The Repentant Abelard: Family, Gender, and Ethics in Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus 978-1-349-38709-0, 978-1-137-05187-5

Table of contents :
Front Matter....Pages i-xvi
Introduction: The Repentant Abelard....Pages 1-10
Front Matter....Pages 11-11
Carmen ad Astralabium Analysis....Pages 13-58
Front Matter....Pages 59-59
Planctus Analysis....Pages 61-90
Front Matter....Pages 91-91
Carmen ad Astralabium—Latin Text....Pages 93-142
Carmen ad Astralabium—English Translation....Pages 143-168
Notes to Carmen ad Astralabium....Pages 169-242
Front Matter....Pages 243-243
Planctus—Latin Text....Pages 245-256
Planctus—English Translation....Pages 257-266
Notes on Planctus....Pages 267-294
Back Matter....Pages 295-355

Citation preview

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The Repentant Abelard: Family, Gender, and Ethics in Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus by Juanita Feros Ruys

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THE REPENTANT ABELARD FAMILY, GENDER, AND ETHICS IN PETER ABELARD’S CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM AND PLANCTUS

Juanita Feros Ruys

THE REPENTANT ABELARD

Copyright © Juanita Feros Ruys, 2014. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-312-24002-8 All rights reserved. First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-38709-0 ISBN 978-1-137-05187-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137051875 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ruys, Juanita Feros. The repentant Abelard : family, gender, and ethics in Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus / Juanita Feros Ruys. pages cm.—(The new middle ages) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Abelard, Peter, 1079–1142—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Latin poetry, Medieval and modern—Translations into English. I. Title. PA8201.H9R89 2014 189.4—dc23

2014020337

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2014 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the loving memory of Philippa C. Maddern 1952–2014 Perceptive scholar of medieval children and their families Caring and supportive mentor Academic “mother” to an entire generation of Australian women medievalists

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction: The Repentant Abelard

Part I

1

Carmen ad Astralabium

1. Carmen ad Astralabium Analysis

13

Writing the Carmen Reading the Carmen: The Medieval Reception of the Carmen

13 32

Part II Planctus 2. Planctus Analysis

61

The Planctus as a Series Specific Studies in the Planctus

Part III

61 79

Carmen ad Astralabium—Text

3. Carmen ad Astralabium—Latin Text

93

4. Carmen ad Astralabium—English Translation

143

5. Notes to Carmen ad Astralabium

169

Part IV

Planctus—Text

6. Planctus—Latin Text

245

7. Planctus—English Translation

257

8. Notes on Planctus

267

Appendix A: Additional sententiae appended to the Carmen ad Astralabium in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, lat. oct. 172

295

Appendix B: Additional sententiae appended to the Carmen ad Astralabium in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, 9210, and Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rossi 933

299

xiv

CONTENTS

Appendix C: Excerpt from the Carmen ad Astralabium in Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 1761 (415)

301

Notes

303

Bibliography

327

Index

345

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T

his book would not exist without the interest and encouragement of John O. Ward and Constant J. Mews. When I was a PhD student I approached John with a suggestion for a translation of Abelard’s Planctus. Constant then suggested that Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium would make a great companion piece to a study of the Planctus, thus initiating nearly a decade of research into this surprising, and surprisingly complex, text. I wish to thank John for those early discussions over translations of the Planctus and Carmen, and Constant for his unfailing encouragement while this monograph was in progress. To John I owe the title The Repentant Abelard, and I thank him for this inspired suggestion. Constant’s own work on Abelard, which combines steel-trap philological and historical accuracy with an intuitive perception, has always been an inspiration. Along the way I have met (both in person and virtually) a number of “friends of Abelard” whose own work and ideas have allowed me to develop and shape my text. David Wulstan and Michael Clanchy were welcoming of my ideas on Abelard and gave me new perspectives on my chosen texts from their own researches, and I have enjoyed discussing with Brenda M. Cook her forthcoming research on the historical Astralabe. He does not appear here, since my Astralabe is no more than a literary figure named in Abelard’s text: those interested in the young man himself can look forward to Ms Cook’s monograph Astralabe: The Shadow on the Star? The Life and Times of Abelard’s Son. Special thanks are also due to Marjorie ( Jorie) Curry Woods and David Konstan who both offered me hospitality in their homes in late 2012 and strongly encouraged me to begin the daunting task of drawing together years of notes and drafts on Abelard and turning them into a finished manuscript. I would particularly like to thank C. Stephen Jaeger and Bruce L. Venarde for their careful reading of and suggestions regarding the translations offered here. Their recommendations were always inspired and helpful and allowed me to understand some of Abelard’s finer thoughts more clearly. The way I translate certain lines and individual words has altered during my years of research, as my perspective and point of view have changed, or my knowledge of a medieval concept or idea has increased, and some translations have oscillated back and forth between alternatives. The translations published here thus represent where my thoughts lie at this moment, and can be thought of as the momentarily captured stasis of a dynamic system. Indeed, I believe that one could continue

xvi

AC K NOW L E DGM E N T S

tinkering with such translations indefinitely. Similarly, the Notes published here represent only a fraction of the Notes that I amassed during my research, and no doubt many additional resonances and citations relevant to Abelard’s texts will occur to readers from their own perspectives and areas of expertise. Professor Venarde was the reader who kindly vetted my manuscript for Palgrave, and I could not have asked for a better. In addition to his extensive comments on my English translations, I wish to thank him for his equally perceptive critique of my Latin editions and of the overall structure of the book. He has helped me create a much more streamlined and focused text. I cannot express gratitude enough for Bonnie Wheeler’s forbearance as she awaited the submission of this manuscript, and I thank her for continuing to have faith in me. I hope she feels it is rewarded by the finished product. The editorial team at Palgrave has been friendly and efficient, and I also wish to thank Lesley O’Brien for her careful and perceptive indexing. One of the joys of undertaking research into medieval texts is the opportunity to engage with manuscripts firsthand, and I wish to thank the librarians and curators of manuscripts at the Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana; British Library, London; Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid; Stiftsbibliothek, Melk; Bodleian Library, Oxford; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Stadtbibliothek, Trier; and Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican. I gratefully acknowledge that my research travel was made possible by funding awarded by the Australian Research Council. My thanks to my husband Andrew who has always believed in me and my work, and to my son Johann for his unfailing support of everything I do. You are both, as Abelard would say, “in una mecum anima.”

INTRODUCTION: THE REPENTANT ABELARD

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)

The Repentant Abelard 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, JeanBarthélemy 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. Yet this book is not devoted to these late poetic works of Abelard simply because they have not yet been accorded the same level of interest as other of his writings. Rather its thesis is that these texts mark a shift in Abelard’s thinking that took place in the mid-1130s. At this time a new Abelard—a repentant Abelard—emerged, and this figure is most clearly visible in the Carmen and Planctus. This repentance is not the monastic repentance so evident following Abelard’s castration, and the change in focus in his writings outlined here is not that break in Abelard’s style described by other scholars as distinguishing the premonastic from the post-castration Abelard.3 Certainly a form of repentance took place at the time that Abelard was castrated in ca. 1118, leading him to reject his old and carnal way of life and devote himself to the monastic ideal. In the process he insisted that his former lover and wife, Heloise, enter her childhood convent of Argenteuil to become a nun, and he forced her to leave behind their only child, the boy Astralabe (Petrus Astralabius), to be raised by his family at his ancestral home of Le Pallet in Brittany. What I suggest here, however, is that after this first repentance, which was characterized by a turning away from his family toward God, there was another repentance later, in the mid-1130s, when Abelard came to realize, largely prompted by Heloise’s allusive references to this in her writings to him,4 the

2

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

losses he had sustained in distancing himself so effectively from his wife and son. This repentant Abelard is the man who turns once again to his family in the wake of the momentous failures of his theological, pedagogic, and monastic enterprises. These include his condemnation for heresy and the burning of his first Theologia at the Council of Soissons in 1121, the enforced closure of his erstwhile school at the Oratory of the Paraclete some time afterward (ca. 1125), and the disaster of his abbacy at St. Gildas de Rhuys in Brittany (following ca. 1125 until some time in the early 1130s when he returned to Paris).5 It is believed that Abelard’s desire to escape St. Gildas and return to Paris to teach may have been the factor prompting the composition of his first-person life narrative, the Historia calamitatum, in ca. 1132. From this text ensued Abelard’s correspondence with Heloise and his writings for the nuns of the Convent of the Paraclete in the early to middle years of the 1130s. I date the Carmen and Planctus to around this same time and see them as emerging from the same emotional and compositional context. Indeed, I would see this “repentance” as not unconnected with the turn toward love that has been recognized as taking place in Abelard’s theology during the 1130s.6 Up to this time, Abelard’s public and professional life had been “paternal” in many ways unrelated to biology. He was a father figure to his students in Paris and elsewhere, to his monastic sons at St. Gildas, and to his spiritual daughters at the Paraclete. Indeed, Bonnie Wheeler has noted “the power and persistence of his paternal mastership over his intellectual and spiritual progeny” as fundamental to Abelard’s formation of his self and, more specifically, his masculinity, in this period.7 Yet when Abelard addresses the opening line of the Carmen to his son Astralabe, describing him as “the sweetness of a fatherly life” (“uite dulcedo paterne”), a change in his viewpoint becomes evident. We see here a man turning again to those whom he had perhaps overlooked in the years of striving for public success, recognition, and vindication. In the Carmen and the Planctus, I argue, it is a repentant Abelard who addresses himself directly to his son and wife as father and husband. He places them at the heart of his compositional undertakings, and it is to them, rather than to his students, the nuns of the Paraclete, or the intellectual world of Paris at large, that he devotes these powerful syntheses of his thought. For Astralabe, this Abelard writes the Carmen ad Astralabium, a thousand-line poem of advice in which he encapsulates a lifetime’s experience and consideration of ethics, theology, and philosophy. He presents these in elegiac distichs, the traditional form of father-son didactic texts such as the Disticha Catonis, but, as discussed in the chapter on the Carmen (chapter 1), Abelard’s poem is far more individualistic, idiosyncratic, and demanding than any of its generic forebears or contemporaries. For Heloise, Abelard composes the Planctus (which mean “Laments”), six evocative poems based on Old Testament stories, presented in a first-person speaking voice, and set to music. Most likely these constituted the first poetic gifts he had sent her personally since the carmina amatoria and the metra of the love letters composed during their early days together in Paris. 8 The Planctus

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3

are not, however, light and playful songs that toy with the nature of love in terms of moons and stars as in Abelard’s earlier literary endeavors, but challenging and conflicted laments, deeply individualistic meditations upon tragic Old Testament stories. Reflecting their author’s lifetime of struggle, persecution, and setbacks, they are tinged with despair, and while hope for the future glimmers dimly in a single one of them, the others speak of the failure of earthly consolation. Some might wonder at these poetic creations, both difficult and at times dark, as the kind of personal texts Abelard would compose for a son and a wife who had been so long estranged from him, certainly physically, but perhaps also emotionally as well. Yet they do their recipients the honor of being utterly honest, to the point of uncompromising, evocations of Abelard’s thought. They are powerful, unrelenting, and focused, conceptually in the case of the Carmen, and in the case of the Planctus, artistically as well. They constitute statements of a truth personal to Abelard in the same way as his Confessio fidei to Heloise does. Indeed, there is a certain similarity of tone between the final lament of the series and the plaintive, almost-but-not-quite-yet defeated voice of Abelard’s Confessio. Both are certainly far removed—perhaps even evolved?—from the brash, defiant, and defensive tone that marked Abelard’s Historia. Family, Gender, Ethics This work is subtitled Family, Gender, and Ethics, as these constitute recurring themes and even a form of teloi throughout the Carmen and the Planctus. By this I mean not just that these themes appear frequently throughout the poems, but also that they often form the endpoint for other ideas in the poems. Other recurring concepts include, for instance, love, friendship, and betrayal. Yet love and friendship are never examined apart from the issues of family and gender: the Carmen repeatedly returns to the question of the relative merits of friendship and family ties, while the Planctus question the role of gender in the formation of friendships and love relationships. In both texts, Abelard the ethical thinker is clearly present, asking his readers and audience to consider the proper boundaries of love and friendship—what they enjoin the lover or friend to do, and what they do not permit. By the same token, Abelard’s favored theme of betrayal, a constant in his Historia, appears in the Planctus always deeply entangled with the politics of gender (whether male-female sexual relationships, or male-male warrior rivalries) and the power and influence of family relations. As with love and friendship, Abelard the ethicist uses the idea of betrayal to interrogate behavior, teasing out the actions that are consequent upon it and raising for reflection the difficulty of determining whether these actions should be viewed as gloriously righteous or insanely unjust. In particular, the Carmen and Planctus focus on the question of family in a way not evident in any of Abelard’s other writings up to that time. Abelard’s personal letters to Heloise and the letters he wrote for the nuns of the Paraclete (the latter

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including his Ep. VII on the history of the nuns and Ep. VIII, the Rule for the Paraclete) offer a traditional antifamilial rhetoric delivered in an authoritative tone. In these letters, family is described a burden to be left behind in the world while the nun devotes herself to more worthy spiritual concerns.9 In both the Carmen and the Planctus, by contrast, complex considerations of family sit at the heart of the text. In this focus on family and gender, Abelard may have been expressing not only personal concerns, but also reflecting some prevailing anxieties of his age. Megan McLaughlin reveals in her study of paternity in the writings of Peter Damian that the meanings and intersections of parental roles and gender roles were under intense negotiation in the period leading up to, and indeed beyond, the turn of the twelfth century.10 Her thesis rests upon Jo Ann McNamara’s observation of a “Herrenfrage” arising at this time11 and Caroline Walker Bynum’s exposition of the rise of imagery of Jesus as mother.12 McLaughlin has theorized that a “portrayal of paternity—both secular and spiritual—as complex, ambiguous and, ultimately, unstable is at least consistent with what one might expect to find in a period of gender crisis.”13 As both a biological father and a castrated monk, Abelard may have had a unique personal insight into and relationship with these issues. This is not to say that Abelard’s opinion of family undergoes a radical inversion in these texts; indeed, his approach to family in the Carmen and Planctus remains riven with conflict and undercut by ambiguity and prevarication. His hierarchies of human relationships in the Carmen struggle to make a consistent place for family in relation to friends, neighbors, and sexual/marital partners, while in the Planctus, family too frequently proves to be a source of danger and deadly excess. What is significant in these texts, however, is that the Abelard who had previously reduced maternal figures of the Old Testament to exempla pointing the way to familial sacrifice in the name of God in his Ep. VII, and who had closed down Heloise’s poignant questions regarding Anna’s desire for children and her maternal care of Samuel in her Problemata 30–35,14 now takes on family relationships as a valid subject of consideration. Eschewing the reductionist answers and formulae of his other writings, Abelard applies his mind to the question of what family is and how it functions. In this way, the Carmen and Planctus appear as canvases upon which Abelard works out his equivocal, ambiguous, and even conflicting ideas on a range of matters. Eileen C. Sweeney has described Abelard’s Scito te ipsum, Sic et non, and Collationes as texts in which “Abelard takes more daring positions, submits more questions to the bar of reason, and exposes conflicts and contradictions in the tradition for reason to consider.”15 In the analysis offered here, the Carmen and Planctus would join this list of texts. We see here Abelard the teacher who instructs from experience and Abelard the poet and musician who manipulates traditional forms to express philosophical profundities. Here is Abelard the philosopher, but above all, here is Abelard the ethicist: overarching all the advice Abelard addresses to his son, all the stories he brings to life in the Planctus, is a driving concern as to how one should think about and act upon human impulses—an ethics of behavior.

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The Structure of This Book This book offers a complete study of Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus. It begins with a literary and conceptual analysis of these texts, taking into account how they reflect Abelard’s thought as evidenced elsewhere in his writings, as well as how they extend, question, and complicate his earlier ideas. For the Carmen I explore issues of theme and style in order to counter the popular perception that this poem is merely a meandering collection of unremarkable sentential advice. On the contrary, I argue that it constitutes a compact summary of the ethical thought of an original and innovative thinker, its ideas woven intimately together, flowing through and more often over the traditional elegiac hexameter form of its verse. To this end, I indicate how it differs in significant ways from other didactic compositions and compilations circulating in late eleventh- and early twelfth-century Europe. Throughout chapter 1, my major focus is on the Carmen as a didactic text, including how it was received as such in the Middle Ages. I suggest that one of the shorter recensions of the Carmen arising and circulating later in the twelfth century gives evidence of a Cistercian origin and ask what this might indicate regarding a Cistercian career for Astralabe. In particular, I explore how the Carmen was transmitted, read, and used through medieval paratexts such as the interlinear glosses and marginal manuscript annotations it accrued, the additional sentential verses it attracted in manuscripts, and the excerpts of it included in florilegia. The chapter concludes with brief considerations of the Carmen’s modern title and the historical reasons that led to questions about its authenticity. For the Planctus, I concentrate on how the laments function as a series of six in the Vatican manuscript in which they are transmitted. As with the Carmen, my intention is to indicate how Abelard modifies an existing genre to imbue it with new thematic and stylistic possibilities. This necessitates a consideration of what function these poems may have been intended to have for Heloise—whether primarily personal or liturgical—and indeed, whether their composition had any particular meaning for Abelard himself in terms of consolation for his own sorrows. Defending the order of the laments as they appear in the sole existing manuscript of the series, I trace the thematic developments that run through them, particularly in terms of Abelard’s exploration of gender and the question of vice and virtue. With regard to Abelard’s stylistic innovations in the planctus genre, I consider the way he multiplies and manipulates the speaking voices in his laments to convey his difficult and complex messages. In conclusion, I suggest that the Planctus as a whole express Abelard’s view that earthly lamentation is ultimately futile and that consolation will be found only in the next life. I also include four individual studies of specific issues that the laments bring to light: these are the verisimilitude of Abelard’s feminine and masculine voices in lament, his theology of sacrament and sacrifice, and his manipulation of homoerotic imagery in order to question the imperatives of gender-identification and suggest an ideal of love as unsexed and gender-neutral. These studies trace particular themes as they occur in the laments; therefore not every one of the six Planctus is discussed in these studies, while some are mentioned more than once.

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For both the Carmen and Planctus I provide a new Latin edition drawn from manuscript and a new English translation. This is a first-time English translation of the Carmen, and the first time that all six Planctus will have appeared together in English translation. My rationales for the editions and translations are given below. In addition, I provide a line-by-line commentary for both the Carmen and Planctus. My aims here are to explain concepts or constructions whose meaning might not be readily apparent and to highlight how these reflect, or perhaps refract, Abelard’s thought as expressed elsewhere in his writings. In the Notes to the Carmen, I outline where Abelard either adduces or contradicts classical sources or traditional didactic texts, while in the Notes to the Planctus, I focus on Abelard’s biblical exemplars, noting how he either adopts or adapts these. The book concludes with three Appendices relevant to a deeper study of the Carmen. These offer first-time editions of texts associated with the Carmen, including the additional sentential verses attracted to the Carmen in three manuscripts, and a short excerpt from the Carmen that appears in one manuscript. The capitalization and punctuation of these texts is mine.

Editions and Translations of the Texts Carmen ad Astralabium Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium is a didactic poem of just over one thousand lines, written in elegiac hexameters. This means that it has been compiled as a series of two-line couplets, known as distichs, in each of which the first line is a hexameter, having six metrical feet, according to the system of Classical Latin prosody, and the second line is a pentameter, having five metrical feet. The edition provided in this book is of the long recension of the poem (Recension I), which is the original and most authentic of the three extant recensions. As discussed further in the chapter on the Carmen, there are also two shorter recensions of the poem; these are most likely abbreviations of the original longer form, although manuscript evidence indicates that they most likely came into being and began circulating very soon after the composition of the original. I am indebted to the work of José [ Josepha] Marie Annaïs Rubingh-Bosscher for her thorough analysis and descriptions of the manuscripts and recensions of the Carmen, and I have not undertaken to duplicate her detailed scholarship on these matters in this volume. I am happy to refer the reader to RubinghBosscher’s edition for information regarding the dating, contents, and provenance of the manuscripts witnessing the Carmen, and the relationship among recensions and the individual manuscripts within recensions.16 The Recension I text of the Carmen is witnessed in four manuscripts that I have consulted in the construction of this edition: Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 561 (= P); Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, lat. oct. 172 (= B); Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, 9210 (= M); and Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 3061 (= O). The first two of

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these manuscripts witness the entire poem and Rubingh-Bosscher has argued that they possibly shared a common ancestor.17 M is a few lines shorter than P and B, while O provides a text only up until line 405, around 40 percent of the total text. I have also collated my edition against that of Rubingh-Bosscher (= RB), and I have included in my edition the interlinear glosses in P (= Pg), which have never before been published. I have chosen P as a base text as this is the earliest witness of the long recension, and I have retained its orthography, although this is less regular than that of the other Recension I manuscripts.18 The punctuation and capitalization of the edition are mine, although the lemmata in the apparatus and the interlinear glosses retain the orthography of their manuscripts. Occasionally I have supplied missing lines or corrections from other manuscripts. I have used B in the first instance for corrections, although I have been conservative in adopting the readings of B, as it appears to have been a “corrected” text. That is to say, its readings appear to have been altered to make more immediate sense of Abelard’s at times complex thought, but in such a way as to suggest that these readings may not necessarily be those of the original text. I have tried to avoid adopting any readings outside of Recension I, although this has been necessary in one instance where none of the Recension I manuscripts could provide a comprehensible reading. My edition differs from that of Rubingh-Bosscher, in that she undertook a critical edition of all known manuscripts of the Carmen, incorporating in one edition readings from the three distinct recensions. Insofar as Recensions II and III are abbreviations from the original Recension I, with occasional interpolations, it has seemed to me better practice to produce an edition of Recension I alone, without consideration of the other recensions that drew from and adapted it. In addition, Rubingh-Bosscher eschewed the idea of a “manucrit de base,” largely reproducing the line order of B, though with the orthography of P.19 I have preferred to produce as consistent as possible an exemplar of one manuscript, P, the earliest of the Recension I manuscripts, and to indicate variant readings from Recension I alone. This has meant employing the orthography of P as consistently as possible, although for one or two words I have used the orthography of B, where the form of the lemma supplied by P would likely be confusing to the reader. The edition of the Carmen published by Graziella Ballanti in 1991 was based on the first publication of the long recension of the Carmen, by Hauréau in 1891, which was of the text of P alone.20 As Hauréau’s edition of this single manuscript was superseded by Rubingh-Bosscher’s critical edition of all extant manuscripts in 1984, I have consulted, but not taken significant account of, the Latin editions of Hauréau and Ballanti. I also gratefully acknowledge the advice of Dr. John O. Ward in the preparation of this edition and offer my thanks to Professors C. Stephen Jaeger and Bruce L. Venarde for their suggestions as to the best final form of the text. The English translation of the poem I have made as literal as possible. In this I accord with Abelard’s own advice in the Carmen that “it is fitting for any teacher to pursue plainness” (“Planiciem quemcumque sequi decet expositorum”; 869). The aim of the translation is to allow readers to follow the sometimes sparse and

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difficult syntax of the Latin in order to appreciate its forceful exposition. I have consulted Ballanti’s Italian translation throughout, but differ from it in a number of places. Some of these are due to differences in our conceptual approaches to Abelard’s thought, while some are due to Ballanti’s reliance on Hauréau’s edition that reproduced faulty readings in P since emended in the editions produced by Rubingh-Bosscher and here. Again, I am most grateful to John O. Ward, who kindly read through the draft translation with me and made a number of suggestions for amendments, and to Stephen Jaeger and Bruce Venarde for their careful reading of the same and further suggestions to improve accuracy and clarity. Planctus Abelard’s Planctus or “Laments” are six poems set to music that recreate powerful Old Testament stories. They exist together as a series of six in a single manuscript, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. Lat., 288, fols 63va-64vb. In this manuscript they are accompanied by a primitive form of neums, or medieval musical notation.21 The manuscript is a composite, comprising four sections. The Planctus appear in the second section, which has been dated to the late twelfth century, where they constitute the final item. 22 The laments are attributed to “Petrus abaelardus” in the left margin at the commencement of the first lament and the same hand has given a title to each lament within the text; this is the title by which each one is identified in this volume. These titles are: Planctus Dine filie Iacob (The Lament of Dinah, the Daughter of Jacob), Planctus Iacob super filios suos (The Lament of Jacob over His Sons), Planctus uirginum Israel super filia Iepte Galadite (The Lament of the Maids of Israel over the Daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite), Planctus Israel super Sanson (The Lament of Israel over Samson), Planctus Dauid super Abner filio Ner quem Ioab occidit (The Lament of David over Abner the Son of Ner whom Joab Killed), and Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha (The Lament of David over Saul and Jonathan). The sixth lament of David over Saul and Jonathan is also found in two other manuscripts, where it tends to be known by its incipit as “Dolorum solatium.” These are Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 3126, fols 88v-90 v, where the lament is accompanied by musical notation in diastematic neums, 23 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 79, fols 53v-56r, where the musical notation is of squared notes on a four-line staff with a C-clef.24 In neither of these manuscripts is the lament attributed to Abelard or given a title. The Paris manuscript, now known as the Nevers troper-proser, was discovered in a private collection only in 1954, and described by Michel Huglo in 1957.25 It is clearly a liturgical manuscript. Here Abelard’s Planctus is found in a third section of the manuscript, a supplement coeval with and written in the hand of the main section of the manuscript, which is of the twelfth century.26 The “Dolorum solatium” is the third in a grouping of four sequences either attributed to Abelard or associated with the Paraclete, including “Virgines caste,” “De profundis,” and “Epithalamica.” The Oxford manuscript is dated to the late thirteenth century and contains, according to its cataloguers: “two Latin laments in verse, slightly later than the rest of the volume, one a paraphrase of 2 Sam. i. 19–27, attributed to Abelard (beg. ‘Dolorum solatium’) . . . with musical notes

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on a 4-line stave.”27 Lorenz Weinrich notes that “before the end of the century Peter Abaelard’s Planctus VI was inserted in the manuscript before the Marian pieces.”28 It is clear from all these manuscripts that the Planctus were musical texts, intended to be sung, and several transcriptions of their possible melodies have been published.29 In this book, however, I will be treating them solely as literary texts and discussing them in terms of their conceptual content and linguistic artistry. My arguments are based on how the Planctus function as a series of six in the Vatican manuscript, since it is clear, as will be discussed in the chapter on the Planctus, that the liturgical context of the Nevers troper-proser alters the way the “Dolorum solatium” can be read. I am particularly interested in how the Planctus reflect and refract the ideas in Abelard’s other writings, as well as the part they play in the development of ideas and arguments in the correspondence between Abelard and Heloise. My explorations and explanations presented here are thus not intended to encompass the totality of readings that are possible for the Planctus; I do not, for example, consider how these laments might have been read and used as conventual, quasi-liturgical texts by nuns who were not privy to their personal resonances or their intersections with Abelard’s theological and ethical thought. For this edition I have consulted all the manuscripts that contain the Planctus and have reproduced the orthography of the Vatican manuscript, although the punctuation and capitalization of the edition are my own. For the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha (“Dolorum solatium”), I have collated the Vatican manuscript against the Paris and Oxford exemplars. I have also taken account of the arguments for the rearrangement of some strophes and the correction of a number of lexical items as witnessed in the editions of Carl Greith,30 Wilhelm Meyer,31 and Peter Dronke.32 Producing an English translation of the Planctus presents a challenge of some difficulty, and Paul Zumthor’s apologia for his French translation makes many of the salient points in this regard.33 In short, it is impossible to present an English text that even begins to convey both the lexical and metrical artistry of Abelard’s poetry. His words are powerful and emotive and often chosen for their “shock” value; they have been woven together in lines that are both rhythmic and endowed with end-rhyme, and in many cases, with additional complex internalrhyme schemes that differ from strophe to strophe as well. With this in mind, I have preferred to shine the light on Abelard’s masterful poetry by producing a literal translation, one that matches as nearly as possible Abelard’s Latin text word-for-word and line-for-line, as Zumthor similarly does. In this way, I hope readers can be led to consider the Latin and, where necessary, using the translation to understand the syntax of the original, so appreciate its evocative power. *

*

*

In his repentant return to the family in the mid-1130s, Abelard produced brilliant but demanding texts that recognize, accommodate, and challenge understandings of human nature. The Carmen is a didactic text that remains unconvinced

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at its heart about the value of learning and the nature of teaching. Traditionally authoritative in tone, it constantly countermands and rethinks its own teachings; refusing to offer definitive precepts, it favors instead sic-et-non style arguments that interrogate a topic from multiple angles. The Planctus are songs of love and the family that are, however, anxious about the dynamics of male-female sexual relationships and the implications of male-male friendships, as well as deeply ambivalent about the impact on individuals of family structures and the loyalties these impose. These are laments that fail to end in consolation, either for the figures who sing them or for their composer. Together the Carmen and Planctus bear witness to a master poet, philosopher, theologian, and ethical thinker pushing to their limits the boundaries of two genres—parent-child didactic texts and laments—and recreating them, forcing them to carry the weight of his innovative and demanding thought. Both the Carmen and Planctus offer insights into the complex, ever-questioning mind of a great thinker. More than just advice to live by, more than just beautiful and moving poetry, these texts are vehicles for some of Abelard’s most experimental thought. As F. J. E. Raby declared, with regard to the Carmen, although his words will stand for the Planctus as well, these texts “will attract those who wish to draw closer to the intimate thought of this famous scholar.”34

PART I CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM

CHAPTER 1 CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM ANALYSIS

Writing the Carmen Many writers have liked to imagine how Astralabe must have felt as he made his way through life, the only offspring of such a famous—or infamous—couple as Abelard and Heloise.1 We could, if we liked, imagine that the quotation below reflects Astralabe’s views on reading his father’s Historia calamitatum: The entries read like an extended trial autobiography. Specifically, they chart the last ten years of his life and the first ten of mine (though I barely figure—a mere footnote in a life much lived). Often, though, they read like memoirs, as this increasingly ill and frustrated man brings to life the dazzling encounters and events of his early years. At other times, we can see his mind churning through philosophical quandaries, toying with his own mortality, and playing, always playing, with the game of language, what he called the great cause of words. 2

The images, the sentiments, would fit remarkably well. In fact, the quotation is not from Astralabe, but arises from a life lived some eight centuries later. What that shows, perhaps, is that being the son of a brilliant, controversial, and literary father has never been an easy thing to bear. But where Astralabe was indeed little more than a “mere footnote”—a passing reference—in his father’s complex, conflicted, proto-autobiographical Historia,3 he was front and center of another text that Abelard wrote, the Carmen ad Astralabium. Distilling in the Carmen the understandings he had accumulated through the life lived in the Historia, Abelard wrote a text designed primarily for his son, a text that in its desire to teach and advise can be seen as written out of paternal love for a child.4 Why Was the Carmen Written? Despite the pervasive antifamilial rhetoric of his writings, as outlined in the Introduction, it is evident both early and later in his career that whenever Abelard felt under pressure, he always turned to his own family for recuperation and a sense of respite. For example, Abelard recounts that following his early conflict

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with William of Champeaux and the personal and political battles involved in founding his own schools at Melun and then Corbeil, he fell ill and had to return home in order to regain his health, where he was presumably nursed by his mother, Lucie, who had not yet entered the monastic life.5 Likewise, at the end of his life, when faced with the dramatic denouément of the Council of Sens, in which his orthodoxy was clearly going to be impugned, Abelard wrote a confession of his faith, sending it not to an official ecclesiastic source, but to Heloise at the Paraclete.6 In the same way as Abelard’s confession of faith to Heloise constituted a concise integration of philosophy, classical learning, and Christian piety, so the Carmen provides not so much the standard medieval didactic text comprising a few discrete commands on matters of behavior—a list of dos and don’ts—but rather a summa of Abelard’s thought over a number of decades. As such, it consists of tightly interwoven reflections on ethics, theology, philosophy, and the law. On two occasions, then, when Abelard felt the need to write the document that would define and justify his life and accumulated thought, he chose to address it to a member of his family. We also get a sense of the way advice giving can be an expression of love for Abelard from his dedication of Treatise II of his Dialectica to his nephews. He confides to his brother Dagobert that he had been balking at so great an undertaking, but that when he was “exhausted and wearied with writing,” he found his strength “enlivened by love” (“ex amore”) as “the memory of your love” (“tue . . . caritatis”) and “the desire for the instruction of my nephews” (“nepotum discipline desiderium”) rushed in upon him.7 Could not the same impulses have inspired the compilation of the Carmen? This dedication in the Dialectica, and Abelard’s many writings for Heloise and the nuns of the Paraclete, reveal that Abelard typically expressed his love for others by writing instructive texts for them and sharing his hard-won knowledge with them. In the case of the Carmen, this love took the form of a didactic poem dedicated to his son. When Was the Carmen Written? It may not be possible to date the composition of the Carmen more specifically than to observe that it is of a piece with numerous other texts written by and to Abelard around the early to mid-1130s. The Heloise section of the Carmen (379– 384, discussed in greater detail later in the chapter), must postdate Heloise’s Ep. IV. Similarly, numerous ideas expressed in Heloise’s Ep. VI, which were then represented by Abelard in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Nuns of the Paraclete, appear again in the Carmen. Themes that arise in both the questions and solutions of the Problemata Heloissae occur in the Carmen. The Carmen also resonates with ideas relayed in Abelard’s ethical works, such as the Collationes and Scito te ipsum, with his biblical exegesis in the Expositio in Hexameron, the scriptural conundrums he explored in the Sic et non, and his poetic works, such as his Hymns and Planctus.8 In terms of theology, the Carmen perhaps most strongly presents the thinking on the Trinity evident in Abelard’s earliest Theologia “Summi Boni” (see 999–1006 in

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the poem),9 though the references in the Carmen to natural law and the ethics of pagan thinkers might suggest an association with the Theologia Christiana.10 Thinking about why the Carmen was written also provides answers as to when it was written. Certainly the period around 1135 was a testing time for Abelard. With the exit from contemporary political power of Stephen of Garland, who had watched over much of Abelard’s career to that point,11 the political climate had swung against Abelard. This, combined with the failure of both his personal charisma and various ecclesiastical authorities to curb the excesses and personal violence of the monks of St. Gildas, may have led to a crisis of confidence and a desire to provide his knowledge and expertise to a more appreciative audience. It is tempting, therefore, to see this time of strife as the impetus that led him to focus on his son, Astralabe, and to wish to teach him, if his spiritual sons were unwilling to listen. This would explain the description in the opening line of the Carmen of Astralabe as the “sweetness of a fatherly life” (“dulcedo paterne uite”). That is, when failing in his spiritual fatherhood of his monks, Abelard turned his attention to his biological fatherhood of Astralabe as a source of consolation and an outlet for instruction. There is also the possibility that Heloise’s first letter to Abelard may have spurred him to leave some legacy for his son. In that letter Heloise criticized Abelard for wasting his knowledge and educational expertise on the recalcitrant monks of St. Gildas, chiding him: “You teach and admonish rebels to no purpose, and in vain you throw pearls of divine eloquence to pigs.”12 Heloise’s assertion of how much Abelard owed his “daughters,” by which she meant herself and the nuns of the Paraclete, may also have stirred in him a sense of what he owed his biological son. There are precedents for the composition of a didactic text as therapeutic act, a means for its author to make sense of a world in which old certainties have perished. Cicero wrote his De officiis, for example, for his son Marcus in 45 bc, at a time of deep personal despair and political turmoil. As Cicero confides in a letter to his friend Atticus, he had in fact been contemplating writing an advice-text in his exile prior to the composition of the De officiis, in part as an antidote to grieving over what had been lost.13 This confession allows the act of didactic authorship to be seen as an attempt for its author to make sense of a disordered world and reassert a recognizable order. The De officiis also makes a nice comparison with the Carmen in its stated aims. Cicero wrote to his son: “Every investigation into duty is two-fold. One part is that which pertains to the highest good, the other is what is set out in precepts, to which the conduct of one’s life can be conformed in all its parts.”14 This serves as an eloquent description of the key thought of the Carmen as well. Traditionally, in terms of medieval didactic literature, one would expect the recipient of a parental advice-text to be aged around fifteen years, that is, on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, and so requiring counsel in the mores of the adult world. This is certainly the common literary convention among anonymous didactic texts that purport to be from parents to children, even if evidence for real situations is more difficult to come by. Textual evidence

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suggests that William, the son of the ninth-century Frankish woman Dhuoda and the addressee of the handbook of advice she composed, was sixteen years old at the time she was completing the work.15 In terms of literary texts, the English “How a Wyse Man taught hys Sone” makes the point of emphasizing its didactic nature by specifying the age of the recipient: “Yt was A wyse man had A chyld | Was fully XV wynter of Age.”16 Merridee L. Bailey’s analysis of the manuscript transmission of this poem shows that this statement of age was a relatively stable component of the text among variants.17 Bailey also points out that where texts of the poem differed from this formula, the alternative reading, “yong and tendir of age,” employed terms recognizable from Chancery petitions as indicating an age of around twelve to fourteen years.18 Georg Misch’s dating of the poem to around 1138 was tied to his argument that at this time, Astralabe would have been about nineteen and undertaking studies for the holy profession to which he had already been committed.19 Misch does not, however, explain why he would locate such studies so relatively late in Astralabe’s life. Yet such time frames need not be rigorously applied to Abelard’s Carmen nor the date of the poem’s composition tied to Astralabe’s putative age at any given point. Bailey makes a salient point when she suggests of didactic literature addressed to children, “in search for literal interpretations we sometimes lose sight of the open contexts authors and scribes may have deliberately intended to create.”20 As an example, Hennig Brinkmann’s dating of the Carmen following the circulation of the Historia and Letters is primarily based on the textual evidence of the relationship between these texts, although he does note in support of his contention that Astralabe would have been undertaking his studies at this time.21 In similar vein, I would suggest that the composition of the Carmen was more likely a product of Abelard’s state of mind in the mid-1130s, and of his need to compile a digest of his thought at this time, rather than a concerted effort to educate his son on his entry into adulthood. To a certain extent, Astralabe was the fortuitous addressee of the text that resulted from his father’s own needs. The fact that in the probable period of the composition of the Carmen (early to mid-1130s), Astralabe would most likely have been of the appropriate age to receive a parental didactic text—that is, in his mid- to late teens—was, in some ways, serendipitous. Or to put it in another way, Astralabe’s age may simply have consolidated in Abelard’s mind the generic form for the material he was already predisposed to write—hence, a poem of elegiac couplets in the didactic tradition of the Disticha Catonis, rather than, say, a treatise. This conjecture is bolstered by the many correspondences in thought and theme between the Carmen and Abelard’s Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete. Here we can see what often amounts to the same advice and the same ethical considerations presented in two different forms: for Heloise, as abbess of the Paraclete, in the form of a rule for her convent; for Astralabe, entering upon adulthood, as a didactic poem. Main Themes In the Carmen, Abelard uses the form of the traditional advice-text but fills it with his own individual and even idiosyncratic thought. In his 1932 study of the

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poem, Brinkmann described it as an individualized hybrid, doubled in form, a type of teaching grown out of an admixture of personal experience and both new and traditional wisdom.22 Misch similarly characterized the poem as comprising proverbial wisdom set out in a traditional father-son format, but leavened with Abelard’s own experiential wisdom. In fact, he noted, some of Abelard’s original formulations in the poem took on their own life in the sentential tradition, thus constructing Abelard as an auctoritas in the didactic genre.23 It has taken until relatively recently, however, for the depth of content in the Carmen to be recognized by scholars of Abelard’s writings. Thus C. Stephen Jaeger has noted that “some of Abelard’s most penetrating comments on teaching and learning are in the poem he wrote for his son Astralabe,” 24 and John Marenbon has identified the poem as “an epitome, concise but accurate, of the whole of his [Abelard’s] ethical thought.”25 Misch’s analysis of the poem also focused on its pervasive ethical concerns. Many of the key themes of the work are common to classical, late antique, and medieval didactic literature: the Golden Rule, the Golden Mean, giving and taking advice, and thrift and largesse. Yet Abelard’s text is clearly not a conduct or courtesy text of the sort that proliferated in the later Middle Ages: there is no advice in the Carmen regarding the sort of clothing that Astralabe should wear, no warnings against dicing or drinking in the street.26 Instead Abelard deals with the big issues: the place of the individual in relation to friends, family, neighbors, and God; the nature of sin and guilt; God’s providential disposition of creation; and death and what might lie beyond it. In this vein, one of the most important and recurrent themes in the Carmen is the consonance of the inner and outer self. Images of steadfastness, constancy, and self-consistency abound. Be steady like the sun, Abelard advises his son, in advice drawn from Ecclesiasticus, not changeable like the moon (19–20). Abelard compares the world of human deceit with Nature, which, he declares, “cannot lie” (787); false-seeming, by contrast, is presented by Abelard as always requiring hard work (385–386). This focus on self-consistency underlies much of the ethical advice that Abelard gives his son about education and human relations. Astralabe must not put his faith in a teacher whose instruction appears to be self-contradictory (17–18). By the same token, the husband of an adulterous wife should not be informed of her sinning because it would upset his own sin-free disposition and introduce into it suspicion, which is a product of sin (181–182). Issues of hypocrisy and false-seeming interact in a very complex way throughout the poem with issues of religion, particularly with the desire for popular acclaim for one’s piety (465–466). A warning about foxes (presumably to be understood as wolves) in sheep’s clothing would appear to be directed against the white wool habits of Bernard of Clairvaux and his Cistercians (297–300) and leads to a statement of that pivotal concept shared by Abelard and Heloise regarding the consonance of the inner and outer person: “outward things do not commend us to God” (302). Hypocrisy is also linked with rhetoric, in the sense of words being used to obfuscate the truth, and with gender, in a discussion of prostitution. Unusually, Abelard’s main argument against prostitution is not a moral or religious one, but an ethical one, that a prostitute only feigns what she professes: “The prostitute and the traitor win over all by their compliance” (225). Indeed, the false-seeming

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of the prostitute is compared not only with that of the traitor, but with that of the rhetor as well: “He prevails in tongue who is not strong in arms; no-one prevails more in this type of battle than a prostitute” (239–240). Yet the complexity of the poem is such that no statement stands unqualified or quarantined from the ideas around it. Thus Abelard describes a prostitute as better than a woman who gives her body for free and exchanges herself for nothing more than the filth of sex (213–216). She is also better than a male prostitute who acts contrary to nature, since “a sodomite is only defiled when he has sex” (224). Indeed, a prostitute may even be better than a proud chaste wife, for “the former defiles the house which the latter more often sets alight” and “flame can harm a house more than filth” (229–230). In short, there are no simple hierarchies of behavior in Abelard’s poem: every relationship is intricately qualified. Allied to the theme of self-consistency is the importance of reputation and, more particularly, of maintaining a good reputation so as to be of value to others (33–34). Here Abelard makes a distinction between living rightly for oneself, which is a matter of conscience, and living rightly in the public eye, which is a matter of providing a good example to others. Thus, he notes that to a certain extent, what people think of how you live is more important than how you actually live (587–588), although he qualifies this by concluding that since God is well aware of your true mode of life, there should be consonance between reputation and reality (589–590). He also acknowledges the gendered nature of reputation, referencing the particular fragility of women’s reputation, which can be tarnished by the slightest imputation (203–206), and concedes that in such cases, false rumors can in fact create the reality they appear to invent (671–672). If self-consistency is one of the key themes of the poem, another would be the importance of temperance and moderation in life, especially the religious life. The poem strongly asserts the importance of living according to a sensible and sustainable mean, with Abelard advising that a humble life is satisfied by a modicum of labor (279). Such moderation is not only a financial consideration, although there is that aspect to it—“Moderate your expenses as your business requires” (789), Abelard advises—but also applicable to the dispensing of justice (“moderate the severity of the law according to the circumstances”; 249), and most particularly to the monastic life. Here Abelard points out that an excess of devotional exercise simply weakens the practitioner who then becomes more likely to succumb to the opposite vice: “our fragile substance, once overcome, will swiftly yield, should it overstep the mean in any religious observance” (663–664). These ideas lead into the philosophical position espoused by Seneca that a wise man always remains sufficient unto himself (481–484). Not surprisingly for a didactic poem, education is a key concern. Unusually for a medieval didactic text, though, it forms the opening subject, preceding the consideration of God’s glory and his divine justice and mercy, which would normally outrank it in importance, thus speaking strongly of its significance in Abelard’s thinking. Yet despite this prominence given to instruction, Abelard’s words reveal a certain ambivalence about aspects of it. He opens by questioning the value of learning (5–6) and the figure of the teacher (7–10), insisting on the substance of the instruction that is provided, not its means of transmission. In

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this regard, teaching should be done in the plainest of terms to facilitate understanding (11–14; 869–870). Indeed, throughout the poem, rhetoric and ornate words are unfavorably compared with the truth made evident through deeds (57; 239–244; 339; 822), and Abelard concludes: “reason surpasses any kind of eloquence” (824). Exemplarity is also an important vehicle of instruction, and Abelard particularly advises both that moral examples should be followed and that one must be careful not to provide a bad example to others (255). The nature of vice and virtue are concerns that appear repeatedly throughout the poem, and are particularly associated with issues of deception and moderation of behavior. In this regard, Abelard notes that the distinction between a vice and virtue can be relative, no more than a matter of degree (613–614). A complex discussion of the difference between a fault or a failing (uicium) and a sin (crimen) in terms of human nature (77–82) leads Abelard eventually to the statement, consonant with his thought in his Scito te ipsum, that the only true sin is contempt of God (369–372). In keeping with his focus on the cohesion of internal and external dispositions, Abelard insists throughout the Carmen on the location of virtue in the inner person, arguing that this alone will be able to regulate outward behavior. In this vein he argues, more than once, that a woman who is chaste in herself will be so regardless of any regulation that is applied, or not applied, to her outward actions, just as a woman who is unchaste in her heart can never be made chaste through custody: “virtue must be considered a thing of the mind, not of the body” (193–198; 673–674). Yet, in a move that perhaps resonates more strongly with modern than medieval understandings of vice, Abelard also concedes that vice will not necessarily impact upon a person’s skills or artistry, since “often he who is a bad man is a good artisan” (426). As might be expected from a medieval didactic text, his counsel about giving and receiving advice constitutes some of the most popular distichs of the poem, with many of these being marked out by marginal annotations in the manuscripts. More than once Abelard remarks that counsel should always prevail over might as a means of handling matters (67–68), and he particularly identifies advice giving as a function of the senior members of a society (351–352). His admonition that one should accept patiently and as a great gift the reproof of an older person is one of the most popular distichs of the entire poem (269–270). Yet, as always in the Carmen, moderation is key: this observation is preceded by the advice that reproof should always be mild, since harsh correction only renders the guilty defensive and more obdurate (265–268). By the same token, the mark of a rash man is his repudiation of both advice and moderation (523). Abelard’s observations on moderation and temperance also buttress the strong social ethic of the Carmen. Unlike many medieval and early modern didactic poems in which profligacy is chastised, Abelard is more concerned to critique what he sees as the ethical evil of miserliness. He devotes a number of distichs to excoriating such avarice, which he compares with the physical sickness of dropsy (407–408). At least lust has a natural end in old age, Abelard argues, while avarice apparently has none (827–828). Brutally he points out that leaving a monetary legacy after one’s death is the poorest form of generosity, since such grants are not given, but rather wrenched by death itself from the grasping hand of the

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miser (620–626). In vitriolic style he paints the picture of the rich miser upon his deathbed, hurrying to the Shades below, but even then begrudging Charon his coin (411–414). Most strikingly, Abelard expresses his commitment to moderation and self-sufficiency and his outrage over the injustice of social inequality when he declares: “Whoever retains more than the conduct of his life demands himself applies his hands to the throat of the poor man” (415–416). Questions of family relationships occur throughout the poem, and this is clearly an area fraught with both significance and difficulty for Abelard. He begins by lauding the sort of Ciceronian friendship that springs from like-minded virtue, which he sees as the gift of grace, as superior to the mere blood ties of family, which are simply a product of nature (119–124). Nature here is synonymous with animal instinct, but as the poem progresses Abelard’s presentation of human relationships becomes increasingly nuanced, developing into a sophisticated hierarchy in which nature and lust are distinguished, and nature and friendship more subtly interlinked. Thus Abelard declares, for example, that “if a wife should be dearer to any man than his own mother, it is agreed that Nature yields to lust” (473–474). Yet by the same token, friendship cannot remain isolated from questions of nature, and Abelard cautions that no grace should allow one to form a friendship with another who is so unnatural that nature does not compel him to love his own parents (449–450). Above all, one must look to establishing one’s own virtue and not imagine that it can in some way be inherited through family standing (477–478). Interspersed throughout the Carmen are admonitions regarding the nature and process of judgment. Abelard’s key statement comes early in the poem where he reminds his son how just, how powerful, and how good God is, how much he tolerates our earthly behavior, and how heavily he may smite us for it when he wills (45–46). In some places Abelard advocates self-judgment, suggesting that the wise man acts as his own judge in moderating his words and actions (22–24, 457–458). Elsewhere he contrasts the role of the earthly judge, who must act with severity, with the role of the heavenly judge who is able to moderate judgment with mercy (603–604), a theme he also treats in his Scito te ipsum (see the Notes to these lines). On one occasion, Abelard addresses the earthly judge directly, advising him on the practice of equity and reminding him that higher powers have ultimately determined the parameters of his remit (249–253). There is much evidence of what can be identified as “late style” in the poem, 27 with its focus on old age, impending death, and the leaving of legacies. Abelard points out the heart of the human conundrum that although no one envies the old, and every day that we live brings us nearer to death, yet everyone still aims to attain old age (321–322). Preparation for death is a recurring issue (689–690; 875), and Abelard makes it clear that suffering on earth is an important aspect of such preparation (692; 877–882). Yet despite the acknowledged pain of passing, there is also a strong desire threading through the poem to depart from current suffering. This includes a very nonmedieval flirtation with the idea of suicide (561–564), which is expressed in words strangely redolent of Epicurean philosophy.28 Allied with this focus on the certainty of death is the issue of the legacy that one leaves after it, and Abelard contrasts the ephemeral nature of speech

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and the human body with the lasting monuments of the written word and one’s reputation (947–954). Overriding all other considerations, however, is a palpable piety and love of God. Abelard everywhere notes God’s power, his goodness, his justice, and his mercy, and advocates love of him (41–48). This is particularly expressed in Abelard’s acknowledgment of God’s right disposition of the world (529–532; 845–858), which must bring the righteous person comfort, even in times of apparent adversity. Yet simple statements of God’s goodness rest alongside more complex discussions of the human approach to devotional practices. In this regard, Abelard uses the image of wolves in sheep’s clothing to caution against the hypocrisy engendered through pride in one’s own piety (297–304), and he observes the limitations of popular piety, with its foundation in what is emotional, sentimental, and corporeal, especially in terms of objects of worship that have been constructed by the human hand (639–644; 835–844). Instead, he counters with the importance of applying reason to religious faith (637–638; 785–786). This is particularly relevant when faced with the growing number of religious pathways on offer, to ensure that heredity and tradition alone do not determine one’s religious destiny. The poem all but ends with an Abelardian exposition on the nature of the Trinity as the supreme good (summum bonum) comprising the power of God, the wisdom of Christ, and the goodness of the Holy Spirit (999–1006). Style Modern scholarly opinion has described Abelard’s Carmen as “garbled, largely haphazard in form,” “a helter-skelter assemblage of sententiae,”29 “rambling in structure,” containing “many distichs of Polonius-like, conventional moralizing,”30 in which Abelard “paraded, Polonius-wise, a capricious collection of moral maxims, spicy rules of practical morality inspired probably by the Distichs of Cato as well as by his own moral theories.”31 Earlier scholars were no more complimentary of the structure and tone, with Misch suggesting that the poem appeared to comprise forty or so unconnected individual sections of ancient and Christian wisdom on the virtues and values of life, largely impersonal in tone, jostling up against each other.32 Yet while Misch was at least prepared to describe the Carmen as a Lehrgedicht, Thomas Haye has more recently taken exception to such a classification. In his study of the Latin Lehrgedicht in the Middle Ages, Haye acknowledges that Abelard’s poem in many respects fulfills the criteria for the genre, in that Abelard takes on the role of teacher in order to instruct a young man (in this case his own son, as happens also in other Lehrgedichte) and expresses his advice in the imperative and second-person subjunctive.33 Yet Haye is highly critical of what he sees as the lack of organization in the poem’s structure. The poem, he declares, lacks a clear theme and a detailed summary of its contents. Readers are unable to perceive any textual structure, as each distich appears to contain only an isolated admonition of proverbial or sentential nature. These distichs are not arranged systematically, but simply strung together paratactically.34 In this regard, Haye

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argues, Abelard’s Carmen is on a par with the Disticha Catonis,35 and therefore, while obviously a medieval didactic poem, must nevertheless be excluded from the higher-order definition of a Lehrgedicht. Certainly the Carmen is composed in a traditional didactic form of discrete distichs, each comprising a hexameter and a pentameter line, yet it is a much more sophisticated assemblage of ideas than it first appears. Its style could best be described as sinuous, as Abelard weaves one idea in with another, returning to themes repeatedly, each time from a slightly different perspective, or in more finely calibrated consideration, in the process continually modifying his arguments and suggesting the ultimate interconnectedness of his several themes. This texture is also created at the lexical level, with a constant interplay and repetition of lexical items through succeeding lines even when these lines deal with different concepts. The subtle nature of Abelard’s style and thought is particularly evident in the long section of the poem (approximately 115–176) that deals with friendship. At first sight, these thirty or so consecutive distichs might appear as simply an agglomeration—and a relatively straightforward and repetitive one at that—of advice on friendship. Closer inspection, however, reveals an extraordinary depth of thought applied to every aspect of friendship, and an attempt to express both the hierarchy and interlinked nature of these. A detailed analysis of these lines is given next. To begin with, the friendship section itself is not a discrete part of the Carmen, despite the desire of some editors (such as Graziella Ballanti)36 to mark it out as a distinct subsection. Rather, it emerges organically from an earlier discussion on the hierarchy of loving God, others, and oneself. Here the idea that we should love others more the better they are, which constitutes a Ciceronian understanding of friendship, is modified by the Christian overlay that we should love others more the dearer they are to God (109–114), and these ideas are synthesized in the declaration that a true friend is the greatest gift of God (115–116), which then initiates the section on friendship. Similarly, the section does not end with a marked break in theme; rather the last distich of it, which deals with friendship with servants (175–176), segues into a discussion of the nature of servitude and from there the poem moves to consider the links between vice, virtue, and metaphorical slavery (177–180). Moreover, within the friendship section, the distichs are not simply tired, trite truisms placed one after the other in arbitrary order and to arbitrary length. Rather, as the analysis here reveals, Abelard’s ideas are complex, interwoven, intricately hierarchized, and comprehensive. In this arrangement and exploration of ideas, Abelard reveals himself an ethicist, philosopher, and theologian, rather than a simple purveyor of conventional ideas. Detailed Thematic Analysis of the Section on Friendship in the Carmen ad Astralabium: r
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CJPMPHJDBMTFYVBM
relationships.

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r
In 125–126 Abelard states how friendship should impact upon one’s own behavior. r
In 127 Abelard differentiates friendship from self-love, which constitutes a further step in his earlier definition of the hierarchy of love in 109–114: Abelard has already indicated that God is first in love (109) and that friends outrank relatives (119–124); now he specifies the place of self in the hierarchy: self outranks friends. r
Abelard then explores the implications of this idea for the behavior of friends: (i) Lines 128–138 list what one should not do in friendship. These are ethical considerations to do with vice and shameful deeds. This section is further divided into injunctions on the friend and on the self; these oscillate back and forth: (a) lines 128, 131–132, 135–136 explore the boundaries of behavior on the friend’s part; (b) lines 129–130, 133–134, 137–138 explore the boundaries of behavior on one’s own part—these behaviors are carefully analyzed and hierarchized with regard to blame. (ii) Lines 139–144 then explore the positive considerations of friendship, that is, what one should do in friendship, with regard to giving freely—this develops the concept of the self less nature of love for a friend. r
This in turn leads to the articulation in 145–146 of the Ciceronian ideal: the true friend is another self. This involves issues of oneness of self and image. r
This idea is then developed in 149–150 by an analysis of how to distinguish the true friend from one whose inner and outer appearances do not mesh. r
Lines 151–174 develop this into the idea of the trust that is attendant upon recognition of friendship. (Interestingly, the idea of betrayal surfaces repeatedly here: 150: trust can lead to gullibility and betrayal; 158: a true friend is prepared to suffer betrayal; 168: do not trust one who has betrayed another): (i) lines 151–162 particularly explore the effect of personal wealth on friendship; seduction and betrayal figure strongly in this discussion. This leads to the idea that you should give freely to your friends, but understand at the same time that friendship cannot be bought: it is yourself you are giving, not your goods. (ii) lines 163–166 develop this theme: because you cannot buy a friend you must treat as valuable those who already exist for you (and note the new interrelationship of friendship and family Abelard develops here, with the concept of a hereditary, family-based friendship—the faithful servant, the father’s friend); (iii) lines 167–174 warn against those who cannot, on the basis of their past behavior, be considered a trustworthy friend;

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(iv) this leads to analyses of key people in one’s life with regard to the issue of trust: (a) 175–180: the servant; (b) 181–186: the wife—which leads to a discussion of the trustworthiness of women in general (187–198)—before returning to the specific focus of the advice at this point; (c) 199–202: the daughter. r
Finally, the discussion at 200–202 on the scandal of a wayward daughter introduces the idea of fame and reputation to which the Carmen next attends, moving from consideration of the daughter who brings shame on her household to the woman who is defamed. As should be evident from this attempt to systematize Abelard’s thought, despite the fact it is obvious that there is a “friendship section” present in the Carmen, it is not possible to argue with regard to specific line numbers where this actually begins and ends, so organically do ideas flow and develop into each other. It surely takes a kind of brilliance, not a lack of organization as some scholars would have it, to be able to link ideas together so seamlessly. Much of the critical judgment that the Carmen lacks organization is the product of an insistence on breaking it, almost by editorial force, into distinct sections that can be simplistically labeled, rather than accepting the natural flow of its ideas. If the impulse to order Abelard’s thought is resisted, however, we gain instead a rare insight into the mind of a brilliant thinker at work: ceaselessly and restlessly turning over concepts, leaping from one thought to another through suggestion and allusion, modifying and hierarchizing ideas as he develops intertwined trajectories of thought over hundreds of lines of text. Indeed, attempts to order the poem artificially tend to end in confusion; this happens in Ballanti’s Italian translation of the text where, because of her desire to label discrete sections, she frequently comes to the conclusion that Abelard jumps without reason from one idea to the next. For example, Ballanti divides 311–352 into five sections: 311–324, “La vecchiaia e la morte” (Old age and death); 325– 326, which she considers an interpolation; 327–342, “Invidia e merito” (Envy and merit); 343–350, “La salute del corpo” (The health of the body), which argues for moderation in living; and 351–362, which Ballanti titles “Decisioni e promesse” (Decisions and promises),37 but which actually deals with the importance of taking counsel and considering vows before pronouncing them, and which begins with the line: “Let young men wage wars, let their elders give counsel” (351). This imposed division mutilates the potential coherence of these forty lines that springs from the fact that they condense a series of thoughts in Cicero’s De senectute. In his contemplation of old age and imminent death, Cicero’s narrator, Cato, suggests waging war against old age by keeping the body in good shape through moderation and avoidance of excess (De senectute, XI, 35–36), and argues that giving counsel is important for retaining mental agility in old age (XI, 38). From this perspective, Abelard’s flow of thought in the Carmen from the imminence of death, through the need for moderate living, to the giving of counsel by elders, can be seen to be motivated by his source text.

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What might appear to be repetitions of thought or even contradictions in ethical position within the Carmen usually turn out on closer inspection to be no such thing. Rather, they evince a moment when Abelard makes a fine distinction upon an earlier argument, or approaches the same problem from a different perspective. Thus hexameter lines that appear to be similar may be modified by quite different pentameter lines that take the argument in a new direction. For example, 291 and 859 are identical hexameter lines about those who ostentatiously refuse to accept gifts (“Multi ne cupidi uideantur dona refutant”), but their pentameter lines conclude upon quite distinct thoughts. In the first instance, Abelard concludes that this is an art of false-seeming (“hacque sibi nomen arte parare student,” 292); in the latter case he suggests that for some people, the vice of vainglory can trump the vice of avarice (“plus quam res laudem gloria uana cupit,” 860). He then addresses the issue for a third time in the next distich (“Sunt qui oblata sibi nonnumquam dona repellunt,” 861), this time arguing that such behavior is a form of avarice that advances under false-seeming (“ut magis hinc cari sepius illa ferant,” 862)—a conclusion that actually meshes the thoughts of the previous two pentameter lines on the matter. By the same token, in considering Abelard’s approach to the question of sinning openly as opposed to sinning discreetly, it would be easy for a reader to leap to the judgment that Abelard’s advice is self-contradictory. Yet careful attention to his individual statements reveals not only a profound consistency between them, but also a finely graded understanding of human behavior. Thus his advice at 181–186 that a man who is ignorant of his wife’s infidelity should not be apprised of it is not countermanded by his advice at 683–688 that it is the better course of action for a man to put an adulterous wife aside. The two situations are distinct: in the first instance, Abelard is aware that a man who does not know of his wife’s adultery is most likely himself a faithful man. Informing him of the adultery will upset his consonance of inner and outer self, creating the suspicious mind that is naturally part and parcel of a sinning disposition. In the second instance, where the adultery is known, it must be acted upon so that it does the least damage. This will more likely entail divorce since maintenance of the marriage will look like the husband is condoning, and indeed flaunting, a sinful state; this in turn will create a bad example that could be damaging to others. These situations also correlate with Abelard’s general consideration of sinning in the Carmen. It could, for instance, look as though Abelard’s advice that if one cannot live chastely, one should at least live discreetly (“Si nequeas caste, ne spernas uiuere caute,” 587), advice that has been labeled “cynical,”38 is in direct conflict with his condemnation of hypocrisy at 305–310, but again, there is consonance to be found. Abelard’s overriding consideration here is the example given to others: if one cannot help sinning, one must at least endeavor not to lead others astray by the behavior. Certainly hypocrisy (living a sin but pretending to piety) is a damnable state, but it is nevertheless preferable to sinning openly and thus teaching others to sin; Abelard considers a person acting in this way to be doubly guilty (“dupliciter reus est, qui docet hoc et agit,” 310). Here Abelard is rehearsing a line of argument also espoused by Heloise in her Ep. IV.39 This should give an idea of how Abelard’s thought in the Carmen, which can at first

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appear random, repetitive, or even contradictory, is actually consistent, subtle, and works through incremental developments of ideas. In terms of sources, the Carmen witnesses a range of classical and biblical antecedents, although only one source is explicitly named in the entire poem: this is Seneca whose Ep. IX on the self-sufficiency of the wise man is cited at 481–484. The most prominent of the unnamed auctoritates are Cicero (especially his De amicitia,40 De officiis, and De senectute), Seneca (especially the Epistulae morales), and, to a lesser extent, Ovid; also the biblical books of wisdom, such as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ecclesiasticus (or the Wisdom of Sirach). Traces of medieval advice-texts such as the Disticha Catonis are present in the Carmen, but not prominent; indeed, as will be discussed next, Abelard does not hesitate to gainsay traditional advice when it conflicts with his own experience. David O’Connell has written of St. Louis’s composition of the Enseignements for his son and daughter that “there was the ever-present influence exerted upon him by the weight and breadth of his own experience, and the insight which came to him over the years as a result of that experience”;41 Abelard’s personal experience similarly inflects the advice he gives throughout his poem. Many of the ideas expressed in the Carmen are also present in other writings of both Abelard and Heloise. We know that Heloise’s Ep. IV must have been the motivation for 379–384 (discussed further ahead in the chapter), and many of the arguments that are found in both the Carmen and Abelard’s Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, appear to have their genesis in Heloise’s Ep. VI. Similarly, the Carmen rehearses both questions and solutions from the Problemata Heloissae. Issues dealt with in at least six of the Problems and Solutions appear in the Carmen, including questions of sin, almsgiving, lust and procreation, and the meaning of the Golden Rule. Abelard’s ethical works, the Collationes and Scito te ipsum, are strongly present in the Carmen, particularly with regard to the questions of virtue and vice, the greatest good, the punishment of sinners after death, and the problem of hereditary religion. Abelard’s discussion of God’s rightful disposition of the world in the Carmen matches his thought in his Expositio in Hexameron, and both texts espouse similar arguments regarding sexuality, procreation, the nonprocreative sin of sodomy, and the respective guilt of Adam and Eve in original sin. Ideas present in the Sermons recur throughout the Carmen, including issues of sin, reputation, false-seeming, and almsgiving; Abelard’s Sermon 29 on Susannah would appear to be particularly reflective of his thought in the Carmen. Moreover, when we consider that the issues forming around twenty of the questions dealt with in the Sic et non can also be found in the Carmen, it becomes evident what a critical mind and subtle thinking Abelard brought to his composition of this poem. Significant subjects covered in both texts include the nature of God, Providence, the Fall, what constitutes a sin, dissimulation, adultery, and the killing of oneself and others. Thus we see Abelard in the Carmen not simply presenting precepts, but studying the big questions of life, turning them over and examining them from every angle, coming to no easy conclusions. The breadth and profundity of these questions reveal that the Carmen is no traditional school text, but something more complex and advanced, designed to stimulate thinking rather than provide easy answers.

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Because the Carmen is explicitly dedicated to Astralabe, and it seems likely that Astralabe was an adolescent at the time of its composition, it is worth considering how the poem might have functioned as a didactic text written for a younger reader. In the Middle Ages, texts made available to child and adolescent readers were equally focused on religious and moral guidance on the one hand, and instruction in grammar, lexis, and meter on the other, even if they occasionally used entertaining stories as a vehicle of transmission.42 It is of course important to remember that medieval didactic literature for younger readers differs from modern notions of children’s literature: it would not be unusual to find explicit images of sexual behavior or violence, or indeed sexualized violence, within medieval texts intended for child readers.43 Equally, children’s texts might seek to convey complex technical material, as, for example, Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe, which is dedicated to “Lyte Lowys my sone.” Yet even within a pedagogic milieu in which texts given to younger readers might appear challenging by current standards, Abelard’s Carmen stands out as being of a different order. Apart from being structured in the comforting and familiar form of distichs, like the traditional school text Disticha Catonis, it offers little easy access to a younger reader. Its thought is demanding and at times bluntly confronting and idiosyncratically Abelardian; its linguistic structure is sparse to the point that a medieval glossator (perhaps a schoolmaster) of one of the manuscripts took it upon himself to expand and explain concepts and supply elided verbs in interlinear glosses (Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 561 = P, discussed further ahead). It does not offer the reader a simple modus vivendi, but rather a complex set of ethical and philosophical tools that must be applied to one’s own life. It is thus a didactic text for child readers in the sense that many medieval texts were—a text that might be read not only by a younger audience for what it could impart in terms of moral conduct and grammatical instruction, but one containing a higher order of thematic material applicable to adult readers as well. Comparison with Other Medieval Didactic Texts Just how original and complex Abelard’s Carmen is as a medieval didactic text can be illustrated first by comparing it with contemporary school didactic texts, and second by considering some of its salient arguments. The Disticha Catonis was the standard medieval school text, in circulation across Europe from around the fourth century until well into the early modern era, and fundamental to twelfth-century schooling. Yet, despite David Luscombe’s assertion to the contrary,44 there are very few points of comparison between the thousand lines of advice that Abelard composed in the Carmen, and the four books of the Disticha. On only a handful of occasions can the thought conveyed in a couplet from the Disticha be recognized in Abelard’s poem of advice, and the closest comparisons between the Carmen and the Disticha reside rather in the “Brief sentences” (Breves sententiae) of the latter. Meanwhile, there exist striking divergences in advice between the two texts on topics as fundamental as the value of teaching and learning, and the place of moderation in personal behavior

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(discussed further ahead). In each instance of divergence, the statement from the Disticha appears more an idealized prescription, the opinion advanced by Abelard more subtle and, perhaps, more likely to have been informed by lived experience. On those few occasions where Abelard’s advice in the Carmen is recognizably conventional, it appears to resonate not only with the Disticha but also with the Liber proverbiorum, compiled by the eleventh-century monk Otloh of St. Emmeram. Yet once again, Otloh’s text does not so much provide a source for Abelard’s collection of didactic wisdom, as allow us the opportunity to comprehend just how original, and indeed, idiosyncratic, it is. Otloh compiled his anthology of gnomic wisdom at the monastery of Fulda in the early 1060s.45 Having spent time as a novice master, Otloh was particularly interested in having at hand a text that would be appropriate for providing basic Christian moral instruction to formative minds. He wished to blend the sage advice of pagan authorities then used as school texts (the proverbs of Seneca, the fables of Avianus, the Disticha Catonis) with expressly Christian principles, creating a text for young learners that would succeed their first reading of the Psalter.46 Otloh maintained the alphabetical order of his exemplar (the proverbs of Seneca), collecting under each letter of the alphabet three types of sayings: texts drawn from the Bible, most especially the Old Testament books of wisdom and the Psalms but also some New Testament sources; second, prose proverbs and sentences from both sacred and secular sources, especially the Fathers ( Jerome and Gregory the Great) and Publius Syrus, Seneca, and Sallust; and third, metrical sentences from the same.47 In total, there are 1276 proverbs in Otloh’s text.48 Given, then, more than twelve-hundred lines in Otloh’s collection of sacred and secular proverbial and sentential wisdom, and more than a thousand lines in Abelard’s text of didactic advice, one might expect a significant overlap of sentences. In fact, there are very few. I have identified only twenty-nine lines or distichs in Abelard’s Carmen that have a counterpart, either verbatim or paraphrased, in the Liber proverbiorum—a very small percentage of each text. What this means in practical terms is that Abelard wrote over a thousand lines of didactic advice almost without repetition of, or reference to, some of the most common proverbs and sentences circulating in school material at the time. This indicates how personalized Abelard’s advice to his son is—in other words, the Carmen is a true work of composition, not of compilation. It also emphasizes that the Carmen is really not a collection of “simple wisdom.” Rather, it offers a complex juxtaposition of ideas and ideals that constantly turns back on itself in reexamination, encouraging readers to draw conclusions regarding principles for living, and to apply them to their own lives. This is what Misch appears to have observed when he commented that in the Carmen, apparently conflicting ideas stand next to each other without actually undercutting each other.49 Eileen C. Sweeney has similarly noted with regard to Abelard’s writings in general: “What Abelard eschews across the board are easy solutions, or solutions that are merely received rather than autonomously achieved.”50 The Moralium dogma philosophorum (attributed to William of Conches by its most recent editor) provides yet another contrast. This twelfth-century text,

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which may or may not have been influenced by Abelard’s own thought, or at least, his school,51 draws on the same classical sources as the Carmen52 and would have been composed at much the same time, yet it is highly organized in its thought. Its plan—both limited in scope and specific in intent—is set out methodically at the head of the text,53 and adhered to in practice. The references to classical authors that appear in it are not the allusive gestures made by Abelard in his Carmen where a single word or even a concept is intended to evoke a wellknown locus (Abelard specifically names a classical authority only once in over a thousand lines),54 but long and verbatim quotations, with much of the text consisting of nothing but a pastiche of such sources. The specificity of the advice given (e.g., details on how and to whom to distribute largesse, which extend over several pages, drawn largely from Cicero’s De officiis and Seneca’s De beneficiis) is often bolstered by illustrative examples and illuminated by clear definitions of key terms. This again contrasts markedly with Abelard’s more compact formulations in the Carmen that are designed to suggest an enacting principle, not supply a preceptive program. The Carmen also differs from contemporary didactic texts written for younger readers. Marenbon’s assertion that Abelard’s Carmen is more a work of “practical ethics” than of “ethics in practice”55 is borne out by comparing it with Hugh of St. Victor’s early twelfth-century De institutione novitiorum.56 Hugh’s text is highly practical, first offering a precept and then explaining in detail how this goal is to be, and not to be, attained. Where Hugh is methodical, meticulous, patient, and aims always at a moderate goal, Abelard’s text is eclectic and wide-ranging, signaling the presence of a restless and brilliant mind that does not have time to dwell on any one idea, but simply uses it as a springboard for the next. Although Abelard’s text constantly restates the virtues of moderation and temperance, it is itself radical, demanding, does not suffer fools, and would be difficult for any individual to follow as a modus vivendi. The Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi, which circulated through the West in the twelfth century, chooses to instruct through diverting stories. Its author argues in his Prologue that his instruction has been deliberately divided into discrete narrative sections in order to avoid producing boredom in the reader, and composed of stories so as to be memorable despite the weakness of human nature.57 By contrast, although Abelard’s Carmen does offer the odd brief vignette—for instance, the deceased miser hurrying to the Shades below who even then begrudges the ferryman his coin—it is not a narrative text. Neither does its complexly intertwined thematic flow, which constantly draws the reader on to the next idea, offer any respite for that reader to rest and reflect upon a simple self-contained moral. In its own context of the didactic literature that was circulating during the twelfth century, Abelard’s text thus stands out as maverick in structure and intent. It is not just a compilation of sentences, nor a handbook with advice arranged under specific heads, nor a collection of narrative tales; moreover, it avoids offering procedure in favor of expounding principle. Its unconventionality becomes even more evident when we consider some of the specific advice that Abelard wished to impart to his readers. It would seem that in cases where Abelard’s own

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experience conflicted with the sort of advice traditionally offered to youths, he chose to teach from experience. This in particular marks his originality as a medieval advice-giving parent.58 For instance, we find in the Carmen, and in the opening lines no less, a lack of faith in the value and process of learning which could be considered unsettling in the context of a long didactic poem. The first thirty lines of the poem struggle with both the absolute and relative merits of learning and teaching, of words and deeds. The opening lines weave around these issues, examining them from alternate perspectives, each distich resonating with suspicion and uncertainty. The most striking of these is Abelard’s advice to his son, “When what you would learn fails you, cease to learn, and you will not say that you should have ceased sooner” (“Cum tibi defuerit quid discas, discere cessa | nec tibi cessandum dixeris esse prius”; lines 5–6). Whichever sense is assigned to the word “defuerit” here—“is absent,” “fails”—the sentiment is disconcerting and flies in the face of traditional didactic advice. If, reading the distich less polemically, Abelard means that when Astralabe has learnt all that he wishes to learn and can think of no further topics for instruction, he should cease to learn, this contradicts traditional advice. Eccelsiasticus 6. 18 declares: “My son, from your earliest youth choose instruction, and till your hair is white you will keep finding wisdom” (“fili a iuventute tua excipe doctrinam et usque ad canos invenies sapientiam”). The Disticha Catonis agrees: “Instruct your soul with these precepts and do not cease to learn, for without learning, life is like the image of death” (“Instrue praeceptis animum, ne discere cessa; | nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago”; Bk III, 1),59 and further argues: “Do not cease to learn; wisdom increases through care, and a rare wisdom is granted through long experience” (“Discere ne cessa, cura sapientia crescat: | rara datur longo prudentia temporis usu”; Bk IV, 27).60 Indeed, the aphorism that “a life without learning is like a vision of death” was common in didactic texts of the medieval and early modern periods. Far more disturbing, however, is the potential meaning of Abelard’s distich—which is also grammatically the more likely, in terms of the dative “tibi” associated with the verb “defuerit”—that learning can actually fail a pupil, that it can be a dangerous and deceptive commodity. If this is Abelard’s meaning here, it is not too difficult to trace its genesis back to his own experiences of long-term learning and the negative results of this for him, both in terms of problematic interpersonal relationships with teachers and their students, and in terms of engendering intellectual audacity and pride. There is also a pervasive suspicion of teaching threaded through the Carmen, which is particularly evident in the opening thirty lines of the poem. Here Abelard advises his son not to develop a personal attachment to his teacher (9–10), not to be misled by the ornate rhetoric of his teacher (11–16), not to trust in the words of a teacher whose behavior is self-contradictory (17–18), and not to rush into teaching and writing himself, but to learn for a long time first (27–28). Abelard is clearly drawing here from his own fraught relationships with his masters Roscelin of Compiègne, William of Champeaux, and Anselm of Laon, although his words also reflect the massive shift early in the twelfth century, studied by Jaeger, from a focus on charismatic and eloquent

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teachers of morals to plain style and an individual’s own rational enquiry.61 Nevertheless, Abelard’s statements contradict traditional didactic precepts to respect one’s teacher, such as expressed in the twelfth-century Facetus (Cum nihil utilius) which declares: “Doctorem timeas et ames” (You should fear and love your teacher).62 How radical Abelard’s thoughts on teaching and learning are for his time is revealed by the perplexity of the glossator of manuscript P in dealing with some of Abelard’s later distichs on the finely balanced relationship between teacher and student. Here Abelard declares, “A wise student is the highest glory of a master: the former’s praise is the latter’s profit” (“Discipulus sapiens est gloria summa magistri: | istius laus est illius utilitas”; 907–908). It might at first blush appear that what Abelard is suggesting is that the master’s praise goes to the student’s benefit, and this is the way the glossator read it, glossing “istius” with “scilicet magistri,” and “illius” with “scilicet dicipuli.” Yet the succeeding distich would suggest that what Abelard in fact means is that the pupil gaining renown in the world brings profit to the master by association. So Abelard goes on to declare: “the teacher draws more from him than he offers him so that he should rather be hired by him” (“plus ab eo doctor summit quam prebeat illi | ut conducendus sit magis hic ab eo”; 909–910). Again this radical rethink of master-student relationships baffles the glossator, who does his best to wrench the grammar so that it presents the traditional affirmative view of teaching. He glosses “ut” with “pro quamuis,” “hic” with “scilicet magister,” and “ab eo” with “scolare,” coming up with the formulation: “although the master should [still] be hired by the student.” Reading the distich as it stands, however—that the master would be better off hiring the wise student—we are left with the image of Abelard rating the student above the master, and learning above teaching. Another example of how Abelard tempers traditional admonitions with his own understanding of human nature is his insistence throughout the Carmen on adherence to the mean in everything, including religious observance. Thus where the Disticha Catonis advises “Always be more watchful and do not be given to sleep, for longterm rest offers nourishment to vices” (“Plus vigila semper nec somno deditus esto; | nam diuturna quies vitiis alimenta ministrant”; Bk I, 2),63 Abelard is more circumspect. Building perhaps on Heloise’s observations in her Ep. VI on the need for moderation in religious life, and no doubt on his own long experience of monastic life as well, Abelard advises his son that surpassing the mean in anything is a recipe for disaster, and “whoever keeps vigil excessively will also sleep excessively” (“quique nimis uigilat dormiet ipse nimis,” 662). He makes it clear that this advice is founded on observation of human nature: “our fragile substance, once overcome, will swiftly yield, should it overstep the mean” (“uicta cito cedet fragilis substantia nostra | . . . excedat . . . modum”; 663–664).64 Perhaps most significant is Abelard’s reconsideration of the virtue of corporal discipline in the education of children. The insistence on physical punishment in the education of children dates back to the Old Testament, as in the wellknown Proverb: “He who spares the rod hates his son” (“qui parcit virgae suae odit filium suum”; Proverbs 13.24), and similar formulations appear commonly in medieval advice-texts. Abelard himself seems happy enough to make use of

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such citations metaphorically when writing to Heloise in his Ep. V advising acceptance of God’s punishment of them both.65 Yet within the literal context of the corporal punishment of children in order to inculcate learning, Abelard takes a surprisingly different approach. Now he argues: “Not easily corrected is he who does not know that he has done wrong; a blow is a lesser thing, but a remedy is heavy work” (“Non leue corrigitur qui se delinquere nescit; | plaga tamen minor est sed medicina grauis”; 395–396). In this distich we are returned to one of the key themes of the Carmen, the consonance between the inner and outer person. Abelard concedes that physical punishment, being swift in its application, can change the outward behavior of one who has done wrong, but he argues that such change is ultimately meaningless, because unless that person understands what he has done wrong and why he has been punished, no real change can be effected. In saying that a remedy is heavy work, Abelard is suggesting that it takes time and effort to teach a child right from wrong and to effect in this way a concordance between interior state and external behavior—a task in which the application of corporal punishment is of little use. As a final observation on the nature and structure of the Carmen, it is worth considering why, given the ambivalence expressed in the poem about the value of book learning, eloquence, and the figure of the master, Abelard should have chosen to express these doubts in the traditional didactic format of a father-son advice-text composed in distichs. Was Abelard, the consummate teacher, simply unable to keep himself from the didactic mode even when arguing against it? Or is this a clever and subtle play on genre, a refiguring of the didactic mode to make the genre argue against itself? Certainly for an explicitly didactic piece, the Carmen is much less certain and strident in tone than many other of Abelard’s writings. The often exploratory style of the Carmen, with its ambiguities and frequent reconsiderations of attitude toward a host of issues such as women, teaching, and the family, contrasts markedly with the stronger sense of certainty articulated in, for example, the letters and treatises written to Heloise. Perhaps, as Catherine Brown perceptively notes, “as Abelard taught, the key to wisdom is assiduous questioning, and true teaching—medieval and modern—aims less to reproduce a doctrine than to instigate doctrina: the doubled movement of constative and performative that instructs both de arte, about an art, and ex arte, through the art, about and through the very process of teaching”.66 Reading the Carmen: The Medieval Reception of the Carmen The Recensions of the Carmen Abelard’s Carmen survives in three different recensions.67 There is a long recension that now exists in one thousand and forty-two lines, and manuscript evidence would indicate that this was the original form of the poem.68 It would appear that very soon after the Carmen began to circulate in this form, it became subject to both abridgment and rearrangement. Two short recensions of the poem now survive, with manuscript evidence showing that both date to the twelfth century.

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Surprisingly, although both short recensions contain about four hundred lines each, they are markedly different from each other, with only about two hundred of those lines in common.69 Recension II is simply an abridgment of the longer recension and follows its line order, while Recension III begins like the other two recensions for around thirty lines, but then provides a completely different arrangement of distichs. Recension II excerpts from the first line of the Carmen through to almost the very end (concluding at 1039); Recension III, while also beginning at the first line, does not, however, include any verse after 738, leaving the last three hundred lines of the original untouched. Both short recensions contain distichs that have been improperly transmitted, which further suggests their status as abridgments of a longer original. There are only three such distichs in Recension III: one hexameter line that is missing its pentameter, and one set of two distichs that have been collapsed into a single distich by the omission of the first pentameter and second hexameter line. In Recension II, however, there are nine defective distichs, which is harder to explain, given that this abridgement retains the order of the long original. In most of these cases, it is the pentameter line that is missing, which is what one would expect from the distich form, where the hexameter line traditionally carries the main didactic message of the couplet; however, in one instance the hexameter line itself is missing. The independent nature of the two recensions is evident in the fact that often lines missing in one recension are present in the other. Manuscript differences within recensions can offer insights into how abridgement came about. For instance, among the Recension II manuscripts, St-Omer, Bibliothèque Muncipale, 115, twelfth-century (= S) is notably shorter than its fellows and its omissions from the Recension II exemplar would appear to be thematic, based on teachings to do with sexuality. Thus it omits 191–192 on marital sexuality, 207–208 on premarital courtship behavior, 211–216 on Abelard’s comparison between a promiscuous woman and a prostitute, and 223–224 on the procreative potential of female and male prostitution. A feature of Recension III bears further consideration. The earliest manuscript of that recension, London, British Library, Royal 6.C. VIII, now part of London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius, C.VIII, late twelfth century (= C),70 comes from the monastery of Rievaulx, which was a Cistercian house. Given the long antagonism that obtained between Abelard and various Cistercian figures, including Bernard of Clairvaux in particular,71 one might ask why a poem of advice that Abelard wrote to his son should be found only a short time after his death in a Cistercian monastery. In addition, in the long recension of the Carmen, there is a section in which Abelard deals with Heloise’s ongoing sexual desires and her confessed inability to repent of the pleasures she experienced (379–384, discussed later). This passage appears in abridged form in Recension II of the Carmen (only the last two lines are transmitted), but it is omitted entirely from Recension III. As abbess of the Paraclete, Heloise was on good terms with leading Cistercian figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux,72 and recent research has indicated that the Paraclete Hymnary and Institutions from the time of her abbacy are more indebted to Cistercian practice than to Abelard’s own voluminous writings on the same subjects.73 In addition, two of the three Recension

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III manuscripts omit the verses from the long recension on hypocrisy in religion and the wolf in sheep’s clothing (293–310), which would appear intended to refer to the Cistercian way of life. It seems possible, then, that Recension III of the Carmen may represent a specifically Cistercian abridgment and revision of the original version of Abelard’s poem.74 This is interesting because ever since Victor Cousin raised the idea in 1838,75 there have been ongoing suggestions that Astralabe eventually became a Cistercian monk.76 Certainly some of the advice in Abelard’s Carmen on taking care in choosing a religious way of life (293–296, 786, 1013–1020) can be seen as indicating a certain anxiety on Abelard’s part that Astralabe was already considering, or being led into, a monastic profession of which he disapproved. If Astralabe did indeed become a Cistercian monk, this would go a long way toward explaining both the circulation of the Carmen within a Cistercian milieu and the omission of the Heloise section from a Cistercian-based Recension III of the Carmen. Historically, it is by no means uncommon to find that manuscripts of parent-child didactic texts traveled with those children as they grew up, and that copies of those texts are now found in the regions where they lived. For example, Pierre Riché has proposed that the Barcelona manuscript of Dhuoda’s Liber manualis, written in the Frankish territory of Uzès for her son William would ultimately have derived from William’s own copy of the book, since he traveled to Barcelona, and died there.77 Indeed, the transmission histories of other medieval parent-child didactic texts can provide instructive case studies regarding the likely trajectory of the Carmen. The late thirteenth-century Enseignements de saint Louis, written by Louis IX for his son Philippe III of France exists in three extant versions: long, short, and interpolated. Editorial research has shown that the short version is an abridgment of the longer. That the shorter versions were produced from what was, even its longest form, already a relatively short text (thirty-two paragraphs), indicates the extent to which such advice-texts were subject to emendation, and particularly reduction, in form. It is also relevant to the history of the Carmen to recognize that these three versions of Louis’s text were all in circulation within forty years of his death;78 this would be equivalent to Recensions II and III of the Carmen being available by the late twelfth century, as we know them to have been. Similarly, the transmission history of Peter Idley’s mid-fifteenth-century Instructions to His Son would suggest an original longer version of the poem that was subject over time to wholesale shortening (loss of large or entire sections), rearrangement of the remaining stanzas, and the addition of some stanzas (usually at the end of the text, to fill it out or make more sense of it).79 The text’s editor, Charlotte D’Evelyn, makes a telling argument against the likelihood that the abbreviations and rearrangements could have been authorial, claiming “Idley would hardly have carried through so extensive a rearrangement of his second book without altering the wording of a single line.”80 By the same token, she finds it very unlikely that a shorter text could have been expanded by the addition of more than a few extraneous stanzas.81 In comparative terms, it is equally unlikely with regard to the Carmen that an original text of shorter length (around four hundred lines) could have been expanded within a few decades of

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its composition into the longer version of over a thousand lines, all of which are identifiably Abelardian in expression and thought. While the long recension of the poem seems likely, then, to be its original form, it does not necessarily follow that this version of the poem was in its final and complete state. Within the thousand and more lines of this recension, there is some repetition of ideas, and similar passages appear in slightly reworked forms at different places in the text. From this, it would appear that the Carmen, like almost all of Abelard’s writings, was not a polished and finished product, but a work constantly in progress. In this it bears a certain similarity with his Collationes, which appear to have been written at around the same time (ca. 1135) and which also come to no clear conclusion. Indeed, the words of Marenbon and Orlandi on the lack of ending in the Collationes may well prove applicable to the Carmen as well, as they ask whether “Abelard decided to bring the work to a provisional conclusion, leaving it open to him to continue it at a later date if he chose,” and conclude: “Such a plan would explain both why . . . Abelard does seem to be coming to a conclusion . . . and yet why he goes on, deliberately leaving the discussion in mid-air, thereby signaling that there is more to come.”82 In this regard, it is difficult to know whether the heavy-handed lexical repetition that can at times be found between consecutive lines of different thought in the Carmen is evidence of Abelard simply dashing off verses as they occur to him (perhaps using one lexical item as a springboard for the next thought), 83 a generic feature of didactic school texts, indicative of Abelard’s program of teaching via planities (plainness) rather than polished rhetoric, a witness to the unrevised nature of this text, or a deliberate attempt by Abelard to construct a strong textual fabric, creating a conceptual flow of ideas in the poem through the repetition of lexical items. The extant manuscripts of the long recension give the strong impression that the Carmen in its original form enjoyed primarily a didactic usage. It appears as the sole text in two manuscripts of this recension (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, lat. oct. 172 = B, and Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 3061 = O), both of which are small handbooks (approximately 20 × 14 cm and 17 × 11 cm). Manuscripts of this size can often suggest a personal instructive function for the text concerned.84 Furthermore, the long recension of the Carmen appears in another small-sized manuscript (P, approx. 17 × 11 cm), which also contains a work by the prolific educator and exponent of moral living, John of Garland (Synonyma), as well as John of Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera, an introductory-level astronomical text. As will be discussed further in this chapter, this manuscript is replete with school-level interlinear glosses. These manuscripts thus indicate a tendency for Abelard’s poem of advice to be presented in a context of elementary learning and in a medium that was portable, suggesting that it functioned both as a personal guide to living that could be readily consulted, and more particularly, as a practical introduction to issues of morality and grammar for younger readers. The Carmen was also popular and circulated widely in partial or extract form. Excerpts from the Carmen appear in medieval manuscripts in various forms: as stray distichs or marginal glosses within larger works, as short extracts given their

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own thematic heads within florilegia, and as highly abbreviated compendia of the longer poem. The existence of these excerpts had been observed since the nineteenth century; for example, when Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau published his first-time edition of the long recension of the Carmen in 1891, he noted the distichs from it that also appeared in Jeremia de Montagone’s compendium of moral sayings in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 6469.85 More recently, Carsten Wollin has identified four previously unnoted excerpts, including one of significant length at 119 lines.86 Some shorter excerpts appear within theological florilegia, indicating that in the Middle Ages, Abelard’s poem was by no means viewed solely as a moral and educational poem for younger readers, but also as a serious and mature work of theology, philosophy, and ethics. For example, two distichs (55–58) appear in a collection of theological statements, the Introductio ad theologiam, in the manuscripts Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale 553 (late twelfth or early thirteenth century) and Evreux, Bibliothèque municipale 19. Here they are attributed in the margin to “M(agister) P(etrus) Abaelardus” and immediately follow a quotation from Bernard of Clairvaux.87 Three lines also appear in a Paris manuscript (Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 8207) as marginal glosses. On fol. 20 v, lines 393–394 of the Carmen appear in the right margin, attributed to “Astralabius.” Interestingly, in the left margin there appears the gloss: “Vnde in Alexande. Non eget exterius qui moribus intra habundat. Nobilitas sola est animum que moribus ornat,” 88 a quotation that also appears in the additional didactic verses appended to the end of the Carmen in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, 9210 (= M; discussed further ahead in the chapter, and see Appendix B). On folio 21r, line 391 of the Carmen appears as a gloss in the left margin. Thus it would seem that although Abelard’s authorship of it is not acknowledged, the Carmen is treated in this manuscript as an authoritative text, equivalent with the writings of figures like Solomon, Cicero, Gregory, Boethius, and Bernard. It must be admitted, however, that the majority of these excerpts do not choose to include the more distinctive and original Abelardian lines, and, as is probably the fate of all authors of didactic texts, the lines of Abelard’s Carmen that prove most popular are generally also the more conventional pieces of preceptive wisdom. It is not surprising to find, for instance, that the most popularly cited lines of the Carmen are the ones that deal with the Golden Rule, the Ciceronian ideal of friendship, the link between wisdom and morals, traditionally misogynistic pronouncements on women, the taking of advice, and giving or lending money to others. For example, the following lines appear in all three recensions and at least one excerpt as well: 19–22 (self-consistency), 59–60 (a wise son is a blessing to his parents), 73–74 (Golden Rule), 145–146 (Cicero on a friend as another “I”), 173 (do not trust someone you have wronged), 175 (a good servant as a friend), 187 (nothing is worse than a bad woman), 227 (a humble prostitute is more pleasing than a proud chaste woman), 269–270 (accept the reproof of your elders with thanks), 351 (elders should give counsel), 355–356 (take counsel before acting), 359–360 (counsel and vows), 387–388 (liars are prejudicial to the truthful), 397–398 (take care to whom you give), 417 (a light promise is not repaid), 579–580 (give what you love, to receive what you desire), and 583–584 (be generous to the generous and miserly to the miser).

