Jan Hendrik Hessels – författare

This 1890 glossary is an edition of the text of MS. 144 in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, by scholar Jan Hendrik Hessels (1836-1926). Hessels was simultaneously producing a multi-volume edition of the archives of the Dutch Church in London, published between 1887 and 1897, and also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. This was the first edition of the MS in its entirety, though three shorter versions had been produced in 1857 and the 1880s. The glossary comprises two parts: an interpretation of Hebrew and Greek names, and a Latin-Old English glossary. Hessels' thorough introduction describes the manuscript, outlines his methodology and provides extensive tables of the 'organic changes' in the text that he takes great care to categorise and explain. M. R. James describes this work as 'edited...with the greatest care and completeness', and it is much sought after by scholars today.

Prior to his 1890 publication of the Corpus Christi Latin-Old English MS, also reissued in this series, Jan Hendrik Hessels (1836-1926) had begun transcribing this equally important text, of which his edition was published in 1906. (He explains the delay by referring to 'work of another nature': his monumental edition of the archive of the Dutch Church in London (1887-1897), also now available in the Cambridge Library Collection.) Hessels again provides a thorough introduction, including a detailed physical description of the manuscript alongside its history, provenance, and a wealth of other information. The work contains extracts from various texts and treatises, and Hessels' cross-references to other glossaries demonstrate the importance of the Leiden MS for gloss-literature, and will be of use to philologists, scholars of Old English and medieval Latin, and historians of the medieval period.