¹ This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at the meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in Toronto, , 17–1904 1997.Google Scholar

² Beda. Opera Didascalica. Pars I, ed. Jones, C. W., CCSL 123A (Turnhout, 1975), 60–114Google Scholar; cf. in general Palmer, R. B., ‘Bede as Textbook Writer: a Study of his De arte metrica’, Speculum 34 (1959), 573–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the specific problem of Bede's use of Vergil and his attitude towards the pagan classics, see Wright, N., ‘Bede and Vergil’, Romanobarbarica 6 (1981–1982), 361–79Google Scholar; repr. in his History and Literature in Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval West (Aldershot, 1995), no. XI.Google Scholar

³ See generally Herren, M. W., ‘Die Anfänge der Grammatikstudien auf den Britischen Inseln: von Patrick bis zur Schule von Canterbury’, ScriptOralia 43 (Tübingen, 1992), 57–79Google Scholar; repr. in his Latin Letters in Early Christian Ireland (Aldershot, 1996), no. II.Google Scholar

⁴ See, in general, Funaioli, G., Esegesi virgiliana (Milan, 1930).Google Scholar

⁵ Fabii Planciadis Fulgentii V.C. Opera, ed. Helm, R. (Leipzig, 1898)Google Scholar; translation in Whitbread, L. G., Fulgentius the Mythographer (Columbus, OH, 1971).Google Scholar

⁶ See the new edition in the Belles Lettres series of ‘the First Vatican Mythographer’ by Zorzetti, N.: Le premier mythographe du Vatican (Paris, 1995), esp. p. xiGoogle Scholar. The editor situates this recension between Remigius of Auxerre and the Ecloga Theoduli.

⁷ The standard edition is still that of Lindsay, W. M., Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1911)Google Scholar. A new multi-volume edition, with modern language translations, is being produced in the Belles Lettres series, Paris, under the general editorship of J. Fontaine.

⁸ De universo libri XXII, PL 111, 9–614Google Scholar; see esp. XV.6, ‘De diis gentium’ (ibid. cols. 426–36). A new edition of this work is being prepared by W. Schippers, Memorial University, Newfoundland.

⁹ See especially Fontaine, J., ‘Le “sacré” antique vu par un homme du Vile siècle: le livre VIII des Étymologies d'Isidore de Séville’, Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé, Lettres d'humanité 48 (1989), 396–405Google Scholar; further, MacFarlane, K. N., ‘Isidore of Seville on the Pagan Gods (Origines VIII.11), Trans. of the Amer. Philosophical Soc. 70.3 (1980), 3–40.Google Scholar

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¹¹ Incerti de Sodoma, ed. Peiper, R. in Cypriani Galli Poetae Heptateuchos, CSEL 23 (Vienna, 1881), 217–18, lines 99–113Google Scholar; Ovid, , Met. II. 19–400.Google Scholar

¹² Ep. I, ed. Ehwald, R. in Aldhelmi Opera, MGH, Auct. antiq. 15 (Berlin, 1919), 475–8Google Scholar; Lapidge, M. and Herren, M. W., Aldhelm: the Prose Works (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 152–3.Google Scholar

¹³ Ep. II, ed. Ehwald, , p. 478Google Scholar; Lapidge, and Herren, , Prose Works, pp. 153–4.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ep. I, ed. Ehwald, , p. 477Google Scholar: ‘… quomodo videlicet ipsius metricae artis clandistina instrumenta litteris, logis, pedibus, poeticis figuris, versibus, tonis, temporibus conglomerentur’; Lapidge, and Herren, , Prose Works, p. 152.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See the Index Locorum in Ehwald's, edition, pp. 544–6Google Scholar. For a detailed study of the knowledge of Juvencus and Sedulius in Anglo-Saxon England, see Lapidge, M., ‘The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in his Anglo-Latin Literature, 600–899 (London, 1996), pp. 470–83.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ehwald, ibid.

¹⁷ See esp. no. XCV, ‘Scylla’, cited and discussed below, pp. 95–6Google Scholar. If Aldhelm knew Ovid directly, such knowledge would have been unique in his period. There are no full manuscripts of the Metamorphoses prior to the eleventh century, with only fragments and scattered quotations surviving from the Carolingian period. See Tarrant's, R. J. entry in Texts and Transmission: a Survey of the Latin Classics, ed. Reynolds, L. D. (Oxford, 1983), pp. 276–84Google Scholar. Manitius, M., Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Munich, 1911–1931) I, 137Google Scholar, points out that examples of verses drawn from Ovid are wholly lacking in the metrical portions of the Epistola ad Acircium (i.e. the De metris and the De pedum regulis).

