Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

68 DENNIS J. BILLY
visible partner in all genuine Christian friendships. All such relationships
flow from, rest in, and tend toward Christ, who provides
the model of genuine spiritual friendship and helps one to
attain it. Aelred also gently reminds his readers that true friendships
do not end but are merely changed by death. Such is what
happens to Aelred and Ivo, the interlocutors of the Book One.
Years later, when Ivo has long been dead, Aelred resumes his discussion
of spiritual friendship and reveals the depth of their
bond:
Indeed, the fond memory of my beloved Ivo, yes, his constant love
and affection are, in fact, always so fresh to my mind, that, though
he has gone from this life in body, yet to my spirit he seems never
to have died at all. For there he is ever with me, there his pious
countenance inspires me, there his charming eyes smile upon me,
there his happy words have such relish for me, that either I seem
to have gone to a better land with him or he seems still to be
dwelling with me here on earth. 15
Aelred’s friendship with Ivo deepens rather than weakens with
death. The reason for this is that the latter’s drawing closer to
Christ through death has had some residual effects on the former.
Aelred, in turn, carries his deep friendship with Ivo into his
daily activities, and especially into the discussion on spiritual
friendship that he takes up again with Walter and Gratian in
Books Two and Three.
This sense of the extended reach of friendship has important
ramifications for Aelred’s readers; they too are silent, invisible
partners in the discussion that is taking place. As mentioned earlier,
Aelred uses the dialogue form to give his readers a glimpse
of a conversation between close friends in a monastic setting. By
allowing them to become quiet observers in this conversation,
he tries to awaken in them the hope that this invisible bond will
one day reap visible fruit. This reader/text dynamic is already
hinted at near the beginning of Book Two when, before setting
out to discuss related concerns on the topic of spiritual friend-
15 DSA 2:5 [CCCM 1:303(30-37); SF 70].