier of hrœgil 'dress, cloth', demonstrates that this adjective
denotes cloth (or the texture of a cloth) also in the Anglo-Saxon glossary
under examination.
The denotation of prielig is confirmed by its attestation as the
adjective modifying wahrœgl 'curtain' in a prose text such as the Vision
of Leofric: «Da wres prer an prilig wahrregl and swyôe picce gewefen pret
hangode breftan pam weofode» 115 •
Vertelium uerua
The entry «Vertelium . uerua» (Hessels 1890, no. 328 [no. 329])
refers to sorne sort of spinning instrument. It is a rather common entry,
both in class and alphabetical glossaries.
The Latin lemma uertelium designates either a joint or a tool which is
turned round, such as the whirlbone of a spindle 116 .
The interpretamentum uerua is a variant spelling of hweoifa and
110
Quinn emends triligium in trilicium.
111
Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Ward-List, s. v., and Du Cange, Glossarium, s. v.
112
See Walbank, F.W., <<Licia Telae Addere>>, The Classical Quarterly 34 (1940), pp.
93-104.
113
(A coat of mail interweaved with mail and triple tissue of gold).
114
(A spear reaches and, stuck fast in it, breaks the double corselet).
115
(There was there a triple-threaded curtain, woven very thick, which hung behind
the altar): transi. in Napier, A.S., <<An Old English Vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia>>,
Transactions of the Philological Society (1907-1910), pp. 180-8, at 184-5.
116
Du Cange, Glossarium, s. v.
occurs among both the names of the parts of the body and words
concerning spinning.
In the Brussels Glossary, the entry «Uertuba, hweorfa» (Wright-
Wülcker, I, col. 292,2) occurs in the section 'De membris hominum',
whereas the entry «Uertellum, hweorfa» (Wright-Wülcker, I, col. 294,6)
is found in the section 'De arte textoria'. In the Antwerp-London
Glossary, a large number of entries concern man and human body; here
«Vertigo, hwerfa» (Kindschi, p. 173,11) and «Vertibula, hwerban»
(Kindschi, p. 173,15) occur in a section beginning with «Antropos uel
homo, man, uel microcosmus, hesse middaneard», and «Vertebulu,
hwyrfban» (Kindschi, p. 59,11: recte uertibulum) is found among a
number of medical terms within the section 'Nomina omnium hominum
communiter'. In the Second Cleopatra Glossary, whereas «Vertibula:
hweorban» (Quinn, p. 28,2) occurs in the section 'Incipit de homine et de
partibus eius' and «Vertelum: hweorfa» (Quinn, p. 21,17) in the section
'Incipit de textrinalibus'. In Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 730, the
entry «uertellum weoruelban» (Ziegler, p. 146,395) 117 occurs among
words related to the human body and «uertellum worfa» (Ziegler, p.
138,141) among tools used in spinning. The entry also occurs, with a
different spelling, in the Second Corpus Glossary: «Vertil: huerb»
(Lindsay U 142).
Vomer scaer
The entry «Vomer . scaer>> (Hessels 1890, no. 329 [no. 330]) has a
counterpart in the Antwerp-London Glossary: «Vomer uel uomis, scear>>
(Kindschi, p. 44,1), found in the section 'De instrumentis agricolarum',
and in the Second Cleopatra Glossary: «Vomer: scer>> (Quinn, p. 44,1),
occurring in the section 'De metallis' 118 •
This entry is likely drawn from Isidore's Etymologiae XX.xiv.1:
«Vomer dictus quod ui humum eruat, seu ab euomendo terram» 119 .
117
Ziegler, W., «Die unveri:iffentlichten Glossare der Handschrift Oxford, Bodley
730», Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 6 (1981), pp. 127-54.
118
A similar entry occurs in LE1fric's Glossary: «uomer scer>>: Aelfrics Grammatik,
ed. by Zupitza, p. 304,2.
119
(The vomer [plowshare] is so called because it digs the ground by force or from
its spewing out the earth).
Grammar
The glossary also contains two bilingual entries that are both
interjections. One of them, namely «Va euwa», does not have a
counterpart in other glossaries. Once again, as with the Hisperica famina
entries, this glass may go back to an Insular Latin source.
Sicini ac àus
The entry «Sicini . ac ous» (Hessels 1890, no. 298 [no. 299]) is
unattested in other glossaries. The lemma sicine, resulting from the
combination of sic and ne, opens interrogative and exclamatory sentences
with the meaning 'so thus?' 120 .
Va euwa
Latin ua is an enterjectional form used as an exclamation of grief or

lamentation
The entry «Va euwa» (Hessels 1890, no. 327 [no. 328]) has no
counterpart in other glossaries and may have been drawn from the
Bible 121 •
In the First Cleopatra Glossary, Latin ehue is glossed with «Wa la
wa» and is listed within a short batch of glosses drawn from Gildas. The
entry «Eheu: wa la wa», in particular, is drawn from Gildas's De excidio
et conquestu Britanniae XXV,47,5 122 .
Conclusion
The origin of most vernacular entries in the First Corpus Glossary

can be identified. Indeed, the majority of them are ultimately derived
from Isidore's Etymologiae; there are also entries which go back to the
Bible and to Hiberno-Latin sources, in particular the Hisperica famina.
This study has attempted to trace the sources of the First Corpus lemmata
and, at the same time, to map out their relationships with other Anglo-
120
Du Cange, Glossarium, s. v. sicinium.
121
See, for instance, Ps CXIX.5; Mt XVIII.7; Mt XXVII.40; Mc XIV.21; Mc XV.29.
122
<<heu! siquidem parum auribus captasti propheticam obiurgationem» (Alas! too
little you listened to the prophetical reproof with your ears): Gildae Sapientis De excidio
et conquestu Britanniae, ed. by T. Mommsen (MGH, AA 13), Weidmann, Berlin 1898, p.
47.
Saxon glossaries. Thereby, it has been possible to offer at least sorne

means of clarification for a number of glosses about which extant Old
English lexicographical works provide quite meagre data.
The semantic relationship within the small clusters of the glosses
from the First Corpus Glossary discussed above suggests that the source
directly drawn on by the compiler was a class glossary, possibly
implemented by one or more short lists of glossae collectae reshuffled in
alphabetical order. This assumption is confirmed by the lemmata adsida,
ledo, malina, and gemellus, ali of them deriving from an Hiberno-Latin
source.
It is common knowledge that class glossaries were widely used in
Anglo-Saxon schools since the tenth-century Benedictine Reform
movement. However, the First Corpus Glossary provides evidence of an
even earlier circulation of class glossaries in Anglo-Saxon England, that
is at least from the late eighth century or early ninth, when CCCC144 was
likely compiled.
bm:.. • pcn:th· dt"is •
.-Qm«flas · populum 'tXlll.fu. •
,.{1;:5\UUall• ~ltumdf.
~d'~ · adhm~&r
-<lJnznor,. ~-
~· fnatû'-' pca:rtti' •
Q 'pttuf.
C(mOllf\CUID · U:mo.num · J.)a.nthol.omeuî!"~u.,;pendamr~ua.8 •
·h~fllnll • pm-dt ~cel.fin~ . è nuchui'· locuftn. .
<.lbna:hœm · ~- muh:tmumtJimû'· b~- Stmu~n. •
~l~- $otlânmî- bfrhttin :Oomut pQ.ml-
·
lf:trpn~e 'Uubutaqo · .emo.nnn · pLut cl~.
~~ . sès · ct?"De&' a..blctnuuf. ba.n...- · flt~nî.
âmwn · mo1is ptmrudtnl'il · benno. · ptngndo ·
'lbtnd · sôunw dm 8a:n10nQ. • plntflvl.umb\U'-' ·
-4..mba:CJK'. · o.m~dum · ba.rua: · bneanf ·
~· · SoU&;;,r. ·1 L. J( 3 • ituœÛN'II · p~m1l.e- at:nm6'1·
~1 ndnf(l.t. t\mtltf. avuf· f'tb'c- · b~ta-chH:a:mleatcuf. Ubt ~u~
jUelnta. · la.trocttfo'..;lnit, · bnHtth· ~em ·
'l~r mdû.,;. • enhrton· Con plfio •
lpoco.hpfin· JU!Ie{,ctqo·
i.mch . UÔlt- · Qnfls · eletc:ct}l •
·
~loN ';)Ô\Utl\1 eltl<a • ofuubm mulmudo '3CI(fyq&--
.(rht&lon · umdt& do . Çam • po'ille&llto .
·~· · crdu6t · . «nl.'net· qttœrt ~emontu.

