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Chapter 5 - The Inspired Commentator
- By Andrew Kraebel
Edited by Ardis Butterfield, Yale University, Ian Johnson, St Andrews University, Andrew Kraebel, Trinity University
Book:

Literary Theory and Criticism in the Later Middle Ages

Published online:

20 April 2023

Print publication:

20 April 2023, pp 94-115
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Summary

The mystic and hermit Richard Rolle (d. 1349) claimed the authority to interpret biblical texts, to add his understandings of their meanings to the received and authoritative interpretations of the Fathers of the Church. This chapter takes up the question of how Rolle understood his own authority as an exegete and how his various explorations of this topic, across his many writings, in Latin and Middle English, compare to the theories of his contemporaries in Oxford and Cambridge, their understandings of how scholastic exegetical authority relates to the inspiration enjoyed by patristic interpreters and, ultimately, to the authors of the Bible itself. Rolle’s theoretical musings have much more in common with this scholastic material than has previously been appreciated, putting pressure on unfortunately persistent binaries of the devotional, affective or mystical, on the one hand, and, on the other, the scholastic or intellectual traditions of medieval Christianity.