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The Heloise Section of the Carmen (379–384) Est nostre super hoc Eloyse crebra querela que michi, que secum, dicere sepe solet: “Si, ne peniteat me comississe priora, saluari nequeam, spes michi nulla manet: dulcia sunt adeo comissi gaudia nostri ut memorata iuuent, que placuere nimis.” (379–384) This is the frequent complaint of our Heloise on this matter which she is often wont to say to me as to herself: “If, unless I repent of what I earlier committed, I cannot be saved, no hope remains for me: so sweet are the joys of our transgression that those things, which pleased too much, bring delight when remembered.”

These lines clearly reference Heloise’s Ep. IV, although they do more than that. In her Ep. IV Heloise demanded from Abelard: ‘How can it be called repentance for sins . . . if the mind still retains the will to sin and is on fire with its old desires? . . . The lovers’ pleasures we enjoyed together were so sweet to me that they cannot displease me and can scarcely shift from my memory.”89 Yet this section of the long recension of the poem, which excites much attention today, seems to have gone largely unremarked in the Middle Ages. As indicated above, it is missing, most likely deliberately, from Recension III of the poem. That the omission is deliberate is suggested by the fact that Recension III includes 369–374 on repentance, misses the Heloise section of 375–384, and continues from 385. The omission of the Heloise passage from Recension II, however, would appear to be rather a case of a lack of interest in or recognition of the specific situation of Heloise. In this recension, the last two lines of the section, which form part of a quotation from Heloise’s Ep. IV to Abelard, are transmitted as a single distich, as though they are part of Abelard’s own advice, while the earlier lines attributing these words to Heloise are omitted. The Heloise section is not transmitted in any extant excerpt made from the Carmen, and the Trier excerpt, which is drawn from the long recension of the poem and excerpts verses from it in order, omits that section, taking nothing from 360 until 387. In three of the manuscripts of the long recension of the poem, the Heloise passage is unmarked by any marginal or interlinear annotation, and only P offers any comment on it, with a number of interlinear glosses. Two things strike a reader about this passage. The first is the immediacy of Heloise’s speaking voice here, which breaks through the admonitory tone of the rest of the poem in a direct quotation. There is only one other direct quotation in the Carmen and that is from Seneca on the self-sufficiency of the wise man (481–484). Apart from these two incursions, the only speaking voice of the poem is that of Abelard’s didactic persona. Heloise’s equivalency here with Seneca as a cited authority is not inappropriate, however, given the influence both of them clearly exert over the thought of the Carmen. The second is why Abelard would have included this passage, potentially injurious to Heloise’s reputation, in a text of advice to his—and her—son, especially

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given his acknowledgment in the poem of the fragility of female reputation (203–206).90 In an earlier publication I speculated that the passage formed part of Abelard’s latent intent in the poem to provide Astralabe with a sense of familial identity, with the sexual sweetness (“dulcedo”) that Heloise confesses to having enjoyed so greatly in this passage being linked with Abelard’s own address to Astralabe as the “sweetness of a fatherly life” (“uite dulcedo paterne”) in the opening line of the poem. This lexical link would thus highlight for Astralabe the idea that his mother delighted in and enjoyed recalling to memory her sexual relationship with Abelard because and insofar as she delighted in bringing to memory its embodied product—Astralabe himself.91 Beyond this, however, another meaning for the passage can be found. The wording—and especially Abelard’s use of “iuvo,” which does not appear in the corresponding passage in Heloise’s Ep. IV—recalls the words spoken by Aeneas to his men in Book I of the Aeneid when they are weary and storm-tossed on their voyage to found a new empire: . . . reuocate animos maestumque timorem mittite; forsan et haec olim meminisse iuuabit. per uarios casus, per tot discrimina rerum tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas ostendunt; illic fas regna resurgere Troiae. durate, et uosmet rebus seruate secundis. (Aeneid, I. 202–207, my emphasis)92 [ . . . recall your spirits and banish sorrowful fear; perhaps it will even bring relief to remember these things at some future time. Through various misfortunes, through so many difficult choices we head for Latium, where the Fates offer us peaceful dwelling; there it will be right to raise again the realms of Troy. Endure, and preserve yourselves for good fortune.] (my translation)

Virgil relates at the commencement of this passage that Aeneas spoke in order to soothe his men’s sorrowing hearts (“dictis maerentia pectora mulcet,” I. 197). Accordingly, reading the Heloise section of the Carmen in the context of Aeneas’s sympathy suggests that Abelard’s words can be seen not as condemnatory (or simply inconsiderate) of Heloise, but rather as consolatory toward her, in the same way as his Historia was ostensibly written with a consolatory function. In such a reading, the sentiments of the passage in the Aeneid become applicable to their contemporary situation: that is, Abelard is saying to Heloise, currently you are going through a difficult time, but through misfortunes and through difficult choices (such as giving up Astralabe and devoting yourself to the monastic life) you will come to Latium (Heaven) where there will be peaceful dwelling and the re-establishment of the former life in a new and better context. If this is Abelard’s intention, there is, however, a sting in its tail. Virgil continues: Talia uoce refert, curisque ingentibus aeger spem uultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem. (Aeneid, I. 208–209)

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[He relayed these things aloud, and ill with prodigious cares he simulated hope upon his face, he buried sorrow deep in his heart.] (my trans)

In other words, Abelard is subtly confessing that for the moment, the optimism he urges upon Heloise eludes him. Abelard’s words regarding Heloise and her memory of sexual pleasure also haunt the poem in another way. In a diatribe against lust, Abelard identifies lust not as bestial, but as human in a way that is beyond bestial, and asks: “If after conception, the lust of beasts, now sated, does not wish to bear the male, why should woman, why should she do so?” (“Si post conceptum pecudum saciata libido | ferre marem nolit, quid mulier, quid agat?”; 707–708). Although Abelard asks this in rhetorical fashion, there was in fact an answer to his question circulating in twelfth-century philosophy, and that same answer can be found in the Heloise passage of the Carmen that draws from her Ep. IV. In his Dragmaticon philosophiae, William of Conches has his student interlocutor, the Duke, ask the Philosopher: “Once conception is achieved, all other animals cease from sexual intercourse, but women then go at it with even greater pleasure. I wonder at the reason for this situation.”93 The Philosopher replies: “In this humans differ from the rest of animals, that animals have an understanding only of the present, while along with that, humans have a memory of the past and anticipation of the future. From this it comes about that a woman reminiscing upon her past delight will desire the same again.”94 In other words, the answer to Abelard’s question about sexual desire in the Carmen lies in Heloise’s recollection of her past delights in her Ep. IV and in fact, forms the fundamental argument of the passage that Abelard cites from her Ep. IV in the Carmen. The answer lies in the ethics of memoria that Heloise proposes.95 Interlinear Glosses in the Paris Manuscript One of the most interesting witnesses to the use of the Carmen in the Middle Ages is the presence of interlinear glosses in one of the early manuscripts of the long recension, P. Gernot Wieland has noted that although Latin glosses over Latin lemmata are far more numerous in medieval manuscripts than glosses over the vernacular, they receive much less scholarly attention,96 and certainly the glosses over the Carmen in P have never received more than a passing mention, even by those producing an edition of P.97 Wieland argues that “more than all the medieval grammars, dictionaries, and even commentaries, interlinear glosses lead us into the medieval class-room.”98 For this reason, I have included these interlinear glosses in the edition of the Carmen based on P in this book. The approach to glossing the Carmen in P appears to be quite different, however, from the glossing applied to the other texts in the same manuscript. As mentioned above, P consists of elementary school texts, and the glossing on these earlier texts, John of Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera and John of Garland’s Synonyma, is full and extensive (to the point of exhaustive in the case of the Synonyma). Marginal glosses on the Tractatus begin from the earliest folios and soon become long texts that fill the side and bottom margins. The glossing on

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the Synonyma, however, is even more comprehensive. From the opening folio, long marginal glosses fill the side of the folio and spill into the bottom margin, with additional shorter marginal glosses squeezed between the text and the long marginal gloss. Every word of the text is glossed with interlinear “hic, haec, hoc” glosses designed to mark the gender of nouns,99 and there are extensive lexical and syntactical interlinear glosses as well. By contrast, the approach to glossing the Carmen in this manuscript gives the impression of being much more ad hoc. The first gloss does not appear until line 310—that is, almost a third of the way into the text—and the glosses remain fairly sparse at first, gradually building in frequency and complexity as the text progresses, particularly from around 600 onward. They begin to taper off again from around the mid-900s, and the last gloss on the text is at 991, fifty lines before the end of the poem. In total, around 175 lines (or 17 percent of the text) receive an interlinear gloss: in some cases this may be of a single word, but in other cases, multiple words in the line are glossed. In his study of glosses on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, Wieland categorized glosses according to their function,100 and considered them “in the order in which they lead the student to an understanding of the text before him”—that is, lexical glosses, grammatical glosses, syntactical glosses, and then the higherorder commentary and interpretative glosses.101 Glosses of all these categories are present in this text of the Carmen, but are overwhelmingly concentrated in the simpler categories of lexical and grammatical glosses. Lexical Glosses Around forty of the glosses simply provide a synonym for a word in the text. Here the intention seems to be to explain difficult or less common terms by more familiar ones. In many instances, this is simply a case of the glossator supplying a better known synonym. Thus, for example, “formidat” is glossed by “timet” (423), “bruma” is glossed by “hiems” (427; “bruma” is overwhelmingly a poetic usage, while “hiems” is more common in patristic prose), “priuignum” is glossed by “filiastrum” (447; “privignus” is both classical and patristic, but interestingly, “filiaster” is the term for a step-son used by Gratian’s Decretum), “pari” is glossed by “scilicet uiro” (578), “uulgari” is glossed by “id est populli” (610), and “preceptore” is glossed by “id est magistro” (957)—this last giving a strong indication of a school context for the glossing, and indeed, of the glossator as a schoolmaster. Grammatical Glosses Grammatical glosses are the most common type found in the text, with over seventy instances of nouns as the gloss for pronouns. A good example is 409–410, where the nouns in the hexameter line (“Diuicias inopi uita conquirit auarus”) are referenced simply by pronouns in the pentameter line (“Quas male congregat his, utitur alter eis”). Here the glossator provides the antecedent (in the correct case) for each pronoun, glossing “Quas” with “diuicias,” “his” (= “is”) with “auarus,” and “eis” with “diuiciis.”

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In some cases, the grammatical glosses unpack a more compact grammatical form, so that for “in factis audax sis aliquando decet” (698), the gloss indicates that here “sis” really has the force of “ut sis.” For the verse “ciuili bello nos graue persequitur” (704), the gloss advises that “graue” should be understood as adverbial, “id est grauiter.” Glosses also explain the use of the dative in conjunction with the gerundive, so that, for example, in “factaque sint uerbis anteferenda tibi” (822), “tibi” is glossed “id est a te,” and in “hec pro se tantum sit ueneranda suis” (966), “suis” is glossed “id est a suis.” A number of distichs, particularly later in the poem, are constructed on a chiastic principle, and in these cases, the glossator takes pains to explain the crossover of nouns from the hexameter to the pentameter lines. For example, “Quis sapiens, quis sit stultus corectio monstrat” (979) is followed by a dense string of pronouns in the pentameter line in chiastic formation, “audit hic hanc nolens, suscipit ille uolens” (980), which the glossator has to unpack. Thus he glosses “hic” with “scilicet stultus,” “hanc” with “correctionem,” and “ille” with “id est sapiens.” The glossator is by no means infallible, however, and sometimes, perhaps for ideological reasons, he misreads the structure of the distich, and attempts to render it chiastic when it isn’t. Particularly telling in this regard are the two distichs 907–910 on the comparative roles of teachers and students. The glossator is determined to read these lines in praise of the teacher over the student, when in fact, it would appear that Abelard is suggesting the opposite. So wedded is the glossator to his reading that he wrenches the grammar to support his meaning, glossing “ut” (so that) with “pro quamuis” (meaning although) in order to maintain it. The entrenched point of view of the glossator here regarding the importance of schoolmasters again suggests his own possible role as such. Syntactical/Suppletive Glosses The syntax of the Carmen is at many points sparse and allusive, and on a number of occasions the glossator expands contracted syntactic structures to make them more comprehensible to a student reader of the text. Thus, for example, for “Vt quod uis nequeas, quod possis uelle docebit” (497), the glossator attempts to loosen the tightly bound structure of the sentence by glossing “nequeas” with “suple habere.” Similarly, for “paruus in ore Dei fueris si magnus in illo” (611), the glossator explains “si magnus” with “suple uis esse.” In one case, the glossator has to perform a combined grammatical and syntactic expansion upon the text: “ut quo longior est uita sit et melior” (726). Accordingly, he glosses “quo” with “id est quanto,” and then completes the “quanto . . . tanto . . . ” structure by glossing the second half of the line with “suple tanto.” There are in total eight suppletive glosses in the text. Commentary and Interpretive Glosses Although they are the least numerous category of glosses on the text, the commentary and interpretive glosses give a powerful insight into the way the Carmen was used as a didactic text. They tend to be clustered toward the end of the

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text, as though the glossator began simply by explicating lexical and grammatical choices, and only in the process found himself undertaking to explain the thought motivating the lines as well. In a number of cases, interpretive glosses help explain a more metaphorical use of a term, so that “ferent” (348), which has here the less common meaning of “consider,” is glossed “gentes dicent” (people say). Similarly, Abelard’s more poetic description of a rushing torrent as “sicabitur” (657; becoming parched, growing thirsty) is glossed by the more prosaic “id est cessabit liqui” (that is, it will cease to flow). In some cases, the glosses explain the line. Thus the distich which argues that whoever does not undergo an apprenticeship of obedience can never be placed in a position of power (649–650), is glossed “id est nisi aliquis fuerit in obediencia non potest esse promotus ad dignitatem” (that is, unless a person is obedient, he cannot be promoted to high office). The advice that those who write must beware the great judge (975) is glossed “q. dicit non incipiant nisi sint certi in hoc quod dicunt” (that is to say, they should not begin unless they are certain of what they say). In one interesting case, the thought of the line is repeated in the gloss, but phrased in the opposite way. So a verse which argues that once overcome by the Devil, a person will subsequently struggle to stand against him (768), is glossed from the reverse point of view: “id est si uincas semel diabolum postea timorose accedet ad te” (that is, if you once overcome the Devil, he will afterwards approach you more cautiously). In some cases, the glosses give more information about the line, or attempt to render its thought more precisely. Thus the line which advises that only God is to be worshipped (965), is glossed in quite legalistic fashion “et nullus alius nec sanctus non sancta” (and no other, neither male saint nor female saint). This attempt to address all contingencies is also found in the gloss to 963 where the text’s advocacy of the written word as the only faithful messenger is glossed “sed alius nuncius referet magis uel minus uel aliter uel nicha [= nichil]” (but another messenger will relay more or less or something different or nothing at all). Two of the glosses (921 and 932) give a strong sense of the locale in which the glossator may have been situated, as they provide an explanation of Abelard’s words in terms that associate them with the Poitevin region. While most of these glosses deal with the material of the text in third-person didactic style, citing “si aliquis” or “quidam” as examples, in two instances, the glossator phrases his comment in the first-person. Thus, referencing the demand to pay Nature its dues (749), the glossator notes “q. dicat non dico contra naturam” (that is to say, I do not speak against Nature), in a sense putting himself in the place of Abelard as the speaking voice of the text, or perhaps, giving a sense of himself as a schoolmaster expounding this idea to a class. Similarly, in glossing Paul’s argument that one cannot please both God and man (469), the glossator personalizes his commentary: “Si hominibus placerem deo utique non placerem” (If I would please men, assuredly I would not please God). This indicates the powerful exhortatory function of the text, both its ability to speak to its readers, and the intention of its glossator that it should do so.

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To add to the sense of the glossator as a schoolmaster is the gloss to 946, where Abelard distinguishes the physical act of writing from the practice of composition and the glossator picks up this distinction by describing composition using the technical term “dictamen.” Finally, there is a single rhetorical gloss that indicates a more advanced level of textual understanding than is suggested by the vast majority of the simple glosses in the text. Line 750 is glossed by the term “antipophora” ( = anthypophora), which references a rhetorical figure in which an objection is refuted by a contrary inference or allegation. In this case it seems to be responding to Abelard’s construction of 749–750, where he appears to give primacy to Nature in the hexameter line, only to undercut this in the pentameter line by arguing that this is to be achieved by constituting God as the end in all things. Textual Glosses In a later study, Wieland also speaks of textual glosses that function “to present the alternate reading in the interlinear space, or to present the gloss to the alternate reading.”102 There are two instances of such glossing in the Carmen. With regard to the first function, P mistakenly supplies the lemma “tus” in place of the correct form “mus” (839). The glossator appears to be aware of this, and for each of the lines 840–842, supplies “mus” as an interlinear reading when referring back to the original lemma, including as the antecedent to “hic” (840), and the subject of the verbs “reputat” (841) and “iudicat” (842). In terms of the second function of textual glosses, in the verse “Post epulas facilem poteris reperire datorem” (991), “facilem” is glossed “uel ilarem.” This indicates that the glossator is aware of the biblical source for the line (2 Corinthians 9. 7: “hilarem enim datorem diligit Deus”), and supplies the correct term from the Bible. No doubt its moralistic content and traditional didactic form made the Carmen appear a suitable text for Latin grammatical instruction. The preponderance of simple synonymic, grammatical, and suppletive glosses, and the fairly simplistic form of those commentary glosses that are present, strongly suggests the glossator to have been a schoolmaster, preparing the text for the use of younger readers still dealing with basic grammatical principles such as the gerundive and chiasmus.103 Suzanne Reynolds has argued that “the medieval grammatical commentator is forced constantly to negotiate between the authority of the text (difficult and recondite though it may be) and the requirement to teach correct usage, and to acknowledge how elocutio is constructed while ensuring that grammatical rectitude is communicated to students.”104 This appears to describe the endeavors of the glossator of P. These glosses also indicate that Abelard’s writings were not solely the province of scholastics, churchmen, and other adult readers in the Middle Ages, but that for some time after Abelard’s death, schoolboys as well were exposed to his highly individual ethical and philosophical ideas—an idea that would no doubt have horrified certain of his contemporaries. This may particularly be the case with the gloss to 784: here Abelard had been arguing that a person cannot be led to belief by force but only by reason, and the glossator summarizes this quintessentially Abelardian thought: “ille ad fidem per cognitionem.”

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Marginal Annotations in the Berlin, Paris, and Madrid Manuscripts The Berlin manuscript of the Carmen (B) is, like P, a small handbook-sized manuscript, containing only the long recension of the Carmen and two folios (recto and verso each) of additional didactic verses (see the section titled “Additional Didactic Verses in the Berlin, Madrid, and Vatican Manuscripts” next for a discussion and Appendix A for a transcription of these additional verses).105 Significantly, the first few folios (2–5) of B are a palimpsest; while the original text is no longer legible, faint remains can be seen of green capitals outlined in red. This care in the presentation of the capitals would indicate that the original text had been, in its own time, of some significance, and its erasure to make way for Abelard’s Carmen suggests that the Carmen was seen as important and worth the effort of erasing and re-preparing the parchment. Unlike P, as discussed earlier, it does not appear that B was used as school text for learning Latin as it contains no lexical or grammatical glosses, but the large number of verses marked for attention in the margins give the impression that it was used for didactic purposes, whether by a personal reader or by a schoolmaster instructing young students. The marginal marks in B appear to have been made by at least two different readers,106 and consist largely of individual lines marked out by a short double line in the left margin (over one hundred lines marked in this way) and complete distichs bracketed in the right margin (nearly one hundred and forty distichs marked in this way, or over one quarter of the total text). In addition, eight lines are underlined: 327–330, 513–514, and 537–538. Of these, 327–330 and 513–514 both deal with envy, and “inuidia” is written in the right margin next to 327–330 (fol. 6r), indicating a strong interest on the part of at least one reader in a theme that was also dear to Abelard’s heart. There are also occasional marks, such as hash marks, in the left and right margins to indicate lines considered particularly worthy of attention. These marginal annotations also provide an insight into the creation of the shorter recensions of the poem from the longer, as they appear to mirror the process of abstraction: they are much more numerous in the first half of the poem and taper off in the final folios, just as the shorter recensions excerpt more heavily from the earlier distichs and only rarely from the later ones. These annotations in B also offer a useful guide to the relative popularity of the ideas in the Carmen, as only occasionally is a line or a distich in B highlighted that is not included in at least one of the shorter recensions; by the same token, in almost every instance, the lines that prove most popular in other recensions and excerpts receive attention marks in B as well. This indicates a confluence in reading habits, or a shared didactic or pedagogic context (i.e., a textual community), between the users of the manuscript, whether they were personal readers looking for advice or scribes looking to excerpt or abbreviate. In B the most heavily marked sections of the text include the opening lines of the poem on learning and self-consistency, the latter part of the section on friendship, the antifeminist statements (especially those about wives), criticisms about importunate speech (which leads to the word “Lingua” being written in

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the left margin at 238; fol. 4v), advice about generosity and criticism of miserliness, and the lines on giving counsel and taking advice. The fact that almost without fail the first line at the top of each new folio receives a mark for attention might perhaps indicate a certain opportunistic nature to the marginal notations, with the top lines possibly catching the eye of the browsing reader more readily than those lower in the folio. One also wonders if the early modern annotator of B’s right margin was himself a father of girls, since throughout the poem the distichs dealing with the marriage of daughters (631–632, 677–680) have been marked for attention, and 199, “Filia si tibi sit, costodi peruigil illam” (If you should have a daughter, guard her, ever-watchful), has not only been marked out, but rewritten in the right margin (“si tibi sit Filia custodi peruigil illam”; fol. 4r). Although, as discussed above, P is replete with glosses that indicate its use as a Latin primer or school text, it is however short of the marginal notations indicating reader-reception of the didactic content of the poem that is so prevalent in B. There are only fourteen marginal marks for attention in P (almost all of these are pointing hands, or manicules, drawn in subtly varied ways), but again, the placement of these reaffirms the conclusion above regarding the didactic core of the Carmen, since most highlight verses that prove popular both to the annotators of B and the creators of the shorter recensions. The most significant of these include “He who does not give what he loves does not himself receive what he desires” (579), which appears in Recensions II and III, the Trier florilegium, the Vienna excerpt discussed by Wollin, and is marked in B, and “If you are unable to live chastely, do not scorn to live discreetly” (587) which appears in Recension II, the Trier florilegium, and is marked in B. Interestingly, the annotators of both B and P have marked out 485 as significant, even though they offer different readings for it: P reads “Quem uir amat famulum miror si diligit uxor” (I wonder if a wife has any affection for the servant whom her husband loves) while B reads “Quem uir amat filium miror si diligit uxor” (I wonder if a wife has any affection for the son whom her husband loves). That this line could be seen as worthy of attention regardless of its actual conceptual content indicates perhaps that its value to the medieval reader lay more in its general antifeminist image of the jealous wife than its application to a specific household situation. Only one line marked for attention in P—“quod pudor est dici non paciatur agi” (do not suffer to be done what is shameful to be spoken; 546)—fails to receive additional scribal attention elsewhere. The marginal annotations in manuscripts B and P thus help build a picture of the typical medieval and postmedieval reader of the Carmen, and of the sorts of sententiae for which this reader approached a medieval didactic text. The reader who annotated the edition of the Carmen in the Madrid manuscript (M), however, may have been using the text in a slightly different context, and his annotations give a strong sense of a clerical reader. Interestingly, a similar ecclesiastic reading audience is suggested for Dhuoda’s text of advice for her son, the Liber manualis, by the marginal markings in Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, MS 569, where particular attention is given to passages exhorting reverence toward priests.107 One of the first marginal marks in the Madrid

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manuscript of the Carmen appears at lines on the primacy of reading the Scriptures (39–40), and this is followed just a few verses later with a pointing hand that directs the reader to lines on fear, love, and reverence for God (41–42). In contrast with many manuscripts of the Carmen, where annotation and abstraction take place earlier in the text then taper off, the marginal annotations in M increase markedly in number after 680. From this point, the annotator begins to write glosses of one or two words in the margin to note the main theme of the verse (such as “virtus mulieris,” “pravus sermo,” “vicinus,” “socius,” “vita longa,” “eleemosyna,” “penitentia”), as though to use these as index markers for later reference, such as, perhaps, the preparation of sermons. At the same time, a number of distichs are marked out in the margin as a “reading,” as in “Leccio xxiia.” Again, this emphasizes the sense of the text being used as a source of preaching material. On two occasions, a greater effort has been expended in creating the annotation. At lines on giving a friend what they need before they ask (138–139), a pointing hand marks out the distich and the text squared off in a box beneath it notes “De amicicia”; similarly at lines arguing that nature puts an end to lust (827–828), a quite elaborate pointing hand marks the distich while the text box glosses “luxurie finem.” M thus gives a slightly different sense of the medieval reader reception of the Carmen: in this instance, perhaps, not a school context, but a clerical one. Additional Didactic Verses in the Berlin, Madrid, and Vatican Manuscripts The originality of Abelard’s poem as a didactic text and its distinction from more traditional works of spiritual guidance or social conduct are evident from the sorts of additional didactic elements that accrete to the Carmen in the Berlin, Madrid, and Vatican manuscripts (B, M, and V: Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rossi 933, fol. 39r; a fifteenth-century Recension II manuscript).108 While in a number of cases these bear some resemblance to the sorts of precepts offered by Abelard in the Carmen, on the whole, the advice they present is notably different. The additional verses in B are reproduced in Appendix A; those in M and V are in Appendix B. The sententiae in B continue directly beneath the explicit of the Carmen (“Explicit liber deo gratias amen,” fol. 17r, line 15) and run without interruption from the lower half of fol. 17r to the top of fol. 18v. For the most part these verses are simply listed one after the other, but the annotator of B’s right margin has marked out some of them into sets of two, three, or four lines. The sententiae open with Mariological and Christological verses that are quite distinct from anything in the Carmen. There is a four-line hymn to the Virgin beginning “Mater uirgo parit natum qui cuncta creauit” (fol. 17r, line 17; A virgin mother bore a son who created all things), followed by a number of distichs relating to the Crucifixion, such as: Fili? Quid mater? Deus es? Sum. Cur ita pendes? Ne genus humanum tendat ad interitum.109 (fol. 17r, lines 21–22)

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[Son? What, mother? Are you God? I am. Then why do you hang there? So that the human race will not fall into eternal damnation.] Quid me miraris? Morior ne tu moriaris.110 (fol. 17r, line 23) [Why do you marvel at me? I die so that you will not die.] Sum Deus immensus, mundi pro crimine pensus. (fol. 17r, line 24) [I am almighty God, hung for the sins of the world.]

These are followed by five lines relating the story of the two thieves who were crucified with Christ that begin: “In cruce sunt fixi latrones nomine dicti: | a dextris Christi Dimas, Gestasque sinistris” (fol. 17v, lines 3–4; Upon the cross the thieves are fixed, called by name, on the right of Christ, Dismas, and on the left, Gestas). Next appears a prayer to a guardian angel: “Angele, qui meus es custos, pietate superna: | me tibi comissum, serua, defende, guberna” (fol. 17v, lines 8–9; Angel, you who are my guardian, of the highest devotion, serve, defend, guide me, who am entrusted to you). These are the first two lines of a much longer poem, attributed to Reginald of Canterbury in his Carmina de S. Malcho 7, which was very widely known and disseminated through the Middle Ages. Thereafter follow three sets of verses that deal with questions of Christ’s body and sacraments, including the statement, very current in high medieval theological discussions, that “Vim sacramenti non mutat uita ministri: | sicut deterius non fit per deteriorem, | sic melius non fit per presbyterum meliorem” (fol. 17v, lines 18–20; the life of the minister does not change the efficacy of the sacrament: just as it is not made worse through a worse priest, so it is not carried out better through a better priest). There is something of a link between the idea of these lines and lines in the Carmen that declare “You should not disparage the skill of a man on account of his vices: often he who is a bad man is a good artisan” (425–426), though the distinction between Abelard’s words and the overtly theological import of the verses in B is clear. The remainder of folio 17v is filled with didactic morals drawn from animal behavior (e.g., “Non uult piscari, sed pisces mandere gatta: | absque labore uolunt celos transcendere multi,” fol. 17v, lines 21–22; A cat does not want to fish but wishes to eat fish; many wish to ascend to Heaven without toil) in a way that is quite alien to Abelard’s insistent anthropocentric focus in the Carmen. From folio 18r the advice becomes more traditionally didactic. Some lines approximate the sentiments found in the Carmen. For example, fol. 18r, line 7: “Est dignus mercede sua quicumque laborat” (Whoever toils is worthy of his own reward), which is taken from Luke 10. 7, bears comparison with the Carmen: “est dignus meritum sumere quisque suum” (920). Others, however, are notably antithetical to Abelard’s precepts. Thus fol. 18r, line 6, “Infima ne spernas cum possis capere magna” (Do not spurn the meanest things since they can enable you to grasp big ones), contrasts with the scorn Abelard pours upon those who seek to parley small gifts into greater ones (859–866). For the remainder of folio 18r, the advice then becomes typical of twelfth-century and

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later conduct advice regarding table manners in the style of texts such as Stans puer ad mensam and Facetus. This includes, for example, the precept: Hospitis in mensa uultum non fercula pensa, nec mense cultum sed dantis respice uultum. (fol. 18r, lines 14–15) [At the table, pay attention to the face of your fellow guest (or: host), not to your food; and do not fix your gaze upon the table setting but the face of your host (or: server).]

This sort of social courtesy advice is far removed from the ethical, moral advice that Abelard offers in the Carmen. Of the additional conduct verses in B, only a single distich bears relation to the spirit of the Carmen: “Fac quod Christus amat dum pauper ad hostia clamat, | pauperis in spetie nam latet ipse Deus” (fol. 18r, lines 23–24; See that Christ loves [i.e., that you show the love of Christ] when the poor man cries out at your door, for God himself hides in the form of the poor). This conforms to the doctrine of charity generally expounded by Abelard in his poem, and in particular at lines on welcoming Christ to one’s table (763–764).111 The extraneous verses in B conclude on folio 18v with five lines on the sacrament of baptism. These additional sentential verses in B thus reveal how very different Abelard’s advice in the Carmen is from the other kinds of didactic texts, whether devotional or those of conduct and courtesy, that commonly circulated in the Middle Ages from the twelfth century. An interesting question can be asked as to whether the additional verses in B carry any hints as to the authorship of the Carmen, which is otherwise unattributed in the manuscript. For example, the last distich on fol. 18r advises: “Solus ob aruinam canis optat adire coquinam: | nam canis ad liram poterit reperire saginam” (the dog alone desires to go to the kitchen for fat; for a dog is able to find fatted food at the furrow). As Constant J. Mews notes, an anecdote that circulated about Abelard in the Middle Ages was that he had obtained his unusual cognomen from the fact that he has been likened to a dog that licked the fat (“baiare lardum”).112 The final distich of the additional didactic verses transmitted by the original scribe in the manuscript reads: “Non est legalis generatio presbiteralis; | non est legalis, nec in usu copula talis” (priestly begetting is not lawful; it is not lawful, nor is such coition customary; fol. 18v, lines 6–7).113 Appearing at the end of a manuscript that has just transmitted Abelard’s poem of advice to his son, could this verse be read as an oblique reference to both the author and intended recipient of the poem? Unlike in B, the seven extra verses in M precede the explicit (“Carmine finito sit laus et gloria Christo,” fol. 123ra) almost as if they are part of the poem, although there are two blank lines between the end of the Carmen proper and the additional verses, possibly to indicate some uncertainty about their placement there. There is a certain cohesion between the thought of these verses and that of the Carmen in general. An extra verse in M, “Pauperis in causa nec auris sit tibi clausa” (do not let your ear be closed in the case of a poor person), compares with the advice Abelard gives in the Carmen to those in the law not to believe the stronger party but the better (253). The idea that outward things do not commend us to God

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is a firm tenet of the Carmen (301–304) and also appears in the extra verses in the form: “Non eget exterius qui moribus intus habundat” (He does not need exterior things, who abounds in moral strength within). As discussed earlier, this verse (from Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis) is also associated with the Carmen in a Paris manuscript of glossed school texts (BnF, lat. 8207). Part of Abelard’s discussion of holding to the mean in the Carmen advises not giving way to rash anger (“You should never presume to strike anyone in anger,” 987), and a similar argument appears in the additional didactic verses in M: “Vindictam diferunt donec pertranseat ira“ (they should defer revenge until the anger has passed). Yet although Abelard constantly advises maintaining the mean in feelings, particularly with regard to familial and companionate relationships, he never explicitly attacks the emotional composition of human nature as inimical to its intellectual counterpart in the way that a couplet in the extra verses in M does: “Quatuor ista: timor, odium, dilectio, census, | seppe solent hominum rectos peruertere sensus” (These four things: fear, hatred, love, and affection, are often accustomed to turn aside the correct understanding of men). Nine extra verses accrete to the end of the shorter (Recension II) version of the Carmen in the fifteenth-century manuscript V. Two of these are traditional: “Sunt tria domus: ymber, mala femina, fumus; | hec faciunt dominum domus illius peregrinum” (There are three [evils] of a house: rain, a bad woman, and smoke; these things force the master of his own house to become a wanderer), of a piece with verses also appearing in the Facetus.114 What is interesting is that although Abelard does address similar matters (i.e., the different ways in which a woman can be an impediment to her house; 227–238), beginning with his idiosyncratic views on the humble prostitute, he does so not in the trite manner of traditional didactic literature, but in terms of a careful hierarchizing of behavior and a comparative ethical study of vices from lust to pride to sins of the tongue. Again we get the sense of Abelard thinking well outside the compass of standard advice literature. Toward the end of the Carmen, Abelard sums up his advice on the intersection between false-seeming and counsel in lines on simulation and dissimulation (967–970). Three of these lines (967–969) are excerpted in Recension II, and their presence there appears to have attracted four additional lines to the end of the poem in V: Si vis ditari, sublimari, venerari, sis assentator, simulator, dissimilator. Nescit regnare qui nescit dissimilare, nec bene regnabit qui multum dissimilabit. [If you wish to become rich, to be raised on high, to be revered, be a yes-man, a feigner, a concealer. He does not know how to rule who does not know how to dissimulate, nor will he rule well who dissimulates too much.]

This advice, which moves away from Abelard’s métier and into the sort of territory occupied by Machiavelli’s The Prince, could indicate that by the later Middle

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Ages, the Carmen was being read as though it were a speculum principis (mirror of princes)—that is, a text of pragmatic political advice, rather than of ethical behavior. Excerpts of the Carmen As mentioned above, excerpts from the Carmen formed a significant means of transmission for Abelard’s didactic precepts. I discuss here three medieval excerpts from the Carmen, each quite different in form and extent, to consider what they tell us about how the Carmen was being read and used in the Middle Ages, and the contexts in which it was circulating. Trier Florilegium (Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 1898) There exist not one but two distinct excerpts from the Carmen within a lengthy fifteenth-century florilegium in Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 1898.115 This florilegium (Flores auctorum) covers forty folios (fols 65–104), and takes excerpts from (or, more accurately, makes attribution of excerpts to) nearly eighty texts ranging from books of the Bible to Roman classics, late antique writers (Boethius), and contemporary medieval writers; the florilegium does, however, appear light on patristic sources. Some texts are designated by the name of the text (“Facetus”), some by the name of the author (“Lucanus,” “Virgilius”), some by a combination of both (“Alanus de planctu nature,” “Petrus de Riga in aurora sua”), and some simply by a description (“Ex libro qui dicitur doligamus id est de fraude mulierum”). The generic context of the excerpts appears to be largely didactic rather than scholastic or spiritual, and this observation is supported by the fact that the Flores auctorum are followed on fols 105–108 by an abbreviated version of Albertano da Brescia’s Liber de doctrina dicendi atque tacendi (a text of advice written for his son Stephen in 1245). Neither of the two excerpts from Abelard’s Carmen in this florilegium is acknowledged as such. The first excerpt, comprising fifty-one lines (fols 68v69 r; Brunhölzl, 1966, lines 249–299), appears under the rubric “Ovidius de consiliis,” and follows a number of other excerpts designated as part of an Ovidian corpus: “Ovidius sine tytulo,” “Ovidius epistolarum,” “Ovidius de remedio,” “Ovidius de arte amandi,” “Ovidius de Ponto,” “de Ovidio tristium,” and “de Ovidio magno.” The second Carmen excerpt comprises twenty-seven lines, and appears twenty folios and over twelve hundred lines later on fols 88r -88v (Brunhölzl, 1517–1543). It duplicates four lines from the first excerpt. Appearing under the rubric “Jozimas [sic: for Zozimas] auctor fuit quidam monachus,” the first ten lines of this section before the Carmen begins are drawn from Hildebert of Lavardin’s verse Life of Mary of Egypt (Zozimas being the name of the hermit in the Life to whom Mary relates the story of her sinful conduct and repentance).116 The Trier excerpts are clearly taken from the long recension of the Carmen and proceed in order. They contain readings that are common to manuscripts P, M, and O, including three readings found only in M,117 one reading found only

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in O,118 and three unique readings.119 There is also, however, one reading found only in Recension II120 and one found only in Recension III.121 The “Ovidius de consiliis” section excerpts from 69 to 1042, which is the very last line in the long recension. This is interesting, given both the general lack of interest by excerptors in the latter lines of the poem, and the strong modern scholarly opinion that the Carmen was most probably intended to finish some lines earlier than this with Abelard’s exposition of the Trinity (999–1006). Meanwhile the “Jozimas” section excerpts from 163 to 898. The Ovidius section contains only one distich manqué (a sole pentameter line), whereas the Jozimas section is much less careful in preserving the distich form, and on ten occasions (out of a total of only twenty-seven lines) extracts the hexameter line of the distich alone. This gives some insight into the way the shorter recensions of the poem were created and particularly communicates the sense that for medieval readers, the didactic import of a distich was overwhelmingly carried in its hexameter line, while the pentameter line was possibly seen as merely clarifying or expanding the initial statement. In the case of the sole pentameter line in the Ovidius section, the splitting of the distich makes sense in that there appears to be no real connection between the didactic content of the hexameter and pentameter lines and the pentameter line in fact functions much as a hexameter line would in terms of stating a precept.122 The lines from the Carmen that the scribe finds worthy of inclusion in both the Ovidius and Jozimas sections are “The work commends the craftsman, not his own tongue” (341) and “You should observe what you give, to whom, where, when, how, and why” (397)—both single hexameter lines—and the complete distich “His knowledge is only for himself, not for others, who does not know how to teach what he knows; such a person will have to be considered as though he knew nothing” (801–802). Not surprisingly, these lines generally prove popular in the reception history of the Carmen, extracted in the shorter recensions and marked out in the marginal annotations in B. Although Abelard’s advice has been presented in this florilegium under two very distinct heads—Ovidian and patristic—there is no real dissimilarity between the lines transmitted as belonging to Ovidius and to Jozimas, as the reiteration of four lines in each section would suggest. Indeed, the so-called Ovidius section includes the Golden Rule (Brunhölzl, 251–252) and a number of lines that refer to “Dominus,” which is hardly representative of classical morality, although it does also include some Ciceronian lines on friendship (Brunhölzl, 259–262). By the same token, the Jozimas section does not particularly contain distichs of spiritual guidance, and in fact includes the line “If you are not able to live chastely, do not scorn to live discreetly’ (587; Brunhölzl, 1535), which seems unlikely to have been associated with the holy hermit Zozimas. However, the line “A humble prostitute is more pleasing than a proud chaste woman” (227; Brunhölzl, 1522) perhaps bears some resonance, given Zozimas’s role in the repentance of the prostitute, Mary of Egypt. More significantly, the placement of excerpts from Abelard’s Carmen under two distinct heads highlights how his thought in the Carmen can be seen as indebted to both classical and patristic sources.

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Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 1761 (415), p. 428 There is a single page containing twenty-four verses drawn from Abelard’s Carmen in the late fifteenth-century (1483–1485) manuscript Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 1761 (415), p. 428 (verso); these are reproduced in Appendix C. The folio is headed by the rubric “Astralabus.” The recto of the leaf presents a mass of around thirty didactic verses excerpted from the Sentences of Sextus. The verses of the Carmen on this leaf are clearly taken from the original long recension as it contains a number of lines found only in Recension I (see Melk, 1, 2, 5, 12, 13, 22 in Appendix C). The extract as a whole contains a number of lines common to all three recensions, and a number common to Recensions I and II (Melk, 8, 9, 18–21), but only one distich common to Recensions I and III alone (Melk, 23–24). It also includes three variants not found in any other manuscript (Melk, 10: “variatur”; 14: “vaga”; 15: “pedem”), and one variant found in only one other manuscript (Melk, 22: “paruo”; found in M, Recension I). In common with other short excerpts from the Carmen, the Melk extract contains two incomplete distichs, with only the hexameter line having been transmitted in each case (Melk, 5 and 22). If a Recension I manuscript was used as the basis for abstraction, the order of the selected distichs in the Melk excerpt appears rather random. For example, two distichs that are consecutive in Recension I (Carmen, 19–20 and 21–22; Melk 10–11 and 14–15) are separated from each other in Melk by a much later distich (Carmen, 345–346; Melk 12–13). The arrangement of the Carmen excerpt here is thus quite different from that of the Sentences of Sextus extract on the recto of the leaf, where the verses have been excerpted largely in their traditional order. In terms of reader reception of the Carmen, it is interesting that only four of the twenty-four lines transmitted here are in common with the long extracts from the Carmen in the Trier florilegium (Melk, 3–4, 18–19), indicating a great diversity of interest in the advice that was taken from the Carmen through the Middle Ages. While some of the lines excerpted here are the most popular in the Carmen (e.g., Melk, 3–4, 6–7, 16–17), others do not appear to have otherwise impacted greatly upon medieval and postmedieval readers of the Carmen (Melk, 1–2). In general, the type of advice transmitted in the Melk excerpt appears to provide an accurate summary of the main themes of the Carmen: self-consistency, receiving correction patiently, operating according to counsel, holding to a mean, and observations on the religious, and specifically monastic, life. This gives a sense of a reader who thoroughly understood Abelard’s arguments in the Carmen to the point that he was able to condense its vast and complex thought to a few well-chosen distichs. Poole 99 The loose twelfth-century folio known as Poole 99, held in the Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, contains two lines that appear to be drawn from the Carmen and are explicitly attributed to Abelard (“Petrus Abailardus”) by the same hand that wrote the verses, the attribution falling within the ruled margins of the page.123 These lines, which read “Iuuenum religio numquam fere laudatur: | uiret in principio, sed in fine siccatur” (recto, 20–21), could be a

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paraphrase of 655–658 of the Carmen, especially 655: “Religio iuuenis leuis est impulsio mentis” and 657: “quo uehementior est, citius sicabitur iste”. Wollin has, however, recently identified the two lines in the Poole fragment as comprising four rhythmic verses drawn from a twelfth-century love lyric, “Primo quasdam eligo.”124 He suggests that this lyric, composed in the late eleventh century, was known by and associated with Abelard and his school, thereby explaining the attribution of these lines to Abelard in the Poole fragment. While the origin of these lines is clearly as Wollin suggests, perhaps their association among medieval readers with Abelard’s Carmen should not be so quickly dismissed. There is much in the dense context of the Poole fragment to suggest that the scribe who attributed these lines to Abelard may have had in mind the didactic text authored by Abelard rather than a love lyric associated with him. This is because a number of the texts and authors that appear in the Poole fragment are associated in various ways with the medieval transmission of Abelard’s Carmen. To begin, the lines attributed to Abelard in the fragment are followed after one line by a distich, in a different hand, which reads: “Nec Deus est nec homo, presens quam cernis ymago; sed Deus est et homo, quem sacra figurat ymago” (recto, 22–24; Neither God nor man is the present image which you perceive, but God and man is he whom the sacred image figures). This distich is also present in the sentential verses appended to the end of the Carmen in B, among the verses that deal with Christ’s crucifixion (B, fol. 17r, line 32–fol. 17v, line 1). That the same devotional lines appear in association with the Carmen in B, and with the excerpt attributed to Abelard in the Poole fragment, could indicate that the lines in the fragment were associated by their scribe with the Carmen. Further, the distich “Nec deus” circulated early in the writings of Hildebert of Lavardin, known through either his Inscriptionum Christianarum libellus, XXXII, “Ubi Christi pingitur imago” (PL 171. 1283D), or his Floridus aspectus (Carmina miscellanea, tam sacra quam moralia), LXXXVI, “Ad Christi crucifixi imaginem” (PL 171. 1426B).125 Although the verses may predate Hildebert, and have also been associated with Baudri of Bourgeuil,126 the distich appears to have been transmitted largely through Hildebert’s usage of it.127 As has been discussed above, one of the excerpts from Abelard’s Carmen appeared in the Trier florilegium under the heading of Hildebert’s Life of Mary of Egypt, and other verses drawn from Hildebert’s Inscriptionum Christianarum libellus are present in the mass of additional sentential verses appended to the Carmen in B. Moreover, Wollin himself has noted that in Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. lat. 212, verses from the Carmen are preceded by two epigrams of Hildebert,128 while in Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 901, poems from Hildebert appear in the manuscript containing an excerpt from the Carmen.129 Given these strong associations between verses from the Carmen and the works of Hildebert, it becomes entirely possible that the two lines attributed to Abelard in the Poole fragment just ahead of the “Nec deus” distich were understood as having been drawn from from his didactic work. Finally, the lines that appear prior to those attributed to Abelard in the Poole fragment read: “Rufinus. Ad hec uulnera que infliguntur ex lingua inter homines medicus pene nullus est” (recto, 18–19; among men there is almost no

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physician for those wounds that are inflicted by the tongue). This is a reference to Rufinus (ca. 345–410), Apologia (contra Hieronymum), lib. 1, cap. 1. Abelard and Rufinus are the only authors explicitly named in the fragment, and the scribe responsible for naming them transmitted only these two extracts on the folio. There is a notable section on the power and detriments of the tongue in the Carmen (231–244; highlighted by the annotator of B with the word “Lingua” in the left margin), which could well have motivated the placement in the Poole fragment of this citation from Rufinus next to lines thought to have been drawn from the Carmen. The presence of Rufinus as an author in this context is also significant, for it was Rufinus who created the Latin translation of the Enchiridion of Sextus, which circulated popularly in the Middle Ages. As discussed earlier, excerpts from the Sentences of Sextus appear on the recto of the folio in Melk 451 that contains an excerpt from the Carmen on the verso. Once again, this shows a strong association between the verses attributed to Abelard in the Poole fragment and other medieval contexts of the circulation and reception of his Carmen; this in turn suggests that the verses in the Poole fragment were being associated with Abelard’s didactic poem, rather than a love lyric. There remains a further interesting correspondence between Abelard and the Poole fragment. On the verso side of the folio (17–22), there is an extract from Ausonius’s Epigram 9. Its modern editor, R. P. H. Green, notes that this epigram circulated in “manuscripts of John of Salisbury, who quotes it at Policraticus 5.17 (586D).”130 There are some idiosyncrasies with the transmission of the poem in John of Salisbury, including an incorrect first line that reads “fictilibus cenasse ferunt,” and the variant of “Siciliae” in place of the original “Sicaniae.” The Poole fragment reproduces both these readings, suggesting that the poem may have come to it from a manuscript of the Policraticus. Given that John of Salisbury was one of Abelard’s most famous students, the juxtaposition in the Poole fragment of John’s version of Ausonius’s Epigram 9, with lines thought to have been drawn from Abelard’s Carmen, could suggest the circulation of the Carmen through Abelard’s school and among his students. The Title of the Poem There is no standard title appended to Abelard’s poem of advice for his son in the manuscript witnesses to it. This is of course common for medieval texts, and particularly for didactic texts which were, more so than other genres, subject to processes of abbreviation, rearrangement, and interpolation. This could mean that different witnesses might provide different incipits, thus suggesting different titles either to the scribes copying them or to later readers and annotators of the text. In some of the manuscripts in which it appears, Abelard’s poem remains untitled, while in others the name of the author, work, and recipient have been garbled, suggesting a lack of contemporary recognition of them. An example of this would be M, which begins: “Incipit strilabius poeta” (fol. 112v). The title “Carmen ad Astralabium” was formally applied to Abelard’s text in 1891 by Hauréau when he published the first full edition of the poem.131 This title

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did not appear in the manuscript he was reproducing (P), which rather described the poem in both its incipit and explicit as a “liber” (book).132 Other manuscripts of the poem known at that time had variously described it as “Doctrina magistri Petri Abaelardi” (London, British Library, Burney 216; The Teaching of Master Peter Abelard) and “Versus petri abaelardi ad astralabium filium suum” (London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius, C.VIII; Verses of Peter Abelard to his son Astralabe). Some decades before Hauréau’s edition, Victor Cousin had identified Abelard’s poem as a “carmen” (poem) when he had published a short version of it in the first volume of his Petri Abælardi Opera (1849), but he had used this term descriptively rather than as a formal title. In the same manner he referred to an alternate recension of the poem as “Altera ejusdem carminis recensio” and elsewhere described the work as “hoc carmen.”133 That Cousin did not intend “Carmen” to stand as the poem’s title is evidenced by the way he included a number of Abelard’s other poetic works, such as his sequences, hymns, and the Planctus, under the general heading “Magistri Petri Abælardi Carmina.” Shortly afterward, Jacques-Paul Migne included the Carmen in volume 178 of his Patrologia Latina (1855) where he gave it the title Monita ad Astralabium (cols 1759–1766; Advice to Astralabe). In fact, the only manuscript that witnesses the term “carmen” in relation to the poem is M, which employs the term descriptively, concluding with the explicit: “Carmine finito sit laus et gloria christo” (fol. 123ra; The poem is finished, praise and glory be to Christ). In his 1932 study of the poem, Brinkmann considered what the proper appellation for it might be, canvassing the various manuscript and print options before concluding that “versus” would be preferable, mainly because it was philologically inoffensive.134 There is good reason, however, to retain Hauréau’s now universally recognized title of Carmen. In his study of Medieval Latin versification, Dag Norberg points out that in the Middle Ages, the term “carmen” indicated quantitative verse, “composed of pedes metrici,” in distinction to a “rithmus.”135 Thomas Haye argues for “carmen” as one of the two central terms of the didactic genre, and suggests that as a didactic poet undertook a doubled role, so “carmen refers to the medium, that is to the metrical and poetic form, doctrina on the other hand refers to the intention, particularly material that needs to be taught.”136 Charles Guittard notes that the term “carmen” has a long history in Latin, with its primary signification being of a rhythmic formula, and its generic context being juridical, legal, oracular, liturgical, and didactic.137 Numerous other didactic texts of the Middle Ages directed toward young men bear the title Carmen. Insofar, then, as it combines the pedagogic intention of “doctrina” and “sententiae” with the parent-child instruction of “monita” and the poetic form of “versus,” the term “carmen” would seem to summarize the poem Abelard wrote for his son appropriately—both a text of advice for a younger reader and a summa of his own mature scholastic thought, written in elegiac distichs. It might, however, be worth noting in caution that Abelard’s own use of the term “carmen” within the Carmen is in reference to a fanciful tale told by the cunning to fool the credulous: “astutus stultos carmine sepe capit” (984).

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Questions of Authenticity Although it has been some time since skepticism regarding the authenticity of the Carmen as a work of Abelard has appeared in print,138 suspicion still hovers over the poem, and several manuscript library catalogues across Europe continue to list the work as possibly inauthentic or pseudonymous. In fact, the Carmen requires no concerted defense of its authenticity—a glance through the Notes to the poem compiled in this book will reveal there is hardly a thought in it that is not attested elsewhere in Abelard’s writings, and often in more than one of his works. A spirited defense of its authenticity is offered by its Italian translator, Ballanti, who points out that the text is so undeniably Abelardian that there can hardly be a question of it. Not only the correspondences between this text and Abelard’s other works, but the very nature of the text—the genius of its pedagogic insights, its development through the contrast of opposites, and the dialectic play of its distichs—speaks of Abelard as its author.139 Yet a brief consideration of the historical circumstances surrounding the initial claims of inauthenticity will indicate how these arose and why they require little refutation. The primary exponent of the inauthenticity of the Carmen was Edélestand du Méril who first raised the issue in his 1844 article, “Poésies d’Abailard.”140 He marshalled a number of arguments against the poem’s authenticity, but many of these were vitiated from the outset because at the time du Méril was writing, the original long recension of the Carmen was unknown, and he had to hand only shorter recensions of it. Hauréau’s publication of the full version of the poem in 1891 laid to rest many of du Méril’s concerns, as Hauréau himself explicitly noted.141 Sections of the poem that are readily identifiable as Abelardian, such as the reference to Heloise, which quotes her Ep. IV (379–384), or theological statements on the worship of idols, the workings of Providence, and the nature of the Trinity (e.g., 637–648, 903–906, and 999–1006), were absent from the recensions to which du Méril had access. A number of du Méril’s objections related to what he believed Abelard would or could not have written, due to his position as a great thinker, or an original thinker, or a monk, or one who challenged the religious structures of his day. As such, they are readily dismissed as subjective, especially when the characterization of Abelard in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a medieval proto-Protestant is taken into account.142 As to du Méril’s characterization of the advice offered in the Carmen as trite, Hauréau argued, in contrast, that the Carmen contained much greater originality of thought than most other medieval advice-texts, and that some maxims expressed in it were so personal that they could not be universally applicable.143 Surprisingly, one of du Méril’s concerns was the strong antifeminist streak running through the poem,144 although he did not suggest why this would contradict Abelardian authorship. Other of du Méril’s concerns center on broad and unsubstantiated claims about the nature and style of medieval parent-child didactic texts. His concern with the lack of elevated style is answered by the poem itself, which explicitly recommends plainness of style for instruction (13–14 and 869–870), an argument that Abelard makes elsewhere in his writings, such as the Preface to his

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Sermons and the Prologue to the Sic et non. Du Méril’s anxiety over the clunky arrangement of thoughts into distichs can be addressed by noting that he was dealing with the shorter recensions of the poem in which concepts had indeed at times been roughly truncated and rearranged, obscuring the more flowing line of thought evident in the longer recension. Particularly interesting, and readily refutable, is du Méril’s claim that the Carmen had been attributed to Abelard in the same way that other didactic texts in the Middle Ages were attributed to wise men such as Cato (Disticha Catonis) or Aristotle (Secreta secretorum).145 In fact, Abelard had been a contentious figure and condemned for heresy twice in his lifetime, which would surely have militated against the choice of his name to head an anonymous advice-text. In any case, this assertion is negated by the sparse late medieval and early modern recollection of Abelard prior to the first publication of many of his works in 1616, as well as by the manuscript evidence of the transmission of the poem itself. Here the perplexity of scribes with respect to the names of both the poem’s author and addressee leaves little doubt that Abelard’s fame faded into obscurity for some time in the later Middle Ages. For example, the version of the Carmen in the Madrid manuscript begins: “Incipit strilabius poeta” (fol. 112v), and a later hand has given an extremely abbreviated version of the poem in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 14809 (= R) the title “Incipit liber qui dicitur Astralabum” (fol. 23v). Jeremia de Montagone’s citation of verses from the Carmen in his compendium of moral sayings (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 6469) are attributed to “Auctor libri qui incipit astrolabi” (fol. 61va et passim), and as noted above and in Appendix C, the Melk excerpt of the Carmen is titled “Astralabus.” Du Méril repeated his doubts in almost identical form in his 1847 volume, Poésies populaires latines du moyen âge.146 In the meantime, however, Rodolphe Dareste had reproduced in the Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes (1845–1846) an edition of a version of the Carmen written in a twelfth-century hand found in a manuscript at Saint-Omer (St.-Omer, Bibliothèque municipale, 115 = S).147 This version of the Carmen was a shorter recension of the original, but a different short recension from the one that had been known up till then. Du Méril now added to his list of arguments against the authenticity of the Carmen two pages on the confusion sparked by Dareste’s publication, considering the differences between the two recensions as ultimate evidence of the poem’s inauthenticity.148 His argument that so great a brilliance as Abelard’s could never have been subjected only years after his death to the indignity of textual additions, deletions, and rearrangements, is, however, incorrect. It is the nature of didactic texts to be transmitted in precisely this way, regardless of authorship.149 Du Méril’s observation that Abelard could never have written the incomplete distichs contained in some of the manuscripts bolstered, he felt, the argument for inauthenticity,150 but could more reasonably have been read, had du Méril been so inclined, as evidence that those versions of the poem had been abbreviated from a longer text. Yet for all du Méril’s manifold rationalizations, it appears that his attack on the authenticity of the Carmen may have arisen not from professional reasons but personal ones. In a long footnote appended to his publication of Abelard’s Planctus David super Abner in his 1843 volume Poésies populaires latines antérieures

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au douzième siècle, du Méril rehearses a grave disservice he felt he had been done by Victor Cousin, the Carmen’s early editor.151 Traveling to Brussels to view a manuscript that contained ninety-six Latin poems that would have been invaluable to his study of the history of Latin poetry (these being Abelard’s Hymns for the Paraclete), du Méril discovered that the manuscript had already been lent to Cousin on the authority of the minister of Public Instruction. His pains in traveling to see the manuscript were, he claims, held of no account by Cousin, and despite the authorization of the Belgian minister of the Interior, Cousin refused du Méril’s request to see the manuscript, adding insult to injury by conveying this refusal not in person but through his domestic servant. Du Méril caustically berates Cousin’s naked political ambition, built on the back of his literary works, and hopes that Cousin may remember that some scholars study simply for the sake of knowledge itself.152 Did du Méril take set against Cousin’s academic labors on Abelard from that point on principle, and argue against the authenticity of the Carmen out of a desire to deflate what he saw as an over-rewarded ego?153 Did suspicions surrounding the authenticity of the Carmen actually arise from nothing more substantial than a nineteenth-century scholarly rivalry? Conclusion Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium is a remarkable didactic poem that operates far beyond the usual tenor of medieval advice-texts, encompassing the big questions of ethics and theology from an idiosyncratic and undeniably Abelardian point of view. It offers no simple program of instructions on how to live, but rather a challenging and holistic approach to an ethical life. Constructed in the traditional format of elegiac distichs, it nevertheless overflows the boundaries of these, skillfully and sinuously weaving ideas together, constantly reconsidering and returning to arguments throughout the poem. It enjoyed a strong reception history throughout the Middle Ages, both in its own right, where it appears to have functioned as a personal guide to morality, a classroom text for grammatical instruction, and a prompt to sermon production, as well as the source of discrete ethical and theological thoughts excerpted for inclusion in various compilations of sentences. That the Carmen had the facility to lend itself to this range of usages is a testament to the breadth of its thinking and its construction out of both traditional source material (classical and biblical) and the innovative ideas not only of its author, Abelard, but also his companion in ethical theory, Heloise. The Carmen ad Astralabium is thus, in the end, something of a family affair: the combined thought of Astralabe’s parents powerfully summarized by Abelard in a thousand lines of intellectually demanding didactic verse and presented as a gift of loving instruction to their son, Astralabe.

PART II PLANCTUS

CHAPTER 2 PLANCTUS ANALYSIS

The Planctus as a Series The Genre of the Planctus In his study of Abelard as a poet and musician, Michel Huglo argues that the Latin planctus is not a specific genre, since its form can be either metric or rhythmic, but is rather recognized by its elegiac themes.1 Nicolas Bell points out that Abelard’s six Planctus follow the form of the sequence or lai, rather than a traditional classical Latin metrical form, an argument that finds consensus among musicologists.2 Bell then suggests that the scribe who titled each of Abelard’s poems “Planctus . . . ” in the Vatican manuscript that provides the only complete copy of the series of six (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. Lat., 288) was probably not so much intending to refer to a specific genre, as to describe an elegiac mode, so that a translation such as “The Lament of . . . ” would be entirely accurate.3 Just how original Abelard was in fashioning his Planctus can be gauged from studies of the planctus-form prior to Abelard’s compositions. Applying Caroline Cohen’s analysis of the seven constitutive elements of tenth- and eleventh-century planctus4 to Abelard’s texts reveals that while Abelard did employ a formal element here and there in individual laments, across the series of six, his approach to his material is innovative and imaginative. For instance, Cohen’s constitutive element of an opening invitation to lament occurs only in Abelard’s Planctus uirginum, where the unnamed narrator summons the maids of Israel to lament Jephthah’s daughter, while Cohen’s requirement of a call for, or description of, others joining in the lament occurs only in the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, where David calls for the daughters of Zion to weep over Saul, a detail that Abelard took from his biblical exemplar. Cohen argues that the laments should tend toward the depiction of the deceased as an ideal or prototype rather than an individual, but the subjects of Abelard’s laments always remain intensely human and deeply flawed. There are no descriptions in Abelard’s laments of the body and tomb of the deceased, and only one of the laments, the Planctus Iacob, ends in a prayer as a planctus should, when Jacob expresses a wish to be joined together with his beloved in God (II, 37–39). By contrast, the Planctus Dine and Planctus uirginum

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end in speechless horror at senseless slaughter (I, 33–34; III, 120–123), the Planctus Israel concludes with an antifeminist tirade (IV, 38–50), the Planctus Dauid super Abner terminates on a call for human vengeance (“uindicandum,” V, 28), and the final lament, and indeed the series itself, ends in David’s despairing failure to find consolation (“deficit et spiritus,” VI, 68). Perhaps Abelard’s most significant deviation from the traditional planctus-form becomes evident when we consider Cohen’s statement, “It is particularly rare for the speaker of the lament to show himself to be personally moved.”5 By contrast, every one of Abelard’s speakers remains deeply invested in the lament he or she articulates. Each lament is an expression of an emotional state, whether grief, resigned sadness, horror, anger, or despair. No speaker is simply an instrumental voice designed to convey material to an audience; rather all of Abelard’s speaking voices hold and express a stake in the story they tell. Abelard was also doing something new in choosing to write laments in the voices of Old Testament characters. Lorenz Weinrich noted that “Abaelard’s planctus are numbered among the first medieval Latin poems which make use of biblical texts,” rather than taking their departure from the death of a contemporary high-ranking figure, whether secular or ecclesiastic. Instead, “Abaelard’s songs take eminently human situations in the Old Testament and fashion them anew for the man of the 12th century.”6 Nicolas Bell situates Abelard’s Planctus at a moment of “renaissance” of biblical planctus, when Old Testament figures came to the fore ahead of more traditional New Testament figures.7 He sees Abelard placed at a decisive moment, both in combining the structure of the sequence in the form of a lai with a text of lament, and in finding new ways of drawing human emotion from a biblical text, taking account of, but going beyond simple exegesis.8 In this regard, Peter Dronke observes that Abelard, who is “not only philosopher and poet, but professional theologian, presents a conception of Old Testament figures that often contradicts or ignores everything that theologians had said about those figures in the past.” 9 Wolfram von den Steinen similarly argues that Abelard sees the figures of the Bible not as instruments in the service of God, but as suffering and groaning subjects.10 Here Constant J. Mews perceives the likely influence of Heloise, for “apart from the early foray into commentary on Ezekiel, Abelard steered away from biblical exegesis,” whereas by contrast, “Heloise, whom he celebrates for her knowledge of Hebrew, seems always to have had a close interest in the Bible.”11 It is clear from Abelard’s writings that he views the planctus as a genre that belongs to this temporal world and one that is particularly associated with women. In his Sermon 6, drawing from both Ecclesiastes 3. 4 (“tempus flendi et tempus ridendi; tempus plangendi et tempus saltandi”) and Psalm 136 (“in salicibus in medio eius suspendimus organa nostra”), he argues that our stay on earth is an exile and therefore a time of weeping and lamenting, that is, of planctus rather than cantica: “moeroris potius quam laetitiae tempus istud insinuant esse, et planctus magis quam cantici.”12 Indeed, Abelard’s Hymns make it clear that he associates cantica instead with the joyful praise of God that will take place once this time on earth has ended. In the Preface to Book II of the Hymns he associates psalms with hymns and religious songs: “in psalmis et hymnis et canticis

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spiritualibus,”13 and this triple identification appears a number of times within the Hymns themselves (58, 4/5–6: “Hymnis, psalmis, canticis | Terra resonat”; 76, 1/3–4: “Psalmis, hymnis, canticis | vacans spiritalibus”). Throughout his writings, Abelard continually fashions planctus as a mode most appropriate to female mourners. In his Ep. V, he urges Heloise to lament the crucified Christ as her bridegroom, advising her that the planctus of those who lament the fallen son of a king should be the same planctus that she utters over Christ, her dead bridegroom.14 Discussing the martyrdom of St. Stephen in his Sermon 22, he exhorts the nuns of the Paraclete to mourn this fallen saint, making the point that even the wives of those who persecuted Stephen mourned, since there is a “natural disposition towards piety which is very much present in your sex.”15 Yet while Abelard may have theorized planctus as religious, female, and more typically a communal genre, half his own Planctus are voiced by individual male speakers who lament not a religious loss but a secular one, of friend or family. Traces of a more traditional approach to the planctus-form surface within individual Planctus, as when the narrating voice in the Planctus uirginum exhorts the maids of Israel to lament the daughter of Jephthah (“et planctus ut cantus celebres”; III, 4), and David in the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha calls the maids of Israel to lament Saul (“Planctus, Syon filie, super Saul sumite”; VI, 41). It must be noted, however, that in both these cases, Abelard is following his biblical exemplar.16 In many ways, the Planctus are the poetic counterpart to Abelard’s Hymns written for the Paraclete, in that both are masterpieces of literary concision and dramatic intensity. But where the Hymns are peopled by characters of strong moral intent such as Mary, the saints, and martyrs, who strive for glory and work only for the love of God, the Planctus operate on a more human level. They are filled with flawed, broken, and sorrowing people who deal with their losses through blame, self-accusation, remorse, and lament. While the saints and martyrs of the Hymns strike out boldly on their holy path, uninhibited by hesitation, undeterred by grief or struggle, willing and happy to sacrifice both themselves and their families, the figures whose dramas animate the Planctus are unsure and uncertain. They have made mistakes—acted out of pride, or lust, or an obstinate single-mindedness—and they, and often those around them, have paid the price for their actions. They are left in shock surveying the aftermath of their actions, and for the most part, their losses are neither willed nor accepted with equanimity.17 A perfect example of this generic distinction is provided by the daughter of Jephthah. This girl, who functions as a stock virgin martyr in Abelard’s Hymns 125 and 126, going almost automaton-like to her doom, is not even a pale shadow of the vibrant figure of the Planctus uirginum whose heart-rending acceptance of her fate and moral steadfastness in the face of horror is so powerfully evoked by Abelard. In Hymn 125 Abelard tells us simply that Jephthah’s daughter incites her father’s right hand to her own destruction (“Patris dextram | animavit iugulum”; 125, 4/3–4); in the Planctus uirginum, however, Abelard lets us hear the heart-rending arguments adduced by this brave girl as she demands the right to

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die as no other girl has ever died before her. The refrain of Hymns 125 and 126: “Ipsi decus, | ipsi gloria,” which Abelard offers to God, the daughter of Jephthah instead arrogates for herself in the Planctus uirginum, claiming that if she were permitted to be sacrificed, what an honor it would be for her sex and what glory to her personally: “quod decus sit sexus mei, percipe | . . . quid michi, quid tibi sit hoc glorie” (III, 41, 43). Some scholars have theorized that Abelard may have found consolation in his composition of the music and lyrics of the Planctus.18 They read the opening lines of the final lament, the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, as self-reflexive, conveying a moment of respite for Abelard provided by the act of creation and song: “Dolorum solatium, | laborum remedium | mea michi cythara” (Solace of sorrows, rest of my labours is my cithara to me; VI, 1–3). However, such a reading overlooks the fact that this lament ends in a powerful and melancholy evocation of the failure of consolation: “Do quietem fidibus; | uellem ut et planctibus, | sic possem, et fletibus. | Lesis pulsu manibus, | raucis planctu uocibus, | deficit et spiritus” (I give rest to my lyre: I would wish also to my laments, and, were it possible, to my tears. With hands wounded from strumming, with voice hoarse from plaining, my spirit also fails; VI, 63–68).19 The bereavements mourned in the Planctus are ones that can never be requited on earth. This is a position Abelard articulates outside the Planctus as well, as for instance in his Sermon 34, where he adduces Rachel as a figura of sorrow and cites Christ’s words about those who weep ( John 16. 20), pointing out that the present can only be a time of sorrow, with consolation deferred to the future.20 Within the series of the Planctus, Abelard reiterates this conclusion. In the planctus uirginum, the maids of Israel return every year (“per annos . . . singulos,” III, 14) to repeat the same laments and mourn the same girl in a cycle of sorrow that can never be resolved and never end in consolation, only in renewed horror. As Eileen C. Sweeney has observed of the genre: “Lament, as a form of lyric, tends to stop time and narrative progress.”21 The eternal “presentness” of this sorrow is also evoked in the Planctus through Abelard’s persistent use of present tense by the speaking voices in most of the laments, even when they describe events in the past. The first lament of the series ends on the present-tense verb “concidis” (you fall; I, 34), despite the fact that Dinah is recalling a slaughter that has already taken place. The chorus of maids in the Planctus uirginum rehearse the awful events of the death of Jephthah’s daughter almost entirely in the present tense, although we know from the outset that this lament is an annual memorial of events long past. They even present the oratio recta of the speech between Jephthah and his daughter as though it were occurring in real time: “ait,” “refert” (III, 29, 32). David ends the final lament of the series with a powerful statement of the present tense, declaring “Do” (I give; VI, 63), and the last verb of the series, in the last line, offers the never-ending present tense of “deficit” (fails; VI, 68). Throughout the Planctus, action is frequently expressed through present participles that thus depict it as unclosed and ongoing, so that, like the laments themselves, the verbs never come to rest in the finite. Pursuing this idea of the lack of consolation possible in this world, Abelard has Jacob admit at the conclusion of his lament over his sons that it can only be

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hoped for in the next life: “Deus cui seruio, | tu nos nobis facito, | uel apud te coniungi” (God, whom I serve, make us to be joined together, or rather, to be united in you; II, 37–39). In fact, when read both individually and as a series, the Planctus reveal that no amount of regret and sorrow felt and expressed on earth can ever assuage the pain of failed human relationships and the loss of loved ones. Consolation does not, in fact, exist. As Sweeney notes, “Abelard also avoids the temptation to resolve the losses he confronts into a ‘happy ending,’ or indeed into any sense that good is brought about by the evil suffered. . . . The focus in all the laments is on the immediate and devastating loss and the past out of which it has arisen.”22 In the same way, then, that Abelard’s didactic poem, the Carmen ad Astralabium, remained fundamentally ambivalent about the nature and value of teaching and learning, so his Planctus end with the generic failure of lament to achieve consolation. Why Were the Planctus Written? By the mid-1130s, Abelard had produced multiple documents of support for Heloise and her nuns at the Paraclete. Through individual letters to Heloise (Epp. III and V) he had negotiated the meaning of their earlier relationship, resolutely insisting on this as having been no more than the providential means to draw them both into the monastic life. In response to the requests she made in the course of that correspondence (Ep. VI), Abelard had then written for Heloise and the nuns of the Paraclete a history of the profession of nuns (Ep. VII) and a Rule for the Paraclete (Ep. VIII). It would appear that Abelard’s Ep. IX to the nuns of the Paraclete extolling the virtues of literacy and biblical study was intended to follow this Rule.23 The Problemata Heloissae, forty-two questions on scriptural conundrums arising from the nuns’ reading addressed by Heloise to Abelard together with his replies, were written at around the same time. In her Introductory Letter to the Problemata, Heloise entreats Abelard to solve these problems for her and her nuns.24 We know that Abelard’s massive undertaking in composing an entirely new Hymnary for the Paraclete, consisting of 133 hymns, was motivated by Heloise’s arguments over what she saw as several inappropriate features of the cycle of hymns in use at the Paraclete. In the Preface to each of the three books of his Hymns, Abelard recalls that he is working at Heloise’s request.25 Similarly, his Expositio in Hexameron, a historical interpretation of the opening lines of Genesis, is acknowledged in its Preface to have arisen out of Heloise’s appeal for a work that would explain this difficult text to the satisfaction and edification of both her and her nuns.26 Finally, in the Preface to the Sermons, Abelard discloses that this collection came about through Heloise’s request and that he composed it “at your request, as much for you as for your spiritual daughters gathered together in our oratory.”27 This wide-ranging collection of conventual texts covering the genres of epistle, monastic rule, dialogue, treatise, hymn, and sermon, reveals Abelard to have been actively and extensively involved in the cura monialium of the nuns of the Paraclete.28 Yet, written within this same monastic context and within the same period of the mid-1130s, the Planctus stand as a genre apart. They differ from Abelard’s

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other writings to and for Heloise in that they appear to be pure gift. They originate from no request of Heloise,29 they constitute no didactic attempt by Abelard to impart a doctrine or procedure that Heloise and her nuns must follow, and they are not intended to modify or regulate behavior. Paul Zumthor saw them as an expression of literary freedom on Abelard’s part, his own personal creative act after the burdensome labor requested of him in the composition of the Hymns.30 Recalling the carmina amatoria that Abelard wrote to Heloise in their early days in Paris, Thomas J. Bell describes it as significant that Abelard “turned to song both in his early and his late relationship with Heloise” and observes that “Abelard found poetry and music a particularly appropriate medium through which to communicate his deepest thoughts and emotions to Heloise.”31 As with the first reception of the Planctus, confusion still persists regarding what function they were intended to fulfil. 32 Scholarly consensus over the past few decades has been that they are not liturgical texts. David Wulstan argues that they “appear to have been lyric compositions of a deeply personal kind: they do not seem to have been intended for paraliturgical use, nor are they mentioned in any of the extant documents relating to the Paraclete.” 33 In this he accords with the earlier judgments of both Huglo34 and von den Steinem, who argued that although the Planctus are clearly sequences according to their literary form, they are based in and reflective of personal individual experience, and are not meant to speak of the Christian soul or the Church. Accordingly, they are not liturgical songs, but a unique kind of lyric.35 Thomas Bell has argued that “planctus were songs of lamentation and existed largely outside the liturgy,” although he notes that “there are planctus that were sung in the liturgy, particularly at funeral Masses.”36 Nicolas Bell, however, finds little evidence in this period of planctus being chanted and a greater likelihood that they were received instead as primarily literary texts;37 Huglo pictures them as a kind of pious diversion for the nuns of the Paraclete.38 Nicolas Bell also argues that the weak subsequent diffusion of the forms of the planctus developed by Abelard bears testament to the fact that his Planctus never had a clearly defined function, such as a liturgical one, that would have ensured their transmission and wider circulation. 39 Nils Holger Petersen discounts the likelihood of a liturgical usage for either the full sequence of the six Planctus in the Vatican manuscript or the sole Planctus transmitted in the Nevers troper-proser (Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 3126; this is Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, or “Dolorum solatium,” as it is known in that manuscript from its incipit).40 More recently, however, Gunilla Iversen has suggested that the presence of the “Dolorum solatium” in the Nevers troper-proser could indicate a new, though unspecified, liturgical use for texts of this kind,41 and this seems convincing, given that the text of the “Dolorum solatium” appears to operate very differently and convey a different message within the two distinct contexts of the Vatican and Paris manuscripts. Despite the possible conventual uses to which they could have been, or were in fact, put, I would argue, however, that the Planctus were primarily sent to Heloise as a personal offering, as part of Abelard’s turn again toward the familial. Avoiding command or precept, they simply express Abelard’s love for Heloise in extraordinarily powerful poetry and some of the most plangent stories of love

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and loss in the Old Testament. In these laments, Abelard reveals that he has, at last, truly heard Heloise. In the Planctus Iacob and Planctus uirginum, Abelard addresses the underlying current of maternal anguish in Heloise’s writings to him.42 He ceases advising Heloise to value her spiritual daughters over any biological offspring, as he did in his Ep. V,43 and instead frankly acknowledges the pain inherent in the loss of a child. In the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, he returns to the argument over marriage that took place early in their relationship, revealing that he now understands Heloise’s plea for a relationship between them not based on heterosexual property arrangements (i.e., marriage), but founded only upon deepest friendship and mutual respect in a way that remains unconcerned with sex, gender, or economic considerations. Here he expresses this love, so profound that it constitutes the sharing of a single soul—“in una mecum anima” (VI, 33)—through the imagery of the celebrated same-sex friendship of David and Jonathan. The Order of the Planctus The order in which the six Planctus are published in the edition in this book follows that of the only extant manuscript of the series of six: Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Reg. Lat., 288. In his 1992 edition and French translation of the Planctus, Zumthor pointed out an anomaly in this regard: while most of the laments are present according to the biblical sequence of the stories they relate, the final two laments appear to be in inverse order. The fifth lament, Planctus Dauid super Abner, references 2 Samuel 2. 8–3. 38, whereas the sixth lament, Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, rehearses a story told earlier at 2 Samuel 1. 1–16. Accordingly, Zumthor reversed the order of these two laments in his book. His rationale for doing so was that he read the Planctus as primarily liturgical texts, designed as six in number to reflect the Hexaemeron, the six days of creation. In their “correct” order, then, he believed they would offer a spiritual song for each day of the week, evoking the sacred history of the chosen people.44 As discussed earlier, however, there appears to be no reason to assume a principally liturgical or conventual function for the Planctus. There are, moreover, several compelling reasons for retaining the order of the laments as in the Vatican manuscript. As I argue later in the chapter, to have the series of laments end at the conclusion of the Planctus Dauid super Abner on the word “uindicandum” (must be avenged, V, 28) would completely distort the message that Abelard is trying to convey in the series. Many of the laments deal with what Abelard sees as the failure of human justice when it descends into family vendettas and revenge; instead Abelard and his speakers seek to comprehend and embrace the vaster mechanisms of divine justice. It would make no sense, then, for this series of laments to end on a cry for further human vengeance. On the other hand, as I argued earlier, it is fundamental to an understanding of what Abelard is doing in the Planctus that they should end with the failure of lament and the words “deficit et spiritus.” That is, Abelard wishes to convey that there is ultimately no consolation to be found in this world: it exists only in the future life—if we are lucky. Other of Abelard’s writings, such as his

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Carmen ad Astralabium (see, e.g., 875–882) and Collationes (§§183–197), similarly depict this world as a place only of suffering and purgation. The human act of lament has to fail in the realization that, just like justice, consolation belongs to, and is with and in God alone. Yet there is evidence that even in its contemporary context, this reading of the hopelessness of consolation in the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha was contested. Marie-Noël Colette sees the positioning of this lament in the sequence of four Latin lais in the Nevers troper-proser as deliberate, so that the series does not end with this failure of consolation, but instead the “Dolorum solatium” is followed by the Epithalamica as a song of joy. As Colette contends: “In the twelfth-century mentality the liturgy always triumphs in its finality.”45 Here the lexical choices are powerfully suggestive: where the “Dolorum solatium” opened with “dolor” and “meror” and concluded with “planctu,” the Epithalamica opens immediately with a call for “cantica” (1a),46 and concludes with advice to the maids to add a psalm to their cantica (“ad . . . cantica psalmum adnectite,” 9b). As mentioned above, the musical forms of “canticum” and “psalmum” functioned within Abelard’s writings, and particularly his Hymns, to designate the joyful celestial alternatives to the earth-bound planctus. Moreover, the opening and closing strophes of the Epithalamica offer a precise inversion of the opening of the Planctus uirginum over Jephthah’s daughter. In the Epithalamica, the maids are truly called to celebrate a wedding instead of a horrific slaughter that follows faux-wedding preparations. Their dance (“vos chorum ducite,” 2a) and their songs (“modulos,” 2d) offer a joyful counterpart to those of the maids called to commemorate the death of Jephthah’s daughter in the Planctus uirginum (“Ad festas choreas celibes,” III, 1; “annuos uirginum elegos | et pii carminis modulos,” III, 11–12). Indeed, a closing strophe of the Epithalamica, where the narrating voice informs the maids that their mournful elegies are turned into songs of joy (“convertit elegos nostros in cantica,” 9d), offers the complete reverse of the opening call to mourning in the Planctus uirginum where songs are refigured as laments: “planctus ut cantus celebres” (III, 4).47 As William Flynn has argued, the author of the Epithalamica appears to “have intentionally adopted the form of Abelard’s planctus, inverting the content to express the overturning of sorrow by joy.”48 In this manner, the Epithalamica provides a fitting resolution to the failure of lament confessed by David at the end of the “Dolorum solatium” within the context of the Nevers troper-proser. If the Epithalamica were indeed, as has been recently suggested, a composition by Heloise or one of the nuns at the Paraclete,49 then the question must be asked whether it was composed in answer to, and perhaps rejection of, the failure of sacrifice and lament manifest in the Planctus uirginum. The impulse toward the resolution of consolation evinced by the medieval compiler of the Nevers troper-proser in the placement of the Epithalamica following the “Dolorum solatium” continues into the present. Thus Giovanni Orlandi observes that “one is tempted to fancy that the poet might have planned to compose six further planctus, recreating episodes of the New Testament . . . wherein the evocation of sorrow gave eventually place to Christian meditations in a less pessimistic perspective.”50 While Willemien Otten takes issue with the idea that

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a New Testament cycle would have allowed Abelard less scope for ambiguity of character or context for lament, she nevertheless reads the series of Planctus as it currently stands as fundamentally consolatory.51 Beyond these considerations, however, there are doubled movements and thematic trajectories that can be discerned within the sequence of the Planctus as it is transmitted in the Vatican manuscript. For instance, the first and second laments and the fifth and sixth laments offer an identical transition between emotional states. The anger and demand for vengeance that characterize the reaction of Dinah’s brothers in the Planctus Dine give way to the sadness, introspection, and desire expressed by Jacob in the Planctus Iacob to move beyond the transient things of this world into more enduring joys. The Planctus Dine and Planctus Iacob form a familial set: both are spoken within the context of the children of Jacob, though notably, Dinah is absent from her father’s lament, which is voiced only over his sons.52 There is a corresponding emotional development in the final two laments of the series, both voiced by David. The barely restrained anger expressed by David over Joab’s treacherous murder of Abner, with its repeated references to trickery and betrayal and its invocation of revenge (“per quem peris proditus, par eius sit exitus,” V, 4),53 segues into the sorrowful despair of the David who plains over Jonathan and whose voice of lament finally fails. In each case, a righteous but ultimately dangerous and unproductive anger gives way to resignation and the acceptance of grief in this world. This doubled transition is made clear in Abelard’s lexical choices, as the term “execrandi” in the Planctus Dine (I, 24) leads to the “solacia” of the Planctus Iacob (II, 25), just as the usage of “execrabilis” and “execrabile” in the Planctus Dauid super Abner (V, 6 and 28) comes to rest in the “solatium” of the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha (VI, 1). There is a further argument for the retention of the Planctus in the order of the Vatican manuscript based upon the development in that series of ideas of vice and virtue. This takes account of how these intersect with sex, gender, and interpersonal relationships, before coming to resolution in the final Planctus of David over Saul and Jonathan.54 The question of what constituted a vice, what a virtue, is one that Abelard addresses in a number of his writings, most particularly the Scito te ipsum (II, 1) and the Carmen ad Astralabium (77–82, 613–614). In both these texts, he makes it clear that the concepts of vice and virtue are relative, that the space between them is fluid, and that excess and immoderation can just as easily turn a virtue into a vice. Through the first five Planctus, Abelard applies these ideas to a range of human relationships, showing that vice and virtue do not reside in a single sex or gendered form of behavior, and that relationships based on heterosexual erotics and family ties necessarily lead to unhappy outcomes. 55 Instead, he argues, the resolution of all these issues can be found in the ungendered and mutually chosen form of friendship figured by David and Jonathan. The dangers of heterosexual attraction and sex are explored in the Planctus Dine and Planctus Israel, where lust is a bodily compulsion that leads only to harm and death. Sechem is forced to ravish Dinah, ravished, as she declares, by her beauty (“Coactus me rapere | mea raptus spetie,” I, 17–18; see also “Amoris impulsio,” I, 25). This leaves Dinah ashamed and tainted through her sexual

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experience (“Quam male sum cognita,” I, 9), and subsequently results in the wholesale slaughter of Sechem’s people. Similarly, Samson is betrayed into servitude and ultimately death by his sexualized relationship with Delilah. The last five strophes of this lament reify vice as feminine, decrying the eternal treachery of an essentialized version of Woman. Yet the world of men and masculine action appears no more moral than this world of heterosexual compulsion and betrayal. The Planctus Dine and Planctus Dauid super Abner explore masculine pride and the family honor killings it sets in motion, accomplished through treachery and deceit. Abelard makes it clear through Dinah’s brothers that it is possible to take familial duty too far and that the virtue of brotherly love can easily become the vice of immoderate revenge. The same message is relayed in David’s lament over Joab’s treacherous murder of Abner. It is not mentioned in the lament, but would have been known to all familiar with the biblical story, that Joab’s fury with Abner resulted from Abner’s earlier murder of Joab’s brother Asahel. Indeed, it is possible that the long and complex title given to this Planctus in the Vatican manuscript—Planctus Dauid super Abner filio Ner quem Ioab occidit—is intended to remind the reader of this back story. The title also highlights the centrality of the figure of Joab to the lament, even though Abelard never mentions Joab by name in the Planctus. Joab is thus pictured as a rogue male in a context where revenge killings take place in complete disregard of civilizing measures such as passes of safe conduct. In this way, Joab functions in parallel with Delilah in the previous lament: just as she epitomized feminine vice, he symbolizes masculine vice. Others of the first five laments showcase the dangers of a range of familial relationships. Behind Jacob’s plaint over his sons is the fact that it was his preference for his beloved Joseph that fomented the jealousy among his other sons (“Ioseph, fratrum inuidia,” II, 9) and led to what was presumed, at the time the Planctus Iacob is spoken, to be Joseph’s death. Similarly, Jephthah’s daughter only becomes a necessary sacrifice to her father’s vow because she runs ahead to greet him out of love and joy. In these two cases, the love of parent for child and child for parent generate tragedy. As Jephthah’s daughter insists on going to her death in accordance with her father’s vow, she aggressively genders herself not only as masculine, but as better than masculine, noting that if God, who spurned Abraham’s son as a sacrifice, should accept her instead, what glory that would be for her sex: “Puerum qui respuit, | si puellam suscipit— | quod decus sit sexus mei, percipe!” (III, 39–41). In the process, she strikingly feminizes her father, declaring herself the fruit of his womb (“Vteri qui tui fructus,” III, 42) and demanding that his outward behavior match his male body: “Vt sexu sic animo | uir esto nunc, obsecro!” (III, 44–45). Jephthah only regains his status as true man once he completes the senseless slaughter of his daughter, achieving this manhood through an act of excess that destroys the very fatherhood it recreates. As as the Chorus rightly laments: “O patrem, sed hostem generis” (III, 122). What Abelard shows through the sequence of the first five laments, then, is that virtue and vice do not reside exclusively in either men or women, nor can they be applied to a form of behavior separate from social context and individual

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intention. Rather, virtue and vice can reside in any individual, regardless of gender. In fact, gender itself has a dangerous potential, since an insistence on acting according to the “correct” gender imperatives, can produce harmful actions. By the same token, there is no form of human relationship in the first five laments that remains free of the capacity to do harm. Heterosexual desire, brotherly love, paternal love, filial love: all are flawed, all are susceptible to excess, and all lead to ill-fated choices and actions. The answer lies only in the sixth and final lament of David over Jonathan. Here Abelard strips away gender from the question of interpersonal relations and purges relationships of all sexual and familial ties. In place of these he envisions a pure relationship of friendship between like-minded individuals who are not in any way defined by their engendered bodies, but are in fact free of sex and gender. This is relationship figured as free choice, not as bodily or social compulsion. The fact that David and Jonathan are both in this instance male is beside the point; this is not about bodies, it is about souls—“in una mecum anima” (VI, 33), “nec ad uitam anima satis sit dimidia” (VI, 50)—and souls know no gender. David and Jonathan are ciphers who stand for any two people who choose to come together free of both sexual and familial compulsion.56 This is a key reason why the Planctus Dauid super Saul and Ionatha has to be the culminating lament in the series: it is the point of rest to which the gender turmoil and the turbulent relationships in the previous five laments tend. What Abelard suggests in sending this lament to Heloise is, I believe, that David and Jonathan offer a template for a future relationship between him and her. Indeed, as Abelard writes in his Hymn 23: “In David caritas | perfecta noscitur” (23, 2/1–2). Yves Ferroul has argued that “Abelard’s decision to enter monastic life erased the possibility that he and Heloise might provide their culture a new ideal: a union of married passionate lovers, loving parents, and admired intellectuals.”57 Abelard attempts to remedy this in his Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, envisaging in this lament a relationship that moves beyond the embodied issues that have beset him and Heloise thus far—heterosexual desire, childbirth, castration, frustrated sexuality—into a new place free of sex and gender, where only love remains. Speaking Voices in the Planctus The first two and the final two laments are unproblematically monologic: they claim to be in a voice of one particular individual (Dinah, Jacob, David), and that speaking voice remains consistent (though not necessarily convincing) throughout. The first two laments draw from biblical stories but not from specific biblical laments, the final two laments have as exemplars biblical plaints that Abelard chooses to follow either more or less faithfully. Abelard entirely invents the lament of Dinah, which has no biblical source. Although Abelard might be thought to be giving a voice here to a woman who is offered no opportunity to speak about her fate in the Bible, as I argue below in “Abelard’s Feminine Voice in Lament,” this act of imagination on Abelard’s part appears only as strident and unconvincing in terms of a lament in the feminine

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voice. It does, however, fulfill other functions that are of use to Abelard in (re)writing the history of his earlier life. The contrast between the lament of Dinah and the lament of Jacob is evident, with Abelard evincing much greater verisimilitude in representing the voice of a father grieving the loss and destruction of his family. Although Abelard draws closely from the biblical account of Jacob’s family, he does not use a particular biblical lament to fashion his own. From the internal evidence offered by the Planctus Iacob it is clearly situated at a very specific point in the biblical story of Jacob’s sons, at a time when Jacob believed his son Joseph to have been destroyed by wild beasts, and when his son Benjamin was being taken to Egypt to be exchanged for Simeon, then being held in chains. It is therefore not drawn from the occasions in the Bible when Jacob laments his sons (Genesis 37. 34–35; Genesis 42. 36), nor from the later “Blessings of Jacob” upon his deathbed (Genesis 49. 1–27).58 The Planctus Iacob is, in this regard, Abelard’s own poetic invention. For the final two laments, Abelard did have a biblical exemplar from which he could draw. David’s lament over Abner as rehearsed in the Bible is three lines long (2 Samuel 3. 33–34), but Abelard chooses to reproduce only a single word of this in his elegy—“corruisti” (you fell, V, 19). This is, however, the word at the heart of the lament. This lament is unusual in that it is the only one whose key characters (Abner and Joab) do not appear elsewhere in Abelard’s writings as figurae. Abelard’s poetic concision is noticeable here as he crystallizes a complex story of perennially changing allegiances, betrayals, and long-term interfamilial rivalries, which ranges over two chapters in the Bible, into a simple plangent song of only twenty-eight lines focusing solely on the betrayal and downfall of a single man, Abner. For this reason, where the biblical lament spoke of Abner’s fall at the hands of the “sons of iniquity” (“filiis iniquitatis,” 2 Samuel 3. 34) within a context of ongoing treacheries, Abelard chooses to picture it instead as the outcome of an individual enmity between him and Joab. In this way it appears as a consequence of excessive family loyalty—one of Abelard’s recurring themes in the Planctus. The lament of David over Saul and Jonathan has a biblical exemplar of significant length, 2 Samuel 1. 17–27, and, as discussed below, Abelard both reproduces large segments of it, while also allowing himself license to elide, add, and alter as he sees fit. In particular, Abelard modifies the biblical lament so that where it focused equally on the losses of Saul and Jonathan, Abelard can have his David sing a more personalized song to Jonathan alone. The two planctus that fall in between, the Planctus uirginum and the Planctus Israel, are much more experimental in voice, and it is not surprising in this regard to find that both are articulated by anonymous corporate speakers rather than identifiable individual ones.59 Whereas Dinah, Jacob, and David mourn losses that have immediate personal consequences for them which they feel as suffering individuals, the lamenting voices of the Planctus uirginum and the Planctus Israel do not appear to be expressing their own sorrow, so much as relating a sorrowful tale and commenting upon it. In both these cases, the speaking voice gives the sense that it is standing outside the action, gazing upon it, and that while it might