•hdl· · btant'f ·('(fer. tolltnt ; C.oJ.ua.n,.,- tllcllf• Cuulm fàm
«_ma.ûch · po1>11tuî ~mbâ.,. . cha.m · \.'.dl.Jdu-6 •
:\momet · ftttp..,nllo di'· ~ · teo .
:lCJTh . lj.omllfite · Cn.m:m · Ttf'Qtla. ·
,.j_J,,fcdon · patti-· f'Cim · d.tiuol'il · '3ons dl·
bQ.. . pctrti> • •cttttmmtnaf' }n1tnua:sd'·
~ 1.\: . f!.~JD. rerrn.ts. pttnll9 ·.
Plate XVI
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 144, f. Ir
1
1
1
1
1
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1
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1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
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INDICES
INDEX OF MANUSCRIPTS
Admont, Stiftsbibliothek 8558-63: 527

508: 392-3 9311-19: 358, 362
Alençon, Bibliothèque 9565-66: 359
Municipale 9850-52: 16
12:77,92 Cambridge, Clare College 17: 15
Amiens, Bibliothèque Cambridge, Corpus Christi
Municipale College
110: 487-8 57:7
Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus 88:62
Museum 144: XX, 128,374,402,509-
16.2 (47) +London, British 10,540
Library, Additional 32246: 162: 13-15
8,90, 156,179,180-5,187, 173: 13
189-90, 192-4, 203-4, 207, 178,pp. 287-457:274
247, 402, 511 190: 15
16.8 (190): 45, 71, 74-8, 90, 201: 249-52, 255-6, 261-5,
92, 105, 109, 114,117 267
Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery 214:46,72-75,92,124
W.73: 424 272: 43-45, 56, 59
Basel, Universitatbibliothek 326: 487-8, 508
A. VI.31: 392 411:45-46,49-56,59
Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin 448: xvii-xviii, 299-336
- Preussischer Kulturbesitz 449: 186
Grimm 132,2 + 139,2: 57, Cambridge, Pembroke College
374 91:58
lat. go 73: 392-4 Cambridge, St John's College
theol.lat. 2° 311: 392 Aa.5.1, fol. 67: 60-61
Bern, Burgerbibliothek H.6 (209): 60
16:484 1.15: 419
207:358,360,362 F. 27 (164): 62
258:521 Cambridge, Trinity College
337:233 B.14.3 (289): 58
417: 357 0.3.7: 76-77, 92, 109, 112,
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 117
1650:6,72,90,124,135,139 Cambridge, University Library
1828-30:156,173,402,404, Ff.2.33: 52
407,412,512 Gg.5.35: 85, 92, 105-7, 117,
546 INDEX OF MANUSCRIPTS
232-3,314,487-8,508 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea

Hh.l.10: 186 Laurenziana
Kk.3.21: 72-79, 82-85, 92, Amiatino 1: 215
105,109,114,117,415, Plut. XIV.15: 82
417,426,427,432,435-6, Plut. LXXIII.16: 240
438 Plut. LXXIII.41: 240
Cologne, Dombibliothek Plut. LXXVIII.l9: 104, 109
193: 36-37 Fulda, Hochschul- und Landes-
211: 391 bibliothek, Aa 2: 221-6
Cologne-Rath, Sammlung Dr. Geneva (Cologny-Genève),
Karl Füngling s.n.: 374 Bibliotheca Bodmeriana
Durham, Cathedral Library 175:75-76,78,92,105,
B.II.30: 59-61 109, 114, 117
B.IV.24: 244, 274 Gloucester, Cathedral Library 35:
Hunter 100: 5, 242-5, 403, 274
412-3, 521 Gottweig, Stiftsbibliothek 30: 44
Düsseldorf, Universitii.ts- Karlsruhe, Badische Landes-
bibliothek bibliothek
Fragm. K16: Z.3/1: 59 Aug. perg. 99: 221-6
Fragm. K19: Z09/01: 374 Aug. perg. 176: 358
Edinburgh, National Library of Aug. perg. 254: 358
Scotland, Adv. 18.6.12: 487- St Peter perg. 87: 382
8 Krakow, Biblioteka Jagiellonska,
Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek Berol. Lat. 4°, 939
179: 99, 109-12, 117 [previously: Berlin,
302: 99, 117 Staatsbibliothek der Stiftung
El Escorial, Real Biblioteca, Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
E.II.1: 76,92,98,117 lat. 4°, 939 (olim Maihingen,
Épinal, Bibliothèque Municipale Bibliotheca Wallersteiniana,
72:128,155,247,373,402, 1, 2, lat. 4°, 3)]: 77, 82,92
Erfurt/Gotha, Universitats- und Laon, Bibliothèque Municipale
Forschungsbibliothek, Dep. 444:483
Erf. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek
Cod. Ampl. 2° 42: 128, 155, Voss. Lat. F. 48: xiii, 22, 26-
247,373,402 27,33
Cod. Ampl. 8° 8: 487-8 Voss. Lat. F. 128: 359
Essen-Werden, Archiv der Voss. Lat. F. 12y: 29-30
katholischen Voss. Lat. Q. 69: 128, 155,
Propsteigemeinde St. 371,373,402
Ludgerus: 374
INDEX OF MANU SCRIPTS 547
London, British Library 85:238,242,399-400,406,

