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Prose

Notes to each other, except as they all breathe the same feeling of pious and fervid devotion. The longer
pieces are made up merely of a succession of spiritual reflections and ejaculations, especially on
divine love. Few allusions to contemporary life occur, and the satirical note is altogether absent.
Rolle has little of the righteous indignation of the reformer, and though the punishments of hell
are eloquently described, his most frequent subject is the love of God.
It was a fervid and lyrical temperament which Rolle brought with him to the composition of his
prose. His feeling for prose was by no means artless, although on the other hand, the use of his
various devices of style is not persistent and regular enough to give him a carefully thought out
and consistent style. At times he wrote quite simply. One of his most popular tracts was his Form
of Perfect Living, addressed to Margaret, an anchoress, who was Rolle’s disciple and with whom he
seems to have enjoyed much spiritual communion. The tract recounts the various temptations to
which one leading the lonely life of the hermit is subjected and also the ways by which the perfect
love of God may be attained. Now thou hast heard, he says, a part of the subtle crafts of the devil,
and if thou wilt thou shalt destroy his traps, and ‘burn in the fire of love all the bands that he
would bind thee with.’ ‘For that thou hast forsaken the solace and the joy of this world, and taken
thee to solitary life, for God’s love to suffer tribulation and anguish here, and sithen [afterwards]
come to that bliss that nevermore blins [ceases] : I trow truly that the comfort of Jesus Christ and
the sweetness of his love, with the fire of the Holy Ghost that purges all sin, shall be in thee and
with thee, how thou shalt think, how thou shalt pray, what thou shalt work, so that in a few years
thou shalt have more delight to be alone and speak to thy love and to thy spouse Jesus Christ, that
high is in heaven, than if thou were lady here of a thousand worlds.’ Many suppose, he continues,
that we hermits are in pain and great penance. ‘They see our body, but they see not our heart,
where our solace is. If they saw that, many of them would forsake all that they have, for to follow
us.’ The love of God is the perfection of the religious life. ‘Amore langueo. These two words are
written in the book of love, that is called the song of love, or the song of songs.’ The special gift of
the solitary is to love God. ‘In heaven the angels that are most burning in love are nearest God.’ ‘If
thou love him mickle, mickle joy and sweetness and burning thou feelest, that is thy comfort and
strength, night and day.’
The Form of Perfect Living is an example of Rolle’s simpler prose style, the purpose of it being
mainly expositional. Even here, however, there is considerable alliteration, some use of the metrical
cadences of the long line, of oratorical, ejaculatory devices, in short a general tendency to fall into
a dithyrambic kind of expression suited to the mood of the prose-poet. The sentences often have
a fullness and roundness of phrasing which remind one of the cadences of later liturgical literature.
Always one feels that Rolle’s written style is merely a transference of the impassioned expression
of the orator to the more permanent record of the manuscript page.
More characteristic of Rolle’s popular style in its admixture of prose and verse is the tract Ego
dormio et cor meum vigilat. In general this tract is similar in method to Taystek’s sermon, and is
representative of a kind of preaching and writing which Wiclif expressly condemned. At times,
passages can be scanned as alliterative verse, though the piece is intended in the main to be prose.
It is a disquisition, a kind of rhapsody, on divine love, and naturally the subject lends itself to a
more lyric treatment than the Form of Perfect Living :
“All perisches & passes pat we with eghe see. It wanes in to wrechednes, pe welth of pis worlde.
Robes & ritches rotes in dike. Prowde payntyng slakes in to sorow. Delites & drewryse stynk sal
ful sone. paire golde & paire tresoure drawes pam til dede. Al pe wikked of pis worlde drawes til
a dale, pat pai may se pare sorowyng whare waa es ever stabel. Bot he may syng of solace pat
lufed Jhesu Criste : be wretchesse fra wele falles in to hell.”
The tract continues with a passage of plain exposition in a more normal prose style, until it reaches
a Meditatio de passione Cristi, where it again breaks out into a kind of rimed prose.
From the point of view of ingenuity of technic Rolle is without question the most effective writer

18 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY