
Dr. Elizabeth Klein and Taylor Kemp explore the life of St. Aelred of Rieveaulx, a famous Cistercian monk from the 12th century. St. Aelred writes about the perfection of Christian friendship, while witnessing to it by his own life. His feast day is January 12.
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You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Taylor Kemp, the director formed, and with me again is our near and dear Dr. Elizabeth Klein. Dr. Klein, it's good. Good to have you.
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Thanks for having me.
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Dr. Klein is a professor here. She teaches theology, the graduate school of theology. And she likes talking about saints.
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I do.
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And today, everybody, we are talking about St. Aelred of Rivo. Hard to spell. So if you're listening to this and you Google it later, that's tough. Aelred. A, E, L, R, E D of Rivo. I know nothing about St. Aelred of Rivo. So this will be. This will be fun to learn.
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Yeah. So Aelred of riveau is a 12th century Cistercian abbot in England.
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Cistercian abbot in England. Got it.
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And Aelred, I met Aelred when I was doing my PhD. So one of the reasons I love Saint so much is I did a class on early and medieval saints lives in one of my first semesters in my PhD, and I was Protestant at the time, so I didn't really, like, know a lot of saints or hadn't read Saints Lives. And I was just like, blown away and made all kinds of same friends and a.
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Even as a Protestant before you became Catholic?
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Yes. I mean, you know, I'm sure it helped becoming Catholic later.
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Oh, it most certainly did. But I find it interesting that you were even open to that.
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I mean, I think, like, people love hero stories, right? People love biographies. No, not saint stories.
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Well, I think Catholics like saint stories, but I think.
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So Protestants can like saint stories?
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Oh, I think they can. I haven't. It's not part of the experience that I.
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Well, I think that this might be an unexplored angle of evangelization. Just give people some saints. Lies, man. I like it. I like them.
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Might want to.
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Maybe not.
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Aelroad of Revo.
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Aerald of Rivo might not be for the average person, but there are, you know, modern saints. But Aelred, one of the reasons why Aelred was a kindred spirit to me was because Aelred of Revo really loved St. Augustine's Confessions.
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Ooh, that had to get you.
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So I really love St. Augustine, and I just thought it was so cool. And this comes up, of course, all over the lives of the saints. You start to get this sense of the saints really as, like, the family of God. And all of a sudden you realize, like, hey, I have this other friend who is also a friend of my favorite saints. So Aelred was a sort of attendant in the court of King David of Scotland and was raised up to the level of being the sort of master of the house. And then reading St. Augustine's Confessions was the reason he abandoned his secular career and decided to become a monk. He loved Augustine's Confessions. He always had with him Augustine's Confessions and St. John's Gospel. And so on his deathbed.
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That's cool.
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Says his only possessions that he kind of brings out are like, he has a crucifix and then he has a copy of St. John's Gospel and a copy of the Confessions, which he sort of bequeaths to his monks. So to back up a little bit about. So I told you kind of how he became a monk. So this is the 12th century. So Cistercians in the 12th century, if you don't know anything about them, they're kind of like taking the world by storm at this point. So Cistercians are a kind of renewed Benedictine order begun at the beginning of the 12th century in France. Their desire was to kind of go back to really following the Rule of St. Benedict. They felt like some of the fancy abbeys at the time had gone astray and were not sort of living the authentic monastic life. And of course, Bernard of Clairvaux is the most famous Cistercian. And to kind of give you a little glimpse of how big a deal those assertions were, I mean, it was something like 300 monasteries were founded during Bernard's life.
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Wow. Yeah.
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So they went from like 2 to 300. So they're being established everywhere. And so this one is in England, in Northumbria, sort of the north part of England, close to Scotland. We have met many Northumbrian saints on this show.
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Do you want to give us a few? If anyone wants to go.
