SOURCE: John A. Alford, "Biblical Imitatio in the Writings of Richard Rolle," in ELH, Vol. 40, No. 1, Spring, 1973, pp. 1-23.

[In the following essay, Alford makes an effort to correct what he sees to þe the paucity of true literary studies of Rolle. In his analysis, Alford examines the relationship of Rolle's works to the biblical imitatio—a rhetorical tradition based on study of the Holy Scripture.]

Though R. W. Chambers was not the first to appreciate Richard Rolle's prose style, his famous essay on the continuity of English prose had much to do with the subsequent direction of Rolle criticism—if it is accurate to speak of "direction" where there has been so little movement. "Rolle's date, his style and his popularity," said Chambers, "give him a supreme place in the history of English prose. In English or in Latin he was, during the latter half of the Fourteenth Century and the whole of the Fifteenth, probably the most widely read in England of all English writers."¹ Criticism of Rolle's vernacular style has hardly gone beyond the concerns expressed in this quotation. Chambers was not interested in making a detailed analysis of Rolle's style (nor, given the purpose of his essay, should he have been): he simply described some of its salient characteristics and tried to assess its place in the development of English prose. Much subsequent criticism has been content to do the same thing—to provide description ("forceful," "uneven," etc.), supported by appropriately chosen examples, and to remind us of Rolle's "place" in literary tradition. (Frequently the writer will cite the above quotation from Chambers, in lieu of any real evidence, as proof of Rolle's influence on the course of English prose; or he may offer as an impressive "fact" the well-worn assertion by Rolle's nineteenth-century editor, Carl Horstmann, that the hermit was the first master of English prose—with hardly a protest, I might add, from students of the Ancren Riwle.)

The influence of Chambers' essay is, of course, only part of the reason for the poverty of Rolle criticism—not every writer mentioned in his essay has fared poorly ever since! Superficial treatment of Rolle's prose has undoubtedly been encouraged by the general nature of the works in which comment on the subject must þe sought—literary histories, editions, studies in mysticism. Incredible though it may seem, in the forty years since Chambers' essay not so much as an article given to an analysis of Rolle's style, whether English or Latin, has seen publication.² One might conclude that in spite of the high esteem in which it has been held, Rolle's style has not proved very interesting for modern readers. And yet I think this conclusion would þe wrong. Paradoxically his English style has been, at least as far as modern criticism is concerned, a casualty of its own success. What it shares with modern English has impressed us so favorably, and particularly the writers of textbooks on the history of English, that we value it less for itself than for what it predicts, or embodies, of subsequent history. In short, we do not see it. Its affinities with modern English have blinded us to its distinctively medieval qualities; for however striking these affinities may be—and I am not minimizing their importance—Rolle's style nevertheless grew out of very different soil and was produced by methods of writing which hardly any of us would think of using.

These peculiarly medieval methods of composition are my primary concern in the following pages. I want to show what they reflect both of the general tradition of biblical imitatio and of the individual literary experience of Richard Rolle. As for biblical imitatio, very little has been said either about the method or about Rolle's use of it.³ Where scholarship has tried to place Rolle in a rhetorical tradition, it has usually preferred to emphasize his knowledge of the classics, for which the evidence is scant, rather than appeal to his knowledge of the Scriptures, for which the evidence is overwhelming. As for Rolle's literary experience, this is too little considered in its totality. When he turned to write in the vernacular, did he forget the habits of composition acquired through writing Latin, did his extensive work on biblical commentaries not intrude in some way, did his constant meditation on Scripture have no part in shaping his expression?

I have divided the discussion into five parts, in which I consider, in order: (1) the essential nature of biblical imitatio, (2) Rolle's knowledge of the Bible, (3) his use of the biblical commentary as an intermediary between the Vulgate text and his own Latin writing, (4) commentary-form in his English writing, (5) a few consequences of this method of composition for the study of his prose style.

I

During much of the Middle Ages, there were two distinct kinds of literary imitation, one based on the curricular authors, or auctores, and the other on Holy Scripture. Imitation of the auctores was never very thoroughgoing—concentrating almost exclusively on rhetorical figures—and was limited by a superficial view of the relation between style and content. This view was dominant throughout the Middle Ages and seems to have been little affected by the so-called battle of the artes and auctores in the late twelfth century. Geoffrey of Vinsauf, presumably a representative of the artes⁴ makes the usual rhetorical distinction in his Poetria Nova between res and verba, the poem as intellectual construct and the poem as verbal construct, a distinction everywhere implied by his favorite metaphor—clothing. "When due order has arranged the material in the hidden chamber of the mind," he says, "let poetic art come forward to clothe the matter with words."⁵ Aside from matters of propriety—e.g., "let rich meaning þe honoured by rich diction, lest a noble lady blush in pauper's rags"—Geoffrey is not much interested in the relation between words and things. Words are like clothes, some plain and some elegant, to þe changed as the occasion requires; they are not an inevitable or even natural extension of the work's meaning. The most famous apologist for study of the auctores, John of Salisbury, seems to have agreed with this view:

The grammarian should also point out metaplasms, schematisms, and oratorical tropes, as well as various other forms of expression that may þe present. He should further suggest the various possible ways of saying things, and impress them on the memory of his listeners by repeated reminders. Let him "shake out" the authors, and, without exciting ridicule, despoil them of their feathers, which (crow fashion) they have borrowed from the several branches of learning in order to bedeck their words and make them more colorful. One will more fully perceive and more lucidly explain the charming elegance of the authors in proportion to the breadth and thoroughness of his knowledge of various disciplines. The authors by diacrisis, which we may translate as "vivid representation" or "graphic imagery," when they would take the crude materials of history, arguments, narratives, and other topics, would so copiously embellish them by the various branches of knowledge, in such charming style, with such pleasing ornament, that their finished masterpiece would seem to image all the arts.⁶

So long as the relation between content and language or imagery was seen in this way, as accidental and at best factitious, imitation of the "authors" could never þe more than superficial. The entire corpus of classical literature becomes, from a rhetorical point of view, mainly a gigantic Bartlett's, a source of apt quotations and imagery, a quarry for the writer searching for rhetorical gems with which to adorn his own work. The proof for this statement lies not merely in the opinion of John of Salisbury but also in his practice and in the practice of countless other writers as well until the Renaissance gave to the word imitatio a new meaning.⁷

