Symeon of Durham and the memoria of Bede (original) (raw)

Symeon of Durham and the memoria of Bede Bede (673-735), the great Northumbrian scholar saint, left a legacy of erudition that was celebrated through the Middle Ages in England and on the Continent. Although his renown was was sufficiently widespread to survive the destruction of Northumbrian holy places, starting with Lindisfarne in 793, it was not until the revival of monasticism in the North under the supervision of Anglo-Norman churchmen that a shrine was built in his honor. The process by which the memory of Bede, his intangible memoria, came to be expressed in an elaborate burial-place, a visible memoria 1 , can be traced in documents from the twelfth century on the history of the church of Durham. Chief among these is the Libellus de exordio atque procurso istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie (Tract on the origins and progress of this the church of Durham) 2 , of which ten manuscripts survive. The date of composition of the Libellus de exordio is unknown, but the earliest manuscripts are from very beginning of the twelfth century (1104-1107 x 1115). It is believed that the work was written by a team of compilers under the leadership of Symeon of Durham († c.