The Corpus Glossary is one of many
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...
glossaries. Alongside many entries which gloss Latin words with simpler Latin words or explanations, it also includes numerous
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
glosses on Latin words, making it one of the oldest extant texts in the English language.
History
The manuscript of the Corpus Glossary, Cambridge Corpus Christi College, 144, dates to the 8th century.
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.
[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).] It also shares much material with the
Leiden Glossary.
References
Bibliography
Online facsimileat the
Parker Library, Corpus Christi College
The Parker Library is a library within Corpus Christi College, Cambridge which contains rare books and manuscripts. It is known throughout the world due to its invaluable collection of over 600 manuscripts, particularly medieval texts, the ...
.
* Bischoff, Bernhard, Mildred Budny, Geoffrey Harlow, M. B. Parkes and J. D. Pheifer (eds), ''The Épinal, Erfurt, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries: Épinal Bibliothèque Municipale 72 (2), Erfurt Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Amplonianus 2o 42, Düsseldorf Universitätsbibliothek Fragm. K 19: Z 9/1, Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cgm. 187 III (e.4), Cambridge Corpus Christi College 144'', Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 22 (Copenhagen, 1988).
* Lindsay, W. M. (ed.),
The Corpus Glossary' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921).
* Lindsay, W. M., ''The Corpus, Épinal, Erfurt and Leyden Glossaries'', Publications of the Philological Society, 8 (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), repr. in Wallace Martin Lindsay, ''Studies in Early Mediaeval Latin Glossaries'', ed. by Michael Lapidge (Aldershot, 1996), ch. 11 (with index to lemmata, omitted from original publication, at end of volume).
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Glossaries
Old English literature