Chapter 3 considers the development of scholastic exegesis outside the universities, focusing on the Yorkshire hermit-mystic Richard Rolle (d. 1349). With only a limited university education, Rolle turned to scholastic commentary, especially on the Psalms, to create material for devotional reading, and he wove authoritative opinions quarried from major scholastic sources together with glosses that read different psalms as describing his distinctive mystical experiences. Rolle wrote two Psalter commentaries reflecting these priorities, first in Latin and then in English, with the later work representing a substantial revision of the earlier one. After assessing the development of his interpretive program across these texts, the influence of Rolle’s vernacular commentary is then charted, focusing on its revision in the last quarter of the century and the various works that imitate its form. Finally, by considering the citations of Rolle’s works by Oxford theologian Richard Ullerston, this chapter reveals the success of Rolle’s hermeneutic project, arguing that the hermit returned to the university with an authority that was at once scholastic and devotional.

During the Middle Ages, the justification of humanity increasingly came to be linked with an explicitly sacramental economy of salvation, with a particular emphasis upon the sacramenta mortuorum (baptism and penance) as the divinely ordained means of establishing and restoring justification. This chapter considers this development, which forged an increasingly robust link between the practice of justification and the institution of the church. Although the possibility of extra-sacramental justification was recognised, the normative account of the initiation and restoration of justification was now firmly linked with the sacramental ministry of the church. This chapter explores the development of this move, and considers its implications. In closing, it turns to deal with some trends in Renaissance biblical scholarship which opened up new and important questions in relation to the theory and practice of justification, such as the revision of the accepted words of Christ on beginning his ministry from ‘Do penance, for the kingdom of God is at hand’ to ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand’.