¹⁸ Porsia, F., Liber monstrorum: Introduzione, edizione, versione e commento (Bari, 1976), p. 64Google Scholar; Lapidge, M., ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm, the Liber monstrorum and Wessex’, in his Anglo-Latin Literature, 600–899, pp. 271–312, at 289.Google Scholar

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²⁰ Priscian manuscripts of the Carolingian period, especially those associated with the schools of north-eastern France, are rich in mythological glosses. These will be listed and discussed in a forthcoming study on the transmission and reception of Graeco-Roman mythology in western Europe in the period 600–900.

²¹ Bischoff, B., ‘Die europäische Verbreitung der Werke Isidors von Sevilla’, in his Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966–1981) I, 171–94, esp. 180–6.Google Scholar

²² Herren, M. W., ‘On the Earliest Irish Acquaintance with Isidore of Seville’, Visigothic Spain: New Approaches, ed. James, E. (Oxford, 1980), pp. 243–50Google Scholar; repr. Herren, , Latin Letters, no. III, pp. 243–50.Google Scholar

²³ Carley, J. P. and Dooley, A., ‘An Early Irish Fragment of Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae’, The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey. Essays in Honour of the Ninetieth Birthday of C. A. Raleigh Radford, ed. Abrams, L. and Carley, J. P. (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 135–61.Google Scholar The manuscript was certainly at Glastonbury in the later Middle Ages (ibid. pp. 136–7).

²⁴ Howe, N., ‘Aldhelm's Enigmata and Isidorian Etymology’, ASE 14 (1985), 37–59.Google Scholar

²⁵ Lapidge, M., ‘An Isidorian Epitome from Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Latin Literature, 600–899, pp. 183–223, at 190–1.Google Scholar

²⁶ See Porsia, , Liber monstrorum, p. 67 and app. font., passim.Google Scholar

²⁷ Bonifatii (Vynfreth) Ars Grammatica, accedit Ars grammatica, ed. Gebauer, G. J. and Löfstedt, B., CCSL 133B (Turnhout, 1980), 109–13.Google Scholar

²⁸ Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 1750; Lowe, E. A., Codices Latini Antiquiores, 11 vols, and Supp. (Oxford, 1934–1971; 2nd ed. of vol. II, 1972Google Scholar) [hereafter CLA], Supp. no. 1674. For a full discussion, see Lapidge, , ‘An Isidorian Epitome’.Google Scholar

²⁹ See the entry by Marshall, P. K. in Texts and Transmission, ed. Reynolds, , p. 385.Google Scholar

³⁰ Herren, M. W., ‘Classical and Secular Learning among the Irish before the Carolingian Renaissance’, Florilegium 3 (1981), 118–57, at 136Google Scholar; repr. Latin Letters, no. I, p. 35.Google Scholar

³¹ Lapidge, , ‘An Isidorian Epitome’, p. 195.Google Scholar

³² ‘Quid Probus atque Focas, Donatus Priscianusve,/Servius, Euticius, Pompeius, Comminianus’, Versus de patribus regibus et sanctis Euboricensis ecclesiae, ed. Dümmler, E., MGH PLAC I, 204, lines 1555–6Google Scholar; see also the discussion in the edition by Godman, P., Alcuin: the Bishops, Kings and Saints of York (Oxford, 1982), p. 127, n. to line 1557.Google Scholar

³³ Formerly Spangenberg, Pfarrbibliothek, s.n. (CLA Supp. no. 1806). This manuscript should now be identified as Marburg, Hessisches Staatsarchiv 319 Pfarrei Spangenberg Hr Nr. 1 (s. viii¹); Bischoff, cf. B., Brown, V. and John, J., ‘Addenda to Codices latini antiquiores (II)’, MS 54 (1992), 286–307, at 307Google Scholar; Lapidge, , ‘An Isidorian Epitome’, p. 195 and n. 43.Google Scholar

³⁴ Herren, , ‘Classical and Secular Learning’, p. 133Google Scholar; repr. Latin Letters, no. I, p. 27.Google Scholar

³⁵ Pheifer, J. D., Old English Glosses in the Epinal—Erfurt Glossary (Oxford, 1974), p. xlviiGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Early Anglo-Saxon Glossaries and the School of Canterbury’. ASE 16 (1987), 17–44, at 28–9 and 44.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Ed. Ehwald, , p. 167.Google Scholar

³⁹ Lapidge, , ‘Beowulf’, p. 288.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For a summary of what is known about this writer, see the introduction to the edition by Prinz, O., Die Kosmographie des Aethicus (Munich, 1993), pp. 1–84.Google Scholar (I am preparing a new edition for the Oxford Medieval Texts series.)

