Aelred of Rievaulx, The Mirror of Charity

OF BLESSED AELRED

ABBOT OF RIEVAULX

THE MIRROR OF CHARITY.

LETTER OF GERVASE, ABBOT OF PARCHORENSIS

TO AELRED

commanding the composition of the following books.

Humility is indeed a very great virtue of the saints, but if it is true, but if it is discreet. For humility is not to be established on the side of a lie, nor preserved by the sacrilege of disobedience. I asked your fraternity, nay, I commanded, nay, under attestation of the divine name I adjured you, that you should write me a few things, among which you should also meet the complaints of certain people who strive from laxer things to stricter. I do not condemn, I do not reprehend your excuse, but I wholly accuse your obstinacy. It may have been of humility to have excused yourself; but is it of humility not to obey? is it of humility not to acquiesce? Nay, to resist is as the sin of divination, and to be unwilling to acquiesce as the crime of idolatry. But you cry that womanly shoulders should be withdrawn from a heavy burden, and that it is more prudent not to undertake a work offered than, having undertaken it, to collapse under the load. Let what I command be heavy, then; let it be arduous, let it be impossible. But even so you have no excuse. I persist in my sentence: I repeat the command. What will you do? Does not he to whose words you have sworn [say]: 'Let the junior know, he says, that this is expedient for him, and trusting in the help of God let him obey'? (St Benedict, Rule, ch. 68.) You have certainly done as much as you ought, if not more than you ought; you went forward as far as was allowed. You have shown the causes of your inability, saying that you are hardly a grammarian, nay, almost unlettered: one who came to the desert from kitchens, not from schools, where, living rough and rustic among rocks and mountains, you sweat with axe and mallet for your daily bread, where one learns to be silent rather than to speak; where, under the habit of poor fishermen, the buskin of orators is not admitted.

I accept your excuse most gladly, by which I feel the spark of my desire increased rather than extinguished: since it ought to taste sweeter to me if you bring forth what you learned not in the school of any grammarian whatever but in the school of the Holy Spirit, since perhaps you have the treasure in an earthen vessel for this very reason, that the sublimity may be of the power of God, and not of you. This too, how pleasant: that by a certain presage of things to come you were transferred from the kitchen to the desert, you to whom for a time in the royal house the dispensing of carnal foods was entrusted, so that one day in the house of our King you might compare spiritual things with spiritual, and refresh the hungry with the food of the word of God. Nor do I dread the heights of the mountains, nor the roughness of the rocks, nor the hollows of the valleys, since in these days the mountains drip sweetness, and the hills flow with milk and honey, in which the valleys abound with corn; in which honey is sucked from the rock, and oil from the hardest stone, and among the rocks and on the mountains are the pastures of the sheep of Christ. Whence I judge that with that mallet of yours you have struck out for yourself from those rocks something which by sharpness of wit you would not have taken from the book-chests of the masters; and that sometimes in the noonday heat, under the shade of trees, you have perceived something such as you would never have learned in the schools. Not to you, then, not to you, but to His name give glory, Who not only snatched one despaired of from the pit of misery and from the mire of dregs, from the brothel of death and the filth of foulness; but also, making a memorial of His wonders, the merciful and compassionate Lord, to raise up the hope of sinners more abundantly, has enlightened the blind, instructed the untaught, taught the unskilled. Accordingly, since everyone who knows you knows that what is demanded of you is not your own, why do you blush, why do you tremble? why do you dissemble? why do you refuse, at the command of the voice of Him Who gave it, to pay out what He gave? Or do you fear the mark of presumption, or the envy of some?

As if anyone ever wrote anything useful without envy; or as if you could be charged with presumption, who as a monk have obeyed your abbot. I command therefore in the name of Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God, that you do not delay to set down with the pen those things which are known to you by daily meditation concerning the excellence of charity, its fruit and its order, so that we may recognize in your very work, as in a kind of mirror, both what charity is, and how great a sweetness is had in its possession, how great an oppression is felt in cupidity, which is contrary to it; how the affliction of the outer man does not diminish the very sweetness of charity, as some think, but rather increases it; lastly, what discretion is to be had in its exercise. But, that your modesty may be spared, let this very letter be prefixed at the front of the work, so that whatever in the Mirror of Charity (for we give the book this name) displeases the reader may be imputed not to you, who obeyed, but to me, who compelled you against your will. Farewell in Christ, beloved brother.

PREFACE OF BLESSED AELRED.

The true and discreet humility of the saints is truly a virtue; but mine, and that of those like me, is a defect of virtue, of which the Prophet [says]: See my humility, and deliver me (Ps. 118[:153]). For he did not ask to be delivered from some virtue, nor was he boasting of his humility, but he implored succour for his abasement. Lest I seem to veil this wretched humility of mine (and would that, as it is true humility, so also it were discreet virtue) with some importunity of disobedience: to the petition, the command, the attestation of so great a condescension, because it is fitting, though less fittingly, which indeed is my concern, I nevertheless obey. I undertake therefore a work impossible, inexcusable, deserving accusation: impossible by my faint-heartedness, inexcusable by your precept, open to accusation from anyone's inspection. For who would fittingly bear one who at the very first, by a certain apostolic authority, sets out to write of the more excellent way of charity, being not only unskilled in writing, or, as it pleased you, unlettered, but even tongue-tied, and not yet fit to lap a drink of milk? Or how should one who is a single portion of things, or rather none, discourse on the eminence of charity; one disordered, on its order; one barren, on its fruit; how should one infatuated and insipid draw out its sweetness, one overcome by cupidity raise himself against it? Finally, how charity is increased by contrition of the flesh, and its discreet exercise, who am I to explain? I who, contrary to how it seems to you (which, however, I say by your leave), coming from kitchens to the desert, changed my place, not my office?

But you will say: You ought not to excuse yourself. I know, my lord, I know. But, since it is not permitted to excuse, it is pleasing to accuse, so that a reader arriving less well disposed may not be compelled to proceed further, while on the very threshold he sees with what right he can take offence. Yet how great a confidence for writing it affords, that you have unhesitatingly set the most holy affection of charity against the vexations which may deservedly be inflicted on me! And so, having scarcely any hope of finishing, I have fitted together, as I could, what you commanded concerning charity, with that mallet of ours to which you alluded, so that the Mirror might be completed; finding this most certain in it, that when hope and the rest have fallen away, charity always remains. Moreover He Who did not bestow the skill has bestowed the grace. And indeed in this mirror of charity the face of charity will pour itself upon no one except him who abides in love; just as to no one save him who stands in the light is his own face returned in any mirror whatever. Now as to the plan of undertaking the present work: certain things I had dictated meditating by myself, and certain things as if with myself, nay rather with myself, because I had dictated them here and there after the manner of letters, to be shared with my most reverend prior Hugh, one in mind with me, who [is] more with me than I myself am with myself; taking from these the material for the present purpose, but also inserting those very things as they seemed to fit, I have divided the whole into three sections. Although I have made mention of each of these in every one, yet my intention labours specially in the first part to commend the excellence of charity, both from its dignity and from the condemnation of the cupidity opposed to it; in the second to meet the inept complaints of certain people; in the third to show how charity is to be exercised. If anything, then, fitting the purpose has come forth in this sweat of ours, it is owed to the Bestower of glory and to your prayer; but if anything otherwise, let it be pardoned to me, who have neither skill nor practice. But lest the great length of this work frighten you in your busy life, run through first the chapters which are set beneath, and by inspecting them discern what is to be read and what rather to be passed over