Aelred Of Rievaulx. (Part Four).

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire.

Date: 2011.

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“De Spirituali Amicitiâ” (“On Spiritual Friendship”), considered to be his greatest work, is a Christian counterpart of Cicero’s “De Amicitia” and designates Christ as the source and ultimate impetus of Spiritual Friendship.[20]

On top of its intellectual foundation, Aelred draws on his personal experience to provide “specific and concrete”[21] recommendations for creating and maintaining long-term friendships.

According to Brian McGuire, “Aelred believed that true love has a respectable name and a rightful place in good human company, especially that of the Monastery”.[21]

This “emphasis on the centrality of friendship in the Monastic life places him outside the mainstream of the tradition. In writing a special treatise dedicated to friendship, and indicating that he could not live without friends, Aelred outdid all his Monastic predecessors and had no immediate successors. Whether or not his need for friendship is an expression of Aelred’s sexual identity, his insistence on individual friendships in the Monastic life meant a departure from what is implied in the Rule of Saint Benedict”.[22]

Within the wider context of Christian Monastic friendship, “it was Aelred who specifically posited friendship and human love as the basis of Monastic life as well as a means of approaching Divine Love, who developed and promulgated a systematic approach to the more difficult problems of intense friendships between Monks”.[23]

It was likely at Durham that Aelred first encountered Cicero’s “Laelius de Amicitia”. In Roman terminology, “Amicitia” means “friendship”, and could be between States or individuals.

Dr. Marsha Dutton.

“On The Soul”.

 The Treatise of Saint Aelred of Rievaulx.

Available on YouTube

HERE

PART FIVE FOLLOWS.