by Linda Tiessen Wiebe

WHAT DID ROLLE mean by "fire of love"? Why was it central to his understanding of spirituality? What are the dangers of stressing ecstatic experiences over a more diverse spiritual discipline? I have included personal answers, but these questions can also be used as a study guide. (Click here for an imaginative interview with Richard Rolle).

1. Compare and contrast Richard Rolle's mystical emphasis with that of other 13th century English Mystics.
   
   
2. Describe the experience of the "fire of love" and "heavenly music".
   
   
3. Armstrong appears to have a strong reaction to Rolle's spirituality. What parts of her critique would you question and what aspects seem to stand?
   
   
4. How would you evaluate Rolle's independent spiritual style in light of Emerson's idea of "Self Reliance"? Is Rolle a rigid charismatic or sectarian Christian or was he on to a form of immanentism that requires submission to an inner light?
   
   
5. Armstrong compares Catherine of Siena to Richard Rolle when she says, " She (and Rolle by implication) never found a spiritual director who was either intelligent or knowledgeable enough to control her and lead her beyond her perilous psychic hinterland." Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Armstrong's emphasis on spiritual direction.
   
   
6. According to Armstrong the "higher" mystics warn against reliance on sensation and inward physical or emotional revelations. Why do they do this?
   
   
7. Imagine that you are Richard Rolle. Write a short, to the point rebuttal to Armstrong's judgment of you, making concessions where necessary.
   
   
8. Recount the instances where your psyche has lead you into a false spirituality where you have not interpreted your experience appropriately. What could you have done to avoid the faulty interpretation?
   
   

1. Compare and contrast Richard Rolle's mystical emphasis with that of other 13th century English Mystics.
   
   Similarities include separating from an over-analytical intellectualism, although all were educated, stress on grace and on gift nature of good works.
   
   Richard Rolle
   
   Rolle's emphasis seems to be on sublime experience being personally authoritative. These experiences involved physical and emotional sensations and were preferable to a spirituality guided by the discipline of an external authority. He is the only one with an anti-authoritarian understanding of the church.
   
   Walter Hilton
   
   Hilton's Ladder of Perfection is like The Cloud of Unknowing, in tracing the steps of the inner spiritual path for the novice. Like Julian of Norwich, Hilton was influenced by Augustine in seeing God as indescribable and yet also seen best through a trinitarian understanding of the human mind (which mirrors its creator). Interesting note: this foreshadows archetypal psychology which sees God within the inner process, deep within that which he has created. Walter Hilton links his mystical insight to traditional, Augustinian theology.
   
   The Cloud of Unknowing
   
   This is a manual for the novice, like Hilton's Ladder of Perfection. Cloud stresses the unknowability of God who can only be approached through mystery, wordlessness and silence. This ineffability is the organizing center (the One thing) through which God is experienced.
   
   Julian of Norwich
   
   Julian also wrote from personal experience, like Rolle. She struggled with tension between theology of the elect and the goodness of God, and tried to deal effectively with the anxiety of being unsaved. Like Hilton, Julian sees God mirrored in three-fold powers of the human mind.
   
   
2. Describe the experience of the "fire of love" and "heavenly music".
   
   This was a physical sensation of heat in the breast that was accompanied by consoling emotions. Rolle interpreted this experience as God showing his love towards him. Heavenly music was another inner physical sensation for Rolle. He heard musical harmonies that were inaudible to others. The music also came with pleasurable feelings and he interpreted it similarly to the "fire of love". This heavenly music seemed to be more advanced than contemporary music, because he found church music intolerable after his experience. Armstrong suggests that Rolle may have been a musical manquŽ (one who is frustrated in the fulfillment of aspirations or talents).
   
   
3. Armstrong appears to have a strong reaction to Rolle's spirituality. What parts of her critique would you question and what aspects seem to stand?
   
