The Manuscript Tradition of Burchard of Mount Sion's Descriptio Terre Sancte

Burchard of Mount Sion Descriptio Terre Sancte is well known to scholars of the medieval Holy Land as a systematic account of that territory composed in the 1280s. It was also extremely popular in late medieval and early modern times, as is made clear by the considerable number of extant manuscripts and printed editions. And yet, very little is known about the text as Burchard actually composed it and about the way it evolved over time. The aim of this paper is to propose, for the first time, a full survey of the manuscripts providing the so-called long version of the Descriptio, revealing their division into families as well as the relations between them. It is hoped that this analysis will bring us much closer to Burchard's original text and, at the same time, facilitate future studies on specific problems related to the Descriptio tradition and reception.