Caedmon

Caedmon (650?-680?), considered the earliest of the Anglo-Saxon Christian poets. The only information concerning Caedmon is in the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (731), by the English theologian Saint Bede the Venerable. According to Bede, Caedmon was an illiterate herdsmen who had a vision one night and heard a voice commanding him to sing of “the beginning of created things.” Later Caedmon supposedly wrote the poem about the creation known as Caedmon's Hymn, which Bede recorded in prose. Bede further states that Saint Hilda, the abbess of a nearby monastery (now called Whitby), recognized Caedmon's poetic ability and invited him to enter the monastery as a lay brother. Caedmon spent the rest of his life at the monastery writing poetry on biblical themes. In the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is a manuscript containing the so-called Caedmon poems. It is now agreed that many of the poems in the Bodleian collection were probably written later than Caedmon's poetry. The only work that can be attributed to Caedmon is “Hymn of Creation,” which Saint Bede quoted. It survives in several manuscripts of Bede's Ecclesiastical History and contains several dialects.