   Armstrong sees Rolle as an example of what a mystic is not. She interprets his language to be too showy and finds his attitude offensive towards women and generally uncompassionate towards people. Because of his self-appointed hermit life-style, she sees him as undisciplined. His focus on intense physical and emotional manifestations of mystic visions she interprets as dangerous. I think her critique could be summed by saying that Rolle is more concerned with his experience than with the content or communication of the visions he received.
   
   Rolle may have had a communication problem in his writing. But Rosamund Allen (Richard Rolle: The English Writings) interprets much of it as in keeping with the mystical tradition of Anselm and Bernard. In Rolle's more rhapsodic passages she interprets him as attempting to evoke, more than describe, a mystical experience for the reader. Not all of his writing was ecstatic; Rolle wrote to all three stages of the contemplative life: purgation, illumination and union. Much of his writing had a tone of humility and devotion. He also wrote several biblical commentaries and reflected a knowledge and love of scripture in his interpretations. Rolle was also one of the first mystics to write in English, which would suggest an attempt to communicate with the common people. Allen makes the point that if Rolle wanted to flaunt his penmanship, he would have written his later, more mature work in the Latin he was trained in, rather than a still poetically awkward English. I guess the strongest case against mere aggrandizement would be that most of his writings were addressed towards specific individuals, and most of these women. Allen states that the general tone of these writings is warm and encouraging.
   
   I find Armstrong's critique that he was strongly misogynist a bit strange, given that most of Rolle's wards were women. Armstrong makes no mention of this. There is an anecdote written of how Rolle, within the last five years of his life, walked 12 miles to comfort one of his subjects by holding her head while she was having a seizure and vowing that even if she had been the devil he would have held her. Armstrong and Allen both refer to another set of incidents with women and draw opposite conclusions. What Armstrong finds projectional and immature Allen interprets as satiric and a form of self-deprecating humor in the line of Chaucer. Armstrong also seems to ignore the context of 13th century misogyny within which Rolle lived and wrote. Allen seems to have more historical empathy.
   
   I suspect that Rolle's spirituality is idiosyncratic, but I wouldn't write him off as uncompassionate or undisciplined. Besides writing mostly to individuals, the seizure anecdote above suggests a tender heart. The fact that his writing reflected the most current theology, and that he wrote several biblical commentaries, suggests he is not lacking in discipline. It is possible he also spent several years at the Sorbonne in Paris. (Historical trivia: Rolle lived in the same time period portrayed in the movie Braveheart).
   
   Intense emotional experience seems to be Rolle's hallmark. But Allen points out that he was well-rooted in the mystical tradition from the 12th century on, which encouraged this emotional emphasis. Allen interprets Rolle, like Anselm and Bernard before him, using physical metaphors to describe mystical experiences; the problem may not be in the individual experience, but in the lack of language to describe it. If I place him within the context that Armstrong painted of a growing dissatisfaction with external authorities, Rolle would fit the tendency to look for authority in inner experience. In this light, Rolle's leaving Oxford after five years, (two years short of a degree) could be seen as a disdain for philosophic, scholastic learning in favor of direct knowledge of God.
   
   From these two interpreters I get an impression of Rolle as a gifted, if troubled, individual. I think he was probably much more ambiguous than Armstrong paints him, and did have a pure love for God. I suspect Armstrong's strong critique of Rolle is partly projectional, having something to do with her own failure at mysticism, and possibly with her narrow definition of mysticism. Her elitist understanding is not able to include aspects of Rolle's spirituality which are helpful because other aspects are so idiosyncratic. Having said that, I do agree with her that Rolle's effectiveness as a spiritual director was hampered because he himself was never submitted to a higher authority. While this might be partly a reaction to an over-restrictive and corrupt religious system, I think Rolle had extreme emotional experiences that he didn't know how to interpret. He probably used his writing to attempt an integration of his experiences, but the fact that many of his followers over-interpreted his physical metaphors to a harmful extent shows he didn't succeed. I suspect that if he had submitted to a director, he might have found a better outlet for his devotion. This might have enabled him to translate the grace he experienced into a language better suited for instruction. Or he may have realized that teaching was not his call. I also agree with Armstrong that he suffered from isolation and was probably very lonely. A monastic community would have alleviated this somewhat, but Allen suggests that he may not have been temperamentally suited for relationships. Having said that, I suspect he still experienced a deep grace and did help many people, because he inspired the devotion of the common people until well into the 16th century. The compassion evident towards the end of his life suggests that he was somehow coping with this pathology.
   
