Historia de Sancto Cuthberto

Historia de Sancto Cuthberto
"History of St Cuthbert"
The opening page of the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto in the Cambridge University Library Ff. 1.27 manuscript
Full title	Historia de Sancto Cuthberto et de Commemoratione Locorum Regionumque Eius Priscae Possessionis, a Primordio usque Nunc Temporis
Author(s)	anonymous
Patron	Bishopric of Durham
Language	Latin
Date	mid- to late-11th century
Provenance	Durham Cathedral
State of existence	three witnesses
Manuscript(s)	Oxford Bodleian Library, Bodley 596; Cambridge University Library, Ff. 1.27; Lincoln's Inn London Hale 114
First printed edition	Roger Twysden, Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores X (1652)
Genre	Chronicle cartulary
Length	c. 6500 words
Subject	St Cuthbert and the property of the church of St Cuthbert
Period covered	7th century to 1031
Personages	St Cuthbert, Bishop Ecgred, Abbot Eadred, Cuthheard

The Historia de Sancto Cuthberto ("History of St Cuthbert") is a historical compilation finished some time after 1031. It is an account of the history of the bishopric of St Cuthbert—based successively at Lindisfarne, Norham, Chester-le-Street and finally Durham—from the life of St Cuthbert himself onwards. The latest event documented is a grant by King Cnut, c. 1031. The work is a cartulary chronicle recording grants and losses of property as well as miracles of retribution, under a loose narrative of temporal progression. The text survives in three manuscripts, the earliest of which dates from around 1100. The original version of the text is not thought to be extant; rather, all surviving manuscripts are thought to be copies of an earlier but lost exemplar. The Historia is one of the important sources behind the higher quality expanded histories produced at Durham in the early 12th century, particularly the Historia Regum and Symeon of Durham's Libellus de Exordio.

There are three manuscript witnesses for the Historia, now in Oxford, Cambridge and London, none of which attribute the text to any author. The earliest witness is believed to be the version in the Oxford manuscript, folios 203r to 206v of Oxford's Bodleian Library, MS "Bodley 596". The text is incomplete, beginning only in chapter 8, as the first folio has disappeared (along with the later folios of the text that preceded it in the manuscript, Bede's metrical Life of St Cuthbert). The handwriting is early Gothic, showing continental influences typical of the contemporary Anglo-Norman script. Palaeographer Michael Gullick has identified the scribe as Symeon of Durham (fl. 1093–1129), an identification accepted by the Historia's recent editor Ted Johnson South. Bodley 596 itself is a compilation bound together in the early 17th century, but folios 174 to 214 are from the late 11th or early 12th century, containing Bede's prose Life of St Cuthbert (175r–200v), his metrical Life of St Cuthbert (201r–202v), this Historia and finally a Life and Office of St Julian of Le Mans (206v–214v). The codicological details indicate that these works were part of one original volume, though it has been claimed that the Julian text is in a different hand.