Saint Aelred of Rievaulx

He was born at Hexham in 1109, the son of one of the married priests who were still common in England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, according to Herbert Thurston's article in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia. ¹ His name is also written Ailred, Æthelred and Ethelred. ¹

While still young he came to know David, the youngest son of Saint Margaret, who soon afterward became King of Scotland. ¹ At David's court he served for some years as a kind of page or companion to the young Prince Henry. ¹ Thurston says the king "loved the pious English youth," promoted him in his household, and wanted to make him a bishop. ¹ Obrecht's article on Rievaulx calls him "a most dear friend and companion" of David. ²

He wrote about those years himself. In the prologue to On Spiritual Friendship, as Fr. Aelred Niespolo quoted it in a feast-day homily, he remembered that at school "the charm of my companions pleased me very much," that he "gave my whole soul to affection and devoted myself to love," and that "nothing seemed to me more sweet, nothing more agreeable, nothing more practical, than to love." ⁶

He gave up the court and the bishopric to become a Cistercian at Rievaulx in Yorkshire, then newly founded. ¹ Obrecht tells how the abbey began: the Archbishop of York wanted a house of the new order in his diocese, Saint Bernard sent a colony of monks from Clairvaux, and Walter Espec gave them land in a wild valley on the little river Rie, which they took possession of in 1131. ² Their land was poor at first and they suffered for years before their labor made it productive. ²

Aelred was soon made master of novices, and Thurston says he was "long remembered for his extraordinary tenderness and patience towards those under his charge." ¹ In 1143, when William, Earl of Lincoln, founded a Cistercian abbey at Revesby in Lincolnshire, Aelred was sent there with twelve monks to take possession of it. ¹ He seems to have met Saint Gilbert of Sempringham while he was there. ¹

His stay at Revesby was short. Thurston says he was elected abbot of Rievaulx in 1146; Obrecht, who calls him its third abbot, gives his abbacy as 1147 to 1167. ¹² He was superior of a community of three hundred monks and, Thurston says, head of all the Cistercian abbots in England, so that disputes were referred to him and he often traveled to visit the order's houses. ¹ Obrecht writes that within a few years of its founding Rievaulx was "by far the most celebrated monastery in England," and that Aelred, for his sweetness of character and depth of learning, was called Bernardo prope par, nearly Bernard's equal. ²

He kept up with the world he had left. On a journey to Scotland in 1153 he saw King David for the last time, and after David's death he wrote a sketch of his character. ¹ Thurston says he had considerable influence over Henry II in the early years of that reign and persuaded him to join Louis VII of France in meeting Pope Alexander III at Touci in 1162. ¹ In 1163 he was at Westminster Abbey for the translation of Saint Edward the Confessor, and for the occasion wrote a life of the king and preached a homily in his praise. ¹ The next year he went on a mission to the Picts of Galloway, whose chief, Thurston says, "is said" to have been so moved that he became a monk. ¹

He left a large collection of sermons, and it was their eloquence that earned him the name of the English Saint Bernard. ¹ His ascetical works include the Speculum Charitatis, or Mirror of Charity, a treatise on spiritual friendship, and a letter to an anchoress. ¹ Benedict XVI, speaking of Julian of Norwich, noted that the women who chose the life of a recluse in those centuries adopted rules written for them, "such as the rule compiled by St Aelred of Rievaulx." ⁴ His histories include a life of Saint Edward, an account of the Battle of the Standard of 1138, a life of Saint Ninian, and works on the church of Hexham and on the founding of Fountains Abbey. ¹

Benedict XVI, speaking to a group of new bishops in 2010, quoted at length a prayer of his on what it means to be placed over others, citing it to the Speculum Charitatis. ³ In it the abbot tells God that he has been set at the head of God's family, unworthy as he is, so that God's mercy and wisdom may be seen; that when such a community is well governed, it is God and not its rulers who sustains it; and that the glory belongs to God's name. ³ The Pope called the words "particularly illuminating" for the bishop's role as father, brother and friend. ³ This page summarizes the prayer and does not reprint it.

Fr. Niespolo's homily quotes the opening of the dialogue On Spiritual Friendship, spoken to his friend Ivo: "Here we are then, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst." ⁶ He also quotes the line "How much does a man know if he does not know himself," and calls "God is friendship" Aelred's most famous saying. ⁶

For years he was in pain. Thurston writes that he journeyed to France for the general chapter of his order "although suffering from a complication of most painful maladies," and that through his last years he gave "an extraordinary example of heroic patience under a succession of infirmities." ¹ He ate so little that he was described as "more like a ghost than a man." ¹

His death "is generally supposed to have occurred 12 January, 1166," Thurston says, "although there are reasons for thinking that the true year may be 1167." ¹

None of the sources consulted for this page names Saint Aelred of Rievaulx as patron of anything, and the page does not supply one. ¹ He is remembered by the Cistercians and Benedictines who keep his feast as a teacher of friendship and of charity. ⁵⁶

Saint Aelred's feast is January 12, the day of his death. ¹⁵ The Bernardine Cistercians of Hyning in Lancashire marked it on January 12, 2017, writing, "Today is the feast of St. Aelred of Rievaulx," and Fr. Niespolo preached his feast-day homily at Saint Andrew's Abbey in California on January 12, 2006. ⁵⁶

He began as a young man at court who, by his own account, found nothing sweeter than to love and be among his friends. ⁶ He did not leave that behind when he entered Rievaulx. What novices remembered about him was tenderness and patience, and he went on to write a whole treatise on friendship as a way to God. ¹⁶ Michaela Toulmin, writing for the Bernardine Cistercians, notes that he did not always choose the best or the holiest as friends. ⁵

He was also a man with authority over hundreds of others, and his prayer about that is the one a pope chose to give new bishops. ¹³ In it the abbot claims none of the credit. When a people is well governed, he tells God, the one who sustains them is God himself. ³

The last years were illness, travel he could barely manage, and very little food, carried with what Thurston calls heroic patience. ¹ Fr. Niespolo's homily puts his teaching in one line from the dialogue with Ivo: two friends talking, and a third, Christ, in their midst. ⁶