The great work of Johannes de Janua, entitled Summa quae vocatur catholicon, dates from the year 1286, and treats of (1) accent, (2) etymology, (3) syntax, and (4) so-called prosody, i.e. a lexicon, which also deals with quantity. It mostly uses Hugucio and Papias; its classical quotations are limited, except from Horace; it quotes the Vulgate by preference, frequently independently from Hugucio; it excerpts Priscianus, Donatus, Isidore, the fathers of the Church, especially Jerome, Gregory, Augustine, Ambrose; it borrows many Hebrew glosses, mostly from Jerome and the other collections then in use; it mentions the Graecismus of Eberhardus Bethuniensis, the works of Hrabanus Maurus, the Doctrinale of Alexander de Villa Dei, and the Aurora of Petrus de Riga. Many quotations from the Catholicon in Du Cange are really from Hugucio, and may be traced to Osbern. There exist many MSS. of this work, and the Mainz edition of 1460 is well known (cf. Goetz in Berichte üb. die Verhandl. der kön. sächs. Gesellsch. der Wiss., Leipzig, 1902).
The gloss MSS. of the 9th and 10th centuries are numerous, but a diminution becomes visible towards the 11th. We then find grammatical treatises arise, for which also glossaries were used. The chief material was (1) the Liber glossarum; (2) the Paulus glosses; (3) the Abavus major; (4) excerpts from Priscian and glosses to Priscian; (5) Hebrew-biblical collections of proper names (chiefly from Jerome). After these comes medieval material, as the derivationes which are found in many MSS. (cf. Goetz in Sitzungsber. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss., 1903, p. 136 sqq.; Traube in Archiv f. lat. Lex. vi. 264), containing quotations from Plautus, Ovid, Juvenal, Persius, Terence, occasionally from Priscian, Eutyches, and other grammarians, with etymological explanations. These derivationes were the basis for the grammatical works of Osbern, Hugucio and Joannes of Janua.
A peculiar feature of the late middle ages are the medico-botanic glossaries based on the earlier ones (see Goetz, Corp. iii.). The additions consisted in Arabic words with Latin explanations, while Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic, interchange with English, French, Italian and German forms. Of glossaries of this kind we have (1) the Glossae alphita (published by S. de Renzi in the 3rd vol. of the Collect. Salernitana, Naples, 1854, from two Paris MSS. of the 14th and 15th centuries, but some of the glosses occur already in earlier MSS.); (2) Sinonoma Bartholomei, collected by John Mirfeld, towards the end of the 14th century, ed. J. L. G. Mowat (Anecd. Oxon. i. 1, 1882, cf. Loewe, Gloss. Nom. 116 sqq.); it seems to have used the same or some similar source as No. 1; (3) the compilations of Simon de Janua (Clavis sanationis, end of 13th century), and of Matthaeus Silvaticus (Pandectae medicinae, 14th century; cf. H. Stadler, “Dioscor. Longob.” in Roman. Forsch. x. 3. 371; Steinmeyer, Althochd. Gloss. iii.).
Of biblical glossaries we have a large number, mostly mixed with glosses on other, even profane, subjects, as Hebrew and other biblical proper names, and explanations of the text of the Vulgate in general, and the prologues of Hieronymus. So we have the Glossae veteris ac novi testamenti (beginning “Prologus graece latine praelocutio sive praefatio”) in numerous MSS. of the 9th to 14th centuries, mostly retaining the various books under separate headings (cf. Arevalo, Isid. vii. 407 sqq.; Loewe, Prodr. 141; Steinmeyer iv. 459; S. Berger, De compendiis exegeticis quibusdam medii aevi, Paris, 1879). Special mention should be made of Guil. Brito, who lived about 1250, and compiled a Summa (beginning “difficiles studeo partes quas Biblia gestat Pandere”), contained in many MSS. especially in French libraries. This Summa gave rise to the Mammotrectus of Joh. Marchesinus, about 1300, of which we have editions printed in 1470, 1476, 1479, &c.
Finally we may mention such compilations as the Summa Heinrici; the work of Johannes de Garlandia, which he himself calls dictionarius (cf. Scheler in Jahrb. f. rom. u. engl. Philol. vi., 1865, p. 142 sqq.); and that of Alexander Neckam (ib. vii. p. 60 sqq., cf. R. Ellis, in Amer. Journ. of Phil. x. 2); which are, strictly speaking, not glossographic. The Breviloquus drew its chief material from Papias, Hugucio, Brito, &c. (K. Hamann, Mitteil. aus dem Breviloquus Benthemianus, Hamburg, 1879; id., Weitere Mitteil., &c., Hamburg, 1882); so also the Vocabularium Ex quo; the various Gemmae; Vocabularia rerum (cf. Diefenbach, Glossar. Latino-Germanicum).
