Medieval Histories

Cædmun and his Beautiful Poem

Cædmon was a cowherd, who turned poet and saintly monk in 7th century Northumbria. Although only one hymn in Old English is preserved, it is venerated for its beauty.

We get the story from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England. He tells how the illiterate herdsman at Whitby Abbey woke up one morning with his head filled with a beautiful poem in Old English venerating the Lord God as creator and guardian. While Bede rendered the poem in a Latin translation, the Old English version was soon added to his rand work. Today, the hymn is known from at least 23 manuscripts of which the oldest surviving copy dates to ca. 737. Apart from Bede’s Latin translation it is preserved in five distinct recensions and two Northumbrian dialects.

Continous debate has raged about the status of the poem. Was it a back-translation of Bede’s Latin text, or was it indeed a more or less faithful transmission of Cædmon’s original? And who was Cædmon, if not a figment of Bede’s mind? 

Recently, a whole new version of the poem was discovered in a 9th century manuscript in Rome, making it the third oldest surviving text of the poem written directly into the text. While the older versions from Cambridge and St. Petersburg have the Old English poem added in the margin or at the end keeping Bede’s text intact, the new version is written directly into the text underlining that at this point, the poem was circulating as a poem referring to Bede’s Latin version.

PHOTO: Frank Meadow Sutcliffe’s photo ca. 1880 of the England Abbey, Whitby. Coloured by Chatgpt 2026 to compare it with a modern view. See here