Ghostly GladnessThe Spiritual Music of Richard Rolle, a 14th Century Mystic
A Saint for South Yorkshire: A Brief History of Richard Rolle of Hampoleby David R. Lunn, Bishop of Sheffield
1. IN SEARCH OF THE SAINT“Few persons who have written so much have left so few memorials of themselves. All that appears to be with certainty known respecting him is that some time about the beginning of the reign of Edward III Richard withdrew himself from a world with whose manners he was disgusted and devoted himself to a life of austerity and divine meditation in a cell not far from the monastery of Hampole and that he continued this mode of life till his death in 1349.” Thus the Revd. Joseph Hunter summarised the life of Richard Rolle in his great ‘History of the Deanery of Doncaster’ published in 1828. He knew more about Richard than I did when I first came to Sheffield. If challenged with the name, after thought, I might have answered: “Early Mediaeval English Mystic”. That he lived at Hampole and that Hampole was in the Diocese of Sheffield I knew not. I suspect that my ignorance about Richard Rolle is not unique — even in his native Yorkshire. I have put together these pages to try to pass on some of the things I’ve found out about Richard and my excitement in finding it out. None of Richard’s contemporaries wrote a book about him. People did not do that in those days. Besides he died in the Black Death — that plague which in killing perhaps a third of the total population brought in a time of fearful confusion and distress. But we find out about him from two sources. The first is his own voluminous writings. ‘Most of them were written, by him in Latin, but some are in the vernacular language of the time . . . they were very popular. Few of our great libraries do not contain some of them in manuscript: and the press of Wynkyn de Worde was three times employed upon them.’ (Joseph Hunter again.) Richard was the first man to write in English. Even in translation I have found them heavy going. Both the prose and poetry have the tone of the preachers and indirectly, like every preacher, he reveals something of himself. The second source is much more helpful. Within the York Breviary is to be found ‘The Office of Saint Richard, hermit, after he shall be canonized by the Church, because in the meantime it is not allowed to sing the canonical hours for him in public, nor to solemnize his feast. Nevertheless, having evidence of the extreme sanctity of his life, we may venerate him and in our private devotions seek his intercessions, and commend ourselves to his prayers.’ This Office consists of Nine Lessons (some quite long) to be read at Mattins on his Feast Day. These tell the story of his life. There follow twenty-seven lessons designed to be read during the week after his Festival which tell of some of the miracles made possible by the Saint in the thirty years that follow his death. The contents of this ‘Life’ were unknown to Joseph Hunter in 1828. But since then three manuscripts of it have been discovered. it appears to have been compiled by the nuns at Hampole. The ‘Life’ has the ring of truth about it. It underlies most of the pages that follow. But it stands alone. There is no real way of checking up on it. We have, too, a picture of Richard the Hermit. A copy provides the frontispiece of this booklet. There is no way of telling whether this is an attempt at a true likeness or simply the artist’s idea of what a hermit ought to look like.
2. UNIVERSITY DROPOUTRichard was a clever lad. His parents were sure he was the brightest lad in Thornton-le-Dale and were prepared to invest in his abilities. Though poor they saw that he had a good education — the only means he had of making his way in the world. The readiness of Thomas Neville, of the greatest family in the North and Archdeacon of Durham, to sponsor him through Oxford must have convinced them that their faith in their son was justified. For the devout scholar with a good brain and a powerful patron a career in the Church in the fourteenth century held the promise of immense prestige, power and even wealth. The new and very successful University of Oxford was the gateway to all that. They knew their Richard would do well. He would become a priest and great preferments would follow. Archdeacon — perhaps Bishop! He would not be the first from as poor a home as theirs to achieve such eminence. And he would not forget that it was his parents’ sacrifices that had made it all possible. Then wholly unexpectedly, he was back home at Thornton. Suddenly he had left Oxford. There had been no scandal. He hadn’t been expelled. He hadn’t failed his exams.. Indeed, for some years ‘he made great progress in his study’. And then he knew that that for him was not the progress that mattered. He feared ‘to be caught in the snare of sinners’. The best explanation of his decision comes from a sentence in his greatest book ‘The Fire of Love’. ‘An old wife is more expert in God’s love than the great divine who studies for vanity that he may appear glorious and so be known and may get rents and dignities.’ The north-country puritan was outraged by the worldliness of Christian and ecclesiastical Oxford. He had not been ordained Priest. In 1320 educated laymen were rare in Yorkshire and their employment prospects nil. I doubt if his parents were pleased to see their Richard. The call of Christ to total discipleship is not often part of the plan of even church-going parents for their children. He was barely nineteen.
