Andrew J. Albin

This project comprises critical commentary, translation, marginalia transcription and musical recording for the late medieval Anglo-Latin mystical treatise the “Melody of Love,” to be published by the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies. The “Melody of Love” represents the most spirited expression of the sensory mysticism of Richard Rolle, among the most widely read English authors of the Middle Ages and a highly influential figure for the period’s spiritual practices. Composed in mesmerizing alliterative Latin prose, the treatise has never been translated into English in its medieval or modern history and thus suffers from a vacuum of scholarly attention. This project redresses both oversights by offering much-needed commentary and interdisciplinary context alongside a stylistically analogous English prose rendering.