Aelred of Rievaulx
| Saint Aelred of Rievaulx | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Abbot | |
| Born | 1110 Hexham, Northumberland, England |
| Died | 12 January 1167 (aged 56–57) Rievaulx, Yorkshire, England |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church; Anglican Communion |
| Major shrine |
Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, England (destroyed) |
| Feast | 12 January |
| Attributes | Abbot holding a book |
| Patronage | bladder stone sufferers |
Aelred (1110 – 12 January 1167), also Ailred, Ælred, Æthelred, etc., was an English writer, abbot of Rievaulx (from 1147 until his death), and saint.
Aelred was born in Hexham, Northumbria, in 1110, one of three sons of Eilaf, priest of St Andrew's at Hexham and himself a son of another Eilaf, treasurer of Durham.
Aelred spent several years at the court of King David I of Scotland in Roxburgh, possibly from the age of 14, rising to the rank of echonomus (often termed 'steward' or 'Master of the Household') before leaving the court at age twenty-four (in 1134) to enter the Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx in Yorkshire. He may have been partially educated by Lawrence of Durham, who sent him a hagiography of Saint Brigid.
From 1142–3, Aelred was novice master at Rievaulx. In 1143, he became the first abbot of a new daughter house of Rievaulx at Revesby in Lincolnshire. In 1147, he was elected abbot of Rievaulx itself, a position he was to hold until his death. Under his administration, the abbey is said to have grown to some 140 monks and 500 conversi and laymen. His role also required an amount of travel. Cistercian abbots were expected to make annual visitations to daughter-houses, and Rievaulx had five in England and Scotland by the time Aelred held office. Moreover, Aelred had to make the long sea journey to the annual general chapter of the Order at Cîteaux.
Alongside his role as a monk and later abbot, Aelred was involved throughout his life in political affairs. In 1138, when Rievaulx's patron, Walter Espec, was to surrender his castle at Wark to King David of Scotland, Aelred accompanied Abbot William of Rievaulx to the Scottish border to negotiate the transfer. In 1142 Aelred travelled to Rome, alongside Walter of London, Archdeacon of York, to represent before Pope Innocent II a group of northern prelates who opposed the election of King Stephen's nephew William as archbishop of York (the result of the journey was that Aelred brought back a letter from Innocent summoning the superiors that Aelred represented to appear in Rome the following March to make their deposition in the required canonical form; the resulting negotiations would drag on for many years). The fourteenth-century version of the Peterborough Chronicle states that Aelred's efforts during the twelfth-century papal schism brought about Henry II's decisive support for the Cistercian candidate, resulting in 1161 in the formal recognition of Pope Alexander III.
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