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have an opinion regarding what has transpired which it is keen to articulate, it does not however have an emotional connection to it. The scribe who compiled the series of six Planctus in the Vatican manuscript titled the third lament Planctus uirginum Israel super filia Iepte Galadite, and it is true that the maids of Israel do create a chorus-like lament-frame; this is drawn from the biblical account of the story that describes the lament as an annual custom: “post anni circulum conveniant in unum filiae Israhel et plangant filiam Iepthae Galaaditae diebus quattuor” ( Judges 11. 40). Yet this chorus of Israelite maids is actually enclosed within a further frame of an unnamed narrator who commands their lament to begin: “ex more uenite, uirgines” (III, 2), and addresses them again at its conclusion: “Hebree dicite uirgines” (III, 124). It seems most likely that the maids themselves do not begin speaking until the apostrophe to Jephthah’s daughter “O stupendam plus quam flendam uirginem” (III, 15). They then continue the narrative trajectory of the tale, including rehearsing the direct speech exchanged between Jephthah and his daughter, before drawing their lament to an end with the apostrophe to Jephthah himself: “O patrem, sed hostem generis” (III, 122). At this point, the initial narrator enters the lament once again to address the maids and remind them how they themselves are ennobled by recalling Jephthah’s noble daughter (III, 124–127). For the dialogue between Jephthah and his daughter in the middle of the lament, Abelard more or less reproduces the few words that are assigned to Jephthah in the biblical account ( Judges 11. 35) but allows himself free rein in imagining the reponse of Jephthah’s daughter. He takes as a starting point her biblical words ( Judges 11. 36–37), but spins these out into a powerful contestation of sex and gender roles as she demands the right to die at her father’s hand. As with Dinah, discussed further below, the message seems to overshadow verisimilitude here, and the words Abelard gives to Jephthah’s daughter, while striking and provocative, provide little sense of an attempt to create the lament of a real female figure. This setting of the Planctus uirginum as a dialogue within a lament frame within a larger commentary frame may be complex, but it is consistent, symmetrical, and true to its own internal logic. The same cannot be said of the fourth lament, which the scribe of the Vatican mansucript has titled Planctus Israel super Sanson. There are serious difficulties with this attribution, however, and the lament as a whole strains the notion of speaking voices. Again, there appears to be either some kind of frame, or else at least two disparate voices, surrounding the lament proper. If this lament does indeed belong to a corporate voice identified as “Israel,” this can really only be true for lines 7–37 that rehearse the narrative of Samson’s betrayal and death. Outside these lines, however, there appear to exist distinct speaking voices that break through and offer a metatextual commentary upon them. None of the other laments begins with a philosophical meditation that is not immediately connected with its story, yet the lament over Samson opens with a contemplation of the immensity of God’s judgments (IV, 1–6). None of the other laments ends with a diatribe that draws from a specific figure within the lament structure to offer a generalized judgment over a type of person, yet here the figure of Delilah is taken from the story in the lament and

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made to function as the type for all women from Eve on (IV, 38–50). The other five laments remain securely within their given biblical context. In the Planctus Israel, the opening meditation on God’s justice is powerfully suggestive of Abelard’s own voice, as it resonates strongly with other of his texts including the Expositio in Hexameron, Sicto te ipsum, and Commentary on Romans (see the Notes to lines 1–2 of the Planctus Israel). Meanwhile, the closing critique of the treachery of woman picks up sentiments from the letters of Heloise (Ep. IV) and ideas in the Carmen. It seems unlikely that this diatribe could be attributed to the speaking voice of Israel that mourns Samson within the context of the Planctus itself. For instance, the diatribe evokes the foolishness of David and the fall of Solomon, David’s son (IV, 42), which, at the time of the death of Samson, were still many years in the future. Unless the Israel imagined as mourning Samson’s death in this lament is intended to be an Israel historically removed in time from Samson’s death, the references to David and Solomon create a jarring note that suggests either an inadvertent irruption or an intentional change in the speaking voice. While the Hymns, for example, do evince this simultaneity of temporal perspectives,60 such a manipulation of time frame is not otherwise evident in the Planctus. In addition, what should be made of the direct address to Delilah that breaks into the lament (IV, 23–24)? Is this another rupture in the fabric of the poem? Does this voice belong to Abelard, to Israel, to the final speaker, or someone else? There is a difficulty in assigning this voice to Israel, as medieval exegesis in writers like Isidore of Seville and Rupert of Deutz correlated Delilah with the Jewish synagogue. Having “Israel” castigate Delilah would thus create an uncomfortable dissonance. By the same token, this accusatory voice seems at odds with the opening Abelardian voice that gently contemplates the immensity of God’s justice. It does, however, appear to have much in common with the final speaking voice that castigates “Womanhood” in general. We should consider the possibility, then, that this lament is really a multivocal drama, containing the voices of Abelard in the prologue, “Israel” in the narrative, and an antifeminist critic who breaks in upon the narrative twice to offer a passionate opinion upon it and point accusing fingers at the culprits of the action (Delilah and “Woman” from Eve onward). These voices tend to cut across each other in competition—either intentionally, if Abelard is here in pursuit of dramatic intensity, or unintentionally, if he finds himself unable hold these voices as tightly under his control as those in his other laments. If the latter is the case, this could suggest a powerful personal investment by Abelard in this lament and the ideas it addresses, an investment that leaves him struggling for command of its speaking voice/s. Themes in the Planctus It is not surprising that the Carmen and Planctus, both written by Abelard for his immediate family at around the same period, share many key themes. The nature of familial relationships was something Abelard considered in the Carmen, but this theme takes on much greater significance in the Planctus where it undergirds, and indeed often precipitates, the action in each of the six laments. Most striking

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about Abelard’s treatment of the nature and function of family relationships in the Planctus is how deeply distrustful he appears to be of them. Family constantly proves to be the basis of conflict, betrayal, and death. It is the unfettered emotional imperatives of familial relationships that set in motion the tragedies of Dinah (family honor and fraternal love), Jacob and his sons (sibling rivalry for paternal affection), Jephthah’s daughter (filial devotion to a father), and Abner (fraternal vendetta). Given that Abelard may have been producing the Carmen for his son and so thinking about the nature of fatherhood at around the same time as he was composing the Planctus, it is telling that father-child bonds appear in the laments as sources of potential danger and shame for the child in a way that inverts any parent-child ideal. In two of the laments, Abelard depicts a child making reparation or expiation for the deeds of a father, as when Jacob bemoans that Simeon “expiates my crimes” (“mea luit crimina,” II, 7), and Jephthah cries out to his daughter: “you pay the price for our joys” (“nostra lues gaudia,” III, 30). In the Planctus Dine, Dinah pictures Sechem as “an everlasting disgrace” (“obprobrium perpes”) to his descendants (I, 12). Yet while too much family feeling may lead to adverse outcomes, Abelard seems to question whether can one have too little as well. A biblical fact not commonly adduced with regard to Abelard’s depiction of Jephthah, but to which Abelard may well have been sensitive given his own family situation and that of Astralabe, is that Jephthah was the child of a harlot, cast out of his home and inheritance by his brothers ( Judges 11. 1–2). Is this psychological detail at the heart of the obstinacy with which Abelard has Jephthah hold to his vow? As the Chorus laments, although a father, Jephthah is actually an enemy to his own kind: “O patrem, sed hostem generis” (III, 122), where “generis” suggests both his own kin and the role of father. Although Abelard clearly mistrusts the power of familial affection that can produce self-interested and treacherous actions, is Jephthah and his fundamental disconnect from a sense of family equally a danger to society? In posing these questions in his Planctus, Abelard shows himself as ambivalent about family as he is in his Carmen, where the bonds of nature are valued below friendship, but still must exist for society to function as it should and a person to become a virtuous individual. The Carmen also questions the value of interpersonal relationships that do not involve a blood tie, and similar questions appear in the Planctus as well. Along with biological family ties, heterosexual relationships such as those between Dinah and Sechem, and Samson and Delilah, are implicated in tragedies that befall the characters in the laments. In these cases, male-female sexual attraction is depicted as a dangerous and destabilizing force that can have significant national ramifications, leading in these laments to the destruction of two entire races of people. Intersecting these familial dramas, either prompting or avenging them, are the machineries of justice, both human and divine. The same lexical items (iustus, iusticia, iudicium) recur throughout the Planctus and every lament is either peopled with judges or references to what is just.61 Yet justice, both in concrete terms, and even in conceptual terms, eludes most of the speakers. Dinah laments that

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the justice meted out to Sechem was “too just” (“nimis crudeles et pii,” I, 22); Jacob that his sons are wrongfully paying the price for his own failings (“noui meo sceleri talis datur ultio,” II, 2); and the maids of Israel that Jephthah’s form of justice is simply insane (“O mentem amentem iudicis!” III, 120). The speaking voice that opens the Planctus Israel claims that God’s judgments are a deep abyss (IV, 1), a declaration that both acknowledges God’s providence and simultaneously expresses incomprehension at how such providence operates.62 In this it appears at odds with the more philosophic voice in the Carmen that constantly exhorts the wise man to have faith in God’s providence, even in times of adversity (529–532; 845–858). In his lament over Abner, David remains fixated on human justice, having apparently learnt nothing from the series of vendetta deaths that motivated his lament in the first place. He summons the justice of this world (“principes iusticie sumant zelum,” V, 27) and calls for an act of vengeance as the solution to the tragedy of Abner’s death. Indeed, the final word of his lament is the gerund “uindicandum” (V, 28), a sobering choice by Abelard that reveals how little anyone in the Planctus really learns from their sufferings.63 In the lament over Saul and Jonathan, David declares himself utterly at a loss to understand how God’s own anointed could have fallen, and yet, despite this divine blow, he keeps the fallible machinery of human justice turning. He himself metes out summary execution upon the messenger of Saul’s death (VI, 59–62), before turning in despair to his lyre for a consolation he fails to find. In these laments, then, we see human justice, just like the human family, as flawed and liable to failure. It can be pursued too far, it can become simple revenge, and it can end in wrongful death. Overarching human events is the indubitable hand of God, but it is a struggle to understand how his providence can be understood in the events that take place in this world: truly his ways are a deep abyss and difficult to discern. There is a deep malaise that lies over the Planctus. Not only do the figures in the laments suffer from an almost debilitating lack of understanding of their situation, they are surrounded by horrific and untimely deaths, almost none of which could be viewed as righteous.64 Sechem and Abner fall through treachery, both brought low through wounds to their genital region.65 Jephthah’s daughter is sacrificed by her father like a burnt offering in a public place. Jacob’s lament is in fact the product of a cruel hoax by several of his sons, as he has at that moment no filial deaths to mourn, although he has been led to believe that he has lost Joseph to wild beasts and that Benjamin will be held as a hostage in order to release Simeon from his chains.66 More disturbingly, the pall of suicide hangs over the voluntary and indeed, willed, deaths of Jephthah’s daughter, Samson, and Saul.67 These are all far removed from the glorious deaths of the martyrs that Abelard celebrates in his Hymns. I argued in the previous chapter that there is a notable sense of late style in the Carmen, with its focus on old age, preparation for death and beyond, and the sense of leaving a legacy from one’s life. The late style of the Planctus, however, is darker and more personalized. A sense of despair pervades the series. Where the Carmen spoke of preparations for death in terms of advice and exhortation, the Planctus enact troubling scenes in which individuals attempt to deal with death

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and its aftermath. We actually hear the suffering individuals cry out in their pain and lack of understanding. And although one might expect this of the genre, it is still surprising how completely this act of lamentation fails in and of itself to provide any form of consolation to those who suffer. In the final lament of the series, David finds himself almost incapable of going on. He declares that he can barely live without Jonathan—“et me post te uiuere mori sit assidue” (and for me to live on after you is to die repeatedly; VI, 49)—and he is left strumming his lyre in the final line of the series, utterly broken: “deficit et spiritus” (my spirit also fails, VI, 68). As Sweeney declares: “The laments end not because there is any end to grief but only because there is an end to the ability to express it any further. The cycle of six laments, then, has no real conclusion except in sorrow that exceeds the capacity of language.”68 As in Abelard’s poem of advice for his son, the theme of immoderation runs strongly through the Planctus. In the Carmen, Abelard exhorted his readers to regard the Golden Mean; in the Planctus, by contrast, he uses scenes of personal desolation in the wake of excessive behavior to make evident the consequences of lack of moderation. Dinah’s curiosity in seeing the foreign women, Samson’s inability to tear himself away from Delilah’s charms, and Joab’s unquenchable desire for revenge all allow disaster to befall them and those around them. The pain and sorrow suffered by Samson become so great that they prompt his act of vengeance against the Philistines, but is this an act of nationalist devotion and piety, or the final action of a Godless despair? Is David’s declaration that he can hardly live without Jonathan a powerful statement of love, or evidence that his love has gone beyond its proper bounds? Just as Abelard insisted in the Carmen that excess could turn a virtue into a vice, so in the Planctus, all forms of immoderate behavior become potentially dangerous, regardless of their initial moral value. The familial piety and desire for justice of Dinah’s brothers becomes “too cruel” (“nimis crudeles et pii,” I, 22—a lexical collocation unique to Abelard in Medieval Latin), while the ostensibly laudable steadfastness to their vows exhibited by both Jephthah and his daughter clearly goes beyond the mean and results in senseless slaughter.69 One area where the Planctus diverge from the Carmen is in their exploration of gender. This is not considered in any depth in the Carmen where a traditional antifeminism is evident in the depiction of old women as lascivious (190), young women as flighty and needing to be married quickly (199–200; 677–680), women as sexual predators (191–192; 549), and women as not constituted to hold authority (547–548; 1021–1024). By contrast, every one of the Planctus addresses directly the question of what constitutes a man, what a woman, and how the two can ever fundamentally relate to each other. In the Planctus Dine, Dinah repeatedly adduces how masculine Sechem is despite his circumcision (which, as is discussed further ahead, is read as an equivalent of an emasculation). He is a young man (“iuuenis,” “‘iuuenilis,” I, 33, 29), a “prince of the land” (“princeps terre,” I, 32), and, most importantly, a father, since Dinah mentions their descendants: “posteris” (I, 12). That is to say, Sechem’s genital excision has not affected the primary functions of his maleness in terms of sexual attractiveness, community leadership, and paternity. In this, the Planctus Dine clearly participates

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in what Martin Irvine and Bonnie Wheeler have identified as Abelard’s project of “remasculinization,” which was an “eight-year campaign (c. 1132–1140) to reinvent himself and demonstrate his inner masculinity” through “a performative model of masculinity: a man is he who acts like a man.”70 Meanwhile, Dinah struggles with what her sexual experience has taught her about herself as a woman. She has to accept that her physical appearance is a function of herself that neither she nor any male can control (“Coactus me rapere | mea raptus spetie,” I, 17–18), that a woman can become a plaything for a man (“plebis aduerse ludis illusa,” I, 6), and that for a woman, becoming sexually active is a kind of identity in itself: she is now known (“Quam male sum cognita,” I, 9). A radical rethink of gender also lies at the heart of the Planctus uirginum over Jephthah’s daughter. This young woman challenges assumptions that necessarily connect particular actions to sexed bodies, demanding the right to be sacrificed by a boy, and insisting that her father be man enough to slay her. Yet at the same time, having won her right to die, she requests an interval in which to lament the lost fruition of her womanhood, that in dying a virgin girl, she will never experience the embodied maternality of a woman. This marks a transition from Abelard’s conception of female piety in his Hymns where women are simply virile and happily sacrifice family, including their own children, to the holy cause. In the Planctus uirginum, by contrast, Abelard effects a balance between a girl’s manly wish to die on the one hand, and her maternal regret on the other. These gender polarities recur over the next two laments, each of which presents a gender extreme. While it has often been noticed that the negative depiction of women (really, an essentialized “Woman”) and female sexuality in the Planctus Israel over Samson is intemperate, there has been, however, little corresponding recognition that the praise of Abner as a figure of “man” in the Planctus Dauid super Abner is equally overblown. Certainly the biblical Abner does not merit the description that David bestows on him here as a “uir perfectus” (IV, 12). Abner appears in the Bible as flawed and as human as any Old Testament warrior, and Abelard’s praise of Abner is not drawn from his biblical exemplar. Rather, taken in tandem, the Planctus Israel and Planctus Dauid super Abner offer broad gender stereotypes, positions from which to begin thinking about the true meaning of what constitutes a person. Both laments converge on a moment of betrayal that is radically gendered: the sexual betrayal of Samson by Delilah in one instance, and the masculine rogue warrior culture from within which Joab attacks Abner (and strikes him in the groin) in the other. These gendered extremes (woman as font of evil / perfect martial man; female sexual temptation / masculine vendetta) necessarily question the veracity of gender stereotypes as a way of thinking about humans as individuals, and of judging actions as belonging to either virtue or vice. What these polarities hint at comes to resolution in the final lament: the need to go beyond gender if we are to understand both humanity and human relations. The Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha attempts to envision a nongendered relationship of equality between friends who could in fact bear any

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gender or any kind of sexed body. The final lament thus offers a resolution to the probing gender investigations so prevalent throughout the rest of the series of laments. Ferroul has argued that Abelard can be read as a medieval rarity, whose writings reveal how he “experienced and expressed his understanding of his gender through sexuality, marriage, and sexual mutilation.” 71 This stands as an eloquent summation of the theme of gender and gender relations in the Planctus as well. A final theme that appears both in the Carmen and the Planctus is that of public reputation. In the Carmen, Abelard developed an understanding of reputation as gendered, picturing it in the case of women as more fragile and vulnerable to adverse external influence. This same argument appears in the Planctus Dine where Dinah laments that she has become the plaything of a foreign people and that she is now known (“cognita,” I, 9), both carnally and by reputation. Elsewhere in his writings, especially his Historia, Abelard addresses the mental anguish that can stem from public humiliation and the possible descent from such a state into despair. This is clearly a strong theme in his Planctus Israel, where the transformation of a blinded and broken Samson into the butt of cruel jokes and public games is pictured as instrumental in his growing resolve to gain vengeance through the destruction of both his tormentors and himself. Similarly, in the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, part of David’s tone of resignation stems from his incomprehension that God could have allowed his chosen people to be laughed at by their enemies: “Insultat fidelibus | infidelis populus | . . . Insultantes inquiunt” (VI, 17–18, 21). For these characters, tragedy is felt not just in terms of their own losses, but also in their awareness of their enemies’ delight in these losses. Instructive as a summary of these themes is Massimo Sannelli’s Index verborum of the Planctus that allows a reader to comprehend at a glance the frequency with which Abelard employs particular words and ideas in his laments. The most commonly recurring lexical items throughout the six Planctus are (alphabetically): “amor,” “Deus”/“Dominus,” “dolor,” “filius”/“filia,” “hostis,” “mors,” “pater,” “populus,” and “vir.” 72 This tells us that in the Planctus, Abelard’s thoughts are focused on the intersections between love, pain, and death; he is deeply concerned with family and familial relationships, particularly those between a father and a child; he cares about what constitutes a man and manliness; he is always aware of the role that reputation and public opinion play in shaping events and individuals; his world seethes with intense, often violent, interpersonal conflicts; and yet these dramas are played out within a fundamentally deistic and providential universe. Specific Studies in the Planctus I take here the opportunity to explore in depth a number of issues that appear in Abelard’s Planctus. The four studies below address particular matters as they arise in the laments; consequently not every one of the six laments is treated here, while some laments may be discussed more than once.

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Abelard’s Feminine Voice in Lament: The Planctus Dine Abelard’s laments do not, and are not intended to, provide a psychologically revealing insight into the mind or inner life of the speaker. This is particularly true of the Planctus Dine that appears rather to displace, elide, and conceal than to reveal. It is the only lament of the series of Planctus to be voiced by a female speaker, and Abelard seems to display a certain difficulty in accessing the feminine voice, with his Dinah appearing as little more than a mouthpiece whose function it is to declaim the salient points of this story and announce the particular perspective that Abelard wishes to convey. A similar stiltedness appears in the words of Jephthah’s daughter in the Planctus uirginum. Scholars shift uncomfortably whenever the issue is raised of personal references from Abelard’s life appearing within his Planctus, but the correspondences seem obvious here.73 The language of betrayal linked to the genital excision of circumcision in the Planctus Dine resonates with the passage in Abelard’s Historia where he describes his castration and the public and his personal reaction to it. In the Historia, Abelard relates his castration as a “proditio,” 74 he records the wailings and laments that greeted it, even describing the outcry as a “planctus,” 75 and makes frequent reference to the pain and suffering inflicted by the event, using terms like “plaga,” “uulnus,” and “dolor.” Elsewhere in Abelard’s writings there is a strong correlation between the language he uses to discuss the ritual practice of circumcision and his recollection of his mutilation in the Historia.76 Indeed, Irvine has remarked of Abelard’s discussion of circumcision in the Collationes that “since so much of the Philosopher’s dialogue with the Jew is concerned with circumcision, we can read here an anxiety about genital privation and emasculation refracted onto a debate about law, the sign of circumcision.” 77 The points Abelard wishes to make known through his female protagonist in the Planctus Dine are that Sechem was a great prince of his land, that he could not help but act as he did given her beauty and sexual attractiveness, that the retribution against him was too vengeful and too cruel, and that he should have been spared for his youth and because he had made amends by offering to marry the woman he initially wronged. The lament thus offers an apologia for a young man brought low through no real fault of his own. Dinah is willing to apportion the blame for events both to herself (I, 8–10) and her brothers (I, 22), but offers a veritable roll call of reasons why Sechem’s behavior should be excused (I, 17–20, 25–32). Wheeler has noted in regard to Abelard’s rehearsal of his castration in the Historia, “there is no Augustinian personal humility woven into the humiliation narrative,”78 and the same would appear to hold true here as well. In addition, the insistence by Dinah in this lament on the performative masculinity of Sechem as prince, warrior, lover, and—revealingly—father, shows the Planctus Dine to be a part of the “remasculinization” project that both Irvine and Wheeler have identified Abelard as pursuing in his writings of the 1130s,79 and to which Dinah’s voice here has been co-opted. It must be remarked that very few literary laments claiming to be in the voice of a woman who had suffered both violent defloration and violent widowhood

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would include a theological analysis of circumcision as a covenant, with terms like “proselyte” and “foreskin.”80 Yet Abelard takes the opportunity here to explore some of the issues surrounding circumcision that also exercised his thought in his theological and ethical writings.81 Interestingly, in both the Historia and the Planctus Dine, the lamentation over the genital mutilation that occurs is voiced by others rather than the sufferer—clerics and students in the Historia, Dinah in this Planctus—who then bewail the unreasonable crime that has been committed. This Wheeler has identified as a “strategy of rhetorical displacement.” 82 This refusal to take up a position of lament in his own voice then allows Abelard to adopt the position of his later Letters where he reads his castration as unalloyed good.83 Two notable elisions made by Abelard in his Planctus Dine from the biblical account of Dinah’s rape reveal how Abelard shapes this story to his own purposes. In the biblical account, after Sechem has taken Dinah’s virginity by force (“rapuit et dormivit cum illa vi opprimens virginem,” Genesis 34. 2), his heart, or soul, becomes attached to hers: “conglutinata est anima eius cum ea” (Genesis 34. 3); “Sychem filii mei adhesit anima filiae vestrae” (Genesis 34. 8). Yet mutual love plays no part in the lament that Abelard’s Dinah speaks, and she appears to be concerned rather with legalistic considerations such as stain and purity, justice and revenge, compensation offered and received, and reputation and posterity. This is because it does not suit Abelard’s purposes for this lament to be about the power or purity of heterosexual devotion; indeed, the love of Dinah’s and Sechem’s souls joined as one is precisely what Abelard does not wish to advocate in this lament. As I have argued, Abelard intends for the sequence of six laments to end in the ungendered, soul-to-soul love of David and Jonathan, which can then stand in contradistinction to other forms of relationship, especially sexually active, heterosexual attractions such as that between Sechem and Dinah. For this reason, Abelard needed to elide passages from the biblical text referencing the adherence of Sechem’s soul to Dinah’s. In fact, the only word of love spoken in Dinah’s entire lament is “Amoris impulsio” (I, 25), where the term is not used to signify affection but rather a kind of animal compulsion. Abelard here employs the more carnal term for love, “amor,” over alternatives that could suggest a love more freely chosen, such as “dilectio.” In collocation with “impulsio,” it conveys the sense of heterosexual attraction not as a true form of love but only a compulsion induced by Nature, a point Abelard also makes in his Carmen (121–124). As such, it does not express Dinah’s feelings for Sechem, as one might expect in a woman’s lament over her lost paramour, but rather offers a justification for his sexually aggressive behavior. Wheeler has noted that in the Historia, “Abelard’s castration narrative is notoriously evasive” and proceeds by “eliding and avoiding” certain matters, particularly those to do with blame, judgment, and punishment.84 This charge is particularly true with regard to a second elision that Abelard makes from the biblical account of Dinah’s situation. In this case, he omits any mention of the justification offered in the final verse of the Bible story by Simeon and Levi when Jacob complains of their excessive action: “responderunt numquid ut scorto abuti

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debuere sorore nostra” (they replied: “Surely we could not allow him to abuse our sister as though she were a whore?” Genesis 34. 31). This defense clearly recalls what Abelard has described as Fulbert’s justification for commissioning his castration, namely, the belief that Abelard had used and then put aside his niece to the lasting shame of the family.85 Not surprisingly, in a lament in which Sechem is intended to appear undeserving of his fate, this consideration has to be excised. Indeed, the blame for the tragedy of Sechem and his people is shifted not just to the excessive zeal for family honor of Simeon and Levi, but oddly to Dinah herself. Given that betrayal is a powerful theme throughout the entire series of the Planctus, it is perplexing to find Dinah here claiming that she has been “betrayed” by herself (“per memet prodite,” I, 7, 10), whereas Sechem, by contrast, is said rather to have been “destroyed” by himself (“per temet perdito,” I, 13, 16). This is not to say that there is nothing innovative about the way Abelard uses Dinah in this lament as a female figure. Medieval exegetical readings of Dinah focused on her unrestrained sexuality, reading this as representative of the irresponsible abbot (or abbess) venturing forth from enclosure in order to engage in the business of the world, or the dangers that might beset the contemplative soul should it leave its narrow bed of communion with Christ, or the peril of curiosity.86 Abelard himself adduces the first two arguments in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, where he concludes his warning on proper monastic enclosure with the words: “Dinah went out to see alien women and was defiled.” 87 The association of Dinah with (sexual) curiosity is particularly a feature of Bernard of Clairvaux’s thought: “O Dinah, what was the need for you to see the foreign women? What was the necessity? What was the use of it? Or was it just curiosity?”88 In the Planctus Dine, however, Abelard moves beyond this limited representation. I do not agree with John R. Clark that “Abelard, in his planctus, has ignored the extensive exegetical interpretation and presented us with Dina, the tragic human figure.”89 As I argue, Dinah here is more a mouthpiece for a number of issues dear to Abelard’s heart than a fully realized or humanized persona. Yet it is also true that in the Planctus Dine, the defilement of Dinah does not provide the only or even the greatest moral of the story. Beyond this moment of selfconfessed error on Dinah’s part stand more deeply explored themes such as the dangers of family ties, summary justice, immoderation, and the unrestrained use (or abuse) of power. In this Planctus, then, Abelard looks beyond the sexualization of a woman—the way Dinah and her story had traditionally been read—to call into question entire networks of social and family structures and their problematic relationship with justice and power. This lament, then, is peculiarly Abelardian. The speaking voice that Abelard has fashioned for Dinah is not intended to represent a true female voice, or even, for that matter, a male fantasy of a true female voice. Abelard has no more attempted to compose a medieval version of an Ovidian Heroidean elegy than he has created a medieval precursor of the early modern unrestrained and abandoned “nouvelle Héloïse.” Abelard’s Dinah is not a young woman purporting to speak from her heart and lament her lost love, but a man using a female figure to

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think through and offer justifications for events earlier in his life—a man with particular axes to grind and some things he would rather hide. Abelard’s Masculine Voice in Lament: The Planctus Iacob If the Planctus Dine reveals a certain failure in Abelard’s expression of the female voice in lament, this is more than compensated for by the Planctus Iacob, where Jacob articulates a moving lament over his children. That Abelard should have chosen to write such a lament is, however, itself a contestation of the gender imperatives of the planctus genre, since one of the key figurae in the early and high medieval lament form was Jacob’s wife, Rachel. Through her mention in Jeremiah as lamenting over her lost children,90 Rachel became pictured in the Gospels as the type of sorrowing mother, an Old Testament exemplar who foretold the slaughter of the innocents by Herod.91 From here she became the leading figure in medieval laments. In her comprehensive bibliography of medieval laments, Janthia Yearley lists seven Latin planctus in the name of Rachel over her children.92 John Stevens argues that Rachel was “an important lamenter in medieval liturgical plays” and “her planctus was so central that at least in one instance the Innocents’ ‘play’ is called Ordo Rachelis.” The lamenting Rachel predates such liturgical drama, however, first coming to medieval notice through the planctus of the ninth-century Notker of St. Gall.93 On more than a dozen occasions Abelard himself adduces Rachel as a figura of sorrow, in many of these instances explicitly picturing her as lamenting her lost children. In his Sermon 22, when he urges the nuns of the Paraclete to mourn the martyred St. Stephen, he quotes the passage on Rachel from Jeremiah and cites her as the nuns’ exemplar.94 Looking to the future of consolation in the next world in his Sermon 34, Abelard again adduces Rachel and depicts her as sorrowing now over her children, over whom she will rejoice in the future.95 Indeed, one of Abelard’s most powerful Hymns takes as its text the Jeremian lament of Rachel in order to evoke the horrific Slaughter of the Innocents: “Est in Rama | Vox audita | Rachel flentis, | Super natos | Interfectos | Eiulantis” (104,1/1–6). For Abelard, then, to conceive a lament over lost children, not in the voice of Rachel, but in that of her husband, Jacob, marks a powerful development in his thinking of the nature, genre, and indeed, gender, of lament. Abelard’s ability to compose a male-voiced lament that powerfully and perceptively conveys the mind-set of an aging father dealing with the loss of his children is most evident in the way he represents Benjamin in the Planctus Iacob. Benjamin appears on numerous occasions within Abelard’s theological works as a figura, but is movingly transformed in the Planctus Iacob into a beloved child. In his Sermon 24, Abelard adduces the fact that Benjamin was the last-born and most beloved of Jacob’s children and so identifies him with Paul, the most recent of the apostles: “Therefore, brothers, Benjamin, the most recently-born of the brothers and the dearest to his father, is Paul himself, who, most recently called by God after the Apostles, stood the dearer to God as he was in merits the more outstanding.” 96 He employs a similar reading in his Commentary on Romans.97

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In these same texts, Abelard constructs the death in childbirth of Benjamin’s mother, Rachel, as Paul’s overturning of his Jewish upbringing (here gendered as female and specifically maternal) and in particular, its emphasis on the bodycentered commands of the Law.98 Benjamin’s original name, Benonim, is read as referring to the sorrow he/Paul has caused his Jewish mother by persecuting her error;99 similarly his new name is bestowed by his father/the Father in recognition of Paul’s destruction of the Synagogue.100 These exegetical readings are founded upon the effacement of the maternal figure of Rachel. Here Benjamin is not considered as a living person, much less a vulnerable child: his purpose for Abelard is solely hermeneutic, as revealed by the fact that Abelard almost always precedes his name with such phrases as “in typu” or “sub figura.” Later in Sermon 24 even this periphrasis is dispensed with, and Paul is simply described as “ille Benjamin noster.”101 Likewise in Abelard’s Hymn 91 to Paul, the third strophe represents Paul as Benjamin, the ravening wolf of Jacob’s prophecy: “Mane Beniamin | praedam rapuit, | Escas vespere | largas dividit, | Vitae ferculis | mundum reficit” (91, 3/1–6).102 The contrast of this impersonal figure with the infant Benjamin of the Planctus Iacob is striking. In this Planctus, Benjamin is a child lovingly remembered by his aged father. Jacob recalls his deeply human, personal characteristics, such as his lisping childhood words (“informes in facie, teneri sermones,” II, 23), which he fondly regards as the height of honeyed eloquence (“omnem eloquentie fauum transcendentes,” II, 24). The nursery songs that accompanied his childhood (“Pueriles nenie,” II, 21) are no longer the tiresome tunes that Abelard (and Heloise) believed would distract a philosopher from his true calling,103 but sweeter than all other songs (“super cantus omnes . . . erant dulces,” II, 21–22). When Jacob remembers that Benjamin was the last born of his children and yet the dearest to him (“Posterior natu fratribus, | sed amore prior omnibus,” II, 13–14), Abelard offers this not as a theological figuration, but as a personal memory, made more touching by the details he provides of the delights this child has brought to Jacob’s old age (“Blanditiis tuis miserum | releuabas patris senium,” II, 17–18). In having Jacob recall the death of Rachel in childbed and his subsequent renaming of Benjamin (“quem moriens mater Bennonim | pater gaudens dixit Beniamin,” II, 15–16), Abelard evokes not a doctrinal lesson about the Church, but human tragedy and the will to go on despite the death of a loved one. Indeed, whereas in his Sermon 24 and his Commentary on Romans Abelard saw in Benjamin/Paul the effacement of the maternal, in this Planctus, Benjamin explicitly brings Rachel back to Jacob’s mind, a point which is made twice: “restoring . . . the face of your beautiful mother” (“reddens . . . decore matris faciem,” II, 19–20) and “representing each of them with equal beauty” (“pari pulcritudine | representans utrosque,” II, 28–29). The Benjamin of Abelard’s Planctus Iacob is thus a complete departure from the Benjamin of his theological writings. The narrative details of the biblical figure remain the same, but instead of being allegorized, they are personalized and imagined through the lens of a sorrowing, reminiscing, and loving father.

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From the opening invocation in this lament by Jacob to his unfortunate sons, “Infelices filii” (II, 1), to the quiet and wistful resignation that looks to oneness in God beyond the grave as the only possible consolation for loss (“tu nos nobis facito | uel apud te coniungi,” II, 38–39), Abelard reveals an assured and accomplished hand in creating and sustaining the plangent mode. This is not done with artificial apostrophes, rhetorical cries of “heu” or, as in the Planctus Dine, unconvincing self-condemnations of “woe to wretched me” (“Ve michi misere,” I, 7, 10). Instead, allowing himself to access the emotional disposition of a father dealing with the loss of a beloved wife and children, Abelard reveals himself capable of producing an understated lament that resonates with verisimilitude of feeling. He may elsewhere in his writings have theorized lament as a feminine mode, but he shows here that he is far more adept at composing a lament voiced by a masculine than a feminine speaker. A lament over his children in the voice of Jacob may be a departure from convention, but Abelard boldly and effectively turns the genre in a new direction. Circumcision, Sacrament, and Sacrifice: The Planctus Dine and Planctus uirginum The Planctus uirginum does not only offer a powerful reconsideration of gender roles: also at work within its verses lies a deep exploration of the mechanics and meaning of Old and New Testament rites of atonement. I mentioned above that Abelard has Dinah enunciate in the Planctus Dine a doctrinal discussion of the Old Testament covenant of circumcision and its efficacy. Her lament revealed the failure of circumcision as a means of salvation, as she regretted that in Sechem’s case, it proved ineffective in preventing his death: “Frustra circumcisio fecit te proselitum, | non ualens infamie tollere prepucium” (I, 14–15). In the biblical account that lies behind the Planctus uirginum, Jephthah promises God a burnt offering if his cause against the sons of Ammon is successful: “votum vovit Domino dicens . . . holocaustum offeram Domino” ( Judges 11. 30–31). In Abelard’s Planctus, when Jephthah’s daughter demands the right to die in fulfillment of this vow, she explicitly recalls the precedent of Isaac (“Immolare filium uolens Abraham | non hanc apud Dominum habet graciam,” III, 36–37) who was also intended to be sacrificed as a burnt offering: “ubi est victima holocausti; dixit Abraham Deus providebit sibi victimam holocausti fili mi” (Genesis 22. 7–8). Moreover, the vocabulary in the biblical story that describes Abraham’s preparation to kill Isaac—“posuit eum in altari super struem lignorum extenditque manum et arripuit gladium ut immolaret filium” (Genesis 22. 9–10)— resonates with that employed by Abelard to describe the actual slaughter of Jephthah’s daughter. With her throat cut by a sword that has been snatched, and her body burnt on a pyre, Jephthah’s daughter clearly dies in the form of an Old Testament burnt offering. The maids of Israel lament this as a travesty, and the interrogation of ritual atonement that runs through the Planctus would support their judgment. Although Isaac was intended to be a burnt offering, his sacrifice did not eventuate because

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God intervened and made it clear that this kind of human offering was not what he wanted: the point was for Abraham to exhibit true fear of God in being prepared to sacrifice his only begotten child.104 But if Jephthah’s daughter is to stand as a second Isaac, then her potential sacrifice should bear the same meaning as his, and in his Commentary on Romans, Abelard argues that Isaac is intended to signify a spiritual circumcision of the gentiles who were called to God after the initial covenant in the flesh.105 In other words, if she is to figure sacrificial atonement, Jephthah’s daughter should supersede both the burnt offering that was not asked of Isaac and the circumcision in the body that did not avail Sechem. Although Abelard takes the biblical story of Jephthah’s daughter ( Judges 11. 30–40) as his primary source for the Planctus uirginum, it is notable that between the moment when Jephthah’s daughter demands the right to die by her father’s vow ( Judges 11. 38; Planctus uirginum, 72) and the very next verse in the Bible when this desire is pictured as being fulfilled ( Judges 11. 39, Planctus uirginum, 116), Abelard invents and inserts close to fifty lines of original and powerful poetry, most of these describing the bath the girl takes in preparation for her death. Dronke has called this a wedding mime and has suggested that it may have been acted out when the lament was performed.106 Certainly the bridal imagery here draws from the Song of Songs to render the Planctus uirginum a mournful counterpart to the joyful wedding celebrations of the true Bride and Bridegroom in a sequence like the Epithalamica, marking a difference between the inevitability of earthly sorrow and the assurance of heavenly joy. However, within the context of preparation for sacrifice, there is another interpretation. In his theological and ethical writings where he addresses the covenant of circumcision, Abelard makes it clear that it was superseded by the sacrament of baptism.107 In his Sermon 3, “In circumcisione Domini,” Abelard takes the traditional Christian imagery of baptism as a bath, and specifically envisages it as a bath preceding a wedding: “afterwards we are joined in the baptism of his body, which is the Church, just as a bride after her bath is taken up into the embrace of her bridegroom.”108 As Abelard points out in this sermon, the value of baptism as a form of atonement is that it is gender-neutral: “Thus, following circumcision, there succeeded the sacrament of baptism which sanctified men and women equally.”109 Circumcision was clearly a male-only ritual, but as Abelard represented the Jewish understanding of the covenant, the pain of the excision to be borne in the male member was a correlative of the pain that females would suffer in childbirth as part of the curse on original sin.110 Jephthah’s daughter, however, is specifically prevented from experiencing childbirth (“me semine priuet Dominus,” III, 68), as she is to be put to death before she has known any man: “munde carnis hostia | quam nulla pollutio, nulla nouit macula” (III, 71–72); thus she cannot effect the female equivalent of circumcision. Instead, having lamented her enforced childlessness, she immediately enters the bath: “Que statim ingressa balneum”’ (III, 76), marking a move from both Old Testament forms of reparation—burnt offering and childbirth as female suffering in equivalence to male circumcision—to the ungendered New Testament sacrament of baptism. The horror of the Planctus uirginum is that this baptism is not enough. In a disturbing sequence of events, Jephthah’s daughter exits her bath, now cleansed

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(“Egressa post paululum | uirgo lota balneum,” III, 88–89), and yet immediately—in the very next strophe—fashions herself as a burnt offering: “ut aram extruat, ignem acceleret | dum ipsa uictimam interim preparet” (III, 91–92), which she sees as pleasing to the Lord: “que Deo conuenit” (III, 93). Jephthah, too, fails to see that the price of atonement has already been paid. He continues with a burnt offering sacrifice that has been surpassed not only by spiritual circumcision in the figura of Isaac (a willingness to offer the required sacrifice that is not in the end enforced), but by a ritual of baptism as well. The progress of the action in the Planctus uirginum thus offers a total travesty of what should be a movement from Old Testament sacrifice through the covenant of circumcision to New Testament sacrament. The issue of burnt offerings again outlines the ideological divide that exists between the more traditional and impersonal Christian world of Abelard’s Hymns and his more human-focused Planctus, since a number of Hymns celebrate the concept of the burnt offering.111 One Hymn on the martyrdom of virgins (120, 3/1–4)112 suggests that virgin female flesh makes a more pleasing sacrifice because it is purer and the female sex is weaker: “Ut quo sexus | harum est infirmior, | Sit ipsarum | virtus mirabilior, | Et ipsarum | tanto gratior | Fit hostia, | quanto purior” (120, 2/5–12). Repeatedly in the Hymns, the concept of the burnt offering is associated with familial martyrdom: in one instance this is conveyed via the symbolism of a bridal couple (“Haec ipsius | holocaustum offerens; | Virgo sponsa, | virgo sponsus est, | Sponsa martyr, | sponsus martyr est”; 122, 1/7–12). More pointedly, in Hymn 99, Abelard adduces a vast array of family relationships that can be employed to encourage martyrdom for Christ (“Holocaustum | Christo facta”; 99, 2/11–12), although he particularly conceives this role as a maternal one, invoking the mother of Maccabees who rebirths for Heaven those whom she first birthed on earth. The contrast with the Planctus uirginum is manifest. In the Planctus, the concept of the burnt offering sacrifice is revealed as passé, superseded by the sacrament of baptism that washes clean all sins and should require no further suffering. Here the family member, in this case, the father, who insists upon the sacrifice of his child is not praised but decried as insane (“O mentem amentem . . . O zelum insanum,” III, 120–121) and an enemy to his kind (“sed hostem generis,” III, 122). The destruction of his daughter is viewed by the Chorus within the lament as both a travesty and a tragedy, not as a glorious sacrifice, and certainly not as a victory.113 In the Planctus uirginum, then, Abelard has rethought his ideas on sacrifice and atonement as conveyed to Heloise elsewhere in his writings, such as his Hymns and his Ep. VII on the history of nuns. Rejecting images of militant Christian martyrdom, especially by women, and the Old Testament concept of the burnt offering, he proposes in their place a revaluation of the importance of family and a New Testament focus on baptism as means of atonement without violence. The Question of Homosociality: The Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha In his study of the medieval history of homosexuality, John Boswell cited Abelard’s Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha as evidence of a homoerotic

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sensibility in the twelfth century, claiming that although “no medieval figure is better known for heterosexual interests than Abelard, yet in his sixth planctus he explored with great sensitivity and feeling the nature of the love between the two men. Whether or not he intended to portray the relationship as sexual, he certainly used erotic vocabulary to invest it with pathos.”114 I have outlined before and elsewhere why I think Boswell is wrong in reading this lament as evocative of an erotic male-male relationship. I believe it is meant rather to express a relationship between two people who love each other disinterestedly and out of pure friendship, beyond questions of sex, sexual orientation, and gender. I would, however, like to explore further Boswell’s recognition of Abelard’s erotic literary play in this lament, as there is no question that Abelard teases his readers with the homoerotic potential of his words, now shying away from the more obvious sexual implications in his exemplar, now including suggestive images not in the original. Gerald Bond has observed similar play in the works of Baudri of Bourgeuil, where “the inherent duplicity reinforces the reader’s inability to resolve the ambiguities,”115 and Mews has argued that “it is simply inappropriate to impose a univocal understanding of contemporary psychoanalytic theory on medieval authors, whose erotic vocabulary delights in ambiguity.”116 Of the six laments in the series, this one possesses the most extensive biblical exemplar from which Abelard could work: 2 Samuel 1. 17–27, comprising eleven verses. Many of these appear in Abelard’s lament in one form or another, but several changes made by Abelard impact significantly upon the homoerotic tenor of the lament. Toward the end of the biblical lament, David turns his attention solely to Jonathan and declares: “doleo super te frater mi Ionathan, decore nimis et amabilis super amorem mulierum” (2 Samuel 1. 26; I grieve over you, my brother Jonathan, exceedingly handsome and beloved above the love of women). Abelard similarly has his David address Jonathan as “more than a brother” (“Plus fratre michi, Ionatha,” VI, 33), but there is no subsequent mention either of Jonathan’s pleasing physical appearance or of how Jonathan exceeds the love of women. Instead, Abelard moves directly into a nongendered description of the relationship between the two of them, as his David declares to Jonathan that “you are one in soul with me”’ (“in una mecum anima,” VI, 33). This description, at once loving and gender-neutral, is also biblical, but drawn from much earlier in the story where David and Jonathan first meet. There the Bible claims: “The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (“anima Ionathan conligata est animae David et dilexit eum Ionathan quasi animam suam”; 1 Samuel 18. 1). In choosing to revert to this earlier description, Abelard takes a step back from the homoerotic potential of “amabilis super amorem mulierum,” and substitutes instead a description that could be applied to either a male or female beloved, opening up the lament to a reading that is not specific to one sex or gender. At other points within the lament, however, Abelard appears playfully to emphasize the homoerotic potential of the relationship between David and Jonathan. Abelard’s David laments that because he acquiesced to bad counsel, he was not at the battle, or else he could have been a “garrison” (“presidio,”

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VI, 46) for Jonathan. The term “presidium” appears from time to time in erotic poetry, and in fact, in the Epistulae duorum amantium, the woman at one point addresses the man as “Dulcissimo anime sue presidio” (“the sweetest protector of her soul”).117 In addition, Abelard’s David makes the erotically suggestive claim that had he been in battle, he would have died happily, “equally pierced through” like Jonathan (“confossus pariter, morerer feliciter”, VI, 47). Yet this assertion bears further examination. According to the biblical story, had David been at that battle, he would have been fighting against Saul and Jonathan, with the forces of the Philistines, and the counsel that caused him to be absent was that of the other Philistine leaders who did not trust his loyalty in a battle against Israel (1 Samuel 28. 1–2; 1 Samuel 29). Had David been present, then, not only would he have been unable to afford Jonathan any protection, he might actually have been the one who pierced him through. If they had then died “equally pierced,” it would not have been because they had fallen as companions in arms facing the same attack, but because they would have pierced each other. Having hinted at this homoerotic reading, Abelard then appears to retreat from it, having his David continue for several lines with the fiction that he would, somehow, have been fighting with Jonathan (VI, 53–56). Even here, however, his language remains sexually charged. When Abelard’s David declares that he would have wished either to snatch Jonathan from death or to fall to it with him (“ut te uel eriperem uel tecum occumberem,” VI, 54), the vocabulary is again suggestive, with “eriperem” evoking “rapio” and “occumberem” evoking “cubo,” both verbs that can reference sex. Moreover, Abelard chooses to include in the lament a line drawn from Christ’s address to his disciples in which Christ declares, “Greater love has no man than this, that he should lay down his soul for his friends” (“Maiorem hac dilectionem nemo habet ut animam suam quis ponat pro amicis suis,” John 15. 13). As Abelard’s David articulates it, however, it becomes “Cum quid amor faciat maius hoc non habeat” (VI, 48), thus incorporating a notable change from the disinterested and familial form of love evoked by the biblical “dilectio” to the more carnal form of love expressed by “amor.” This seems especially significant considering that elsewhere in his writings, Abelard cites Christ’s words according to the biblical exemplar. For instance, he advises Heloise in his Ep. V that a true friend will die for you, quoting: “Maiorem hac dilectionem nemo habet ut animam suam ponat quis pro amicis suis.”118 Similarly, when he describes Christ’s sacrifice in his Solution to Heloise’s Problem 6, he declares: “illam nobis dilectionem exhibuit, qua major esse non possit. Unde et ipsemet ait: Majorem hac dilectionem nemo habet, ut animam suam ponat quis pro amicis suis.”119 Yet another instance can be found in the Collationes, where the Philosopher observes: “ut autem Christus meminit, ‘maiorem hac dilectionem nemo habet, ut animam suam ponat quis pro amicis suis.’”120 The change in the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha to the more erotic term “amor” thus appears deliberate and suggestive of a certain undercurrent of sexuality.121 There remains one more telling variation undertaken by Abelard in this Planctus. In the biblical text, David declares that Saul and Jonathan were not divided in death (“in morte quoque non sunt divisi,” 2 Samuel 1. 23), and two

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rhetorical questions break from him in his grief, asking how these great warriors could have fallen (2 Samuel 1. 25, 27). By contrast, in Abelard’s lament, David focuses on the oneness between himself and Jonathan rather than the oneness between Saul and Jonathan, grieving that had they fallen together, death could have joined them to each other more than it could have separated them: “ut et mors nos iungeret magis quam disiungeret” (VI, 56). Moreover, the rhetorical question that breaks from Abelard’s David raises a number of troubling issues. Addressed to Jonathan alone, it is at once more personalized and sexualized than its biblical counterparts, as David asks: “What sins, what crimes have sundered our innermost parts?’ (“que peccata, que scelera nostra sciderunt uiscera,” VI, 34). The language here is frankly sexual, redolent of sodomy, and also begs the question of what sins and what crimes first joined their innermost parts.122 In this way, Abelard deftly plays with the homoerotic potential of his lament of David over Saul and Jonathan, now suggesting it, now retreating from it. Overall, his lament can stand as testament to the ideal of friendship, a friendship removed from sexual compulsion and temptation. Yet there remains just enough residual sexuality to destabilize that friendship slightly. Here it seems not the homoerotic content that is significant, but the erotic content per se, regardless of the sex and gender in which it is embodied. The poem thus stands as a lament of a man for a person whom he has loved in a sexual sense, but perhaps more truly in friendship. In this regard, I believe, it constitutes an offering of love from Abelard to Heloise.

PART III CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM—TEXT

CHAPTER 3 CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM—LATIN TEXT

Edition according to MS P with interlinear glosses from MS P (Pg) Sigla P: Pg : B: M: O: RB :

Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 561 interlinear glosses in Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 561 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, lat. oct. 172 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, 9210 Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 3061 Josepha Marie Annaïs Rubingh-Bosscher, Peter Abelard, Carmen ad Astralabium: A Critical Edition (Groningen: [privately published], 1987)

[P 35v] [B 1r; M 112v; O 1r] liber astralabi1 (in top margin) Astralabi2 fili, uite dulcedo paterne, doctrine studio pauca relinquo tue.3 Maior discendi tibi sit quam cura docendi, hinc aliis etenim4 proficis, inde tibi. Cum tibi defuerit quid discas, discere cessa nec5 tibi cessandum dixeris6 esse prius. Non a quo sed quid dicatur7 sit tibi cure: actori8 nomen dant benedicta suo.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

1

M: Incipit strilabius poeta M: Strilabi 3 B: tibi; M: tuo 4 aliis etenim) et enim aliis, O 5 O: Non 6 cessandum dixeris) dixeris cessandum, B; cessandum dixerit, O. 7 B: discatur 8 RB, B, O: Auctori 2

[M 113r]

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

1

Nec tibi iures in uerba dilecti1 magistri 2 nec te detineat 3 doctor amore suo. Fructu non foliis pomorum quisque cibatur et sensus uerbis anteferendus4 erit. Ornatis animos captet5 persuasio uerbis; doctrine magis est debita6 planicies. Copia uerborum est ubi7 non est copia sensus, constat8 et errantem multiplicare uias. Cuius doctrinam9 sibi dissentire10 uidebis nil11 illam12 certi constet13 habere tibi: instabilis lune stultus mutatur ad instar sicut sol sapiens permanet ipse sibi.14 Nunc huc, nunc illuc stulti15 mens ceca16 uagatur,17 prouida mens stabilem figit ubique18 gradum:19 cogitat ante diu quid sane dicere20 possit ne fiat iudex 21 turpiter ipse sui.22 Dictis doctorum, factis intende bonorum;23 ferueat hac semper pectus auaricia.24 25 Disce diu, firmaque26 tibi,27 tardaque docere,28

iures in uerba dilecti) dilecti iures in uerba, RB, B; dilecti vires in uerba, M, O (RB does not note O’s variant reading) 2 M: magni 3 te detineat) detineat te, M 4 P: anteferandus (not noted by RB); B: an[ ]ferendus (erasure, not noted by RB) 5 O: captat 6 M: ueri via 7 P, M: ibi ubi 8 P: constet 9 M: doctrina 10 M: disentare 11 M: ad nichil 12 M: illum 13 M, O: constat 14 O: this line added in right margin 15 O: stuti 16 P: reca 17 O: this line added in right margin 18 M: uerbi 19 B: locum 20 O: discere 21 fiat iudex) iudex fiat, RB, B, O 22 M: sibi (not noted by RB) 23 P: borum (?) 24 O: auarica (not noted by RB) 25 M: Discere 26 M: cura sit que 27 O omit (not noted by RB) 28 P omits lines 26–27

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 1

atque ad scribendum ne cito1 procilias;2 nolo repentini tibi3 sit doctrina magistri qui cogatur adhuc fingere que doceat. Nemo tibi tribuet4 quod 5 nondum nomen adeptus est:6 post multos, si uis,7 experiaris eum. Detrimenta tue caueas super omnia fame ut multis possis et tibi proficere: que precesserunt8 credi9 noua crimina cogunt et prior in testem uita sequentis10 erit. Non tua sed Domini queratur gloria, nate,11 non tibi sed cunctis uixeris, ymo Deo. Sit tibi, queso, frequens scripture lectio sacre; cetera, si qua legas,12 omnia propter13 eam. Sit tibi precipuus diuini cultus honoris14 teque timor semper subdat amorque Deo. Nemo Deum metuet uel amabit sicut oportet si non agnoscat sicut oportet eum: quam iustus sit15 hic atque16 potens, quam sit bonus ipse, quantum17 nos tollerat,18 quam graue percuciat.19 Semper diuine tua sit subiecta uoluntas: contra 20 si uis, appetis esse Deus. Nec tibi quid 21 prosit queras, sed quod placet ipsi: mercenarius hoc, illud amicus agit. Sufficit ut tantum queras ipsius22 honorem:

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[P 36 r ; O 1v]

[B 1v]

[M 113v]

M: scito B, M: prosilias; O: procileas 3 RB, B, M, O: tua 4 M: tribuat 5 M: que 6 nondum nomen adeptus est) non est nomen adeptus, B; non dum extat ademptus, M (RB does not note variant reading “ademptus”); nomen est nondum adeptus, O; nondum est nomen adeptus, RB 7 si uis) P: possibly “suus” 8 M: preceserit 9 M: reddi 10 M: sequeti sed 11 nate) semper, M; queratur gloria nate) tibi gloria nate queratur, B: (RB reads “glorianate”) 12 O: leguas (not noted by RB) 13 O: preter 14 M: amoris (or: a moris); P: This line added lengthways along right margin, mark indicates correct position 15 M: sic (not noted by RB) 16 O: quam 17 O: Quam (not noted by RB) 18 B: toleret; M: tolleret 19 O: percusciat 20 RB, B, M, O: Econtra 21 M: quod (RB notes “fortasse recte”) 22 M: alius 2

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52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

1

utilitatis erit sic memor ipse Deus1 tue. Sicut tesauris prestat 2 sapiencia cunctis, sic nichil oposito uilius esse potest. Ingenii sapiens3 sit4 nullus5 acumine magni: hunc pocius mores et bona uita creant. Factis non uerbis sapiencia se profitetur; solis6 concessa est gracia sola7 bonis. 8 Filius est sapiens benedictio multa parentum, ipsorum stultus dedecus atque dolor. Quod tolerat maior non sit graue ferre minori9 nec se prelato preferat ullus homo: oblatam Kato10 fudit11 aquam populumque refecit12 dum refici propriam non tulit ipse sitim.13 Insipiens14 rex est asinus15 diademate16 pollens: tam sibi quam cunctis17 perniciosus hic est. Nolo miliciam sed sensum18 in principe laudes: consilium, non uis, preminet ad regimen. Cum bonus est princeps, diuini muneris hoc est;19 cum malus, id populli promeruere mala.20 Sit tibi cura prior faciendi21 deinde docendi que bona sunt, ne22 sis dissonus ipse tibi. 23 Que tibi tu non uis fieri, non 24 feceris ulli;

[O 2r]

[P 36v]

RB, B, M, O omit. M: preest 3 O: sapiencia (added at end of line with mark to indicate correct position) 4 RB, B, O: fit 5 sit nullus) nullus fit, M 6 M omit 7 RB, B, M, O: tanta 8 P: Filicis 9 P: minorem (RB notes P “fortasse recte”) 10 B, O: Cato; M: cito 11 M: fundit 12 M: reficit 13 Dum refici propriam non tulit ipse sitim) sed si propria refici non tullit ipse gratis, M 14 O: Incipiens 15 O: azinus 16 O: diamate 17 M: multis; O: cuntis 18 B: an erasure following “sensum”—looks like “queras” (not noted by RB) 19 hoc est) est hoc, M 20 B, O: mali 21 O: discendi 22 B: nec 23 M: Quod 24 RB, B, M, O: ne 2

[B 2r]

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74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 1

que1 fieri tibi uis,2 hec3 quoque fac alii.4 Simplicis est hominis similem sibi quemque5 putare et leuiter 6 falli, fallere nolle7 quidem. Est animi uicium falli, sed fallere crimen; crimine non uicio quisque carere potest. Vt sapiens falli, mens sic8 bona fallere nescit: est uicii9 falli, fallere criminis est. Credere te numquam falli fallacia summa est remque istam constat10 solius esse Dei. Nolo Deum similes11 nec te super ethera12 queras dum situs hic terre te tenebrosus habet. Est iusti proprium reddi sua13 uelle quibusque, fortis in aduersis non trepidare14 suis,15 illicitos animi motus frenare modesti tunc cum succedunt prospera precipue. Sicut in aduersis uirtus16 ea murus habetur sic istius egent18 prospera19 temperie, nec prior ulla 20 manet uirtus nisi fulta21 sit istis, ne22 sit fracta malis siue remissa bonis.23 Philosophus causas rerum dicernit 24 opacas;25 effectus26 operum practicus exequitur. Quisquis apud Deum 27 se querit iustificari

M: Quod fieri tibi uis) tibi vis fieri, M; tibi fieri uis, O 3 M, O: hoc; RB reads P as “hoc” 4 RB, B, M, O: aliis 5 P: quamque; O: queque (not noted by RB) 6 B: leniter; O: leuter(?; not noted by RB) 7 M: noli 8 mens sic) sic mens, RB, B, O; sic timens, M 9 M: uicium 10 M: extat; O: costat (abbreviation mark missing) 11 M: silens 12 O: etara (not noted by RB) 13 reddi sua) sua reddi, M 14 M: tepidare 15 B: suus 16 M: dei add. 17 B positions distich 91–92 prior to line 99 18 P: egens 19 M: propspera (RB reads as “proprospera”) 20 RB, B, M, O: illa 21 P: fulsa 22 M: nec 23 P transposes the order of distichs 89–90 and 91–92 24 B, M, O: discernit 25 M: a pauca (not noted by RB) 26 P, O: E factus (RB reads P as “Cum factus”) 27 RB, B, M, O: dominum 2

97

[O 2v]

[P 37r]

[B 2v]17

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96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 1

iusticiam, si qua est, nesciat ipse suam.1 Quid uicii, quid sit uirtutis2 discute prudens: quod si perdideris, desinis esse3 quod es.4 Agnoscat5 culpas, acuset,6 corrigat illas nec7 se8 corde bonum censeat, ore malum. Ne timeas9 unquam, meliores aspice semper10 in quibus atendas quid tibi desit adhuc. Ante potestatem ne queras11 magnus haberi:12 paruus eris si te querere nouerit hoc. De pecato humiles, de religione13 superbos aut facit aut fieri fert14 aliquando Deus. Scandala quam possis hominum15 uitare labora ut tamen16 incurras scandala nulla Dei. Quo melior cunctis Deus est, plus debet amari et melior post hunc ordine17 quisque suo.18 Quo melior quisque est,19 maiori 20 dignus amore21 est22 utque Deo23 quisque est24 carior et tibi sit; quos etenim nisi 25 propter eum 26 debemus amare, finis hic in cunctis que27 facit28 unus29 erit.30

[B 2v]

[O 3r] [M 114r]

[P 37v]

M: sua Quid uicii quid sit uirtutis) Quid uitium, quid sit uirtus tu, B; Quid sit uirtutis, uicii quid, O 3 desinis esse) decicus, P 4 lines 93–98) 97–98, 93–94, 95–96, RB, B, M, O 5 O: Cognoscat 6 B: actis et; O: actus que 7 B: Ne 8 M omit 9 RB: tumeas; M: “timeas,” corrected in superscript to “tumeas” 10 M: super 11 P: credas 12 magnus haberi) magnificari, O 13 P: religiones 14 M: ferunt (not noted by RB) 15 M: horum 16 ut tamen) corrected from “et tamen ne,” M 17 M: ordinem 18 O: lines 110 and 112 are transposed 19 M omit 20 M: maioris 21 O: honore 22 B, O omit 23 O: deus 24 B omit 25 B omit; etenim nisi) et eum sed, M 26 P omit 27 P: quia (not noted by RB) 28 RB: facis; B: facimus; P: “facit” appears to have been erased and rewritten 29 B: uerus 30 que facit unus erit) anteferendus hic est, M (see line 116) 2

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 1

Omnia dona Dei transcendit uerus amicus: diuiciis cunctis anteferedus hic est.1 Nullus pauper erit 2 thesauro3 preditus4 isto qui quo rarior5 est, hoc6 pretiosior7 est. Sunt multi fratres sed illis8 rarus amicus: hos9 natura creat, gracia prebet eum. 10 Gracia libertas, natura coactio quedam11 est12 dum generi quiuis heret amore suo; quo13 pecudes etiam14 nature lege trauntur,15 affectus quarum gracia nulla manet. Turpia ne facias sed uites propter amicum si cupis ut uere sis preciosus ei. Nullum te Dominus plusquam te cogit amare16 nec te qui de17 te turpia poscit18 amat.19 Turpiter excusat noxam quem 20 propter amicum a se hanc comiti dicere21 non pudeat:22 23 si roget ut facias quicquam 24 quod ledat25 honestum, metas et leges26 transit amicicie. Exaudire preces inhonesta 27 precantis28 amici est ab amicicie calle referre pedem;

99

[O 3v] [B 3r]

B: erit; hic est) est hic, M (but see apparatus for line 114) P: corrected from “eris” 3 M: corrected from “thesaurus” 4 M: predictus 5 B, O: carior 6 B: tanto; M, O: hic 7 P: preciosor 8 B, O: in eis; sed illis) in eis sed, M 9 M: corrected from “Hoc” 10 B: Gloria 11 coactio quedam) quedam choacio, M (first “o” added in superscript) 12 P inverts the order of lines 120–121 13 M: Quam 14 M: et 15 nature lege trauntur) trahuntur sub lege nature, O 16 plusquam te cogit amare) de te turpia poscit amat, P (see line 128, which was originally omitted in P) 17 M: a 18 M: posit; O: possit 19 P: This line added lengthways along left margin, mark indicates correct position 20 O: qui (not noted by RB) 21 O: discere 22 M, O: puduit (RB reads “pudut” for M and “puduat” for O) 23 M: rogat 24 RB, B, M: quisquam; facias quicquam) quisquam faciat, O 25 O: ledit 26 RB, B, M, O: legem 27 O: inhoneste 28 RB, B, M, O: rogantis 2

100

135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 1

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

plus tamen ofendit qui cogit1 ad ista rogando2 quam qui concensum 3 dat prece4 uictus5 ei.6 Propter amiciciam si quid comisero uile rem turpi pulcram fedo, maloque7 bonam. Si non subuenias donec8 te exoret amicus, quod9 dare te credis,10 uendere crede magis: non precio paruo est rubor ille rogantis habendus quo que tu dicis dona, coactus emit.11 Debita sunt quam dona magis que dantur amico; nil tantum12 est quo13 plus non mereatur amor. Alter ego nisi sis, non es14 michi uerus amicus; ni15 michi sis ut ego, non16 eris alter ego. Quos in amicicia sua querere lucra17 uidebis quod18 dici cupiunt hoc19 simulare scias. Cuius criminibus cito credis non es amicus; ultimus20 hinc21 proprie scit22 mala quisque23 domus. Non poterit proprios cognoscere diues amicos an sint fortune scilicet an 24 hominis; pauper in hoc felix errore est liber ab isto25 quo sit26 paupertas cuique ferenda magis. Quos in amicicia fortuna secunda 27 tenebat,28

P: colit O: rognando 3 B, M: consensum 4 M: preesse (RB reads “precem”) 5 M: victum 6 B: ea 7 P: maleque; M: malaque (RB notes “fortasse recte”) 8 B: dum 9 RB, B: Que (RB reads O as “Que”) 10 O: credas 11 O: erit 12 P, O: tamen (RB reads O as “tantum”) 13 O: quod 14 O: est (not noted by RB) 15 M: si 16 M omit 17 querere lucra) lucra sperare, M 18 O: Que 19 M: hos 20 M: Vlterius 21 B, O: huic (RB doesn’t note variant reading in O) 22 P: scis; O: sit 23 M: quis ue 24 M: aut 25 est liber ab isto) liber ab isto est, M 26 O: si 27 fortuna secunda) secunda fortuna, M 28 B, O: tenebit 2

[P 38r]

[O 4r]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 1

cum perit hec,1 pereunt quos dabat2 illa tibi. Qui bonus est damnum contempnit propter amicum: sic3 et eum4 prodi5 si sit amicus habet. Plus recipit quam det6 pro donis quisquis amatur, nam quid amicicia carius esse potest? Maiores grates dono7 maiore8 merentur:9 dando10 se maius11 quam sua quisque dabit. Anticum retine quem sis12 expertus13 amicum nec similem14 credas, si15 sapis, esse nouum; precipueque16 tuus sit qui patris extitit ante ut sis huic etiam carus amore patris. Non est qui17 donis corumpi possit amicus: proditor alterius non tibi fidus18 erit. 19 Quem coruperunt20 tua munera credere noli: alter erit cuius sic21 quoque dona 22 uolet; quos ad concensum 23 traxerunt munera turpem, horum te fidei credere turpe puta. Cui mala 24 fecisti,25 ne26 te comiseris illi: pretereunte27 malo permanet ira 28 mali. Sit tibi precipuus29 seruus bonus inter amicos 30

O: hoc M: dabit 3 O: Si (not noted by RB) 4 et eum) etenim, RB, B, O; et ei, M 5 M: prodit 6 RB, M, O: dat 7 M: dona 8 dono maiore) maiori dono, O 9 RB, M, O: meremur 10 B: Dato 11 B, O: magis 12 M: scis 13 M: spertus 14 M: simile 15 O: quem 16 B: precipue 17 O: quid 18 M: fidelis 19 M: Ei add 20 B: corrumperunt; M, O: corrumpunt (not noted by RB) 21 O: sit (not noted by RB) 22 P: donat; quoque dona) dona quoque, M 23 M: consensum; O: concessum (not noted by RB) 24 RB, B, M: male 25 RB reads M as “facisti” 26 B: non 27 M: preterunt (RB reads as “pretereunt”) 28 M: ipsa 29 RB, M: precipuos (but RB notes B, P, O “fortasse recte”) 30 O: amicum 2

101

[M 114v]

[B 3v]

[P 38v]

102

176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194.

1

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

nec1 memor in talem conditionis eris. Erectum stimulis et2 uerbere3 comprime seruum, in tua ne calcem4 dirigat ora suum. Non homini te sed uicio5 seruire pudebit; dum6 sit libera mens nil tibi turpe putes.7 Nolo uirum doceas uxoris crimen amate;8 quod9 sciri10 pocius quam fieri grauat hunc: oprobriis11 aurem propriis12 dat nemo libenter; nec te nec13 quemquam14 talia scire uolet. Cuique uiro casto coniunx sua15 casta uidetur semperque16 incestus17 suspiciosus erit. Nil melius muliere18 bona,19 nil quam mala peius:20 omnibus ista bonis prestat et illa malis. 21 Nil teneris constat22 uerecundius23 esse puellis hocque24 carere bono nil ita sicut 25 anus. Si non dormierit tecum, tristabitur uxor; si contra, somnus26 turpia multa dabit. Incestam ut27 castam pariter seruare caueto, 28 quipe hec29 non debet sicut et illa nequit. 30

O: Ne M: in 3 O: ubere (not noted by RB) 4 B: calle 5 te sed uicio) te seruitio, B; sed uicio te, M; uicio sed te, O 6 O: Cum 7 M: puta 8 M: amare 9 O: Et 10 P, RB: siri; M: scire 11 M: Probriis 12 aurem propriis) propriis aurem, M 13 M: ne 14 M: quamquem 15 coniunx sua) sua coniux, O 16 M: semper et 17 O: intestus (not noted by RB) 18 P: mulier; O: multe (not noted by RB) 19 M omit 20 quam mala peius) peius iniqua, O 21 bonis prestat et illa malis) malis prestat ulla bonis, M 22 O: costat (abbreviation mark missing) 23 B: uerecundis 24 O: Hoc queque (not noted by RB) 25 B: si sit 26 O: sompnum 27 B: aut 28 B, O: memento 29 M: hic (not noted by RB); O: hoc 30 M: nequid 2

[O 4v]

[P 39r] [B 4r]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211. 212. 213. 214. 215. 216. 217. 1

Quid1 facit inceste2 custodia? Nonne pudicam sic fieri credes3 que mala non minus est? Virtus quipe animi non corporis esse putanda est; nemo ui4 bonus est sed malus inde5 magis.6 Filia si tibi sit, costodi peruigil illam ne te perpetuum mittat7 in oprobrium; cura tibi sit8 multa domus, sed summa sit ista: plus tolerare uelis9 cetera damna domus. Odit eum mulier de quo infamatur10 honesta: fame quippe decus diminui pudet hanc; que11 uero fame nequaquam damna ueretur12 de falso uerum crimine13 crimen agit. Quo fuit asperior que14 postea nubsit amanti tanto gracior est ipsa futura15 uiro; aspernando16 uirum propria placet ipsa repulsa et17 blandum facit hunc asperitate18 sui. 19 Que se luxurie gratis supponit amica censetur, meretrix que20 precio gerit hoc;21 22 in vicio tamen hoc ardencior illa uidetur que preter sordes suscipit inde nichil. Qualiter hanc autem 23 censes debere uocari que sordes etiam comparat hoc24 precio? Quecumque25 est auium species consueta 26 rapinis,

B: Quod O omit 3 fieri credes) credes fieri, B 4 M: idem 5 O: uide (not noted by RB) 6 malus inde magis) magis idem malus, M 7 O: mutat (not noted by RB) 8 tibi sit) sit tibi, M 9 P omit 10 M: difamatur 11 O: Quod (not noted by RB) 12 M: merentur 13 uerum crimine) crimine uerum, M 14 O: qui (not noted in RB) 15 M: futuro 16 P, O: Aspernendo; M: Exasperando 17 P: Est 18 P: aspertate 19 O: Quod 20 O: quo 21 precio gerit hoc) facit hoc precio, M 22 O: A (not noted by RB) 23 hanc autem) autem hanc, M 24 M: hec 25 O: Quicumque (not noted by RB) 26 RB, B, O: assueta; M: asueta 2

103

[O 5r]

104

218. 219. 220. 221. 222. 223. 224. 225. 226. 227. 228. 229. 230. 231. 232. 233. 234. 235. 236. 237. 238. 239.

1

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

quo1 plus possit in hoc, femina forcior est,2 nec rapit humanas animas ut femina quisquam:3 fortis in hoc est hec4 quolibet 5 hoste magis. Vile nimis scortum,6 sed uilior est sodomita; peior quam meretrix femina uir meretrix: femineus coitus fructum pariendo7 reportat; polluitur tantum8 dum sodomita coit.9 Obsequio superant10 meretrix et proditor omnes; qua placeant aliis hec uia sola11 patet. Gracior est meretrix humilis12 quam casta superba perturbatque domum sepius ista13 suam; polluit illa domum quam incendit sepius14 ista: sorde magis domui f lamma nocere potest. Mitior15 est anguis linguose coniugis ira;16 qui tenet hanc, eius non caret angue sinus. Deterior longe lingosa est17 femina scorto: hec18 aliquis,19 nullis20 illa 21 placere potest; est linguosa domus incendia maxima 22 coniunx;23 hac leuior f lamma quilibet ignis erit. Cum modicum membrum sit lingua est maximus ignis, nec tot24 per gladium quot periere per hanc.25 Preualet 26 in lingua qui non est fortis in armis;

[P 39v]

[B 4v]

[M 115r] [O 5v]

M: qui femina forcior est) forcior est femina, P 3 RB, B, O: quicquam 4 est hec) hec est, RB, B; hec, M; est, O 5 M: mollibus 6 B: scortes 7 O: choendo (? RB unsure but suggests “donendo”) 8 O: tamen (not noted by RB) 9 M: collit 10 M: superat 11 uia sola) sola uia, O 12 meretrix humilis) humilis meretrix, RB, B, O 13 M: ipsa 14 M: superius 15 M: Minor (not noted by RB) 16 P: ita 17 M omit 18 RB: hoc (RB reads O as “hoc”) 19 M: aliquibus; O: aliis 20 M: multis 21 M: ipsa 22 B: “magna” corrected in superscript to “maxima” 23 linguosa domus incendia maxima coniunx) coniux lingosa domus incendia magna, M 24 P: Nec to; RB, B: Non tot 25 M omits lines 237–238 26 M: Preuelet 2

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

240. 241. 242. 243. 244. 245. 246. 247. 248. 249. 250. 251. 252. 253. 254. 255. 256. 257. 258. 259. 260. 261. 262. 263.

1

nullus in hac pugna plus meretrice ualet.1 Ex hoc precipue distant2 ignauus et audax, quod factis iste preualet, ille minis.3 Si lingue bellum quam armorum forcius esset Tercites Troie4 maior Achille foret. “Crescite,” coniugibus dictum est, “terramque replete”; uirginibus celum dicitur5 ut6 repleant. Plus ratio7 quam lex, plus consuetudine lex sit:8 singula sunt proprio9 constituenda10 gradu.11 Tempore, tu iudex, legis moderare12 rigorem, hoc etenim leges qui statuere uolunt. Vtilitas legis scribende maxima causa est; huic13 nichil aduersum lege14 licebit agi. Maiori parti15 ne credas sed meliori: stultorum numerus innumerabilis est. Nullus in exemplum mala ducit16 sed bona tantum aut17 siquis facit hoc,18 nullus habendus erit. Sit tibi dum pugnas cum quo pugnatur ut hostis; si superaueris hunc, sit tibi sicut homo. Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos: hec est in summis gloria summa uiris.19 Vt ualeas lenire20 metum,21 propone futurum id tibi quo22 grauius nil superesse putes.23 Obiurga iuuenis culpam puerique24 f lagella,

RB, B, M, O: potest M: distat 3 M, O: nimis (not noted by RB) 4 Tercites troie) M: ter sites tor troye 5 B: dictum est 6 M omit 7 B: homo (not noted by RB) 8 B: fit (not noted by RB) 9 M: propria 10 P: constituendo; O: costituenda (abbreviation mark missing) 11 M: loco 12 M: moderante 13 RB, O: hinc (RB reads P, B, and M as “hinc”) 14 B: legem 15 M: parte 16 O: duxit 17 B: Vt; O: At (RB reads “Aut”) 18 siquis facit hoc) si hoc quis faciat, RB, B, O; si hec quis faciat, M 19 B: iuris (not noted by RB) 20 M: linire (not noted by RB) 21 O: mentum (not noted by RB) 22 tibi quo) tibi quod B; quod tibi, M. 23 M: potest 24 B: piumque 2

105

[P 40r]

[O 6r] [B 5r]

106

264. 265. 266. 267. 268. 269. 270. 271. 272. 273. 274. 275. 276. 277. 278. 279. 280. 281. 282. 283. 284. 285. 286. 1

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

exortare senes1 blandiciisque2 mone. Quo plus proficiat tua sit corectio3 blanda: aspera peruersos non capit, ymo mouet:4 culpari metuens culpam pretendere5 temptat obiecta falcem6 preueniendo petra.7 Cum te coripiat senior pacienter habeto et grates tanquam post data magna8 refer.9 Non credendus eris si te laudaueris ipse; si tua confessus sis mala, credo tibi.10 Cum cuiquam quisquam11 iam12 per sua dona placebit, hec13 ubi cessabunt falsus abibit14 amor. Ne libertatem uendas, fuge dona potentum: emptum te credas hec ubi15 sustuleris. Ne seruire bonos16 ad17 turpia cogat egestas his natura manus ingeniumque dedit. Contenta est modico mediocris uita labore, que cum libera sit,18 nil preciosius19 est. Conquiri20 magno sudore21 superf lua constat; frugalis22 modici 23 mensa laboris eget. Archelai 24 reprobans Socrates donaria 25 regis dixit se non his posse referre uicem: philosophum puduit donis a diuite26 uinci quem se gaudebat uincere pauperie.

RB, B, M, O: senem M: blandeque 3 B: correcto (not noted by RB) 4 B: tenet; M: monet (?) 5 M: precedere 6 M: facere 7 M: pena 8 data magna) magna data, M 9 P, O: refert 10 O inserts line 292 here (duplicated from correct position) 11 cuiquam quisquam) quisquam cuiquam, O 12 O omit 13 O: Hoc (not noted by RB) 14 M: hebit 15 hec ubi) ubi hec, B 16 P: honos (not noted by RB) 17 M: aut 18 M: est 19 P: preciosus 20 M: Quoqueri; O: Inquiri 21 magno sudore) magnoque labore, B 22 P: Frugali 23 M: medici 24 B: Archilai; M: Archilay; O: Archilei 25 P: doria (not noted by RB); M: domaria 26 a diuite) atque munere, M 2

[P 40v]

[O 6v] [M 115v]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

287. 288. 289. 290. 291. 292. 293. 294. 295. 296. 297. 298. 299. 300. 301. 302. 303. 304. 305. 306. 307. 1

Vincere1 contemptu mundum 2 uirtute preire est;3 cautela hec4 magni regula magna uiri. Oblatum gratis Abraham cur emerit5 agrum respueritque6 datum forsitan audierat. 7 Multi ne cupidi uideantur dona refutant hacque8 sibi nomen arte parare9 student. Ne faciat quemquam10 noua uite secta superbum: comuni uita uiuere quemque11 decet. Ne maiore12 petas paradisi13 sede locari: sufficit ut quiuis14 angulus hic tibi sit. 15 Nolis ex habitu16 populi captare fauorem: fallere prudentes17 pellis18 ouina nequit;19 que pellis sit ouis, que uulpis non latet illos: simplicitas uulgi quelibet20 errat21 in hoc. Nulla uiris doctis sentencia cercior ista est: non nos22 commendant 23 exteriora Deo. Ex habitu non sanctus eris,24 potes25 esse superbus,26 est nimis hec summis res odiosa uiris. Ypocrite miseram 27 super omnia censeo uitam; dupliciter miserum gloria uana facit, corpus in hac uita crucians animamque futura.28

107

[B 5v]

[P 41r]

[O 7r]

M: Vince contemptu mundum) contemptum mundi, B, M 3 RB, B, M, O omit 4 P: est add. 5 O: emerat 6 O: Respuitque 7 M: Multa 8 M: hac 9 P: pariare 10 M: altered to “quemquem” (attempt to form “quemque”?) 11 M: quemquam; O: quemqueque 12 P, B, M: maiori 13 RB reads P as “padisi” 14 M: quid vis (not noted by RB); O: quisuis (not noted by RB) 15 P, O: Noli; M: Nobilis 16 ex habitu) exhibitum, M (RB reads M as “ex habitum”) 17 P: prudente (RB reads P as “prudentem”); M: prudentes (but with final “s” struck through) 18 M: pellit 19 M: nequid 20 P, B: quamlibet (RB reads P as “qualibet”) 21 P: erat (not noted by RB) 22 M, O: uos 23 P: comendat 24 M: sed (RB reads as “fieris” with a question mark) 25 M: potest 26 B: superbum 27 P: miserum 28 M: gehenna 2

108

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

308. Hoc precio laudem quisquis1 emit—sua sit! 309. Qui fugit ypocrite nomen pecando patenter pro quia

310. 311. 312. 313. 314. 315. 316. 317. 318. 319. 320. 321. 322. 323. 324. 325. 326. 327. 1

dupliciter reus est, qui docet hoc2 et agit. Omnes ad senium 3 cupimus producere4 uitam cum pigeat dici5 quemque6 uel esse senem. Nemo senex7 adeo quin uiuere posse8 per annum se confidat adhuc; fallitur omnis in hoc:9 nullus enim est aliquo qui non10 moriatur in anno quem11 tamen et uite deputat12 ipse13 sue. Tempora sunt uite tanto14 breuiora future quanto preterite longa fuere magis. Dum15 cupis ut mestis succedant16 tempora leta, quo17 tua18 sit breuior uita futura cupis.19 Ad senium 20 nemo est21 qui non pertingere querat cum labor in senio penaque maxima sit. Ad requiem sanctos constat pertingere morte22 cum tamen ad mortem 23 nemo uenire uelit.24 Si sit amica senex, 25 donis conducat26 amicum; supleat ex 27 donis quod caret ex facie. Summa petit liuor, perf lant altissima uenti,

[B 6r]

[P 41v]

O: si quis M: hec 3 P: setium 4 B, M, O: perducere (not noted by RB) 5 cum pigeat dici) Qui cum dici pigeat, B 6 M: quemquam; O: quisque 7 M: senes (not noted by RB) 8 M: posit 9 in hoc) homo, M 10 aliquo qui non) qui non aliquo, RB, M, O 11 M: quando (not noted by RB) 12 M: deputet 13 B: esse 14 Tempora sunt uite tanto) Tanto tempora sunt uite, RB, O; Tanto sunt tempora uite, B; Tanto tempore sunt uite, M 15 O: Cum 16 O: succedunt (RB reads as “succedant”); M: sucedat 17 M: quod 18 P: tuo 19 O: cupit 20 P: cenium 21 P omit 22 RB reads O as “mortem” 23 tamen ad mortem) ad mortem tamen, M 24 P: uelut; M: uelet 25 amica senex) amicus uerus, M 26 B: adducat 27 B: hec 2

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

109

328. crebrius et montes fulgura1 percuciunt. 329. Cercius indicium nullum uirtutis2 habetur scilicet uirtus

330.

quam quod 3 sola patet4 morsibus inuidie: uirtute

331. nullus ea dignus miser5 est nullusque beatus 332. est minus his6 quorum uicera7 liuor edit.

[M 116r; O 7v]

in hoc mundo

333. Quo magis inuidia depressa est uita bonorum scilicet uita

334. 335. 336. 337. 338. 339. 340. 341. 342. 343. 344. 345. 346. 347. 1

tanto post mortem gloria maior erit. Quem timuit uiuum, defunctum plangit iniqus8 ut nec laus magnis desit ab hoste uiris: laudantur cum9 laus illis non proderit ulla10 et cum iam pariter11 nulla nocere queant.12 Factis quisque13 suis, non dictis glorificatur; alterius pocius quam tua laus14 tibi15 sit: artificem commendet16 opus, non propria lingua; sola loquatur17 in hoc ore tacente manus. Maxima sobrietas—tam uirtus quam medicina— cor simul et corpus conferat18 incolume. Si uictus19 parcus, si sompnus sit 20 mediocris, incolumis fuerit21 longuaque22 uita 23 tibi. His nimis indulgens, piger efficieris24 inhersque

B: fulmina M: uirtuti (emended from “uirtutis”; not noted by RB); O: uirtis (not noted by RB) 3 O: que (with erasure) 4 P: petet 5 M: missor 6 est minus his) His minus est; RB, B, M, O 7 M: in sancta ( not noted by RB) 8 B: inique 9 M, O: iam add. 10 illis non proderit ulla) nulla profecerit illis, M; nullaque proderit illis, O 11 et cum iam pariter) pariter iam et cum, M. 12 M: potest; O: queat (RB notes “fortasse recte”) 13 O: quique 14 quam tua laus) laus tua quam, O 15 B, M: tua 16 RB, O: commendat (so RB reads P); P: comedat 17 O: locatur 18 M: continet 19 M: uitus 20 M: tibi add. 21 M: fueras; O: fueris 22 B, M, O: longaque 23 M: tua add. (not noted by RB) 24 B: efficeris 2

110

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D gentes dicent

348. 349. 350. 351. 352. 353. 354. 355. 356. 357. 358. 359. 360. 361. 362. 363. 364. 365. 366. 367. 368. 369.

1

et te porcino1 uiuere more ferent.2 Que natura petit facili3 sudore parantur; conquisita4 graui queque superf lua sunt. Bella gerant5 iuuenes, seniores consilientur; 6 hos quid agant illi costituisse7 decet. Si sine consilio tibi8 successisse uidebis, gracia fortune sit sine laude tua; si post consilium non sint tibi9 fata10 benigna, non hinc11 culpandus12 sed miserandus eris. 13 Ne uoueas maiora Deo quam soluere possis set tua sint factis uota minora tuis. Que uoueas decerne14 prius multumque diuque: consilium tarde15 post tua uota uenit; omne minus uotum solui maiore16 licebit et cambire17 bonum pro meliore iuuat.18 Tot fidei sectis diuisus mundus19 habetur ut que sit uite semita uix pateat. Quod 20 tot habet fidei contraria docmata 21 mundus, quisque facit 22 generis traditione sui; denique nullus in his rationem 23 consulere audet dum quacumque sibi uiuere pace studet.24 Contempnendo Deum pecat solum modo quisque:

M: porcio B: foret 3 M: paruo 4 O: Adquisita 5 M: gerent 6 M: senes add. 7 M: constituiset (not noted by RB) 8 B: bene; M: propspere add. (RB reads “propter spem” with question mark) 9 M: tua 10 RB, B, M, O: facta 11 B: hic; M: ex hoc 12 P: cupandus 13 B: Non 14 RB, O: discerne; B: docet ne; M: dicere 15 B, M: tardum 16 RB reads “maior” for P; final “e” is partly erased but still present 17 O: quambire 18 P: uiuat (RB reads as “iuuat”) 19 sectis diuisus mundus) sectis mundus diuisus RB, M, O; cultus sectis diuisus, B 20 M: Nam 21 M: domata 22 quisque facit) facta que sunt, M. 23 M, O: ratione 24 RB, B, M, O: cupit 2

[B 6v] [P 42r] [O 8r]

111

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

370. nil1 nisi2 contemptus hunc3 facit esse reum. 371. Non est contemptor qui nescit quid sit agendum4 372. si non hoc culpa nesciat ipse5 sua. 373. Te pecata magis quam tu6 pecata relinquent7 374. si8 cum non possis ledere peniteas.9 375. Sunt quos oblectant10 adeo11 pecata peracta12 id est de peccatis

376.

ut numquam uere peniteant13 super his,14 peccati

377. immo uoluptatis15 dulcedo tanta sit huius

[M 116v] dulcedinem

378.

ne grauet16 ulla satisfactio17 propter eam.18 miserie

379. Est nostre super hoc Eloyse19 crebra 20 querela 380. que michi que21 secum dicere sepe22 solet: 23 381. “Si ne peniteat me comississe24 priora id est non qu[?] [= queo?]

[P 42v; O 8v]

stat

382. saluari nequeam, spes michi nulla 25 manet: 383. dulcia sunt 26 adeo comissi gaudia nostri defecent

384.

1

ut27 memorata iuuent que placuere nimis.”28

RB, B, O: Nec nil nisi) et sibi, M. 3 B: hic 4 At this point M inserts lines 395 and 396. 5 B: esse 6 M: relinquas add. 7 RB, B: relinquunt; M: relinqunt; O: relinquent (RB reads as “relinquunt”) 8 O: Sic 9 B: peniteat (appears to have been altered from “peniteas”) 10 B: delectant; M: obletant 11 M: in tantum add. 12 M: parata 13 M: peniteat 14 M: hoc 15 M: uoluntatis 16 M: eos add. 17 P: satis facio 18 M: ea 19 B: heloyse; M: scilicet mentis elise (RB reads “sed” for “scilicet”); O: eloise 20 M: creba 21 Que . . . que) Qua . . . qua, RB, B, O; quam . . . quam, M (RB reads as “qua . . . qua”) 22 M omit 23 RB, B: nisi; M, O: non (O: “non” written over an erasure; RB says O omits) 24 me comississe) commisisse sepe, B. 25 RB reads O as “ulla” 26 P omit 27 M: uetera add. 28 M omit 2

112

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D ueram

385. 386. 387. 388. 389. 390. 391. 392. 393. 394. 395. 396. 397. 398. 399. 400. 401. 402. 403. 404. 405. 406. 1

Qui dicit uerum non hoc dicendo laborat; fingere falsa prius nitimur,1 inde loqui. Mendaces faciunt ne credam 2 uera loquenti et multis iustis perfidus unus obest. Qui numquam iurat numquam periurus3 habetur; uir bonus a licitis4 prouidet illicitis.5 Securus quia pauper erat6 uiuebat Amiclas:7 eligit hoc sapiens uiuere quisque modo. Securus diuesque8 simul9 frustra esse laboras;10 opposito iungi non licet opositum.11 12 Non leue corrigitur qui se delinquere nescit; plaga tamen minor13 est sed medicina grauis. Quid cui des uideas,14 ubi, quando, quomodo, quare, ni15 grates pariter donaque perdere uis. Quisquis in hoc quod agit curat16 uitare reatum nequaquam reus hinc17 constituendus erit. Largus quisque18 datis, acceptis19 gaudet auarus; nec20 si peniteat post data largus erit:21 gaudet cum dederit22 largus, tristatur auarus;23 rapta 24 tamen cupido quam data credo magis. Qui sua dat largo non dat sed fenerat illi:25 seminat26 pauca, iacit comoda, multa metit.

[B 7r]

RB, B, O: nititur M, O: credant 3 numquam periurus) periurus numquam, B. 4 a licitis) illicitis, M; allicitis, O 5 M: et licitis 6 O: eras 7 M: a malis 8 Securus diuesque) Securusque diues, B; Securus diues quia, O (not noted by RB). 9 RB reads O as “similis” 10 O: laborans (not noted by RB) 11 opposito . . . opositum) oppositum . . . opposito, M. 12 M: nam 13 O: leuis 14 M omit 15 M: nisi 16 M, O: querit (RB notes “fortasse recte”) 17 reus hinc) hinc reus, P 18 M: quisquis 19 O: acceptus (not noted by RB) 20 O: Ne (not noted by RB) 21 O: corrected from “eris” (RB reads “erist”) 22 P: delerit 23 P inverts the order of 402 and 403 as found in RB, B, O; M omits lines 402–403. 24 P: Repta 25 last line transmitted by O; folio ends with catchwords for next line “semina pauca iacit” 26 RB, B, M, [O]: Semina 2

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

407. Idropico similis nemo est ut diues auarus 408. ex lucro lucri1 multiplicando sitim.2 409. Diuicias inopi uita conquirit auarus; diuicias

auarus

113

[P 43r]

diuiciis

410. quas male congregat his3 utitur alter eis. 4 411. Vix sua pauperibus moriens largitur auarus: 412. ad manes5 properans hec quasi6 ferre uelit id est ex quibus

413. unde7 queat naulum Stigio persoluere naute 414. quem sibi precipue non putat esse pium. 415. Quisquis plus retinet quam uite postulat8 usus scilicet plicat

416. admouet 9 ad iugulum pauperis ipse manus. 417. Qui leuiter spondet non multum soluere10 curat; scilicet spondere

scilicet soluere

418. uir uerax minus hoc sed11 magis illud agit. 12 419. Quod non precedit promissio gracia13 donum14 est; id est aliquid

420. cum promiseris hoc, debitor eficieris.15 421. Amitendorum timor omnem torquet auarum 422. quorum nil prorsus16 proficit usus ei;17 timet

423. perdere formidat que18 nil sibi prosit habere, 424. immo que multum perdere proficiat. 425. Ex hominis uicio ne culpes illius artem: 426. est homo sepe malus19 qui bonus est opifex. hiens

427. Frigore bruma pigrum crucians estasque calore 428. cogunt20 mendicum uiuere semper eum. 1

M: lucrari B: sinum 3 congregat his) gregatis, B 4 M: Vx 5 M: manens (not noted by RB) 6 M: quas (not noted by RB) 7 M: Vade (? RB reads “uadere”) 8 B: postulas 9 P: Admonet; B: A mouet; M: admoueret; reading taken from Rec. II 10 P: timet add. 11 B: et 12 M: Quam (RB reads “Dum”) 13 promissio gracia) meritum promissio, M 14 P: domum 15 RB, B: efficeris 16 M: pro usus (not noted by RB) 17 B: heris; proficit usus ei) usus ei proficit, M 18 M: qui (not noted by RB) 19 M omit 20 M: tegunt 2

[B 7v]

114

429. 430. 431. 432. 433. 434. 435. 436.

