Epistola Gervasii Parchorensis abbatis ad Aelredum
The Command to Write
Gervase exhorts Aelred to obey the command to write, distinguishing true humility from the disobedience that hides behind false modesty.
Humility is indeed the greatest virtue of the saints — but only if it is true, and only if it is exercised with discernment. For humility is not to be built on a foundation of lying, nor is it to be preserved through the sacrilege of disobedience. I asked your brotherhood — no, I commanded; no, I adjured you under the witness of God's name — to write me certain brief things, among which you might also address the complaints of those who strive from a more relaxed life toward a stricter one. I don't condemn the excuse, I don't reprove the plea — but I absolutely accuse the obstinacy. Perhaps it was humility to make excuses — but surely it is not humility to refuse to obey? Surely it is not humility to refuse to yield? On the contrary — to resist is like the sin of divination, and to refuse to yield is like the crime of idolatry.✦ But you cry out — that your womanly shoulders must be withdrawn from the heavy burden, and that you'd rather not take up the work offered than collapse under the load once you've shouldered it.
No Excuse Before the Command
Gervase presses his command with increasing urgency, invoking the Rule of St. Benedict and challenging Aelred to trust in God's help rather than his own strength.
So let what I command be heavy; let it be steep, let it be impossible. But even so, you have no excuse. I stand firm in my judgment: I repeat my command. What will you do? Is this not the one whose words you swore by? 'Let him know,' He says, 'younger one, that this is for his own good; and trusting in God's help, let him obey.' ') (St. Bened. in the Rule, ch.
From Kitchen to Wilderness: Grace in Lowliness
Gervase warmly receives Aelred's self-deprecating excuses and reframes his humble origins as a sign of God's grace, drawing on Pauline and scriptural imagery of treasure in clay vessels and spiritual abundance in the wilderness.
68.) You have certainly done what you ought — if not more than you ought; you have gone as far as you were permitted. You've laid out your reasons for saying it's impossible — claiming you're short on grammar, barely even literate; that you came to the wilderness not from the schools but from the kitchens, where, living among rocks and mountains as a rough countryman scraping by for your daily bread, you sweat over axe and hammer — a place where you learn silence more than speech; where, under the dress of poor fishermen, the tragedian's buskin has no place. I welcome your excuse most gladly — I sense it kindles the spark of my desire rather than quenching it; since it ought to taste all the sweeter to me if you bring forth what you learned not in any grammarian's school, but in the school of the Holy Spirit, seeing that you perhaps carry a treasure in a clay vessel, so that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to you.✦ And how delightful this is too — that by a kind of foretaste of what was to come, you were translated from the kitchen to the wilderness, you who perhaps for a time had charge of dispensing fleshly foods in a royal household, so that one day in the house of our King you might set spiritual things alongside spiritual, and feed the hungry with the food of God's word.✦ But I don't dread the steep mountains, or the rough crags, or the deep valleys — for in these days the mountains drip sweetness and the hills flow with milk and honey, where the valleys abound with grain; where honey is drawn from the rock and oil from the hardest stone, and on the crags and mountains are the pastures of Christ's sheep.✦ And so I believe that with that hammer of yours you'll forge something from those rocks that you could never have carried off from the storehouses of the masters by sharpness of intellect alone; and sometimes, in the heat of midday, sitting in the shade of trees, you'll perceive something you would never have learned in the schools. So give the glory not to yourself — not to yourself, but to his name — to the one who snatched the desperate not only from the pit of misery and the mire of filth, from the brothel of death and the filth of shame; but also, calling to mind his wonders, the merciful and compassionate Lord, to raise higher the hope of sinners, enlightened the blind, taught the unlearned, instructed the ignorant.✦✦
The Charge to Write the Mirror of Love
Gervase silences Aelred's remaining fears of presumption and envy, commands him to set down what meditation has taught him about love, and offers his own letter as a shield for any reader's displeasure.
So then, since everyone who knows you is well aware that what you've been asked to do isn't in your nature — why are you ashamed? Why do you tremble? Why do you hide it? Why, at the command of the voice of the One who gave, do you refuse to give out what he gave? Is it the charge of presumption you fear, or the envy of some people? As if anyone has ever written anything useful without envy — or as if you could be accused of presumption, you who have obeyed your abbot as a monk should. I command you, then, in the name of Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God, that those things which long meditation has made known to you — concerning the excellence of love, its fruit, and its order — you not delay setting down with your pen, so that in your very work we may come to recognize, as if in a mirror, both what love is and how great a sweetness is found in its possession; how great an oppression is felt in the greed that stands opposed to it — an oppression which, as some think, diminishes the sweetness of love itself, but which rather increases it: the affliction of the outer person; and finally, what kind of discernment ought to be maintained in its practice. But to spare your feelings, let this very letter be placed at the front of the work, so that whatever in the Mirror of Love — for that is the name we give this book — may displease the reader, let it be attributed not to you, who obeyed, but to me, who compelled you against your will. Farewell in Christ, beloved brother.
