SOURCE: Rosemary Woolf, "The Lyrics of Richard Rolle and the Mystical School," in The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1968, pp. 159-79.

[In the excerpt that follows, Woolf considers Rolle in relation to the broader conventions and schools of mystical writing, focusing particularly on the tradition of the Passion meditation. Ultimately contradicting the pervasive image of Rolle as a "natural" writer, Woolf notes his innovative skill with literary form and places him at the beginning of "devotional-mystical writing in English."]

All the poetry so far discussed is unmystical. It may vary in the degree of literary formality, but the emotion expressed in it has no affinities with the fervour and elevation of the mystics; in kind it is the emotion familiar to every man and woman. Even in such works as Þe Wohunge of oure Laverd, which was probably intended for the same kind of religious audience as the Ancrene Wisse, the emotion expressed is ordinary emotion highly intensified, rather than the quite different kind of love described by Richard Rolle and his followers. The poetical antecedents of Rolle's mystical poetry do not lie in vernacular literature, but they may be found in some of the great Anglo-Latin mystical poetry of the twelfth century, the Philomena of John of Howden and the Dulcis Iesu memoria. It is only from Rolle's time onwards that there is a continuous tradition of devotional-mystical writing in English—whether in prose or verse—and there can be no doubt that it was the work of Rolle and the outstanding authority of his name that restored the prestige of English as a medium for contemplative writing: evidence for this can be seen in the fact that vernacular works of Rolle were in due course to appear in the devotional collectiones of monks, who had hitherto copied for themselves only Latin treatises, the works of St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura, etc.¹

Rolle's works fall roughly into two kinds. Firstly, those that are records of and reflections upon his own mystical experience.² These, according to established tradition, were written in Latin (his contemporary, Julian of Norwich, was unique in writing in English, even though a woman: the visions of women mystics on the Continent were usually set down in Latin, normally by means of a cleric who acted as their secretary). Secondly, the works intended for the instruction of women recluses. These, reviving the tradition begun by the Ancrene Wisse, were written in English.³ The important distinction between the two is that, whilst the principle of the Incendium amoris and the Melos amoris is a faithful exposition of his own thought and experience, that of the Ego dormio and The Form of Living is a faithful adherence to the teaching appropriate to beginners in the spiritual life. Nevertheless Rolle's works of instruction were inevitably influenced by his thought as a contemplative, and the lyrics⁴ too reflect this double current of the individualistic and the traditional.

In his own thought as a contemplative Rolle was scarcely concerned with meditation on the Passion; but, as an adviser to women in religious orders he taught meditation on the Passion according to the method that had become traditional.

Like the author of the Cloud of Unknowing⁵ and Walter Hilton,⁶ Rolle accepts meditation on the Passion as a grade in the Christian life. It is higher than the active life with the works of mercy and the basic assent of faith, but inferior to the life of mystical contemplation: in the thought of the writers on meditation it represents a midway stage on the ladder of the good life. It would seem that there is here the formulation of a theory designed to explain common practice. The harmonious scheme of St. Bernard, with its place for meditation on the Passion, cannot have convinced an exponent of the negative form of mysticism inherited from the Pseudo-Dionysius, and the fact, therefore, that the author of the Cloud of Unknowing praises it as yielding '… moche good, moche helpe, moche profite, and moche grace'⁷ shows both how strong was the tradition, and at the same time how it could be detached from the theological roots whence it had originally sprung. Even in the thought of Rolle, Passion meditation was less integral than in that of St. Bernard. It is clear from a comparison of the Incendium amoris with the English Epistles that Rolle considered Passion meditation to be a stage which the learner in contemplation made use of and then left behind: he therefore does not describe it in his own experience but recommends it to beginners. But to St. Bernard meditation on the Passion was, as it were, a gateway to contemplation of the Divinity, and was therefore never left behind, but constantly passed through on every mystical journey, and returned to for refreshment after the arduous experience of a more direct communion.

This difference between Rolle and St. Bernard, which may have been influenced by the popular practice of meditation on the Passion as an end in itself, is not, however, the only important one: the other is that Rolle and St. Bernard had quite different conceptions of love. St. Bernard's theory of love obviously had affinities with St. Augustine's, in that they both expound a love which has been called physical or natural, as against ecstatic, and both see no unbridgeable divide between true self-interest and the love of God. To St. Bernard, as we have already seen, love of oneself is an emotion which may be taught and guided to grow into the love of God: to St. Augustine the two were even closer, for God is the summum bonum, and the man who loves false objects is self-deceived concerning his own best interests, for, as the well-known quotation so perfectly expresses it, 'Thou has made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee'. To the mystical school to which Rolle belongs, however, there can never be this tranquil relationship between love of God and man's natural desires, for love is violent, compelling, and unreasonable, and it does not make use of man's natural faculties, but possesses him by thwarting and overcoming them. A short passage from the translation of the Philomena on the ecce sto theme may be quoted as an illustration of the difference in tone:

Kyng of love, strengest of alle,
I here be at my dore calle.

þou fyndest it loke wiþ barres stronge,
But brek hem up, stond not to longe.⁸

Here man cannot open the door himself, and love must break in by violence. In the Passion meditations of Rolle it is this kind of love that is described, and therefore, whilst they make use of many traditional details, the tone and style are quite different from those of popular meditative poetry and, originally at least, they were probably intended for a religious, not a lay, audience.

Of this small group of mystical poems four are exclusively Passion meditations: 'My keyng þat water grette', from the Ego dormio; 'My trewest tresowre', one of the set of poems in MS. Dd. v. 64 attributed by the copyist to Rolle; and 'Ihesu þat hast me dere i-boght' and 'Crist makip to man a fair present', which both belong to the same 'school' of lyric writing, although there is no suggestion that either is by Rolle. The Ego dormio is a text written for an anchoress or nun: like Aelred, but unlike the author of the Ancrene Wisse, Rolle both advises meditation on the Passion and also provides a meditation. It may well be a sign of the strength of the previous lyric tradition that the meditation is in verse. Rolle advises the reader of his treatise 'Thynk oft on his passyon', and then follows the poem with the title Meditacio de passione Christi.⁹ Like fifteenth-century Passion meditations, which we shall later be discussing, the poem does not confine itself to the Crucifixion, but traces the Passion sequence from the time of the scourging. For the Crucifixion itself Rolle borrows the description of the Candet nudatum pectus, but, despite such familiar details, the tone of the poem is quite unfamiliar. This is partly on account of the direct statements of mystical desire, 'Þi face when may I see', 'Al my desyre þou ert', or—with the image of burning, characteristic of Rolle's writing—'Kyndel me fire within'. But there is a change of tone, not only in the expressions of love and in the petitions associated with the Passion meditation, but also in the description of the Passion itself. In this Rolle exploits the device of paradox, whereby in a description of Christ's human suffering He is ostentatiously given a title referring to His divinity, as in 'And nayled on be rode tre, þe bryght aungels brede', or in a much finer passage:

A wonder it es to se, wha sa understude,
How God of mageste was dyand on þe rude.¹⁰

In the ordinary Passion meditation this kind of splendour would have daunted the familiar tenderness which the writer wished to evoke, for only ecstatic love is the fitting response to it. The magnitude of the object is then matched by the intensity and excitement of the meditator's feeling. This type of paradox is often repeated in the mystical poetry, for example, the brief statement 'Lyf was slayne' and its immediate derivation is probably the Philomena, in which such paradoxes abound, and it is noteworthy that the English poems succeed in achieving the same dignity—though necessarily not the same succinctness—as the Latin. There is admittedly nothing in Rolle's poems which has the monumental and complex quality of Langland's 'The lorde of lyf and of liƷte tho leyed his eyen togideres',¹¹ which shows the imaginative range of a great poet. Nevertheless, in Rolle's work the potential magnificence of the form is never obscured by feebleness of expression.

In contrast to this poem, 'My trewest tresowre' is more nearly a meditation in the non-ecstatic style. Though each stanza in it begins with a periphrasis¹² for Christ, 'My well of my wele', 'My dere-worthly derlyng', 'My salve of my sare', they do not with dazzling directness refer to Christ's divinity, but have rather the tone of loving endearments, which accentuate the painfulness of the detailed description of the Passion sequence. Emotive adverbs and phrases, 'sa saryful in syght' or 'sa dolefully', with their reference to personal sorrow, lead up to the description of Christ as a knight, 'My fender of my fose', whose shield at the time of evensong is unlaced from His body. In general, the feeling of this poem is not unlike that of some of the Harley lyrics, but the absence of secular adornments, and the crowded and emotional descriptions, almost over-emphasized by alliteration, give a much stronger effect of urgency and distress.

'Ihesu þat hast me dere i-boght' is a poem deriving from the vernacular translation of the Philomena of John of Howden. This is a long Latin poem, of which the author himself composed a French version for Eleanor, wife of Henry III, to whom he was chaplain,¹³ but which was not translated into English until about a hundred years later. In this very fine work, which is sustained throughout its length with an inexhaustible vigour and power of variation, a meditation on the Passion is given form by two images: firstly by the allegory that it was the force of love that compelled Christ at every stage, and secondly by the invocation to love to wound the heart of the meditator by writing upon it the details of the Passion. Neither of these ideas, however, is used in the short poem we are discussing. Although the theme of the compelling power of love is, as we shall see, a fairly common one in the mystical lyrics, the constructor of 'Ihesu þat hast me dere i-boght' has avoided it, and in the verses he has borrowed, in which love is implored to write on the meditator's heart, he has substituted for love the name Ihesu, as in the following:

Ihesu, write in my hert depe
how þat þou began to wepe
þo þy bak was to þe rode bent,
With rogget nayll þy handes rent.¹⁴

This poem is obviously a short popularization of the original. The translation of the Philomena, 2,254 lines in length, would clearly be too unwieldy for the normal type of meditation: whereas it survives only in one manuscript, 'Ihesu þat hast me dere iboght' survives in a large number and remained popular into the fifteenth century. In some manuscripts it is preceded by a rubric prescribing it as a devotional exercise. There is no evidence that the compiler of the poem knew the Latin original: his method was to take and shorten a consecutive passage of Passion meditation, and then to append to this some of the striking protestations of love from various other parts of the poem. There is hardly a line that he has not transferred word for word from his source. Nevertheless, the effect of the poem is not one of patchwork. If the translation of the Philomena had not survived, it would have been impossible to detect the author's method of working. Indeed, the progress of thought in the poem develops with far greater logical steadiness than in many other lyrics. It is difficult, however, to praise the poem except in terms of selection and organization: for, whilst all of it is fine and many individual passages such as the following are moving,

Whan I am lowe for þy love
Þan am I moste at myn above,
Fastynge is feest, murnynge is blis,
For þy love povert is richesse.

this is the achievement of the translator of the Philomena, an excellent poet, whose work is nowadays unfortunately far too little known.

Though the author of 'Ihesu þat hast me dere i-boght' simplifies his poem by excluding from it the ideas of love writing upon the heart and of the compelling power of love, both of these are in fact found recurrently in the mystical lyrics, and respectively form the dominating themes of two poems, 'Ihesu, god sone' and 'My keyng þat water grette'. The image of love writing a meditation of the Passion on the heart of the meditator is a slightly conceited variation of the recurring mystical idea of the wound of love, the spiritual wound that Rolle so often prayed to be granted, particularly in his Passion meditations, 'In lufe þow wownde my thoght', or 'Wounde my hert with-in'. The text on which it was based, amore langueo, was one much quoted by the exponents of ecstatic love, such as Richard of St. Victor. Though this text could be taken to refer to the languor of love, 'I languysch for lufe', more often it was taken to refer to the wound of love, the Latin rendering of the Septuagint reading, amore vulnerata sum, being preferred to the Vulgate text¹⁵. The would of love was an experience often referred to by early medieval mystics, though it did not receive a full technical definition until the work of the Spanish mystics in the fifteenth century: however, as Rousselot has so well pointed out, the use of this image is always a certain sign of the ecstatic view of love, and the violence of its effect.¹⁶ In literary usage, however, it is possible to trace the associations of this image rather more precisely.