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

Cum1 pigrum uexaret hiems2 tectoque careret “Ver,” inquid, “ueniet tuncque parabo3 domum”; uer uenit dixitque piger non esse4 necesse temperie tanta temporis esse domum.5 Se piger excusans presencia tempora culpat tanquam6 sit uicium temporis hoc quod agit.7 Velocem quemcumque pigrum facit8 esca parata; tunc, si miseris hunc,9 desinit esse piger.

[M 117r]

[P 43v]

inhers

437. Asserit ignauus bona10 tempora11 preteriisse 438. et12 uicium fatis imputat ipse13 suum.14 439. Mulcet adulator stultum, detractor inicum; et adulatorem detractorem

440. auris confestim sancta repellit eos. 441. Diuitis est rerum numerum15 nescire suarum; 442. pauperis aut nullus compotus aut breuis est. 443. Iussa potestatis16 terrene17 discucienda, potestatis

444.

celestis tibi mox perficienda scias. iussa

445. Siquis diuinis iubeat contraria iussis, 446. te contra Dominum pactio nulla trahat. filiastrum

447. Miror si mulier priuignum18 diligat ulla 448. ni quo Fedra modo fertur19 amasse suum. 449. Quem natura suos non cogit amare parentes 450. consciliare20 tibi gracia nulla potest. 451. Qui patri malus est nuli bonus esse putetur;

1

RB: cumque M: in yemps 3 tuncque parabo) tunc preparabo, B; tunc parabo, M 4 M: est 5 M: in maiori domo 6 M: tamque (not noted by RB) 7 RB, M: eget; B: aget 8 quemcumque pigrum facit) quemque facit pigrum, B 9 si miseris hunc) sit miseris nunc, P 10 B: sua 11 M: iam add. 12 M: qui 13 P, M: esse 14 B: suis 15 rerum numerum) numerum rerum, M 16 P: potestatatis 17 P: trenere (not noted by RB) 18 M: priuinum (not noted by RB) 19 Fedra modo fertur) sed ra modo feruntur, M 20 P: Conilliare 2

[B 8r]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

115

452. nolo roges pro quo non rogat parens eius.1 453. Est uelox uindicta Dei maledictio patrum; maledictionem

454.

nemo nisi 2 demens hanc tolerare potest. id est cognoscit

455. Cum grauius peccet 3 qui se4 peccase5 fatetur, 456. ad ueniam tamen hic pronior6 esse solet; 457. ipse sui iudex acusatorque malorum id est quanto

458. 459. 460. 461. 462. 463. 464. 465.

quo7 magis est8 pauidus tucior esse studet.9 Quos alios damnare uides seseque beare hos fuge, si cupias appropiare10 Deo: non est11 Christus in his, phariseus ductor12 eorum, iudicio simili quos patet esse reos. Si de principiis presumtio13 gaudet eorum, exitus incertus sollicitet14 magis hos. Quos populus laudat, quos uulgi subleuat aura,

[P 44r]

populis

466. miror si placeant his simul atque Deo; 467. hoc puto tuque putes inter miracula15 summum,16 468. si quemquam uideas hec retinere simul. Si hominibus placerem deo utique non placerem17 18

469. Non se homini Paulus credit19 Christoque placere; 470. maiorem Paulo nolo putes aliquem. 471. Luxurie nimis est20 mulieri grata uoluptas21 472. si plusquam fratrem diligat illa 22 uirum; 473. si sua quam mater cuiquam sit carior uxor, 1 parens eius) ipse parens, RB, M; ipsa parens, B (RB notes B “fortasse recte”); P: “eius” added later in different ink and hand 2 M: non 3 P: pectet; B: corrected from “peccat”; M: peccat 4 B: iam 5 M: peccare 6 P: pronicior (RB reads P as “pernicior”) 7 B: Quoque 8 B omit 9 B: solet; this distich added in B in right margin with mark to indicate correct position in text 10 P: apropriare 11 P omit 12 RB, B, M: doctor 13 M: perfecio 14 M: salutet 15 M: moracula 16 M: esse add. 17 gloss appears in right margin 18 P omit 19 Paulus credit) credit paulus, M 20 M: uir uxor add. 21 M: voluntas 22 B, M: ulla

116

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

474. constat naturam cedere1 luxurie. 475. Ne superinducta 2 crucies uxore parentes; id est superuiuere

476. 477. 478. 479. 480. 481. 482. 483. 484. 485. 486. 487. 488. 489.

hos sepeli primo si3 superesse queas.4 De propria gaude non de uirtute tuorum: nil precii confert5 laus aliena tibi. Laus uetus6 obruitur nisi laus7 noua fulciat illam spectandusque magis finis in omnibus8 est. “Omnia fert 9 sapiens sua secum,”10 Seneca dixit, “et se contentus sufficit ipse sibi. Nemo11 suis ea12 connumeret13 que perdere possit: cum fortuna perit propria cuique manent.” Quem uir amat famulum14 miror si diligit15 uxor: semper in insidiis hunc timet esse sibi. Proximus16 est melior uicinus fratre remoto et iuncus prato17 sic erit utilior. Ira potentis erit quasi fulguris ictus18 habenda:19 scilicet ictus

scilicet ira

490. sicut hic20 est, sic est21 illa cauenda tibi. 22 491. Qui prodesse sibi proprio medicamine nescit 492. languor23 eum 24 frustra postulat alterius. 493. Et quoniam stultos25 inf lare26 superbia nouit 494. semper ab hac caueas, obsecro, peste tibi. 1

M: credere M: super induta 3 M omit 4 M: uellis 5 M: conferent 6 P: uentus 7 B omit 8 finis in omnibus) in omnibus finis, P 9 P: fers (RB reads as “fert”); M: ferunt 10 sua secum) socio sic, M 11 M: Ne 12 P: eo 13 M: comuneret (?) 14 B: filium 15 M: diligat 16 P: Proximis 17 et iuncus prato) vicinus fratre, M 18 M: itus (not noted by RB) 19 M: habendus 20 M: hoc (not noted by RB) 21 M: sit 22 M: Cui 23 M: langorem (not noted by RB) 24 P: cum; M omit (not noted by RB) 25 M: multos 26 M: prostrare 2

[M 117v]

[B 8v]

[P 44v]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

117

495. Viuere sic studeas ut de te nemo queratur; 496. si prodesse nequis, hoc age ne noceas. suple habere

497. 498. 499. 500. 501. 502. 503. 504. 505. 506. 507. 508. 509. 510. 511. 512. 513. 514. 515. 516. 517. 518. 519. 520. 521. 522. 1

Vt quod1 uis nequeas,2 quod possis uelle docebit si cupis effectum uelle tenere tuum. Bella caue sensuque3 tuo plus utere4 quam ui;5 utere fortuna, sed ratione magis. A Domino comissa tibi bona cuncta memento: auferet ingrato cum uolet ipse tibi;6 nam te quando7 uolet uel quomodo perdere fas est: muneris illius est et8 quod es et quod habes. Vestibus9 ornatos alienis sepe uidemus et sua mentiri que10 minime sua sunt; sic diuina sibi tribuit bona quisque11 superbus et Domini que sunt in sua iura rapit. Talis erat cornix12 alienis spledida plummis quas mentita suas13 in sua probra tulit. Multiplici surgit stipata superbia prole14 et multis radix15 pullulat hec uiciis. Cor miserum liuor, detractio possidet ora dum non maiorem ferre parem ue potest. Tutus adulator declinat ad illius edes ut de figmentis comoda multa16 ferat; 17 que cum detulerit tunc uerax incipit esse, stulticie preco maximus ille18 sue.19 In sua fit preceps discrimina quisque superbus et se posse putat qualiacumque uelit: turgidus in uerbis, factis temerarius, omnes urget et in iugulum prouocat ipse suum;

P: proprius quam add. M: facere add. 3 P: sensu quod (not noted by RB) 4 P: urere (not noted by RB) 5 quam ui) quam uis, P; sorte, M 6 M: sua 7 nam te quando) Te quoque, M (“Te” emended from “Tu”) 8 M omit 9 M: Mesibus 10 B: quem; M: qui 11 bona quisque) seppe, M 12 M: coruis (not noted by RB) 13 B: sua 14 superbia prole) super le, M 15 et multis radix) et ex multis radiis, M 16 M: uera (RB notes “fortasse recte”) 17 P, B: Quod 18 M: ipse 19 RB, B: tue (but RB notes P “fortasse recte”) 2

[B 9r] [P 45r]

118

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

523. consilium spernit,1 modus illi crimen habetur,2 524. uim uocat in cunctis, cecus3 in omnibus est. 525. Intolerabilius nichil est quam uita superbi

[M 118r]

sordida

526. cunctaque transcendit prodiga4 luxria: 527. uiribus hec corpus, mentem uirtutibus haurit, 5 528. ingenium sensu,6 nullaque munda sinit.7 529. Summa Dei bonitas disponens8 omnia recte 530. que bona, que mala sunt ordinat ipse9 bene; 10 531. hinc nec in aduersis iusto solatia11 desunt12 pro quamuis

532. ut mala sint, etiam13 cum sciat esse bonum. 533. Credit inhumanam14 mentem sapietibus esse 534. qui nichil illorum corda dolere15 putat; id est bonorum

535. ferrea non adeo uirtutis duraque16 mens est 536. ut pietas horum uiscera nulla sciat. 537. Qualiacumque uelis17 da fercula religiosis, id est luxurie

538. dummodo uina neges, summa fomenta mali. 539. Sicut amat sapiens hominem qui corrigit18 illum19 540. sic odit 20 qui se corrigit 21 insipiens. 22 541. Quid prodesse potest possessa pecunia stulto 542. mercari sensum si nequit inde sibi? 543. Turpia ne facias, plus te constringat honestas 544. et uirtutis amor quam timor exagitet;

1

[P 45v]

P: supernit consilium spernit modus illi crimen habetur) Modus illi crimen consilium spernit habetur, M 3 P: secus 4 B, M: sordida 5 B: ausit; M: aurit with “h” added in superscript 6 M: sensum 7 B: fiunt (? RB reads as “fuerit”); M: sunt (not noted by RB). 8 M: dispensat 9 RB: ipsa (Rec. II), but notes B, P, M “fortasse recte” 10 B: Huic 11 P: solatio 12 M: desint 13 B: omne quod (“quod” marked for omission?); M omit 14 P: inhumanera 15 P: dolore 16 P: diraque 17 P: uel 18 M: corrigat 19 B, M: ipsum 20 P: added in superscript 21 RB, B, M: corripit 22 M: Quidquid 2

119

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

545. 546. 547. 548. 549. 550. 551. 552. 553. 554. 555. 556. 557. 558. 559. 560. 561. 562. 563. 564. 565. 566. 567. 568. 569. 570. 1

denique peccati1 confessio, que tibi restat, quod 2 pudor est 3 dici non paciatur4 agi. Nequis consilio mulieris tradat habenas a primo cunctis sunt documenta 5 uiro. 6 Ne te blandiciis seducere Dalida possit que tecum dormit, sit tibi cura uigil: non est uicino tutum dormire colubro; anguem transcendit femina nequicia. Nequicia similem serpens sibi credidit Euam et cito persuasit7 credere nequicie; hinc prius hanc agressa,8 uirum temptauit in illa, facta per hanc omnis causa capudque mali. Viuit in occulto uir honestus ut in9 manifesto; nusquam deprendi se bona uita timet. Occasum sapiens, stultus considerat10 ortum; finis quippe rei cantica laudis habet. Liberat a pena miserum qui interficit ipsum11 si pena penitus uita futura uacat;12 est igitur pietas misere non parcere uite si post hanc uitam nulla13 sequatur14 eam. Qui uenit ad causam tarde15 difidit ab illa, accelerat causam16 qui bene fidit ei;17 consilio longo cause pars altera ducta non minimum praue18 suspicionis habet. 19 Orator bonus atque pugil 20 fiducia praua est:21 quo maior fraus est, amplius optat eos;22

[B 9 v]

[P 46 r]

M: peccata M: que 3 B: corrected from “esse” by later hand (RB reads “se” corrected from “esse”) 4 P: pactatur 5 M: domata 6 B: Nec 7 RB, B, M: persuase 8 B: egressa 9 P omit 10 M: desiderat 11 M: illum (RB notes “fortasse recte”) 12 B: uacet 13 uitam nulla) uita nullam, M 14 P: sequantur 15 B: tardus (RB reads as “tardum”) 16 M: sed add. 17 B: eam 18 B: parue 19 B: Oratus 20 P: pugis (RB reads as “pugil”) 21 atque pugil fiducia praua est) M omit (continues line with line 571 from “in domino”) 22 M: omit line 2

120

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

571. uir bonus in Domino confidit,1 prauus in istis, scilicet deus

572. sed cunctis unus prestat2 in auxilio. 573. Ne dubites illam proprie diffidere3 forme 574. que cauet aspectum4 compta prius nisi5 sit;6 575. non curat mulier naturam7 casta8 iuuare 576. nec studet ut fallat per bona ficta9 uiros.10 577. Luxuriam11 simul atque uirum sepelit12 bona coniunx scilicet uiro

578. 579. 580. 581. 582. 583. 584. 585. 586. 587. 588. 589. 590. 591. 1

alius uiri

mutatoque13 pari nescit inire iugum. Qui non dat quod amat non accipit ipse14 quod optat: ut15 tua cara16 tibi, sic mea cara michi. Vilia pro caris recipi non conuenit equo nec comercia sunt talia iusticie. Vt largus larguo17 sis,18 sis19 auarus auaro: qualis hic est aliis sis quoque talis ei. Subiectis prodesse magis quam preesse memento, nominis est aliter gloria uana tui. Si nequeas caste, ne spernas20 uiuere caute: in populo uita plus tibi fama ualet. Quo21 plus diuinos oculos offendere uitas22 plus studes23 ut recte uiuas24 ubique Deo; id iusto pudor25 est: hominum complere timore26

P: comfidit; M: sed add. M: preest 3 M: defidere 4 P: expectum; M: aspectu 5 prius nisi) nisi prius, B 6 M: sibi 7 M: natura 8 M: uiros add. 9 bona ficta) bona cuncta, B; mala facta, M 10 M transposes lines 576 and 577 11 M: luxuria (not noted by RB) 12 uirum sepelit) “sepelit uirum” but with marks to indicate transposition, P 13 M: mutataque 14 B omit 15 M: et 16 P: cura 17 B, M: largo 18 RB, B, M: sic (RB does not note P’s variant reading) 19 B: et add. 20 ne spernas) nec sperne, B 21 M: Qui 22 B: uitat; M: uitam 23 B, M: studet 24 B, M: uiuat 25 B: timor 26 B: timorem 2

[M 118v]

[B 10r]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

121

592. ad quod1 non fuerit tractus amore Dei. 593. Stulticie summe est dimitere premia magna 594. atque his dimissis uelle minora sequi. 595. Vim metuit sapiens, stultus confidit in illa: scilicet sapiens scilicet stultus

596. 597. 598. 599. 600. 601. 602. 603.

audiri cupit hic,2 ille ferire parat. Infirmis legem positam non esse fatemur3 nec tollerat4 pondus sanus5 et eger idem. Te tua non alium culpe confessio culpet, non aliter uenia dignus es ante Deum; nec6 tua demoniis ascribere7 crimina8 temptes quo se excusare9 credidit Eua modo.10 Terrenus iudex confessi11 crimina punit

[P 46v]

confessum

604. quem12 uenia dignum13 iudicat esse14 Deus. 605. Non minimum peccat qui regis prouocat iram: scilicet ira

606.

id est quanto

uitanda hec magis est quo magis ipsa nocet;

prout et non

607. ne cito peccantem feriat scentencia regis15 regis

id est non paucos

damnare

608. cuius non paucos16 ira ferire potest. 609. Ne Dominum17 temptes ab eo miracula poscens miracula id est populli

610.

id est sis

per que uulgari magnus in ore sones; suple uis esse scilicet in ore epopulli

611. paruus in ore Dei fueris si magnus18 in illo:19 612. multum laus hominum dissonat atque Dei. 613. Finitime uiciis uirtutes fallere norunt

1

B: que M: sed add 3 P: fatetur 4 P: colerat 5 P: sonus 6 M: Ne 7 M: ascribi 8 P: word contains otiose minim (RB reads as “crimuna”) 9 B: excusari, RB notes B “fortasse recte” 10 M inserts lines 611–612 here 11 RB, B, M: confessum 12 M: quam (not noted by RB) 13 B: dignus 14 B: ipse 15 B: regem 16 P: parcos (but note gloss) 17 Ne Dominum) Nolo deum, M 18 M: es add 19 M: te 2

[B 10 v]

122

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

614. sepeque cum non1 sint2 esse putemus3 eas. 4 615. Cum bene quis moritur persoluit debita cuncta: 616. nil quod agat superest, plus nichil exigitur. 617. Ne5 moriens aliis tua distribuenda relinquas: id est bonus

618. 619. 620. 621. 622. 623. 624. 625.

nullus erit quam6 tu plus tibi propicius; nemo tuos melius tua dispensabit in usus: da7 tua dum tua sunt, uel8 data non data sunt. “Hec do si moriar”: qui dicit nil ibi9 donat; mortuus autem qui10 nil habeat,11 unde dabit? Hec igitur nullus data censeat,12 ymmo relicta que quantum potuit strinxit auara manus; set neque talia sunt proprie dicenda relicta13 id est fortitudo

626. que uis14 extorsit mortis auaricie. 627. Quem domino placuit seruorum absoluere gratis, 628. si sit is ingratus, gracia non maneat. 629. Set neque15 sit patris qui patrem iniuriat16 heres; q. dicat idem est de matre

630. lege pari matri par sit habendus honor.17 631. Contra consilium si nubat uirgo parentum 632. horum non debet participare bonis.18 633. Si menbro seruum19 domini uiolencia priuet, serua

634.

ius in eo20 nullum possidet ulterius; empte

635. ancille proprie si se coniunxerit ullus, 636. carnis eam tactu liberat ipse sue.

1

B: si M: sine 3 B: putandus; M: putamus; RB reads P as “putamus” 4 P: Dum 5 B: Nec 6 P: extra 7 M: dei 8 sunt uel) M omit 9 M: tibi 10 P omits from “nil” in line 621 to “qui” in line 622; supplied by B 11 RB, B, M: habet 12 B: sentiat 13 M omits lines 624–625 14 M: uix 15 M: nec 16 M: non amat 17 M: horror 18 P: borus 19 menbro seruum) seruum menbro, M 20 M: eum 2

[M 119r] [P 47r]

123

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

637. Philosophis1 populloque fides nuquam fuit una: 638. huic semper2 sensus3 pro ratione fuit; scilicet populli

639. nil nisi4 corporeum, nisi5 sencile6 mens capit eius, 640. tale quid et summum cogitat esse Deum, 641. quem7 nisi cum8 membris audire uidereque nescit, 642. nec quid agat nouit si manus absit ei. scilicet deus

643. Ipse quidem totus manus est oculusque uel auris; hominibus

644.

[P 47v; B 11r]

scilicet aures et alia

ex se cuncta potest qui creat omnibus hec. scilicet deus

645. Cumque sit absque loco, sic9 nusquam est ut sit ubique deus

646. et quidam cunctis sit10 locus ipse locis; 647. nusquam conclusus sed more potentis ubique est11 deo

648.

in quo subsistunt omnia ne pereant. id est nisi aliquis fuerit in obediencia non potest esse promatus [= promotus] ad dignitatem id est manserit obediendo

649. Quisquis non fuerit paciens parendo12 iubenti 650. imperio nulli13 preficiendus14 erit; 651. armiger esse prius quam miles debuit omnis15 652. quidque16 ageret doctor discere17 discipulus. id est aliquando

si opoteat

653. Si quando dare quid cuiquam contingat auarum,18 quia non consueuit dare alias

654. hoc quia non didicit,19 nescit habere modum. 655. Religio iuuenis leuis est impulsio mentis20

1

M: Philosophus huic semper) Semper enim, B; semper enim huic, M 3 M: consenssus 4 M: sibi 5 M: nil 6 M: sensus 7 M: Qui 8 M: eum (not noted by RB) 9 P: sit; RB reads B as “sit” and P as “sic” 10 B: fit (not noted by RB) 11 B omit; M omits lines 646 and 647 12 B: pariendo 13 M: nulis 14 P: perficiendus; B corrected to “preficiendus” from “proficiendus” 15 P: This line supplied lenghtways along the left margin with mark to indicate correct position 16 M: quod 17 B: disceret 18 B: auaro 19 M: didiscit 20 B: uentis 2

124

656.

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

et tamquam torrens impetuosus aque: id est cessabit liqui scilicet torrens

657. quo uehementior1 est, citius2 sicabitur iste scilicet torens

658. excedensque modum,3 deperit ille cito. 659. Dedalus ad patriam mediocri calle rediuit; 660. Ycarus4 alta petens lapsus ad ima ruit. 661. Ieiunando modum superans superabis5 edendo 662. quique nimis6 uigilat7 dormiet ipse nimis; 8 663. uicta cito cedet 9 fragilis substantia10 nostra id est si excedat

664.

qualibet excedat religione11 modum. quia fugit statim ad [?]us

665. Nec catus poterit seruari pelle nitente,12 poterit suple

666. nec mulier cultus si presiosus erit. 667. Magna Dei reprobis, cum non irascitur,13 ira est 668. quos sinit ad penam14 multiplicare dies. q. dicat non aliter non tradant

669. Qui nuptum15 tradunt, studeant16 hornare puellas; 670. hornatu sapiens uir cito priuat eam. 671. De quo culpasti mulierem cogis amare 672. et uerum falso crimine sepe struis.17 673. Incestam ut castam frustra seruare laboras: scilicet incestam

scilicet casta

674. non potes hanc,18 illam non opus esse scias.19 675. Plus famam quam res amittere uitat honestas20

1

P: uheemencior B: si cursus 3 M: modo (not noted by RB) 4 M: ytarus 5 M: superauit 6 B: Qui minus 7 P: uigilam 8 M: Vita 9 B: cadet 10 B: stantia sub 11 M: si racione 12 M: nitenti 13 P: iracitur 14 M: penas 15 B: nuptam (not noted by RB) 16 M: student 17 P: struit 18 P: hunc 19 M omits lines 671–674 20 B: honesta; M: honestus 2

[P 48r]

[B 11v]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

125

scilicet honestas

676. et nomen prefert1 omnibus ipsa 2 bonum. 677. Ne sis natarum sic cecus amore tuarum id est ut non putes

natas

678. ut non3 corrumpi posse rearis4 eas; 679. quam cito fas sit eas festina tradere nuptum:5 680. uilescit6 mulier suspicione cito. 681. Quanto plus fragilis muliebris sexus habetur 682. tanto eius uirtus preeminet in meritis. id est post adulterium

683. Si cui post lapsum carnis retinenda sit uxor, id est dacat [=dicat] quod non est uerum

684.

nesciat oprobrium uitet ut ipse7 suum.8 uxorem

685. Aut abici decet hanc aut turpia dissimulare:9 scilicet excusare et non curare

scilicet dimitit ipsam

686. callidus hoc curat,10 uir bonus illud agit; 687. quam iactura mali iactancia peior habetur 688. et grauior leso cuilibet esse solet. 689. In quam dum11 moreris12 regionem cogeris ire 690. mens tua dum uiuis cogitet13 assidue: 691. quis status illius,14 qualis sit mancio uite uite

692. cui15 tam difficilem16 mors17 parat introitum, 693. in qua si18 grauius contingat19 uiuere nobis, 694. sorte nichil nostra censeo deterius.20 695. Accensas mollis responsio mitigat iras; 1

M: preferet M: ipse 3 M omit (gap in MS) 4 M: credatis 5 B: nuptu 6 P: uilesit 7 B: ipsa, RB notes B “fortasse recte” 8 M omits lines 683–684 9 P: discimilare (RB reads P as “discimulare”); M: disimulare 10 hoc curat) sicatur, M 11 M: dei 12 M: morieris 13 P: cogitant (RB reads as “cogitat”) 14 M: ille 15 B: Cum 16 M: dificile 17 B: mens 18 M: sit 19 M: cogitat 20 sorte nichil nostra censeo deterius) deterius nostra censeo sorte nichil, M 2

[M 119v]

126

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D responsio

irans [= iras]

696. auget eas pocius dura creatque nouas. 697. In uerbis pauidus semper letare fuisse; id est ut sis

698.

in factis audax sis aliquando decet.1

[P 48v]

hominem

699. Nil magis offendit quam prauus sermo potentem; 700. plus probra liber homo quam sua dampna timet. 701. Vt pecudes quo uult fert2 impetuosa 3 uoluptas4 702. sic homines agitat luxuriosus amor; 703. luxurie stimulus, supremus et intimus hostis, id est grauiter

704. 705. 706. 707. 708. 709. 710. 711.

ciuili5 bello nos graue persequitur. Vxorem ratione sua uir debet amare6 ut non ad coitum sicut adultera sit. Si post conceptum pecudum saciata libido ferre marem7 nolit, quid mulier, quid agat? An se luxurie solam putet esse creatam, ad coitus fructus8 cetera nata9 feret? Cui malus assistit uicinus dampna propinquant q. dicat semper cogitat malum nisi possit nocere

712. et cum dampna uacant mens sine pace manet. 713. Iudex et medicus tibi consilientur amore: scilicet medicus et iudex

714. si possis omnes, precipue tamen hii. 715. Nec10 temptare Deum, fili, presumpseris unquam; id est quanto

716. nitere quo possis ut merearis opem. 717. Infames fugiat tua conuersatio semper 718. et socio gaude te meliore frui; 719. est melius socium quam cognatum esse bonorum, et a sociis

a cognato

720. hinc etenim uircus eminet,11 inde genus. 721. Quorumuis hominum similes12 consorcia formant:13

1

M: licet (RB notes “fortasse recte”) RB, B, M: trahit 3 P: impetusa (RB reads as “impetosa”) 4 P, M: uoluntas 5 B: Ciuile (not noted by RB) 6 P: This line added lengthways along right margin, mark indicates correct position 7 B: matrem 8 RB, M: fructum 9 cetera nata) nata cetera, P; cuncta nata, M 10 RB, B, M: Ne 11 M: iminet (not noted by RB) 12 P: modo res (“o res” erased and rewritten) 13 B: format 2

[B 12 r]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

127

722. cum quo uiuendum sit tibi prospicito.1 723. Displicuisse bonis non est infamia parua 2 724. nec placuisse malis3 suspicione caret.4 pro ut

725. Quaque die quo proficiat5 tua cura reuoluat id est quanto

suple tanto

726. ut quo longior est uita sit et melior. 727. Nec6 prius excipiat7 te sompnus nocte8 sequente

[P 49r]

id est si non uigilaueris et precedenti nocte in alia non cubas de die

728. quam te precedens lux uigilasse sciat. 729. Cuiuscumque9 rei leuis est obliuio nobis:

[M 120r]

id est quia spreuimus illud quod audiuimus ideo nescimus

730. momenti nobis nullius illa fuit; 731. inmemori seruo sua uix10 obliuio prosit 732. cum sine contemptu uix ea contigerit.11 733. Quas multi multo conquirunt tempore docti12 734. stultus eas modico dissipat unus13 opes. 735. Egregius pauper contemptor14 diuiciarum id est ille qui semper non mundum et agit peniteciam dicitur stultus a stultis

736. stulticia tali15 dedecorosus16 erit. 737. Scripture ignarus princeps qui sustinet esse 738. cogitur archanum pandere sepe suum. quintum [= quantum] natura concedit et non magis

739. Qui faciunt quantum est illis concessa potestas, 740. ad meritum nichil est quod superesse queat. 741. Nil superest culpe cum cessat praua uoluntas 742. hec etenim sola est17 que facit esse reum. 743. Nulla bonos faciunt eque18 comunia prauis

1

[B 12v]

RB: perspicito (does not note variant readings of P, B, M) B: praua 3 M: malus 4 M transposes the second half of each line of the distich: “Displicuisse malus suspicione caret | nec placuisse bonis non est infamia parua” 5 RB: proficias (not in Rec. I); M: prospicias 6 B: Ne 7 M: excusat 8 sompnus nocte) nocte sompnus, P 9 B: Cuiusque 10 B: coniunxit 11 B: contingerit 12 M: patres 13 M: filius 14 RB, B, M: contemptu; RB notes P “fortasse recte” 15 B: talis 16 P: dedeterosus; B: dederosus 17 M omits line 740 following “est,” all line 741, and line 742 “hec . . . est.” 18 B: equo 2

128

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

744. que1 nichil ad meritum nos habuisse refert.2 745. Cum natura bonum3 cuiquam te4 impendere5 cogit 746. id meritis noli conumerare tuis: 747. quod6 pecudes eque faciunt7 ratione carentes pecudibus

748.

nisi facias plusquam ipse

scilicet illud

scilicet pecudibus

non his te prefert8 sed magis equat 9 eis. q. dicat non dico contra naturam

749. Nature10 sua iura tamen persoluere debes antipophora

750. sed finem11 in cunctis constituendo Deum; 751. quicquid ab hoc unquam12 diuisum fine13 uidebis 752. disiunctum a meritis penitus14 esse scias. scilicet in deo

753. 754. 755. 756. 757. 758. 759.

Esse datam nobis rationem constat in isto, ne meritorum expers16 uiuere posset17 homo. Quidquid18 agis quia uis,19 etiam 20 si iussus obedis, quod facis hoc21 quod 22 uis, id tua lucra putes. Libera mens ita prouideat que sunt facienda ne quid seruorum more coacta gerat. Pauperis auditor Domini 23 sibi preparat aures suple pauperis

760. propiciumque Deum qui miseretur habet. 761. Cum tua pauperibus largiris24 non data dicas25

1

P: Quem M: facit 3 B: bene 4 B: hec; M omit 5 P: impedere (not noted by RB) 6 B: At 7 pecudes eque faciunt) faciunt eque pecudes, M 8 M: preferunt 9 M: equa (not noted by RB) 10 P: Natura 11 RB reads M as “fine” 12 M: numquam 13 P: sine (RB reads as “fine”); M: finem 14 B: protinus 15 P: lines 753–761 are displaced to between lines 628–629 16 P: ex pars 17 B: possit 18 P: Quiquid 19 P: quamuis 20 M: et 21 facis hoc) hoc facis, M 22 P: quia 23 M: deum 24 P: largitis; M: eleemosina add. 25 B: dicis 2

[from P 47r]15

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

762. namque datis Dominus premia magna1 dabit.2 763. Cum reficit tua mensa Deum conuiuaque3 Christus

129

[P 49v]

suple nulla potest

est tuus,4 hac mensa dicior esse nequid.5

764.

reddita

765. Pauca Deo reddes que merces multa sequetur;6 si homo dat

deus malis non bonis

deus

766. multum homini cui sit gracia nulla dabit. 767. Exmendare7 bonum est, melius peccata cauere: id est si uincas semel diabolum postea timorose accedet ad te

768.

uictus ab hoste semel iam minus obstat ei, id est multo

769. plagaque8 non9 nullo curanda10 dolore cauænda est 770. precipue que nil utilitatis habet. 771. Si moueat11 quemquam12 reprehenssum crimen ad iram,

[B 13r]

id est si irascitur de reprehencione insinuat se esse reum

772. ipse sibi13 super hoc testis habendus erit. 773. Tormentum cunctis est uxor adultera maius; 774. mors ista minor est14 passio cuique15 bono. 775. Tartarea non est uindicta iustior ulla16 scilicet inferno quia postquam aliquis est ibi non inuenit medicinam propter aliquid

776.

cum magis iniustus17 iudice nemo sit hoc.18

id est quanto

777. Quo magis istius careo19 dulcedine uite id est tanto

778.

1

constat eo quia sit finis20 amara 21 minus.

B: multa (RB notes “fortasse recte”) Namque datis Dominus premia magna dabit) christus centuplici fenore reddet ea, M; line order here follows RB, B; in P line 762 follows line 764 (its hexameter line, line 761, was misplaced to prior to line 629) 3 M: conuiuamque 4 est tuus) extat ab, M 5 P: potest; M: potes 6 P: sequentur (RB reads as “sequuntur”) 7 B, M: Emendare 8 M: Plagas que 9 M omit 10 B: creando 11 M: mouent 12 B: quequam (not noted by RB) 13 P omit; Pg: a sibi (added in left margin) 14 minor est) M: minorem (not noted by RB) 15 M: cuiquam 16 B, M: illa 17 B: istius 18 nemo sit hoc) ire nemo sit, M 19 B: care 20 P: sons (read by RB as “fons”); B: fortis; M: in uiuis add. (not noted by RB) 21 P: corrected from “amare”; B: amare 2

130

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

779. Qua te cumque1 die bona non fecisse2 uidebis,

[M 120 v]

scilicet dies

780.

non erit hec uite conumeranda tue; id est diamedis

781. consilio3 saltem gentili plangere disce 782. amisisse diem, quam4 reparare5 stude.6 suple credis

783. Vt credat7 quod tu8 nullum ui cogere tempta:9 ille ad fidem per cognitionem

784. sola quippe potest huc racione trahi; 785. extorquere potes10 fidei mendacia11 frustra: 786. ipsa fides non ui, set racione uenit. 787. Mentiri natura nequid: firmissima semper id est fortim

si aliquis conuertatur ad fidem

id est illud tempus quo mouebas eum

788. coniectura fuit quam dedit ille12 locus. 789. Expensas moderare tuas ut res tua13 poscit14 expensas

790. ne15 fore16 maiores quam tua lucra feras. 791. Iudiciis adsis, causis assiste docendus: 792. presidium17 multis hinc eris atque tibi. ferum

uerbi uel iniuriam corporis

793. Dampna timet pauper,18 contemptus19 nobilis horret: illud

794. quod plus quemque20 grauat, uindicat21 ipse magis. 795. Est in peccatis mala consolatio quedam ut faciunt quidam quando reprehendunt de peccato excusantes se, qui dicunt: quid mirum si pecaui; talis maior me forcius pecauit

796.

1

si maiora tuis crimina respicias.

te cumque) tecumque, M P: fessisse 3 B: Cum scito; M: Cum socio 4 B: quem 5 P: temperare 6 B: studet 7 P: credam; M: credas 8 M: ita 9 M: temptat 10 M: potest 11 P: mendicia; M: gentilia 12 RB, B, M: iste 13 ut res tua) M omit 14 P: possit 15 P: Nec 16 B: forte; M: sint 17 RB, B, M: Presidio 18 B omit 19 RB, B, M: contemptum 20 M: quemquam 21 M: uindictam 2

[P 50r]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

131

797. Magnum1 te reputas2 si quos precellere possis id est quanto

798. cum minor hinc fueris quo tibi maior eris. 799. Nemo stupet sapiens de prosperitate malorum id est in hoc mundo

800. 801. 802. 803. 804. 805. 806. 807. 808. 809. 810. 811. 812. 813. 814. 815. 816. 817. 818.

aut cum hic af ligi conspicit ipse bonos. Scit sibi, non aliis qui nescit scita docere; tanquam nil sciret 3 talis4 habendus erit. Non sibi5 qui bonus est sed cunctis uiuere querit, pro nichilo ducens ut sibi sufficiat. Cum minus accipiat lucri, plus Marta6 laborat ut merito soror hanc torqueat inuidia. Fertilitas parcum,7 largum te noscat8 egestas ut fiat donis gracia multa tuis. Qui celebrant epulis sacra natalicia largis non ea sic sanctos promeruisse sciant:9 speratur super his anime retributio frustra cum caro mercedem tam cito10 ferre cupit. Cum multis non possit emi sapiencia nummis quid prodest horum copia, stulte, tibi? Gentilis11 ritus simulacra fidelis aborret in falso uerum ne colat ipse Deum. Quod magis a sanctis est gentibus12 improperatum13 auferri summo conuenit hoc studio.14 q. dicat non

819. Numquid amare potest ut Iupiter ydola Christus ut illa imago

820.

aut sculpi se15 ut Vestam16 nostra Maria uolet?

pluris precii

821. Pluris sit morum tibi17 quam doctrina librorum

RB, B, M: Magni; P: an erasure at the end of the word, rewritten ū. B: reputa 3 P: scitur; RB, M: scierit 4 P omit (gap in line here) 5 M: tibi 6 M: martham (not noted by RB) 7 B: parcit 8 RB, B, M: agnoscat 9 M: sciat 10 tam cito) tacito, B; tan cito, M 11 M: Gentiles 12 B: gentilibus 13 M: imperatum 14 conuenit hoc studio) studio conuenit hoc, M 15 RB, M omit. 16 RB: Vesta; B: uestem; M: uetustu 17 morum tibi) tibi modum, M 1 2

[B 13v]

[P 50v]

132

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D id est a te

822.

factaque sint1 uerbis anteferenda 2 tibi;3

scilicet facta

823. hec te prudentem mostrabunt, illa loquentem, 824. et ratio4 cuiuis preminet eloquio. 825. Si taceat stultus, sapiens reputabitur esse: 826. nil sicut sermo prodere corda ualet.5 827. Luxurie finem saltem natura datura est: 828. nullus auaricie terminus esse potest; scilicet luxuria

[M 121r]

scilicet auaricia

829. ignis hic extingi6 poterit,7 sitis illa manebit; scilicet luxuriam

830.

scilicet auariciam

turpius hoc, illud peius habeto malum.

id est dolor

831. Ve8 cui luxurie uiteque est terminus idem:9 suple luxurie

832.

nempe maritatos10 exitus iste manet. id est a falsis

833. Falsa figurari non est mirabile falsis 834. ut falsum hornari qualibet arte queat.11 et iste talis solus deus est

835. Non eget hornatu quem nullo constat egere scilicet deum

836.

nec manus artificis hunc decorare potest; scilicet deum

837. immo pudet talem credi qualem12 indicat13 illum: 838. res insencibilis membraque falsa gerens. scilicet deum fictum

839. Quem mus14 non metuit15 contingere nec reueretur: mus

840.

1

diis fictis

tanquam nil sensus16 hic his17 inesse sciat;

M: sunt P: antefedenda 3 M: tuis 4 M: non (not noted by RB) 5 M: solet (RB notes “fortasse recte”) 6 RB, B: extingui; M: stingui 7 B: potest 8 M: Ne 9 est terminus idem) terminus idem est, B 10 M: maritos 11 M: queant 12 M: quale (not noted by RB) 13 M: iudicat (not noted by RB) 14 Quem mus) Quem tus, P (but see Pg gloss to lines 840–842); Quamuis, B 15 M: mutuit 16 M: senus (not noted by RB) 17 hic his) hi(i)s hic, RB, B, M 2

[B 14r]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T scilicet mus

133

id est uim

841. nil reputat membrum quod membri non habet usum, id est sine uita

scilicet mus

842. nil sine re formam iudicat esse rei. 843. Hanc1 solam ueneratur homo quam fecit et ipse: 844. in tali forma crede manere Deum!2 845. Cum quidam 3 casu dicant contingere cuncta,4 id est firmum est

846.

cuncta tamen constat dispossuisse Deum.

847. 848. 849. 850. 851. 852. 853.

Si qua neges5 ex arbitrio contingere nostro, arbitrio fuerit6 liberiore Dei; nil igitur temere7 fieri temere8 reputabis cum prestet cunctis summa Dei ratio. Quicquid contigerit9 iusto10 non prouocat iram: disponente Deo scit bene11 cuncta geri. Non est perfectus12 quisquis meditatur13 in ullo14

854. 855. 856. 857. 858. 859. 860. 861.

quod minime dubitat dispossuisse Deum; fortuitu15 qui cuncta geri16 tantummodo credit, non miror17 casus cum male fert18 aliquos.19 Iustus pressura se consolatur in omni qui meditatur20 et hanc21 dissposuisse Deum. Multi ne cupidi uideantur22 dona refutant: plus quam res laudem gloria uana cupit. Sunt qui oblata sibi nonnumquam dona repellunt

id est hoc quod non potes scias quod deus potest

pro non

1

B: Quam M omits lines 843–844 3 M: quedam 4 casu . . . cuncta) cuncta . . . casu, B; cuncti . . . casu, M 5 B: negas 6 M: fiunt (not noted by RB) 7 M omit 8 B: tecum 9 B: contingerit (RB reads M as “contingerit”) 10 RB, B, M: iusti 11 B: bona 12 RB reads B as “perfactus” 13 B: mediator 14 RB, B, M: illo 15 B: Fortuita 16 B: gerit 17 M: minor 18 M: ferent 19 M places lines 855–856 after lines 857–858 20 qui meditatur) Quod mediatur, P 21 M: has 22 P: uideante 2

[P 51r]

134

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D dona

862. ut magis hinc cari sepius1 illa ferant. 863. Escam piscator modicam componit in amo2 864. ut magnum piscem subleuet inde sibi; 865. sic capit 3 astutus de paruo munere magnum 866. et pauca impendens plurima ferre solet. alique

867. Sunt qui lucrantur4 multum modicumque laborant; 868. econtra multis nouimus accidere. 869. Planiciem5 quemcumque sequi decet expositorum6 870. quantumcumque7 rudis sermo sit eius in hoc. 871. Quilibet ergo labor nichil est si gracia desit

[B 14v]

[P 51v]

scilicet gracia

872. et nil defuerit dummodo presto sit hec.8 873. Ne dicas miserum, ne dicas esse beatum id est in hoc mundo

874. cui male succedi uel bene uideris9 hic:10 11 875. altera spectanda12 regio que iudicet ista id est semper

876.

ad quam nonnumquam13 conditus14 est sapiens. in hoc mundo

in futuro

877. Purgari decet15 hic qui sunt ibi suscipiendi 878. ut fornax auri16 uita sit ista bonis;17 scilicet hec uita

879. hec18 igitur nostrum fornax examinat aurum 880. quod qui non tolerat, non ibi purus erit, id est illuc

ire

881. nec nisi purus eo19 poterit pertingere20 quisquam: 1

P: sapius B: hamo; M: “h” added in superscript 3 M: cupit 4 P: luctantur 5 P: Planicime (not noted by RB) 6 RB, B, M: expositorem 7 P: Quamcumque 8 M omits lines 871–872 9 B: uidebis 10 M: hoc 11 P: Litera 12 RB, M: est add. 13 nonnumquam) non in qua, RB, B, M 14 M: condictus (not noted by RB) 15 RB reads B as “docet” 16 M: auro 17 M: hominis 18 RB, B, M: Hic (RB reads P as “Hic”) 19 M omit 20 B: contingere 2

[M 121v]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

135

882. fornax hec igitur est sicienda1 bonis. 883. Ira Dei magna est cum delinquentibus ipse scilicet delinquentes

irasci difert2 hos tolerando diu.

884. id est quanto

id est in hoc mundo

885. Quo se mollius hic studet unusquisque fouere 886. ad penam tenerum se magis ipse parat. 887. Corrigias corio larguas3 facit4 ex alieno 888. qui cum distribuat5 plurima, plura rapit. ostendat

precii

889. Proximus6 exibeat quanti Deus ipse tibi7 sit: proximo

890.

cercior hoc nullus testis amoris erit. di proximi

scilicet deum

891. Hoc hornat templum pietas, hanc excollit aram, deo diligendo proximum

pietas

uota

pietas

deo

892. huic8 pia uota facit factaque9 soluit ei.10 893. Nolo manufactis operam te impendere multam11 894. res ubi12 non ipsa est ymmo figura rei.13 895. Cui benefecisti ne credas laudibus eius: id est qui dat

896.

cuilibet hoc faciet qui facit14 illud ei. male dicit

897. Quisquis se15 laudat multum sibi detrahit ipse; 898. laudet se factis ore tacente suo. 899. Quando rogas Dominum16 ne mente uageris ab illo 17 900. ut uerbis illi sis prope, corde18 procul, 901. sed pariter uocem quo dirigis erige mentem

1

M: scienda M: diferunt 3 RB, B, M: largas 4 P: dabit 5 P: distribuit 6 B: proximis 7 B: sibi 8 B: hinc; M: hic 9 B: sanctaque (not noted by RB) 10 P: es (not noted by RB); Pg corrects with gloss “deo” 11 B, M: multa 12 B: ibi 13 M: dei 14 B: fecit (not noted by RB); M: faciet 15 B: te 16 M: deum 17 M: ne add. 18 M: mente 2

[P 52r] [B 15r]

136

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D oris

deum

902. ut1 magis affectus2 quam sonus oret eum. 903. Cum Domino loquimur quando hunc3 orando uocamus:4 904. nobiscum facit hunc lectio sacra loqui; id est opera

905. lectio sacra nimis sed plus collatio5 prodest: scilicet collatio

scilicet lectio

906. hec monet ut queras, quod petis illa docet.6 907. Discipulus sapiens est gloria summa magistri: scilicet magistri scilicet dicipuli

908.

istius laus est illius utilitas; scilicet discipulo

909. plus ab eo doctor summit quam prebeat illi pro quamuis

scilicet magister scolare

910. ut conducendus7 sit magis hic ab eo. 8 911. Notius est semper uicium9 uirtusque potentis: id est quanto

quo10 magis eminet11 hic sunt sua nota12 magis.

912. id est quanto

913. Quo minus hic penam didiscerunt13 ferre potentes id est tanto

914. hoc14 magis ymminet15 his ultima pena grauis.16 915. Nemo per exemplum sic proderit17 atque nocebit uno

est

hoc id est alio

916. hoc18 melior cunctis deteriorque modo. 917. Vt te alii laudent19 alios laudando mereris: 918. laudari 20 cupiens uituperare caue; 919. uituperare cauens uitabis uituperari: 920. est dignus meritum sumere quisque suum. 21 1

B, M: Cum P: effectus 3 P omit; Pg add. 4 RB: uacamus (a “coniectura” contrary to all MSS readings). 5 M: oratio 6 M: dabit 7 B: condocendus 8 M: Incertum 9 semper uicium) uitium semper, B 10 P: Que; Pg corrects with gloss 11 M: iminet 12 M: uota 13 RB, M: didicerunt; B: didiscunt (? not noted by RB) 14 M: hec 15 M: tanto add. 16 P and B insert lines 913–914 between lines 902–903 (see commentary for discussion) 17 P: proderiit (RB reads as “proderit”) 18 M: hec 19 alii laudent) laudent alii, B 20 M: laudare 21 M omits line 920 2

137

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T comes blesensis

921. 922. 923. 924. 925. 926. 927. 928. 929. 930. 931.

Multa Theobaldus largitur religiosis sed si1 plura rapit sunt data rapta magis. Vt Salomon meminit, pertusus2 saculus eius de quo3 produxit4 tanta fefellit eum. Conuenit hoc magis ut5 rapiat nichil6 atque nichil det quam perdat grates et sua dona simul. Multa Deo diues quia7 multum possidet ofert8 et uelut ex uomitu quod superest reicit;9 multa dat et dampni nil sentit copia multa: censum non animum cogitat insipiens. Credit habere Deum pro magno quod sibi magnum est10

932. 933. 934. 935. 936. 937. 938. 939. 940.

non uidue pensans11 illa minuta duo. Sic male de uenia confidens liberiusque delinquens, donis mortem emit ipse suis, de quibus, est nobis dubium qua mente gerantur, in melius uertit quilibet ista bonus. Is12 quoque qui malus est uult ut bona sint sua cuncta13 hic14 minime curans ut sit et ipse bonus;15 cumque bonam16 caligam non uitam curet17 habere, quid18 cui preponat quis dubitare potest?

[P 52v]

[M 122r]

scilicet illas duas pictas

aliquam

[B 15v]

id est sciat bene

941. Si19 quis forte reum credat iurareque20 cogat, si aliquis sciret alium culpabilem et ille negat culpam si faceret ipsum uitare [= iurare?]

942.

1

plus reus est illo quem putat esse reum,

B omit M: percussus 3 P: qua 4 B, M: producit (RB notes “fortasse recte”) 5 hoc . . . ut) ut . . . hic, M 6 B: nil (not noted by RB); M omit 7 B: quam (not noted by RB) 8 M: offeret 9 B: iaciat 10 quod sibi magnum est) munere magnum, M 11 M: pensas 12 B: Hiis 13 bona sint sua cuncta) sua cuncta bona sint, P 14 RB, B: Id (RB also reads “id” for M, but the line is not transmitted in M as RB notes p. 196) 15 M omits lines 937–938 16 P: donam 17 M: curat 18 M: emended from “quid”: quem? quod? (not noted by RB) 19 B: Sed 20 M: iuraque 2

138

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D pro sed

scilicet culpabilem

943. quod1 si non talem credit 2 cur cogit ad ista?3 ad iurandum

944. Nemo igitur quemquam cogere debet ad hec.4 945. Scribere scire stude simul ac5 diccare6 labora: scilicet sine dictamine et scriptura

946. is7 sine secretum nullus habere potest. 947. Quod loqueris transit nec8 plus est labile quicquam, id est moriente

948. quod uero scribis9 te pereunte manet; 949. qui pereunt in se uiuunt per scripta poete: scilicet per scripta

950. quam natura negat uita per ista manet. 951. Per famam uiuit defuncto in10 corpore doctus11 952. et plus natura philosophia potest; 953. quique fere nullum uiuentes12 nomen habebant 954. postea de scriptis optinuere suis.13 955. Pauper erat Socrates rebus nunc14 nomine diues; 956. rebus scripturas anteferendo manet. id est magistro

957. Sic et Aristotilem cum preceptore Platone15 958. presentes nobis propria scripta tenent; 959. sic reliqui tales uerbis aliquando locuti 960. numquam desistunt per sua scripta loqui.16 17 961. Scripto se faciet presentem quilibet absens, scilicet scripto

962.

nemo magis fidus nuncius esse potest: sed alius nuncius referet magis uel minus uel aliter uel nicha [=nichil] scriptum

963. id solum referet18 quod tu19 comiseris illi 1

B: Quis non talem credit) talem credit, P; tale non credidit, M 3 P: rogando add. 4 M: hoc 5 P: hac 6 B: ditare; RB, M: dictare 7 B, M: hiis 8 B: non 9 B: scribes 10 defuncto in) defunctus, B 11 M omits line 951 12 P: umentes 13 M: suos 14 B: non 15 P: platane 16 P inverts the order of lines 959–960 (not noted in RB) 17 P: Scripte (but see Pg line 962) 18 M: referunt 19 B omit 2

[P 53r]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

964.

139

queque1 loqui pudeat2 scribere multa licet. et nullus alius nec sanctus non sancta

965. Solus adorandus Deus est,3 cum4 sola potestas

[B 16r]

id est a suis

966. 967. 968. 969. 970. 971. 972. 973. 974.

hec5 pro6 se tantum sit ueneranda suis. Dissimilat, similat sapiens pro tempore multa paucaque ui peragit, plurima consilio. In cunctis7 sapiens tam tempora quam loca pensat et facies multas sumit ut ista decent.8 Vt nichil ad meritum caro sed mens integra9 confert,10 sic nichil econtra decidit a merito. Magni perducunt ad premia magna11 labores gloriaque12 est casu nulla parata leui. q. dicit non incipiant nisi sint certi in hoc quod dicunt

975. Qui scribunt13 libros caueant a iudice multo 976. cum multus iudex talibus immineat. 977. Persuadere14 bonum stulto non est leue quiddam:15 978. solus habet sapiens credere16 consilio.17 979. Quis sapiens, quis sit stultus corectio18 monstrat: scilicet stultus correctionem

id est sapiens

980. audit hic hanc nolens,19 suscipit ille uolens. 981. Quid poterit stulto prodesse pecunia multa 982. cum minime sensum comparet inde20 sibi?21 22 983. Vt res de uerbis, de23 fictis uera reportet 984. astutus stultos carmine sepe capit.

1

B: Quos M: nequeas 3 Deus est) est deus, M 4 M: cui 5 M: hoc 6 RB reads both P and B as “per” 7 M: multis 8 P: docent; M: decet 9 P: integer (not noted by RB) 10 M: conferet 11 premia magna) magna premia, M 12 B: Gloria 13 M: scribent 14 M: Asuadere (not noted by RB) 15 M: quidam 16 RB: cedere (from Rec. II) 17 P: consilium; M omits line 978 18 B: correptio 19 P: uolens 20 B: ipse 21 P omits lines 981–982; supplied from B 22 P omit 23 M: dic 2

[P 53v]

[M 122v]

140

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

985. Multus uicinus, rarus1 circumstat amicus: 986. quo preciosior2 est res ea, rarior3 est. 987. Iratus numquam presumas4 cedere5 quemquam: 988. impedit in cunctis ira tenere modum. 989. Distulit insipiens oblatum sumere donum: 990. sepius hoc6 ipsum nemine dante petet.7 uel ilarem

991. 992. 993. 994. 995. 996. 997. 998. 999. 1000. 1001. 1002. 1003. 1004. 1005. 1006. 1007. 1

Post epulas facilem poteris reperire datorem:8 tunc pete si qua uelis,9 cum dator10 est ilaris. Femineis lacrimis quas mors11 extorquet amici12 non modicus pudor est ora madere uiri. Se consolatus13 de nati funere quidam “Mortalem,” dixit, “me genuisse14 scio.” Flesse Dauid puerum morientem scimus eoque15 defuncto letum se exibuisse suis. A Christo descripta16 boni perfectio summi est in personis significata tribus:17 in patre quippe Deo diuina potencia nobis exprimitur de qua18 dicitur19 omnipotens; Spiritus est sanctus bonitas, sapiencia uerbum, de patre procedens est hic et hec genita. Tres20 has personas substantia copulat 21 una trina 22 diuisas23 proprietate sui. Cum male24 cuncta geras si quid uolo dicere de te25

M: emended from “carus” M: pocior 3 M: carior 4 P: presumat 5 P, M: credere 6 M: hic 7 RB, B: petit 8 M: doctorem 9 P: eulis (RB reads as “euelis”) 10 M: doctor 11 M: mox 12 M: amicus 13 RB, B, M: consolanti 14 P: ienuisse (not noted by RB) 15 scimus eoque) B omit 16 B: descripti 17 P places lines 999–1000 after line 1006 18 M: quo 19 M: deus 20 P: Tre 21 B: capiat 22 M: tria (not noted by RB) 23 M: diuisa 24 B: mala 25 de te) dece, P 2

[B 16v]

[P 54r]

C A R M E N A D AST R A L A BI U M — L AT I N T E X T

1008. 1009. 1010. 1011. 1012. 1013. 1014. 1015. 1016. 1017. 1018. 1019. 1020. 1021. 1022. 1023. 1024. 1025. 1026. 1027. 1028. 1029. 1030. 1031. 1032. 1

mentiri cogor1 ni2 mala sola loquar.3 Plus quandoque4 metus quam uiuus mortuus affert:5 plus metuas quem plus posse nocere patet. Indignare tibi cum te tua culpa f lagellat non illi qui dat uerbera iusta tibi. Quos paupertatem6 uel rerum dampna timentes conuerti uideas, ne tibi spes7 sit in his; his quoque quos pueros traxit deuotio patrum mirandum est si quid religionis inest. Sanguinis eiusdem plures in religionis conuentu noli consociare8 sibi,9 in quibus offensis10 multis cum11 offenderis unum aduersum multos sit12 tibi pugna grauis. Si prelata uiris dominatum13 femina summat peruerso dicas ordine cuncta14 geri: 15 ducit in exicium quecumque16 remissa potestas;17 tam sibi quam domui18 fiet amara sue.19 Siquis opes plusquam mores in coniuge querat, 20 si mecabitur hec, non habet ille21 queri,22 precipue si possidet has quas querit in illa et que coniugii causa fuere sui. Nobilis et diues mulier confidit in istis23 unde tumens semper24 iurgia crebra mouet. Multa dat insipiens nec grates inde meretur; multa recepturus pauca dabit sapiens.

M: tegor P: in (not noted by RB) 3 P, M: loquor 4 B: quidem 5 M: aferent 6 M: paupertate 7 M: species (not noted by RB) 8 B: tu sociare; M: sociare 9 B: tibi 10 P: offeresis 11 multis cum) multum, M 12 B: fit (not noted by RB) 13 prelata uiris dominatum) preclara uiri doni catum, M 14 M: queque 15 B, M: Dulcis 16 RB: quemcumque (RB reads B and P as “quemcumque”) 17 B: potestis 18 B: domine 19 B: sua 20 M: querit 21 RB, B: unde; M: inde 22 B: querat 23 B: illis 24 M omit 2

141

[B 17r]

142

1033. 1034. 1035. 1036. 1037. 1038. 1039. 1040. 1041. 1042.

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

In dandis sapiens tam tempora1 quam loca pensat; mensuram pensi non habet insipiens: ignorat trutinam nec libre2 pondera nouit est ideo donis gracia nulla suis. Cui tua 3 post mortem commiseris4 efficis hostem:5 fert6 grauius uite tempora nemo tue. 7 Vi Sathanas8 pugnat, paciens9 uirtute resistit: uincit hic et palma uincitur ille10 sua. Pauper sufficiens sibi solus11 diues habetur;12 non sibi sufficiens diues auarus eget.

[P 54v]

[M 123r]

Explicit liber Astralabi. Hic liber est scriptus; qui scripsit sit benedictus. Qui scripsit scribat semper cum Domino uiuat. Grates reddo tibi, genitor Deus, cum tibi, Christe.13

1

M: tempore M: libere 3 M: cuncta 4 B: concesseris (RB notes B “fortasse recte”) 5 P omit 6 M: ferunt 7 B: Vt 8 P: scithanas (RB reads as “sathanas”) 9 M: sapiens 10 P: ipse 11 M: soli 12 The text of M ends here 13 Explicit . . . christe) Explicit liber deo gracias amen, B; Carmine finito sit laus et gloria christo, M 2

CHAPTER 4 CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM—ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Peter Abelard, Carmen ad Astralabium 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Astralabe, my son, sweetness of a fatherly life, I leave behind a few things for the diligent pursuit of your instruction. Your concern should be of learning rather than of teaching, for from this you are of profit to others, from that, of profit to yourself. When what you would learn fails you, cease to learn and you will not say that you should have ceased sooner. Not by whom, but what is said should be your concern: things said well make a name for their author. Neither should you swear by the words of a beloved master nor should a teacher hold you bound by his love. By the fruit, not the leaves of apples is every man fed and meaning must be preferred to words. Persuasion may seize minds with ornate words; plainness is rather owed to teaching. An abundance of words exists where there is not an abundance of meaning, and it is agreed that one who wanders about multiplies the ways. The teaching of one which you see to be self-contradictory you should be sure to hold as not at all certain: the fool is changed like the unstable moon, just like the sun, the wise man remains consistent with himself. Now here, now there, the blind mind of the fool wanders, the prudent mind fashions a steady step everywhere: it ponders in advance for a long time what it can reasonably say lest it should become, shamefaced, its own judge. Pay attention to the words of teachers, the deeds of the good; may your breast ever burn with this kind of greed. Learn for a long time, and lay a firm foundation for yourself, and delay teaching, and do not leap too soon to writing;

144

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

I do not want your teaching to be that of an extempore master who is forced to make up what he teaches as he goes. No-one will assign you a renown which is not yet earned; after many years, if you are willing, you may prove its worth. Beware all damage to your reputation so that you might be of profit to many as to yourself: what has gone before forces new accusations to be believed; likewise a former life will stand as witness to the one that follows. Let not your glory but the Lord’s be sought, my son, you will not have lived for yourself, but for others, or rather for God. Read the Holy Scriptures constantly, I beg you; let everything else you may read be on their account. Let the worship of divine glory be your principal concern and may fear and love ever subject you to God. No-one will fear or love God as he ought if he does not know him as he ought: how just and powerful he is, how good he is, how greatly he sustains us, how heavily he smites us. Let your will always be subject to that of God: if you wish to do otherwise, you desire to be God. Nor should you seek what profits you, but what pleases him: a mercenary does the former, a friend the latter. It is enough for you to seek only his honor: by this God himself will bear in mind your usefulness. Just as wisdom is superior to all other treasures, so nothing can be worth less than its opposite. No-one may be wise through the keenness of great genius: rather morals and a good life make him so. In deeds, not in words, does wisdom declare itself; grace alone is granted to the good alone. A wise son is a great blessing to his parents, a foolish one their shame and sorrow. What a greater person may endure should not be heavy for a lesser man to bear nor should any man place himself before his superior: Cato poured out the proffered water and refreshed his people while he himself did not suffer his own thirst to be refreshed. A foolish king is an ass made mighty by a crown: such a man is as ruinous to himself as to others. I do not want you to praise the martial skill of a prince but his discretion: counsel, not strength, is the key to ruling. When a prince is good, this is a gift from God; when he is evil, the evils of the people have deserved this. Your first concern should be of doing, then of teaching what is good, lest you be in conf lict with yourself.

C A R M E N A D A S T R A L A B I U M — ENGLISH TRANSLATION

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

145

What you do not wish to be done to yourself you will not have done to another; what you wish to be done to yourself, do likewise to another. It is characteristic of a simple man to think that everyone is like himself and he is easily deceived, but he does not wish to deceive. It is a fault of character to be deceived, but an offense to deceive; every man can be free of offense, not of fault. Just as a wise man does not know how to be deceived, so a good mind does not know how to deceive: it is a fault to be deceived, an offense to deceive. To believe that you are never deceived is the highest deception and it is agreed this is a characteristic of God alone. I do not want you to liken yourself to God, nor to look for yourself above the upper airs while the shadowy mire of the earth holds you here. It is the characteristic of the just to want each man to be assigned what is his, of the brave not to panic in his adversities, of the sober to restrain the forbidden passions of the mind especially in the midst of prosperity. Just as that virtue is considered a bastion in adversity, so prosperity requires the same moderation, nor does any virtue remain foremost unless it is supported by the others, lest it be broken by ill-fortune or made complacent by good times. The philosopher determines the obscure causes of things; the practical man pursues the outcomes of works. Whoever seeks to be made righteous before God should be unaware of the justice—if any—of his own case. Consider carefully what is a fault, what a virtue: if you confuse them, you cease to be what you are. Let him recognize his faults, reprove, and correct them nor should he consider himself good in his heart while reproving himself in words. That you should never fear, look always to your betters in whom you should take note of what is still lacking in yourself. You should not seek to be considered great before one in power: you will be held of no account if he knows you seek this. From time to time God either makes us or permits us to become humble in our sin, or proud in our piety. Strive to avoid the scandals of men as much as you can, so that, moreover, you incur no scandals before God. The better God is before all others, the more he deserves to be loved and after him each man is better in his own ranking.

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111. The better any person is, the more worthy he is of greater love, 112. so that as each man is dearer to God, he may become so to you as well; 113. since we ought to love them only on account of him, 114. this will be the one goal in everything a person does. 115. A true friend surpasses all the gifts of God: 116. he is to be preferred to all other riches. 117. No-one will be poor endowed with that treasure 118. which, by how much it is rarer, so it is more precious. 119. There are many brothers but among them a friend is rare: 120. Nature creates brothers, grace provides the friend. 121. Grace is a kind of freedom, Nature a kind of compulsion, 122. while each one adheres to his own kin through love; 123. since even beasts are drawn along by the law of Nature, 124. their feelings remain without grace. 125. Do not commit shameful acts but avoid them for the sake of your friend 126. if you wish to be truly valuable to him. 127. The Lord compels you to love no-one more than yourself 128. nor does one who requests shameful acts from you love you. 129. He shamefully excuses an offense whom it would not shame to say 130. that he did it for the sake of a friend: 131. if he should ask you to do anything that might offend an honorable person, 132. he transgresses the boundaries and laws of friendship. 133. To give ear to the entreaties of a friend requesting shameful deeds 134. is to draw back the foot from the path of friendship; 135. indeed, he who compels such things by asking offends more 136. than the one who gives his assent, won over by his entreaty. 137. If I do anything disgraceful for the sake of friendship 138. I defile a beautiful thing with something foul, and a good thing with evil. 139. If you do not offer assistance until a friend should implore you, 140. what you believe yourself to give, believe yourself rather to sell: 141. that shame of the one asking should be considered no small price 142. with which he is compelled to buy what you call gifts. 143. Things which are given to a friend are what is owed rather than gifts; 144. there is nothing than which love does not deserve more. 145. Unless you are as another self, you are not a true friend to me; 146. unless you are to me as I am to myself, you will not be my other self. 147. Those whom you will see seeking gain in their friendship 148. you should know to feign what they desire to be called. 149. You are not a friend to one whose sins you readily believe; 150. hence each man is the last to know the evils of his own house. 151. A rich man will not be able to discern whether his friends 152. are friends of his wealth or rather of himself;

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153. a poor man, happy in this, is free from such uncertainty, 154. wherefore poverty should rather be preferred by everyone. 155. Those whom good fortune held fast in friendship, 156. when this perishes, those whom it granted to you perish. 157. He who is good scorns a loss for the sake of a friend: 158. in this way he even holds himself liable to be taken in, if he would be a friend. 159. Anyone who is loved for his gifts receives more than he might give, 160. for what can be dearer than friendship? 161. A greater gift merits greater thanks: 162. in giving himself, each man will give something greater than his goods. 163. Hold onto an old friend whom you know by experience, 164. nor, if you are wise, should you believe a new one to be the same; 165. and let him especially be yours, who was previously a friend of your father’s 166. so that you may likewise be dear to him for the sake of your father’s love. 167. He is not a friend who can be seduced by gifts: 168. one who betrays another will not be faithful to you. 169. Do not trust one whom your gifts have corrupted: 170. there will be another whose gifts he will also want in this way; 171. those whom gifts have drawn into shameful agreement, 172. consider it a disgrace for you to trust in their good faith. 173. You should not entrust yourself to one whom you have done wrong: 174. the wrong having passed, the anger at the wrong remains. 175. Let an especially good servant be among your friends, 176. nor will you be mindful of the rank of such a man. 177. Restrain a haughty servant with goads and a beating, 178. lest he should set his heel against your face. 179. It will not shame you to serve a man, but vice; 180. as long as your mind is free, you should consider nothing a disgrace to you. 181. I don’t want you to teach a husband about the sin of his beloved wife; 182. what is known, rather than what was done, weighs him down: 183. no-one willingly gives ear to his own disgrace; 184. he will want neither you nor anyone else to know such things. 185. To every chaste man his own wife seems chaste 186. while an unchaste man will always be suspicious. 187. Nothing is better than a good woman, nothing worse than a bad one: 188. this one surpasses all goods and that one all evils. 189. It is agreed that nothing is more modest than girls of tender age 190. and nothing so devoid of this virtue as an old woman. 191. If your wife doesn’t sleep with you, she will be downcast; 192. if the contrary, sleep will furnish many shameful acts. 193. Avoid guarding an unchaste woman just the same as a chaste one,

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indeed the latter does not need [to be guarded], just as the former cannot be. What does the guardianship of an unchaste woman achieve? Surely you don’t believe that she who remains no less sinful can be made virtuous in this way? Surely virtue must be considered a thing of the mind, not of the body; no-one is made good through force, but rather worse thereby. If you should have a daughter, guard her, ever-watchful, lest she should send you into eternal scandal; however great your household cares, let this one be the greatest: you may wish to endure all other household losses instead. An honorable woman hates him by whom she is defamed: indeed it shames her that the ornament of her good reputation is tarnished; but she who in no way fears injuries to her reputation brings about a true accusation from a false one. For the woman who later marries, the harsher she was to her suitor, the more pleasing she will be to her husband; by disdaining the man, having held herself from him, she is pleasing and she renders him mild by her severity. She who submits herself to lust for free is judged a mistress, a prostitute she who does it for a price; she however seems more fervent in this vice who gets nothing from it other than filth. Indeed, what do you think this woman ought to be called who even procures filth at this price? Whichever species of bird is trained to seize prey, however capable it is in this, a woman is stronger, nor does anyone seize human souls like a woman: she is strong in this, more so than any enemy. Exceedingly vile is a whore, but viler yet is a sodomite; worse than a female prostitute is a male one: female intercourse brings forth fruit in childbearing; a sodomite is only defiled when he has sex. The prostitute and the traitor win over all by their compliance; this pathway alone lies open by which they may please others. A humble prostitute is more pleasing than a proud chaste woman and such a one more often throws her own house into confusion; the former defiles the house which the latter more often sets alight: f lame can harm a house more than filth. A serpent is milder than the wrath of an idle-tongued wife; he who retains such a one harbors a serpent at his breast. An idle-tongued woman is far worse than a whore: the latter can please some people, the former pleases no-one; an idle-tongued wife is the greatest firebrand to a house;

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236. any fire will be less damaging than a f lame of this kind. 237. Although the tongue may be the smallest member, it is the most incendiary, 238. nor have as many perished by the sword as by this. 239. He prevails in tongue who is not strong in arms; 240. no-one prevails more in this type of battle than a prostitute. 241. By this especially are the coward and the bold man differentiated: 242. this one is strong in deeds, that one in threats. 243. If the warfare of words were more effective than the warfare of arms 244. Thersites would have been greater at Troy than Achilles. 245. “Multiply,” it was said to married people, “and fill the earth”; 246. it is said to virgins that they should fill Heaven. 247. Reason should be more than law, law more than custom: 248. individual things should be established according to their ranking. 249. You, judge, moderate the severity of the law according to the circumstances 250. since those who have established the laws desire this. 251. Utility is the greatest reason for writing laws; 252. nothing contrary to this will be permitted to be done by law. 253. You should not believe the greater party but the better; 254. the number of fools is countless. 255. No-one takes bad deeds as an example, but only good ones 256. or, if anyone should do this, he would be considered a nobody. 257. While you are fighting, let him whom you are fighting be your enemy; 258. if you have defeated him, let him be just as a man to you. 259. To spare the subject and vanquish the proud: 260. this is the highest glory among the greatest men. 261. So that you can alleviate your fears, imagine that future 262. than which you could imagine none harder for you to bear. 263. Reprove the fault of a youth and whip that of a boy, 264. admonish and advise old men with encouragements. 265. Let your correction be mild so that it may profit more: 266. a harsh one does not win over the erring—rather, it stirs them up: 267. fearing to be reproved, he attempts to excuse his fault 268. by throwing a rock before the scythe. 269. When an older person reproves you, bear it patiently 270. and give thanks as you would following great gifts. 271. You will not be believed if you yourself praise yourself; 272. if you have confessed your faults, I will believe you. 273. Although one person will please another now by his gifts, 274. when these cease, false love is found wanting. 275. Lest you should sell your freedom, f lee the gifts of the powerful: 276. once you have accepted them, believe yourself bought. 277. Lest poverty should force the good to serve disgraceful ends, 278. Nature has given them hands and wit. 279. A humble life is satisfied by moderate labor;

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280. as long as it is free, nothing is more precious. 281. It is agreed that unnecessary goods are acquired with great sweat; 282. a frugal table demands only modest toil. 283. Socrates, rejecting the treasure-chambers of King Archelaus, 284. said that he could not offer a return for these: 285. it was disgraceful for a philosopher to be vanquished by gifts from a rich man 286. whom he rejoiced to vanquish by his poverty. 287. To vanquish the world by scorn is to lead the way in virtue; 288. this precaution is the great rule of the great man. 289. Perhaps he had heard why Abraham should have bought the field 290. offered for free and spurned it as a gift. 291. Many resist gifts lest they should seem avaricious 292. and by this art they study to formulate a reputation for themselves. 293. Nor should a new mode of life make anyone proud: 294. it is fitting for each to live the common life. 295. Nor should you seek to be placed in a greater seat in Paradise: 296. it is enough that there should be any corner whatever here for you. 297. You should not wish to seize the favor of the people by your habit: 298. a sheep’s skin cannot deceive the wise; 299. what is a sheep’s skin, what is that of a fox, is not hidden from them: 300. the gullibility of the crowd errs in this. 301. No maxim is more certain to learned men than this: 302. outward things do not commend us to God. 303. You will not be made holy by your habit, you can become proud, 304. and this is a most hateful thing to the best of men. 305. I consider the life of a hypocrite wretched above all else; 306. vainglory makes him doubly wretched, 307. crucifying the body in this life and the soul in the life to come. 308. Whoever buys praise at this price—let it be his! 309. He who f lees the name of hypocrite by sinning openly 310. is doubly guilty since he both commits and teaches the sin. 311. We all wish to prolong our life into old age 312. even though it is distasteful to every man to be, or to be called, an old man. 313. No-one is so old but he still trusts 314. that he can live for another year; everyone is deceived in this: 315. for there is no-one who doesn’t die in some year 316. which, however, he himself assigns to his own life. 317. The remaining years of his life are the shorter 318. by as much as the past years of his life were long. 319. Since you desire that happy times should succeed sorrowful ones, 320. by this you desire that your remaining life should be shorter. 321. There is no-one who would not seek to attain old age

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even though toil and aff liction are the greatest in old age. It is agreed that the holy attain peace in death even though no-one would wish to arrive at death. If a good-time girl grows old, she must hire her lover with gifts; she must supply with gifts what she lacks in looks. Envy seeks the heights, winds blast against the summits, and lightning more often strikes the mountain-tops. There is no more certain mark of virtue than that it alone is exposed to the bites of envy: no one worthy of it is wretched, and no-one is less fortunate than those whose innards envy consumes. The more the life of the good is weighed down by envy, so much greater will be their glory after death. He whom an enemy fears while alive, he mourns when dead so that great men will never lack praise from their enemy: they are praised when no praise will profit them and equally now when nothing can harm them. Every man is glorified by his deeds, not his words; let your praise be of another rather than yourself: the work commends the craftsman, not his own tongue; the hand alone speaks in this matter, the mouth remaining silent. The greatest sobriety—as much a virtue as a therapy— can keep the heart safe together with the body. If your food intake is sparing, if your slumber is moderate, life will have been long and safe for you. Indulging in these too greatly, you will have become sluggish and lazy and people will say that you live like a pig. What nature demands is furnished with easy toil; whatever is superf luous is obtained by heavy labor. Let young men wage wars, let their elders give counsel; it is fitting for these to have decided what those should do. If you are seen to have succeeded without counsel, Fortune’s favor might be yours, but with no credit due to you; if, following counsel, the Fates are not kind to you, you will not be blamed for this, but pitied. You should not vow more to God than you can discharge, but let your vows be less than your deeds. Consider beforehand and extensively and for a long time what you should vow: advice arrives late once you have taken your vows; it will be permissible for every lesser vow to be discharged by a greater one and it is beneficial to exchange a good vow for a better one. The world is considered to be divided into so many sects of the faith that it is hardly clear which may be the narrow path of life. Because the world contains so many contrary dogmas of faith,

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each man acts according to the tradition of his people; in the end no-one dares to consult reason in these things as long as he strives to live in any kind of peace with himself. Each man sins only by despising God: nothing other than contempt makes him guilty. He is not showing contempt who does not know what should be done, if he is ignorant of this through no fault of his own. Your sins will forsake you more than you will forsake your sins if you repent when you can no longer do harm. There are those whom the sins they have committed delight to such an extent that they may never truly repent of them, or rather, the sweetness of this pleasure is so great that no penance done on its account can weigh them down. This is the frequent complaint of our Heloise on this matter which she is often wont to say to me as to herself: “If, unless I repent of what I earlier committed, I cannot be saved, no hope remains for me: so sweet are the joys of our transgression that those things, which pleased too much, bring delight when remembered.” He who speaks the truth does not struggle to speak it; we labor first to invent falsehoods, then to speak them. Liars make me disbelieve the person speaking the truth and one dishonest person is injurious to many righteous men. He who never swears can never be held a perjurer; a good man foresees what is illicit from what is allowed. Amyclas lived untroubled because he was poor: every wise man chooses to live in this way. You strive in vain to be carefree and rich at the same time; a thing cannot be joined to its opposite. Not easily corrected is he who does not know that he has done wrong; a blow is a lesser thing, but a remedy is heavy work. You should observe what you give, to whom, where, when, how, and why, unless you wish to lose thanks together with your gifts. Whoever takes care in what he does to avoid an accusation will never be made a defendant thereby. Every generous person delights in what he gives, every greedy one in what he receives; nor will a man be generous if he repents after giving: the generous man rejoices when he has given, the greedy one is saddened; I believe, however, that things are seized from, rather than given by, an avaricious man.

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405. He who gives his own things to a generous man does not give but lends to him at interest: 406. he sows a few things, piles up advantages, harvests much. 407. No-one is so like a man with dropsy as a rich miser 408. in breeding a thirst for gain from gain. 409. The miser pursues wealth within a life of poverty; 410. the riches he evilly accumulates another gets to enjoy. 411. Even on his deathbed the miser scarcely bequeaths his goods to the poor: 412. hurrying to the shades below as though he wishes to carry all these with him 413. from which he could pay his fare to the ferryman of the Styx, 414. whom he does not think has been particularly dutiful to him. 415. Whoever retains more than the conduct of his life demands 416. himself applies his hands to the throat of the poor man. 417. He who pledges himself lightly does not take great care to repay; 418. a true man does less of the former but more of the latter. 419. What a promise does not precede is a gift of grace; 420. when you have promised something, you become a debtor. 421. The fear of having to lose those things torments every miser, 422. the use of which profits him nothing; 423. he fears to lose what it benefited him nothing to have, 424. or rather what it would profit him greatly to lose. 425. You should not disparage the skill of a man on account of his vices: 426. often he who is a bad man is a good artisan. 427. The winter afflicting the lazy man with cold and the summer with heat 428. compel him always to live as a beggar. 429. When winter was tormenting the lazy man and he lacked a roof, 430. he said: “Spring will come and then I will prepare a home”; 431. spring came and the lazy man said that it was not necessary 432 to have a house in a time of such mild weather. 433. Excusing himself, the lazy man blames the present season, 434. as if what he does were the fault of the season. 435. Having food prepared makes every lazy man swift; 436. if you take pity on him, then he ceases to be lazy. 437. The slothful man declares that the good times have passed 438. and ascribes his own failing to the Fates. 439. A sycophant f latters a fool, a detractor his enemy; 440. the holy ear repulses both at once. 441. It is characteristic of the rich man not to know the number of his possessions; 442. a poor man’s tally is either brief or nonexistent. 443. You should know that the commands of an earthly power are to be shaken off, 444. those of a heavenly power are to be carried out at once. 445. If anyone should order what is contrary to divine commands,

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446. no pact should draw you against the Lord. 447. I wonder if any woman loves her step-son 448. except in that way Phaedra is held to have loved hers. 449. A man whom Nature does not compel to love his parents 450. no grace can reconcile to you. 451. He who is bad to his father is considered good to no-one; 452. I do not want you to entreat on behalf of a man for whom his own parent does not entreat. 453. The curse of fathers is the swift vengeance of God; 454. no-one except a madman could endure it. 455. When he who confesses that he has sinned, sins more grievously, 456. he is, however, likely to be more open to forgiveness; 457. he himself, his own judge and accuser of his misdeeds, 458. the more fearful he is, the safer he strives to be. 459. Those whom you see condemning others and blessing themselves, 460. f lee these, if you wish to draw near to God: 461. Christ is not among them, a Pharisee is their leader, 462. and it is clear they are guilty of a similar judgment. 463. If their confidence concerning their origins delights them, 464. their uncertain end should concern them more. 465. Those whom the people praise, whom the breath of the crowd raises on high, 466. I wonder if they may please these people and God at the same time; 467. I think, and you should too, this the greatest of all miracles, 468. if you could see someone achieving both these things at the same time. 469. Paul believed that he could not please both man and Christ; 470. I do not want you to think anyone greater than Paul. 471. The delight of lust is too pleasing to a woman 472. if she loves her husband more than her brother; 473. if a wife should be dearer to any man than his own mother, 474. it is agreed that Nature yields to lust. 475. Do not torment your parents with an unlawful wife; 476. bury them first, if you are able to outlive them. 477. Rejoice in your own virtue, not that of your family: 478. praise of another confers nothing of value on you. 479. Old praise is overthrown unless new praise supports it 480. and the end is rather to be observed in all things. 481. “The wise man carries all his goods with him,” said Seneca, 482. “and he, content in himself, is sufficient unto himself. 483. No-one would number among his belongings those he can lose: 484. when Fortune fails, those things which are his remain for each man.” 485. I wonder if a wife has any affection for the servant her husband loves: 486. she fears that he is always setting traps for her.

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A near neighbor is better than a distant brother and in the same way a rush will be of more use than a field. The wrath of a powerful man is to be considered like a bolt of lightning: just as you must avoid the latter, so you should avoid the former. A man who does not know how to help himself with his own medicine the sickness of another seeks in vain. And since pride knows how to puff up fools always guard yourself, I beg, from this pestilence. You should strive to live in such a way that no-one complains about you; if you do not know how to be of use, act so that you do no harm. That you cannot do what you want, will teach you to want what you can do, if you desire to hold fast to your purpose. Avoid wars and employ your sense more than force; make use of Fortune, but use reason more. Remember that all good things have been entrusted to you by the Lord: he will withdraw them from you, an ingrate, when he himself wishes; for whenever or however he might wish to destroy you, this is lawful: both what you are and what you have is a gift from him. Often we see people adorned in another’s clothes and they pretend to own what is in no way theirs; so every proud man attributes to himself the good things that are divine and he seizes in his own right those things that are the Lord’s. Such was the crow, resplendent in another’s plumage, which, lying, it wore as its own, to its own disgrace. Pride, thronging with multiple offspring, rises up and this root sprouts forth with many vices. Jealousy takes hold of the wretched heart, slander the mouth, since it cannot bear a superior or an equal. A f latterer turns aside safely to the house of such a one so that he may obtain many benefits from his fictions; when he has carried these off, then he begins to be truthful, himself the greatest herald of this man’s stupidity. Every proud man rushes headlong into his own decisions and thinks that he can do whatever he pleases: puffed up in speech, rash in deeds, he stirs up everyone and himself incites them against his own throat; he scorns counsel, he considers moderation a wrong, he calls for force in all things, he is blind in everything. Nothing is more insupportable than the life of a proud man and unrestrained lust overcomes all things: it drains the body of strength, the mind of virtues, the wit of sense, and permits nothing to be clean. The greatest goodness of God arranging all things rightly,

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530. he himself justly ordains what things are good and what are evil; 531. because of this, consolations are not lacking to the righteous man in adversity, 532. since, although there may be evils, he also knows that there is good. 533. He believes the minds of the wise to be less than human 534. who thinks nothing aggrieves their hearts; 535. nor is the mind of the virtuous iron-clad and insensible to such an extent 536. that no compassion touches them inside. 537. Give whatever kind of dishes you like to the religious, 538. provided only that you avoid wine, the greatest inciter of sin. 539. Just as the wise man loves the one who corrects him, 540. so the fool hates the one who corrects him. 541. What can the possession of money profit a fool 542. if he cannot purchase sense for himself with it? 543. Lest you commit shameful deeds, let probity restrain you more 544. and a love of virtue rather than fear impel you; 545. as a last consideration, the confession of sin, which is available to you, 546. should not permit to be done what is shameful to be spoken. 547. That no man should surrender the reins to a woman’s counsel 548. are the lessons for all from the first man. 549. Lest the Delilah who sleeps with you is able to seduce you 550. with her blandishments, take care to be vigilant: 551. it is not safe to sleep next to a serpent; 552. a woman surpasses a snake in wickedness. 553. The serpent believed Eve similar to itself in wickedness 554. and swiftly persuaded her to trust in its wickedness; 555. and so, having first assailed her, it tempted the man through her, 556. becoming through her the cause and source of every evil. 557. An honorable man lives in private as he does in public; 558. on no occasion does a good life fear to be taken unawares. 559. A wise man contemplates the sunset, a foolish man the dawn; 560. indeed the end of a matter occasions songs of praise. 561. He liberates a wretch from torment who kills him(self ), 562. if the life to come is wholly free of torment; 563. it is therefore a duty not to spare a wretched life 564. if, after this life, no other follows it. 565. He who comes late to a case lacks faith in it, 566. he hastens the case who trusts in it firmly; 567. the other side of the case, conducted by long-drawn counsel, 568. smacks not a little of crooked mistrust. 569. A good orator and a good fighter are evidence of bad faith: 570. the greater the deceit, the more it needs them; 571. a good man trusts in the Lord, a bad man in such men, 572. but One excels all others in help. 573. Nor should you doubt that she distrusts her own appearance

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who carefully guards her countenance until she has first been made up; a chaste woman does not take pains to assist Nature nor does she study to deceive men with fraudulent goods. A good wife buries lust and her husband at the same time, nor does she know how to undergo the yoke with a different spouse. He who does not give what he loves does not himself receive what he desires: as your things are dear to you, so mine are dear to me. It is not proper that cheap things be exchanged equally for dear ones nor do such transactions speak of justice. As you are generous to a generous man, be miserly to a miser: just as this man is towards others, you should also be likewise towards him. Remember to help your inferiors rather than lord it over them, otherwise the glory of your renown is in vain. If you are unable to live chastely, do not scorn to live discreetly: among the people your reputation avails you more than your way of life. The more you would avoid offending divine eyes, the more you should strive to live rightly everywhere for God; this is shameful to a righteous man: to carry out through fear of men what he would not have been drawn to by love of God. It is the height of stupidity to refuse great rewards and having renounced these, to wish to pursue lesser ones. A wise man fears force, a fool trusts in it: the former desires to be heard, the latter prepares to strike. We admit that the law was not made for the weak nor do the healthy and the sick bear the same burden. Your confession of a fault should blame yourself, not another, otherwise you are not worthy of mercy before God; nor should you attempt to attribute your sins to demons, in the way Eve believed she could excuse herself. An earthly judge punishes the sins of one who confesses whom God judges to be worthy of pardon. Not least does he sin who provokes the wrath of a king: this is the more to be avoided, the more harm it can do; nor should the king’s sentence strike the sinner swiftly since his wrath is capable of striking more than a few. Do not put the Lord to the test, demanding miracles from him through which you may be acclaimed great on the lips of the people; you will be small in the mouth of God if you are great in the other: the praise of men and of God differs greatly. The virtues closest to vices know how to deceive

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614. 615. 616. 617. 618. 619. 620. 621. 622. 623. 624. 625. 626. 627. 628. 629. 630. 631. 632. 633. 634. 635. 636. 637. 638. 639. 640. 641. 642. 643. 644. 645. 646. 647. 648. 649.

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and often, although they are not [virtues], we might think them to be. When a man dies well, he dissolves all his debts: nothing remains which he should have done, nothing more is required. Nor, dying, should you leave your goods to be distributed by others: no-one will be more favorable on your behalf than you; no-one will dispense your goods better in accordance with your intentions: give your things while they are yours, or else those gifts are not given. He who says: “I bequeath these things if I die” bestows nothing thereby; since one who is dead owns nothing, how can he give? Therefore no-one should consider those things given, but rather left behind which the greedy hand grasped as tightly as it could; but neither are such things properly described as left behind which the power of death wrenched from greed. If the servant whom it pleased his lord to release freely should be ungrateful, that grace may not endure. But he who harms his father should not be his father’s heir; by the Law, the honor due to a mother should be equal with that due to her spouse. If a girl should marry against the advice of her parents she should not share in their goods. If a master’s violence should deprive a servant of a body part, he possesses no further legal right in him; if any man should join himself carnally to his own maidservant, by the touch of his own f lesh, he himself frees her. There was never a single belief-system for philosophers and the people: for the people, feeling has always stood in place of reason; its mind grasps nothing but what is corporeal, nothing but what can be sensed, and it thinks that any such thing is the supreme God, and it does not know how he can hear and see except with the parts of a body, nor does it understand how he can act, if he lacks a hand. Indeed, God’s whole self is hand and eye or ear; he can create all things of himself, who creates these things for all. And since he is without place, just as he is nowhere so he may be everywhere, and he himself may be the certain place for all places; he is nowhere confined but, in the manner of potency, he is everywhere in whom all things abide lest they should perish. Whoever will not have been patient in obeying the one issuing orders

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650. will never be placed in authority over any realm; 651. everyone ought to be a squire before he is a knight 652. and what the teacher does, the student ought to learn. 653. If ever it should fall to a greedy man to give something to someone, 654. because he never learnt this, he does not know how to have moderation. 655. The religion of a youth is a capricious impulse of mind 656. and just like an unrestrained torrent of water: 657. the more violently it f lows, the faster it runs dry 658. and exceeding its allotted measure, it swiftly dies away. 659. Daedalus returned to his homeland by the median course; 660. Icarus, seeking the heights, fell hurtling to the depths. 661. Surpassing the mean in fasting, you will surpass it also in eating 662. and whoever keeps vigil excessively will also sleep excessively; 663. our fragile substance, once overcome, will swiftly yield, 664. should it overstep the mean in any religious observance. 665. Neither can a cat be maintained with a gleaming coat, 666. nor a woman, if her apparel be extravagant. 667. Although he is not angered, great is the wrath of God against reprobates 668. whom he allows to multiply the days until their punishment. 669. Let those who contract marriages study to adorn young girls; 670. a wise man swiftly deprives her of such ornamentation. 671. You compel a woman to love the one about whom you have accused her, 672. and often you manufacture a true charge from a false one. 673. You strive in vain to guard an unchaste woman as a chaste one: 674. the first you cannot guard, for the other, you know there is no need. 675. Integrity avoids losing reputation more than goods 676. and itself prefers a good name to everything. 677. You should not be so blinded by love of your daughters 678. that you believe they cannot be corrupted; 679. hasten to contract them in marriage as fast as may be lawful: 680. a woman is swiftly sullied through innuendo. 681. The more fragile the womanly sex is considered to be, 682. the more its virtue excels in its merits. 683. If a wife is to be retained by any man following a lapse of the f lesh, 684. he should not recall her disgrace, just as he himself should avoid his own. 685. It is fitting either that she be cast aside or that he keep her shameful deeds a secret: 686. a shrewd man takes care to do the latter, a good man does the former; 687. f launting evil is considered worse than casting it out 688. and is often more burdensome to the injured party. 689. Into what region you will be forced to go when you die 690. let your mind consider carefully while you are alive:

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691. 692. 693. 694. 695. 696. 697. 698. 699. 700. 701. 702. 703. 704. 705. 706. 707. 708. 709. 710. 711. 712. 713. 714. 715. 716. 717. 718. 719. 720. 721. 722. 723. 724. 725. 726. 727. 728. 729. 730. 731.

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what its situation is, what kind of dwelling there is for this life, to which death prepares so difficult an entrance, where, if it should befall us to live under greater burden, I judge nothing worse than our lot. A mild reply soothes inf lamed angers; a harsh one rather increases them and creates new ones. Always rejoice to have been timid in words; in deeds it is sometimes fitting to be bold. Nothing offends a powerful man more than wicked speech; a free man fears insults more than losses of his things. Just as unrestrained lust carries beasts where it will, so lustful love drives men; the goad of lust, the greatest enemy within, persecutes us painfully with civil war. A man ought to love his wife with his reason so that she may not be just for sex, like an adulteress. If after conception, the lust of beasts, now sated, does not wish to bear the male, why should woman, why should she do so? Or does she think that she alone was created for lust, does she hold that other creatures were made for the fruits of coition? Losses draw near for the one who has an evil neighbor and even when free from losses, the mind remains without peace. Let the judge and the physician advise you out of love: let all [advise you] if you can, but especially these. You should never presume to put God to the test, my son; strive however you can to merit his assistance. Let your way of life always f lee the disreputable and delight in enjoying a companion better than yourself; it is better to be the companion rather than the relative of good people, since from the former your virtue shows forth, from the latter, only your birth. Like-minded men of any kind of form societies: show some foresight regarding with whom you are to live. It is no small disgrace to have displeased the good nor is it free of suspicion to have pleased the evil. Every day let your concern turn upon what might be beneficial so that, the longer your life is, it may also be better. Nor should sleep seize you the following night before the preceding daylight knows you to have been wide awake. Forgetting anything whatsoever is of little consequence to us: that matter was of no importance to us; his forgetfulness would scarcely avail the unmindful servant,

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732. 733. 734. 735. 736. 737. 738. 739. 740. 741. 742. 743. 744. 745. 746. 747. 748. 749. 750. 751. 752. 753. 754. 755. 756. 757. 758. 759. 760. 761. 762. 763. 764. 765. 766. 767. 768. 769. 770. 771. 772. 773. 774.