When one turns to imitation of the Bible, however, he finds an entirely different situation. Medieval man never regarded the Bible as a textbook of rhetorical tricks, and there is, consequently, a unity of language and content in biblical imitatio which is utterly lacking in its secular counterpart. This fact can þe demonstrated by a simple test (part of which is provided later by my analysis of Rolle's prose): go through an example of medieval imitation of the auctores, remove the phrases modeled on the classical sources and also the allusions and borrowed imagery, the rhetorical "feathers" as John calls them, and you will still have an argument left, however diminished. But do the same with a work modeled upon the Bible, remove the scriptural reminiscences, and you will have almost nothing left. Isn't this exactly what one might have expected? How could the medieval writer speak of God, of Judgment and Redemption except in the idiom of the Bible? Christian thought and language are inseparable, and the most natural language for expressing Christian ideas is biblical language, the language which gave Christian thought its birth and which continues to nourish it. On this matter St. Augustine, the chief if not the earliest apologist for biblical rhetoric, is explicit: "He who wishes to speak not only wisely but also eloquently, since he can þe of more worth if he can do both, should more eagerly engage in reading or hearing the works of the eloquent and in imitating them in practice than in setting himself to learn from the masters of the art of rhetoric." Do the Scriptures qualify as "works of the eloquent?" "This question is most easily solved for me," says Augustine, "and for those who think like me. For where I understand these authors, not only can nothing seem to me more wise than they are, but also nothing can seem more eloquent. And I venture to say that all who understand rightly what they say understand at the same time that it should not have been said in any other way."⁸ Because the words of Scripture are never merely ornamental—"feathers" or apparel to delight the eye and ear—but rather the reflection of the soul of wisdom itself, anyone desiring to speak with eloquence is enjoined to follow them, and eloquence will come behind, says Augustine, like "an inseparable servant who was not called." The vitality of this rhetorical tradition is not to þe sought in the textbooks which repeat Augustine's precepts but rather in the writings which embody them. And these writings are, for the most part, monastic, for it was in the monasteries that all the activities most conducive to biblical imitatio—constant reading, meditation, and memorization—took place.⁹ It was through these activities that the true practitioners of biblical imitatio were produced, those for whom the language of the Bible became so familiar that it was their own language as well, the language of impulse. In his study of St. Bernard and the Bible, P. Dumontier asks, "What is the language of Bernard?" "Mais n'estce pas du latin? non, c'est de la Bible, ce qui n'est point pour éclaircir l'affaire: de la Bible, non pas citée, mais parlée."¹⁰

The chief difference between imitation of the auctores and imitation of the Bible, as I have just described it, stems ultimately from medieval man's view of the past, from his sense of what historical events truly made up his heritage. He did not generally feel that he was continuing classical traditions and, unlike the Renaissance scholar, made little effort to assimilate classical ways of thinking. Thus his imitation of classical literature was bound to þe superficial, however much he may have admired its felicities of style. But the Bible was a different matter, and medieval man felt himself a part of its world when he didn't that of classical antiquity. He was, in fact, a character in the biblical story, himself a part of the sacred history which had been written but not yet fulfilled. This sense of identification with the ideas and expression of the Bible is the one thing which all writers who follow the Sacred Bard may þe said to have in common. Specific methods of imitation, however, differ considerably from one writer to another. This is hardly surprising. Each writer brings to his work his own judgment of which stylistic details deserve imitation, his own individual purposes. Moreover, even if all other things were equal, the writer who imitates the Psalms is not going to produce the same style as one who imitates the Pauline epistles—the Bible is not one book but many, each having a distinctive character of its own. For these reasons it is not possible to þe more specific about the nature of biblical imitatio than I have been already; we must examine the practice of an individual writer.

II

Like all writers in the tradition of biblical imitatio, Richard Rolle occupied a large part of his time in meditating upon and memorizing Holy Scripture. The Officium de Sancto Ricardo, written in anticipation of his canonization, notes his love of the Bible: "Desideravit plenius et perficudius imbui theologicis sacrae Scripturae doctrinis, quam phisicis aut secularis scientie disciplinis."¹¹ Rolle not only meditated upon Scripture himself, but he urged his disciples to do the same and even facilitated their task by translating the Psalms into English—all of which has prompted some scholars to refer to him as a forerunner of Wyclif and the Lollards. Rolle's interest in Scripture is not incidental to his mysticism: both are intimately related, growing out of an intense desire for a personal and immediate experience of God. Together they form the way. "God leris his chosen," says Rolle, "thurgh bokis and inspiracioun."¹² Each nourishes the other. Correct interpretation of Scripture can only þe accomplished with the aid of divine inspiration, as we learn in Rolle's gloss on Psalm 17:13: "Her may we see that nan sould þe swa hardy to translate or expound haly writ, bot if he felid the haly gast in him, that is makere of haly writ. for soen sall he erre that is noght led with him." Obviously Rolle considered himself inspired, and we may suspect that he saw his commentaries in part as testimony to his special gift. Elsewhere he is quite explicit about the benefits of Bible-reading: "If thou desire to come to the love of God, and þe kindled in thy desire for heavenly joys, and þe brought to the despising of earthly things, þe not negligent in meditating and reading holy scripture; and most in those places where it teaches manners, and to eschew the deceits of the fiend, and where it speaks of God's love, and of contemplative life."¹³ Indeed, the lower half of the contemplative life "es meditacion of haly wrytyng, Þat es Goddes wordes."¹⁴ This close connection between mysticism and Bible reading is suggested by Evelyn Underhill's observation that "Bible reading, sometimes considered peculiarly characteristic of English piety, is historically the child of mysticism."¹⁵

Although the prevalence of biblical quotations in Rolle's work has been noted by many critics—indeed, these could hardly þe missed—the full extent of his enormous debt to Scripture has escaped most readers simply because he was able to adapt the language of Scripture so perfectly and naturally to his own expression. As one of his most recent editors puts it, "Only a familiarity equal to that of Rolle with the text of the Vulgate can enable one to realize fully how steeped the hermit was in the Biblical text."¹⁶ Assuming that very few of us enjoy such a familiarity, I intend to exemplify by two means the nature of biblical influence in Rolle's expression, first by taking a single text and following it through its various transformations in a number of Rolle's works, and then by taking whole passages in Latin and English and identifying the scriptural reminiscences.