In origins it is, of course, not an invention of the mystical writers, but rather the classical idea of Cupid shooting with his bow (in contrast, for instance, to the Old Testament, where arrows are symbols of God's anger). The classical theme passed as a commonplace into Provençal and French poetry, either in the form of brief references—of which there is an imitation in one of the secular Harley lyrics¹⁷—or as an extended narrative description of the kind occurring in the Roman de la rose.¹⁸ In the shape of classical allusion it appears in 'Ihesu Þat hast me dere i-boght':

Lat now love his bow bende
And love arowes to my hert send,
Þat hit mow percen to þe roote,
For suche woundes shold be my bote.¹⁹

The image is already in the Latin ('Telum arcus Amoris iaciat'),²⁰ but the English translation manipulates it a little to make the likeness to the love-shot of Cupid more explicit. Commonly, however, in Passion poetry the allusion to Cupid's wound of love is more undefined, for the wound is said to be inflicted, not by a bow and arrow, but by the spear that pierced Christ's side. The development of this idea can be traced in religious thought. In the Song of Songs there was a second reference to the wound of love, this time applied to the bridegroom, not the bride: 'Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea …' (iv. 9),²¹ and inevitably this wound was associated both with that of amore langueo and with the wound in Christ's side, which, in that it touched His heart, was in itself a supreme symbol of Christ's love: the physical wound thus became an allegory of Christ's love for man. It was, however, possible to transfer this wound from Christ to man. The Pauline prayer to be crucified with Christ led quite easily to a full reversal, whereby the details of Christ's sufferings might be attributed to man as a symbol of his love for Christ. An example of this kind of reversal occurs in Gilbert of Hoyland's continuation St. Bernard's of Sermons on the Song of Songs: 'Talia in me utinam multiplicet [Christus] vulnera a planta pedis usque ad verticem, ut non sit in me sanitas. Mala enim sanitas, ubi vulnera vacant quae Christi pius infligit aspectus.'²² This image could therefore be used very appropriately in Passion meditations as an expression of love for Christ in His Passion.

In a poem from the Cambridge Manuscript, 'Ihesu, god sone', the image is used very skilfully. The second stanza begins with a plea for the wound of love:

Ihesu, þe mayden sone, þat wyth þi blode me boght,
Thyrl my sawule wyth þispere, þat mykel luf in men hase wrought.²³

This plea is repeated in the fourth stanza, 'Wounde my hert with-in', and, with a variation in the fifth, 'Rote it in my hert, be memor of þi pyne'. It is answered in the last section of the poem, in which there is a moving description of the Passion, made evocative by emotive epithets. Unless this relationship is understood, the last four stanzas may seem an ill-fitting appendage. Here, in the way that we have described before, the plea for ecstatic love is matched by an emotionally heightened description of the Passion.

The other theme, that of the compelling power of love, was also characteristic of writers on ecstatic love. Their view of love, that it was by its nature irresistibly violent, became transformed into an allegorical conceit, in which love was imagined to have overcome Christ Himself. This idea was first fully elaborated by Hugh of St. Victor in a short treatise much read in the Middle Ages, the De laude caritatis, of which it is the main theme:

Sed fortassis facilius vincis Deum quam hominem, magis praevalere potes Deo quam homini, quia quo magis beatum, eo magis Deo est debitum a te superari. Hoc optime tu noveras, quae ut facilius vinceres, prius ilium superabas; adhuc nos rebelles habuisti, quando ilium tibi obedientem de sede paternae majestatis usque ad infirma nostrae mortalitatis suscipienda descendere coegisti. Adduxisti ilium vinculis tuis alligatum, adduxisti ilium sagittis tuis vulneratum. Amplius ut puderet hominem tibi resistere, cum te videret etiam in Deum triumphasse. Vulnerasti impassibilem, ligasti insuperabilem, traxisti incommutabilem, aeternum fecisti mortalem.²⁴

It can be seen from this that the idea of Christ's submission to the omnipotent force of love is a brilliant and paradoxical way of expressing the motive for Christ's sufferings and their extent. Its natural context is therefore a Passion meditation, and it is thus that it is used in the English mystical lyrics. It occurred, for instance, in the poem from the Ego dormio that we have already discussed, 'My keyng þat water grette':

A wonder it es to se, wha sa understude,
How God of mageste was dyand on þe rude.
Bot suth Þan es it sayde þat lufe ledes þe ryng;
Þat hym sa law hase layde bot lufe it was na thyng.²⁵

The last two lines are to be found almost word for word in the last chapter of the Incendium amoris: '… sed verum dicitur quia amor preit in tripudio, et coream ducit. Quod Christum ita demissum posuit, nihil nisi amor fuit.'²⁶ The O.E.D. shows that by the end of the fourteenth century the phrase 'to lead (or rule) the ring' had acquired the meaning 'to be foremost', but the use of the expression in Latin suggests that in Rolle's time awareness of the metaphor had by no means been suppressed by common usage, and that, with love as the subject, there is an allusion to the God of love 'carolling', as he does in the Roman de la rose.²⁷ The last line, with its statement that it iwas nothing but love which laid Christ low, is a clear, if slightly clumsy, expression of the domination of love.²⁸

In 'My keyng þat water grette' the idea of the omnipotent force of love is a subordinate image in a Passion meditation. It is in the very fine poem, 'Crist makip to man a fair present', that a Passion meditation is organized entirely within the framework of this paradox. This lyric, not by Rolle, though succeeding the Form of Living in two of its three manuscripts, is more than any other indebted to the tone and style of the Philomena. In the opening stanza, as in a large section of the Philomena, love is implored to explain the wild incomprehensibility of its actions:

O Love, love, what hast þou ment?
Me þinkep þat love to wraþþe is went.²⁹

The poem then shifts to a direct address to Christ, in which is given a saddened description of what love has done, 'þi loveliche hondis love haþ to-rent', and:

Þi mylde boones love haÞ to-drawe,
Þe naylis þi feet han al to-gnawe;
Þe lord of love love haþ now slawe—
Whane love is strong it haþ no lawe.³⁰

In this the violent irrationality of love is most powerfully expressed. In particular, the skilful syntactical inversion in line 3 and the poised generalization of line 4 show a style that has risen to the magnificence and complexity of its subject. After three less effective stanzas, the poem returns to its initial theme of the questioning of love, and it is in this passionate questioning that it most clearly catches the tone of the Philomena, 'O Love, love, what hast þou ment?', 'Love, love, where schalt þou wone?', 'Love, love, whi doist þou so?'. These apostrophes may be compared in their vehemence with the opening of many stanzas in the Philomena, such as 'Amor, audi: quis est, quern crucias?' (274) or 'Amor, adhuc audi, quern laceras' (312).³¹ Likewise with the paradoxes of the eighth stanza—

Love haÞ schewid his greet myƷt,
For love haÞ maad of day þe nyƷt;
Love haÞ slawe þe kyng of ryƷt,
And love haÞ endid þe strong fiƷt.

