De obsessione Dunelmi

De obsessione Dunelmi ("On the siege of Durham"), is a historical work written in the north of England during the Anglo-Norman period, almost certainly at Durham, and probably in either the late 11th- or early 12th-century.

The text survives in only one manuscript, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 139. In its surviving form, it was written down between 1161 and 1167. The manuscript was at Sawley Abbey, Lancashire by the late 12th century. Derek Baker in 1975 argued that it was probably compiled at Fountains Abbey.M. R. James had argued in 1912 that the manuscript was compiled at Hexham, Northumberland.Theodor Mommsen in 1898, Peter Hunter Blair in 1963 and David Dumville in 1974 (repeated in 1990) argued that the compilation took place at Sawley.

It is almost certain, however, that the text predates its transcription into the Cambridge MS. Bernard Meehan argued that the bulk of the text was composed between 1073 and 1076, before the execution of Earl Waltheof (1076) but after the date of a massacre at Settrington (1073). This is largely on the basis that Waltheof's death goes unrelated, an argument that Morris attacked by pointing out that such things were not important for this particular text, noting other great figures mentioned whose deaths also go unrelated. Morris, for a variety of reasons, favoured a date inside the first two decades of the 12th-century, though he conceded that a date in the 1070s was a possibility.

The source which resembles De obsessione Dunelmi most is a letter, immediately preceding De obsessione Dunhelmi in the manuscript, written by Symeon of Durham to Hugh, Dean of York Cathedral. Both sources open with similar dating clauses and share a similar style, and it is possible that De obsessione Dunelmi was originally a letter too. A 16th-century incipit in the manuscript attributes the work to Symeon of Durham, though this is too late to be reliable. It is of however of note that Dean Hugh, when he resigned his deanship in 1135, retired to Fountains Abbey, supposedly taking with him a collection of books.

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