An early copy of the oldest poem in the English language has been found in Rome

Caedmon's Hymn is a short nine-line poem in Old English that praises God as the creator of the world. According to legend, it was composed by Caedmon, an illiterate shepherd from Whitby in Northern England, who received the gift of singing after a vision in a dream. The story of Cadmon is known through Bede the Venerable, a monk and author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Details

The new find is important not because the text itself was unknown. Caedmon's Hymn has long been known to researchers. It is the early copy and the way the poem is placed in the manuscript that is important. In the two older surviving copies, which are in Cambridge and St Petersburg, the Old English text is added in the margin or at the end. In the Roman manuscript it is embedded in the main Latin text.

According to researchers, this shows that already in the ninth century Bede's readers appreciated not only the Latin paraphrase but also the Old English poetic text itself. In other words, English poetry was significant enough to be brought back inside the Latin historical manuscript.

The manuscript was created at the Abbey of Nonantola in Northern Italy. Its later history proved complicated: it was associated with Roman church collections, it was considered lost to Bede scholars since 1975, and its significance only became clear after it was digitised by the National Central Library of Rome.

Why it's important

The find helps us better understand the early history of English literature. Relatively few Old English texts have survived, and Caedmon's Hymn is considered one of the earliest and most important monuments of English poetry.

The manuscript also shows how Latin book culture and vernacular languages co-existed in the early Middle Ages. Bede wrote his story in Latin, but readers and scribes soon began to bring back the Old English original of the poem. This shows the growing importance of English as a literary and cultural medium.

The discovery also highlights the role of digitalisation of libraries. The manuscript was in Rome, but its significance was recognised by researchers in Ireland after the library digitised and provided images.

Background

Caedmon's Hymn is usually associated with the seventh century. If Bede's account is correct, the poem was composed sometime between 658 and 680, during the early period of Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England. It is considered one of the oldest reliably dated examples of Old English poetry.

All known copies of Caedmon's Hymn are preserved in manuscripts related to the Bede story. The new Roman copy has been labelled Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Vitt. Em. 1452, fol. 122v and is dated to the early ninth century.

Source

Research by Elisabetta Magnanti and Mark Faulkner published in Early Medieval England and its Neighbours in 2026: A New Early-Ninth-Century Manuscript of Cædmon's Hymn: Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Vitt. Em. 1452, 122v. The find was also reported by Trinity College Dublin and The Guardian.