[4] Stemming back to the glory of the Roma aurea e aeterna of the Roman Empire, the language of exaltation of the Rome finds an echo in the 9th-century poetry of Liutprand of Cremona in Versus de Mediolani civitate.
[5] The Beneventan script found in the earliest manuscripts of O Roma nobilis suggests an origin it was composed in or near the abbey of Monte Cassino, probably from the late ninth or early tenth century.
In a show of ecclesial triumphalism, Igino Cecchetti published an essay entitled Roma nobilis in 1953[8] which received praise from the Jesuit review La Civiltà Cattolica in 1955.
[10] As early as 1822 the poem was being sung in a choral setting by the papal choirmaster Giuseppe Baini, being popular not only in Rome, but also in Berlin, where Crown Prince Frederick William IV heard Baini's setting of O Roma nobilis at the Singakademie in Berlin on November 27, 1827[11] and it reached even the ears of German poet Goethe.
In 1909 at Fribourg, P. Wagner published the Vatican melody from the exact notation given in the Monte Cassino manuscript (I-MC 318, p.291) and demonstrated the complete inauthenticity of Baini's transcription.