Arator's On the Acts of the Apostles (De Actibus Apostolorum) by 
Biblical and Pastoral Poetry by
Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, bishop of Vienne and a vigorous defender of Christian orthodoxy, was born into the senatorial aristocracy in southern Gaul in the mid-fifth century and lived until 518. The verse in Biblical and Pastoral Poetry was written in the late fifth or early sixth century. Avitus’s most famous work, the Spiritual History, narrates the biblical stories of creation, the Fall and expulsion from paradise, the Flood, and the Israelites’ escape from Egypt. He revitalizes Christian epic poetry, highlighting original sin and redemption and telling the history of Christian salvation with dramatic dialogue and rich description. In Consolatory Praise of Chastity―a verse treatise addressed to his sister, a consecrated virgin―illuminates the demands of the ascetic life from the perspective of a close family member. Avitus seeks to bolster his sister’s resolve with biblical examples of mental fortitude, constructing a robust model for female heroism. This volume presents new English translations of Avitus’s two extant poetic writings alongside the Latin texts.
The Canterbury Tales by
At the Tabard Inn in Southwark, a jovial group of pilgrims assembles, including an unscrupulous Pardoner, a noble-minded Knight, a ribald Miller, the lusty Wife of Bath, and Chaucer himself. As they set out on their journey towards the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury, each character agrees to tell a tale. The twenty-four tales that follow are by turns learned, fantastic, pious, melancholy and lewd, and together offer an unrivalled glimpse into the mind and spirit of medieval England.
Canterbury Tales by
Each tale is presented in the original language, with normalized spelling and substantial annotations for modern readers. Among the new added to the Second Edition are the much-requested "Merchant’s Tale" and the "Tale of Sir Thopas." "Sources and Backgrounds" are included for the General Prologue and for most of the tales, enabling students to understand The Canterbury Tales in light of relevant medieval ideas and attitudes and inviting comparison between Chaucer’s work and his sources. "Criticism" includes nine essays, four of them new to this edition, by leading Chaucerians, among them F. R. H. DuBoulay, E. Talbot Donaldson, Barbara Nolani, and Lee Patterson. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
The Christ of Cynewulf: A Poem in Three Parts by
The Christ of Cynewulf is considered a masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon literature and is notable for its use of alliteration and other poetic devices. It is also an important work in the history of Christian literature, as it reflects the religious beliefs and values of the time in which it was written.
The Dream of the Rood by
In a dream the unknown poet beholds a beautiful tree—the rood, or cross, on which Christ died. The rood tells him its own story. Forced to be the instrument of the saviour's death, it describes how it suffered the nail wounds, spear shafts, and insults along with Christ to fulfill God's will.
The author of Dream of the Rood is unknown, but by knowing the approximate date of the Ruthwell Cross, scholars have been able to suggest possible authors. These include the Anglo-Saxon poets Cædmon and Cynewulf.
Gregory of Nazianzus by
Includes bibliographical references (p. viii-ix).
Greek with English translation on facing pages.
The autobiographical poems of Gregory of Nazianzus, fourth-century Father of the Greek Church, are remarkable not only for a highly individual picture of the Byzantine world but also for moments that are intimate, passionate and moving. This book contains Greek text and facing English translation of a selection from his one hundred or so surviving poems. Gregory is best known for the five orations he gave in Constantinople. Except for the poem "De Vita Sua," his work can only be read in a nineteenth-century edition and has never before been translated into English.
The harp of the spirit : eighteen poems of Saint Ephrem by 
Latin Poetry by
The Virgin Birth -- Lamentation on the death of Christ -- Piscatory eclogues -- Fragment of an eclogue -- The willows -- Elegies -- Epigrams.
Miracles of the Virgin. Tract on Abuses by
The first English translation of the earliest Latin poems about miracles performed by the Virgin Mary, composed in twelfth-century Canterbury by a Benedictine monk who inspired Chaucer.
Nigel (ca. 1135–1198), a Benedictine monk at Christ Church in Canterbury, is best known for The Mirror of Fools―a popular satire whose hero Burnellus the Ass is referenced in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Nigel’s oeuvre also includes other important poems and hagiography.
