Some medieval texts have barely survived. Beowulf, the Old English masterwork, exists today because of a single manuscript – one that narrowly escaped combustion in 1731. For such texts, the single manuscript is all important. The discovery of another copy would transform our understanding.
By contrast, a work like Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) survives in more than 160 manuscripts. This volume of material has meant that scholars have tended to focus on just a few of the earliest copies, since these are most likely to preserve a text close to what Bede originally wrote. The result is that many later or less well-known manuscripts have received little detailed attention.
