Spiritual Friendship.
Worcester, Thomas
SPIRITUAL FRIENDSHIP. By Aelred of Rievaulx. Translated from the
Latin by Lawrence C. Braceland, S.J. Edited with an introduction by
Marsha L. Dutton. Cistercian Fathers Series 5. Collegeville, Minn.:
Liturgical, 2010. Pp. 159. $19.95.
A twelfth-century Scotsman (1110-1167) who became abbot of
Rievaulx, a large Cistercian monastery in Yorkshire, Aelred was also a
prolific author of historical and spiritual writings, among them this
work on friendship. In this edition, the cover of which features an
evocative photograph of the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, Marsha Dutton
provides a lucid and helpful introduction as well as notes; she devotes
special attention to the major influences on A., above all Cicero, but
also Ambrose and Augustine of Hippo. But A. was also at odds with
Augustine; as Dutton puts it, by "showing friendship to be
sacramental," he "rejects Augustine's view that one must
choose between human friendship and loving God" (30).
A.'s work on spiritual friendship consists of a prologue and
three books, the latter in the form of dialogues between several monks,
including a Father Aelred. The interlocutors discuss how spiritual
friendship is distinguished from two other kinds, the carnal and the
worldly. The dialogue extols spiritual friendship as the kind that is
free of lust and greed; the spiritual friend, like Christ, is willing to
lay down his life for his friends. Purity of intention characterizes
spiritual friendship; its qualities are love, affection, reassurance,
and joy. Such friendship is an image of eternity, for spiritual
friendship begins here and is perfected in eternity. Father Aelred
mentions how, while walking about the monastery among the brothers
loving one another, and amidst blossoms and fruit, it is as if he
"were in the fragrant bowers of paradise" (108). Yet Father
Aelred also dwells on the need to correct and reprove friends, with
frankness but also with humility and compassion, when one detects vices
in them.
A. was abbot from 1147 to his death in 1167. This work on
friendship, written in the last two or three years of his life, offers
an interesting window onto monastic ideals that may seem distant to us
and yet not so distant at all. Who would not want spiritual friends as
A. describes them?
THOMAS WORCESTER, S.J. College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass.
