Although dimly anticipated by certain Old English poetic texts, the Middle English religious lyric appears in the manuscript record in the first half of the 13th century, when a rich and diverse collection of largely religious lyrics sprang into being in what must have seemed like a Russian spring. The phenomenon almost certainly owes its birth to the entry into Britain of the Franciscans, and to the preaching these Franciscans initiated, and to the warm, engaged, and meaningful spirituality their order both practiced and inculcated. Preceded and informed by Latin and Continental examples, the English religious lyric soon developed its own practices and its own audience, sometimes simply translating into English familiar Latin hymns, at other times producing texts of extraordinary originality and complexity. The English religious lyric retained from its earliest appearances elements of instruction, learning, and joy, and these qualities came to inform later production, thus remaining central to its identity. Changes having been made, religious lyrics in English continued to be written in large numbers well into the 17th century, informed by a number of traditions, that of Latin (and latterly, vernacular) meditation and European devotional practices and images, among them. The roughly two thousand medieval lyrics now known, many preserved in only one version, were no doubt only a fraction of the total number sung, recited, and inscribed, and although they have been long known to students of the period, an understanding of their cultural importance and their literary artistry is of relatively recent date. Since the 1960s, however, the depth, complexity, and beauty of these extraordinary works of art have been widely accepted, and, though their study was somewhat curtailed by the advent of literary theory, it has now begun again and continues with interest, learning, and vigor. The new study of the English religious lyric reaches out as well to carols and ballads, and the diverse, compelling, and not infrequently brilliant poems that make up the genre are now increasingly understood to be, as Douglas Gray has written, “the glory of late medieval English literature.”
