Glosas Emilianenses
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The Glosas Emilianenses (Spanish for "glosses of [Saint] Emilianus") are glosses written in a Latin codex. The anonymous author is assumed to have been a monk at the monastery of Suso (the upper one) in San Millán de la Cogolla (now in La Rioja, then in the Kingdom of Navarre). He wrote about a thousand years ago in three languages - Latin, the medieval form of a Hispanic Romance (traditionally regarded as Castilian or Old Spanish, but most probably old Aragonese or a related dialect) and Basque (the latter two being the vernacular languages in the region surrounding the monastery).
The codex is known as Aemilianensis 60 (Aemilianus is Latin for Emilianus, "Millán" or "Emiliano" in modern Spanish) and was preserved in the monastery library at Yuso (the lower re-foundation of the monastery) before being moved to its current location in the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid.
[edit] Basque Glosses
Aemilianensis 60 has been publicized as the earliest known codex with inscriptions in Basque, though other codices are posited. In 2006 Basque inscriptions from the Late Roman period were discovered at Iruña-Veleia: these appear to predate all codices. Only two of the glosses (of a total of about one thousand) are actually in Basque, but it has been suggested that some of the other glosses reflect the influence of the Basque language, the implication being that their author was a fluent Basque-speaker.
[edit] Romance Glosses
There is still some debate as to whether the Iberian Romance language of the glosses should be classed as an early form of Castilian or of Aragonese, although some recent studies (1 H.J.Wolf, in Spanish) show that most features belong indeed to the latter. It is not the only text to be difficult to classify: other texts traditionally assumed to be in Old Spanish, like the Kharjas, are proved to be in a different medieval Romance, Mozarabic, which happens to be classified along with Aragonese in a Pyrenean-Mozarabic group.
