In a Christian adaptation of Cicero's
teaching about friendship Aelred, abbot of Rievaux
starts with a circle of his monks in the cloister.
The day before yesterday, when I was
going round the cloister of the monastery, sitting
with the brethren in a loving circle, as though amid the delights of paradise, I admired the
leaves, the flowers, and the fruits of every tree. I found no one in that great number
whom I did not love, and whom I did not believe loved me. I was filled with such a joy as
passes all the delights of this world. For I felt as though my spirit were transfused into
them all, and their affection into me, so that I could say with the prophet: "Behold how
good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity".
Even in this world, where not all we love
can be our friends, how much easier it is to live
in an atmosphere of love and trust, rather than surrounded by every kind of suspicion,
loving no one and feeling oneself to be loved by no one.
in Aelred explicitly alludes to
that note of disinterestedness in love which so much
appealed to the early Cistercian writers as an essential way of insisting upon the
worthwhileness of Christian love in itself.
....the spiritual friendship which
we call genuine is sought, not with an eye on any worldly
expediency, or for some ulterior motive, but simply on account of its own natural worth
and the inclination of the human heart, so that its profit and its reward is nothing other
than itself.
Thus the Lord in the Gospel says: "I
have appointed you that you should go and should
bring forth fruit", that is, should love one another. For in true friendship one travels by
making progress, and receives the fruit in the experience of the delight of its perfection.
Thus spiritual friendship is begotten
between the good, who have lives, habits, and
interests that are alike, which is "accord in benevolence and charity on things human
and divine". So this definition seems to me to be adequate to express the notion of
friendship if, however, according to our usage, we understand "charity" to exclude from
friendship everything vicious.
When he goes on to speak of the origin
and source of friendship, Aelred makes it quite
clear that this disinterestedness in love, which is a reflection of God's disinterested self-
giving in creation, is in no sense incompatible with a genuine sense of need. God alone
is un-needy; only to him every creature cries: "Thou art my God, tor thou hast no need of
my goods."
Everything else needs the completion of
relationship for its fulfilment in a world in which
a vestige of God's own supreme unity has been left in the natural tendency of all things
to fall into an order in time and place, from stones in the brook and trees in the wood to
animals at play, everything seems to long for companionship.
The theoretical basis of the discussion
is developed with reference to the belief which
Aelred shares with Cicero that "there is nothing more advantageous to seek in human
affairs, nothing harder to find, nothing sweeter to experience" than friendship. It is not
merely that, as scripture says, "a faithful friend is the medicine of life". It is also that,
as a
consequence, friendship is a step towards that perfection "which consists in the love
and knowledge of God; so that, from being a friend of man, a man becomes a friend of
God, according to that saying of our Saviour in the Gospel: 'I will not now call you my
servants, but my friends'".
According to Aelred, the being which all
things have is a participation or share in the
being of God, who is the 'being of all things that exist'. In his defence of the
worthwhileness of friendship Aelred takes the view that it is actually a foretaste of
heaven, "where no one hides his thoughts or disguises his affection. This is that true and
everlasting friendship, which begins here and is perfected there. Here, few know it,
where few are good. There, everyone shares it, where all are good".
The medieval image or model of the cosmos
into which Aelred's imaginings had to fit,
which, however grotesque its inaccuracies, was one of the most attractive concepts of it
ever devised. In this respect it is likely that the Cistercians knew better than the the
monks of the urban orders so many of the components of this grand design - the rocks
and trees among which they worked and slept, the birds and animals he encountered
each day in their wild valley, and –around or above him - the elements, the sun and the
moon, angels and demons, Lucifer and God.