—it echoes the style of the innumerable paradoxes of the Philomena, 'Amatorem, Amor, cur proicis?' (271) or 'Vitam mori dum Amor imperai … ' (443).³² The accomplishment of the English is, of course, by no means diminished by this comparison, and, fine though the English translation of the Philomena is, it might be thought that this short poem surpasses it in its catching of the impassioned tone of the Latin.

It is interesting to notice that the idea of Christ dominated by love did not remain restricted to the more sophisticated mystical poetry. In John of Grimestone's preaching-book the idea is effectively worked into the form of a complaint:

Love me brouthte,
And love me wrouthte,
Man, to þe þi fere.
Love me fedde,
And love me ledde,
And love me lettet here.
Love me slou,
And love me drou,
And love me leyde on bere.
Love is my pes,
For love i ches,
Man to byƷen dere.

Ne dred þe nouth,
I have þe south,
Boþen day and nith,
to haven þe,
Wel is me,
I have þe wonnen in fith.³³

The repetition of the word 'love' drives home the idea, though the verses lack the dignity of 'Crist makiþ) to man'. The last verse, entirely mediocre in quality, inappropriately reduces the theme by confining it to the plea of a lover-knight. Two other short narrative verses in the same manuscript also make use of the idea: one a fairly perfunctory four lines, 'Love made crist in oure lady to lith',³⁴ and the other modelled upon it, but with reuthe instead of love as the compelling power:³⁵ this weakened substitution indicates how the original sublime and complex meaning had become lost in popular usage.

Besides the Passion poems there are also a small number of mystical poems that are mixed in content. They are held together by sustained intensity of tone rather than structure, and in them Passion meditation, praise of the beloved, and praise of Love itself are linked together: indeed, it is one of their characteristics that they are as much concerned with the idea of love itself as with the beloved. The two least interesting of these are from the Cambridge Manuscript, 'All vanitese forsake'³⁶ and 'Thy ioy be ilk a dele',³⁷ which could be called hortatory love songs, similar to the 'Love-Ron' in their juxtaposition of the vanity of the world with the joy of loving Christ. But in contrast to the sweet reasonableness of the 'Love-Ron', the plea in these poems proceeds solely by appeals to the emotions. They contain many passages that are typical of the best style of Rolle's writing, but there is nothing in them that is not done consistently better in other poems.

Of these others the finest are 'Luf es lyf þat lastes ay' and the lyric with which the Ego dormio concludes, 'My sange es in syhting'. 'Luf es lyf' falls into two parts, which on both literary and textual grounds we may assume to have been originally distinct. The first part consists of a discussion of the nature of love, where discursive and sometimes homiletic comment is subordinated to a series of definitions, which produce, through taut parallelism, a strong emotional impact:

Lufe es thought wyth grete desyre, of a fayre lovyng;
Lufe I lyken til a fyre, þat sloken may na thyng;
Lufe us clenses of oure syn, lufe us bote sall bryng;
Lufe þe keynges hert may wyn, lufe of ioy may syng.

Luf es a lyght byrthen, lufe gladdes Ʒong and alde,
Lufe es with-owten pyne, als lofers hase me talde,
Lufe es a gastly wynne þat makes men bygge and balde,
Of luf sal he na thyng tyne, þat hit in hert will halde.³⁸

Behind verses such as these there lies a stylistic form common in French secular poetry, which may be illustrated by a famous example, that of the description of love in Reason's speech to the lover in Jean de Meung's continuation of Le Roman de la rose:

Amour ce est pais haïneuse,
Amour c'est haïne amoureuse;
C'est leiautez la desleiaus,
C'est la desleiautez leiaus
C'est peeur toute asseuree,
Esperaunce desesperee;
C'est raison toute forsenanable,
C'est forsenerie raisnable;
C'est doux periz a sei neier;
Griés fais legiers a paumeier;
C'est Caribdis la perilleuse,
Desagreable e gracieuse;
C'est langueur toute santeïve,
C'est santé toute maladive;
C'est fain saoule en abondance;
C'est couveiteuse soufisance.³⁹

More immediately close to Rolle's work, however, are the English definitions of love preserved in MS. Digby 86:

Love is þe softeste þing in herte mai slepe.
Love is craft, love is goed wiþ kares to kepe.
Love is les, love is lef, love is longinge.
Love is fol, love is fast, love is frowringe.
Love is sellich an þing, wose shal soþ singe.
Love is wele, love is wo, love is gleddede
Love is lif, love is deþ, love mai hous fede.⁴⁰

The similarity of metre suggests that Rolle may have known the poem from which this quotation comes: certainly in style it could have formed a transition between the French manner and that of the mystical poetry. For the French style, with its many Latin analogues, insists primarily upon epigrammatic para doxes: whereas the English is more concerned with the insistence upon the power of love, conveyed through the accumulation of definitions. In Rolle's poem there are no paradoxes ('Luf es a lyght byrthen' is a later variant, as the absence of internal rhyme shows),⁴¹ and the substance of the poem is not in origin poetical, for it derives from the Incendiimi amoris.⁴² But certainly it would not have been given this structural and stylistic form, had it not been for the precedents, remote perhaps, in French, and immediate in English literature.

