SOURCE: C. Horstman, in an introduction to Yorkshire Writers, edited by C. Horstman, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1896, pp. v-xxxvi.

[In the excerpted introduction that follows, Horstman provides a detailed rendition of Rolle's life and a comprehensive paraphrase of his works, organizing the paraphrase according to the tenets of Rolle's spiritual beliefs.]

Richard Rolle, from the place of his death and burial surnamed Hampole, was born about, or shortly before, 1300¹, at Thornton (now Thornton Dale), a village 2 1/2 miles E. of Pickering, at the foot of the hills in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He died on the 29th of September 1349. His father was William Rolle², a man apparently of respectable position, being called an intimate friend of John de Dalton (iste armiger patrem suum veluti sibi familiarem grata affectione diligebat); he was perhaps a dependant of the Nevilles. Having received his primary education at home, he was at a more advanced age sent to Oxford by Thomas de Neville, afterwards (since 1334) archdeacon of Durham. Oxford, at that time, was in the zenith of its glory: only a few years had elapsed since the great Duns Scotus had given a new impulse to scholasticism and no fewer than 30,000 students had sat listening at the feet of the great master. R. Rolle cannot but have felt the influence of the great time, of the great men and the ardent young spirits then gathered there. His spirit, too, was kindled, but in another direction. Being a man of feeling rather than of discrimination, and endowed with strong religious instincts, he was not made to grapple with the subtle and barren questions of the schools. Indeed, he ever afterwards retained a strong dislike of the philosophers. His studies were chiefly given to Holy Scripture and theology, and no doubt he then and there became imbued with the doctrines of the mystics, St. Bernard, the Victorines, Bonaventura. So, conceiving that salvation was not to be obtained through dialectics and philosophy but through flight from the world, and fearing some imminent danger for his soul³, he in his 19th year, when he can scarcely be supposed to have attained to classic composure⁴and to a sense of method and investigation, left the University and returned to his father's house, soon to adopt the profession of an hermit after the example of St. Guthlac. One day he procured from his sister two kirtles, a white one and a grey one, and a hood of his father's, cut off the buttoms of the white frock and the sleeves of the grey, donned the white one next his skin and the grey one over it, put on the hood, and so, in the semblance of an hermit, ran away from home, frightening off his sister who raised the cry that he was mad. On the eve of Assumption he appears at a church near John of Dalton's estate⁵("probably at Topcliffe near Thirsk, the parish of which includes a township of the name of Dalton"), taking his seat on the spot where Lady Dalton is wont to pray. On her entering, her servants would have turned him away, but she, seeing him in his devotions, will not allow him to be disturbed. Her sons recognize him as the son of William Rolle, whom they had seen at Oxford. Next morning he—sine mandato cuiuscumque—puts on a surplice and sings in the choir at Matins and Mass; after the gospel he, having first obtained the benediction of the priest, ascends the pulpit and delivers a sermon, so moving the hearts of his hearers that all wept and declared they had never heard anything like it before. After mass John of Dalton invites him to dinner: he hides himself in an outhouse, from sheer humility, but is found and placed at table before the sons of the house. Silently he takes his meal, and, having eaten his fill, rises to withdraw, but is reminded that it is not the custom to leave before dinner is over. After dinner, the host takes him aside, asks him whether he is really the son of William Rolle, and, having satisfied himself as to the sincerity of his purpose, invites him to remain in the house, and provides him with the proper habit of an hermit, a solitary cell on his estate, and his daily sustenance.

Having so entered upon the career of an hermit, he tried to realize, and put to the test of his personal experience, the mystic ideal of contemplative life. He first went through the stage of "purificatio" or "purgatio", a time of penitence and repentance, of tears and sorrows, of fastings and watchings, of severe discipline, of ascetic exercises, so to withdraw the mind from the world and the self, from sin and carnal affection;—as long as any remorse is felt, the mind is not yet perfectly purified. Then through the stage of "illuminatio", in which the mind is kindled to perfect love of God, by meditation and prayer, by the remembrance of God's benefits to man as Creator, Redeemer, and Saviour, by meditations on the passion of Christ &c. After this preparation—which, as he carefully sums up, lasted 3 years minus 3-4 months, he at last got to the third stage, the "contemplatio" or "sight", when man "sees into heaven with his ghostly eye"; when "through the open door of heaven with unveiled face the eye of the heart 'contemplates' (sees) the heavenly spirits (superos)". In this stage he subsequently—the doors of heaven remaining open—experienced the 3 phases which he describes as calor, canor, dulcor. Nearly a year had passed in the stage of contemplatio, when, sitting one day in meditation in a certain church, he suddenly felt in him a strange and pleasant heat as of real, sensible fire, so that he often felt his breast to see if the heat was caused by some exterior cause; but finding that it arose from within and not from the flesh, and was a gift from his Maker, he was all liquefied in love, and the more so because with the cauma he felt a dulcor inexpressibly sweet. In this warmth he had continued for 9 months, when suddenly he felt the canor⁶…. This gift, so wonderful that, as he says, "nee putavi tale quid etiam nee sanctissimum in hac vita accepisse", he calls a free gift of Christ (hoc arbitror nulli datum meritis, sed gratis, cui voluerit Christus), "accorded to those only who so specially love the name of Jesus that it never recedes from their minds"⁷. The dulcor—an ineffable sweetness, an anticipation of the joys of Heaven—accompanies both the calor and the canor. The stages once attained, remain henceforth; not "raptim" or "momentanée", but "jugiter" he feels the calor, canor, dulcor, though not always alike intensely, or all at the same time, sometimes the calor, sometimes the canor prevailing.

The whole process from his conversion to the attainment of the canor had lasted 4 years and 3 months.—(Thus far, we have the authority of the Vita).

So in his youth—the age most fitted for love—he has forsaken the wisdom, the love of the world and carnal love, and given himself entirely to divine love; enthralled by the sweet humanity of Christ, he has followed Him in voluntary poverty and lives in solitude, in divine contemplation. The beginning of his conversation had not been without temptations, especially of the flesh; but now he has overcome. Now his tears are dried, his sorrow is turned into joy. Fasting and watching are no longer required; nay a moderate fare is more conducive to contemplation than outrageous abstinence. He has attained to the highest stage of contemplation, to the highest degree of love, the degree represented by the Séraphin ("ardentes") in Heaven. He is now perfectus, Justus, sanctus in his sense, and lays claim to saintship—for Saint is he who forsaking the world and the flesh, is all absorbed in the love of God (Istum virum jam justum, perfectum, et sanctum Christus dignatur ostendere, qui in vera caritate non cessât flagrare). Yea, by the gift of canor, so rarely, if ever, given to mortal man, he belongs to the few privilegiati.

Contemplative life necessarily requires quiet and rest, quiet of body and mind. The mind must be abstracted from visible things, be free from sinful thoughts, from carnal love, from envy, wrath and pride; be even-tempered in adversity and prosperity. The body must be in rest; "Tanto minus quis internis gaudiis rapitur, quanto extemis rebus magis implicatur". Exterior works, fatigue of any kind, interrupt the canor (Fervorem felicem et cantum captatum fatigatio fugat, et fugere facit ministerium mechanicum vel cursus corporalis, Mel.). Even the psalmody of the congregation disturbs the holy strain. The true contemplative must be solitary, not conjoint (non conjunctus, in congregatione et tumultu positus) or "communis";—"solus suscipiet quod conjunctus carebit". He must be poor, unfettered by office or dignity; poor in spirit, unspoiled by worldly wisdom. His place is the solitude, the desert, where no discordant noise jars upon the ear listening to the divine melody. Lovers will not kiss in public but seek solitude, Christ is not found in the multitude but in the desert: "In solitudine Christus loquitur ad cor, tanquam verecundus amator qui amicam coram omnibus non amplectitur nee amicabiliter sed comiter tantum velut extraneam osculatur"; "Pax est in cella: nil exterius nisi bella". He must not rove about—instability proceeds from vice. The best thing he can do is to sit; not to run about (discurrere) on exterior work, but to sit; to sit still, inactive, to sit by day and night, all absorbed in his raptures. Indeed, exterior works, almsgiving, preaching &c, are not the proper domain of the contemplative, but belong to active life; his domain is "love-longing and still mourning"—…such is his work. He does not say his prayers: he sings (Jam non dicit orationes suas: sed in sublimitate mentis positus et amore raptus, mira suavitate supra se rapitur et Deo decantare spirituali organo in mirum modum sublevatur, Cant.). Yet, contemplative life is not "otium"; it is not attained without great efforts, not sustained without severe spiritual exercises. Indeed, contemplation is labour, though a sweet labour (Est utique contemplatio labor, sed dulcis, desiderabilis et suavis: laborantem laetificat, non gravât). It so emaciates and consumes the body that the contemplative is hardly fit for preaching and exterior work (Cum divinae caritatis dulcedo mentem absorbuerit, caro deficit et ulterius jam ad exteriores labores sustinendos fortis non erit). So the true contemplative is the solitarius, anachorita, eremita.

The degree of sanctity depends on the degree of love ("iþe diuersite of lufe makes be diuersite of halynes and of mede"); the more ardent in love, the greater is the Saint: "Perfectior et excellentior, qui suavius ac jocundius in caritate ardet". The Séraphin are the highest angles because they are most ardent in love. Therefore contemplative life, as it is most given to love, is the saintliest, the highest life, and in dignity and merit exceeds all active life. St. Bernard had ranked contemplative life between the two kinds of active life—a lower and a higher; R. Rolle proclaims the superiority of contemplative life…. As the soul is more excellent than the body, so spiritual labour is more commendable than bodily labour; "Tanto quis aeterni amoris dulcedinem affluentius haurit, quanto solummodo divina et celestia cogitans, ad nullam exteriorem mundi occupationem se tradit". The contemplative, therefore, ranks before the prelate, the priest, and the monk. The prelate, the priest, are distracted by outward work, the duties of their office. The monk, the "obedientiarius sub abbate", is bound by obedience and not free. The monastic profession is commendable, if rightly observed; but it has not the monopoly of perfection. A layman, a man in the world, can attain to caritas (Tanta caritate nonnunquam aliquis inter homines conversatus erga Deum exuritur, quanta ille qui inter claustrales etiam optimus approbatur); then à fortiori the solitary who forsakes the world for the love of God. Anselm therefore errs in maintaining the superiority of conventual life under obedience. Christ certainly will prefer him who loves nothing but Him; nothing but love is accepted by God, and He counts not so much the work as the will. The contemplative is God's special darling (specialissimus). "Talem suavitatem habet in mente qualem angeli in coelo, licet non tantam". He has true rest and freedom; he lives happy and dies secure (dulciter vivit, secure morietur); he will have a high place in Heaven and sit on the throne with God to judge the wicked. His privilege is such that he cannot err, because God would not allow it (inspiratus est a Spiritu sancto, non potest errare; etsi voluerit assensum praebere persuasioni aliorum, non permittitur a Deo, qui constringit ems ad suam voluntatem; agat quicquid libet, securus est, Inc. Am.); and though he may be subject to temptation while he lives in this world, his ardent love will burn out all sin (incendium amoris cuncta vitia destruit et omnium virtutum florem plantât; cum mortali peccato nunquam stat, etsi aliquando veniali, sed tamen tarn ardens esse potest quod omnia venialia consumit.) The contemplative is truly a king, yea a fourfold king—"non unum tantum sed quatuor régna devicit: regnum mundi per paupertatem voluntariam, regnum carnis per temperantiam et prudentiam, regnum diaboli per humilem patientiam, regnum coeli per caritatem perfectam; regnum ejus non est de hoc mundo, quia gaudium non quaerit nisi de coelo" (In Ps. 20).