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since it would scarcely have come about except through contempt. The wealth that many learned men acquire over a long period one fool squanders in a short time. A poor man, a well-known scorner of riches, will be disgraced by such folly. A prince who continues to be ignorant of writing is often compelled to disclose his secrets. For those who do as much as the power granted them, there is nothing more that can be added to their credit. Nothing of sin remains when the evil will ceases since it is this alone that creates the guilty. Common features that make the good equal to the wicked it adds nothing to our merit for us to have had. When Nature compels you to do good to someone, do not count that among your merits; because beasts lacking in reason do likewise, this does not set you above them, but rather equates you with them. You ought, nevertheless, to pay Nature her dues, but by constituting God as your end in all things; whatever you see to be sundered at any time from this end, you should know to be utterly divorced from merits. It is agreed that reason was granted to us to this end, lest man should live devoid of merits. Whatever you do because you wish to, even if you are obeying orders, because you do what you wish, you should consider it your gain. A free mind should foresee what needs to be done in such a way that it is not compelled to undertake anything in the manner of a servant. One who listens to a poor man opens the ears of the Lord to himself and has a propitious God who shows mercy. When you bestow your things upon the poor, you should not call them gifts, for the Lord will give great rewards for what was given. When your table refreshes God and Christ is your table-companion, nothing can be richer than this table. Great profit will follow the few things that you render up to God; he will give much even to a man for whom there is no grace. It is good to correct faults, better to avoid them: a person conquered once by the Enemy offers him less resistance thereafter and the blow that must be cured by no small suffering is to be avoided, especially one that brings no benefit. If a fault rebuked should move anyone to wrath, he will have to be held as a witness against himself on the matter. An adulterous wife is a greater torment than all others; death itself is less of a suffering for any good man.

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775. 776. 777. 778. 779. 780. 781. 782. 783. 784. 785. 786. 787. 788. 789. 790. 791. 792. 793. 794. 795. 796. 797. 798. 799. 800. 801. 802. 803. 804. 805. 806. 807. 808. 809. 810. 811. 812. 813. 814. 815.

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No punishment is more just than that of Tartarus although no-one is more unjust than such a judge. The more I abstain from the sweetness of this life, it is agreed that its end will be so much less bitter. Any day on which you see that you have not performed good deeds will not be accounted to your life; on the advice of the heathen at least, learn to lament that you have lost a day, which you should strive to recover. Do not attempt to compel anyone by force to believe the same as you: in fact he can be led to this by reason alone; you can wrench from him lies about his faith in vain: faith itself comes not through force, but by reason. Nature cannot lie: always most certain was the claim which that argument supported. Moderate your expenses as your business requires, lest they should be greater than your income might support. In order to be taught, you should be present at judgments, take part in cases; in this way you will become a defense for yourself and for many. A poor man fears losses, a nobleman shrinks from slights: what aff licts each one the more, he guards against the more. There is a certain evil consolation in your sins if you can observe greater faults than your own. You consider yourself great if you are able to surpass others, when you will be the lesser by how much you are the greater in your own eyes. No wise man marvels at the good fortune of the wicked or when he sees that in this world the good are aff licted. His knowledge is only for himself, not for others, who does not know how to teach what he knows; such a person will have to be considered as though he knew nothing. He who is good seeks to live not for himself but for others, reckoning it as nothing that he is sufficient unto himself. Although she receives less reward, Martha works the harder, so that deservedly her sister torments her with envy. Let abundance find you sparing and need find you generous, so that great grace may f low from your gifts. Those who celebrate saints’ birthdays with extravagant banquets should know that the saints have not merited such things in this way: a benefit for the soul is hoped for in vain from such things when the f lesh desires to carry off its reward as fast as possible. Since wisdom cannot be bought with many coins, what does an abundance of them profit you, fool? The faithful follower abhors the effigies of pagan rite,

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816. lest he himself should worship the true God in a false way. 817. What has been condemned the more by holy people 818. should, it is agreed, be driven out with the greatest zeal. 819. Surely Christ is not able, like Jupiter, to love idols, 820. or would our Mary wish herself to be carved as Vesta is? 821. Let the instruction of morals be worth more to you than the teaching of books 822. and may you prefer deeds to words; 823. the latter will demonstrate that you are wise, the former, [merely] that you can speak, 824. and reason surpasses any kind of eloquence. 825. If a fool remain silent, he will be thought wise: 826. nothing is able to betray inner feelings like speech. 827. Nature at least will put an end to lust: 828. there can be no limit to greed; 829. this fire can be extinguished, that thirst will remain; 830. consider the former a more shameful evil, the latter a worse one. 831. Woe to the one for whom there is the same end to both lust and life! 832. Surely this end awaits married people. 833. It is not remarkable that false things are fashioned from what is false, 834. for what is false can be adorned by any art. 835. He does not need adornment whom it is agreed needs nothing, 836. nor can the hand of an artisan decorate him; 837. or rather, it is shameful for such a one to be considered such as the artisan depicts him: 838. a thing insensate, and bearing false limbs. 839. One whom a mouse is not afraid to touch is not to be revered: 840. it is as if this mouse knows there is no consciousness in these limbs; 841. it thinks a limb nothing which does not have the use of that limb, 842. and judges the form of the thing to be nothing without the thing itself. 843. Man venerates only what he himself has made: 844. believe that God resides in such a form! 845. Although some say that everything happens by chance, 846. yet it is agreed that God has arranged all things. 847. If you should deny that things happen as a consequence of our free will, 848. it will have been by the freer will of God; 849. therefore you will not rashly judge that things have come about by chance, 850. since the supreme reason of God presides over all things. 851. Whatever befalls a righteous man does not arouse his wrath: 852. he knows that with God arranging, all things are done well. 853. He is not perfect who considers in any matter 854. that he has the least doubt that God has done the arranging; 855. he who believes that all things are brought about solely by chance, 856. I am not surprised when he bears some outcomes badly.

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857. The righteous man consoles himself in every aff liction 858. when he ref lects that God has also arranged this. 859. Many refuse gifts lest they seem avaricious: 860. vainglory desires praise rather than things. 861. There are those who sometimes refuse gifts offered to them 862. so that by this they may more often bear off those of greater worth. 863. A fisherman places a modest bait on his hook 864. so that he may reel in a large fish for himself with it; 865. in the same way a shrewd person exacts a great gift from a small one 866. and expending little, is accustomed to carry off much. 867. There are those who gain much and labor little; 868. we know that the opposite is the case for many. 869. It is fitting for any teacher to pursue plainness, 870. however greatly unadorned his speech may be on the subject. 871. Indeed any undertaking is nothing if grace is lacking 872. and nothing will be lacking so long as it is present. 873. Nor should you call this one wretched, nor say that one is blessed 874. whom you will have seen to have prospered either poorly or well here: 875. another region must be kept in mind which will judge these things 876. for which the wise man was more often created. 877. It is fitting that they be purified here who are to be taken up there 878. so that this life may be for the good like a furnace for gold; 879. and so this furnace tests our gold 880. because whoever does not suffer this, will not be pure there, 881. nor, unless he is pure, will anyone be able to go there: 882. and so the good should thirst for this furnace. 883. The wrath of God is great when he himself 884. puts off becoming angry with transgressors by tolerating them for a long time. 885. The more anyone strives to pamper himself here, 886. the more vulnerable he renders himself to punishment. 887. He makes generous shoe-laces from another’s leather 888. who, although he gives out much, seizes more. 889. Let a neighbor display of what great worth God himself is to you: 890. there will be no more certain testament of love than this. 891. Piety adorns this temple, decorates that altar, 892. makes pious vows to this one, and fulfils deeds before that. 893. I do not want you to expend great effort on things made by hand 894. where the artefact is not the thing itself, but only an image of that thing. 895. You should not believe the praises of one for whom you have done a favor: 896. he will do this for anyone who does the same for him. 897. Whoever praises himself detracts from himself greatly;

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898. 899. 900. 901. 902. 903. 904. 905. 906. 907. 908. 909. 910. 911. 912. 913. 914. 915. 916. 917. 918. 919. 920. 921. 922. 923. 924. 925. 926. 927. 928. 929. 930. 931. 932. 933. 934. 935. 936. 937. 938. 939.

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let him praise himself through his deeds, while his mouth remains silent. When you call upon the Lord, do not wander from him in your mind so that you are close to him in words, while far away in heart, but raise up your mind to the same place where you direct your voice so that your disposition rather than sound should entreat him. We speak with the Lord when we call upon him in prayer: sacred reading has him speak with us; sacred reading is of great benefit, but prayer even more so: the former advises that you should seek, the latter teaches what you should ask for. A wise student is the highest glory of a master: the former’s praise is the latter’s profit; the teacher draws more from him than he offers him so that he should rather be hired by him. The vice and virtue of a powerful person are always more widely known; the more eminent such a person is, the more his qualities are noted. The less the powerful have learnt to bear suffering here, the more the final terrible punishment threatens them. No-one will do both good and harm through example such that in one way he is better than all others and in another way worse. In order that others may praise you, merit it by praising others: desiring to be praised, take care not to censure; taking care not to censure, you will avoid being censured: each man deserves to receive his own merit. Theobald bestows much upon the religious but if he seizes more, the more his plunder constitutes his gifts. As Solomon recalled, his moneybag with a hole in it from which he drew forth so much, deceived him. This is more fitting: that one should seize nothing and give nothing, rather than lose thanks and gifts together. The rich man offers many things to God because he owns much and, like one vomiting, he throws up what is superf luous; he gives many things and his great wealth feels no loss: the fool thinks of his account, not his soul. He believes that God considers great what is great to him, not bearing in mind the widow’s two mites. Trusting thus wrongly in his pardon and sinning more freely, he himself buys death with his gifts; although we may doubt with what intention these gifts are made, any good man turns them to the better. He, too, who is evil wants all he has to be good, little caring whether he himself is also good; and since he takes care to have a good boot rather than a good life,

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940. who can doubt which he sets above the other? 941. If by chance anyone should believe another to be guilty and force him to swear, 942. he is more guilty than the one whom he thinks is guilty, 943. but if he does not believe him so, why does he force him to these oaths? 944. No-one, therefore, ought to compel anyone to these things. 945. Strive to know how to write and at the same time, work hard at your composition: 946. without these skills, no-one can hold confidential knowledge. 947. What you say passes away, nor is anything more transient, 948. but what you write remains after you have perished; 949. poets who perish in themselves live on in their writings: 950. the life which Nature denies them endures through these. 951. The learned man, deceased in body, lives on through his reputation 952. and philosophy can do more than Nature; 953. those who had scarcely any renown while they were alive 954. have attained it afterwards from their writings. 955. Socrates was poor in goods, now rich in name; 956. he lives on by having placed writings above goods. 957. So also Aristotle together with his teacher Plato 958. their own writings hold present before us; 959. so other such men, having spoken at one time in words, 960. never cease to speak through their writings. 961. Whoever is absent will render himself present in his writing, 962. no one can be a more faithful messenger: 963. it alone will report what you have entrusted to it 964. and it is licit to write many things which it may be shameful to speak. 965. God alone should be worshipped, since his power alone 966. should be venerated only for its own sake by his followers. 967. The wise man conceals, feigns many things according to the circumstances 968. and he accomplishes few things by force, many by counsel. 969. In all things the wise man considers times as much as places 970. and assumes as many faces as these render fitting. 971. Just as the f lesh contributes nothing to merit, but a sound mind does, 972. so on the other hand nothing detracts from merit. 973. Great labors lead to great rewards 974. and no glory is acquired in a trif ling cause. 975. Let those who will write books beware a powerful judge, 976. since a powerful judge can threaten such people. 977. It is no easy task to persuade a fool to something good: 978. the wise man alone knows how to give credence to counsel. 979. Correction reveals who is wise and who a fool: 980. the latter hears it unwillingly, the former takes it up willingly. 981. How can much money profit a fool 982. when he can gather for himself little sense from it?

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983. 984. 985. 986. 987. 988. 989. 990. 991. 992. 993. 994. 995. 996. 997. 998. 999. 1000. 1001. 1002. 1003. 1004. 1005. 1006. 1007. 1008. 1009. 1010. 1011. 1012. 1013. 1014. 1015. 1016. 1017. 1018. 1019. 1020. 1021. 1022. 1023. 1024.

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So that he might extract things from words, what is true from fiction, a crafty man often deceives fools with a song. Many a neighbor, scarce a friend are near at hand: the more precious a thing is, the rarer it is. You should never presume to strike anyone in anger: wrath makes it difficult to maintain the mean in all things. The fool hesitated to accept the proffered gift: more often he will seek the same gift when no-one is offering it. After banquets you can find a ready giver: ask then, if you want anything, when the giver is in good cheer. With the womanly tears which the death of a friend extorts it is no small shame to dampen the face of a man. A certain man, having consoled himself at the funeral of his son, said: “I know that I fathered a mortal.” We know that David wept over the dying boy, and once he was dead, he presented himself to his men as cheerful. The perfection of the highest good represented by Christ is signified in three persons: in the Father, that is God, divine power is expressed to us, because of which he is called Omnipotent; the Holy Spirit is goodness, the Word is wisdom, the former proceeding from, and the latter begotten of, the Father. One substance unites these three persons who are distinguished by its threefold property. When you carry out all things badly, if I want to say anything about you, I am forced to lie, unless I say only bad things. Sometimes the dead occasion more fear than the living: you should fear more the one it is clear can harm you more. Be angry at yourself when your guilt lashes you, not at the one who gives you a rightful beating. Those whom, fearing poverty or the loss of property, you may see to have been converted, have no faith in them; likewise regarding those boys whom their fathers’ religion constrained, it must be wondered if there is any piety in them. Do not associate several people of the same blood together in a religious community, among whom, when you have offended one, with many taking offense, you will have a heavy battle against many. If a woman set over men should assume mastery, you would say that all things were done in a perverse order: yielded power leads everything into ruin; it will become as bitter to itself as to its own house.

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1025. 1026. 1027. 1028. 1029. 1030. 1031. 1032. 1033. 1034. 1035. 1036. 1037. 1038. 1039. 1040. 1041. 1042.

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If anyone seeks wealth rather than good character in a wife, if she commits adultery, he has no cause to complain, especially if she continues to possess those things he seeks in her and which were the reason for his marriage. A noble and rich woman trusts in these things and so, always puffed up, sets in motion frequent disputes. A fool gives away many things and deserves no thanks for it; a wise man will give away few things in order to receive many. Regarding things to be given, the wise man considers the times as much as the places; the fool does not have this measure of value: he is ignorant of the balance and does not know the weights of the scale, and for that reason there is no grace in his gifts. The one to whom you entrust your goods after your death you make into an enemy: no-one bears the length of your life as more of a burden. Satan fights with force, the patient man resists with virtue; the latter conquers, and the former is conquered by his victory-palm. The poor man sufficient unto himself alone is considered rich; the greedy rich man, not sufficient unto himself, remains in want.

Here ends the book of Astralabe. This book has been written; may he who wrote it be blessed. May he who wrote it always write and live with the Lord. I give thanks to you, Creator God, together with you, Christ.

CHAPTER 5 NOTES TO CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM

1. Astralabi fili: Rubingh-Bosscher notes the similarity of the first line of this poem to the opening line of Macrobius’s Somnium Scipionis, “Eustachi fili, vitae mihi dulcedo pariter et gloria” (Somnium Scipionis, I, 1; Rubingh-Bosscher, p. 98). It also recalls David’s cry to his son: “fili mi Absalom, fili mi Absalom . . . Absalom fili mi, fili mi” (2 Samuel 18. 33; also 2 Samuel 19. 4); David is said to have missed Absalom every day while he was absent from him: “luxit ergo David filium suum cunctis diebus” (2 Samuel 13. 37). This reference thus forms a frame for the Carmen, as the evocation of David’s sorrow over Absalom appears again at the end of the poem, 997–998. Images of Old Testament and classical fathers nearing the ends of their lives also recur throughout the poem: Anchises (259– 260), Abraham (289–290), and Daedalus (659). It is usual in medieval parentchild didactic texts for the child to be addressed in the opening in a vocative. For example, Dhuoda addresses her son William in her ninth-century Liber Manualis as “o fili Wilhelme” and creates an acrostic that reads: “Dhuoda dilecto filio Wilhelmo salutem: lege” (Riché, Manuel pour mon fils, p. 72, line 5, and acrostic pp. 72–78). Albertano da Brescia also addresses each of his three sons by name in the thirteenth-century treatises he wrote for them (Liber de amore et dilectione Dei et proximi et aliarum rerum, Ars loquendi et tacendi, and Liber consolationis et consilii). dulcedo: this word recurs twice more in the poem in telling contexts: at 377 Abelard uses it in a quotation from Heloise where she describes the joys of her sexual relationship with him, which presumably also encompass her motherhood of Astralabe; at 777–778 Abelard remarks that life is easier to leave if we refuse to acknowledge the sweetnesses it contains, which could be read as a reference to the joys of family. On usages of “dulcedo” in the writings of Abelard and Heloise, see my “Eloquencie vultum depingere,” pp. 109–111, and “Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Medieval Parent-Child Didactic Texts,” p. 222. Barbara Rosenwein has observed that in early medieval times, a reference to sweetness was expected in an address from a mother to her son, although she notes in general “the connection between that word and parental feeling” (Emotional Communities, pp. 112, 113). As an example, each of Herchenefreda’s three letters of advice to her son Desiderius, written in the early seventh century, addresses him in the salutation as “Dulcissimo”: see Krusch, Vita Sancti Desiderii Episcopi

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Cadurcensis, Letters 9, 10, 11; pp. 353, 354, 355; and note the opening sentence of Herchenefreda’s first letter to Desiderius: “litteras meas ad dulcedinem tuam dirigere deberem” (Letter 9.4, p. 353). paterne: it is telling that Abelard uses the adjective “fatherly” rather than the noun “a father’s.” This is an admission that while his life has been “fatherly” in many ways—as master to his students, as abbot to his monastic sons, as founder of the convent of the Paraclete—this poem marks a new understanding of himself as “fatherly” in a more literal sense. See my “ ‘La douceur d’une vie paternelle’: la représentation de la famille dans les œuvres poétiques d’Abélard” and “Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Medieval Parent-Child Didactic Texts,” p. 215. 1–10: note the intense personalization of the opening lines of the Carmen: line 1 opens with a vocative (“Astralabi fili”) and 2–10 contain another eight secondperson pronouns: “tuo” (or “tibi” in B), “tibi”, “tibi”, “tibi”, “tibi”, “tibi”,—, “tibi”, “te”. 2. studio: this word has the sense of an applied attention to study, that is, of Astralabe taking an active role in his education. On the demanding nature of the Carmen as a text of instruction for a child, see the section on “Style” in chapter 1, and my “Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Medieval ParentChild Didactic Texts,” pp. 215–219 and 225–227. In his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, Abelard argues that “studium” is the concerted application of the mind to something, and comprises a willing and dedicated effort: “Est enim studium uehemens applicatio animi ad aliquid gerendum. Multa uero negligenter agimus uel inuiti sed nulla studiose nisi uolentes uel intenti” (The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, p. 364). relinquo: this word bears the sense of a last will and testament, and introduces the late style that recurs throughout the poem. On late style see Gordon McMullan, Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing. 3–4. See Ecclesiasticus 18. 19: “antequam loquaris disce” (learn before you speak). This quotation appears in medieval parent-child advice texts; see, for example, Albertano da Brescia, De amore Dei, Bk 1, Preface: “in primis duo credo tibi fore precipue necessaria: doctrinam videlicet ac loquelam. Primo enim debes discere, postea vero loqui” (I believe two things to be especially important for you: namely, learning and speaking. For first you ought to learn, then afterwards to speak). 5. quid: can bear the sense of “why” or “what” as in: “when the reason why you learn fails you”; or “when what you learn is found wanting.” The line expresses an Abelardian suspicion of learning, including the idea that it is possible to learn too much, that is, beyond what will render one useful to oneself and others. It is at odds with traditional medieval approaches to learning which tend to embrace the idea of lifelong learning; see, for instance, Disticha Catonis, III, 1: “Instrue praeceptis animum, ne discere cessa; | nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago”; IV, 27: “Discere ne cessa, cura sapientia crescat: | rara datur longo prudentia temporis usu”; IV, 29: “Ne pudeat quae nescieris te velle doceri: | scire aliquid laus est; culpa

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est nil discere velle”; and IV, 48: “Cum tibi contigerit studio cognoscere multa, | fac discas multa, vita nescire doceri.” Otloh of St. Emmeram quotes Disticha, III, 1 in his Liber proverbiorum (p. 80, #90), but more closely matches Abelard’s sentiment in his Proverb 107: “Quid prodest studium quod fructum non habet ullum?” (p. 71; what profits study that bears no fruit?). Abelard’s line also contradicts biblical wisdom literature, such as Proverbs 19. 27: “non cesses fili audire doctrinam nec ignores sermones scientiae,” and Eccelsiasticus 6: 18: “fili a iuventute tua excipe doctrinam et usque ad canos invenies sapientiam.” Abelard himself quotes the latter approvingly in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete (Letter Collection, pp. 508–509; see also pp. 502–503 for more patristic quotations on the value of learning). Abelard is at odds here with Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae morales, LXXVI. 3: “Tamdiu discendum est quamdiu nescias; si proverbio credimus, quamdiu vivas. . . . etiam seni esse discendum” (You should learn as long as there is something you do not know; if we believe the proverb, as long as you live. . . . Even an old man needs to learn). Abelard’s line does however match the world-weariness of Ecclesiastes 1. 17–18: “dedique cor meum ut scirem prudentiam atque doctrinam erroresque et stultitiam; et agnovi quod in his quoque esset labor et adflictio spiritus. Eo quod in multa sapientia multa sit indignatio et qui addit scientiam addat et laborem.” Abelard’s advice may also have a classical antecedent in Cicero, De officiis (written to his son Marcus): “et disces, quam diu voles (tam diu autem velle debebis quoad te quantum proficias non paenitebit)” (I, I, 2; and you should learn as long as you wish to; you should to wish to, as long as the progress you are making does not displease you). 7–8. See similarly Proverbs 12.8: “doctrina sua noscetur vir” (a man is known by his teaching), and Martin, Bishop of Braga, Formula honestae vitae (sixth century): “Non te moveat dicentis auctoritas, nec quis, sed quid dicat intendito” (do not let the authority of the one speaking persuade you, do not attend to who said something, but what was said; cited from Mark D. Johnston, “Ciceronian Rhetoric and Ethics,” p. 149 n. 6). 9–10. these lines mark the twelfth-century pedagogic move away from the eleventh-century emphasis on the charismatic master (master of morals, magister morum) as the font of teaching—see C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels, esp. Ch. 8: “Old Learning against New.” The thought appears to have been taken up by Abelard’s student, John of Salisbury, who writes in his Policraticus, II.7.9: “Quid enim dubitat qui iuratus in uerba magistri non quid sed a quo quid dicatur attendit?” (For who doubts that someone who swears on his master’s words is concerned not with what was said but by whom it was said?). Abelard’s thought here thus resonates with early twelfth-century intellectual movements, and contrasts with conventional medieval didactic advice that counsels love for one’s teacher. 11. This thought seems to be linked with the description of fruit-bearing trees in Matthew 7. 16–20 (“a fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos”; by their fruits you shall know them). See also Abelard’s critique of his teacher of theology, Anselm of Laon in his Historia: “he was a tree in full leaf which could be seen from afar, but on closer and more careful inspection proved to be barren” (Letter Collection,

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p. 17; p. 16: “Arbor eius tota in foliis aspicientibus a longe conspicua uidebatur, sed propinquantibus et diligentius intuentibus infructuosa reperiebatur”). See also the critique made by Robert of Melun in the Preface to his Sentences of the “new” style of teaching in the mid-twelfth century that involved “seeking out the leaves covering the fruit” (“folia fructum tegentia”); discussed by Constant J. Mews, “Between the Schools of Abelard and Saint-Victor”, pp. 127–128. Abelard notes, however, in his Expositio in Hexameron, that some animals eat from nonfruit-bearing trees, gaining nourishment from the leaves or other parts instead (§300, p. 68, lines 1783–1786: “Et nota quod illȩ quoque arbores que infructuos ȩ dicuntur aliquod alimentum in foliis saltem uel floribus seu cortice nonnullis animantibus ministrare possunt”). 14. planities: see also 824 and 869–870. On Abelard’s dedication to plainness in teaching over rhetoric or artificial eloquence in order to foster understanding, see the Preface to his Sermons: “Plus quippe lectioni quam sermoni deditus, expositionis insisto planitiem, non eloquentiae compositionem: sensum litterae, non ornatum rhetoricae. Ac fortasse pura minus quam ornata locutio quanto planior fuerit, tanto simplicium intelligentiae commodior erit” (PL 178. 379). See also the Prologue to his Sic et non, where he cites Augustine on the primacy of meaning over eloquence in teaching (Sic et non, pp. 90–91, lines 21–43; translation in Minnis and Scott, Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, p. 88). 16. multiplicare uias: see Ecclesiastes 10. 14: “stultus verba multiplicat” (a fool multiplies his words). In the Collationes, however, the Philosopher suggests that wandering through different ways is part of the reasoning process: “Qui enim quem adhuc ignorant locum uestigant, multas explorare coguntur uias ut rectiorem ualeant eligere” (§106, p. 124). 17–20. See also 72; the theme of self-consistency, the consonance of inner and outer person, runs through the Carmen. The thought is drawn from Ecclesiasticus 27. 12: “homo sanctus in sapientia manet sicut sol, nam stultus sicut luna inmutatur,” though here Abelard alters holy man (“sanctus”) to wise man (“sapiens”). This sentence appears commonly in proverbial literature, such as Sextus, Sentences, 147: “sapiens semper sibi similis est,” Disticha Catonis, I, 4: “Sperne repugnando tibi tu contrarius esse: | conveniet nulli, qui secum dissidet ipse,” and Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 76, #20: “Sapiens ut sol permanet, stultus autem ut luna mutatur.” 23. dicere: O’s variant reading of “discere” would give the translation: “he ponders long in advance what it is reasonable to learn”—see also note to 71 below. 25. See also 255, 652, and 821–822 on the importance of exemplarity, an idea that permeates the Carmen. Note the distinction between dicta (precepts) and verba (words): Abelard usually valorizes deeds over words, but here he places dicta and facta on the same plane, indicating that dicta are more than just words. On exemplarity in the twelfth century see Jaeger, Envy of Angels, Caroline Walker Bynum, Docere verbo et exemplo, and Bynum, “Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual,” p. 97: “‘Teach by example as well as word’ was one of their

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favourite exhortations to evangelism, and teaching by example meant being oneself an observable pattern that was available to others for the reshaping of their lives.” 28. ad scribendum: the gerund (“what must/should be written”) indicates that Abelard recognizes the necessity of writing at some point—his argument is that this should be later, in maturity. See 945–964 for Abelard’s views on the importance of leaving a written record of spoken eloquence. 29–30. These observations may be drawn from Abelard’s own experience: he admits in his Historia that he began teaching too early—“setting my heart on running a school of my own, young as I was, and estimating my capacities too highly for my years” (Letter Collection, p. 7; p. 6: “Factum tandem est ut, supra uires etatis de ingenio meo presumens, ad scolarum regimen adolescentulus aspirarem”)—and that he attempted to teach without proper preparation, as in his lecture on a passage in Ezechiel (Letter Collection, p. 18). Similar advice can be found in other didactic texts: see, for example, Sextus, Sentences, 290: “ea quae oportet discere et ita facere, ne coneris facere antequam discas,” and Facetus, 121: “nec sine re cupias tu nomen habere magistri.” 33–34. This marks the entry of the theme of reputation and the conundrum of inward/outward behavior in relation to exemplarity that pervades the Carmen: on reputation see also 181–184, 203–206, 255, 495–496, and 587–588. The idea is drawn from Proverbs 22. 1: “melius est nomen bonum quam divitiae multae super argentum et aurum gratia bona,” which Abelard cites in his Historia where he comments that he was more distressed by the damage to his reputation than the wound to his body (Letter Collection, p. 46). See also Ecclesiastes 7. 2: “melius est nomen bonum quam unguenta pretiosa.” Abelard also cites the idea in his Confessio fidei “Universis”: “Cum enim beatus Augustinus ‘crudelis est qui famam suam negligit’” (Burnett, p. 133, lines 19–20). The idea of being of “profit” to others would seem to suggest that a teacher must lead an exemplary life: Otloh similarly notes in his Liber proverbiorum, p. 12, #33: “Cuius uita despicitur, restat ut eius doctrina contemnatur.” Yet this sentence contradicts other of Abelard’s teaching in the Carmen (such as 425–426) and his critique of the “master of morals” (9–10). 35–36. Abelard offers a similar observation in his Historia, attributed there to Geoffrey, Bishop of Chartres: “Jerome also reminds us that ‘a false rumour is soon stifled, and a man’s later life passes judgement on his past’” (Letter Collection, p. 65; p. 64: “‘Falsus’ enim ‘rumor,’ ut predictus doctor meminit, ‘cito opprimitur et uita posterior iudicat de priori’”); a citation of Jerome, Ep. 54. 13. 37–52. It is common for medieval didactic texts to focus first on the worship of God; Mary Theresa Brentano notes that among medieval Facetus-literature, “Foremost . . . are the admonitions which prescribe a reverent attitude toward God” (Relationship of the Latin Facetus Literature to the Medieval English Courtesy Poems, p. 97). By contrast, Abelard turns to religious devotion only after first treating learning, teaching, eloquence, rhetoric, reputation, and self-consistency.

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51–52: Abelard suggests that the person who seeks God’s honor in all that he or she does will in fact be making himself/herself useful to God; that is, there is no need to actively attempt to “do” God’s will. This thought meshes with that of Heloise’s Ep. VI on how to live a Christian life. 55–58. These lines appear in the anthology Introductio ad theologiam in Rouen, BM 553 and Evreux, BM 19 where they are attributed in the margin to “M(agister) P(etrus) Abaelardus”—see Edouard Jeauneau, “Glane chartraine dans un manuscrit de Rouen,” pp. 105 and 116. An edition of this text and a reconsideration of its status is currently being undertaken by Constant J. Mews and Ralf Stammberger. 55–56. See however 425–426. 57. The first of the explicit contrasts in the Carmen between deeds (res) and words (verba): see also 25, 242–244, 339, 357–358, 697–698, and 821–822, and 898. Seneca marks the precedence of deeds over words in terms of instruction and example in his Epistulae morales, LII. 8: “eligamus . . . eos qui vita docent, qui cum dixerunt quid faciendum sit probant faciendo. . . . eum elige adiutorem quem magis admireris cum videris quam cum audieris” (let us choose those who teach by their life, who, when they say what should be done, prove it by doing it . . . Choose him as a guide, whom you admire the more when you see him than when you hear him). Advocating deeds over words is common in medieval didactic texts: see, for example, Sextus, Sentences, 383: “fidelium pauca sint verba, opera autem multa,” and Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 6, #59: “Apertius et melius per opera quam per uerba insinuatur uia uitae,” and p. 61, #57: “Plus sunt laudandi bene facientes quam bene dicentes.” 59–60. This thought, drawn from biblical wisdom literature, is a staple of medieval and early modern didactic literature; see Proverbs 10. 1: “filius sapiens laetificat patrem; filius vero stultus maestitia est matris suae”; 13. 1: “filius sapiens doctrina patris qui autem inlusor est not audit cum arguitur”; and 15. 20: “filius sapiens laetificat patrem; et stultus homo despicit matrem suam”; contrast Proverbs 17. 21, and 25: “ira patris filius stultus et dolor matris quae genuit eum”; and 19. 13: “dolor patris filius stultus.” 61–62. In his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, Abelard discusses election to positions of authority within monastic orders and concludes that those in authority must live an exemplary and transparent life for the sake of their subordinates (Letter Collection, pp. 400/402). This argument culminates in the example of Cato pouring out water, which follows here in the next distich. This suggests that 61–62 discuss the proper attitude of one who is elected to high authority, in terms of understanding the burden of leadership. 63. See the notes to 61–62 and Abelard Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “any shortage there may be can be more easily accepted by all when it is shared by all, and especially by superiors. This we have learned from the example of Cato, who, it is written, ‘when the people with him were thirsty,’ rejected and poured away the few drops of water offered him ‘so that all were satisfied’” (Letter Collection,

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p.403; p. 402: “Tunc quoque tolerabilior omnibus quelibet habetur inopia, cum ab omnibus eque participatur, maxime uero a prelatis. Sicut in Catone quoque didicimus. Hic quippe, ut scriptum est, ‘populo secum siciente’ oblatum sibi aque paululum respuit et effudit ‘suffecitque omnibus unda’”). The reference is to Lucan, Pharsalia, IX, 498–510. 65. The theme of proper leadership continues over the next six lines. See Ecclesiasticus 10. 3: “rex insipiens perdet populum suum.” References to kings as crowned asses abound in medieval texts. Nicholas Orme notes: “with regard to the kings of England, we encounter the famous maxim rex illiteratus, asinus coronatus, ‘an illiterate king is a crowned ass.’ This is referred to by William of Malmesbury in about 1125, and was subsequently quoted by several other writers of the twelfth century or later” (From Childhood to Chivalry, p. 143). See also Jacques Verger: “It was John of Salisbury who popularized the adage ‘An uneducated king is like a crowned ass’ (Rex illiteratus est quasi asinus coronatus), which was until the end of the Middle Ages one of the most commonly repeated commonplaces in political literature” (Men of Learning in Europe at the End of the Middle Ages, p. 105). 68. The importance of advice to a ruler was repeated throughout didactic texts of the Middle Ages. As Steven J. Williams notes: “It was a commonplace that the ideal ruler engage good counselors and listen to their advice” (“Giving Advice and Taking It,” p. 146). 69–70. See Ecclesiasticus 10: 2: “secundum iudicem populi sic et ministri eius et qualis rector est civitatis tales et inhabitantes.” The thought became a staple of medieval and early modern didactic texts, especially those designed for children. 71. faciendi: O’s variant reading “discendi” would give the translation: “Your first care should be of learning, then of teaching.” As with 23 above, O tends to construe lines with reference to processes of learning, perhaps indicating a school context for its production and use. 72. see 20; being “dissimilar to oneself ” was a common accusation. Bernard of Clairvaux criticized Abelard as “Homo sibi dissimilis” (Sancti Bernardi Opera, Vol. 8, Ep. 193, p. 44, line 17). Otloh compiles a number of sentences against inconsistency of self, particularly in terms of the role of a teacher: Liber proverbiorum, p. 8, #19: “Bene loqui et male uiuere nihil est aliud nisi se ipsum damnare”; p. 9, #25: “Bene docens et male uiuens uirtutes quas praedicat moribus infamat”; p. 19, #69: “Doctor perfectus quae rite docet prius implet”; p. 20, #70: “Doctrinae uerba paucis prosunt sine factis”; p. 22, #30: “Egregius doctor faciens bona quae docet ipse”; p. 53, #85: “Nil prodest didicisse bonum, nisi feceris illud”; and p. 53, #88: “Non est multa sciens laudandus, sed bene uiuens.” 73–74. The Golden Rule, drawn from Matthew 7. 12: “Omnia ergo quaecumque vultis ut faciant vobis homines et vos facite eis” and Luke 6. 31: “Et prout vultis ut faciant vobis homines et vos facite illis similiter.” Abelard also cites it again, though in negative form, at 583–584. This is one of the most popular distichs

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of the Carmen, included in Recensions II and III, the Trier excerpt, the Troyes excerpt described by Carsten Wollin (“Neue Textzeugen,” p. 205), and marked out by marginal annotation in B. The Golden Rule is a staple of medieval didactic literature: see Brentano, Relationship of the Latin Facetus Literature, p. 99; Facetus, Distich 13: “Ne facias alii, tibi quod minime fieri vis; | sic Christo placidus et amatus habebere cuivis,” and Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 67, #60: “Quod tibi non uis fieri, alii ne feceris.” Heloise questions the meaning of the Golden Rule in Problem 20, where she asks whether it could legitimate mutual sinning: “For if anyone should wish another person to consent with him in wrongdoing, would he be obliged to give his consent to the other in a similar matter?” (McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 244; PL 178. 708B: “Si quis enim vult ut in malo sibi quisquam consentiat, nunquid debet illi praebere consensum in re consimili?”). In his De civitate Dei, 14. 8, Augustine argued that the Golden Rule applies only in terms of “good things.” In his reply to Problem 20, Abelard stresses that conscience must regulate that to which one consents, while the application of the Golden Rule must be contingent upon, and consonant with, the respective ranks of those involved in the exchange. This fits with Abelard’s specification of rank in the Carmen, 109–114. Abelard addresses similar issues relating to the Golden Rule in his Commentary on Romans (IV.XIII.10, p. 291). Further answers to Heloise’s Problem can be found at Carmen, 127–138 and 445–446. On Abelard’s philosophical and theological approach to the Golden Rule in his writings, see Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 77 and 290, and Marenbon, “Abelard’s Concept of Natural Law,” pp. 612–614. Marenbon notes that Abelard’s Solution to Problem 20 “raises a fundamental difficulty about the logic of the Golden Rule . . . which frequently troubled Abelard, but not, it seems, his contemporaries” (The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, p. 77). 75–82: This apparent acceptance of the inevitability of deception and fallibility of human nature contrasts with Abelard’s expression of outraged betrayal in his Historia and the powerful evocations of betrayal in his Planctus. The Carmen might thus represent Abelard’s attempt to theorize betrayal as a necessary component of human life, whereas his Planctus allow him to dramatize the personal emotional aftermath of betrayal. Note that Abelard’s declaration of the inevitability of deception here is at odds with his advice at 149 not to believe too readily the evil said of a friend; similarly his claim here that a good mind is unable to deceive seems to be at odds with 967 and its apparent approbation of deception practiced in certain contexts. The question of intention in deception is addressed by Abelard in his Sic et non, where he explores it in his Prologue (Sic et non, pp. 97–99), and Quaestio LXXIX: “Quod Christus fefellerit et non” (That Christ deceived, and that he did not). Here he cites Ambrose arguing that Christ did at times deceive “so that he could overcome” (“Fefellit ergo, ut vinceret; fefellit diabolum, cum temptaretur, ut nunquam divinitatem propriam fateretur. Sed tamen magis fefellit principes saeculi”), but also Augustine to the contrary. Consider in this regard also Sic et non, Q. CLIV: “Quod nulla de causa liceat mentiri et contra” (That for no

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reason is it permitted to lie, and against). Abelard’s approach here is more complex than the warnings against lying and deception found in traditional advice literature: he examines the issue from every side, determining where and how blame should be apportioned for deception, moving from this to a study of the nature of God. Abelard’s distinction here between a vitium (failing) and a crimen (sin) reappears in his Scito te ipsum: “Non est autem huiusmodi animi uicium idem quod peccatum, nec peccatum idem quod actio mala” (I.2.1, p. 2, lines 21–22; for this kind of failing of the mind is not the same as a sin, nor is a sin the same as evil action); “Vicium itaque est, quo ad peccandum proni efficimur” (I.2.9, p. 3, lines 54–55; and so a failing is that by which we are rendered liable to sinning). Richard of St. Victor similarly distinguishes vitium from peccatum, as for example: “Vitium itaque est ipsa infirmitas naturalis corruptionis, peccatum vero est ipsa prava assentatio temptantis infirmitatis. Vitium est quasi quedam passio nature, peccatum vero est spontanea quedam actio industrie”; see J. Ribaillier, “Richard de saint-Victor, De statu interioris hominis,” C.XXXIX, pp. 109–111 (quote from p. 110). 82. solius esse dei: See also Sextus, Sentences, 186: “possibile est verbo fallere hominem, non tamen deum.” Abelard addresses the same issue in his Theologia Christiana, where his arguments are directed against a contemporary theologian: see Mews, Abelard and Heloise, pp. 137–138. 83–84. A reference to the fall of the Devil: see Isaiah 14. 14 where Lucifer claims: “ero similis Altissimo” (I will be like the Most High). Through pride and envy, Lucifer (the highest angel) desired to be like God and overreached; in punishment he was flung down from the higher empyrean heaven, where the angels had been created and dwelt, to the lower ethereal heaven, above the world. There was a pervasive belief in the Middle Ages that the former angels, now demons, once flung down, took on denser “cloudy” bodies; Abelard discusses this belief in Collationes, §185. 85–90. Here is the traditional definition of justice as “rendering unto each his own.” It matches the argument of the Philosopher in the Collationes who says: “Iustitia itaque uirtus est, communi utilitate seruata, suam cuique tribuens dignitatem” (§118, p. 134; p. 135: “Justice, then, is the virtue which, while preserving the common good, gives to each person his worth”). Marenbon and Orlandi note that in quoting this defintion from Cicero (De inventione, II. 53. 160), Abelard alters “Iustitia est habitus animi” to “Iustitia est uirtus” (p. 134 n. 116). On courage and temperance as supports of justice, see Collationes, §§120– 123. Here courage is “the virtue which makes us ready to undertake dangers and bear hardships,” while temperance is “the firm and measured control by reason of sensual desire and of the mind’s other wrongful impulses.” The Philosopher restates this position in §124, p. 138: “iustitia, que merita dispensat, quid cui debeatur sciat, fortitudo in suscipiendis periculis uel laboribus tolerandis discretionem habeat, temperantia, ut dictum est, in concupiscentiis refrenandis moderationem” (p. 139: “justice, which gives out what is merited, can know what is due to whom; through which courage can exercise discretion in undertaking

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dangers and bearing toils, and temperance, as has been said, can have moderation in reining back our desires”). 92. Here Abelard speaks from experience about the dangers of complacency in good times, as his Historia makes clear: “But success always puffs up fools with pride, and worldly calm weakens the spirit’s resolution and easily destroys it through carnal temptations” (Letter Collection, p. 23; p. 22: “Sed quoniam prosperitas stultos semper inflat et mundana tranquillitas uigorem eneruat animi et per carnales illecebras facile resoluit”). 93. See Cicero, De officiis, I, VI, 19: “Alterum est vitium, quod quidam nimis magnum studium multamque operam in res obscuras atque difficiles conferunt easdemque non necessarias” (Another failing is that some people apply too great study and too much attention to obscure and difficult matters that are not necessary). Cicero continues: “Cuius studio a rebus gerendis abduci contra officium est; virtutis enim laus omnis in actione consistit” (to be drawn away from things that need to be done by such study is contrary to duty, for all the glory of virtue lies in action). Although 93–94 seem like a non-sequitur where they appear in the Carmen, their placement here is in fact justified by Abelard’s source, since Cicero’s warning on obscure researches immediately follows his discussion of the four cardinal virtues. 97. In the beginning of Bk II of his Scito te ipsum, Abelard notes: “Prudencia, id est ‘boni malique discrecio,’ ‘mater’ est ‘uirtutum’ pocius quam uirtus” (II.2.1, p. 85, lines 2237–2238). 101. See Moralium dogma philosophorum, p. 26, lines 17–18 on reverentia: “Huius officium est imitari maiores. Optimum est enim maiorum uestigia sequi” (The function of reverence is to imitate your betters, for it is best to follow in the footsteps of your betters). 110–111: Abelard deals in greater detail with this thought in his Theologia “Scholarium” and Sententie—see Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 290–291: “By contrast with love for God, love of one’s neighbour should be measured . . . We are commanded to love our neighbour ‘as we love ourselves’— that is, as Abelard explains, not ‘to the same extent as’ (quantum), but ‘in the same way as.’ Our charity should, therefore, be ‘ordered’ (ordinata) according to the relative excellence of its objects: God should be loved beyond all other things, because he is good beyond all other things; then ‘the mother of God,’ because she is better than all others except him; and then others according to their worth.” Note that in the Carmen, Abelard omits mention of Mary as second in rank. Marenbon continues: “Exactly how Abelard’s ‘ordering of charity’ might work out in practice is as hazy as the practical implications of the injunction to do everything for the sake of God.” See also Sextus, Sentences, 439: “agnosce qui sunt filii dei in creaturis eius, et honora unumquemque pro merito post deum” (Acknowledge those who are the sons of God amongst his creation, and give honour to each one according to his merit, after God).

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115–172. For an analysis of the complex interplay and ordering of the ideas in this section, see the section on “Style” in chapter 1. Georg Misch finds Abelard’s focus on the nature of friendship in the Carmen to have been powerfully influenced by Heloise’s exposition of pure and selfless love in her letters to him (Geschichte der Autobiographie, 3.1, p. 700). 119–124. Compare Cicero, De amicitia, VIII. 27: “Quapropter a natura mihi videtur potius quam ab indigentia orta amicitia, applicatione magis animi cum quodam sensu amandi quam cogitatione quantum illa res utilitatis esset habitura. Quod quidem quale sit etiam in bestiis quibusdam animadverti potest, quae ex se natos ita amant ad quoddam tempus et ab eis ita amantur, ut facile earum sensus appareat” (Wherefore it seems to me that friendship arises from nature rather than from need, and more from a union of the mind together with a certain feeling of loving than from any thought of how much use the friendship might hold. The kind of thing that it is can even be observed among certain animals, which, for a certain time, so love those born to them and are so loved by them, that their feeling is readily apparent). Yet this does not constitute Abelard’s final statement on the issue in the Carmen: he revisits the question of the hierarchy between love, family, nature, and lust at 447–452, where he advises the primacy of natural familial love over other ties and states its importance as a marker of an honorable person, and at 471–474, where he ranks natural familial love above sexual desire. See further my “La douceur d’une vie paternelle,” pp. 208–210. 125–138. See Cicero, De amicitia, XII. 40: “Haec igitur lex in amicitia sanciatur, ut neque rogemus res turpes, nec faciamus rogati” (Let this law be established as regards friendship: neither must we request shameful acts, nor supply them to one asking). Abelard considers this concept, examining it from all sides, taking into account whose blame is greater when one friend shamefully submits to the wrongful desire of the other. He restates his position more succinctly at 445– 446; this discussion also answers Heloise’s Problem 20 on whether the Golden Rule can require mutual sinning (see 73–74). See also Augustine, Confessions, 3.1: “venam igitur amicitiae coinquinabam sordibus concupiscentiae candoremque eius obnubilabam de tartaro libidinis” (Pine-Coffin, p. 55: “I muddied the stream of friendship with the filth of lewdness and clouded its clear waters with hell’s black river of lust”). 139–140. This distich is particularly marked out in MS M: there is a cross in the center margin next to it, and in the right hand margin “De amicicia” is written inside a box with an ornate pointing hand. 145–146. See Cicero, De amicitia, XXI. 80: “verus amicus . . . est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem.” On the ancient concept of friendship/empathy expressed in the formula “I am you” see Karl F. Morrison, “I Am You”. Similar statements abound throughout the Epistulae duorum amantium: see Letter 13 (woman): “quippe quem sicut memetipsam diligo, ita te toto cordis conamine diligere non negligo” (“for just as I love you as my very self, so I do not neglect to love you with all the effort of my heart,” Mews, Lost Love Letters, pp. 222–223) and Letter

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77 (man): “tu es ego et ego sum tu. Hoc dixisse satis sit” (“you are me and I am you. May it be enough to have said this,” Lost Love Letters, pp. 282–283). 149–150. See also 75–82, 181–186, and 677–678. These lines resonate with Abelard’s description in his Historia of how Fulbert long refused to believe the rumors about him and Heloise: “We do not easily think ill of those whom we love most, and the taint of suspicion cannot exist along with warm affection” (Letter Collection, p. 31). In his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, Abelard cites Jerome (Ep. 147. 10): “We are always the last to learn what has gone wrong in our own home, and we do not know of the faults of our wives and children even though they are the talk of the neighbourhood” (Letter Collection, p. 397). Here friendship would appear to lead to gullibility and hence betrayal—this draws the Carmen into closer thematic relationship with the Planctus where the theme of betrayal through excess of human sentiment is explored. 151–152. See Ecclesiasticus 12. 8: “non agnoscetur in bonis amicus.” 155–156. See Seneca Ep. IX. 9: “qui amicus esse coepit quia expedit ” (He who begins to be your friend because it profits him, will also cease, when it profits him); and Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 6, #60: “Amicum res secundae parant, aduersae probant” (Prosperous times make the friend, adverse times test him). Similar sentiments appear in Heloise’s Ep. II on marriage (Letter Collection, p. 134) and Abelard, Ep. V: “There is no wider distinction between true friends and false than the fact that the former share adversity, the latter only prosperity” (Letter Collection, p. 191).These lines resonate with the woman’s letter 49 of the Epistulae duorum amantium: “For I do not consider the friendship of those who seem to love each other for riches and pleasures to be durable at all, since the very things on which they base their love seem to have no durability. Consequently, when their riches or pleasure runs out, so too at the same time love may fail, since they loved these things not because of each other but each other because of these things” (Lost Love Letters, pp. 250–253). 158. prodi: again friendship is associated with betrayal and loss, an idea that appears also the Planctus. In this case, the loss is only monetary, but it is a recurring theme in Abelard’s writings (see also Carmen, 168). 163–164. See Ecclesiasticus 9. 14: “ne derelinquas amicum antiquum, novus enim non erit similis illi,” but contrast Seneca’s Ep. IX. 6: “Habet autem non tantum usus amicitiae veteris et certae magnam voluptatem sed etiam initium et comparatio novae” (For not only does the enjoyment of an old and established friendship hold great delight, but also the beginning and undertaking of a new one). 173–174. See Ecclesiasticus 12. 10: “non credas inimico tuo in aeternum.” 177–178. See Facetus, 103: “Si servus tibi sit, hunc sub pede semper habeto, | ne nimis elatus faciat tibi damna quieto” (If you have a servant, keep him always under your heel, lest becoming too puffed up, he should destroy your peace of mind). Consider Abelard’s own experience with servants as related in his Historia, where he was betrayed by one (Letter Collection, p. 44).

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179–180. See Abelard’s Scito te ipsum (I.2.7–8, p.3, lines 48–52): “Illis corpori dominantibus, dum liber animus fuerit, nichil de uera libertate periclitatur, nichil obscene seruitutis incurrimus. Non enim homini seruire set uicio turpe est, nec corporalis seruitus set uiciorum subiectio animam deturpat” (Although the body may be overcome, so long as the mind remains free, nothing of our true freedom is imperilled, we incur no vile servitude. For it is not shameful to serve a man, but vice, nor does bodily servitude, but subservience to vices pollute the soul). See also his Sermon 5: “nec tam servitutem hominum fugiamus quam vitiorum. Non enim turpe est aut damnosum hominibus servire, sed vitiis” (PL 178. 420D; and let us flee the servitude not so much of men as of vices, for it is not shameful or destructive to serve men, but vices). See also the argument of the Philosopher at Collationes, §138. For this ancient conception of the self as ultimately free as long as the will is free, see the discussion of Epictetus in Richard Sorabji, Self, Ch. 10. 181–186. See also 75–78, 149–150, 683–688, and 773–774. These lines seem to be primarily concerned with the interior moral state of the wronged husband. If his ignorance of his situation is maintained through friends’ silence, then he avoids the hypocrisy of knowing his disgrace and trying to hide it from others (181–184; at 683–686 Abelard deals with the aftermath of the knowledge of adultery where action has to be taken). There is also the question of self-consistency (185–186): the husband’s ignorance of his wife’s immoral behavior indicates that he himself has been faithful in marriage and does not operate under a mind-set of suspicion; his friends should respect this and not disturb the consonance of the inner and outer man by introducing suspicion and the idea of adultery to a good man. Consider Titus 1. 15: “omnia munda mundis” (To the pure all things are pure). This picks up Abelard’s argument in his Scito te ipsum over how knowledge of another’s sin can impact behavior through negative example (I.27.3, p. 28, lines 728–735). See also Ovid, Amores, II, 2.50–58 on a husband’s unwillingness to hear wrong of his wife. 187–188. See Marbod of Rennes, Liber decem capitulorum (Leotta, IV.3, p. 113): “Nil melius muliere bona, quae portio nostri | Corporis est sumus atque suae nos portio carnis”; and John of Salisbury, Policraticus, II.8.11, p. 306, line 15: “Nichil enim melius, nichil utilius muliere pudica.” In his 1845 biography of Abelard, Charles de Rémusat argued: “Nil melius muliere bona. C’est la véritable épitaphe d’Héloïse” (I, p. 269). Note that Abelard’s misogyny here contradicts advice given in Facetus, 99: “Femineo nunquam de sexu prava loquaris, | sed, quamcumque vides, pro posse tuo verearis” (You should never speak evil of the female sex, but, whatever woman you see, you should honour as much as you can); and 186: “Rusticus est vere, qui turpia de muliere | dicit; nam vere sumus omnes de muliere” (He is truly a boor, who says shameful things about women, for truly we all come from a woman). 190. The lasciviousness of old women was a standard trope of medieval misogyny; see, for example, chapters in Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Albrecht Classen, including Gretchen Mieszkowski, “Old Age and Medieval Misogyny: The Old Woman”; Karen Pratt, “De vetula: The Figure of the Old

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Woman in Old French Literature”; and Connie L. Scarborough, “Celestina: The Power of Old Age.” 193–198. See also 673–674. Heloise makes a number of references in her letters to this idea that chastity must be understood as an inner disposition, maintained by internal will, not an outward appearance, maintained only by external force or restraint: see Ep. II: “It is a holy error and a blessed delusion between man and wife that perfect love can keep the ties of marriage unbroken not so much through bodily continence as chastity of spirit” (Letter Collection, p. 135); Ep. IV: “Men call me chaste; they do not know the hypocrite I am. They see purity of the flesh as a virtue, though virtue belongs not to the body but to the mind” (p. 173); and Ep. VI, quoting Augustine, De bono conjugali, XXI, 25: “Continence is a virtue not of the body but of the soul” (p. 247). In his Sermon 1, Abelard also addresses the idea that technical chastity of the body does not matter if the will to sin remains in the heart: “Sed quae ista, quaeso, est dignitas, esse virginem in carne, si jam per consensum corrupta fuerat mente?” (PL 178. 381C; But what is the value, I ask, to be a virgin in the flesh, if you have already been corrupted in the mind through consent?). See also Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 14, #51: “Continentia non corporis sed animi est uirtus” (Continence is not a virtue of the body but of the mind); and p. 14, #62: “Carnis uirginitas, quamuis sit caelica uirtus, | Non prodest cuiquam sine mentis uirginitate” (Virginity of the flesh, although it is a heavenly virtue, does not profit anyone without virginity of the mind). For a classical exemplar for these ideas, see Ovid, Amores, III, 4.1–8. 199–200. See 677–680. See Ecclesiasticus 7. 26: “filiae tibi sunt serva corpus illarum et non ostendas hilarem faciem tuam ad illas”; 26. 13: “in filia non avertente se firma custodiam”; and 42. 9–11. Several of these verses are cited by Abelard in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, as advice to the abbess concerning the care for her nuns (Letter Collection, p. 397). 203–206. See similarly 671–672 and 680 on the particular fragility of female reputation. Abelard speaks bluntly of social realities here. Under medieval canon law, a husband could dismiss his wife for adultery without written accusation (“sine inscriptione”), without any fear of disadvantage to his own reputation (“sine metu calumpnie”), and on the basis of suspicion alone (“de sola suspitione”): see James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, pp. 320–321 and n. 300. A woman’s reputation was therefore something to be guarded assiduously. Abelard addresses this in his Sermon 29 on Susannah, arguing that Susannah wept not just for the touch of groping hands upon her body, but because her reputation had been sullied: “non solum corporis contactum, sed et famae futurum flebat detrimentum, cum illi scilicet ad testificandum prorumperent, quorum testimonio plurimum credi providebat” (PL 178. 560C). 203–216. It is difficult not to see these lines as implicit criticisms of Heloise, both her behavior when she was with Abelard, and more particularly, her claims and memories about this time expressed in her Letters. For instance, with regard to 203–206, Heloise wrote that she remembered fondly the love songs that made her name renowned throughout the city (Letter Collection, Ep. II, pp. 137, 141);

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regarding 207–210, she did not withhold herself sexually from Abelard early in their relationship in the hope of eventual marriage (Letter Collection, Historia, p. 29); and with respect to 211–216, she declared in her letters to Abelard that her sexual devotion to him was freely given without any expectation of monetary (as in matrimonial) return (Letter Collection, Ep. II, p. 133). 211–212. There were numerous definitions of what constituted prostitution in the Middle Ages, variously drawn from Roman law, the Fathers, Gratian’s Decretum, and later decretists. It was generally agreed that the term referred to a “common” woman who gave herself freely to more than one man. Whether this had to be for money to qualify as prostitution was disputed; some theorists believed that promiscuous and indiscriminate sex was all that was required. This was the position of Jerome, and it was adopted by Gratian in his Decretum. Abelard clearly disagrees with this line, as he posits here (212) the acceptance of money as the distinguishing feature between the mistress/lover and the whore (note however that this dichotomy leaves the concubine in a nondefined state). On prostitutes see Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women; on the difficulty that medieval theologians had in dealing with the idea of women’s sexuality outside of marriage and prostitution see Brundage, “Concubinage and Marriage in Medieval Canon Law.” In his Sermon 29 on Susannah, Abelard makes a similar distinction between the two types of women: “quae de forma confidunt, venales sese prostituunt; aut si de mercede diffidunt, ipsas luxuriae sordes quas excipiunt pro mercede sibi constituunt” (PL 178. 556A-B; those who trust in their beauty set themselves for sale; or, if they despair of earning money, the very filth of lust that they receive they take for themselves in place of payment). 215–216. The thought seems to be that the amica actually procures sex at a price— perhaps to her reputation—and that while the Latin language abounds in terms to designate a prostitute (e.g., meretrix, scortum), it has no unambiguous means of marking out a woman who offers sex for free. Abelard might be countering here Heloise’s declarations in her Ep. II regarding the names by which she wished to be called, and particularly her search for terms of ever greater abjection: “The name of wife may seem holier or more valid, but sweeter for me will always be the word friend, or, if you will permit me, concubine or whore” (Letter Collection, p. 133; p. 132: “Et si uxoris nomen sanctius ac ualidius uidetur, dulcius mihi semper extitit amice uocabulum, aut, si non indigneris, concubine uel scorti”). 217. consueta: This word suggests habituation, thus referencing a bird of prey that has been specifically trained in the art of hunting. The negative association of women with birds of prey has a long history, from the antique world through to the early modern. 221–224. These lines on prostitution and sodomy appear in Recension II but not in Recension III (which possibly has a Cistercian provenance: see chapter 1). 221. The term “sodomite” (sodomita) was a powerful one in the Middle Ages, associating those branded by it not only with deviant sexuality, but often (particularly from the thirteenth century on) with heresy as well. The punishment

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for sodomy in the Middle Ages could be death, whether by burning, hanging, or stoning, depending on the period and locality. Peter Damian wrote his virulently antihomosexual pamphlet, the Liber Gomorrhianus, in around 1048–1054, and in it he coined the term “sodomia” on the analogy of “blasphemia.” Brundage has described this as “the most explicit manifesto against deviant sexuality in reform literature” (Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, p. 212). Sodomy was known as “the sin against nature” (“peccatum contra naturam”) and although it was most generally understood to refer to male-male anal intercourse, within canon law it could in fact refer to any form of nonprocreative sexual activity, whether heterosexual or homosexual, including bestiality, same-sex intercourse, heterosexual intercourse in nonprocreative positions, and masturbation. It is clearly the nonprocreative nature of male-male sexual activity with which Abelard takes issue here (223–224). See Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology, and Joan Cadden, Nothing Natural Is Shameful. 222. uir meretrix: See note to 211–212. Abelard is highly unusual here in conceptualizing a “male prostitute.” The term and concept were not current in medieval Europe, since legal and social definitions of a prostitute in the Middle Ages were predicated on female sexual nature: see Mary Elizabeth Perry, “Deviant Insiders,” p. 142: “City laws did not recognize males as prostitutes . . . sexual activity with male prostitutes could neither be openly acknowledged nor formalized into regulated brothels. It had to be discreet, socially invisible. Homosexual practice which became too visible was punished by the legal machinery.” See also Karras and David Lorenzo Boyd, “Ut cum muliere,” p. 105: “The whore was the extreme case of what all women could be . . . For a man to be considered a prostitute, then, would have been an oxymoron. A whore was first and foremost a sinful woman, although probably one who happened to take money for her sin. A man who took money for sex did not fall into the same category . . . There is no case extant . . . from any other medieval courts . . . in which a man was accused, let alone convicted, of prostitution.” Abelard’s bluntness here in naming the unnamable (a male prostitute) is indicative of a didactic text that speaks plainly of social realities. 223–224. In his Expositio in Hexameron, Abelard similarly describes male homosexual intercourse as unfruitful pollution: “Ex quo patenter insinuat quantum a creatione dei et institutione nature illa sodomitarum abhominabilis commixtio recedat, qua se ipsos tantum polluunt, nullum de prole fructum reportantes” (§292, p. 66, lines 1730–1733). At numerous places in his writings, Abelard refers to the Old Testament prohibition against the wasting of seed (see the Notes on the Planctus uirginum, 68–70). 225–244. Perhaps unusually for a medieval didactic text, Abelard here represents the major sins committed by women not as sexual sins, but rather “sins of the tongue” (vitia linguae), such as loquacity and idle gossip. On these see Johnston, “Speech in Medieval Ethical and Courtesy Literature,” and Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, Les péchés de la langue.

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225–226. Both the prostitute and traitor are masters of false-seeming and flattery (on flattery, see also 439–440 and 515–518). Brundage notes that medieval writers “agreed that an element of deception is also involved in prostitution: the harlot systematically deceives those whom she serves. The deception that these lawyers had in mind was presumably the simulation of love or at least of emotional intimacy between the prostitute and her client”; see “Prostitution in the Medieval Canon Law,” p. 82. 227. The idea of a humble prostitute was a deliberate contrariety, as prostitutes were considered by nature to be “superba” (proud), given to displaying their bodies and looking upon men with bold eyes. Note how Abelard’s thought makes a far more subtle ethical distinction than is usually found in medieval father-son advice-texts, where the warning “flee prostitutes” is common: see, for example, Disticha Catonis, “meretricem fuge” (Brief Sentence 25). Abelard seems here to have taken a traditional piece of advice, such as Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 73, #22: “Rectius sequuntur Agnum coniugati humiles, quam uirgines superbientes” (Humble married women follow the Lamb more righteously than proud virgins), and pushed it to the extreme. Abelard similarly praises Mary Magdalene as a repentant sinner in Hymn 128, 3/10 using the term “felix meretrix,” and in his Ep. VII to the nuns of the Paraclete, he remarks that the grace of the Lord is more abundant in women, including whores (scortorum): “Look at all the grades within this sex, not only virgins and widows and married women but also prostitutes with their abominable practices, and you will find the grace of Christ to be fuller in the latter” (Letter Collection, p. 311). Of Mary Magdalene and Mary the Egyptian he later notes “the consideration shown by divine mercy even to the degredation of common prostitutes” (p. 331; p. 330: “diuine respectum misericordie in ipsa etiam publicorum abiectione scortorum”), and he cites the words of Christ at Matthew 21. 31: “Harlots shall enter the kingdom of God before you” (p. 331). A similar contrariety can be found in Peter of Celles, Sermones: “Cujusnam major iniquitas superbi leprosi, an humilis meretricis?” (PL 202. 837C; for whose wickedness is greater: that of a proud leper or a humble whore?). On proud chaste women, see Juvenal, Satire VI, 166–169; also Alexander of Ashby: “Alia est nobilis, formosa, casta, prudens et potens, set displicet suis quia est superba et tam inhumana ut non dignetur suos respicere” (Sermones, Collectio prima, Sermo 17). There was a common patristic and medieval sentiment that proud chastity was not chastity at all; see Gregory the Great: “Si enim uel castitatem humilitas deserat, uel humilitatem castitas relinquat, apud auctorem humilitatis et munditiae prodesse quid praeualet uel superba castitas, uel humilitas inquinata?” (Moralia in Job, Bk 21); Aelred of Rievaulx, De spiritali amicitia, Bk 1: “sic et superba castitas uirtus non est; quia superbia ipsa quae uitium est, eam quae uirtus putabatur, sibi conformem facit; et ideo iam non uirtus sed uitium est”; and William of St. Thierry: “Castitas enim superba non castitas est, sed ornatum diaboli prostibulum” (for proud chastity is not chastity but the decorated brothel of the Devil; Breuis commentatio, Ch. 30).

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229–236. In his Planctus Israel super Sanson, Abelard advises any man to take a snake or fire to his breast before a woman (48: “Sinum aspidi uel igni prius aperi, quisquis sapis”). Brentano notes that “Facetus warns young men to keep apart from an evil woman as from a snake and a leaky house” (Relationship of the Latin Facetus Literature, p. 99; see Facetus, 35). 237–238. See James 3. 5: “ita et lingua modicum quidem membrum est et magna exultat; ecce quantus ignis, quam magnam silvam incendit . . . ” Abelard quotes the Epistle of James, including this verse, on the need for restraining the tongue in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete (Letter Collection, p. 364). This was a popular distich in the reception of the Carmen: it appears in Recension III, the Trier excerpt, the Reims excerpt described by Wollin (“Neue Textzeugen,” p. 202), and is marked out by the annotator of MS B, who also wrote “Lingua” in the left margin (one of only two such marginal notations expressing theme). 239–244. These lines develop Abelard’s argument on the untrustworthiness of rhetoric and the primacy of deeds over words; see also 567–570. Rhetoric is associated here with false-seeming in the same way that a prostitute only simulates desire. Thersites, Achilles: These two are contrasted by Juvenal in Satire VIII, 269– 271. For Thersites as emblematic of loquacity, see Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, 1.15.11; for a later exemplar see Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, De liberorum educatione (1450), which references “Thersitis loquacitatem” (Kallendorf, Humanist Educational Treatises, p. 174). 245–246. In his Solution to Heloise’s Problem 42, Abelard notes that whereas God originally gave the command to go forth and multiply (Genesis 1. 28 and 9. 1), Jerome pointed out that this command and its accompanying curse against seedlessness (Exodus 23. 26) were valid only “as long as the Law pertained” (PL 178. 723B, quoting Jerome, De perpetua virginitate sanctae Mariae). Abelard adds that Augustine argued that this Law was necessary to bring about the bodily person of Christ (PL 178. 723C, quoting Augustine, De viduitate servanda). Abelard makes this distinction clear here in the differing tenses of “dictum est” (245) and “dicitur” (246). Abelard also deals with God’s command to humans to go forth and multiply in his Expositio in Hexameron, where he reads it as a condemnation of homosexuality (see notes to 223–224). It is interesting that, in a text written for nuns, he also reads it as a sanctification of marriage: “Dampnantur et ex hoc loco precipue dampnatores nuptiarum, cum primis hominibus creatis ex auctoritate dominica coniugium statim sanctitum sit” (§292, p. 66, lines 1734–1736; In this text, those who condemn marriage are especially condemned, since from the first creation of humans, marriage was instantly sanctified by divine authority). By contrast, in this poem to his son, Abelard argues that the injunction to multiply is now superseded by the Christian requirement of virginity. In the Expositio he continues: “Vt beatus meminit Ieronimus, consideranda est uis uerbi. Nuptie quippe replent terram, uirginitas paradisum” (§293, p. 66, lines 1737–1739; citing Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum, I, 16; as the Blessed Jerome recalled, the force of the saying must be considered: the married indeed fill the earth, virginity fills Heaven).

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Celum . . . repleant: see Abelard’s Ep. V to Heloise: “What a hateful loss and grievous misfortune if you had abandoned yourself to the defilement of carnal pleasures only to bear in suffering a few children for the world, when now you are delivered in exultation of numerous progeny for heaven!” (Letter Collection, p. 205). On the biblical injunction in general, see Jeremy Cohen, “Be Fertile and Increase”. 247. See Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “we absolutely forbid that custom should ever be set above reason; a practice must never be defended on grounds of custom but only of reason, not because it is usual but because it is good, and it should be more readily accepted the better it is shown to be” (Letter Collection, p. 433; p. 432: “Omnino enim prohibemus ut numquam consuetudo rationi preponatur nec umquam aliquid deffendatur quia sit consuetudo, sed quia ratio; nec quia sit usitatum, sed quia bonum; et tanto libentius excipiatur quanto melius apparebit”). In his Ep. X to Bernard of Clairvaux defending his formulation of the Lord’s Prayer, Abelard quotes authorities on the primacy of reason over custom, including Augustine, De Baptismo, 3: “ratio et ueritas consuetudini praeponenda est” (reason and truth are to be set before custom), and Pope Gregory VII: “Dominus dicit: ‘Ego sum,’ inquit, ‘ueritas’; non ait: ‘ego sum consuetudo’” (The Lord said: “I am truth”, not “I am custom”); see Smits, Peter Abelard. Letters IX-XIV, p. 244. 249–250. See also 597–598. Compare Disticha Catonis, “aequum iudica” (Brief Sentence 43). 251. See Cicero, De inventione, I. 38. 68–69: “ut in legibus scribendis nihil sibi aliud nisi salutem atque utilitatem rei publicae proponerent . . . desinite litteras legis perscrutari et legem, ut aequum est, ex utilitate rei publicae considerate” (so that in writing laws they should put nothing first but the safety and utility of the republic. . . . cease to scrutinize the letter of the law, and consider the law, as is just, from the point of view of the utility of the republic). 253. Compare Exodus 23. 2–3: “nec in iudicio plurimorum adquiesces sententiae ut a vero devies; pauperis quoque non misereberis in negotio,” and Leviticus 19. 15: “nec iniuste iudicabis; nec consideres personam pauperis, nec honores vultum potentis; iuste iudica proximo tuo.” A similar sentence appears in the verses appended to the end of the Carmen in MS M: “Pauperis in causa nec auris sit tibi clausa” (Do not let your ear be closed in the case of the poor person; see Appendix B). 254. Ecclesiastes 1. 15: “stultorum infinitus est numerus”; this text is cited by Abelard in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, in the contexts of taking advice (Letter Collection, p. 434) and of monasteries amassing too many converts (p. 486). 255. See also 33–34, 181–184, 309–310, 495–496, 587–588, 821–822, and 915– 916. In his Scito te ipsum, Abelard discusses the role of bad example in leading the behavior of others astray, arguing that bad deeds must be punished for their propensity to incite similar ones, even if there is no evidence that anyone will imitate them, or even know about them (I.27.3, p. 28, lines 728–732). He also

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suggests that a sin should be considered the greater, the more harm it is likely to do to one’s neighbor (I.49.5, p. 49, lines 1289–1291). In his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, Abelard advises the abbess that she must prevent her nuns becoming bad examples to others: “She must be the first to know all the evils of her house, so that she may correct them before they are known to the rest and taken as a precedent” (Letter Collection, p. 397). See also Disticha Catonis, III, 13: “Multorum disce exemplo quae facta sequaris, | quae fugias, vita est nobis aliena magistra” (Learn from the example of many what deeds you ought to follow, which you should avoid, for the lives of others are our teacher). 257–258. See also 335–338. Abelard makes a similar point in his Planctus Dauid super Abner, where David laments the death of his former enemy. 259. This line is drawn from Aeneid, VI. 853. It occurs near the end of Anchises’ long speech in the Underworld where he outlines the future of the Italian people: “tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento | (hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem, | parcere subiectis et debellare superbos” (VI. 851–853). In a parallel with Abelard and Astralabe, it is Anchises here, as a father, who gives this advice to his son Aeneas; given the late style of the Carmen, perhaps Abelard feels as though he too speaks from the Shades. On father-son dyads in the Carmen see also 659–660 on Daedalus and Icarus. This was a common sentence in medieval and early modern didactic literature, probably because of its citation by Augustine in his De ciuitate Dei: see Pierre Courcelle, Connais-toi toi-même de Socrate à Saint Bernard, Vol. 2, pp. 492–493 and 501. Augustine cites the passage in De civitate Dei, 1. Preface, 1. 6, and 5. 12. It also matches the advice in James 4. 6: “Deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam” and 1 Peter 5. 5: “quia Deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam.” In terms of medieval and early modern didactic literature see Disticha Catonis, “parce minori” (Brief Sentence 10), and Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 10, #39: “Blandus mansuetis sis, districtusque superbis.” A similar sentiment also appears in the verses that accrete to the end of the Carmen in MS B: “Parcere prostratis uult nobilis ira leonis: | mox ueniam Christus pro crimine dat lacrimanti; | prostratos perdit ignobilis ira draconis” (fol. 17v). This is taken from Theodoric Trudonensis, De mirabilibus mundi, “Parcere prostratis scit nobilis ira leonis | tu quoque fac simile quisquis dominaris in orbe” (see Appendix A). 261–262. A Stoic doctrine: see Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, p. 216 with reference to Epictetus. See Seneca, Ep. XXIV. 9: “exempla nunc congero . . . ut te adversus id quod maxime terribile videtur, exhorter” (I now pile up examples, so that I might strengthen you against that which seems most frightening); and Ep. LXXVI. 34–35: “Hoc ut scias, ea quae putaverunt aspera fortius, cum adsuevere, patiuntur. Ideo sapiens adsuescit futuris malis, et quae alii diu patiendo levia faciunt hic levia facit diu cogitando” (As you know, those things which you consider harsh, when you have accustomed yourself to them, can be borne with greater strength. For that reason, the wise man accustoms himself to future evils and what others make light by enduring for a long time, he makes light by contemplating for a long time). Robert Miner comments: “Cicero endorses,

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with some reservations, the praemeditatio futurorum malorum (which he associates with the Cyreniacs) as a palliative to misfortunes (see Tusculan Disputations 3.14)”, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, p. 241 n. 14. 265–266. See Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 68, #79: “Qui uerbis lenibus potest corrigi, non debet increpatione dura exasperari” (he who is able to be corrected with mild words ought not to be provoked with harsh rebuke); the text’s editor, Korfmacher, finds no antecedents for this thought. Compare Abelard on punishment, Carmen 395–396. 268. falcem . . . petra. The scribe of MS M rewords this line so that the guilty party attempts to forestall criticism by doing penance: “objecta facere preueniendo pena.” This suggests the possible ecclesiastical provenance of M, discussed in chapter 1. 269–270. One of the most popular distichs in the Carmen, it appears in all three recensions and the Trier excerpt, and is marked out with a hash in the right margin of MS B. See also 351–352. See Ecclesiasticus 25. 6–8: “quam speciosum canitiae iudicium et presbyteris cognoscere consilium; quam speciosa veteranis sapientia et gloriosis intellectus et consilium; corona senum multa peritia et gloria illorum timor Dei,” which is cited by Abelard in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete (Letter Collection, p. 388). 271–272. See also 340 and 897–898. Abelard’s proto-autobiographic Historia is a curious mix of both self-praise and self-censure. In his Ep. V, Abelard notes: “It is written: ‘He who is first in accusing himself is just’” (Letter Collection, p. 193; citing Proverbs 18. 17: “iustus prior est accusator sui”). In his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, Abelard advises that “whoever anticipates the others in accusing herself deserves a milder punishment if her negligence has ceased, as it is written: ‘The just man is the first to accuse himself ’” (Letter Collection, p. 431). The injunction against self-praise is common in didactic literature: see Proverbs 27. 2: “laudet te alienus et non os tuum, extraneus et non labia tua”; this is included by Otloh in his Liber proverbiorum, p. 40, #13: “Laudet te alienus et non os tuum” (Let another praise you and not your own lips). See also Sextus, Sentences, 286: “Turpe ducito proprio ore laudari” (Consider it shameful to be praised by your own lips), and Facetus, 77: “Si quemvis superexcelles probitatis honore, | non iactes, quia laus proprio sordescat in ore” (If you should excel someone in honor and righteousness, do not boast, because the praise of your own lips sullies you). 275–276. Included in the Moralium dogma philosophorum: “beneficium accipere est libertatem uendere” (p. 16, ll. 17–18; drawn from Publius Syrus, sent. 48; to accept a gift is to sell your freedom). 279–82. These lines initiate the themes of sufficiency, moderation, and the Golden Mean that pervade the poem; see also 343–350, 481–482, 653–664, and 1041–1042. This theme appears strongly throughout Heloise’s Ep. VI: “in everything, necessity not superfluity could be our consideration” (Letter Collection, p. 241). See also Abelard’s Hymn 14, 14/1–8.

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283–284. See also 955–956 and note. This story is taken from Seneca, De beneficiis, V. 6: “archelaus rex socratem rogavit, ut ad se veniret; dixisse socrates traditur nolle se ad eum venire, a quo acciperet beneficia, cum reddere illi paria non posset” (King Archaelaus asked Socrates to come to him; Socrates is held to have said that he did not want to come before him, from whom he had received such gifts, since he was not able to return like ones to him). Abelard also refers to the same story, attributing it to Seneca, in his Sermon 33: “Socrates quoque Archelai regis dona respuens, hoc unum in excusatione praetendit, nolle se suscipere tanta, quibus referre non posset aequalia. Unde Seneca de Beneficiis libro V . . . ” (PL 178. 591D–592A; Socrates also rejecting the gifts of King Archelaus, offered this one consideration as his excuse, that he did not want to take up such great gifts the equal of which he could not return). 289–290. Genesis 23. Here Abraham is old, nearing the end of his life, and looking for a burial plot in which to lay to rest his wife, Sarah, and all the subsequent dead of his family. This exemplum seems less to illustrate Abelard’s arguments over power and money than to reveal his anxieties concerning death, family, heritage, and acquiring a proper and permanent resting place for oneself before death. In this regard, the story resonates with Abelard’s concern regarding arrangements for his own eventual interment at the Paraclete, as expressed in his Epp. III and V to Heloise (Letter Collection, pp. 155, 191). These overtones bring the Carmen into closer relationship with the use made of Old Testament figures in the Planctus. The evocation of the aged Abraham here also connects with the image of Anchises in the Underworld at 259: both are elderly fathers, nearing death, and looking to the future patrimony of their descendants. 291–292. See also 859–862. 293–294, 297–304. These lines function as pointed barbs directed toward the Cistercians in general and Bernard of Clairvaux in particular. 294. comuni uita: If by “comuni,” Abelard means “communal,” then he is arguing that living a monastic life is appropriate to all and that one particular monastic mode of life (such as the Cistercian) need not be considered preferable to any other. If, however, by “comuni” he means “ordinary”(which is the way Ballanti reads it, translating it as “quotidiana”), then Abelard is arguing that any form of life, if lived the right way, is appropriate and need not specifically be a monastic life lived under a Rule. These arguments are similar to those rehearsed by Heloise in her Ep. VI (Letter Collection, esp. pp. 229/231). 295. See the story of the sons of Zebedee, James and John, who asked to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus in Heaven (Matthew 20. 20–23; Mark 10. 35–40). In Matthew’s version of the story, the request comes from the men’s mother. 296. See Heloise, Ep. IV: “In whatever corner of heaven God shall place me, I shall be satisfied. No one there will envy anyone else; what each one has will be enough” (Letter Collection, p. 177; p. 176: “Quocumque me angulo celi Deus collocet satis mihi faciet; nullus ibi cuiquam inuidebit, cum singulis quod habebunt suffecerit”). Abelard rehearses this idea in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “It

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is enough for the weak if they avoid sin, although they may not rise to the peak of perfection, and sufficient also to rest in a corner of Paradise if you cannot take your seat with the martyrs” (Letter Collection, p. 459). 298–299. The thought appears to be drawn from Matthew 7. 15: “Adtendite a falsis prophetis qui veniunt ad vos in vestimentis ovium intrinsecus autem sunt lupi rapaces.” That Abelard is directing this barb against Bernard of Clairvaux is suggested by L. J. Engels’s study of a similar usage made by Abelard of this quotation from Matthew. In “Adtendite a falsis prophetis (Ms. Colmar 128, ff. 152v/153v),” Engels publishes a letter by Abelard that opens with the same quotation from Matthew and moves to the same issues addressed here: a new religious order, vainglory, pride engendered by exterior habit (i.e., the white habit adopted by the Cistercians), and a desire to be praised by the crowd (Engels, p. 225, lines 1–14). The imagery of wolves menacing sheep recurs in Abelard’s Hymn 42, 2/3–4 (where it refers to Jesus’s betrayal by Judas) and Hymn 76, 2–3. The Matthean imagery also appears in Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 69, #93: “Quid prodest ullis incedere in uestimentis ouium, si intrinsecus gerant corda luporum?” (What does it profit anyone to go forth in sheep’s clothing, if within they bear the hearts of wolves?). Brooke Heidenreich Findley notes that Augustine was the first to draw this association between hypocrisy and the wolf in sheep’s clothing in his De sermone Domini in monte: see “Does the Habit Make the Nun?” p. 252 n. 14. 301–304. See also 743–744. The idea that outward things do not commend one to God pervades the letters of Heloise and Abelard, and can especially be found in Heloise’s Epp. IV: “What is common to the damned and the elect, things that are outwardly done, can win no favour in the eyes of God: none of the saints perform these as eagerly as hypocrites” (Letter Collection, p. 175), and VI: “These are all outward works which are common to the damned and elect alike, as much to hypocrites as to the truly religious. For nothing so divides Jew from Christian as the distinction between outward and inner works” (Letter Collection, p. 241). See also Abelard, Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “The more they are taken up with outward things, the less they can devote themselves to inner ones. . . . But we who desire Christ to dwell in the inner man by faith, think little of outward things which are common to the sinner and the chosen” (Letter Collection, pp. 463/465). This also forms the argument of the Philosopher against the Jew in Collatio I of the Collationes. A similar sentiment appears in the verses that accrete to the end of the Carmen in MS M: “Non eget exterius qui moribus intus habundat” (He does not need exterior things, who abounds in moral strength within; see Appendix B). On the exteriority of the habit, see Abelard on the “black but beautiful” woman of the Song of Songs (Letter Collection, Ep. V, pp. 181–187), and his critique of the Cistercians in the letter “Adtendite a falsis prophetis”: “Vestes nigras que hucusque monachis communes fuerunt abhominantur; in hoc quidem callidi et astuti magis dicendi quam prudentes, scientes animos hominum quacumque nouitate laeuiter capi et exterioribus tantum eos iudicare posse” (Engels, pp. 227–228, lines 78–82; they spurn the black clothing which up till now had been common to monks; in this indeed they can rather be called cunning and

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shrewd than wise, knowing that the hearts of men are easily captured by any novelty and are able to judge them from exterior things alone). Abelard similarly excoriates Norbert of Xanten and others like him who “progressing from solitude to crowds, just as they are puffed up by the false name of religion, so also they seek to appear wondrous by means of the simulation of miracles” (Sermon 33, PL 178. 605B: “de solitudine ad turbas procedentes, sicut de ficto religionis nomine tumebant, ita et de simulatione miraculorum gratia videri mirabiles appetebant”). See also Bernard of Cluny: “His sacra nomina sacraque tegmina, corda superba” (De contemptu mundi, Bk II, line 719: “Their names are holy and their garments are holy, but their hearts are proud”). For a study on inner and outer in the writings of Abelard and Heloise, see Ineke van ’t Spijker, “Partners in Profession” and “Conflict and Correspondence”; for an analysis of how Heloise negotiated Abelard’s discourse on the black exterior habit, see Findley, “Does the Habit Make the Nun?,” pp. 254–260. 307. The scribe of MS M makes the point even more forcefully by substituting the word “gehenna” (Hell) for “futura” (the life to come). 309–310. See also 587–588 and 967. These lines are part of the complex treatment of external reputation and interior morality that runs through the Carmen (see in this regard also 181–186). Line 310 is a direct quotation from Isidore of Seville (Sent. II, 20, 1) which Abelard cites again in Q. CXLIX of his Sic et non on the proposition “Quod gravius sit aperte peccare quam occulte et contra” (That it is more serious to sin openly than secretly, and against): “Maioris culpae est manifeste quam occulte peccare. Dupliciter enim reus est qui aperte delinquit, quia et agit et docet” (It is of greater guilt to sin openly than in secret. For he stands doubly accused who sins openly, because he both does and teaches). Note that in the Sic et non, Abelard also provides auctoritates in support of the contrary proposition, citing Augustine (Sermo 355, 4, 6): “Nolo habere hypocritas. Malum est cadere a proposito sed peius est simulare propositum” (I will not hold with hypocrisy. It is evil to fall from one’s position, but worse to simulate it), and Jerome (Comm. in Isaiam, VI, 16, 14): “In comparatione duorum peccatorum levius peccatum est aperte peccare quam simulare et fingere sanctitatem” (In the comparison of the two sins, it is a lighter sin to sin openly than to pretend and feign holiness). docet: this word highlights Abelard’s focus in the Carmen on exemplarity, and in particular, the problem of providing an evil example. 311–324. For a more detailed study of the themes of old age and death in the Carmen, see my “Medieval Latin Meditations on Old Age,” pp. 186–191. 311–312. See Cicero, De senectute, II. 4: “Quo in genere est in primis senectus; quam ut adipiscantur omnes optant, eandem accusant adeptam.” 313–316. These lines begin with citations from Cicero and Seneca on old age, but then frustrate these, by exchanging the positive philosophical positions offered by the Roman writers for a bleak view of looming death instead. When Cicero writes “nemo est enim tam senex qui se annum non putet posse vivere”

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(De senectute, VII. 24), he goes on to note the social usefulness of the elderly who continue in their life’s tasks even though they themselves may not live to enjoy the benefits of this labor. Similarly, when Seneca declares: “deinde nemo tam senex est ut inprobe unum diem speret” (Ep. XII. 6), he concludes that at least this is life: “Unus autem dies gradus vitae est.” In the Carmen, however, Abelard greets the idea that everyone promises themselves another day of life with a blunt dose of social reality: “fallitur omnis in hoc.” Abelard’s view on old age here thus departs from Roman Stoic philosophy, but matches that found in the Disticha Catonis: “Tempora longa tibi noli promittere vitae; | Quocumque ingrederis sequitur mors corporis umbra” (IV, 37: Do not promise yourself long years of life; wherever you go, death, the body’s shadow, follows). 317–318. Abelard makes the same observation in his Sermon 6: “quo majus spatium vitae quilibet habuit, tanto brevius est habiturus, et singulorum vita quanto longior exstitit, tanto brevior est futura, et suis incrementis semper ad defectum properat” (PL. 178. 425C; the greater the length of life anyone has had, so the length of their life still to come is the briefer, and by how much each person’s life has drawn on the longer, by so much is his future the briefer, and it hastens ever onward towards death one step at a time). 319–320. Abelard makes the same argument to Heloise in his Ep. V: “you must know that whoever frees me from life will deliver me from the greatest suffering . . . I cannot see why you should prefer me to live on in great misery rather than be happier in death” (Letter Collection, pp. 191/193). See similarly Cicero, De senectute, XIX. 67: “Quid igitur timeam, si aut non miser post mortem aut beatus etiam futurus sum?” (What should I fear, therefore, if either I will not be wretched after death, or may even be happy?); XX. 73: “Non censet lugendam esse mortem, quam immortalitas consequatur” (He should not judge death something to be lamented, when immortality follows upon it). 323–324. Abelard has the Christian makes the same point in Collatio II, §195: “Scriptum et alibi reperimus quasdam sanctorum morientium animas, timore pene, dissolutionis sue tempore ad paratam sibi beatitudinem egredi prorsus refugere, donec eas Dominus iussisset ab angelis suscipi sine dolore. Ex quo liquidum est quanta sit mortis huius passio, cuius, ut diximus, metu alius ad salutem redire noluit, alius ad beatitudinem egredi trepidauit” (Collationes, p. 200; p. 201: “I have also found it written elsewhere that, when some of the saints were dying, their souls utterly refused to go to the happiness prepared for them, from fear of the pain they would feel when they were untied from their bodies, until the Lord commanded them to be taken up by the angels without suffering. From this it is obvious how great is the suffering in death: suffering for fear of which, as I have said, some have preferred not to pass through it again in order to be saved, and some have trembled to go out to their heavenly happiness”). 327–328. This distich is largely drawn from Ovid, Remedia amoris, 369–370: “summa petit liuor: perflant altissima uenti, | summa petunt dextra fulmina missa Iouis,” although the term “fulgura” is sourced from the similar formulation of Horace, Ode II, 10, 11–12: “feriuntque summos | fulgura montis”

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(note, however, that B is more consistent in retaining the Ovidian reading of “fulmina”). Abelard uses this quotation a number of times in his writings: in his Historia, when he describes the envy and jealousy against him early in his teaching career, he quotes Ovid: “Envy seeks the heights, winds sweep the summits” (Letter Collection, p. 13; p. 12: “Summa petit liuor: perflant altissima uenti”). Later, describing the lead-up to his condemnation at Soissons, Abelard attributes to Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres, the Horatian observation: “Jerome has said that ‘courage which is unconcealed always attracts envy, and lightning strikes the mountain peaks’” (Letter Collection, p. 63; p. 62: “Et quia iuxta illud Iheronimi: ‘Semper in propatulo fortitudo emulos habet, | Feriuntque summos | Fulgura montes’”). In a letter against Bernard of Clairvaux, edited by Raymond Klibansky, Abelard appears to combine both the Ovidian and Horatian readings into a single quotation: “Summa petit livor, perflant altissima venti, | Feriuntque summos fulmina montes” (Klibansky, “Peter Abailard and Bernard of Clairvaux,” p. 7, lines 21–22; though note the Ovidian “fulmina” within the Horatian line). Jaeger notes that in his Sermon 7, Abelard particularly emphasizes Christ’s downfall as a result of the envy of evil men against him: see “Peter Abelard’s Silence at the Council of Sens,” p. 38. The annotator of MS B found these lines significant: each of lines 327–330 is underlined, which occurs only on two other occasions in the manuscript (notably, one of these other occasions is lines 513–514, which also deal with jealousy). In the right margin the annotator of MS B has written “inuidia,” one of only two such marginal glosses in the manuscript. 335–336. See also 257–258 and Abelard’s Planctus Dauid super Abner. 339–340. See 271–272, 821–822, and 897–898. 343–350. Ballanti designates these lines “La salute del corpo” (The health of the body). Although Ballanti defines this as a separate thematic section of the Carmen, there is in fact a logic to the placement of this material here: in his De senectute, which forms Abelard’s source for much of his earlier discussion of old age, Cicero has Cato follow his discussion of old age with advice to wage war against it by keeping the body in good shape through moderation and avoidance of excess (XI. 35–36). 351–352. See also 67–68, 269–270, and 499–500. See also Ciero, De senectute, VI. 17: “Non viribus aut velocitate aut celeritate corporum res magnae geruntur, sed consilio auctoritate sententia, quibus non modo non orbari, sed etiam augeri senectus solet” (Not by bodily strength or speed or swiftness are great things achieved, but by counsel, authority, and wisdom, and old age is not only not accustomed to be deprived of such things, but even to gain them in greater abundance); see also De senectute, IX. 29. Ballanti designates 351–362 as “Decisioni e promesse” (Decisions and promises), but again, this division interrupts the flow of the argument, for here Abelard is following Ciceros’s De senectute, XI. 38, where Cato argues that giving counsel is important for retaining mental agility in old age. See also Proverbs 20. 29: “exultatio iuvenum fortitudo eorum et dignitas senum canities,” and 24. 6: “quia cum dispositione initur bellum et erit salus ubi multa consilia sunt.”