Aelred's Humble Self-Accusation
Aelred responds with deep humility, confessing his unworthiness to write about charity's excellence, order, and fruit, yet submitting to the command despite his sense of impossibility.
Truly, the genuine humility of the saints is a real virtue; but mine, and that of those like me, is a failure of virtue—about which the Prophet says: See my humiliation, and rescue me (Ps.✦ 118). He wasn't asking to be rescued from any virtue, or boasting about his humility, but imploring help for his own humiliation. How wretched my humility is—and would that, just as my humility is true, so my discretion in virtue might also be genuine, lest I seem to cloak any disobedience or stubbornness with such great condescension toward your request, command, and witness; for though it is fitting, it is less than fitting, and though it concerns me, I nevertheless obey. So I take on a work that is impossible, inexcusable, and worthy of accusation: impossible because of my faintheartedness, inexcusable because of your command, subject to accusation from anyone's scrutiny. For who could worthily undertake, at the very outset, with a kind of apostolic authority, to write about the more excellent way of charity, sending ahead not only one unskilled in writing, or, as it pleased you, unlettered, but also speechless, and not yet fit to lap at the drink of milk?✦ Or how could one with experience in just one matter—or certainly none—speak in an unformed way about charity's eminence; about its order, be barren; about its fruit, be insipid and tasteless; draw out its sweetness, though conquered by desire, and rise up against it? And finally, how charity might be increased through the contrition of the flesh, and how it might be discreetly shown—who am I to explain?
The Hammer and the Mirror
Aelred resolves to accuse rather than excuse himself, takes confidence in Gervase's charitable command, and describes the Mirror of Love as a work that reflects only to those who remain in love.
Though it may seem otherwise to you — and I say this with your leave — I have come from the kitchens to the desert, changing my location but not my duty. And yet you'll say: You shouldn't excuse yourself. I know, my Lord, I know. But since I'm not allowed to excuse myself, I'd rather accuse myself, so that the reader, on arriving, won't feel unwelcome and be forced to go any further without first seeing, right at the threshold, just how easily they might take offense. Still, this gives me just as much confidence to write: you have fearlessly thrown the most holy affection of love at me — to undergo the troubles that could rightly be inflicted on me. And so, with scarcely any hope of finishing, I have hammered together the Mirror of the love you commanded, using that hammer you alluded to, as best I could; for I find this to be most certain: when hope and everything else fall away, love always remains. But the one who gave the grace gave no skill. And indeed, in this Mirror of love, the face of love pours itself out on no one except the one who remains in love; just as in any mirror, a person's own face is reflected back only for someone standing in the light.
Plan and Purpose of the Work
Aelred explains the three-part structure of the Speculum Caritatis, attributes any success to God's grace and Gervase's prayers, and invites the reader to use the chapter headings as a guide.
So here's how I came to take on this project. Partly it grew out of my own private reflection, and partly — or more accurately — out of conversations with my most reverend prior Hugh, a kindred spirit, to whom I had dictated certain things in the form of letters, shared here and there as the occasion arose, more freely than I would have committed them to paper on my own. Drawing from these letters the material for my present purpose, I inserted them as they stood wherever they seemed to fit, and divided the whole into three sections. Although I have touched on each of these topics individually at various points, the aim of the work is this: in the first part, to commend the excellence of love — both on the basis of its own dignity and on the basis of the condemnation of its opposite, cupidity; in the second, to push back against the foolish complaints of certain people; and in the third, to show how love is to be put into practice. So if anything in this labor of ours has turned out in a way consistent with our purpose, glory is owed to the Giver and to your prayers; but if anything has fallen short, let it be forgiven me, since I lack the skill or the experience. But don't let the sheer length of this work intimidate you. First, run through the chapter headings listed below, and by scanning them, decide for yourself what's worth reading and what can be passed over.
Read the original Latin
Est quidem sanctorum virtus permaxima humilitas, sed si vera, sed si discreta. Neque enim humilitas in parte est constituenda mendacii, nec inobedientiae sacrilegio conservanda. Rogavi fraternitatem tuam, imo praecepi, imo sub attestatione divini nominis adjuravi; ut mihi pauca quaedam scriberes, inter quae etiam quorumdam querimoniis, qui de remissioribus ad arctiora nituntur, obviares. Non damno, non reprehendo excusationem, sed prorsus obstinationem accuso. Fuerit humilitatis excusasse; sed nunquid humilitatis est non obedire? nunquid humilitatis est non acquiescere? Imo quasi peccatum ariolandi est repugnare; et quasi scelus idololatriae nolle acquiescere. Sed clamas, femineos humeros gravi sarcinae subducendos, cautiusque opus oblatum non subire, quam sub fasce, cum subieris, ruere.