A central concept in Rolle's thought is the triad of dulcor, calor, and canor, three ascending levels of the mystical experience. Such triads are typical of Rolle: he habitually reduces thought to verbal formulas, in which each word, highly charged with new meaning, attracts verbally related scriptural texts. Canor, for example, his term for the secret and ineffable experience of the contemplative at the highest level, is constantly described by Rolle in the words of Apoc. 2:17: "Vincenti dabo manna absconditum, et dabo illi calculum candidum, et in calculo nomen novum scriptum, quod nemo scit, nisi qui accipit" (Douay version: "To him that overcometh, I will give the hidden manna, and will give him a white counter, and in the counter, a new name written, which no man knoweth, but he that receiveth it"). In his Contra Amatores Mundi,¹⁷ Rolle says that the gift of interior song cannot þe communicated because "vero nemo hominum hoc donum novit, nisi qui accepit" (IV. 119). In the same work, Apoc. 2:17 underlies the wording of an earlier reference to song: "Mirabar quippe quod aliquis mortalium aliquando ad tantam melodiam caperetur, sed iam vere scivi per experimentum quod vera est dileccio apud deum. Alii autem, qui illud donum nesciunt, nee illud ideo ab aliis percipi putant" (II. 82-85). And in the Melos Amoris, we find "Nam supra humanam estimacionem est quod exigit, et ideo aperte non audet ostendere loquens mortalium more; ymno tam excelsum est quod accipit, quod nemo prêter habentem novit quatinus usque in canoram conscendens jubilacionem" (p. 174). Glossing Psalm 26:11 ("cantabo & psalmum dicam domino"), Rolle comments, "All the clerkis in erth may noght ymagyn it, ne wit what it is, bot he that has it. and in that i. sail synge in dilatabilte of contemplacyon." And in his Form of Living: "Forpi, if pou will wytt whatkyn joy þat sang has, I say pe þat na man wate, bot he or scho þat feles it, þat has it, and þat loves God, syngand parwyth" (p. 106). In noting Rolle's debt to Apoc. 2:17 for his description of canor, however, we have not exhausted his use of the verse by any means; the text can apply to any of the special gifts (the manna absconditum) enjoyed by the contemplative. Of love, for example, Rolle says, "Quam impetuosus, quam violens, sit vis amoris, nemo novit nisi qui amavit"(Melos, p. 9). And of wisdom, "bot that all men wate noght, bot whaim he shewis it til."¹⁸ Rolle's use of Apoc. 2:17 is characteristic. He rarely quotes it directly—which is one reason his editors have not noted the debt—but rather echoes the wording and phrasing as the new context requires.¹⁹

Not only are Rolle's favorite concepts tied to particular biblical texts, but even his most personal experiences are filtered through the medium of Scripture. When he tries to describe the fear which came over him at the death of a woman-friend, he does so in the words of Job 4:5, Exodus 15:15, and Psalm 54:6-7 (Contra Amatores, VI. 1-18). When he tries to answer the charges of his enemies, those "detractores Deo odibiles" of Romans 1:30, he does so again in the words of Scripture (Contra Amatores, V. 75 sqq.). Hope Emily Allen has noted that in his commentary on Job, "it is often hard to draw the line between what is autobiography and what is interpretation of the texts. We may suspect, however, that the young hermit often describes the situation of his forlorn and tormented hero in terms that he feels are suitable to his own state."²⁰ Because of Rolle's tendency to describe his personal condition in terms of biblical language and personalities—an extremely common phenomenon among medieval writers—we should þe doubly cautious in approaching his autobiographical comments. It must þe remembered, for example, that in all his talk about backbiters and slanderers, he is following a conventional complaint of the Psalmist. This is not to say that his enemies were not real, but the value and intensity of their reality for Rolle came from his life in the Bible, the world in which, in a very real sense, he lived and moved and had his being. He seems to have felt that persecution was a sign of his own election—an idea from which he must have drawn considerable strength—and he keeps returning to the fact that biblical heroes had their enemies. For Rolle, as for countless of his predecessors, Scripture was a mirror in which he beheld all truth, past and present, social and individual. The longer he looked into it, the more his own identity merged with the reflection, until he was himself Job, and David, and Paul.

III

Rolle's use of Scripture had its effect not only on the content of his writing but also on the form. He frequently models his sentence structure on certain favorite biblical texts, a practice which must have been greatly reinforced by his experience with biblical commentaries. I am going to suggest, in fact, that some of the structural aspects of his style—in particular, his methods of transition and amplification—owe more to the tradition of biblical commentaries than to school rhetoric. That Rolle's work on his commentaries might have influenced his prose style has not been considered, not, at least, beyond perfunctory admissions of the possibility. Yet, given their number and their personal importance for Rolle, it is difficult to imagine otherwise, Moreover, Rolle would probably have felt the modern division of his work into genres, such as commentaries, treatises, and epistles, to þe artificial. His works are a whole, closely related by similarities of tone, purpose, and frequently of style. We could open Rolle's commentaries anywhere and see the same structural methods which characterize his prose sentences, but I have chosen for its succinctness the following example from his gloss on Psalm 63:

1. Exaudi deus oracionem meant cum deprecar: a timore inimici eripe animam meam. "Here god my prayer, when J pray: fra the dredde of ennemy take out my sawle." The voice of christe in his passion, that preyes not that he nought dye, but that his lovers drede not them that nought may doe but slay the bodye: "& for ever iche manne dredes inne the dede."

2. Protexisti me a conventu malignancium: & a multitudine operancium iniquitatem. "Thou hilde me fra the convent of ill willand: & fra the multitude of workeand wickedness." That is, thou hilde me fra the getheringe of ill men, and fra tha that wirkid to sla me.