The Miracles of the Virgin is the oldest Latin poem about miracles performed by Mary. This collection features seventeen lively tales in which the Virgin rescues a disappointed administrator from a pact with the devil, has a Roman emperor killed by a long-dead martyr, saves a Jewish boy from being burned alive, and shields an abbess from the shame of pregnancy. Each story illustrates the boundlessness of Mary’s mercy. In the Tract on Abuses, a letter that resembles a religious pamphlet, Nigel rails against ecclesiastical corruption and worldly entanglements.
Alongside authoritative editions of the Latin texts, this volume offers the first translations of both works into English.
Old English Poems of Christ and His Saints by
Religious piety has rarely been animated as vigorously as in Old English Poems of Christ and His Saints. Ranging from lyrical to dramatic to narrative, the individual poems show great inventiveness in reimagining perennial Christian topics. In different poems, for example, Christ expels Lucifer from heaven, resists the devil's temptation on earth, mounts the cross with zeal to face death, harrows hell at the urging of John the Baptist, appears in disguise to pilot a ship, and presides over the Last Judgment. Satan and the fallen angels lament their plight in a vividly imagined hell and plot against Christ and his saints.
In Andreas the poet relates, in language reminiscent of Beowulf, the tribulations of the apostles Andrew and Matthew in a city of cannibals. In The Vision of the Cross (also known as The Dream of the Rood), the cross speaks as a Germanic warrior intolerably torn between the imperative to protect his Lord and the duty to become his means of execution. In Guthlac A, an Anglo-Saxon warrior abandons his life of violence to do battle as a hermit against demons in the fens of Lincolnshire. As a collection these ten anonymous poems vividly demonstrate the extraordinary hybrid that emerges when traditional Germanic verse adapts itself to Christian themes.
Old English Poems of Christ and His Saints complements the saints' lives found in The Old English Poems of Cynewulf, DOML 23.
The Old English Poems of Cynewulf by
The Old English poems attributed to Cynewulf, who flourished some time between the eighth and tenth centuries, are unusual because most vernacular poems in this period are anonymous. Other than the name, we have no biographical details of Cynewulf, not even the most basic facts of where or when he lived. Yet the poems themselves attest to a powerfully inventive imagination, deeply learned in Christian doctrine and traditional verse-craft. Runic letters spelling out the name Cynewulf appear in four poems: Christ II (or The Ascension), Juliana, The Fates of the Apostles, and Elene. To these a fifth can be added, Guthlac B because of similarities in style and vocabulary, but any signature (if one ever existed) has been lost because its ending lines are missing. What characterizes Cynewulf’s poetry? He reveals an expert control of structure as shown from the changes he makes to his Latin sources. He has a flair for extended similes and dramatic dialogue. In Christ II, for example, the major events in Christ's life are portrayed as vigorous leaps. In Juliana the force of the saint’s rhetoric utterly confounds a demon sent to torment her.
Old Testament Narratives by
The Old English poems in this volume are among the first retellings of scriptural texts in a European vernacular. More than simple translations, they recast the familiar plots in daringly imaginative ways, from Satan's seductive pride (anticipating Milton), to a sympathetic yet tragic Eve, to Moses as a headstrong Germanic warrior-king, to the lyrical nature poetry in Azarias.
Whether or not the legendary Caedmon authored any of the poems in this volume, they represent traditional verse in all its vigor. Three of them survive as sequential epics in a manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The first, the Old English Genesis, recounts biblical history from creation and the apocryphal fall of the angels to the sacrifice of Isaac; Abraham emerges as the central figure struggling through exile toward a lasting covenant with God. The second, Exodus, follows Moses as he leads the Hebrew people out of Egyptian slavery and across the Red Sea. Both Abraham and Moses are transformed into martial heroes in the Anglo-Saxon mold. The last in the triad, Daniel, tells of the trials of the Jewish people in Babylonian exile up through Belshazzar's feast. Azarias, the final poem in this volume (found in an Exeter Cathedral manuscript), relates the apocryphal episode of the three youths in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace.
