The Life Of Aelred Of Rievaulx: And the Letter to Maurice (Volume 57) (Cistercian Fathers Series)

Daniel, Walter

ISBN 10: 0879072571 / ISBN 13: 9780879072575

Published by Liturgical Press, 1994

About this Item

Fairly worn, but readable and intact. If applicable: Dust jacket, disc or access code may not be included.

Seller Inventory # GICWV.0879072571.A

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Life Of Aelred Of Rievaulx: And the Letter to Maurice (Volume 57) (Cistercian Fathers Series)
• Publisher: Liturgical Press
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0879072571
• ISBN 13: 9780879072575
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: acceptable

About this title

Synopsis

Writing shortly after Aelred of Rievaulx died on 12 January 1167, Walter Daniel, his secretary and fellow monk has created the picture of Aelred which endures to this day. We come to know a man of 'charity and astonishing sanctity', and ailing abbot whose monks sat chatting around his bed. Only in passing do we glimpse the ambitious young steward at the court of King David of Scotland, the ecclesiastical diplomat and political counselor who moved easily in royal and episcopal circles, or the canny property manager who guided his monasteries to prosperity. From Walter's pen we have a gentle, loving, ascetic abbot who offered spiritual guidance to his monks through conversation and to a wider audience through the treatises he composed, and who died a holy death. 

The reaction the Life provoked suggest that some contemporaries outside Rievaulx entertained a different picture of the abbot of Rievaulx. Whether motivated by simple dislike, by envy, or by dissatisfaction at a hastily informal 'canonization', the critics stung the indignant Walter to response. Perhaps they, like Walter, viewed as irreconcilable and struggled to keep apart two worlds which Aelred himself integrated and brought together. 

About the Author

Marsha L. Dutton is the executive editor of Cistercian Publications. Emeritus professor of English at Ohio University, she is the author of many articles and book chapters on a variety of Cistercian subjects. Dutton is also the editor of A Companion to Aelred of Rievaulx (1110–1167) (Brill, 2017), of four volumes of Aelred’s works in translation, and of “Aelred of Rievaulx” and (with Tyler Sergent) “The Cistercians” in the Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies. Her sixteen presentations on Aelred for Schola Cisterciensis appear on YouTube.