Turning at last from this long series of analyses, and looking back to take our final view of the ground we have covered in the course of making them, the shape of Rolle's career appears in many respects as schematic as the structure of ideas around which it was built. The literary landscape across which our eye passes is patterned, at least in retrospect, with an almost obsessive neatness. Here, as we survey Rolle's works in what seems to be chronological order, is a careful progression from discussion of the active life, to a long engagement in the affairs of the contemplative life, to a final and selfconscious shift to the perspective of the ‘mixed’ life. There, focussing our gaze in a different way, the same progression appears as an elaborate movement from an early phase of cautious imitation, to a middle one of audaciously original inspiration, to a late one of confidently individual spiritual direction. There, too, in the smaller group of works which are at the heart of this study, from Incendium Amoris to Melos Amoris, we can see a sustained evolution from one phase of self-revelation to the next, which corresponds in some way to an imagistic development from fervor to dulcor to canor; perhaps this is meant to appear as the fundamental triad on the model of which all the others are constructed. A glance at some of the individual works which make up our total picture reveals equally careful rhythms, and gives some grounds for confidence that all this patterning is not merely in the eye of the beholder.