Il greco nell'Inghilterra altomedievale

Abstract

This study offers a re-assessment of the circulation of Greek in early medieval England by taking into account texts as diverse as bilingual glossaries, prayers, charms, treatises, and poems. Liturgical works stand among the longest Greek texts circulating in early medieval England, with the influence of Byzantine liturgy extending to incantations. Amongst bilingual glossaries, Épinal-Erfurt adopts different strategies to interpret rare and specialistic Greek words, whereas the later Antwerp-London class glossary includes batches of trilingual entries (Greek-Latin-English) belonging to several word fields, which together would make up an elementary lexicon of Greek. The tenth-century Old English poem Aldhelm features a unique usage of Greek words presumably drawn from both the Septuagint and the works of Aldhelm of Malmesbury. Collectively, the surviving evidence indicates that, while the presence of Greek material in early medieval England fits the broader pattern of the circulation of Greek in the medieval West, different kinds of Old English texts demonstrate a reuse of Greek vocabulary and the adoption of different strategies for the interpretation of Greek lexicon.