Observations placeholder
Rolle, Richard - Incendium Amoris - On humility
Identifier
013665
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Rolle is actually describing saints here but it is convenient to keep the observation with him.
Rolle is referencing the Vita S. Maglorii, which relates how Maglorius, bishop of Dol, was bidden by an angel "that he might seek to offer ceaseless praises to the Lord, to go forth from hence, and set forth to lead a solitary life in some desert spot."' and how Maglorius then left his flock and "betook himself to the desert, where he attained great holiness, and shone with many miracles. "
As one commentator has said " Actually, however, he seems to have founded a monastery at Sark, which even then was not deserted"
A description of the experience
Richard Rolle - Incendium Amoris
The hermit life therefore is great, if it be greatly led. For blessed Maglorius also, who was full of miracles and rejoiced from his childhood in angelic visitations, was made archbishop according to the prophecy of blessed Sampson his predecessor. And when he was warned by an angel who visited him, he put away the archbishopric, and chose the hermit life, and at the end of his life he was (divinely) warned of his death.
So also blessed Cuthbert passed from a bishopric to the life of an anker. If therefore men like these acted thus to obtain greater merit, what thinking man shall dare to set any state in the church about the life of the solitary?