Richard Rolle (c. 1300 – 30 September 1349) was an English hermit, mystic, and religious writer. He is also known as Richard Rolle of Hampole or de Hampole, since at the end of his life he lived near a Cistercian nunnery in Hampole, now in South Yorkshire. In many ways, he can be considered the first English author due to the reported influence (both locally and internationally) of his vernacular works starting soon after his death and continuing for centuries. Indeed, until the nineteenth century northern English medieval religious texts were regularly mis-attributed to him because of his ongoing authority.
In his works, Rolle provides little explicit evidence about his early life and education. Most, if not all, of our information about him comes from the Office of Lessons and Antiphons that was composed in the 1380s in preparation for his canonisation, although this never came about.
Born into a small farming family and brought up at Thornton-le-Dale near Pickering, he studied at the University of Oxford where he was sponsored by Thomas de Neville, the Archdeacon of Durham. While there, he is said to have been more interested in theology and biblical studies than philosophy and secular studies. He is also described as possessing a fiery temperament. Richard left Oxford at age eighteen or nineteen—dropping out before he received his MA—to become a hermit.
At first Richard chose to live as a recluse in a forest at Thornton but he soon left, fearing his family would restrain his life of solitude. Leaving the family home, he went to Pickering and housed with a squire, John Dalton, for perhaps three years. John had known Richard in Oxford when the two were students. During this time Richard's sister met with him in the woods, and gave him two of her own gowns which he fashioned into a hermit's robe and mantle. She then fled, the legend claims, crying that her brother had gone insane.
It was probably while still living with Dalton, two years and eight months after becoming a hermit, Rolle had his first mystical experience. Around a year later, he felt similarly after listening to a choir, and he began to take less interest in all things temporal.
Dalton himself was arrested and his lands confiscated in 1322; the lack of mention of this fact in accounts of Rolle's life makes it likely that he was no longer living with Dalton by this point.
It is unclear where Rolle lived from 1321/2 until his death in 1349. One theory is that Rolle spent the early 1320s at the renowned Sorbonne, becoming well-trained in theology, and perhaps being ordained there. This theory is based on the entries in three seventeenth-century manuscripts at the Sorbonne, assumed to be copies of medieval originals, which record a Ricardus de Hampole as being admitted to the Sorbonne in 1320, entering the prior's register in 1326, and noting that he died in 1349 among the sisters of Hampole near Doncaster in Yorkshire. Scholars, however, are divided on the authenticity of this material. Whether or not Rolle studied in Paris, it is probable that most if not all of this time was spent in Richmondshire, either living with his family at Yafforth, or, given the uncertain political conditions in the region at the time, wandering from patron to patron.
Around 1348, Rolle knew the Yorkshire anchoress Margaret Kirkby, who was his principal disciple and the recipient of much of his writings and would be important in establishing his later reputation.
Rolle died in Michaelmas 1349 at the Cistercian nunnery at Hampole. Because of his time spent there, he is sometimes known as Richard Rolle of Hampole, or de Hampole. It is not known what his role there was. However he wrote The Form of Living and his English Psalter for a nun there, Margaret Kirkby (who later took up a similar life to Rolle, as an anchoress), and Ego Dormio for a nun at Yedingham. He died of the Black Death, but there is no direct evidence for this. He was buried first in the nuns' cemetery at Hampole. Later records of people making offerings of candles at his shrine show that he was moved first to the chancel and then to his own chapel.
Rolle probably began writing in the early 1330s, and continued until his death – but there is no certain chronology of his various works. He wrote in both Latin and English, with his English works apparently all dating from after c. 1340.
The precise dating of Rolle's works is a matter of much modern dispute. The dates set out by Hope Emily Allen in 1927 have been widely used by later writers, but in 1991 Nicholas Watson set out a rather different vision of the chronology of Rolle's writing.
In one of his best-known works, Incendium Amoris (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. The book was widely read in the Middle Ages, and described the four purgative stages that one had to go through to become closer to God: described as open door, heat, song, and sweetness. This was part of an important movement in medieval Christianity, in which the feeling of God's presence became central to devotional practice; Rolle is a key figure in the development of affective mysticism. Similarly, as Andrew Kraebel has demonstrated, Rolle claims that his extensive commentary on scripture (in both Latin and the vernacular) is divinely inspired, giving his works an authority beyond that of the purely interpretive and academic (even as he drew on a wide range of Biblical scholarship).
His last work was probably the English The Form of Living, written in autumn 1348 at the earliest. It is addressed to Margaret Kirkby, who entered her enclosure as a recluse on 12 December 1348, and is a vernacular guide for her life as an anchorite.
His works are often classified into commentaries, treatises and epistles. As such, the commentaries are:
Commentary on the Readings in the Office of the Dead taken from Job. This commentary on nine readings from the Book of Job which form part of the readings for the office of the dead was used extensively by York clergy in the fifteenth century. Surviving in forty-two manuscripts, it was the first of Rolle's works to be printed, in Oxford in 1483. A critical edition and translation by Andrew Kraebel was published in 2025.
Commentary on the Canticles, a commentary on the first two and a half verses of the Song of Songs. It survives in thirty manuscripts.
Two Commentaries on the Psalter. One is in Latin, and may belong to the very early period after Rolle left Oxford. The second is an English commentary with translation of the Latin Psalms into English, which was designed to help Margaret Kirkby to understand the doctrines behind the Psalms she was to chant in her anchorage. For nearly 200 years after the Constitutions of Arundel this commentary and translation remained the only authorised vernacular rendering of a portion of the Bible into English; it did not need diocesan permission for its use. It exists in about 20 manuscripts.
Treatise on Psalm 20, in Latin