Description

Richard Rolle (1290-1349) was an English religious writer, Bible translator, and hermit. He is known as Richard Rolle of Hampole or de Hampole, since after years of wandering he settled in his final years at Hampole, near the Cistercian nunnery. He was brought up near Pickering, and studied at the University of Oxford, supported by Thomas de Neville, leaving there at age eighteen or nineteen. He had his cell first at Pickering, and then in the North Yorkshire parish of Ainderby. He wrote in both Latin and English; many works are attributed to him, but it has been questioned how many are genuinely from his hand. Some were printed in the sixteenth century, by Wynkyn de Worde. In one of his best-known works, The Fire of Love, Rolle provides an account of his mystical experiences, which he describes as being of three kinds: a physical warmth in his body, a sense of wonderful sweetness, and a heavenly music that accompanied him as he chanted the Psalms. Amongst his other works are The Mending of Life and The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises.