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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
In the Introduction to his Old English Glosses, published in 1900, the late Professor Napier asserted that Aldhelm glosses are to be found in the Corpus Glossary. He did not attempt any elaborate argument, but contented himself with giving a list of sixty-four instances in which the lemmata of the Corpus Glossary (none of the words, it is important to remark, being in the normal dictionary form, but all in inflexional forms differing from this) coincide entirely (i.e., including the inflexions) with words occurring in the text of the De Virginitate. Of these lemmata, twenty-three occur also in the Epinal and Erfurt Glossaries, and must therefore have existed in the common archetype of the three collections. Napier's conclusion was that the compiler of the archetype had before him one Aldhelm glossary, and that the author of the Corpus Glossary, who rearranged the material of the archetype and made extensive additions, had among his sources another and an independent glossary.
page 89 note 1 I adopt this form of the title of the prose treatise, in order to prevent confusion in the references with the metrical De Laudibus Virginum.
page 90 note 1 This MS., in addition to the valuable Aldblem glossary which I cite as Cloop., contains the alphabetical glossary WW., 338–472, with which I am not here concerned. It is highly important that the two should not be confused.
page 91 note 1 The blunder, strange to say, recurs in the portion of Cleop. dealing with the corresponding section of the poetical De Laudibus Virginum. From the apparatus criticus in Ehwald's edition, it appears not to be found in any extant MS. of Aldhelm.
page 92 note 1 To preclude a possible misapprehension, I may point out that the misunderstood Anastasius in the Aldhelmian glossae collectae used in Corpus was not the heading of the section (if it had been that it would have been De Anustasio), but a catchword at the top left-hand corner of a page, indicating that the section is continued from the preceding page. Instead, therefore, of proving that ‘De recessibus: of digelnessum’ was the first item of the section, and thus ruling out most of the correspondences roted above, but this catchword really proves just the contrary, In Cleop., it may be remarked, ‘De recessibus’ comes twenty-sixth in the section.
page 93 note 1 I do not italicize this word, because S 536, Strictis: getogenum’, although it is an Aldhelm gloss, belongs to ‘strictis mucronibus’ in 5218.
page 94 note 1 I have not fully investigated the relation between the second and third Erfurt Glossaries and the Corpus Glossary. My provisional hypothesis with regard to this allows me to treat the entries common to these glossaries and Corpus as on the same level with those peculiar to Corpus: and I do not think any error can result from my doing so.
page 97 note 1 There appears to be no accepted mode of referring to this glossary. Sweet's numeration in O.E.T. omits the purely Latin glosses, and is therefore unavailable for the present purpose.
page 98 note 1 Read audit with Corpus.
page 98 note 2 The word is glossed ‘scriptam’ in Cleop.
page 99 note 1 I must confess that letter C is a very unfair sample, for in every other letter the Aldhelm glosses are much less numberous, and instead of occurring in large blocks are dispersed (as if by design) among the rest. This may throw an interesting light on the methods of the compiler, but it certainly does not weaken my argument.
page 103 note 1 The numbers attached to the half-lines are those of the corresponding entries in the Corpus Glossary (ed. Hessels).
page 103 note 2 So Epinal; Gorpus omits the word; Leiden according to Hessels, has a contraction for tamen.
page 103 note 3 For Chrysoprasus.
