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ABSTRACT
This paper discusses Aldred’s glosses to the expanded forms of a series of abbreviations (or notae) of (Roman) legal terms included on fols 85r–86r of Durham, Cathedral Library, MS A.iv.19. By taking a novel approach to Aldred’s work and focusing on what his glossing practices can tell us about his scholarly interests rather than his taste for morphological and semantic structures, this paper shows that, unlike other glossators working south of the Humber, Aldred did not have an interest in the study of (Roman) legal matters and therefore his work should not be aligned with that of Southumbrian scholars, as has been the case in the past. Nonetheless, his work is still very important for our understanding of legal studies in pre-Conquest England: while the Southumbrian materials are dominated by Isidore’s Etymologies, Aldred’s list provides an insight into other sources available to pursue this field of study in early medieval England.
Acknowledgements
I am very thankful to Kees Dekker, Julia Fernández Cuesta, Karen Jolly and the anonymous readers for their suggestions and advice on previous drafts of this paper. Needless to say, any remaining shortcomings are my own.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 His hand has also been identified in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 819, where he added sporadic Latin glosses to Bede’s commentary on Proverbs. Neither “Collectar” nor “Ritual” are fully appropriate terms to describe the whole of Durham A.iv.19 (see below); accordingly, I follow Karen Jolly, Community, in referring to this manuscript by its classmark instead.
2 The dating of the two sets of glosses relies on the information that Aldred provides in the two colophons: in the colophon to the Lindisfarne Gospels (fol. 259r) he identifies himself as a presbyter, a term commonly translated as “priest”, while in the colophon to Durham A.iv.19 (fol. 84r) he tells us that he is a profast “provost” and that he has copied four prayers in honour of St Cuthbert on “Wednesday, Lawrence’s Feast Day (the moon being five nights old), before Tierce”, i.e. Wednesday 10th of August. This makes 970 the most likely year for his work on (at least this part of) Durham A.iv.19. If one allows for a number of years for him to progress up the community’s ranks, ca. 950 seems an appropriate date for the composition of the Lindisfarne gloss (see Ross, Stanley and Brown, 26–32; and Jolly, Community, 1–2). See, however, Roberts, 48–51, for an argument in favour of understanding presbyter as a higher rank than “priest”, perhaps “dean”, which would suggest that there does not need to be such a large chronological gap between the two glosses. On these titles, see further Tinti, 67–73, with references.
3 The publication of three collections of essays on Aldred’s work, particularly the glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels and their context, in quite close proximity is a testament to renewed interest in these texts: Fernández Cuesta and Pons-Sanz, Gameson and van Gelderen. The articles in these collections cover all the issues mentioned above (see also their references).
4 For a recent investigation of Aldred’s attempts to mirror the morphological structure of the Latin lemmata in his glosses, which often results in loan-translations not attested elsewhere, see Sauer and Schwan. Aldred’s multiple glosses are key in his exploration of the semantic structure of the Old English vocabulary; see Pons-Sanz, “Study”.
5 Maccini, 59–60.
6 Cp. the Dictionary of Old English, hereafter DOE, s.v. cȳþnes. The meanings of Old English terms starting in a to i mentioned in this paper follow the DOE; the meanings of other Old English terms follow Clark Hall.
7 For an edition of Aldred’s gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, see Skeat; for an edition of the Old English Gospels, see Liuzza.
8 On the significance of Roman Law in early medieval England, see Winkler. On the knowledge and use of canon law, see Helmholz, Oxford; and Elliott. On their interaction, see Helmholz, “Canon”. On the place of Roman law in early medieval studies, see Riché; and Brundage, ch. 2. On the significance of legal documents written in Latin for our understanding of the Latin culture in pre-Conquest England (particularly in the tenth century), see Lapidge, “Present,” 54–6.
9 See, for instance, the entries for these terms in the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, hereafter DMLBS. I use word field in this paper to refer to the group of words that share the same root, including simplexes as well as complexes (derivatives and compounds).
10 Dekker, “Aldred’s”; and id., “Vernacularization”.
11 Dekker, “Glosses,” 190.
12 Jolly, Community, 175–8.
13 This part of the manuscript is edited by Corrêa.
14 Corrêa, 79–80. Lindelöf edits the whole manuscript, including the Old English gloss. For a facsimile edition, see T. J. Brown. The additions to the original collectar have most recently been edited by Jolly, Community, 231–357, and this is the edition followed in this paper; references to the rest of the manuscript follow Lindelöf’s edition (in both cases, by page and line number). The manuscript is also available online: https://n2t.durham.ac.uk/ark:/32150/t2m0p096691f.html.
15 Dekker, “Anglo-Saxon”.
16 On the make-up of the manuscript and its historical context, see further Jolly, Community; and id., “Process,” 373–5. On the Northumbrian religious additions, see Jolly “Prayers”; and id., “Process”. On the educational additions, see Jolly, Community, ch. 5; Dekker, “Aldred’s”; and id., “Vernacularization,” 68–75.
