According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury went to Rome in 990, to fetch his pallium. Sigeric, formerly a monk of Glastonbury and then abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury, had been consecrated bishop of Ramsbury in 985, and became archbishop of Canterbury at the end of 989 or at the beginning of 990, on the death of Archbishop Æthelgar. During the journey, or more likely, once he had returned to England, he committed to writing a diary covering his journey and his stay in Rome. This year, the 1000th anniversary of Sigeric's visit to the ‘city of St Peter’, as medieval travellers called Rome, seems a suitable time to undertake a new examination of the considerable devotional and artistic impact of the Roman pilgrimage on the cultural and spiritual life of the late Anglo-Saxon Church.

Ms Royal 2. B.V. in the British Library, London, is a tenth-century Psalter from Winchester, possibly from Nunnaminster. On the last folios of this MS (189-190) were added in the late tenth century, miscellaneous computistical entries, which include the years ofChrist, the ages of the world, the ages and generations, the numbering and reckoning of years and the number of years from the Creation to the foundation of Rome. Two texts, the ‘De longitudine mundi’ (fol. 189) and ‘Longitudo, latitudo et altitudo templi et tabernaculum (sic)’ (fols. 189r and v) precede, and another, ‘De area Noe’ (fol. 189v) follows a short text entitled ‘De aedificatio (sic) ecclesie sancti Petri apostoli’ at folio 189v.With the exception of this last, all these texts are also found in a ninth-century MS, British Library, Cotton Vespasian B.VI (fols. 106-70). To the best of my knowledge, the ‘De aedificatio[ne]’ does not exist in any other manuscript, and there is no known source for it. The present note aims solely at bringing this text to light and providing an edition of it; an examination of its implications for English history and architecture will be provided elsewhere.