Spiritual Friendship

· Cistercian Fathers Book 5 · Liturgical Press
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Spiritual Friendship is today the best known and perhaps most influential of the thirteen surviving works of Aelred, abbot of the great English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx from 1147 '1167. During his abbacy he built Rievaulx into a place of spiritual welcome and physical prosperity, desiring to make it a mother of mercy" to those in need. In a three-book Ciceronian dialogue Aelred defines human friendship as sacramental, beginning in creation, as God sought to place his own love of society in all his creatures, linking friends to Christ in this life and culminating in friendship with God in beatitude. This fresh new translation makes the work crisply readable, allowing the intellectual and Christian insight of this great Cistercian teacher and writer to speak clearly to today's seekers of love, wisdom, and truth.
Spiritual Friendship is today the best known and perhaps most influential of the thirteen surviving works of Aelred, abbot of the great English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx from 1147 '1167. During his abbacy he built Rievaulx into a place of spiritual welcome and physical prosperity, desiring to ...

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About the author

Marsha Dutton, the executive editor of Cistercian Publications, is a scholar of twelfth-century Cistercian thought and writing, best known for her work on Aelred of Rievaulx. She also writes regularly on medieval history and literature. She has most recently published Embracing God: Essays on the Spiritual Treatises of Aelred of Rievaulx (Cistercian Publications, 2025) and “Nuns as Chaplains in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods” (The Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 2025).

Lawrence C. Braceland, (1912-1987) was professor of classics and dean at Ignatius College, Guelph (Canada), until in 1963 becoming professor of classics and dean of arts and sciences at St. Paul's College, the University of Manitoba. After his retirement in 1978, he devoted himself to Cistercian scholarship, publishing numerous articles and translating in four volumes all the works of the English Cistercian abbot Gilbert of Hoyland.

Marsha Dutton, the executive editor of Cistercian Publications, is a scholar of twelfth-century Cistercian thought and writing, best known for her work on Aelred of Rievaulx. She also writes regularly on medieval history and literature. She has most recently published Embracing God: Essays on the...

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