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Researchers uncover oldest English poem in neglected Roman manuscript

• Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have identified a 9th-century manuscript in Rome’s National Central Library that contains the oldest surviving English poem, “Caedmon’s Hymn,” within the main body of a Latin text.
• Monks at the Benedictine abbey of Nonantola in northern Italy produced this copy of the Venerable Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” in the 9th century.
• Caedmon, a 7th-century agricultural worker, composed the poem—a nine-line hymn about Creation—according to Bede’s account.
• The poem appears three centuries earlier than the previous oldest copy containing it in the main body, documenting the early diffusion of English beyond Britain.
• The manuscript had been virtually unstudied by Bede scholars after its complex journey from Nonantola to Rome via private collectors including the English antiquarian Thomas Phillipps.