The Corpus Glossary is one of many
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
glossaries. Alongside many entries which gloss Latin words with simpler Latin words or explanations, it also includes numerous
Old English
Old English (, ), 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 was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
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 The Épinal-Erfurt glossary is a glossary of Old English. It survives in two manuscripts (from Épinal and Erfurt). It has been described as "the earliest body of written English", and is thought to have been compiled at Malmesbury for Aldhelm (c. 6 ...
(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.
* 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