Early Manuscript Dissemination

Since its release, the De gestis Britonum has been defined by its popularity. The work became successful quickly and the material record of its early reception is exceptional in its extent. The count of surviving manuscripts runs to 225 at the moment, and almost 80 of them can be dated to before c.1210.1 In what follows I shall examine the first stages of the transmission and reception of the DGB using these early manuscripts as my primary body of evidence. The first part of this chapter discusses the earliest dissemination of the work, bringing together evidence from the manuscripts, textual transmission, and narrative and documentary sources. I start from the process of how the text was released and move on to discuss the role of the dedicatees and early documented readers in the circulation of the text. I also suggest circumstances in which the three dedications of the work were probably penned and look briefly at the genesis of the textually idiosyncratic versions of the work, the socalled First and Second Variants. This part depends heavily on Michael Reeve’s textual work and the division of the transmission of the DGB into two main families, depending on lost archetypes Φ and Δ respectively. In the second part, I turn to what the manuscripts tell us about the early audience and its attitudes toward the DGB. Here, I first provide an overview of what is known about the origins of the early copies and point out the scale of early monastic dissemination, in particular on the Continent. Despite its