Rolle, Richard, Of Hampole

(?1300-1349)

   Yorkshire-born mystical poet whose fees at Oxford University were paid by Thomas de Neville, archdeacon of Durham. He left Oxford at the age of nineteen and became a wandering hermit, finally settling at Hampole, near Doncaster, Yorkshire, near the Cistercian nunnery of St. Mary, founded by William de Clairefai in 1170. People flocked to his cell, and when he died they continued to visit his grave, where miracles were reported. He translated into English the Psalms and extracts from Job and Jeremiah. He wrote treatises in Latin and his English works were written in the Northumbrian dialect. His chief English work is the religious poem of nearly 10,000 lines, Pricke of Conscience, written in rhyming couplets, with many quotations from scripture and from the church fathers. His Paraphrases of the Psalms and Canticles was published at the Clarendon Press in 1884. Some of his poems: "A Charme for the Tethe-Werke," "Almyghty God in Trinite," "Fadir and Sone and Haly Gaste," "Hail Ihesu, My Creatowre, of Sorowyng Medicine," "Ihesu, Thi Swetnes Wha Moghte It Se," "Lorde Ihesu Cryste, Godd Almyghty," "My Trewest Tresowre Sa Trayturly Taken."

   Sources: A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century. James H. Trott, ed. Cumberland House Publishing, 1999. Poets of the English Language. Vol. I,. W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson, eds. Viking Press, 1950. Richard Rolle, Translated by Rosamund Allen. Paulist Press International, U.S., 1999. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbia grangers.org). The Harper Anthology of Poetry. John Frederick Nims, ed. Harper and Row, 1981. The Oxford Book of Christian Verse. Lord David Cecil, ed. Oxford University Press, 1940. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.