3. Quia exacuerunt ut gladium linguas suas: intenderunt arcum rem amaram, ut sagittent in occultis immaculatum. "for thai sharpid as swerd thaire tunges: thai bent boghe bittere thyngis, that thai shote in hidils the unfilde." Thai sharpid, as swerd, apertly criand his ded, thaire tungis, with the whilke thai sloghe crisi. thai bent bowe. that is tresons, that was bitter thynge, thof thaire wordis ware swete: that thai shote in hidils, as thai wend, the unfdid. forthi thai may not þe excused.

There is nothing at all unusual in this. Rolle is commenting in the traditional manner and, in fact—as Middendorf demonstrated almost a hundred years ago—he follows Peter Lombard's commentary on the Psalms rather closely. Rolle's method is simply to explain each verse in turn, usually in one or more of three ways:

(1) by association with another scriptural text, related usually by verbal concordance. For example, in verse 1, the prayer "fra the dredde of ennemy take out my sawle" associates verbally with Christ's words in Matt. 10:28, "And do not þe afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." Hence the gloss that Christ is praying here in Psalms "that his lovers drede not them that nought may doe but slay the bodye."

(2) by substitution of an equivalent word or phrase which may clarify the meaning: "Thou hilde me fra the covent of ill willand…. That is, thou hilde me fra the getheringe of ill men."

(3) by amplification of the text. This may þe achieved in several ways, but the most common—the insertion of explanatory matter—is illustrated by verse 3 (I have italicized the interpolations). Another kind of amplification can þe seen in verse 1, the insertion of a statement denying the alternative (not that, but this): "The voice of christe in his passion, htat preyes not that he nought dye, but that his lovers drede not them that nought may doe but sia the bodye." Such definition by contrast, the rhetorical principle of oppositio, is very popular in the commentary tradition and is a major element of Rolle's style.

These principles of commentary writing were carried over by Rolle into his prose writing where they served as principles of composition. Sometimes the general form of the commentary is hardly disguised, as in his Melos Amor is, the structure of which has been characterized by Gabriel Liegey as "postill-form": "Ordinarily a postili on the text forms the chapter or several chapters, and these postills, strung together loosely at times, form the Melos."²¹ The influence of the commentary is not confined to such larger aspects of structure, however, nor is it confined to the Melos (where it is simply more visible, owing to the unusual frequency of direct scriptural quotations); it extends to almost every paragraph of Rolle's works, both Latin and English. Close analysis of the following excerpts from his Latin Incendium Amoris and his English Commandment will reveal the typical commentary-like structure of his writing: a network of submerged biblical texts, joined by association and transformed by substitution and amplification. In the first chapter of the Incendium, Rolle characterizes the lovers of the world in contrast to the lovers of God:

Assimulantur siquidem suo amato, quia conformantur concupiscencie seculari, et retinentes veterem hominem, vanitate visibilis vite pro fervore felici perfruuntur. Mutant igitur gloriam incorruptibilis charitatis in lasciviam momentanee pulchritudinis. Hoc utique non agerent nisi excecarentur perversi amoris igne, qui cuncta dévastât germina virtutum, et augmentum iugerit omnium viciorum. Porro plerique in formam femineam non figuntur, neque luxuriam lambunt, unde se salvari quasi cum securitate estimant, et propter solam castitatem quam exterius exhibèrent, se velut sanctos inter alios eminere vident; sed nequiter et inaniter sic suspiciantur, quando cupiditatem que radix est peccatorum non extirpant. Et quidem, ut scriptum est, nihil iniquius quam amare pecuniam, quia dum cor alicuius occupât amor rei temporalis, nullam penitus devocionem habere permittit. Dileccio namque mundi et Dei nunquam simul in eodem animo existunt; sed cuius amor forcior est reliquum expellit, ut manifeste appareat quis sit mundi amator, et quis Christi imitator. Erumpit enim in ostencione operis fervor amoris. Siquidem sicut se habent amatores Christi erga mundum et carnem, sic amatores mundi se habent erga Deum et animum suum.²²

What gives coherence to this passage is the opposition of caritas and cupiditas (or concupiscentia), a major structural device in other works by Rolle (most obviously, as the title shows, in his Liber de amore dei contra amatores mundi). Around this theme are grouped the several biblical texts which make up the passage as a whole. The first sentence notes that the lovers of this world are conformed to the concupiscence of this world ("conformantur concupiscencie seculari")—in direct opposition to Paul's exhortation, "Be ye not conformed to this world" ("Et nolite conformari huic saeculo"), Romans 12:2; they retain the old man ("retinentes veterem hominem")—although Paul said to "Put off … the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts" ("Deponere vos … veterem hominem, qui corrumpitur secundum desideria errois"), Eph. 4:22; they enjoy the vanities of the visible world ("vanitate visibilis vite") before the love of eternal bliss ("pro fervore felici"), an echo perhaps of Col. 1:15-16; where Paul speaks of Christ as "the image of the invisible God … for in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible" ("qui est imago Dei invisibilis … quoniam in ipso condita sunt universa in caelis et in terra, visibilia et invisibilia"), an echo, I would suggest, not only because it repeats the word visibilis and maintains the principle of opposition established by the two previous texts, but also because it shares with those texts a special relationship: all three are joined in their biblical contexts with the metaphor of the Church as the body of Christ, an especially appropriate metaphor here which might well have served Rolle as a foil against which to consider the lovers of this world. But more on this later. The structure of opposition is continued in Rolle's next sentence, "mutant igitur gloriam incorruptibilis charitatis in lasciviam momentanee pulchritudinis," an obvious paraphrase of Romans 1:23, "Et mutaverunt gloriam incorruptibilis Dei in similitudinem imagis corruptibilis hominis." (The verbal correspondences with the previous texts should þe noted: the phrase "imaginis corruptibilis hominis" recalls Rolle's reference to the "veterem hominem qui corrumpitur" and at the same time contrasts with the "imago Dei invisibilis.")

