AELRED of RIEVAULX. The Liturgical Sermons: The Reading-Cluny Collection, 1 of 2 – Sermons 85-133, translated by Daniel Griggs, with an Introduction by Marjory Lange and Marsha L. Dutton. Cistercian Fathers vol. 81. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2021. Pp. liv + 378. $49.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-87907-181-3. Reviewed by Patrick F. O’CONNELL, Gannon University, Erie, PA 16541.

    In his classic biography of Aelred of Rievaulx, Walter Daniel had given the number of his abbot’s liturgical sermons as about two hundred, but for almost seven centuries only twenty-five sermons from what has come to be called, due to its original provenance, the first Clairvaux collection, reprinted in Volume 195 of Migne’s Patrologia Latina, were assigned to Aelred. One of the signal accomplishments of modern monastic textual scholarship has been the recovery of the full corpus, or close to it, of the twelfth-century English Cistercian’s work in this genre, beginning with C. H. Talbot’s edition of 24 Sermones Inediti in 1952, and carried on with the discovery of further manuscripts and individual sermons by the indefatigable researcher and meticulous editor Giovanni Raciti, above all the massive collection of 98 of Aelred’s sermons known as the Reading-Cluny collection, which Abbot Hugh of Reading had brought with him from England to France when he was elected abbot of Cluny in 1199, published in 2012 as the third and final volume of Raciti’s critical edition of what was now a total of 184 liturgical sermons by Aelred. After publishing three volumes of translations of the smaller collections in 2001, 2016 and 2018, Cistercian Publications has now issued a translation of the first half of this final collection, too extensive to be included in a single volume. When the companion volume appears, it will mark not only the availability in English of all Aelred’s sermons, but the completion of the massive project of a complete English translation in the Cistercian Fathers series of the works of Aelred that began in 1971, a full half-century ago.

     This lucid translation by Daniel Griggs is preceded by a thorough and informative introduction by Professor Marjory Lange of Western Oregon University and world-class Aelred scholar Marsha Dutton, executive editor of Cistercian Publications. It includes a brief summary of Aelred’s life and succinct overview of his writings in various genres before turning its focus on the sermons, drawing extensively on the work of Raciti as well as on the relatively few other published studies of this material. (There is one misleading statement in this section: “For a long time only about eighty-four sermons were known” [xxiii] – i.e., the total apart from the Reading-Cluny sermons, giving the impression that this collection was the last to be discovered, a considerable time later than all the others; in fact the so-called second Clairvaux collection [sermons 29-46] and the small Lincoln collection [sermons 80-84] were actually identified subsequent to Reading-Cluny, and even the Durham collection first published by Talbot had only been known for about thirty years previous to the attribution of Reading-Cluny to Aelred.)

According to Raciti, followed by Lange and Dutton, this collection is not only the largest but the latest gathering of sermons, dating from the final period of Aelred’s abbacy – from the late 1150s up to the time of his death in January 1167 – and probably is separated by only one or two intermediaries from Aelred’s own autograph copy, thus closer to Aelred’s actual voice than versions recorded and modified by stenographers as in the earlier collections. The introduction summarizes Raciti’s classification of these sermons into five groups: nine are variants of sermons also found in the other collections; fifty-two are substantially new, and another twenty-two likewise new but more reliant on outside sources such as Origen, Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede; nine more sermons are composed mainly of extracts from two other writers, Geoffrey Babion and Hugh of St. Victor, included without attribution but with various degrees of modification that render them more “Aelredian”; finally, six of the sermons underwent modification in the opposite direction, as Aelred’s original texts were adopted and adapted, again without explicit citation, by Odo of Canterbury and Geoffrey of Auxerre, and had been attributed to them for centuries. Information is then provided about the little-known Babion (“Stutterer”), a very popular preacher in his own time who has been identified only recently as St. Bernard’s correspondent Geoffrey de Loratio, archbishop of Bordeaux; Aelred’s methods of adaptation in two of these sermons are then discussed, followed by detailed consideration of particular examples from the second and third groups: Sermons 94 on the Circumcision and 133 on Pentecost, respectively, both of which feature the typological reading of Old Testament events and texts as foreshadowing key New Testament mysteries to be lived out in Christian and specifically Cistercian life. This introduction, then, provides essential orientation to Aelredian homiletics generally and to his methodology as illustrated by specific sermons.