3. TEENAGE HERMITHe does not stay at home long. From before his flight from Oxford I think he has known the way he was meant to serve God. The problem (as so often) is how to get started. A dramatic gesture creates the crisis. The story is told in full in ‘The Life’.
He flees across the moor and by chance or design comes to Topcliffe near Thirsk where at Dalton lives John of Dalton who is the father of two friends he had known at Oxford. He goes to the church there and is discovered when the Dalton family come to church for Vespers on the Eve of the Assumption. ‘Then, on the day of the Assumption (15th August) he went into the Preacher’s pulpit and gave the people a sermon of wonderful edification, insomuch that the multitude which heard it was so moved by his preaching that they could not refrain from tears and they all said that they have never heard a sermon of such virtue and power. And small wonder since he was a special instrument of the Holy Spirit.’ After the Mass Richard goes to the Daltons’ house for dinner. He is afraid that Sir John will send him back to his father. ‘For this Sir John loved Richard’s father as a friend with warm affection. But Richard, newly made a hermit without his father’s knowledge and against his wish, had taken this manner of life upon him because he loved God more than his earthly father.’ Fortunately, Sir John, ‘convinced of the sanctity of his purpose, clad him according to his wish with clothing suitable for a hermit: and kept him for a long time in his own house, giving him a place for his solitary abode and providing him with food and all the necessaries of life.’ Apparently Richard stayed with the Daltons in his ‘prophet’s chamber’ for some years. It would be in these quiet years that he came to understand the meaning of the ‘Fire of Love’ which God had given him. The parallels with S. Paul are striking: a dramatic conversion followed first by some years of seclusion at Tarsus and then a lifetime of activity and influence in the service of Jesus Christ.
4. THE MAKING OF A SAINTRichard Rolle is important for many reasons. Indeed, his well supported claim to be the very first person to write English prose should be enough to secure his place on any team of famous Yorkshiremen. Again, the bare fact that after over five hundred years he comes to us so vividly as a real person whom we might have had as a rather difficult but greatly loved friend makes him significant. Even the great kings of the time with the chroniclers noting their every act can seem infinitely remote. And he is very much a Yorkshireman. This could well explain his writing in English. For in the fourteenth century even more than today the English spoke many different dialects. If you wanted your book to be read throughout the country it had to be in Latin. But Richard was writing for his friends and neighbours. He wanted to be understood by them. “I speak”, he writes, “no strange English but the easiest and commonest.” That he was not being read in London would not bother him greatly. A rather difficult and awkward Yorkshireman too. He often complains of the harsh words and sharp looks he receives. He is conscious of being talked about behind his back. He is very ready to ‘be his own man’ come what may. It is typical that unlike everyone else in those days he believes in sitting for prayer. “I have loved to sit for prayer,” he says, “not for fancy that I wished men to speak of me but only because I loved God more than when moving or standing or kneeling. For sitting I am most at rest and my heart is uplifted. But it may be it is not best for another to sit, as I have done and will do until my death, unless he were disposed in his soul, as I am.” He’s not changing! He has some trenchant comments too on Church music! It is not wholly surprising that his is a life of moving on. He can outstay his welcome. I am reminded of John Wesley who so often writes in his diary: “I think I will not be asked to preach there again.” In the text books, again, he gets his mention as the ‘first of the English Mystics’. The great names, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich and the unknown author of the Cloud of Unknowing, all follow where Richard Rolle has led. But in the end all these things are of less importance than the fact that Richard Rolle was a Saint — one of those people in whom we can see the Holy Spirit very much at work. Holiness is never easy to write about. It is easier to recognize than describe! And when the saint is astonishingly verbose in the written word and writes always to bring his readers closer to God we can loose him as we murmur: “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness to the flesh”. The Nuns of Hampole claim to be certain of ‘the extreme sanctity of his life’. Some of what they tell intrigues rather than convinces. ‘The Saint’, they write, ‘was sometimes so absorbed in spirit while he prayed, that once, when his cloak with which he was clad was taken from him, he did not feel it; and when, after patching and stitching it, they replaced it on him he did not notice it’. But they explain well both the groundwork of his holiness and the effectiveness of his ministry. ‘He spurned the world too with its riches, being content with only the bare necessities of life that he might more freely enjoy the delights of true love; he had a hard bench for a bed and for a house a small cell; fixing his mind always on heaven. Yet wonderful and beyond measure useful was the work of this. saintly man in holy exhortations whereby he converted many to God, and in his sweet writings, both treatises and little books composed for the edification of his neighbours, which all seemed like sweetest music in the hearts of the devout’. Richard was a contemplative (despite the busyness of his life) and a mystic. That is he was one of those who come to experience God at the very centre of his being. In many different ways he speaks of the ‘high love of Christ’ as standing in three things: in heart; in song; in sweetness’. But here is the matter for another book by some expert in prayer who can help us to find in Richard an experienced guide in a path of Prayer for the people of Yorkshire today.
