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The novices' house The cell where the tyros of Christ are
proven.(1)
[Walter Daniel, Life of Aelred]
(1/1)
Anyone who wished to become a monk had to first
undergo a year-long period of instruction in the monastic life, as stipulated
in chapter 58 of the Rule
of St Benedict. This was known as the novitiate and the newcomer
was called a novice. The novices
usually had their own separate quarters where they lived after an
initial four days spent in the guest-house. Here they meditated under the
tutelage
of the novice-master, whose duty it was to offer encouragement and support
during times of self-doubt, and to make the novices ‘worthy
vessels of God and acceptable to the Order.’(2) Their
quarters were often located in the undercroft of the monks’ dormitory,
but at Rievaulx the novices’ house occupied
the middle level of a three-storey building, sandwiched between the monks’ toilet
block (the reredorters) on the upper level and a long, dark cellar,
that may have functioned as the novices’ dayroom. The novices enjoyed
greater comfort than the monks, for their quarters were heated by a large
moulded
fireplace, which had a tiled hearth. They could access the infirmary and
its cloister
via
a door and stair in the NW corner of their undercroft.
It was during his time as
novice-master of Rievaulx that Aelred wrote what was perhaps the most
highly regarded of his writings, namely, the Mirror of Charity (Speculum
Caritatis). His biographer, Walter
Daniel, considered this the greatest
of Aelred’s works: which contains as good a picture of the
love of God and one’s neighbour as a man can see held up to a mirror.
[Walter Daniel, Life of Aelred, p. 26.]
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Aelred, the third
abbot of Rievaulx, officiated for a time as novice-master of the abbey.
This was an important position, for he was responsible for
grooming the next generation of monks and offering support. Aelred evidently
carried
out
his duties to perfection, and was an inspirational and beloved figure.
The fruits of his industry could be clearly seen in the monks whom he
had nurtured:
Their manner of life is such that they seem
to bear blossoms
more dazzling white than the white flowers about them and
reveal a yet greater loveliness of incomparable grace.(3)
Aelred’s
biographer, Walter Daniel,
tells of one secular clerk who entered the novitiate at Rievaulx
and found the way of life overly severe. Aelred
pleaded with him to stay, but to no avail, and the clerk left the
abbey, ‘ignorantly
ignorant, unwisely wise.’(4) Aelred,
we are told, was devastated at his departure, but not for long for only
one day later he caught sight
of the man who had, unwittingly,
walked in a circle and ended back at the monastery! Aelred was overjoyed
and welcomed his return. Aelred had prudently not mentioned the novice’s
disappearance to the abbot, hopeful that through his prayers the sheep
might return to the
fold and end his days as a Cistercian monk. This, we are told, he eventually
did, for he died in Aelred’s arms.(5)
Walter also reveals that when Aelred was novice-master he built for himself
a little brick chamber, rather like a tank, beneath the floor of the
novices’ quarters,
and would discretely immerse himself here in icy cold water, to ‘quench
the heat in himself of every vice.’(6)
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