Terms

Gallery of Glosses attempts to serve the needs of many scholarly disciplines in the study of the pre-modern world. As a result, Gallery of Glosses includes standard scholarly abbreviations and citations within individual disciplines within the data. When it comes to labels for different categories of data, Gallery of Glosses must accommodate various terminology and, in some cases, has adopted its own terminology that attempts generically to cover the types of information in view.

Standard Scholarly Terminology and Abbreviations

Gallery of Glosses assumes that the user is familiar with the norms of citation and abbreviation in relevant fields.

Thus, if a user finds that the work being glossed is “X 1.13.6,” the user is expected to know (or learn through other means) that the text referred to is the Liber Extra or Decretales Gregorii noni issued under Pope Gregory IX in 1234, and to the sixth chapter or decretal within the thirteenth title of Book 1. Similarly, if a gloss on Thomas Aquinas’s Summa includes the abbreviation ‘s.c.’, the user is expected to know (or learn through other means) that this refers to the sed contra section of the article.

Within transcriptions themselves, those who entered the transcription may include commonly used abbreviations for individual words or for works quoted. Thus, “B. Augustinus” may appear for “Beatus Augustinus.” “Is 6:1” would refer to the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapter 6, verse 1. “R.” might appear for “Respondeo.”

Terminology for Categories Specific to Gallery of Glosses

The terminology of this public Gallery of Glosses website aligns with the vocabulary established to encode the data.

Label for Display/Incipit

This is the incipit or first few words of the gloss. Contributors may have entered a different label for an individual gloss, but we encourage users to utilize the incipit. What differentiates two glosses that share an incipit? The canonical reference locator attached to that gloss (see below).

Gloss Text

This is the full text of any given gloss in question.

N.B. When you are on the page for the gloss, the “gloss text” is the version of the gloss that the creator of the entry has chosen to identify as the standard or authoritative version of the gloss. In some cases, this will have been determined through collation of multiple witnesses. In other cases, this will simply be the first instance of the gloss found, in a single manuscript, and the specifics of this gloss text might change if additional witnesses to the gloss are found. When you are on the page for the “Witness” (see below), the “gloss text” is the version of the gloss in that particular witness. A different witness to this gloss may have a somewhat different “gloss text” if there are textual variants.

Gloss Witness

This is the manuscript or printed source from which the gloss text is transcribed. Each source serves as a witness to a gloss but might not be the only one in existence. At this stage of Gallery of Glosses, each “gloss witness” is referred to in a short, succinct way. A future iteration of Gallery of Glosses intends to include more metadata about them.

A manuscript “witness” will be referred to by its shelfmark.

A printed “witness” (e.g. an article published in 1925 that included transcriptions of glosses from a manuscript in Prague) will be referred to by a short-hand bibliographical citation.

Canonical Reference Locator

This is the location in the source text being glossed, e.g. “Matthew 5:1” or “Sententiae, liber 2, dist. 17” or “Decretum C.32 q.1 c.3.” Ideally, the “canonical reference locator” matches the way a medieval text would be cited in a footnote in a scholarly publication in the discipline.

Target Text

This is the lemma or the word or phrase within the text referenced in the “canonical reference locator” that is being glossed, e.g. “s.v. potestas” or “In principio.” These do not exist for every gloss.

Language

This is the language in which a gloss has been found. In theory, the same gloss might appear in one manuscript in Latin but be translated into Middle French in another. Gallery of Glosses allows for this possibility, even if it is rare.

Tags

These are key terms or features of the gloss, e.g. “incarnatio” or “OT citation” or “linguistic observation.” They may also identify specific citations to other texts or allegations found within the gloss text, e.g. “X 3.16.4.” Tags are subject to the creator of them. The tags found in Gallery of Glosses should not be considered comprehensive or scholarly meaningful in and of themselves. They are intended merely to help facilitate searches on various terms or gloss features.