author
of Hampole Richard Rolle
d. 1349
A wandering hermit, mystic, and devotional writer from fourteenth-century Yorkshire, he became one of the most widely read spiritual voices in medieval England. His works helped bring mystical writing into English as well as Latin, giving later readers a vivid, personal language of prayer and contemplation.
1 Audiobook
The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises
by of Hampole Richard Rolle
About the author
Born around 1300 in Yorkshire, Richard Rolle left Oxford without taking a degree and turned instead toward a life of solitude and intense religious devotion. He is often called Richard Rolle of Hampole because he spent his later years near the Cistercian nunnery at Hampole, where he seems to have served as a spiritual guide.
Rolle wrote both in Latin and in English, which helped his work travel far beyond learned clerical circles. He is remembered as an English hermit, mystic, and religious writer whose devotional prose and verse were widely copied and read in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
His writing is known for its warmth and immediacy, especially when describing the inner life of prayer. That direct, personal style helped make him one of the best-known spiritual authors of medieval England, and his influence continued long after his death in 1349.