Hardly Harmless Drudgery

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Hardly Harmless Drudgery

Collection Items

Manuscript leaf from a Latin word-list, the terms deriving from canon law
This page is typical of late-medieval dictionaries: double columns of 52 lines in a squat secretarial hand, with important words underlined in red, capitals and paragraphs touched in red, running titles (e.g., “A”) at column heads on the rectos, and…

Though published without attribution, this famous law dictionary was identified in many early manuscripts as being by Jodocus, a doctor of decretals in Erfurt, Germany. It went through more than 70 printed editions over the following 150 years. The…

Repertorium Iuris
This large, elaborate law dictionary, rubricated throughout, is thought to have been printed later in the same year as Jodocus’s. Though unattributed, it’s credited to Johannes Calderinus, who taught at Bologna. This copy was a chained book early in…

Ambrosii Bergomatis Dictionarium, ex optimis quibusdam authoribus
Friar Calepino of Bergamo first printed his Dictionarium in 1502. Said to be one of the most dogged lexicographers in history, he produced the most influential of Renaissance dictionaries—and went blind in the effort. Although the first few editions,…

Bibliotheca Eliotæ, Eliotis Librarie. This Dictionarie Now New
Friar Calepino of Bergamo first printed his Dictionarium in 1502. Said to be one of the most dogged lexicographers in history, he produced the most influential of Renaissance dictionaries—and went blind in the effort. Although the first few editions,…

Hans Holbein the Younger. Portrait of Sir Thomas Elyot
Friar Calepino of Bergamo first printed his Dictionarium in 1502. Said to be one of the most dogged lexicographers in history, he produced the most influential of Renaissance dictionaries—and went blind in the effort. Although the first few editions,…

Thesaurus Linguæ Romanæ & Britannicæ
Elyot, who led a storied life as Henry VIII’s failed emissary to help annul the marriage to Catherine of Aragon, issued the first book ever to be called a dictionary. This 1548 edition was prepared after Elyot’s death by Thomas Cooper, to whom…

Exposiciones Terminoru[m] Legu[m] Angloru[m]
Rastell’s Exposiciones is a law dictionary with two complete columns: one in English, one in Law French. It isn’t a bilingual dictionary in the conventional sense—with a headword in one language and a definition in another. The English column is…

Exposiciones Terminoru[m] Legu[m] Angloru[m]
This copy of Rastell is the oldest in North America. It contains 169 alphabetically arranged entries. The English column defines such terms as abbot, abeyance, acceptance, action, accord, acquittal, additions, adjournment, administrator, agreement,…

In this 1579 edition, also on loan from Harvard Law, the number of entries grew from 169 to 282. Many of the newly added headwords derive not from Law French but from Old English, as with boote and Burgh English. Hence this edition, along with…
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