Daily Reading for January 12 • Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167
Bouts of acute pain from arthritis and the stone had compelled Aelred reluctantly to submit to mitigations in his daily regime from about 1157 onwards, and to find a way of being as little trouble as possible to everyone else on these occasions. His solution had been to erect an outbuilding near the common infirmary of the abbey, where he could have a fire and be close enough to benefit from the provisions normally made for the sick. There, at the same time, he could conduct the business of the monastery and see members of his community without disturbing anyone else. In this place, when he was at home, he more and more worked and talked and prayed.
By Walter Daniel’s account there must have been a good deal of talking to be done. Rievaulx had been growing steadily all through Aelred’s life and, towards the end, on the greater feast days, when the lay brothers came in from the granges, the church was crowded with the brethren “like bees in a hive.” There were, we are told, one hundred and forty monks and five hundred lay brethren at the time of Aelred’s death. Inevitably the life of this large community converged upon the abbot’s simple lodging, where there was an atmosphere of freedom in which to talk about scripture and the problems of monastic life and anything that was wholesome and interesting. For Aelred, who had often had to be very firm with himself in his search for the appropriate self-discipline, knew the importance of allowing the immature their root-room. He understood, as his own ascetic teaching makes clear, when to insist but, unlike disciplinarians whom Walter Daniel calls “silly abbots,” Aelred never crushed the spontaneity of his young men. Twenty or thirty at a time could be found any day round his bed, or sitting on it, talking to him. Walter Daniel says that they felt able to be so open with him that they were rather like children with their mother.
From Aelred of Reivaulx by Aelred Squire, O.P., quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister: A Monastic Reader, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).