The hermit has no ministry, no place in the hierarchical body. R. Rolle himself belonged to no monastic institution, was not in holy orders, was neither priest nor monk, and consequently was not allowed to preach from the pulpit⁸; he was a mere layman. The hermit must give himself entirely up to contemplation, and to spiritual exercises as reading, prayer, meditation.⁹He may occasionally give spiritual advice, exhort to peace and charity; he may also write, if he feel inspired by the Spirit; but preaching is not his concern; indeed, contemplation makes him unfit for preaching. In the main, he is a free liver—in the better sense of the word—, subject to no control, to no rule but his own. "Abbas amor dat morum formulam" (Off.), "Soli Deo débet heremita obedientiam facere, quia ipse est abbas, prior, et praepositus claustri cordis sui" (Reg. her.). He has to submit to the statutes of the Church, to say the Hours, to hear Mass, to confess and to receive holy communion; he must also notify his life to the diocesan, or to the patron of the place if he be a prelate or priest of good life, and if they find in him something to correct, obey their counsels; or he may, with the consent of the bishop, have a wise old priest appointed in a neighbouring monastery or church to whom he may confess rarely and who may advise him in questions of conscience. But practically he is independent, his own master, and follows the dictates of his spirit. He claims exemption from the Congregation, which would tend to disturb the canor. He must be chaste, he must be poor, but obedience is not in his regulation. Indeed, the word "obedience" is distasteful to him—Magis oportet Deo obedire quam hominibus. His approbation he has from God, not from men; his ruler is Love.

The soul of holy contemplation is Love—Cor vulneratum, liquefactum, crematum amore; love precedes and leads to it, and contemplation itself is perfect and highest love (contemplatio est caritas perfecta et summa). "Nisi Christum quis certe diligit, proculdubio in canore coelestis contemplationis non jubilât". Love is desire of the heart, ever thinking on that that it loves, and when it has that it loves then it joys (quia gaudium non creatur nisi ex amore) and nothing may make it sorry; a yearning between two, with lastingness of thought; a coupling together of the lover and the loved, sum of affections (I, p. 36); transformation of the affect into the thing beloved. Where is love? "in the heart and in the will of man, not in his hand or in his mouth, that is to say, not in his work; but in his soul". Love is a universal principle (universalitas mundialis creaturae diligere diligique cupit, et motiva cordis intentio quodammodo semper in amatum tendit, jugiter mens in illud quod summe amat progreditur, nee in ejus desiderio fatigatur); but it is the privilege of youth (abilis est haec aetas ad ardenter amandum)—what knows the child of love? and old age has spent it. No reasonable soul is, or can be, without love. Love, therefore, is the foot by which man goes either to Heaven or to Hell. A thing can be loved only "propter bonum quod est aut existens aut apparens". But love of woman, or of the world, is no real, no lasting good, but an illusion, a deceit, a sham. Therefore we damnably neglect our soul, if we fix our love on woman for lust; "dum oculi visus animum incendit, mox intrabit delectatio, et in corde concupiscentiam generat". "Omnis amor qui in Deum non intendit, iniquitas est, ac iniquos reddit suos possessores"; "Amarior absinthio huiusmodi amor algescit, et finis felle erit ferocior, quia fervor infmitus carnales consumet." Woman is the devil's deception. Carnal love leads to perdition. "Propter speciem mulieris multi perierunt, pulcritudo plurimos decepit, et concupiscentia corda etiam sapientum quandoque subvertit". Therefore flee women, "fugito feminas"…. But divine love leads to Heaven. This love is true love, which deceives not. True love is chaste, holy; voluntary, selfless, impetuous, undying. It loves God for Himself, and all other things for God. It is meek, humble, suffers gladly tribulation; patient and stalworth as death—as death slays all, so love overcomes everything (amor vincit omnia); he that loves God perfectly, delights in persecution, joys if men reprove him, covets to be worthy to suffer torment (I, 40). It loves poverty, penance, and hard travail. It is shy and seeks solitude, to be alone with the beloved (non potest commisceri societatibus saecularium, qui solummodo delectatur in gaudiis angelorum). The first step is to keep the ten commaundments and eschew the deadly sins; the next is perfect love—when man forsakes his kin, despises the world and follows Christ in poverty; the highest is contemplative love, "in which the soul is as burning fire, and as the nightingale that loves song and melody and fails for great love" (I, 52. 33); or, the degrees of love are defined as love insuperable, inseparable, singular (ilium solum in solatium recipiens quern jugiter amare concupiscit). This love is attained only by the simple-minded, the pure-hearted, the poor—not by the proud, the rich, the philosophers and sophists…. Divine love is painful in the beginning, and attained only with greatest labour; but when possessed, it gives ineffable joy. It alone gives real joy. All carnal pleasures, all abundance of earthly possessions, are misery and abomination in comparison to the least drop of the sweetness infused by God into the loving soul; "Tantus est dulcor infusus in mentem Christum amantem, quod si omne mundi gaudium in uno loco fuerit adunatum, magis delectaretur in solitudinem currere, quam illud semel oculo aspicere"; "Tota terrena consolatio sibi videtur potius desolatio quam recreatio". It is a sweet burden. It makes us one with God, it couples Christ with the elected soul, reforms in us the image of the trinity, makes the creature similar to the Creator. It is death of sin, life of virtues. Without it, no man can please God; with it, no man sins. Who feels the sweetness of eternal love, cannot relapse to temporal love (Ut lac semel coagulatum nunquam iterum ad pristinum statum redire potest, sic qui vere aeterno amore incenditur, ad amorem temporalem nunquam relabitur). It gives wonderful delight and security. It gives true rest and freedom (quam nobilem Hbertatem omnes in aeternum ignorabunt qui nesciunt diligere suavitatem in Christo sentire). It secures salvation. And love only merits…. Not to us us anything to be imputed but to grace…. God works justification and sanctification through his grace: "Nisi Deus electos quos salvare decreverit, gratia praeveniret, inter filios hominum non inveniretur quern justificaret; ipse inspirât ut recte velit; subsequitur ut voluntatem perficere possit". Contemplation, also, is the work of grace: "Non in humana potestate est contemplationem accipere, nee labor alicuius quantumcumque extensus ipsam meretur. sed a bonitate divina tribuitur vere diligentibus se, qui utique supra humanam aestimationem Christum amare desideraverunt". Grace and will combined, work salvation (I, p. 306). Will, not works, is the essential thing, and will is love: "Sine bona voluntate nemo salvabitur; cum qua nee aliquis dampnabitur. Deus est finis bonae voluntatis. Caritas nunquam est nisi in bona voluntate, nee bona voluntas nisi in caritate". Works are but a sign, not a test or proof of love, or love itself: "Many speak good and do good, and love not God; are holy in men's sight, and in the sight of God the devil's sons and ravishing wolves; as hypocrites. Nothing that I do without, proves that I love God; for a wicked man might do as much penance, might wake and fast as much as I do—how may I then ween that I love, or hold myself better, for that that each man may do? Certes, my heart, whether it love or not, no one knows but God, for nought that they may see me do. Wherefore love is in will only, and not in work, save as a sign of lofe. For he that says he loves God and will not do in deed that in him is to schew love, tell him that he lies; love will not be idle: it is working some good evermore; if it cease of working, know that it cools and fades away" (I, p. 38).—So "dilectio est quoddam maximum, quoddam optimum, quoddam carissimum; quod nos intus et extra disponit, ad unum solum Deum amandum colligit, opera nostra componit et Deo placere facit; cum qua pauper dives est, sine qua dives pauper, immo nihil est". "Amor itaque omnia excellit, nemo nisi diligens ad Deum ducetur". "Pro caritate cuncti coronantur".

Only divine love gives true happiness and bliss. The mind which revels in the sweetness of this love, in the intoxication of holy contemplation, cannot but loathe the world and all the glory of the world (Ita fit quod praeter ilia interna solatia nee aliquid amare aut cogitare quaerat; inde exteriora vilescunt, transitoria quaeque ac omnem mundi inanem gloriam nee appetere curat nee respicere). It has no taste for other love (Si mens aeterni amoris dulcedine perfunditur, non potest fieri quod ultra in carnali amore nequiter delectetur). Carnal love is beastly, horrid, bitter as absinth, leads to ruin, disease and death—the world is being diminished "de multis maculatis". The pleasures of the world are shallow; beauty, riches, honours, dignities, worldly wisdom, are absolutely vain…. "Al perisches and passes that we with eghe se; it wanes into wretchednes, the welth of this worlde" (s. p. 53). This earthly life is a vale of tears and woe, its pleasures and joys are illusory, being always accompanied by sin and suffering and evil, from which we can escape only by fixing our hopes upon the world to come. Man is foul from beginning to end: conceived and born in filth, at last "worms' cook". "Heu quam miser homo qui perdidit omnia porno! Labimur et cadimus, praesto peccamini sumus: Vermibus dum morimur caro, spiritus igni donatur" (Job). Men are blinded by their vices (Excaecantur oculi saecularium tenebris vitiorum); all seek riches and carnal love; the rich and proud are honoured, the poor are despised, the saint is persecuted and exiled. The best thing is death which removes us hence and puts an end to our misery. So pessimistic world-sadness is the reverse side of divine love.