17 Dekker, “Vernacularization,” 71.
18 Cp. Jolly, “Prayers”.
19 Dekker, “Vernacularization,” 66.
20 Cp. Jolly, Community, 175.
21 Dekker, “Aldred’s,” 583.
22 On this manuscript, see Keynes, 180–5; on its intellectual and educational context, see Gretsch, 352–9. These notes were copied by the main scribe, and, thus, were part of the original manuscript. See Rollason for a suggestion that this was not one of the manuscripts donated by Athelstan; in his view, this manuscript would have only made its way to Durham after the Norman Conquest.
23 See Dekker, “Vernacularization,” 70; and Jolly, Community, 173.
24 Jolly, Community, 175.
25 On the various types of abbreviations that one could find in Latin texts, see Lindsay, Notae; on the notae iuris and their varied nature, see his ch. 3.
26 These terms are L affectus “state or disposition of mind, mood”, beatus “blessed, happy”, egressus “digression”, lapis “stone”, lapsus “fault, error”, omnipotens “omnipotent”, salus “salvation; health”, spes “hope”, zabulus “devil”, zelus “jealousy; zeal” and zelotes “one that is jealous”. See further Stelten; and, specifically on the last three words, which are not recorded in the Notae Lindenbrogianiae (see below), Jolly, Community, 176, notes 95–6.
27 A straight apostrophe here and elsewhere in the paper reproduces a suspension mark.
28 Riché, 242.
29 Barney et al., 51–2. For the original Latin text, see Lindsay, Isidori.
30 See Leach, 8–9, for an edition of the letter.
31 For a list of manuscripts written or owned in England before 1100 which include (fragments of) Isidore’s Etymologies, see Gneuss and Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon, 916. It has, however, been suggested that an epitome, rather than a copy of the whole work, lies at the core of the Isidorian entries in the glossaries; see Lapidge, “Isidorian”, and Porter, “Isidore’s”.
32 For an edition, see Porter, Antwerp-London.
33 For an edition of the three Cleopatra glossaries, see Rusche, “Cleopatra”. For an edition of the Harley Glossary, see Oliphant. This glossary incorporates entries shared with the other glossaries associated with the Canterbury school, particularly the Corpus Glossary (see below, note 61), as well as entries not attested elsewhere and, hence, probably borrowed directly from the Etymologies rather than from the glossarial tradition; see Cooke. On the evidence that glossaries provide for legal studies in early medieval England, see Pons-Sanz, “Legal Glossaries”.
34 See Gameson, “Northumbrian,” 78 and 81; Gneuss and Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon, nos 821 and 885; and Lazzari, “Anglo-Saxon,” 66.
35 See the DOE, s.v. begangnes, sense a.
36 Barney et al., 128.
37 See, for instance, the following explanation in Ælfric’s Grammar: “circiter kalendas wið ðam monðe kalendae synd clypunga, forðan ðe ða ealdan men clypodon symle on niwum monan” (Zupitza, 270.15–17).
38 See Harmer, 129–30 and 432; cp. the DMLBS, s.v. privilegium, senses 1 and 2.
39 For the relevant Old English glosses to Aldhelm’s works, see Goossens, nos 4686 and 5270; and Napier, nos 4805 and 5394. On the close connection between the Third Cleopatra Glossary and Aldhelm’s works, see Rusche, “Cleopatra,” ch. 3.
40 Barney et al., 119.
41 For an edition of this glossary, see Lindsay, Corpus.
42 Jolly, Community, 176.
43 Mommsen, 285–8.
44 Cp. Cordoñer.
45 Haigh, 7–8.
46 In keeping with the aim of this paper, the discussion below focuses on the lexeme chosen to render each expanded form, not the specific grammatical form of each Old English lexeme, which does not always coincide with that of the Latin lemma: e.g. proprio, a masculine or neuter, dative or ablative, singular form of the adjective L proprius is rendered by syndrigne, an accusative, masculine, singular form of the adjective OE syndrig. Lack of grammatical correspondence between Latin and Old English forms is not uncommon in Aldred’s work (cp. Ross), although this particular example could also be associated with the trends towards accusative-dative syncretism that we find in Aldred’s work (cp. Fernández Cuesta and Rodríguez Ledesma).
47 Cp. the DOE, s.v. ingeseted.
48 Cp. genog fremað as the gloss for sufficit, where a form of OE fremman renders the root of the Latin verbal complex while OE genoh “enough” helps to capture the semantics rather than the morphology of the lemma.
49 See, for instance, 39.10, 41.21, 73.2 and 83.14. Outside Aldred’s works, the loan-translation OE weldǣd is preferred.
50 See Pheifer, no. 135, for the Old English entries in the Épinal and Erfurt Glossaries (Épinal, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 72 (2); and Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, MS Amplonianus, MS 2o 42, respectively); and no. B.68 in the Corpus Glossary.
