Glossa - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 529

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

GLOSSA. – A literal explanation of a term or phrase, from the Greek γλῶσσα “tongue,” hence also “dialect, idiom, or an ancient or rare expression” that requires a note in order to be understood; this note was likewise called “g.” In this latter sense γλῶσσα is used by the Greek grammarians; subsequently, “g.” or “glosseme” came to denote the explanation of the words itself. The words explained together with their explanation were called “glossaries.”
I. THE G. TO 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 archaic words or 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 f., Jerome added, to explain how the mound of stones erected by Laban and Jacob had been called by different words: « uterque iuxta proprietatem linguae suae », and at Jos. 3:16 b, to explain the words « mare solitudinis », he added: « quod nunc vocatur mortuum ». As regards the Hebrew text, masora (v.) itself is largely a glossary, as are also a large part of the commentaries of the rabbis.

When these g. became numerous, they were collected in 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 century). Other Greek glossaries or dictionaries were composed by Theodoret, Photius, Oecumenius, Zonaras, and especially Suidas (c. 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 Nazianzen and Dionysius the Areopagite, glosses were made.

The Onomastica sacra also belong to this class of glossaries or dictionaries; the oldest known of these comes from the school of Origen and was later reworked by St. Jerome (Liber interpretationis nominum Hebraicorum), followed by 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 a continuous commentary on the whole of Sacred Scripture, which enjoyed the greatest authority in the Middle Ages. It is printed in PL 113–14, and, together with the G. interlinearis, also in editions of the Postillae 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 research, especially that of Mrs B. Smalley, demonstrates that it was composed no earlier than the 12th century and is largely the work of Anselm of Laon and his school, who used existing works by Lanfranc, Berengar of Tours, and also Walafrid Strabo, namely extracts from his g. on Genesis and Exodus (v. CATENE BIBLICHE, III).

BIBL.: F. Vigouroux, Glosse, in DB, III, coll. 252–58; J. Beckmann, Glossen, in LThK, IV, coll. 238–41; B. Smalley, Gilbertus Universalis, bishop of London (1128-34), and the problem of the « G. ordinaria », in Rech. de théol. anc. et médiévale, 7 (1935), pp. 235–62; 8 (1936), pp. 24–60; id., La « G. Ordinaria ». Quelques

prédicateurs d'Anselme de Laon, ibid., 9 (1937), pp. 365–400;
J. de Blic, L'oeuvre exégétique de Walfrid Strabon, ibid., 16
(1949), pp. 5–28.
Arduino Kleinhans
II. THE G. TO TEXTS OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW. —
Byzantine legal literature has the analogous form of scholia, the most important and best known of which are those appended to the compilation of the Basilics, the famous reworking of the Corpus iuris civilis, which was carried out in the East by the emperors Basilio the Macedonian and Leone the Philosopher (v. BASILIO, SANTO).

In the early Middle Ages, elaboration in the form of annotations attached to the text continued in theological and religious schools and also passed into literary and rhetorical schools. In the field of law, and especially of civil law, the form of particular annotations perhaps developed from the slavish indications to the text (catapodai) permitted by Justinian.

Nevertheless, the expression g. did not come into use and was not characteristic until the Middle Ages, when it came to designate both the individual annotation on a text and the whole of that elaboration by means of particular interpretations, as well as the school and the teachers who chiefly employed that form. Glossators were subsequently called, by antonomasia, the scholars—especially the Bolognese—who, beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, authored g. on the texts of the Corpus iuris civilis. The initiator of this kind of commentary is Irnerio (v.), who, according to an erroneous but nevertheless very widespread opinion, would have been the first to gloss the Roman legal texts. Leaving aside the precedents constituted by the Lombard, Romagnol, and Tuscan schools, it seems that, precisely in Bologna, Irnerio was instead preceded by Pepo, a scholar described contradictorily in the sources as nullius nominis or as clarus Bononiensium lumen; but he certainly deserves the credit for having been the first to study those texts as a true jurist and for having, in this sense, given rise to a school. His direct Bulgaro (v.), Martino Cosia (v.), Ugo (v.), and Jacopo di Porta Ravegnana (v.); with them the school divided into two currents, one headed by Bulgaro and the other by Martino, with orientations respectively theoretical and inspired by the demands of equity. To the first of these currents belonged Rogerio, Alberico di Porta Ravegnana, and Giovanni Bassiani; to the second, Placentino, Pillio da Medicina, and Ottone Pavese.

