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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
Richard Rolle, ‘Richard Hermit of Hampole’, is the first, easily the most controversial, and probably the most widely influential of the English mystical writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Of all the prolific writings in various genres that Rolle produced – and many more were later attributed to him – it is the Latin prose Incendium Amoris {The Fire of Love), with its vivid moments of autobiographical recollection and its rhapsodic, exultant spirituality, that establishes the singular persona that is such a central part of Rolle's strategy as a mystical artist: idiosyncratic, ingenuous, impassioned, he is exuberantly lyrical, winsome and sensual. The Incendium's prologue catches the surprise in Rolle's still-amazed memory of first feeling the fire of love in his breast (even in this literal English version of 1435 by the Carmelite Richard Misyn):
Mor have I mervayled then I schewe, forsoth, when I felt fyrst my herte wax warme and – truly, not ymagyn[yn]gly, bot als it were with sensibill fier – byrned! I was forsoth mervaylde as the byrnynge in my saule byrst up, and of an unwonte solas. For uncuthnes of slike helefull habundance oftymes have I gropyd my breste, sekandly whedyr this byrnynge were of any bodely cause utwardly. But when I knewe that onely it was kyndylte of gostely caus inwardlye – and that this brynnynge was nought of fleschly lufe ne concupiscens – in this Y consayvyd it was the gyfte of my makar: glad therfore I am moltyn into the desyre of grettyr luf.
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