House” (perhaps a repository for relics) and a fine
example of a round tower. West of the main settlement
lies the “Lady Church,” a foundation for women reli-
gious, and to the east is St. Saviour’s, founded for
Augustinian canons by St. Lorcán. Glendalough was
chosen as an episcopal see at the reforming Synod of
Ráith Bresail in 1111, but following the Anglo-Norman
invasion, pressure from the Dublin-based English
administration saw the diocese united with Dublin
in 1216. Commercial activity was maintained at
Glendalough; there is archaeological evidence of
ironworks in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Increasingly perceived by the English, once the Gaelic
revival gathered pace, as a haven for “Leinster rebels,”
the settlement was burned in 1398. Occupation con-
tinued at the site, and the Leinster Irish nobility strove,
with varying degrees of success, to revive the bishop-
ric, but Glendalough gradually faded from the histor-
ical record during the fifteenth century.
AILBHE MACSHAMHRÁIN
References and Further Reading
Plummer, Charles, ed. “Vita Sancti Coemgeni” (Life of St. Kevin).
In Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, 1:234–257. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1910.
———, ed. “Vie et miracles de S Laurent, archeveque de
Dublin” (The Life and Miracles of St. Lawrence, Archbiship
of Dublin). Analecta Bollandiana 33 (1914): 121–186.
———, ed. “Betha Caimgin” (Life of St. Kevin). In Bethada
Nóem nÉrenn (Live of Irish Saints), 1:125–167 and
2:121–161. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922.
Long, Harry. “Three Settlements in Gaelic Wicklow, 1169–1600:
Rathgall, Ballincor, and Glendalough.” In Wicklow: History
and Society, edited by K. Hannigan and W. Nolan, 248–256.
Dublin: Geography Publications, 1994.
MacShamhráin, Ailbhe S. “Prosopographica Glindalechensis:
The Monastic Church of Glendalough and its Community,
Sixth to Twelfth Centuries.” Journal of the Royal Society of
Antiquaries of Ireland 119 (1989): 79–97.
———. Church and Polity in Pre-Norman Ireland: The Case
of Glendalough. Maynooth, Ireland: An Sagart, 1996.
See also Church Reform, Twelfth Century;
Ecclesiastical Organization; Ecclesiastical
Settlements; Ecclesiastical Sites
GLENDALOUGH, BOOK OF
See Rawlinson B502
GLOSSES
A gloss, in its simplest form, is an explanation of a
difficult word (lemma). Typically, it is entered close to
its lemma, between the lines or on the margins of the
manuscript, and in a subordinate script. The practice
of glossing arose from the need to elucidate difficult
words in commonly used texts, and from the fact that
most of these texts were written in a foreign language,
Latin. However, glosses also occur in certain vernac-
ular texts that contain technical vocabulary, notably
the Old-Irish law tracts.
Glosses were composed in Latin, Irish, or a mixture
of both. Glossing in the vernacular had already taken
hold in the seventh century as is evident from a scatter-
ing of Old-Irish glosses in the so-called Ussher Gospels
(Dublin, Trinity College, MS 55) and from an archaic
stratum of glosses in a ninth-century copy of Priscian’s
Institutiones Grammaticae (St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek,
MS 904). During the eighth and first half of the ninth
century the glossing of Latin texts with vernacular
words was widely practiced by the Irish, as is evident
from three manuscripts of Irish origin which between
them contain over 15,000 Old-Irish glosses (as well as
numerous Latin glosses): a copy of the Pauline Epis-
tles, a commentary on the Psalms, and the text of
Priscian’s grammar mentioned above.
The surviving glosses range in complexity from
simple calques on individual words to complex inter-
pretations of biblical passages. They serve such com-
mon functions as: supplying information about the
grammatical properties of a lemma; clarifying its
meaning with illustrations; highlighting its relation-
ship with other words in the immediate context; and
offering commentary or interpretation. Another type,
the so-called syntactical gloss, consists of symbols
(combinations of dots or letters) attached to Latin
words of the text, which effectively rearrange the Latin
word order to conform to that of the vernacular.
Although one naturally thinks of glosses as designed
to help students, some may have served the teacher.
For example, the Ussher Gospels contain glosses that
provide merely the opening words of excerpts from
St. Jerome’s commentaries, suggesting they may have
been intended to jog the teacher’s memory.
Once the preserve of linguists and lexicographers,
the study of glosses has shifted from language to con-
tent, from printed editions to manuscript contexts, and
from vernacular words in isolation to the interaction of
vernacular and Latin glosses. This new approach brings
glossography into the mainstream of literary evidence.
Thus, glosses can testify to the use of rare or unusual
literary sources in Ireland, such as Pelagius’s Commen-
tary on the Pauline Epistles and Chromatius’s treatise
on St. Matthew’s Gospel. Secondly, glosses identify the
kinds of words that the Irish found difficult or interest-
ing in a Latin work. Thirdly, glosses offer important
insights into the methodologies employed by Irish
scholars, notably, their recourse to etymology to
explain difficult words, their use of grammar to
expound biblical passages, and their fondness for jux-
taposing conflicting interpretations. This tradition ofGLENDALOUGH