of Love, and forms a curious reaction against the exaltation of reason and logic in scholasticism.  He wrote a large number of treatises and poems, both in Latin and English, lyrical songs and alliterative homilies, burning spiritual rhapsodies and sound practical sermons, all of which were widely known and read.  Certain points about Rolle are of special interest and distinguish him from other mystics and seers.  One is that for him the culminating mystical experience took the form of melody, rhythm, harmony.  He is the most musical of mystics, and where others “see” or “feel” Reality, he “hears” it.  Hence his description of his soul’s adventures is peculiarly beautiful, he thinks in images and symbols of music, and in his writings we find some of the most exquisite passages in the whole literature of mysticism, veritable songs of spiritual joy.  In the Fire of Love, perhaps the finest of his more mystical works, he traces in detail his journey along the upward path.  This is very individual, and it differs in some important respects from other similar records.  He passed through the stage of “purgation,” of struggle between the flesh and spirit, of penitence and aspiration, through “illumination,” until he reached, after nearly three years, the third stage of contemplation of God through love.[55]

In this condition, after about a year, “the door of heaven yet biding open,” he experienced the three phases to which he gives the names of “calor, canor, dulcor,” heat, song, and sweetness.  “Heat soothly I call when the mind truly is kindled in Love Everlasting, and the heart on the same manner to burn not hopingly, but verily is felt."[56]

This “burning” seems to have been for him a real physical sensation, a bodily condition induced by the adventure of the spirit.  This is not unusual in mystical states, and possibly the cryptic notes made by Pascal record a similar experience.[57] He continued in this warmth for nine months, when suddenly he felt and heard the “canor,” the “spiritual music,” the “invisible melody” of heaven.  Here is his description of his change from “burning love” to the state of “songful love.”

Whilst ...  I sat in chapel, in the night, before supper, as I my psalms sung, as it were the sound of readers or rather singers about me I beheld.  Whilst also, praying to heaven, with all desire I took heed, suddenly, in what manner I wot not, in me the sound of song I felt; and likeliest heavenly melody I took, with me dwelling in mind.  Forsooth my thought continually to mirth of song was changed:  and as it were the same that loving I had thought, and in prayers and psalms had said, the same in sound I showed, and so forth with [began] to sing that [which] before I had said, and from plenitude of inward sweetness I burst forth, privily indeed, alone before my Maker.[58]

The sweetness of this inward spiritual song is beyond any sound that may be heard with bodily ears, even