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Cuthbert Bede are two Northumbrian saints we've done. I'm trying to think if there's other. Aidan of Lindisfarne, I think we did as well. So there's a couple who are from this area of England, and that is where Aylward is from. And so he joins the Cistercians. The life, this little life. Hold it up for those who are watching and not listening. This is the. It's called the Life of Elbert of Rubio by Walter Daniel. Walter Daniel was one of aelred's monks for 17 years. So the whole Tenure of Aelred as abbot. He was his monk. And something I really love about this life is that although we know from this life and other things that Aelred was sort of involved in politics of his day, he was sent to Rome to help solve a dispute over a bishop's election. He was involved in sort of brokering some secular political affairs. This life is just basically about the monastic life and it's about Aelred and his brothers.
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Cool.
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So it's a very like, intimate look at sort of how a monk even progresses. Like it talks about Aelred entering and then a early years and then him becoming the sort of novice master and then his election as abbot of Revisby first, and then of Rivo and then really just his governance as abbot. That's cool. That's really like the foundational. There are miracles as well in there, but that's really the foundational aspect of it. And something that Walter Daniel really emphasizes about Aelred, which I found attractive, is not just that he is kind of the Holy Father Aelred. You see this a lot in something like the life of St. Benedict. He's the Holy Father Benedict. He was also the loving father Aelred. So he calls him our loving father.
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That is. Yep.
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It's very clear that Aelred was. He was just a really compassionate guy who wanted to befriend his monks and lead them to salvation. So part of this is Aelred wrote several works. If you end up Googling him later, if you can spell his name, you can find a list of his works. He actually wrote the Life of Edward the Confessor, which is an interesting kind of historical work. He wrote a work called the Mirror of Charity. But the most sort of interesting work, at least for moderns, is that he wrote a work on Christian friendship, which I don't know that there is another. Not another come to mind anyway, from this period. Yeah. So he wrote a work on Christian friendship. He quotes the Confessions a lot in this work on Christian friendship. He's obviously inspired, but he also says he's a young man. He read Cicero's work on friendship. So he talks about Cicero's definition of friendship and how it's kind of inadequate because it doesn't include Christ. And so he kind of supplements it with Acts 4:32. Right. The multitude of believers was of one heart and one soul. No one claimed any belonging as his or her own, but all was held in common. So I think that's just really beautiful because obviously Acts 4. 32, if you're living the monastic life. That makes total sense. But I never really, until I read Eelred and thought about it, I never really thought about the monastic life as a kind of. The goal was like, the perfection of Christian friendship.
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Yeah, Yep, exactly.
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And of like, living in concord and having like your whole soul and mind in common. And that was clearly Aelred's goal.
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No, that is really cool because you're right, you would think monastic life, like perfection of friendship with God, but that. Then that is, obviously, you're living among brothers, that. That is lived out in a. In a communal friendship. Is. It is. Yeah. That's really cool.
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And sometimes you think about the community aspect maybe being, like, incidental in a way. Like, it's just like you have to get together to pray.
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It's just the structure for how I get there kind of a thing.
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Right. It's a structure for how. How I kind of work in holiness. And of course, almost like, I don't know, some monastic literature almost feels like the other people are kind of like the way of sharpening your life.
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They're just here to sanctify.
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Yeah, they're just here to sanctify.
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They're God's providence of my problems.
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Yeah, it can feel like that. But that is obviously not like, the attitude that Aelred took is like these. So Cicero's definition of friendship is concord in all things human and divine.
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Okay.
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And so the idea of, like, no, these are not just people who are, like, going to annoy me and I'm going to endure them with, like, holy patience, but they're actually going to perfect me as a lover of Christ because together we're going to love Christ.
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Yeah, A little bit of a more positive take on the monastic life.
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So the opening line of the prologue is, you know, wherever two are gathered there a third is with them. And so this idea of the monastic life is like, well, where is Christ? He's in our midst when we're gathered. Like, that's where we actually encounter him in this communal life. Emphasis on friendship really comes across in the actual events of the life. So this is his work on friendship, but in the life. And so there's a lot of really awesome instances of this. One is that there's almost like a subplot in Aelred's life of the unstable monk.
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Okay.
