SOURCE: E. J. Arnould, "Richard Rolle of Hampole," in The Month, Vol. 23, No. 1, January, 1960, pp. 13-25.

In the essay below, Arnould seeks to synthesize the divergent portraits of Rolle that have dominated, one portraying him as wholly saintly, and the other as largely wild and tempermental. In his effort to draw a more complex picture of Rolle's character, Arnould examines the De Emendatione Vitae, the Incendium Amoris; and the Melos Amoris.

The fourteenth century was the heyday of English mysticism and is also famous for its hermits and anchorites. Richard Rolle, whose life-span covers the first half of the century, has a marked place among both hermits and mystics.¹ Professor R. W. Chambers has observed that "in English or in Latin Rolle 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...