Stephen Plustwik

Saint Aelred of Rievaulx could well be surnamed, ‘the Lenient’:

'We must remember that most of those who answered Aelred's invitation were lay brothers, untaught, and of peasant stock, while others were learned young men who had attended the schools. Some were shackled by the ties of sin. Others were pure and innocent, like Aelred's young friend, Simon. Some had been brought up in comfort, while others were already used to a hard life. Aelred had to watch them all in order to find out how best to train them. He had to find the right remedy for every sin and bad habit he found among them. Every man who came there found a loving father in Aelred, and helpers and comforters among the brethren. And although so many came to Rievaulx, no one was ever sent away in Aelred's time, for he held that if a house is too proud to bear with its weaker brethren, it cannot be called a house of religion. He claimed that Rievaulx was outstanding because, above all other houses, it had learned to have compassion on all in their needs.'

—Saint Aelred of Rievaulx (ca. 1110–67), Cistercian Abbot of Rievaulx, translators' introduction to his On Jesus at Twelve Years Old (De Jesu puero duodenni, written sometime between 1153 and 57), translated from the Latin by Geoffrey Webb and Adrian Walker (for its first appearance in English), published by A. R. Mowbray & Co., London, in 1956, and reprinted by The Saint Austin Press, London, in 2001, pages 10–11.