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The Medieval Church · c. 1160–1162
A Rule of Life for a Recluse
Aelred of Rievaulx · 1110–1167
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What it is
Written for his sister, enclosed as an anchoress: practical advice on visitors and servants, then a long meditation on entering the gospel scenes in imagination.
Why it lasted
A direct ancestor of the Ancrene Wisse and of the imaginative meditation on the life of Christ that dominated later medieval devotion.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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