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The contributors explore the life, thought, and works of Aelred, 12th-century Cistercian abbot of Rievaulx Abbey, his sermons, spirituality, and histories and highlight their principal themes (e.g., friendship, community, lay spirituality, and saints' lives).

The medieval existence of a sexual meaning for the word cunning, rendering the word itself available for sexual puns, remains unrecognized today, in part because the Middle English Dictionary (MED) fails to include any instance demonstrating such use. But a line from the popular Proverbs of Hending, written before 1325, witnesses to the fourteenth-century availability of the sense. This article discusses the value of literary puns, shows numerous instances in which Chaucer appears to pun sexually on the word cunning, and explains the incarnational implications of the linking of body and spirit in such a pun. It also explores the MED's omission of the relevant quotation from the entry for cunning, examining the MED's archived slips and considering the editorial conventions that should have required inclusion of the evidence from the Proverbs of Hending.

\"That is, God is sought through the experiences of others and through experiences with others.\" Just such an incarnational awareness appears in Aelred of Rievaulx's frequent depictions of monastic community. But although his use of theme is familiar from his works, readers have in general treated the form he uses to embody that content as being of merely casual interest. In fact, however, Aelred is remarkable among the Cistercian fathers in his attention to conversation, with three of his works written entirely or in part as formal dialogues and five others as historical and hagiographical narratives. With their well-realized characters, his dialogues and narratives repeatedly emphasize the value of people talking and listening to one another—an opportunity for mutual learning and teaching.

The source for the story of Arthur's drawing the sword that would make him king seems likely to be a miracle involving Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, his episcopal staff, and a saintly king's tomb, found in Aelred of Rievaulx's \"Vita Sancti Edwardi, Regis et Confessoris\".