Corpus Glossary

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The Corpus Glossary is one of many Anglo-Saxon glossaries. Alongside many entries which gloss Latin words with simpler Latin words or explanations, it also includes numerous Old English glossaries on Latin words, making it one of the oldest extant texts in the English language. [1]

Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, as during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English.

Contents

History

The manuscript of the Corpus Glossary, Cambridge Corpus Christi College, 144, dates to the 8th century. [2] [3] The manuscript in fact contains two glossaries, the first of which is short, and the second of which (fols. 4–64v, to which the name 'Corpus Glossary' usually refers) is much longer. This latter contains almost the full text of the Épinal-Erfurt glossary (deriving independently from the same archetype as the Épinal and Erfurt manuscripts), along with about as much extra material again. [4] It also shares much material with the Leiden Glossary. [5]

The Épinal-Erfurt glossary is a glossary of terms. It consists of two manuscripts, and contains terms in Old English. It has been described as "The earliest body of written English", and is thought to have been compiled at Malmesbury for Aldhelm.

The Leiden Glossary is a glossary contained in a manuscript in Leiden University Library, Voss. Lat. Q. 69. The lemmata (headwords) come from "a range of biblical, grammatical, and patristic texts". It is based on an Anglo-Saxon exemplar, and was prepared c. 800 in the Abbey of Saint Gall in modern-day Switzerland.

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Cædmon's "Hymn" is a short Old English poem originally composed by Cædmon, a supposedly illiterate cow-herder who was, according to Bede, able to sing in honour of God the Creator, using words that he had never heard before. It was composed between 658 and 680 and is the oldest recorded Old English poem, being composed within living memory of the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England. It is also one of the oldest surviving samples of Germanic alliterative verse.

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Hatton Gospels

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Christopher de Hamel Librarian and specialist in medieval manuscripts

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The Durham Plant-Name Glossary is an glossary translating Latin and Greek plant-names into Old English/Middle English. It was copied in Durham in the early twelfth century. Its principal sources were Greek-Latin-Old English plant-name glossary whose lemmata come from Dioscorides’s De materia medica, which also contributed lemmata and glosses to the Épinal-Erfurt glossaries, and those entries in the Old English Herbarium which translate Latin plant-names with vernacular plant-names. A text very like the Durham Plant-Name Glossary was one major source of the more extensive Laud Herbal Glossary.

The Harley Glossary is an Anglo-Saxon glossary, mostly providing glosses on Latin words. It mostly survives in the fragmentary British Library, MS Harley 3376, but fragments are also found in Lawrence, University of Kansas, Kenneth Spenser Research Library, Pryce P2 A: 1, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Lat. Misc. a. 3., fol. 49. The manuscript was produced in western England in the eleventh century, and has been argued to have been produced at Worcester Cathedral.

References

  1. ↑ "The Dialect of the Corpus Glossary on JSTOR". JSTOR   458625.
  2. ↑ Hartmann, R.R.K. (2003). Lexicography: Dictionaries, compilers, critics, and users. Routledge. p. 48. ISBN   9780415253666 . Retrieved 2017-01-08.
  3. ↑ Lindsay, W.M. (2014). The Corpus Glossary. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9781107637818 . Retrieved 2017-01-08.
  4. ↑ Phillip Pulsiano, ‘Prayers, Glosses and Glossaries’, in A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne (Oxford, 2001), pp. 209–30 (p. 218).
  5. ↑ Hessels, J.H. (2011). An Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9781108029087 . Retrieved 2017-01-08.

Bibliography

Parker Library, Corpus Christi College library

The Parker Library is the rare books and manuscripts library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It is known throughout the world due to its invaluable collection of over 600 manuscripts, particularly medieval texts, the majority of which were bequeathed to the College by Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker, a former Master of Corpus Christi College.

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