AELRED of RIEVAULX. Homilies on the Prophetic Burdens of Isaiah, translated by Lewis White with an Introduction by Marsha L. Dutton. Cistercian Fathers vol. 83. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2018. Pp. lxxiv + 349. $54.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-87907-183-7. Reviewed by Patrick F. O’CONNELL, Gannon University, Erie, PA 16541.

            The critical edition of the Opera Omnia of St. Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-1167) is now complete (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 1-3 [1971-2017]), and the collection of English translations in the Cistercian Fathers series nearly so. Best known for his dialogue On Spiritual Friendship, Aelred was the descendant of a distinguished line of Anglo-Saxon married priests in Yorkshire, brought to an end by the Gregorian Reform late in the century preceding his birth. Raised largely at the Scottish court, where he filled the responsible position of seneschal in his early twenties, he entered the Yorkshire Cistercian Abbey of Rievaulx in 1134, two years after its foundation by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Having served as novice master there and as the first abbot of its daughter house of Revesby, he became the monastery’s third abbot in 1147 and remained in that position until his death, making Rievaulx one of the largest and most celebrated religious houses in England. Known to posterity as “the Bernard of the North” and one of the four “Cistercian Evangelists” (along with Bernard, William of St. Thierry and Guerric of Igny), he is author of thirteen treatises on spiritual and historical topics as well as 182 surviving sermons, and is the subject of a biography by Walter Daniel, one of his monks, that is a masterpiece of medieval hagiography.

            The contents of the present volume consist in a set of thirty-one homilies, preceded by a prefatory letter to Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, and an Advent sermon that evidently served as the impetus for the extended work to follow. Composed late in Aelred’s career (c. 1162-64), this composition is described by preeminent Aelred scholar Marsha Dutton in her extensive and informative introduction both as “far and away the least read of the works of Aelred” (xv) and as “the most ambitious and challenging of Aelred’s works” (xvi). It is an extended commentary on chapters 13 through 16 of Isaiah, the opening chapters of a segment running through chapter 23 in which the prophet pronounces judgment on a series of oppressive pagan nations. In his Advent sermon he had provided brief reflections on this entire portion of Isaiah, commemorating the once and future coming of the Lord in both mercy and judgment (Ps. 100[101]:1) by considering all eleven “burdens” named by Isaiah in these chapters. (Following St. Jerome, Aelred prefers this term rather than the more generic “oracles” and will repeatedly stress the double significance of its connotation – either weighing down those responding with humility and repentance to the offer of divine mercy or crushing with judgment those who reject the call to conversion.) Aelred writes that he is responding to the request of his monks to consider these burdens in more detail, though the consensus of scholars is that while the work is presented as a set of homilies preached to Aelred’s community, in fact the material is too complex to have been delivered orally, at least in its present state, and is actually a treatise in homiletic form, with an intended readership that certainly includes but is not limited to a monastic audience.

Aelred provides discussion of only the first three of the nations denounced by Isaiah: nineteen homilies on Babylon (the first two of which are actually an introduction to the entire set), three on the Philistines and nine on Moab. In his prefatory letter to Bishop Foliot, whom he had met in London on some earlier occasion and for whom he professes a deep admiration and a desire for friendship, he boldly asks the busy prelate to advise him whether to continue his commentary to include the subsequent burdens, to stop at the point he had reached, or even to destroy what he had already written. No reply, or evidence of a reply, is extant, so there is no way of knowing if Aelred received, or followed, any recommendations of Foliot, but the fact of his seeking input from a powerful public figure (though also a former abbot himself) supports the idea that Aelred intended his frequent castigation of contemporary worldly abuses and oppressive practices, comparable to those denounced by the prophet, to apply to a church and society beyond the cloister. (Some scholars have speculated that by addressing Foliot, already the main opponent of Archbishop Thomas Becket in the early stages of the controversy that would lead to his martyrdom almost five years after Aelred’s death, he was signaling his support of King Henry, to whom he had earlier addressed some of his historical writing, but evidence for this is inconclusive at best.)

