A lost copy of a seventh-century poem in Old English found in the library of Rome | Poetry

A lost copy of a seventh-century poem by a Northumbrian cowherd – the earliest known English poem – has been found in Rome.

Scholars from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) discovered a manuscript containing Caedmon’s song at the National Central Library of Rome.

The bed5th to 15th century theologian revered as the father of English history, he wrote a nine-line poem in the 8th century. An Old English Bible found in Rome is believed to have been written by monks in northern Italy between AD800 and AD830.

“When we saw each other we looked at each other and I said, ‘Nobody knows about this’,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, who discovered the manuscript with Mark Faulkner, of Trinity’s English school. “Just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, I looked at the shorts twice and didn’t mention it. It was so amazing, so good.”

It is the third oldest edition of the poem, after earlier editions held in Cambridge and St Petersburg. The other versions contain the Latin poem, with the Old English text added in the margin or at the end.

The Roman edition is important because it contains the Old English version in its main text, which shows the growth of the language in the ninth century, Faulkner said. “The absence of the poem would have been felt by the reader, I think, and that’s why it goes in.”

The poem is punctuated with a pause after each word, which suggests that the difference in sound was new, Faulkner said. “It’s one of the first ways to divide words and show that words are beginning to define the English language we know today.”

The researchers have detailed their findings in Early Medieval England and Neighborsan open access journal published by Cambridge University Press.

Caedmon is said to have been an uneducated cowherd who worked at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire. According to Bede, he had a divine visitation that inspired him to write and sing the Song of Songs, which praises God for creating the world.

Bede included the Latin version in his memorable book, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, but left the original Old English version. However, less than a century later a monk at the abbey of Nonantola, in the north Italyincluding the Old English Bible, said Faulkner. “It’s a sign of how early readers liked English poetry.”

There are at least 160 copies of Bede’s history in existence. Conflicting evidence about the pamphlet in Rome led Magnanti, an expert on 5th to 5th century CE manuscripts, to ask the National Central Library in Rome to search for the manuscript. The agency found pages, files and e-mails that contained the poem. “This discovery is a testament to the power of libraries to support new research by digitizing their collections and making them freely available online,” he said.

Andrea Cappa, head of manuscripts and rare books at the Rome library, said the agency is counting on funding from the National Center for the Study of the Manuscript in Italy, which will give researchers access to more than 40m images.

Riccardo Fangarezzi, head of archives at the abbey in Nonantola, said he hoped to find more. He said: “These days it may be dark, but this wisdom is the true knowledge of the light of the sun.”

A poet Paul Muldoon translated Caedmon’s Hymn into contemporary English in a 2016 anthology of British poetry. The opening lines read:

“Now we must praise the heavens, the Guardian of the heavenly kingdom.
The powers of the Standard, all that they have in mind,
The work of the Father of Glory, of all kinds of wonders.”