'Æðele geferes’: northern saints in a Durham manuscript

A late twelfth-century manuscript that once belonged to the Abbey at Sawley in Yorkshire, but was produced in Durham, contains a collection of texts focused on the history of princes, bishops, and abbots. The manuscript is now divided in two as Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS, 66 and Cambridge, University Library MS, Ff.I.27. The manuscript is an important record of Anglo-Saxon verse as it preserves the only surviving copy of the late Old English poem Durham, a short piece in praise of the resting place of Cuthbert. It is also the only manuscript with a northern provenance to contain AEthelwulf’s De abbatibus, a ninth-century Latin poem on a cell of Lindisfarne. The poems are found in the final part of the manuscript, which focuses on northern England, and the city of Durham in particular. De abbatibus and its associated miscellanea precede a section containing Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est dunhelmensis, ecclesie and the Anonymous Historia de sancto Cuthberto; the section concludes with the Old English poem Durham. The two Anglo-Saxon poems, composed more than two centuries apart, share an interest in the saints and holy men of Northumbria. Together with their associated miscellanea they are employed in the manuscript to aid Symeon’s work in demonstrating the pre-eminence of the Durham community and their patron saint, Cuthbert.