   
4. How would you evaluate Rolle's independent spiritual style in light of Emerson's idea of "Self Reliance"? Is Rolle a rigid charismatic or sectarian Christian or was he on to a form of immanentism that requires submission to an inner light?
   
   Emerson's idea of Self-Reliance is based on the assumption that goodness resides within man not outside him, and the greatest service a person can do society is to discover that goodness. Ultimately no guide can assist in this; seeing external sources as authoritative is merely an abdication of responsibility.
   
   From this perspective Rolle is truly self-reliant. He left Oxford because he couldn't tolerate the rote learning advocated there. He refused to enter spiritual direction because he couldn't find a guide that he trusted. He strove to understand intense subjective experiences, came to understand these as examples of God's love, and attempted to teach others in the inner way. Emerson's inner light seems to be an intuitive understanding. Rolle wouldn't talk about it in Emerson's immanent terms, but he moves in that direction. It is the inner experience of God that is authoritative for both, whether that God is the true human or loving Father.
   
   An Emersonian approach would encourage a person to take their own perceptions seriously by submitting them to reason, and then follow where those reasoned perceptions lead. Rolle seems to have done this in his interpretations of fire of love and heavenly music, since these became seminal images for him. But I can't help thinking that he also struggled with interpreting these experiences. Perhaps his struggle was with submitting to reason, since these experiences seem to be idiosyncratic. Reading contemporary mystical and theological writing (Bernard, Anselm) may have been his way of attempting understanding. Emerson seems to assume reason is equally present in all. But I think we need a certain quality of experience of self, and a strong degree of self-critique in order to move from egocentricity to true self-reliance. This suggests a developmental task. Whether Rolle had this in his life or not, I don't know. I would guess that as he matured, his experiences were more tempered with what he continued to read, since literary analysis shows strong influences of various writers. Whether he allowed writers to critique his writing or only looked for justification is unknown.
   
   However, Emerson also writes that the way to this inner goodness is to maintain honesty and truth-telling within oneself. Rolle had trouble with this, at least in light of external criticism. He maintained that his detractors' intent was to malign him and commentators say he was defensive in responding to them. This seems to suggest that he wasn't completely confident in his inner experiences, but it could also mean that people didn't know how to interpret the subjective nature of his language.
   
   At first I thought Emerson and Rolle were writing from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. But they both stand within the experience and write evocatively. Rolle is writing at a time when people were just beginning to articulate a spirituality of the Divine within. Emerson has the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement behind him. They both use rapturous language. But what Emerson articulates in terms of human reason, Rolle describes as extra-sensory experiences of God's love. It's interesting that they both had an aversion to footnoting, while their sources are evident in their work.
   
   If Rolle interpreted his inner experience rigidly, he would demand his followers to replicate his experience. If he was moving towards immanentism, he would encourage his followers to cultivate inner awareness of their own unique spirituality. It appears that his teaching was directed at those receptive to his ideas. I don't think Rolle was sectarian. He didn't advocate church reform or revolution, but made a call to an inner experience, very similar to Emerson in Self-Reliance. But his spirituality is idiosyncratic. The peasants re-interpreted his life to support their revolts several decades after his death.
   
   
5. Armstrong compares Catherine of Siena to Richard Rolle when she says, " She (and Rolle by implication) never found a spiritual director who was either intelligent or knowledgeable enough to control her and lead her beyond her perilous psychic hinterland." Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Armstrong's emphasis on spiritual direction.
   
   From Armstrong's perspective, the obvious benefit of direction was to obtain guidance in integrating mystical experiences instead of being swallowed or fused with those experiences. The Unconscious is seductive and finds as many ways to distract as to enlighten the seeker. A wise director would give discernment to what meaning lay behind an experience and to where it leads.
   
