GLOSS. - Literal explanation of a term or a phrase, from the Greek γλῶσσα "tongue", hence also "dialect, idiom, manner or word that is ancient or rare" which, to be understood, requires a note, which was also called a "g." In this latter meaning γλῶσσα is used by the Greek grammarians; then "g." or "glosseme" is what the explanation of the words itself is called. Words explained together, with the explanation, were called "glossaries".
I. THE GLOSSA ON THE BIBLE
Explanations of certain words, inserted into the text, are found in all ancient books and also in the Bible, because copyists or readers wrote explanations of antiquated words, of names of places that had been changed, in the margin or even in the text itself. Thus, for example, in the Vulgate, Gen. 31, 47 ff. Jerome added, to explain how the heap of stones erected by Laban and Jacob had been called by different words: "uterque iuxta proprietatem linguae suae," and Jos. 3, 16b, to explain the words "mare solitudinis," he added: "quod nunc vocatur mortuum." As for the Hebrew text, the masorah (v.) itself is for the most part a glossary, as is also a large part of the rabbis' commentaries.
When these g. became numerous, they were collected into separate works called "glossaries," and their authors were called "glossators." The oldest known Greek glossary is that of Hesychius of Alexandria, in which, however, the sacred g. were added later (5th cent.). Other Greek glossaries or dictionaries were composed by Theodoret, Photius, Oecumenius, Zonaras, and especially Suidas (ca. 976), in whose glossary the biblical g. constitute an important part, generally derived from Hesychius and other Greek interpreters. Among the works of the Fathers, especially those of Gregory of Nazianzus and of Dionysius the Areopagite were glossed.
To this class of glossaries or dictionaries also belong the Onomastica sacra, the oldest known of which comes from the school of Origen and was later reworked by St. Jerome (Liber interpretationis nominum Hebraicorum), then the topomastic dictionary of Eusebius of Caesarea translated by St. Jerome (De situ et nominibus locorum Hebraicorum).
For the Latin text of the Bible we have the G. ordinaria and the G. interlinearis. The former is not a glossary or dictionary in the proper sense of the word, but is a continuous commentary on the whole of Sacred Scripture, which in the Middle Ages enjoyed very great authority. It is printed in PL 113-14, and, together with the G. interlinearis, also in editions of the Postils of Nicholas of Lyra. While the G. interlinearis is attributed to Anselm of Laon, the ordinaria was commonly ascribed to the abbot of Reichenau Walafrid Strabo (d. 17 July 849), but recent investigations, especially by Mrs. B. Smalley, show that it was composed no earlier than the 12th century, and is in large part the work of Anselm of Laon and his school, who used already existing works of Lanfranc, Berengar of Tours and also of Walafrid Strabo, that is, extracts from his g. on Genesis and Exodus (v. CATENE BIBLICHE, III).
Bibliography6 works
Arduino Kleinhans
II. THE G. TO TEXTS OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW
Byzantine legal literature has the analogous form of scholia, of which the most important and best known are those appended to the compilation of the Basilica, the famous reworking of the Corpus iuris civilis, which was carried out in the East through the work of the emperors Basil the Macedonian and Leo the Philosopher (v. BASILIO 1).
In the early Middle Ages the elaboration in the form of annotations attached to the text continued in the theological and religious schools and passed also to the literary and rhetorical ones. In the field of law, and especially of civil law, perhaps the form of particular annotations developed from the word-for-word indications to the text (catapodai) permitted by Justinian.
Nevertheless the expression g. came into use and was characteristic only in the Middle Ages, when it came to designate both the single particular annotation to a text and the whole of that elaboration by way of particular interpretations, as well as the school and the masters who principally made use of that form. Glossators were then called, by antonomasia, the scholars — especially the Bolognese — who, from the 11th-12th century onward, were authors of g. on the texts of the Corpus iuris civilis. The initiator of this kind of commentary is commonly considered to be Irnerius (v.), who, according to an erroneous but nonetheless widespread opinion, would have been the first to gloss the Roman legal texts. Not to mention the precedents constituted by the Lombard, Romagnol and Tuscan schools, it appears that, precisely in Bologna, Irnerius was instead preceded by Pepo, a scholar described contradictorily in the sources as nullius nominis or as clarus Bononiensium lumen; but to him certainly belongs the merit of having been the first to study those texts as a true jurist and of having in this sense given origin to a school. His direct pupils were the quattuor doctores Bulgarus (v.), Martinus Gosia (v.), Hugo (v.) and Jacobus de Porta Ravegnana (v.); with whom the school divided into two currents, one headed by Bulgarus, the other by Martinus, having a respectively theoretical orientation and one inspired by the requirements of equity. To the first of these currents belong Rogerius, Albericus de Porta Ravegnana and Johannes Bassianus; to the second Placentinus, Pillius de Medicina and Otto Papiensis.
To the glossators goes the merit of having inaugurated a new period in European legal history, since their teaching spread throughout Europe, with the school of Placentinus at Montpellier and of Vacarius of Mantua at Oxford. Their work continues in the 13th century, in which the figures of Azo and Odofredus (v.) emerge; and it closes with Accursius (v.), the author of the great apparatus which would take the name of g. ordinaria or magna.
The kind of g. and the method of glossing was likewise characteristic of the school of canon law, when the first exegetical elaboration around the Decretum of Gratian (v.) was undertaken, whose glossators were precisely called decretists (v.).
The method continued still around the collections of decretals which were made subsequently and whose particular explanations were also called glossae or apparatus glossarum, but the name of glossators nevertheless remains, in the field of canon law, typically reserved to the first masters of canon law, who were interpreters of the Decretum of Gratian.
As for their form, the g. were either interlinear or marginal, according to whether they were placed in the interline of the text or in the margin of it; and the aforesaid distinction does not always correspond to the other of literal g. and dogmatic g., in the first kind of which is meant the better explanation or substitution of a word of the text and the citation of parallel or contrary passages of the text; while in the second there is the explanation of the principle contained in the text and the doctrinal discussion with the dogmatic resolution of contrary points.
As a characteristic literary genre, deriving from the material juxtaposition of g., there also arises in canonist doctrine the other genre of the summae, an ordered and synthetic exposition of the norms scattered through the text, as Juncker clearly demonstrated for canon law.
In the school of the decretists, besides the glossae there were as more important literary genres of elaboration: excerpta and exceptiones, summae, distinctiones, quaestiones, brocharda, casus and historiae, borrowing the various kinds indicated, except perhaps the last, from the parallel school of civil law.
The method of glossing continued around the texts of the decretals (v. DECRETALISTI).
Bibliography11 works
Antonio Rota
