Confessor Aelred

Aelred of Rievaulx, often styled Confessor in liturgical calendars, was an English Cistercian abbot and spiritual writer of the twelfth century. He was born at Hexham in Northumberland around 1110, the son of Eilaf, a hereditary priest of Hexham whose family had long been associated with the churches of Hexham and Durham. In the decades after the Norman Conquest, such married clergy were being displaced by the Gregorian reform, and Aelred's father later entered the monastic life at Durham. As a youth Aelred was sent to the court of King David I of Scotland, where he received a courtly education and rose to a position of trust as steward or master of the royal household. Contemporary accounts describe him as well liked, eloquent, and already drawn toward religion despite the prospects of secular advancement.

In 1134 Aelred left the Scottish court and entered the newly founded Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx in Yorkshire, a daughter house of Clairvaux established in 1132. The Cistercian reform, with its emphasis on simplicity, manual labour, and the Rule of Saint Benedict as interpreted by the Carta Caritatis, shaped the rest of his life. After serving as novice master he was sent in 1143 as first abbot of Revesby in Lincolnshire, a foundation of Rievaulx. In 1147 he was elected abbot of Rievaulx itself, remaining in that office until his death. Under his government the community became one of the largest Cistercian houses in England; his biographer Walter Daniel claimed some six hundred monks and lay brothers. Aelred travelled on the order's business to Scotland, Citeaux, and Clairvaux, and he was involved in the affairs of the English church, including the disputed election to the see of York and relations with the Angevin court.

Aelred's writings made him the principal English spiritual author of his age and later earned him the epithet of the Bernard of the North. His chief treatises are the Speculum caritatis (The Mirror of Charity), written at the urging of Bernard of Clairvaux, and De spiritali amicitia (On Spiritual Friendship), a dialogue that recasts Ciceronian friendship within a monastic theology of charity. He also composed historical works, including a genealogy of the English kings, an account of the Battle of the Standard in 1138, and a Life of Saint Edward the Confessor prepared in connection with the translation of Edward's relics at Westminster in 1163. Sermons and a pastoral prayer likewise survive. Recurring themes are the formation of the affections, the life of the community, and holy friendship as a school of divine charity.

In later years Aelred suffered from severe illness, including calculus (the stone) and arthritis, and he spent long periods in the infirmary while continuing to govern and to write. He died at Rievaulx on 12 January 1167 and was buried in the chapter house; his relics were later translated within the abbey. A Life was written shortly afterward by Walter Daniel, a monk of Rievaulx. Aelred was venerated locally and by the Cistercian Order, which entered him on its calendar in the later Middle Ages. He was never the subject of a formal papal canonization, but his cult was received into the Roman Martyrology, and he is commemorated on 12 January in the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. In popular devotion he has been invoked by those suffering from kidney and bladder stones, in memory of his own protracted illness.