Such are the outlines of R. Rolle's system, if system may be called what lacks every philosophic or metaphysic ingredient. His system is not a metaphysic system, his God not a metaphysic God; he implicitly believes in the Bible and in the Fathers, and rigorously resists any attempt to introduce reason into the domain of faith or to construe the Trinity from a psychological basis¹⁰. His God is Christ;—"Totiens glorior, quotiens nominis tui, Jesu, recordor." His mysticism is "in amore Dei canere et jubilare quasi raptus super terrena, in se deficere et in Deum pergere^10w His system is religious life, not theory. His "principle" is Love. In a time of utter depravity, of gross materialism, when immorality and cupidity pervaded all classes from the highest to the lowest; in juxtaposition to the reigning scholasticism, the vain efforts of the brain, he re-discovered, re-introduced the principle of Love, Cor, and proclaimed salvation through the heart. He contains the elements which constitute Christ, and came very nearly to the same results—but the greater light out-shone the lesser; the work had been done before, had been done well, and that which crowned the work, the crucifixion, could not be overdone; every departure on the same line is necessarily drawn into the way of imitation. Still, his example may serve to explain the genesis of Christ. On the other side, by re-developing the original ideas of Christ which had been overlaid, and partly obscured, by an artificial, elaborate hierarchical system, he opened and started that revolution which commenced by restoring and re-asserting individual right and conscience, and ended in the Reformation, the breach of obedience to Rome by Luther. Many of the arguments of Wicliffe, Savonarola, and Luther are first found in R. Rolle. As a matter of fact, the renaissance of letters and the Reformation were preceded by the regeneration of the heart, and R. Rolle is the link between Bonaventura and the Reformers. In England, this regeneration met with the individual principle of the Saxon, and by it received that tincture of self-independence which negatived a given rule, a formal authority, obedience. Though perfectly correct in dogma, yet, by living a life after his own taste, in solitude, apart from a Congregation, without a head, with God only as his praepositus, with abbas amor ruling his life, a self-made saint, a "homo sui juris", a king in the realm of the Spirit, R. Rolle represents the extreme, excessive height of individualism on the side of feeling, as Scotus on the side of intellect. The novel ideal of the hermit, revived from more primitive times when a less elaborate organisation of the Church left more space for individual freedom; the unique position of the contemplative as above the religious orders and prelacy; the emphasis laid on the inner man, the heart, love, as against works; his unsparing criticism of the existing system,—all this was sure to give offence to the dominant classes, and might, if followed up in its consequences, lead to serious complications.—

Of R. Rolle's later life the Vita gives but scant information. We learn that he was wonderfully, and very usefully, busy in holy exhortations, by which he converted many to God, and in writing mellifluous treatises and books for the edification of others which in the hearts of the devout resound the sweetest melody; that from the abundance of his holy love he was wont to befriend recluses and such as needed spiritual consolation or suffered vexations from the malign operation of evil spirits in body or soul, and that God conferred on him the singular grace of relieving those that were so troubled. We learn that after a time he went to other parts—no doubt, by the will of Providence, that he, dwelling in many places, might be useful to many, and sometimes, also, to evade obstacles of contemplation; and that this frequent change of place gave occasion for fault-finding, although the holy Fathers of Egypt had done the same and the canons allow a change of place in certain cases (cum nécessitas persecutionis loca eorum gravaverit; cum difficultas locorum fuerit; cum sancti malorum societate premantur). That so he went into Richmondshire, where for a time he had his cell 12 miles from his spiritual friend Margaret (Kirkby), a recluse near A(i)nderby; whom he used to instruct in the art of the love of God and in the ruling of life, and twice by his mere presence cured from a seizure, promising her the second time that she shoult not be seized again during his life-time. When—transactis postea quibusdam annorum curriculis—the same fit returned a third time, it was found that he had just died "apud domum sanctimonialium de Hampole, ubi illis diebus solitariam vitam egit". Thither the said recluse afterwards removed.

This meagre account of a life which must have been rich in incident and full of interest, can be largely supplemented from his works which abound in selfconfessions, he being a very subjective writer. All the 4 years odd from his conversion to the attainment of the canor, he appears to have stayed with the Daltons, and there in his lonely cell, "remotus inter homines", provided with the necessaries of life by his kind friends, to have enjoyed that rest and quiet so indispensable to contemplation. "Comedi et bibi de his quae meliora videbantur." The solitude has taught him his "love" and the canorus jubilus, and he is happy. "Parentum seu amicorum subitis doloribus non concutitur nee illorum calamitate turbatur (contemplativus)"—he says, alluding perhaps to his own family. It was probably Lady Dalton ("domina quaedam in cuius manerio idem Ricardus cellam habuit longe a familia separatam ubi ipse solitarius sedere consuevit et contemplationi vacare"), at whose death he drove away a troop of horrible demons, as the Vita relates (Lect. 8); and we may suppose that it was this same lady ("matrona quaedam in mundo magna quae me una cum marito suo per annos nonnullos sustentaverat"), whose aspect in death produced in him that great horror described in "Contra amatores mundi", and which seems to re-echo in his awful descriptions of death. At the time of his conversion Lady Dalton had been an elderly matron, having grown-up sons at Oxford. Perhaps it was her death and her husband's that put an end to his residence there. When he left that place he was still young—"non inutile, he says, arbitrandum est si in juventute mea plura loca viderim, ut de melioribus statui meo convenientibus unum eligere possem." Hitherto he had enjoyed rest: henceforth his rest is broken. He becomes a wanderer upon earth.¹¹ "Quemadmodum Cayn^11a " vagus et profugus super terram factus fuit pro facinore fratricidii, ita et ego in hoc exilio incertae sedis fio; de loco ad locum transeo, donee omnipotens deus dignetur servum suum dirigere, ut deinceps jam non indigeam circumquaque transmigrare" (Mel.). The next period of his life is one of restlessness, conflict and fierce strife. He remained an hermit and adhered to contemplative life; but he had to live somehow. England was not Egypt, his time not St. Guthlac's; there were no longer lonely islands or waste places to occupy, the land had been parcelled out; to till the ground, to live by manual labour, did not agree with his delicate health and with his aspirations—he was dependent on men for his living. But, being no professional, neither priest in orders nor monk, he could offer little or no service—he had only ideas to give. He had to find friends who for God's sake could spare him a cell and his sustenance. And such friends he did find: we learn from his writings that he continued to live "cum divite domorum", dwelling on their estates and heartily joining in their meals. Who these friends were we know not—he never gives names of persons or places: but they must be sought amongst the gentry, the lords of manor, of the neighbourhood. However, not all friends were so kindly disposed, so constant, as the Daltons. He was of a sensitive, irritable nature, easily giving and taking offence, and yet exacting as to his dignity; his ways were strange, not in tune with the "world" ("non feci sicut ipsi fecerunt"), his theories new and incomprehensible to common intellect. He could not agree with men (cum hominibus concordare non potui); his friends soon became estranged (statim mutati fuerunt qui ministrare consueverunt), showed the cold shoulder; he suffered rebuff and ignominy. Slanderous tongues helped to embroil him with his patrons and to drive him "a domibus in quibus diligebar". Personal frictions hindered his contemplation. So he had no permanent home and changed his cell several times, living where he found a welcome, and leaving when friendships cooled; depending on the goodwill of men, on the seasons, on circumstances; staying a year or two at this manor, half a year at another, and changing from bad to worse.

Or, he left his cell for a while to return to it at convenience, in the meanwhile traversing the country. The reason is not far to seek: he began to appear in public. It is a remarkable fact that new systems of Love have generally implied a tendency to remodel the world, or rather that moral revolutions have proceeded from a deeper grasp of the principle of Love. Love and mercy are akin. Having found his system, he was naturally desirous to make it known, to propagate his ideas, to teach his love, to save others, to win souls. He appeared in the manor-houses of the neighbourhood, made friends with the lord, chatted with the women, knacked jokes with the girls, but all with that intent to preach his love, chastity and charity…. He appeared in the villages and mixed with the people; colloquially (as Socrates), not from the pulpit, inculcating love, loving-kindness, peace. He formed connections with clerics—one of his epistles (Cupienti mihi) is addressed to a young priest¹² whom he instructs in charity and invites to seek the solitude. He tried to revive anchoritical life. The "Régula heremitarum", which is undoubtedly his work, is a proof that at one time he contemplated to form a community of hermits under a rule. How far he succeded in his missionary work it is difficult to judge: the Vita says that he converted many to God by his exhortations; I find no confirmation in his writings. He himself begs to be excused if, his health failing under the strain of contemplation, he, infirm and dead to the world, keeps within his cell, "non visitans villanos, fugiendo festis psallentiumque sonoro"; he maintains that "exterius ministerium" is not the sphere of the contemplative. In another work (Contra amatores mundi) he complains that his labour is lost, that "inter multos morans nee uni scio prodesse, et quae putabam lucrata timeo ne evanescant". As to his propaganda for anchoritical life, he complains that he can find no one willing to join him: "Heu mihi misero qualicunque solitario, ita fit in temporibus meis quod nee unum invenio qui mecum cupit currere ac sedendo et tacendo aeterni amoris delicias desiderare", "Vix unum invenio quern solitudinem amantem videbis", that no woman will last in his love: "Amor mulieris multivolae cito fluens evanet et nullicubi persistens innumeras mansiones affectât evagando; non miror si in amore mei non moretur aliqua, cum ab aeterno amore modico venti flatu in aliud redigatur." On the other side it would seem that the order of hermits, which before his time had become nearly extinct, was really revived by him, and that after a time his example was followed by many.¹³ Piers Ploughman directs his satire against the hosts of begging hermits traversing the country. On the whole, his oral mission does not seem to have met with much success, or to have been long continued. Indeed, he had found a better and more congenial mode of conveying his ideas.