In this poem there are altogether about twenty definitions of love: it is a fire, it is eternal, it is God's darling, it comforts, it purges of sin, etc. The ultimate sources are of various kinds: the symbol of fire, for instance, is characteristic of Rolle's mystical thought, whilst the idea that 'Lufe us reves þe nyght rest' suggests the conventions of secular poetry. There is, however, one definition in the poem which is particularly important, and which in a sense sums up all the rest. It is the line 'For luf es stalworth as þe dede, luf es hard as hell'. This is a translation of a text from the Song of Songs, 'Fortis est ut mors dilectio, dura ut infernus emulatio', which along with the other text, amore langueo (which we have already discussed), was frequently quoted by the great exponents of ecstatic love. In his De iv gradibus violentae caritatis, for instance, Richard of St. Victor uses this quotation in his analysis of the fourth (i.e. the highest) degree of love.⁴³ The Glossa ordinaria and other commentaries agreed in taking aemulatio to be synonymous with amor,⁴⁴ thus making it an imaginatively astounding definition of love. Rolle often quoted this text in his English epistles, and in 'Luf es lyf' it comes as a magnificent conclusion to a stanza, which in its first three lines was subdued and didactic in tone:

For nou lufe þow, I rede, cryste, as I þe tell,
And with aungels take þi stede—þat ioy loke þou noght sell.
In erth þow hate, I rede, all þat þi lufe may fell;
For luf es stalworth as þe dede, luf es hard as hell.⁴⁵

The second part of 'Luf es lyf' begins at line 69 with the opening, 'I sygh and sob bath day and nyght for ane sa fayre of hew': the manuscript evidence suggests that this may originally have been a separate poem,⁴⁶ and this is confirmed by the fact that the first line has the ring of an introduction. There follow four verses of love-song for the Christ-knight, 'þat swete chylde', in general theme resembling some of the Harley lyrics, but more passionate and inwardly orientated. Thereafter praise of Christ the lover is intermingled with ecstatic praise of love itself. In style and tone this part of 'Luf es lyf' resembles the love song (Rolle actually calls it 'A sang of lufe') which concludes the Ego dormio, 'My sange es in syhtyng'.⁴⁷ This is a pure love song, in that it contains no Passion meditation, nor any didactic warning. Its theme is 'Nou wax I pale and wan for luf of my lemman'. In its compactness, coherence, and sustained intensity, it is perhaps the finest of Rolle's lyrics.

Both 'Luf es lyf' and 'My sange es in syhtyng' include verses expressing the devotion to the Holy Name,⁴⁸ and for these to be fully appreciated it is an advantage to know something of the history of this devotion; and this in turn leads naturally into a discussion of the small group of poems in English which have this as their subject.

This devotion, which had its roots in the Old and New Testaments,⁴⁹ was to some extent formalized before the end of the patristic period. In Christian thought the Name of Jesus acquired both the sanctity attributed to the divine name in the Old Testament, and the power, deriving from an identity with Himself, which Christ attributes to it in the New Testament. Thus the Name, Jesus, was not thought to be an arbitrary means of identification, but to signify almost in a sacramental manner the Saviour to whom it refers: it was therefore endowed with a high sanctity and with an efficacy deriving from that which it signified. Much of this can be seen in the earliest extended reference, the poem of Paulinus of Nola, De nomine Jesu,⁵⁰ and in the much later passage from a sermon of Peter Chrysologus, in which the powers of Christ, the healing of the sick and the raising of the dead, are attributed to His Name.⁵¹ In the twelfth century, however, in accordance with the new forms of spirituality, this idea acquired a fresh emphasis and its devotional implications were explored. The two most important texts of this period were the fifteenth of St. Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs⁵² and the still well-known hymn, Dulcis Iesu memoria, long thought to be also by St. Bernard, but shown by Wilmart to be of Yorkshire Cistercian origin.⁵³ In both of these the Name is praised, not merely in objective Biblical terms, but also in terms of the religious experience of those who meditate upon it. It is honey in the mouth, melody in the ears, the comforter of the distressed, the hope of the penitent, the destroyer of vice, a light which heals and restores. Above all it is dulcis, a word repeated over and over again. In medieval spirituality, in fact, the devotion to the Holy Name becomes a form of devotion to Christ in His humanity, but, unlike that of the usual meditation, its practice does not involve a visual image. Its expression in literary terms demands a use of rhetoric and metaphor which will evoke a sensation of love without the help of the visualization of the object, and therefore the poetry on this subject, both Latin and English, is characterized by an incantatory repetition of the Name of Jesus—at the beginning of each stanza or even of each line—exotic and sensuous metaphors, often borrowed from the Song of Songs, by eloquent variations upon one idea, and by accumulation rather than by the steady development of a theme.

This devotion seems to have flourished especially in England. In the twelfth century there were written, not only the Dulcis Iesu memoria, which was to be repeatedly copied in manuscripts,⁵⁴ but also striking, though short, passages in other works, as in Meditatio ii of Anselm⁵⁵ (where the Name is lingered upon and praised as the refuge of the justly fearful), and in the Philomena of John of Howden.⁵⁶ The devotion also appeared early in vernacular poetry: the opening of the Wohunge of owe Laverd⁵⁷ echoes successfully the Dulcis Iesu memoria, and this Latin hymn was echoed again in two Anglo-Norman poems of the thirteenth century⁵⁸, of which one forms part of the Manuel des pechiez, though Robert Manning did not include it in the Handlyng Synne. In these there first appears the typical English tendency to incorporate into poems on the Holy Name a passage of meditation on the Passion.

The two earliest English poems on the Holy Name are preserved in MS. Harley 2253. The less remarkable of these is that beginning 'Swete Ihesu, king of blisse', which seems to have begun as a short three-stanza poem (the text of MS. Digby 86),⁵⁹ and then to have become expanded into the text of the Harley manuscript.⁶⁰ The influence of the Dulcis Iesu memorica is seen in the opening of each of the fifteen stanzas with the words 'Swete Ihesu', and by turns of phrase in many individual lines, but, like a later poem in the Thornton Manuscript, 'Ihesu Criste, Saynte Marye sonne',⁶¹ it is partly penitential. Whereas the Latin hymn is a poem of pure praise of Christ and His love, with one verse only set in the form of a prayer, the English in both its short and expanded forms is an expression of contrition and prayer for mercy. In other words, it develops one of the minor ideas of the hymn, that of Jesus as spes penitentibus, into the controlling idea of the work. It lacks entirely the sustained ecstatic expression which makes the Dulcis Iesu memoria so exceptionally fine a poem. The second lyric, 'Ihesu, swete is þe love of þee', is much more striking, and in some ways anticipates by several decades the ecstatic style of Richard Rolle's poetry. After its first two verses, which are again closely dependent upon the Latin, it progresses independently, preserving the spirit, though not the thought and expression, of the original. One of its themes, for instance, is one we have already discussed, that of Christ overpowered by Love: 'Ihesu, þi love was us so fre / Þat it fro hevene brouƷe þee', an idea not found in the Latin. Again it has a kind of moving, simple directness, possible only in English:

Iheus my god, ihesu my kyng,
Þou axist me noon oþir þing,
But trewe love and herte Ʒernyng,
And love teeris with swete momyng.⁶²

It is, perhaps, not so accomplished or so filled with fine emotional rhetoric as the slightly later poetry of the 'school' of Rolle, and it is occasionally feeble, as in the line 'I wole þee love and þat is riƷt': indeed, there is throughout a slight naïveté of expression, perhaps indicating the lack of literary precedent, but it is an agreeable early attempt at a poem of ecstatic love.