51 Cp. Gneuss, “Study,” 22–5.
52 See Porter, Antwerp-London, nos 128–9; and Porter, “Legal,” 216–7. OE undergerefa is similarly a loan-translation, but one that attempts to capture what the role actually entailed; cp. Lazzari, “Bilingual”. It is only attested here and in Ælfric’s works, which is not surprising if we consider that Ælfric’s Glossary and the Antwerp-London Glossary are likely to derive from the same source, even though Ælfric does not share the glossator’s interest in Roman legal terms; see Pons-Sanz, “Legal Glossaries”. Interestingly, f'e froefrend is the first interpretamentum in one of the (empty) double glosses in the list: it is followed by ł (the standard abbreviation for L vel “or”) but no alternative rendering is provided. Given Aldred’s use of OE forelātteow to translate the same Latin term later on in the work, this context is in keeping with other empty glosses in Durham A.iv.19, where the presence of ł seems to indicate that there are other possible interpretations and that this is a term to ponder over, as suggested by Jolly, Community, 177, when discussing gescir ł as the empty double gloss for actionem (cp. Jolly, “Process,” 369).
53 Cp. Pons-Sanz, “Study,” 312–3.
54 Cp. Pons-Sanz, “Legal Vocabulary”. Jolly, Community, 178, points out that Aldred’s religious habits also come through when dealing with abbreviations that are not solely associated with the legal technolect: qs∼ (336.5) is expanded as quasi, a conjunction meaning “as if, as though”, but, when glossing it, Aldred seems to have thought of the abbreviation in a religious context, where it often means quaesumus “we request” (cp. Lindsay, Notae, 214–5), and glossed it accordingly (viz. we biddas) before recognising his mistake and adding the appropriate gloss for the expanded form he had actually written, viz. svæ (cp. OE swā “if, as if; so”).
55 E.g. both are given as alternatives in Aldred’s gloss to Matthew 8:10 in the Lindisfarne Gospels, although Aldred tends to prefer OE gelēafa to render L fides. On Aldred’s reliance on these terms to render L fides, see further Jolly, “Letter,” 132–5.
56 See Liebermann, I.182 and 216.
57 See the DOE, s.v. cȳþnes, sense 2.
58 Cp. Pons-Sanz, “Legal Vocabulary,” 581.
59 See the DOE, s.v. hēahsynn.
60 Aldred’s rendering of forms of L lex with OE ǣ might provide a further example of a Latin legal term being translated with an Old English word more closely associated with religious texts, but this is not as clear as with other terms; see Pons-Sanz, “Legal Vocabulary,” 575.
61 This is one of the cases in which the Harley Glossary does not simply follow the Corpus Glossary (see above, note 33), where an equivalent entry, capturing the more general sense of the term, reads as follows: cp. bona caduca: facultates quae non habent firmitatem (B.217).
62 Barney et al., 121.
63 Notably, in other glossaries OE gyfu / gifu receives some premodification in order to account for the more specific meaning of L dos as “dowry”: e.g. OE morgengyfu in the Antwerp-London Glossary, no. 333; and the possible compound weddgyfu in the Harley Glossary, no. D799 (see the DOE, s.v. gyfu, gifu, sense A.3.a.iv).
64 On the legal uses of OE āgnung, (ge)andett(i)an, fēoh, folc and hȳrnes, see their respective entries in the DOE; on the legal sense of OE þing, see Pons-Sanz, “Legal Vocabulary,” 572. Cp. as well the rendering of the polysemous causa (part of the legal phrase causa cognita) with intinga.
65 But cp. OE ǣht as the gloss for L res, discussed above.
66 See the DOE, s.v. geflit, sense 3.b.
67 Cp. DOE, s.vv. cāserdōm and cāsere.
68 Jolly, Community, 178; see also Jolly, Community, 176; and Jolly, “Process,” 363–5.
69 See, for instance, Pons-Sanz, Lexical, 265–9, on differences with regard to their use of Norse-derived terms.
70 Winkler, 106.
71 Dekker, “Aldred’s,” 590.
72 Jolly, Community, 155–62; and Jolly, “Process”.
73 On the community’s possessions, see Pons-Sanz, Analysis, 23–30.
74 See Lawrence-Mathers, 16–26, on what we know about the volumes that were in place in 1083, when William of St Calais replaced the community’s clerks with Benedictine monks. See Boyd, 56–7, for a list of the sources that Aldred might have consulted when glossing the Lindisfarne Gospels.
75 See Jolly, Community, 178; and Jolly, “Process,” 364–5.
76 Rusche, “Glosses,” 67–8; see also Dekker, “Glosses,” 192–3.
77 Boyd, 57 (see above, note 74).
78 For suggestions that Aldred might have worked under the influence of the Benedictine Reform, see Michelle Brown, 23–36; Cavill, 83 and 101; and Jolly, “Process,” 368–9.