Explaining bird names from Leviticus

Codex Sangallensis 283 (p. 483). 9th century; St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek. Latin, Old English and Old High German, Carolingian minuscule.

Introduction

The manuscript Codex Sangallensis 283 (Cod. Sang. 283) is dated around the second half of the ninth century (Seiler 2024: 294). The section that has been selected for this transcription exercise was taken from page 483 of the manuscript and forms a part of Walahfrid Strabo’s commentary on Leviticus 11. The passage is concerned with the identification, description and religious interpretation of various birds and animals mentioned in the Bible text (Ott & Seiler 2025: 54).

Walahfrid Strabo (808/809–849) joined the Abbey of Reichenau in 823. In 827 he spent some time studying in Fulda with Hrabanus Maurus (Eberl 2011). Although Walahfrid’s commentary was formerly associated with Hrabanus Maurus and his teachings, an observation which remains relevant to this day, as comparisons with Hrabanus’ Expositiones in Leviticum have now revealed that there are differences between his and Walahfrid’s text (as presented in Cod. Sang. 283). These differences are present in both structure and wording (Seiler 2024: 294). It is now known, that Walahfrid draws on material which is preserved both on the pages 139-145 of Cod. Sang. 913 at the Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen and in the Canterbury biblical glossary (Seiler 2024: 295). This is evident due to his treatment of Leviticus 11, wherein he incorporates vernacular bird names from the Canterbury biblical glossary (Seiler 2024: 300). A section from Cod. Sang. 913 is available here.

Consequently, the word forms encountered in Cod. Sang. 283 reflect both vernacular Old English and Old High German characteristics, and thus, their linguistic origin cannot always be determined (Seiler 2025: 54, 62-64). An important paleographical aid is the use of superscript (word characters written above the baseline of the text) for <f> and <s>, which mark vernacular word forms in Cod. Sang. 283 (Seiler 2024: 300, Seiler 2025: 59). The mark <f> means francisce (lit. ‘Frankish’) and points to a variety of German, while <s> stands for saxonice (lit. ‘Saxon’) indicating an English (Anglo-Saxon) word. However, these labels should be taken with a pinch of salt – not least because the letters <f> and (long) <s> are difficult to distinguish paleographically.

The manuscript is written in the Carolingian minuscule – a script which developed around the 8th century in educational centers on the European continent – and subsequently became widespread under King Charlemagne. As a comparatively uniform script, Carolingian minuscule is characterized by the consistent use of the four-line system, largely unconnected letters and relatively few ligatures, though the first characterization is less obvious in this manuscript specifically (for reference see also: Ad Fontes, History of Scripts: Caroline Minuscule). Due to its uniformity the reading of the Carolingian miniscule is comparatively easy; however, due to individual scribal conventions with their individual letter forms and the abbreviations used, these texts still require a careful look.

The word spacing is tricky here, as orthographical conventions at the time were different to our current ones. Try to thus separate unsegmented text into single words and to combine spaced out morphemes to form a word.

In addition, we find the letters ash (æ) in this text. Many of the d 's are round-backed (ꝺ). Moreover, the letters r (ꞃ) and long s (ꞅ) are sitting on the baseline, which sometimes makes r difficult to distinguish from s. Abbreviations in the text should be written out in full. An example of such an abbreviation as found in this text is ÷, which is the short form of est. Furthermore, nasal suspension marks, consisting of horizontal strokes placed above a vowel, expand to m.