Divided Thought: Comparative Analysis of Peter Abelard's Historia Calamitatum and His Letters to Heloise

The 12th-century renaissance saw the expansion of many theoretical frameworks in such diverse genres as philosophy and theology. Attempting to understand something of the major and the nuanced shifts in ideology during this time requires a close analysis of one of the most influential scholars of this time, Peter Abelard, and his correspondence with Heloise, his most promising student and lover. Though concerned primarily with pursuits of knowledge, Abelard took a detour for love, and because of his late letters to Heloise and the Historia Calamitatum, or his History of Misfortunes, his book of reflections has allowed historians the unique opportunity to uncover a direct view into the cross-section of theology and logic. The difference in methodology of these two modes of thinking underscores the intellectual split of the age.

While many scholars focus on the facets of Abelard and Heloise's writings, such as individualism, or favoring his involvement in the re-foundation of the Paraclete, much can be learned about Medieval scholarship from the intersection of Abelard's work in both his theological treatises and work in the French schools. John Marenbon contextualizes Abelard's institutional and intellectual background in considering the cross-cultural environments in which Abelard performed. He notices three distinct milieus: the “logical schools”, which Abelard first studied; the “world of 12th century monastic thinking and reform,” and the “Paris schools, logical and theological of the 1130s.” The varied nature of Abelard's experience created within him a privileged position, but it was not always so. Being well-versed in logical scholarship was a boon to his career, however, in turning to monastic studies he found the politics to be of quite a different nature, as shown by the Historia calamitatum.

In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard is quick to mention his argumentative and competitive nature, clearly prideful and complimentary in his frank disclosure of how he defeated the master of the school: “because I undertook to refute certain of his opinions, not infrequently attacking him in disputation, and now and then in these debates I was adjudged victor.” His desire to become a logician was undertaken in the long-standing traditional method: humiliate the master to boost your credibility. His character was aggressive and contentious, as the Historia shows, and he very rapidly won the respect due to him as a great logician. To argue with the master was to utilize and expand upon the principles of rhetoric, and thus an effective learning method. When this method followed Abelard to the monastic setting, he wasn't nearly as successful.

Before the institutionalized regularity of the University, the path of a logician was rooted in the study of a few subjects: logic, rhetoric, grammar, geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy. Abelard's interest drew only from rhetoric, logic, and grammar. These schools were attached to cathedrals, with a canon presiding as schoolteacher. Naturally, theology played a large part in the rhetorician's education. From the Historia, Abelard's concerns solely with logic give way to more heavily weighted theological concerns, after the interval of neglecting his studies upon meeting Heloise.

Difficult though it may be to place the precise nature of Heloise and Abelard's pupil-teacher relationship, from The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise it is clear that their involvement in the scholarship had a foundational impact on their personal characters. Heloise writes to Abelard: “Seneca (with whose writings you made me acquainted), though he was a Stoic, seemed to be so very sensible to this kind of pleasure, that upon opening any letters from Lucilius he imagined he felt the same delight as when they conversed together.” Heloise interprets this lesson as if it were her own. Her casual speech divulges the intimacy between herself and Seneca's writings, an intimacy that is born from confidence in knowledge.

Here, she is likening the delight Lucilius experienced with her own, upon opening a letter from her beloved teacher. Supporting this analysis is a quote that follows “It seems to me as if the farther they are removed their pictures grow the more finished, and acquire a greater resemblance; or at least our imagination, which perpetually figures them to us by the desire we have of seeing them again, makes us think so” Not only does this speak directly to her estranged relationship with Abelard, this passage, in the context of the passage quoted before, allows us to better understand the relationship 12th century scholars had to the philosophers and theologists whose minds were opened to them in learning. Heloise suggests that by reading, the scholars can become present in the imagination, thereby insinuating that Abelard came alive to her again in a way more real than when she simply imagined his words and image without the substance of his writing.

Heloise had a very powerful mind, as the letters demonstrate. Abelard considered her thirst for knowledge, and her ability in logic, to be more desirable than any other trait, and sought to win her hand in marriage using the same aggressive zeal as he used in disputing his master. He quotes Heloise in the Hisotira calamitatum: “It matters little, she pointed out, whether one abandons the study of philosophy completely or merely interrupts it, for it can never remain at the point where it was thus interrupted.” Foreshadow or premonition, these words deliver a message that it at once true in a logical sense, but that gain significance in the chronology of Abelard's life, for after his interlude with Heloise, Abelard distinctly shifts his mode of study from logic to the theological.

Within the monastic system and as a scholar of theology, Abelard found that his enthusiasm for logic and rhetoric was not shared by the others. Arguments were presented that had come from tradition and literature, rather through the logical development of a theory. This, he found, was highly subject to the preferences of his fellow men. In the discussion of traditionally held beliefs, Abelard brought forth a contradicting account written by Bede stating that Dionysus was the bishop of Corinth, not Athens. When asked “which of the two, Bede or Hildun” Abelard considered the “better authority on this point,” he answered incorrectly, and was expelled from the monastery. Through his failures, we can measure the constituents of success. The monks did not want a contentious individual. To be successful meant to teach the words of the church well, and to further theological studies without undermining tradition.

His own life flows from the Histoira calamitatum as a sort of inner logic, through which divine will intervenes and apportions unjust situations. Faith, the infallible: no logic can dispute it. Abelard's commitment to the Christian belief certainly produced the thinking that led him to write the Historia in theological terms. The reason for his complete dismissal of his previous scholarship is not so clear, but it speaks to the sense of the monastic and scholarly modes of study as being incompatible. In his letter to Heloise he writes, “saw you, I was earnest to teach you vain sciences; it cost you your innocence and me my liberty.” He quickly revokes the power of the sciences, perhaps because they spurred his downfall. Furthering his point, he tells Heloise to “Be humble among your children, assiduous in your choir, exact in your discipline, diligent in your reading; make even your recreations useful.” This is not a lesson in logic, these are rules for her to follow as Abbess, thus confirming that monastic education is ruled by law and tradition.

Abelard attempted to synthesize the two forms of intellectual pursuits. When he later moved to Soissons, he was forced “to argue more from the authority of written texts.” Mews also notes that the Historia calamitatum “gives no record of the way Abelard's thinking deepened during the 1130s as a result of his becoming spiritual adviser to the Abbey of the Paraclete and through starting to teach again in Paris at the schools of the Montagne St. Genviève.” He was extremely intellectually productive during this time, and wrote prolifically for both his students and for Heloise. In the Historia, Abelard wrestled with the many themes of his life: love, philosophy, theology, and monasticism. His expression of the different milieus he engaged with—the logic schools, the monastery, even his time with Heloise—serves as a means for comparative scholarship. From this study we can not only discern the personal history of Abelard and Heloise and their separate involvements in the cultural renaissance of the 12th century, but we can uncover the underlying mechanisms for the age, and can successfully read the Historia calamitatum as more than an autobiography, for it is an evocative account of the age.

Bibliography

Abelard, Peter. Historia calamitatum: The Story of My Misfortunes. Translated by Henry Adams Bellows. New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1922.

Abelard, Peter, and Heloise. The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1903.

Bagge, Sverre. "The autobiography of Abelard and medieval individualism." Journal of Medieval History 19, no. 4 (1993): 327-350.

Marenbon, John. “Life, milieu, and intellectual contexts.” The Cambridge Companion to Abelard, edited by Jeffrey E. Bower and Kevin Guillfoy, 13-44. Camrbidge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Mews, C. J.. Abelard and Heloise. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.