ABSTRACT
The Epinal and first Erfurt glossaries are closely related copies of a common original which the second Corpus glossary combines with an equal amount of new material, largely from the same sources, and these, together with the second and third Erfurt glossaries and the three fragmentary Werden glossaries, the second and third of which are related to Erfurt II and Erfurt III as Erfurt I is related to Epinal, form W. M. Lindsay's 'English group' of alphabetical Latin glossaries.7 The English group differs from its continental relatives in having some Old English interpretations, and from the later Anglo-Saxon glossaries (except the Harley Glossary) in drawing on the
6 The date of Epinal-Erfurt is determined by the date of Aldhelm's prose De virginitate, a probable source, which was written between 675 and 69o according to Aldhelm: the Prose Works, trans. M. Lapidge and M. Herren (Cambridge, I979), pp. I4-I5, and that of the Epinal manuscript itself, copied s. vii/viii or s. viiex according to M. B. Parkes, 'Palaeographical Commentary', in Epinal, Erfurt, Werden, and Corpus, ed. Bischoff et al.; Parkes dates the Corpus manuscript in the second quarter of the ninth century (ibid.). These dates agree with those given by H.M. Chadwick, 'Studies in Old English', Trans. of the Cambridge Philo!. Soc. 4 (I899), 85-265, esp. 246 and 249, who dates Epinal-Erfurt 'about 67o-68o' on linguistic grounds and judges from the Old English interpretations that Corpus 'might be attributed to the ninth century with just as much probability as to the latter part of the eighth'.
