In book III of Boethius's Latin Consolatio philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy), Philosophia tells Boethius that her remaining teaching will cause pain when first tasted yet grow sweet when ingested. When the Old English Boethius translates this section, however, Wisdom (Philosophia's vernacular counterpart) adds the further specification that this medicine will be ‘swide swete to belcettan’ – very sweet to belch. The metaphor of digestion extends a consideration of affective apprehension and contemplation that the text develops at some length, acknowledging that her previous, simpler teaching had been ingested swa lustlice (so eagerly) when her pupil wanted ‘mid inneweardan mode hi ongiton and smeagean’ (to perceive and examine it with the inward mind). But where the Latin warns, strikingly, that he will not be able to perceive the true felicity while his sight remains ‘occupato ad imagines’ (occupied with images), the Old English names the problem not as images themselves but only ‘ansine dissa leasena gesalda’ (the likeness of these false felicities). In both the Latin text and the Old English translation, we meet metaphors for the affective reception of instruction as well as instruction by means of such metaphors and images, and in both, sweetness is more than a mere coating on a bitter pill – rather, bitter experience must first be borne in order for lasting sweetness to come about. Elaborate, affectively engaged metaphors and narrative exempla can thus guide the weak from error, yet as Wisdom warns, their influence over the emotions has the power to lead one astray. The digestive metaphor anticipates later figures of belching that will appear in, for example, Bernard of Clairvaux. But in context, the Old English elaboration of the image suggests that both the sweetness, and certain kinds of similitude, must persist, as the Latin text increasingly leaves both of these things behind in favor of increasingly abstract philosophy. As Mary Carruthers has argued, sweetness as a medieval aesthetic category denotes not an abstract concept of beauty but a ‘definable sensory phenomenon’, a bodily one, and one that did not necessarily entail a preconceived moral judgment. This characteristic of embodied sensory experience and not abstracted, conceptual goodness made such sweetness particularly salient for the English translator of the Boethius.