Additional15601: 77, 92 408,413
Additional32246: see Egerton 267, fol. 37: 92
Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Egerton 3088: 424
Museum 16.2 Harley 107: 186
Arundel 155: 124 Harley 110: xvii-xviii, 299-
Cotton Cleopatra A.iii: 5-6, 8, 336
125,135,139,206,402, Harley 585: 238, 242, 400, 408
512 Harley 603: 51
Cotton Cleopatra C.viii, fols. Harley 978: 244, 245
4-37: 14, 125 Harley 1005: 416-8, 424-6
Cotton Dornitian i: 488, 508 Harley 1585: 240-1
Cotton Dornitian ix: 359-60 Harley 3095: 77, 89, 92
Cotton Faustina A.x: 186, 274 Harley 3271: 487-91
Cotton Faustina B.iii: 446 Harley 3376: 127, 518
Cotton Galba A.ii, iii: 415 Harley 3667: see Tiberius C.i
Cotton Galba A.xvi: 51 Harle y 3826: 487-8, 510
Cotton Julius A.ii: 186 Harley 5294: 240
Cotton Julius A. vi: 491 Harley 6258B: 234, 238, 242,
Cotton Nero A.ii: 51 400
Cotton Otho E.i: 125 Royal2.B.v: 40, 42, 64
Cotton Tiberius A.iii: xvii, Royal2.E.xiii: 61-63, 65
124,126,147,249,251-2, Royal2.E.xiv: 61-65
255,257-8,260-1,263,269- Royal 3.A.vi: 487-8
74,276-83,285,287-8,290- Royal 4.A.xiv: 63-65
5, 331-2,443-4,446-9, 451, Royal 5 E.vi: 244
462, 471-3 Royal 5 .E.xi: 144
Cotton Tiberius C.i + Harley Royal6.A.vi: 144
3667: 416-8, 421, 423-6, Royal6.B.vii: 138
428,432,435-6,438-9 Royal 7.C.iv: 9, 15
Cotton Tiberius C.ii: 521 Royal 7.D.ii: 488, 508
Cotton Tiberius E.iv: 419, 424 Royal10.A.viii: 416-7, 426,
Cotton Titus A.iv: 274 435-8
Cotton Vespasian D.vi: 122, Royal 12.B.xii: 244
124,186,205 Royal12.C.xix: 244
Cotton Vespasian D.xii: 491 Royal15.B.xix: 419
Cotton Vespasian D.xiv: 70, Royal 15.B.xxii: 187
332 Sloane 146: 245
Cotton Vitellius A.xii: 423 Sloane 284: 246
Cotton Vitellius C.iii, fols. 11- Sloane 475: xvi, 245
Sloane 1975: 240-1 Hatton 48: 219, 271, 287

Sloane 2839: 233-4, 244 Hatton 76: 238, 242, 400, 408
London, Lambeth Palace 427: Junius 2: 207
42-43 Junius 3: 207
London, Society of Antiquaries Junius 4: 207
60:488 Junius 5: 207
Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana Junius 6: 207
D 88 sup: 357 Junius 12: 205
M 79 sup.: 221-6 Junius 71: xv, 179, 185-6,201-
Modena, Archivio Capitolare, 2,205
0.1.11: 359 Junius 77: 206
Munich, Bayerische J unius 85 and 86: 10-12, 14-17
Staatsbibliothek Junius 113: 207
Cgm 187 III (e.4): 374 Junius 114: 207
Clm 22016: 357 Junius 115: 207
Clm 13090: 390 Junius 116: 207
Clm 19410: 359, 365-6 Junius 121: 12
Clm 29315/3: 44 Laud lat. 92: 214
MünsterlWestfalen, Laud Mise. 247: 422
Universitatsbibliothek, Laud Mise. 567: 5, 243, 402
Paulinianus 719 (271): 374, Oxford, Corpus Christi College
Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, IV 74:92
G.68: 112, 117 197: 274
New York, Pierpont Morgan Oxford, Merton College, E.3.12:
Library 776: 42 92
Oxford, Bodleian Library Oxford, St John's College
Arch. Selden, B.35: 246 17:419,421,424,439,
Ashmole 1431: 239, 242 154: 5, 186,489-91
Ashmole 1462: 240-1 Oxford, Trinity College 54: 65-
Auct. F.1.15, fols. 1-77: 78, 66
92, 114, 117 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de
Auct. F.1.16: xix, 377, 384-8 France
Barlow 25: 62 lat. 528: 359, 365-9
Barlow 35: 186 lat. 2685: 376, 392
Bodley 130: 238-9 lat. 2773: 29
Bodley 340: 526 lat. 5570: 487
Bodley 730: 538 lat. 6401A: 76, 85, 92, 105,
Digby 146 (1747): 124, 135, 109, 117
139,144,530 lat. 6402: 77, 92
Digby 174 (1775), fol. iii: 92 lat. 9344: 392, 394
INDEX OF MANUSCRIPTS 549
lat. 12961: 77, 92 621:21,36

lat. 13833: 478, 487-8 845: 99, 109-12, 117
1~. 13953:99,109,117 876:359,362
lat. 14380:76,85,92,105, 878:359,363
109, 117 904: 36
lat. 15090: 77, 82, 92 913: 167, 528
lat. 16093: 77, 92 914:270,287
lat. 17814:75-78,85,92,99, 916:219
105-6, 112, 117 St Paul im Lavanttal,
Pommersfelden, Graf von Stiftsbibliothek 8211: 210-6,
Schonbornsche Schloss- 219, 221-7
bibliothek 39: 109, 117 St Petersburg, Russian National
Prague, Narodnf Galerie, Inv. Nr. Library
K 7314:44 F.v.VI.3: 234
Princeton University Library, Lat. Q.v.I.l5: 316
W.H. Scheide Collection 71: Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket
10, 11, 15-17 (National Library of
Regensburg, Bischbfliche Sweden) Perg. 410 nr 15: 337
Zentralbibliothek, Clm. 3: Tours, Bibliothèque Municipale
44 10:215
Reykjavik, Stofnun Ârna 803: 104, 117
Magnussonar (Ârni Trier, Bibliothek des
Magnusson Institute) Priesterseminars 61: 393-4
AM 249,1 fol: xviii, 337-41, Trier, Stadtbibliothek
350-1 40/1018:377-8,386,389,390-
AM 732 a VII 410 : 337 3
GKS 1812 410 : xviii, 337-41, 1093/1964:29,75,77,80,92
347, 350-2 Uppsala, Universitetsbiblioteket,
Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale Gr. 8: 361
26 (A.292): 421 Valenciennes, Bibliothèque
Salisbury, Cathedral Library 38: Municipale 298: 86, 487-8
530 Vatican City, Biblioteca
Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Apostolica Vaticana
Generalia 1: 356 Pal. lat. 68: 57
St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek Pal. lat. 1773: 483
9: 210-6, 219, 221-7 Reg. lat. 338: 59
27:44,217 Reg. lat. 1260: 232-3
242: 167 Reg. lat. 1701: 394
270:359,362 Vat. lat. 266: 359
295: xvi, 210-9, 221-7 Vat. lat. 1468: 477
V at. lat. 1469: 507 40 A: 59

Vat. lat. 3363: 70-71, 75-80, Worcester, Cathedral Library
89, 92, 98, 117 F.173, fol. 1: 50-54, 56, 59
Vat. lat. 3865: 77, 92 F.174: 186
Vat. lat. 5956: 81, 92 Q.5: 234
Vienna, bsterreichische Wrisbergholzen, Archiv des
N ationalbibliothek Grafen von Goertz-
93:240 Wrisberg, Nr. 3: 58
751: 359, Würzburg, Universitats-
795:359,364-5,369 bibliothek
Wells, Cathedral Library 7: 274, M.p.th. f. 43: 57
Winchester, Winchester College M.p.th. f. 79: 316
INDEX OF
AUTHORS AND WORKS
AA Glossary: 247 Glossary: xv, 5, 86, 124, 135,

