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This work deals with the personality of the English Cistercian monk and abbot of the 12th century Aelred of Rievaulx and his work "On Spiritual Friendship" (De spirituali amicitia). It aims to analyze Aelred's work in the broader context of Aelred's life, his other works and contemporary theological-philosophical concepts and ideals. It further intends to place him in the tradition of late ancient and medieval reflections on friendship and love with an emphasis on the monastic environment. The author made a translation and analysis of De spirituali amicitia's most important passages and compared them with Aelred's sources and originals. These include among others the work of Marc Tullio Cicero Laelius de amicitia, the writings of St. Ambrose and Augustine and the Bible. The thesis is concluded with an analysis of Aelred's "individuality", which is spread throughout his work and which is interpreted using the current discourse on individuality in the Middle Ages. Therefore, the author tries to define Aelred's place "between tradition and individualism".

Thesis advisor: André Brouillette / Thesis advisor: Colleen M. Griffith / This thesis studies Celibate Friendship in the Christian Tradition from the perspectives of Aelred of Rievaulx and Teresa of Avila. Both of them taught and modelled celibate friendship in response to their vocation as religious, in their time and space. It is the desire to reclaim authentic Christian living through friendship as lived and taught by Aelred of Rievaulx and Teresa of Avila, that necessitate this study. I realized that Aelred and Teresa's doctrine on spritual friendship is basically Christ-centered. It begins with Christ, proceeds in Christ and ends in Christ. Aelredian and Teresian celibate friendship is essentially love for God and humanity. It is incarnational, communal, apostolic and scripture-based. It teaches authentic way of living the Gospel values of love, unity, justice, peace and joy in the contemporary world. Religious life as a charismatic gift to the Church, is a most appropriate vocation for Christian witnessing through celibate friendship as taught and modeled by Aelred of Rievaulx and Teresa of Avila. To live Aelredian and Teresian sprirituality of celibate friendship in the twenty-first century, religious men and women need to be versatile in knowledge, sustained by on-going formation on the subject matter. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

abstract: In this study, I explore to what extent an erotic orientation toward others’ spiritual characteristics, specifically with regard to “clean” souls, was strongly idealized in at least two medieval English locales, the central Midlands and the North Riding of Yorkshire. Where a hetero-genital orientation was pervasively considered proper with regard to erotic attraction then as today, I propose that, additionally, a desire to associate on a spiritual level with not only those of the same religion but also of like spiritual purity governed desire. As I will argue, this orientation to a spiritual sameness stemmed from a meme of preferred association in life with other Christians with clean souls. I refer to this desire for association with Christian sameness as a homo-spiritual orientation. As I will argue, this homospirituality was the primary basis of erotic desire portrayed and prescribed in the evidence considered in this study. In sum, I argue that fifteenth-century English ways of knowing and feeling desire, reflected in models of desire in romance poetry in these two locales, evidences an erotic orientation based on homospiritual lines of attraction. Moreover, in each area, the models of lay homospiritual erotics were preceded by and coincided with religious writings on the subject that contributed to an overall intellectual current. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2017

As perennial Christian ideals, virginity and chastity were frequent themes in medieval religious discourse. Male religious were frequently virgins and were expected to cultivate chastity; however, women not men were usually the focus of such discussions. But some monastic writers did draw on those models when considering their own spirituality, and it is worth knowing how they were understood and enlisted in those instances. To this end, I investigate five eleventh- and twelfth-century monks who wrote about monastic virginity or chastity: Anselm of Canterbury, Guibert of Nogent, Rupert of Deutz, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Ælred of Rievaulx. In my analysis, I uncover each author’s perception of virginity/chastity. Thus, I reveal that Anselm’s Deploratio is not about lost physical virginity or even sexual sin per se; it is a spiritual meditation driven by his immense fear that sinners would be forever damned. Guibert’s work exposes what a treatise on virginity could become in the hands of an adolescent struggling with sexual desire and steeped in lessons taught by his monastery. Rupert’s tract on virginity and masturbation portrays male virginity as tangible and potent. In so doing, it erects a barrier defending Rupert’s work as an exegete against detractors. For his part, Bernard teaches that what matters most is chaste humility. He also consistently links virginity with pride and false holiness, a strategy possibly linked with a battle between white and black monks. Finally, Ælred produces a model of monastic perfection that is terrifically masculine, distinctively different from virginity, and perfectly suited for his audience. In addition to uncovering each monk’s unique perception of virginity and chastity, I call attention to similarities and differences in their thought and make conclusions based on those observations. Overall, I have found not only that virginity and chastity did matter to some medieval religious men but also that the way they handle those ideals can be tremendously revealing.

