Lost 7th-Century Old English Poem Discovered in Rome Library

Scholars from Trinity College Dublin have discovered a lost copy of Caedmon’s Hymn, the earliest surviving poem in the English language, at the National Central Library of Rome.

The manuscript was uncovered by Elisabetta Magnanti and Mark Faulkner from Trinity’s school of English. Magnanti, an expert in medieval manuscripts, requested the library check its archives following conflicting evidence regarding a copy in Rome.

The institution subsequently located, digitized, and emailed the pages. Magnanti described the discovery as a testament to the power of libraries to facilitate new research through the digitization of collections.

The Historical Significance of Caedmon’s Hymn

The nine-line poem was composed in the seventh century by Caedmon, an illiterate cattle herder at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire. According to the medieval theologian Bede, Caedmon was inspired by a divine visitation to compose the work, which lauds God for the creation of the world.

While Bede included a Latin translation of the poem in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, he omitted the original Old English version. The Rome copy is significant because it features the Old English version in the main body of the text, signaling the language’s growing status in the ninth century.

The text is punctuated with a full stop after every word. According to Faulkner, this indicates that word spacing was a relatively new invention at the time and shows the early development of English text presentation.

The researchers have detailed their findings in Early Medieval England and its Neighbours, an open-access journal published by Cambridge University Press.

Andrea Cappa, head of manuscripts and rare books at the Rome library, stated the institution is continuing to digitize holdings from Italy’s National Centre for the Study of the Manuscript, which will eventually grant researchers access to more than 40 million images.