Medieval Wales as a Linguistic Crossroads in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 153

Abstract

The manuscript known as Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 153 contains a copy of Martianus Capella’s Latin text De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae. Written in Wales around 900 CE, it includes marginal annotations in Latin and Old Welsh that open a window on the spread of Carolingian educational culture to Celtic-speaking Britain. Evidence is examined here for close interaction between some of the indigenous languages of the island and the learned Latin of the schools, and even for surviving traces of the variety of spoken Latin that had been current in Britain under the Empire.