IS MAURICE OF RIEVAULX January — was, after a contested election at Richmond, recognized by Eugenius as archbishop of York at Treves on 7 December 1147. 1 The new archbishop had now to find a successor at Fountains. He selected Maurice of Rievaulx. The story was told by Hugh of Kirkstall on the authority of the aged monk Serlo, about sixty years later : Fontes interim veniens [Henricus archiepiscopus] monachum quendam Kievallis, Mauricium nomine, in abbatem creavit. Hie Mauricius non tres plene menses apud Fontes faciens resignata cura in manu archiepiscopi rediit ad locum unde assumptus est. 2 So, within three years, Maurice refused two of the most responsible positions that St. Bernard and his friends could offer in the Cistercian order. He was succeeded at Fountains by another monk of Rievaulx, Turold. But Archbishop Henry was a diffi- cult neighbour, and after two years Turold was forced to resign and to return to Rievaulx. Unlike Maurice, he did not settle down there, but withdrew to Clairvaux. Almost at once (1151) St. Bernard procured his election as abbot of Trois -Fontaines. 3 Rievaulx was clearly a place to be reckoned with, a home of scholars and administrators. Of the three contemporaries, Ailred, Turold, Maurice, the two former have long been known. St. Ailred was in his way a great man ; Turold was a learned and competent man — ' adhuc non deest homini litteratura congruens,' wrote St. Bernard, defending the appointment at Trois -Fontaines. 4 Maurice has hitherto been neglected. He must have been a remarkable person, but, like most men who refuse responsibility, he has been lost to history. Yet there is evidence that he also was a scholar, and it is possible to identify at least one of his writings. Help comes from yet another scholar of Rievaulx, Walter Daniel, the friend and pupil of Ailred. Walter wrote the life of St. Ailred which has survived in a manuscript now in Jesus College, Cambridge (Q. B. 7). In an abbreviated and rearranged form, this life has long been known in Capgrave's version, which was adopted by the Bollandists. Capgrave simply recast the lives of English saints collected early in the fourteenth century by John of Tynemouth. Two different summaries of Walter's life of Ailred seem to have been made by John of Tynemouth, 1 Bohmer, Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie im xi. und xii. Jahr- hundert, p. 349 (1899). 2 ' Narratio de Fundatione Fontanis monasterii in comitatu Eboracensi ' (Gale MS. O. 1. 79) in Walbran's Memorials of the Abbey of St. Mary of Fountains, i. 104 (Surtees Soc, 1863). As Walbran points out, the identification of this Maurice with the later Cistercian writer Maurice of Ford Abbey is due to a confusion first made by Pits. 3 Narratio, ut supra, p. 105, with Walbran's notes. Eugenius III had been abbot of Trois-Fontaines. 4 S. Bernardi Opera, i. col. 287 d.
