French government, and was entrusted with numerous commissions for the decoration of public buildings and for commemorative pictures, like the “President Carnot at Versailles at the Centenary of the États Généraux” (now at Versailles Palace), and “The Tzar and President Faure laying the Foundation Stone of the Alexandre III. Bridge.” For the Hôtel de Ville he executed “The Pleasures of Life” and “The Rosetime of Youth.” Besides the pictures already mentioned, a vast number of his works are to be found in the public galleries of France. The museum of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris owns his “National Fête at Paris in 1880”; the Cognac Museum, Labour, Works at Suresnes”; the Luxembourg, his “War” and “Manda Lametrie, farm-hand.” At Avignon Museum is the “Don Juan and Haidee”; at Laval Museum, “Halt!”; at Fontainebleau Palace, “In Normandy”; at Pau Museum, “Roubey, cementer”; and at the Museum of Geneva, “Marianne Offrey, crieuse de vert.” In portraiture he is known by his “Yves Guyot,” “Coquelin cadet,” “Jules Simon,” &c., but his greatest success was the group of “Fritz Thaulow and his Wife.” In 1905 he replaced Carolus-Duran as president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, of which he was one of the founders.
ROLL (O. Fr. rolle, roll, mod. rôle, Lat. rotulus, dim. of rota, wheel), something rolled or wound up in a cylindrical form on an axis, or something which “rolls,” that is, moves or is moved along a service by a turning motion. Primarily the word is
used of a piece of writing material, such as parchment or paper,
rolled up for the purpose of convenient storage, handling, &c.
This is the meaning of the Med. Lat. rotulus, defined by Du
Cange as “Scheda, charta in speciem rotulae seu rotae convoluta.”
It was thus the convenient name for any document kept in
this form as an official record, and hence for any register, record,
catalogue or official list. “The Rolls” was the name of the
building where the records of the Chancery Court were kept,
the keeper of which was the Master (q.v.) of the Rolls, now the
title of the third member of the English Supreme Court of
Judicature. Other familiar examples of the use of the word
in this sense are the list of those admitted as qualified solicitors,
whence the phrase “to strike off the rolls,” of removal by the
court of a solicitor for offences or delinquencies. There are
numerous applications of the word to other objects packed in
a cylindrical form, such as tobacco, cloth, &c., and particularly
to a small loaf of bread rolled over before baking, the crust
being thin and crisp and the crumb spongy.
In architecture a “roll” or “scroll” moulding is a moulding resembling a section of a roll or scroll of parchment with the end overlapping; a “roll and fillet” moulding is a section of a cylindrical moulding with a square fillet running along the centre of the face (see Label). For the sense of an object that rolls, the word “roller” is more general, but “roll” is frequent in technical usage for revolving cylinders, especially when working in fixed bearings. For the rolling of steel see Rolling Mill.
ROLLAND, JOHN (fl. 1560), Scottish poet, appears to have been a priest of the diocese of Glasgow, and to have been known in Dalkeith in 1555. He is the author of two poems, the Court of Venus and a translation of the Seven Sages. The former, which was printed by John Ros in 1575, may have been written before 1560. The latter was translated from a Scots prose version at the suggestion of an aunt (“ane proper wenche”), who had found his treatment of the courtly allegory involved and uninteresting.
The Court of Venus was edited by Walter Gregor for the S.T.S. in 1884. See W. A. Craigie’s long list of corrections of that edition in the Modern Language Quarterly (March 1898). The Seven Sages was printed in 1578, and frequently during the earlier decades of the 17th century. It was reprinted by David Laing for the Bannatyne Club (1837). Sibbald, in his Chronicle of Scottish Poetry (iii. 287), hinted that Rolland may be the author of the Thrie Priestis of Peblis. There is not a scrap of evidence in support of this; and there are many strong reasons against the ascription.