Abavus Glossary: 247 149, 156-62, 164-7, 172-
Abbo, ab bot of Fleury: 31 3, 176-7, 186-7, 194,248,
Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés: 490,522,526,528,538
xix-xx, 475-508 Grammar: 5, 124, 127, 186-
Bella Parisiacae urbis: xix- 7,490,494
xx, 475-508 Homilies:
Homilies: 477, 493 Cath. Hom. I,VII: 458
Abdias, pseudo-: 382 Cath. Hom. I,IX: 265
glosses to in Admont 508: Cath. Hom. I,XIV: 265
382 Cath. Hom. I,XXXI: 111
Abecedarium Nordmannicum: Cath. Hom. II,XI: 533
363-4 Cath. Hom. II,XIV: 526
Abolita Glossary: 482, 484, 493, Cath. Hom. II,xv: 13-15
524 Cath. Hom. II,XIX: 526
Abstrusa Glossary: 247,481-2, Suppl. Hom. xxx ('De
484-5, 503, 520 virginitate '): 16
Achadeus Psalter: 43-44, 50 Letter to the Monks of
Aero, pseudo-: 100 Eynsham: 257
scholia on Horace, Saturae: Letter to Wulfsige: 266
100 Letter for Wulfstan, 1 OE:
Adamnan, ab bot of Jona: 356 266
Vita S. Columbae: 356 Letter for Wulfstan, II OE:
Adelhelm of Laon: 31 264,265
Admonitio: see Regula Sancti lElfric Bata: 181, 237, 330-3,
Bene die ti 490,521
lElfric, abbot of Eynsham: xv, 5, Colloquies: 237, 330, 332-3,
11-13, 16, 83-84,86, 111, 490,521
124, 127, 135, 149, 156-63, Aesop: 403
164-7, 172-3,176-7,181, Fabulae 403
186-7,194,248,252,254, lEthelwold, bishop of
257,264-6,330,447,490, Winchester: 40, 83, 90-91,
494,522,525-6,528,533, 274,333,445,488,495
538 transi. of the Regula Sancti
Colloquy: 124,181,490 Benedicti: 272, 274, 281, 495
552 INDEX OF AUTHORS AND WORKS
Aethicus Ister: 114-5, 360, 367, XXIII! seniorum': 417,438-

369 41
Cosmographia: 114 Alfred, king: 79, 83-84, 87, 120,
Affatim Glossary: 247 126, 261, 396, 399; see also
Albert of Bec: 186, 239 OELaws
Alcuin of York: 33, 35,215,333, Alphabetical series: xix, 353-70
364-5 Alphita Glossary: 245-7
Carm. 39:35 Ambrose: 54, 58, 516
Carm. 40:35 Exameron: 516
De orthographia: 365 Explanatio super Psalmos
Epist.: 365 XII: 54
Aldhelm, ab bot of Malmesbury: Expositio de Psalmo CXVIII:
xi, 5, 6, 72, 84-85, 90-91, 58
124, 135, 138-139, 144, 150, Anesus Glossary: 232, 245
154, 159, 171, 174-7,333, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 265
372,432-3,495, 518-9, 527, Annals of Peterborough Abbey:
530,533 416
De virginitate (prose): xi, 5- Antonius Musa: 396
6, 72,90, 124,135,138-9, De herba vettonica liber: 396
144,150,159,174-7,372, Antrix (or Anthrax) Glossary:
432,508,519,527,530 232
glosses to (Brussels Antwerp-London glossaries: xv,
1650): xi, 5-6, 124, 135, 8, 90, 153-6, 159-60, 168-9,
139,150,519,527,530 404-6, 180-1, 189, 198-9,
(Digby 146): 124, 135, 204,206
139,144,150,519,527, Antwerp-London (bilingual)
530 Glossary: xv, 8, 126, 132-3,
(Royal5.E.xi): 144 135, 137, 140, 145, 150, 153-
(Royal6.A.vi): 144 77,179-207,247,402,411,
(Royal 6.B.vii): 138 413,434,501,508,511-3,
(Salisbury 38): 530 518, 520, 527-31, 533-4,
De virginitate (verse): 5-6, 536,538
124,135,519,533 Apuleius, pseudo-: xvi, 237, 239-
glosses to (Brussels 41,396-7,405,408,411,522
1650): 5-8, 150 Herbarius: xvi, 237-8, 241-2,
Enigmata: 159, 174, 176-7, 396-9,408,411,522
433,519 Arator: 21, 29, 67, 85, 313-4, 323
Epistola ad Heahfridum: 174 Historia apostolica: 21, 29
Aldred: 56 commentary on/glosses to:
'Alea caeli in qua sunt nomina 21, 29-31
INDEX OF AUTHORS AND WORKS 553
Aristides Quintilianus: 26 362