In any case, the series was never extended beyond the thirty-one homilies originally composed, remaining open-ended while nevertheless conveying a sense of completeness, in Dutton’s words “both a three-part series of only loosely related homilies and a treatise with a single source and end: to instruct the faithful and reform them into their original form of wisdom – their likeness to God through Christ” (lxvi). Throughout, Aelred relies on the accepted medieval exegetical application of the multiple senses of scripture, particularly the allegorical (or typological), finding the mysteries of Christ and the Church, and particularly the drama of salvation, in Isaiah’s scathing critiques of the powers and principalities of his time; and the moral (or tropological), the personal application to the lives of his audience, both monks and readers generally, of the struggles between sin and grace evidenced in Isaiah’s oracles against the nations. Though not mentioned explicitly, the anagogical or eschatological dimension is a frequent focus, as Aelred looks to the ultimate victory of Christ over the forces of sin and death foreshadowed in Isaiah’s predictions of defeat, or possible conversion, of Israel’s foes. Relatively little attention, however, is given to the literal level of the source – for example, by far the most famous passage in this entire section of Isaiah, the description of the downfall of the king of Babylon in 14:1-21 in imagery associated with the daystar, Lucifer, is discussed extensively in Homilies 14 through 19 (136-90) in terms of the rise and fall of the anti-Christ in the last days, as well as in its traditional association with the primordial rebellion of Satan, but consideration of its actual reference to an earthly monarch is explicitly excluded (143 [15.3]). Even more striking is the way Aelred completely ignores the historical Philistines, applying Isaiah’s words instead to the Jews (191 [20.2]), and going on to see Samson as a Christ-figure brought low by his enemies yet ultimately victorious (193-200 [20.7-28]). What takes the place of examination of the historical setting of Isaiah’s words (much of which, of course, like the denunciation of Babylon, modern scholarship dates to periods much later than the eighth-century prophet) is an entirely different aspect of the “literal” sense, a reliance on Jerome’s (generally fanciful) etymologies of the various Hebrew names of the multitude of places and persons that are such a prominent part of these chapters, and which serve as the major foundation for much of what Aelred develops in his commentary – particularly Babylon interpreted as meaning “confusion” (54 [5.13] and passim); the Philistines as “falling down from drink” (191 [20.2]); Moab as “from the father” or “paternal water” (220 [23.1]).

Prescinding from the contingencies of concrete historical circumstances, Aelred is able to find in these nations and their fates universally applicable lessons for life in a fallen world, anchored in the redemptive drama of Christ’s death and resurrection that he believes Isaiah had foreseen and written of in these chapters as well as those more generally seen as messianic. The complexity, even apparent contradictions, in Aelred’s presentation, the constant shifting of perspective between darkness and light, judgment and mercy, sin and salvation, represents in meticulous detail the alternatives available to his own society and to each individual in it, the humbling burden of repentance counterposed to the crushing burden of condemnation. But these antitheses are not simply left in a precarious equilibrium. As the series moves toward its conclusion, commenting on the three years set for Moab’s trials (Is. 16:14), Aelred sees in this time frame both the “three periods of the church: the times of calling, of trial, and of consolation” (313 [31.16]), and the “three stages of progress” available to each member of the Christian community: “conversion, purgation, and contemplation. The first takes place in pain, the second in fear, and the third in love” (314 [31.19]), when “the soul has been purged by spiritual exercises” and “advances on to the contemplation of heavenly things and meditation on the Scriptures. Then the soul begins to find virtue sweet and vice contemptible. By a kind of infusion of love it tastes how sweet the Lord is” (314-15 [31.22]).

Thus Aelred brings his reflections to a close with a ringing affirmation of the divine will and plan for his Church and his people, the triumph of grace and mercy in the face of confusion and discouragement. While not the most accessible introduction to Aelred (his early treatise The Mirror of Charity is probably the best to begin with), this first English translation of The Burdens of Isaiah is a valuable addition to the available corpus of Aelred’s works, a challenging and rewarding tour de force, sometimes puzzling and sometimes dazzling, that represents Aelred’s thought and spirit in its maturity. It is a profound explication of that wisdom which he tells us is “the original form” according to which we were created and which we are called to recover through “true instruction” in the threefold path of faith, hope and love, guided by “the Spirit himself” who made the scriptures “broad enough for countless meanings” and “always fresh, training abilities and driving away boredom” as it “always delights by a kind of renewal” (23 [1.3]). It is a vision of the Word of God that, however different in its particulars, continues to be one that can inspire readers to seek this wisdom on their own journey from conversion through purgation to a contemplative encounter with divine mercy and love.