ABSTRACT
Who wrote Urbanus magnus? This chapter postulates that we can understand the authorship of the poem only after understanding its content. Scholarship has called into question the authorship of the text and – more worryingly – its composition. The overarching issue is whether later authors modified or supplemented the text after the twelfth century. The first section of the chapter broadly introduces the content and structure of the text. A summary is provided of the content of the poem, with relevant examples. The aim is to provide the reader with a general understanding of the main subjects and themes which run throughout the text. It is only with familiarity of the content of the poem that we can move forward to consider questions of composition and authorship. The subsequent sections focus on the issue of composition and introduce the historical sources which form the basis of our knowledge of the poem as it appears today. With this foundation laid, the final section examines the attribution of Daniel of Beccles as author of the text. This will help us to understand his role in the creation of Urbanus magnus, and to determine whether we should view him as the author or the compiler of the text.
