Earliest poem written in English has been discovered
Scholars from Trinity College, in Dublin, uncovered the manuscript that contains the ancient poem at the National Central Library of Rome
- Published
A lost copy of one of the oldest poems to be written in English has been discovered in Rome, in Italy.
Dr Elisabetta Magnanti and Dr Mark Faulkner, two researchers from Trinity College Dublin, found the ancient poem hidden inside a manuscript - an old handwritten book - at the National Central Library of Rome.
Written more than 1,300 years ago, the poem is nine lines long and is called Caedmon's Hymn.
It was created towards the end of the seventh century (601-700) during the Anglo-Saxon times, by a cow herder from Whitby, in north Yorkshire, who could not read or write, and is said to have come from a religious dream the farmer had.
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The poem was written down in Latin in a copy of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, by Venerable Bede in the eighth century.
Venerable Bede was a famous Christian monk and scholar who wrote lots of books about England's history.
The Old English language version is thought to have been copied down and translated from the original by a monk in northern Italy between 800-830.
Which makes this the third oldest surviving copy of the poem in existence - with the other two copies kept in Cambridge and St Petersburg, in Russia.
The new discovery is important because it shows the Old English version in the main body of the text for the first time - whereas the other two were written in Latin, with an Old English footnote at the bottom.
A page from the Old English manuscript with Caedmon's Hymn
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," he said
"Unearthing a new early medieval copy of the poem has significant implications for our understanding of Old English and how it was valued.
"It is a sign of how much early readers valued English poetry."