IIEp{ flOUcrtKfj<;: 26 De temporum ratione: 355-6
Aristotle: 419-20 Explanatio Apocalypsis: 130,
Meteorologica: 420 142
Arundel Psalter: 123, 131, 141 Historia ecclesiastica gentis
glosses (OE) to: 123, 131, Anglorum: 125-6, 521
141 glosses (OE) to: 521
Asaru Glossary: 247, 404 transi. (OE) of: 125-6
Asphaltum Glossay: 247 In epistulas septem
Augustine: xv, 10, 28, 43, 46-48, Catholicas: 49
53-54, 56-57, 62, 65, 94, In Genesim: 131
131, 146, 355 Benedict of Aniane: 271
Confessiones: 28 Benedictine Rule: see Regula
De civitate Dei: 146 Sancti Benedicti
De doctrina Christiana: 355 Beowulf: 120, 122
De musica: 28 Bernard of Laon: 31
De ordine: 355 Bestiary: 422
De trinitate: 355 Bible: 30, 119, 128, 147-8, 162,
Enarrationes in Psalmos: 43 218-9, 525-6, 539
48,53-54,57,62,65,131 Genesis: 210, 212-3, 215-6,
Soliloquia: see OE transi. of 219, 221-4, 511
Aulus Gellius: 25 Exodus 127-8, 142, 147,
Noctes Atticae: 25 213-4, 222
Aurelius Victor: 99 Leviticus: 212-2, 528
A vianus: 88-89 Numeri: 213-4, 223
Fabulae: 88 Deuteronomium: 212-3, 223
Bald: 119, 395-6 Iosue: 433
Lœceboc: 119,395-6,405 Iudicum: 214, 223, 216,
Basil of Casearea: 59 Ruth: 223
Homiliae in Psalmos: 59 Samuel 1: 212-6, 224-5
'Beatus quid est': 489 Samuel II: 212-6, 225-6
Bede:49, 106,125,130-132, Reges III: 213, 226
142, 355-6, 360, 362-3, 369, Reges IV: 210, 212-3, 226
416,420,516-7,521 Paralipomenon 1: 128-9
Commentarii in S. Iudith: 526
Scripturam: 132 lob: 521
De loque/a digitorum: see De Psalmi: 39,46-50, 52-56, 61-
temporum ratione 63,65-66,123,131,141,
De natura rerum: 420, 516-7 539
De schematibus et tropis: Proverbia: 122, 124, 185,
205 27-28
Sirach: 14 glosses to: 34
Hiezechiel: 128, 138, 147 De institutione musica: 21,
Micha: 225 26,29
Machabei: 493 glosses to: 29, 34
Mattheus: 5, 47, 122, 132-3, Boniface, archbishop of Mainz:
319,521,525-6,539 333
Marcus: 5, 132-3, 319, 526, Bosworth Psalter: 123, 141
529-30, 539 glosses (OE) to: 141
Luca:5, 133,319,428,526 Brevis expositio: see Virgil
Johannes: 5, 48, 254-5, 260, Bruno of Würzburg, pseudo-: 44
355,526 Brussels Glossary: 156, 159,
Corinthios II: 47 173-4,402,404-7,409-13,
Ephesios: 55 512-3, 519-20, 522, 524,
Apocalypsis: 130, 147-9 528,538
Bible of Saint-Vast: 86 Byrhtferth of Ramsey: 7, 87-88,
Biblical glossaries: 209-227 90,424,438-9,441,517
Biblical Glossary in St 'Concordia mensium et
Galien 9: 210-6, 219 elementorum': 439,441
Biblical Glossary in St Enchiridion: 7, 90, 424, 517
Galien 295: 210-227 glosses (OE) to: 7
Biblical Glossary in St Paul Northumbrian Chronicle: 87
im Lavanttal82/1: 210-6, Vita Oswaldi: 87
219 Caesarius of Arles: 10-11, 14-17
Blickling Homilies: 17-18 Sermones: 16
El. Hom. IV: 10-12, 14-17 Sermo 33 'De reddendis
Blickling Psalter: 42, 56, 59 decimis' : 10-11, 14-17
glosses (Latin) to: 59 Breviate Sermo 33 'De
Boethius: xiii-xiv, 20, 26-29, 34, decimis': 16
46,67-117,122,124,307, Calcidius: 26, 34
415,429 transi. of Plato, Timaeus: 26
De consolatione Philoso- glosses to: 34
phiae: xiii-xiv, 21, 67- Calendar in AM 249 1 fol: 339
117, 122, 124, 307, 415, Cambridge Psalter: 123, 141, 150
429-30, glosses (OE) to: 141, 150
commentaries on: 67, 415 Cambridge Songs: 85
glosses to: xiii-xiv, 21, 'Canterbury Classbook': 232-3
34,46,67-92,93-117, Canticles: 491-2
124; see also OE Boethius Carmen ad Deum: 366
De institutione arithmetica: Cassiodorus: 39,41-44, 48-49,
50, 53-57, 59, 60-62, 94, 99, 243-4

162,217,367 Viaticum peregrinantis: 243
Expositio Psalmorum: 39, Corpus I Glossary: xx, 509-40
41, 43-44, 48-49, 53-57, Corpus II Glossary: 128-32, 138-
59-62,217,367 9, 144-7, 149-50, 159, 161,
Charms in Sloane 475: 245 168-70, 172, 184, 372, 375-
Christ: 122 6,379-80,382,385-90,393-
Chrodegang of Metz: 527 4, 402-5, 431-3, 438, 510,
Regula canonicorum: 12, 527 513, 521-3, 526-30, 532,
glosses OE) to: 527 534-5, 536, 538
transl. (OE) of: 12 Credo: 337
Cicero: 26, 103, 484 Cyrillus Glossary, pseudo-: 483
De re publica: 103 Damasus I, pope, pseudo-: 367
Somnium Scipionis: 26 Hieronymi Ep. supp. 46: 367;
Comm.on:26 see also Jerome, pseudo-
Cleopatra glossaries: 8, 149, Defensor of Ligugé: 9, 10, 15
170-1,173,403,406 Liber Scintillarum: xii, 9-11,
Cleopatra I Glossary: 8, 125, 13, 15-17
135, 144, 159, 160-1, 171-3 glosses (OE) to: 9, 15-17
184,206,372,401-3,405, De inventione litterarum: 362
410-3, 431-3,438, 501, 519, De mirabilibus Sacrae
521-2, 527-37, 539 Scripturae: 516
Cleopatra II Glossary: 8, 139-40, De moro: see Medicina de
150, 156, 159, 161, 171-2, quadrupedibus
177,184,372,512-3,524, De ordine creaturarum: 514-5
526-7, 529, 531-8 De ponderibus: 243
Cleopatra III Glossary: 5, 8, 135, De quattuor humoribus corporis:
139,144,150,171,519,521, 243
529,533,535 De situ arbis: 95-96
Collatio Alexandri Magni cum De situ arbis terre vel regionum:
Dindimo: 422 95-96
Commentaries: see Psalter, De taxone liber: see Medicina de
Dunchad, John Scottus, quadrupedibus
Martianus Capella, Remigius Dicuil: 95-96, 102, 106-8, 115
of Auxerre De mensura arbis terrae: 95-
Computistical texts: 338-40, 416, 96, 107-8
419, 422-4, 441 Dionysius the Areopagite,
Confessionale Pseudo-Egberti: pseudo-: see John Scottus
12 Eriugena
Constantine the African: 236, Dioscorides: 244, 397-8, 404
Dioscorides, pseudo-: 396, 399, 173,175,375,379,385,402-

405 5, 410, 412-3
Curae herbarum: 396 Epiphanius of Salamis: 142-3
De herbis femininis: 396 Ile pi nûv tP' Ài8mv (On the
Disticha Catonis: 333 twelve stones): 142-3
Donatus, Aelius: 181, 363, 367-9 Epistola Alexandri ad
Ars maior: 363, 367 Aristotelem: 422
Comm. on 'De littera': 367-8 Erfurt I Glossary: 128, 130-2,
Ars minor: 181, 363 138, 144-5, 147, 149, 155,
Vita Vergilii: 494 172,247,372,377-8,380,
Dunchad of Rheims, pseudo-: 21 383, 385-90, 393-4, 405,
Comm. on Martianus 432-3, 514, 521-4, 528-30,
Capella, De nuptiis: 21 532, 534-5
Dunstan, ab bot of Glastonbury: Erfurt II Glossary: 128-9, 131,
70, 75, 78-80, 83, 85, 89-91' 138, 146, 379
333 Erfurt III Glossary: 128, 379,
Durham plant Glossary: 5, 242-3, 383-4, 393, 534
245,395,402,404-10,412- Eucherius of Lyon: 49,510-1
3, 521-4 Instructiones: 49, 510-1
Eadwine Psalter: 123, 131, 141, Eusebius of Caesarea: 148
150 Historia Ecclesiastica: 148,
glosses (OE) to: 123, 131, 162
141, 150 Examinatio for a Bishop: 447
Easter table (Icelandic) in AM Excerptiones de Prisciano: 90,
10
732 a VII 4 : 337 154, 180, 182
Ecbasis captivi: 479 scholia to: 182
Einhard: 421-2 Expositio hymnorum: 491-2
Vita Karoli magni: 421-2 Florus, Publius Annius: 99, 101,
Ekkehart: 21 107
glosses to Orosius: 21 Epitoma bellorum: 101
Elene: 122 Galen: 244-5
Ennius: 520 'Epistola de febris': 245
Annales: 520 Gallicanum (Psalterium): 42, 50,
Épinal Glossary: 127-8, 130-2, 56,217
138, 145, 147, 149, 155, 172, Genesis A: 12
247,372,376,380,385-90, Gesta Berengarii imperatoris:
393-4,405,431-3,514,522- 481
4, 528-9, 532, 535 Gildas: 148, 539
Épinal-Erfurt glossaries: 132, De excidio Britanniae: 148,
155, 158, 161, 163-4, 166, 539
Glossa in Psalmos: 57 transi. (OE) of: 126, 147