Sit ergo grave, quod jubeo; sit arduum, sit impossibile. Sed nec sic excusationem habes. Persisto in sententia mea: praeceptum ingemino. Quid facies? Nonne is, in cujus verba jurasti. « Sciat, inquit, junior, hoc sibi expedire: et confidens de adjutorio Dei obediat? » (S. Bened. in Regula c.
68.) Fecisti utique, quantum debuisti, si non plusquam debuisti; quousque licuit processisti. Causas tuae impossibilitatis ostendisti, dicens te minus grammaticum, imo pene illitteratum: qui de coquinis, non de scholis ad eremum veneris, ubi inter rupes et montes agrestis et rusticus victitans, pro diurno pane in securi desudes et malleo, ubi magis discitur silere quam loqui; ubi sub habitu pauperum piscatorum, cothurnus non admittitur oratorum. Accipio gratissime excusationem tuam, qua desiderii mei scintillam augeri potius sentio, quam exstingui; cum dulcius mihi debeat sapere, si id proferas, quod non in cujuslibet grammatici, sed in schola didiceris Spiritus sancti, cum forte thesaurum ob id habeas in vase fictili, ut sublimitas sit virtutis Dei, et non ex te. Id quoque quam jucundum, quod quodam praesagio futurorum de coquina sis translatus ad eremum, cui forte ad horam in regia domo carnalium ciborum fuit credita dispensatio, ut aliquando in domo regis nostri, spiritualibus spiritualia comparares, ac cibo verbi Dei esurientes reficeres. Sed nec ardua montium, nec aspera rupium, nec vallium concava perhorresco, cum in diebus istis montes stillent dulcedinem, et colles fluant lac et mel, in quibus valles abundant frumento; in quibus sugitur mel de petra, oleumque de saxo durissimo, et in rupibus et in montibus sunt pascua ovium Christi. Unde arbitror, quod malleo illo tuo aliquid tibi de rupibus illis excuderis, quod sagacitate ingenii, de magistrorum scriniis non tulisses; et nonnunquam tale aliquid in meridiano fervore, sub umbris arborum senseris, quale nunquam didicisses in scholis. Non tibi ergo, non tibi, sed nomini ejus da gloriam, qui non solum de lacu miseriae et de luto faecis, de prostibulo mortis, et caeno turpitudinis eripuit desperatum; sed et memoriam faciens mirabilium suorum, misericors et miserator Dominus, ad peccatorum spem cumulatius erigendam, illuminavit caecum, indoctum erudivit, docuit imperitum.
Proinde, cum id quod exigeris, tuum non esse noverit omnis, qui te novit, cur erubescis, cur trepidas? cur dissimulas? cur ad ejus vocis imperium qui dedit, renuis erogare, quod dedit? An praesumptionis notam, vel aliquorum formidas invidiam? Quasi aliquid utile quis unquam sine invidia scripserit; aut praesumptionis possis argui, qui monachus abbati parueris. Praecipio itaque in nomine Jesu Christi, et in Spiritu Dei nostri, quatenus ea quae tibi diuturna meditatione nota sunt, de excellentia charitatis, de fructu ejus, de ordine ejus, stylo adnotare non differas, ut et quid sit charitas, et quanta in ejus possessione habeatur dulcedo, quanta in cupiditate, quae ei contraria est, sentiatur oppressio; quam non ipsam dulcedinem charitatis minuat, ut quidam putant, sed potius augeat, hominis exterioris afflictio; postremo qualis in ejus exhibitione sit habenda discretio, in ipso opere tuo, quasi in quodam speculo agnoscamus. Verum, ut pudori tuo parcatur, haec ipsa epistola in fronte operis praefigatur, ut quidquid in Speculo charitatis (hoc enim libro nomen imponimus), lectori displicuerit, non tibi, qui parueris, sed mihi, qui invitum coegerim, imputetur. Vale in Christo, dilecte frater.