Piers Plowman by
Astonishing in its cultural and theological scope, William Langland’s iconoclastic masterpiece is at once a historical relic and a deeply spiritual vision, probing not only the social and religious aristocracy but also the day-to-day realities of a largely voiceless proletariat class. E. Talbot Donaldson’s translation of the text has been selected for this Norton Critical Edition because of its skillful emulation of the original poem’s distinct alliterative verse. Selections of the authoritative Middle English text are also included for comparative analysis. "Sources and Backgrounds" includes a large collection of contemporary religious and historical documents pertaining to the poem, including selections from the Douai Bible, accounts of the plague, and legal statutes. "Criticism" includes twenty interpretive essays by leading medievalists, among them E. Talbot Donaldson, George Kane, Jill Mann, Derek Pearsall, C. David Benson, and Elizabeth D. Kirk. A Glossary and Selected Bibliography are also included.
The Poems of St. Paulinus of Nola by
In general, the corpus of Paulinus' poetry has as its purpose to encourage Christians to persevere in a life of Christian commitment and to demonstrate to nominal Christians and to benevolent non-Christians the nature of that commitment. None of the extant poems were written after 409.
Saints' Lives, Volume II by
The artistry, wit, and erudition of medieval Latin narrative poetry continued to thrive well into the middle of the thirteenth century. No better evidence of this survives than in the long and brilliantly successful career of Henry of Avranches (d. 1262). Professional versifier to abbots, bishops, kings, and at least one pope, Henry displays a pyrotechnical verbal skill and playfulness that rivals that of the Carmina Burana and similar collections of rhymed secular verse. Yet he also stands as self-conscious heir to the great classicizing tradition of the twelfth-century epic poets, above all of Walter of Châtillon. Henry entwines these two strands of his literary inheritance in what might surprise modern readers as an improbable genre. The bulk of Henry’s known output is a series of versified saints’ lives, including those of Francis of Assisi, King Edmund, and Thomas Becket, nearly all of which are based on identified prose models. These two volumes present most of his work in the genre, as witnessed in the English manuscript that remains the linchpin of our knowledge of this remarkable poet’s career.
Saints' Lives, Volume II by
The artistry, wit, and erudition of medieval Latin narrative poetry continued to thrive well into the middle of the thirteenth century. No better evidence of this survives than in the long and brilliantly successful career of Henry of Avranches (d. 1262). Professional versifier to abbots, bishops, kings, and at least one pope, Henry displays a pyrotechnical verbal skill and playfulness that rivals that of the Carmina Burana and similar collections of rhymed secular verse. Yet he also stands as self-conscious heir to the great classicizing tradition of the twelfth-century epic poets, above all of Walter of Châtillon. Henry entwines these two strands of his literary inheritance in what might surprise modern readers as an improbable genre. The bulk of Henry’s known output is a series of versified saints’ lives, including those of Francis of Assisi, King Edmund, and Thomas Becket, nearly all of which are based on identified prose models. These two volumes present most of his work in the genre, as witnessed in the English manuscript that remains the linchpin of our knowledge of this remarkable poet’s career.
Sources and analogues of Old English poetry : the major Latin texts in translation by Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals by
Anthology presents poetry on Christian themes from the 7th century to the present with a brief biography of each poet
Early New England Meditative Poetry by
Poems by Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor.
Includes indexes.
George Herbert by
George Herbert (1593-1633) lived in England during the tempestuous reigns of James I and Charles I that saw the nation racked by conflict among Catholics, Hugh Churchmen, and Puritans. A member of a politically-active family, Herbert rejected a promising career as a member of Parliament for the simple life of a country parson. While busily involved in his pastoral duties he produced works of poetry and prose that have earned him a long-established place in English literary history. Collected here are two works originally published after Herbert's death at Bemerton in 1633: The Country Parson, a prose treatise on the duties, joys, and hardships of a pastor's life; and The Temple, a collection of poems. In them the literary genius of this humble priest whose spirituality was a synthesis of Evangelical and Catholic piety is revealed. Herbert's appeal for today is summed up by A.M. Allchin in his preface to this volume: Without glossing over the fragility and brokenness of man's experience of life in time, he managed to reaffirm the great unities of Christian faith and prayer. These are the unities which draw together the separated strands in the Christian heritage, which draw together past and present in a living an creative appropriation of tradition.
George Herbert by 
George Herbert and the 17th Century Religious Poets by
This volume presents the major works of five poets―George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, and Thomas Traherne.