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353–356. This is drawn from Ecclesiasticus 32. 24: “fili sine consilio nihil facias et post factum non paeniteberis” and becomes a commonplace of medieval and early modern political counsel. See for example Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 54, #19: “Omnia fac cum consilio, et post factum non paenitebis” (Do all things with counsel and afterwards you will not regret it). Abelard reverts to this idea on a number of other occasions: see his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “If something done without taking counsel happens to have a successful outcome, fortune’s kindness does not excuse the doer’s presumption. But if after taking counsel men sometimes err, the authority which sought counsel is not held guilty of presumption, and the man who believed his advisers is not so much to be blamed as those with whom he agreed in their error” (Letter Collection, p. 437). See also the argument of the Jew in Collatio I on the lack of blame to be assumed by one following advice (Collationes, §13, pp. 16–17). 355–356. A popular distich, included in Recension II, Recension III, the Melk excerpt, and the Leipzig excerpt described by Wollin (“Neue Textzeugen,” p. 195), and marked out by the annotator of MS B in both right and left margins. 357–362. See Proverbs 20. 25: “ruina est hominis devorare sanctos et post vota tractare,” and Ecclesiastes 5. 3–4: “si quid vovisti Deo ne moreris reddere, displicet enim ei infidelis et stulta promissio, sed quodcumque voveris redde; multoque melius est non vovere quam post votum promissa non conplere.” This was obviously a matter of great import to Heloise and Abelard, given their hasty and possibly nonvocational entries into the monastic life. Heloise treats this issue extensively in her Ep. VI: “What could be so foolish as . . . to take a vow you are not capable of keeping?” (Letter Collection, p. 225); “it is a great sign of forethought in those who bind themselves by vow to God if they perform more than they vow, so that they add something by grace to what they owe” (p. 235). Abelard particularly explores the concept of the rash vow through his treatment of the daughter of Jephthah, such as in his Ep. III: “Such men could properly be compared with Jephthah, who made a foolish vow and, in carrying it out even more foolishly, killed his only daughter” (Letter Collection, p. 147); Ep. VII to the nuns of the Paraclete (p. 317); Q. CLV of his Sic et non (Item 5); Hymns 125, 4 and 126, 1; and his Planctus uirginum. Abelard also addresses the issue of rash vows in a number of places in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, citing the passage from Ecclesiastes in full (Letter Collection, p. 443), commenting: “It is safe to vow in moderation so that grace may add more to what we owe,” and “Think carefully before you accept it, but once you have done so, keep it. What was voluntary before afterwards becomes compulsory” (p. 461). For medieval advice that rash vows should in fact be broken, see Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 30, #32: “Grata Deo dona fert qui frangit mala uota” (He gives grateful gifts to God, who breaks badly made vows), and p. 80, #89: “Stulta uota frangenda sunt” (Foolish vows should be broken). Lines 359–360 prove a popular distich of the Carmen, being included in Recension II, Recension III, and the Trier excerpt, and marked out by the annotator of B in the right margin. 363–368. See also 1015–1016. In the Preface to the Collationes, the Philosopher likewise observes that the world is divided into many faiths, and claims he will

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choose to follow the one most consonant with reason (§2, p. 2). In his first dialogue with the Jew, the Philosopher critiques those who follow a religion purely because of family tradition, which he says is very common (§7, p. 8). The Jew disagrees, arguing that although first devotion might arise through family loyalty, adult devotion subsequently develops through reason (§12, p. 14). 364. uite semita: See the words of Jesus at Matthew 7. 14: “quam angusta porta et arta via quae ducit ad vitam et pauci sunt qui inveniunt eam.” 366. See the words of Jesus at Mark 7. 8: “relinquentes enim mandatum Dei tenetis traditionem hominum” (citing Isaiah 29. 13). 367–368. Abelard seems to suggest that using reason to guide faith requires courage, because it is more rigorous than simple uncontested belief, and can perhaps cause unsettledness in the self through questioning and doubt. On his approach to questioning the certainties of faith, see the Prologue to his Sic et non: “Haec quippe prima sapientiae clavis definitur assidua scilicet seu frequens interrogatio . . . Dubitando quippe ad inquisitionem venimus; inquirendo veritatem percipimus” (Sic et non, p. 103, lines 333–334 and 338–339; Minnis and Scott, Medieval Literary Theory, p. 99: “For consistent or frequent questioning is defined as the first key to wisdom . . . For by doubting we come to enquiry, and by enquiring we perceive the truth”). See also Sabina Flanagan, Doubt in an Age of Faith. 369–372. These lines are also fundamental in Abelard’s Scito te ipsum: see I.3.2, p. 3, lines 60–62: “Quid est enim hic consensus nisi dei contemptus et offensa illius? Non enim deus ex damno set ex contemptu offendi potest” (For what is this consent but contempt of God and an affront to him? For God cannot be affronted by insult but by contempt). Abelard goes on to discuss the absence of sin in the actions of ignorance in Scito te ipsum, I.15, I.16, I.37, and I.44, although see, on the contrary, I.42.4, p. 41, lines 1077–1080: “Ad dampnacionem quippe sufficit eis euangelio non credere, Christum ignorare, sacramenta ecclesiae non suscipere, quamuis hoc non tam per maliciam quam per ignoranciam fiat” (for damnation it is sufficient for them not to believe the Gospels, to overlook Christ, not to take up the sacraments of the Church, even though this be done not so much through ill will as through ignorance). Abelard treats the question again in his Sic et non, Q. CLXIII: “Quod peccatum actus sit non res et contra” (That a sin is an action and not a thing, and against), and notes in Hymn 5, 4/1–2: “Recusamur in omnibus, | Si factorem contemnimus” (We stand accused in all things, if we contemn our maker). In Collatio II, the Philosopher argues that ignorance allows for some excuse in sinning (Collationes, §117, p. 132). Heloise appears to make this same distinction between ignorance and contempt. In her Ep. II she notes: “It is not the deed but the state of mind of the doer which makes the crime, and justice should weigh not what is done but the spirit in which it is done” (Letter Collection, p. 137), and in her Ep. VI she argues that “unless the mind be first corrupted by an evil will, whatever is done outwardly in the body cannot be a sin” (p. 249). 373–374. See Augustine, Sermo 393: “si autem tunc uis agere poenitentiam ipsam, quando iam peccare non potes; peccata te dimiserunt, non tu illa” (if,

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however, you wish to make repentance then, when you are no longer able to sin, your sins desert you, not you them; PL 39. 1715). 373–378. On the idea of sin as residing in a persistent will to sin, see Abelard, Sic et non, Q. CXLIV: “Quod peccator sit ille tantum qui assiduus est in peccatis et contra” (That a sinner is only he who is persistent in his sins, and against), and Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 36, #43: “In hoc ipso peccat homo, quod peccare uellet, si inulte posset” (In this does a man sin, that he would wish to sin, if he could do so without punishment). dulcedo: see notes to 1. 379–384. These lines are clearly drawn from Heloise’s Ep. IV: “How can it be called repentance for sins . . . if the mind still retains the will to sin and is on fire with its old desires? . . . The lovers’ pleasures we enjoyed together were so sweet to me that they cannot displease me and can scarcely fade from my memory” (Letter Collection, pp. 169/171). For a more detailed analysis and reception history of these lines of the poem, see “The Heloise Section of the Carmen (379–384)” in chapter 1; see also my “Heloise, Monastic Temptation, and Memoria” for a discussion of this passage in Heloise’s Ep. IV. 385–386. On the art and labor of false-seeming see also 573–576 and contrast 787 on the naturalness of sincerity. 387–388. A popular distich, included in Recension II, Recension III, and the Trier excerpt, and marked out with a cross in the left margin in MS M. 389–390. Heloise raises the question of swearing in her Problem 17 citing the injunction against it in Matthew 5. 36. In his Solution, Abelard notes that we are commanded not to swear in order that we might not be forsworn: “Tale est ergo quod juramento Dominus praecipit vel adhortatur, ut, quia periculosum est jurare, ne perjuremus omnino” (PL 178. 706C). Abelard also notes there that swearing puts into question the veracity of our unsworn words, which links with Carmen 385–388 on speaking truthfully. In this Solution he then considers how to distinguish which things are prescribed, prohibited, encouraged, and permitted (PL 178. 706D), which explains the otherwise obscure relationship between 389 and 390 in this distich. The idea of understanding what is prohibited from what is permitted also references the ambivalence over experiential knowledge that obtained in the early twelfth century. At this time, Augustine’s distinction between “prudentia boni” and “experientia mali” was still very powerful and it was widely accepted that one need not have personal experience of wrong in order to understand that it was wrong; moral precepts could teach this: see Jean Pépin, “Experimentum mali: Saint Augustin sur la connaissance du mal.” 391. See Lucan, Pharsalia, 5. 527–529, where Amyclas is a poor boatman whose simple way of life means he is unconcerned about being roused in the dark of night by Caesar himself. The name “Amyclas” was apparently not recognized by the scribe of MS M who rendered it instead “a malis,” thereby creating the meaning that paupers live safe from evils.

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393. See Bernard of Cluny, De contemptu mundi, II, line 884: “Quanta pecunia, tanta molestia crescit eidem” (However much money you have, your cares grow to match it). 395–396. Ballanti designates these lines “Insegnare agli ignoranti” (Teaching the ignorant). Such a division again obscures the flow of the idea of oneness in outward behavior and inward disposition that pertains as much here in the context of correction, as it does above in the lines on false-speaking. Here Abelard argues that while physical punishment might be swiftly applied and change the outward behavior of one who is in error, unless that person understands what he has done wrong and why he has been punished, it is in vain. It takes time and effort to teach a child right from wrong, and until this more difficult task has been undertaken, corporal punishment remains pointless. See similarly 769–770. In his De statu interioris hominis, Richard of St. Victor defines “plaga,” the word Abelard employs here, as distinct from “vulnus” insofar as it designates a form of wound that contains both an internal and an external component: “Vulnus itaque est ubi membrum non leditur interius, nisi quantum aperitur exterius. . . . Plaga autem tumens est ubi et latius conteritur intrinsecus, et tamen vulneris more in parte aperitur extrinsecus” (Ribaillier, Ch. XXXVIII, p. 109). This discussion then leads Richard into an analysis of the difference between a vice and a sin, which again relies on an internal/external distinction; see 75–82 above. Note the subtlety of Abelard’s thought here, and its focus on interiority, which differs so greatly from the pervasive biblical advice to meet children’s errors with physical punishment: see, for example, Proverbs 3. 12: “quem enim diligit Dominus corripit et quasi pater in filio conplacet sibi”; Proverbs 13. 24: “qui parcit virgae suae odit filium suum, qui autem diligit illum instanter erudit”; Proverbs 20. 30: “livor vulneris absterget mala et plagae in secretioribus ventris”; Proverbs 22. 15: “stultitia conligata est in corde pueri et virga disciplinae fugabit eam”; Proverbs 23. 13–14: “noli subtrahere a puero disciplinam si enim percusseris eum virga non morietur; tu virga percuties eum et animam eius de inferno liberabis”; Proverbs 29. 15: “virga atque correptio tribuet sapientiam; puer autem qui dimittitur voluntati suae confundet matrem suam”; Ecclesiasticus 22. 6: “flagella et doctrina in omni tempore sapientia”; and Ecclesiasticus 30. 1: “Qui diligit filium suum adsiduat illi flagella.” See similarly, Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 75, #16: “Stultitia colligata est in corde pueri, sed uirga disciplinae fugabit eam” (Foolishness gathers in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will put it to flight = Proverbs 22. 15) and p. 75, #17: “Stultus uerbis non corrigitur” (A fool is not corrected through words). See also the Benedictine Rule, Ch. 30, which recommends beatings to correct the wrongdoing of children who are too young to understand the penalty of excommunication: “quotiens pueri vel adulescentiores aetate, aut qui minus intellegere possunt quanta poena sit excommunicationis, hi tales dum delinquunt, aut ieiuniis nimiis affligantur aut acris verberibus coerceantur, ut sanentur” (RB 1980, p. 226; p. 227: “as often as boys and the young, or those who cannot understand the seriousness of the penalty of excommunication,

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are guilty of misdeeds, they should be subjected to severe fasts or checked with sharp strokes so that they may be healed”). Abelard cites these biblical injunctions on corporal punishment to polemic effect in his letters to Heloise to argue for the appropriateness of his castration and their dual entry into monasticism (Letter Collection, Ep. V, p. 211), and as an incitement to monastic discipline in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete (Letter Collection, pp. 431/433). He abandons them here, however, where they would be more literally applicable in modifying the behavior of a child. See, in this regard, Abelard’s Solution to Problem 24 where he suggests that there can be no sin where there is no consent to sin, such as in small children: “Ubi autem non est sensus, non potest esse consensus, sicut in parvulis aut stultis. Qui sic faciunt, quod non debent, nullum in hoc eis peccatum imputatur” (PL 178. 710C; McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 247: “Where there is no understanding, however, there can be no consent, such as in very young children or in the mindless. For when they do what they should not do, no sin is imputed to them”). See also the notes to 369–372 on the ethic of intention and the inability to sin from ignorance. In this regard, Abelard’s advice approximates that of Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 1.3.14, who argues that corporal punishment can only harden in wrongdoing a child who is incapable of understanding verbal correction: “Caedi vero discentis . . . minime velim . . . quod, si cui tam est mens inliberalis, ut obiurgatione non corrigatur, is etiam ad plagas ut pessima quaeque mancipia durabitur” (Radermacher and Buchheit, p. 20). See also Mia Münster-Swendsen, “The Model of Scholastic Mastery in Northern Europe c. 970–1200,” p. 313: “If one looks at the various sources from the eleventh century that provide us with glimpses of daily pedagogical practice, one is struck by the widespread preoccupation with finding better and subtler ways of imposing discipline than the use of physical punishment. There was a feeling that the regime of the rod was disgraceful and brutalizing for both parties.” Münster-Swendsen contrasts teaching through punishment with teaching through love, but in the Carmen, Abelard also explicitly rejects this eleventh-century pedagogic tradition (see notes to 9–10). 397–398. See also 925–926 and 1033. Compare Ecclesiasticus, 12. 1: “si benefeceris scito cui feceris et erit gratia in bonis tuis multa”; and Disticha Catonis, Brief Sentence 17: “cui des videto.” This advice stands at odds, however, with Abelard’s Solution to Problem 23 where he comments on the biblical verse: “Give to everyone who asks you, and do not ask for your property back from the man who robs you” (Luke 6. 30), that you should always recognize God and not yourself as the final possessor of any good (“Tua ne repetas, hoc est quia tua sunt, ut in te videlicet potius quam in Deo repetitionis finem constituas,” PL 178. 709C). This was a popular distich of the Carmen, appearing in Recension II, Recension III, and the Trier excerpt (where 397 appears twice, once in each section excerpted from the Carmen); it is also marked out by marginal annotations in MS B in both the left and right margins. 401–424. This issue of true generosity of spirit and the proper bequest of goods pervades the Carmen: see also 615–626 on bequeathing money after death,

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761–766 on giving to the poor, and 927–934 on the rich man’s bequests. Abelard is indebted to Seneca, De beneficiis, in general for his views here. 407. Idropico: The term “dropsy” denotes the effects of medical conditions resulting in excessive fluid retention and swollen connective tissue. Here Abelard compares the swollen body of the dropsy sufferer with the metaphorical swollenness of the rich miser. See Ecclesiastes 5. 9: “avarus non implebitur pecunia et qui amat divitias fructus non capiet ex eis”; Disticha Catonis, IV, 1: “Despice divitias si vis animo beatus, | quas qui suspiciunt, mendicant semper avari” (Despise riches if you wish to be blessed in heart; those who take them up, are always begging greedily); and Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 5, #41: “Auarus propriae est causa miseriae, ingerens sibi sitim auaritiae” (The greedy man is the cause of his own wretchedness, storing up for himself the thirst of greed); and p. 22, #25: “Egens aeque est is qui non satis habet, et cui copia nulla sufficit” (Equally needy is he who does not have enough and he for whom no amount will suffice). There are numerous references to the idea that the greedy man suffers by obtaining goods because this increases his desire for more, both in the Roman authors (such as Seneca, Ep. XCIV. 43: “Avarus animus nullo satiatur lucro”; an avaricious heart is satisfied by no amount of wealth) and the Fathers (e.g., Gregory the Great, Moralia, 15.12: “Licet uero quia auaritia desideratis rebus non exstinguitur, sed augetur”; know that avarice is not extinguished by gaining the goods it desires, but only increased; this saying appears in Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 5; #45). However, none of these texts employs the brutal medical imagery that Abelard does here. 409–410. See Ecclesiasticus 14. 3–10; and Disticha Catonis, IV, 16: “Utere quaesitis opibus, fuge nomen avari; | quid tibi divitias, si semper pauper abundas” (Use the wealth you have obtained, flee the name of miser; what good are riches to you, if you live always as a pauper). See Scito te ipsum, I.53.4–5, p. 53, lines 1371–1375: “non prouides, quid tibi conserues, set quid aliis thesaurizes. . . . Quis super te non rideat, si audierit te sperare alios magis tibi propicios fore quam te ipsum?” (you do not provide for what you might preserve for yourself, but what you can store up for others . . . Who would not laugh at you, if he heard that you hoped that others would be more well-disposed toward you than you yourself?) 413–414. stigio naute: this refers to Charon, the ferryman who conducted the souls of the dead across the Rivers Styx and Acheron into the Underworld. The dead were required to pay a small price for this service, and for this reason a coin was often placed under the tongue of the dead person. 415–416. This argument recurs throughout Abelard’s writings: see Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “Whatever is over and above our needs we possess by robbery, and are guilty of the deaths of all the poor whom we could have helped from the surplus” (Letter Collection, p. 485); Sermon 30: “Quidquid enim supra necessaria vitae retinetis, ipsorum sunt, et per rapinam sua violenter occupastis, quibus ablatis eos interficitis” (PL 178. 567C; For whatever you retain beyond what is necessary for your life, belongs to them [i.e., the poor], and you seize what is yours through violent plunder, and having stolen these things, you effectively kill them) and “Quantum hic, fratres, nobis periculum indicitur, si sic

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pauperes membra Christi avaritia nostra interficit, imo ipsum iterum in membris suis Christum occidit?” (PL 178. 567A; What great danger is here revealed to us, brothers, if in this way our greed kills the poor members of Christ, or rather, kills Christ himself again through his members?); Scito te ipsum, I.53.6, p. 53, lines 1379–1381: “Vitam pauperibus eripis sua illis auferendo, unde sunt sustentandi, et in eis rursum occidere Christum machinaris” (You snatch life itself from the poor by taking away your goods from them, by which they would have been sustained, and in them you plot to kill Christ again) and I.54.3, p. 54, lines 1395–1400, where Abelard recounts the story of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16. 19–31), pointing out that Dives suffered in Hell not for seizing another’s goods, but simply because he refused to share his own with one more needy. Szövérffy notes of Abelard’s Hymn 6, which contrasts the lives of Dives and Pauper, that “Abelard displays an unusual interest in the ‘poor,’ a striking feature in the pre-Fransiscan twelfth century” (p. 28 note to 4/1). However, on the consonance of Abelard’s stance with that of his age, see Brian Tierney, “Origins of Natural Rights Language: Texts and Contexts, 1150–1250,” p. 639: “Among the church Fathers there was some discussion as to whether almsgiving was a work of justice or a work of charity; but the twelfth-century canonists had no doubt that strict justice required a rich man to share at least his superfluities with those in need. The Decretum contained some striking texts on this obligation: ‘Feed the poor. If you do not feed them you kill them.’ ‘A man who keeps more for himself than he needs is guilty of theft.’” See also Ecclesiasticus 34. 24–25. admouet: note that the glossator of P has glossed this with the word “plicat,” which is both more literary, having antecedants in Virgil and Seneca, and more dramatic, having the sense of coiling or twining: see, for example, the serpent described in Aeneid, V. 279: “nexantem nodis seque in sua membra plicantem.” 417–418. a popular line, included in Recension II, Recension III, the Trier excerpt, and marked out in the left margin by the annotator of MS B. 421–424. See Abelard, Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “The more we possess which can be lost, the greater the fear which torments us, and the more costly these are, the more they are loved and ensnare the wretched mind with ambition to have them” (Letter Collection, p. 485). 425–426. Abelard here divorces skill from the moral standing of the artisan: this constitutes another attack by Abelard on the eleventh-century concept of the “master of morals” (see 9–10), although it also runs contrary to his assertion of the importance of good reputation in being of use to others: see 33–34 and 255. In his Scito te ipsum Abelard similarly argues that someone may teach well who also leads an evil life: “Non est ergo talium doctrina contempnenda, qui bene predicant, licet male uiuant, et qui erudiunt uerbo, licet non edificent exemplo, et uiam ostendunt, quam sequi nolunt” (I.70.3, p. 71, lines 1861–1865; Therefore the teaching of such men is not to be spurned, who preach well, although they live badly, and who instruct in word, although they do not edify by their example, and who show the way which they themselves do not wish to follow). Mary Carruthers notes that “the crucial distinction, between virtuous living

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and successful art” was “well understood in the Middle Ages”: The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, p. 9. Line 425 proved popular in reception, being excerpted in both Recension II and III, and marked out by the annotator of MS B in both the left and right margins. There are also three lines in the extra verses that accrete to the end of the Carmen in MS B that address the theological issue of whether a bad priest vitiated the sacraments he administered, and which conclude that the life of the minister does not affect his sacramental work (see Appendix A, fol. 17v). 427–434. See Proverbs 20. 4: “propter frigus piger arare noluit; mendicabit ergo aestate et non dabitur ei.” Biblical and medieval didactic injunctions against laziness frequently cited the ant as an example: see Proverbs 6. 6–11: “vade ad formicam o piger et considera vias eius et disce sapientiam,” and Proverbs 30. 2. Petrus Alfonsi’s Disciplina clericalis contains the advice from a father to his son: “Fili, ne sit formica sapiencior te, que congregat in estate unde uiuat in hieme” (Hilka and Söderhjelm, p. 3; Son, do not let an ant be wiser than you, which stores up in the summer what it will live on in the winter); a similar aphorism is found in the sentential verses appended to the end of the Carmen in MS B: “Stipite formica, dum stat, comburitur ipsa:| qui piger est, discat formice uiuat ad instar” (see Appendix A, fol. 17v). In the Carmen, however, Abelard does not employ beast fable to argue his moral. 439–440. See also 515–518. In her Ep. IV, Heloise requests that Abelard not flatter her, lest “the breath of my vanity blows away any merit you saw in me to praise” (Letter Collection, p. 175), and Abelard addresses the issue of flattery in his reply, Ep. V (pp. 193/195). 445–446. These lines revert to the ideas stated in 125–138 that even friendship should not draw one into actions contrary to the Lord’s commands (which referenced Heloise’s Problem 20). They also function as a reply to Heloise’s Problem 42: “Utrum aliquis in eo quod facit a Domino sibi concessum, vel etiam jussum, peccare possit quaerimus” (PL 178. 723A; McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 260: “We ask whether anyone can sin in doing what the Lord has permitted or even commanded). 447–454. Note the development here of ideas first raised in 119–124 on the hierarchy between familial love and friendship; see also 471–474 on the distinction between familial love and lust. 447–448. Phaedra was the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae who married Theseus. Theseus had a son, Hippolytus, by a previous marriage, and Venus caused Phaedra to fall madly in love with him. Warnings against stepmothers were common in medieval didactic literature; see, for example, Bernard of Cluny: “Aspide pocula dant nece pabula plena novercae” (De contemptu mundi, III, 675: “Step-mothers give cups full of poison, they give food full of death”). A source for this can be found in Juvenal, Satire VI, 627–642. Yet these negative attitudes were not universal: Facetus, 105 advises that kindness and respect should obtain between stepparents and their

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stepchildren: “Si qua noverca tibi fuerit vel vitricus, esto | gnarus, ut allicias ipsos tibi corde modesto. | Si tibi sit privignus, ei tu confer honorem; | sic laudem populi matrisque mereris amorem” (If you have a stepmother or stepfather, be pleasant, so that you may draw them to you with your humble heart. If you have a stepson, honour him, and in this way you will merit the praise of people and the love of a mother). James A. Schultz observes that in many German medieval stories, “Not only do foster parents equal real parents, they become real parents” (The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages, 1100–1350, p. 136 and n. 167). Perhaps Abelard’s advice here is intended to refocus Astralabe’s attention on the primacy of the love of his biological mother, Heloise, over the other forms of foster care he would have received throughout his childhood (see my “Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium,” pp. 224–225). These lines thus contribute to Abelard’s project in the Carmen of qualifying and hierarchizing human relationships. 449–450. Seneca argues that Nature instills love of their parents in children: De beneficiis, IV. 17, 2. 452. parens eius: M reads “ipse parens,” which would render this figure masculine (the father), whereas B reads “ipsa parens,” making this figure feminine (the mother). 453. maledictio patrum: See Deuteronomy 27. 16: “maledictus qui non honorat patrem suum et matrem,” and Ecclesiasticus 3. 1–18 (especially verse 18: “quam malae famae est qui relinquit patrem, et est maledictus a Deo qui exasperat matrem”). Note that cursing one’s father is considered worthy of death: see Exodus 21. 17: “qui maledixerit patri suo et matri morte moriatur” and Leviticus 20. 9. These verses are discussed by Megan McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority in an Age of Reform, p. 168. Dhuoda quotes the same verses in advising her son to honor his father: Riché, Manuel pour mon fils, p. 136, lines 36–38. 457–458. Abelard similarly argues in his Scito te ipsum that it is a mercy from God we are permitted to act as our own judge on earth, so that we may not be punished more severely hereafter: “Magna profecto misericordia dei, cum nos nostro iudicio dimittit, ne ipse puniat grauiori” (I.71.5, p. 72, lines 1885–1889). 459–460. See Luke 18. 10–14. 465–470. See Galatians 1. 10: “modo enim hominibus suadeo aut Deo, aut quaero hominibus placere; si adhuc hominibus placerem Christi servus non essem”; see also 611–612. 471–474. See notes to 119–124 and 447–454: these lines constitute part of Abelard’s theorizing in the Carmen of the relationship between familial ties, friendship, and ties of matrimony or sexual desire in terms of precedence and compulsion.

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475. superinducta: According to Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, the term is used of a concubine or bigamous wife, or a person brought into the family from outside (p. 466). It appears to be used in this sense by Peter Comestor where he discusses Rachel as a “superinducta alia sponsa” and her marriage to Jacob as “non fas” (Scolastica historia, Ch. 82), and Rather of Verona who notes that no matter how holy, chaste, noble, or modest the superinducta wife is, she is nevertheless regarded as a whore: “superinducta autem quamlibet sancta, casta, nobilis sit et pudica, meretrix habeatur ratione ueridica” (Praeloquia, Bk 2). Ballanti translates superinducta as “seconda” (second) and notes that second marriages had to be justified by weighty dynastic or economic considerations not to be seen simply as evidence of lust; in this way she links this distich with the preceding ones. 477–478. These lines continue the questioning of the value of family that pervades the Carmen; see similarly 487–488 and 719–720. 481–484. See also 803–804 and 1041–1042. Although the Carmen abounds in citations from and allusions to auctoritates, this is the sole instance in the poem where authorship is explicitly attributed. The reference is to Seneca, Ep. IX. 13: “Se contentus est sapiens.” Seneca’s letter is not, however, so much a statement of this as an enquiry into it, and an examination of whether the wise man still needs friends and neighbours—a theme that also pervades the Carmen. Thus Seneca continues: “Distinguendum autem est quid et quatenus vox ista promittat: se contentus est sapiens ad beate vivendum, non ad vivendum. . . . Ergo quamvis se ipso contentus sit, amicis illi opus est” (IX. 13, 15: But it must be discerned what this saying suggests and how far it applies; the wise man is sufficient to himself for living happily, not simply for living . . . Therefore although he may be sufficient to himself, he still has need of friends). On the use of Seneca by Abelard and Heloise, see Mews, Abelard and Heloise, pp. 180–181 and p. 280 nn. 24 and 25; in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, Abelard describes Seneca as “the supreme teacher of morals” (Letter Collection, p. 471; p. 470: “summus . . . morum edificator”). 483–484. These lines are drawn from Seneca’s Ep. IX. 18 where he quotes the philosopher Stilbo: “omnia . . . bona mea mecum sunt,” and comments: “nihil bonum putare quod eripi possit” (consider nothing a good that can be taken from you). Note that Stilbo was said to have made this statement following an invasion in which he lost his wife and children. 485–486. These lines are extracted in Recension III, marked by a pointing hand in the left margin in MS P, and marked by the annotator of MS B in the right margin. See Disticha Catonis, I, 8: “Nil temere uxori de servis crede querenti: | semper enim mulier, quem coniux diligit, odit” (Believe nothing rashly of a wife complaining of the servants: for a woman always hates him whom her husband loves). B’s variant of “filium” for “famulum” (giving the reading: “I wonder if a wife has any affection for the son whom her husband loves”) may have been prompted by the reference a few lines earlier to the story of Phaedra and her stepson.

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487–488. See also 119–124, 477–478, and 719–720. See Proverbs 27. 10: “melior est vicinus iuxta quam frater procul.” Earlier Abelard argued on philosophical grounds that a friend was superior to a brother (119–120); the current observation, while maintaining Abelard’s antifamilial stance, is, however, more pragmatic, though see 711–712 for an alternate, and equally realistic, point of view. See also 889–890 on the neighbor as a gift from God. 489–490. Seneca describes anger as both a vice and an affect (passion, emotion) that can overwhelm reason with intensity and vehemence, like a lightning bolt: see De ira, III. 1.4. 493. See 1 Corinithians 8. 1: “scientia inflat,” and the Benedictine Rule, 65. 2: “dum sint aliqui maligno spiritu superbiae inflati” (RB 1980, p. 284: while some are puffed up with the evil spirit of pride). Abelard accuses himself of this in his Historia: “But success always puffs up fools with pride” (Letter Collection, p. 23; p. 22: “prosperitas stultos semper inflat”). 495–496. These are popular lines: they are included in Recension II, the Trier excerpt, the Vienna excerpt described by Wollin (“Neue Textzeugen,” p. 209), and marked out in the left margin by the annotator of MS B. See also 33–34, 181–182, 255, 309–310, and 587–588 on the power of reputation and negative example. Abelard makes the same point in his Historia, citing Augustine, Sermon 355, On the Life and Morals of Clerics: “‘He who relies on his conscience to the neglect of his reputation is cruel to himself ’ . . . For ourselves, conscience within us is sufficient. For your sake, our reputation should not be blemished but should be influential upon you. Conscience and reputation are two different things. Conscience concerns yourself, reputation your neighbour” (Letter Collection, p. 107). See also Scito te ipsum, I.27.3–4, p. 28; and van ’t Spijker, “Conflict and Correspondence,” p. 100: “Fama is to be distinguished from vainglory and ambition. It is rather an awareness of the effect of one’s actions on others.” 497. See similarly, Augustine, De civitate Dei, 14. 25, where he quotes Terence, Andria, 2.1.5: “sicut ait terentius: quoniam non potest id fieri quod uis, id uelis quod possis” ( Just as Terence says: since it is not possible that you should do what you will, will what you can). Note that Pg adds the gloss “suple habere” which interprets the line as speaking about what one can have rather than what one can do. 499–500. See similarly 67–68, 351–352, and 595–596 on the primacy of counsel over might. 505–510. These lines contribute to the theme of false-seeming and false clothes that runs through the Carmen: see also 833–834 and 939–940 as general observations, 297–303 on monastic habits as capable of engendering pride, and 573–576, 665–666, and 670 on the link between outward show and morality in women. In his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, Abelard similarly warns against the vanity of rich clothing (Letter Collection, pp. 479–485). cornix: Aesop’s Fables contain the story of the plain bird which collected fallen peacock feathers and attempted to wear them as its own; it was rejected by the

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peacock community which denuded it of its false feathers, and was then subsequently refused readmittance among its own kind, left humiliated and in disgrace. As versified by Phaedrus in the first century, this fable is told of a jackdaw; it opens with the warning: “Ne gloriari libeat alienis bonis” (Do not glory in another’s goods; Fabulae, Bk 1, Fabula 3, verse 1). However, Abelard may be referencing the story as told by Horace in his Ep. I, III, 18–20, where the bird is described as a crow: “suas repetitum venerit olim | grex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum | furtivis nudata coloribus” (the flock of birds having come to take back their former feathers, the poor crow, denuded of his stolen colours, arouses laughter). In the thirteenth century, Odo of Cheriton included a slightly different version of the story, based on the crow, in his Parabolae, a collection of fables. 511–512. This references the taxonomy of the “seven deadly sins.” Originally the eight logismoi (evil thoughts) of Evagrius of Pontus, they were regulated into seven capital sins in Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, at the head of which stood pride. Over the course of the Middle Ages, these seven capital vices begot varying ranges and numbers of “daughter vices,” which are the “multiple offspring” (“multiplici prole”) Abelard mentions here. Abelard applies this taxonomy to his own life in his Historia, declaring that his intellectual pride soon led to carnal temptation (Letter Collection, p. 23; see below 525–526). 515–518. See also 439–440 on flattery. illius: Abelard suggests here that the proud man is especially susceptible to the guile of flatterers. 521–522. Abelard’s vocabulary of the rash man here bears strong similarities with his description of Jephthah and his daughter in the Planctus uirginum: see “in suum hunc urget iugulum” (III, 20) and “Vrget dux populum” (III, 97). See also Proverbs 13. 10: “inter superbos semper iurgia sunt.” 525–526. See notes to 511–512; Abelard saw his own situation in Paris at the height of his renown as one of pride devolving to lust. 529–532. See also 845–858. See the Book of Wisdom, 12. 15: “cum sis ergo iustus iuste omnia disponis,” and Proverbs 12. 21: “non contristabit iustum quicquid ei acciderit, impii autem replebuntur malo.” This thought recurs throughout Abelard’s writings: see, for example, the last lines of the Historia: “since everything happens by divine disposition, each one of the faithful, when it comes to the test, must take comfort at least from the knowledge that God’s supreme goodness allows nothing to be done outside his plan” (Letter Collection, p. 121; p. 120: “quoniam omnia diuina dispositione geruntur, in hoc se saltem quisque fidelium in omni pressura consoletur, quod nichil inordinate fieri umquam summa Dei bonitas permittit”). Abelard’s Expositio in Hexameron also deals with God’s right disposition of all things in the act of creation, where God first arranges all things in the word of his mind through reason, then completes them in fact: see §§50, 51, 131, and passim. The nature and definition of the “summa Dei bonitas” is discussed by the Philosopher and the Christian throughout the Collationes. This is the position of the Philosopher in the Collationes: “Cum enim nichil sine causa,

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Deo cuncta optime disponente, fiat, quid accidit unde iustum tristari uel dolere oporteat et sic optime dispositioni Dei, quantum in se est, contraire, quasi eam censeat corrigendam esse?” (“For since God disposes all things in the best way, and there can be nothing without a cause, what happens at which a just person should be sad or grieve and thus, so far as he can, go against God’s best provision, as if he considered it is in need of correction?”; §128, pp. 140–143); see also the Christian: “Quis etiam nesciat summam Dei bonitatem, que nichil sine causa fieri permittit, adeo mala quoque bene ordinare . . . ” (“Also, who could be unaware that God’s highest goodness, which permits nothing to happen without a cause, arranges even evil things so well . . . ”; §210, pp. 210–211). The opening hymn of the collection composed by Abelard for the nuns of the Paraclete salutes God as the “Universorum conditor, | Conditorum dispositor,” and concludes with the thought that God can arrange all things well despite their natures and intent: “Quidquid male gerit iniquitas, | Summa bene disponit aequitas” (1, 7/3–6). See also Hymn 81, 1/1–4: “Angelorum hominumque | factor et dispositor, | Immo rerum quarumcunque | tam rector quam conditor.” See Mews, Abelard and Heloise, p. 105. Abelard may also be indebted here and at 845–858 to Seneca’s De providentia. 533–536. Marenbon and Orlandi note that these two distichs are at odds with the Philosopher’s position in the Collationes (p. 142 n. 133). Here Abelard opposes the Stoic/Senecan position of wisdom unmoved by daily annoyances, arguing instead for a more fallible and vulnerable view of humanity in which wisdom is no guard against pain and suffering. This is a development of the more conventional wisdom of 531–532 and acknowledges that although one may know of the ultimate goodness of God, one can still suffer. See Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, p. 319, on Abelard’s particular refutation of the Stoic position in the suffering portrayed in his Planctus. In this regard, see especially his Planctus Dauid super Abner, in which the speaking voice admits that Abner’s loss has moved even an enemy and adamantine minds (“mentes adamantinas”) to tears (V, 7–8). 535. duraque: P alone reads “diraque”, yet the word “dira” offers an interesting counterpoint to “pietas” in the next line: in the Aeneid, Ulysses is described as “dirus” (II. 261, 762), in contrast with Aeneas who is known throughout the epic as “pius” (e.g., I. 220, 545). Thus Abelard could be linking strength with a sense of arrogance and invincibility, and contrasting these with the vulnerability of true piety. 537–538. This distich is included in Recension II and and the Melk excerpt, and underlined by the annotator of MS B (one of only three occasions on which he marks out text in that way). The observation on food continues Abelard’s theme that outward things do not influence internal disposition, and similar sentiments appear in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete (Letter Collection, pp. 465–479). The warning against wine is a theme of Heloise’s Ep. VI (pp. 221–223, 233), and her arguments there are picked up by Abelard in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete (pp. 469, 473).

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539–540. See the similar distich at 979–980. This is common biblical wisdom: see Proverbs 9. 8: “noli arguere derisorem ne oderit te; argue sapientem et diliget te”; Proverbs 12. 1: “qui diligit disciplinam diligit scientiam, qui autem odit increpationes insipiens est”; Proverbs 13. 1: “filius sapiens doctrina patris qui autem inlusor est non audit cum arguitur”; Proverbs 15. 5, 12; Proverbs 17. 10: “plus proficit correptio apud prudentem quam centum plagae apud stultum”; Proverbs 19. 20: “audi consilium et suscipe disciplinam ut sis sapiens in novissimis tuis”; Proverbs 19. 25: “corripueris sapientem intelleget disciplinam”; and Ecclesiastes 7. 6: “melius est a sapiente corripi quam stultorum adulatione decipi.” 541–542. See similarly 813–814; manuscripts B and M repeat this distich with slightly different wording at 981–982 (P omits this distich). See Proverbs 17. 16: “quid prodest habere divitias stultum cum sapientiam emere non possit.” 546. See similarly Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 70, #98: “Quae facere turpe est, etiam dicere turpe est” (What it is shameful to do, it is also shameful to speak). 547–556. These aggressively antifeminist lines did not find a strong reception history. Distichs 547–548 and 551–552 were included in Recension II, but otherwise these ten lines remain overlooked in the medieval reception of the poem, both in terms of excerpts and marginal annotations. 547–548. See also 1021–1022. In his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, Abelard draws a comparison between Eve’s desire for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the desire of a woman to rule: “by the same wiles he [the Devil] can still easily seduce a woman when her desire is for authority, not for service, and when she is brought to this through ambition for wealth or status” (Letter Collection, p. 399). In his Expositio in Hexameron, Abelard notes that Eve was created equal with Adam but subjected to his dominion following sin: “De latere uiri, non de superiori uel inferiori parte mulierem formare decreuit, ut eam quasi sociam et collateralem, non quasi prelatam uel subiectam ante peccatum intelligeret. Post peccatum namque in potestatem et dominium uiri tradita est”(§483, p. 107, lines 2864–2868). 549. Dalida: in a usage that may be unique, Abelard appears to use the name “Delilah” as a noun encompassing all sexually active women, with the suggestion that such women are both seductive and treacherous. The figure of Delilah recurs in the writings of Abelard and Heloise, appearing in Heloise’s Ep. IV: “that mighty man of the Lord [Samson], the Nazirite whose conception was announced by an angel, Delilah alone overcame” (Letter Collection, p. 167). See also Abelard’s Planctus Israel, IV, 13 and 23. In 191–192 of the Carmen, Abelard similarly warns his son about the dangers of the marital bed. 551. An idea expressed a number of times by Jerome, such as in his Contra Vigilantium: “nulla securitas est vicino serpente dormire,” (PL 23. 351C) and his Ep. 128. 3 on the education of Pacatula where he argues against the cohabitation of men and women: “iuxta serpentem mortiferum securum dormire te credis?” Abelard repeats the quotation from the Contra Vigilantium in his Ep. XII

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to a regular canon (Smits, Peter Abelard. Letters IX-XIV, p. 265, lines 233–246). Interestingly, Marbod of Rennes is thought to have used the saying to critique Robert of Arbrissel’s association with women, reminding him: “non est diu tutum vicino serpent dormire” (Ep. 6; PL 171. 1482A). The saying thus resonates oddly here, given Abelard’s conscious modeling of himself on Robert in his establishment and curation of a community of women: see Mews, “Negotiating the Boundaries of Gender in Religious Life,” p. 143. Other twelfth-century writers to employ the image include Bernard of Clairvaux, Ep. 125. 2: “Quousque vicino serpente tua male secura dormitat industria?” (Sancti Bernardi Opera, Vol. 7, p. 308, line 20), and Ep. 242. 1: “quia non est tutum dormire vicinis serpentibus” (Vol. 8, p. 128, lines 18–19); and John of Salisbury (Ep. 291; PL 199. 334B). 553–556. See also 601–602. These lines exist only in the long recension, and do not appear in any of the short recensions or excerpts. Eve’s primary guilt in the Fall is traditional in medieval theology; see 1 Timothy 2. 14: “et Adam non est seductus; mulier autem seducta in praevaricatione fuit.” Abelard deals with this issue in a number of places in his writings: he devotes two quaestiones to it in his Sic et non, Q. LIV: “Quod primum hominis peccatum non coeperit a persuasione diaboli et contra” (That the first sin of humankind did not originate from the persuasion of the Devil, and against), and Q. LV: “Quod Eva sola non Adam seducta sit et contra” (That Eve alone, and not Adam, was seduced, and against). In this quaestio Abelard cites John Chrysostom whose words resonate in these lines of the Carmen: “Adeo persuasa est et persuasit, infecta est et infecit, decepta est et decepit” (Sic et non, p. 232, citing Chrysostom’s De lapsu primi hominis). In his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, Abelard declares: “It was a woman he first seduced, and through her, her husband too” (Letter Collection, p. 399). See also his Theologia “Scholarium” (I, 9): “Vnde et eum a serpente non esse seductum, cum seduceretur mulier, testatur apostolus” (wherefore the Apostle testifies that he [Adam] was not seduced by the serpent, although the woman was seduced). Abelard adds there that Adam sinned because he accepted the fruit, not wanting to sadden Eve by refusing her gift, and trusting too much in God’s mercy: “Qui tamen amore mulieris gustatum ei fructum porrigentis, cum eam contristare nollet . . . amplius de misericordia dei quam oporteret presumens.” Abelard also addresses the matter in his Expositio in Hexameron, §§265–266, p. 61, lines 1579–1586, and §393, pp. 88–89, lines 2355–2361, and he acknowledges the devil’s temptation of Eve in his Scito te impsum, I.21.4, pp. 21–22, lines 560–564: “Persuasio quippe diaboli precessit . . . Delectacio successit, cum mulier uidens lignum pulcrum et ipsum intelligens suaue ad uescendum in concupiscenciam eius exarsit . . . ” (And so the persuasion of the Devil went first . . . and pleasure came after, when the woman, seeing the beautiful tree and realizing that it was sweet for eating, burned with desire for it). See Mews, Abelard and Heloise, pp. 208–209, on Abelard’s position on this matter with respect to other twelfth-century theologians. In his Expositio in Hexameron, Abelard argues that while in Paradise, Adam and Eve could understand the natural sounds of animals, including the hissing of the tempting serpent: “Nam et serpens non uerbis, sed sibilo mulieri locutus fuisse

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creditur, tanteque sagacitatis illi primi parentes extitisse, ut ex sibilo serpentum uel uocibus auium affectus eorum cognoscerent” (§448, p. 101, lines 2686–2689; For the serpent is believed to have spoken to the woman not in words, but in hissing, and that those first parents stood in such great wisdom that from the hissing of snakes or the calls of birds they might know their intentions). 557–558. These lines contribute to the treatment in the Carmen of the role of reputation, example, and living rightly. Note the contradistinction between these lines and 587–590: Abelard’s argument is that consonance between the reality and appearance of one’s life is important, but that not setting bad examples to others by glorying in bad behavior is even more important (see in this regard 309–310). See also Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 52, #75: “Non uiuas aliter in solitudine, aliter in foro” (You should not live in one way in private and another in public). 561–564. The “ipsum” that concludes line 561 raises the possibility that Abelard here evokes a suicidal impulse. Self-murder was an unforgivable sin in the Christian Middle Ages, leaving the suicide assured of eternal damnation, and surviving family members open to financial loss of the suicide’s goods and ongoing social stigma: see Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages, I and II; and Ruys and McNamara, “Unlocking the Silences of the Self-Murdered.” “Ipsum” is the reading of both MSS P and B, the earliest and most correct witnesses to the Carmen. The only two other witnesses to this line, MS M and London, British Library, Burney 216 (Recension III = L), replace “ipsum” with “illum,” a choice that Rubingh-Bosscher describes as “fortasse recte.” Although this would mean that suicide is not explicitly evoked here, the line would nevertheless still express a willed longing for death akin to a suicidal impulse. It should also be remembered that M appears to have an ecclesiastical provenance, perhaps motivating an alternate reading not countenancing suicide. While “ipsum” can function in place of the deictic “illum” in Medieval Latin, it does not necessarily do so here, where it seems rather a deliberate choice, insofar as this is the only place in MS P where the reading “ipsum” appears; throughout the Carmen, “eum” is the favored choice for the accusative masculine pronoun. For a discussion of the pervasiveness of suicidal themes in Abelard’s writings, see my “Abelard on Suicide” (also my “Medieval Latin Meditations on Old Age,” pp. 188–189). Murray deals with Abelard’s thought on suicide in Suicide in the Middle Ages, I, 38, where he notes the contiguity of Abelard’s thought with Senecan and Stoic thought on suicide, and II, 200–203, although he does not refer to Abelard’s Carmen. It is worth noting that much of Abelard’s thought in the Carmen on providence and the testing of righteous men is drawn from Seneca’s De providentia, which concludes with an approbation of suicide. Abelard’s thought in these lines is also redolent of the ideas of Epicurus, particularly as these were related by Lucretius in his De rerum natura, though this text is not generally thought to have been known in Medieval Europe; see Sorabji, Self, pp. 95–99. Lines 561–564 particularly resonate, both in idea and lexical choice, with Abelard’s declaration in his Ep. V: “Certum quippe tibi est quod quisquis ab hac

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uita me liberet, a maximis penis eruet. Quas postea incurram incertum est, sed a quantis absoluar dubium non est. Omnis uita misera iocundum exitum habet, et quicumque aliorum anxietatibus uere compatiuntur et condolent, eas finiri desiderant” (Letter Collection, p. 190; p. 191: “At least you must know that whoever frees me from life will deliver me from the greatest suffering. What I may afterwards incur is uncertain, but from what I shall be set free is not in question. Every unhappy life is happy in its ending, and those who feel true sympathy and pain for the anxieties of others want to see these ended”). Augustine critiqued those who contemplated suicide in the hope of a better life following this one (De civitate Dei, 1. 22 and 26; 14. 25), but Abelard’s observation here seems more nihilistic: he does not hope for a better life, simply not a worse one, or even none at all. Yet in the Collationes, the Christian argues that a future life can only be desired where it is better or more pleasing than the current one: “Que nisi melior uita presente sit aut magis placeat, frustra est in retributione posita” (§86, pp. 108–109). See Carmen 689–694 for Abelard’s further thoughts on death. In questioning the existence of a future life, is Abelard disputing the concept of Purgatory, which was particularly being developed at the time by Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians? See Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, pp. 163–164, 168, 180; and Mews, Abelard and Heloise, p. 223. In his Scito te ipsum, I.59.5–6, p. 59, lines 1535–1543, Abelard admits the possibility of purgatorial suffering (“penis purgatoriis”), although he then suggests that penitential satisfaction may perhaps be made instantly at the time of death/Day of Judgment. On the possible torments of the afterlife, see also Collationes, §§183–197, especially §185 in which the Christian argues that there cannot be bodily torments after death for souls that have left behind their bodies (although he admits to the possiblity of spiritual torment), and §195 where he argues that death itself is torment enough to remove all further suffering except for sins worthy of eternal damnation. See Mews, Abelard and Heloise, p. 184. For other traditional advice on a similar theme, see Disticha Catonis, III, 22: “Fac tibi propones mortem non esse timendam, | quae bona si non est, finis tamen illa malorum est” (See that you do not establish death as a thing to be feared, since, even if it is not a good, it is at least an end of evils). For a thought that is strikingly close to Abelard’s acceptance of death, see Sextus, Sentences, 321–322: “mortis quidem ipse tibi causa non fias; si quis autem exuere te vult corpore, ne indigneris. sapientem de corpore iniuste si quis extrudat, iniquitate sua beneficium ei praestat, absolvitur enim tamquam de vinculis” (Do not become the cause of your own death; if, however, anyone wishes to divest you of your body, do not disdain it. If anyone separates a wise man from his body unjustly, by his iniquity he offers him a boon, for he is freed as if from chains). 565. Are there echoes here of Abelard’s trial for heresy at Soissons in 1121? He says in his Historia of his detractors there: “it was plain that they had little confidence in the justice of their cause” (Letter Collection, p. 67). 567–570. These two distichs are linked by the idea that prolix and overblown rhetoric is intended to cover a lack of truth; there is a link between rhetoric as linguistic artifice and malpractice or trickery.

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571. See Jeremiah 16. 5: “haec dicit Dominus maledictus homo qui confidit in homine”; 16. 7: “benedictus vir qui confidit in Domino.” 573–576. See also 239–240, 385–386, and 787: Abelard continues his theme of false-seeming and trickery, and links the artifice of rhetoric with the artifice of cosmetics. In 239–240, Abelard adduced the prostitute as exemplifying the false-seeming of rhetoric; here, he critiques rhetoric by comparing it with a woman who conceals her true appearance with makeup. This is traditional: see Jacqueline Lichtenstein, “Making up Representation: The Risks of Femininity,” pp. 78–79, and Jill Ross, “The Dazzling Sword of Language.” For a humanistic reading of the same tropes, see Patricia Parker, “Virile Style.” See also Epistulae duorum amantium, Letter 49, and my analysis of this in “Eloquencie vultum depingere,” pp. 105–106. 577–578. See also 827–832. Abelard inveighs against the remarriage of widows in his Ep. VII to the nuns of the Paraclete, particularly employing 1 Timothy 5. 16; he argues that “true widows” are those who “have not dishonoured their widowhood by a second marriage” (Letter Collection, p. 295; p. 294: “Veras quippe uiduas dicit que uiduitatem suam secundis nuptiis non dehonestauerunt”). For a discussion, see my “Quae maternae,” pp. 328–330. 579–580. One of the most popular distichs in the reception of the Carmen: these lines are included in Recension II, Recension III, the Trier excerpt, the Vienna excerpt described by Wollin (“Neue Textzeugen,” p. 209), marked out by the annotator of MS B in both the left and right margins, and marked out with a pointing hand in the left margin of MS P. 583–584. A negative version of the Golden Rule as cited by Abelard at 73–74; see also Disticha Catonis, I, 11: “Dilige sic alios, ut sis tibi carus amicus; | sic bonus esto bonis, ne te mala damna sequantur” (Love others in this way, as if you were being a dear friend to yourself; be good to the good, lest evil losses pursue you). 585. See Disticha Catonis, Brief Sentence 47: “minorem ne contempseris” (do not despise the lesser). 587–592. Distich 587–588 is highly popular in the medieval reception of the Carmen: it is included in Recension II and the Trier excerpt, marked by the annotator of MS B in both the left and right margins, and marked by a pointing hand in the left margin in MS P. These lines form part of Abelard’s complex thought in the Carmen on the links between inward disposition, outward behavior, reputation, and example: see also 33–34, 309–310, 495–496, 557–558, and 967–970. In the Carmen, Abelard struggles to hold in tension two ideas not always congruent, but which both appear as major arguments of his Scito te ipsum: first, the need to live rightly for God always, and second, the need to avoid providing a bad example that could harm others. Hypocrisy is to be abjured, so behavior should be consonant both inwardly and outwardly, but bad behavior must not be flaunted. Hence, at the level of practical reality, if bad behavior cannot be avoided, it should at least be hidden from the sight of others

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to avoid leading them into similar sin. This formulation is thus part of Abelard’s deeply held ideas on the value of exemplarity, and not, as Peter Dronke would have it, “cynical” advice (Poetic Individuality, p. 149). These lines also intersect with Heloise’s analysis of hypocrisy in her Epp. IV and VI; despite her condemnation of hypocrisy, she similarly argues that “perhaps it seems in a way praiseworthy and somehow acceptable to God if a person gives no offence to the Church in outward behavior, whatever his intention” (Letter Collection, Ep. IV, p. 173). These lines also help explain Abelard’s intention when he underwent a secret marriage so that he could continue to teach: “All I stipulated was that the marriage should be kept secret so as not to damage my reputation” (Letter Collection, Historia, p. 35). On Heloise’s understanding of hypocrisy, and its intersection with ethics and intention, see Findley, “Does the Habit Make the Nun?” The saying “Etsi non caste, tamen caute” (or similar) appears in a number of medieval authors, including Abelard’s contemporary, Innocent III: “Vivamus ergo, fratres charissimi, non solum caste, sed etiam caute. Caste, ne contaminemus unctionem ordinis quem accepimus . . . Caute, ne corrumpamus alios per exemplum” (Sermon 1, PL 217. 654B; Let us live therefore, dearest brothers, not only chastely, but also discreetly. Chastely, lest we should contaminate the chrism of the order which we have assumed . . . Discreetly, so that we do not corrupt others through our example). Writers from Rather of Verona to Thomas Aquinas cite it as a traditional dictum; see Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries, p. 450 n. 3: “Here, as ever, the Church went on the principle that sin was bad but scandal worse: si non caste tamen caute.” On 589–592, see Abelard’s Sermon 29 on Susannah: “Frustra hominum conspectum fugitis, qui conspectum Dei fugere non potestis . . . Pudet ab homine deprehendi, et non a Deo conspici?” (PL 178. 557D-558A; In vain do you flee the sight of men, you who cannot flee the sight of God . . . Are you ashamed to be caught out by man, yet not to be observed by God?). 589–614. Ballanti designates these lines “Giudizi umani e giudizio divino” (Human judgments and divine judgment). However, a thematic division is not necessary here, as it is clear that 589–592 continue the argument in 587–588 on the proper way to live: both so as not to give scandal, and rightly in the eyes of God. See notes to 495–496. 595–596. See similarly 67–68, 351–352, and 499–500 on the primacy of counsel over might. 597–598. See also 249–250. This is the driving argument of Heloise in her Ep. VI where she argues for a new Rule designed for female monastics. It is picked up by Abelard in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “Whatever their sickness requires, baths, food or anything else, is to be allowed them; for there is a wellknown saying: ‘The law was not made for the sick’” (Letter Collection, p. 417, using Radice’s more correct translation of the quote); also: “who does not know that it is against all good sense if the same burdens are imposed on the weak as on the strong” (Letter Collection, p. 473).

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599–602. This is Abelard’s argument in his Scito te ipsum, I.20–23, pp. 21–25. There he recognizes the role of incitement or temptation to sin on the part of other people, and even demons, but argues that while personal proclivity and external temptation to a sin are one thing, the sin itself is constituted by entertaining in oneself consent to an act known to be wrong followed by commission of the deed. These performative stages of sinning cannot be blamed on external forces. A similar distinction is made by Heloise in her Ep. IV between demonic temptation and personal consent: “At least I can thank God for this: the tempter did not prevail on me to do wrong of my own consent” (Letter Collection, p. 169). See also 553–556 and Notes on the serpent and Eve. Abelard recognizes that demons are long skilled at manipulating our weakened human natures (Scito te ipsum, I.23.1, p. 24, lines 623–630), and argues that the Devil manipulates emotions both to incite sinners and to prevent them from seeking redemption through penitence (Scito te ipsum, I.66, p. 66). 603–604. These lines follow the flow of the argument in Abelard’s Scito te ipsum where he moves from consideration of what constitutes a sin to discussion of human justice, noting that sometimes those whom we know to be innocent nevertheless need to be punished (I.24.2, p. 25, lines 654–657). He adduces the case of an impoverished mother who accidentally smothers her child out of excessive love while trying to keep it warm, but must still bear the full brunt of the law. He concludes that human judges must be bound by what is knowable on earth, as only God can judge from interior intention: “Deus uero solus, qui non tam, quae fiunt, quam, quo animo fiant, attendit, ueraciter in intencione nostra reatum pensat et uero iudicio culpam examinat” (I.25.3, p. 26, lines 685–687). See also the argument of the Philosopher in the Collationes, that one confessing and repenting a sin will be granted divine pardon for it, but may still have to suffer the earthly consequences of judgment (§59, p. 74). In his Solution to Problem 14, however, Abelard advises that the heavenly Judge, who should be imitated by his earthly counterparts, always tempers justice with mercy (PL 178. 700D-701B)— see Carmen 249–250. 605–606. See Proverbs 20. 2: “sicut rugitus leonis ita terror regis; qui provocat eum peccat in animam suam”; see also Proverbs 16. 14 and 19. 12. Michael Clanchy notes that in 1121, Abelard himself “had to flee from the king’s anger” (Abelard: A Medieval Life, p. 131), indicating a possible personal resonance to the advice he gives here. 609–612. See Matthew 12. 39: “Qui respondens ait illis generatio mala et adultera signum quaerit et signum non dabitur ei nisi signum Ionae prophetae”; also Mark 8. 11–12, Luke 11. 16. In the Collationes, the Philosopher describes miracles as being equally the function of God and demonic illusion (§69, p. 86). See also 297–304 and 465–470, and Abelard’s Sermon 33 where he excoriates Norbert of Xanten for “the simulation of miracles” (PL 178. 605B-C). See also Cicero, De officiis, I, XIX, 65: “Etenim qui ex errore imperitae multitudinis pendet, hic

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in magnis viris non est habendus” (for he who depends upon the error of the unlearned crowd will not be considered among the great men). 613–614. See also 661–664 and Notes relating to the Philosopher’s position in the Collationes. These lines continue the theme of deception and false-seeming that run through the Carmen. Abelard deals with the issue of the virtues as opposite to the vices in his Scito te ipsum, II.2.2–3, p. 85, lines 2241–2247: “Sicut enim uirtutes uiciis contrarie sunt, ita peccatum, quod proprie dicitur dei contemptus, uidetur aduersum obediencie bono, id est uoluntas ad obediendum deo parata” (For just as the virtues are contrary to the vices, so sin, which is properly said to be contempt of God, appears opposite to the good of obedience, that is, a will ready to obey God). See Mews, Abelard and Heloise, p. 106, for Abelard’s commendation in his Theologia “Summi Boni” of the distinction made by pagan philosophers between virtues and vices. The idea of the vices posing as virtues was current in classical, patristic, and medieval thought: see Seneca, Ep. LVI. 10: “avaritiam itaque et ambitionem et cetera mala mentis humanae tunc perniciosissima scias esse cum simulata sanitate subsidunt” (and so you should know avarice and ambition and the rest of the evils of the human mind to be at their most pernicious then, when they hide under feigned integrity); Jerome, Ep. 107. 6 to Laeta: “uitia non decipiunt nisi sub specie umbra que uirtutum” (the vices do not deceive, except beneath the form and shadow of the virtues); and Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 83, #25: “Tanto peiora sunt uitia, quanto uirtutum specie celantur” (The worse the vice, the more it hides under the form of virtue). 615–626. See also 401–424 on the “avarus” (miser), 761–766 on bequeathing to the poor, and 927–934 on the rich man’s bequests. See Abelard’s Scito te ipsum, I.55, pp. 54–55 for a mordant description of a family’s reaction to a rich man’s death, which employs the same vocabulary as these lines. Abelard’s advice here contrasts with that given in Ecclesiasticus 33. 24: “in die consummationis dierum vitae tuae et in tempore exitus tui distribue hereditatem tuam.” 620. The saying “Da tua, dum tua sunt. Post mortem, tunc tua non sunt” is proverbial in the Middle Ages: see Julius Zupitza, “The Prouerbis of Wysdom,” p. 256. 627–636. These lines deal with the economic considerations involved in interpersonal relationships in the domestic world (servants and masters, parents and children). 629. On the primacy accorded to fathers in the Carmen, see also 451–454. 630. See the Ten Commandments: “honora patrem tuum et matrem tuam” (Exodus 20. 12; Deuteronomy 5. 16). This advice recurs throughout the Bible: see for instance Ecclesiasticus 3. 8: “qui timet Deum honorat parentes.” For a saying that is closer to Abelard’s distinction here, see Disticha Catonis, III, 24: “Aequa diligito caros pietate parentes | nec matrem offendas, dum vis bonus esse parenti” (Love your dear parents with equal dutifulness, and do not offend your mother, while you wish to be good to your parent).

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633–634. See Exodus 21. 26, “si percusserit quispiam oculum servi sui aut ancillae et luscos eos fecerit dimittet liberos pro oculo quem eruit.” This is an interesting observation for Abelard to make, given that in his case, the situation was reversed: it was the treachery of his own servant that led to his castration (Letter Collection, Historia, p. 45). 637–648. See similarly 835–844 and 891–894. The arguments articulated here at 637–644 (God’s position in space) and 645–648 (the common understanding of God as a physical body) appear in the Collationes in the discourse of the Christian (§§162, 171, pp. 170, 180–182), but in reverse order. Compare Abelard’s less critical description of the same idea in his Expositio in Hexameron: “Sic et deus, qui in seipso inuisibilis et incomprehensibilis est, ex operum suorum magnitudine primam nobis de se scientiam confert, cum omnis humana noticia surgat a sensibus” (§11, p. 6, lines 88–91; Thus also God, who is invisible and incomprehensible in himself, bestows upon us the first knowledge of himself from the magnitude of his works, since all human understanding arises from our senses). Abelard goes on to say that Moses had the Pentateuch written in five books in order to match the five senses, since the people for whom he was writing possessed only carnal rather than spiritual understanding (§12, p. 6, lines 91–95). See Mews, Abelard and Heloise, on Abelard’s assertion in the Theologia “Scholarium” that “Philosophers have always shunned popular opinion” (p. 209). 638. This is the argument of the Philosopher in the Collationes (§§7–8, pp. 8–10). 641–642. See Abelard, Sermon 4, where he even argues that God’s voice when heard in this world (such as at the baptism of Christ) is not actually his, but belongs rather to the air or an angel, since he has no bodily presence: “Quae quidem vox in persona Patris in aere facta est sive per angelum, sive quocunque alio modo formata. Non enim Pater corpus habet, aut ipsum unquam assumit, ut corporalibus instrumentis ipse vocem formare possit” (PL 178. 416B). This is the argument of the Christian in the Collationes (§171, pp. 180–182). See also Abelard, Sic et non, Q. XLI: “Quod deus ipse sit qui antiquis patribus apparebat et non” (That it was God himself who appeared to the ancient fathers, and not), and Q. XLIV: “Quod solus Deus incorporeus et non” (That God alone is incorporeal, and not). 645–647. Abelard addresses this question in his Sic et non, Q. XL: “Quod Deus quoque loco moveatur vel localis sit et non” (That God is also moved in place or has place, and not). See Marenbon, “Abelard on Angels,” where Marenbon describes Abelard’s view as unique to the twelfth century: “It explains that God is not anywhere, because what is somewhere is contained in place, and whatever is contained in place is a body” (p. 66). Marenbon further notes that for Abelard, “authoritative statements in the Bible and elsewhere that seem to indicate . . . that God came down to earth, or that he is everywhere . . . must be understood metaphorically . . . he is everywhere because his power is everywhere” (p. 69). Citing the Sententie Parisienses, Marenbon continues: “God is not even said to be circumscribable according to his actions, because God does not operate in one place

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in such a way that he is not operating in another, because he operates everywhere.” See also Mews on Abelard’s arguments as recorded in the Sententie Petri Abaelardi: “God is everywhere through his power or potency, because he can be everywhere” (Abelard and Heloise, p. 218). See also Collationes (§161, p. 170; §162, pp. 170–172). Marenbon suggests, however, that “Abelard’s theory appears to have left only a little trace in the writings of his near contemporaries” (“Abelard on Angels,” p. 70). 649–650. Traditional advice: see Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 69, #90: “Qui nunquam didicit subesse, nulli potest rite praeesse” (He who never learns to be a subject can rightfully be set in command over none); and p. 60, #40: “Praelatis ac senioribus inoboediens meretur ut, si ipse praelatus fuerit aliquibus, ab eis similia patiatur” (The one who does not give obedience to his elders and betters deserves that if he himself should be set above others, he should be treated in the same way by them). 651–652. Abelard here parallels the squire with the student (and thus the military world with the classroom) in terms of training and apprenticeship. He makes a similar comparison in his Historia: “I preferred the weapons of dialectical reasonings to all the teachings of philosophy, and armed with these I chose the conflicts of disputes instead of the trophies of war” (Letter Collection, p. 5). See also Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, p. 141: “Abelard’s persistent belligerence is explicit in his description in his ‘history of calamities’ of his wars in the schools. Scholastic life might involve all the stratagems and excitement of the knightly life without the bloodshed.” Note again Abelard’s depiction of teaching by example (see also 25 and 821–822); see also Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 74, #39: “Rector perfectus, hic primo suos regit actus” (The perfect ruler is he who first rules his own actions). Line 651 is popular in the medieval reception of the Carmen, being included in Recension II, the Trier excerpt, the Vienna excerpt described by Wollin (“Neue Textzeugen,” p. 210), and marked out by the annotator of MS B. 653–654. In Hymn 14, 5/1–8, Abelard prays for God to set the mean according to which precipitate nature can be regulated: “Tuum est gratiam | dare supplicibus, | Ut sibi temperent | ab his et talibus, | Tuum est omnibus | modum praefigere | Atque praecipitem | naturam regere.” 655. The same reference to the lightness of youth informs Abelard’s description of Sechem in his Planctus Dine where Dinah seeks to excuse Sechem’s behavior by declaring: “Leuis etas iuuenilis minusque discreta | ferre minus a discretis debuit in pena” (I, 29–30; An age light and youthful, less wise, ought to have borne less in punishment from the wise). See also Cicero, De senectute, VI. 21: “Temeritas est videlicet florentis aetatis, prudentia senescentis” (Rashness is characteristic of youth, wisdom of old age). A twelfth-century loose folio held in the Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, contains two lines attributed to Abelard by the scribe that resonate with Carmen, 655–658: for a discussion of these, see chapter 1, “Poole 99,” and Wollin, “Ein Liebeslied des Petrus Abaelardus in Bloomington (Indiana).”

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659–660. The myth of Daedalus and Icarus escaping from Crete on wings manufactured from feathers held together with wax was best known in the Middle Ages from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, VIII. 183–235. Daedalus flew a median path between sun and earth, but Icarus, despite his father’s counsel, flew too close to the sun. Consquently, the wax on his wings melted, and he fell into the sea and drowned. In Ovid’s retelling of the myth, Daedalus advises his son: “medio . . . ut limite curras, | Icare. . . . moneo” (204–205), as Abelard does here to Astralabe. This is another instance in the Carmen of a father giving advice to his son (see Anchises and Aeneas, 259 above); Ovid also specifically refers to the love Daedalus bears for his son: “dedit oscula nato” (211). 661–662. See also 613–614 and 727–728. Heloise makes a similar argument in her Ep. VI: “For the virtues which exceed all bounds and measure are, as Jerome says, to be counted among vices” (Letter Collection, p. 225, citing Jerome, Ep. 130. 11). Abelard reverts to this idea on a number of occasions in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete (Letter Collection, pp. 427, 459, and 467) and see particularly: “Let discretion, the mother of all the virtues, preside over zeal and look carefully to see on whom she may lay which burdens, that is, on each according to his capacity, following nature rather than putting pressure on it, and removing not the habit of sufficiency but the abuse of superfluity, so that vices are rooted out but nature is unharmed” (p. 459). This is also the argument of the Philosopher in the Collationes: “For often, when we seem to ourselves to be temperate, we exceed the measure and go over the bounds of temperance. This happens, for instance, when in our keenness for sobriety we afflict ourselves with excessive fasting, and when, wishing to tame vice, we extinguish nature itself and thus, going beyond the measure in many ways, we set up as virtues the vices which neighbour them” (§123, pp. 137–139). See also Richard of St. Victor, Benjamin Minor: “Sciendum autem quod affectus isti tunc veraciter creduntur boni, quando sunt non solum ordinati, sed etiam moderati. Saepe namque cum discretionis moderamen excedunt, virtutis nomen amittunt” (It should be known that those emotional states are truthfully believed to be good when they are not only ordered but also moderated. For often when they exceed the bounds of moderation, they lose the title of virtue; PL 196. 50B). This sentence runs contrary to traditional advice, such as Disticha Catonis, I, 2: “Plus vigila semper nec somno deditus esto; | nam diuturna quies vitiis alimenta ministrant” (Always keep vigil longer and do not be given over to sleep; for long rest provides nourishment to the vices), but has patristic antecedents, such as Cassian’s Institutes, III, 8.2 (p. 65); and VI, 23: “whoever exceeds the measure of strictness will inevitably exceed the measure of relaxation as well” (p. 162). Consider also Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 69, #85: “Quaecumque mensuram excedunt, daemonia suggerunt” (Whatever things exceed good measure, these are the suggestions of demons). In his “Attitudes towards Self-Inflicted Suffering in the Middle Ages,” Giles Constable notes a twelfth-century move away from extremes of asceticism and toward moderation, particularly within monastic contexts.

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665–666. Dronke edits a poetic fragment which contains two very similar lines: “Nec catus in nitida servari pelle valebit | Nec mulier cultus si preciosus erit” in “Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale 284 (238),” pp. 280–281. John F. Benton describes this poem as “a spiritual exhortation addressed to a nun” and suggests that it may have been addressed to Heloise, although he also notes the possibility of a proverbial source: “Abelardiana: Poems from Orléans, Bibl. Mun. MS 284,” p. 276. The poetic fragment is also discussed by Wollin, “Neue Textzeugen,” pp. 221–223. In the fragment, these lines appear as a forceful call to monastic humility and the rejection of worldly vanity, while in the Carmen, they would appear to link the theme of moderation with that of avoiding vanity and falseseeming. 667–668. See also 883–884. cum non irascitur: The question of whether God could feel emotions or was impassible arose early in the Christian era. Writers like Origen, Tertullian, and particularly Lactantius, in his De ira Dei, had argued for the ability of God to suffer emotions, but Church fathers like Augustine and Jerome soon disagreed: as a perfect, immutable, and incorporeal being, God had to be unable to be moved toward anything that approached human affections: see Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? Medieval theologians argued instead that what we might describe as emotions, God experienced only as movements of his will, and that biblical ascriptions of emotions to him (such as anger, jealousy, love) were to be read metaphorically: see Augustine, De patientia: “irascitur sine aliqua perturbatione” (I.1, p. 663). In his Sic et non, Q. XXXI (“Quod Deus malorum quoque causa vel auctor sit et non”; that God is the author or cause of evils, and not), Abelard cites Jerome: “Magna ira est quando peccantibus non irascitur Deus” (p. 177; citing Ep. ad Castricianum, 68. 5). 671–672. See also 203–206 and Notes, and 680 below. Abelard explores here the nexus between appearance and reality and the gender inequality of reputation when applied to women, about whom a falsity repeated often enough can become the truth. 673–674. See also 193–198 and Notes: true chastity is regulated by internal disposition, and has nothing to do with external restaints. 675–676. On reputation and name in the Carmen, see also 8, 31–34, 203–206, 557–558, and 587–588; also Ecclesiasticus 41. 15: “curam habe de bono nomine hoc enim magis permanebit tibi quam mille thesauri magni pretiosi.” In Abelard’s Sermon 29 on Susannah he specifies that she was more concerned with clearing her good name than avoiding death: “famae potius quam vitae decrevit consulere . . . nec tam de morte quam de infamia propulsanda curabat” (PL 178. 561C–562A; she determined to take account of her reputation rather than her life . . . nor did she care so much about death as about warding off infamy). On this see Jaeger, “Peter Abelard’s Silence at the Council of Sens,” p. 41. 677–680. See 199–202 and Ecclesiasticus 7. 27: “trade filiam et grande opus feceris.” This is conventional advice in medieval didactic literature, yet note

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that Abelard gives a social aspect to his reasoning: women are more prone to the caprices of public suspicion than men. 681–682. This statement (as also its obverse: praise for the virile holy woman) appears commonly throughout Abelard’s writings, especially those designed for the nuns of the Paraclete: see Mary Martin McLaughlin, “Peter Abelard and the Dignity of Women”; Barbara Newman, “Flaws in the Golden Bowl,” p. 122; Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture, p. 134; and my “Ut sexu sic animo,” pp. 3–5. In his Historia, Abelard argues that the convent of the Paraclete flourished since “women, being the weaker sex, are the more pitiable in a state of need, easily rousing human sympathy, and their virtue is the more pleasing to God as well as to men” (Letter Collection, p. 101). In his Ep. VII to the nuns of the Paraclete, Abelard notes: “just as the female sex is weaker so the virtue of women is more pleasing to God and more perfect” (p. 309) and “the weaker a woman’s nature is, the more pleasing to him is her virtue” (p. 327). This thought recurs throughout Hymns 99, 1/17–20; 120, 2/ 1–8; 121, 1/9–12 and 4/5–8; and 126, 4/1–4. It appears in Abelard’s Sermons 1 and 2 (PL 178. 383D and 393B), and his Expositio in Hexameron, §454, p. 102, lines 2721–2723. Abelard states the corollory of this thought, namely the greater damnability of sinful men, in his Sermon 29 on Susannah: “Quorum sexus quo naturaliter est fortior, tanto et eorum lapsus damnabilior” (PL 178. 563D). 683–686. See 181–186 and 773–774. According to medieval canon law, a husband was required to cast out an adulterous wife or else be seen to be condoning her sin and functioning as her pimp: see Brundage, “Adultery and Fornication: A Study in Legal Theory,” p. 133. At the time of the composition of the Carmen, this position would have been regulated in the Decretum of both Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres (see Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, p. 209 n. 167). In the Decretum of Gratian (formalized probably a few years after the composition of the Carmen in c. 1140), it is noted that “Patronus enim turpitudinis est, qui celat crimen uxoris” (C. 32 q. 1 c. 1; col. 1115). Subsequent capita, however, permit the retention of the sinning wife following her repentance provided that the married couple abstain from the debt of marriage (i.e., sexual relations) for the period of her penitence. The behavioral dichotomy offered by Abelard in 686 highlights the complex approach to the relationship between internal virtue and external reputation in the Carmen. The first option Abelard suggests, casting aside the adulterous wife, meshes with his advice at 557 that a man should live honorably whether in private or public, while the second option, retaining the wife while keeping her slip a secret, links with his advice at 587 that if you cannot live chastely, you should at least live discreetly. Where 181–186 dealt with the problem of whether the unknowing husband should be informed of his wife’s infidelity, the situation described here deals with the next step of the problem, once knowledge of the wife’s sin is known to her husband and he has to decide how to act. This passage appears to have caught the interest of the glossator of P, who adds a number of practical interlinear observations. In expansion of Abelard’s general admonition at 684 that the husband should not acknowledge the opprobrium of

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his wife’s adultery, Pg provides the practical advice: “dicat quod non est uerum” (he should say that it is not true). In explanation of how the shrewd man would dissemble his wife’s guilt (686), Pg suggests: “scilicet excusare et non curare” (namely, pardon her and not take note of it). Abelard deals with the question of adultery in his Sic et non, Q. CXXVIII: “Quod nullo modo adultera sit retinenda et contra” (That in no way should an adulterous wife be retained, and against), in which he cites Jerome (Comm. Matt. III, 19, 9) that “Ubicunque igitur est fornicatio et fornicationis suspicio, libere uxor dimittitur” (And so wherever there is fornication or the suspicion of fornication, the wife should be freely dismissed); such a position perhaps contributes to Abelard’s understanding of the delicacy of reputation for a woman (e.g., 203–206). Yet see also Sic et non, Q. LXI: “Quod Ioseph non sit suspicatus Mariam adulteram et contra” (That Joseph did not suspect Mary of adultery, and against), where citations reveal that a just man may sometimes be wrongly led to suspect a blameless wife and that when this is the case, he should not accuse her loudly but send her away quietly. Equally telling is Abelard’s quotation in Q. CXXVIII from Augustine (De adulterinis coniugiis, II, 6, 5; II, 9, 8) that while putting away an adulterous wife may have been justified in the Old Testament context, it does not fit with the New Testament forgiveness of sins and Christ’s forgiveness of the woman taken in adultery: “quis non intelligit debere ignoscere maritum quod videt ignovisse Dominum, nec iam se debere adulteram dicere cuius paenitentis crimen divina credit miseratione deletum?” This passage was also cited by Gratian in his Decretum, C. 32 q. 1 c. 7, col. 1117. 687–688. Here retaining a sinning wife is equated with flaunting, or even condoning, her offence. Abelard argues that the loss of reputation incurred by admitting the betrayal and casting out the sinning wife is less damaging than living with the hypocrisy of retaining her. Given his views on the importance of reputation, this underlines his belief in the primacy of internal and external consonance. 689–690. See also 875; see Otloh, Liber proverbiorum: p. 62, #74: “Pensandum cunctis qualis maneat sibi finis” (You should consider in all things what end remains for you); and p. 38, #80 “Ingenti cura pensanda est uita futura” (A great man’s care should be contemplating the life to come). 691. mancio: see the words of Jesus in John 14. 2: “in domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt; si quo minus, dixissem vobis, quia vado parare vobis locum.” 692. For Abelard’s views regarding the difficulty of death and dying, see the words of the Christian in Collatio II, §§194–196; for example, §195: “Tantam uero in dissolutione mortis passionem anime esse certum est”; “Ex quo liquidum est quanta sit mortis huius passio” (pp. 198–203; “It is certain that the soul’s suffering, as it is separated from the body in death, is so great . . . ”; “From this it is obvious how great is the suffering in death”). 695–696. Proverbs 15. 1: “responsio mollis frangit iram, sermo durus suscitat furorem”; this source was recognized by an annotator of MS B who wrote

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“responsio mollis frangit iram” in the left margin. This proverb is also cited by Abelard in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, where he recommends that the portress should be a woman of mild manner since “A soft answer turns away anger, but a sharp word makes tempers hot” (Letter Collection, p. 423; p. 422: “Hinc enim scriptum est: ‘Reponsio mollis frangit iram; sermo durus suscitat furorem’”). This proverb was well known and often cited throughout the Middle Ages; see, for example, Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 72, #10: “Responsio mollis frangit iram.” 697–698. The contrast between deeds (res) and words (verba) runs throughout the Carmen: see also 57, 242–244, 339, 358, 821–822, and 898. This distich and the next also recall Abelard’s examination of the sins of the tongue at 225–244 (especially 239–242). 701–702. See Abelard’s Solution to Problem 14 where he notes how lust turns humans into carnal creatures, just like beasts: “vincitur spiritus dominante carne, et ei subjicitur, ut homo jam carnalis vel animalis sit dicendus, desideriis carnis more pecudum deditus” (PL 178. 697C; McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 233: “the Spirit is overcome by the dominance of the flesh, and subjected to it, so that a person must be described as carnal or animal-like, given up to the desires of the flesh like a beast”). See also his Expositio in Hexameron, §502, p. 111, lines 2979–2981: “nemo uidelicet ad coitum modo moueatur nisi beluino more, id est sola carnis delectatione” (no-one is moved to sexual intercourse in this way except in the manner of a beast, that is, by the pleasure of the flesh alone). An unbridled horse is a common medieval metaphor to denote human sexuality after the Fall. 703–704. luxurie stimulus: these words reference Paul’s confession: “datus est mihi stimulus carnis meae” (2 Corinthians 12. 7), which Abelard mentions in his Ep. V when arguing the divine mercy of his castration (Letter Collection, p. 201: “The Apostle too is recorded as having besought the Lord to rid him of this thorn in the flesh”). See also Jacqueline Murray, “‘The Law of Sin That Is in My Members,’” pp. 17–18. 705–706. In medieval canon law, the immoderate desire of a husband for a wife, beyond the needs of procreation, was often considered a form of fornication or even adultery. For the early to mid-twelfth century, see Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 198–199 and 240–241. See Gratian’s Decretum, C. 32 q. 4 c. 5: “Nichil fedius est quam amare uxorem quasi adulteram” (cols 1128–1129; Nothing is more shameful than to love a wife as though she were a mistress); c. 12: “Extraordinaria uoluptas et inuerecunda opera nuptiarum luxuria et inmundicia appellantur” (cols 1130–1131; Excessive delight and shameless acts in marriage are considered lust and wantonness); and c. 14: “Liberorum procreatio in matrimonio laudatur; meretricia uoluptas etiam in uxore dampnatur” (col. 1131; The procreation of children in marriage is praised; but meretricious pleasure is condemned, even in a wife).

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707–708. This argument was commonly used in the Middle Ages to castigate human (and specifically female) sexual desire. Often the mare was adduced as the only exception to this rule. Peter Damian argued that “While brute beasts may be satisfied with procreation alone, human beings seek the satisfaction of lust” (cited by Michael Goodich, Other Middle Ages, p. 107). See Dyan Elliott, “From Sexual Fantasy to Demonic Defloration,” p. 37 and p. 184 n. 11 for similar citations from William of Conches, Vincent of Beauvais (Speculum naturale), and Albertus Magnus; and Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages, pp. 98, 148–149, and 268–269 for the associated Aritostelian tradition in later scholasticsm. Yet William of Conches makes an important distinction relevant to Abelard’s thesis, and to Abelard’s earlier comments on Heloise (379–384): alone of all animals, humans possess memory and forward projection, so a woman might continue to desire sexual intimacy following conception because she remembers past delights and desires future ones (Dragmaticon philosophiae, VI, 9, §§2–3). For further discussion see “The Heloise Section of the Carmen (379– 384)” in chapter 1. 711–712. A reconsideration of 487–488: a near neighbor might be preferable to a far-distant brother, but equally, a near neighbor is not necessarily unalloyed good. See the further reconsideration of this hierarchy at 985–986. 715. Deuteronomy 6. 16: “non temptabis Dominum Deum tuum”; Ecclesiasticus 18. 23: “noli esse quasi homo qui temptat Deum”; Matthew 4. 7: “non temptabis Dominum Deum tuum” (also Luke 4. 12). 717–722. These lines pick up Abelard’s focus in the Carmen on reputation through association, the example of one’s betters, and the priority of friendship over blood ties; see similarly 477–478, and Cicero, De amicitia, V. 19 and 20. On similes see also De amicitia, V. 27 regarding friendship with another “cuius cum moribus et natura congruamus” (with whose way of life and nature we are at one). See also Bynum, “Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?,” on the “selfconscious interest in the process of belonging to groups and filling roles” (p. 85). Bynum concludes: “the goal of development to a twelfth-century person is the application to the self of a model that is simultaneously, exactly because it is a model, a mechanism for affiliation with a group” (p. 108). 725–726. See also 779–780. 729–732. Abelard distinguishes between forgetting our own affairs (which is condoned insofar as, if these were important to us, we would remember them) and forgetting matters which we are obliged as part of our duty to others (officium) to remember, which is therefore condemned as a sign of contempt. 735–736. There are two ways of reading this distich. The first is that the poor man who spurns wealth will be judged a fool, but only by the fools of the world. Alternatively, although wealth is not to be sought for its own sake, neither is it to be wastefully squandered.

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737–738. See also 945–946, but note also 821–822 on the primacy of moral exemplars over book learning. See also Piccolomini, De liberorum educatione, pp. 160–161: “Sine litteris omnis aetas caeca est, nec alieno carere ducato potest illiteratus princeps” (“Every age without letters is dark, and an illiterate prince must depend on another’s guidance”). 741–742. On the role of an evil will as constitutive of sin, see Abelard’s Scito te ipsum, I.4, p. 4; see also, I.20, p. 21; in this latter reference he distinguishes other aspects that constitute a sin, including a proclivity to sin, consent to evil or contempt of God, an evil will, and the act of evil itself. 743–744. See also 301–302, and Scito te ipsum, I.1.6, p. 1, lines 14–16: “Quae quidem omnia, cum eque reprobis ut bonis conueniant, nichil ad morum compositionem pertinent nec turpem uel honestam efficiunt uitam” (All these things, since they pertain equally to the reprobate and the good, provide nothing toward the composition of morals, and do not render a life either shameful or honorable); and I.2.8, p. 3, lines 52–54: “Quicquid enim bonis pariter et malis commune est, nichil ad uirtutem uel uicium refert” (For whatever is common to the good and evil alike, contributes nothing either to virtue or vice). Heloise expresses a similar thought in her Ep. VI: “For things which do not prepare us for the Kingdom of God or commend us least to God call for no special attention. These are all outward works which are common to the damned and elect alike, as much to hypocrites as to the truly religious” (Letter Collection, p. 241). 745–748. This picks up the argument at 119–124 concerning actions necessarily engendered by blood ties, and their distinction from choices freely made for the sake of friendship. 748. To Abelard’s statement that offering only what Nature impels does not raise one above the level of beasts, Pg adds the rider: “nisi facias plusquam ipse” (unless you yourself do more). 749. Pg highlights an important point that is made repeatedly throughout the Carmen: “q. dicat non dico contra naturam” (that is to say, I do not speak against Nature). Pg phrases this gloss in the first-person: is this the sign of a teacher preparing the text to be taught, or an example of how didactic literature functions, by encouraging readers to internalize moral positions? 750. Pg’s gloss “antipophora” stands for anthypophora: “a rhetorical figure in which one anticipates the arguments of his antagonist, and refutes them” (Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary). 757–758. See also 170–180. This distich is excerpted in Recension II, marked out in the right margin of MS B, and marked in the right margin of MS M with the lemma “coactio.” 761–766. See also 401–424 on the “avarus” (miser), 615–626 on bequeathing goods after death, and 927–934 on the rich man’s bequests.

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761–762. This distich is included in the Trier excerpt, marked out in the left margin of MS B, and marked in the right margin of MS M with the lemma “eleemosyna.” See Luke 6. 38: “date et dabitur vobis . . . eadem quippe mensura qua mensi fueritis remetietur vobis”; Abelard cites this in his Sermon 30 (“De eleemosyna”; PL 178. 565B). He adds: “Ne putetis, fratres, cum haec pauperibus impenditis, vos eis vestra dare, sed sua reddere. . . . Nam cum quaelibet necessaria indignantibus ministramus, sua illis reddimus, non nostra largimur” (PL 178. 567C-D: Nor should you think, brothers, when you give these things to the poor, that you give them what is yours, but that you return what is theirs . . . For when we provide whatever is necessary to those lacking it, we return their things to them, we do not offer them ours). 763–764. This recalls Jesus’s parable of rewards in Heaven in Matthew 25. 37 and 40, where the people will ask: “Domine quando te vidimus esurientem et pavimus, sitientem et dedimus tibi potum?” to which the King will reply: “amen dico vobis, quamdiu fecisitis uni de his fratribus meis minimis mihi fecistis.” Abelard also cites these verses in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, where he criticizes “the habit of cleaning and wiping the hands and knives on some of the bread which is left uneaten and kept for the poor,” which is done in disrespect of Christ who identified himself with the poor (Letter Collection, p. 479). These verses from Matthew are quoted in the Rule of Benedict, Ch. 53: “De hospitibus suscipiendis,” which begins: “Omnes supervenientes hospites tamquam Christus suscipiantur” (RB 1980, pp. 254–255: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ”). This chapter of the Rule also notes that guests are to be cordially greeted for the sake of their embodiment of Christ: “Christus in eis adoretur qui et suscipitur” (RB 1980, pp. 256–257: “Christ is to be adored because he is indeed welcomed in them”); and that the poor and pilgrims are to be received as Christ: “Pauperum et peregrinorum maxime susceptioni cura sollicite exhibeatur, quia in ipsis magis Christus suscipitur” (RB 1980, pp. 258–259: “Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received”). Abelard’s ethically based exposition of a dining table here differs from the medieval courtesy texts that began to circulate from the mid-twelfth century onward, such as Quisquis es in mensa, Dum manducatis, the Phagifacetus, or the Urbanus Magnus, which were primarily concerned with social prescription in the form of table-manners (see Jonathan Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy, pp. 179–85; and Merridee L. Bailey, Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, pp. 23–25). But note that courtesy books did also advise their readers to consider Christ as present at the table in the person of the poor: see Brentano, Relationship of the Latin Facetus Literature, p. 74. 767–768. This distich is excerpted in Recension II, marked out in the left margin in MS B, and marked in the right margin of MS M with the lemma “penitencia.” See Otloh, Liber de tentatione cuiusdam monachi, where the speaking voice of God makes a similar observation to Otloh: “qui huiusmodi vitio fragilitate humana devictus sepe succubuit, tanto longiora et graviora passionum carnalium certamina sustinebit, quanto frequentius eisdem passionibus consentiens

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semet subiecit” (Gäbe, p. 306; he who, overcome in his human frailty by this kind of vice, has often surrendered, will endure battles of the carnal passions that are so much the more enduring and more serious, as he surrenders himself with his own consent to those same passions). Pg glosses the entire line 768, presenting the argument in its obverse: “id est si uincas semel diabolum postea timorose accedet ad te” (that is, if you overcome the devil once, he will approach you thereafter more cautiously). 769–770. This distich suggests that sinning once not only causes great pain and must be repaired through heavy penitence, but also renders subsequent sin more likely. See also 395–396 where physical punishment and long-term cures are juxtaposed; this idea seems to be reiterated in 770 with the suggestion that physical punishment does not avail its recipient. 771–772. This extends Abelard’s position in the Carmen that internal recognition and correction of a sin is more important than external accusation or punishment (see also 1011–1012). Pg glosses the entire distich: “id est si irascitur de reprehencione insinuat se esse reum” (that is, if he is angered by the rebuke, this implies that he is guilty). 775–776. Tartarea: note Heloise’s similarly classical usage in her Ep. II for the image of Hell: “Vulcania loca” (Letter Collection, p. 138). Abelard also uses the word “Tartarus” in his Hymn 55, 1/7–8 on Christ’s harrowing of Hell: “Iustos de tartaro | confestim eripit” (At once he snatches the righteous from Hell); and Hymn 63, 1/5–6: “Spoliatis | nunc redit tartaris” (Having harrowed Hell, he now returns). Szövérffy notes that this is a “ ‘classical reminiscence’ not unusual in hymns” (p. 135 n.). Pg glosses the whole of line 776, offering an interpretive reading: “scilicet inferno quia postquam aliquis est ibi non inuenit medicinam propter aliquid” (that is to say, in hell, because after anyone is there he does not find a cure for anything). 777–778. See Abelard’s Sermon 6 on those who are enamored of this world: “Qui tanto ardentius vitae hujus amaritudinem appetunt, quanto futurae dulcedinem minus advertunt” (PL 178. 426B; How much the more ardently they seek out the bitterness of this life, so much the less do they consider the sweetness of the life to come). On “dulcedo” see Notes to 1. 779–780. See also 725–726. The thought is taken from Suetonius, Life of Titus (8. 1), where Titus declares at the end of a dinner that he has done nothing for anyone else all day, concluding: “Friends, I have lost a day” (“amici, diem perdidi”). Abelard cites this story in his Theologia Christiana (II, 109) from Jerome’s commentary on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Abelard asks that if one like Titus who was uninstructed in the law, gospels, and teaching of the apostles, could do and say such things naturally, how much more should a Christian adopt the same disposition. 781–782. gentili: in Medieval Latin this word can indicate anyone not a Christian, such as a pagan or heathen—see the similar usage at 815. In his Collationes, Abelard introduces the philosopher as “gentilis ex his quos

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philosophos appellant” (§1, pp. 2–3; “a pagan, one of what they call the ‘philosophers’”). Later the Philosopher argues that if a person looks only to his own needs and does nothing for others, he should consider his life of little worth (§131, pp. 142–145). 783–786. These lines sum up Abelard’s position on the relationship between faith and reason that permeates his other writings; in his Historia, Abelard relates that he first began “expounding the basis of our faith using analogies based on human reason . . . In fact they said . . . that nothing could be believed unless it was first understood” (Letter Collection, p. 55). Pg glosses 784: “ille ad fidem per cognitionem” (he should come to faith through understanding). 787–788. See also 385–386 and 573–576 on the hard work required by falsespeaking and false-seeming, and 771–772 where Abelard suggests that a person physically reveals the truth they would dissimulate. On the inability of Nature to lie, see Tertullian: “Si de tuis litteris dubitas, neque deus neque natura mentitur. Vt et naturae et deo credas, crede animae, ita fiet ut et tibi credas” (De testimonio animae, Cap. 6, line 4; if you doubt what is written, neither God nor Nature lies. So that you might believe both Nature and God, believe your own soul; in this way it will come about that you will also believe in yourself ). 791. Iudiciis adsis: compare Disticha Catonis, Brief Sentence 32: “in iudicium adesto.” 793. Pg glosses “dampna” with “ferum” (= “ferrum,” sword?), indicating that he thinks of those losses as threats to the body, or forcible seizure of goods; yet he appears to miss the point of the comparison when he glosses “contemptus” as “uerbi uel iniuriam corporis” (injury of word or of the body), since Abelard’s point is that a noble man fears slights more than personal losses. 795–796. Another interpretive gloss from Pg: “ut faciunt quidam quando reprehendunt de peccato excusantes se, qui dicunt: quid mirum si pecaui; talis maior me forcius pecauit” (as certain people do when they are censured for a sin, excusing themselves by saying: What wonder if I have sinned, when such-and-such, who is greater than I, has sinned even worse than I have). 799–800. See also 529–532, 667–668, and 845–858 on God’s right disposition of the world and the need for Christians to accept it. 801–802. These lines develop the thought of 3–4: there Astralabe was advised to apply himself to learning rather than teaching; here, however, Abelard argues that once the learning process is underway, it is important to disseminate that knowledge to others (see in this regard 34). See also the further development of this thought in 907–910. This distich is included in Recension II, and appears twice in the Trier excerpt (once in each excerpt of the Carmen in it). See Disticha Catonis, IV, 23: “Disce sed a doctis, indoctos ipse doceto: | propaganda etenim est rerum doctrina bonarum” (Learn, but from the learned, you yourself teach the

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unlearned: for the teaching of good things is to be pursued); and IV, 48: “Cum tibi contigerit studio cognoscere multa, | fac discas multa, vita nescire doceri” (When it will have come about that you have learnt many things through study, see that you teach many things, avoid not knowing how to be instructed). See also Jacques Verger, Men of Learning in Europe at the End of the Middle Ages, p. 31: “The idea of distinterested learning that had no goals other than the development of one’s personality and the pure joy of knowledge for its own sake was completely foreign to intellectuals of this time.” 803–804. This distich succinctly combines two key ideas of the Carmen: living so as to be of use to others (33–34 and 38) and the value of self-sufficiency (481–482 and 1041–1042). See Abelard, Expositio in Hexameron, §343, p. 78, lines 2069–2072: “ut non solum sibi, sed etiam aliis uiuat, nec tantum in se bonus sit, uerum etiam alios bonos efficiat tam exemplis operum uel beneficiis collatis quam doctrina predicationis” (so that he might live not only for himself, but also for others, and not only be good in himself, but also render others good, as much by the examples of his deeds or benefits bestowed, as by the instruction of his preaching). 805–806. The story of Mary and Martha comes from Luke 10. 38–42. Abelard appears to have adopted the idea Martha envying Mary from Heloise’s Ep. VI: “But was not Mary sitting idle in order to listen to the words of Christ, while Martha was working for her as much as for the Lord and grumbling rather enviously about her sister’s respose, as if she had to bear ‘the burden and heat of the day’ alone?” (Letter Collection, p. 255). The idea of Martha envying Mary is otherwise quite rare. It can be found in an anonymous eighth-century Spanish commentary on the Gospel of Luke: “martha autem murmurat quia actualis uita, laboriosa et tortuosa per omnia membra corporis, securitatem theoricae uitae semper inuidet. Et respondens dixit illi dominus: martha, martha, sollicita es et turbaris circa plurima: martha, martha, per dolore inuidiae sororis.” (Commentarium in Lucam, Cap. 10, lines 96–101; Martha, however, complained because the physical life, burdensome and painful for all the limbs of the body, always envies the safety of the life of the mind. And in reply the Lord said to her: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and disturbed over so many things; Martha, Martha, through the pain of the envy of your sister.”). It also appears in William of Conches’s Glosae super Boetium, Bk 4, metrum 7: “Vnde in euangelio Martha tenens figuram actionis, Mariae sorori tenenti tipum contemplationis quasi inuidens . . .” (Wherefore in the Gospel, Martha figures the persona of the active life, as though envying her sister Mary, who figures the type of the contemplative life). Constable does not mention the idea of Martha envying Mary in his extensive study of the medieval reception of the two sisters, “The Interpretation of Mary and Martha.” Other than in the Carmen, Abelard’s references to Martha do not describe her as envious: see his Ep. VII (Letter Collection, p. 331); Ep. XII (Smits, Peter Abelard. Letters IX-XIV, pp. 262, 267); Solution to Heloise’s Problem 14 (PL 178. 697A; McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 232), and Sermon 26 (PL 178. 546–547).