At that time he began to write. Love forces him to write. Love has given him wisdom and subtlety; the gift of canor, the power of lucid speech (lucide, liquide loquor). The old Fathers had written: so why should not he? why should a modern be less able? God is of no less bounty now than in the primitive times. If he is not allowed to preach, he will write, and preach in writing. "Non sum episcopus nee praelatus nee rector ecclesiarum, tamen solicitus sum pro ecclesia Dei, si possem aliquo bono modo quidquam facere aut scribere quo ecclesia Dei augmentum capiat in divina dilectione". He fears not, Love makes him bold.—His first attempts had been private, the outcome of the canor modulated into song: short rhapsodic effusions, ejaculation of love-longing, rhymes,—of course, in English—, made afterwards into songs to Christ and Mary. The Virgin he held in special veneration and to her he had dedicated his virginity; in her praise he wrote a Latin poem (Zelo tui langueo virgo speciosa, in Ms. Rawl. C 397) in 39 4-lined stanzas, one of his earliest works—an imitation of Bonaventura's (or Peckham's) famous "Cantus philomenae", and in the same metre, but with frequent alliteration. But now he comes forward as a writer (proferor), and having once commenced, he wrote on, issuing work after work in quick succession. He writes with astounding facility, with an eloquence which brings out with ease whatever is in his mind, but he takes no trouble to revise or refine his writings. He writes to bring out his system, to win souls, to attack vice, to castigate society. Yes, he will not only edify, he will strike and sting (spinis pungendo principles perversos); he will not only show love, but hatred (Amorem et odium utrumque ostendi). He appears as a champion, enters the lists against the vices of the time—cupidity and concupiscense, throws down the gauntlet to the "saeculares miseri", the tyrants, the egotists, the hard hearted, the princes, the proud, the rich, the lovers of vanity, the pharisees and hypocrites—"Tutus non timeo tundere temptantes: contra tyrannos thema tetendi".—In embracing anchoritical life he had followed in the steps of St. Guthlac and other Northerners; his gift of canor reminds of Caedmon's miraculous gift of song—as a writer he took up the old traditions of the North: he revived the alliterative verse. I cannot discover any previous attempt in that direction, and do not hesitate to ascribe to him the revival of this verse which forms so prominent a part in the vernacular literature of the 14th century. He first employed it in Latin. The first work—or one of his first—with which he appeared before the public, "Of the glory and perfection of the Saints" i.e. hermits (in Ms. CCCO 193 titled Melum contemplativorum), is written in alliterative verse, mixed with alliterative prose. His next works are in prose: a "book on the life of hermits", quoted—with the preceding—in his "Job" and probably identical with the "Rule of hermits" in Ms. Mm. VI. 17; "Against the lovers of the world"; on God's judgment as against man's (Judica me Deus); an epistle to a young priest inculcating charity and contemplation (Cupienti mihi); postils on the first 2 verses of Canticum canticorum (Osculetur me osculo oris sui), and on the chapters of Job used as lessons for the dead. All these works are in Latin, at that time the common language of the learned. They all belong to this period and are written in his youth: in the "Melum" he calls himself juvenculus, puer, pusillus—it was written probably in 1326, when presumably he was 26 years old; in the other works he calls himself juvenis. They all bear the mark of youth in the strongly personal, subjective, combative, passionate, nervous, eruptive style, in the sweeping and uncompromising character of his assertions; the Melum betrays its primogeniture in a certain juvenile—shall I say frivolity? They are written in a time of conflict, when he had to make headway, to lay open, to maintain, and to defend his theories, and subjectivism will naturally appear when the "Ich" is not in concord with the time and has to assert itself.—All these works are written in praise of contemplation and divine love as against carnal love and the love of the world. His favourite form is the postil, i.e. he comments Holy Scripture—he is dependent on scriptural texts for the exposition of his views. In the "Melum" he thus chooses his texts indiscriminately, according to their bearing on contemplative life; in the postils on Canticum and Job he comments a couple or a series of texts. Those of his works in which he either abandons the support of texts (as Incendium amoris) or more regularly expounds whole books of the Bible verse by verse (as Psalter, Threni), must be assigned to a subsequent period—he certainly commenced his literary career as a—somewhat irregular—postillator; "de gloria et perfections sanctorum praecellentium postillas proferam", "Positus in praesenti patiens pressuras pro pane perhenni, puto quod potero . . in publicum procedere probatus postillator, strictam scripturae masticans medullam, ut degam delicate dulcoribus divinis", so he says in the Melum. This is characteristic of his method. He propounds a biblical text: this text evokes a certain note or tune, a certain emotion, and on that he enlarges, so bringing out his views. His method is lyrical or musical, not deductive—a translation into words of the canor, the chiming in his breast; he is a poet, a lyric poet, not a philosopher, he writes from feeling. Guided by a biblical text as "Leitmotif, he brings out the sensations attending holy contemplation. In the Melum he so follows up the whole course of contemplative life from the first conversion to the attainment of caritas perfecta, and ends with the grand Finale: Doomsday, the glory of the saints, the pains of the damned; in the postils on Canticum he more particularly dwells on the dulcor. His plans are loose, invisible, introduced from without, the parts are exteriorly slung together like beads in a rosary, the sentences loosely connected, his style is strangely incoherent, there is no development, no progress: the progress is obstructed by variations and repetitions of the same theme, much in the wise of A.S. poetry; sometimes he repeats himself in different works in identical terms. His strength lies in his lyric fervour, in the truth of his feeling, in the depth of his inner life, as in graphic descriptiveness, in happy illustration from nature, life, his own experience; he strikes some of the deepest chords that ever have sounded in the human breast; he excels in terse sentences epigrammatically pointed and full of antithesis, which often convey truths far in advance of his time and of almost modern impress—indeed his style is largely made up of sentences, each the result of a spiritual experience, a momentary inspiration. He is strangely deficient in reasoning and all that pertains to reason and scientia acquisita: he is strong in point of feeling and scientia inspirata; he is all, entirely, and nothing but feeling. This, I think, explains the peculiarities of his strange style.—But he not only gives the sensations in the progress of contemplative life: he is also a preacher and teacher; his lyric effusions are mixed with admonitions and warn ings, with polemic and satire. He appears as a reformer: he propounds his scheme of a higher and unworldly life, exhorts others to follow him, criticises the existing order of things, attacks the worldliness of the ruling classes. All these elements are combined in the Melum, his chief and most comprehensive work, while his other writings are more uniformly either exegetic and mystical, or exhortatory, or polemic, or written in self-defence; indeed, the polemic element may be said to prevail in his earlier writings in the same degree, as it recedes in his later. How he labours to win souls! Ο come, he says, ye youths and maidens, learn from me, a wonderful lover (amator mirabilis), how to love: forsake the impure love of one another and embrace eternal love! Ο maidens, do not hanker after men, do not adorn yourselves for men, to tempt them: lo Christ, lovely of shape before the sons of men, the King of Heaven, wants your beauty, woos your love—he loves maidens chaste and poor, he loves caritas, not libido (caritas est color quo pulcri paremus): he will adorn you with a wonderful crown, a worthy diadem, with shining garments; and her that now languishes in love for him, he will requite with everlasting sweetness….—Be comforted ο ye poor! you will be the rich in Heaven and sit with God on the throne to judge the wicked princes:…—He attacks the cupidi, carnales, directs his satire against all classes of society from the King down to the selfish poor, but mainly against the great, the proud, the rich, against all who love the world and the flesh, not God…. No less he censures the manifest abuses in the Church, insisting on inward religion, on caritas, as against "ministerium mechanicum", the formalism of the time; he censures the prevailing worldliness, exteriority, work-service, hypocrisy, the lack of true religious spirit. He declaims against the "ficti et falsi fideles, qui Deum se amare fingunt cum non diligunt"; against the priests who eagerly claim their tithes but neglect the cure of their parishioners…against the monks who are implicated in secular affairs, and in their presumption claim to possess the sole way to perfection; against the book-wise, the "doctores et philosophi et theologi, infmitis quaestionibus implicati, in omni scientia summi sed in amore Dei inferiores"; against the prelates, who bent on worldly pursuits, on secular business, on mammon, on carnal pleasures, and anxious to shine, to excel, indifferently perform the duties of their office and neglect to attend to the spiritual needs of their flocks, sending incompetent preachers and prohibiting the "missi a Deo", the poor hermits…If so the columns fall, how can the fabric stand: (Si columnae cadunt, quomodo stabit quod frondificatum est? Membra sequuntur caput; quia superiores insaniunt, etiam inferiores in vanitates et fantasias falsas deducuntur): So much the more it is necessary that the few elected should raise their voice against the prelates…. He so, leaning on his mission by God, challenges his own bishop: "Ecce juvenis, zelo animatus justitiae, insurgit contra senem, heremita contra episcopum et contra omnes taliter opinantes qui in quantumcumque exterioribus actibus supereminentia affirmant esse sanctitatis" (Mel).)—Alas, the world is sadly deteriorated!…—Truly, the end of the world is near: "Et quidem in istis temporibus, in quibus deveniunt fines temporum, maxime superbi regnant, hypocritae praesident, homicidae dominantur, fornicatores sublevantur, avari divitias et dignitates adquirunt, iracundi et invidi praeponuntur".

