John Henry Hessels

“ From these glossed or annotated MSS. and interlinear versions glossaries were compiled; that is, the obscure and difficult Latin words, together with the interpretations, were excerpted and collected in separate lists, in the order in which they appeared, one after the other, in the MSS., without any alphabetical arrangement, but with the names of the authors or the titles of the books whence they were taken, placed at the head of each separate collection or chapter. In this arrangement each article by itself is called a gloss ”

“ Of Latin glossaries of the first four centuries of the Roman emperors few traces are left, if we except Verrius-Festus. Charis, 229. 30, speaks of glossae antiquitatum and 242. 10 of glossae veterum, but it is not known whether these glosses are identic, or in what relation they stand to the glossemata per litteras Latinas ordine composita, which were incorporated with the works of this grammarian according to the index in Keil, p. 6. Latin glosses occur in Ps.-Philoxenus, and Nonius must have used Latin glossaries; there exists a glossarium Plautinum (Ritschl, Op. ii. 234 sqq.) ”

“ A chief landmark in glossography is represented by the Origines (Etymologiae) of Isidore (d. 636) , an encyclopedia in which he, like Cassiodorus, mixed human and divine subjects together. In many places we can trace his sources, but he also used glossaries. ”

“ These glosses we know from (1) Codices Romani (15th and 16th century) ; (2) the Liber glossarum; (3) the Cod. Paris. nov. acquis. 1298 (saec. xi.) , a collection of glossaries, in which the Placidus-glosses are kept separate from the others, and still retain traces of their original order (cf. the editions published by A. Mai, Class. auct. iii. 427–503, and Deuerling, 1875; Goetz, Corp. v.; P. Karl, “De Placidi glossis,” Comm. Ien. vii. 2. 99, 103 sqq.; Loewe, Gloss. Nom. 86; F. Bücheler, in Thesaur. gloss. emend.) . ”

“ Of biblical glossaries we have a large number, mostly mixed with glosses on other, even profane, subjects, as Hebrew and other biblical proper names, and explanations of the text of the Vulgate in general, and the prologues of Hieronymus. ”

“ Its sources are the Liber glossarum (Loewe, Prodr. 234 sqq.) , the glossary preserved in the 9th-century MS. Lat. Monac. 14429 (Goetz, “Lib. Gloss.” 35 sqq.) , and the great Abavus Gloss (id., ibid. p. 37; id., Corp. iv. praef. xxxvii.) .
The Lib. glossarum has also been the chief source for the important (but not original) glossary of Papias, of A.D. 1053 (cf. Goetz in Sitz. Ber. Akad. Münch., 1903, p. 267 sqq., who enumerates eighty-seven MSS. of the 12th to the 15th centuries) , of whom we only know that he lived among clerics and dedicated his work to his two sons. ”

“ The Paulus-Glossary (cf. Goetz, “Der Liber Glossarum,” p. 215) is compiled from the second Salomon-Glossary (abacti magistratus) , the Abavus major and the Liber glossarum, with a mixture of Hebraica. Many of his glosses appear again in other compilations, as in the Cod. Vatic. 1469 (cf. Goetz, Corp. v. 520 sqq.) , mixed up with glosses from Beda, Placidus, &c. (cf. a glossary published by Ellis in Amer. Journ. of Philol. vi. 4, vii. 3, containing besides Paulus glosses, also excerpts from Isidore; Cambridge Journ. of Philol. viii. 71 sqq., xiv. 81 sqq.) . ”

“ There are a very great number of glossaries still in MS. scattered in various libraries of Europe, especially in the Vatican, at Monte Cassino, Paris, Munich, Bern, the British Museum, Leiden, Oxford, Cambridge, &c. Much has already been done to make the material contained in these MSS. accessible in print, and much may yet be done with what is still unpublished, though we may find that the differences between the glossaries which often present themselves at first sight are mere differences in form introduced by successive more or less qualified copyists. ”

“ In most cases the form of the lemma was retained just as it stood in its source, and explained by a single word (tesca: sancta, Varro vii. 10; clucidatus: suavis, id. vii. 107; cf. Isid. Etym. i. 30. 1, “quid enim illud sit in uno verbo positum declarat [scil. glossa] ut conticescere est tacere”) , so that we meet with lemmata in the accusative, dative and genitive, likewise explained by words in the same cases; the forms of verbs being treated in the same way. ”

