. The Sawley Recension – Historia Brittonum

This is an interpolated text, which David Dumville has identified as deriving from twelfth-century scholarly activity at Sawley, in which the pseudo-Gildas and pseudo-Nennius recensions were conflated and further material interpolated. The Sawley library contained a manuscript of the pseudo-Gildas recension written in the early thirteenth century (Cambridge University Library MS Ff.I.27) that copies the Sawley original into which the material from a now lost pseudo-Nennius recension text had been interpolated (Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 139). At least three hands added material to the original manuscript before 1166, at which point it was copied at Durham. Subsequent additions to the text were made up to the early sixteenth century. Dumville has also shown that the redactor was familiar with a text of the Vatican recension. The recension is therefore a composite, which provides evidence about other recensions in addition to the scholarly activity underlying its own production, much of which derives either from sources other than the Historia Brittonum or from now lost versions.

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