From so appearing in public as a teacher and writer, his name soon began to be noised about. But in the same measure he found violent opposition: he was attacked by a host of enemies. His earlier works are full of bitter complaints against his detractors; he had to maintain his reputation, to defend his principles. His system ran counter to the common opinion of men, of the world that lives, and struck against the very root and foundation of society. He proclaimed chastity, divine love: but, mothers will marry their daughters although they know that the price is their virginity; girls will have their sweethearts and adorn themselves to please men, and will not cease to believe that they possess what men desire to know; young men are expected to be infatuated, illusioned—and disillusioned—it is the way to knowledge and to wisdom;—such is the course of the world. Matrimony is the natural law (lex) of man, though no community has ever formally proclaimed it such, leaving it to nature to enforce her ends. The sex is man's natural incumbency, his fate, his Cross, the tree on which he grows. The ways of sex are hideous indeed: but they are indispensable—the way to life leads through that gate, and nature herself has given beauty and illusion, love and curiosity, to unite the sexes for the creation of new life; chastity is the beau ideal, the essence of morality, indeed morality itself, but chiefly as the nursery, the mainspring of love, which is the foundation of human society. Love is life itself, and life was given to return love; it is primarily sexual, and divine love is but secondary love, love transferred in its ends. His system was transcendental idealism—flight from the "trieb", and, as such, as much above truth, as mere sensuality is beneath it, truth lying between the two, as between body and soul, between matter and spirit. His system was hostile to kind, and he who forsakes kind, is forsaken by kind, and liable to fall maybe as Joseph by the wife of Putiphar; the whole world becomes his enemy. He had raised the whirlwind: he became the "lapis offensionis, petra scandali", "scandalum Judaeis, gentibus autem stultitia."—He was a strange man: strange in his ways, strange in his words and teaching: people asked: Who is this man that so cometh forth? They did not understand him, or misunderstood him. They saw his gloominess, but not the joy he felt within; they saw him constantly absorbed, ecstatic, constantly talking of a love not of this world, and could not make him out. They called him a fool, mad, demented (stultus, insipiens, alienatus mente), nay wicked (iniquus), saying he did irreverence to God and did not keep the statutes of the Church (dicentes irreverentiam Deo facere et statuta ecclesiae non observare), and did not run the right way to God (affirmant non recte currere ad coelestem mansionem). Others said: We give alms, feed the poor, clothe the naked and do all the works of mercy: how can those be equal to us who daily love quiet and do nothing of the kind? it is better to be in the world and do some good, than to sit idle in the solitude or in the cloister. His wanderings, his shifting from place to place, seemed at variance with the notions of an hermit, with the rest and quiet claimed by himself for the contemplative: people said he was no hermit (nonnulli cum heremiticam vitam considerant, me etiam heremitam non esse impudenter affirmare non formidant), but an hypocrite; some said he was a scamp (trutannus). His converse with the rich gave another occasion for slander: he who is so exhausted by absinence that he suffers excruciating head-aches, is said to be led away by the pleasures of the rich (dicunt derogantes: deliciis deducor quibus divites delectant, et indignus sum Deo), is accused of being a glutton and a wine-bibber, and they said of him as was said of Christ that he ate with sinners and publicans (Sancti saepius inter saeculares etiam solitarii sedebant: ideo tu dicis quod de Domino dicebatur: Quare cum peccatoribus et publicanis manducat magister vester? et iterum vocabant veritatem viventem quae angelos alit in sola visione, vini potatorem), that he was impure and ran after the girls (lubricum et lapsum me judicaverunt, putantes quod pro puellis persisterem cum pravis), that his "sittings" in holy contemplation were due to an overfull belly and to good wine, and his penance merely for the eyes of men (asserebant sophistice loquentes quod pro sumpto cibario sustinui sedere, et potibus deputantes quod Piissimus praestavit, ac populis ut placeam plerique publice praedicabant penitentiam me pati). These attacks he ascribes to envy, the envy of those who saw his goodly life and the wonders God worked in him, and found themselves deficient ("invidebant autem eo quod in magnis muneribus munitus mirabilis manebam, et seipsos mordebant morsibus malignis quia magnifica majestas me mirificavit in mente per musicum in melle melodis"; "Invidia uruntur quia lucide loquor"). But his worst enemies were those who called themselves followers and disciples of Christ, the professionals, the monks, the doctors, and especially the prelates; those that were encrusted in their traditional ways, in their self-conceit, their self-righteousness, and failed to comprehend the new gospel ("Odium et invidiam tantam non inveni nec habui sicut ab his qui dicebantur discipuli Jesu Christi"; "Hi qui praeferuntur (i. e. the prelates) maxime me odiunt"). They derided his self-assumed saintship—if he is a saint, where are the miracles which signalize the saint? They found fault with his quietism, his idle inactivity, his contemplation without works, his salvation by love, his independence without obedience. The generality of men are business-men and cannot understand the enthusiast: They jeered at his canor. The bookwise asked: Where has he learned and from what doctor? (Docti per acquisitam scientiam, non infusam, et inflati argumentationibus implicitis, dedignantur dicentes Ubi didicit iste et a doctore audivit?). They despised the layman who was not of their guild, scorned his inadequacy in things dialectic, questioned his qualification, thought it easy to beat him in disputation (nonnullos audivi me disputationibus velle vincere, quia apud opinionem hominum eos vivendo videbar superare), called him a rustic, an idiot (rusticus, idiota, insipiens). They maintained that he had no capacity to preach (Putant quod non potui pure praedicare nee sapere ut ceteri qui sancte subsistunt); they despise his words because he is poor, not a bishop, a prelate, or a rector (Quia pauper sum et non reputatus inter magistratus mundi, parvi penditis verba quae loquor vobis). They ridiculed his authorship—his teaching is to them a mystery (mysterium mitto modemis); they maintain that he errs in his interpretation of Holy Scripture (dicentes aut me in expositione errasse, aut sacra verba congruenter non tractasse, non acceptantes me quia modernus sum, Job)—to them he is a "homo novus", a modern. So—because he did not "run" as others in this world (quia non cucurri quemadmodum qui adhuc carnalitati inhaerent)—he was an object of universal hatred—Horridum me habebant omnes insensati. Those became his worst detractors whom before he had thought true friends (Eos pessimos detractores habui quos prius amicos fidos putavi). "Multi qui mecum loquebantur, similes fuerunt scorpionibus, quia capite blandiebantur adulantes, et cauda percutiebant detrahentes". They would fain have seen him fall into sin (Invidi undique obsistebant adversus me, qui si lapsus ligarer in lacum laetarentur); they tried to lure him into sin, so to catch him therein and make him belie his saintship. They contrived to drive him out of the houses where he was loved, and so did him great harm, as he was dependent on the benevolence of men. He has had so much annoyance from their defamations that in his "Cupienti mihi &c" he begs the dedicatee to use discretion in showing the book, lest he should incur new slander (vobis habenda est discretio non modica, ne dum circumquaque hunc libellum indesinenter ostenditis, juventutem meam invidorum dentibus acerbiter corrodendam exponatis).

How far this conflict went we are not informed. The annals of the time are silent with regard to him. His age treated him as a nonentity and gave him over to oblivion. Society simply took no notice of him. He himself will not disclose the names of his tormentors (Dirisiores et detractores non divulgavi ad dampnum, necnon et amavi eos qui me arguerunt et ostenderunt odia ut ab omnibus abominarer). Yet it seems that matters came to a crisis. It appears that he had one chief adversary—in his Melum he chiefly addresses one, who vainly curses…and I have no doubt that he refers to one and the same person. I mentioned before that in one passage of the Melum he directly challenges his bishop, and it is very probable that his bishop was this one adversary. He also complains that the prelates prohibit the hermits from preaching and send unfit persons (prohibent praecipuos proferre sermonem, et alios admittunt qui a Deo non mittuntur; heremitas abiciunt), and that those in prelacy hate him most. In the register of Archbishop Melton (1317-42) I find the following memorandum: 1334 Aug. 5: An order forbidding any one to listen to the teaching of friar Henry de Staunton hermit (Raine, Fasti Ebor. p. 421). Nothing more is known of this hermit, but we may readily suppose that he was a disciple or follower of R. Rolle. It is quite possible that some similar restriction, if not a severer censure, was issued against R. Rolle at an earlier date, and that he suffered some kind of check at the hands of his diocesan.

So, what with these conflicts, what with the loss of patrons and friends, and the increasing difficulty of living, what with his restlessness, his life in this period became more and more sad. In the two great passions of life, ambition and love, he is checkmated. He saw others rise to honours, and himself was nobody. He had a loving heart, was bound by no vow, was free to marry if he chose: yet he clung to chastity, a self-imposed burden. He was a fair young man, florid, not uncomely, and well worth a woman's love: all the greater was his temptation (elegans eligitur amplius amori, nam formosus in facie, qui fuerit facundus, oculos solicitat et taliter temptatur). Yet, absorbed in his holy love, he managed to escape carnal love and so to remain chaste—we have his positive testimony that he kept his chastity. But who can tell the struggles he had to go through as years came on, those years especially when the "trieb" is strongest, virility most potent, when every one succumbs—the height of generation, the years of Christ? The victory is gained, but at what price! By refusing himself to kind, he is refused by kind, his friends forsake him, his patrons repudiate him, no maiden will abide in the love he offers, he is overrun by enemies¹⁴. His life is that of the lonely man who, forsaken by all, is sent adrift, a prey to all. He tasted of that destitution in which man, stripped of all belongings, is reduced to the state of man simple, the son of man. He should so like to have an associate (sodalis in itinere; who would understand him, who could modulate his clamor (canor), so that it might become objective to him—but there is none. He has no home, no place where to rest his head. Despite his converse with the rich he is extremely poor, so poor that at times he has no water to drink, only rags to cover him, and suffers severely from frost and heat…. His health is delicate, his constitution is weakened by contemplation, he suffers from intolerable head-aches (Quippe sic carnem modo maceravi et caput contunditur dolore deducto, quod consistere non queo—ita gravatur—nisi corroberer cibario sanante); he has the presentiment of an early death (the Melum concludes with the remarkable words: Amorem et odium utrumque ostendi, et puer nunc propero ad finem felicem, nam paene perfudi gressus gravantes, ut calcans contagium in cantico consummer; caritatem carissimam cunctis commendo: amen). And what has come of his efforts, his vast projects? his plans have failed, his labour is lost, he is of no use to anybody. The world is too much for him; the very noises of the world are painful to him (penales sunt mihi vociferantes et crucior quasi per incommodum quando clamor clangentium me tangit). He languishes in still mourning, his youth is all consumed in yearning (prae amoris magnitudine assiduis horis ferme consumor), and there is no relief, the beloved tarries so long! He grieves over the sins of the time, the wickedness of man; that so many souls are lost that the king has redeemed (Dolui pro desolatione, nam multi merguntur mortifero in mari: quos Rex redimebat, vanos vidi et vacuos virtute); turpitude reigns supreme, the Saint has left the earth, the solitary are despised—and he can do nothing. So he suffers, his misery at times is extreme; his words sometimes betray utter desolation and sound like the outery of the beast wounded to death. He wishes to die—it is better for him to die, as he is of no use…. He wishes to die because true love is gone and mean concupiscence only remains…. He can hardly await the end…. He longs for the day when the Saviour will come and do justice to the poor; when the truth will come out and he will be seen as he is, not as his detractors paint him. He joys that the end of the world is near: "Nam finis mundi appropiat, paene paratus est tubam caniturus, adest finis mundialis malitiae, terminus terrenae cupiditatis longe non moratur"; "Iam judex ut fulgur gladium suum acuit in quo ad judicium veniens peccatores ferit."—In this time of suffering he came to realise the sorrows of the "man of sorrows", the desolation of the "son of man". In this time he formed his pessimistic views of the miserableness of this earthly existence. In this time he conceived that deep sympathy with the suffering, the poor, the oppressed, which is one of his chief characteristics.

