Lost Copy of Oldest-Known English Poem Found in Rome
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Titled 'Caedmon’s Hymn,' the poem praises God for creating the world was composed by a cattle herder over 1,200 years ago.
Researchers announced the find in a recently published a study, declaring that they had recovered a lost copy of the oldest-known English poem in a Rome library. Bede, the medieval theologian revered as the father of English history, recorded the nine-line poem in the eighth century. The Old English version discovered in Rome is believed to have been transcribed by a monk in northern Italy between AD800 and AD830.
“To make sure I wasn’t dreaming, I double-checked the catalogs and there was no mention of it,” historian Elisabetta Magnanti, who found the manuscript, alongside fellow researcher Mark Faulkner, told The Guardian. “It was a huge surprise, a very good one.”
Unlike older Latin copies, the recently discovered poem was written in Old English in the ninth century, reflecting the growing status of the language in the early medieval period. The poem is also punctuated with periods after every word to clearly separate them. “It is part of the early development of ways of dividing words and shows text starting to come toward the presentation of English that we know today,” said Faulkner.
It is the third oldest surviving text of the poem, after older copies held at Cambridge and St Petersburg. Those other versions have the poem in Latin, with the Old English text added in the margin or at the end.
As not many people can read Old English, here's Caedmon's Hymn - courtesy of the Poetry Foundation - in modern English:
Now let us praise Heaven-Kingdom's guardian,
the Maker's might and his mind's thoughts,
the work of the glory-father - of every wonder,
eternal Lord. He established a beginning.
He first shaped for men's sons
Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator;
then middle-earth mankind's guardian,
eternal Lord, afterwards prepared
the earth for men, the Lord almighty.
