Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

THE HEALING ROLE OF FRIENDSHIP 65
venerable tradition of philosophical and theological expression.
He casts his teaching in this literary genre because he desires a
flexible way of expressing his very particular concerns about the
nature of human relationships. Those concerns are closely connected
with what Jean Leclercq terms “monastic theology,” a
broad, descriptive phrase used to distinguish the practical, experiential,
and symbolic interests of the cloister setting from the
more theoretical, abstract, and dialectical interests of the
scholastic aula. 5 The two approaches differ in fundamental
ways. Monastic theology values the epistemological role of love
and looks upon learning as a means to holiness. Scholastic theology,
in turn, while having nothing against the pursuit of holiness,
sees it as only ancillary to the specific goal of theology itself,
which is to clarify the objective content of the faith through
a critical use of dialectical reasoning. 6 In the twelfth century, the
dialogue form was used very creatively and to great benefit by
monastic and scholastic authors alike. 7
Aelred’s interests in using the dialogue form coincide closely
with his practical interest as a monastic author in showing his
readers how friendship can heal them and draw them closer to
Christ. A close examination of his treatise shows that he departs
from the general characteristics of monastic theology only in his
general hesitancy to incorporate allegorical interpretations into
his text. Since he employs such interpretations in many of his
Desire for God, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University
Press, 1982), 153-54. For the dialogue as a literary form, see IRWIN EDMAN,
ed., “Introduction” in The Works of Plato (New York: Tudor Publishing Company,
1931), xxiii-xxvi.
5 LECLERCQ, The Love of Learning, 191-235.
6 For a comparison of monastic and scholastic theology, see B. P. GAYBBA,
Aspects of the History of Theology: 12 th -14 th Centuries (Pretoria: University of
South Africa, 1988), 52-57. See also JEAN LECLERCQ, “Monastic and Scholastic
Theology in the Reformers of the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century,” in
From Cloister to Classroom: Monastic and Scholastic Approaches to Truth, ed.
E. Rozanne Elder, The Spirituality of Western Christendom III (Kalamazoo,
MI: Cistercian Publications, 1986), 178-201, esp. 194.
7 Compare, for example, DSA with PETER ABELARD’S Dialogus inter
philosophum, iudaeum et christianum, ed. R. Thomas (Stuttgart-Bad-
Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann, 1970).