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"Abelard, Peter, 1079-1142 Criticism and interpretation."
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The repentant Abelard : family, gender, and ethics in Peter Abelard's Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus
\"The great medieval thinker Peter Abelard is renowned for his uncompromising and radical approach to ethics and theology, a towering public figure in twelfth-century schools and monasticism. The Repentant Abelard argues, however, that later in his life, Abelard's thoughts turned again towards his own family, and it explores the works he wrote at this time for his former wife Heloise and son Astralabe. These include six laments (Planctus) for Heloise written in the voices of Old Testament figures, works of extraordinary poetry, resonant with love, sorrow, and despair. For his son he wrote a long poem of didactic advice (Carmen ad Astralabium) in which he summarized decades of his controversial ethical and theological ideas. This book offers a new Latin edition of these texts complete with first-time full English translation and comprehensive notes. The works are introduced by thematic, stylistic, and reception studies which reveal how powerful and unique these texts are within Medieval Latin literature. As such, they stand as truly personal gifts from Abelard to his family\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Richard of Saint Victor and His Idea of Wisdom and Love
This study examines Richard of Saint Victor’s conception of wisdom and love, understood as the ultimate ends of human life and deeply connected with the notion of care. For Richard, authentic care requires discerning the true object of concern: the human being as a rational creature created for happiness through knowledge and love of God. His anthropology highlights the dignity of man, composed of body, reason, and affection, and called to participate in divine happiness. Richard develops a spiritual pedagogy in which the ordering and moderation of affections—fear, sorrow, hope, love, joy, hatred, and modesty—are indispensable for the path toward contemplation. Through an allegorical reading of Jacob, his wives, and their children, Richard presents a symbolic itinerary where the progression of affectivity and reason leads ultimately to contemplation, embodied in Benjamin. This contemplative fulfillment transcends both fear and greed, liberating the human being from self-centeredness and opening him to love and divine wisdom. The work demonstrates Richard’s synthesis of Platonic, Augustinian, and Victorine traditions, proposing a transformative vision of the human person: happiness is inseparable from love, and wisdom is achieved not through rational argument but through the lived experience of love that surpasses reason.
Journal Article
Rewriting “litel Lowys” in Chaucer’s A Treatise on the Astrolabe
This essay examines the biographical and literary contexts of Geoffrey Chaucer's prose technical manual, A Treatise on the Astrolabe. An astrolabe is a handheld, circular brass instrument that allows users to read the stars and calculate geography; it can also portend human fates. As I argue, Chaucer, who wrote the Treatise for his young son, Lewis, situates the astrolabe as a vehicle for connection between father and son to overcome geographical separation. Over the course of the Treatise, Chaucer builds a narrative of familial reunion from which he apophatically writes Lewis out of the text to deny circumstances surrounding the boy's maternity and, with the poetic device of apostrophe, calls back an alternative version of his son further amended by an astrological rewriting of Lewis's birth. The essay concludes by directly bringing the Treatise into dialogue with Chaucer's poetic writing to open up new ways to read the Treatise as a work of literature.
Journal Article
Abelard’s Exegesis of the Song of Songs in his Second Letter to Heloise
In this paper I am making the argument that the brief excursus on the Song of Songs in Abelard’s second letter to Heloise (the fifth in the Correspondence) contains exegesis of a few phrases of this biblical book that is so far out of the ordinary that it cannot be taken seriously and was not intended to be. This argument is based on the following observations: the lines presented as being from the Song of Songs are not really biblical verses; no remotely comparable exegesis of these phrases exists in earlier and contemporaneous exegesis; the literal interpretation that Abelard applies besides an allegorical reading was expressly forbidden by authorities both old and new; and finally Abelard’s alleged exegesis conflicts absolutely with his own exegesis of the same elements in authenticated works.
Dans cet article, je démontre que la brève digression sur le Cantique des Cantiques dans la deuxième lettre d’Abélard à Héloise (la cinquième dans la Correspondance) contient une exégèse de quelques phrases de ce livre biblique s’écartant tellement de l’ordinaire, que l’on ne peut pas la prendre au sérieux et que telle n’en fut pas l’intention. Cette affirmation se base sur les observations suivantes: les phrases présentées comme provenant du Cantique des Cantiques ne sont pas réellement des versets de la Bible; il n’existe pas la moindre exégèse de ces phrases comparable dans l’exégèse antérieure et contemporaine; l’interprétation littérale à laquelle Abélard se prête de pair avec une lecture allégorique, était formellement interdite par les autorités tant anciennes que nouvelles; et, enfin, la soi-disant exégèse d’Abélard est en opposition absolue avec sa propre exégèse des mêmes éléments dans des oeuvres reconnues comme authentiques.
Journal Article
Peter Abelard, Heloise and Jewish Biblical Exegesis in the Twelfth Century
This paper revisits the question of the influence of Jewish biblical exegesis on Christian scholars in twelfth-century France, by focusing in particular on Abelard's response to a question of Heloise in her Problemata about questions raised by 1 Samuel ii.35–6 (=1 Regum ii.35–6) concerning ‘the faithful priest’ prophesied as Eli's successor, the meaning of ‘will walk before my anointed’ and the nature of the offering his household should make. Abelard's discussion of the views of an unnamed Jewish scholar illustrates a consistent movement evident in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries for certain Christian exegetes to approach Jewish scholars to resolve problems posed by the text of the Old Testament. While the passage in 1 Samuel was traditionally interpreted in a Christocentric fashion, Heloise implicitly supports a more historical reading of the text in the question she puts to Abelard. The Jewish scholar's interpretation reported by Abelard is very close to that of Rashi's twelfth-century disciples.
Journal Article
The Sacramental World in the Sentences of Peter Lombard
The article studies the sacramental teaching in Peter Lombard's Sentences, a work that quickly became the principal theology text in the schools and universities from the High Middle Ages until the Counter Reformation. The study places Peter and the Sentences in the context of twelfth-century Europe's renaissance of learning; it includes an analysis of Peter's theology of the sacraments in general and, in particular, of penance and marriage, the most controversial sacraments of his era.
Journal Article