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Religious Lyrics offer a wide range of themes between the twelfth and the early sixteenth centuries. The first poem we know today is the Prayer to Mary by St. Godric (mid 12th century) that shows romanic endrhymes for the first time in shorter poetry.

The subjects of religious poetry vary from such prayers to Complaints of Christ and the Virgin, from the Passion of Christ to the Five Joys of Mary, from translations of Latin hymns to rhymed sermons and poems on the fear of death. A great part of religious lyrics form the lovesongs to the Virgin, that often are written in the tradition of courtly love lyrics.

A great part of the religious poetry we know today is anonymous, but we sometimes know the names of authors, or at least owners of notebooks, like William Herebert or Friar John Grimestone, in which these poems are preserved. And then, of course, well-known authors like John Lydgate or Thomas Hoccleve also wrote religious poems.

Most religious lyrics have come down to us from Franciscan tradition. As those friars travelled the country to explain the Bible, Liturgy and Christian life to people who did not know Latin, they not only translated the Latin texts, but composed prayers, rhymed sermons etc. Their aim was to show Christ, the Virgin and also the saints as human beings, more easily to understand and to pity in their suffering than the spiritual beings they are.