Treatise on Spiritual Friendship
St. Aelred of Rievaulx, born 1110 in Northumbria. His biographer, Walter Daniel describes him thus:
“He did not attain to great knowledge of the liberal arts at school, but by his own efforts and the exercise of the keen and subtle mind he had, he became more cultured than many who are steeped in secular learning… He was moreover a man of the highest integrity, wise in the ways of the world, witty, eloquent, a pleasant companion, generous and discreet. At the same time no prelate of his day was as gentle and patient as he, or sympathised so deeply with the physical and moral infirmities of others.”
Here is the extract from Aelred of Rievaulx’s De spirituali amicitia:
“First we must set this spiritual love on a firm foundation in which its beginnings must be anchored, and the greatest care must be exercised, when soaring to the heights of friendship, to keep within the established limits. This foundation is the love of God, to which all things should be referred – whatever love or affection may suggest, whatever one’s inner promptings or a friend may recommend…
Not all those whom we love, however, are to be received into friendship, for not all will be found fit for it, since friendship is a twinning of minds and spirits where two become as one.
Your friend is a second self from whom you withhold nothing, hide nothing, fear nothing. The first essential, therefore, is to choose someone whom you judge suitable, then to try him, and finally to submit him to your friendship. For friendship should be stable, unfaltering in affection, holding a mirror to eternity. That is why friends are not to be changed by childish whim according as we blow hot or cold. Since there is none viler than the man who violates friendship, nor mental anguish worse than being forsaken or attacked by a friend, a potential friend must be picked with the utmost care and tested with all circumspection. But once he is admitted to intimacy, you must bear with him, follow him, draw him after you, so that, as long as he does not withdraw irrevocably from the given basis, you hold all things in common, both material and spiritual, and are thus one in mind and heart and will and purpose.
So you can distinguish four stages by which one ascends to the perfection of friendship: the first is choosing, the second is testing, the third is accepting, the fourth the achieving, through charity and good will, of total unanimity in matters human and divine.”
“Yet it is not only the high irascible you should avoid choosing as friends, but also the unstable and the suspicious… As for the suspicious man, he lacks the first essential to be sought in friendship: the peace and tranquillity of heart that each can give the other. You should therefore choose for your friend a man who is free from anger’s fretting, who knows his own mind, is not eaten up with suspicion and does not cast gravity to the winds with idle chatter, and above all one whose character and conduct is compatible with yours…”
“I grant you one is hard put to it to find a man who is not naturally subject to these failings. But there are many who have risen above them: those who curb their irritability with patience, who cultivate seriousness as check upon their levity, and banish distrust by fixing their minds on love. And the best-trained for friendship, I would say, are precisely those who have fought and overcome. The harder they have struggled against their weaknesses, the more dependable they are as friends.”
“He did not attain to great knowledge of the liberal arts at school, but by his own efforts and the exercise of the keen and subtle mind he had, he became more cultured than many who are steeped in secular learning… He was moreover a man of the highest integrity, wise in the ways of the world, witty, eloquent, a pleasant companion, generous and discreet. At the same time no prelate of his day was as gentle and patient as he, or sympathised so deeply with the physical and moral infirmities of others.”
Here is the extract from Aelred of Rievaulx’s De spirituali amicitia:
“First we must set this spiritual love on a firm foundation in which its beginnings must be anchored, and the greatest care must be exercised, when soaring to the heights of friendship, to keep within the established limits. This foundation is the love of God, to which all things should be referred – whatever love or affection may suggest, whatever one’s inner promptings or a friend may recommend…
Not all those whom we love, however, are to be received into friendship, for not all will be found fit for it, since friendship is a twinning of minds and spirits where two become as one.
Your friend is a second self from whom you withhold nothing, hide nothing, fear nothing. The first essential, therefore, is to choose someone whom you judge suitable, then to try him, and finally to submit him to your friendship. For friendship should be stable, unfaltering in affection, holding a mirror to eternity. That is why friends are not to be changed by childish whim according as we blow hot or cold. Since there is none viler than the man who violates friendship, nor mental anguish worse than being forsaken or attacked by a friend, a potential friend must be picked with the utmost care and tested with all circumspection. But once he is admitted to intimacy, you must bear with him, follow him, draw him after you, so that, as long as he does not withdraw irrevocably from the given basis, you hold all things in common, both material and spiritual, and are thus one in mind and heart and will and purpose.
So you can distinguish four stages by which one ascends to the perfection of friendship: the first is choosing, the second is testing, the third is accepting, the fourth the achieving, through charity and good will, of total unanimity in matters human and divine.”
“Yet it is not only the high irascible you should avoid choosing as friends, but also the unstable and the suspicious… As for the suspicious man, he lacks the first essential to be sought in friendship: the peace and tranquillity of heart that each can give the other. You should therefore choose for your friend a man who is free from anger’s fretting, who knows his own mind, is not eaten up with suspicion and does not cast gravity to the winds with idle chatter, and above all one whose character and conduct is compatible with yours…”“I grant you one is hard put to it to find a man who is not naturally subject to these failings. But there are many who have risen above them: those who curb their irritability with patience, who cultivate seriousness as check upon their levity, and banish distrust by fixing their minds on love. And the best-trained for friendship, I would say, are precisely those who have fought and overcome. The harder they have struggled against their weaknesses, the more dependable they are as friends.”
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