The devotion to the Holy Name did not receive its fullest expression in vernacular poetry until the work of the fourteenth-century mystics: it is a recurrent theme of the Scale of Perfection and a substantial element in the mystical thought of Rolle. Rolle in his Comment on the Canticles follows St. Bernard by turning the text, 'Oleum effusum nomen tuum', into a meditation on the Holy Name:

O nomen admirabile. O nomen delectabile. Hoc est nomen super omne nomen. Nomen altissimum, sine quo non operai quis salutem. Hoc est nomen suave et iocundum, humano cordi verum prebens solacium. Est autem Ihesus in mente mea cantus iubileus, in aure mea sonus celicus, in ore meo dulcor mellifluus. Unde non mirum si illud nomen diligam, quod michi in omni angustia prestat solamen. Nescio orare, nescio meditari nisi resonante nomine Ihesu. Non sapio gaudium quod non est Ihesu mixtum. Quocumque fuero, ubicumque sedero, quicquid egero, memoria nominis Ihesu a mente mea non recedit. Posui illud ut signaculum super cor meum, ut signaculum super brachium meum, quia fortis est ut mors dilectio.⁶³

This exceptionally fine meditation, of which the above quotation is only a small part, was very popular: in a vernacular translation it circulated independently, and it also forms part of the didactic compilation, The Pore Caitiff.

The subject also recurs in Rolle's vernacular works, in the Form of Living, where he instructs that 'þis name Jhesu' should be rooted firmly in the heart,⁶⁴ and in The Commandment, where he says: ' … forgete noght pis name Jhesu, bot thynk it in þi hert, nyght and day, as þi speciall and þi dere tresowre.'⁶⁵ Above all it is to be found in the fine lyric from 'My sange es in syntyng', where, as we have already seen, the theme of the Holy Name is combined with that of Christ the lover:

Jhesu, þi lufe is fest, and me to lufe thynk best.
My hert, when may it brest to come to þe, my rest?
Jhesu, Jhesu, Jhesu, til þe it es þat I morne
For my lyfe and my lyvyng. When may I hethen tome?

Jhesu, my dere and mi drewry, delyte ert þou to syng.
Jhesu, my myrth and melody, when will þow com, my keyng?
Jhesu, my hele and mi hony, my whart and my comfortyng,
Jhesu, I covayte for to dy when it es þi payng.⁶⁶

In some medieval verses the authors would seem to be the mechanical servants of rhetorical forms, but here Rolle manipulates them in order to attain a higher degree of passionate intensity. This craftsmanship must be stressed, since a modern reader might easily attribute the obvious poetic superiority merely to a greater degree of personal feeling. There is, of course, no doubt that Rolle is in one sense a romantic poet, in that it is his own experience, passionately apprehended, that is the subject-matter of his poetry. His experience itself, however, has been moulded by the traditional thought of the Church and the traditional literary forms for expressing it; but these literary forms he was able to use exceptionally, since, as his prose style demonstrates even more clearly, he had an ear sensitive to the rhythms of language.

The influence of Rolle can be seen in several later poems on the Holy Name: 'Swete Ihesu, now wol I synge',⁶⁷ a long poem, preserved in many later fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century manuscripts, shows in many places the marks of Rolle's thought. It is in part a combination of the two poems already described, but there are many additions. It contains, for instance, Rolle's ideas of fire ('Love-sparkes send pou me') and of melody ('Teche me, lord, þi luf-songe'), and other ideas we have already noticed, such as the wound of love. In it, too, can be seen the tendency, already mentioned, for the Name of Jesus to recall the Passion. In a long passage the chief stages of the Passion are enumerated in direct address, each verse beginning 'Ihesu':

Ihesu swete, þou hynged on tre,
Noght for þi gylte bot al for me;
With synnes I gilte, so wo is me,
Swete Ihesu, forgyf it me.⁶⁸

The lack of logical arrangement inherent in the kind made such a digression possible, and enables the incoherence to appear, at least to some extent, deliberately contrived, and proper to the fervour and excited devotion of a lover.

The association of the Holy Name with expressions of penitence continued in poems of the late fourteenth century. One of these, 'Ihesu, þi name honourde myƷt be', is severely penitential in tone, but contains one verse that expresses touchingly the pure devotion to the Holy Name:

The other poem from the Thornton Manuscript, 'Ihesu Criste, Saynte Marye sonne',⁷⁰ has been said to fall into two parts, one of penance, the other of devotion. But the transition from one to the other is not abrupt but gradual, so that it cannot be considered the combination of two originally distinct poems. In the second half there is the lingering upon the Name of Jesus, and the metaphorical variations of it, which always form the substance of this kind of poetry; and into it, too, there is incorporated, in weakened form, a verse from the lyric of the Ego dormio:

Ihesu my Ioy and my lovynge,
Ihesu my comforthe clere,
Ihesu my godde, Ihesu my kynge,
Ihesu with-owttene pere.
…. .
Ihesu my dere and my drewrye,
Delyte þou arte to synge;
Ihesu my myrthe and my melodye:
In to thi lufe me brynge.⁷¹

Devotion to the Holy Name, even when blended with penitential themes or with meditation on the Passion, seems to have belonged chiefly to the contemplative, rather than to the active layman, or at least to the educated aspirant to contemplation, and not to those with little time for reflection. Nevertheless, like the idea of love's dominion over Christ, it also found expression in more popular poetry. An unpublished poem from John of Grimestone's preaching-book illustrates this:

Ihesu God is becomen man,
Ihesu mi love and my lemman.