Glossaries of Laon 444: 483 Grotius, Hugo: 36
Glossary in Admont 508: 393 Hadoard of Laon: 31
Glossary in BAV, Pal. lat. 1773: Hadrian, abbot of SS Peter and
482 Paul, Canterbury: xv, 148-9,
Glossary in BAV, Vat. lat. 1468: 153-4, 162, 167, 174, 177,
477 371,375-6,401,403
Glossary in BAV, Vat. lat. 1469: Haimo of Auxerre: 31
507 Biblical Glosses: 20
Glossary in Berlin, Preussischer Heiric of Auxerre: 31, 81
Kulturbesitz, Grimm- Harley Glossary: 122, 127, 131,
Nachlass 132,2 + 139,2: 375, 134,138,145,150,259,499,
377-8 508,518,521-2,527,530-2
Glossary in Bodley 730: 538 Harley 603 Psalter: 51
Glossary in Cotton Otho E.i: 125 Hebraicum (Psalterium): 52
Glossary (trilingual) in Harley Helperic of Auxerre: 243
978: 245 De computa: 243
Glossary in Paris 528: 368 Heraclides of Pontus: 25
Glossary (plant) in Sloane 146: Henri of Eastry: 17
245-6 Catalogue of Christ Church
Glossary in St Gallen 242: 159, library: 17
167-8 Hermeneumata Pseudo-
Glosses on the prologues of Dositheana: 247, 403, 411,
Jerome: 486 413,433
Glos ses to the Book of Prv in Hermeneumata glossaries:
Cotton Vespasian D.vi: 122, 158, 162-4, 166, 172-3,
124, 185-6, 205 175,403,405,410-1,413
'Grammaticae artis nomina Hermeneumata Monacensia:
graece et latine no tata': 509- 433,435
10 Hermeneumata
Gospels (Anglo-Saxon): see Montepessulana: 483
Lindisfarne Gospels, Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims:
Rushworth Gospels, 44
West Saxon transi. of Hippocrates: 244
Gregory I, pope: xv, 49, 55, 126, Hippocrates, pseudo-: see 'Lettre
147-8 d'Hippocrate'
Dialogi: 148 Hispericafamina: 516, 519-20,
Homiliae in Euangelia: 55 539
Moralia in lob: 49 Historia Apollonii regis Tyri: 422
Regula pastoralis: 126, 147-8 Homer: 419
Hômilfubôk (the lcelandic 'Book 141, 154-60, 163, 167-9,

of Homilies'), Holm. Perg. 171-77, 184-5, 194, 246,
410 nr 15: 337 311,355,364,379,404,
Homily for Palm Sunday in 412,418-20,422,424,
Bodley 340 (B 3.2.18): 526 427,431,477,482,484,
Homily for Third Sunday in Lent 486,488,493,496-7,
in Junius 86 (B 3.2.14): 10- 504, 510-1' 513-4, 520,
11, 14, 16 522,525,527,529,531-
Horace: 35-36, 100 4, 536, 538-9
Saturae: 100 In Genesim: 49
Hrabanus Maurus: 95, 99, 142, In libros Veteris et Novi
363 Testamenti prooemia:
De universo: 95, 142 368
Hymnary in Paris 528: 368 Sententiae: 49
Hymns: 491-2 Synonyma: xvii, 299-336
Isaac Judaeus: 244 glosses to: 299-336
Isidore of Seville: xv, xvii, 49, Ivo of Chartres: 416
54-55, 81, 95-96, 99, 100-3, Jerome: xv, 53, 58, 63-65, 81,
105-15, 129, 131, 133-4, 162,216,222,355,357,369,
136-8, 141, 148, 154-60, 499, 510-1
162-3, 166-8, 171-7, 184, Commentarii in Esaiam: 499
194, 207, 246, 301-2, 311, Commentarioli in Psalmos:
324, 332-3, 355-7' 363-4, 53, 63-64
366,368-9,371,379,385, Epist.: 355, 367
404,412,416,418-24,427, Hebraicae quaestiones in
431,435,439,477,482, libro Geneseos: 216, 222
484,486,488,493,496-7, Liber interpretationis
504, 510-1, 513-4, 520, 522, Hebraicorum nominum:
525,527,529,531-4,536, 510-1
538-9 Prologus galeatus: 357
De differentiis uerborum: Tractatus LIX in Psalmos:
311 53,58,63-65,356-7
De ecclesiasticis officiis: Jerome, pseudo-: 43-44, 48, 52-
148,155,162,366,371 56,59,61,63-65,367
Denatura rerum: 148, 155, Breviarium in Psalmos: 43-
162, 371, 418-21,423-5, 44,48, 52-56,59,61,63-
439-40 64
Etymologiae: xiv, 54, 95, De formis Hebraicarum
101-3, 105-11, 113, 129, litterarum: 356-7
131, 133-4, 136, 138, Hieronymi Ep. supp. 47: 367
Sermo Sancti Hieronymi de Leiden Glossary: 128-30, 132,

psalterio: 367-8 138, 141, 147-9, 155, 158,
Johannes Platearius of Salerno: 161-3, 165-6, 175,218-9,
244 371-2, 375, 378-80, 382-3,
John Scottus Eriugena: 20, 26, 402-3,410,432,521,528,
81,479 532, 535-6
Biblical Glosses: 20 'Lettre d'Hippocrate': 244
Comm. on Martianus Liber medicinae ex animalibus:
Capella, De nuptiis: 20, see Medicina de
22, 26-27, 81, 486 quadrupedibus
Expositiones in Ierarchiam Liber de ordine creaturarum:
celeste: 479 515-6
transi. of Dyonisius the Liber glossarum: 482-6, 488,
Areopagite, pseudo-, The 493-4, 496, 502, 507,
Celestial Hierarchy: 479 523
Jordanes: 100-1 Lindisfarne Gospels: 56, 132-3,
Romana: 100-1 258,428
Julius Valerius: 422 glosses to: xi, 132-3, 428
Res gestae Alexandri Magni Litany in CCCC 215: 46
(Zacher Epitome): 422 Lothian Psalter: see Blickling
Junius, Francis: xv, 179, 186-7, Psalter
189, 191, 194-5, 204-5, Lucan: 107
207 Lucilius: 477
Junius's Glossary: 179-207 Saturae: 477
Junius Psalter: 123, 141 Lucretius: 101-2, 115
Lambeth Psalter: 42-43, 56, 123, Lupus of Ferrières: 82
131, 141, 150 Manno of Laon: 31
glosses (Latin) to: 43, 56 Macrobius: 26, 34, 103, 416
glos ses (OE) to: 56, 131, Commentarium in somnium
141, 150 Scipionis: 26, 103
Laidcenn glosses to: 34
Lorica: 520 Marbod: 120
Latin-Icelandic glossaries in AM De lapidibus: 120
2491 fol and GKS 1812 4to: Marcellus of Bordeaux: 395, 515
xviii, 337-352 De medicamentis: 395, 515
Laud plant Glossary: 5, 232, 242- Martianus Capella: xiii, 20-29,
3, 245, 402, 404-7, 409-10, 32, 33-34, 36, 81, 95-96,
412,522 115, 486
Leiden Family glossaries: 372, De nuptiis Philologiae et
374-9, 384-95 Mercurii: xiii, 20-22, 24-
27, 29, 33-34, 36, 95-96, OE Laws: 12