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So it's like he's telling Aelred's story and then he'll be like. And then there was the unstable monk, and he'll go a few pages, like.
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Stand in for the troublemaker, the unstable monk return.
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And so there was this monk who kept trying to leave the monastery. Basically was not a very good monk, Couldn't like, keep to the tasks. And Aelred prays to God for the salvation of his soul, that he would give the soul to him. And so there's these stories of Aelred kind of shepherding this unstable monk and eventually ministering to him at his bedside. And so he dies in the monastery. As I wanted to read. Oh, maybe I don't have it bookmarked, actually, maybe I can't read it. There's a really beautiful story. I'm gonna have to summarize it if I can't find it fast enough. I thought I bookmarked it here, no problem. But this monk comes to Aelred and like, basically says, this is the unstable monk. This is the unstable monk. He's basically like, no, I can't do it. Like, I'm over. I can't do this whole monastic thing.
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And so Ilred, page 120 here, is that what you're looking for?
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Yep, here it is. Okay, so this is what the. This is the speech that the unstable monk makes to Ilred says, lord, my inconstancy is not equal to the burden of the order. And everything here and in my nature are opposed to each other. I cannot endure the daily tasks. The sight of it all revolts me. I'm tormented and crushed down by the length of vigils. I often to succumb to the manual labor. The food cleaves to my mouth more bitter than wormwood. The rough clothing cuts through my skin and flesh, down my very bones. More than this, my will is always hankering after other things. It longs through the lights of the world and sighs unceasingly for its loves and attachments and pleasures. Hearing this, the noble director replied, and I am prepared to give you better food to eat and softer raiment, and to grant you every indulgence allowable to a monk, if only you will persevere and bring yourself to live with me in the monastery. I would not say, he replied, though you give me all the wealth of this house, to whom Ilred and I in turn taste no food till the Lord brings you back, willing or unwilling. Wow. So he vows to go on a hunger strike until the unstable mug returns to the monastery. So then one of the sub sellerer comes to Ilred and basically is like, why are you wasting time on this worthless person? Like, nobody likes him. So the sub sellerer says this, the sub seller, his nearest kinsman comes to him and says, why on earth do you cry your eyes out for this wretched creature? And is it true that you have vowed to starve yourself to death if he does not come back? And so I just think that that's so beautiful because Aelred is like, wants to befriend his monks and wants to bring them to heaven.
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He is the loving father.
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He's the loving father. And I just like, could imagine another monk be like, why are you wasting your time? Like, he just g you this speech about how, like, being among sucks and he hates it. El's like, no, he will not leave.
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I will help him. But it's a beautiful example of compassion because compassion is to suffer with. And a. It's like looking at this guy who's struggling from that paragraph in every way, like he's hurting all over the place. And rather than like looking down on him, rather than saying like, oh my gosh, you don't have what it takes or grow up, get a will, like kind of a thing, he's like, I'm going to enter into that suffering. So, yeah, I agree. It's a really inspiring reminder for us that, like, the Lord works in all of our lives in different ways. People are in different places. Certain people have some certain types of temptations, others have others. It's difficult to always relate to other people if they're struggling with something different. But that the impulse of charity is to be like, hey, yeah, I'm going to help step into this space. I don't know what the. You know, I think In Mere Christianity, C.S. lewis gives some example of like, you don't know that it takes more virtue for. I think the example he says is like someone who's like, basically a murderer to not kill someone than it might take for you to like, deny a little bit of food. Like, it might take like, you don't.
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Know people's internal temptations.
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Yeah. Like, that person actually might be more virtuous than you even though they're vicious. Meaning, like they're still kind of trapped in vice, but they may actually be exemplifying greater levels of virtue to an extent, like, of a willingness to enter into the battle of wills. And so anyways, it's all of it is to say, like, everyone deals with things differently. Everyone has different difficulties. And often like the Lord deals with us as individuals because we're individuals. And that Aelred enters in as a.
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Compassionate desire ultimately to befriend this monk.
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Yeah.
