Brill's Companion to Aelred of Rievaulx explores the life, works, and thought of Aelred, Cistercian abbot of Rievaulx Abbey from 1147 to 1167. As well as introducing the three genres of his works —sermons, spiritual teaching, and history— scholars survey such central topics as Marian devotion, love and friendship, the sacramental nature of community, lay spirituality, and saints’ lives. The work also includes the first supplement to the Bibliotheca aelrediana secunda, listing publications by and about Aelred from between 1996 and 2015. Aelred is rapidly becoming one of the best-known and most loved of the 12th-century Cistercians; this book provides welcome new insights into his contributions to the spiritual and political concerns of his place and time. Contributors are Damien Boquet, Pierre-André Burton, Marsha L. Dutton, Elizabeth Freeman, Daniel M. La Corte, Marie Anne Mayeski, Domenico Pezzini, John R. Sommerfeldt, and Katherine Yohe.

2021 Catholic Media Association Award third place award in English translation edition This book places the life of Aelred of Rievaulx, third abbot of the English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx, within the hundred-year period from the Norman Conquest of England in October 1066 through Aelred's death in January 1167. While exploring what is known of Aelred's life from his own works and especially from the principal work of Walter Daniel, author of The Life of Aelred of Rievaulx, Burton considers the influence of both English and church history on Aelred's personality and purpose as Christian, abbot, and writer. He emphasizes the place of the crucified Christ at the center of Aelred's life while calling spiritual friendship—not only personal but cosmological—the "hermeneutic key" to his teaching.

During his twenty years as abbot of the Yorkshire monastery of Rievaulx, Aelred preached many sermons: to his own monks, in other monasteries, and at significant gatherings outside the cloister. In these thirty-one homilies on Isaiah chapters 13–16, together with an introductory Advent sermon, Aelred interprets the burdens that Isaiah prophesied against the nations according to their literal, allegorical, and moral senses. He sees these burdens as playing a role both in the history of the church and in the progress of the individual soul. This collection of homilies is an ambitious, unified work of a mature monk, synthesizing biblical exegesis, ascetical teaching, spiritual exhortation, and a theory of history.

Essays illuminating a wide range of topics from Cistercian preachers and the "geography" of purgatory to royal and ecclesiastical justice and power. This volume continues the Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research from the early and central Middle Ages and demonstrates its belief that the close interrogation of primary documents yields new insights into or important recalibrations of our understanding of the past. It begins by surveying the works of the Greek Fathers rendered into Latin in late antiquity, exploring their reception and deployment in England before the conquest. The twelfth century occupies a central place in this volume. Four papers offer close readings or re-readings of key authors or sources: one reconstructs William of Malmesbury's journeys in the mid-1130s; another offers a new reading of two of Aelred of Rievaulx's royal biographies; a third considers the influence of Henry of Marcy on Herbert of Clairvaux's Liber visionum et miraculorum Clarevallensium; and a fourth examines the Historia Gaufredi Ducis and its outsized impact on the history of the ritual of dubbing. Two papers address royal and ecclesiastical justice in mid-thirteenth-century France through meticulous work with archival sources: they respectively consider the case of Geoffroy de Milly and limits of sovereign authority and enquêtes as a technique of power. Further topics include the emerging "geography" of purgatory in the imagination of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the different dimensions of medieval institutional culture as seen in the intersection of earthly and angelic power in Angevin England (placed in dialogue with American medieval historiography); and the evolving historiographical treatment of men of the Church employed as trusted administrators by Italian communes. The volume concludes with two essays on significant moments in the history of American medieval studies: examinations of the publication history of Evelyn Faye Wilson's Stella Maris of John of Garland and of the life, scholarship and legacy of Bennett David Hill round out the volume.

The Centre for Missional Leadership at St. Andrew’s Hall, Vancouver, has curated a dynamic collection of essays from missional thinkers in church and academy. Together, they explore both the pitfalls and possibilities of Christian witness in the post-Christendom soil of the Pacific Northwest. What does it mean to till, plant, and nurture Christian community while awaiting growth in the rocky soil of secularity, in this West Coast land better known for its hipsters, baristas, and outdoor lifestyle? Each chapter is an attempt to dust for divine fingerprints at work within the church and wider culture, giving evidence of God’s activity in our midst. Within this book you will encounter women and men who are finding hopeful ways to proclaim and live the gospel that are bearing fruit and growing hope within Christian communities and the neighborhoods they call home.

In this study, Micol Long looks at Latin letters written in Western Europe between 1070 and 1180 to reconstruct how monks and nuns learned from each other in a continuous, informal and reciprocal way during their daily communal life.

In this book, David N. Bell explores what Cistercian writers and preachers have said about Mary from the time of the founding fathers of the Order to Armand-Jean de Rancé, who introduced the Cistercian Strict Observance and who died in 1700. This work is divided into three parts. The first part presents some selective background material on Mary that is necessary for understanding where the Cistercian writers are coming from and the sources and ideas they are using. The next eight chapters, the second part of the book, examine the Marian ideas of Cistercian writers from Bernard of Clairvaux to a number of visionaries, both male and female, who take us to the very end of the thirteenth century. There is then a gap of more than three centuries—the reasons are given at the end of chapter 12—before we arrive at the birth of Armand-Jean de Rancé in 1626. The final chapters—part 3 of the book—summarize the life of Rancé, examine the place of Mary at La Trappe, and present annotated translations of Rancé’s five conferences for three Marian feasts: the Nativity of Mary, the Annunciation, and the Assumption.