The sermon series in this collection is presented in the main according to the chronological pattern of the liturgical year, but with some alteration that may seem to suggest accidental disarrangement – for example Sermons 110 and 111, on the Epiphany and Presentation, follow a group on Lent and Holy Week instead of being included with Sermons 99-102 on these same feasts, and Sermon 133, on Pentecost, follows rather than preceding the three sermons on the Feast of the Trinity, where the previous four Pentecost sermons are properly located. But Raciti suggests that these are deliberate displacements made by Aelred himself to highlight certain thematic elements by drawing on authoritative patristic and medieval sources, as with the citations from Bede and Gregory on the meaning of Paraclete in Sermon 133 (see xxv and xliv-xlv).

Since this volume of the translation contains the sermons from the first half of the collection, beginning with three for Advent and continuing up through three for the Feast of the Trinity, it includes materials from the most significant periods of the liturgical year, those surrounding the celebrations of Christmas and Easter. Of the occasions on which a Cistercian abbot was required to preach to his community, only the Feasts of St. John the Baptist and of Sts. Peter and Paul, the Assumption, the Nativity of Mary and All Saints’ Day belong to the second half of the series, which otherwise consists largely of sermons for various saints’ feast days. Multiple sermons for the same feast, as many as five for Pentecost and six for Christmas in this volume and no less than seven for the Assumption among those in the second half of the collection, indicate that it gathers material from a fairly lengthy period. At times more than one sermon for a given feast will have a textual or thematic connection, as when the text from Sirach 24:26 in the first Nativity sermon (#90: 27-32) on crossing over to wisdom (identified with the Blessed Virgin), being drawn by desire and being fulfilled with fruits (a typical Aelredian triadic pattern) is linked in the following sermon (#91: 33-34, the shortest in the volume, probably due to the inadvertent loss of much of the text) with the text of Sirach 24:24, likewise given a Marian interpretation, in which the love, fear, knowledge and hope of her motherhood are understood as the fruits mentioned in the nearby passage. More frequently the multiple reflections on the same feast exemplify the variety of approaches and insights provided by the same celebration, as when the first sermon on the Ascension (#123: 257-66) begins by contrasting the forty days of affliction during Lent with the forty days of consolation following the resurrection, goes on to compare the figures of Elijah and Elisha with those of Christ and the apostles at the Ascension, and concludes by applying the story to his own listeners, his “dearest ones” (266), who are to focus heart, mind and strength on their glorified Head so they may see Him clearly on his return; while the following quite lengthy sermon (#124: 267-83) likens the glorified Lord to Jacob, returning rich from Mesopotamia to the Promised Land, wedded to both Leah and Rachel (Jews and Gentiles), with the staff of the cross crossing the Jordan, in which Naaman the leper was healed; Christ is identified with the pelican, the night-raven and the sparrow of Psalm 101[102]:7-8, all seen as images of redemption, and finally seen as clothed in the seamless tunic into which all the saved are woven as Christ comes before the Father in glory – pulling out all stops in an unrestrained tour-de-force.

Many of the sermons take texts from the antiphons and responsories for the liturgy of a particular feast, which are included in the marginal citations that accompany the translation; these consist primarily of scriptural references, but unlike the notations for antiphons and responsories, no indication is provided as to which if any of these passages in a given sermon are actually drawn from the readings for that feast, information that could greatly assist the reader in appreciating how Aelred is constructing his homiletic reflections. Citations from other authors, who are sometimes but not always explicitly mentioned by Aelred himself, are carefully identified by the translator, but except for notes pointing out when a similar sermon is found elsewhere in Aelred’s corpus, no attempt is made to include, as Raciti does in his edition, the numerous cross-references to similar passages elsewhere in Aelred, which, as the authors of the introduction point out (see xxiv, n. 42), would have overwhelmed the text of the translation. A comprehensive index of scriptural references is followed by a much shorter but equally inclusive listing of references to classical, patristic and medieval works; a bibliography of all modern editions of Aelred’s works, in the original Latin and in English translation, along with other primary sources and a thorough listing of secondary studies is another valuable resource provided by this impressive volume. Whether a general index of this collection or of the entire corpus of Aelred’s sermons will be included in the final volume of translations remains to be seen.

In a passage from his review article on Raciti’s critical edition of the Reading-Cluny collection, quoted by Lange and Dutton in their introduction, Abbot Elias Deitz writes: “The recuperation of the whole of Aelred’s sermon literature will necessarily signify a shift in Aelredian scholarship. All previous studies will have to be revisited in the light of this new, substantial, core” (xlvi). By making this literature available in clear, contemporary English translations, Cistercian Publications is allowing not only scholars but a broad spectrum of readers to engage with this significant portion of the legacy of one of the wisest and most attractive figures of the early Cistercian movement, and so to challenge and inspire a far larger audience than he was able to reach, or could even imagine reaching, in his own time.