So far, then, Rolle has used four scriptural texts in the construction of two sentences, and in both he proceeds as if he were writing a biblical commentary. One text is associated with another, verbally or thematically, and all are modified by substitution and amplification in such a way as to reinforce the central theme of earthly love versus love of God. For example, Paul's exhortation "Et nolite conformari huic saeculo" becomes by amplification "conformantur concupiscencie seculari"; the contrast between things visible and invisible becomes by substitution "vanitate visibilis vite pro fervore felici perfruuntur"; the first half of Romans 1:23, "Et mutaverunt gloriam incorruptibilis Dei," becomes by substitution "mutant igitur gloriam incorruptibilis charitatis" (for "Deus charitas est," I John 4:18), and the second half of the same text, "in similitudinem imaginis corruptibilis hominis," becomes by radical substitution "in lasciviam momentanee pulchritudinis."

Of the four texts identified thus far, three are indisputably the models for Rolle's first two sentences. The influence of the fourth (Col. 1:15-16) is problematic. And yet it will seem less so once we appreciate the associative power of metaphor in Rolle's writing. Because of his extreme familiarity with Scripture, any given biblical verse must have existed in Rolle's mind as part of a context, and not (as for those of us brought up on a new verse each Sunday) as an apt saying or isolated piece of biblical wisdom. As I have noted, Romans 12:2, Eph. 4:22, and Col. 1:15-16 are all related in their biblical contexts with the metaphor of the Church as the body of Christ, and although it is not inevitable, neither is it coincidental that Rolle should have thought about these particular verses together as he wrote about the lovers of God and the lovers of the world, that is, about those within the Church or body of Christ and those without. Perhaps there is no very satisfactory way to prove the influence of the metaphor here, but we can appeal to similar examples as some evidence that Rolle worked in this fashion. Aside from the body of Christ, what other figure of comparison might occur to a medieval writer engaged in distinguishing the lovers of God from the lovers of this world? Certainly and foremost, the parable of the wise and foolish virgins—those who will þe present at the marriage of Christ to his bride the Church and those who will þe left on the outside. According to exegetical tradition the five foolish virgins represent those who, because they keep their bodies from sin, appear holy in the sight of other men, "who look upon the outward appearance," but because their love is not directed towards God, "who looketh upon the heart," they will not enter into the bliss of heaven. John Wyclif's interpretation of the parable is the traditional one (however unorthodox he may have been in other respects) and may þe quoted here:

Þis rewme of hevene is þis Chirche: þes ten virginis ben þei þt ben spiritual, as ben prestis, and religious, and many oþer in þe Chirche; for as þe soule shulde quykene þe þe bodi, so þes shulden quykene þe actyve part. But þes ten virginis be partid in two, in fyve foolis and fyve wise. Alle þei ben virgyns herfore, for þei ben chast of bodi, and kepen hem from outward synnes þat mai be knowun to siʒte of men…. Þis oile is riʒt devocioun, þat alle þes virgyns shulden have. Þes vesselis of þe virginis ben þe poweris of her soulis; for riʒt as a vessel holdiþ oile, so þe power of þe soule shulde holde riʒt devocioun in alle þe workes þat man doiþ…. Þes lampis ben goode workes in kynde, þat boþ þes partis of virgins done; but ʒes lampis brennen not ne shynen bifore God, but þif þei have riʒt devocioun in þe workes þat þei done."²³

Although Rolle does not refer explicitly to the parable, it clearly underlies the remainder of our passage. True, the lovers of this world are not without fire, but it is the fire of cupidity or perverse love ("perversi amoris igne") rather than the fire of charity ("incendium amoris"). Like the foolish virgins many think that they will enter heaven because of the chastity which they exhibit outwardly ("propter solam castitatem quam exterius exhibèrent"). But their chastity is worthless so long as cupiditas rather than caritas occupies the heart: "sed nequiter et inaniter sic suspiciantur, quando cupiditatem que radix est peccatorum non extirpant." Here, use of the word cupiditas has led Rolle to the classic text on the subject, I Tim. 6:10 ("Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas"), and the radix metaphor, in turn, probably influenced his choice of the main verb, extirpant. Cupiditas hardly permits one to have devocionem (a key word also in Wyclif's exposition of the parable), for love of God and love of the world cannot exist in the same soul ("dileccio namque mundi et Dei nunquam simul in eodem animo existunt")—a rough paraphrase of Christ's words in Matt. 6:24, "Nemo potest duobus dominis servire: aut enim unum odio habebit, et alterum diliget, aut unum sustinebit, et alterum contemnet. Non potestis Deo servire et mammonae" (cf. James 4:4). Continuing the imagery of the parable, Rolle notes that true charity—like the oil of "right devotion"—flares forth in works that are seen, "erumpit enim in ostencione operis fervor amoris."²⁴

To summarize my analysis of the passage: the major structural device is the opposition between caritas and cupiditas, or lovers of God and lovers of the world; two images (the body of Christ and the parable of the virgins) underlie this theme and give rise to a number of scriptural associations—in fact, more than half of the lines are echoes or paraphrases of specific texts (Romans 12: 12, Eph. 4:22, Col. 1:15-16, Romans 1:23, I Tim. 6:10, and Matt. 4:24—not to mention the reminiscences of the parable itself, Matt. 25:1-13, and the commentaries on it). This method of composition, based on his knowledge of Scripture and his experience with biblical commentaries, is fairly typical of Rolle throughout the rest of the Incendium and in his other Latin writings as well.²⁵

IV

When we turn to Rolle's English writings, we find much the same method of composition, though now we face a new obstacle: translation has obscured a large number of debts to the Vulgate text which in Rolle's Latin writings would have been obvious. The sources are fairly clear, however, in the following example; it comes from the Commandment, an epistle written to an unidentified nun and usually dated late in Rolle's life:

Skyful prayer es, til cristen mans sawle, to seke and aske nyght and day Þe lufe of Jhesu Criste, þat it may lufe hym verraly, feland comforth and delyte in hym, owtkastyng worldes thoughtes and il bysynes. And sykir þe þou, if Þou covayte his lufe trewly and lastandly, swa þat na lufe of þi flesche, ne angers of Þe worlde, ne sÞeche, ne hatreden of men draw þe agayne and caste IÞe nought in bisynes of bodily thyng; Þou sal have his lufe, and fynde and fele þat it es delitabeler in an owre pan al Þe welthe þat we here se may til domesday. And if þou fayle and fall for temptacions, or for angers, or for over mykel lufe of þi frendes, it es na wonder if he halde fra Þe thyng þat pow covaytes noght trewly. He says þat "he lufes bam þat lufes hym, and bai þat arely wakes til hym sal fynde him." fÞow ert arely wakand oftsythe, why pan fyndes þou hym noght? Certes, if Þou seke hym ryght, Þou sail fynde hym. Bot ay whiles Þou> sekes erthly joy, if þou wake never sa arely, Criste may Þou noght fynde. For he es noght funden in pair lande þat lyves in fleschly lustes. Hys moder, when he was willed fra hyr, scho soght hym gretand arely and late ymang his kynredyn and hirs; bot scho fand hym noght, for al hyr sekyng, til at þe laste scho come intil þe tempyl, and bare scho fand hym syttand ymange þe maysters, herand and answerand. Swa behoves þe do, if þou wil fynd hym: seke hym inwardly, in trouth and hope and charite of haly kyrk, castand owt al syn, hatand it in al þi hert: for þat haldes hym fra þe, and lettes þe, þat þou may noght fynd hym.²⁶

Here, as in the excerpt from the Incendium, Rolle organizes his writing by means of the opposition of the two loves. This time, however, the discussion receives its impetus not from unexpressed imagery but from a pair of words, seek ana find, whose very commonness in Scripture guarantees a cluster of verbally related texts. Among the numerous possibilities Cant. 3:1-2 seems to have exerted the chief influence (like other mystics Rolle had a special fondness for Canticles—he wrote a commentary on the book, and after the Psalms he quotes it more frequently than any other book of the Bible). The text reads: "In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him and found him not. I will rise, and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not." The theme of Canticles—the soul in search of Christ—is also the theme of our excerpt from the Commandment. Rolle's first sentence notes, "Skyful prayer es, til cristen mans sawle, to seke and aske nyght and day þe lufe of Jhesu Criste." In his next sentence Rolle imitates the structure of one of those classic biblical texts which, like I Cor. 13, always find their way into a discussion of love: "And sykir þe þou, if þou covayte his life trewly and lastandly, swa þat na lufe of þi flesche, ne angers of þe worlde, ne speche, ne hatreden of men draw þe agayne and caste þe nought in bisynes of bodily thyng; þou sal have his lufe." The series of correlative conjunctions in this context points unmistakably to Romans 8:38-39, "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will þe able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." For abstractions such as life and death, heights and depths, Rolle substitutes concrete phenomena (such as "angers of þe worlde") which are not only closer to his immediate theme but, if we may believe his autobiographical asides, closer to his own experience as well. Nor does the influence of Romans 8 end here, inasmuch as this sentence determined the structure of the next one: "And if þou fayle and fall for temptacions, or for angers, or for over mykel lufe of þi frendes, it es na wonder if he halde fra þe thyng þat þow covaytes noght trewly." This is simply a rewording, by means of rhetorical oppositio, of the previous sentence—even the order of obstacles is carefully preserved. Then quoting Prov. 8:17 almost directly, Rolle says, "He lufes þam þat lufes hym, and þai þat arely wakes til hym sal fynde him." However, in its biblical context this verse does not refer to Christ; it is wisdom which says, "I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me." What is noteworthy here is not Rolle's substitution of Christ for wisdom—this is supported by exegetical tradition—but the fact that he continued, as he wrote, to þe influenced by the identification. The word "wisdom" (like the metaphor of the body of Christ in an earlier example—unexpressed) led Rolle a few sentences further to Job 28:12-13 ("Where is wisdom to be found, and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof, neither is it found in the land of them that live in delights"). Rolle's paraphrase of the last part of the text is very close: "For he es noght funden in þair lande þat lyves in fleschly lustes." The bridge between these two texts on wisdom is mostly a reworking of what has already been said and consists of a few sentences drawing again upon Cant. 3:1-2 and Prov. 8:17. However, in writing "Certes, if þou seke hym ryght, þou sail fynde hym," Rolle may also have been amplifying upon Christ's words in Luke 11:9, "Seek, and you shall find," which was taken by medieval exegetes to be a conditional promise. The Glossa ordinaria comments on Christ's words by quoting Psalm 144:18, "Prope est Dominus omnibus invocantibus eum in ventate." To "seke hym ryght," therefore, is to seek him in truth, or as Rolle puts it, to "seke hym inwardly, in trouth and hope and charite of haly kyrk."²⁷ As support for this view, Luke 2:44-46 is interpreted by Rolle as a parable of the soul's search for Christ: Mary sought her son "gretand arely and late ymang his kynredyn and hirs; bot scho fand hym noght, for al hyr sekyng, til at þe laste scho come intil þe tempyl, and þare scho fand hym syttand ymange þe maysters, herand and answerand." This is a fairly close paraphrase of the scriptural text, with only a few modifications: Joseph, who searched with Mary for their son, is necessarily omitted as supernumerary in Rolle's application of the story to the individual soul, and the phrases "arely and late" and "for al hyr sekyng," repeating key words from previous texts, are added to enhance the general coherence. The final participle phrase is a direct translation from the Latin: "sedentem in medio doctorum, audientem illos, et interrogantem eos."

In short, then, hardly a line of this passage from the Commandment is untouched by scriptural influence of some sort, and the method of composition is very similar to what we have already seen in a typical example from Rolle's Latin writings. Again, Rolle takes a basic opposition and develops it in terms of appropriate scriptural texts, modifying them by amplification and substitution, and joining them all by means of verbal association, in particular by means of the words "seek" and "find."

