Rievaulx Abbey.

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unless otherwise stated.

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, England.

Photo: 8 September 2012.

Source: Own work by mattbuck.

Author: mattbuck (category).

(Wikimedia Commons)

Rievaulx Abbey (/riːˈvoʊ/ ree-voh) is a former Cistercian Abbey headed by the Abbot of Rievaulx. It is located in Rievaulx, near Helmsley in the North York Moors National Park, North Yorkshire, England.

It was one of the wealthiest Abbeys in England and was dissolved by Henry VIII of England in 1538. Its ruins are a tourist attraction.

Rievaulx Abbey.

Very atmospheric on a foggy Autumn day.

Photo: 15 October 2009.

Source: From geograph.org.uk.

Author: Simon Palmer.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Rievaulx Abbey was founded in 1132 by twelve Monks from Clairvaux Abbey, France, as a Mission for the colonisation of the North of England and Scotland. It was the first Cistercian Abbey in the North. With time, it became one of the great Cistercian Abbeys of Yorkshire, second only to Fountains Abbey in fame.

The remote location was ideal for the Cistercians, whose desire was to follow a strict life of Prayer and self-sufficiency, with little contact with the outside world. The Patron, Walter Espec, settled another Cistercian community, founding Wardon Abbey, in Bedfordshire, on unprofitable wasteland on one of his inherited estates.

Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire, England.

Photo: 14 August 2006.

Source: Own work/oeuvre personnelle.

Author: Myself (Bernard Leprêtre).

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Te Deum. 

5th-Century Monastic Chant (Solemn).

Available on YouTube at

http://youtu.be/sqwV9l-U8ds.

The following Italic Text is from the Video on YouTube.

Monks of one of the Abbeys of the Solesmes Congregation sing this beautiful Chant. 

The Te Deum is attributed to two Fathers and Doctors of the Church, Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, and is one the most majestic Chants in the Liturgy of the Church. 

It is sung in Traditional Seminaries and Monastic Houses at the Divine Office and for Double Feasts of the First Class, The Nativity, Easter, Corpus Christi, Epiphany, Pentecost and those Feasts which have an Octave. 

The Solemn Te Deum is sung on all occasions of public Church rejoicing (in Traditional Catholic Churches).

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, England.

Photo: 8 September 2012.

Source: Own work by mattbuck.

Author: mattbuck (category).

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Abbey lies in a wooded dale, by the River Rye, sheltered by hills. To have enough flat land to build on, a small part of the river was diverted several metres West of its former channel. The Monks altered the course of the river three times during the 12th-Century. 

The old course of the river is visible in the Abbey's grounds. This is one illustration of the technical ingenuity of the Monks, who, over time, built up a very profitable business mining lead and iron, rearing sheep and selling wool to buyers from all over Europe. 

Rievaulx Abbey became one of the greatest and wealthiest Abbeys in England, with 140 Monks and many more Lay Brothers, receiving grants of land totalling 6,000 acres (24 km²) and establishing Daughter Houses in England and Scotland.

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, England.

Photo: 8 September 2012.

Source: Own work by mattbuck.

Author: mattbuck (category).

(Wikimedia Commons)

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, England.

Photo: 8 September 2012.

Source: Own work by mattbuck.

Author: mattbuck (category).

(Wikimedia Commons)

Towards the end of the 13th-Century, the Abbey had incurred a great deal of debt with its building projects and lost revenue, due to an epidemic of sheep scab (psoroptic mange). This ill fortune was compounded by Scottish raids in the Early-14th-Century. To make matters worse the decimation of the population caused by the Black Death, in the Mid-14th-Century, made it difficult to recruit new Lay Brothers for manual labour. As a result, the Abbey was forced to lease much of its land. By 1381, there were only fourteen Choir Monks, three Lay Brothers and the Abbot left at Rievaulx, and some buildings were reduced in size.

Rievaulx Abbey ruins.

Photo: 23 August 2008.

Source: Own work.

Author: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net).

Permission: Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-2.5. 

Please attribute using name and website URL (as per the author line above).

(Wikimedia Commons)

Miserere Mei Deus.

Gregorian Chant.

Available on YouTube at

http://youtu.be/zC0o723hb0M.

By the 15th-Century, the original Cistercian practices of strict observance, according to Saint Benedict's rule, had been abandoned in favour of a more comfortable lifestyle. It was then permitted to eat meat and more private living accommodation was created for the Monks, and the Abbot now had a substantial private household.

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, England.

Photo: 8 September 2012.

Source: Own work by mattbuck.

Author: mattbuck (category).

(Wikimedia Commons)

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, England.

Photo: 14 April 2008.

Source: Own work.

Author: Tilman2007.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Rievaulx Abbey showing Presbytery (right), South Transept, 

Chapter House foundations and wall of Infirmary (left). Mist at dawn.

Date: 2011.

Source: http://www.wyrdlight.com Author: Antony McCallum.

Author: Antony McCallum.

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Abbey was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1538. At that time there were said to be seventy-two buildings occupied by an Abbot and twenty-one Monks, attended by 102 servants, with an income of £351 a year. It also had a prototype blast furnace at Laskill, producing cast iron as efficiently as a modern blast furnace; according to Gerry McDonnell (archeo-metallurgist of the University of Bradford), the closure of Rievaulx delayed the Industrial Revolution for two-and-a-half centuries.

Rievaulx Abbey in Winter.

Source: (Not Known).

Attribution: (Not Known).

Rievaulx Abbey.

Available on YouTube at

http://youtu.be/f509TzoOpg0.

