Symeon of Durham's Historia de Regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-century Historical Workshops *

This chapter is offered by way of some reflections on one aspect of the research agenda of this volume, but also by way of a report on a new edition and translation of Symeon of Durham, Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum, which is being undertaken by Michael Lapidge and the present author, to be published by the Clarendon Press in the series Oxford Medieval Texts. ¹ This text, which is currently available in full only in Thomas Arnold’s now-antiquated and much criticised edition in the Rolls Series, ² is a complex and composite one, as Peter Hunter Blair made abundantly clear, ³ and the new edition needs to reflect that, and to make it transparent to a reader what the various layers and attributions within it are. Michael Lapidge has demonstrated that the first part of the Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum represents a compilation, containing some of his own work, of the early-eleventh-century English scholar Byrhtferth of Ramsey, ⁴ and the editors consequently intend to present it as such, within Symeon’s more extended compilation. The title which Byrhtferth’s compilation originally had is unknown. Lapidge favoured originally the neutral ‘Historical compilation’, although he has since wondered whether Historia regum might have been Byrhtferth’s original title, and that is what will be used in the new edition. ⁵