THE spiritual author Richard Rolle is commemorated within the Common Worship calendar on 20 January. He began and ended life in Yorkshire, born in 1300 in what’s now chocolate-boxy Thornton Dale (presently more famous because the home of the TV series Bangers and Cash), and dying at Hampole, north-west of Doncaster, in 1349 — very probably of the Black Death, which was sweeping England on the time.
His was an age with a pointy concentrate on the aim of life: to organize for the subsequent world. Particularly for the educated and non secular classes, there was much written help at hand, all in Latin, and gathered from throughout pan-Catholic Europe.
Rolle himself was not confined to Yorkshire: he studied at Oxford (although left without graduating), and possibly also on the Sorbonne. His writings actually show evidence of contact with contemporary theological pondering. But most of his life seems to have been spent as a hermit and mystic: first, near his family home; later, further north within the Richmond area; and, later still, settling within the West Riding at Hampole, near the Cistercian convent where he was spiritual adviser to at the least one anchoress.
ROLLE’s particular gift was to write down in Latin and in English, and to be considered one of the primary whose works spoke to a wider, lay audience, not only the more restricted readership of previous spiritual writers. And — in contrast to many on the time, whose works have been lost or exist only in tantalising fragments — Rolle left a wealth of fabric: his works survive in nearly 400 English manuscripts and at the least 70 Continental ones.
One commentator has suggested that, within the 14th and fifteenth centuries, Rolle was more widely read than Chaucer; and his was not only a large readership, but a remarkable breadth of writing — commentaries on scripture (the Commandments, the Magnificat, the Lord’s Prayer, Psalm 20, Lamentations, and more); on the Office of the Dead; meditations on the Passion; an apologia for his eremtical life; what is perhaps called manuals of spiritual instruction; commentaries, visions, pastoral writings, epistles, rules . . . — the list goes on. Three-quarters of what we’ve got is in Latin; the remainder is in Middle English.
One of his more famous works is Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love), wherein he describes and systematises his mystical experiences. He is one amongst a growing number in Western Europe on the time who were debating whether faith appealed at base to the “affective” — emotional — life or to the intellect. Rolle‘s sympathies are with the affective.
He urges his readers, with the advantage of a soul and the gift of reason, to be “fired up”, as he was, by a divine love that overwhelms the soul and results in deeper craving and devotion. Thus, the seeker is cultivating a relationship with God otherwise from attending mass or listening to a sermon; quite than kneel to wish, the seeker after God sits in contemplation, specializing in particular interior disciplines aimed toward keeping the seeker in a relationship to God which is as near, and as deep-seated, as possible. The urging is at all times to hunt a stronger desire for God.
SO FAR, so good. Rolle’s writings fall inside the Western tradition extant for the reason that twelfth and thirteenth centuries, particularly from Cistercian and Franciscan writers. But not all his writings found favour in his time. He was accused of putting himself an excessive amount of in the image and of being too emotional. His assertion that he heard heavenly melodies on a regular basis was doubted, as was his claim of being in constant union with God. His writings were said to betray undisciplined religious fervour.
But, in his prolific and diverse output, written apparently over a protracted period, there could be traced a more settled sense of spiritual sure-footedness, which appealed not only to the Hampole community, but, within the later 14th century, to literate lay men and ladies with a hunger for spiritual writing of their native tongue. What had previously been writings with an appeal mainly to female religious now, by Rolle’s ability to place his experiences into the context of up to date mystical theology, would grow to be mainstream and be embraced by the laity.
He solid a protracted shadow over the spiritual lifetime of the 14th and early fifteenth centuries — mainly, but not exclusively, in England. After his death, when his body had been moved into its own chapel, there was a movement for his canonisation, however it got here to nothing.
A PARTICULAR feature of his spiritual exercises is worthy of mention. He urges an articulated, sung engagement with a number of the texts and lyrics that he provides, particularly in “Ego dormio” (which springs from a verse within the Song of Songs). This is an element and parcel of the affective nature of contemplation for Rolle. Texts are provided that mix spiritual song with a lyrical outpouring of craving for God. One example (modernised from Middle English) is:
O Jesu sweet, now will I sing
To Thee a song of love-longing;
Cause in my heart a well to spring
Thyself to like above all things.
Rolle’s death got here probably at Michaelmas in 1349, as plague burned its way through England. Nearly 700 years later, how does he still speak to us? Today’s social and non secular context could be unrecognisable to Rolle and his contemporaries. Spiritual contemplation might be way more of a minority interest now than it was back then. But his witness to a disciplined approach in cultivating our relationship with God, accompanied by a spiritual director, still holds good today.
Moreover, his appeal to the affective side of our personalities in cultivating our relationship with God seems to suit well with the current Zeitgeist. Modern church life is actually no stranger to singing love for Jesus, although whether that could be a feature of personal contemplative practice is open to query.
Rolle stays considered one of the innumerable “cloud of witnesses” from the past who were willing to put aside the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, to hunt union with God in Christ — and were sufficiently impelled by the hearth of God’s love to induce others, through his writings, to follow that path and, by instruction, to point out the best way.
The Revd Roy Shaw is a retired priest within the diocese of York.