Ihesu to Marie cam
Ihesu for to delivere man.
Ihesu of Marie was born,
Ihesu to saven þat was forlorn.
Ihesu for senne wep allas,
Ihesu for senne peined was.
Ihesu mi love stedefast,
Ihesu to rode was nailed fast.
Ihesu is herte let undo
Ihesu to bringen man him to,
Ihesu wit blode and water cler.
Ihesu wes man to bringen him ner.
Ihesu þe devel overcam,
Ihesu to blisse brouthte man.
Ihesu sal cumen to demen us,
Beseke we merci to swete Ihesus.
Ihesu of senne delivered us alle.
Ihesu þu bring us in to þin halle,
Ihesu to wonen wit þe in blisse,
Ihesu þeroffe þat we ne misse.⁷²

To begin each line with the Name, Jesus, is a fairly common device of style in poems on the Holy Name. It occurs, for instance, in one of the verses we have just quoted from the Thornton poem, and in the fourteenth-century translation of the Philomena the substance of the passage on the Holy Name in the original is repeated, with the modification that nearly every line begins with the Name.⁷³ The use of anaphora in this simple Passion poem, however, is particularly striking, in that it is often unsyntactical, and its intrusion into the sentence effectively draws attention to its importance.

With the exception of the two poems from John of Grimestone's preaching-book discussed earlier, and some of the lesser poems on the Holy Name, the poems associated in this chapter form a quite distinct group, their distinctiveness being indicated by both manuscripts and style. They are preserved in manuscripts of contemplative works, and from their style it is clear that they could have no other useful place, for they could be of interest to the average person only in the modern period, when they can be read as literature: in the fourteenth century they clearly served as meditative adorations for the religious. In terms of style the audience is still important, for, despite the intensity of personal feeling, the design is still controlled by their needs. In homeliness and comprehensibility they are far nearer to the ordinary English Passion lyric than, for instance, to the poems of St. John of the Cross. It is perhaps this combination of homeliness with rapture that makes these poems so especially moving and aesthetically satisfying.

Notes

¹ For references to monastic collections, containing works in the vernacular, see W. A. Pantin, 'English Monks before the Suppression of the Monasteries', Dublin Review, cci (1937), 250-70.

² The most recent account of Rolle as a mystic is that of D. Knowles, The English Mystical Tradition (London, 1961), 48-66.

³ Women would not normally know Latin (see the introduction to The Chastising of God's Children, ed. J. Bazire and E. Colledge, Oxford, 1957, 71).

⁴ It is assumed in the following pages that the lyrics embodied in Rolle's prose works are by Rolle and that some of those in MS. C.U.L. Dd. v. 64 are there rightly ascribed to him. A fuller discussion of this is given in Appendix C.

⁵ E.E.T.S. 218, 31-32, 47, and 54. The author distinguishes a kind of life that is partly that of Martha (with the works of mercy) and partly that of Mary (contemplation). The contemplation appropriate to the intermediate stage between the active and contemplative life is chiefly meditation on the Passion.

⁶The Scale of Perfection, ed. and trans. E. Underhill (London, 1948), 9, 79-81, and 358-60. Hilton recognizes meditation on the Passion as a grade of the contemplative life. For Hilton in general see Knowles, op. cit. 100-18, and Helen Gardner, 'Walter Hilton and the Mystical Tradition in England', Essays and Studies, xxii (1936), 103-27.

⁷ E.E.T.S. 218, 39.

⁸ E.E.T.S. 158, 22 (ll. 827-30). This is an exceptionally fine paraphrase translation of a twelfth-century Latin poem, the Philomena of John of Howden. The Latin text is edited by C. Blume (Leipzig, 1930). The value of the E.E.T.S. edition is diminished by the fact that the editor did not at that time recognize the English poem as a translation. Later, however, she made a comparison between the two: Charlotte d'Evelyn, 'Meditations on the Life and Passion of Christ', Essays and Studies in Honor of Carleton Brown (New York, 1940), 79-90.

⁹English Writings of Richard Rolle, ed. Hope Emily Allen (Oxford, 1931), 67-69.

¹⁰ Ed. cit. 68.

¹¹ B Text xviii, 59, Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, 524.

¹² Brown XIV, 79.

¹³ L. W. Stone, 'Jean de Howden, poète anglo-normand du xiii siècle', Romania, lxix (1946-7), 496-519.

¹⁴ Brown XIV, 91, p. 116.

¹⁵ The Septuagint reading at Cant. ii. 5, was: ' … ότι τετρωμένη αγάπης άγω'.

¹⁶ P. Rousselot, Pour l'histoire du problème de l'amour au moyen âge (Munster, 1908). The analysis of ecstatic love, pp. 56-87, is very illuminating.

¹⁷ Brown XIII, 86, 'Ant love is to myn herte gon wib one spere so kene.' There is already a confusion here between the secular and religious traditions, for the spear is of Christian origin.

¹⁸ Ed. E. Langlois, S.A.T.F. ii. (Paris, 1920), 47-51.

¹⁹ Brown XIV, 91, p. 118.

²⁰ Verse 620, ed. cit. 51. 'Let the bow of Love shoot forth an arrow.'

²¹ 'Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister … '. The A. V. has 'ravished'.

²²P.L. 184, 156. 'O that Christ would multiply such wounds in me, from the sole of my foot to the crown of my head, so that nothing in me would be healthy. For health is bad when the wounds are lacking that a devout gazing upon Christ inflicts.'

²³ Brown XIV, 83, p. 99. Thyrl: pierce.

²⁴P.L. 176, 974-5. 'But perhaps it would be easier for you to conquer God than man, to prevail more strongly with God than with man, because the more blessed it is to be overcome the more God was bound to be so overcome. You knew this well and therefore, to have an easy victory, you conquered Him first; when in obedience to yourself you had made Him come down from the throne of His Father's glory to take on the weakness of our mortal state, you still had to deal with us, the rebels. You brought Him, bound with your chains and wounded by your arrows, so that man might be ashamed to resist you any longer when he saw that you had triumphed over God Himself. You wounded the Impassible, you bound the Invincible, you drew the Unchangeable, you made the Eternal mortal.'

²⁵English Works, ed. Allen, 68.

²⁶ Ch. 42, ed. M. Deanesly (Manchester, 1915), 276. 'But it is truly said that love goes first in the dance and leads the ring. It was nothing but love that put Christ thus low.'

²⁷ Ed. cit. 51.

²⁸ F. M. Comper, The Life and Lyrics of Richard Rolle (London, 1928), 229, footnote 5, erroneously assumes the lines to mean that 'it was hate not love that nailed Christ upon the Cross'.

²⁹ Brown XIV, 90, p. 113.

³⁰ Ed. cit., p. 113.

