Richard Rolle was born at Thornton-le-Dale, near Pickering, in
Yorkshire. He was sent to Oxford, already a formidable rival to the
University of Paris; but the severer studies were evidently uncongenial
to his impulsive temperament. He returned home without taking orders,
improvised for himself a hermit's dress, and fled into solitude. His
piety attracted the favour of Sir John and Lady Dalton, who gave him a
cell on their estate. Here, in meditation, he developed his mystical
religion. He did not immure himself, or cut himself off from human
companionship. For a time he lived near Anderby, where was the cell of
the recluse Margaret Kirkby, to whom he addressed his _Form of Perfect
Living_. Another important work, _Ego Dormio et Cor Meum Vigilat_, was
written for a nun of Yedingham (Yorks.). Towards the end of his life he
lived in close friendship with the nuns of Hampole, and for one of them
he wrote his _Commandment of Love to God_. At Hampole he died in 1349,
the year of the Black Death. By the devout he was regarded as a saint,
and had his commemoration day, his office, and his miracles; but he was
never canonized.
He wrote both in Latin and in English, and it is not always easy to
distinguish his work from that of his many followers and imitators. The
writings attributed to him are edited by C. Horstmann, _Yorkshire
Writers_, 2 vols., London 1895-6. Besides the prose works noted above,
he wrote, at the request of Margaret Kirkby, a _Commentary on the
Psalms_ (ed. Bramley, Oxford 1884), based on the Latin of Peter Lombard.
A long didactic poem in Northern English, the _Prick of Conscience_, has
been attributed to him from Lydgate's time onwards; but his authorship
has recently been questioned, chiefly on the ground that the poem is
without a spark of inspiration. It is not certain that he wrote _Love is
Life_, which is included here because it expresses in characteristic
language his central belief in the personal bond, the burning love,
between God and man. The first prose selection shows that he did not
disdain the examples from natural history that were so popular in the
sermons of the time. The second is chapter xi of the _Form of Perfect
Living_, which is found as a separate extract from an early date.
With Rolle began a movement of devotional piety, which, as might be
expected from its strong appeal to the emotions, was taken up first
among religious women; and signs of a striving for effect in his style
suggest that the hermit was not indifferent to the admiration of his
followers. He brings to his teaching more heart than mind. He escapes
the problems of the world, which seemed so insistent to his
contemporaries, by denying the world's claims. His ideas and temperament
are diametrically opposed to those of the other great figure in the
religious life of fourteenth-century England—Wiclif, the schoolman,
politician, reformer, controversialist. Yet they have in common a
sincerity and directness of belief that brushes aside conventions, and
an enthusiasm that made them leaders in an age when the Church as a
whole suffered from apathy.