The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220

Mary Swan and Owen Roberson

London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius D xx + Miscellaneous Burnt Cotton Fragments, Bundle I (16)

OE poem: De situ Dunelmi

Date: s. xii

Summary:

On the now-missing fol. ‘20’v of this manuscript was a poem in Old English entitled De situ dunelmi. Et de sanctorum reliquiis que ibidem continentur carmen compositum. CUL Ff. 1. 27, pp. 1-40, 73-252 + CCCC 66, pp. 1-114 (s. xiiex) contains the same poem with the same title. The main text in the manuscript was a Latin Life of Cuthbert; 14 leaves of this have survived the Cotton Library fire. Ker reports that ‘the OE was probably of the same hand as the rest of the manuscript’, and that the manuscript is ‘probably from Durham’ (1957, p. 298).

Miscellaneous Burnt Cotton Fragments, Bundle I (16) was also part of this manuscript.

Manuscript Items:

1. Item: fol. 20v

   Title (A.11.1.EM): [Short Old English poem, now lost]

   Title (manuscript): De situ dunelmi. et de sanctorum reliquiis que ibidem continentur carmen compositum

   Incipit: (fol. 20v) Is ðeos burch breome geond breoten rice

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, p. 298

Administration Information:

Manuscript described by Mary Swan and Owen Roberson with the assistance of Sanne van der Schee, with reference to published scholarship.

Bibliography:

Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 223