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You know, because it's very Beautiful that he, he, he, he serves the monk as he's dying, you know, at his bedside. I'm much more, I'm much more like the sub seller. Why are you wasting your time with that person? Like this person is not worth shamir. But Aelred thinks everybody should be there. And so Walter Daniel tell he kicked no monk out of the monastery the entire time he was there. And only one person left, which he likens to Judas. You know, it's like even Jesus lost one guy. But so Aelred doubled the number of monks in the monastery during his time from 300 to 600 monks. And it seems like he really did that largely due to this kind of friendship. Like he wanted to befriend them, he wanted them to succeed. And it seems to me this is a really important lesson with friendship now, Christian friendship that like what constitutes true friendship, sort of Christ being in our midst when we're together. Because we can be very selective nowadays about like who we listen to and who we friend or unfriend on various like platforms. It's very easy to silence people who we don't agree with, to ignore people who maybe have either different viewpoints or different temptations from us to be very like calloused towards even other Christians, actually almost especially other Christians who don't agree with us or aren't on like the right track or whatever. And Aelry just seems to me like, yeah, I mean who would put up with a monk like that who basically is like scorning the monastic life but he loves that monk. He knows it's for his salvation that he needs to stay. By the way, he has a miracle where the monk can't leave even though the gate's open. So that's how he stays. So God help Dale right out on they didn't have to starve himself to death. But who would go on a hunger strike for a loser like that?
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Oh, it's true.
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You know, we wouldn't even go on a hunger strike for like someone we liked because we don't, I don't think we value friendship and we don't really invest in people because it's hard, time consuming. We can easily pick up and drop people or entertainments at will. We don't have that kind of level of commitment.
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Yep, there's something to. I'm trying to figure out the exact balance because like there's I think a temptation where you could read into some of the story of like Aelred without boundary, tolerant of this monk. But I think that would Need a qualifier of like, he's giving him some wiggle room on the non essentials. Right. Like he's like, yeah, we can soften your clothing, we can give you better food. Like, he's there for the salvation of soul. Soul of his soul. But his task is one of love. So it's like he's like, I want to help you get to heaven. You don't have to wear this clothing. That's okay. Like, I'm assuming it's not part of the rule of the Cistercians perhaps, but.
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Yeah, or he can. You can. I mean everything is almost up to.
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The avenue, but it's kind of like there's. It seems to me that there's a little bit in the story of like a letting go of like a preference or habit when it's not an essential for the sake of like, let's, you know, make sure that we're working towards the most important thing, which is salvation in this. On this.
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And of course, you know, there are different. Obviously we have different responsibilities towards different people in our life. And Aelred's responsibilities towards the brothers is pretty high. It's pretty specific. And yet, yeah, I do think that we tend to not be very compassionate.
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No.
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And we don't tend to put up with people. People are hard because we love ourselves.
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That's right.
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We don't love them. And Aelred or plagued by fear and Aelred is just this, I don't know, kind of lavish example of.
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Yeah, lavish, lavish, lavish in love.
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I also want to mention one other cool thing that isn't. It's not directly related to Illid's life, but it's related to the text of the life of Ilred, which is that after this life was written by Walter Daniel, some other priests in the area were critical of it. So I think this is a really interesting historical kind of, I don't know, Blip, because we read these saints lives and we might think like, oh, ancient people were super credulous, they believed in miracles and they, they were like, you know, made up all this stuff. And this is a really interesting little thing that survives from history because he responds to them. So he says, there are priests who are saying that the miracles I said in this life are not true and that my experience of Aelred's death in particular was exaggerated. So he responds to this in a letter. So that's attached to this. It's the letter to Maurice. And he gives witnesses to all the miracles. You know, like, brother, so and so was there and this person was there and you can ask them. And then he talks about some of the ways he describes Ilred. He's like, ever heard of this thing called like rhetoric? So when I did this, it was called hyperbole. You like by exaggeration bring out an important point. And so it's really, it's just really interesting little kind of psychological glimpse of hagiographers and why they write saints lives and what they mean by writing the saints life. So the particular line that he defends is that he says when Aelred died that his body was like completely like a renewed child, that it like gleamed as white as a carbuncle, like a gemstone. And he's like, well like, yeah, it wasn't, wasn't like a car. Like it wasn't actually like a carbuncle. It's, it's like a hyperbole. And he's like, he's like, I tell you, I've never seen a body like so like Aelred's. And like this is describing like what we experience. And so I think that can be helpful for those of you, any of you who actually go and read these ridiculous things that I recommend you read all these lives. This is a really interesting little glimpse into how the authors were thinking about what they were doing and how they were telling the story of the saints.
