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Isidorian ‘Glossae collectae’ in Aelfric's Vocabulary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Robert T. Meyer
Robert T. Meyer*
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of America
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Extract

At first sight Aelfric's Vocabulary appears to be a well-ordered word list, topically arranged under appropriate Latin subtitles. In this it differed none from the Nominale, which was really a Latin-English lexicon largely used in England to teach boys Latin during the Middle Ages. The Nominale, or Vocabulary, contained Latin words together with the English meanings topically arranged: names of trades, herbs, plants, animals, etc. There was no alphabetical arrangement except in a few isolated instances. The Glossary differed from the Nominale or Vocabulary in that it was a collection of glosses which originated as marginal or interlinear explanations of words or phrases in the Latin authors. Any schoolboy who writes the meanings of the Latin words between the lines or on the margin of his Caesar or Vergil is perfectly familiar with the glossing process. However, the analogy stops here: the present-day schoolboy employs this gloss but momentarily. Should he forget the meaning of the Latin word when it occurs again, he is not required to go over the glossed portion of his text to find it; he turns instead to the vocabulary at the end of his book, or goes to a dictionary.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 12 , 1956 , pp. 398 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 This was first printed by William Sommer, Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum … accesserunt Aelfrici abbatis Grammatica Latino-Saxonica cum Glossario suo ejusdem generis (Oxford 1659). The Vocabulary is in the Supplement, pp. 55–80. Zupitza, J., Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar (Berlin 1880), in the Sammlung englischer Denkmäler in kritischen Ausgaben, contains only the Grammar; the first Abteilung is all that was ever published. Wright, T. Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies (2nd ed. edited by Wtilcker, R., London 1884) 104–167, apparently copied the Vocabulary out of Sommer without giving him credit. Eight of the fifteen MSS of the Grammar contain the closely related Glossary. Google Scholar

2 Bradshaw, H., Collected Papers (Cambridge 1889) 462.Google Scholar

3 Sample plates of this MS may be seen in Lindsay, W. M., Early Welsh Script (Oxford 1912), plates ix-x, pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

4 Lindsay, W. M., in Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 1 (1924) 17.Google Scholar

5 Hessels, J. H., A Late Eighth-century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary (Cambridge 1906).Google Scholar

6 Lindsay, W. M., The Corpus Glossary… (Cambridge 1921). Cf. also his Corpus, Epinal, Erfurt and Leyden Glossaries (Publications of the Philological Society 8; London 1921), which serves as prolegomena to this.Google Scholar

7 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX ree. Lindsay, W. M. (2 vols. Oxford 1911).Google Scholar

8 B. Kübler, ‘Isidorusstudien Hermes 5 (1890) 496–526; cf. especially 509–19 (‘ Die juristischen Partien der Etymologien ’).Google Scholar

9 Ibid. 496.Google Scholar

10 Wright prints 4 familiae, erciscundae (leg. herciscunda),’ but this emendation is not called for; the genitive, familiae erciscundae (short for actio f. e.) is also attested as a variant in Lindsay's apparatus, Isid. ad loc. Google Scholar

11 White, L. C., Aelfric : A New Study of his Life and Writings (Yale Studies in English; New Haven 1898) 58.Google Scholar

12 Manitius, M., Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters II (Munich 1923) 677.Google Scholar

13 Murray, J. A. H., The Evolution of English Lexicography (Oxford 1900) 7.Google Scholar