ABSTRACT
J. A. Kiff-Hooper specifies ‘contemporary’ glosses, and thereby begs the question of what happens when a manuscript is glossed later on. It would seem that a manuscript that did receive glosses after its original compilation could still be considered a classbook, one that perhaps originally was not intended for classroom use, but one that was appropriated for the school at a later date. As it happens, however, all extant illustrated Psychomachia manuscripts from Anglo-Saxon England are also extensively glossed with exactly the types of glosses one would expect a teacher to use, and on the strength of these glosses they could all be classified as classbooks. The Psychomachia thus occupies a singular place among illustrated Anglo-Saxon manuscripts: despite possessing a cycle of illustrations, it differs from other such manuscripts in that its text forms part of the curriculum; and despite forming part of the curriculum, it differs from other teaching texts because of the presence of a cycle of illustrations.
