Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

64 DENNIS J. BILLY
to the healing role of friendship in a person’s journey through
life. 3
Literary Context: The Uses of ‘Dialogue’
Aelred’s choice of the dialogue form has great significance
for the content of his teaching. Deeply rooted in the Western
philosophical tradition, the dialogue was a widely accepted
means of learned discourse in classical civilization, one that was
eventually taken up by a wide spectrum of interested Christian
authors. 4 In selecting the dialogue form, Aelred embraces this
3 For the sources of the De spiritali amicitia, see DOUGLASS ROBY,
“Sources of the Spiritual Friendship,” in SF, 29-35. For the centrality of Scripture
in Aelred’s spirituality, see ANDRÉ VAUCHEZ, The Spirituality of the Medieval
West: The Eighth to the Twelfth Century, trans. Colette Friedlander, Cistercian
Studies, 145(Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1993), 157-58.
In addition to Church fathers such as Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, later
monastic authors such as Bernard of Clairvaux, sometimes called “the last of
the fathers,” must also be taken into account. According to ÉTIENNE GILSON:
“Aelred of Rievaulx, although belonging to a later generation, still directly depends
upon St. Bernard. Living wholly within the twelfth century, he is not
divided from the latter by any considerable interval; and although various
doctrinal influences interposed between them, accentuated, no doubt, by
their individual differences, he remains nevertheless a qualified interpreter of
the master whose presence in his writings may be constantly felt.” See The
Mystical Theology of St. Bernard, trans. A. H. C. Downes (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian
Publications, 1990), 6. Aelred, in fact, was often referred to as “the
English Bernard.” See GUERRINO PELLICCIA and GIANCARLO ROCCA, eds.
Dizionario degli istituti di perfezione (Rome: Edizioni Paolini, 1962-), s. v.
“Aelredo,” by H. TRIBOUT DE MOREMBERT According to BERNARD MCGINN,
“[t]he appeal to experience that formed the leitmotif of all Christian mysticism
seems somehow more accessible in Aelred’s personal and at times
painful expressions of how he actually “felt” his friendships as a part of the
quest for God than it may be in Bernard’s lush evocations of male-female
erotic symbolism of the encounter with God.” See The Presence of God: A History
of Western Christian Mysticism, vol. 2, The Growth of Mysticism: From
Gregory the Great to the Twelfth Century (London: SCM Press, 1994), 323.
4 “The monks prefer to cultivate genres like the letter, the dialogue, and
history in all its short forms from short chronicles and accounts of individual
events to long annals.” See JEAN LECLERCQ, The Love of Learning and the