Chapter 9 The Voice of Thunder: Aelred of Rievaulx

An introduction to Aelred's life and works.

Medieval Sermon Studies, 2018

In his _Ars praedicandi sermones_, in traditional yet rich metaphoric language, Ranulf Higden compares Christ to a fountain, a shepherd, a rock, a lily, a rose, a violet, an elephant, a unicorn, and a youthful bridegroom wooing his beloved spouse. Ranulf encourages preachers to use such metaphors while using them himself, rendering his text a performed example of what he encourages. This text is clearly linked to two others: Ranulf’s Latin universal history, the _Polychronicon_, and John Trevisa’s English translation of it. In the _Polychronicon_, Ranulf relates the life of Christ, utilizing some of his own rhetorical suggestions from his preaching manual. He also depicts a cross-section of good and bad preachers, including Gregory, Wulfstan, Eustas, St Edmund, and one William Long-Beard and his kinsman, who exemplify (in different ways) the wisdom conveyed in Ranulf’s instruction in the Ars praedicandi. This essay suggests that the literary relationship between the preaching manual and the _Polychronicon_ supplies additional support for the idea that the audience of the latter was not noblemen exclusively, but also clergymen who preached and had responsibility for the care of souls (cura animae).

Medieval Sermon Studies, 2014

Since the publication of The Sermon in 2000, the field of medieval sermon studies has matured into a well-established and growing interdisciplinary area of medieval studies. This article seeks to illustrate how we are doing our work and where our interests are taking us. Growing numbers of print and electronic resources facilitate locating, accessing, and interpreting texts and other historical sources pertinent to preaching. Via the preparation of carefully edited texts, the exploration of specific themes, and the illumination of particular preaching traditions, increased depth of understanding is being achieved. Sermonists use an expanding range of scholarly methodologies and pursue a broadening range of topics, here exemplified by memory and visual arts. Overarching much of our work is the desire to recover medieval experiences of what was fundamentally an oral and performative genre through its largely textual remains. keywords Resources, interdisciplinary, performance, reception, texts ological and geographical range with attention to both Latin and vernacular sermons. Each offers a sample sermon text. The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography. In the Introduction, Kienzle defines the sermon, a 'central literary genre in the lives of European Christians and Jews during the Middle Ages', in this way: 1) The sermon is essentially an oral discourse, spoken in the voice of a preacher who addresses an audience, 2) to instruct and exhort them, 3) on a topic concerned with faith and morals and based on a sacred text. 2 Much subsequent scholarship on medieval sermons has quoted this definition. The individual chapters serve as standard introductory works to particular kinds of sermon literature. The volume helped to consolidate the field at a time when medieval sermon studies was increasingly recognized as an integral part of medieval scholarship as a whole. Since then, the field of medieval sermon studies has continued to mature. Sermons are now identified as essential sources for various aspects of medieval history. Beginning students are introduced to sermons. Understanding Medieval Primary Sources, a recent introductory text, includes a chapter, 'The Medieval Sermon: Text, Performance and Insight'. The author asserts, that '[s]ermons were woven into the fabric of medieval culture and thus their study is inherently interdisciplinary. While sermons have been traditionally mined for the history of theology, the study of rhetoric, and glimpses into historical life, more recent scholarship has expanded into studies of performance, art, audience, women, devotional practice, spirituality, and other topics'. 3 At more specialized levels as well, sermons are a focus of increased attention. As Jessalyn Bird noted in a review of Christoph Maier's Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross: 'It is testimony to the influence of sermon studies that crusade sermons have earned new respectability as sources for the history of the crusades. Their enduring attraction remains their ability to provide a glimpse of the amusing and instructive anecdotes, heroic exemplars, striking imagery and rhetorical appeals which could motivate lay and clerical audiences to sacrifice family, homeland, possessions and life itself to rescue the Holy Land [.. .] and to maintain both in the home and foreign fronts the penitential renunciation, financial support, liturgical intercessions and reforms considered necessary to earn the divine favour essential for the crusade campaign's moral and military success'. 4 While it is impossible to reference all the good work in the field since The Sermon was published, this article seeks to offer examples illustrating, under three broad headings, how we are doing our work and where our interests are taking us. The first heading is resources: growing numbers of print and electronic resources facilitate locating, accessing, and interpreting texts and other historical sources pertinent to preaching. The second is depth, the intensive study of particular facets of the field,

