Richard Rolle de Hampole

by Richard Rolle, George Gresley Perry (Editor)

1866. Edited from Robert Thornton's MS. The treatises in this volume were taken from a miscellaneous collection of Poems, Tracts, Prayers, and Medical Receipts, made by Thornton, archdeacon of Bedford, in the earlier half of the fifteenth century. These religious tracts are valuable in two ways. First, as illustrating the teaching given to the people (the unlered or lewed) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and second as genuine specimens of the old Northumbrian dialect-perhaps the finest form of the ancient English tongue. The present volume contains only those which are attributed to Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1866

About the author

Richard Rolle (1290/1300 – late 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, Yorkshire. In the words of Nicholas Watson, scholarly research has shown that "during the fifteenth century he was one of the most widely read of English writers, whose works survive in nearly four hundred English...and at least seventy Continental manuscripts, almost all written between 1390 and 1500."