2.5.3. Aalma series

Roques (1938: xvii) identifies eleven other manuscripts containing the Aalma lexicon:

It should be kept in mind that the dates given only represent the approximate dating of the copies. Roques believes (1938: xiii) that A1 is not an original version but a copy based on an earlier Latin-French adaptation of the Catholicon. Littré (1852: 29), in describing A4, remarks that despite the recent date of this copy (fifteenth century), the glossary contains words which belong to an older state of the language.

The prologue to A3 [36] recognizes the contribution of the Catholicon to the Aalma glossary, and also clearly indicates the glossary's didactic purpose:

"Afin que plus tost et plus prestement les escoliers et autres puissent mettre le latin en françois et le françois en latin des moz de gramaire et par especial du livre nommé Catholicon, En ce livret nommé le Mirouer des nouveax escoliers est mis le latin et aprés le françois des moz plus necessaires et acoustumez contenus ou dit Catholicon et d'aucuns autres moz. Et par la lettre de l'a.b.c. mise en la fin du mot est sceu de quel genre est le dit mot, car m. signifie le masculin genre et f. le feminin genre et semblablement des autres lettres pour les autres genres tant du nom comme du verbe."

It also points up the fact that the author of Aalma omits some proper nouns, rare words and derivations. On the other hand, he gives to Abavus, which is a sub-lemma of Avus, and to Abiectio, which is a sub-lemma of Abiectus in the Catholicon, the status of lemmata in alphabetical order in Aalma. Roques (1938: xvi) gives some other examples of this intervention.

Roques (1938: xviif.) demonstrates that, compared with articles in the Catholicon, the definitions in the Aalma glossary are significantly abridged. At the same time, he points out the wide variances among the texts:

Although A1 is the oldest and the most complete of the Aalma group, Roques (1938: xix) concludes that the other manuscripts are not copies of it, but rather represent different editions of a more complete version. He also points out (1938: xx) that "a reduced version" of Aalma is the source of the first printed Latin-French dictionary, known as Catholicon abbreviatum (see 4.0.).

We believe that three other manuscripts, which were apparently unknown to Roques, should be added to the twelve which he identifies as constituting the Aalma series. The first is described in Littré (1852: 33) as Catholicum or Dictionnaire latin-français, conserved by the Archives nationales de France, section historique, as ms. M.897 (A13). [37] Littré remarks that although the writing in the manuscript dates from the fifteenth century, the original appears to have been much older. He does not give the number of folios, and at the present time the manuscript is not available to us. [38]

According to Littré (1852: 36), the first word of the dictionary in A13 is alma - 'vierge', and the last word is zucara - 'sucre, une espice', which corresponds with the first and last entries in A1. There is also close correspondence among the other entries which Littré cites as being of interest: [39]

Littré (1852: 36) remarks that versus appear occasionally in A13 and cites three of them. They are identical to three versus occurring in A1.

The second manuscript which we believe to be a part of the Aalma series is found in ms. Metz, BM n° 1182 (A14). [40] It is slightly smaller (141 folios, two columns per page, thirty-two lines per column) than A1. A comparison of the first twenty-two lemmata from A14 with parallel lemmata in A1 shows a high degree of correspondence between them:

The principal differences are the lack of one lemma in each manuscript (Abienus in A14 and Abatis in A1), the lack of a French equivalent or definition in some articles in A14, and the inclusion of two versus memoriales in the latter. We believe, however, that A14 without doubt forms part of the Aalma series.

In the course of our research at l'Institut d'Histoire et Recherche des Textes, Paris, we learned of another likely addition to the Aalma inventory: ff.14-25 of ms. Paris, BN nouv.acq.fr. 24398 (A15), which contain a fragment of the dictionary. These twelve folios, which apparently date from the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, were found in the cover of l'Article 104 de la Série E des Archives du Cogner. They are all badly mutilated in the upper corners.

Exhibit 20 compares twenty-one lemmata beginning Mur- to Musca- from A15 with the corresponding lemmata from A1.

Although A15 lacks four lemmata which occur in A1 and the latter lacks two which occur in A15, and there are some differences in French equivalents, it is apparent there is a close relationship between the two manuscripts.

Naïs (1986) announced a project to create a concordance of Roques' edition of A1, but, as far as we know, the proposed project has not been completed.

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