Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T16:16:38.022Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Ego Dormio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

Barry Windeatt
Affiliation:
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Named by modern editors after its opening text, Ego Dormio is usually considered the earliest of Rolle's English epistles and is an exposition of ‘thre degrees of lufe’, the third being ‘contemplatife lyfe’. According to CUL MS Dd. 5. 64 it was written for a nun of Yedingham Priory (near Pickering, North Yorkshire), and modern opinion has been divided on whether the exhortations against worldliness point to a laywoman reader (who may have been considering becoming a nun, or became one after the epistle's composition), or whether the opening and the emphasis on the second degree of love imply an intended reader who is already a nun. Whoever the recipient, there is a striking intimacy of address in the opening paragraph's identification with wooing for another and with a ‘messanger to bryng the to hys bed’, as also in the declaration ‘Til the I write specialy ….’ Such a reader may at least aspire to the third degree of love, in which ‘kyndelde with fyre of Cristes lufe … and feland lufe, joy, and swetnes … thi prayers turnes intil joyful sange’. Rolle's account of the three degrees of love is hence fittingly punctuated by lyric passages: the first degree closes with some unrhymed alliterative lines (‘Alle perisches and passes …’); the second degree is closed by a Passion Meditation lyric, which may serve as a means of transition to the third degree (although ‘I say noght that thou, or another that redes this, sal do it all’); the third degree closes with a love lyric to Jesus, offered, like the Passion lyric, for the reader's devotional use.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Ego Dormio
  • Edited by Barry Windeatt, Emmanuel College, Cambridge
  • Book: English Mystics of the Middle Ages
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511518812.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Ego Dormio
  • Edited by Barry Windeatt, Emmanuel College, Cambridge
  • Book: English Mystics of the Middle Ages
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511518812.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Ego Dormio
  • Edited by Barry Windeatt, Emmanuel College, Cambridge
  • Book: English Mystics of the Middle Ages
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511518812.005
Available formats
×