GLOSS (in biblical criticism), Gr. glossa (tongue or language), an of purely verbal difficulties of the text, to the exclusion of those which arise from doctrinal, his torical, ritual, or ceremonial sources. The words which are commonly the subject of these glossarial explanations are reducible to five classes: (1) foreign words; (2) provin cialisms or dialects; (3) obsolete words; (4) technical words; and (5) words used by the author in some abnormal or exceptional signification. From an early period, these verbal difficulties were the object of attention, and the writers who devoted themselves to the elucidation were called glossatores, and their works glossaria. The principal Greek glossatores are Ilesychius, Zonaras, Suidas, Phavorinns. Most of the Rabbinical writers have done the same work for the Hebrew text; so that it would be difficult to name any in particular as Hebrew glossatores. The chief glossatores of the Latin Vul
gate are the celebrated Walafried Strabo in the 9th c., and Anselin of Lama, who con tinued Walafried's work in the 12th century. • In Roman and canon law, the practice of introducing glosses was of early origin, and probably was an imitation of the biblical glosses. Among jurists, the gloss was not purely verbal, but regarded the true interpretation of the law, and in some cases it was held to be of equal authority with the text itself. From the position-which it occupied in the MS., being generally written between the lines of the text and on the margin, it was called glossa inierlinearis. The gloss of the Roman law is written in very pure Latinity, that of the canon law in the Latinity of the mediaeval schools.