Aelred of Rievaulx - Böcker

Aelred (1110–1167), abbot of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, has always been a controversial figure. He was beloved by his monks and widely admired, but also sharply criticized for his frankness about his own sinfulness and what some considered his favoritism and excessive leniency.Writings on Body and Soul includes a selection of the prolific abbot’s theological, historical, and devotional works. Each contains autobiographical elements, showing Aelred at turns confident and fearful, tormented and serene. In A Pastoral Prayer, he asserts his unworthiness and pleads for divine aid in leading his monks wisely and compassionately. Spiritual Friendship adapts Cicero’s dialogue on friendship for Christian purposes. A Certain Marvelous Miracle offers a riveting account of a pregnant teenage nun, the bloody vengeance wreaked on her seducer, and the miracle of her release from her fetters. Finally, Teachings for Recluses, addressed to Aelred’s sister, is a guide for women pursuing solitary religious perfection.Freshly revised editions of the Latin texts appear here alongside new English translations.

Aelred, abbot of the Yorkshire Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx from 1147 to 1167, wrote six spiritual treatises, seven historical treatises, and 182 liturgical sermons, most of which he delivered as chapter talks to his monks. Translations of the first twenty-eight of these sermons appeared in The First Clairvaux Collection, Advent-All Saints, published in 2001. The current volume contains eighteen sermons given on feasts beginning with the Nativity and concluding with a sermon for All Saints.

Aelred, abbot of the Yorkshire Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx from 1147 to 1167, wrote six spiritual treatises, seven historical treatises, and 182 liturgical sermons, many of which he delivered as chapter talks to his monks. Translations of the first twenty-eight of these sermons appeared in CF 58 in 2001, translated by Theodore Berkeley and M. Basil Pennington, and sermons twenty-nine through forty-six appeared in CF 77 in 2015, translated by Marie Anne Mayeski. The current volume contains thirty-eight sermons for feasts from Advent through the Nativity of Mary, taken from the Durham and Lincoln collections, edited by Gaetano Raciti in CCCM 2B and 2C.

Aelred (1110–1167) served Rievaulx Abbey, the second Cistercian monastery in England, for twenty years as abbot. During his abbacy he wrote thirteen treatises, some offering spiritual guidance and others seeking to advise King Henry II. He also wrote thirty-one sermons as a commentary on Isaiah 13–16 and 182 surviving liturgical sermons, mostly addressed to his monks.  This volume contains the first half of Aelred's ninety-eight liturgical sermons from the Reading-Cluny collection, Sermons 85 through 133. For the most part, the collection follows the liturgical year, beginning in this volume with three sermons for Advent and ending with five for Pentecost and three for the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. Sermons 134 through 182, from the Nativity of John the Baptist (June 24) through the Feast of All Saints, will appear in CF 87. These sermons appear to contain evidence of Aelred's editorial additions to the autograph of the sermons, as he added selections from patristic and medieval authors within the sermons and between them.

During his twenty years as abbot of the Yorkshire monastery of Rievaulx, Aelred preached many sermons: to his own monks, in other monasteries, and at significant gatherings outside the cloister. In these thirty-one homilies on Isaiah chapters 13–16, together with an introductory Advent sermon, Aelred interprets the burdens that Isaiah prophesied against the nations according to their literal, allegorical, and moral senses. He sees these burdens as playing a role both in the history of the church and in the progress of the individual soul. This collection of homilies is an ambitious, unified work of a mature monk, synthesizing biblical exegesis, ascetical teaching, spiritual exhortation, and a theory of history.

Aelred (1110–1167) served Rievaulx Abbey, the second Cistercian monastery in England, for twenty years as abbot. During his abbacy he wrote thirteen treatises, some offering spiritual guidance and others seeking to advise King Henry II. He also wrote thirty-one sermons as a commentary on Isaiah 13–16 and 182 surviving liturgical sermons, mostly addressed to his monks.  This volume contains the second half of Aelred's ninety-eight liturgical sermons from the Reading-Cluny collection, Sermons 134 through 182, as well as Aelred's sermon for the translation of Saint Edward the Confessor in 1163, from the critical edition by Peter Jackson first published in Cistercian Studies Quarterly. For the most part, the collection follows the liturgical year; this volume begins with a sermon for the birth of John the Baptist and ends with three sermons for the feast of All Saints. It contains sixteen Marian sermons as well as a sermon for the birth of Saint Katherine and a sermon for nuns.

Aelred of Rievaulx, like his Cistercian brothers, believed that the human person is created in the image and likeness of God. He analyzed the human soul therefore to understand by analogy something of the being of God. Possessing three faculties—intellect, memory, and will—the one, indivisible soul resembles the triune, simple Godhead. In that it is to some degree incomprehensible, the soul shares in the incomprehensibility of its Creator. By ascetic discipline and by training their innate spiritual faculties, the early Cistercians sought to restore persons to the perfection in which God had created them: to remember without forgetfulness, to know without error, to love without satiety.