115,486 Alfred-/ne Law: 13
commentaries on/glosses OE Letter of Alexander: 122,
to: xiii, 20-24, 26-29, 126
32-34, 36 OE Martyrology: 84, 517
Martin of Laon: 31 OE transi. of Orosius, Historiae
Medical terminology, Poems adversum paganos: 84, 430
made up of: 232-4 OE Pharmacopeia: 395-7
Medicina de quadrupedibus: 397 'Oratio de Sancto lElfhego': 124
Memoriale qualiter. 277 Oribasius: 395
Milan Biblical Glosses: 218-9 Synopsis: 395
Murethach of Auxerre: 31 Orosius: 21, 36, 94-95-96, 103,
Nikuhis of Munkapveni, 107, 110, 113, 115, 148,363,
Icelandic abbot: 351 427-32,435
Leiôarv(sir (Icelandic travel Historiae adversum paganos:
guide): 351 94-96, 103, 110, 113, 115,
Nonius Marcellus: 477 148, 427-33; see a1so OE
De compendiosa doctrina: transi. of
477 glosses to: 21, 36; see also
Note on the names of the winds: Ekkehardt
xix, 415-6, 426-8, 432, 435- Ovid: 36, 101-2, 115
8,441 Papias: 485
glosses to: 426-8, 432, 435-8 Parker Chronicle: 13
OE transi. of Augustine, Paschasius Radbertus: 31, 49
Soliloquia: 84 Expositio in Lamentationes
OE transi. of Bede, Historia Hieremiae: 49
Ecclesiastica: 125-6 Paul the Diacon: 422, 484
OE transi. of Boethius, De Historia Langobardorum:
consolatione Philosophiae: 422
69, 70,78-79,81,83-85,89- Epitome of Festus, De
90,93 verborum significatu: 484
OE prose transi.: 70, 78, 90, Peri Didaxeon: 234, 242
430 Persius: 29, 36, 81
OE verse transi. of the glosses to: 29, 36
Metres: 122, 205 Petrocellus of Salerno, pseudo-:
OE Heptateuch (Exodus): 127 233; see also Practica
OE Herbarium: xvi, 242, 395-9, Petrocelli Salernitani
404-7, 409-14, 522 Peter Damian: 98,
OE Lapidary: 126-7, 129-30, Epistola 72: 98
141, 145-9 Philippe de Thaon: 244
Philoxenus Glossary, pseudo-: Prognostics in Sloane 475: 245

482 Prognostics in Tiberius A.iii: 124
Phoenix, The: 120, 122 Prosper of Aquitaine: xvii-xviii,
Physica Plinii: 395 300,303-8,310,312-5,317,
Physiologus: 301 319-21, 322-4, 326-8, 333,
Phocas: 162 335
Ars de nomine et verbo: 162 Epigrammata ex sententiis S.
Placidus Glossary: 482-4, 496, Augustini: xvii-xviii, 299-
502 330, 333-36
Plato: 87 glosses to: 299-330, 333-
Timaeus: 34 6
transi. of: see Calcidius Poema coniugis ad uxorem
Pliny the Eider: 26, 34, 94, (Versus ad coniugem
99, 103, 106, 111-2, 115, suam): 300-1, 304, 307,
129, 131, 136-7, 141, 309, 314-5, 319, 323-4
143-4,146,397,416, Sententiae ex operibus S.
419 Augustini: 301
Naturalis historia: 26, 34, Prudentius: 12, 21, 67, 81, 85,
103, 111-2, 129, 131, 131,139,150,301,314,323
136-8, 141, 143-4, 146, Cathemerinon: 131
397 glosses (OE) to: 131
glosses to: 26, 34 Dittocheon: 301
Pomponius Mela: 94, 96, 103, Peristephanon: 139, 301
107-8, 110, 112, 115 glosses to: 139, 150
De chorographia: 103, 108, Psychomachia: 13, 21
110, 112 glosses to: 13, 21
Pomponius Porphyrio: 100 Psalter: xiii, 39-56, 65, 122-
Comm. on Horace, Saturae: 3, 131, 141-2, 149
100 Psalter commentaries: xiii, 39-40,
Practica Petrocelli Salernitani: 45, 48-49, 53, 55-66
233-4, 245, 395 Psalters glossed in Latin: xiii, 40,
Epistola /: 234 45-56
Tereoperica: 234 Psalters glossed in OE: xiii,40-
Prayerbook: 51 42,56,59,65, 123,131,140-
Priscian: 36, 113, 181, 3, 149, 150, 494; see also
Institutio de nomine et Bosworth, Cambridge,
pronomine et verbo: 113 Eadwine, Royal, Stowe,
Institutiones grammaticae: V espasian Psalter
181,483 Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus):
glosses to: 37 94, 103, 106
Geography: 107 Romanum (Psalterium): 40, 42,

Tetrabiblos: 103 52,56,217
Ratherius of Verona: 88-90 Royal Psalter: 40-42, 45, 56, 59,
Praeloquia: 88-90 63,64, 123,141,150
Ratramnus of Corbie: 31 glosses (Latin) to: 40-42, 44,
Recipes in CUL, Gg.5.35: 233 50,56,59,64
Recipes in Sloane 146: 245 glosses (OE) to: 40-42, 50,
Recipes in Sloane 475: 245 56, 131, 141, 150
Reginald of Montpellier: 244 Rufinus of Aquileia: 59, 148,
Regius Psalter: see Royal Psalter 162; see also Basil, Eusebius
Regula Magistri: 271-2 Rule of Chrodegang: see
Regula Sancti Benedicti: xvi- Chrodegang of Metz
xvii, 148, 218-9, 269-97, Ruin, The: 122
372,445,460,473 Rushworth Gospels: 122, 132-3
glosses to: 269-97 glosses to: xi, 122, 132-3
transi. (OE) of: 272, 274, Salisbury Psalter: 131, 141, 150
281, 495, see LEthelwold glosses (OE) to: 131, 141,
Admonitio: 277 150
Regularis Concordia: xvi-xvii, Scholica Graecarum glossarum:
249-267, 277, 443-53, 455-6, 482-3, 485-8, 490, 492-3,
458,462,464-9,471,473 500,503,507
glosses (OE) to in Tiberius Sedulius: 67
A.iii: 249, 251-2, 255-67 Seneca: 89,419
transi. (OE) of in CCCC 201: Sententiae Augustini et Isidori in
249-59, 261-7 laude computi: 367
Remigius of Auxerre: 20, 22, 31, Septem miracula mundi:
51,67,80-82,113,181 Servius: 30, 96, 99-100, 102,
Comm. on Boethius, De 106,109-10,115,507
consolatione: 415 Comm. on Virgil, Aeneid:
Comm. on Donatus, Ars 30,99-100,106,109,
minor: 181 484-5,507
Comm. on Martianus Comm. on Virgil, Georgics:
Capella, De nuptiis: 20- 100, 109-10
21, 415, 486 'Servius auctus': 485
Comm. on Priscian, Institutio Smaragdus, abbot of Saint-
de nomine et pronomine Mihiel: 7
et uerbo: 113 Diadema monachorum: 7
Richard of Montepellier: 244 glosses to: 7
Riddle 25: 530 Snorri Sturluson: 343
Roger of Salemo: 244 Hâttatal: 343
Solinus: 96, 101, 103-5, 112, On stones: 136