   While an unguided seeker runs the risk of being overcome by the Unconscious, a guided seeker is equally vulnerable. She has put her trust temporarily in an outer source. Unless she learns the discernment that the director administers, the seeker will eventually sell her birthright, cutting herself off from the source of spiritual renewal. Spiritual direction can discourage the work of intellectually integrating the experience, and the seeker is then still at the mercy of the Unconscious. So there was a wisdom working in Catherine of Siena to not choose her director lightly. And in choosing direction, the seeker must always realize they are still exercising their will in that choice; a strange combination of submission and assertion.
   
   However, it seems that any spiritual path involves submission to a Higher Source. Even psychologically, the Ego must give way to the Self. It seems the gift we've been given is only released in humble recognition of our connection to Mystery. If this is recognized, then the seeker is submitting not to the director, but the director's God. The same Spirit is served, whether guiding or following.
   
   
6. According to Armstrong the "higher" mystics warn against reliance on sensation and inward physical or emotional revelations. Why do they do this?
   
   There is something about remaining attached to the physical body which encourages the ego perspective. Sensations or emotions focus attention on "me". Mysticism is about cultivating a perspective of the Other, learning to see life from an impersonal view. Looking for the presence of certain sensations increases self-consciousness, which meditation is trying to counter-act. Actively striving for extra-ordinary experiences is dangerous because it involves subtle self-denigration and works righteousness. It can also become addictive, another form of attachment.
   
   Physical or emotional revelations are difficult to interpret. They can be pointers to deeper spiritual truth. They can also be quixotic and distracting, especially when one begins to pay more attention to these responses than the object of meditation.
   
   There appears to be a contradiction in this warning, however. On the one hand, classic mysticism teaches a detachment from the body. On the other hand, they seek the Divine within their own experience. I think the key to this, and the reason behind the warnings, is not so much the presence or absence of emotions, but in making them central. When mystic meditation is working, excitement and control give way to a calm and observing stance which can include deep emotions or sensations but is not bound by them.
   
   
7. Imagine that you are Richard Rolle. Write a short, to the point rebuttal to Armstrong's judgment of you, making concessions where necessary.
   
   My dear Madam Armstrong, you say that I am self-absorbed, over-subjective, lacking discipline and compassion. Well, I would have called you one of my persecutors when I was alive. But now I see that what I experienced and what you criticize are the same phenomena. The central aspect to my hermetic life was my subjectivity. I agree that basing my spiritual direction on subjectivity was less effective because I didn't balance it with reasoned intuition. It saddens me that this resulted in people imitating me, damaging themselves in the process of seeking God. They dishonored their own uniqueness and found themselves more distant from God. This was never my intention.
   
   I differ from you in my interpretation of this subjectivity. My sin was not subjectivity but in not understanding it well enough. My lack of a spiritual guide was partly due to my willfulness. But the loneliness I often felt, which you noted, was my acknowledgement of needing to be understood by someone wiser. As it was, I honored my uniqueness as fully as I knew how. It was difficult, it was also my path to God. My compassion was limited by scope, not in quality. Where less subjective mystics were able to reach more people through effective writing, I was able to be intensely present to a few people. And ecstatic yet torturous raptures led me to discipline myself by writing. I wrote what I loved, and my devotion served to bring the English language together with spiritual writing. You must be careful not to limit your definitions too tightly. God's love pours out in infinite form; he is in everything.
   
   
8. Recount the instances where your psyche has lead you into a false spirituality where you have not interpreted your experience appropriately. What could you have done to avoid the faulty interpretation?
   
   I have a tendency of interpreting experiences as overly negative. That resonates with my experience of reading about Rolle, because I think Armstrong interprets his life too negatively. My perfectionism and judgementalism incline me to give blanket negative interpretations, instead of spending more time to understand the full meaning of experiences. The false spirituality is the false humility that comes with negativity. Feeling negative about myself assumes I have to become more than I am; it denies grace. It is also despairing because it doesn't allow for the healing aspect of acknowledging truth.