Henry VIII ordered the buildings to be rendered uninhabitable and stripped of valuables such as lead. The Abbey site was granted to the Earl of Rutland, one of Henry's advisers, until it passed to the Duncombe family.

In the 1750s, Thomas Duncombe III beautified the estate by building the terrace with two Grecian-style temples; these temples, now called Rievaulx Terrace & Temples, are in the care of the National Trust. The ruins of the Abbey are in the care of English Heritage.

When awarded a life peerage in 1983, former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, a Yorkshireman, adopted the title Baron Wilson of Rievaulx.

Rievaulx Abbey.

An Oasis of Peace.

Available on YouTube at

http://youtu.be/RzQlPeO-C4g.

Saint Aelred of Rievaulx (Part Two)

Text and Pictures taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
unless otherwise accredited

  

The above photo was taken from dragonhaven.plus.com 

and can be found on Google Images 

The above photo was taken from dragonhaven.plus.com

and can be found on Google Images

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, England

Aelred (1110 A.D. – 12 January 1167 A.D.), also Aelred, Ælred, Æthelred, etc., was an English writer, Abbot of Rievaulx (from 1147 until his death), and Saint.

Aelred was one of three sons of Eilaf, priest of St Andrew's at Hexham and himself a son of Eilaf, treasurer of Durham. He was born in Hexham, Northumbria, in 1110.

Rievaulx Abbey in Winter

Aelred spent several years at the court of King David I of Scotland, rising to the rank of Master of the Household before leaving the court at age twenty-four (in 1134) to enter the Cistercian Abbey of Rievaulx in Yorkshire. He may have been partially educated by Lawrence of Durham, who sent him a hagiography of Saint Brigid.

Aelred became the Abbot of a new house of his Order at Revesby in Lincolnshire in 1142 and in 1147 was elected Abbot of Rievaulx, itself, where he spent the remainder of his life. Under his administration, the Abbey is said to have grown to some hundred monks and four hundred lay brothers. He made annual visitations to Rievaulx's daughter-houses in England and Scotland and to the French abbeys of Cîteaux and Clairvaux.

Saint Aelred of Rievaulx wrote "Speculum caritatis" 

("The Mirror of Charity"), circa 1142

Fragmento del manuscrito medieval «De Speculo Caritatis», 

en el que aparece un retrato de Elredo de Rieval

Français : Enluminure médiévale, extraite du «De Speculo Caritatis» 

(le miroir de la charité) d'Ælred de Rievaulx

(Picture taken from Wikimedia Commons) 

Aelred wrote several influential books on Spirituality, among them Speculum caritatis ("The Mirror of Charity," reportedly written at the request of Bernard of Clairvaux) and De spiritali amicitia ("On Spiritual Friendship"). He also wrote seven works of history, addressing two of them to Henry II of England, advising him how to be a good king and declaring him to be the true descendent of Anglo-Saxon kings. Until the 20th-Century, Aelred was generally known as a historian rather than as a spiritual writer; for many centuries his most famous work was his Life of Saint Edward, King and Confessor.

Aelred died on January 12, 1167, at Rievaulx. He is recorded as suffering from the stone (hence his patronage) and arthritis in his later years. He is listed for January 12 in the Roman Martyrology and the calendars of various churches. 

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, England

For his efforts in writing and administration, Aelred has been called by David Knowles the "St. Bernard of the North." Knowles, a historian of monasticism in England, also described him as "a singularly attractive figure … . No other English monk of the 12th-Century so lingers in the memory."

Extant works by Aelred include:Histories and biographies

Vita Davidis Scotorum regis ("Life of David, King of the Scots"), written circa 1153.
Genealogia regum Anglorum ("Genealogy of the Kings of the English"), written 1153–54.
Relatio de standardo ("On the Account of the Standard"), also De bello standardii  ("On the Battle of the Standard"), 1153–54.

Vita S. Eduardi, regis et confessoris "The Life of Saint Edward, King and Confessor," 1161–63.
Vita S. Niniani ("The Life of Saint Ninian"), 1154–60.
De miraculis Hagustaldensis ecclesiae ("On the Miracles of the Church of Hexham"), circa 1155.
De quodam miraculo miraculi", also known as "[De Sanctimoniali de Wattun|De sanctimoniali de Wattun]" ("A Certain Wonderful Miracle" or "The Nun of Watton"), circa 1160 Spiritual Treatises.
Speculum caritatis ("The Mirror of Charity"), circa 1142.
De Iesu puero duodenni ("Jesus as a Boy of Twelve"), 1160-62.
De spiritali amicitia ("Spiritual Friendship"), 1164-67.
De institutione inclusarum ("The Formation of Anchoresses"), 1160–62.
Oratio pastoralis ("Pastoral Prayer"), circa 1163–67.
De anima ("On the Soul"), circa 1164-67, many sermons.

All of Aelred's works have appeared in translation, most in English, but all in French.

Issues of sexuality

Aelred's work, private letters, and his "Life", by Walter Daniel, another 12th-Century monk of Rievaulx, have led historians, such as John Boswell of Yale University and Brian Patrick McGuire of Roskilde University in Denmark, to suggest that he was homosexual. For example, in writing to an anchoress in "The Formation of Anchoresses", Aelred speaks of his youth as the time when she held on to her virtue and he lost his. 

All of his works, nevertheless, encourage virginity among the unmarried and chastity in marriage and widowhood and warn against any sexual activity outside of marriage; in all his works in later life he treats of extra-marital sexual relationships as forbidden and condemns "unnatural relations" as a rejection of charity and the law of God. He criticized the absence of pastoral care for a young nun who experienced rape, pregnancy, beating, and a miraculous delivery in the Gilbertine community of Watton.