³¹ Ed. cit. 24 and 27. 'Hear me Love! Who is it whom you torment?'; 'Again, hear me Love! Whom are you wounding?'.

³² Ed. cit. 24 and 36. 'Why, Love, do you thrust from you your lover?'; 'While Love commands Life to die … '.

³³ Brown XIV, 66.

³⁴ Ibid. p. 266.

³⁵ Inc. 'Reuthe made God on mayden to lithte', f. 119.

³⁶English Works, 49-51.

³⁷ Brown XIV, 86.

³⁸ Brown XIV, 84, pp. 102 and 104. Lovyng: lover; bote: remedy; gastly wynne: joy for the spirit; tyne: lack.

³⁹ S.A.T.F. ii. 212-13. This passage with various other examples is referred to by P. Meyer, 'Mélanges de poésie anglo-normande, ix: Une définition de l'amour', Romania, iv (1875), 382-4.

⁴⁰ Brown XIII, 53, p. 108. Craft: strength (?); les: false; frowringe: comfort; sellich: wonderful.

⁴¹ The reading in MS. Lambeth 853, 'a birbun fyne' (E.E.T.S. 24, 25), preserves the rhyme.

⁴² Brown XIII, p. 209, and XIV, p. 270.

⁴³ Ives, Épitre à Séverin sur la charité, Richard de Saint Victor, Les quatre degrés de la violente charité, ed. and trans. G. Dumeige (Paris, 1955), 149. The De iv gradibus violentae caritatis contains one of the most important expositions of the theory of ecstatic love.

⁴⁴P.L. 113, 1165.

⁴⁵ Brown XIV, p. 104. L. 3, 'I advise you to hate everything on earth that may destroy your love'.

⁴⁶ A text of the poem in southern dialect occurs in MS. Lambeth 853 (E.E.T.S. 24, 22-31) but with the poem, 'Ihesu god sone, lord of mageste' (Brown XIV, 83), inserted between II. 68-69. It is a fair inference that three originally distinct poems have here been conflated.

⁴⁷English Works, 70-72.

⁴⁸ Brown XIV, p. 106; English Works, 71.

⁴⁹ F. M. Lemoine, 'Le Nom de Jésus dans l'ancient testament', and C. Spicq, 'Le Nom de Jésus dans le nouveau testament', La vie spirituelle, lxxxvi (1952), 5-18 and 19-37.

⁵⁰PL. 61, 740-2. This poem is referred to by A. Cabassut, 'La Dévotion au nom de Jésus dans l'église d'occident', La vie spirituelle, lxxxvi, 46-69, who provides a useful series of references to works on the subject of the Holy Name. See also M. Meertens, De Godsvrucht in de Nederlanden, i (Louvain, 1930), 103-11.

⁵¹PL. 52, 586.

⁵²P.L. 183, 843-8.

⁵³ A. Wilmart, Le 'Jubilus' dit se saint Bernard (Rome, 1944).

⁵⁴ Ibid. 17-24, 29-32.

⁵⁵P.L. 158, 724-5. Cabassut, loc. cit. notes that this prayer was copied in many later books of hours.

⁵⁶A.H. 1. 29-31.

⁵⁷ E.E.T.S. 241, 20.

⁵⁸ On these see H. E. Allen, " The Mystical Lyrics of the Manuel des pechiez', Romanic Review, ix (1912), 154-93.

⁵⁹ Brown XIII, 50.

⁶⁰Harley Lyrics, 51-52.

⁶¹ F. A. Patterson, The Middle English Penitential Lyric, 53.

⁶² Brown XIV, 89, p. 112 (from MS. Hunterian Mus. V. 8. 15). The Harley text, which is longer and in many of its readings inferior, is printed by Böddeker, Altenglische Dichtungen, 198-205.

⁶³ Wilmart, op. cit. 275. The title derives from Cant. i.2. Amongst the many Biblical texts that could be relevantly quoted by writers on the Holy Name this seems to have been the most popular. Ubertino of Casale, for instance, quotes it three times in his chapter on the Holy Name in the Arbor vitae, ii. 2 (edn. of Venice, 1485, fols. ii^v-vi). Rolle's Oleum effusum was later translated into the vernacular and survives in a number of manuscripts: it was also incorporated into The Pore Caitiff. The following is the translation of the above quotation from the text of MS. Harley 1022: Ά, bat wondurful name, A, bat delytabul name! Þis is bo name bat es above al names, name alberheghest, with-outen qwilk na man hopes hele. Þis name es swete and Ioyful, gyfand sothfast comforth unto mans hert. Sothle þo name of Ihesu es in my mynde Ioyus sang, in my nere hevenly sounde, in my mouth hunyful swetnes. Qwarfor na wondur if I luf bat name þe qwylk gyfs comforth to me in al angwys. I can noght pray, I can noght have mynde, bot sownand bo name of Ihesu; I savour noght Ioy pat with Ihesu es noght mengyd. Qwar-so I be, qwar-so I sit, qwat-so I do, þo mynd of bo name of Ihesu departes noght fra my mynde. I have set it as a takenyng opon my hert, als takenyng apon myn arme: ffor "luf es strange as dede".' C. Horstman, Yorkshire Writers, i (London, 1895), 186-7.

⁶⁴English Writings, 108.

⁶⁵ Ed. cit. 81.

⁶⁶ Ed. cit. 71. Brest: break; drewry: beloved; whart: health.

⁶⁷Yorkshire Writers, ii. 9-24.

⁶⁸ Op. cit. 13.

⁶⁹ E.E.T.S. 15, 140. Brown XV, 144, prints this poem as a pendent to 'Ihū, Ihū, mercy I cry', which in both manuscripts precedes it. The Index, however, gives it a separate entry, and both Patterson, loc. cit. 54 and E.E.T.S. 15, 139-40, present it as an independent poem. The correctness of this is indicated by the style of the first line of this poem and by the finality of the last line of the preceding poem, 'Ihc, Amen, Maria, Amen'.

⁷⁰Yorkshire Writers, i. 364-5; Patterson, op. cit. 53 and notes p. 190.

⁷¹ Op. cit. 365. The second of these verses is a weakened version of two lines from the poem in the Ego dormio, quoted above, p. 176.

⁷² f. 119^v.

⁷³ E.E.T.S. 158, 28-29, Latin text ed. Blume, 29-31.