A
That is a good note. All right, give us the one liner to remember for Aelred here.
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Aelred, Christian friendship.
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That's a good one.
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Christian friendship. Cultivate Christian friendships because you love other Christians.
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That is a really great takeaway. Thank you Dr. Klein for joining us and thank you all for listening or watching wherever you are. You can subscribe to this podcast in podcast apps, wherever they are. And you can just type in Catholic Saints and find this. Or you can find it on YouTube too. So thank you for joining us. We will see you next time on Catholic Saints. Thank you for being a dedicated listener to the Catholic Saints podcast. Your support truly uplifts us. For those seeking additional thought provoking content, go to formed.org It's a platform brimming with resources, including insightful videos that align seamlessly with our podcast's themes. If you're finding value in our podcast, please consider taking a moment to leave us a review. Your feedback serves as a cornerstone for our growth and outreach.
Host: Taylor Kemp
Guest: Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Date: January 12, 2026
Produced by: Augustine Institute
This episode explores the life and spirituality of St. Aelred of Rievaulx, a 12th-century Cistercian abbot from Northumbria, England. Through engaging conversation, Taylor Kemp and Dr. Elizabeth Klein illuminate Aelred's commitment to Christian friendship, his compassionate leadership, and his profound influence on monastic life. The discussion draws on Dr. Klein’s scholarly experience and personal affinity for Aelred, particularly highlighting his unique approach to monastic community and spiritual friendship.
Background:
Personal Connection:
“He always had with him Augustine's Confessions and St. John's Gospel… On his deathbed, his only possessions… were a crucifix, a copy of St. John's Gospel, and a copy of the Confessions.”
– Dr. Elizabeth Klein ([02:57])
“He was just a really compassionate guy who wanted to befriend his monks and lead them to salvation.”
– Dr. Elizabeth Klein ([05:54])
Major Works:
Christian Friendship:
“The goal [of monastic life] was the perfection of Christian friendship.”
– Dr. Elizabeth Klein ([07:18])
“I am prepared to give you better food to eat and softer raiment, and to grant you every indulgence allowable to a monk, if only you will persevere and bring yourself to live with me in the monastery.”
– Dr. Elizabeth Klein reading from Walter Daniel ([10:40])
At one point, Aelred vows to go on a hunger strike until the monk returns, exemplifying his deep compassion and commitment.
Lesson in Charity:
“Who would go on a hunger strike for a loser like that?... We wouldn’t even go on a hunger strike for someone we liked because… we don’t value friendship and we don’t really invest in people.”
– Dr. Elizabeth Klein ([15:17])
Modern Lessons:
Boundaries and Essentials:
“He’s like, ever heard of this thing called rhetoric? So when I did this, it was called hyperbole… So I think that can be helpful for those of you… who… read these ridiculous things… This is a really interesting little glimpse into how the authors were thinking.”
– Dr. Elizabeth Klein ([18:38])
On Aelred’s Detachment from Worldly Goods:
On Monastic Friendship:
On Compassion for the Difficult:
On the Role of Rhetoric in Saints’ Lives:
Final Takeaway:
Through delightful storytelling and keen theological insight, this episode provides a compelling introduction to St. Aelred of Rievaulx. Listeners are invited to ponder the value of Christian friendship—not only in monastic life but in their own communities—and to seek the kind of compassionate, enduring love exemplified by Aelred.
For more episodes or to support the Augustine Institute, visit formed.org or subscribe to the podcast.