V

By concentrating on what is the dominant method of composition in both his Latin and English writings, I have perhaps given the impression that Rolle's style is more or less uniform throughout his works. Nothing could þe further from the truth, as anyone could see in an instant by comparing, say, the Incendium Amoris and the heavily alliterative Melos Amoris. I would assume, however, that those of us interested in a more detailed study of what is distinctive about any one of Rolle's several styles would wish to start from the knowledge of what is common to them all. Rolle's method of composition has immense ramifications for his style, whatever the work in question. Take, for example, the large amount of verbal repetition which characterizes much of his writing. What can we say about the fact that in the above excerpt from the Commandment the word "seek" occurs six times—not to mention synonyms like "covayte"—and "find," ten times? Frances Comper says, "We have always to bear in mind that Richard suffered from what I have called an untidy mind…. [His] writings are apt to be confused, full of repetitions and often redundant."²⁸ Since the only evidence for Rolle's "untidy mind" is his writing, Comper's opinion begs the question and is based on the dubious assumption that expression always mirrors the state of mind which produced it. Though it barely misses the same pitfall, G. C. Heseltine's explanation is a little more acceptable: "His repetition, seemingly excessive, is due to his unceasing attempts to express what he knows he has never expressed adequately."²⁹ Of course, we can never know if Rolle thought his expression adequate or not. In short, neither opinion is subject to proof. However, in light of what has just been demonstrated, we can say with some assurance that much of Rolle's verbal repetition grows out of the earliest stages of composition and is not merely a rhetorical veneer, something added for the sake of emphasis or coherence (though, of course, it sometimes serves this function too); it is a natural by-product of scriptural association (and serves, incidentally, as a key to the biblical texts just below the surface of the work). In the above passage the words "seek" and "find" are the most visible manifestations of these texts and, in fact, the chief means by which they were originally brought together.

If verbal repetition in Rolle's style cannot be studied apart from his use of the Bible, neither can the supposed influence of Latin upon his English prose. The relation between his Latin and English writings, as I have tried to show, is primarily one of method, and efforts to link the two in other ways, such as by vocabulary and word-order, have not been notably successful. William Matthews, for example, suggests that Rolle's English prose style was influenced by habits formed in writing Latin. He compares two passages from Rolle on the same subject (the three degrees of love), one taken from Rolle's Form of Living and the other taken from a fifteenth-century translation of Rolle's Emendatio Vitae. His conclusion: "Rolle's original English version has been expanded by rhetorical devices, but the sentence patterns and their rhythms, the vocabulary, and the composition of the whole are much the same as in the independent translation from his Latin. Manifestly, his Latin composition determined the form of his English discussion."³⁰ Even aside from some rather serious objections to the methodology which underlies Matthews' conclusion—and chiefly to his arguing from an English translation of Rolle's Emendatio rather than from the original Latin version itself, fairly accessible in LaBigne's edition—we must remain unconvinced that "manifestly, his Latin composition determined the form of his English discussion." The similarities are not nearly so striking as Matthews suggests (e.g., there is nothing particularly Latinate about Rolle's English here), and what similarities there are can be explained in other ways than by direct influence. For example, speaking of Rolle's Latin and English Psalters, Hope Emily Allen says, "whole passages are sometimes repeated, and repetitions of phrases, sentences, and subjects are the very stuff of all of Rolle's writings, and perhaps the inevitable effects of a life like his dedicated to concentration on a few topics."³¹ Matthews' comparison of two passages on the three grades of love is a particularly unhappy choice, for this is a central idea in Rolle's mysticism, one to which he returns again and again. As often as he expressed himself on the subject of the three loves—or the three levels of contemplation (dulcor, calor, canor)—he was bound to fall into a certain amount of repetition. We have all experienced this phenomenon in our own writing; we know the tyranny which expression can hold over our favorite concepts, how we habitually explain these concepts in the same words and often in the same order. In the case of Rolle, this natural tendency was intensified by his deliberate association of ideas with specific scriptural texts, a practice we examined earlier in some detail. Just as he imitates the vocabulary and structure of Apoc. 2:17 whenever he refers to the state of canor, so he always describes the three stages of love—insuperable, inseparable, and singular—in the language, respectively, of Romans 8:35-39, Luke 10:27, and Cant. 8:6-7. For example, love is inseparable according to the Commandment "when al þi thoghtes and þi willes er gederd togeder and festend haly in Jhesu Criste" (English Writings, p. 74), or according to the Form of Living "when al þi hert and þi thoght and þi myght es swa haly, swa enterely and swa perfytely festend, sett, and stabeld in Jhesu Cryste" (English Writings, p. 105). The scriptural debt is evident, especially in the second example, which is a rather mechanical amplification of Luke 10:27, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength." Given the fact that Rolle describes each of the three grades of love in terms of a particular scriptural text and the fact that the triad itself demands a consistent order of treatment, it is not so remarkable that in the two passages chosen by Matthews for comparison "the sentence patterns and their rhythms, the vocabulary and the composition of the whole are much the same." Undoubtedly, many of the similarities of style between Rolle's Latin and English writings are the result not of one's borrowing from the other but of the common debt which both owe to the Bible and to Rolle's special brand of imitatio.

These matters—Rolle's verbal repetition and the influence of his Latin upon his English—are not the only ones requiring further study in the light of biblical imitatio. His characteristic use of participles (which owes a great deal to St. Paul), his special store of translation words ("genges" for gentes, "covent" for coventus, and so forth), his stylistic debt to the Victorines (and to Richard, in particular)—these are a few more things that merit investigation against the background I have been describing. Perhaps some day we shall see the kind of full-length study which Rolle's style deserves. To iterate E. J. F. Arnould's hope: "Varied opinions on Rolle's style have been advanced. Most are highly subjective and based on impressions derived from an incomplete or a cursory reading of some, rarely all, of his works. An adequate study of this style would be a brilliant contribution to mediaeval stylistics."³² Indeed it would be, and not because Rolle is so unusual—"the first master of English prose" or what have you—but because he is in many ways so typical of numerous other medieval writers who composed with one ear to the Bible, their Sacred Muse.

Notes

¹ "The Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and His School," in Harpsfield's Life of More, ed. E. V. Hitchcock, EETS, 186 (1932), p. ci.

² Only two full-length studies of Rolle's style have appeared within this century: J. P. Schneider, The Prose Style of Richard Rolle of Hampole, with especial reference to its Euphuistic tendencies (Baltimore, 1906), and A. Olmes, "Sprache und Stil der englischen Mystik des Mittelalters, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Richard Rolle von Hampole," Studien zur englischen Philologie, 76 (1933), 1-100. Neither assigns much importance to the Bible as an influence on Rolle's style, though Schneider does consider it briefly as an encouragement to euphuism.

