Prik of Conscience

Once attributed to the renowned English mystic Richard Rolle, the fourteenth-century Prik of Conscience appears in 130 separate medieval manuscripts—more than any other Middle English poem. This devotional and didactic work presents a penitential program that guides readers in the act of confession by emphasizing the psychosomatic qualities of this experience, beginning with contritio cordis—the contrition of the heart—from which the poem takes its title. In exploring the relationship of humanity to divinity, the poem’s erudite author considers scientific, geographic, and historical subjects as well as biblical and theological matters, all construed as sources of knowledge for understanding the Creator through Creation. In the first modern edition of the poem since 1863, James H. Morey reproduces the Prik of Conscience in its original northern dialect of Middle English alongside extensive notes and glosses, provided to support students, instructors, and researchers in their investigations of this influential work.