SOURCE: Geraldine E. Hodgson, in an introduction to The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises, Thomas Baker, 1910, pp. xi-xxxiv.

Below, Hodgson discusses Rolle's major works, summarizing their content and engaging the various controversies that had sprung up around them; she ultimately tends to defend Rolle 's standing as a mystic.

Richard Rolle of Hampole is the earliest in time of our famous English Mystics. Born in or about 1300, he died in 1349, seven years after Mother Julian of Norwich was born. Walter Hilton died in 1392.

An exhaustive account of Rolle's life is given in Vol. ii. of Professor Horstman's Edition of his works, a book unfortunately out of print. The main facts are recorded in a brief "Life" appended to Fr. R. Hugh Benson's A Book of the Love of JESUS. Therefore, it will suffice to say here that Richard Rolle seems to have been born at...