The Épinal-Erfurt glossary is a glossary of Old English. It survives in two manuscripts (from Épinal and Erfurt).[1] It has been described as "the earliest body of written English",[2] and is thought to have been compiled at Malmesbury for Aldhelm (c. 639–709).[3]
Two main manuscripts of the Glossary exist today:[4]
Glossaire d'Épinal [fr], Épinal, France, Bibliothèque municipale, MS72 (2), fols. 94–107, around the turn of the seventh to eighth centuries, England (perhaps specifically Southumbria).
Erfurt, Germany, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, MS Amplonianus, MS 2o42, 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.[5]
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).
“The Épinal Glossary, Edited with Critical Commentary of the Vocabulary”, ed. by A. K. Brown, 3 vols (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1969).
^Brown, Alan K. (October 1977). "Reviewed Work: Old English Glosses in the Epinal-Erfurt Glossary by J. D. Pheifer". Speculum. 52 (4): 1031–1037. doi:10.2307/2855442. JSTOR2855442.
^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).