Richard Rolle's English Psalter and the Making of a Lollard Text

Abstract

Rolle's English Psalter and the Making of a Lollard Text. Richard Rolle's English Psalter was frequently copied and, by the early fifteenth century, was a source of religious controversy, as one writer complained that Lollard scribes had contaminated an otherwise orthodox text by introducing heretical glosses. Modem scholars, largely content to accept this claim, have struggled to identify exclusively Lollard elements in the manuscripts. This essay reexamines the problem of defining heterodoxy in the English Psalter by focusing less on the putative sources of interpolated passages than on how features of Rolle's original text-notably its emphasis on personal confession and its ambivalence about clerical authority-made it susceptible to both Lollard theology and ecclesiastical scrutiny. The author concludes that, while manuscript variation undoubtedly raised suspicion, the heresy of the English Psalter should also be seen as the product of historical change, as an ambitious vernacular text coll...