Researchers have unearthed an important lost copy of a poem called “Caedmon’s Hymn,”—the oldest extant poem in the English language. It was composed by an illiterate cowherd after he received a vision encouraging him to sing about “the beginning of things,” according to the 8th-century English historian, Bede. Scholars Elisabetta Magnanti and Mark Faulkner of Trinity College in Dublin made the discovery while looking through materials at the National Central Library of Rome.
A Lost Manuscript Resurfaces in Rome
This instance of the poem, dating from A.D. 800 to 830 is the third-oldest known copy. What makes the discovery so significant, then, isn’t primarily the age of the manuscript, but that the poem appears in Old English rather than in Latin. The two older copies of the poem, in Cambridge and St. Petersburg, are both in Latin. The newly revealed Rome copy, which faithfully preserves elements of the early Northumbrian dialect in which Caedmon dictated, will help researchers understand the history of the English language. It also points to the importance of English poetry for readers of the era, who evidently wanted the verses preserved in their own tongue.
The Venerable Bede, in an illustrated manuscript, writing the “Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” from a 12th-century codex at Engelberg Abbey, Switzerland. The 8th-century English historian Bede preserved "Caedmon's Hymn" by referencing its origin in his "Ecclesiastical History of the English People."Public Domain
