Abstract
In 1763 the Benedictine authors of Tome XII of the Histoire littéraire de la France wrote of Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus that they were “the poetic works of our author which have escaped the shipwreck of time without yet having seen the light of day.”1 Over two centuries later, in 1891, Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau published the first full edition of the Carmen, declaring that “such a precious document deserves to be better known.”2 These remarks continue to be valid into the twenty-first century, and these texts too little known, even among Abelardian specialists.
Unusquisque enim in nouissimis suis cognoscitur et in filiis aestimatur, si bene filios suos instituit et disciplinis conpetentibus erudiuit.
For each person is known by his last things and is judged in his children, if he has taught his children well and has instructed them with appropriate teachings.
Ambrose, De bono mortis (Ch. 8, §35)
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Notes
Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau, “Le poème adressé par Abélard à son fils Astralabe,” Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale et autres bibliothèques, 34 (1891), 153–187 (p. 154): “Il importe de faire mieux connaître un si précieux document.”
See, for example, John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 94: “his work, although varied in form and subject, appears to show a high degree of continuity … In fact, however, the apparent consistency hides an important break … After his castration, Abelard became a monk.”
See Mews, “Cicero and the Boundaries of Friendship in the Twelfth Century,” Viator, 38 (2007), 369–384, (p. 381): “it is noticeable that in his later theological writing in the 1130s, he became fascinated by developing a theology in which Caritas and dilectio play a central notion in terms of God’s love for humanity, manifest in the life and death of Christ.”
Bonnie Wheeler, “Origenary Fantasies: Abelard’s Castration and Confession,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 107–128, (p. 116).
See Heloise, Ep. II, The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, ed. David Luscombe, translated by Betty Radice and revised by David Luscombe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013), pp. 137 and 141: “You have left many songs composed in amatory verse or rhyme. Because of the very great sweetness of their words as much as of their tune, they have been repeated often… most of these songs told of our love …”; “When in the past you sought me out for sinful pleasures your letters came to me thick and fast, and your many songs put your Heloise on everyone’s lips”; pp. 136 and 140: “pleraque amatorio metro uel rithmo composita reliquisti carmina, que pre nimia suauitate tarn dictaminis quam cantus sepius frequentata … Et cum horum pars maxima carminum nostros decantaret amores…”; “Cum me ad turpes olim uoluptates expeteres, crebris me epistolis uisitabas, frequenti carmine tuam in ore omnium Heloissam ponebas.”
See also Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999; 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Megan McLaughlin, “Secular and Spiritual Fatherhood in the Eleventh Century,” in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, ed. Jacqueline Murray (New York: Garland, 1999), pp. 25–43.
Jo Ann McNaniara, “The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–1150,” in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A. Lees with Thelma Fenster and Jo Ann McNaniara, Medieval Cultures, 7 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 3–29; see also McNaniara, “An Unresolved Syllogism: The Search for a Christian Gender System,” in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities, pp. 1–24.
Caroline Walker Bynum, “Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing,” in Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 110–169.
McLaughlin, “Secular and Spiritual Fatherhood in the Eleventh Century,” p. 27. This appears a more nuanced reading than McLaughlin’s later assertion that “during the central Middle Ages the dominant discourse of fatherhood remained one of untroubled continuity between different forms of paternity—whether divine, biological, political, or spiritual,” which Abelard’s own struggle with the concept of fatherhood would appear to belie: see McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority in an Age of Reform, 1000–1122 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 170.
See Mary Martin McLaughlin, with Bonnie Wheeler, The Letters of Heloise and Abelard: A Translation of Their Collected Correspondence and Related Writings (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 251–254. This is discussed in my “Quae maternae immemor naturae,” pp. 331–332.
Eileen C. Sweeney, “Abelard and the Jews,” in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette S. Hellemans, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 229 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 37–59, (p. 55).
Peter Abelard, Carmen ad Astrolabium: A Critical Edition, ed. Josepha Marie Annaïs Rubingh-Bosscher (Groningen: [privately published], 1987), pp. 23–89.
Pietro Abelardo, Insegnamenti al figlio: Commento, traduzione e testo latino, ed. and trans. Graziella Ballanti (Rome: Armando Editore, 1991); Hauréau, “Le poème adressé par Abélard à son fils Astralabe.”
See Andreas Wilmart, Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae: Codices manu scripti recensiti; Codices Reginenses Latini, 2 vols ([Città del Vaticano]: Bibliotheca Vaticana, 1937–1945), Vol. II: Codices 251–500 (1945).
Michel Huglo, “Un nouveau prosaire nivernais,” Ephemerides liturgicae, 71 (1957), 3–30, (p. 18). Weinrich notes: “They are the thin, indeed elegant, French neumes of the 12th century. Melodic intervals are not so clear at first glance … since only the F line is drawn (in red ink), the other lines being merely scratched with the bare quill point,” “Peter Abaelard as Musician—II,” p. 466.
Falconer Madan and H. H. E. Craster, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 285 (No. 2267).
See Giuseppe Vecchi, Pietro Abelardo, I “Planctus” (Modena: Società tipografica modenese, 1951), following p. 119 (pp. I–XVI),
Weinrich, “‘Dolorum solatium’: Text und Musik von Abaelards Planctus David,” Mittellateinisches fahrbuch, 5 (1968), 59–78;
Weinrich, “Peter Abaelard as Musician—I” and “Peter Abaelard as Musician—II,” The Musical Quarterly, 55 (1969), 295–312 and 464–486;
Peter Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry 1000–1150 (London: Westfield College, University of London Committee for Medieval Studies, 2nd edn, 1986; first pub. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), “Appendix: Melodies of Peter Abelard and Hildegard,” transcribed by Ian Bent, pp. 202–209;
and Massimo Sannelli, Pietro Abelardo, Planctus (Trento: La Finestra, 2002), pp. 61–74.
Wilhelm Meyer, Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur mittellateinischen Rythmik, 3 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970; first pub. Berlin: Weidmann, 1905–1936), Vol. I, “IV Petri Abaelardi Planctus (III.) Virginum Israel super filia Jeptae Galaditae,” pp. 340–356, and “V Petri Abaelardi Planctus I II IV V VI,” pp. 357–374.
Pierre Abélard, Lamentations; Histoire de mes malheurs; Correspondance avec Héloïse, ed. and trans. Paul Zumthor (Arles: Actes Sud, 1992), p. 29: “Je me suis imposé de traduire littéralement, si possible mot pour mot, au moins phrase pour phrase, et me suis interdit de ne point reproduire les nombreuses répétitions de mots ou de tournures, un peu lourdes ou étranges en français d’aujourd’hui mais ornementales dans le latin du XIIe siècle …. De même, j’ai, en un très petit nombre de passages, dû modifier l’ordre des mots, voire de deux phrases successives. Quant à la structure poétique, elle posait un problème. Il était en effet impossible de sauvegarder à la fois le rythme et les rimes de l’original.”
F. J. E. Raby, History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed. 1957; first pub. 1934), Vol. 2, p. 7.
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© 2014 Juanita Feros Ruys
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Ruys, J.F. (2014). Introduction: The Repentant Abelard. In: The Repentant Abelard. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137051875_1
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