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809–810. See Abelard, Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, where he cites Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome, and Augustine on the hypocrisy of indulging in gluttony on saints’ days when the proper response should be abstinence and holy example (Letter Collection, p. 475). 813–814. See also 541–542 and 981–982. Of the three times this thought appears in the Carmen, this occurrence most closely approximates the language of the original quotation in Proverbs 17. 16 (see note to 541–542). 815–820. See also 833–844 and 891–894, Abelard’s Ep. VII to the nuns of the Paraclete where he comments on how Christian worship has superseded that of the pagans (Letter Collection, p. 335), and his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, where he decrees: “There must be . . . no carved images. Nothing but a wooden cross shall be set up on the altar there, though if the sisters like to paint the statue of the Saviour, that is not forbidden. But the altars must have no other statues” (Letter Collection, p. 425). On “gentilis” see the note to 781–782. 821–822. See also 25, 57, 255, and 339. See Abelard, Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “it is written of the Lord: he ‘set out to do and teach,’ that is, he taught afterwards what he did first, for teaching through works rather than speech, the deed before the word, is better and more thorough. Let us pay careful heed to what abba Ipitius is recorded to have said: ‘He is truly wise who teaches others by his action, not by words’” (Letter Collection, p. 391). Heloise uses the argument against Abelard in her Ep. II: “It is no use my hoping for generosity in deeds if you are grudging in words” (Letter Collection, p. 139). See also Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 78, #61: “Sapiens est, qui factis plus quam uerbis alios docere studet” (He is wise, who endeavors to teach others more by deeds than by words). 823–824. See Disticha Catonis, I, 3: “Virtutem primam esse puta conpescere linguam; | proximus ille deo est, qui scit ratione tacere” (Consider your first virtue to be curbing your tongue; he is closest to God, who knows how to be silent with reason). 825–826. See Proverbs 17. 28: “stultus quoque si tacuerit sapiens putabitur et si conpresserit labia sua intellegens”; Disticha Catonis, IV, 20: “Perspicito cuncta tacitus, quid quisque loquatur; | sermo hominum mores et celat et indicat idem” (Observe all things silently, what each person says; the one speech both hides and reveals the morals of men). 827. It was a standard observation in classical and medieval treatments of old age that whatever its detriments, at least it put an end to lust. See, for example, Cicero, De senectute, XII. These ideas are taken up by Abelard’s contemporary, Marbod of Rennes, in his Liber decem capitulorum, V: “De senectute”; see my “Medieval Latin Meditations on Old Age,” pp. 180–182. Distich 827–828 is marked out in MS M with a pointing hand in the left margin and the gloss: “luxurie finem.” 829. See also 407 for greed characterized as thirst.

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831–832. See also 577–578 on remarriage and 707–710 on lust while pregnant. The mutual debt of marriage (1 Corinthians 7. 3–5) means that those who are married necessarily remain subject to lust until death dissolves the marriage. 833–844. See also 637–648, 815–820, and 891–894. See Abelard, Sic et non, Q. XLV: “Quod Deus per corporales imagines non sit repraesentandus et contra” (That God should not be represented through physical images, and against; this is one of the longer quaestiones in the Sic et non). See Deuteronomy 27. 15: “maledictus homo qui facit sculptile et conflatile abominationem Domini; opus manuum artificum ponetque illud in abscondito”; Wisdom 13. 10–19; and Wisdom 15. 15 on the uselessness of the limbs of idols. Abelard’s language in the Carmen parallels that in a passage he cites from Augustine (Enarrat. Ps. 113, sermo 2, 1) in Sic et non, Q. XLV (p. 205) which deals with issues of falsity, artisanship, and the fabrication of movable and immovable limbs. Note that the sententiae appended to the end of the Carmen in MS B and appearing in the Poole 99 fragment contain a couplet from Hildebert of Lavardin that deals with the question of representing Christ: “Nec Deus est nec homo, presens quam cernis ymago; | sed Deus est et homo, quem sacra figurat imago” (see chapter 1 and Appendix A). In the Collationes, the Philosopher argues that reason must be applied to faith to prevent the idolatry of carved objects (§72, pp. 88–90). Here Abelard constrasts the wisdom of the lowly mouse with the credulity of the common person who venerates idols. mus: the reading “mus” at 839 is taken from M (P has “tus”), but is clearly the meaning intended for P, as Pg has glossed the subject of each of the next three lines as “mus” or “scilicet mus.” The imagery of the mouse seems to be drawn from Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 113, sermo 2, 3, as cited by Abelard in his Sic et non, Q. XLV (p. 206), where Augustine critiques those who would chase away mice and snakes from making a home in their idols, valuing what is inanimate over what is alive and can move. 845–858. See also 529–532, 667–668, and 799–800. The issues raised here are also dealt with by Abelard in successive chapters of his Sic et non: Q. XXVII: “Quod providentia Dei causa sit eventuum rerum et non” (That the providence of God is the cause of everything that comes about, and not); Q. XXVIII: “Quod nihil fiat casu et contra” (That nothing comes about by chance, and against); Q. XXIX: “Quod praedestinatio Dei in bono tantum sit accipienda et non” (That the predestination of God is to be taken only as a good, and not); and Q. XXXIV: “Quod Deus non habeat liberum arbitrium et contra” (That God does not have free will, and against). 848. arbitrio . . . liberiore: See Abelard’s Sic et non, Q. XXXIV: “Quod Deus non habeat liberum arbitrium et contra.” There was much discussion among the medieval schoolmen (such as Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas), drawing from Augustine, over whether God had free will, and the notion of a “freer” or perfected free will: “Prima ergo libertas voluntatis erat posse non peccare; novissima erit multo maior, non posse peccare” (Augustine, De correptione et gratia, PL 44. 936, Cap. 12; De civitate Dei, 22. 30; Therefore the first freedom of will was to

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be able not to sin; but the newer will be so much greater: not to be able to sin). This “freer will” was attributed to the good angels who were confirmed in grace following the fall of the evil angels. Peter Lombard notes that by its definition, God cannot have free will: “Free choice appears to be only in those who can change their will and bend it to contrary things, that is, in those whose power it is to elect good or evil, and to do or leave undone either of these according to their election. According to this, there cannot be free choice either in God, or in all those who are strengthened by such grace of blessedness that they are already unable to sin” (Sentences, Bk II, D. XXV, C. 4, Silano, p. 116). But since it was vital to affirm that God created as he willed, and not by any necessity (hence that he must have had free will), this problem was skirted by arguing that the Creator had a different type of free will from his Creation. Abelard discussed in several of his writings whether Christ, as both fully divine and fully human, had free will: see Mews, Abelard and Heloise, p. 188; and Corey L. Barnes, Christ’s Two Wills in Scholastic Thought, pp. 31–33. Abelard seems to be unique, however, in attributing a “freer” will, usually associated with the angels, to God. In the Collationes, the Jew argues that divine laws prove that God rules by providence rather than chance (§14, pp. 16–18). 849. This is the language of Augustine as cited by Abelard in his Sic et non, Q. XXVIII: “Quod nihil fiat casu et contra” (That nothing comes about by chance, and against—where Abelard seems, however, to omit anything in the way of arguments “contra”): “Quidquid casu fit, temere fit; quidquid temere fit, non fit providentia. Si ergo casu aliqua fiunt in mundo, non providentia universus mundus administratur” (citing Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus, 83, Q. 1, 24; Whatever comes about by chance, comes about without design; whatever comes about without design, does not come about through providence. Therefore, if anything in the world should come about by chance, the entire world would not be under the governance of providence); and “Nihil fortuitu fit ab eo qui omnia disponit, quamvis nullus intelligat causam” (citing Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum, III, xiii, 48; Nothing comes about by chance from him who arranges all things, even though no-one might understand the reason). 851–858. See the concluding lines of Abelard’s Historia: “since everything happens by divine disposition, each one of the faithful, when it comes to the test, must take comfort at least from the knowledge that God’s supreme goodness allows nothing to be done outside his plan” (Letter Collection, p. 121), and Abelard’s closing citation from Proverbs 12. 21: “Whatever happens to the righteous man it shall not sadden him” (p. 121). See also Seneca’s De providentia. 859–860. See also 291–292 which contain an identical observation in the hexameter line, but a different moralization of that behavior in the pentatmeter. Here the pentatmeter line develops the ongoing theme in the Carmen of the value placed upon words and the sin of desiring praise.

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861–866. Abelard offers the same harsh judgment in his Sermon 30: “Quod si quandoque sub obtentu eleemosynae aliqua largimur, ad hoc utique intendimus, ut majora recipiamus; et quasi modicam escam in hamo ponimus, ut sic magnum piscem extrahamus, nec tam aliis quam nobis beneficia impendimus, nec tam aliis quam nobis charitatem exhibemus, si forte in talibus vel beneficium, vel charitas dici queat” (PL 178. 593A; Because if when we bestow something under the pretence of alms-giving, we aim only at this, that we should receive even more, and it is as if we place a modest bait on the book, so that we might draw out a big fish, we expend our gifts not so much for others as for ourselves, we show charity not so much toward others as toward ourselves, if there can even be said to be gifts or charity in such actions). In his Historia, Abelard notes that he used a hook (hamum) baited with the taste of philosophy to draw students to theology (Letter Collection, p. 53). 867. This line picks up the distinction in 805 between Martha’s labor (“laborat”) and Mary’s gain (“lucri”). 869–870. These lines pick up the argument of Abelard’s opening lines regarding the proper method for teaching (see especially 13–14). 875. See the similar observation at 689–690. 877–892. In his Scito te ipsum, Abelard notes that God often permits the righteous to be punished on earth, that they may be the more glorified in Heaven: “Sepe etenim deus aliquos hic corporaliter punit nulla eorum culpa hoc exigente, nec tamen sine causa, ueluti cum iustis eciam afflictiones immittit ad aliquam eorum purgacionem uel probacionem uel cum aliquos affligi permittit, ut postmodum hinc liberando ex collato beneficio glorificetur” (I.39.3, p. 39, lines 1006–1011). 878. fornax: the purifying furnace is a biblical image much used by Abelard. See Wisdom 3. 6: “tamquam aurum in fornace probavit illos,” a citation which Abelard quotes in his Commentary on Romans (II.V.4, p. 154), and to which he returns later in that work (IV.IX.17, p. 237). Note that Wisdom 3.6 continues: “et quasi holocausta hostiam accepit illos,” which is imagery that appears in Abelard’s Planctus uirginum with respect to Jephthah’s daughter. See also Ecclesiasticus 2. 5: “quoniam in igne probatur aurum et argentum, homines vero receptibiles in camino humiliationis.” The image of the furnace recurs in Abelard, Hymn 98, 1/5–6 on the glory and suffering of the martyrs: “Fornax aurum excoquit | Sicque purum efficit”; Sermon 29 on Susannah, where Abelard notes that Job and Susannah lived lives of great virtue such that “quasi purissimum aurum in fornace non arsit” (PL 178. 555D; just like the purest gold, it did not burn in the furnace); and the Collationes, where the Jew argues that the sins of his people have been burnt up in the furnace: “nullaque rubigo peccati esse potest, quam non consumere fornacem huius afflictionis concedi debeat” (“there can be no rust of sin which is not burnt up in the furnace of this affliction”; §15, pp. 18–19). The imagery has classical antecedents such as Seneca, De providentia, V. 10: “Ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes uiros” (Fire tests gold, and bad times strong men); and appears commonly in medieval sentential texts: see, for example, Otloh,

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Liber proverbiorum, p. 84, #42: “Tamquam fornacis rutilans aurum probat ignis, | Sic Deus electos purgabit in igne doloris” ( Just as the reddening fire of the furnace tests gold, so God will purge the chosen in the fire of suffering), and the late twelfth-century Liber de modo bene vivendi (misattributed in the medieval period to Bernard of Clairvaux): “Probari te in dolore cognosce, non frangaris: in fornace probatur aurum, ut sordibus careat” (PL 184. 1264D; Know yourself to be tested in suffering, not broken: gold is tested in the furnace, so that it might be free of dross). 882. sicienda: Hauréau notes: “Sitienda paraît un mot altéré. On ne peut avoir ‘soif d’un fourneau’ ” (p. 182 n. 1; Sicienda appears to have been altered. One cannot have a “thirst for a furnace”); however Ballanti defends the imagery: “Ma forse sì, se si è dialettici, e poeti” (p. 133 n. 105; But perhaps one can, in a dialectical or poetic sense). The use of “sicienda” would pick up the sense of thirst as an overwhelming desire for something, used by Abelard in a negative sense in 407–408 and 829. 883–884. See 667–668 on God’s anger; and 46 and 873–874 on how God can appear to allow the wicked to prosper for a time on earth though his judgment will arrive in the end. 887–888. Abelard cites the same proverb in his Sermon 30 on almsgiving: “Et sic in eo completum est illud vulgare proverbium: ‘De alterius corio largae corrigiae’” (PL 178. 564B). See similarly William of Tyre who also calls it a “popular proverb” in his Chronicon: “Factum que est, sicuti vulgari proverbio dici solet, ut petentibus et inmeritis de alieno corio fieret larga corrigia” (Bk 14, C. 14). See also Facetus, 32: “In propriis rebus laus est si largus haberis; | dedecus alterius largo res dando mereris” (There is merit if you are considered to be generous of your own things; you deserve to be discredited in giving the things of another). 889–890. Abelard makes this point elsewhere in his writings: see his Commentary on Romans (III.VII.6, p. 196; and IV.XIII.10, pp. 291–292), and Theologia “Scholarium” (I, 44). 891–894. See 815–820 and 833–844 on the falsity of human-made items of worship. 895–896. These lines develop the theme of false-speaking, and flattery in particular, that runs through the Carmen. 897–898. See 271–272 and notes, and 339–340. This distich is extracted by Recension II and the Trier excerpt and marked in the left margin in MS M with a cross. Hauréau notes that these two lines are contained in a gloss on the Doctrinale of Alexander de Ville Dieu in a Paris manuscript (Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 14747, fol. 13 col. 1) which reads: “Si quis se laudat multum sibi detrahit ipse: Laus est de factis, ore tacente suo” (If anyone praises himself, he greatly detracts from himself: Praise comes from your deeds, with your lips remaining silent; Hauréau, p. 182 n. 2). This is a common admonition in courtesy texts: see Johnston, “Speech in Medieval Ethical and Courtesy Literature,” pp. 23 and 34 for citations from the Facetus and “Urbain.”

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899–902. See Abelard, Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete: “When our spirit prays, that is, when we form words only by breathing and pronouncing them so that what the mouth speaks is not taken into the heart, our mind does not benefit by prayer as it should, so as to be moved and fired towards God by an understanding of the words” (Letter Collection, p. 499). This constitutes another evocation in the Carmen of the contrast between inner (affectus; disposition, true feeling) and outer (sonus; sound) in the pursuit of religious devotion: see similarly 301–304 on monastic habit and 459–468 on Pharisaism and the adulation of the populace. See Susan R. Kramer, “We Speak to God with Our Thoughts,” pp. 23–28, for a more extensive study of Abelard’s writings on inner disposition as opposed to mere “sound” in devotion to God. 903–906. These lines nuance Abelard’s advice in 39–40 on the primacy of holy reading, through the inclusion of prayer as part of the divine conversation. 905. collatio: this word makes best sense as a synonym for prayer, picking up the sense in the preceding distich of prayer as a “talking together” or “conference” (see the similar usage of the word in the title of Cassian’s Conlationes, and indeed, Abelard’s own Collationes or Dialogus). It is significant in this regard that MS M here reads alternatively “oratio” (prayer). Pg’s gloss of the word by “opera” (work) may indicate the pedagogic context in which he was dealing with Abelard’s text; in this sense, he may be referencing the school system in which the master read a lesson in the morning (“lectio”) upon which the students later attempted their own compositions (“collatio,” “opera”). For the range of meanings of the term collatio in Medieval Latin, see Mariken Teeuwen, The Vocabulary of Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages, pp. 232–234. 906. The syntax here is ambiguous, but it seems most likely that it is Scripture that advises one to seek (see, for example, Matthew 7. 7 and Luke 11. 9: “petite et dabitur vobis; quaerite et invenietis”) while in prayer, as a conversation with God, specific needs can be isolated and addressed. Kramer notes in this regard that Abelard particularly embraced the idea of silent prayer, in the sense that God could know and answer unspoken prayer: see “We Speak to God with Our Thoughts,” pp. 28–33. Note however that Pg reads the structure as chiastic, glossing “Hec” as “collatio” and “illa” as “lectio.” 907. This saying circulated widely in the Middle Ages: see Gerbert of Reims: “Discipuli victoria magistri est gloria” (Ep. 194, cited in Münster-Swendsen, “The Model of Scholastic Mastery,” p. 318), and Bernard of Clairvaux: “Discipulus quippe proficiens, gloria est magistri” (Ep. 385, Sancti Bernardi Opera, Vol. 8, p. 351, lines 11–12). 908. istius . . . illius: It seems clear, in light of the preceding and succeeding distichs, that this line is to be read as arguing that praise of the student goes to the master’s profit, by bringing in other students who are impressed with his results. See similarly Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 1.2.16, on advice to masters to foster students in whom they see promise in order to advance their own reputation: “eum, in quo studium ingenium que perspexerit, non in suam quoque gloriam

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peculiariter fovebit” (Radermacher and Buchheit, p. 16; he will particularly foster him, in whom he has glimpsed dedication and talent, not least for his own glory). However, Pg (again) reads the structure of the line as chiastic, glossing “istius” with “scilicet magistri” and “illius” with “scilicet discipuli,” thus suggesting that a master’s praise is of benefit to a student. While this would run counter to Abelard’s position in the Carmen on the proper relationship between masters and students (see 9–10), it does mesh with his Ep. IX to the nuns of the Paraclete where he cites Jerome’s advice that a teacher’s praise is important to a student’s development: “She should have companions in her lessons as well, so that she may try to rival them and be stimulated by any praise they win. Do not scold her if she is a little slow; praise is the mind’s best sharpener” (McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 197). Note that Otloh of St. Emmeram, writing in the early 1060s, warns masters in the Prologue to his Liber proverbiorum that God discerns what their intention in teaching pupils might be, whether they teach for the sake of earthly glory or spiritual glory (“cernit etiam quae sit cura uel intentio magistrorum in doctrina discipulorum, utrum eos doceant pro appetenda et obtinenda gloria saeculari, an pro spirituali”; Korfmacher, p. 2). 909–910. This exposition of a student outshining his master bears strong similarities with Abelard’s account of his own schooling and triumph over certain of his masters in his Historia. Note that in order to maintain his line of argument from the preceding distich, Pg needs to gloss “Vt” (so that) as “quamuis” (although), which would seem unlikely. 911–912; 915–916. These lines continue Abelard’s arguments on the value of exemplarity and the dangers of bad examples that run through the Carmen: see also 33–34, 255, 309–310, 495–496, and 587–588. Lines 913–914 do not appear to fit this theme, but have been placed here on the witness of MS M; MSS B and P alternatively position them following line 902, where they seem even more out of place and interrupt the line of argument at that point on the value of prayer. They probably fit best earlier, in the section 877–886 on testing and preparation for the life to come. 920. See Luke 10.7: “dignus enim est operarius mercede sua.” Among the sentential verses accreted to the end of the Carmen in MS B there appears the similar line: “Est dignus mercede sua quicumque laborat” (fol. 18r; see Appendix A). 921–922. These lines are an inverse of the criticism in 887–888. Hauréau (p. 155) suggests that they help explain an anecdote relayed by Peter the Chanter in his Verbum abbreviatum regarding Theobald II, Count of Blois and Champagne, offering gifts to Abelard: “Item, exemplo magistri Petri Abaelardi qui a comite Theobaldo aliqua sociis distribuenda, nisi ex redditibus meris sumpta essent, noluit accipere” (Cap. 44, lines 169–172; Likewise, by the example of Master Peter Abelard who, given some things by Count Theobald to distribute to his companions, did not want to accept them, unless they had arisen from legitimate income). Theobaldus: Pg glosses this as comes blesensis (Count of Blois), indicating some local knowledge.

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923–924. Peter Damian, Epistulae CLXXX, Ep. 39: “Unde et Salomon de stulto viro dicit: Quia congregavit divitias et misit eas in sacculum pertusum,” citing Haggai 1. 6: “qui mercedes congregavit misit eas in sacculum pertusum” (Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, Vol. 1, p. 378). 925–926. See also 397–398 and 1033. Yet where 397–398 is one of the most popular distichs in the Carmen (see Notes), 924–925 are not included in any shorter recension or excerpt. 927–934. These lines pick up the widespread theme in the Carmen of the right use and disposal of worldly goods. See also 401–424 on the “avarus” (miser), 615–626 on bequeathing goods after death, and 761–766 on the bequest of goods to the poor. While Recension II excerpts only rarely from the second half of the long recension of the Carmen, it includes this entire section. 932. minuta duo: See Mark 12. 42–43 and Luke 21. 2–3 for the story of the widow’s two mites. Heloise cites the story in her Ep. VI as an example of the ethic of intention (Letter Collection, p. 251). Pg glosses “minuta” with “scilicet illas duas pictas.” According to J. F. Niermeyer (Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus), a picta was a local Poitevin coin, and Du Cange describes it as “moneta comitum Pictaviensium minutissima fere omnium monetarum” (Glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis, Vol. 5, p. 245; a coin of the counts of Poitou, almost the smallest of all coins). As with the gloss on 921, this suggests the locale in which Pg was working on this manuscript. 933. male . . . confidens: Abelard evokes a similar sense of wrongful trust in his Planctus Dauid super Abner where he describes Abner as caught off-guard, “male tutus” (see V. 16 and Notes). 937–940. These lines revisit the theme of outward show as against inward disposition. 941–944. These lines give a slightly different (this time, legalistic) perspective to Abelard’s argument in the Carmen on the need for consonance between the inner and outer person; see also 1013–1016 critiquing the enforcement of a particular religious way of life. Pg offers an extensive interpretive gloss: “si aliquis sciret alium culpabilem et ille negat culpam si faceret ipsum iurare” (if anyone should think another guilty and he denies his guilt, if he should make him swear). 945–946. See also 737–738. The use of “scribere” as distinct from “diccare” marks the difference in Medieval Latin literary culture between the physical handwork of writing (actually forming letters on a writing surface) and the intellectual process of composing a text (which might be done orally by dictation): see Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, pp. 125–129, and Carruthers, The Book of Memory, pp. 195–196. Pg clearly understands this distinction, glossing 946 with “scilicet sine dictamine et scriptura” (that is to say, without dictamen [= composition] and writing), which again marks the likelihood of his working in a school environment. Abelard’s Ep. IX to the nuns of the Paraclete strongly

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advocates the value and importance of Latin literacy and writing skills, including both the ability to understand texts and the ability to write: see McLaughlin and Wheeler, pp. 195–207; Vera Morton, Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents, pp. 121–138. 947–954. The idea in the Carmen of reputation as of value to the living person is here extended to incorporate the idea of a reputation that continues beyond the human lifespan. These lines also valorize the written word over the oral as the vehicle of a teacher’s thought. This is unusal given that Abelard’s own difficulties with the ecclesiastical establishment appear largely to have come about after his ideas were committed to writing: see John O. Ward, “Rhetoric, Truth, and Literacy in the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century,” Mews, “Orality, Literacy, and Authority in the Twelfth-Century Schools,” and more generally, Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy. Yet this focus on leaving a written corpus as evidence of one’s life does mesh with the late style of the Carmen. natura: Abelard expresses two attitudes toward Nature throughout the Carmen: on the one hand, it can show the right way to live, offering a guide to sufficiency and simple moral relationships; on the other hand, it is also a kind of compulsion that the learned man can overcome through the application of philosophy. Here, writing is associated with this latter definition, in that it permits reputation to extend beyond the limits set by Nature. 955–956. Abelard also cites Socrates at 283–286, albeit drawing a different moral. Socrates seems an odd exemplar for longevity through the written word, however, given that he left no written texts—see the perplexed comment of Hauréau: “Abélard croyait donc que Socrate avait écrit des livres” (p. 184 n. 1). 957. Pg’s gloss of “preceptore” by “id est magistro” again suggests his role as a schoolmaster. 961–962. This is the argument of Seneca in a letter to Lucilius (XL. 1), which Heloise cites in her Ep. II to Abelard (Letter Collection, pp. 125, 127). 963. Pg glosses: “sed alius nuncius referet magis uel minus uel aliter uel nich[il]” (but another messenger will report more or less or something different or nothing at all). This was in fact a common concern of medieval letter writers, although the opposite view, of the greater trustworthiness of oral messengers, also obtained: see Peter the Venerable, Letter 68: “Sed nolui illud his quas mitto litteris inserere, quia plenius id ab ore nuntiantis quam a manu scribentis accipere poteritis” (Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, Vol. 1, p. 199; But I don’t want to include that in this letter which I send, because you will be able to receive it more fully from the lips of the messenger than the hand of the writer). 964. Abelard similarly recalls his seduction of Heloise in his Historia, where he suggested that literacy would help further an illicit liaison: “Knowing her knowledge and love of letters I thought she would be all the more ready to consent, and that even when separated we could enjoy each other’s presence by exchange of written messages in which we could write many things more boldly than we could say them” (Letter Collection, p. 27).

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965. God as power or potency is a key argument of Abelard’s theological writings: see Mews, Abelard and Heloise. Note that Pg’s gloss particularly targets the worship of saints: “et nullus alius nec sanctus nec sancta” (and no other, neither male saint nor female saint). 967–968. Although the second half of the Carmen is much less heavily excerpted and annotated than the first half, this distich is abstracted in Recension II and the Trier excerpt, and 967 is marked out by a hash sign in the right margin by the annotator of MS B, and marked as a “Lectio” in the right margin of MS M. Among the nine additional verses that accrete to the end of the Carmen in MS V (Rec. II), four read: “Si vis ditari, sublimari, venerari, | sis assentator, similator, dissimilator. | Nescit regnare qui nescit dissimilare; | nec bene regnabit qui multum dissimilabit” (Vatican, Rossi 933, fol. 39r; see Appendix B). This could indicate the Carmen being read as a speculum principis (mirror of princes), that is, as a text of pragmatic politics rather than ethical behavior. Numerous medieval texts pair the terms “simulator” and “dissimulator” as a criticism; the locus classicus is Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae (Cap. 5, p. 6). Isidore of Seville distinguished the two terms in his De differentiis uerborum: “Inter Simulare et dissimulare. Dissimulamus nota: simulamus ignota. Qui enim fingit se scire quod nescit, simulat; qui autem quod scit nescire se dicit, dissimulat (PL 83. 62A; §515; We dissimulate what we do know, we simulate what we do not know. For he who feigns that he knows what he does not know, simulates; but he who says that he does not know what he does know, dissimulates); “Inter Simulare et dissimulare. Qui simulat vult videri facere quae non facit, qui dissimulat non vult videri facere quae facit” (PL 83. 64C; §541; He simulates who wishes to be seen to do what he does not do; he dissimulates who does not wish to be seen to do what he does). Although 967 appears to run counter to much of the advice in the Carmen on the necessity of consonance between the inner and outer person, and between intention and deed, 968 rehearses advice Abelard supplies on a number of other occasions throughout the poem (67–68, 351–352, 499–500, and 595–596). 969–970. See also Disticha Catonis, I, 7: “ . . . temporibus mores sapiens sine crimine mutat” (A wise man changes his morals in accordance with circumstances without sin); and II, 18: “Insipiens esto, cum tempus postulat ipsum, | stultitiam simulare loco, prudentia summa est” (Be a fool, when the occasion calls for it; to simulate foolishness at such a time is the highest wisdom). 971–972. This is the argument of Heloise’s Ep. VI (see esp. Letter Collection, p. 241) and Abelard’s Scito te ipsum; see also William E. Mann, “Ethics,” pp. 281–282. 975–976. Abelard opens his Confessio fidei “Universis” with a similar observation that he attributes to Jerome: “ut beatus meminit Ieronimus, ‘qui multos scribit libros, multos sumit iudices’” (Burnett, p. 132, lines 4–5; as the blessed Jerome recalls: “those who write many books, raise up many judges”). This seems to provide an obverse to Abelard’s earlier observations on the eternity of reputation that writing can bestow: he seems to suggest here that something which should not have been written will always remain in circulation and vulnerable

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to judgment. Pg glosses 975: “q. dicit non incipiant nisi sint certi in hoc quod dicunt” (that is to say, they should not begin unless they may be certain of what they say). 977–980. See 539–540 and Notes; proverbial. 981–982. A repetition with slight rewording of 541–542; see also 813–814. 983. Another reflection on the power of words to create reality from fiction (see similarly 205–206 and 671–672); only a fool is led astray in this way. 985–986. Further hierarchization on this theme: at 487–488 Abelard valorized a near neighbor ahead of a distant brother; here he devalues the neighbor in the face of the friend (who is also more precious than a brother—see 119–120). 987–988. A permutation of Disticha Catonis, II, 4: “Iratus de re incerta contendere noli, | impedit ira animum, ne possis cernere uerum” (Do not fight about a disputed matter when angry; wrath impedes the mind, so that you cannot perceive the truth); this is cited by Otloh, Liber proverbiorum, p. 38, #77: “Impedit ira animum ne possit cernere uerum.” Abelard’s rewording returns the focus to his theme of holding to moderation and the mean. Note the similar thought in the extra verses appended to the version of the Carmen in MS M: “Vindictam diferunt donec pertranseat ira” (see Appendix B). 991–992. A reference to 2 Corinthians 9. 7: “hilarem enim datorem diligit Deus.” Pg references this citation when he glosses “facilem” with “uel ilarem.” 993–994. This advice contrasts with the moving images of grief evoked by Abelard in his Planctus: particularly the Planctus Dauid super Abner and super Saul et Ionatha, where the object of mourning is a friend. Note that the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha ends with David’s face stained with tears (“fletibus,” VI. 65). The advice is also at odds with Ecclesiasticus 22. 10: “super mortuum plora defecit enim lux eius,” and 38. 16: “fili in mortuum produc lacrimas.” It appears to draw particularly from a Stoic perspective and matches the argument of the Philosopher in the Collationes (§128, pp. 140–142) on the need to temper pity and always recognize the working of providence, whatever should come to pass (see Mews, Abelard and Heloise, p. 183; Seneca, De providentia, VI. 2). In his Solution to Problem 14, Abelard also exegetes the beatitude “Beati qui lugent quoniam ipsi consolabuntur” (Matthew 5.5: Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted) only in terms of grieving for one’s sins or the sins of others (McLaughlin and Wheeler, pp. 235–236). 995–996. This saying was attributed to a number of early Greek philosophers who championed the state of apatheia (freedom from emotion), most commonly Anaxagoras: see Erasmus, De conscribendis epistolis: “the famous utterance of Telamon, attributed also to Anaxagoras, deservedly enshrined in the annals of all nations: ‘I knew that I had begotten a mortal’”(Fantazzi, p. 157), and Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind (p. 197). A similar statement is found in the Moralium dogma philosophorum: “Stultus est qui mortem mortalium deflet. Perierunt perituri” (p. 36, lines 3–4; citing Seneca, De remediis fortuitorum, XIII; He is a fool

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who weeps over the death of mortals. Those who were born to die have died). See also Augustine, Confessions, IV. 8: “The grief I felt . . . loving a man who was mortal as though he were never to die” (p. 79). 997–998. Abelard’s image of David quickly reining in his grief is at odds with the multiple biblical accounts of David mourning and Abelard’s own use of the figure of David as the voice of lament in two of his Planctus. Rubingh-Bosscher sees these lines as referring to the situation in the Planctus Dauid super Abner, but there David refuses to cease mourning (2 Samuel 3. 32–37) and there is no mention of him thereafter “putting on a happy face.” Nor do the lines seem to refer to the story in the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha (2 Samuel 11–12 and 17) where there is no reference to David thereafter presenting himself as joyful. Ballanti reads the lines as referring to the death of David’s first child with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12. 15–24), and the story there does match Abelard’s argument to a certain extent, particularly the almost Stoic manner in which David ceases to mourn once the child has succumbed to its illness. However, the lines appear to fit most closely with David’s lament over the death of his son Absalom (2 Samuel 18. 33–19. 8); there David is distraught and laments his son’s death until Joab tells him he is behaving shamefully, at which David agrees to present himself before his people. If this is the reference Abelard had in mind, then David’s lament “fili mi Absalom” would recall Abelard’s opening line of the Carmen and so provide a framework of paternal love for the whole poem. 999–1006. Hauréau argues that Abelard’s placement of these lines signifies that up to the time of his death, he was not cowed, but continued to believe that the three persons of the Trinity were distinct although identical in substance. Thus they indicate an unrepentant Abelard, convinced, despite the condemnation of councils, that he had correctly expounded the mystery of the Trinity. Hauréau therefore represents Abelard, as Rémusat had done before him, as championing reason to the last (p. 185 n. 2). If, as Dronke has suggested, this evocation of the theology of the Trinity was intended as the natural termination of the Carmen, then the preceding reference to paternal love would function as a last thought related to family, before Abelard turns his final attention toward God. These lines bear strong similarities with Abelard’s earlier Theologia “Summi boni” where he explicated the Trinity in terms of the divine attributes of power (God), wisdom (Christ), and benignity (Holy Spirit): see Mews, Abelard and Heloise (pp. 103–104). Mews describes such an understanding as new to the twelfth century, similar only to Hugh of St. Victor’s De tribus diebus. Lines 1003–1004 match Mews’s description of Abelard’s exposition of the Trinity at this time: “This particular attribute of loving-kindness is the specific attribute of the Holy Spirit, which comes through both divine potency and the divine wisdom and by which all things are ordered for the good” (p. 114). However, these lines of the Carmen also correspond with Abelard’s final statement of faith, his Confessio fidei “Universis,” especially sections II and IV. copulat: B’s alternative reading capiat would be translated “one substance contains these three persons,” which is a different theological position from the idea that one substance unites them.

NOTES TO CAR MEN AD ASTR AL ABIUM

241

proprietate: See Jeffrey E. Brower, “Trinity,” on the understanding of “property” in Abelard’s exposition of the Trinity. 1011–1012. A very popular distich in the reception of the Carmen, included in Recension II, the Trier excerpt, the Melk excerpt, and marked out by the annotator of MS B in both the left and right margins. It picks up Abelard’s approbation of correction as expressed elsewhere throughout the Carmen (e.g., at 539–540 and 979–980), but it also develops Abelard’s idea that correction must have an internal component: see 99–100, 395–396, and 771–772. 1015–1016. See also 363–368 and Notes there. 1017–1020. Throughout monastic history there were strong critiques of the discord that blood ties could create within the conventual environment: see the Rule of Benedict, Ch. 69: “Every precaution must be taken that one monk does not presume in any circumstance to defend another in the monastery or to be his champion, even if they are related by the closest ties of blood” (RB 1980, p. 291). Abelard made a similar argument in his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, regarding the abbess: “Precautions must be taken against her becoming presumptuous because of the proximity of her kindred, and the convent’s being burdened or disturbed by their numbers, so that religion suffers harm through her people” (Letter Collection, p. 393). Abelard witnessed firsthand the sort of disruption that could occur through family at St. Gildas de Rhuys (Letter Collection, Historia, p. 97). Yet in his Rule, Abelard also relates a vision of double monastic houses in terms of familial conversion: “whoever wishes to be converted along with a mother, sister, daughter, or any other woman for whom he is responsible will be able to find complete consolation there, and the two monasteries should be joined by a greater affection of charity and a concern for each other the more closely their members are united by some kinship or affinity” (Letter Collection, p. 411). 1021–1024. See also 547–548. Abelard reverts to this theme a number of times in his writings: see his Historia: “In very many places, too, the natural order is upset, to the extent that we see abbesses and nuns ruling clergy who have authority over the people, all the more easily able to entice them to evil desires the more authority they have, holding over them as they do a heavy yoke” (Letter Collection, p. 111); and his Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete (Letter Collection, pp. 409–411). On Abelard’s approach to female headship of monastic communities, and Heloise’s negotiations of this, see Mews, “Negotiating the Boundaries of Gender in Religious Life,” esp. pp. 144–145. On Heloise as an effective abbess, see Bruce L. Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society, esp. pp. 120–125, and McLaughlin, “Heloise the Abbess.” 1025–1030. Ballanti designates these lines “Disordini in famiglia” (Disorders in the family). This again highlights the problem of dividing the text of the Carmen into themed sections, since 1025–1030 flow naturally from the discussion of woman as assuming mastery in a relationship (1021–1022). The same segue takes place in Abelard’s Historia where his discussion of the dangers of a woman

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taking power in a monastic setting leads to his observation: “The satirist has this in mind when he says ‘Nothing is more intolerable than a rich woman’” (Letter Collection, p. 111). These lines constitute a gender reversal of Heloise’s arguments against a woman marrying a rich man as rehearsed in her dehortatio against marriage in the Historia and her Ep. II: “And a woman should realize that if she marries a rich man more readily than a poor one, and desires her husband more for his possessions than for himself, she is offering herself for sale. Certainly any woman who comes to marry through desires of this kind deserves wages, not favours, for clearly her mind is on the man’s property, not himself, and she would be ready to prostitute herself to a richer man, if she could” (Letter Collection, p. 135). See also Disticha Catonis, III, 12: “Uxorem fuge ne ducas sub nomine dotis, | nec retinere velis, si coeperit esse molesta” (Flee a wife and do not take one for reason of dowry, nor should you wish to retain her, if she begins to become annoying). 1031–1036. See also 397–398 and 925–926. 1037–1038. See also 615–626. 1041–1042. See also 481–482 and 803–804; Proverbs 12. 9: “melior est pauper et sufficiens sibi quam gloriosus et indigens pane”; and Horace, Ep. I, II, 56: “semper avarus eget.”

PART IV PLANCTUS—TEXT

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CHAPTER 6 PLANCTUS—LATIN TEXT

Edited from Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. Lat. 288 [f63va] [left margin: Petrus. | abae | lardus.] Planctus Dine filie Iacob 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Abrahe proles, patriarcharum incircumcisi hominis spurci generis sancti plebis aduerse Ve michi misere,

Israel nata, sanguine clara: uiri rapina, facta sum1 preda; macula summa, ludis illusa. per memet prodite!

8 Quid alienigenas 9 Quam male sum cognita, Ve michi misere, 10

iuuabat me cernere? uolens has cognoscere. per memet prodite!

11 Sichem, in exicium 12 nostris in obprobrium 13 Ve tibi misero,

nate tui generis, perpes facte posteris. per temet perdito!

14 Frustra circumcisio 15 non ualens infamie 16 Ve tibi misero,

fecit te proselitum, tollere prepucium. per temet perdito!

17 18 19 20

Coactus me rapere, mea raptus spetie, quouis expers uenie non fuisses iudice.

1 V: sunt; first emended by Carl Greith, Spicilegium Vaticanum: Beiträge zur nähern Kenntniss der vatikanischen Bibliothek für deutsche Poesie des Mittelalters (Frauenfeld: Ch. Beyel, 1838), p. 123; adopted by Wilhelm Meyer, Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur mittellateinischen Rythmik, 3 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970; first pub. Berlin: Weidmann, 1905–1936), I, p. 366.

246

21 22 23 24

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

Non sic, fratres, in eodem innocentes quin et patrem

censuistis, facto nimis coequastis perturbastis,

Symeon et Leui, crudeles et pii: in pena nocenti, ob hoc execrandi!

25 Amoris impulsio, 26 culpe satisfactio: 27 quouis sunt iudicio 28 culpe diminutio.

[f63vb]

29 Leuis etas 30 ferre minus

iuuenilis a discretis

minusque discreta debuit in pena.

31 Ira fratrum 32 quem his fecit:

ex honore princeps terre,

fuit lenienda ducta peregrina.

33. Ve michi, ue tibi, 34. in stragem conmunem

miserande gentis tante

iuuenis: concidis.1

Planctus Iacob super filios suos 1. 2. 3. 4.

Infelices filii, noui meo sceleri Cuius est f lagicii Quo peccato merui

5. Ioseph, decus generis, 6. deuoratus bestiis 7. Symeon in uinculis 8. post matrem et Beniamin

patre nati misero, talis datur ultio. tantum dampnum passio? hoc feriri gladio? filiorum gloria, morte ruit pessima; mea luit crimina: nunc amisi gaudia.

9. Ioseph, fratrum inuidia, 10. que, fili mi, presagia

diuina pollens gracia, fuerunt illa sonnia?

11. Quid sol, quid luna, fili mi, 12. que mecum diu contuli,

quid stelle, quid manipuli, gerebant in se mistici?

13. 14. 15. 16.

Posterior natu fratribus, sed amore prior omnibus, quem moriens mater Bennonim, pater gaudens dixit Beniamim.

17. Blanditiis tuis miserum 18. releuabas patris senium, 1

V: condicis; first emended by Greith, p. 124; adopted by Meyer, I, 367.

PL A NCT US — L AT I N T E X T

247

19. fratris michi reddens spetiem 20. et decore matris faciem. 21. Pueriles nenie 22. orbati miserie 23. informes in facie, 24. omnem eloquentie

super cantus omnes1 senis erant dulces; teneri sermones fauum transcendentes.

25. Duorum solacia 26. perditorum maxima 27. gerebas in te, fili; 28. pari pulcritudine 29. representans utrosque, 30. reddebas sic me michi. 31. Nunc tecum hos perdidi 32. et plus iusto tenui 33. hanc animam, fili mi. 34. Etate tu paruulus, 35. in dolore maximus, 36. sicut matri, sic patri. 37. Deus, cui seruio, 38. tu nos nobis facito 39. uel apud te coniungi. Planctus uirginum Israel super filia Iepte Galadite 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Ad festas ex more Ex more et planctus Inculte plangentum aurate et cultus

9. Galadithe 10. miseranda

choreas uenite, sint ode ut cantus sint meste et f lentum sint longe sint procul

celibes uirgines! f lebiles celebres. facies similes; ciclades diuites.

uirgo Iepte patris facta

filia, uictima,

11. annuos uirginum elegos 12. et pii carminis modulos 1

cantus omnes) omnes cantus, V; first emended by Greith, p. 125; adopted by Meyer, I, 368.

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T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

13. uirtuti uirginis debitos 14. per annos exigit singulos. 15. O stupendam plus quam f lendam 16. O quam rarum [f64ra] illi uirum 17. 18. 19. 20.

uirginem! similem!

Ne uotum sit patris irritum promissoque fraudet Dominum, qui per hunc saluauit populum, in suum hunc urget iugulum.

21. Victor hic de prelio, 22. dum redit cum populo, 23. prior hec pre gaudio, 24. occurrit cum tympano. 25. Quam uidens 26. dat plausum 27. triumphum

et gemens, in planctum, in luctum

pater anxius uoti conscius; uertit populus.

28. “Decepisti, filia, 29. me,” dux ait, “unica, 30. et decepta grauius 31. quamque dedit Dominus

nostra lues gaudia perdet te uictoria.”

32. Illa refert: “Utinam 33. meam ignocentiam1 34. tante rei uictimam 35. aptet sibi placidam! 36. Immolare filium 37. non hanc apud Dominum 38. ut ab ipso puerum

uolens Abraham habet graciam, uellet hostiam.

39. Puerum qui respuit, 40. si puellam suscipit— 41. quod decus 42. Vteri 43. quid michi,

sit sexus qui tui quid tibi

mei, percipe! fructus, inspice, sit hoc glorie!

44. Vt sexu sic animo 45. uir esto nunc, obsecro! 1 Meyer reads “ignoscentiam,” but notes: “d.h. innocentiam” (I, 348); Wolfram von den Steinen, “Die Planctus Abaelards—Jephthas Tochter,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 4 (1967), 122–144, (p. 143) reads “innocentiam.”

PL A NCT US — L AT I N T E X T

46. Nec mee 47. Si tue 48. exemplo

nec tue preferre que prauo

49. Sinat te1 dilectio 50. preferat hanc Domino, 51. unaque tu Dominum 52. amittas et populum

obstes glorie! me uis anime cunctos ledere?

offendens2 cum populo, displicendo Domino.

53. Non est hic crudelitas, 54. sed pro Deo pietas, 55. qui ni uellet hostiam, 56. non daret uictoriam. 57. 58. 59. 60.

Soluens ergo debitum, placa, pater, Dominum, ne forte cum placitum erit, non sit licitum.

61. Quod ferre non trepidat 62. inferre sustineat 63. sponsio quem obligat

uirgo tenera uiri dextera, uoti propria!

64. Sed duorum mensium 65. indulgebis spatium, 66. quo ualles 67. peragrans 68. quod sic me 69. 70. 71. 72.

et colles et plorans, semine

Sitque legis sanctio mea maledictio, nisi sit remedio quam nulla pollutio,

cum sodalibus uaccem planctibus priuet Dominus.

munde carnis hostia, nulla nouit macula.”

73. His gestis rediit ad patrem unica. 74. Secreti thalami subintrans abdita, 75. lugubris habitus deponit tegmina. 76. Que statim ingressa balneum, 77. circumstante choro uirginum, 78. fessam se refouet paululum,

1 2

Steinen reads “Si nate,” (p. 143). Steinen reads “offendes,” (p. 143).

249

250

T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

79. 80. 81.

et corpus puluere squalidum, laboreque1 uie languidum, mundat ac recreat lauacrum.

82. 83. 84.

Varias unguenti speties aurate continent pixides quas f lentes afferunt uirgines.

85. 86. 87.

His illam condiunt alie, capillos componunt relique, uel uestes preparant domine.

88. 89. 90.

Egressa post paululum uirgo lota balneum, mittit patri nuncium

91. 92. 93.

ut aram extruat, ignem acceleret, dum ipsa uictimam interim preparet que Deo conuenit, principem condecet.

94. 95. 96.

O quantis ab omnibus istud eiulatibus nuncium excipitur!2

97. 98. 99.

Vrget dux populum ut hec accelerent, et illa uirgines ut cultum properent, et tamquam nuptiis morti se preparent.

[f64rb]

100. 101. 102. 103.

Illa bissum propriis madefactum lacrimis porrigit, hec humidam f letu suo purpuram.

104. 105.

Auro, gemmis, quod sic pectus

106. 107.

Inaures et anuli cum armillis aurei uirginis tenerrimum honerant corpusculum.

108. 109.

Rerum pondus lecto surgit

1

margaritis ornat eius

et ornatus et repellit

uariatum est monile ut ornetur magis inde.

moram uirgo iam non ferens, que restabant ita dicens:

V: laboremque; emended by Meyer I, 350, but without note. Steinen notes Meyer’s correction but suggests that “laborem” could be retained (p. 141). 2 Steinen reads “accipitur,” (p. 144).

PL A NCT US — L AT I N T E X T

110. “Que nupture satis sunt 111. Mox quem patri detulit

251

periture nimis sunt.” ensem nudum arripit.1

112. Quid plura, 113. Quid f letus,

quid ultra quid planctus

dicimus? ginnimus?2

114. Ad finem 115. plangentes

quod tamen et f lentes

cepimus ducimus.

116. Collectis circa se uestibus, 117. in are succense gradibus, 118. traditus ab ipsa gladius 119. peremit hanc f lexis genibus. 120. 121. 122. 123.

O mentem O zelum O patrem, unice

124. Hebree 125. insignis 126. inclite 127. hac ualde

amentem insanum sed hostem quod nece

iudicis! principis! generis, diluis.3

dicite uirginis puelle uirgine

uirgines, memores, Israel— nobiles.

Planctus Israel super Sanson 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Abissus uere multa iuditia, Deus, tua, eo plus formidanda quo magis sunt occulta, et quo plus est ad illa quelibet uis infirma.

7. 8. 9. 10.

Virorum fortissimum, nuntiatum per angelum, Nazareum inclitum, Israelis clipeum:

1 V: arripuit; Meyer notes that in the manuscript, this word has been corrected to “arripit” (I, 351). In the manuscript there is a dot beneath the “u.” 2 Meyer notes: “ginnimus = hinnimus” (I, 352). 3 V: diluit; the emendation is suggested by Steinen (p. 141), although he does not include it in his text (p. 144); the emendation is taken up by 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 ed., 1986; first pub. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), who notes: “A consonantally impure half-rhyme scarcely occurs elsewhere in the six planctus” (p. 119 n. 2).

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T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

11. 12.

cuius cor uel saxeum non f leat sic perditum?

13. 14.

Quem primo Dalida hunc hostes postea

sacra cesarie, priuarunt lumine.

15. 16.

Exhaustus uiribus, mole fit deditus

orbatus oculis, athleta nobilis.

17. 18. 19.

Clausus carcere, quasi geminis ludos marcios

oculorumque lumine ad molam sudans tenebris plus exercere solitos

iam priuatus, est oppressus; frangit artus.

20. 21. 22.

1

uix sustentans edulio labor hic2 et insolitus agitatur et ab emulis

iumentorum, sumit rarum; ut iumentum.

quid ad hec dicis, impia, per tanta tibi scelera per longa manet tempora

que fecisti? conquisisti? proditori.

Hos cibario quod et nimius crebris stimulis

23. Quid tu, Dalida, 24. Quenam munera 25. Nulli gracia 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Renatis iam crinibus, reparatis uiribus, temulentis hostibus lusurus3 inducitur, ut morte doloribus finem ponat omnibus.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

A iocis ad seria fertur mens diu concita. Tam leua quam dextera columpnis applicita: hostium et propria miscet dolor funera.

38. O semper fortium 39. et in exicium

ruinam creatam

40. Hec patrem omnium 41. et mortis poculum

deiecit protinus propinat omnibus.

[f64va]

maximam feminam!

1 V: this strophe follows the next; emended by Meyer (I, 369) so that “Hos” (here line 20) can refer to “artus” (line 19); so also Dronke (p. 121). 2 V: hii; emended by Meyer to “hic” (I, 370), so also Dronke (p. 121); Greith renders the line: “quod et durus | Labor hunc et insolitus” (p. 128). 3 V: lesurus; Meyer emends to “lusurus” following Judges 16. 25: “ut vocaretur Samson et ante eos luderet; qui adductus de carcere ludebat ante eos” (I, 370); so also Dronke (p. 122).

253

PL A NCT US — L AT I N T E X T

42. Dauid sanctior, 43. Aut1 quis impius 44. Quis ex fortibus

Salomone prudentior magis per hanc uel fatuus sicut 2 Sanson fortissimus

quis putetur? repperitur? eneruatur?

45. Adam, nobile 46. quam in proprium 47. ex tunc femina

diuine plasma dextere, acceperat auxilium uirorum tela maxima

mox hec strauit; hostem sensit: fabricauit.

48. Sinum aspidi 49. quam femineis 50. ad exitium

uel igni prius aperi, te conmittas illecebris, properare certissimum

quisquis sapis, nisi malis cum predictis.

Planctus Dauid super Abner filio Ner quem Ioab occidit 1. Abner fidelissime, 2. amor ac delicie

bello strenuissime, militaris glorie:

3. 4. 5.

dolus in te potuit; par3 eius sit exitus, quos tuus dat omnibus.

quod uis non preualuit, per quem peris proditus, nullis dignus f letibus

6. Dolus execrabilis, 7. cogunt ad continuas 8. dissoluitque pietas 9. 10.

Hostis regni semper claris

casus miserabilis hostem quoque lacrimas mentes adamantinas. dum fuisti es triumphis

11. multis dampnis nos multasti, 12. armis potens, sensu pollens:

manifestus, sublimatus; nulla passus, uir perfectus.

13. 14.

Israelis inimicus

murus fortis, et amicus

Iude metus: eras summus.

15. 16.

Tandem nostris et spe pacis

cedens uotis, arma ponis,

inis4 fedus male tutus.

17. 18.

Dum timendum tibi periculis cunctis

credidisti prouidisti;

19. fide nostra fidens, corruisti, 20. quam de tua, uir uerax, pensasti. 1

Meyer emends to “at” (I, 370); Dronke retains the manuscript reading of “Aut” (p. 122). Meyer emends to “non ut”(I, 370); so also Dronke (p. 123). 3 V: pars; first emended by Greith, p. 129; adopted by Meyer, I, 371. 4 V: in his; first emended by Meyer, I, 372; he claims to be following Greith, but Greith maintains the manuscript reading, p. 129. 2

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T H E R E PE N TA N T A BE L A R D

21. Armati qui horruit 22. inermi preualuit

nomen Abner tibi, Abner;

23. nec in uia congredi tecum ausus, 24. portas urbis polluit per hoc scelus. 25. Milites, milicie 26. lacrimantes plangite

ducem tantum sic prostratum;

27. principes iusticie 28. in tam execrabile

sumant zelum uindicandum.

Planctus David super Saul et Ionatha Sigla V: Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. Lat. 288, fol. 64va-vb P: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 3126, fols 88v-90 v O: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 79, fols 53v-56r 1. Dolorum solatium, 2. laborum remedium 3. mea michi cythara. 4. Nunc quo maior dolor est 5. iustiorque meror est, 6. plus est1 necessaria. 7. Strages magna populi, 8. regis mors et filii, 9. hostium uictoria, 10. ducum desolatio, 11. uulgi desperatio, 12. luctu replent omnia. 13. Amalech inualuit 14. Israel dum corruit; 15. infidelis iubilat 16. dum lamentis macerat

[P 89r]

Philistea se Iudea.

17. Insultat fidelibus 18. infidelis populus; 19. in honorem maxi- [f64vb] mum 20. in derisum omnium

plebs aduersa, fit diuina.2

[O 54r]

1 Lorenz Weinrich, “‘Dolorum solatium’: Text und Musik von Abaelards Planctus David,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 5 (1968), 59–78 reads “et” (p. 70). 2 V: diuisa; Meyer emended to “divina” (I, 373); adopted by Weinrich (p. 70).

PL A NCT US — L AT I N T E X T

255

21. Insultantes inquiunt: 22. “Ecce, de quo garriunt, 23. qualiter hos prodidit1 Deus suus,2 24. dum a multis occidit diis prostratus.3 25. Quem4 primum his prebuit, 26. uictus rex occubuit: 27. talis est electio Dei sui, 28. talis consecratio uatis magni!” 29. Saul regum fortissime, 30. qui uos5 nequiuit uincere,

uirtus inuicta Ionathe, permissus est occidere;

31. quasi non esset oleo 32. sceleste manus7 gladio

consecratus dominico,6 iugulatur in prelio.

[O 54v]

33. Plus fratre michi, Ionatha, 34. que peccata, que scelera

in una mecum anima: nostra sciderunt uiscera?

[P 89v]

35. Expertes, montes Gelboe, 36. nec agrorum primitie

roris sitis et pluuie, uestro8 succurrant 9 incole!

37. Ve, ue tibi, madida 38. qua et te, mi Ionatha,

tellus cede regia, manus strauit impia,

39. ubi christus Domini 40. morte miserabili

Israelque incliti sunt cum suis10 perditi.11 [O 55r]

12

41. Planctus, Syon filie, 42. largo cuius munere

1

super Saul sumite, uos ornabant purpure.13

O: prodiit. O: seruus. 3 P and O place this strophe before the one following; V reverses the order. Without reference to P and O, Meyer argued in his edition of V for the order supplied here (I, 373); Weinrich concurs (p. 71). 4 P: Quos. 5 O: nos. 6 P: dominaco. 7 sceleste manus) celeste munus, O. 8 V: uestros; P: uestri; O: uestro. Without reference to P and O, Meyer emended to “uestro” (I, 373), followed by Weinrich (p. 71); Greith suggested “Vestrae” (p. 130). Dronke argued that “P’s vestri can be construed as a pronominal genitive . . . or corrected to vestro” (p. 231). 9 P: succrescant; Weinrich follows this reading (p. 71). 10 sunt cum suis) cum suis sunt, O. 11 V: perdidi; Greith (p. 130), Meyer (I, 373), and Weinrich (p. 71) emend to “perditi.” 12 P: Planctum; Weinrich follows this reading (p. 71). 13 P: purpere; P and O place this strophe before the following one; V reverses the order. 2

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43. Tu michi, mi Ionatha, 44. inter cuncta gaudia

f lendus super omnia; perpes erit1 lacrima.

45. Heu, cur consilio 46. ut tibi presidio

adquieui pessimo, non essem in prelio?

47. 48. 49. 50.

morerer feliciter, maius hoc non habeat; mori sit assidue, satis sit dimidia.

Vel confossus pariter, cum quid amor faciat et me post te uiuere nec ad uitam anima

51. Vicem amicicie 52. oportebat tempore

uel unam me reddere summe tunc angustie,

53. 54. 55. 56.

uel ruine comitem, uel tecum occumberem, quam saluasti tociens, magis quam disiungeret.

triumphi participem ut te uel eriperem uitam pro te finiens ut et mors nos iungeret

57. Infausta 58. quam 3 uana,

uictoria quam breuia,

[O 55v]

potitus2 interea: hinc4 percepi gaudia!

59. Quam cito durissimus 60. quem, in suam animam 61. mortuis5 quos nuntiat 62. ut doloris6 nuntius

est secutus nuncius locutum superbiam, illata mors aggregat doloris sit socius.

63. Do quietem 64. uellem 65. sic7 possem,

fidibus; ut et planctibus, et f letibus.

66. Lesis8 pulsu 67. raucis planctu 68. deficit et

manibus, uocibus, spiritus.

1

[P 90 r]

[O 56r] [P 90 v]

O: eris. O: pocius. 3 O: tam. 4 V, O: hic; in his edition of V, Meyer retained “hic” but questioned whether “hinc” would be preferable (I, 374); Weinrich gives “hinc” (p. 72). 5 V: mortuos; Meyer emended to “mortuis” (I, 374); followed by Weinrich (p. 72). 6 P: sit add. 7 P: si. 8 P: Lelis. 2

CHAPTER 7 PLANCTUS—ENGLISH TRANSLATION

The Lament of Dinah, the Daughter of Jacob 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Descendant of Abraham, daughter of Israel, bright with the blood of the patriarchs: of an uncircumcised man I was made the plunder, of an unclean man the prey; the greatest stain upon a holy race, abused as the sport of an enemy people. Woe to wretched me, by myself betrayed!

8. What did it aid me to behold the foreign women? 9. How evilly am I known, wanting to know them! 10. Woe to wretched me, by myself betrayed! 11. Sechem, born to the ruin of your race, 12. Made an everlasting disgrace for our descendants. 13. Woe to wretched you, by yourself destroyed! 14. In vain did circumcision make you a proselyte, 15. incapable of removing the foreskin of shame. 16. Woe to wretched you, by yourself destroyed! 17. 18. 19. 20.

Forced to seize me, seized by my beauty, before no judge of any kind would you have been deprived of mercy.

21. 22. 23. 24.

You did not think so, my brothers Simeon and Levi, in this deed both too cruel and too dutiful: in your punishment you make the innocent equal with the guilty, and truly you dishonor our father, cursed be for this!

25. 26. 27. 28.

The incitement of love, satisfaction for the crime: in any sentence these are a mitigation of the crime.

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29. An age light and youthful, less wise, 30. ought to have borne less in punishment from the wise. 31. The wrath of my brothers should have been softened by the honor 32. he did them: a prince of the land, leading forth a foreign bride. 33. Woe to me, woe to you, youth to be pitied, 34. in the general slaughter of your great race you fall. The Lament of Jacob over His Sons 1. 2. 3. 4.

Luckless sons, born of a wretched father, I know it is for my wickedness that such a vengeance is imposed. For what shameful act is so great a loss to be my suffering? For what sin have I deserved to be struck by this sword?

5. 6. 7. 8.

Joseph, the f lower of his race, the glory of my sons, devoured by wild beasts, falls in a most wretched death; Simeon in chains expiates my crimes: after his mother and Benjamin, now I have lost all joys.

9. Joseph, the envy of your brothers, potent with divine grace, 10. what foretellings, my son, were those dreams? 11. What deeper meaning, my son, did the sun, the moon, the stars, and the sheaves— 12. as have I long wondered—signify in themselves? 13. 14. 15. 16.

After your brothers in birth, but before them all in love, you whom your dying mother named Ben-Oni, your rejoicing father called Benjamin.

17. 18. 19. 20.

By your charms you were in the habit of lightening the wretched old age of your father, restoring to me the likeness of your brother and the face of your beautiful mother.

21. 22. 23. 24.

Childhood lullabies above all songs were sweet to the wretchedness of a bereaved old man; unformed on your lips, your tender words surpassing every honeyed eloquence.

25. The greatest consolation 26. for the two who were lost 27. you used to provide in yourself, my son; 28. representing each of them 29. with equal beauty, 30. in this way you were accustomed to restore me to myself.

PL A NCT US — E NGLISH T R A N SL AT ION

31. Now I have lost these together with you, 32. and, more than is right, I have retained 33. this life, my son. 34. You, in age the youngest, 35. in grief the greatest, 36. just as you were to your mother, so also to your father. 37. God, whom I serve, 38. make us to be joined together, 39. or rather, to be united in you. The Lament of the Maids of Israel over the Daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

To the festal dances come as is the custom, unwed maids! According to custom let your songs be tearful and your laments as frequent as your songs. Let your sorrowing faces be unadorned like those who weep and wail; let golden robes be far distant and rich adornment far removed.

9. The virgin daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite, 10. maid to be pitied, made her father’s sacrifice, 11. 12. 13. 14.

calls forth every year the annual elegies of maidens, and melodies of pious song, owed to the courage of this virgin.

15. O maiden, more to wondered at than lamented! 16. O how rare the man her equal! 17. 18. 19. 20.

Lest her father’s vow should be unfulfilled and he should fail to render what he promised to the Lord, who saved the people through him, she urges him against her own throat.

21. 22. 23. 24.

He, the victor from the battle, while he returns with the people, she, in her joy, before them all, rushes to meet him with her tambourine.

25. Seeing her and groaning, her distressed father 26. gives way from rejoicing to lament, mindful of his vow; 27. the people exchange triumph for grief.

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28. “You have deceived me, daughter, 29. my only one,” the general cries, 30. “and you, even more grievously deceived, pay the price for our joys, 31. and the victory which the Lord gave now destroys you.” 32. 33. 34. 35.

She replies: “Would that he would fashion for himself my innocence as the uncomplaining sacrifice in so great a matter!

36. Abraham wishing to sacrifice his son 37. did not receive this grace from the Lord, 38. that he would accept the boy from him as an offering. 39. He who spurned a boy, 40. if he accepts a girl— 41. think, what an honor it would be to my sex! 42. Behold, she who is the fruit of your womb, 43. what glory this would be for me, for you! 44. As in sex, so in spirit, 45. be now a man, I pray! 46. Do not stand in the way either of my glory or your own! 47. Would you wish to set me before your own soul 48. and by this shameful example harm others? 49. 50. 51. 52.

If love should allow you to prefer this girl to the Lord, then offending the Lord together with the people, you would also destroy the people by displeasing the Lord.

53. 54. 55. 56.

This is not cruelty, but duty towards God, who, had he not wished the sacrifice, would not have granted the victory.

57. 58. 59. 60.

Paying your debt, therefore, appease the Lord, father, lest by chance although it will be acceptable, it would not be lawful.

61. What the tender maiden does not fear to endure 62. let the right arm of the man suffer to inf lict, 63. whom the solemn promise of his own vow binds fast! 64. But you will grant 65. a period of two months 66. in which, wandering through valleys and hills with my companions 67. and weeping, I may give myself over to laments 68. that thus the Lord should deprive me of children.

PL A NCT US — E NGLISH T R A N SL AT ION

69. 70. 71. 72.

And let the sanction of the Law be my curse, unless an atonement should be the sacrifice of my spotless f lesh, which knows no defilement nor any stain.”

73. These things now done, his only one returned to her father. 74. Stealing into the hidden recesses of the secluded bedchamber, 75. she lays aside the garments of her mourning dress. 76. Having slipped at once into a bath, 77. with her band of maidens standing round, 78. she refreshes her tired self a little, 79. and her body, grimed with dust, 80. and weary from the journey’s toil, 81. the bathtub cleanses and restores. 82. Gilded spice-boxes hold 83. many kinds of lotion 84. which the weeping maidens bring forth. 85. Some of her handmaids adorn her with these, 86. the rest dress her hair, 87. or prepare the garments for their mistress. 88. Having emerged a little later 89. from her bath, the maiden now washed 90. sends a message to her father 91. that he should raise up the altar, stoke up the fire, 92. while she herself meanwhile prepare a sacrifice 93. fitting for God, seemly for a prince. 94. O with what great 95. wailings is that news 96. received by all! 97. The general urges the people to speed their actions, 98. and she her maids to hasten the adornment, 99. and prepare her for her death as though for her wedding. 100. 101. 102. 103.

This handmaid offers her linen soaked with her own tears, that one hands her purple damp from her weeping.

104. Variously set with gold, gems, and pearls is the necklace 105. which adorns her breast, or rather is adorned by it. 106. Golden earrings and rings along with bracelets 107. weigh down the slender body of the tender maid. 108. Now no longer bearing the weight of these things and the delay of adornment,

261

262

109.

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the maid springs from her bed and waves away all that remains, saying:

110. “What is sufficient for one about to wed is too much for one about to die.” 111. At once she seizes the naked blade which she delivered to her father. 112. 113. 114. 115.

What more, what further can we say? What weeping, what laments, sound forth? Yet lamenting and weeping, we draw to its end what we began.

116. 117. 118. 119.

With her garments gathered round her, upon the steps of the f lameswept altar, the sword she herself handed over cuts her down on bended knees.

120. 121. 122. 123.

O senseless mind of a judge! O insane zeal of a prince! O father, but enemy of your kind, which you destroy by the death of your only one!

124. 125. 126. 127.

Sing out, Hebrew maidens, in remembrance of that remarkable maid, that glorious girl of Israel— by that maid you are truly ennobled. The Lament of Israel over Samson

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

An abyss truly great are your judgments, God, the more to be feared the more veiled they are, and the more any kind of might is weak before them. The strongest of men, foretold by an angel, celebrated Nazarite, shield of Israel— whose heart, unless of stone, would not weep over him, destroyed in this way?

13. He whom Delilah first deprived of his consecrated hair, 14. his enemies afterwards deprived of his sight. 15. Depleted in might, bereft of his eyes, 16. the noble champion is consigned to the mill. 17. Enclosed in prison, and now deprived of the sight of his eyes, 18. sweating at the mill, he is weighed down by a doubled darkness as it were;

PL A NCT US — E NGLISH T R A N SL AT ION

19.

he cracks the limbs more accustomed to practise warlike games.

20. 21.

Barely sustaining these with the coarse food of beasts of burden, because this labor is both excessive and unaccustomed, he eats the meagre fare; he is driven by his enemies with frequent blows also like a beast.

22. 23.

263

24. 25.

What, Delilah, what do you say, godless one, to these things you have done? What rewards, pray, did you seek for yourself through such great crimes? No benefit lasts for long for any traitor.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

With his hair now regrown, with his strength now recovered, he is brought before his wine-soaked enemies to entertain them, so that by death he may put an end to all sorrows.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

From sport to weighty matters is drawn a mind at long last roused. Left hand as well as right hand is pressed against a column: grief brings together the deaths of himself and his enemies.

38. 39.

O, always the greatest ruin of the strong and created for their destruction is woman!

40. 41.

She swiftly cast down the father of all and she serves the cup of death to all.

42. 43. 44.

Who would be thought more holy than David, wiser than Solomon? Or indeed, who is found more irreverent or foolish through her? Who of the powerful is unmanned, just like Samson most mighty?

45. 46. 47.

Adam, the noble creation of the divine right hand, she soon f lung down; the one he had taken for his own helpmeet he found an enemy: since then, woman has formed the most powerful weapon against men.

48. 49.

Lay bare your breast to a viper or the fire, if you are wise, before you consign yourself to womanly seductions, unless you would prefer to hasten to most certain destruction with these same men.

50.

The Lament of David over Abner the Son of Ner whom Joab Killed 1. 2.

Abner, most faithful, in battle most forceful, the love and delight of military glory:

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3. 4. 5.

where force could not prevail, treachery succeeded against you; the one through whom you perished, betrayed, let his demise be the same, but worthy of no tears which your death brings to all.

6. 7. 8.

An accursed treachery, a pitiable downfall, force even an enemy to unrelenting tears and compassion melts adamantine hearts.

9. While you were the clear enemy of the kingdom, 10. you were always borne aloft on celebrated triumphs; 11. with many losses you beset us, suffering none yourself, 12. strong in arms, powerful in understanding, the perfect man. 13. Mighty wall of Israel, the terror of Judah, 14. as both enemy and friend were you the greatest. 15. Finally yielding to our promises, you enter upon a treaty, 16. and in hope of peace, you lay down your arms, falsely safe. 17. While you believed that you should fear, 18. you made provision against all dangers; 19. you fell, trusting in our faithfulness, 20. which, a true man yourself, you judged as your own. 21. He who trembled at the name of Abner armed, 22. prevailed against you, Abner, when you went unarmed; 23. not daring to engage you in the street, 24. he polluted the gates of the city through this crime. 25. Soldiers, weeping, bewail 26. so great a leader of the military brought low in this way; 27. let the princes take up the zeal for justice, 28. against so accursed an act that must be avenged. The Lament of David over Saul and Jonathan 1. 2. 3.

Solace of sorrows, respite from my labors is my cithara to me.

4. 5. 6.

Now, the greater the suffering and more fitting its lamentation, the more necessary it is.

7. 8. 9.

The great slaughter of the people, the death of the king and his son, the victory of our enemies,

PL A NCT US — E NGLISH T R A N SL AT ION

10. the desolation of the leaders, 11. the despair of the people, 12. fill all things with mourning. 13. Amalech prevailed 14. while Israel fell; 15. faithless Philistia rejoices, 16. while Judea steeps itself in laments. 17. A faithless people 18. reviles the faithful; 19. the hostile race raised to greatest honor, 20. the holy people made the scorn of all. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Taunting, they speak: “Behold, how their own God, about whom they prattle, betrayed them, when he fell, laid low by many gods.

25. 26. 27. 28.

That king whom He first offered them, lies conquered: this is the one chosen by their God, this is the one consecrated by the great prophet!”

29. Saul, mightiest of kings, unconquered valor of Jonathan, 30. he who could not conquer you was permitted to slay you; 31. as though he had not been consecrated by the Lord’s own chrism, 32. his throat is slit in battle by the sword of an accursed hand. 33. More than a brother to me, Jonathan, with me in a single soul: 34. what sins, what crimes have sundered our innermost parts? 35. Mountains of Gilboa, may you be devoid of dew and rain, 36. let not the first-fruits of your fields nourish your inhabitants! 37. Woe, woe to you, earth soaked in royal bloodshed, 38. upon which, my Jonathan, an impious hand also you cut down, 39. where the Lord’s anointed and the glorious f lower of Israel 40. were destroyed along with their men by wretched death. 41. Daughters of Zion, take up your laments over Saul, 42. through whose generous gift the royal purple used to adorn you. 43. But for me, my Jonathan, it is you who are to be lamented most of all; 44. among all my joys there will be an everlasting tear. 45. Alas, why did I consent to that worst of counsel, 46. so that I was not a garrison for you in battle? 47. Else, likewise pierced, I would happily have died, 48. since what love may do has nothing greater than this;

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49. and for me to live on after you is to die repeatedly, 50. nor is half a soul sufficient for life. 51. To make at least one return for your friendship 52. was fitting for me then in that time of greatest distress, 53. 54. 55. 56.

a partner in your triumph or a comrade in defeat, so that I should either snatch you back or fall to my death with you, ending for your sake a life which you saved so often, so that death might even unite us, rather than separate us.

57. Unpropitious victory won in the meantime: 58. how empty, how brief the joys I took from it! 59 60. 61. 62.

How swiftly that most unfeeling messenger followed, whom, having spoken pride in his heart, death, bearing down upon him, adds to the dead whose names he calls, so that the messenger of sorrow should become the companion of sorrow.

63. I give rest to my lyre: 64. I would wish also to my laments, 65. and, were it possible, to my tears. 66. With hands wounded from strumming, 67. with voice hoarse from plaining, 68. my spirit also fails.

CHAPTER 8 NOTES ON PLANCTUS

Planctus Dine filie Iacob Biblical lament: there is no biblical exemplar for this lament. Biblical story: Genesis 34. 1–31. 2. patriarcharum sanguine clara: Abelard uses a similar expression in his Sermon 29 where he describes Susannah as “Filia Juda, ut ipse Daniel profitetur, et de regio sanguine clara, atque Dominicae stirpi per cognationem conjuncta” (PL 178. 563B; daughter of Judah, as Daniel himself declares, and bright with royal blood, and joined through this affinity to the Lord’s stock). In classical texts, the sense of “bright blood” connotes nobility; in the medieval period, however, it tends to signify the sacrifice of martyrs, and particularly of Christ, which hints at Dinah being read here as a sacrifice. There is, however, no formulation exactly like Abelard’s. 3. incircumcisi uiri: see Genesis 34. 14 where Jacob’s sons declare in response to Hemor’s marriage proposal: “non possumus facere quod petitis, nec dare sororem nostrum homini incircumciso, quod inlicitum et nefarium est apud nos” (We cannot do what you ask, nor give our sister to an uncircumcised man, because that is unlawful and a great wrong among us). Along with “spurci” in the next line, “incircumcisi” conveys a strong sense of miscegenation and ritual uncleanness. 8. alienigenas: see Abelard, Ep. VIII, Rule for the Paraclete, where he uses Dinah as a warning against abbesses leaving their convents: “Egressa est Dina ut alienigenas uideret et corrupta est” (The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, p. 492; p. 493: “Dinah went out to see alien women and was defiled”). The term “alienigena” recurs in Abelard’s Sermon 3 (PL 178. 401A-B) and Commentary on Romans (I.II.16, p. 88; II.IV.11, p. 136) where he discusses God’s intention of circumcision for Jews and not gentiles (“alienigenae”). The covenant of circumcision is an underlying motif of this Lament that will intersect with references to the sacrament of baptism in the Planctus uirginum (see “Circumcision, Sacrament, and Sacrifice: The Planctus Dine and Planctus uirginum” in chapter 2). 9. male sum cognita: this plays on the sense of “cognita” as “known” both in terms of having a reputation and being sexually experienced (a gendered usage applied

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to women). In his Sermon 29, Abelard argues that a chaste woman fears to be known and that this is the mark of her chastity: “Quo enim quaeque castior est, verecundior esse cognoscitur, et castimoniae summum istud est argumentum” (PL 178. 560D); he makes a similar point in the Carmen, 203–206 and 671–672. The sexualized sense of “knowing” also appears in the Planctus uirginum where Jephthah’s daughter’s virginal flesh is described as knowing no defilement or stain (71–72). uolens has cognoscere: the word play on the active and passive senses of “cognita” and “cognoscere” in this line is similar to that of Bernard of Clairvaux in his apostrophe to Dinah as the figure of “curiositas” in his De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae, X. 29: “Tu curiose spectas, sed curiosius spectaris” (Sancti Bernardi Opera, III, 39). 12. posteris: Abelard adduces here the tradition that Dinah became pregnant through her sexual encounter with Sechem, thereby continuing his line and rendering him a father of his nation. The posterity of Sechem through Dinah was particularly developed in Hebrew exegesis, with two competing traditions: first, that Dinah bore a son (Saul) who was accounted to Simeon’s family while she herself became known as “the Canaanitess”; and second, that she bore a daughter (Asenath) who later married Joseph, while she herself married the prophet Job. The great Hebrew scholar Rashi, who lived in France slightly before Abelard’s time, advocated the idea that Dinah had borne a son (Bereishit, Genesis, 46. 10). As Constant J. Mews and Micha J. Perry point out in “Peter Abelard, Heloise and Jewish Biblical Exegesis in the Twelfth Century,” there are known links between Abelard and Rashi’s school, and between Rashi’s protégé Rabenu Tam and the Count of Champagne who was patron of the Paraclete. This strongly suggests that Abelard may be alluding here to the tradition espoused by Rashi. It may also reference Heloise’s continuation of Abelard’s line, despite his later castration, through the birth of Astralabe. See also Dahan, “La matière biblique dans le Planctus de Dina de Pierre Abélard,” p. 265 n. 53. 14–15: See Romans 4. 9–12 where Paul discusses whether Abraham was blessed by God only after he had been circumcised (“in circumcisione”) or beforehand (“in praeputio”). Abelard expounds these verses in his Commentary on Romans, arguing that of Abraham’s sons, Ishmael reflects the people of Israel who bear the physical mark of circumcision, while Isaac, born after Abraham’s covenant, represents the spiritual circumcision shared by the gentile people of God as proselytes: “Isaac uero, qui postea natus est, gentilis populi postea uocati spiritualem a uitiis circumcisionem exprimit, quam et proselyti praefigurabant” (II.IV.11, p. 128). To Edélestand du Méril, one of the earliest literary critics of the Planctus, the unwieldy theological terminology of these lines highlighted the deficiency of eloquence and purity of style in the Planctus (“Poésies d’Abailard,” p. 139 n. 2). non ualens infamie tollere prepucium: in his Commentary on Romans, Abelard speaks of Christ as conceived without sin and, for that reason, taking up pure flesh without the foreskin of uncleanness: “qui solus sine concupiscentia conceptus, carnem puram et penitus absque praeputio immunditiae suscepit” (II.IV.11, p. 131).

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17–18: Dinah’s defense of Sechem resonates with the opening of Abelard’s Scito te ipsum where he suggests that a man does not sin by lusting after a woman since he has no control over that nature (I.8.6–7, p. 8, 206–211): “precepit nos concupiscencias quidem nostras non implere, non penitus eis carere. Illud quippe uiciosum est, hoc iam infirmitati nostre impossibile. Non itaque concupiscere mulierem, set concupiscencie consentire peccatum est, nec uoluntas concubitus, set uoluntatis consensus dampnabilis est” (he commands us not to fulfill our desires, not to be totally without any. The first is a thing of vice, the latter impossible to our infirmity. And so it is a sin not to lust after a woman, but to consent to that lust; it is not the will for sex, but the consent to the will, that is condemned). There is also an interesting Ovidian echo here of Amores, III. 11 in which the speaker laments his powerlessness at the beauty of his object of desire, crying out “me miserum” (line 44). He claims that her eyes have ravished his (“perque tuos oculos, qui rapuere meos,” line 48), and declares that she must choose whether he loves her by will or by compulsion (“tu selige tantum, | me quoque uelle uelis anne coactus amem,” lines 49–50). Yet in a twist on the Ovidian situation, Abelard here articulates these sentiments through the voice of a previously sinless virginal girl, rather than that of a practiced lover teasing her besotted paramour. This Ovidian interlude also functions as an odd caesura between the two halves of the Planctus that are otherwise heavily indebted to the technical vocabulary of the Old Testament story and its patristic commentary. 22. There are two oxymora expressed in this line: the idea of “cruel and dutiful,” and the idea of “too dutiful.” crudeles et pii: a powerful linguistic juxtaposition of two terms which are usually polar opposites. Indeed, Abelard himself uses them as contrastive in his Planctus uirginum when Jephthah’s daughter declares: “non est hic crudelitas | sed pro Deo pietas” (53–54). Isidore of Seville marks them as distinct terms when he uses them in his De differentiis verborum to categorize two of the four types of love: “Est enim justus amor, pius, crudelis, obscenus” (PL 83. 10A). Similarly Bernard of Clairvaux distinguishes “pius timor” from “crudelis timor” (Ep. 87, Sancti Bernardi Opera, VII, 226), while Peter the Venerable describes Christ’s sacrifice as “pius” and “amabilis,” because it is “uolens” and “spontaneus,” rather than “durus” and “crudelis,” since it is not “nolens” and “coactus” (Contra Petrobrusianos haereticos, C. 202). nimis . . . pii: this is a second jarring discordance within the set of three terms; the exaggerative force of “nimis” diminishes the value of “pius,” rendering it as something less than desirable. Abelard himself uses a similar phrasing in his Scito te ipsum to describe the miser who hoards his wealth, seized from the poor, for the sake of enriching his own family: “Quid ergo tu male pius in tuos et crudelis in te pariter atque deum a iudice isto expectas . . . ” (I.54.1, p. 53, 1383, my emphasis; What therefore can you expect from this judge, when you are wrongly dutiful toward your own and equally cruel to yourself and to God). This is consonant with the pervasive antifamilial rhetoric throughout Abelard’s writings, where he comments frequently on the ethics of being too pious, or too dutiful, in regard to one’s own family above a common or larger good. This is a theme that

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particularly surfaces throughout Abelard’s Ep. VII on the history of the nuns. In the Planctus Dine, the brothers’ excess of duty to their family honor leads to great harm for those around them. 23. innocentes coequastis: almost unparalleled in Medieval Latin. A telling exception is Avitus Viennensis who speaks of the judge who condemned Jesus to be crucified with the two thieves: “quos tamen temeritas crudelis iudicii, non servilis culpae meritum, coaequaverat innocenti” (whom however the rashness of a cruel judgment, not the merit of servile guilt, equated to the one who was innocent; Contra Eutychianam haeresim libri II, Bk II, p. 25, line 16). Abelard’s choice of imagery thus emphasizes the Christlike nature of Sechem and therefore Abelard himself, insofar as Sechem can be read as cipher for Abelard (see “Abelard’s Feminine Voice in Lament: The Planctus Dine” in chapter 2). 24. perturbastis: this term comes from the biblical story; see Genesis 34. 30: “Iacob dixit ad Symeon et Levi: turbastis me et odiosum fecistis Chananeis et Ferezeis habitatoribus terrae huius” ( Jacob said to Simeon and Levi: You have made trouble for me, and you have made me hated amongst the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the inhabitants of this land). ob hoc execrandi: on his deathbed, Jacob curses these two sons (Genesis 49. 5–7): “Symeon et Levi fratres vasa iniquitatis bellantia; in consilio eorum ne veniat anima mea et in coetu illorum non sit gloria mea, quia in furore suo occiderunt virum et in voluntate sua suffoderunt murum; maledictus furor eorum quia pertinax, et indignatio illorum quia dura” (Simeon and Levi, brothers, warlike vessels of iniquity; let not my soul come in their counsel and let not my glory be in their company, because in their rage they have killed a man and in their will they have pierced a wall; cursed be their fury because it is obstinate and their outrage because it is enduring). The powerful term “exsecror”/“exsecrabilis” also occurs twice in the Planctus Dauid super Abner (6 and 28) where again it appears in response to a situation of outrageous and unconscionable betrayal. 26. culpe satisfactio: a common usage in Medieval Latin with regard to penance; it appears frequently in the Benedictine Rule. These two lines further imbue the story told in this Planctus with religious overtones, increasing the sense of the Christlike nature of Sechem and, by extension, Abelard. 29. Leuis etas iuuenilis: a common collocation in Medieval Latin, indicating that there was a medieval sense of youth or adolescence as a separate and distinct developmental stage with different behavioral expectations. See in this regard Carmen, 655: “Religio iuuenis leuis est impulsio mentis”; and the poem “Primo quasdam eligo”, discussed by Carsten Wollin, “Ein Liebeslied des Petrus Abaelardus,” which contains a strophe employing similar language. This poem was possibly associated with Abelard’s school and is discussed with regard to the Poole fragment in chapter 1. 31–32. Again the parallels with Abelard’s own situation are clear, as he appears to be arguing, through the figure of Sechem, that having taken Heloise for his wife despite his elevated status as one of the foremost philosophers of his time and master of the Paris schools, he had fulfilled his debt of honor toward Fulbert and so

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should have been safe from further attack. It is telling, however, that Abelard omits from this Planctus the retort of Simeon and Levi to Jacob’s complaints regarding their acts of vengeance: “numquid ut scorto abuti debuere sorore nostra?” (Surely we could not allow him to abuse our sister as though she were a whore?; Genesis 34. 31), which could equally have been Fulbert’s defense, given Abelard’s internment of Heloise at the convent of Argenteuil following their secret marriage. Studies on the Planctus Dine: r
John R. Clark, “The Traditional Figure of Dina and Abelard’s First Planctus,” Proceedings of the PMR Conference, 7 (1982), 117–128. r
Gilbert Dahan, “La matière biblique dans le Planctus de Dina de Pierre Abélard,” in Hortus troporum: Florilegium in honorem Gunillae Iversen. A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Gunilla Iversen at the occasion of her Retirement as Chair of Latin at the Department of Classical Languages, Stockholm University, ed. Alexander Andrée and Erika Kihlman (Stockholm: Stockholms Universitet, 2008), pp. 255–267. Planctus Iacob super filios suos Biblical lament: Genesis 42. 36: “absque liberis me esse fecistis; Ioseph non est; super Symeon tenetur in vinculis Beniamin auferetis; in me haec mala omnia reciderunt” (you have left me bereft of my children. Joseph is no more; for the sake of Simeon held in chains you take away Benjamin. All these evils have fallen upon me). There is also an earlier lament at Genesis 37. 34–35 where Jacob is told of Joseph’s death: “scissisque vestibus indutus est cilicio lugens filium multo tempore. congregatis autem cunctis liberis eius ut lenirent dolorem patris; noluit consolationem recipere et ait descendam ad filium meum lugens in infernum et illo perseverante in fletu” (and tearing his clothes, he put on sackcloth, mourning his son for a long time. His other children gathered around him so that they could assuage the sorrow of their father, but he did not want to take consolation and said: I will go down to my son, weeping in Hell; and he continued in mourning for him). Biblical story: Genesis 37. 3–35 and Genesis 42–43 (with reference to Genesis 35. 18). 1. The opening line of Abelard’s lament (together with 20 and 35) bears a striking similarity with Hrotsvit, Basilius, 133–134: “Infelix non felicis tu nata parentis | Tu decus atque dolor matris temet parientis.” However, a direct line of transmission seems unlikely, given the limited circulation of Hrotsvit’s works in the Middle Ages. 2–4. sceleri . . . ultio . . . flagicii . . . dampnum . . . peccato: these ideas of Jacob’s crimes and punishment appear to derive from a later tradition than Genesis. See, for example, Micah 1. 5: “in scelere Iacob omne istud et in peccatis domus Israhel”; and Micah 3. 8: “ut adnuntiem Iacob scelus suum et Israhel peccatum suum.” These verses are exegeted by Jerome and much cited in the twelfth century. 5. Joseph . . . filiorum gloria: in the biblical account, Jacob is said to have loved Joesph more than all his other sons: see Genesis 37. 3: “Israhel (= Jacob [Genesis 35. 10])

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autem diligebat Ioseph super omnes filios suos.” In his study of Christian love and friendship, Peter of Blois uses Jacob’s lament over Joseph as an example of natural love: “Amor induxit Jacob, ut plangeret filium suum Joseph” (De amicitia christiana et de charitate Dei et proximi, Ch. V: De naturali amore; PL 207. 875). 6. deuoratus bestiis: Jacob refers here to the feigned death of Joseph when his brothers threw him in a well, took his coat, and covered it with goat’s blood, showing it to their father in order to make him believe that Joseph had been attacked by wild beasts; see Genesis 37. 33: “tunica filii mei est, fera pessima comedit eum; bestia devoravit Ioseph.” Abelard picks up the “pessima” from the biblical account in his own “morte . . . pessima.” 7. Symeon in uinculis: when Jacob’s sons travel to Egypt to buy grain, Joseph (whom they do not recognize as their abandoned brother) arrests them as spies, and keeps Simeon as a hostage: see Genesis 42. 18–25: “tollens Symeon et ligans.” luit: one of two instances in the Planctus where Abelard uses this term to depict a child making reparation or expiation for its parent; see also Planctus uirginum (30). 8. post matrem: Rachel, the mother of both Joseph and Benjamin, died giving birth to Benjamin (Genesis 35. 16–19). et Beniamin: with Simeon held in chains as a hostage, the remaining brothers return home to collect Benjamin as instructed and bring him before Joseph (Genesis 42. 20). nunc amisi gaudia: when he hears that he must give up Benjamin to preserve Simeon’s life, Jacob laments: “absque liberis me esse fecistis; Ioseph non est; super Symeon tenetur in vinculis Beniamin auferetis; in me haec mala omnia reciderunt” (Genesis 42. 36). These details—Jacob’s lament over Joseph as devoured by wild beasts, Simeon as held in chains, and Benjamin as about to be taken to Egypt—point to Abelard situating this lament at a very specific moment in the biblical story of Jacob. Simeon is released from chains when his brothers bring Benjamin to Joseph as requested (Genesis 43. 23), while Jacob later learns that Joseph is alive (Genesis 45. 25–28) and is reunited with him (Genesis 46. 28–30). This lament is therefore not made by Jacob at the end of his life, at the time of his deathbed blessing/curse of his sons, as one might expect from the sense of late-life reverie in its tone, but rather some years earlier, when Jacob’s losses seemed the greatest to him (as he says at Genesis 42. 36: “in me haec mala omnia reciderunt”). The specificity of the moment reveals how deeply and empathically Abelard immersed himself in the speaking voice and context of this lament. 9. fratrum inuidia: see Genesis 37. 4: “videntes autem fratres eius quod a patre plus cunctis filiis amaretur oderant eum” (but his brothers, seeing that he was loved by their father more than the rest, hated him). 11. manipuli: Joseph’s first reported dream, which turns his brothers against him, is of them all binding sheaves in the countryside and their sheaves bowing down to his (Genesis 37. 5–8).