³ There is no study of biblical imitatio as such, though scholars have long recognized the debt of medieval writers to the style of the Vulgate; e.g., Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York, 1961), esp. pp. 91-96; or R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1953, rpt. 1963), pp. 211-18. I am in the process of writing a general history of biblical imitatio in the Middle Ages. Besides Rolle, other fourteenth-century English writers in the tradition include William Langland (see my unpublished dissertation, "Piers Plowman and the Tradition of Biblical Imitatio," University of North Carolina, 1969) and John Gower (see Paul Beichner, "Gower's Use of Aurora in Vox Clamantis," Speculum, 30 [1955], 582-95).

⁴ However, see Ernst Lewalter, "'Auctores' und 'artes,' zu einer neuen Auffassung von der mittelalterlichen Poetik," Rom. Forschungen, 52 (1938), 318-23.

⁵ Trans. Margaret Nims (Toronto, 1967), p. 17.

⁶Metalogicon, trans. Daniel McGarry (Berkeley, 1955), pp. 66-67.

⁷ See R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage (Cambridge, 1954; rpt. New York, 1964), pp. 199-200.

⁸On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. (New York, 1958), p. 122.

⁹ See Leclercq, pp. 91-96.

¹⁰St. Bernard et la Bible (Paris, 1953), p. 17.

¹¹English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle de Hampole, ed. G. G. Perry, EETS, 20 (1866), p. xvii.

¹²The Psalter, or Psalms of David and Certain Canticles, ed. H. R. Bramley (Oxford, 1884), p. 250. Subsequent quotations from Rolle's Psalter are from this edition.

¹³The Fire of Love and The Mending of Life, trans. Richard Misyn and done into Modern English by Frances Comper (London, 1914), p. 225.

¹⁴English Writings of Richard Rolle, ed. Hope Emily Allen (Oxford, 1931; rpt. 1963), p. 118.

¹⁵The Mystics of the Church (London, 1925), p. 114.

¹⁶ E. J. F. Arnould, ed., The Melos Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole (Oxford, 1957), p. lx.

¹⁷ Ed. Paul Theiner, University of California English Studies, No. 33 (Berkeley, 1968).

¹⁸ Gloss on Psalm 50:7. Add to these examples the following from Rolle's commentary on Canticles (not having seen the manuscript, I cannot ascertain the context): "Forsitan non credis verum esse quod dico, ideo experire modicum et invenies me veracem, quia nemo illud novit nisi qui accipit"—Hope Emily Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Monograph Series of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. III (New York, 1927), p. 71.

¹⁹ This same practice may be seen in another of his favorite triads; see below, p. 22.

²⁰Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, p. 141.

²¹ "Richard Rolle's Carmen Prosaicum, an edition and commentary," Mediaeval Studies, 19 (1957), 23.

²² Ed. Margaret Deanesly, Publications of the University of Manchester Historical Series, No. 26 (1915), p. 149. Misyn's translation is as follows:

They sicker are made like to that love because they are conformed to wanton concupiscence; and holding to old manners of wickedness, they love the vanity of this life before holy love. Wherefore they change the joy of incorruptible clearness [sic] to wantoned beauty that shall not last. This soothly would they not do unless they were blinded with the fire of forward love, the which wastes the burgeoning of virtue and nourishes the plants of all vice. Forsooth many are not set on womanly beauty nor like lechery, wherefore they trust themselves saved, as it were with sickerness; and because of chastity only, which they bear outwardly, they ween they surpass all others as saints. But wickedly they thus suppose and all in vain, when covetousness, the root of sins, is not drawn out. And truly, as it is written, nothing is worse than to love money. For whiles the love of temporal things occupies the heart of any man, it altogether suffers him to have no devotion. Truly the love of God and of this world may never be together in one soul, but whichever love is stronger puts out the other that thus it may openly be known who is this world's lover and who Christ's follower. For the heat of love breaks out in works which are seen. Certainly as Christ's lovers behave themselves towards the world and the flesh, so lovers of the world behave themselves towards God and their own souls. (The Fire of Love, pp. 16-17)

²³Select English Works of John Wyclif ed. Thomas Arnold (Oxford, 1869-1871), I, 289-91.

²⁴ The way in which Rolle echoes the parable of the virgins, without ever mentioning it explicitly, is by no means unique in medieval literature; William Langland does the same thing. See Ben Smith, Jr., Traditional Imagery of Charity in Piers Plowman (The Hague, 1966), pp. 38-39.

²⁵ See, for example, the Contra Amatores Mundi, V.I97-243. These lines are organized around the opposition of light and dark, a motif introduced by the text "per speculum et in enigmate videmus" (I Cor. 13:12). Or see the Melos, chap. lvi, especially paragraphs four and five which may be viewed as representative of two stages in the development of biblical imitatio. The structure of paragraph four, an exposition of certain verses from Psalm 149, is nothing more or less than commentary form. Paragraph five, however, is bound less by a particular text than by particular words, namely gloria and congregare, both of which continue motifs established by the scriptural text at the beginning of the chapter. The more important texts which make up the paragraph are, in order, I Cor. 15:41-42, Psalm 149:9, Romans 12:9, Luke 1:52, Matt. 5:3, Psalm 46:10. Finally, see the Melos, chap. lii, lines 22-35: the significant word here is fides, and the texts are Heb. 11:33, I Peter 2:5 (cf. Romans 12:1), I Cor. 12:31, I Cor. 13:2, Romans 1:17, James 2:17, Luke 10:27.

²⁶English Writings, pp. 76-77.

²⁷ Of course "trouth" here may also mean "faith" (cf. I Cor. 13:13).

²⁸The Life of Richard Rolle (London, 1929), p. 126.

²⁹Selected Works of Richard Rolle (London, 1930), p. xxvii.

³⁰Later Medieval English Prose (London, 1962), p. 24.

³¹Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, p. 177.

³²Melos, p. lxi.