While most of the selections fall under the heading of religious poetry, the important secular verse of Marvell and Crashaw is included.
Eighty poems by Herbert have been selected from The Temple, and two early poems from Isaak Walton's Lives are also included. Crashaw is represented by sixteen poems from Steps to the Temple, Delights of the Muses, and Carmen Deo Nostro; Marvell, by eighteen selections from Miscellaneous Poems; Vaughan, by forty-five poems from Silex Scintillans, Parts I and II; and Traherne, by twelve poems from the Dobell Folio, The Third Century, and the Burney Manuscript.
The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse by
Gathers religious poems by Chaucer, Spenser, Donne, Cowper, Dickinson, Eliot, Auden and others
Paradise Lost by
John Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, who are motivated by all too human temptations but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.
Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition, Paradise Lost is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years, it has held generation upon generation of audiences in rapt attention, and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture.
A Sacrifice of Praise by
Twelve centuries of Christian poetry in English are surveyed in this one-volume treatment. It spans ancient, medieval, Reformation, and modern church sources, representing Anglican, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox poets from the mainline and evangelical traditions.
The Soul in Paraphrase by
Christians throughout the ages have written poetry as a way to commune with and teach about God, communicating rich truths and enduring beauty through their art. These poems, when read devotionally, provide a unique way for Christians to deepen their spiritual insight and experience. In this collection of over 90 poems by poets such as Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, and over 30 more, literary expert Leland Ryken introduces readers to the best of the best in devotional poetry, providing commentary that helps them see and appreciate not only the literary beauty of these poems but also the spiritual truths they contain. Literary-inclined readers and first-time poetry readers alike will relish this one-of-a-kind anthology carefully compiled to help them encounter God in fresh ways.
The Temple by
"Herbert loved crafting language in new and powerful ways. It was for him a way of seeing and savoring and showing the wonders of Christ. The central theme of his poetry was the redeeming love of Christ, and he labored with all his literary might to see it clearly, feel it deeply, and show it strikingly. We don’t have a single sermon that he ever preached.... What we have is his poetry. And here the beauty of the subject is wedded to the beauty of his craft."
~John Piper, Introduction
Although George Herbert was a pastor of a small remote church in Elizabethan England, he came to fame because of a small collection of poems called The Temple. In this short but beautiful collection of poetry, Herbert devised 116 new poetic forms to capture his experiences of awe, sorrow, glory, turmoil, repentance, and heart-rending joy, all of it dedicated to God, not man. In this book, we have a picture of the full range of human experience and emotion, felt by a man being sanctified by God and describing it with all his poetic powers.
The Construction of Christian Poetry in Old English by
Focusing on the works of Cynewulf, the Caedmonic school, and the great Beowulf-poet, John Gardner traces the development of Anglo-Saxon Christian poetic style. This latest contribution to a distinguished new series is a scholar-novelist-poet’s analysis of allegorical modes in a few major poems from England’s great age of allegory, the seventh century to, roughly, the eleventh. What John Gardner is out to understand and describe is not so much the “meaning” of particular poems—though his study inevitably deals, to some extent, with meaning and offers critical interpretations—but how the various kinds of Anglo-Saxon allegory work, what happens when several completely different kinds of allegory are brought together in one poem (as in _Beowulf_), and what it is that makes the different kinds of allegory not just intellectually but emotionally effective. Gardner asks the right questions from both the scholar’s and the novelist’s points of view, which turn out to be important for an understanding of the whole Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition.
God's Altar by
"This book makes available to us many poets who have not hitherto been studied in such detail, and it places the major Puritan poets for the first time in the context provided by the work of their contemporaries."
A History of Christian-Latin Poetry : From the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages by 
The Poetic Imagination by
Anglicanism, as Countryman argues, is unusual among forms of Western Christianity in being defined primarily in terms of community rather than by authoritative theological principles. In the end, Anglicanism may be characterized by a poetic imagination well reflected in the work of many of the great lyric poets of the English language.
Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric by
Barbara Lewalski argues that the Protestant emphasis on the Bible as requiring philological and literary analysis fostered a fully developed theory of biblical aesthetics defining both poetic art and spiritual truth.