Jennifer Lorden reveals the importance of deeply felt religious devotion centuries before it is commonly said to arise. Her groundbreaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, she shows how conventions of earlier English poetry recombine with new literary conventions after the Norman Conquest. These new conventions – for example, love lyric repurposed as devotional song – created hybrid aesthetics more familiar to modern scholars. She argues that this aesthetic, as much as changing devotional practice, rendered later affective piety recognizable in a way that earlier affective devotional conventions were not. Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry reconsiders the roots and branches of poetic topoi, revising commonplaces of literary and religious history. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Jennifer Lorden reveals the importance of deeply felt religious devotion centuries before it is commonly said to arise. Her groundbreaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, she shows how conventions of earlier English poetry recombine with new literary conventions after the Norman Conquest. These new conventions – for example, love lyric repurposed as devotional song – created hybrid aesthetics more familiar to modern scholars. She argues that this aesthetic, as much as changing devotional practice, rendered later affective piety recognizable in a way that earlier affective devotional conventions were not. Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry reconsiders the roots and branches of poetic topoi, revising commonplaces of literary and religious history. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Jennifer Lorden reveals the importance of deeply felt religious devotion centuries before it is commonly said to arise. Her groundbreaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, she shows how conventions of earlier English poetry recombine with new literary conventions after the Norman Conquest. These new conventions – for example, love lyric repurposed as devotional song – created hybrid aesthetics more familiar to modern scholars. She argues that this aesthetic, as much as changing devotional practice, rendered later affective piety recognizable in a way that earlier affective devotional conventions were not. Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry reconsiders the roots and branches of poetic topoi, revising commonplaces of literary and religious history. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Jennifer Lorden reveals the importance of deeply felt religious devotion centuries before it is commonly said to arise. Her groundbreaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, she shows how conventions of earlier English poetry recombine with new literary conventions after the Norman Conquest. These new conventions – for example, love lyric repurposed as devotional song – created hybrid aesthetics more familiar to modern scholars. She argues that this aesthetic, as much as changing devotional practice, rendered later affective piety recognizable in a way that earlier affective devotional conventions were not. Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry reconsiders the roots and branches of poetic topoi, revising commonplaces of literary and religious history. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Jennifer Lorden reveals the importance of deeply felt religious devotion centuries before it is commonly said to arise. Her groundbreaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, she shows how conventions of earlier English poetry recombine with new literary conventions after the Norman Conquest. These new conventions – for example, love lyric repurposed as devotional song – created hybrid aesthetics more familiar to modern scholars. She argues that this aesthetic, as much as changing devotional practice, rendered later affective piety recognizable in a way that earlier affective devotional conventions were not. Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry reconsiders the roots and branches of poetic topoi, revising commonplaces of literary and religious history. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Jennifer Lorden reveals the importance of deeply felt religious devotion centuries before it is commonly said to arise. Her groundbreaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, she shows how conventions of earlier English poetry recombine with new literary conventions after the Norman Conquest. These new conventions – for example, love lyric repurposed as devotional song – created hybrid aesthetics more familiar to modern scholars. She argues that this aesthetic, as much as changing devotional practice, rendered later affective piety recognizable in a way that earlier affective devotional conventions were not. Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry reconsiders the roots and branches of poetic topoi, revising commonplaces of literary and religious history. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Jennifer Lorden reveals the importance of deeply felt religious devotion centuries before it is commonly said to arise. Her groundbreaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, she shows how conventions of earlier English poetry recombine with new literary conventions after the Norman Conquest. These new conventions – for example, love lyric repurposed as devotional song – created hybrid aesthetics more familiar to modern scholars. She argues that this aesthetic, as much as changing devotional practice, rendered later affective piety recognizable in a way that earlier affective devotional conventions were not. Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry reconsiders the roots and branches of poetic topoi, revising commonplaces of literary and religious history. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Jennifer Lorden reveals the importance of deeply felt religious devotion centuries before it is commonly said to arise. Her groundbreaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, she shows how conventions of earlier English poetry recombine with new literary conventions after the Norman Conquest. These new conventions – for example, love lyric repurposed as devotional song – created hybrid aesthetics more familiar to modern scholars. She argues that this aesthetic, as much as changing devotional practice, rendered later affective piety recognizable in a way that earlier affective devotional conventions were not. Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry reconsiders the roots and branches of poetic topoi, revising commonplaces of literary and religious history. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

POPE GREGORY would have been happier living as a monk. So he explains himself, writing the Regula pastoralis after having been wrenched from a life of secluded contemplation and thrust into the limelight of the papacy in 590. Therefore, his Regula pastoralis arises, as he says, from more than merely his practical desire to instruct the ministers over whom he has authority. The once-reluctant Gregory seeks to address why he had earlier balked at this responsibility, ‘[p]astoralis curae me pondera fugere delitescendo uoluisse’ [had wished to flee from the burdens of pastoral care by concealing myself]. By explaining his circumstances, he seeks moreover to impress upon other ministers the necessity of that reluctance, the magnitude of pastoral responsibility, and the caution demanded by one taking such responsibility upon themselves. From there, ministers are instructed in the means of ministering to various kinds of people in various circumstances – the joyful must temper their joy with sadness, the sad must recall joy. For all circumstances, there are necessary admonitions. Gregory first expounds upon how difficult his own burdens seem to him, how warily the power and authority of positions such as his own ought to be approached, and, from thence, how others who govern should approach this task when it falls to them. To Gregory, power should never be actively sought, and all to whom it might fall must criticize their own motives.

But the Old English translation of the Regula pastoralis has its own problems. In the ninth-century English court of King Alfred the Great, the text similarly positions itself as the work of an authority figure, in this case ostensibly a translation by the king himself. Yet while Gregory treats authority as a burden to be assumed, the Old English text laments the vulnerability of English authority: