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Researchers from Trinity College Dublin identified, in a medieval manuscript kept in Rome, a rare copy of Caedmon’s Hymn, considered the oldest known poem in the English language and linked to the earliest records of English writing
Irish researchers identified in Rome a rare copy of Caedmon’s Hymn, considered the oldest known poem in the English language, inserted in the main body of a medieval manuscript of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede.
The discovery was made by Elisabetta Magnanti from the School of English at Trinity College Dublin, and Mark Faulkner, a professor of medieval literature at the same institution. They were analyzing digitized pages of a book in the National Central Library of Rome.
Magnanti reported surprise upon seeing the poem in the Latin text. For her, the presence of the hymn in the main body of the manuscript was extraordinary. The team traveled to Rome to observe the document.
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Poem in English language was in an ancient manuscript
Caedmon’s Hymn was composed in Old English by a farm worker from Northumbria in the 7th century. The poem appears in some copies of the Latin work by Bede, a monk and saint known as Venerable Bede.
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People was one of the most reproduced texts of the Middle Ages, with nearly 200 manuscripts. Faulkner stated that the hymn connects scholars to the earliest stages of English writing.
The manuscript found in Rome dates from the 9th century. Two earlier copies contain the poem in Old English, but as later additions, scribbled in the margin or added outside the main body of the text.
This difference made the Roman copy important. Before it, the oldest manuscript with this feature dated from the early 12th century. The find brings this record forward by three centuries.
Faulkner stated that Caedmon’s poem can be considered the beginning of English literature. He highlighted that only about three million words of Old English have survived, mostly from texts of the 10th and 11th centuries.
The journey of the book to Rome
The copy of Bede’s work was transcribed by monks in the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey of Nonantola, near present-day Modena, in northern Italy. The site was an important center of medieval transcription.
In the 17th century, with the decline of the abbey, its collection passed through Rome, the Vatican, and a small church. Part of the texts disappeared and only resurfaced in the early 19th century with international collectors.
The copy came into the hands of the English antiquarian Thomas Phillipps, then was acquired by the Swiss Martin Bodmer and, in the 20th century, was in New York, in the collection of the Austrian bookseller HP Kraus.
The Italian Ministry of Culture bought the manuscript from Kraus in 1972. Since then, the text has remained in the library of Rome, where it received little attention until the work conducted by Magnanti.
Digitization paved the way for new discoveries
Magnanti had been studying Bede’s work for more than four years and was preparing a catalog of existing copies. She located the book in the catalog, consulted the library, and received digital images three months later.
Valentina Longo stated that the Nonantolan collection was digitized and is available for free on the website. Andrea Cappa, head of the manuscripts department, said that the discovery could pave the way for other new international research.
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