THE USE OF RICHARD ROLLE'S "LATIN PSALTER" IN RICHARD ULLERSTON'S "EXPOSITIO CANTICORUM SCRIPTURAE"

Abstract

Richard Rolle studied at Oxford. In the late fourteenth-century Offiaum et Miracula, we are told that his time there was sponsored by Thomas de Neville, Archdeacon of Durham. Rolle excelled in his studies, yet, 'considerans tempus uitae mortalis incertum et terminum tremebundum . . . cogitauit Deo inspirante prouide de seipso memorans sua nouissima, ne peccatorum laqueis caperetur. Proinde ... de Oxonia [rediuit] ad domum paternam.'1 This hagiographie commonplace would seem to establish a firm distinction between the academic and the devotional, the latter being Rolle's favoured form of life and the register in which his best-known writings were composed. His works have thus been described predominantly as 'devotional',2 'mystical',3 or even 'anti-intellectual'.4 Further, though Rolle's influence on WycHffite writers is well known - evident in the Lollard-interpolated versions of his English Psalter1 - he is not generally thought of as enjoying currency among the orthodox intellectual elite active within his former university.6Yet at least one of Rolle's Latin works, the so-called Latin Psalter, can be seen to have exerted influence on a leading orthodox intellectual in Oxford c. I4oo.7 The Latin Psalter provides a continuous or lemmatized commentary on the Gallican text of the Psalms, to which is appended a lemmatized commentary on six Old Testament canticles: Isaiah xu.i- 6, Isaiah xxxviu. 10-20, I Kings Ji.i- io, Exodus xv.i- 19, Habakkuk 111.2-19, and Deuteronomy xxxii.i- 43.® M. T. Gibson noted the tendency to include exegesis of these canticles in Psalter commentaries beginning in the early medieval period,9 and the expectation of their inclusion is indicated at the end of John WycHf 's postil on the Psalms, where, in Oxford, St John's College, MS 171, fol. 312% we are told, 'Sex cantica feralia inuenies suis locis exposita.' Rolle's gloss on these cantica was used, and Rolle was cited by name, by Richard Ullerston in his Expositio cctnticorum Scripturae, composed, according to the explicit in Bodleian Lyell 20, in Oxford in 1415.10Ullerston, who is known primarily for his determinatio on the translation of the Bible into English,11 makes his familiarity with Rolle's commentary apparent at the conclusion of his exposition of Deuteronomy xxxu, where he writes, 'Cui uero placet moraus instructio huius cantici, uideat expositionem uenerabilis uiri Ricardi HampolHs, qui eleganter exposuit ista cantica' (fol. 2l;1).12 Ullerston is compelled to point elsewhere for such 'moral' exposition because, as he notes in his general preface, 'pauci haec cantica ad sensum Htteralem exposuerunt, ad quern sensum intendimus ea exponere' (fol. 2o6ra) - that is, Ullerston's commentary is focused on the canticles' literal sense. Rolle is similarly invoked as Ullerston concludes his commentary on Exodus xv.i- 19:Totum istud canticum exponit Ricardus luculenter de eductione fidelium de spirituali Egypto, Christo duce per ipsum Moysen figurato, de submersione potestatis diaboHcae in baptismo tamquam in quodam mari Rubro tamquam sanguine Christi rubricato; et per gentes aduersas intelligit mystice motus carnis aduersantes ipsi spiritui, et per introducuonem in terram promissionis uult intelligere ingressum terrae uiuentium quam habituros nos speramus. (fol. 209)Here Ullerston provides an apt summary of Rolle's gloss on this canticle. The register of Rolle's gloss on Exodus xv is from the outset spiritual. It begins, 'Cantemus Domino, id est nos educti de spirituali Egypto, id est de tenebris uitiorum', and, indeed, Rolle glosses the 'currus Pharaonis' (Exod. xv.4) as potentatum diaboli' and the phrase 'submersi sunt in mari Rubro' (ibid.) as 'in baptismo sanguine Christi consecralo' (ed. Faber, sig. Q31).In his writing on these passages from Deuteronomy xxxu and Exodus xv, Ullerston invokes Rolle only after his verse-by-verse gloss on each canticle is complete. In these commentarial postscripts, Ullerston suggests that Rolle's interpretations are rich and potentially useful to the reader, but, by referring to them as 'morals instructio', Ullerston indicates that such glosses are nevertheless inconsistent with the hermeneutic priorities of his own interpretative project. …