The Hermit of Hampole.

 Here is a brief introduction to the Medieval Mystic known as Richard Rolle, references on request. Rolle is a particularly interesting mystic and his works should be read even if only for his take on spirituality and perfection and a passionate love for God and Christ which often borders on the erotic.

Relatively little is known about Richard Rolle, and what we do know is based almost entirely from autobiographical references that are found in his own writings and from the biographical office complied by the Hampole nuns thirty years after he died during the Black Death in September 1349. Several miracles were attributed to Rolle during his life and even more so after his death which led people to believe that he would one day become a saint. Rolle was born in Thornton Dale in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the son of William Rolle, a prosperous but landless yeoman. Rolle studied at Oxford sponsored by the archdeacon of Durham Thomas Neville, however, in his nineteenth year after religious conversion, he left university before taking a degree. Following this, Rolle famously fashioned himself a hermit’s habits from his sister’s clothing before returning to Yorkshire.

 Aged twenty-two he had his first sensory experience of God’s love: a warmth (fervor); a sweet smell or taste (dulcor); and the angelic chorus of the saved in heaven (canor).The commentary which best expresses this divine moment is his gloss on the first two and half verses of the Song of Songs or Super canticum canticorum, which survives in thirty manuscripts. Here he gives a sensual account of these feelings and claims to have repeatedly experienced these sensations over many years. 

These experiences can be compared to many other English and European mystics, for example Julian of Norwich claimed to have experienced divine revelations from God and St Teresa of Avila, who inspired the infamous Bernini sculpture, experienced many visions of Jesus and seraphim. She can be related to Rolle not only through the fire of love which she experienced physically when visited by the seraph “leave me all on fire with a great love for God” but she also helped establish nine levels of Christian prayer comparable to Rolle’s levels of sensory experience which lead one to God.   

Rolle develops this love further in his Latin poem in praise of the Virgin, Canticum Amoris  which helps establishes his unconventional persona as the joyous hermit-saint. These two roles of inspired religious authority and poetic lover of God converge in The Fire of Love or Incendium Amoris. In this early work written before 1343 of substantial length Rolle refers to the ‘fire’ that is the love for God. The exact nature of the fire is never fully clarified since he refers to it both physically and metaphorically but he is later criticised by other mystical writers for suggesting it has physical presence. 

In the Fire of Love Rolle refers to an intense physical sensation and an almost sexual love for God portrayed by an abundance of erotic language and description. “What mortal man could survive the heat at its peak,” he uses the heat of love to emphasise God’s ineffability, his references to Icarus suggest that we as humans can feel the heat, if we are fortunate enough, but we cannot reach the very core as we will be burnt, “he must inevitably wilt before the vastness and sweetness of love.” This is not unique to this work as references in Ego Dormia, one of Rolle’s later vernacular works despite its Latin title , are made to a marriage to Christ as Rolle attempts bring the readers to ‘Christ’s bed’. The piece is written in an intimate present tense for a nun of Yedingham and uses sensual language to encourage a union between the recipient, himself and Christ. Critic E.Colledge believes that this is the piece which best represents Rolle. With The Fire of Love in particular, Rolle inspired a great response with many villagers’ who experienced similar fiery passions; he became incredibly popular with the common man who believed he would become a saint.  Emendatio Vitae or The Amendment of Life was perhaps the most popular of Rolle’s Latin treatises on the spiritual life and was also later translated into English by Richard Misyn.“There is no emphasis on the hermit life yet it is utterly characteristic of Rolle’s spirituality.”