The Épinal-Erfurt glossary is a glossary of

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

. It survives in two manuscripts (from Épinal and Erfurt). It has been described as "the earliest body of written English", and is thought to have been compiled at

Malmesbury Malmesbury () is a town and civil parish in north Wiltshire, England, which lies approximately west of Swindon, northeast of Bristol, and north of Chippenham. The older part of the town is on a hilltop which is almost surrounded by the upp ...

for

Aldhelm Aldhelm (, ; 25 May 709), Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey, Bishop of Sherborne, and a writer and scholar of Latin poetry, was born before the middle of the 7th century. He is said to have been the son of Kenten, who was of the royal house of Wessex ...

(c. 639–709).

Manuscripts

Two main manuscripts of the Glossary exist today: * ,

Épinal Épinal (; ; ) is a Communes of France, commune in northeastern France and the prefecture of the Vosges (department), Vosges Departments of France, department. Geography The commune has a land area of . It is situated on the river Moselle, so ...

, France, Bibliothèque municipale, MS72 (2), fols. 94–107, around the turn of the seventh to eighth centuries, England (perhaps specifically

Southumbria The Southumbrians () were the Anglo-Saxon people occupying northern Mercia. The term might not have been used by the Mercians and was instead possibly coined by the Deiran or Bernician people as a territorial response to their own Kingdom of Nor ...

). *

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital (political), capital and largest city of the Central Germany (cultural area), Central German state of Thuringia, with a population of around 216,000. It lies in the wide valley of the Gera (river), River Gera, in the so ...

, Germany, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, MS Amplonianus, MS 2^o42, fols. 1–14v, from the first quarter of the ninth century. (This contains other glossaries too; the one shared with the Épinal manuscript is known as "Erfurt I".) However, parts of the glossary are also found in other manuscripts, most importantly the Second Corpus Glossary, which contains amidst other glosses a complete text of the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, descended independently from a common exemplar.Phillip Pulsiano, ‘Prayers, Glosses and Glossaries’, in ''A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature'', ed. by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne (Oxford, 2001), pp. 209–30 (p. 218).

Facsimiles

* ''The Épinal Glossary, Latin and Old English'', ed. by Henry Sweet, Early English Text Society, o.s. 79b (London: Trübner, 1883). * Bischoff, Bernhard, Mildred Budny, Geoffrey Harlow, M. B. Parkes and J. D. Pheifer (eds), ''The Épinal, Erfurt, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries: Épinal Bibliothèque Municipale 72 (2), Erfurt Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Amplonianus 2o 42, Düsseldorf Universitätsbibliothek Fragm. K 19: Z 9/1, Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cgm. 187 III (e.4), Cambridge Corpus Christi College 144'', Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 22 (Copenhagen, 1988).
Online facsimile of the Épinal MS

Editions

''The Oldest English Texts''
ed. by

Henry Sweet Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref> As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic lang ...

Early English Text Society The Early English Text Society (EETS) is a text publication society founded in 1864 which is dedicated to the editing and publication of early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes contain editions of ...

, o. s. 83 (London: Oxford University Press, 1885), pp. 35–107. * “The Épinal Glossary, Edited with Critical Commentary of the Vocabulary”, ed. by A. K. Brown, 3 vols (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1969). *
Old English Glosses in the Epinal-Erfurt Glossary
', ed. by J. D. Pheifer (Oxford:

Clarendon Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 1974), . *
The Épinal-Erfurt Glossary Project: A Critical Edition of the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary
', ed. by Michael W. Herren, David W. Porter, Hans Sauer (Toronto: The Dictionary of Old English, 2019-).

Commentaries

References

Old English dictionaries 7th-century manuscripts 9th-century manuscripts Glossaries Old English literature {{Old English Glossaries