Vere sanctorum vera, et discreta humilitas virtus est; mea autem, et mei similium defectus virtutis, de qua Propheta: Vide humilitatem meam, et eripe me (Psal. cxviii). Neque enim a virtute aliqua se eripi postulabat, aut de humilitate extollebat, sed dejectioni suae subventionem implorabat. Quam miseram humilitatem meam, et utinam sicut humilitatem veram, sic quoque virtutem discretam, ne aliqua inobedientiae importunitate velare videar; tantae dignationis petitioni, jussioni, attestationi, quia dignum est, minus digne licet, quod quidem mea interest, tamen pareo. Suscipio itaque opus impossibile, inexcusabile, dignum accusatione, ex mea pusillanimitate impossibile, ex praeceptione vestra inexcusabile, accusationi subjacens ex cujusvis inspectione. Quis enim digne ferat prima fronte, quadam auctoritate apostolica, de excellentiori via charitatis scribere praemittentem, non solum scribendi rudem, aut, sicut vobis placuit, illitteratum sed etiam elinguem, et lactis potum nondum idonee lingentem? Aut qualiter rerum peritia una, aut certe nulla, de charitatis eminentia, incompositus, de ejus ordine, sterilis, de fructu disserat; infatuatus et insipidus, ejus dulcedinem eliciat, cupiditate victus, contra eam se erigat? denique, qualiter carnis contritione charitas augeatur, et ejus discretam exhibitionem, quis ego qui explicem?
qui secus ac vobis videtur, quod tamen pace vestra dico, de coquinis ad eremum veniens, locum non officium mutavi? Atqui dicetis: Excusare non debes. Scio, domine mi, scio. Sed, quia excusare non licet, libet accusare, ut adveniens lector minus gratus non cogatur ulterius progredi, dum in ipso limine cernit, quo jure possit offendi. Illud tamen ad scribendum quantam fiduciam praestat, quod sanctissimum charitatis affectum, ad suscipiendas molestias, quae mihi digne irrogari poterunt, incunctanter objecistis? Itaque spem perficiendi vix habens, de charitate quae jussistis, illo malleo nostro, cui allusistis, ut Speculum perficeretur, ut potui, compegi; in hoc certissimum esse reperiens, quod, cum spes et cetera exciderint, semper maneat charitas. Praestitit autem gratiam, qui artem non tribuit. Et quidem in hoc charitatis speculo, nulli, nisi in dilectione manenti, vultus se charitatis infundet; sicut nec nisi in luce existenti, sua cuique in quovis speculo redditur facies.
Sane autem praesentis operis suscipiendi propositum, quaedam ipse mecum meditando, quaedam vero quasi mecum, imo magis mecum, quia illa unanimi meo reverendissimo priori Hugoni, qui plus mecum, quam ego ipse mecum, communicanda epistolarum more sparsim dictaveram, ex quibus praesenti intentioni materiam sumens, sed et ipsa eadem ut congruere videbantur inserens, tribus incisionibus totum distinxi. Quarum licet de qualibet in singulis mentionem fecerim, specialiter tamen in prima parte charitatis excellentiam, tum ex ejus dignitate, tum ex adversae ei cupiditatis improbatione commendare, in secunda ineptis quorumdam querimoniis obviare; in tertia qualiter exhibenda sit charitas, monstrare laborat intentio. Si quid igitur in hoc sudore nostro proposito congruens processit, gloria largitori, et vestrae orationi debetur; si quid vero aliter, mihi artem, aut usum non habenti donetur. Verum ne occupationem vestram terreat operis hujus tanta prolixitas, capitula, quae subjecta sunt, primo percurrite, et eorum inspectione quid legendum, quid vero negligendum sit, discernite.
Scripture echoes
- ↩1Sam.15.23 — For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and iniquity and idolatry are stubbornness. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has rejected you from being king.
- ↩2Cor.4.7 — But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that the surpassing power belongs to God and not from us.
- ↩1Cor.2.13 — And these things we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things with spiritual words.
- ↩Deut.32.13 — He made him ride on the high places of the earth, and he ate the produce of the field; and he nursed him with honey from the rock, and oil from the flinty crag.
- ↩Ps.39.3 — I was mute in silence; I held back from good, and my pain was stirred up.
- ↩Ps.110.4 — The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: "You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek."
- ↩Ps.119.153 — See my affliction and rescue me, for I have not forgotten your law.
- ↩1Cor.12.31 — But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you a still more excellent way.
Speculum caritatis (The Mirror of Charity) companion
Reorder one love at a time, daily
Use the study map with the free Chosen Portion app's daily readings to work through Aelred at a sustainable pace.
Aelred wrote the Mirror as a rule for daily interior discipline in community, and Chosen Portion carries that discipline forward as a short ordered reading each day.
- All 3 books and 102 chapters mapped into 4 weekly themes with page-level pointers
- Aelred's choice-motion-fruit test, turned into a one-page self-examination worksheet
- 16 discussion questions ready for personal journaling or a 4-session small group