Irish Researchers Find Oldest English Poem in Rome

Why this is here: The manuscript discovered in Rome dates to the 9th century, making it roughly three centuries older than the previously known earliest copy of “Caedmon’s Hymn.”

Irish researchers Elisabetta Magnanti and Mark Faulkner discovered the oldest surviving English poem within a medieval book in a Roman library. The poem, “Caedmon’s Hymn,” was composed in Old English around the 7th century by a Northumbrian agricultural worker. It appears within the main text of a Latin history written by the Venerable Bede, a monk and saint.

Previous copies of the poem existed, but those were added as later additions to other texts. This ninth-century manuscript shows the poem integrated into the core text, suggesting earlier importance for English-language writing. The book itself had a complex journey, moving from an abbey in Italy to collectors in America before Italy’s culture ministry acquired it in 1972.

Researchers note that about three million words of Old English survive, but most texts date to the 10th and 11th centuries. The library in Rome has digitized its entire collection of rare manuscripts, making them accessible online, and anticipates further discoveries will follow. The work to catalog and study these texts continues.