Showing posts with label Richard Rolle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Rolle. Show all posts

Saturday, May 21, 2022

The Cloud of Unknowing

Many works of Christian mysticism in the Middle Ages are biographies or autobiographies of mystics, sharing their revelations, their visions, and their interpretations of such. In the 2nd half of the 14th century, an anonymous author wrote a manuscript called "The Cloud of Unknowing" which was a guide aimed at a student on approaching God through mysticism.

The author shared three forms of prayer: reading, ordinary prayer, and contemplative prayer. Reading referred to contemplative or pious reading (in Latin, lectio pia). Ordinary prayer would be praying out loud or silently.

The last, contemplative prayer, inspired what is now called Centering Prayer, a form of Christian meditation with a strong emphasis on internal silence. The idea is to be more "present" and open to God.

Indeed, the point of the "Cloud" seems to be to avoid specific images and works and thoughts of God's attributes, and realize that God is not really knowable, that there is a vast "cloud of unknowing" between you and God. One must surrender all thought of specific aspects of God and open oneself to allow a glimpse of the true indescribable nature of God. This abandonment of trying to know God by specifics is the apophatic method, mentioned when discussing Maimonides' explanation of what God is by discussing what God is not.

The author felt that his approach was not for just anyone. At the start of the prologue, he says:

I charge thee and I beseche thee, with as moche power and vertewe as the bonde of charité is sufficient to suffre, [...] neither thou rede it, [nor] write it, [nor] speke it, [nor] [yet] suffre it be red, wretyn, or spokyn, of any or to any, bot yif it be of soche one or to soche one that hath (bi thi supposing) in a trewe wille [...] to be a [perfect] folower of Criste,

There are a few other works that are possibly written by the same author. One of them seems certain: "The Book of Privy Counseling" is only half the length of his most famous work, and explains further the concepts in "Cloud." The "Cloud" has 17 known manuscripts, and was clearly not as popular as the works of Richard Rolle, but interest grew in the 20th century.

One paragraph stands out for some thinkers:

If you want to gather all your desire into one simple word that the mind can easily retain, choose a short word rather than a long one. A one-syllable word such as "God" or "love" is best. But choose one that is meaningful to you. Then fix it in your mind so that it will remain there come what may. This word will be your defence in conflict and in peace. Use it to beat upon the cloud of darkness above you and to subdue all distractions, consigning them to the cloud of forgetting beneath you. [Chapter 7]

Some see in this a strong similarity to Buddhist meditation and modern transcendental meditation, which got me thinking: was Buddhism known in medieval Western Europe? Let's find out tomorrow.

Friday, May 20, 2022

Heat, Sweetness, Sound

Richard Rolle's career as a hermit left him plenty of time for writing. He chose a wide variety of topics—although Psalms figured heavily—and wrote in Latin early on; after 1340 he mostly wrote in English, perhaps trying to aim his words of wisdom at a wider audience.

Incendium Amoris ["The Fires of Love"] was one of his most popular in later years. We still have 44 copies, one-third of them from outside England. In it he describes the stages of mystical experience that he perceived, the first of which was the purgative stage he called "open door." In it one has to purge oneself of all worldly thoughts that would stand between yourself and the divine. Then came the stages of calor, canor, and dulcor.

Calor was the first experience of mystic contemplation, what they called illumination; it is a glimpse of heavenly glory felt as heat:

I call it fervour when the mind is truly ablaze with eternal love, and the heart similarly feels itself burning with a love that is not imaginary but real. For a heart set on fire produces a feeling of fiery love. [Penguin Classics, translator Clifton Wolters]

Canor, or song, became the most constant and important to him. As he first described it in "The Fires of Love":

I call it song when there is in the soul, overflowing and ardent, a sweet feeling of heavenly praise; when thought turns into song; when the mind is in thrall to sweetest harmony. [Ibid.]

Last was dulcor, always a part of the other two:

This twofold awareness is not achieved by doing nothing, but through the utmost devotion; and from these two there springs the third, for unspeakable sweetness is present too. Fervour and song bring marvellous delight to a soul, just as they themselves can be the product of very great sweetness. [Ibid.]

Some of his other works:

Readings in the Office of the Dead taken from the Book of Job. It was popular enough to be printed in 1483 in Oxford and was used by clergy in York in the 15th century. It survives in 42 manuscripts.

*Commentary on the first 2.5 verses of the Song of Songs, of which we still have 30 manuscripts.