⁴¹ Ed. Prinz, , pp. 178–81Google Scholar; see also the Index Locorum, pp. 327–8.Google Scholar

⁴² Porsia, , Liber monstrorum, pp. 66–7.Google Scholar

⁴³ Sometimes explicitly by author and work, as at De virginitate, c. IX (ed. Ehwald, , p. 237): ‘… siquidem beatus Augustinus in libro civitatis Dei…’Google Scholar

⁴⁴ For a brief biography of Aldhelm and list of his writings, see Lapidge, and Herren, , Prose Works, pp. 5–19.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ See especially Lapidge, M., ‘The Hermeneutic Style in Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Literature’, in his Anglo-Latin Literature, 900–1066 (London, 1993), pp. 105–49.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Manitius, , Geschichte I, 138.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ep. 3, ed. Ehwald, , p. 479Google Scholar. ‘What, pray, I beseech you eagerly, is the benefit to the sanctity of the orthodox faith to expend energy by reading and studying the foul pollution of base Proserpina, which I shrink from mentioning in plain speech; or to revere, through celebration in study, Hermione, the wanton offspring of Menelaus and Helen, who, as the ancient texts report, was engaged for a while by right of dowry to Orestes, then, having changed her mind, married Neoptolemus; or to record — in the heroic style of epic — the high priests of the Luperci, who revel in the fashion of those cultists that sacrifice to Priapus …’ (Lapidge, and Herren, , Aldhelm: the Prose Works, p. 154).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ed. Ehwald, , p. 100Google Scholar. ‘In the writings of the ancients I am conceived as the child of Thaumas’ (Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 71).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 248Google Scholar, n. 4, where it is suggested that Aldhelm knew the ‘African Anthology’.

⁵⁰ Ed. Ehwald, , pp. 101–2Google Scholar. ‘The stupid ancients said that we were the offspring of Atlas’ (Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 72).Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ed. Ehwald, , p. 72.Google Scholar

⁵² Ed. Ehwald, , p. 109Google Scholar: ‘I am two-shaped, being different with respect to my face and my limbs: I am armed with horns, but my other limbs constitute a terrifying man. I am known by report through the fields of Cnossos, having been born a bastard of an unknown father in Crete. My name is taken from that of man and beast together’ (Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 75).Google Scholar

⁵³ Ed. Ehwald, , p. 117Google Scholar. ‘I was born in the forest, green on a leafy bough, but fortune changed my condition in due course, since I move my rounded shape twirling through the smooth-spun thread; from this is made the royal covering of a robe. No hero (anywhere) is girded by a belt as long as mine [scil. the distaff]. They say that the Parcae decree the fates of men through me’ (Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 79).Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ed. Ehwald, , p. 123Google Scholar. ‘Although deceitful poets might sing in their verses (that I am) the weapon-bearer of unlucky Jove and the abductor of Ganymede, I was not that bird by whom the youth [i.e. Ganymede] was carried off; rather I chase fleeing swans high in the air…’ (Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 82).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Ed. Ehwald, , p. 142Google Scholar. ‘Look, the Fates gave me the name of dogs — thus does the language of the Greeks render it in words — ever since the incantations of dread Circe, who stained the waters of the flowing fountain with her words, deceived me. Weaving words, the cruel witch deprived me of thighs together with shins, and calves together with knees. Terrified mariners relate that, as they impel ships with oars and cleave the sea, sweeping along the mighty waves while the tempest rages, where the broad blade of the oar runs through the water, they hear from afar the howling offspring that barks about my loins. Thus the daughter of Titan [scil. Circe] once tricked me, so that I should live as an exile — deservedly — in the salt waves’ (Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 91).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Cf. Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 254, n. 85Google Scholar; cf. above, pp. 89–90 and n. 17.

