ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 examines the trajectories of deification in Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum and The Form of Living. Although we lack a critical edition of Incendium Amoris, which makes absolute claims difficult, the chapter tries to show that a case can be made for reading this early work of Rolle’s as advocating some form of deification, albeit perhaps implicitly. The same is true of a work probably composed around the same period, Tractatus Super Psalmum Vicesimum. Comparisons are made between these works and Rolle’s final text, The Form of Living, which illustrates that similar ideas pertaining to deification appear in Rolle’s vernacular writing. The chapter aims to show that Rolle’s account in each case owes a significant debt to the ethical tradition of deification that has its roots in the writings of the Desert Fathers and Evagrius Ponticus.
