ABSTRACT
SOME ninety years ago W. M. Lindsay corrected scholars who found in the early English glossaries what they believed to be glossae collectae from Aldhelm's prose De Virginitate (Pdv). Tracing the glosses to other sources, Lindsay demonstrated that the lines of dependence ran in the exact opposite direction, that Aldhelm had borrowed from the glossaries, incorporating glossarial items sometimes in their original order. 1 Let me adduce a further example of Aldhelm's glossarial borrowing. In Chapter 34 of the Pdv, the saintly twins Cosmas and Damianus are able to heal a range of disabilities:
scilicet caecis et malagma monoptalmis impertiendo, mutis taciturnitatis ualuam reserando, surdorum auribus armonias rerum restaurando, balbis et blessis rectitudinem loquelae largiendo, claudos et mancos incolomitati pristinae restituendo, • • 2 mergummos ....