But all this misery and persecution is not able to overcome him: he bears up, stands firm, strikes home and hits hard. "Das Individuum richtet sich herrlich auf'. He has found Jesus—he has found him in poverty, in affliction, in penance, in the desert. He joys in his poverty, he joys in his solitude, more than the king in all his riches: "Amplius gaudeo sedens in solitudine quam rex in cuius omnes terrenae divitiae veniunt potestate". He has found such joy that the tongue cannot express it; he is in so sweet a life that no misery, no wrong, no pain can make him sad, that he is as it were impassible in his mind. He allows no disparagement of his profession, and blesses the solitude that has taught him his love…. Perfect love kills pain: "Perfectus amor vincit penam, vincit minas, quia non sentit timorem creaturae"; tribulation and persecution will only enhance his merit and win him a higher reward in Heaven. Temptations, "fantasmata noctis", have disappeared by the invocation of the name of Jesus; the flesh is overcome, he can live amongst women without feeling any emotion…. In his illnesses he is consoled and strengthened by the canor…. What does he care for grandeur or men's praise?… He prefers to be despised…. His tormentors cannot disturb him…. Against their defamations he flees to God, under the shadow of His wings, and appeals to Him who alone knows the heart and reins and does not judge by the exterior as man; He will reveal the truth in the last Judgment. He vindicates his character, the integrity of his life. He is no glutton, no wine-bibber, no parasite of the rich: he takes only what is neces sary—"nullus enim sufficit seipsum portare nec etiam fortissimus per seipsum subsistit", and, aye, "inebrior ab ubertate domus Dei et torrente voluptatis suae potavit me" (Ps. 35)…. Even in the repasts of the rich he hears the canor: "Inter delicias divitum saepe in me resonat melos coelicum et amoris canticum amoenum". He is not unchaste: "non fallit me femina nec pereo puellis, neque glorior in gula quae jugulat gentiles"; his addresses to women are only meant to teach them "ut amico mundano non maculentur nec langueant pro lubrico labentes in lacum, horridum habentes humanum amorem, osculis amplexibus non aveant immundis, caste et pie deinceps degentes"; if his words are not believed, let inquiries be made and the truth will appear: "Haec si non creditis, quaerite quid dixi, interrogare potestis qui me andierunt, si docui dampnabile, injuriam aut Deo, vel cogitavi corrumpere fragilem facturam", and he calls Christ to witness: "Christus quern cupio hoc contestetur et contra me consurgere faciat fideles, sed et ipse conquasset caput captivi et cunctos corroboret me premere procellis, si ab adolescentia ipsum non amavi(!)"; adding however: "Nimirum non nego plurima non prospera in me pervenisse ac temptamenta inter tales tolerasse, turbatus, tribulatus et turbidus primitus permansi", and concluding: "Tamen hoc teneo ut sistas securus: Fugito feminas qui Christum amare voluntarie vovisti, nam vitii venenum sic vincere vales, alioquin, nisi Auctor te altius assumpsit, in dira dulcedine decipieris" (Mel.). In another passage he affirms: "Ex quo ardebam aeterno amore, quievi a cupidine carnali", and praises God who has kept him chaste (In laude levabor gratias agendo, Conditorem complectens qui castum me custodit dum alii errabant juvenes a jure). He maintains his saintship: "Sanctus subsisto". Though it may seem strange that a man, however excellent, should call himself a saint when even St. Paul confesses himself a sinner, yet one must speak the truth when asked…. One can be a saint without miracles, and may not be a saint with miracles…. God is still wonderful in his saints, but in these latter days of the world miracles are not necessary, but example of elect work…. Oh the wretched who argue against the Saint, whom they ought to honour as intercessor and patron…. He maintains the superiority of contemplative over active life, of love over works, of hermit over monk. Anselm, in asserting that monks love God more than any secular because they "offer fruit and tree to God under an abbot", appears to flatter the monks rather than to speak the truth; "Ego Ricardus utique solitarius heremita vocatus, hoc quod novi assero: quoniam ille ardentius Deum diligit qui igne Spiritus sancti succensus a strepitu mundi et ab omni corporali sono quantum potest discedet; non monachi vel alii quicunque ad congregationem collecti summi sunt aut maxime Deum diligunt: sed solitarii contemplationi sublimati". No one can see another man's heart; no one, therefore, ought to judge himself worthier than another…. The monks say: "Propter obedientiam quam praepositis exhibemus, inter omnes ordines ecclesiae in meritis majores sumus": but those in congregation cannot realise in what sweetness of love he burns that is solitary, and those bent on exterior works are ignorant of the delights of eternal love; "Quia ignorant quam amoena et meritoria sit ilia quam gustamus aeterna suavitas, non putant aliquem sanctiorem fieri posse qui exterioribus actibus non studeat mancipari". Therefore, ye monks &c, "ilia quae contra conversationem vestrae vitae sunt scripta a sanctioribus, non debetis reprehendere, sed in quantum potestis humiliter imitari; nec dicatis: nos coram Deo maximum meritum habebimus; quia sic mentitores arrogantia totum amittitis". He maintains his literary position. His power is from God, his wisdom is infused, not acquired, he is taught by the interior doctor, the Holy Ghost, who inspires his lovers no less now than of old—he needs no further approbation…. God has predestined and emboldened him to preach, and he is full of the Spirit of God…. His enemies in their envy—quia lucide loquor—say that he is not fit to preach: but "Sciant simpliciter Auctorem amavi qui animum ardore Olympi implevit ut proferam praecipue sermones amoris, scripturam scrutans quac latet carnales"; "Hoc profero quod plures non possunt: nam lubricos latet luminis lucerna et nucleum nitentem nesciunt nudare nec pascere parvulos qui properant ad polum lacte laetitiae aut cibo salubri, cum seipsos substernunt stultitiae in stagno et student cum stolidis qui strangulantur". If his works are a mystery to them, it is because they do not understand the true meaning of Scripture: "Nimirum mysterium mitto modernis, etenim antiqui sublimia sciebant; archanum absconditum ab omnibus avaris vix unus hoc accipit dum est in hoc mundo. Claudit enim Conditor januam scripturae, ut lateant legentes quae liquide lucescunt; sed amicis hanc aperit ardenter qui amant, ut aliis ostenderent quod hi intellexerunt". If they sneer at his canor, it is because they have not got so high…. They read his words, but do not know the tune: "Mundi amatores scire possunt verba vel carmina nostrarum cantionum, non autem cantica nostrorum carminum; quia verba legunt, sed notam et tonum ac suavitatem odarum addiscere non possunt". If they despise him because he is poor and nobody, let them know "quod nunquam Deus nec papae nec episcopo, nec alicui alii cuiuscunque status fuerit, singulari Virgine excepta, de gloria aeterni amoris in hac vita illam praerogativam tribuit quam vero solitario delegavit". They call him modern: "sed profecto qui bonos modemos reprobat, hesternos non laudat; non enim Deus est nunc minoris bonitatis quam fuit in primitiva ecclesia, qui adhuc electos suos ad amorem aetemitatis desiderandum praeparat et quos vult coelesti scientia sapientiaque divina inspirat". Many depreciate the moderns, as void of the spirit, but not all are so: "Hoc comperi quod virorum volumina moderne manentium minime cum multis magnificantur qui putant quod spiritus in istis non assistat quemadmodum affuit antiquos inspirans; et rationem reddere aliam non habent quam, quia ipsi vacuos se vident a flatu felice, etiam sic omnes esse suspicantur." And what are the arguments of the book-learned, compared to the inspirations of the living Spirit? how can they judge of what they have not got?….

So he stands up firmly against his adversaries, and has an answer to all their accusations. So far from being overawed by their learning, he speaks with authority in his own person, leaning on his own experience as against book-knowledge (Ego Ricardus solitarius heremita dictus hoc melius cognovi quia expertus sum; or: hoc quod novi, assero), and triumphantly maintains his own views, his individual conviction.

These are the outlines of his live during this—his first—period. No more positive facts or dates can be gleaned from his writings, but in general his life was such as might be expected of a man who, raising a new religious ideal, meets with the hostility of the powers that be, is resisted by the inert mass of prejudice and tradition which always impede progress, and so becomes a martyr to his convictions. Indeed, though he manfully resisted and maintained his ground, he seems at last to have fallen a victim to his enemies. It may be presumed that his troubles at last reached such a climax that his life in the old neighbourhood became unbearable or impossible, and that this was the reason why he removed from thence and went into Richmondshire; but whether the immediate cause was his conflict with the authorities, or the persecution of his detractors, or the desertion of friends and patrons and the difficulty of his living, or whether all these points worked together, we have no means to ascertain.

From that time, however, a new period seems to begin. His life seems to enter into smoother waters. The storm is passed, the tension subsides; he recovers his equanimity and calms down. His works of this period are comparatively free from bitterness and from the excessive subjectivity of his earlier days, and show the serenity peculiar to those that have overcome. He is less personal, less combative, his language more moderate, his assertions are less sweeping and uncompromising. There are traces to show that he wishes to appear more in line with the general practice of the Church; f. i., if formerly he had said of the contemplative: "Iam non dicit orationes suas, sed in sublimitate mentis positus et amore raptus mira suavitate supra se rapitur et Deo decantare spirituali organo in mirum modum sublevatur"—words which might easily be misconstrued as implying that prayers in that stage were dispensable, we now read in his Inc. Am.: "Talis amator Christi non dicit orationes suas more aliorum hominum etiam justorum, quia in sublimitate mentis positus atque amore Christi raptus supra se suscipitur in mirabilem jocunditatem, et infuso in se sono divinitus quasi cum quodam neupna canens preces modulatur". In the Incendium amoris he gives his creed, which is rigidly orthodox, and he emphatically declines to admit reason in matters of faith. In substance, his views are the same as before, but he is more guarded, more conciliatory, in his utterance. The wild exuberance of his former works is sobered down; he is matured by experience and shows the even temper of the sage. His tone is even more pathetic than before, and sometimes seems to rise from an unfathomable depth. Before, he had meant to be a Saint: now, he is a Saint, stripped, at it seems, of all earthly concerns and passions.

His remove into Richmondshire seems to have taken place in the earlier half of the third decade of his age. He stayed there for a considerable time. Of his outward life we know nothing beyond the fact that he remained an hermit and for a time had his cell 12 miles from Margaret the recluse of Ainderby. But I am inclined to think that he now was a real hermit, no longer dependant on the goodwill of the great, and really lived retired in solitude, perhaps supported by voluntary contributions of friends. On the whole, however, he seems to have been comparatively at ease and to have had no difficulty about his daily bread. At least he was sufficiently at ease to concentrate his thought on comprehensive works. His literary activity continued with unabated or increased vigour. In his Incendium Amoris (an imitation of Bonaventura's Stimulus Amoris) he once more follows up the course of contemplative life from the first conversion to the final perfection—but now in prose, and without the guidance of biblical texts. In other works he is postillator, but now expounds more regularly and methodically whole books of the Bible verse by verse, a task which required a more settled mind, close study, and mature reflection. He so wrote commentaries on the Psalter and Cantica, and on Threni. Besides, he is now more bent upon questions of practical usefulness—so he wrote a direction for priests how to hear confession (in the Mss. combined with Cupienti mihi); expositions of the Creed, the Athanasian symbol, the Pater noster, for the instruction of laymen, &c. All these works are in Latin. But at the some time he now began more largely to write in English.

