BOB2023MOME

Glossaries are the dictionaries of the medieval period. They were created at a time when no comprehensive dictionary of the Latin language existed, but lexicographical resources were urgently needed to engage with the writings of Classical and Late Antiquity as well as near-contemporary texts. In the non-Romance speaking areas in north-western Europe, the compilers of glossaries were quick to have recourse to their vernacular languages. Glossaries are often the places in which these languages were put into writing for the first time. Hence, the effort to explain Latin vocabulary resulted in bilingual lexicography and in the establishment of the vernaculars as written languages in their own right. The negotiation of linguistic and cultural barriers lies at the centre of the glossaries. Consequently, medieval traditions of glossography are highly interconnected.

This volume represents the first reference work dedicated to medieval glossaries in English and related traditions, including other languages spoken in the British Isles (Celtic languages, Anglo-Norman) and the Germanic languages (High and Low German, Dutch, Scandinavian, Gothic). As such, it is intended as a vademecum for researchers in order to facilitate modern approaches to medieval glossography, lexicology and lexicography, which often require some familiarity with different traditions. Written by experts in the field, the fifty chapters of this volume highlight important characteristics and themes of medieval glossaries and outline different glossographic traditions; they facilitate access to individual glossaries, or groups of related glossaries, by providing detailed discussions of the texts, their sources, relationships and transmission; they also give an account of the current state of research and highlight important resources.

This book offers a study of the scientific landscape of medieval Bavaria during the higher Middle Ages. Based on manuscripts as well as medieval library catalogues, it tries to quantify the so-called ‘Discovery of Nature’ and tries to analyse it from the perspective of a monastic landscape in which the arrival of the astrolab in the 11th century marked a significant turning point. By introducing new methods and questions into the traditional body of Carolingian astronomy, monastic scholars of this area played a decisive, albeit neglected, role in the development of medieval astronomy.

The book reconstructs the studies of the monk Wilhelm von Hirsau who tackled some of the most urgent problems of astronomy of his time: correcting the dates of the solstices and finding latitude. These studies are then placed in the broader development of medieval science, particularly focusing on his sphaera, an instrument that has often been wrongly understood as a teaching device. In contrast, the present study argues that this instrument is not only William’s lost astronomical clock, but also the first example for stationary observational astronomy in medieval Europe as well as an important milestone towards the empirical astronomy of future centuries.