Researchers have identified a 1,200-year-old manuscript in Rome that contains one of the oldest known copies of Caedmon’s Hymn, the first poem written in English. The discovery provides new insight into how Old English was valued in early medieval times.
Scholars from Trinity College Dublin uncovered the early ninth-century manuscript at the National Central Library of Rome. Dated between 800 and 830, it is the third-oldest surviving copy of the nine-line poem praising God’s creation of the world. Unlike earlier versions where the Old English text appears only in margins, this copy integrates the poem directly into the main Latin text of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.