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Aelred (1110–1167) served Rievaulx Abbey, the second Cistercian monastery in England, for twenty years as abbot. During his abbacy he wrote thirteen treatises, some offering spiritual guidance and others seeking to advise King Henry II. He also wrote thirty-one sermons as a commentary on Isaiah 13–16 and 182 surviving liturgical sermons, mostly addressed to his monks.
This volume contains the first half of Aelred’s ninety-eight liturgical sermons from the Reading-Cluny collection, Sermons 85 through 133. For the most part, the collection follows the liturgical year, beginning in this volume with three sermons for Advent and ending with five for Pentecost and three for the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. Sermons 134 through 182, from the Nativity of John the Baptist (June 24) through the Feast of All Saints, will appear in CF 87. These sermons appear to contain evidence of Aelred’s editorial additions to the autograph of the sermons, as he added selections from patristic and medieval authors within the sermons and between them.
Translated by Daniel Griggs, with an introduction by Marjory Lange and Marsha Dutton
Daniel Griggs earned an MA in medieval studies and a PhD in Byzantine theology, both from the University of Leeds. He teaches Latin at Butte College near Chico, California, and translates medieval texts from Greek and Latin. He previously translated Saint Bernard’s Sermones de Diversis published in CF 68 as Monastic Sermons.
Marjory Lange has been a professor of English/humanities at Western Oregon University for twenty-three years. She is also an accomplished violist and violinist who regularly performs in Oregon and southern Washington. After publishing Telling Tears in the English Renaissance (Brill, 1996), she returned to medieval monastic and spiritual literature as her true métier and regularly presents papers on Aelred at the annual Cistercian Studies Conference in Kalamazoo. She is currently completing an article on the difficulties of translating Latin words about sweetness.
Marsha Dutton is the executive editor of Cistercian Publications and a long-time student of Aelred of Rievaulx and other Cistercian authors. She is at work on a book about twelfth-century Cistercian laments.
