The church of Durham, founded in 995, claimed in the Middle Ages to be in origin the church of Lindisfarne or Holy Island, the members of which had fled in the face of Viking raids and had wandered for long across northern England, before re-establishing their church at Chester-le-Street in Co. Durham and then at Durham itself. The text edited and translated here for the first time for over a century is the most complete and detailed account of the history of that church. Important as a piece of early post-Conquest historiography by an author about whom much is now known, the text is fascinating for the details it gives about the ecclesiastical community of Durham, the miracles which its members believed had occurred, and the place of the church of Durham in relation to the lands and secular inhabitants of northern England.

Edited and translated by: David Rollason