GoKawiilNew copy of earliest poem in English language discovered by Trinity researchers in Rome
Posted on: 30 April 2026
Old fashioned sleuthing and the help of modern technology leads to discovery of manuscript with poem composed by a farm labourer 1,300 years ago
An early 9th century manuscript containing a text of the first known poem in the English language has been discovered in Rome by researchers from Trinity College Dublin.
The newly-discovered manuscript in the National Central Library of Rome of Caedmon’s Hymn dates from between the years 800 and 830, making it the third oldest surviving text of the poem.
Dr Elisabetta Magnanti and Dr Mark Faulkner with the Trinity copy of Bede's Ecclesiastical History in the Library of Trinity College Dublin.
The discovery is highly significant because the Latin manuscript contains the poem in Old English in the main body of the text. The two older copies in Cambridge and St Petersburg have the poem in Latin, with the Old English text only added in the margin or at end.
The inclusion of the poem in Old English in the Rome manuscript indicates how Old English poetry was valued by Bede’s readers, according to researchers from Trinity’s School of English.
Written over 1,300 years ago Caedmon’s Hymn is a nine-line poem praising God for the creation of the world. It is said to have been composed by a cowherd from Whitby, North Yorkshire, after a divine visitation.
The poem was composed in Old English – the form of English used in the early Middle Ages. It survives today thanks to its inclusion in some copies of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, an 8th century history of England written in Latin by the Venerable Bede, a northern English monk.
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