Rolle Playing: “And the Word Became Flesh”

Abstract

Vividly in this epigraph,¹ but also throughout his Latin and Middle English writings, Richard Rolle, self-proclaimed mystic and hermit of fourteenth-century Yorkshire, exploits the interplay of text and identity by rendering the humanity of Christ as a linguistic sign. Christ s body literally becomes the body of the text; he is transformed into a particular assemblage of words whose meaning must be interpreted through careful reading like any other text. No longer a figure outside the text but rather a particular type of writing, Christ exceeds his usual function as a model for lived behavior. He represents a mode of thinking, a type of speech, and finally a particular pattern of discourse—Rolle’s dalyaunce. Moreover, Rolle s texts conflate the signifier “Christ” with the signifier “Richard Hermit” so that Rolle’s textual persona shares the transcendental authority of Christ’s name. “Richard Hermit,” thus elevated, becomes the guarantor of the Rollean text—the focal point around which Rolle spins his web of authorial privilege in his Latin writings. As a result of the success of the former, Rolle becomes the beneficiary of the pious devotion that Richard Hermit’s authoritative Middle English works of spiritual guidance evoke. In other words, Rolle’s textual maneuvers in his Latin writings gain him vernacular disciples by creating a saindy persona that authorizes Rolle’s Middle English writings as authoritative guides to understanding the “loue of Ihesu Crist” [love of Jesus Christ].