5. THE ROAD TO HAMPOLE‘Hampole is still a tiny hamlet about seven miles distance from Doncaster. Of the nunnery there are now no certain traces, except where a few mounds in the meadows by the stream below the hamlet mark its foundations and beyond a few of its stones built into the school house. The few grey stone houses nestle together on the steep slope in a shallow nook in the hill round an open space where the old village spring still runs. There is no trace of Richard’s cell; but in spite of the railway line in the valley, the place has a curious detached air, lying as it does a complete and self-contained whole, below the Doncaster road, fringed and shadowed by trees and bordered with low-lying meadows rich in early summer with daisies and buttercups and dotted with numerous may-trees.’ That was written in 1905. Today the A1(M) is only a good stone’s throw away, but it is still true. The nunnery had always been a small one, with about fifteen nuns living there. Roche Abbey was founded for Cistercian Monks around 1150 and it seems likely that Hampole was founded for the White Ladies at much the same time. Practically nothing is known of its history. Not even a full list of Prioresses has survived. Henry VIII duly dissolved the Priory. The annual value of the site with garden, orchard and dovecot, meadow and pasture ground adjacent together with a very varied list of other possessions was £63.5s.8d. We don’t know how Richard came to live and die at Hampole. From references in his writing, we find him staying in a number of places mostly in the northern part of Yorkshire. There may have come to be some contacts with the Austin Friars at Tickhill. Clearly he ministered to the nuns at Hampole. He is sometimes described as their ‘chaplain’. But was he ordained? Clearly by the end of his life much of the criticism that had so long followed him around had died away. People had come to realize that there was a Man of God in their midst. In his lifetime his writings were much sought after, read and copied. Nothing is known of the circumstances of his death. The date — 29 September, 1349 — suggests that he was a victim of the Black Death. But he does seem to have been at work right up to his death. He wrote a vast amount of poetry which the changes in language since then make somewhat inaccessible to us. A few lines from his last letter make a fitting end to the story of his life. “One thing I counsel thee: that thou forget not this name, JESU, but think it in thy heart night and day as thy special and dear treasure. Love it more than life, root it in thy mind. Love Jesu for he made thee and bought thee full dearly.
6. FROM THEN TILL NOWAfter Richard’s death his fame increased. Despite the desolation of the Black Death, Hampole became a place of pilgrimage and a number of modest miracles followed. Soon after his death a man, in response to continuing visions of Richard in his dreams, came and built his tomb and shrine in the Church at Hampole. The twenty-seven lections of the ‘Miracles’ are interesting evidence that he continued to hold a place in the hearts of the neighbourhood some thirty years after his death. It was then that the Office was drawn up. It was in 1383 that a boy from as far distant as Leicester was healed. Most of the miracles are fairly local — Fishlake, Sutton, Sprotborough. The hope that he was to be formally canonised must eventually have faded. The failure was due, I imagine, to the lack of resources of the nunnery and the fact that Richard was not a member of a religious community. But as late as 1608 he was remembered in The English Martyrologe as ‘Blessed Richard, Confessor and Hermite, whose singular spirit of. piety and devotion is left written and manifest to the world by his own works yet extant.’ In this century he has attracted a good deal of interest from both students of history of English Literature and of Mediaeval Mysticism. Large numbers of books have been written — many in German and some in French. He has been unlucky in those who have written about him in English. The ones I have read have been difficult both to get hold of and to read. ‘The Fire of Love’ is sometimes available as a Penguin Classic. There is a new church dedicated to him at Selby. Today I believe he is a fitting patron for lay Christians. His integrity, close involvement in the life and work of the people of his own day and direct personal relationships to God in Christ through the Holy Spirit make him a Man of God who speaks to our need across the centuries. We are his neighbours and still he speaks to us of the reality and importance of the love of God for us and our love to Him.
NOTES 1. The Site of the Hampole Nunnery was excavated in a modest way in 1937 and the results reported in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. Part 134. “Evidently the greater part of the remains of the priory lie under the village green. If our suggestions about the two walls at the south of the field should be correct then the rest of the choir lies under a public path and a blacksmith’s shop.” 2. The cover is designed by Winifred Maughan and printed by Bentley Print. 3. Copies of this leaflet may be obtained from Bishopscroft, Snaithing Lane, Sheffield. S10 3LG. at 25p.
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