ABSTRACT
Some twenty years ago the late Professor Alistair Campbell observed that there were two broad stylistic traditions of Anglo-Latinity: the one, which he called the classical, was seen to have its principal proponent in Bede; the other, which he called the hermeneutic, was said to have its principal proponent in Aldhelm. I The following discussion is an attempt to clarify Campbell's broad distinction by reference to a variety of tenth-century Anglo-Latin texts which may be described as 'hermeneutic'. By 'hermeneutic' I understand a style whose most striking feature is the ostentatious parade of unusual, often very arcane and apparently learned vocabulary. 2 In Latin literature of the medieval period, this vocabulary is of three general sorts: 3 (I) archaisms, words which were not in use in classical Latin but were * exhumed by medieval authors from the grammarians or from Terence and Plautus; (2) neologisms or coinages; and (3) loan-words. In the early medieval period (before, say, I Ioo) the most common source of loan-words was Greek. This was a result of the universal prestige which Greek enjoyed, particularly after the Carolingian period, when a very few exceptional men seemed to have a fundamental knowledge of the language. 4 But sound knowledge of Greek was always restricted to a privileged minority (prin-' 'Some Linguistic Features of Early Anglo-Latin Verse and its Use of Classical Models', TPS
I95 3, I I, and (ed.) Chronicon JEthelweardi (London, I962), p. xlv. 2 So Campbell apparently understood the term, though he did not define it. It implies that the
vocabulary is drawn principally from the hermeneumata, a name by which certain Greek-Latin glossaries are designated. But the term is not entirely satisfactory (cf. the usual meaning of epp.TJVEVw); after some reflection I have adopted it because its use is sanctioned by earlier students of Anglo-Latinity. Another possible term would be 'glossematic'.