FOR YOUR OWN PEOPLE: Aelred of Rievaulx’s Pastoral Prayer. , 2008

Contains an overview of the purpose and themes of Aelred's late work, his Oratio Pastoralis (Pastoral Prayer), as well as an overview of Aelred's life, a description of the work's single manuscript, from Jesus College Cambridge, and the Prayer's editorial and translation history. Argues that the work should not be read as a transparent revelation of Aelred's emotions but as a consideration of the relationship of an abbot to his community, originating in part in Aelred's familiarity with a genre of such works popular in the 11th and 12th centuries.

O. Marin and L. Viallet, eds., Pentecôtes médiévales. Fêter l’Esprit Saint dans l’Église latine (VIe-XVIe siècle) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2021), 2021

Aelred's seven historical works have finally all been published in critical editions in two volumes in Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis. This review article considers the strengths and a few problems of each of them, particularly praising their unusually thorough and helpful introductions.

Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, 2019

This is a peer-reviewed article in Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, a journal published by the Open Library of Humanities.

The life and writings of Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-67) provide some of the most important material for the study of Cistercian monasticism in 12th-century England, Cistercian teachings and beliefs, and the relationship of the order with other ecclesiastical and secular bodies. To date, the corpus of surviving works attributed to Aelred includes almost 200 sermons, 13 treatises and seven historical and hagiographical works. Among modern audiences, Aelred is regarded as one of the foremost thinkers of 12th-century England, at times on par with the great Bernard of Clairvaux, with whom Aelred is known to have had regular contact and with whom Aelred's biographer; a link which inspired Knowles' now famous description of Aelred as the 'Bernard of the North'.(1) Aelred provides the subject for the latest addition to the Brill Companions to the Christian Tradition series. This is a book which easily fulfils Brill's brief to produce 'full balanced accounts at an advanced level' and 'synthesis of debate and the state of scholarship', with particularly notable strengths in the latter.(2) This collection has been curated by Marsha Dutton who, as Professor Emerita at Ohio State University, Executive Editor of Cistercian Publications, editor of several of Aelred's works, and author of numerous studies on Aelred's life and themes within his writings, needs little introduction to Aelred specialists.(3) Dutton is author of two chapters, with the remaining eight authors drawn from the ranks of the established academic field of Aelred and Cistercian studies. This companion makes a worthy and timely addition to Brill's series, focusing on one of the most important thinkers in 12th-century English theology and spirituality, and drawing on a number of recent new editions of Aelred's works, many of which have been produced by Dutton. Dutton's introduction is carefully planned, introducing the reader to Aelred's life and works in just enough detail so as to provide sufficient coverage, but without too much content so as to confuse the novice. Dutton expertly outlines the case for Aelred as a subject for attention, describing his treatises on spiritualism as his 'greatest contribution to Western thought', and portraying Aelred as a 'significant contributor' to his three main fields of writing, noted here as spiritual thought; history-writing, and discourse on English conquests abroad, which is here termed 'paracolonialism' (p. 1). Dutton's summary of Aelredian scholarship reflects on the major trends in Aelred studies from Dumont and Squire to more recent developments, recognising debts owed to modern Cistercian scholars, before setting out the agenda for the rest of the volume.

2019

This short paper reviews scholarly work on early modern English sermons 1999-2019

Journal of the Early Book Society, 2023

This volume provides fresh insights into sermon production in specific regions, and each article concludes with a valuable bibliography of relevant primary and secondary sources. Essays focus on the transition from manuscript to print and from Catholicism to Protestantism, and show how a living faith can transcend borders, harness technology, and reach its intended audiences even during periods of profound spiritual reform. Contributors ask important questions about how medieval sermon literature circulated, why textual evidence is patchy in certain countries, and how the content, form, theological orthodoxy, and audiences of sermons evolved over time.