The Bodley Glossaries: The Glossaries in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 730
Publications of the Dictionary of Old English 11 • xii, 140 pp. • ISBN 978-0-88844-911-5 • Cloth • $90.00
Between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries, scribes at the Cistercian abbey of Buildwas in the West Midlands copied four glossaries at the end of a manuscript containing the De institutis coenobiorum and Conlationes by John Cassian. These glossaries, preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 730, offer precious evidence of the continuity of the Old English glossarial tradition well into the Middle English period. At the same time, in their Latin (and sometimes Greek) entries followed by Latin, Anglo-Norman, and English glosses, they bear witness to the multilingual environment of their time and place.