After the revival of learning, J. Scaliger (1540-1609) was the first to impart to glossaries that importance which they deserve (cf. Goetz, in Sitzungsber. sächs. Ger. d. Wiss., 1888, p. 219 sqq.), and in his edition of Festus made great use of Ps.-Philoxenus, which enabled O. Müller, the later editor of Festus, to follow in his footsteps. Scaliger also planned the publication of a Corpus glossarum, and left behind a collection of glosses known as glossae Isidori (Goetz, Corp. v. p. 589 sqq.; id. in Sitzungsber. sächs. Ges., 1888, p. 224 sqq.; Loewe, Prodr. 23 sqq.), which occurs also in old glossaries, clearly in reference to the tenth book of the Etymologiae.
The study of glosses spread through the publication, in 1573, of the bilingual glossaries by H. Stephanus (Estienne), containing, besides the two great glossaries, also the Hermeneumata Stephani, which is a recension of the Ps.-Dositheana (republished Goetz, Corp. iii. 438-474), and the glossae Stephani, excerpted from a collection of the Hermeneumata (ib. iii. 438-474).
In 1600 Bonav. Vulcanius republished the same glossaries, adding (1) the glossae Isidori, which now appeared for the first time; (2) the Onomasticon; (3) notae and castigationes, derived from Scaliger (Loewe, Prodr. 183).
In 1606 Carolus and Petrus Labbaeus published, with the effective help of Scaliger, another collection of glossaries, republished, in 1679, by Du Cange, after which the 17th and 18th centuries produced no further glossaries (Erasm. Nyerup published extracts from the Leiden Glossary, Voss. 69, in 1787, Symbolae ad Literat. Teut.), though glosses were constantly used or referred to by Salmasius, Meursius, Heraldus, Barth, Fabricius and Burman at Leiden, where a rich collection of glossaries had been obtained by the acquisition of the Vossius library (cf. Loewe, Prodr. 168). In the 19th century came Osann’s Glossarii Latini specimen (1826); the glossographic publications of Angelo Mai (Classici auctores, vols. iii., vi., vii., viii., Rome, 1831-1836, containing Osbern’s Panormia, Placidus and various glosses from Vatican MSS.); Fr. Oehler’s treatise (1847) on the Cod. Amplonianus of Osbern, and his edition of the three Erfurt glossaries, so important for Anglo-Saxon philology; in 1854 G. F. Hildebrand’s Glossarium Latinum (an extract from Abavus minor), preserved in a Cod. Paris. lat. 7690; 1857, Thomas Wright’s vol. of Anglo-Saxon glosses, which were republished with others in 1884 by R. Paul Wülcker under the title Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies (London, 2 vols., 1857); L. Diefenbach’s supplement to Du Cange, entitled Glossarium Latino-Germanicum mediae et infimae aetatis, containing mostly glosses collected from glossaries, vocabularies, &c., enumerated in the preface; Ritschl’s treatise (1870) on Placidus, which called forth an edition (1875) of Placidus by Deuerling; G. Loewe’s Prodromus (1876), and other treatises by him, published after his death by G. Goetz (Leipzig, 1884); 1888, the second volume of Goetz’s own great Corpus glossariorum Latinorum, of which seven volumes (except the first) had seen the light by 1907, the last two being separately entitled Thesaurus glossarum emendatarum, containing many emendations and corrections of earlier glossaries by the author and other scholars; 1900, Arthur S. Napier, Old English Glosses (Oxford), collected chiefly from Aldhelm MSS., but also from Augustine, Avianus, Beda, Boethius, Gregory, Isidore, Juvencus, Phocas, Prudentius, &c.
There are a very great number of glossaries still in MS. scattered in various libraries of Europe, especially in the Vatican, at Monte Cassino, Paris, Munich, Bern, the British Museum, Leiden, Oxford, Cambridge, &c. Much has already been done to make the material contained in these MSS. accessible in print, and much may yet be done with what is still unpublished, though we may find that the differences between the glossaries which often present themselves at first sight are mere differences in form introduced by successive more or less qualified copyists.