Richard Rolle

Richard Rolle (c. 1300 – 30 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, now in South Yorkshire. In many ways, he can be considered the first English author due to the reported influence (both locally and internationally) of his vernacular works starting soon after his death and continuing for centuries. Indeed, until the nineteenth century northern English medieval religious texts were regularly mis-attributed to him because of his ongoing authority.

Early life

In his works, Rolle provides little explicit evidence about his early life and education. Most, if not all, of our information about him comes from the Office of Lessons and Antiphons that was composed in the 1380s in preparation for his canonisation, although this never came about.

Born into a small farming family and brought up at Thornton-le-Dale near Pickering, he studied at the University of Oxford where he was sponsored by Thomas de Neville, the Archdeacon of Durham. While there, he is said to have been more interested in theology and biblical studies than philosophy and secular studies. He is also described as possessing a fiery temperament. Richard left Oxford at age eighteen or nineteen—dropping out before he received his MA—to become a hermit.

At first Richard chose to live as a recluse in a forest at Thornton but he soon left, fearing his family would restrain his life of solitude. Leaving the family home, he went to Pickering and housed with a squire, John Dalton, for perhaps three years. John had known Richard in Oxford when the two were students. During this time Richard's sister met with him in the woods, and gave him two of her own gowns which he fashioned into a hermit's robe and mantle. She then fled, the legend claims, crying that her brother had gone insane.