Foiled in his vast attempts at prostrating the tyrants and regenerating society, he now contents himself with a more moderate aim: he befriends recluses and nuns, and gives his spiritual advice to those that ask. One of his friends was "Margareta reclusa apud Anderby" (Vita), "Margareta anachorita, dilecta sua discipula" (Form of living), the Margret Kirkby mentioned in the Prologue (by a later poet) to his English commentary of the Psalms. She seems to have been his good angel, and perhaps helped to smooth down his ruffled spirits. This friendship was lasting—it lasted to their lives' end. He loved her "perfecta caritatis affectione", and "used to instruct her in the art of love of God, and to direct her in the ruling of life by his holy institution". He twice cured her, by his mere presence, from a seizure. What a pathetic picture is that given in the Life. She had been ill for 13 days, losing the power of speech and suffering such prickings and pains that she could nowhere find rest. A certain husbandman rides off to fetch R. Rolle…. Another friend was a sister in the nunnery of Yedingham (Little Mareis, or De parvo Marisco, in the East Riding—a nunnery founded in 1139 by Roger de Clere for 8 or 9 nuns of the Benedictine order), to whom he dedicated his Epistle Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat. Whether the Cecil to whom the Form of living is addressed in Ms. Rawl., was also a friend of his, cannot be made out. This relation to recluses was, no doubt, the main reason why he now began to employ the vernacular¹⁵. The time had long passed when—as in the Ancren Riwle—the ladies were expected to understand Latin: he had perforce to write in English if he wished to be understood; he translates even the few Latin quotations extant in his epistles, and these epistles are all addressed to ladies. So his first English prose works must be assigned to this period. In form, they are epistles, but written in a rythmical, half-poetic prose, interspersed with bits of poetry (ejaculations of love-longing). So the beautiful Form of living addressed (in most Mss) to Margaret (the same epistle in which he "instructs her in the ruling of life"), and the no less beautiful 2^nd epistle (Ego dormio &c),—epistles which I do not hesitate to count amongst the pearls of Old English literature, and which are all the more valuable because they are the first really original productions and the first prose works of medieval English. To the same Margaret he dedicated his English prose commentary on the Psalms and Canticles¹⁶ (ed. by Bramley), which is substantially a translation of his Latin Psalter, with this difference that, instead of expounding the verses phrase by phrase as in the Latin work, he leaves the verses entire and not broken up in phrases, each verse being headed by the Latin text with its English translation (which often agrees with the version given in the Northern Metrical Psalter).—To the same period must be ascribed most of his lyric poems, which form perhaps the best part of his productions—his genius being essentially lyric. Some of them are apparently written to ladies (f. i. I p 74. 83). I think I detect his hand in some stanzas inserted in the Vernon version of the old West-Midland song "Swete Ihesu now wil I synge" &c, which certainly bear the mark of his peculiar style (II p. 9 ff.); this—if my assumption be right—would not only prove his acquaintance with the earlier national literature, but directly connect the lyric of the North with that of the West (in Ms. Harl. 2255 &c)¹⁷. His first lyric attempts were, no doubt, short ejaculations of love-longing, effusions of the canor, and they seem to belong to his earliest works. These he now formed into songs, by combining them, or adding new stanzas on the same tune. Some of these combinations—those inserted in his epistles and written as prose in the Mss (I p 30. 34. 57. 60)—are very irregular in form, consisting of rhyme-tirades of an unequal number of verses, and stanzas mixed together, and somewhat resembling the old French or German laïs. Others are regular poems of even stanzas, but they too exhibit certain irregularities and may be dissolved into ejaculations. His favourite form is the 4-lined stanza (that employed in his Latin poem Zelo tui langueo), but besides he uses a great variety of forms: rhyming couples, rhyme couee, 6 and 8-lined stanzas, alliterative verses (I. 53), and makes freely use of inner rhyme and alliteration, sometimes showing considerable art¹⁸. He seems to have been in close touch with the popular poetry of his time, and even to have derived some of his themes from it (so I. 73. 373). His lyric poems comprise those extant in Ms. Dd v. 64 (under his name) and most of the poems of Ms. Thornton (though here his name is not given), and probably several of the minor poems of Ms. Vernon, especially some songs to Mary, who, as he expressly states, was next to Christ the object of his amorous effusions. In Ms. Dd they are called Cantica divini amoris, a title also used in John Hoveden's poems. They include addresses of Christ on the Cross to sinfull man, of the poet to Christ on the Cross, songs to Jesus, the Trinity, Mary, poems on mercy, on what is love, on the vanity of the world &c. The lyric fervour, the beauty, the melody of these lines have never been surpassed. He seems to have accumulated and issued his poems in batches, as they are often intermixed with prose sentences. Probably he also wrote some Latin hymns, perhaps those found in Ms. Thornton (I. p 381 and 410).—To the same period may also belong the Meditation on the Passion (I. 83 ff—devotions to be said in following the successive stages or stations of our Lord's Passion—and another meditation on the three arrows on Doomsday (I. 112: in the Mss., however, not given with his name); both written in rhythmical prose, the former intermixed with alliterative verses, the latter with occasional rhymes.

At last—presumably in the beginning of the fourties of his age—he removed to Hampole, and there stayed during the remainder of his life. The reason why he left Richmondshire for the South of Yorkshire, does not appear. One of his epistles (þe commandment &c, I. 61) is written to "a certain nun of Hampole"—perhaps it was this lady who invited him there or was instrumental in his coming. The place was a Cistercian nunnery, founded by William de Clarefai in 1170 for 14 or 15 nuns. He there continued his solitary life, having his cell near or in the grounds of the nunnery, and supported by the nuns, who seem to have employed him as their spiritual adviser. This time forms the 3^d and last period of his life. More details cannot be gleaned of his life, as his later writings are singularly free from personal remarks. But he certainly continued to write in the same pace. Which of his works belong to this period it is difficult to make out in every instance; but I think we shall not be far wrong if we attribute to this time those works in which he appears least personal and subjective, most sobered, most practical; those in which he sums up, and in which he is most engrossed by the life to come. Of this kind is the Emendatio peccatoris (or 12 Capitula), which contains an abridged résumé of his doctrines; De octo viridariis (in Ms. Magd. Coll. 71, and here ascribed to R. Rolle) in which the verses of the Psalter containing the words misericordia, misericors, miserator, miserere, are connected and bound together in 8 viridaria or gardens of salutiferous herbs (these herbs being the auctoritates psalmorum de Dei misericordia); and his miscellaneous collections of epigrams, aphorisms, sentences, sayings from the Fathers &c, in Latin and English, likewise brought out in batches (as those in Ms. Baliol 224, Reg. 17 B XVII), and which form an important part of his works, he being one of the chief contributors to the stock of northern epigrams then forming (see I. p. 421). Of his English works, I ascribe to this period his wellknown poem "Þe prick of conscience", which in the descriptions of old age, of death, of the day of judgment, of the pains of Hell and the joys of Heaven, shows the objects then predominant in his mind, and is the most matured of all his works.

But though, as in this poem, he describes the signs of old age, we nowhere in his works find him complaining of his own old age, and when death, so long anticipated, so impatiently desired and prayed for, overtook him at last, it found him still in the prime of manhood. He died, after several years' residence at Hampole, on the 29^th of September 1349, probably of the pestilence¹⁹ which in that year raged in the North, not sparing even the remotest and healthiest villages in the county of York (cf. Raine, Fasti Ebor. p. 444, Knyghton col. 2598, Stubbs 1732), and to which his enfeebled constitution could offer little resistance. He was buried at Hampole, and by the nuns regarded as a saint and their patron. Not long after his death his name began to be celebrated for miracles, especially of healing, and pilgrims flocked there not only from the neighbourhood, but from distant counties. The miracles related in the Officium, refer to events of the years 1381-3, and this most likely was the time when the nuns of Hampole, to whom the fame of his sanctity was a source of honour and profit, had his Officium²⁰ compiled, in view of his expected canonisation, which, however, never took place. His works were kept by the nuns in iron chains, to prevent their being further polluted by the Lollards, who had begun to interpolate his writings in their sense and to give out these interpolated writings as his, so covering their heresies with the authority of his name (see Prologue to Engl. Psalter).²¹

A well-preserved portrait of R. Rolle is extant in Ms. Faustina B VI (end of 14^th cent.), in a northern poem on the trees of vices and virtues growing in the wilderness of life (falsely attributed to W. Hilton), illustrated by figures of hermits and nuns; he is represented sitting, with a book in his lap, in a white habit, Jhesus is written in gold letters on his breast, angels above bear a scroll with the words Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus dominus deus sabaoth, pleni sunt celi et terra gloria tua; the picture is surrounded by the legend: A solitari here hermite life i lede, For Jhesu loue so dere all flescli lufe i flede; þat gastli comforthe clere þat in my breste brede, Might me a thowsand zeere in heuenly strenghe haue stedd. Of the correctness of the likeness we have as little proof as in the case of the portraits of Wicliffe: but the features are certainly such as might be expected in a man of his character, and agree with the description he himself gives of his personal appearance as good-looking, florid, yet pale and emaciated.

R. Rolle was one of the most remarkable men of his time, yea of history. It is a strange, and not very creditable, fact that one of the greatest of Englishmen has hitherto been doomed to oblivion. In other cases the human beast first crucifies, and then glorifies or deifies, the nobler minds who, swayed by the Spirit, "do not live as others live", in quest of higher ideals by which to benefit the race; he, one of the noblest champions of humanity, a hero, a saint, a martyr in this cause, has never had his resurrection yet—a forgotten brave. And yet he has rendered greater service to his country, and to the world at large, than all the great names of his time. He re-discovered Love, the principle of Christ.²² He re-installed feeling, the spring of life, which had been obliterated in the reign of scholasticism. He re-opened the inner eye of man, teaching contemplation in solitude, an unworldly life in abnegation, in chastity and charity—an ideal not unlike Christ's and Buddha's. He broke the hard crust that had gathered round the heart of Christianity by formalism and exteriority, and restored the free flow of spiritual life. He fought against the absorption of religion by the interested classes, and re-asserted the individual, individual right and conscience, against all tyranny, both seculer and ecclesiastic. He broke the way for the Reformers, and was the predecessor of Wicliffe and Luther, though to his credit it must be said that he himself never left, or meant to leave, the unity of the Church.²³ He was a great religious character, made of the stuff of which the builders of religions are made. Of all the ideals of humanity—the hero, the sage, the poet, the king—the saint is perhaps the greatest, and that ideal he realised. Besides, he is one of the greatest English writers. He was the first to employ the vernacular. He is the true father of English literature. He revived the alliterative verse. He made the North the literary centre for half a century. He is the head and parent of the great mystic and religious writers of the 14^th century—of W. Hilton, Wicliffe, Mirk &c, all of whom received their light from his light and followed in his steps. He shaped the thought of the next generations, and it is his influence when the typical Englishman even of the 15th century is described as a man seldom fatigued with hard labour, leading a life more spiritual and refined, indolent and contemplative, preeminent in urbanity but devoid of domestic affection (cf. Gairdner, Paston letters III. p. 1XIII).

