This book places the life of Aelred of Rievaulx, third abbot of the English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx, within the hundred-year period from the Norman Conquest of England in October 1066 through Aelred’s death in January 1167. While exploring what is known of Aelred’s life from his own works and especially from the principal work of Walter Daniel, author ofThe Life of Aelred of Rievaulx,Burton considers the influence of both English and church history on Aelred’s personality and purpose as Christian, abbot, and writer. He emphasizes the place of the crucified Christ at the center of Aelred’s life while calling spiritual friendship-not only personal but cosmological-the “hermeneutic key” to his teaching.

Pierre-Andr Burton, OCSO, is abbot of the Cistercian Abbey of Sainte-Marie du Dsert. After receiving a degree at the Universit Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, he entered Notre-Dame de Scourmont Abbey (Chimay) in 1987; he transferred his stability to Dsert in 1999. He is on the editorial board ofCteaux.HisAelred de Rievaulx (1110-1167): Essai de Biographie Existentielle et Spirituelleappeared in 2010, with a supplement inA Companion to Aelred of Rievaulx (:1110-1167),in Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 76 (Brill, 2017). The two volumes of hisVers l’infini d’une autre lumire,containing several of his articles fromCteauxandCollectanea Cisterciensia,were published in 2013 by Pain de Cteaux.

Christopher Coski is a professor of French and chair of the Department of Modern Languages at Ohio University, where he teaches early modern French literature and the cultural history of France from the Middle Ages to the Revolution. He is the author ofFrom Barbarism to Universality: Language and Identity in Early Modern France(University of South Carolina Press, 2011). His articles on French Enlightenment philosophies of language and mind have appeared in French Forum,French Review, Dalhousie French Studies, Essays in French Literature,and1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era.He also serves as an assistant editor for the French Review.

612pages.