Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Richard Rolle, English Writer
- 2 “Ihesu louynge, Ihesu thynkynge, Ihesu desyrynge”: Affectivity, the Devotional Movement and Rolle's Implied Reader
- 3 “I wil becum a messager to bring þe to hys bed”: Ego Dormio
- 4 “A noble tretise of loue”: The Commandment
- 5 ‘A man or a womman þat is ordeynet to contemplatif lif’: The Form of Living
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - ‘A man or a womman þat is ordeynet to contemplatif lif’: The Form of Living
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Richard Rolle, English Writer
- 2 “Ihesu louynge, Ihesu thynkynge, Ihesu desyrynge”: Affectivity, the Devotional Movement and Rolle's Implied Reader
- 3 “I wil becum a messager to bring þe to hys bed”: Ego Dormio
- 4 “A noble tretise of loue”: The Commandment
- 5 ‘A man or a womman þat is ordeynet to contemplatif lif’: The Form of Living
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Uera enim amicicia non potest esse sine mutua delectacione amicorum, et eorum collocucione desiderabili, atque consolatoris affatu, et hec amicicia si gracia Dei informata et tota in Deo fiat, et ad Deum referatur et tendat, dicitur tunc sancta amicicia, et est multum meritoria.
[For true friendship cannot exist without mutual enjoyment and pleasant fellowship and helpful conversation. And if this friendship is founded in God's grace, and is wholly his, related and directed to him, it can then be called a holy friendship, and it is very rewarding.]
LIKE EGO DORMIO and The Commandment, The Form of Living is a icomposite work that deploys material from Rolle's own Latin canon as well as from other sources. But, also like its predecessors, The Form of Living is a unique text which develops a singular discourse, in this case a discourse of friendship, to fulfil its affective purpose of turning the reader to the love of God. The Form of Living is the longest, and in many ways the most complex, of Rolle's vernacular treatises and holds the unique position in his canon of being the only work whose date and occasion of composition are known to us; it was written in late 1348 or early 1349, in the last months of his life, on the occasion of his friend and disciple Margaret Kirkeby's enclosure at an anchorhold in Richmond.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle , pp. 140 - 186Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004