Richard rolle produced one of the most extensive bodies of religious literature of the early fourteenth century; the bulk of this literature is exegetical, but some works are based on Rolle’s own mystical experiences, and others can be considered as didactic works, composed specifically with a view to exhorting others to turn to the love of God. Rolle wrote in both English and Latin, more prolifically in the latter, but his works in both languages were widely disseminated throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; this is shown by the large number of surviving manuscripts of his Latin and English writings....

Rolle’s distinction as a writer of devotional literature derives mainly from his affective method. Briefly stated, affective language in devotional literature excites and directs the emotions of the audience so that readers are drawn first to holiness and then to union with God. The recognition of the need for affective devotion in Christianity ultimately derives from the Apostle Paul who states in his epistle to the Roman Christians that the problem for the believer is not so much in knowing how to behave, but in knowing how to drive his or her emotions and passions into such an intimate relationship...

Ego dormio is the first of the English prose treatises composed by Richard Rolle on the subject of the journey towards spiritual perfection. According to the chronology set out by Nicholas Watson, which divides Rolle’s writings into stages based largely on the evidence of self-borrowing throughout his texts, Ego Dormio falls into the category of “late works” in which, along with Melos Amoris, it pre-dates Super Lectiones Mortuorum, Emendatio Vitae, The Commandment, The Form of Living and, in all likelihood, the English Psalter and the shorter vernacular prose pieces.³ Because it is Rolle’s first vernacular prose work of any length,...

The second of Rolle’s vernacular treatises was a shorter work of plain instruction which is known today by the title The Commandment.³ Unlike its predecessor Ego Dormio, which had sought to woo the reader to become the lover of Christ through the use of affective language, The Commandment engages the lover of God in a more sober and formal discourse. The text itself follows a fairly simple narrative structure. Rolle opens the work with an exposition of Christ’s utterance of the great commandment from Matthew 22:37 which both sets the tone of the work as didactic and informs the reader...

Like ego dormio and The Commandment, The Form of Living is a composite work that deploys material from Rolle’s own Latin canon as well as from other sources. But, also like its predecessors, The Form of Living is a unique text which develops a singular discourse, in this case a discourse of friendship, to fulfil its affective purpose of turning the reader to the love of God. The Form of Living is the longest, and in many ways the most complex, of Rolle’s vernacular treatises and holds the unique position in his canon of being the only work whose date...