Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority

This 1991 book is a literary study of the career of Richard Rolle (d.1349), a Yorkshire hermit and mystic who was one of the most widely read English writers of the late Middle Ages. Nicholas Watson proposes a chronology of Rolle's writings, and offers a literary analyses of a number of his works. He shows how Rolle's career, as a writer of passionate religious works in Latin and later in English, has as its principal focus the establishment of his own spiritual authority. The book also addresses wider issues, suggesting an alternative way of looking at mystical writing in general and challenging the prevailing view of the relationship between medieval and renaissance attitudes to authors and authority.