*Twenty manuscripts exist of Commentaries on the Psalter, in both Latin and English. The English version was for Margaret Kirkby, and was the only English translation of (part of) the Bible for 200 years.

*The Form of Living, written as a guide for Margaret Kirkby, exists in 30 manuscripts. 

His writing was enormously popular, copied and shared for several generations.

Not all authors of mystic writing are known to us; some maintained anonymity, whether through humility or simple obscurity. One such author, writing shortly after Rolle, produced a work of Christian mysticism with the evocative title, The Cloud of Unknowing. That will be next.

Thursday, May 19, 2022

Richard Rolle

Richard Rolle (c.1300 - 30 September 1349) was born to a North Yorkshire farming family. He showed promise as a young man and was sponsored by the Archdeacon of Durham to attend Oxford to study philosophy. He gravitated more toward theology and biblical studies, but left Oxford while still in his teens to become a hermit.

At first he tried to live simply near his family's home, but became worried that they would disapprove and try to "reclaim" him. One day he encountered a former fellow Oxford student, John Dalton, who was willing to set him up in a cell with the necessary provisions.

A few years after leaving Oxford, while living an ascetic life on Dalton's property, he had his first mystical experience. He expressed the feeling of mystical experience as calor, canor, and dulcor. Calor was a feeling of heat. Canor was an experience of sound. Dulcor was a sweetness that accompanied both the feelings of calor and canor. A combination of these feelings was with him always after that, about which he says "I did not think anything like it or anything so holy could be received in this life."

Having attained this level of mystic expression, he left Dalton's cell and started to travel. We know he spent time in Hampole, sharing his experience with a Cistercian convent. He also visited Margaret Kirkby, whom he had set on the path to the anchorite life. He was able to cure her seizures by his presence.

He stayed near the Hampole convent for the rest of his life. He died there in 1349, possibly having succumbed to the Black Death, although by fall of that year the worst of the plague was over. He was originally buried in the convent cemetery, but later moved to his own chapel space because of the attention his grave drew: visitors and supplicants came to pray and make offerings; miracles were claimed to result.

In the 1380s, canonization proceedings were begun; many of the details of his life (other than details he included in his many writings) came from recording the anecdotes from people who knew him or had heard of him during the process of preparing a biography as part of the canonization process. The process was never completed, however, so he never became Saint Richard Rolle, although the Church of England commemmorates him on 20 January. In the Episcopal Church in the USA, he is commemorated on 28 September along with the mystics Margery Kempe and Walter Hilton.

His writings were so popular that over 450 manuscripts survive that were produced between 1390 and 1500. His writings were more popular than Chaucer. We can look at some of them next.

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Margaret Kirkby

Margaret Kirkby (c.1322 - 1391/4 CE) was an anchoress in a couple locations in England. Although she withdrew from public life to devote herself to a contemplative life worshipping God (in a cell like the illustration to the left), we  actually know quite a bit about her.

Growing up in a landowning family in Ravensworth, North Yorkshire, she made the acquaintance of Richard Rolle, the spiritual director of the Cistercian convent at Hampole. He wrote for her an English translation of the Psalms, with commentary relating the Psalms (which are, technically, songs) with his concept of canor, the idea that sound—specifically through singing things like the Psalms—can link the devout to God.

Rolle wrote his own version of the Ancrene Wisse, called The Form of Living, in which he warned her of the difficulties she would face as an anchoress cut off from his guidance. He also sent her copies of other of his writings.

Margaret Kirkby and Richard Rolle had an interesting relationship. She suffered from seizures while in her cell, and Rolle would sit at the window to her cell and comfort her with her head on his shoulder.

Margaret's career as an anchoress took an unusual turn in 1357 when she was allowed to leave her cell in Hampole and enter a cell at a church in Ainderby that would allow her to observe Mass. Remarkably, she reversed this in the early 1380s, returning to the Hampole convent for her remaining years.

Anchorites were not too numerous, and having an extremely devout person sealed away in the church (or some other building's) wall was rare enough that the spectacle drew visitors and donors. A silver ewer was bequeathed to her by one of her patrons, Sir Bryan Stapleton, in 1394. She did not get to enjoy its use for long, however, since she died in 1394.

The man who guided her to and through the religious life, Richard Rolle, became one of the most widely read authors in the hundred years after he died. We will meet Richard Rolle next time.