His position as a mystic was mainly the result of the development of scholasticism. The exuberant, luxuriant growth of the brain in the system of Scotus called forth the re-action of the heart, and this reaction is embodied in R. Rolle, who as exclusively represents the side of feeling as Scotus that of reason and logical consequence, either lacking the corrective of the other element. Both are antagonists—but both are individualists, who subject the existing system to the test of their individual feeling and thought and, though supporting the dogma even to the exclusion of reason, yet, as individualists, break through that harmony, that "in Reihe und Glied"—catholicity wherein the individual as such disappears. R. Rolle, though following in the wake of Bonaventura, was not a mere repetition of Bonaventura, but, by bringing out his individuality, developed mysticism in the English spirit; his abhorrence of obedience and of a rule, his love of liberty and independence, his practical sense, his democratic tendencies are national features, which impart a new character to his system. But he is not only an Englishman: he is more especially a Northerner, and continues the traditions of the North. His "hermit"—the embodiment of his religious ideal—is a revival of an institution long familiar in the North. His almost morbid love of solitude and isolation, his boldness in defying prejudice, the uncouth, rugged side of his character are northern traits. It is this influence which made him revive the northern alliterative verse and vie with Caedmon in the gift of canor, with Bede as a commentator and epigrammatist. His chief charasteristic as a writer is originality—he is essentially a genius; everywhere he cuts out new ways, lays now foundations. Next, he is preeminently a lyric; whether he writes in prose or verse, he writes from feeling, from momentary inspiration. Besides, he is of a remarkable versatility and facility; he writes with equal ease in Latin and English, in verse and prose, and in all kinds of verse, frequently mixing prose and verse in the same work; he writes postils, commentaries, epistles, satires, polemic treatises, prayers and devotions, lyric and didactic poetry, epigrams. His defects lie on the side of method and discrimination; he is weak in argumentation, in developing and arranging his ideas. His sense of beauty is natural rather than acquired, and his mind is too restless to properly perfect his writings. His form is not sufficiently refined, and full of irregularities; his taste not unquestionable; his style frequently difficult, rambling, full of veiled allusions—much depends on the punctuation to make it intelligible; his Latin incorrect and not at all classic—it is the Latin of his time and, besides, full of solecisms and blunders of his own, it is not surprising that the learned of the guild should have looked down upon his rusticity. But all this cannot detract from his great qualities as a writer—the originality and depth of his thought, the truth and tenderness of his feeling; the vigour and eloquence of his prose, the grace and beauty of his verse, and everywhere we detect the marks of a great personality, a personality at once powerful, tender, and strange, the like of which was perhaps never seen again.

Notes

¹ John Wilson in his "English Martyrologe" (1608 & 1640) has it that he died "full of sanctity and venerable old age", but this statement of a late writer is not borne out by any older authority. In the works of R. Rolle, who generally is very communicative about himself, I find no allusion to his old age. The large number of his works, however, proves that he must have attained a fair age. The Vita tells us that he was "exhibited" at Oxford by Thomas Neville. Now this Neville was not born before 1292—5. He may have taken R. Rolle with him while himself going to Oxford for his course, in which case Rolle might be of equal age; but more probably he sent him there after finishing his studies, in which case Rolle would be younger. In his earliest work, the Melum, in which he calls himself juvenculus, puer, pusillus, he prophesies a bad end for the King and Queen: "Reginas quae reprobe regebantur vermes rodent invisibiles; reges a regnis ruent quia sanguis sarcinatus sceleribus duces et divites inaniter decepit", alluding to the misgovernment of Edward II and his spouse. Now the Queen's infamous adultery with Mortimer, to which, it seems, allusion is made, commenced in 1325 and was known in England in 1326. In that year R. Rolle, if born in 1300, would be 26 years, an age which would allow him to call himself juvenculus and puer. So I fix 1300 as the most approximate date.

² The name, probably Norman, is not found in northern registers of the time….

³ It seems that he passed through an early love with all its bodily consequences. The lady was probably the same young woman who continued to haunt his imagination in the beginning of his conversation (cf. Off, Lect. VII). "Domine deus meus"—he confesses afterwards—"infantia mea stulta fuit, pueritia mea vana, adolescentia mea immunda: sed nunc inflammatum est cor meum amore sancto" (Inc. Am.); "Arripui iter agendum, habitum assumens prae omnibus abjectum; prorsus prospexi ad placitum potentis, sed prius peccavi, quod plane me penituit; et potius parabar purgare peccatum quod puer perpetravi, quam aliud addere" (Mel.).

⁴ He had a smattering of Greek, as proved by the many Greek words in his earlier writings (f. i. usya, sophia, cauma, euprepia, onoma, theoria, sophisma, carisma, trisagios), and of Hebrew, as proved by the interpretation of the Hebrew letters in his Postilla in Threnos.

⁵ The Daltons, extant in many branches, belonged to the inferior families (the gentry) of Yorkshire, who were originally dependents of the great families (the Percys, Nevilles), but had, as the feudal system grew weaker, acquired independence. The feudal system had been introduced in the North by Alan Rufus, a younger son of Eudo Duke of Bretagne, who after the defeat of Edwin, Earl of Mercia, had acquired the vast possessions of this earl and distributed large tracts of his possessions among his more favoured dependents, who in their turn rewarded their followers (the founders of the minor houses). Topcliffe was a dependency of the Percys….

⁶ This canor is the perpetual theme in his writings. It is also called musica spiritualis, invisibilis melodia, canticum spirituale, sonus coelestis, iubilatio, canorus iubilus, canor iubilaeus, clamor, myrth and soun of heaven; and identified with contemplatio (contemplatio est iubilus divini amoris suscepto in mente sono coelicae melodiae vel cantico laudis aeternae) and perfecta caritas.

⁷ All this recalls what Bede says of Caedmon: Ipse non ab hominibus neque per hominem institutus canendi artem didicit, sed divinitus adiutus gratis canendi donum accepit. This canor—this divine melody chiming from above and resounding in his breast which henceforth is full of delightful harmony, so that his thought, his very prayers turn into songs to Jesus or Mary and that he now modulates what before he was used to say—what can it mean but the awakening of his poetical powers, which to him appear a miraculous gift imparted at the height of the ecstasis? We have here an instance how R. Rolle takes up the traditions of the North….

⁸ It is erroneous to call R. Rolle a famous preacher. In the Melum he complains that the hermits are not allowed to preach. In "Cupienti mihi" he states: Sciatis quod de verbis praecedentium patrum illud extraxi et ad utilitatem legentium in quodam brevi compendio redegi, ut quod ego nondum in publico praedicando cogor dicere, saltern vobis ostendam scribendo qui necessitatem habetis praedicare ("nondum", he says, as if possibly he may yet take holy orders later on, like Guthlac; but he never did).

⁹ It is advisable that he should live by the work of his hands….

¹⁰ God and the Trinity is to him simply incomprehensible….

^1Oa "in Deum pergere" is his formula for the mystic process, as (the more pantheistic) "in Deum redire" that of the German mystics….

¹¹ Of course, it was ultimately the "trieb" which, being unsatisfied, drove him about and made him ex-centric.

^11a It is surprising to find the Cain-idea anticipated by R.R….

¹² Perhaps one of the young Daltons who had studied with him at Oxford?

¹³ The hermits in Rolle's sense have nothing to do with the order of the hermits or frairs of Knaresborough, founded by Robert Flower or Robert de Knaresborough who, when a monk in New Minister Abbey in Morpeth, resolved to lead a solitary life as an hermit and resorted to the rocks by the river Nid, where, being joined by others, he "instituted his companie in the sect of Friars of the order De Redemptione Captivorum, alias S. Trinitatis" (Dugdale Mon.); or with the Friars Eremites of the Order of St. Augustine, who were brought into England ab. 1250 and soon had 32 houses in England and Wales (they were one of the 4 begging orders, and some of the most celebrated learned men were of their number, as John Waldeby, Robert Waldeby, Capgrave). Piers Ploughman may allude to the latter. Of St. Robert of Knaresborough we have an Engl. metrical life ed. Roxb. Club 1824 by Thomas Drury, in Northern dialect….

¹⁴ His parents, also, seem to have been dead by this time….

¹⁵ Wharton, in his Appendix to Cave's Hist. lit. quotes Archb. Ussher as saying that R. Rolle, in his Commentary on the Psalms, pronounced the necessity of vernacular translations of Holy Scripture. This is a mistake. The error seems to have arisen from a remark to this effect in an exposition of the Pater noster in Ms. Bodl. 938, which may have been reputed a work of R. Rolle, but is of Lollard origin.

¹⁶ This English commentary is undoubtedly genuine; it contains one poetic ejaculation: I wate na betere wele, than in my thoght to fele, the life of his lufynge; of al it is the best, Ihesu in hert to fest, and þerne nane othere thynge (Bramley p. 215), which proves R. Rolle's authorship.

¹⁷ He also was acquainted with, though he did not approve of, the secular songs, the cantilenas carnales, of the day; so he says in the Melum: nec lira letitiae quam lubrici laudabant mihi libebat, sed et cantum carnalium concito calcavi, ad Christum convertens quod cantabatur, Cantilenas quidem de feminis fecerunt—hoc reputavi rurusum ruinam.

¹⁸ The North was for England the school of form; many new forms were here invented and introduced; I even find an attempt at an hexameter, in Ms. Ff 1. 14 (in a Latin treatise on the Hours &c.: "Dolenter refero"):

Hi sunt qui psalmos corrumpunt nequiter almos:
Ourelepers, forskyppers, bebbers, momelers quoque stutters….

¹⁹ In the same year, of the same disease, died Rob. Holcot, and Tho. Bradwardine.

²⁰ The Vita in the Officium is made up of traditions (transmitted probably by Margaret Kirkby) and extracts from R. Rolle's writings; the Miracula is a later work by another author (perhaps identical with the author of the Miracula S. Edmundi regis apud Wainflete, Ms. Bodl. 240).

²¹ It is probably on account of his being identified with reformatory tendencies or Lollard heresies, that his canonization was not effected.

²² He did not, however, come to equally realise the other principle of Christ, the Spirit ("Geist"), both—Love and Spirit—the evolution of the "Trieb" (the Absolute, the "Father"), which first proceeds into Love, and from Love into "Geist" (expressed in the biblical "cognovit eam").

²³ His difference from Wicliffe is briefly this: he is all love, Christ-like; Wicliffe all hatred, negation.