1,300-Year-Old Secret: Lost Medieval Manuscript Finally Found Hiding in Plain Sight
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
An early 9th-century manuscript containing one of the earliest surviving copies of the first known poem in English has been found in Rome by researchers from Trinity College Dublin.
The manuscript [Site in Italian -Ed], discovered in the National Central Library of Rome, contains Caedmon's Hymn and dates to between 800 and 830. That makes it the third-oldest known surviving version of the poem.
The find is especially important because the Latin manuscript includes the poem in Old English within the main body of the text. In the two older known copies, held in Cambridge and St Petersburg, the poem appears in Latin, while the Old English version was added only in the margin or at the end.
According to researchers from Trinity's School of English, the placement of the Old English poem within the Rome manuscript suggests that Bede's readers placed real value on Old English verse.
The poem was written in Old English, the form of English used during the early Middle Ages. It has survived because it was included in some copies of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, an 8th-century Latin history of England written by the Venerable Bede, a northern English monk.
The manuscript was identified by Dr Elisabetta Magnanti and Dr Mark Faulkner of Trinity's School of English, both specialists in medieval manuscripts. Their findings have been published by Cambridge University Press in the open-access journal Early Medieval England and its Neighbours.
Dr Elisabetta Magnanti explained: I came across conflicting references to Bede's History in Rome, some pointing to its existence and some indicating it was lost. When its existence was confirmed by the library and the manuscript was digitized for us, we were extremely excited to find that the manuscript contained the Old English version of Caedmon's Hymn and that it was embedded in the Latin text.
The magic of digitization has allowed two researchers in Ireland to recognize the significance of a manuscript now in Rome, containing a poem miraculously composed in Northern England by a shy cowherd a millennium and a half ago. This discovery is a testament to the power of libraries to facilitate new research by digitizing their collections and making them freely available online."
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.
Unearthing a new early medieval copy of the poem has significant implications for our understanding of Old English and how it was valued. Bede chose not include the original Old English poem in his History, but to translate it into Latin. This manuscript shows that the original Old English poem was reinserted into the Latin within 100 years of Bede finishing his History. It is a sign of how much early readers valued English poetry."
The rediscovered manuscript of Bede's History is one of at least 160 surviving copies. It was produced at the Abbey of Nonantola in Northern Central Italy between 800 and 830 and is now held by the National Central Library in Rome. Its identification offers fresh evidence of cultural links between England and Italy during the early medieval period.
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