1.3. Latin Lexica - Eleventh to Fourteenth Centuries

1.3.1. Elementarium doctrinae erudimentum of Papias

Papias's consciousness that he has created an original work is clear from his lengthy preface. In the following extract, Papias proudly states that his work is more than a simple glossary: [14]

"But now it appears I ought not to pass on without mention of the name of this Art which, although it was once called Glossary because it adhered literally and simply to the interpretation of each individual word, now that definitions and notations according to the rules as well as quotations and many other features of this sort have been added, may be more profoundly and appropriately be called a Basic Introduction to Education." [15]

Papias concludes his preface with a list of his sources (Daly/Daly 1964: 231); however, de Angelis (1977) clearly demonstrates that his principal source is the Liber glossarum or Glossarium Ansileubi (see 1.2.). Since the Liber glossarum is itself compiled from many sources, de Angelis also gives the original source from which each lemma is drawn, as in the following examples:

Grammatical material included by Papias comes, directly or indirectly, from Priscian, Fulgentius, Pompeius, Charisius, and others; medical terms generally from Hippocrates; names of trees, plants, gems, etc. from Pliny. Classical authors include Juvenal, Cicero, Virgil and others.

Papias was an important source for virtually all Latin lexicography until the fifteenth century. According to Bursill-Hall (1981) there are 110 existing manuscripts of the Elementarium. It was first printed in Milan in 1476, and printed again in Venice in 1485, 1491 and 1496. The latter edition was reprinted at Torino in 1966. In 1977, V. de Angelis published the first three volumes of a critical edition, covering the letter 'A'. Papias's work was also the basis of Universal Vocabulario, the first Latin-Spanish dictionary, printed in 1490 by Alfonso Fernández of Valencia (Lépinette 1992: 248; Lindemann 1994: 141).

1.3.2. Liber derivationum (Panormia) of Osbern of Gloucester

"The emergence of dictionaries as distinct from 'libri glossarum', or collections of glosses, is the result of the increasing use of the derivational principle as a method of extending the lexical knowledge of students whose Latin was relatively elementary. [...] Etymology became the key not only to generating vocabulary but to semantic precision. [...] In periods of superior Latinity the need was for explanations of rare or archaic words and the lemmata might be collected in alphabetical arrangement to constitute glossaries, a method which ran the risk of generalising many purely ad hoc meanings. For more elementary instruction, on the other hand, methods of word composition and generation were no longer simply treated orally in the classroom, but incorporated in reference works for private study and consultation and there arranged in 'articles' in which sequences of lexical items are connected by phrases such as inde, componitur, derivatur, dicitur, etc. The 'disciplina derivationis' became particularly widespread in the twelfth century."

There were two schools of thought in the twelfth century concerning the relationship of derivatio and etymologia. Weijers (1989: 147f.) explains that one group "took etymologia narrowly, as the simple explanation of a word by one or more other words according to its character or verbal likeness [...] whereas the [other] group took etymologia in a larger sense, including not only derivatio (which is in fact a form of etymology that derives one word from another thought to have existed earlier [...]), but also interpretatio (the explanation in a different language) and compositio (the composition of a word from several others)". [16]

The interest in the technique of derivation is clear from the many extant manuscripts containing collections of derivations, usually called simply derivationes (id. 1989: 148). At first, the collections of derivationes were kept separate from glossaries, but at some point, as the need developed for dictionaries containing virtually all Latin words together with all their possible inflections, lexicographers attempted to merge derivationes and glossaries. An important example is a compilation found in three twelfth-century manuscripts (mss. Munich 17151, 17153 and 17194). It consists of two parts: Expositiones, which is a simple glossary, and Derivationes, a collection of derivations (Marinoni 1968: 135f.).