The glossators deserve the credit for inaugurating a new period in the history of European law, since their teaching spread throughout Europe, through the school of Placentino at Montpellier and that of Vacario di Mantova at Oxford. Their work continued in the thirteenth century, in which Odofredo (v.) emerged; Accursio (v.), the author of the great apparatus that would take the name of g. ordinaria or magna.

The kinds of g. and the method of glossing were likewise characteristic of the school of canon law, when the first exegetical Graziano (v.) was undertaken, decretists (v.).

The method continued around the collections of the decretals that were subsequently produced, and whose particular explanations were likewise called glossae or apparatus glossarum; but the name glossators nevertheless remains, in the field of canon law, characteristically reserved for the first teachers of canon law, who were interpreters of the Decree of Graziano.

As regards their form, the g. were either interlinear or marginal, according as they were placed between the lines of the text or in its margin; and the distinction just mentioned does not always correspond to the other distinction between literal g. and dogmatic g. In the first kind, the better explanation or replacement of a word in the text and the reference to parallel or contradictory passages of the text are intended; whereas in the second there is an explanation of the principle contained in the text and a doctrinal discussion with the dogmatic resolution of contrary points.

As a characteristic literary form arising from the material juxtaposition of g., the other genre of the summae also arose in canonist doctrine: an ordered and synthetic exposition of the norms dispersed throughout the text, as Juncker clearly demonstrated for canon law.

Gloford. Exodi Cap. XXIII. DeLyra.

G. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I.

NIC. DE LYRA.
G. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I.

NIC. DE LYRA.
G. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I.

NIC. DE LYRA.

In the school of the decretists, besides the glossa, the most important literary genres of elaboration were: excerpta and exceptiones, summae, distinctions, 306, and historiae, borrowing the various kinds indicated—perhaps with the exception of the last—from the parallel school of civil law.

The method of glossing continued around the texts of the decretals (v. DECRESTALISTI).

BIBL.: F. Maassen, Beiträge zur Geschichte der juristischen Literatur des Mittelalters (Sitzungser, der K. Abad. der Wiss., Phil.-Hist. Kl., 24), Vienna 1857, pp. 4-84; J. F. Schulte, Zur Geschichte der Literatur über das Dehret Gratian I, II, III Beitr. (Sitzungser, der K. Abad. der Wiss., Phil.-Hist. Kl., 63), Vienna 1870, pp. 299-352; ibid., 64, ivi 1871, pp. 93-142; ibid., 65, ivi 1872, pp. 21-76; id., Die Glaue zum Dehret Gratian von ihren Anfängen bis auf die jüngsten Aussehen (Deutsche, der Phil. Hist. Kl. der K. Abad. der Wiss., 21), ivi 1872; H. Singer, Beiträge zur Würdigung der Decretistenliteratur, in Archiv für Katholisches Kirchenrecht, 69 (1895), pp. 369-417; 73 (1895), pp. 3-124; E. Besta, Storia del diritto italiano, II, 1, Milano 1925, p. 700-822; I. Juncker, Summen und Glossen, Beiträge zur Literaturgeschichte des ämonischen Rechts im 12. Jahrhundert, in Zeitschrift der Saxigny Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kan. Abt., 45 (1925), pp. 384-474; S. Kuttner, Repertorium der Kanonistik (1140-1154), Prudromar corporis glossarum, I (Studi e testi, 71), Città del Vaticano 1937; e inoltre la bibl. delle voci cui si rinvia nel testo. Antonio Rota