Glossa biblijna jako problem badawczy

Biblical glossary as a research problemThe Biblical glossary is one of the most important phenomena in the history of medieval scholarship, it combines the text of the Scriptures with a commentary in a special graphic layout. It played an important part in the popularisation of the Biblical studies. The glossary appeared around the turn of the twelve century in northern France in the milieu of cathedral school at Laon, with the key figure of Master Anselm. Already before the mid-twelve century glosses to individual books of the Bible gained huge popularity, and had hundreds of copies. At a certain time – it is thought today that it was the early thirteenth century – the text of the Glossary got stabilised. And although in the thirteenth century its popularity began to fade, it was copied to the end of the medieval period, and then many times published in print.Modern research into the glossary, although initiated in the nineteenth century, has in fact been developed in the 1980s. But ambitious source research and comparative analyses have shown that the Biblical glossary is a very difficult discipline. It was comparatively easy for researchers to have got through hagiographical legends that grew up around the glossary (for example the alleged authorship of Walafrid Strabon), but despite all the efforts only one book (Song of Songs) and some other fragments were published in a critical edition. In the course of ongoing studies more and more apparently “sure” points in our knowledge about the glossary are discredited, such as, for instance, the conviction that the glossary text had stabilised at one point of time. What hampers the research is mainly an enormous number of manuscript copies containing glosses, amounting to thousands of them. What is more, the production of those manuscripts was strictly standardised, making it difficult to establish not only their actual chronology, but also their place of origin. The research into the Biblical glossary is still a growing field of study.