As perennial Christian ideals, virginity and chastity were frequent themes in medieval religious discourse. Male religious were frequently virgins and were expected to cultivate chastity; however, women not men were usually the focus of such discussions. But some monastic writers did draw on those models when considering their own spirituality, and it is worth knowing how they were understood and enlisted in those instances. To this end, I investigate five eleventh- and twelfth-century monks who wrote about monastic virginity or chastity: Anselm of Canterbury, Guibert of Nogent, Rupert of Deutz, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Ælred of Rievaulx. In my analysis, I uncover each author’s perception of virginity/chastity. Thus, I reveal that Anselm’s Deploratio is not about lost physical virginity or even sexual sin per se; it is a spiritual meditation driven by his immense fear that sinners would be forever damned. Guibert’s work exposes what a treatise on virginity could become in the hands of an adolescent struggling with sexual desire and steeped in lessons taught by his monastery. Rupert’s tract on virginity and masturbation portrays male virginity as tangible and potent. In so doing, it erects a barrier defending Rupert’s work as an exegete against detractors. For his part, Bernard teaches that what matters most is chaste humility. He also consistently links virginity with pride and false holiness, a strategy possibly linked with a battle between white and black monks. Finally, Ælred produces a model of monastic perfection that is terrifically masculine, distinctively different from virginity, and perfectly suited for his audience. In addition to uncovering each monk’s unique perception of virginity and chastity, I call attention to similarities and differences in their thought and make conclusions based on those observations. Overall, I have found not only that virginity and chastity did matter to some medieval religious men but also that the way they handle those ideals can be tremendously revealing.

This dissertation concerns the narrative and theological role of divine vengeance and saintly cursing in the saints’ Lives of England and Ireland, c. 1060-1215. The dissertation considers four case studies of primary material: the hagiographical and historical writings of the English Benedictines (Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Eadmer of Canterbury, and William of Malmesbury), the English Cistercians (Aelred and Walter Daniel of Rievaulx, John of Forde), the cross-cultural hagiographer Jocelin of Furness, and the Irish (examining key textual clusters connected with St. Máedóc of Ferns and St. Ruadán of Lorrha, whose authors are anonymous). This material is predominantly in Latin, with the exception of the Irish material, for which some vernacular (Middle Irish) hagiographical and historical/saga material is also considered. The first four chapters (I-IV) focus discretely on these respective source-based case studies. Each is framed by a discussion of those textual clusters in terms of their given authors, provenances, audiences, patrons, agendas and outlooks, to show how the representation of cursing and vengeance operated according to the logic of the texts and their authors. The methods in each case include discerning and explaining the editorial processes at work as a basis for drawing out broader patterns in these clusters with respect to the overall theme. The fifth chapter (V) frames a more thematic and comparative discussion of the foregoing material, dealing with the more general questions of language, sources, and theological convergences compared across the four source bases. This chapter reveals in particular the common influence and creative reuse of key biblical texts, the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, and the Life of Martin of Tours. Similar discussion is made of a range of common ‘paradigms’ according to which hagiographical vengeance episodes were represented. In a normative theology in which punitive miracles, divine vengeance and ritual sanction are chiefly understood as redemptive, episodes in which vengeance episodes are fatal can be considered in terms of specific sociological imperatives placing such theology under pressure. The dissertation additionally considers the question of ‘coercive fasting’ as a subset of cursing which has been hitherto studied chiefly in terms of the Irish material, but which can also be found among the Anglo-Latin writers also. Here it is argued that both bodies of material partake in an essentially shared Christian literary and theological culture, albeit one that comes under pressure from particular local, political and sociological circumstances. Looking at material on both sides of the Irish Sea in an age of reform, the dissertation ultimately considers the commonalities and differences across diverse cultural and regional outlooks with regard to their respective understandings of vengeance and cursing.

The thesis is a comparative and multidisciplinary study of legendary genealogies in the historical writing of northern England and Iceland c. 1120 – c. 1241. Historical writing was produced in abundance over this period in both areas and the frequent contact between England and Scandinavia, as well as shared use of early medieval insular sources make them especially suitable for comparison. The Viking invasions and settlement in England had a significant impact on English culture, language and literature and changed attitudes to their own legendary past. The Danish conquest of England in the early eleventh-century also brought the insular and Scandinavian worlds closer together, and even after the Norman Conquest in 1066, England and Scandinavia engaged in scholarly and textual exchange The theoretical framework for the thesis combines approaches from religious history, art history, political history, literature history and gender history. The main research questions of the thesis consider the dissemination, development, and purpose of legendary genealogies. The sources are a collection of Durham related manuscripts with illuminations of the pagan god Woden (c. 1120–88) in two historical works De Primo Saxonum Aduentu and De Gestis Regum; Genealogia Regum Anglorum (Rievaulx, 1153x54) by Aelred of Rievaulx; two works attributed to Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (Iceland, 1220s) and Heimskringla (Iceland, 1225x35). Common to the sources is the inclusion of genealogies that stretch from legendary generations to living individuals at the time of writing. Thus, genealogies connected dynasties and civilisations in mutual descent from pagan, Trojan and biblical ancestors. By analysing textual dissemination as well as political contexts, literary patronage and mechanisms in legitimisation of power, the thesis address amalgamations of origin myths, the use and significance euhemerised pagan gods, and female generations in genealogies.