Researchers Find Oldest English Poem in 9th-Century Manuscript in Rome

Irish researchers examining digitized pages of a medieval manuscript in Rome identified the oldest surviving copy of an English poem. The nine-line work, known as Caedmon’s Hymn, appears within the main body of a 9th-century Latin text rather than in the margins or as a later addition.

The poem was composed in the 7th century by a Northumbrian agricultural worker at Whitby Abbey. It is preserved inside copies of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in Latin by the monk known as the Venerable Bede.

Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English, described the moment the text appeared on screen. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” she told The Associated Press.

Mark Faulkner, an associate professor of medieval literature at Trinity, said the manuscript dates from the 9th century and is one of the oldest surviving copies of Bede’s history. He noted that two earlier copies contain the poem only as marginal notes or appended additions.

“Prior to the discovery of the Rome manuscript, the earliest one was from the early 12th century. So this is three centuries earlier than that,” Faulkner said.

The copy was produced at the Benedictine abbey of Nonantola near modern-day Modena. Monks transcribed it in the scriptorium, one of the major centers for manuscript production during the Middle Ages. The volume later moved through several abbeys, the Vatican, and a small church before entering private collections.

It passed through the hands of English antiquarian Thomas Phillipps and Swiss bibliophile Martin Bodmer before reaching New York bookseller H.P. Kraus. Italy’s culture ministry purchased the manuscript from Kraus in 1972 and placed it in Rome’s National Central Library, where it remained largely unexamined until now.