ROME (AP) — Researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screens and marveled at a medieval book found in a Roman library. They thumbed through its digitized pages and found the treasure they had longed for: the oldest surviving collection of poetry in the English language.
“We were very surprised. We were speechless. When we saw it for the first time, we couldn’t believe our eyes,” Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting fellow at the School of English at Trinity College in Dublin, told The Associated Press.
What’s more, she says, is that the poem is within the body of a Latin text: “It’s extraordinary.”
The Hymn of Caedmon, written in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, appears in some copies of the Ecclesiastical History of the People of England, written in Latin by a monk and saint named Venerable Bede. His history is one of the most widely copied texts of the Middle Ages, with nearly 200 manuscripts, said Magnanti’s colleague Mark Faulkner, associate professor of medieval literature at Trinity College.
He believed that Caedmon’s poems were the beginning of English literature.
The manuscript he and Magnanti discovered is one of the oldest, dating back to the 9th century. Researchers say two early copies included the poem in Old English but as an afterthought — translated from Latin and scrawled in the margins or appended to, but not within, the body of the text.
Faulkner said in Rome that the discovery revealed the widespread spread of English long before it was understood. The pair traveled to Rome to see the text in person for the first time.
“Before the Roman manuscripts were discovered, the earliest manuscripts were from the early 12th century. So this is three centuries older than the Roman manuscripts. This proves that the British were already paying attention in the early 9th century,” Faulkner said.
It’s a miracle they found it.
The book has a long and winding genesis
Faulkner said Caedmon is said to have composed the poem while working at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire, where guests at a banquet began reciting the poem.
“Caedmon was so embarrassed that he didn’t know what to do, so he left the party and went to bed,” he said. “Then a character appeared to him in a dream and told him to sing a song about creation, which Caedmon miraculously did, composing a nine-line hymn.”
A copy of the poem reappeared in Rome’s main public library some 1,400 years later, but not before crossing the Atlantic at least twice and changing hands multiple times.
Valentina Longo, curator of medieval and modern manuscripts at the National Central Library in Rome, said monks copied Bede’s historical record in a scriptorium at the Benedictine monastery of Nonantola, one of the most important copyist centers in the Middle Ages near modern Modena in northern Italy.
In the 17th century, as the importance of the monastery declined, its extensive manuscript collection was transferred to another monastery in Rome, then to the Vatican, and finally to a chapel.
Along the way, Longo said, some texts were lost and remained in the collections of internationally renowned collectors until the early 19th century.
This copy of Bede’s history was collected by the famous British antiquarian Thomas Phillipps. He fell on hard times and sold his collection, and the book was acquired by Swiss bibliophile Martin Bodmer. Somehow, the book made its way from there to New York City, where it became the treasure trove of 20th-century Austrian-born rare book dealer HP Kraus.
The Italian Culture Ministry is searching the world for the missing manuscripts from the Abbey of Nonantola, which are being snapped up at auctions and from collectors around the world. Longo said it purchased a copy of Bede’s History from Kraus in 1972, and since then this outstanding text has remained in the Roman library but received little attention.
Enter Magnanti, who has spent more than four years researching Bede’s history and is compiling a catalog of surviving copies.
“I know the book is listed in the library’s catalog, so I’m almost certain the book is actually still here,” she said. “I realized that because the history of the book is so complex, no Bede scholars had really studied it. So it really hadn’t been studied.”
She emailed the library, which confirmed that the book was in the library. Three months later, she received a digital image of the entire manuscript.
Old English text of the poem
Nupuai. Skullen. Elgar. Hefenricaeus. Puar. Medues. mehndi. and his.
mod geðanc. Puerke. Puldur. Fadul. Cirrhosis
ecidrichtin or astalde. he aeristscoop eor dubearnū hefento
Hrolf Khalig. scepend. Da. Midu. gear. Moncines Pierre ECI
Derichtin. after. Thia de Firu. On the fold. Freya. All of this.
The text of the poem has been translated into modern English
Now we must praise the Guardian of Heaven,
The power of the Creator and His intention,
The work of the Father of Glory, who works every miracle,
Lord of Eternity, Begin.
He first created the earth for mankind,
Heaven as roof, divine creator,
Then comes Middle-earth, the guardian of mankind,
the eternal Lord, who was later created
For mankind on earth, the Lord Almighty.
Libraries are offering more rare books
Longo said the library has digitized the entire Nonantolan collection and is making it freely accessible through the website.
Andrea Cappa, head of the library’s Manuscripts and Rare Book Reading Room, said this is part of a larger project at the library to make thousands of rare books and manuscripts available to researchers around the world.
“The discovery by Trinity’s experts is just a starting point, and one manuscript could pave the way for countless other discoveries in countless other fields through international collaborations like this,” Capa said.
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An earlier version of the story incorrectly quoted Elisabetta Magnanti as saying that “no great scholar had actually seen” the book before. She said “no Bede scholar had really studied it”.
