Biblical Text and Spiritual Experience in the English Epistles of Richard Rolle

Abstract

Recent scholars of the fourteenth-century English mystic Richard Rolle have found themselves preoccupied by the question of his originality. Does he rely principally on the model of his own experience in authorizing his devotional theology, or can we speak of his English writings as shaped by traditional precedent? Rather than seeing personal experience and precedent as mutually exclusive this article argues that they are mutually informing. I explore Rolle's use of biblical authority and personal experience and contends that he uses precedent both to encourage his addressees towards spiritual maturity and to define the spiritually mature addressee as incarnating the perfection of biblical ideals. The proximity of authoritative text and lived experience which this implies is present throughout his English writings, making it impossible to effect a divorce between the two.

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