Durham, also known as De situ Dunelmi, Carmen de situ Dunelmi or De situ Dunelmi et de sanctorum reliquiis quae ibidem continentur carmen compositum, is an anonymous late Old English short poem about the English city of Durham and its relics, which might commemorate the translation of Cuthbert's relics to Durham Cathedral in 1104. Known from the late 12th-century manuscript, Cambridge, University Library, Ff. 1. 27, Durham has been described both as "the last extant poem written in traditional alliterative Old English metrical verse" and as being placed "so conveniently on the customary divide between Old and Middle English that the line can be drawn right down the middle of the poem." Scholars have dated the poem either to the twelfth century or to some point in the second half of the eleventh century.
Durham is often considered to be a rare Old English example of the genre of encomium urbis, or urban eulogy, and has also been described as elegiac poetry, a riddle and an occasional poem.
Historical background
Cuthbert (c. 635 – 687) is a prominent saint associated with northern England, who served as the Bishop of Lindisfarne. Eleven years after his death, his coffin was opened and his body found to be incorrupt, that is, it had miraculously not decayed. In 875, his body was removed from Lindisfarne after an invasion by the Danes led to the monastery being abandoned. After long peregrinations, Durham was founded in around 995 by Aldhun and other followers of Cuthbert's cult.Kendall 1988, pp. 507–8 The location, a rocky peninsula surrounded by a loop of the River Wear, was probably chosen for its ease of defence.Bonney 2005, pp. 14–15 A stream of pilgrims attended the shrine, a series of churches was built for their use, and a fortified town soon sprang up.Kendall 1984, p. 5Bonney 2005, pp. 22–24 Several other relics had accumulated by the time the group settled in Durham, and the remains of several other saints, including Boisil and possibly Bede, were acquired by a sacristan called Alfred Westou in the mid-11th century, Bede allegedly being stolen from its shrine in Jarrow.Offler 1962, pp. 592–93
After the Norman Conquest, the Anglo-Scandinavian priests originating in Lindisfarne eventually lost ownership of Cuthbert's shrine; however, the transfer of power in Durham to the Normans occurred in stages. William the Conqueror ordered a castle to be built, started around 1072.Blurton 2008, pp. 46–47Bonney 2005, p. 20 The first Norman appointee as Bishop of Durham was murdered, and his successor, William of Saint-Calais, established Durham as a Benedictine priory in 1083. Tradition holds that only a single Lindisfarne priest chose to abandon his family to join the new priory. The Anglo-Norman Benedictines continued to venerate Cuthbert. A grandiose new Norman building – the existing Durham Cathedral – was founded as a fitting permanent home for his remains and the other relics in 1093, and the final Anglo-Saxon church or cathedral was demolished.pp. 24–27 in By the time the new cathedral building was sufficiently advanced, William of Saint-Calais had died and the "notorious" Ranulph Flambard had succeeded him as bishop.Blurton 2008, p. 48
Cuthbert's coffin was reopened on 25 August 1104, and ceremonially moved to the unfinished cathedral a few days later.Kendall 1988, p. 520 A later eye-witness account of the opening of the coffin is given in Capitula de Miraculis et Translationibus Sancti Cuthberti, which states that the body remained incorrupt more than four centuries post-mortem, and also lists all the other relics found in the coffin, including a linen bag said to contain Bede's remains.
Structure and contents The poem has 20 or 21 lines, which run continuously even though the subject matter falls into two unequal parts. The first part gives a brief general introduction to the unnamed city and its locale:
The opening first states that the site is renowned throughout Britain. The poet describes it as located on a high bluff, surrounded by rocks, with the River Wear flowing around it. The river is said to contain many different kinds of fish. The poem goes on to describe the surrounding countryside as densely wooded, with abundant wild animals. This part of the text shows similarities to two earlier works in Latin, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, where the description relates to the whole of England, and Alcuin's poem praising York, De pontificibus et sanctis Ecclesiae Eboracensis.Kendall 1988, p. 517 There is no explicit mention of the cathedral.Blurton 2008, pp. 41–42, 44–45
These lines are followed by a longer description of the relics to be found there:
The second part opens by saying that everyone knows that the city also contains Cuthbert, the head of King Oswald – described as the "lion of England" – and Bishop Aidan, with his companions Eadberht and Eadfrith. With them within are Bishop Æthelwold, Bede – the renowned scholar – and Abbot Boisil, described as Cuthbert's teacher. Within the minster many other relics are also said to reside. The poem concludes by saying that there many miracles occur, as has been written, and looks forward to the Day of Judgement.
The poem's account of the relics closely parallels that given in Capitula de Miraculis et Translationibus Sancti Cuthberti, preserving the order in which the saints are listed.Kendall 1984, pp. 8–9 All of the seven other saints mentioned were closely connected with Cuthbert.Kendall 1984, p. 7Kendall 1988, p. 510 There is no mention of the other relics collected by Elfred Westou.Kendall 1984, p. 11 The poem's epithet for Bede ("breoma bocera Beda") derives from the 10th-century translation of the Lindisfarne Gospels into Old English.