115, 136, 143 Tiberius Psalter: 123
Collectanea: 103, 105, 136, Tibullus: 35
143 Trier Glossary (Glossary in Trier,
Salomon and Saturn: 84 40): 386, 389-93
Sornner, William: 186-7 Varia glosemata (Glossary in
Dictionarium Saxonico- Oxford, Auct. F.1.16): xix,
Latino-Anglicum: 187 384-92, 394
Soranus, pseudo-: 233 Vatican Mythographer II: 99, 102
Quaestiones medicinales: 'Versus de Asia et de uniuersi
233 mundi rota': 100
St Gallen Biblical glossaries: 'Versus de duodecim ventis': 419
209-227 V arro, M. Terentius: 25-26, 355
St Gallen Psalter: 44-45 Fragm. (gramm.) 235: 355
gloss to: 44-45, 53, 59 Vegetius: 433
Stowe Psalter: 123, 141 Epitoma rei militaris: 433
glosses (OE) to: 123, 141 Vespasian Psalter: 123, 141
Strabo: 94, 107, 506 Victor of Vita: 422
Geography: 107,506 Historia persecutionis
Suetonius: 99 Africanae provinciae: 422
Sulpicius Severus: 162 Virgil: 30, 35-36, 96, 99, 100-2,
Dialogi: 162 106,109,115,384,482-5,
Vita S. Martini: 162 493,506,536
'Sumer is icume in': 244 Aeneid: 99, 101-2, 106, 109,
Symeon of Durham: 413 386,388,484,506,537
Talbot, Robert: 360 Eclogues: 484
Tatwine: 7 Georgics: 100-1, 109
Ars grammatica: 7 Brevis Expositio on: 109
glosses to: 7 Vision of Leofric: 537
Terence: 35-36, 484 Vitellius Psalter: 123, 131
Tereoperica: see Practica glosses (OE) to: 123,131
Petrocelli Vitruvius: 112, 419, 433
Theodore, archbishop of De architectura: 112, 433
Canterbury: xv, 148-9, 153- 'Vocabularius Sancti Galli': 167
4,162,167,174,177,219, Vulgate: 214-7, 319, 493, 525
371,375-6,401,403 Walahfrid Strabo: 102, 363-4
Theodore of Mopsuestia: 43, 48 Walewein ende Keye: 36
Theodulf of Orléans: 12 Werden glossaries: xix, 375-8
Capitula: 12 Werden A: 129, 374, 379-84
Theophrastus: 136 Werden B: 129, 374, 379,
384 435-6
Werden C: 129, 374, 379, glosses to: 421-8, 435; see
383-4, 393 also 'Alea caeli' ,
West Saxon transi. of the Byrhtferth
Gospels: 521, 525-6, 529-30 Worcester Psalter fragments: 50-
Winchcombe Computus: 419 56,59
Winchcombe Psalter: 51 glosses (Latin) to: 50-56, 59
Wind diagrams/wind rotae: Wulfstan the homilist,
417-9,421, 423-6, 431, archbishop of York: 12, 477
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TEXTES ET ETUDES DU MOYEN AGE, 54

RETHINKING AND RECONTEXTUALIZING GLOSSES

RETHINKING AND RECONTEXTUALIZING GLOSSES

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

© 2011 Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales.

ANTONETTE DIPAOLO HEALEY (University of Toronto), Late

CLAUDIA DI SCIACCA (Università di Udine), Glossing in Late

Index of manuscripts 545

Plate 1 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 411, f. 4v

Permission to publish photographs has been granted by Bayerische

CGL Corpus glossariorum Latinorum a Gustavo Loewe inchoatum,

CCCM Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, Brepols,

CCSL Corpus Christianorum, series Latina, Brepols, Turnhout 1954-

CPPM Clavis Patristica Pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevi, ed. by J.

CSASB Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon Bngland, Cambridge

CSBL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, various

BBMF Barly Bnglish Manuscripts in Facsimile, Rosenkilde and

BBTS Barly Bnglish Text Society Publications, published for the

MGH Monumenta Germaniae historica, Weidmann, Hannover,

MRTS Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Center for

University of New York, Binghamton, from 1978 until 1996;

PL Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, ed. by J.-P. Migne,

SettSpol Settimane di Studio del Centra ltaliano di Studi sull' Alto

TUEPh Münchener Universitatsschriften. Texte und Untersuchungen

VCSS Variorum Collected Studies Series, Ashgate, Aldershot 1970-

Anglo-Saxon glossaries from the tenth and eleventh centuries,

The volume is one of the outputs of the research project 'Rethinking

physical realities which have often been disregarded as a result of the

explain points of interest. The essay focuses on the late Anglo-Saxon

few native words and many loanwords), besides a variety of (more or

St Galien, Stiftsbibliothek 295, a codex produced at St Galien in the late

devoted to the id est-glosses, the uel-glosses, and the scilicet-glosses, that

Antonette diPaolo Healey

Henry Sweet is not a comforting lexicographer. Anyone looking to

construct his «List of Texts» for inclusion in the Dictionary of Old

«lexicalized» to describe these base forms) 13 , nominative singular for

Cotton Cleopatra A.iii 19 • Derolez is right, I am sure. There is no universal

enlargement and revision of Bosworth's Dictionary between 1882 and

Aldhelm does 30 ; focusing on difficulties in the Latin text which have a

program to make them compliant with twenty-first-century standards. I

souls of the needy) 44 • Here Defensor incorrectly ascribes the quotation to

As is evident, although Junius 86 is more expansive, the translations

Psychomachia 56 in London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra C.viii

Forôan ponne men ôa leofestan micel neadpearf us is ]:n:et we us geomlice cla:nsien

It is, moreover, tantalizing to think that the reference here to se

an allusion to Caesarius. However, a quotation from Sir III.33 62 follows

interesting of which appears to be ecce 162 with its unnamed

According to Gneuss, there was an incomplete copy of Caesarius' s

lexical choices made by the glossator and translator in rendering their

expression may also reflect the linguistic preference of one or several

Marginal and interlinear texts: a plea for new research

Marginal annotations in early medieval manuscripts are a true terra

far more variation than an 'ordinary' texe. Severallayers of annotations

institutione musica has been published by Michael Bernhard and Calvin

1969. Beda Paulus edited the commentaries of Pascasius Radbertus: De benedictionibus

As the result of a collaborative effort involving Sinead 0' Sullivan, Mary

variety of subjects, ranging from Neoplatonic ideas about creation to the

A new hypothesis on the purpose and function of glosses

Since Arthur Rigg's and Gernot Wieland's research on glosses, the

thematically related texts, and marked their differences and

Between the Lines: Reflections of Scholarly Debate in a Carolingian Commentary

theme pops up in different parts of the work, and is treated in