Early Medieval Glosses And The Question Of Their Genesis: A Case Study On The Vienna Bede

The early medieval period is marked by constant interchange and multicultural relationships, and has significantly shaped Western intellectual history.

During this time Irish scholars started to annotate texts, i.e. underlining, highlighting, glossing etc. – techniques that quickly spread across the European continent and are still used today. Gloss-ViBe will research the early medieval Celtic glossing tradition on the Venerable Bede’s De Temporum Ratione.

Its main research question is: “Are vernacular glosses original compositions or translations from original Latin glosses?” The present project will investigate the Celtic and Latin glosses found in the manuscript Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex 15298 (olim Suppl. 2698) from different angles including methodology from the digital humanities, philology, linguistics and translational studies.

Since there is a lack of comprehensive editions of early medieval glossed manuscripts, this study is a pioneering and challenging task. One of its main deliverables will be the first such comprehensive digital documentary edition. It will include the primary text and all the glosses and annotations found in the Vienna Bede.

Because of the fragile nature of the manuscript and recent advances in digital humanities in conjecture with a simultaneously arising interest on how to annotate (digital) documents caused by the recent shift from paper to digital media, the proposed research is highly topical at this time. It offers insights into how information has been processed that can be directly applied to modern annotation systems.

Additionally, researching the multicultural environment in which early medieval manuscripts were composed also has impact for understanding modern migration patterns, especially in a scholarly environment.