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Old-fashioned sleuthing and modern technology have led to the discovery of a manuscript containing a poem written by a farm laborer 1,300 years ago.
An early 9th-century manuscript containing one of the earliest surviving copies of the first known poem in English has been found in Rome by researchers from Trinity College Dublin.
The manuscript, discovered in the National Central Library of Rome, contains Caedmon’s Hymn and dates to between 800 and 830. That makes it the third-oldest known surviving version of the poem.
The find is especially important because the Latin manuscript includes the poem in Old English within the main body of the text. In the two older known copies, held in Cambridge and St Petersburg, the poem appears in Latin, while the Old English version was added only in the margin or at the end.
According to researchers from Trinity’s School of English, the placement of the Old English poem within the Rome manuscript suggests that Bede’s readers placed real value on Old English verse.
Caedmon’s Hymn was composed more than 1,300 years ago. The nine line poem praises God for creating the world and is said to have been created by a cowherd from Whitby, North Yorkshire, after a divine visitation.
The poem was written in Old English, the form of English used during the early Middle Ages. It has survived because it was included in some copies of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, an 8th-century Latin history of England written by the Venerable Bede, a northern English monk.
The manuscript was identified by Dr Elisabetta Magnanti and Dr Mark Faulkner of Trinity’s School of English, both specialists in medieval manuscripts. Their findings have been published by Cambridge University Press in the open-access journal Early Medieval England and its Neighbours.
Dr Elisabetta Magnanti explained: “I came across conflicting references to Bede’s History in Rome, some pointing to its existence and some indicating it was lost. When its existence was confirmed by the library and the manuscript was digitized for us, we were extremely excited to find that the manuscript contained the Old English version of Caedmon’s Hymn and that it was embedded in the Latin text.
“The magic of digitization has allowed two researchers in Ireland to recognize the significance of a manuscript now in Rome, containing a poem miraculously composed in Northern England by a shy cowherd a millennium and a half ago. This discovery is a testament to the power of libraries to facilitate new research by digitizing their collections and making them freely available online.”
Why is this important?
Dr Mark Faulkner said: “About three million words of Old English survive in total, but the vast majority of texts come from the tenth and eleventh centuries. Caedmon’s Hymn is almost unique as a survival from the seventh century – it connects us to the earliest stages of written English. As the oldest known poem in Old English it is today celebrated as the beginning of English literature.
“Unearthing a new early medieval copy of the poem has significant implications for our understanding of Old English and how it was valued. Bede chose not include the original Old English poem in his History, but to translate it into Latin. This manuscript shows that the original Old English poem was reinserted into the Latin within 100 years of Bede finishing his History. It is a sign of how much early readers valued English poetry.”
Torrid history and complex ownership
The rediscovered manuscript of Bede’s History is one of at least 160 surviving copies. It was produced at the Abbey of Nonantola in Northern Central Italy between 800 and 830 and is now held by the National Central Library in Rome. Its identification offers fresh evidence of cultural links between England and Italy during the early medieval period.
According to the researchers, the manuscript passed through a troubled chain of events. It was stolen from the church of San Bernardo alle Terme in Rome, where it had been sent with other manuscripts for protection during the Napoleonic Wars in the 1810s. It later moved through several private owners before being acquired by the National Central Library of Rome.
Because of this complicated ownership history, Bede scholars had considered the manuscript lost since 1975. No one realized that it contained a copy of Caedmon’s Hymn until the National Central Library of Rome digitized it.
Valentina Longo, Curator of Medieval and Modern Manuscripts at the National Central Library of Rome, said: “Today, the National Central Library of Rome holds the largest collection of early medieval codices from the benedictine abbey of Nonantola. This collection comprises 45 manuscripts dating from the sixth to the twelfth century, divided between the original Sessoriana collection and the Vittorio Emanuele collection, where the manuscripts recovered following their dispersal due to the 19th-century theft have been housed. The whole Nonantolan collection has been fully digitized and is accessible through the library’s website.”
Andrea Cappa, Head of Manuscripts and Rare Books Reading Room at the National Central Library of Rome, added: “The Central National Library of Rome continually expands its digital collections, providing free access to its resources. The library has already made available digital copies of around 500 manuscripts, and is also completing a major project to digitise the holdings of the National Center for the Study of the Manuscript, which includes microfilm reproductions of approximately 110,000 manuscripts from 180 Italian libraries. This initiative will give scholars and researchers access to more than 40 million images.”
Composed following a divine visitation
Caedmon’s Hymn is traditionally attributed to Caedmon, an agricultural laborer at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire. According to the account, he was at a feast where guests began reciting poems, but he left because he did not know one to perform.
After he went to bed, a figure appeared to him in a dream and told him to sing about Creation. Caedmon then miraculously produced the Hymn, a nine-line poem of carefully woven verse praising God as creator of the world. The poem can be read in both modern English and Old English.
Continued research
“Interest in the Abbey of Nonantola has once again been stirred by this ancient copy of Caedmon’s Hymn and the history of the manuscript in which it is preserved,” said Canon Dr. Riccardo Fangarezzi, Head of the Abbey Archive in Nonantola, Italy, where the manuscript was produced.
“This newly identified gem of British cultural heritage now joins the small Anglo-Nonantolan cultural treasury constituted by manuscripts listed in early catalogues and reconstructed in more recent scholarship, from the source of the Old English poem Soul and Body, preserved in the Nonantolan manuscript Sess. 52, to the diplomatic missions of our abbot Niccolò Pucciarelli to King Richard II, to mention only the most well-known examples.
“We look forward to further results arising from the dissemination of these valuable studies and from continued research. The present times may be rather dark, yet such intellectual contributions are genuine rays of sunlight: the Continent is less isolated.”
Reference: “A New Early-Ninth-Century Manuscript of Cædmon’s Hymn: Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Vitt. Em. 1452, 122v” by Elisabetta Magnanti and Mark Faulkner, 28 April 2026, Early Medieval England and its Neighbours.
DOI: 10.1017/ean.2025.10012
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