No date or period can be assigned to any of the above stages or arrangements. For instance, the first and second are both found in the Leiden Glossary, which dates from the end of the 8th century, whereas the Corpus Glossary, written in the beginning of the same century, represents already the fourth stage.
For the purpose of identification titles have of late years been given to the various nameless collections of glosses, derived partly from their first lemma, partly from other characteristics, as glossae abstrusae; glossae abavus major and minor; g. affatim; g. ab absens; g. abactor; g. Abba Pater; g. a, a; g. Vergilianae; g. nominum (Goetz, Corp. ii. 563, iv.); g. Sangallenses (Warren, Transact. Amer. Philol. Assoc. xv., 1885, p. 141 sqq.).
A chief landmark in glossography is represented by the Origines (Etymologiae) of Isidore (d. 636), an encyclopedia in which he, like Cassiodorus, mixed human and divine subjects together. In many places we can trace his sources, but he also used glossaries. His work became a great mine for later glossographers. In the tenth book he deals with the etymology of many substantives and adjectives arranged alphabetically according to the first letter of the words, perhaps by himself from various sources. His principal source is Servius, then the fathers of the Church (Augustine, Jerome, Lactantius) and Donatus the grammarian. This tenth book was also copied and used separately, and mixed up with other works (cf. Loewe, Prodr. 167. 21). Isidore’s Differentiae have also had a great reputation.
Next comes the Liber glossarum, chiefly compiled from Isidore, but all articles arranged alphabetically; its author lived in Spain c. A.D. 690-750; he has been called Ansileubus, but not in any of the MSS., some of which belong to the 8th century; hence this name is suspected to be merely that of some owner of a copy of the book (cf. Goetz, “Der Liber Glossarum,” in Abhandl. der philol.-hist. Class, der kön. sächs. Ges. xiii., 1893; id., Corp. v., praef. xx. 161).
Here come, in regard to time, some Latin glossaries already largely mixed with Germanic, more especially Anglo-Saxon interpretations: (1) the Corpus Glossary (ed. J. H. Hessels), written in the beginning of the 8th century, preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; (2) the Leiden Glossary (end of 8th century, ed. Hessels; another edition by Plac. Glogger), preserved in the Leiden MS. Voss. Qo. 69; (3) the Épinal Glossary, written in the beginning of the 9th century[8] and published in facsimile by the London Philol. Society from a MS. in the town library at Épinal; (4) the Glossae Amplonianae, i.e. three glossaries preserved in the Amplonian library at Erfurt, known as Erfurt1, Erfurt2 and Erfurt3. The first, published by Goetz (Corp. v. 337-401; cf. also Loewe, Prodr. 114 sqq.) with the various readings of the kindred Épinal, consists, like the latter, of different collections of glosses (also some from Aldhelm), some arranged alphabetically according to the first letter of the lemma, others according to the first two letters. The title of Erfurt2 (incipit II. conscriptio glosarum in unam) shows that it is also a combination of various glossaries; it is arranged alphabetically according to the first two letters of the lemmata, and contains the affatim and abavus maior glosses, also a collection from Aldhelm; Erfurt3 are the Glossae nominum, mixed also with Anglo-Saxon interpretations (Goetz, Corp. ii. 563). The form in which the three Erfurt glossaries have come down to us points back to the 8th century.
The first great glossary or collection of various glosses and glossaries is that of Salomon, bishop of Constance, formerly abbot of St Gall, who died A.D. 919. An edition of it in two parts was printed c. 1475 at Augsburg, with the headline Salemonis ecclesie Constantiensis episcopi glosse ex illustrissimis collecte auctoribus. The oldest MSS. of this work date from the 11th century. Its sources are the Liber glossarum (Loewe, Prodr. 234 sqq.), the glossary preserved in the 9th-century MS. Lat. Monac. 14429 (Goetz, “Lib. Gloss.” 35 sqq.), and the great Abavus Gloss (id., ibid. p. 37; id., Corp. iv. praef. xxxvii.).
The Lib. glossarum has also been the chief source for the important (but not original) glossary of Papias, of A.D. 1053 (cf. Goetz in Sitz. Ber. Akad. Münch., 1903, p. 267 sqq., who enumerates eighty-seven MSS. of the 12th to the 15th centuries), of whom we only know that he lived among clerics and dedicated his work to his two sons. An edition of it was published at Milan “per Dominicum de Vespolate” on the 12th of December 1476; other editions followed in 1485, 1491, 1496 (at Venice). He also wrote a grammar, chiefly compiled from Priscianus (Hagen, Anecd. Helv. clxxix. sqq.).
The same Lib. gloss. is the source (1) for the Abba Pater Glossary (cf. Goetz, ibid. p. 39), published by G. M. Thomas (Sitz. Ber. Akad. Münch., 1868, ii. 369 sqq.); (2) the Greek glossary Absida lucida (Goetz, ib. p. 41); and (3) the Lat.-Arab. glossary in the Cod. Leid. Scal. Orient. No. 231 (published by Seybold in Semit. Studien, Heft xv.-xvii., Berlin, 1900).
The Paulus-Glossary (cf. Goetz, “Der Liber Glossarum,” p. 215) is compiled from the second Salomon-Glossary (abacti magistratus), the Abavus major and the Liber glossarum, with a mixture of Hebraica. Many of his glosses appear again in other compilations, as in the Cod. Vatic. 1469 (cf. Goetz, Corp. v. 520 sqq.), mixed up with glosses from Beda, Placidus, &c. (cf. a glossary published by Ellis in Amer. Journ. of Philol. vi. 4, vii. 3, containing besides Paulus glosses, also excerpts from Isidore; Cambridge Journ. of Philol. viii. 71 sqq., xiv. 81 sqq.).
Osbern of Gloucester (c. 1123-1200) compiled the glossary entitled Panormia (published by Angelo Mai as Thesaurus novus Latinitatis, from Cod. Vatic. reg. Christ. 1392; cf. W. Meyer, Rhein. Mus. xxix., 1874; Goetz in Sitzungsber. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss., 1903, p. 133 sqq.; Berichte üb. die Verhandl. der kön. sächs. Gesellsch. der Wiss., Leipzig, 1902); giving derivations, etymologies, testimonia collected from Paulus, Priscianus, Plautus, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Mart. Capella, Macrobius, Ambrose, Sidonius, Prudentius, Josephus, Jerome, &c., &c. Osbern’s material was also used by Hugucio, whose compendium was still more extensively used (cf. Goetz, l.c., p. 121 sqq., who enumerates one hundred and three MSS. of his treatise), and contains many biblical glosses, especially Hebraica, some treatises on Latin numerals, &c. (cf. Hamann, Weitere Mitteil. aus dem Breviloquus Benthemianus, Hamburg, 1882; A. Thomas, “Glosses provençales inéd.” in Romania, xxxiv. p. 177 sqq; P. Toynbee, ibid. xxv. p. 537 sqq.).