Leiden Glossary

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The Leiden Glossary is a medieval glossary kept in Leiden University Library (Leiden Lat. Q. 69, Voss. Lat. 69). It gathers 48 groups of short notes, or glosses, that explain words from biblical, grammatical, and patristic texts.

It was based on an Anglo-Saxon example and was prepared around the year 800 at the Abbey of Saint Gall in what is now Switzerland. The notes are mainly Latin, but about 250 are in Old English. The glossary shows what the Canterbury library contained and what Anglo-Saxon churchmen were interested in reading.

Of the 48 groups, 19 focus on Bible lemmata, while the other 23 come from late antique and patristic writings. The work reflects the classroom teaching of Theodore of Tarsus and Adrian of Canterbury, who taught at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, so the glosses record how they explained texts to their students.

Theodore’s interest in Pope Gregory the Great is clear: eight glosses on Gregory’s Pastoral Care and many on his Dialogi. The many glosses on the Dialogi point to Canterbury’s emphasis on hagiography (saint’s lives). There is also a notable group on Rufinus’s Latin translation of Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica, where three different glossators appear, suggesting three distinct student responses to the teacher’s explanations.

The Leiden copy seems to come from an English exemplar brought to the continent. The Anglo-Saxon glosses fit with other Canterbury-style biblical commentary, and the Rufinus glosses align with a related manuscript from Lorsch (c. 800). The third Rufinus glossator may have had an interest in Greek, and scholar Michael Lapidge even suggests that this person could be Aldhelm.

The Lorsch manuscript is thought to copy the Canterbury exemplar used for Leiden Lat. Q. 69. An edition of the glosses appeared in 1901 (Plazidus Glogger), with a commentary in 1903, and a second edition by Jan Hendrik Hessels in 1906. There’s a famous anecdote about how Hessels learned of Glogger’s edition by chance while finishing his own work.

The Leiden Glossary gave its name to a large family of medieval Continental glossaries drawn from the same core material. Many of these have not yet been edited. Scholar Michael Lapidge has listed other manuscripts in the Leiden Family, such as Werden and Pfarrarchiv.