ROLLE DE HAMPOLE, RICHARD (d. 1349), English hermit and author, was born near the end of the 13th century, at Thornton (now Thornton Dale), near Pickering, Yorkshire. His father, William Rolle, was perhaps a dependant of the Neville family. Richard was sent to Oxford at the expense of Thomas de Neville, afterwards archdeacon of Durham. At Oxford he gave himself to the study of religion rather than to the subtleties of scholastic philosophy, for which he professed a strong distaste. At the age of nineteen he returned to his father’s house, and, making a rough attempt at a hermit’s dress out of two kirtles of his sister’s and a hood belonging to his father, he ran away to follow the religious vocation. At Dalton, near Rotherham, he was recognized by John de Dalton, who had been at Oxford with him. After satisfying himself of Rolle’s sanity, Dalton’s father provided him with food and shelter and a hermit’s dress. Rolle then entered on the contemplative life, passing through the preliminary stages of purification and illumination, which lasted for nearly three years, and then entering the stage of sight, the full revelation of the divine vision. He is very exact in his dates, and attained, he says, the highest stage of his ecstasy four years and three months after the beginning of his conversion. Richard belonged to no order and acknowledged no rule. He left the Daltons, and wandered from place to place, resting when he found friends to provide for his wants. He seems to have desired to form a rule of hermits, but met with much opposition. The pious compilers of his “office” evidently thought it necessary to defend him against the charge of mere vagrancy. He nowhere says himself that his preaching made many converts, but his example was followed by many recluses in the north of England. After some years of wandering he gave up his more energetic propaganda, contenting himself with advising those who sought him out. He began also to write the songs and treatises by which he was to exert his widest influence. He settled in Richmondshire, twelve miles from the recluse Margaret Kirkby, whom he had cured of a violent seizure. To her some of his works are dedicated. Finally he removed to Hampole, near Doncaster, invited by an inmate of the Cistercian nunnery of St Mary. There he died on the 29th of September 1349. Many miracles were wrought at his shrine, and, in view of an expected canonization, an office was drawn up giving an account of his life and the legends connected with it.
Richard Rolle had a great influence on his own and the next generation. In his exaltation of the spiritual side of religion over its forms, his enthusiastic celebration of the love of Christ, and his assertion of the individualist principle, he represented the best side of the influences that led to the Lollard movement. He was himself a faithful son of the church, and the political activity of the Lollards was quite foreign to his teaching. The popularity of his devotional writings is attested by the numerous existing editions and by the many close imitations of them.
A very full list of his Latin and English works is given (pp. 36–43) in Dr Carl Horstmann’s edition (1895–96) of his works in the Library of Early English Writers. Some of his works exist in both English and Latin, and it is often not easy to say which is the original version. The most considerable of them are The Pricke of Conscience and his Commentary on the Psalter.
The Pricke of Conscience is a long religious poem, in rhyming couplets, dealing with the beginning of man’s life, the instability of the world, why death is to be dreaded, of doomsday, of the pains of hell, and the joys of heaven, the two latter subjects being treated with uncompromising realism. Rolle wrote in the northern dialect, but southern transcripts are also found, and the poem exists in a Latin version (Stimulus conscientiae). The sources of this work included the De Contemptu Mundi sive de miseria humanae conditionis of Pope Innocent Ill., and Rolle also showed a knowledge of Bartholomew Glanville, Thomas Aquinas and Honorius of Awtun. His English devotional commentary on the Psalms follows very closely his Latin Expositio Psalterii, which he based partly on Peter Lombard’s Catena. It often agrees with the English metrical Psalter preserved in three MSS. in the British Museum (Cotton Vesp. D. vii., Egerton 614, and Harl. 1770). Dr R. F. Littledale in his edition (1873) of J. M. Neale’s Commentary on the Psalms called it a “terse mystical paraphrase, which often comes Very little short in beauty and depth of Dionysius the Carthusian himself.”
There is no complete and accessible edition of his works. The best collection is by C. Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, An English Father of the Church and his Followers