Aelred of Rievaulx was an heir of Saxons living under Norman rule, a native speaker of English daily speaking French and Latin, a descendant of generations of married priests in an age when priests were forbidden to wed, an English monk in a French order, an abbot bred to service in the church but trained for service in the court. His sermons and treatises reflect Aelred the monk, the novice-master, and abbot. His historical works 'concerned with the political world of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England ' seek to explore the past as a guide for the present and assurance of the future. Drawing on the Bible, the Fathers of the Church, classical writers like Cicero, and medieval historians such as the Venerable Bede and Symeon of Durham, Aelred insisted on the importance of history for guiding human action, declaring that the meaning of the past can only be known in the present and that only at the end can one understand the beginning.In this volume are four of Aelred's seven historical works: Lament for David, King of the Scots (1153), The Genealogy of the Kings of the English (1153-1154), The Life of Saint Edward, King and Confessor (1162-63), and The Battle of the Standard (1153-54).

During his twenty years as abbot of the Yorkshire monastery of Rievaulx, Aelred preached many sermons: to his own monks, in other monasteries, and at significant gatherings outside the cloister. His disciple and biographer, Walter Daniel, mentions hundreds of sermons. In this volume, the first of several, we have twenty-eight of his sermons. They have been translated from the critical edition of a manuscript copied for the Abbey of Clairvaux in the latter part of the twelfth century–that is, not long after Aelred's death on 12 January 1167. Cistercian abbots were expected to speak to their monks in chapter every morning, commenting on the passage of Saint Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries that had just been read to the monks. In addition, they were required to preach to the whole community–both monks and lay brothers–on fifteen principal days of the liturgical year as well as on the anniversary of the dedication of the monastery’s church. This 'First Collection of Clairvaux' includes sermons for fourteen of these days: the First Sunday of Advent–the inauguration of the liturgical year–and Palm Sunday–the inauguration of Holy Week; five Christological feasts of Christmas, Epiphany, the Annunciation, Easter, and Ascension; three Marian feasts: her Purification, Assumption, and Nativity; the Feasts of All Saints, Saint Benedict of Nursia, the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, and Saints Peter and Paul.

Aelred entered the newly founded abbey of Rievaulx in 1133, after serving at the Scottish royal court. As novice master and abbot, this 'Bernard of the North' composed works of history and theology, and among the great medieval spiritual writers remains even today ' easiest and plainest guide to the practical question of how to begin to pray'. The three treatises translated in this volume seem to date from his years as abbot of Rievaulx (1146 until his death in 1166). In Jesus at the Age of Twelve, he reflects on the historical, allegorical, and moral meaning of gospel passage recounting the visit of the boy Jesus to the Temple at Jerusalem. In Rule of Life for a Recluse, the advises his sister on organizing her time and disciplining herself. Of it, Aelred Quire write: "..there is no work in which the true complexity of Aelred's ascetic inheritance can be better appreciated.' The intensely personal Pastoral Prayer 'comes nearest to being the embodiment of what his personal ideal finally came to be. It defies adequate analysis.'

Aelred of Rievaulx possessed a personal charm which drew friends and disciples naturally to him. His own experience of human weakness in a worldly life at the court of King David of Scotland made him sensitive to the doctrine of charity which he found among cistercian monks.The Mirror of Charity gives us a solid theology of the cistercian life. Aelred's deep knowledge of Scripture, his joy in his brethren, and his love of Christ shine from every page. Because the divine nature is love, as the Bible tells us, directing our love to God-love conforms us to the image of God that has been lost through sin. All love, to Aelred, is a participation in God-love that leads us to union.The Mirror of Charity, written at the beginning of his monastic life, and Spiritual Friendship, written near its end, form a set. Together they demonstrate both the consistency of his teaching and his unswerving love of God in Christ.

Spiritual Friendship is today the best known and perhaps most influential of the thirteen surviving works of Aelred, abbot of the great English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx from 1147 '1167. During his abbacy he built Rievaulx into a place of spiritual welcome and physical prosperity, desiring to make it a mother of mercy" to those in need. In a three-book Ciceronian dialogue Aelred defines human friendship as sacramental, beginning in creation, as God sought to place his own love of society in all his creatures, linking friends to Christ in this life and culminating in friendship with God in beatitude. This fresh new translation makes the work crisply readable, allowing the intellectual and Christian insight of this great Cistercian teacher and writer to speak clearly to today's seekers of love, wisdom, and truth.