⁵⁷ Ed. Ehwald, , p. 143Google Scholar: ‘Flowering earth bore me, black, from her body; and I produce nothing fecund from my sterile womb, even though the poets, telling in their verse of the Eumenides, claim that I gave birth to the race of Tartarus’ (Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 92).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ For the attribution, see Lapidge in Lapidge, and Herren, , Aldhelm: the Prose Works, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ed. Ehwald, , p. 526Google Scholar. ‘And likewise, the beautiful constellation of the Pleiades, offspring of Atlantis, with its seven gleaming lights lies hidden’ (Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p.178).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Carm. rhyth. I.23, Ed. Ehwald, , p. 525Google Scholar: ‘Cum fracto vend federe’ (Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 177)Google Scholar; cf. Vergil, . Aen. I.50–141.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Ed. Ehwald, , pp. 528–37.Google Scholar

⁶² See below, pp. 100–1.

⁶³ For a list of manuscripts of the ‘Leiden family’ of glossaries, see Lapidge, M., ‘The School of Theodore and Hadrian’, Anglo-Latin Literature, 600–899, pp. 163–8.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid. pp. 153–4.

⁶⁵ There is as yet no complete critical edition of this work. The Old English glosses only are ed. Pheifer, , Old English Glosses.Google Scholar For the complete glossary one must still consult Goetz, G., Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum, 7 vols. (Leipzig, 1881–1923) V, 337–401Google Scholar. There is a diplomatic edition by Schlutter, O. of the Épinal copy only (cited below, p. 98, n. 67Google Scholar), and a facsimile edition by Bischoff, B. et al. , The Épinal, Erfurt, Werden and Corpus Glossaries;, EEMF 22 (Copenhagen, 1988).Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Épinal, Bibliothèque municipale, 72 (2) and Erfurt, Amplon., Fol. 42. The Épinal copy has recently been redated to c. 700: see Brown, T. J., ‘The Irish Element in the Insular System of Scripts to circa A.D. 850’, Die Iren und Europa im Frühmittelalter, ed. Löwe, H., 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1982) I, 109, n. 12Google Scholar. See Pheifer, , ‘Early Anglo-Saxon Glossaries’, p. 44.Google Scholar

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⁶⁸ Pheifer, , Old English Glosses, pp. xli–lvii.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See Philippson, E. A., Germanisches Heidentum bei den Angelsachsen, Kölner Anglistische Arbeiten 4 (Leipzig, 1929), 113–23.Google Scholar (I wish to thank Roberta Frank (Toronto) for this reference.)

⁷⁰ CLA II, no. 122; Ker, N., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), p. 49 (no. 36).Google Scholar

⁷¹ I follow the edition of Lindsay, W. M., The Corpus Glossary (Cambridge, 1921)Google Scholar. There is an older edition by Hessels, J. H., An Eighth-Century Latin—Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (MSN^°. 144) (Cambridge, 1890)Google Scholar. For the position of this glossary in the complex of Old English glossaries, see Pheifer, , Old English Glosses, pp. xxviii–xxxi.Google Scholar

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⁷³ Ibid. pp. 136–41.

⁷⁴ Ed. Hessels, J. H., A Late Eighth-Century Latin—Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the Library of the Leiden University (Cambridge, 1906).Google Scholar

⁷⁵ CLA X, no. 1585.

⁷⁶ Pheifer, , Old English Glosses, p. xliiiGoogle Scholar; Lapidge, , ‘The School of Theodore and Hadrian’, pp. 150–68.Google Scholar

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⁷⁸ See the edition by Porsia, cited above, p. 90, n. 18.

⁷⁹ See esp. Lapidge, ‘Beowulf’, as well as Lendinara, P., ‘IlLiber monstrorum e i glossari anglosassoni’, L'immaginario nelle letterature germaniche di medioevo, ed. Cipolla, A. (Milan, 1995), pp. 203–15.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Liber monstroram, ed. Porsia, , p. 72.Google Scholar

⁸¹ ibid. p. 64; Lapidge, , ‘Beowulf’, p. 289.Google Scholar

⁸² Liber monstrorum, ed. Porsia, , pp. 70–1.Google Scholar

⁸³ Ibid. pp. 81–2.

⁸⁴ Ep. IX, to Nihthard, ed. Tangl, M. et al. , Bonifatii Epistulae, Willibaldi Vita Bonifatti (Darmstadt, 1968), p. 26.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Ep. XIII, ed. Tangl, et al. , p. 50.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ I am grateful to the Killam Foundation and the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council of Canada for providing leave time and support money to enable me to carry out the research required for this paper.