A manuscript containing a text of the first known poem written in the English language has been discovered in Rome by researchers from Trinity College Dublin.
The nine-line poem, Caedmon’s Hymn, dates from the late seventh century and is the oldest known poem in the English language, which was highly Germanic before the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The discovery was made following the digitisation in the National Central Library of Rome of a rare and original copy of the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
The text is highly significant because the Latin manuscript contains the poem in Old English in the main body of the text.
Bede, an English monk, author and scholar, was one of the best known writers of the Early Middle Ages.
