Mark entity safe and reinstall escape -- make title display right Change to explicitly mark the string entity — as safe and reinstate escaping of doctitle. If this worked in the past maybe auto-escaping wasn't turned on. If it is in the newer versions of sphinx's jinja |safe is needed now (and |e isn't, but it doesn't seem to cause double escaping so....).

def init_severity(db, cl, nodeid, newvalues):
    """Make sure severity is set on new issues"""
    if 'severity' in newvalues and newvalues['severity']:
        return

    normal = db.severity.lookup('normal')
    newvalues['severity'] = normal

def init(db):
    db.issue.audit('create', init_severity)