The Latin and Old English glosses in thears Tatuini

Abstract

The practice of the late classical grammarians of providing copious lists of frequently archaic and obscure examples of the parts of speech was subjected to varying treatment at the hands of their medieval adapters. Some omitted these lists altogether; some substituted commoner examples current in ecclesiastical vocabulary; others incorporated the classical material almost unaltered into their own works. Thears grammatica Tatuini, a lengthy treatise by the Mercian scholar Tatwine, archbishop of Canterbury from 731 until his death in 734, contains extensive lists drawn from such authors as Charisius and Phocas. Early in the textual tradition of all the surviving copies of this work several of the examples in the first,de nominesection were supplied with glosses, five in Latin and eighteen in Old English. Although they have been mentioned several times, no commentary on them, nor even an adequate transcription of them, has been published. Yet the glosses – particularly those in Old English – are of considerable interest, not only for their contribution to Old English lexicography, but also for the glimpse they afford of one aspect of the study of Latin in early-eighth-century England.