Manuscripts and editions
The poem is known from a copy in a late 12th-century manuscript, Cambridge, University Library, Ff. 1. 27, believed to have been compiled at Durham Cathedral Priory and now held by the Cambridge University Library. In 1705, George Hickes published a copy made by G. Nicolson from London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius D. xx, a 12th-century manuscript, which was lost in a 1731 house fire.Rollason 1998, pp. 278–79 A further transcription, discovered in 1992, was made in 1640 by Franciscus Junius the younger, possibly from an otherwise unknown manuscript. The poem is here accompanied by a Latin translation in the right-hand column. Some variation among these three versions exists.
Durham is the only work in Old English in the Cambridge and Cotton Vitellius manuscripts, and both entitle it in Latin: "De situ Dunelmi et de sanctorum reliquiis quae ibidem continentur carmen compositum". As with other Old English poetry, it is presented as prose, without line breaks.Lerer 1999, pp. 32–33 In the Cambridge manuscript, the handwriting of the poem is that of the main transcriber. The poem comes at the end of a large group of texts about Durham; a few lines of subsequent text have been erased, to make the poem conclude the page.
The usual modern edition is that of Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (1942), published in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. The poem has previously been edited by George Waring (1865), I. H. Hinde (1867), Thomas Arnold (1882), Richard Wülcker (in German; 1921), and others. All pre-date the discovery of the Junius copy.
Date and author The poem's date is often given as between 1104 and 1109. The end of this range is fixed by a reference to the poem in Symeon's Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae (also known as Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesiae), completed between 1104 and 1115, and probably by 1107. Symeon describes it as an English-language poem on Durham and its relics, and implies that it pre-dated the discovery of Bede's remains by many years.
The beginning of the range is disputed. The poem's 20th-century editors, Wülcker and Dobbie, each suggest that it was written after the translation of Cuthbert's remains in 1104, considering the poem's statement that the relics are "" to refer to the Norman cathedral. Margaret Schlauch, an early commentator, considers the language to suggest an early 12th century date. Many later scholars concur. H. S. Offler, Thomas O'Donnell and others have, however, suggested that the poem could have been composed as early as around 1050, before the Conquest, when the relics that it lists were all present in Durham and resting in the church which preceded the Norman Cathedral and was equally a “” (making the reference to a “” in the poem at least ambiguous). Moreover, the description of the relics in the poem suggests an arrangement closer to what is known of the secular cathedral, which preceded the Normans, than of the Norman Cathedral.
There is no direct information about the author. Many scholars consider him to have been one of the Benedictine monks at Durham, while O'Donnell has suggested that he might have been among the secular clerks who occupied Durham before the arrival of the monks from Lindisfarne, if the poem is indeed from earlier in the eleventh century.Grossi 2017, pp. 713–15 The two groups differ substantially in character: the former Anglo-Norman and monastic, the latter Anglo-Scandinavian and secular. Calvin B. Kendall has speculated that he might have been a scholar.
Style, language and themes Durham employs traditional alliterative verse. The proportion of half-lines of the C, D and E types is very low (14%) even compared with the other late poems The Battle of Maldon (991) and The Death of Edward (c. 1066) (both around 25%).Fulk 1992, p. 255 The poem features interlace and ring structure, as well as extensive and complex word play. The final lines are macaronic: they mix Old English with Latin. Several characteristics of the language might be signs of linguistic drift towards Middle English – including changes in unstressed syllables; some spelling choices, such as burch for the Old English burg/burh; and the inclusion of Latin words such as leo and reliquia – although other interpretations are possible.Kendall 1988, pp. 511–12Kendall 1988, pp. 518–19
Both parts of the poem share the theme of abundance, the location's natural gifts being complemented by the many relics collected together; this theme is also seen in the description of England in Bede's Ecclesiastical History.Kendall 1988, pp. 509–10, 517
Genre
In her "influential" 1941 article on the poem, Schlauch suggests that Durham forms the sole example in Old English poetry of the encomium urbis (urban eulogy) genre, a successor to Alcuin's Latin poem praising York, as well as several works on Italian cities; this idea is broadly accepted in much subsequent scholarship.Howe 2008, pp. 225–31 Calvin B. Kendall, Helen Appleton and Heather Blurton have each suggested that Durham is an unusual example of this genre, as it fails to describe the cathedral and other features of the built environment, and does not even include the name of the city that is being praised (the explicit mention of the River Wear fixes the subject as Durham).Blurton 2008, pp. 43–44 Lerer sees the poem as adhering equally to the tradition of alliterative elegiac poetry.Lerer 1999, pp.7–8, 18–22, 24 An earlier Old English poem, The Ruin, which describes a Roman spa, probably Bath, considered by some scholars as another atypical example of the encomium urbis, can equally be considered as an elegy. Christopher Abram notes that only the stone-built cities of York, Bath and Durham have inspired British examples of the encomium urbis.