twelve-year-old son in the Temple: “Then there are embraces, then there are kisses, then: ‘I have found him whom my soul loves, I have held him fast and will not let him go’ ” (Sg. 3:4).28
Having discussed the overall orientation of the De Jesu puero duodenni—the way it encourages the monastic reader to envision himself as seeking the most beloved of boys, as did the Christ Child’s family, friends, and neighbors—I will now flesh out the treatise’s contents more precisely in order to show that it places greater emphasis upon spiritual growth than upon the actual or hypothetical details of the Temple episode. Aelred gives his treatise a tripartite structure, dividing it into sequential considerations of the historical, allegorical, and moral senses of the biblical anecdote about the twelve-year-old Jesus. Numerically speaking, only the first ten of the text’s thirty-two sections (according to how its modern editors have divided it) are devoted to what the Christ Child did during his three-day sojourn in Jerusalem or to the issue of his subsequent advancement “in wisdom, and age, and grace” when he returned to Nazareth (Lk. 2:52). In other words, less than a third of the treatise is concerned with the historical (or broader, Christological) sense of the biblical account about the twelve-year-old Jesus’ staying behind in the Temple.29 That Aelred is more interested in the episode’s moral sense is indicated by the fact that his treatise culminates in this mode of interpretation, and also by his reference to the theme of the soul’s infancy and development in sections that are ostensibly devoted to the historical and allegorical interpretations of the aforesaid biblical episode. For instance, early on, in the first (that is, historical) section of the treatise, after remarking that the boy Jesus did not come into the Temple “as a teacher, but as a boy who learns … [and] does not withdraw from the control of his parents” (a comment that, incidentally, undermines the potential view of Jesus as a disobedient and disrespectful child), Aelred suddenly reflects upon his own past sinful behavior, likening himself to the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15:11–32) who, through folly, soon found himself without food. In need of bread like the Prodigal Son, Aelred eventually came to his senses and returned to Bethlehem, a town whose name means “House of Bread.” There, on the altar in the Church, he found the Eucharist, which is none other than the Christ Child in the manger, and fed thereon.30 Aelred then offers a moral reading of his own behavior and of the beasts widely thought to have been gathered around the manger at the first Christmas: “This is the beginning of conversion, a spiritual birth as it were, that we should model ourselves on the Child, take upon ourselves the marks of poverty, and becoming like animals before you, Lord, enjoy the delights of your presence.”31 Aelred clearly regards Bethlehem as a symbol of Christians’ spiritual birth. Proceeding along these tropological lines further, he explains that the Infant’s hiding of himself in Egypt (a dangerous place that nevertheless served as a safe haven for the child Jesus and his family) signifies the soul’s temptation, and that the Boy’s subsequent upbringing in Nazareth (a name meaning “flower”) represents the soul’s growth, or blossoming, in virtue. “For just as the Lord Jesus is born and conceived in us, so he grows and is nourished in us, until we come to perfect manhood, that maturity which is proportioned to the complete growth of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).32 Aelred here assumes his reader is aware of how “scripture speaks of two sorts of age,” as Origen put it: “One is the age of the body, which is not subject to our power but to the law of nature. The other is the age of the soul, which is properly under our control. If we will it, we grow daily in this age.”33 In other words, the monk whom Aelred is addressing must consciously pursue spiritual development. By thus encouraging his reader to imitate the Christ Child by being spiritually reborn and developing after his pattern, Aelred, as abbot and spiritual guide, can be said to labor like a mother so that Christ might be formed in the monks entrusted to his care (cf. Gal. 4:19). After this digression about his own spirituality, which leads to his offering of moral advice, Aelred returns to a consideration of what transpired while the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.
At the beginning of the second part of the work, in which he offers what he sees as the obvious allegorical meaning of the text (namely, that Christ’s parents in searching for him represent the Jews in search of the Messiah), Aelred reiterates the idea that the events of Christ’s early life (his birth, his persecution by Herod, and his upbringing at Nazareth) signify the monk’s spiritual progress.34 Later on, in the third main section, when he centers his attention on the moral sense, Aelred uses a striking metaphor when he speaks of how the monk experiences “the infancy of the new way of life” (novae conversationis … infantia) at Bethlehem. Elaborating on a point he made earlier, Aelred explains that the monk imitates the poverty of Christ’s birth by renouncing the world and, in addition, acquires wealth at Nazareth by growing in virtues. He goes further, pointing out that Christ’s “going up” to Jerusalem with his parents signifies the soul’s eventual ascent to contemplation and that his “going down” to Nazareth with his parents means that a monk (especially an abbot charged with the responsibility of pastoral care) should turn aside from the heights of prayer when duty calls.35
Whereas up until this point Aelred had spoken of the soul’s imitation of the child Jesus in an analogous sense, here he says, more literally, that the characteristics of infants are worthy of emulation: an infant, since it has “not yet arrived at the use of reason … harms no one, deceives no one; it is free from covetousness, knows nothing of its own will, judges no one, calumniates no one, covets nothing. It is not anxious for the present nor solicitous for the future and relies only on the judgment of others.”36 While Aelred seems to imply that infants are naturally virtuous, he essentially says they lack the vices or failings commonly found in adults, especially those living in the world (though one could also say that Aelred values infants’ simplicity, a positive virtue).37 When commenting on Christ’s remark about the necessity of becoming like a little child, if one wishes to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:3–5), St. Jerome (d. 420) had similarly spoken of little children as not being guilty of the negative behaviors commonly displayed in flawed adults: “Just as that little one, whose example I give you, does not persevere in anger, does not remember when it is injured, does not desire a beautiful woman it sees, does not think one thing while saying another, so also you, unless you shall have such innocence and purity of soul, shall not enter into the kingdoms of the heavens.”38 Jerome’s list was repeated by a number of monastic authors.39 Though Aelred does not reiterate its particulars, he can be said to convey the same basic idea. Yet even as both authors call attention to children’s lack of malice, their harmlessness, and overall passivity, they do so in slightly different ways. Aelred’s ideal seems to be that Cistercian monks (who, significantly, as already noted, did not begin their life in the monastery as oblates, which was a standard practice in the earlier Benedictine tradition) should be as malleable and submissive as young children.40 Guerric of Igny, another twelfth-century Cistercian, likewise valorizes childhood in reflecting on Christ’s having taken on the form of a child: “Unto us … a little Child is born, and emptying out his majesty God had taken on himself not merely the earthly body of mortal men but the weakness and insignificance of children. O blessed childhood, whose weakness and foolishness is stronger and wiser than any man…. O sweet and sacred childhood, which brought back man’s true innocence, by which men of every age can return to blessed childhood and be conformed to you, not in physical weakness but in humility of heart and holiness of life.”41 In his treatise De Jesu puero duodenni, Aelred likewise engages in a type of idealization of childhood,42 though he is specifically concerned with how it was exemplified by Christ, the epitome of spiritual as well as physical perfection.
Thus far we have seen how Aelred spends a relatively small amount of time discussing the concrete aspects of Jesus’ childhood, specifically, how Aelred often seems eager to transition to the topic of a monk’s spiritual development, as ideally running parallel to the Christ Child’s human development. There is another way in which Aelred takes ample time to focus on the nonhistorical aspects of the Temple episode: in the middle section of his treatise, he offers an extended allegorical discussion of the Jews, who, like Jesus’ parents on this very stressful occasion, have great difficulty finding him. Though Aelred’s extensive criticism of the Jews (specifically, the Holy Family’s traveling companions) for failing to
