Notre Dame de Rouen. The façade of the Gothic Church in France. Photographer: Hippo1947. Licence: SHUTTERSTOCK.

Sunday, 19 January 2025

Aelred Of Rievaulx. (Part Five).



Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire.
Date: 2011.
This file is licensed under the
3.0 Unported licence.
Attribution: WyrdLight.com
Author: Antony McCallum
(Wikimedia Commons)


Text is from Wikipedia - the free encyclopædia,
unless stated otherwise.

It suggested an equality of status and, in practice, it might only be an alliance to pursue mutual interests.[24] For Cicero, “Amicitia” involved genuine trust and affection. “But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle — friendship can only exist between good men. We mean then, by the “good”, those whose actions and lives leave no question as to their honour, purity, equity, and liberality; who are free from greed, lust, and violence; and who have the courage of their convictions”.[25]

In “Confessions”, Saint Augustine of Hippo identifies three phases of friendship:

Adolescence;
Early adulthood;
Adulthood.

Adolescent friendships are essentially self-interested comradeship. Augustine then describes a close friendship he had as a young adult with a colleague. This was based on love and grew out of shared interests and experiences and what each learned from the other.


The third mature phase for Augustine is transcendent, in that he loves others “in Christ”: The focus is on Christ and the point of friendship is to grow closer to Christ with and through friends.[26]

In writing of adolescent friendship, Augustine said: “For I even burnt in my youth heretofore, to be satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild again, with these various and shadowy loves; my beauty consumed away . . . pleasing myself, and desirous to please in the eyes of men. And what was it that I delighted in, but to love, and be loved ?”[27]

Aelred was greatly influenced by Cicero, but later modified his interpretation upon reading Augustine of Hippo’s “Confessions”.[10]


Dr. Marsha Dutton.
“Jesus At The Age Of Twelve”.
The Treatise of Saint Aelred of Rievaulx.
Available on YouTube

PART SIX FOLLOWS.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...