Gloss

A Bible containing the glossa ordinaria from 1481

A gloss is an explanation of a piece of text. It can range from a simple translation for a word in a foreign language to an extensive commentary on a long passage. In the Medieval period, glosses would typically be written in between the lines of text (if they were short) or in the margins of manuscripts (if they were longer). The process of writing interpretations of existing texts is known as glossing.

Glossing authoritative texts was a common practice in the Scholastic movement of the Middle Ages, and by the 12th century, comprehensive glosses for the entire Bible and many important Roman legal texts had been assembled from the writings of experts of centuries past. These were called glossa ordinaria ("standard glosses") and included both interlinear and marginal commentaries, typically dwarfing the actual text being discussed. The Jewish tradition of recording Midrashim in the margins of the Tanakh is a parallel tradition that arose in this same period.

By the 15th century, when the Liechtenauer tradition arose, the gloss tradition had been superseded by other models in the Scholastic tradition but it was still a recognized form and glossed texts were still being sold in great numbers (the glossa ordinaria of the Bible was among the first books to be printed after the invention of moveable type). Many of the earlier authors in the Liechtenauer tradition chose to treat his Recital as an authoritative text and fashioned glosses to explain their interpretations of it.

The Recital (red text) and Lew gloss with additional commentary (black text) from 1491

Hans Liechtenauer

There are many different surviving glosses of Liechtenauer's Recital, and they can be broken down into major glosses and minor glosses. These texts all seem to have been created around the middle half of the 15th century, but the age of surviving copies varies quite a lot.

Major Glosses

The major glosses are equivalent to the glossa ordinaria discussed above: they include commentary on the entirety of one or more sections of the Recital. The major glosses are associated with two members of the fellowship of Liechtenauer, Peter von Danzig zum Ingolstadt and Sigmund ain Ringeck.

Peter von Danzig's gloss is the shorter one, only commenting on the short sword fencing in armor.

The other major gloss is fragmented into multiple versions, including one attributed to Sigmund ain Ringeck and three others that are anonymous, though we assign their authors the nicknames Pseudo-Peter von Danzig, Lew, and Nicolaus to make them easier to discuss. These four glosses are somewhat distinct, though they share text freely between them, especially in the short sword and mounted fencing, and are generally treated as separate teachings that complement each other well. They are similar enough to each other that they almost certainly had a common origin, but it's impossible to say whether this was an original "gloss Q" that they were all modified from or whether they were all the works of a single author modifying his teachings (for different audiences or at different times of his life).

The Ringeck and Pseudo-Danzig versions cover all three sections of the Recital, whereas the Lew version only covers the long sword and mounted fencing, and the Nicolaus version just covers the long sword.

Minor Glosses

The minor glosses offer commentary on shorter segments of the Recital. They are all anonymous. Despite their incomplete nature, they are valuable for study because they often present different interpretations from the major glosses and can help develop a more nuanced understanding of Liechtenauer's teachings.

The largest of the minor glosses is the one found in the Pol Hausbuch (MS 3227a), whose author is nicknamed Pseudo-Hans Döbringer. This one seems to have been an aborted attempt at writing a major gloss; the verses were all written into the manuscript with blank pages left between them to hold commentary, but despite writing a long introduction to Liechtenauer's teachings, the author only filled in glosses for about half of the Recital on the long sword and nothing on the short sword or mounted fencing.

The other three minor glosses are quite short:

• The Dresden Gloss Fragment covers six lines of the Recital on the long sword (27-28 and 43), and is found in the MS Dresd.C.487.
• The Glasgow Gloss Fragment covers the first seven couplets of the Recital on the short sword, and is found in E.1939.65.341.
• The Speyer Fragments are a series of nineteen paragraphs added as additional commentary to the copy of the Lew gloss in MS M.Ⅰ.29.

Meta-Gloss

The final entry in the Liechtenauer gloss tradition is that of Hans Medel von Salzburg. It was probably created as a major gloss, but only the only known copy (in Cod.Ⅰ.6.2º.5) stops abruptly after the 87th couplet, making it a minor gloss.

However, what's most interesting about Medel's gloss is that he frequently quotes the glosses of Ringeck and Nicolaus verbatim, and sometimes even criticizes them and offers his own interpretations as counterpoint. He also offers a handful of teachings that he attributes to Hans Seydenfaden von Erfurt, a member of the Fellowship of Liechtenauer from whom no other teachings are known to survive. This acknowledgement of and engagement with the prior glosses makes Medel's work unique in the gloss tradition.

Hans Lecküchner

Inspired by the glosses of Liechtenauer's Recital, in the 1470s the priest Hans Lecküchner apparently created his own Recital (expanded from Liechtenauer's) and a gloss to explain it. This text is far longer than any of the Liechtenauer glosses, and the longest single fencing treatise of the 15th century.