It is likely that Claudianus Osbernus, or Osbern (c.1123-1200), a Benedictine monk at Gloucester, used the work described above when compiling his Liber derivationum, also called Panormia (CGL I: 204f.; Manitius 1931, III: 188, Marinoni 1968: 136). Osbern adopted the same method of separating derivations and glosses; he divided his work into letter-sections, called Tractati, and further divided each Tractatus into two parts (each in first-letter alphabetical order): Derivationes and Repetitiones. (The latter correspond to the Expositiones of the Munich manuscripts.) In the Derivationes the entries are grouped in word families, while the Repetitiones 'repeat' certain words from the derivation section, such as neologisms created by Osbern following the principles of derivation, as well as rare and difficult terms drawn from glossaries; however, they also include other terms which did not fit into the derivational method (Marinoni 1968: 137; Weijers 1989: 142).

Two lexicographical techniques - glossary and derivation - are juxtaposed in Osbern's work, without merging entirely. Marinoni (1968: 137) concludes that Osbern felt the need, on the one hand, to unite the two methods, and on the other hand, to keep them distinct from one another.

Osbern cites a number of classical and medieval authors, including Plautus, Persius, Augustine, Cicero, Ovid, Horace, Virgil, Juvenal, Donatus and Priscian, as well as Isidore, Hrabanus Maurus, Remigius on Donatus and Johannes Scotus on Martianus Capella.

According to Hunt (1991: I, 373, n.14), there are twenty-one surviving complete copies of the Panormia and six fragments. It has been printed once, by Cardinal Mai (1836: VIII), who did not know the author when he edited ms. Vatican Reg. lat. 1392 under the title Thesaurus novus latinitatis. He concludes from the number of romanisms and the few anglicisms in the text, that the author was an Anglo-Norman grammarian. Littré (1852: 8) also does not recognize the author, but speculates that it might be Alexander of Villedieu. It is Wilhelm Meyer (1874) who identifies the author of Panormia as Osbern of Gloucester.

1.3.3. Magnae derivationes of Hugutio of Pisa

Riessner (1965) identifies each source used by Hugutio in two articles from the Magnae derivationes: Augeo (194f.) and Aveo (196f.). Exhibit 2 presents a short extract from the latter:

Hugutio tried to arrange his entire work according to the derivational method, creating large families of words through derivation from one root (Weijers 1989: 143), and further embellishing the whole with a variety of quotations. Austin (1946: 104) found some 2500 quotations in Magnae derivationes, of which about eleven percent come from the Vulgate Bible. Principal authors include Plautus, Juvenal, Virgil, Martianus Capella, Persius, Ovid, Terence, and others. Looking at Osbern as an intermediate source, Austin notes (1946: 105) that Hugutio shows the least correspondence with Osbern in quotations from the Vulgate, but a high correspondence in quotations from many of the authors.

Lengthy articles, stuffed with derivations and details on orthography, phonetics and grammar, and grouped in first-letter alphabetical order, resulted in a work which was very difficult to consult. Yet in spite of its cumbersome format, Magnae derivationes was quickly and widely copied. Bursill-Hall (1981) identifies 210 extant manuscripts, most dating from the thirteenth century, in European libraries. Further evidence of its extensive use is the fact that it is cited as a source in virtually every major Latin or Latin-vernacular dictionary from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. However, Hugutio's work has never been printed. The Modern Language Association of America has produced Magnae Derivationes of Uguccione da Pisa: a reproduction of the MS Laud 626 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Collection of photographic facsimiles, no. 30, 1925.

Most present-day scholars, confronted with its dense articles and (to modern eyes) preposterous etymologies, share the opinion expressed by Daly/Daly (1964: 235) that Hugutio's Derivationes "was to enjoy a reputation and use out of all proportion to its real worth". However, Hugutio's work should be measured first in terms of its value at the time it was compiled. R.W. Hunt (1950: 149) explains:

"To the teachers of the early thirteenth century Hugutio's work appeared in a very different light. The masters of the French Cathedral schools in the twelfth century had done their work by lecturing very fully on texts. In the course of these lectures, many of which still survive, they had given etymologies and derivations of an elaborate kind, but they had never stopped to gather them together or to compile works of reference. [...] It was Hugutio's great service that he brought together many of these scattered derivations and combined them with the older glossarial matter in a single book arranged alphabetically."

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