A previously unknown copy of the earliest surviving poem in the English language has been discovered in the National Central Library of Rome. The poem is Caedmon ’s Hymn , a nine-line poem praising God for the creation of the world that legend says was written by a divinely inspired illiterate cattle herder in the 7th century. This version was discovered by scholars from Trinity College Dublin who realized the Roman library held a long-lost early copy of a Medieval manuscript that contains the poem. The rediscovered manuscript is a version of Historia Ecclesiastica by the 8th-century English monk the Venerable Bede , as transcribed by a northern Italian monk in the early 9th century. It is likely the fifth-oldest surviving copy of the work and serves as a key witness to the diffusion of Bede’s text across Europe. It is the third oldest surviving version of Caedmon’s Hymn after copies of the manuscript held at Cambridge and St. Petersburg.…