“ While reading the manuscript texts of classical authors, the Bible or early Christian and profane writers, students and teachers, on meeting with any obscure or out-of-the-way words which they considered difficult to remember or to require elucidation, wrote above them, or in the margins, interpretations or explanations in more easy or better-known words. ”

“ Here come, in regard to time, some Latin glossaries already largely mixed with Germanic, more especially Anglo-Saxon interpretations: (1) the Corpus Glossary (ed. J. H. Hessels) , written in the beginning of the 8th century, preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; (2) the Leiden Glossary (end of 8th century, ed. Hessels; another edition by Plac. Glogger) , preserved in the Leiden MS. Voss. Qo. 69; (3) the Épinal Glossary, written in the beginning of the 9th century [8] and published in facsimile by the London Philol. Society from a MS. in the town library at Épinal ”

“ Next came his disciple Zenodotus of Ephesus (c. 280 B.C.) , one of the earliest of the Homeric critics and the compiler of Γλῶσσαι Ὁμηρικαί; Zenodotus in turn was succeeded by his greater pupil Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 200 B.C.) , whose great compilation Περὶ λέξεων (still partially preserved in that of Pollux) , is known to have included Ἀττικαὶ λέξεις, Λακωνικαὶ γλῶσσαι, and the like. ”

“ Many quotations from the Catholicon in Du Cange are really from Hugucio, and may be traced to Osbern. There exist many MSS. of this work, and the Mainz edition of 1460 is well known (cf. Goetz in Berichte üb. die Verhandl. der kön. sächs. Gesellsch. der Wiss., Leipzig, 1902) .
The gloss MSS. of the 9th and 10th centuries are numerous, but a diminution becomes visible towards the 11th. We then find grammatical treatises arise, for which also glossaries were used. The chief material was (1) the Liber glossarum; (2) the Paulus glosses; (3) the Abavus major ”

“ These derivationes were the basis for the grammatical works of Osbern, Hugucio and Joannes of Janua.
A peculiar feature of the late middle ages are the medico-botanic glossaries based on the earlier ones (see Goetz, Corp. iii.) . The additions consisted in Arabic words with Latin explanations, while Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic, interchange with English, French, Italian and German forms. ”

“ A. Dammann, De Festo Pseudo-philoxeni auctore, 12 sqq.; Goetz, Corp. ii. 1-212) to Philoxenus (consul A.D. 525) , clearly consists of two closely allied glossaries (containing glosses to Latin authors, as Horace, Cicero, Juvenal, Virgil, the Jurists, and excerpts from Festus) , worked into one by some Greek grammarian, or a person who worked under Greek influence (his alphabet runs A, B, G, D, E, &c.) ”

“ Other sources were the Differentiae, already known to Placidus and much used in the medieval glossaries; and the Synonyma Ciceronis; cf. Goetz, “Der Liber glossarum,” in Abhandl. der philol.-hist. Cl. der sächs. Gesellsch. d. ”

“ Loewe, Prodr. 168) . In the 19th century came Osann’s Glossarii Latini specimen (1826) ; the glossographic publications of Angelo Mai (Classici auctores, vols. iii., vi., vii., viii., Rome, 1831–1836, containing Osbern’s Panormia, Placidus and various glosses from Vatican MSS.) ; Fr. Oehler’s treatise (1847) on the Cod. Amplonianus of Osbern, and his edition of the three Erfurt glossaries, so important for Anglo-Saxon philology; in 1854 G. F. Hildebrand’s Glossarium Latinum (an extract from Abavus minor) , preserved in a Cod. Paris. lat. ”

“ Harl., which is the source of all the other MSS., belongs to the 7th century) ; cf. Goetz, Corp. ii. 215–483, 487–506, praef. ibid. p. xx. sqq. Furthermore, the bilingual medico-botanic glossaries had their origin in old lists of plants, as Ps.-Apuleius in the treatise De herbarum virtutibus, and Ps.-Dioscorides (cf. M. Wellmann, Hermes, xxxiii. 360 sqq., who thinks that the latter work is based on Pamphilus, q.v.; Goetz, Corp. iii.) ; the glossary, entitled Hermeneuma, printed from the Cod. Vatic. reg. Christ. ”

“ Funck; J. H. Gallée (Altsächs. Sprachdenkm., 1894) ; Gröber; K. Gruber (Hauptquellen des Corpus, Épin. u. Erfurt Gloss., Erlangen, 1904) ; Hattemer; W. Heraeus (Die Sprache des Petronius und die Glossen, Leipzig, 1899) ; Kettner; Kluge; Krumbacher; Lagarde; Landgraf; Marx ”