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sol . . . lune . . . stelle: Joseph next dreams that the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bow down to him; this exacerbates his brothers’ hatred and envy (Genesis 37. 9–10). 12. mecum diu contuli: while Joseph’s brothers are outraged by his dreams of dominance over them, Jacob silently turns the matter over in his mind (“pater vero rem tacitus considerabat”; Genesis 37. 11). 13–14. Jacob now turns his attention from Joseph to Benjamin, Rachel’s lastborn son. 15–16. Dying in childbirth, Rachel named her son Benoni (“son of my sorrow”), but Jacob, delighting in his son, renamed him Benjamin (“son of my right hand”). See Genesis 35. 18–19: “egrediente autem anima prae dolore et inminente iam morte vocavit nomen filii sui Benoni id est filius doloris mei; pater vero appellavit eum Beniamin id est filius dexterae. Mortua est ergo Rahel et sepulta in via . . . ” In his Ep. XII, Abelard uses the death of Rachel in childbirth to advise the regular canon he is addressing about the dangers of success in the spiritual life, noting that while Rachel was barren, she remained safe, but that her fertility brought about her death: “Quandiu sterilis Rachel permansit, incolumis uixit. Foecunda postmodum facta proprio partu est extincta. Ex quo patenter innuitur quam periculose id unde gloriamini, suscipiatur et quod haec gloria ruina potius siue deiectio quam exaltatio sit dicenda” (Smits, Peter Abelard. Letters IX-XIV, pp. 264–265). Here, however, he treats her death in terms of the personal loss of a beloved. 20. decore matris faciem: this line is taken from the biblical account where Jacob first sees Leah and Rachel: “Rahel decora facie et venusto aspectu” (Genesis 29. 17). 21. nenie: in Classical Latin this had the sense of laments, but by the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the term had come to be associated with frivolous and vain utterance inappropriate to Christian and especially monastic life. In Heloise’s reported dehortatio on marriage in Abelard’s Historia, she uses the term to refer either to lullabies or perhaps something similar to nursery rhymes: Letter Collection, pp. 36/38: “Quis denique sacris uel philosophicis meditationibus intentus, pueriles uagitus, nutricum que hos mittigant nenias . . . sustinere poterit?”; p. 37: “Who can concentrate on thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying, nurses soothing them with lullabies . . . ?” Within Medieval Latin, the idea of nenie as sweet (dulces) appears to be original to Abelard. 22. orbati . . . senis: when Jacob is bidding farewell to Benjamin he declares: “ego autem quasi orbatus absque liberis ero” (Genesis 43. 14). 24. eloquentie fauum transcendentes: this collocation of “eloquentia” and “transcendere” appears to be unique to Abelard. The term “favus eloquentiae” is not common in Medieval Latin; however, in the Epistulae duorum amantium, the woman speaks of the man’s “favus sapientiae” (Letter 53; Mews, Lost Love Letters, p. 258). Here, as he does also in a number of places in the Carmen, Abelard questions the

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value of rhetoric and eloquence and reaffirms instead the superiority of plain and simple speech. 25. Duorum: this refers to Joseph and Rachel, as at lines 19–20. solacia: Megan McLaughlin notes that it was not unusual for medieval fathers to identify their children as “the ‘dearest consolation’ of their lives”: see Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority, p. 162. Note also the echo of the phrase duorum solacia here with dolorum solatium in the sixth Planctus. 35–36. Benjamin is literally a “dolor” (suffering, grief ) to his mother, since she dies in childbirth, naming him “filius doloris mei” (Genesis 35. 18). Within the timeframe of the lament, Benjamin is a grief to his father only insofar as the demand that he go to Egypt threatens Jacob with his loss. However, 36 also hints at the later history of Benjamin, since in his dying blessing/curse of his sons, Jacob prophesies of Benjamin: “Benjamin is a ravening wolf, in the morning he devours his prey, in the evening he is still dividing the spoil” (see Genesis 49. 27). 37–39. Compare the Epistulae duorum amantium, Letter 50, in which the man writes: “Nos vere alio pacto, ne dixerim fortuna, immo deus coniunxit” (“Truly we have been joined—I would not say by fortune but rather by God—under a different agreement”; Mews, Lost Love Letters, pp. 256–257). See also the prayer composed by Abelard at the end of his Ep. V to Heloise: “those whom thou hast parted for a time on earth, unite forever to thyself in heaven” (Letter Collection, p. 217; p. 216: “Et quos semel a se diuisisti in mundo, perempniter tibi coniungas in celo”). Abelard could not have known that these sentiments would also resonate with Peter the Venerable’s understanding of Heloise’s own bereavement following his death when Peter similarly observed that God would care for Abelard as another Heloise until she could be joined together him again in God’s presence (Giles Constable, Letters of Peter the Venerable, I, Letter 115, p. 308). Planctus uirginum Israel super filia Iepte Galadite Biblical lament: there is no biblical exemplar for this lament, but see Judges 11. 39–40: “mos increbuit in Israhel et consuetudo servata est ut post anni circulum conveniant in unum filiae Israhel et plangant filiam Iepthae Galaaditae diebus quattuor” (a practice began in Israel and a custom was observed that each year the daughters of Israel should gather as one and mourn the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite for four days). Biblical story: Judges 11. 30–40 3. ex more: as in Judges 11. 39: “in Israhel et consuetudo servata est . . . conveniant in unum filiae Israhel.” 4. planctus ut cantus: On the contrast in Abelard’s thinking between a planctus (a song of lament for those who are still in the world) and a cantus (a song of joy such as will be sung in Heaven), see “The Genre of the Planctus” in chapter 2 and my “Planctus magis quam cantici: The Generic Significance of Abelard’s Planctus.”

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7. ciclades: this word is also used by Abelard in his Hymn 62, 4/3–4: “Hic intextas | ex auro cyclades”; Joseph Szövérffy describes it as “a rare word in hymnody” to denote “ceremonial dress for women” (Hymnarius Paraclitensis, II, 134). There are other strong links between Hymn 62 and the Planctus uirginum: the opening lines of the Hymn recall Jephthah’s daughter’s request to wander the hills and the valleys lamenting her loss of progeny (see note below on 66), while Strophe 4 of the Hymn evokes Abelard’s depiction of the preparation of Jephthah’s daughter for death (see note below on 103–104). These parallels between the Planctus uirginum, Hymn 62, and the Song of Songs also recur in the Epithalamica, attributed to Abelard (or sometimes Heloise): see Chrysogonus Waddell, “Epithalamica: An Easter Sequence by Peter Abelard” and chapter 2. 10. uictima: this terms occurs three times in this lament (see also 34 and 92). Here it is used of Jephthah’s daughter by the voice that frames the lament; at 34, Jephthah’s daughter uses it of herself in direct speech that is quoted by the maids of Israel who are performing the lament; and at 92 the maids report Jephthah’s daughter’s use of the term in oratio obliqua. “Victima” is the word used of Isaac in the biblical story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son (see Genesis 22. 7: “ubi est victima holocausti”; Genesis 22. 8: “Deus providebit sibi victimam holocausti”). The word clearly possesses powerful resonances for Abelard, since he uses it of Christ betrayed in Hymn 42, 2/5–6: “Agnus ad victimam | per lupum traditus,” and Christ going willingly to death in Hymn 44, 1/1–3: “Solus ad victimam | procedis, Domine, | Morti te offerens.” In his Sermon 3 (on circumcision) Abelard speaks of the sacrifice of one whose throat is to be cut (“jugulanda victima”; PL 178. 401D) and here, Jephthah’s daughter similarly urges her father to cut her throat (20: “in suum hunc urget iugulum”). 11. annuos: see Judges 11. 40: “post anni circulum.” 3–12. ode . . . planctus . . . cantus . . . elegos . . . carminis . . . modulos: Abelard’s precise and varied technical vocabulary of types of song gives a sense of his musical expertise; this is also evident in the three books of Hymns he composed for the Paraclete and his discussions in the Prefaces to those books regarding the appropriate form and nature of religious music. The literature on Abelard as a musician is vast: for an introduction see Waddell, Hymn Collections from the Paraclete and Szövérffy, Peter Abelard’s Hymnarius Paraclitensis. Recent works in the field include the chapters by Gunilla Iversen, Marie-Noël Colette, and William T. Flynn in Sapientia et eloquentia; Thomas J. Bell, Peter Abelard after Marriage; the chapters by Iversen, Nicolas Bell, Nils Holger Petersen, and Colette in Pierre Abélard: Colloque international de Nantes; the chapters in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard; and the articles in Plainsong and Medieval Music, 11 (2002). 16. This marks the first time in the lament where the question of gender is raised in relation to Jephthah’s daughter; this will recur throughout the Planctus, as she is both rendered more than male by her courage in the face of death, and yet bejeweled and adorned like a virginal bride in order to face that fate. See my “The Resolution of Sex and Gender in the Planctus of Abelard.”

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17. uotum . . . patris: see Judges 11. 30–31: Jephthah vowed that if God gave him victory over the sons of Ammon, he would sacrifice as a burnt offering whatever first came from his home to greet his victorious return (“votum vovit Domino dicens si tradideris filios Ammon in manus meas quicumque primus fuerit egressus de foribus domus meae mihique occurrerit revertenti cum pace a filiis Ammon eum holocaustum offeram Domino”). Note that in the biblical story, as told in the Vulgate, Jephthah’s assumption is that his sacrifice will be male: “quicumque . . . eum.” Jephthah’s daughter is indeed sacrificed in flames as a burnt offering (see 91–92 and 117). On Abelard’s manipulation of the meaning of Jephthah’s daughter as a burnt offering, see “Circumcision, Sacrament, and Sacrifice: The Planctus Dine and Planctus uirginum” in chapter 2. 17–20. Abelard employs very similar vocabulary in his discussion of Jephthah’s daughter in his Ep. VII for the nuns of the Paraclete: “que, ne uoti licet inprouidi reus pater haberetur et diuine gratie beneficium promissa fraudaretur hostia, uictorem patrem in iugulum proprium animauit” (Letter Collection, p. 316). 21–24. Jephthah is met on his return by his only child, a daughter—see Judges 11. 34: “revertenti autem Iepthae in Maspha domum suam occurrit unigenita filia cum tympanis et choris.” 25–27. See Judges 11. 35: “qua visa scidit vestimenta sua” (seeing her, he tore his clothes). Here Abelard has heightened the evocation of Jephthah’s disbelief and grief (“gemens . . . anxius . . . planctum”) and added for emphasis the people’s grief (“luctum”). 28–31. Abelard follows closely the words of Jephthah’s lament in the Bible (“heu filia mi decepisti me et ipsa decepta es”; Judges 11. 35). 29. unica: Abelard chooses the term “unica” in place of the biblical “unigenita”: see also 73 and 123 where “unica” is used to describe Jephthah’s daughter by the chorus of the maids of Israel. “Unicus, -a” is always a powerful term in the writings of Abelard and Heloise. Heloise ends her first letter to Abelard “Vale, unice” and begins her next letter with the superscription: “Vnico suo post Christum, unica sua in Christo.” She addresses him as “unice” at numerous points throughout the correspondence, and also describes herself as his “unica.” The terms “unicus, -a” also recur throughout the Epistulae duorum amantium in the letters of both the man and the woman. The term is prominent in Abelard’s Hymns where he applies it to the infant Jesus: Hymn 31, 1/1–2: “Dei patris | et matris unicus”; Hymn 39, 2/1–2: “Offer, beata, parvulum, | Tuum et patris unicum”; and to Mary: 33, 3/5–6: “Tu spes nostra | post Deum unica.” Of particular interest here is Abelard’s use of the term in Hymn 53 to describe the phoenix: “Avis mirabilis | phoenix et unica” (Hymn 53, 2/1–2), a bird which he notes (as will become relevant in the ensuing argument of Jephthah’s daughter) to be ignorant of the differences of sex: “Sexus est comparis | haec avis nescia, | Sicut est unica, | sic semper integra” (Hymn 53 4/1–4). Abelard reverts to this usage in his Sermon 13: “Haec quippe avis quia unica esse perhibetur, nec masculini, nec feminini sexus esse cognoscitur” (PL 178. 488B).

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30. lues: see Planctus Iacob (7) where Abelard also uses this term to picture a child making a sacrifice on behalf of its parent. 32 et seq. In the biblical story, the only concern of Jephthah’s daughter is legalistic, namely that her father fulfill what he has vowed to God, and does not address issues of personal glory or gender politics: “pater mi si aperuisti os tuum ad Dominum fac mihi quodcumque pollicitus es; concessa tibi ultione atque victoria de hostibus tuis” ( Judges 11. 36). By contrast, at this moment in the Planctus uirginum, Abelard’s imagination soars into play: 36–63 have no biblical parallel and constitute Abelard’s own meditation on questions of sex and gender. In this regard they resonate with Abelard’s Hymns, particularly 120–126, where the themes of virgin sacrifice and the greater value of the female martyr and female virtue are addressed (Hymns 125 and 126 specifically reference Jephthah’s daughter). 36–38. This is a reference to Abraham’s testing by God, where God demanded that he sacrifice his firstborn son, Isaac—see Genesis 22. 2: “tolle filium tuum unigenitum quem diligis Isaac et vade in terram Visionis atque offer eum ibi holocaustum.” However, once God saw that Abraham was prepared to make the sacrifice, he sent an angel to halt the sacrifice and substituted a ram for Isaac (Genesis 22. 10–13). In this sense Jephthah’s daughter’s demand at 34 to be a willing “uictimam” contrasts with Isaac who remains ignorant of his intended role in the sacrifice, even asking: “ubi est victima holocausti” (Genesis 22. 7). Abelard discusses God’s command to Abraham in his Scito te ipsum (I.19, pp. 20–21), where he draws the distinction between action and intention, arguing that it can be good to command something to be done that is not in itself good to be done. 39. respuit: this is part of the gender rhetoric of Jephthah’s daughter’s speech. In fact God does not scorn Isaac; he allows a substitution of the ram for Isaac once Abraham’s unwavering faith is confirmed: “nunc cognovi quod timeas Dominum et non peperceris filio tuo unigenito propter me” (Genesis 22. 12). 41, 43. decus, glorie: in Abelard’s Hymns 125 and 126 that mention Jephthah’s daughter, the refrain is “Ipsi decus, | ipsi gloria,” with reference to God. Here, however, Jephthah’s daughter arrogates these terms for herself and her sex. 42. Vteri qui tui fructus: this line evokes God’s blessing in Deuteronomy 28. 4: “benedictus fructus ventris tui,” but also constitutes a powerful challenge to Jephthah’s masculine gender as his daughter describes herself as the “fruit” of, literally, his “womb.” “Vteri fructus” is a formulation that is far more redolent of female parturition than male insemination. While the Latin “uterus” can technically signify any body cavity and therefore could be understood in reference to male generation, it more specifically references the uterus. This is particularly the case in the twelfth century, with the rise of Mariology and the concomitant veneration of the “uterus Virginis.” Note the double gender displacement of this line, as Jephthah’s daughter not only attributes to her father a “womb,” but also describes herself as its fruit, using of herself the masculine relative pronoun “qui” to match the grammatical gender of “fructus.”

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44. Vt sexu sic animo: This line evokes the fundamental tension between bodily sex and social gender that runs throughout the Planctus as a whole, and informs much of Abelard’s writings on women in general (see my “The Resolution of Sex and Gender”). It raises the question of where sexual identity truly lies: in the physical facts of a person’s embodied flesh, in their attitude and behavior, or in the way they are received within their social context? As a castrated man, this was clearly a question that engaged Abelard: see the discussions of Abelard’s castrated masculinity by Bonnie Wheeler, Martin Irvine, and Yves Ferroul. 45. uir esto nunc: in many ways, this line lies at the heart of the Planctus as a whole, since the laments interrogate from all angles what is required of, and to be, a “man.” Indeed, “uir” is one of the more commonly repeated words throughout the Planctus. From the sexualized love and family honor of the Planctus Dine, to the sibling rivalry and paternal care of the Planctus Iacob, Samson’s weakness to female treachery and yet noble self-sacrifice in the Planctus Israel, the rogue warrior machinations and family honor killings of the Planctus Dauid super Abner, and the touching homosocial love evoked in the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, Abelard explores a range of ideas that congregate around manhood and masculinity. Here, however, the question at the core of all these interrogations—what it means and what is required to be a man—is articulated by a young girl who admonishes her father to match her own strength of will and resolve, crying “Be now a man, I pray.” There are several biblical usages of the phrase “esto vir” that resonate with Abelard’s use of it here. In 1 Samuel 18. 17, Saul tells David that he can marry his elder daughter, but first he must “be a strong man and fight the Lord’s battles” (“esto vir fortis et proeliare bella Domini”). The context of a girl given in marriage in return for a battle victory parallels Jephthah’s daughter who is sacrificed here in bridal regalia in return for her father’s military victory. In 2 Samuel 10. 12, Joab is commanded to “be a strong man and fight for our people and for the city of our God” (“esto vir fortis et pugnemus pro populo nostro et civitate Dei nostri”); this highlights the way Abelard uses the military might of Joab in his Planctus Dauid super Abner to question the male-centered world of martial valor. In 3 Kings 2. 2, David advises his son Solomon to “be a man and keep the observances of the Lord your God” (“esto vir et observa custodias Domini Dei tui”), an interesting reversal of the direction of the similar parent-child advice in the Planctus uirginum; this reveals that Jephthah’s daughter is not only arrogating to herself her father’s sex, but also his parental status. 48: exemplo . . . prauo . . . ledere: exemplarity was an important mode of instruction for Abelard and a “cultus virtutum” (exemplarity of morals) pervaded eleventhcentury school culture: see C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels, esp. Ch. 4; also pp. 189–190 and 229–236. The Carmen is full of Abelard’s arguments about the role of examples, particularly bad examples and the examples of leaders as moderators of behavior; see, for example, Carmen, 33–34, 325, 821–822, and particularly 255: “Nullus in exemplum mala ducit” (No-one takes bad deeds as an example). 49. dilectio: an interesting choice of word to connote “love”: this is not “amor,” which comprehends a more physical sense and is used of sexual love, but “dilectio,” which is the term commonly used in Medieval Latin of parental love.

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53–54. crudelitas . . . pietas: this pairing of words recurs from the Planctus Dine (22: “crudeles et pii”) where the terms are used in concert to describe Dinah’s brothers’ revenge on Sechem. However, “crudelitas” (cruelty) was also a wellknown euphemism for suicide in the Middle Ages (see Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages, Vol. 2: The Curse on Self-Murder, pp. 108 and 320–322). This raises important questions about Jephthah’s daughter’s insistence upon her own death, and whether it constituted a pious observation of a solemn vow to the Lord, or a problematic fixation upon self-destruction, not unlike Samson’s, treated in the next Planctus. On the correlation between Abelard’s depiction of the actions of Jephthah’s daughter and those associated with suicidal behavior, see my “‘He Who Kills Himself Liberates a Wretch’: Abelard on Suicide.” 61–62. Another powerful contestation of gender by Jephthah’s daughter. See also Hymn 121, 4/5–8: “Erubescat | ad haec sexus fortior, | Ubi tanta | sustinet infirmior” (let the stronger sex blush at these things, when the weaker bears so much).These words resonate with Abelard’s description of the Virgin Mary in his Sermon 2: “Haec igitur mulier sexu, sed infirmitatis ignara muliebris” (She, therefore, a woman by sex, but ignorant of any womanly weakness; PL 178. 393B) and Hymn 120, 2/5–8: “Ut quo sexus | harum est infirmior, | Sit ipsarum | virtus mirabilior” (so that by how much their sex is the weaker, their virtue will be the more wondrous); these lines are repeated almost verbatim in Hymn 121, 1/9–12. 64–67. Abelard returns here from rhetorical disputations on gender by Jephthah’s daughter to his biblical exemplar—Judges 11. 37: “hoc solum mihi praesta quod deprecor: dimitte me ut duobus mensibus circumeam montes et plangam virginitatem meam cum sodalibus meis.” By contrast, in his discussion of Jephthah’s daughter in his Ep. VII on the history of nuns, Abelard depicts Jephthah as the one who offers two months’ stay of execution: “Dimissa per duos menses a patre libera . . . ” (Letter Collection, p. 316). 66. This line resonates with Song of Songs 2. 8: “ecce iste venit saliens in montibus transiliens colles” (behold he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills). However, where the bride in the Song of Songs looks forward joyfully to her Beloved joining her, Jephthah’s daughter is mourning that she is never to be married or a mother. Song of Songs 2. 8 is also used by Abelard in his Hymn 62, 1/1–2: “In montibus hic saliens | Venit colles transsiliens,” where it describes the Bridegroom who is calling his Bride; in the Planctus uirginum, however, Abelard reverses the context to evoke a virginal girl lamenting her eternal childlessness. Abelard also alters the topography in the Planctus uirginum from the biblical “montibus” and “colles” (both high places) to “ualles” (valleys) and “colles” (hills). In the Glossa ordinaria, the mountains and hills signify the higher things of contemplation (see Mary Dove, The Glossa ordinaria on the Song of Songs, p. 46). In altering the landscape, Abelard could be suggesting that Jephthah’s daughter is contemplating both spiritual (high) and temporal (low) things in mourning her loss of progeny. These same lines from the Song of Songs also appear in the Epithalamica, an Easter sequence most probably written by Abelard and used at the Paraclete, which follows the Planctus Dauid super Saul

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et Ionatha in the Nevers troper-proser (Paris, BnF, n.a.lat. 3126): see Waddell, “Epithalamica: An Easter Sequence by Peter Abelard” and Michel Huglo, “Un nouveau prosaire nivernais.” The imagery in the Epithalamica of maidens called to a joyful wedding preparation for a bride contrasts markedly with the fauxwedding preparations that lead only to the death of Jephthah’s daughter in the Planctus uirginum. 68. me semine priuet Dominus: a striking expression given that the Lord is largely associated throughout the Old Testament with the giving of seed, as for instance in God’s promise to Abraham at Genesis 22. 17–18: “benedicam tibi et multiplicabo semen tuum . . . ” In his Solution to Heloise’s Problem 42, Abelard reverts to this idea, using the same terminology. He argues that under the Old Law, brothers were required to lie with their deceased brother’s widows: “so that the brothers who were not deprived of offspring might thus absolve their brothers from the curse of the Law” (McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 261; PL 178. 724A: “ut vel sic a maledicto legis illos absolveret, qui prole privati non essent”). Abelard also declares: “We read also that none of the holy patriarchs were deprived of seed” (McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 262; PL 178. 724A: “Unde et nullos sanctorum Patrum legimus semine privatos”). In this lament, however, the childlessness mourned by Jephthah’s daughter is presented not in nationalistic terms (the loss of the seed of Israel) but in personal terms as her own individual loss. 69–70. Abelard is referring here to what he believed was the Old Testament curse upon barrenness in women, a concept he drew from Augustine and Jerome, and which was thought to have been articulated in texts such as Exodus 23. 26: “non erit infecunda nec sterilis in terra tua.” Abelard raised this idea in a number of his writings, including his Sermon 1 on the Virgin Mary (see PL 178. 382C: “ex ipsa maxime legis sanctione, quae sub maledicto ponebat omnes qui non relinquerent semen in Israel” and 384C: “legis maledictum evitet”) and his Solutions to Heloise’s Problemata. In his Solution to Problem 31, Abelard argues that Hannah was unhappy “because she is cursed with barrenness, and has left no seed in Israel” (McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 251; PL 178. 715A: “Infelicem se dicit, quasi probrosam, quia maledicta sterilis, et quae semen non reliquit in Israel”). In his Solution to Problem 42, Abelard refers to “the curse of the Law upon those who left no seed in Israel” (McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 260; PL 178. 723A: “legis maledicto in eos, qui semen in Israel non relinquerent”) and within this context adduces Jephthah’s daughter as an example: “Mindful of the malediction of the Law, Jephtha’s daughter mourned her virginity, because by dying a virgin, she left no seed in Israel” (McLaughlin and Wheeler, p. 262; PL 178. 724C: “Hoc maledictum legis Jephte filia considerans, virginitatem suam deflebat, quod virgo moritura semen in Israel non esset relictura”). Abelard mentions the idea again in his Collationes, where the Philospher raises the issue (Collationes, §59, p. 72: “potius illam maledictam censeatis que non reliquerit semen in Israel”), but John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi characterize this as a misunderstanding by Abelard of the Jewish Scriptures (p. 72 n. 166). 71–72. Abelard uses similar terminology in his Sermon 29 to describe Susannah offering her body as a stainless sacrifice: “atque ipsum corpus quod appetebatur

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ad culpam, hostiam offerret immaculatam” (PL 178. 556A). See also Wisdom 3.6: “tamquam aurum in fornace probavit illos, et quasi holocausta hostiam accepit illos.” The imagery of gold being purified in the furnace recurs throughout Abelard’s writings, including in his Carmen, 879 (see the notes to that line in this book, chapter 5). 73. See Judges 11. 39: “expletisque duobus mensibus reversa est ad patrem suum.” Abelard subsequently devotes more than fifty lines of powerful poetry to depicting the preparations of Jephthah’s daughter for her death, the act of sacrifice, and the general reaction to it, all of which is rendered in the biblical account in a single line: “et fecit ei sicut voverat quae ignorabat virum.” For the biblical description at this point of Jephthah’s daughter as “quae ignorabat virum” (she who had known no man), Abelard simply and tellingly substitutes “unica” (his only one). 74. Secreti thalami . . . abdita: Abelard here begins his extended depiction of Jephthah’s daughter as a bride-to-be. He uses the language of the marriage-bed and the private inner sanctum of the bride and bridegroom in numerous of his writings to signify the proper enclosure of the monastic contemplative life (e.g., Epp. V, VIII, and XII). 74–107. This extended scene of the bridal preparations for Jephthah’s daughter resonates with Abelard’s Hymn 62, 4/1–6: “Quae regis sponsae congruant, | Quae reginae conveniant, | Hic intextas | ex auro cyclades | Cum purpuris | gemmatis indues.” Both this hymn and the Planctus uirginum would appear to reference the Royal Wedding Song of Psalm 44. There is also a certain similarity with Hrotsvit, Pelagius, 220–222: “Omneque lavacro corpus detergere puro, | Lotaque purpureo circumdare tegmine membra, | Collum gemmatis necnon ornare metallis.” 79–81. There is a strong allusion here to the New Testament sacrament of baptism (“mundat ac recreat lauacrum”), which picks up Abelard’s theological references in the Planctus Dine to the Old Testament covenant of circumscision. In this strophe, the bath (i.e., baptism) washes clean the body that is described as “languidum,” a term that resonates with sexuality, drawn from the Song of Songs 2. 5 and 5. 8: “amore langueo.” 89. uirgo lota balneum: see Abelard’s Hymn 30, 6/1–4 on the Virgin Mary: “Defuerunt | fortassis balnea, | Sed, quam lavent, | non erat macula.” 104–110. In the Carmen, in a section on false-seeming and false appearances, Abelard warns that those who are anxious to effect marriages will adorn young girls, but wiser men will quickly divest their bride of such baubles (669–670). 111. This line bears strong lexical similarities with the near sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22. 10: “extenditque manum et arripuit gladium ut immolaret filium.” Yet in what constitutes another of the gender/power reversals of this lament, where Abraham was the one who seized the sword, here it is Jephthah’s daughter, the sacrifice herself, who grasps the weapon, an action that Abelard will refer to again at 118.

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112. Quid plura: a common interjection in twelfth-century Latin generally, where it tends to bring a prefatory discussion of events to a swift culmination. In this instance it calls to mind Abelard’s narration of his amatory relations with Heloise in the Historia: “Quid plura? Primum domo una coniungimur, postmodum animo” (Letter Collection, p. 28; p. 29: “Need I say more? We were united, first under one roof, then in heart”). Here, however, it marks a fatal, not a sexual, consummation. 116–117. The biblical account of this story gives no details of the execution of Jephthah’s daughter but simply relates: “fecit ei sicut voverat” ( Judges 11. 39; he did to her just as he had vowed). Abelard, on the other hand, offers a powerful recreation of the events, drawing on the image of the virgin Apollonia who threw herself onto a pyre before the horrified eyes of her persecutors, demonstrating how a woman was not afraid to die. Abelard relates this story in Quaestio CLV of his Sic et non on suicide, sourcing it from Euseubius’s Historia ecclesiastica, and both the imagery and vocabulary resonate with this Planctus: Apollonia sees the fire blazing high (“rogum vidit esse succensum”), she snatches herself from the hands of her captors (“se e manibus eripuit impiorum”) and throws herself willingly (“sponte”) upon the flames. 118. traditus ab ipsa: as above at 111, Abelard insists on the willing collusion of Jephthah’s daughter in her own death. 120: mentem amentem: these words are drawn from Augustine’s De civitate Dei, 1. 33 and Abelard includes them in Sententia 11 of Q. CLV of his Sic et non on suicide, citing: “O mentes amentes! quis est hic tantus non error sed furor?” To this citation in the Sic et non, Abelard joins another quote from Augustine, De civitate Dei, 1. 26, dealing with the suicides of holy women, undertaken to preserve their chastity. This contributes to the theme of suicidality that runs not only through this lament, but through a number of the Planctus, and indeed many of Abelard’s other writings. Interestingly, in terms of the imagery of baptism in this Planctus, Abelard also cites Augustine’s line “O mentes amentes . . . ” in Sententia 3 of Q. CVII of his Sic et non on the efficacy of baptism. See also Abelard’s apostrophe in Sermon 29 on Susannah: “O caeci caecorum duces, et expertes justitiae judices” (PL 178. 557 D). 121. zelum insanum: zeal is allied with the pursuit of justice in the Planctus; in the Planctus Dauid super Abner (27) it highlights the fallibility of human approaches to justice. “Zeal” appears around sixty times in Abelard’s writings where it tends to have negative rather than positive connotations, and is frequently found in the phrase “zelo justitiae.” In terms of zeal associated with a lack of sense or understanding, see Ep. V where Abelard describes Origen’s act of self-castration: “zelum quippe Dei habens sed non secundum scientiam; homicidii incurrit reatum” (Letter Collection, p. 202; p. 203: “True, he has zeal for God, but an ill-informed zeal, and he can be accused of homicide”). Abelard notes this dipolar nature of zeal in his Sermon 29 on Susannah: “Unde et tam bonus quam malus zelus dicitur vehemens, scilicet commotio animi ac sollicitudo ad aliquid agendum” (PL 178. 557B; wherefore violent zeal, which is to say, a disturbance of the mind and

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an anxiety to do something, is said to be equally bad as good). He makes a similar point in his Commentary on Romans: “Zelus, siue bonus siue malus, dicitur feruor quilibet atque commotio accensi animi ad aliquid gerendum”(IV.X.2, p. 249). In terms of a traditional association of madness and zeal, see Augustine’s Sermo 116: “Insaniant Judaei, impleantur zelo: lapidetur Stephanus” (PL 38. 660). 122. hostem generis: insofar as his only child dies a virgin without issue, in killing her, Jephthah effectively ends his line. 123. unice: the third usage of this loaded term in the lament (see also 29 and 73); it underlines the horror of Jephthah’s action. Studies on the Planctus uirginum: r
Peter Dronke, “Medieval Poetry—I: Abélard,” The Listener (November 25, 1965), 841–845. r
Margaret Alexiou and Peter Dronke, “The Lament of Jephtha’s Daughter: Themes, Traditions, Originality,” in Dronke, Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992), pp. 345– 388 (first pub. Studi medievali, 3a serie, 12 [1971], 819–863). r
Wolfram von den Steinen, “Die Planctus Abaelards—Jephthas Tochter,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 4 (1967), 122–144. Planctus Israel super Sanson Biblical lament: there is no biblical exemplar for this lament. Biblical story: Judges 16. 1–2: See Psalm 35. 7: “iustitia tua quasi montes Dei; iudicia tua abyssus multa.” The phrase “iudicia Dei abissus multa” appears commonly in Medieval Latin texts and Abelard himself cites it numerous times in his writings. His Expositio in Hexameron opens with a reference to the “Immensam . . . habissum profunditatis” (§8, line 65, p. 5), and he provides a definition of “Habissum” (abyss) later in this text (§25, lines 223–225, p. 11). In his Scito te ipsum, Abelard uses the statement “Abissus quippe multa dei iudicia sunt” to discuss who constitute the saved and the damned (I.44.4, p. 43, lines 1115–1118). His Commentary on Romans 11. 33 (“o altitudo divitiarum sapientiae et scientiae Dei; quam inconprehensibilia sunt iudicia eius et investigabiles viae eius”) uses the phrase “multam abyssum diuini iudicii” to discuss the salvation of the gentiles (IV.XI.33, p. 271). Abelard also cites the phrase twice in his Sic et non, in Q. CXIII on baptism (citing Augustine) and Q. CXLVI on God’s punishment of sins (citing Origen). 7–9. Heloise similarly describes Samson in her Ep. IV: “Fortissimum illum Nazareum Domini et angelo nuntiante conceptum” (Letter Collection, p. 166; p. 167: “that mighty man of the Lord, the Nazirite whose conception was announced by an angel”). Compare Abelard, Theologia Christiana, II. 89: “et Nazaraeum Domini Samsonem, cuius per angelum natiuitas annuntiata fuerat, concupiscentia mulieris usque ad interitum attraxit.”

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8. nuntiatum per angelum: See Judges 13. 3–5 where Samson’s mother is told “concipies et paries filium cuius non tanget caput novacula; erit enim nazareus Dei ab infantia sua et ex matris utero” ( Judges 13. 5: You will conceive and bear a son whose head no razor must touch. For he will be a Nazirite of God from his infancy and from the womb of his mother). 9. Nazareum: the qualities required of a Nazirite were set out in Numbers 6. 1–21 and included abstinence from all products of the grape and a prohibition against cutting the hair of the head. Peter Dronke argues that the phrases used by the speaking voice here to describe Samson would have evoked for twelfth-century audiences “the traditional signs of Samson as figura of Christ, likewise heralded by an angel, likewise Nazareus” (Poetic Individuality, p. 134). 11–12. Abelard expands on the concept of the “heart of stone” (“cor saxeum”) in his Hymn 108 on the martyrdom of St. Eustachius: “Cuius cor saxeum | horum temptatio, | Quod pectus ferreum | non mollit passio, | Quem non continuo | movet ad lacrimas | Tam miserabilis | horum calamitas?” (Hymn 108, 5/1–8; Whose heart of stone, whose breast of iron does not their trials, their sufferings soften? Whom does not their lamentable downfall move constantly to tears?). See also the note to “athleta” at 16 below. 13. Dalida sacra cesarie: after a number of failed attempts, Delilah finally managed to elicit from Samson the secret of his strength, which was that as a Nazarite, he could never cut his hair ( Judges 16. 17). Putting him to sleep with his head in her lap, she then cut seven locks of his hair ( Judges 16. 19). 14. hostes . . . priuarent lumine: Once Delilah had weakened Samson by cutting his hair, the Philistines seized him and put out his eyes ( Judges 16. 21). 16. athleta: this is a word Abelard uses throughout his sermons and Hymns to describe Christ and Christian martyrs. In Sermon 11, Abelard describes Christ undergoing the fear and torment of death just prior to his Passion as a “fortem athletam” (PL 178. 469A). Interestingly, this sermon also refers to the “cup of death” that Jesus must drain (PL 178. 468B-C, citing Matthew 26. 39, 42; which picks up 41 below on “mortis poculum”) and contains Abelard’s call for a compassionate response to Christ’s suffering in terms of “stone hearts,” which refers back to 11 above: “Cujus cor lapideum dolor iste non scindat?” (PL 178. 470A). In Sermon 32 on the martyrdom of St. Stephen, Abelard describes Stephen as an “athleta” (PL 178. 577C). In his Hymn 100 on martyrs, Abelard notes that “Hinc athletae | pugnant Christi | Et irrident | hostes tuti”; this picks up the theme of enemies laughing at God’s heroes, which arises later in this Planctus (when Samson is led out to play, 29) and in the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha (17–21). Hymn 100 then continues with the words: “Adamante | bitumen robustius . . . ” (1/13–14), which picks up the terminology used by Abelard of Abner in his Planctus Dauid super Abner (8). 16–18. These lines are almost the only ones in the Planctus taken directly from the biblical account—see Judges 16. 21: “et clausum in carcere molere fecerunt.”

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18. geminis . . . tenebris: Samson is both enclosed in a dark prison and without his sight. Dronke notes that there was an exegetical tradition dating from Gregory the Great of reading Samson’s “doubled blindness” as indicative of spiritual blindness as well: see Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages, p. 131. 20. cibario . . . edulio iumentorum: Abelard uses the term “cibarius” a number of times in his writings to refer to coarse bread appropriate to the monastic life. The term “edulium” tends to have negative connotations in the Bible, as in Genesis where Esau sells Jacob his birthright for food that is only fit for beasts: “et sic accepto pane et lentis edulio comedit et bibit” (Genesis 25. 34). Dronke suggests that behind Samson here lies the figure of Adam “driven out of paradise, who is cursed to the labor insolitus of toiling for his food and compelled to eat the fodder of beasts . . . (Gen. III. 17–18)”: Poetic Individuality, p. 135. 23–25. Que . . . munera: the Philistines offer Delilah payment for her betrayal of Samson—see Judges 16. 5: “quod si feceris dabimus tibi singuli mille centum argenteos.” Reference to a traitor’s gains being shortlived would draw to mind for medieval readers the exemplar of Judas, whose suicide put a swift end to his enjoyment of the thirty pieces of silver he received for betraying Christ. Dalida . . . proditori: in his Carmen, Abelard claims that “the prostitute and the traitor win over all by their compliance” (225), a line that is especially meaningful here, since both terms can describe Delilah. While Delilah is not specifically described as a prostitute either in the biblical account or in this Planctus, there is a certain underlying assumption of such a role, because Samson had previously been with a prostitute ( Judges 16. 1–3), and because as a sexually active and treacherous woman who accepts money for her acts, Delilah fits the definition of a whore. Abelard does in fact struggle to distinguish sexually active women from prostitutes in the Carmen (211–216) and later in that poem uses the term “Delilah” to signify any sexually active woman: “Ne te blandiciis seducere Dalida possit | que tecum dormit, sit tibi cura uigil” (Lest the Delilah who sleeps with you is able to seduce you with her blandishments, take care to be vigilant; 549–550). Abelard is unusal in making a direct apostrophe to Delilah here, as the medieval theological tradition more commonly addressed and castigated Samson for his foolish trust of women, or his recourse to prostitutes. An exception to this is Adam of Dryburgh, De triplici genere contemplationis: “Vae tibi, Dalila dolosa, et fraudulenta!” (PL 198: 815A). 29. lusurus (= about to play): an important emendation made by Wilhelm Meyer from the manuscript reading “lesurus” (about to be harmed). “Lusurus” not only picks up the vocabulary of the biblical exemplar ( Judges 16. 25: “ut vocaretur Samson et ante eos luderet, qui adductus de carcere ludebat ante eos”), but also evokes the concern with mockery and public humiliation that flows through Abelard’s writings. This is ever-present in his Historia, forms part of the rationale for the revenge Dinah’s brothers take on Sechem in the Planctus Dine, and constitutes part of the back-story of the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha where both Saul and David are driven to particular actions by their concern not to become objects of derision to their enemies. On Abelard and this fear of mockery, see my “Abelard on Suicide.”

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32. A iocis ad seria: this oppositional pair was much cited in antiquity and the Fathers (especially Augustine) and appears as a rhetorical opposition in the Rhetorica ad Herennium. In Q. CLIV of his Sic et non, “Quod liceat mentiri, et contra” (That it is permitted to lie, and against), Abelard cites Augustine’s discussion of whether or not Joseph lied, which relies on the opposition of these terms: “An quia non serio sed ioco dictum est, ut exitus docuit, non est habendum mendacium. Mendacia enim a mendacibus serio aguntur, non ioco” (p. 517, citing Quaest. in Heptateuchum, I, 145; Whether, because it was said not in seriousness but in jest, as the end proves, it is not to be considered a lie. For lies are brought about by lying in all seriousness, not in jest). 36. propria: this word is the closest Abelard comes in this lament to acknowledging the question of Samson’s suicide, which was much debated in the Middle Ages. Abelard discusses the motivating factors and the divine permissibility of Samson’s suicide more fully in his Theologia Christiana (II, 80) and addresses it in Q. CLV of his Sic et non, “Quod liceat homini inferre sibi manus aliquibus de causis et contra” (That it is permitted for a man to lay hands upon himself for a number of reasons, and against). For a discussion see my “Abelard on Suicide.” 37. dolor: this constitutes an interesting personification of “dolor” (grief, sorrow) as an actor, which picks up Abelard’s imaginative depiction in the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha of the “envoy of sorrow” (“doloris nuntius”) becoming the “companion of sorrow” (“doloris . . . socius”; 62). Dronke has argued that Abelard’s invocation of “dolor” (pain, grief ) as the motivating factor for Samson’s self-ruin is unique (see Poetic Individuality, pp. 133–135), but note Heloise’s Ep. IV on Samson: “et eum inimicis proditum et oculis priuatum ad hoc tandem dolor compulit ut se pariter cum ruina hostium opprimeret” (Letter Collection, p. 166, my emphasis; p. 167: “betrayed to his enemies and robbed of his sight, he was driven at last by sorrow to destroy himself along with the fall of his enemies”). Luscombe has emended Radice’s original translation of “dolor” here as “suffering” to the less physical “sorrow.” 38–39. In recounting Fulbert’s discovery of their affair in his Historia, Abelard relates that he sought to excuse himself by pointing out that “since the beginning of the human race women had brought the noblest men to ruin” (Letter Collection, p. 35; p. 34: “quanta ruina summos quoque uiros ab ipso statim humani generis exordio mulieres deiecerint”). Heloise articulates similar sentiments in her Ep. IV: “O summam in uiros summos et consuetam feminarum perniciem!” (Letter Collection, p. 166; O the greatest and ever-present ruin of women against the greatest men!; my trans.). After discussing the specific cases of Adam, Samson, Solomon, David, and Job, Heloise concludes: “Et callidissimus temptator hoc optime nouerat, quod sepius expertus fuerat, uirorum uidelicet ruinam in uxoribus esse facillimam” (Letter Collection, p. 168; p. 169: “The cunning arch-tempter well knew from repeated experience that men are most easily brought to ruin through their wives”). 41. poculum mortis: it is uncommon to find the “cup of death” attributed to Eve (standing for all women). Marbod of Rennes, in his Liber decem capitulorum,

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III: “De muliere mala” does include this act among the list of trouble-bringing and death-dealing behaviors associated with “Femina, triste caput, mala stirps, vitiosa propago” (Woman, the head of sorrow, an evil offshoot, viceridden stock), and he argues that she: “Caedes multiplicat, letalia pocula miscet” (multiplies slaughter, mixes cups of death; see Marbodi Liber decem capitulorum, pp. 98–99; lines 4 and 11). Generally, when the phrase “poculum mortis” is used in Medieval Latin, it is God who offers the cups of life and death. An interesting exception is Abelard’s Hymn 57, 2/1–4 where it is the Devil who pours out the cup of death for all: “Hoc mortis poculum, | quod per diabolum | Nobis tranfusum est | in poenae debitum.” Cups of death recur throughout Abelard’s Hymns (see 47, 2/5–6; 56, 2/5–8; and 68, 3/1–2). See also Baldwin of Forde who attributed the pouring of the cup of death not to Eve, but to Adam through his disobedience: “Adam pater inobedientie uinum hoc proprie uoluntatis miscuit, et poculum mortis filiis suis propinauit, quasi diceret: Bibite ex hoc omnes” (Sermo 1). 42–44. Dauid . . . Salomone . . . Sanson: These three figures are specifically mentioned by Heloise in her Ep. IV on the dangers of women (see notes to 38–39 above) and Abelard discusses them in his Theologia Christiana, II, 89, where his antifeminism is even more striking than in this lament, as he notes Solomon’s capitulation to “cunnum gentilis feminae per concupiscentiam” (the cunt of a gentile woman because of lust). Mews notes that “the word cunnum is unknown in patristic theological literature” (Abelard and Heloise, p. 135). A similar formulation appears in Marbod of Rennes’s Liber decem capitulorum, III, where he asks: “Quis fortem spoliatum crine peremit? | Femina” (Who destroyed the strong man, deprived of his hair? Woman; pp. 102–103, lines 30–31). Marbod goes on to demand, in words very similar to Abelard’s: “Quis David sanctum, sapientem quis Solomonem | Dulcibus illecebris seduxit . . . nisi femina blanda?” (Who seduced holy David, who seduced wise Solomon with sweet enticements, except a fawning woman; p. 103, lines 34–36). Samson, David, and Solomon constituted a favored triumvirate of fallen and deceived heroes of the Old Testament upon whom biblical commentators could moralize, particularly with regard to the dangers of women. Dronke cites a twelfth-century poem in which, just as Heloise foresaw, Abelard was added to this list: “Adam, Samsonem, Salomonem perdidit uxor: | Additus i o Petrus—clade ruit simili” (Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Testimonies, p. 45). 45. nobile . . . plasma: “plasma” recurs throughout Abelard’s writings when he discusses the formation of the human being. Thus he declares in his Sermon 1: “Primus Adam de terra plasmatus non de femina est natus” (PL 178. 380A). He also plays here with the term “cataplasma” (poultice), since Christ as a second Adam heals the wounds inflicted by the first (PL 178. 381A). In Hymn 8, 5/1–2, Abelard once again uses the collocation “nobile plasma,” which is otherwise very rare in Medieval Latin: “Hoc unum plasma nobile | In quo resplendes, Domine.” 46. auxilium: Heloise makes this same point in her diatribe against women in her Ep. IV: “and she who had been created by the Lord as his helpmate became the

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instrument of his total downfall” (Letter Collection, p. 167; p. 166: “et que ei a Domino creata fuerat in auxilium, in summum ei conuersa est exitium”). 48. aspidi uel igni: this characterization of women as either snakes or firebrands (or perhaps, snakes and firebrands) recurs throughout Abelard’s Carmen as well. At 227–238 Abelard discourses at length on the values and natures of women according to their known sexual status. Thus he argues that a humble whore is better than a proud chaste woman, who is like a firebrand to her home. He then declares that a nagging wife is worse both than a whore and a snake, and that one who has a nagging wife “harbors a serpent at his breast” (“non caret angue sinus,” 232)—a formulation that resonates here with his admonition that one would better open one’s breast to an asp (“sinum aspidi . . . aperi”) than be sexually involved with a woman. A nagging wife is then further characterized as a firebrand to the home, worse than any actual fire. At Carmen, 549–552, Abelard uses the biblical story of Samson to characterize all sexually active women as “Delilahs,” and he warns that care must be taken in sleeping next to such a one since it is not safe to sleep next to a snake and women exceed snakes in wickedness. Studies on the Planctus Israel: r
Peter Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry 1000–1150 (London: Westfield College, University of London, 2nd ed., 1986; first pub. Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 121–145. Planctus Dauid super Abner filio Ner quem Ioab occidit Biblical lament: 2 Samuel 3. 33–34: “plangensque rex Abner ait . . . ” (and the king lamenting Abner said . . . ). Biblical story: 2 Samuel 2. 8–3. 38 2. amor: one of several instances of this word in the Planctus, all of which highlight problematic aspects of this emotion. For instance, in the Planctus Dine, the impulse of love (“amoris impulsio,” 25) is credited with provoking Sechem to ravish Dinah, resulting in the slaughter of his people, while in the Planctus Iacob, Jacob’s playing favorites with his sons (“amore prior omnibus,” 14) sets in motion deadly sibling rivalries that rend the family and cause Jacob’s sorrow. In the Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, the word justifies a desire for self-sacrifice in the wake of a fallen friend (“quid amor faciat maius hoc non habeat,” 48). In the Planctus Dauid super Abner, however, “love” is not an interpersonal emotion with dangerous consequences, but is instead refigured as a (masculine) group emotion: Abner is the “love and delight of military glory.” In applying this troubled term “amor” to the evocation of “military glory,” Abelard brings into question the world of male martial prowess where alliances are made and broken as expedience dictates, revenge and jealousy are ever-present motives for murder, and a traditional sense of family honor can lead to generations of treachery and homicide.

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3. dolus: Joab, David’s general, is furious to learn that David has, without his knowledge, entered into a peace treaty with Abner, their former enemy. While Abner is under promise of safe conduct from David, and therefore unarmed, Joab summons him to a talk at the city gate, but treacherously stabs him in the groin instead (2 Samuel 3. 26–27). The underlying cause for Joab’s enmity is Abner’s earlier slaughter of Joab’s brother Asahel in battle (2 Samuel 2. 17–23). 6. execrabilis: the word “execrabilis” / “execrabile” appears twice in this very short lament (see also 28), indicating how strongly it suggests to Abelard a treacherous ambush. The word also appears in the Planctus Dine where Dinah rebukes her brothers that they are to be cursed (“execrandi,” 24) for shaming their father by their treachery against Sechem and his people. 7. On lamenting one’s fallen enemy, see also Abelard, Carmen, 335–336: “He whom an enemy fears while alive, he mourns when dead so that great men will never lack praise from their enemy.” 8: mentes adamantinas: this is not a common collocation in Medieval Latin where “adamantinus” is more commonly used of inanimate objects such as rocks, nails, walls, etc. It does, however, appear in a similar sense in William of Tyre’s Chronicon that also evokes “breasts of iron”: “Quis enim tam ferrei pectoris, quis tam mentis adamantine . . . ” (Bk 8, Ch. 21, line 47). These lines are reminiscent of the “hearts of stone” alluded to by Abelard in the Planctus Israel, and the “breasts of iron” in his Hymn 108. There are biblical collocations of “adamantinus” with “cor” (heart) and “facies” (face) where the association of the two words suggests faithless obstinacy (see Ezechiel 3. 9 and Zachariah 7. 12); the association with “cor” is relatively common in Medieval Latin. The only other use of “adamas” / “adamantinus” in Abelard’s writings is Hymn 100: “Adamante bitumen robustius” (1/ 13–14). 12. uir perfectus: along with the cry “uir esto nunc” in the Planctus uirginum, this constitutes another key moment in which the Planctus seek to define manhood, manliness, and its behaviors. Abner is “strong in arms, powerful in understanding” (“armis potens, sensu pollens”) and this makes him a “perfect man.” Yet neither of these qualities saves his life, since both are rendered futile in the face of treachery. Betrayal, functioning as the obverse of a proud warrior culture, consitutes a male underworld that surfaces intermittently, and always dangerously, through the Planctus. 16: male tutus: a variation for metrical reasons on “male securus,” a common oxymoronic formulation used by Augustine to describe those Christians who are not thoroughly committed and vigilant in their faith. Abelard uses a similar turn of phrase in the Carmen when he speaks of the rich man who gives away what he thinks is a great amount, thereafter trusting wrongly (“male confidens,” 933) that he is pardoned of sin. 19. corruisiti: this is the only word that Abelard takes from the biblical lament by David: “sed sicut solent cadere coram filiis iniquitatis corruisti” (2 Samuel 3. 34).

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24. scelus: the enormity of Joab’s crime lies not just in the treachery that lured an unarmed warrior under safe conduct to murder at the city gates, but also in the nature of the crime: a stab wound to the groin (2 Samuel 3. 27: “percussit illum ibi in inguine”), which is unseemly for a great warrior. Such a blow was, perhaps, warranted in Joab’s mind, given that Abner killed his brother Asahel in the same way: “percussit ergo eum Abner aversa hasta in inguine” (2 Samuel 2. 23). “Scelus” is a word that recurs throughout the Planctus: Jacob laments his “crime” that has led to his children taking his rightful punishment upon them (Planctus Iacob, 2); the speaking voice of the Planctus Israel castigates Delilah for the “enormous crimes” she perpetrated for money (Planctus Israel, 24); while David mourns the “sins” and “crimes” that have sundered him from Jonathan (Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, 34) and fulminates against the “accursed hand” that took Saul’s life (Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha, 32). 27–28. principes iusticie sumant zelum: David remembers Joab on his deathbed and charges his son Solomon to avenge the murders of Amasa and Abner (1 Kings 2. 5–6); Solomon orders the execution to be carried out, and this takes place as Joab grasps the horn of the altar in the tabernacle of the Lord (1 Kings 2. 28–34). David’s focus here on human rather than divine justice underlines the theme of the failure of human justice that runs throughout the Planctus. Iusticie . . . execrabile: through these words a human justice that demands satisfaction, and that ultimately fails, is contrasted with the representation of a divine justice in 2 Peter 2. 11, where the angels, being greater in might and power, do not seek the terrible judgment they could rightfully pursue against sinners: “ubi angeli fortitudine et virtute cum sint maiores, non portant adversum se execrabile iudicium.” Studies on the Planctus Dauid super Abner: r
Annelies Wouters, “ ‘Abner fidelissime’: Abelard’s Version of a Biblical Lament,” in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan, Musicological Studies, 78 (Ottawa: The Institute of Mediæval Music, 2003), pp. 60–66. Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha Biblical lament: 2 Samuel 1. 17–27: “planxit autem David planctum huiuscemodi super Saul et super Ionathan filium eius . . . ” (1. 17: and David lamented a plaint of this kind over Saul and his son Jonathan). Biblical story: 2 Samuel 1. 1–16. 1. dolorum solatium: this is a common collocation of words in Medieval Latin. For instance, Aelred of Rievaulx uses it to describe the Holy Spirit: “Ipse spiritus mei reclinatorium, dolorum meorum dulce solatium” (De spiritali amicitia, Bk 3). Given Abelard’s close association with the Holy Spirit as comforter (i.e., the Paraclete), there could be a sense of such a usage here. The phrase also resonates with “Duorum solacia” in the Planctus Iacob (25), which refers to Benjamin and

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the solace he was accustomed to bring his two parents. “Dolor” is one of the most commonly recurring words in the Planctus as a whole, and appears four times in this lament alone (see also 4 and 62). In Medieval Latin, “dolor” suggests not just emotional suffering and grief, but actual physical pain as well (differing from “tristitia” in this sense—a word which is, incidentally, not employed in the Planctus). 3. mea michi cythara: compare Job 30. 31: “versa est in luctum cithara mea et organum meum in vocem flentium.” 7. strages magna: 2 Samuel 1. 4: “multi corruentes e populo mortui sunt.” 8. regis mors et filii: these are the deaths of the king, Saul, and his son, Jonathan. 17–24. These lines expand upon the biblical lament in which David begs that the victory of the Philistines not be made known “or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice, the daughters of the uncircumcised will gloat” (2 Samuel 1. 20: “ne forte laetentur filiae Philisthim ne exultent filiae incircumcisorum”). It is interesting that Abelard has chosen to remove the fear explicitly expressed here of an Israelite being the sport of the uncircumsized, employing that instead in his Planctus Dine where its articulation by a female Israelite speaker imbues it with sexualized as well as nationalist implications. 27–28, 31. electio; consecratio uatis magni; oleo consecratus dominico: see 1 Samuel 10. 1: “Samuel took a phial of oil and poured it on Saul’s head; then he kissed him, saying, ‘Has not Yahweh anointed you prince over his people of Israel? You are the man who must rule Yahweh’s people, and who must save them from the power of the enemies surrounding them.’” See also 1 Samuel 10. 20–21 where Saul is chosen by lot. 32. There are two accounts in the Bible of Saul’s death (1 Samuel 31. 3–5 and 2 Samuel 1. 5–10). The first raised questions about Saul’s possible suicide and prompted much discussion throughout the Middle Ages. Here, however, Abelard follows the text of 2 Samuel 1. 5–10, which recounts that Saul asked an Amalekite solider to kill him so he would not be captured. Given Abelard’s flirtation with expressions and explorations of suicide in his writings (see my “Abelard on Suicide”) it is interesting that he overtly eschews the issue of suicide here, making it clear that Saul was murdered (see 30). In eliding the earlier account of Saul’s death, Abelard also omits that Saul explicitly asked here to be put to death so that he would not be mocked by the uncircumcised people: 1 Samuel 31. 4: “evagina gladium tuum et percute me ne forte veniant incircumcisi isti et interficiant me inludentes mihi.” This is the second time in this lament that Abelard has deliberately avoided biblical references to the mockery of the uncircumcised (see 17–24 above). 33. plus fratre michi, Ionatha: in David’s biblical lament he declares: “doleo super te frater mi Ionathan” (2 Sam. 1. 26). in una mecum anima: see 1 Samuel 18. 1: “Jonathan’s soul became closely bound to David’s and Jonathan came to love him as his own soul” (“anima Ionathan

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conligata est animae David et dilexit eum Ionathan quasi animam suam”) and 1 Samuel 18. 3: “diligebat enim eum quasi animam suam.” However, in the biblical lament, David praises the oneness not of himself and Jonathan, but rather of Saul and Jonathan: “in morte quoque non sunt divisi” (2 Samuel 1. 23; even in death they were not divided). 34. peccata . . . scelera . . . uiscera: see “The Question of Homosociality: The Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha” in chapter 2 for a discussion of how Abelard plays with implications of homosexuality and homosociality in this lament. Within a different genre, this collocation of terms would evoke a sodomitic relationship, but here Abelard suggests that it is a crime and a sin that has prevented the conjoining of the innermost parts of these two men. 35–36. These lines draw closely from the biblical lament, 2 Samuel 1. 21: “montes Gelboe nec ros nec pluviae veniant super vos neque sint agri primitiarum.” 39. christus: Abelard here adduces the literal meaning of the term as “the anointed one,” referring to Saul. 41–42. These lines are drawn from the biblical lament, 2 Samuel 1. 24: “filiae Israhel super Saul flete qui vestiebat vos coccino in deliciis, qui praebebat ornamenta aurea cultui vestro” (Daughters of Israel, weep over Saul who clothed you in scarlet luxuries, who offered you golden ornaments for your outfits). This specific invocation to the daughters of Israel meshes with Abelard’s own sensibility, which particularly views the act of lamenting as associated with women (see the note to line 4 of the Planctus uirginum above). It is interesting that Abelard has altered the “coccino” (red) of the biblical text to “purpure” (purple). While both signify a deep maroon color and can be interchangeable, they tend to have slightly different connotations in Medieval Latin, with purple signifying matrydom, and crimson the love of God (caritas). “Purpureus” is a more typically Abelardian word, appearing in Hymn 65, 4/5–6, where the risen Christ is “shining in purple raiment” (“Purpureo | vestitu renitens”), and the Planctus uirginum (103) where Jephthah’s daughter takes on purple before her self-sacrifice. By contrast, “coccinus” tends to have adverse connotations in Abelard’s writings, such as Hymn 46, 1/7–8: “Et vile coccinum sumens illuderis,” where it represents the scarlet soldier’s cloak with which Jesus was mocked. 45–47. David does not express a lament in the Bible that he was not with Jonathan in battle, nor a self-destructive impulse to have fallen with him. In fact, in 1 Samuel 27. 1, it is revealed that David fled to the Philistines in order to save himself from Saul’s machinations, and in 1 Samuel 29. 6–7, David is excluded by the Philistine leaders from taking part in their battle against the Israelites for fear of where his loyalties might lie. Had David been involved in that battle, he would have been fighting against Jonathan, not in protection of him. 47. confossus pariter, morerer feliciter: again, lexical choices that raise the idea of latent homosexuality (see also 54). Abelard may be exploiting here the potential sexual overtones of the verb “confodere” as it appears in 2 Samuel 2. 22 where Abner warns Asahel to cease pursuing him “lest I be compelled to pierce you

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upon the ground” (“ne conpellar confodere te in terra”). This verse may well have been in readers’ minds given that this lament follows that of David over Abner, which evokes the story of Abner’s slaughter of Asahel. morerer feliciter: this collocation of ideas of happy death also appears in Abelard’s Ep. V where he demands that Heloise cease lamenting his impending death and declares: “I cannot see why you should prefer me to live on in great misery rather than be happier in death” (Letter Collection, p. 193; p. 192: “cur me miserrime uiuere malis quam felicius mori non uideo”). 48. cum quid amor faciat maius hoc non habeat: this line recalls John 15. 13: “Maiorem hac dilectionem nemo habet ut animam suam quis ponat pro amicis suis” (There is no greater love than this, that a man should lay down his own life for his friends), which Abelard cites a number of times in his writings (see “The Question of Homosociality: The Planctus Dauid super Saul et Ionatha” in chapter 2). Note, however, that Abelard has altered the lexis here, employing the word “amor,” which has more carnal implications than the disinterested love of the biblical “dilectio.” 50. anima . . . dimidia: the phrase is used by Horace of Virgil (Odes, I.3.8: “animae dimidium meae”); Augustine cites it in his Confessions, lamenting the death of a friend: “Well indeed did one say to his friend, you are half my soul” (“dimidium animae suae”: Bk IV, Ch. 6; O’Donnell, Vol. 2, p. 37). Augustine then continues in words that clearly resonate in Abelard’s lament: “nam ego sensi animam meam et animam illius unam fuisse animam in duobus corporibus, et ideo mihi horrori erat vita, quia nolebam dimidius vivere” (For I sensed my soul and his to be one soul in two bodies, and for that reason life was a thing of horror to me, because I did not wish to live half a person). Interestingly, this phrase appears three times in the Epistulae duorum amantium. In the superscription to Letter 11, the woman offers the man “half her soul” (“dimidium anime,” Mews, Lost Love Letters, p. 220); in Letter 86, the woman concludes with the valediction: “Vale cordis dimidium” (“Farewell, half of my heart,” p. 290); while in the superscription to Letter 97, the man addresses the woman as “half of my heart and part of my soul” (“Cordi dimidio, parti anime,” p. 300). See also Karl F. Morrison, “I Am You,” pp. 35–36. 54. te uel eriperem uel tecum occumberem: these lexical choices continue the play with homosexuality in the lament. 55. quam saluasti tociens: Saul plotted continuously against David out of envy and fear, but was constantly confounded in his attempts to destroy David by Jonathan: see 1 Samuel 19. 2–7 and 1 Samuel 20. 57. infausta uictoria: another oxymoronic juxtaposition within the Planctus (as also “nimis crudeles et pii” in the Planctus Dine); this collocation is very nearly unparalleled in Medieval Latin. Of course, this is not a victory for the Israelites: it is a victory for the Amalekites and the Philistines, with whom David has been associated due to the machinations of Saul. From the dominant point of view of the Bible, it is in fact a defeat. This makes clear the conceptual disconnect at 45–47 where David expresses the idea that he would happily have died with Jonathan in

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battle when in fact, he would have been in the opposing camp; the word “uictoria” here admits David’s recognition of that strange partisanship. Throughout the Planctus, victories are clouded with ultimate defeat and disaster: Dinah’s brothers overcome the Hemorites but are cursed by their father; Jephthah wins a great victory, but must in turn sacrifice his only child; Samson regains his strength and is able to destroy his enemies, but only at the cost of his own life. 59. nuncius: this is the Amalekite soldier who brings news of the death of Saul and Jonathan to David (2 Samuel 1. 2). 60. in suam animam locutum superbiam: this phrasing is taken from Psalm 16. 10: “os eorum locutum est superbia,” said of an enemy. 61. mortuis quos nuntiat . . . mors aggregat: David ordered the messenger who brought him the news of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan to be slain, after he testified that he killed Saul at Saul’s own request: 2 Samuel, 1. 13–16. Abelard addresses this story again in Hymn 23, 2/1–8, where he speaks of “Mortem mox puniens | mendacem nuntium.” Here Abelard suggests that the messenger was lying (“mendacem”) in giving his account of Saul’s wish to die, another clear instance of Abelard’s difficulty in dealing with the apparent suicidality of Saul in the Bible. 63. Do quietem fidibus: an early twelfth-century lyric treating the love of Orpheus and Eurydice, known from its incipit as the Parce continuis, concludes with remarkably similar lines: “Do quietem fidibus | finem, queso, luctibus | tu, curas alentibus.” It also references the “fedus venerabile” between David and Jonathan. See Dronke, Medieval Latin and the Rise of European Love-Lyric, pp. 341–352, esp. pp. 344–345. 66–67. Not only does the act of lamentation on earth end in failure, it is also physically draining. Studies on the Planctus David super Saul et Ionatha: r
Lorenz Weinrich, “‘Dolorum solatium’: Text und Musik von Abaelards Planctus David,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 5 (1968), 59–78. r
Eileen F. Kearney, “Peter Abelard’s Planctus ‘Dolorum solatium’: A New Song for David,” in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette S. Hellemans, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 229 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 253–281.

APPENDIX A: ADDITIONAL SENTENTIAE APPENDED TO THE CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM IN BERLIN, STAATSBIBLIOTHEK, PREUSSISCHER KULTURBESITZ, LAT. OCT. 172

[fol. 17r] Mater1 uirgo parit Tutus ero si quesiero Virga dedit f lorem Iusticie solem

natum qui cuncta creauit. te pectore uero. transcendit germine f lorem. dat uirga dauitica prolem.

Fili? Quid mater? Deus es? Ne genus humanum

Sum. Cur ita pendes? tendat ad interitum.2

Quid me miraris? Sum Deus immensus,

Morior ne tu moriaris. 3 mundi pro crimine pensus.

Cernite quam turpem Conscia corda mali

pro uobis suffero mortem. caueant a iudice tali.

Aspice pendentem, Brachia tendentem Cerne nec incassum nec te compassum

crucifigas in cruce mentem. complectere me pacientem. si cernis me cruce passum; iudex ero qui pietas sum.

Aspice, mortalis,

pro te datur hostia talis.

Nec Deus est nec homo,

presens quam cernis ymago;

1

Corrected in the manuscript from “matrer.” “Distichon de Jesu crucifixo”: see André Boutemy, “Notes additionnelles à la notice de Ch. Fierville sur le manuscrit 115 de Saint-Omer,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 22 (1943), 5–33, (p. 9). 3 This line appears commonly in medieval manuscripts; a version can be found in Hildebert of Lavardin’s Inscriptionum Christianarum libellus, no. XXXV (PL 171. 1284A) where it reads “Cur homo miraris? morior ne tu moriaris.” 2

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[fol. 17v] sed Deus est et homo, Istum non Christum,

quem sacra figurat ymago.4 sed Christum crede per istum.

In cruce sunt fixi a dextris Christi Dimas, Inparibus meritis, Dimas et Gestas, alta petit Dimas,

latrones nomine dicti: Gestasque sinistris. tria pendent corpora ramis: medio diuina potestas; infelix5 infima Gestas.

Angele, qui meus es custos, pietate superna: me tibi comissum, serua, defende, guberna. Tres partes facte de Christi corpore signant: prima suam carnem, sanctosque secunda sepultos, tercia uiuentes, hec est in sanguine tincta. In tres particulas diuiso corpore Christi: hoc quod surexit, mititur in calicem, particulam reliquam consumit presbyter ipse; hec est ecclesia fructificans Domino, illud sanctorum corpora significant. Vim sacramenti non mutat uita ministri: sicut deterius non fit per deteriorem, sic melius non fit per presbyterem meliorem. Non uult piscari, sed pisces mandere gatta: absque labore uolunt celos transcendere multi. Stipite formica, dum stat, comburitur ipsa: qui piger est, discat formice uiuat ad instar. Parcere prostratis uult nobilis ira leonis: mox ueniam Christus pro crimine dat lacrimanti; prostratos perdit ignobilis ira draconis. Gallus mille gerit gallinas, ducit, et arcet: uxorem solam uir retinere nequit. Ante sues gemmas non est apponere dignum.6 4 For this distich see Baudri of Borgueil, “Circa crucifixum” and Hildebert of Lavardin, Inscriptionum Christianarum libellus, XXXII (PL 171. 1283D). For a discussion of the origin, circulation, and meaning of these lines, see Ragne Bugge, “Effigiem Christi, qui transis, semper honora: Verses Condemning the Cult of Sacred Images in Art and Literature,” Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia, 6 (1975), 127–139 (Section III, pp. 133–136); and Jack M. Greenstein, “On Alberti’s ‘Sign’: Vision and Composition in Quattrocentro Painting—Leon Battista Alberti’s ‘Commentary on Painting,’” The Art Bulletin, 79 (1997), 669–698, (p. 675). This distich also appears in the Poole 99 fragment (discussed in chapter 1). 5 Corrected in the manuscript from “infelex.” 6 See Matthew 7. 6: “neque mittatis margaritas vestras ante porcos.”

A PPEN DIX A

Cum tibi porcastrum si tibi porcellus

Dominus dat, porrige saccum; dabitur, sit saccus apertus.

Asinus est stalla

melius quam sit uacuata. [fol. 18r]

Non matura pira currere qui tardat

comedunt animalia pigra: pira sus non mala gustat.

Qui sua non celat qui sua non seruat qui sua consumpsit,

aliis aliena reuelat; aliena nec ipse gubernat; tua ne commiseris illi.

Infima ne spernas cum possis capere magna. Est dignus mercede sua quicumque laborat. Mense nunc isti celesti mense

benedicat dextra Christi: cuncti ualeamus adesse.

Non buccam cupe, ni forsan siphus

sed cupam porrige buce, fuerit pro tempore fissus.

Hospitis in mensa nec mense cultum

uultum non fercula pensa, sed dantis respice uultum.

Cum sit quisque satur Christo presentes

benedictio facta sequatur: sint grates tunc referentes.

Ad mensam celi at benefactores at benedefuncti

nos pascat filius heli: celi teneantur omnes; requiescant pace sepulti.

Cum breuis esca datur si cibus augetur

benedictio parua sequatur; benedictio multiplicetur.

Fac quod Christus amat dum pauper ad hostia clamat, pauperis in spetie nam latet ipse Deus. Non inuitandus tantum, sed ueste trahendus, hospes nam melius loquitur ore manus; non est palpandus, sed suplici uoce rogandus: hospes, ut urbanus, uocibus adde manus. Nullus inops sapiens: ubi res, ibi copia sensus; res sapiunt: pauper nil nisi semper erit. Solus ob aruinam nam canis ad liram

canis optat adire coquinam: poterit reperire sagimen. [fol. 18v]

Quid meruere pati

quocumque in fornice nati.

297

298

A PPEN DIX A

Aut puer est totus aut non est munda aut mundat totum aut non est sacri

sacro baptismate lotus, sacri baptismatis unda; baptismi gracia lotum, purgatio sacra lauacri.

Non est legalis non est legalis,

generatio presbiteralis; nec in usu copula talis.

Responsio predictorum7

Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum. Non uult piscari, sed pisces mandere gata.8

7

Gloss in right margin. These last two lines have been added in a later hand; Rubingh-Bosscher notes that the last line has been partially erased: see Carmen ad Astralabium, p. 25. 8

APPENDIX B: ADDITIONAL SENTENTIAE APPENDED TO THE CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM IN MADRID, BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA, 9210, AND VATICAN, BIBLIOTECA APOSTOLICA VATICANA, ROSSI 933

Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, 9210, fol. 123ra Non eget exterius qui moribus intus habundat; nobilitas sola est animum qui moribus ornat. Pauperis in causa nec auris sit tibi clausa. Quatuor ista: timor, odium, dilectio, census, seppe solent hominum rectos peruertere sensus. Vindictam diferunt donec pertranseat ira, nec meminisse uellis odii post uerbera. Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rossi 933, fol. 39 r Festinatores corrumpunt vndique mores. Si vis ditari, sublimari, venerari, sis assentator, similator, dissimilator. Nescit regnare qui nescit dissimilare; nec bene regnabit qui multum dissimilabit. Sunt tria domus: ymber, mala femina, fumus; hec faciunt dominum domus illius peregrinum. Crebra dabit multis sensum vexacio stultis. Quisquis abest oculis procul est a lumine cordis.

APPENDIX C: EXCERPT FROM THE CARMEN AD ASTRALABIUM IN MELK, STIFTSBIBLIOTHEK, COD. 1761 (415)

Astralabus1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 1

Cum grauius peccat qui se peccare fatetur, (line 455; Rec. I) ad veniam tamen hic pronior esse solet. (line 456; Rec. I) Cum te corripiat senior pacienter habeto (line 269; Rec. I, II, III) et grates tanquam post data magna refer. (line 270; Rec. I, II, III) Factis quisque suis, non dictis glorificatur.2 (line 339; Rec. I) Si post consilium non sunt tua facta benigna, (line 355; Rec. I, II, III) non hic culpandus sed miserandus eris. (line 356; Rec. I, II, III) Sanguinis eiusdem plures in religionis conuentu 3 (line 1017; Rec. I, II) noli consociare sibi. (line 1018; Rec. I, II) Instabilis lune stultus variatur4 ad instar (line 19; Rec. I, II, III) sicut sol sapiens permanet ipse sibi. (line 20; Rec. I, II, III) Si uictus parcus, si somnus sit mediocris, (line 345; Rec. I) incolumis eris longaque vita tibi. (line 346; Rec. I) Nunc huc, nunc illuc stulti mens vaga5 vagatur; (line 21; Rec. I, II, III) prouida mens stabilem figit vbique pedem.6 (line 22; Rec. I, II, III) Filius est sapiens benedictio parentum, (line 59; Rec. I, II, III) ipsorum stulum dedecus atque dolor. (line 60; Rec. I, II, III) Indignare tibi cum te tua culpa f lagellat (line 1011; Rec. I, II) non illi qui dat verbera iusta tibi. (line 1012; Rec. I, II) Qualiacumque velis da fercula religiosis, (line 537; Rec. I, II) dummodo vina neges, summa fomenta mali. (line 538; Rec. I, II) Que natura petit paruo7 sudore parantur.8 (line 349; Rec. I) Ne faciat quenquam noua vite secta superbum: (line 293; Rec. I, III) communi vita viuere quenque decet. (line 294; Rec. I, III)

p. 428; title written in red. Distich manqué (sole hexameter line). 3 Distich incorrectly divided; “conuentu” should be first word of next line. 4 Unique reading; all other MSS (Rec. I, II, III) have “mutatur.” 5 Unique reading; all MSS except P have “ceca” (P: “reca”). 6 Unique reading; all MSS except B have “gradum” (B: “locum”). 7 This reading only found in M (all other MSS have “facili”). 8 Distich manqué (sole hexameter line). 2

NOTES

Introduction: The Repentant Abelard 1. Histoire littéraire de la France, Tome XII (Paris, 1763), p. 133: “Les Ouvrages poëtiques de notre Auteur, qui ont échappé au naufrage des temps sans avoir encore vu le jour”; reprinted in PL 178. 39–40. 2. 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.” 3. 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.” 4. These are discussed at greater length in my “Quae maternae immemor naturae: The Rhetorical Struggle over the Meaning of Motherhood in the Writings of Heloise and Abelard,” in Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 323–339. 5. Yet as scholars have noted, Abelard retained the nominal abbacy of St. Gildas until his death in 1142, despite his residency elsewhere: see Constant J. Mews, Peter Abelard, Authors of the Middle Ages, Volume 2, Number 5; Historical and Religious Writers of the Latin West (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), p. 17 n. 37. 6. 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.” 7. 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). 8. 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

304

NOTES

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

composita reliquisti carmina, que pre nimia suauitate tam 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). See my “Quae maternae immemor naturae,”and my ‘“La douceur d’une vie paternelle’: la représentation de la famille dans les œuvres poétiques d’Abélard,” in Pierre Abélard: Colloque international de Nantes, ed. Jean Jolivet and Henri Habrias (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003), pp. 205–213. 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 McNamara, “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 McNamara, Medieval Cultures, 7 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 3–29; see also McNamara, “An Unresolved Syllogism: The Search for a Christian Gender System,” in Conf licted 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 Astralabium: A Critical Edition, ed. Josepha Marie Annaïs Rubingh-Bosscher (Groningen: [privately published], 1987), pp. 23–89. Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, p. 88. Rubingh-Bosscher also chose the orthography of P as her guide, arguing that as “P is nearly a century older than B,” she preferred it “because of its seniority.” Its orthography she described as “what we would call the ‘normal’ medieval orthography for northern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries”; see Carmen ad Astralabium, p. 93. Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, pp. 90–93. 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.”

NOTES

305

21. Lorenz Weinrich has described these as “in campo aperto and vaguely diastematic,” “Peter Abaelard as Musician—II,” The Musical Quarterly, 55 (1969), 464–486, (p. 464). Armand Machabey Sr. states that “Les neumes sont diastématiques: ils présentent entre eux des différences de niveau symbolisant les intervalles musicaux d’une certaine échelle (gamme); mais la valeur de ces intervalles est à peu près indéterminable,” “Les Planctus d’Abélard: Remarques sur le rythme musical du XIIe siècle,” Romania, 82 (1961), 71–95, (p. 89). 22. 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). 23. 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. 24. Weinrich, “Peter Abaelard as Musician—II,” p. 464. 25. Huglo, “Un nouveau prosaire nivernais.” 26. Huglo, “Un nouveau prosaire nivernais.” On the hand see pp. 5 and 16; for a description of Abelard’s Planctus, see p. 18. 27. 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). 28. Weinrich, “Peter Abaelard as Musician—II,” p. 464. 29. 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 Jahrbuch, 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 . 30. Carl Greith, Spicilegium Vaticanum: Beiträge zur nähern Kenntniss der vatikanischen Bibliothek für deutsche Poesie des Mittelalters (Frauenfeld: Ch. Beyel, 1838). 31. 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. 32. Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages. 33. 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.”

306

NOTES

34. 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.

1

Carmen ad Astralabium Analysis

1. See, for instance, Christa Laird, The Forgotten Son (London: Walker Books, 1992; first pub. Julia MacRae Books, 1990); Luise Rinser, Abelard’s Love, trans. Jean M. Snook (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998; first pub. as Abaelards Liebe, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1991); and particularly the novels of Sharan Newman, The Devil’s Door (New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, Forge, 1994) and Strong as Death (New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, Forge, 1996). Laird explicitly considers Astralabe’s thoughts on reading Abelard’s Historia for the first time in The Forgotten Son, pp. 154–157. 2. Matthew Tynan on the diaries of his father Kenneth Tynan, the infamous British theater critic; “My Father’s Infidelities,” Spectrum, Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, Saturday, December 1, 2001, p. 8. 3. The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, Historia, p. 32: “ubi apud sororem meam tam diu conuersata est donec pareret masculum quem Astralabium nominauit” (p. 33: “There she stayed with my sister until she gave birth to a boy, whom she called Astralabe”); p. 42: “Nato itaque paruulo nostro, sorori mee commendato, Parisius occulte reuertimur” (p. 43: “And so, when our little one was born, we entrusted him to my sister’s care and returned secretly to Paris”). 4. See my “Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Medieval Parent-Child Didactic Texts: The Evidence for Parent-Child Relationships in the Middle Ages,” in Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), pp. 203–228. 5. Letter Collection, Historia, p. 8: “ex immoderata studii aff lictione correptus infirmitate coactus sum repatriare” (p. 9: “I fell ill through overwork and was obliged to return to my own country”). 6. M. T. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 278: “The hypothesis that Heloise set Abelard’s agenda in theology helps explain why he addressed his final confession of faith to her, and not to his prosecutors at Sens and in Rome who were demanding it . . . In embracing Christ, Abelard was also embracing Heloise.” See also Charles S. F. Burnett, “‘Confessio fidei ad Heloisam’: Abelard’s Last Letter to Heloise? A Discussion and Critical Edition of the Latin and Medieval French Versions,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 21 (1986), 147–155 (p. 150): “It is appropriate that Abelard should express his love for Christ . . . in a work addressed to Heloise, especially when her own worries for him, prompted by her love, appear to be the immediate cause of the writing of the ‘Confessio.’” 7. Petrus Abaelardus, Dialectica: First Complete Edition of the Parisian Manuscript, ed. L. M. de Rijk, 2nd rev. ed (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1970), p. 146, lines 24–29: “Sed cum lasso michi iam et scribendo fatigato tue memoria caritatis ac nepotum discipline desiderium occurrit, vestri statim contemplatione michi blandiente languor omnis mentis discedit et animatur virtus ex amore que pigra fuerat ex labore, ac quasi iam reiectum onus in humeros rursus caritas tollit et corroboratur ex desiderio que languebat ex fastidio”.

NOTES

307

8. The Problemata, Collationes, Scito te ipsum, Expositio in Hexameron, and Planctus would all appear to date from a similar (and similarly undefined) period up to the mid-1130s: see Constant J. Mews, Abelard and Heloise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 170–177; Mews notes a similar timeframe for the enlarged version of the Sic et Non, ibid., p. 129, and the Hymnarius Paraclitensis, ibid., p. 164. Mary Romig also gives a likely dating of the early to mid-1130s for the Expositio in Hexameron: Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica, V: Expositio in Hexameron, ed. Mary Romig, with David Luscombe, CCCM 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), p. lxxiv; John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi settle on a period of the early 1130s as most likely for the composition of the Collationes: Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. and trans. John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), p. xxxii. 9. See Mews, Abelard and Heloise, p. 103. 10. Ibid., p. 134. 11. 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), pp. 153–157. 12. Letter Collection, Ep. II, p. 129; p. 128: “Doces et ammones rebelles, nec proficis. Frustra ante porcos diuini eloquii margaritas spargis.” 13. Ep. 281 (XII. 40), May 9, 45 (vii Id. Mai an. 45); Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Vol. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 138. 14. Cicero, De officiis, ed. M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), I, III, 7, p. 4: “Omnis de officio duplex est quaestio. Unum genus est quod pertinet ad finem bonorum, alterum quod positum est in praeceptis, quibus in omnes partes usus vitae conformari possit.” 15. See Dhuoda, Manuel pour mon fils, ed. and trans. Pierre Riché, Sources Chrétiennes, 225 bis (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 2nd ed., 1997; first pub. 1975), p. 344, lines 54–55: “Licet iuuentus tua f lorida uirgis | Quadrans quaternis computaris in annis”; and p. 346, lines 70–71: “Finiunt uersiculi, Deo iuuante, | Annis praeteritis octo binis deductos.” 16. Queene Elizabethes Achademy, ed. F. J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, Extra Series 8 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1869), p. 52. 17. Merridee L. Bailey, Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, c. 1400–1600 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2012), p. 47. 18. Ibid., p. 48. 19. Georg Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, 4 vols (Frankfurt am Main: G. Schulte-Bulmke, 1949–1969), Vol. 3.1 (1959), p. 692. 20. Bailey, Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, p. 53. 21. Hennig Brinkmann, “Astrolabius,” Münchener Museum für Philologie des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, 5 (1932), 168–201, (p. 195). 22. Ibid., pp. 188–189. 23. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, 3.1, p. 693. 24. C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), p. 229. 25. John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 315–316. 26. See, for example, Bailey, Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, pp. 49, 63, 75. Christine de Pizan warns her son Jehan against dicing and other games

308

NOTES

27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

41. 42.

43.

of chance in her Enseignemens moraux: Œuvres poétiques de Christine de Pisan, ed. Maurice Roy, 3 vols (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965; first pub. Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot, 1886–1896), Vol. 3, p. 33, Strophe XXXIX. On late style see Gordon McMullan, Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing: Authorship in the Proximity of Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For more detail, see the Notes to 561–564 of the Carmen in this volume, chapter 5, and my “‘He Who Kills Himself Liberates a Wretch’: Abelard on Suicide,” in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette S. Hellemans, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 229 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 230–249. Peter Dronke, Poetic Individuality: 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), pp. 148–149. Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, p. 315. David E. Luscombe, Peter Abelard’s Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. xxiv. Dronke also adduced the Polonius comparison in Poetic Individuality, p. 149. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, 3.1, p. 693. Thomas Haye, Das lateinische Lehrgedicht im Mittelalter: Analyse einer Gattung, Mittellateinische Studien und Texte, 22 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), p. 260. Ibid., pp. 260–261. Ibid., p. 262. Pietro Abelardo, Insegnamenti al figlio: Commento, traduzione e testo latino, ed. and trans. Graziella Ballanti (Rome: Armando Editore, 1991). See Ballanti, Insegnamenti al figlio, pp. 100–102. In fact, Ballanti actually begins this section by identifying lines 309–322 as “La vecchiaia e la morte,” when lines 309–310 are clearly about hypocrisy, which had been the focus of several preceding lines. See Dronke, Poetic Individuality, p. 149. Letter Collection, Ep. IV, p. 173: “I am thought to be religious at a time such as this when there is little in religion which is not hypocrisy . . . And yet perhaps it seems in a way praiseworthy and somehow acceptable to God if a person gives no offence to the Church in outward behaviour, whatever his intention . . . ” Marenbon describes Abelard’s employment of the De amicitia in the Carmen as “the most extended use of this treatise anywhere in his work,” The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, p. 315. David O’Connell, The Teachings of Saint Louis: A Critical Text (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1972), pp. 53–54. See Daniel T. Kline, “Medieval Children’s Literature: Problems, Possibilities, Parameters,” in Medieval Literature for Children, ed. Daniel T. Kline (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 1–11. See Nicole Clifton, “The Seven Sages of Rome, Children’s Literature, and the Auchinleck Manuscript,” in Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, pp. 185–201 (pp. 194–195); Mary E. Shaner, “Sir Growther (Advocates MS. 19.3.1),” in Medieval Literature for Children, pp. 299–321 (pp. 300–301); Jody Enders, “Rhetoric, Coercion, and the Memory of Violence,” in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, ed. Rita Copeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 24–55; and Marjorie Curry Woods, “Rape and the Pedagogical Rhetoric of Sexual Violence,” in Criticism and Dissent, pp. 56–86.

NOTES

309

44. Luscombe, Peter Abelard’s Ethics, p. xxiv, where he describes the Carmen as “a capricious collection of moral maxims, spicy rules of practical morality inspired probably by the Distichs of Cato.” 45. Othloni Libellus proverbiorum, ed. William Charles Korfmacher (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1936), p. xxvii. 46. “Prouerbiorum autem hic collectorum dictis paruuli quilibet scholastici, si ita cuiquam placeat, possunt apte instrui post lectionem psalterii”; Korfmacher, Othloni Libellus proverbiorum, p. 2. 47. Ibid., pp. xxxi–xxxii. 48. Ibid., p. xxxiv. 49. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, 3.1, p. 699. 50. Eileen C. Sweeney, Logic, Theology, and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard, and Alan of Lille: Words in the Absence of Things (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 96. 51. See Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, p. 289 n. 9. 52. Its editor particularly notes the inf luence of Cicero and Seneca, including Seneca’s De beneficiis and De ira: see Das Moralium Dogma Philosophorum des Guillaume de Conches: Lateinisch, Altfranzösisch und Mittelniederfränkisch, ed. John Holmberg (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri-A.-B., 1929), p. 9 (of the introduction). 53. “Triplex est capiendi consilii deliberatio: prima est de honesto tantum, secunda de utili tantum, tercia de conf lictu utriusque,” ibid., p. 6, lines 19–20. 54. The reference is to Seneca: see the Notes to lines 481–484. 55. Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, p. 316. 56. See L’œuvre de Hugues de Saint-Victor, 1: De institutione novitiorum, De virtute orandi, De laude caritatis, De arrha animae, ed. H. B. Feiss and P. Sicard (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997). 57. Die Disciplina clericalis des Petrus Alfonsi (das älteste Novellenbuch des Mittelalters), ed. Alfons Hilka and Werner Söderhjelm (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1911), p. 1. 58. On this see my “Didactic ‘I’s and the Voice of Experience in Advice from Medieval and Early-Modern Parents to their Children,” in What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early-Modern Periods, ed. Juanita Feros Ruys, Disputatio, 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 129–162. 59. Disticha Catonis, ed. Marcus Boas (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1952), p. 152. 60. Ibid., p. 227. 61. Jaeger, The Envy of Angels, esp. Ch. 8: “Old Learning against New,” pp. 215–236. 62. Der deutsche Facetus, ed. Carl Schroeder, Palaestra 86: Untersuchungen und Texte aus der deutschen und englischen Philologie (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1911), p. 19, Distich 69. 63. Boas, Disticha Catonis, p. 35. 64. For a more detailed discussion see the Notes to 661–664 of the Carmen, chapter 5, in this volume. 65. For a more detailed discussion and sources see the Notes to 395–396 of the Carmen, chapter 5, in this volume. 66. Catherine Brown, Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 150. 67. For a detailed discussion of these recensions and the manuscripts that constitute them, see Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, pp. 53–92 and “Appendix: Survey of the verses transmitted by the individual witnesses,” pp. 167–199.

310

NOTES

68. See Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, p. 90: “rec. I must be considered as the recension presenting the Carmen in the form closest to the original at the level of composition.” 69. See Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, p. 86: “The textual relations confirm that both II and III derive from I and that they are independent of each other.” 70. For a description of this manuscript see Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, pp. 47–50. 71. See Mews, Abelard and Heloise, Ch. 11, “Accusations of Heresy,” pp. 226–249; and Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, pp. 310–317. 72. See Mews, Abelard and Heloise, p. 249. 73. See Chrysogonus Waddell, “St. Bernard and the Cistercian Office at the Abbey of the Paraclete,” in The Chimæra of His Age: Studies on Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. E. Rozanne Elder and John R. Sommerfeldt, Studies in Medieval Cistercian History, 5; Cistercian Studies Series, 63 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1980), pp. 76–121; Waddell, The Paraclete Statutes, Institutiones Nostrae: Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 802, ff. 89r-90v. Introduction, Edition, Commentary, Cistercian Liturgy Series, 20 (Trappist, KY: Gethsemani Abbey, 1987), pp. 130– 131; Mews, “Liturgy and Identity at the Paraclete: Heloise, Abelard and the Evolution of Cistercian Reform,” in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan, Musicological Studies, 78 (Ottawa: The Institute of Mediæval Music 2003), pp. 19–33; and Mary Martin McLaughlin, “Heloise the Abbess: The Expansion of the Paraclete,” in Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 1–17. 74. Rubingh-Bosscher notes that the form of Recension III “demonstrates an individual attitude of the recensor towards his exemplar,” which “may explain some highly individual readings in his text”; Carmen ad Astralabium, p. 65. 75. Victor Cousin, Fragments philosophiques, 2 vols (Paris: Ladrange, 3rd ed., 1838), Vol. 2, p. 140. 76. Research on the later life and career of Astralabe has been undertaken by Brenda M. Cook who intends to publish this work in a monograph titled Astralabe: The Shadow on the Star? The Life and Times of Abelard’s Son. See also Cook, “The Shadow on the Sun: The Name of Abelard’s Son,” in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, pp. 152–155 (p. 155). 77. Riché, Dhuoda, Manuel pour mon fils, p. 49. 78. O’Connell, The Teachings of Saint Louis, pp. 13–29. 79. See Peter Idley’s Instructions to His Son, ed. Charlotte d’Evelyn (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1935), esp. pp. 58–75. 80. Ibid., p. 74. 81. Ibid., p. 62. 82. Marenbon and Orlandi, Collationes, p. lxxxviii. 83. See, for example, the heavy repetition within lines 739–747, which includes “faciunt,” “facit” (739, 742, 743, 747), “ad meritum nichil” (740, 744), “eque” (743, 747), “superesse,” “superest” (740, 741), and “praua,” “prauis” (741, 743). 84. See for example Charles F. Briggs, Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275–c. 1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 26: “Large books imply some sort of ceremonial function or the desire on the part of the patron to impress those who

NOTES

85.

86.

87.

88. 89.

90. 91. 92. 93.

94.

95.

311

beheld them, medium-sized books can often be associated with university and communal libraries, while small volumes suggest personal, private use.” See also Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993; first pub. Edward Arnold, 1979), p. 135: “The new smaller formats were designed for individual private study, if they were academic books, or meditation, if they were religious”; and Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), p. 4: “a book’s physical dimensions ref lect the image its maker had of the book he was making, the use it was to serve, and how it was to be read, whether as a lectern book or a portable pocket book.” 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. Carsten Wollin, “Neue Textzeugen des Carmen ad Astralabium des Petrus Abaelardus,” Sacris erudiri, 46 (2007), 187–240. The manuscripts he discusses are Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. lat. 212; Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 521; Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 215; and Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 901. The Vienna manuscript contains the longest excerpt. See Edouard Jeauneau, “Glane chartraine dans un manuscrit de Rouen,” in Jeauneau, “Lectio philosophorum”: Recherches sur l’Ecole de Chartres (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1973), pp. 103–116 (pp. 105 and 116: “Addendum”). An edition of this text and a reconsideration of its status is currently being undertaken by Constant J. Mews and Ralf Stammberger. Taken from a speech of Alexander the Great in Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis. Letter Collection, Ep. IV, pp. 169 and 171; pp. 168 and 170: “Quomodo etiam penitentia peccatorum dicitur . . . si mens adhuc ipsam peccandi retinet uoluntatem et pristinis estuat desideriis? . . . In tantum uero ille quas pariter exercuimus amantium uoluptates dulces mihi fuerunt ut nec displicere mihi nec uix a memoria labi possint.” Misch confessed himself similarly perplexed by Abelard’s intention here: see Geschichte der Autobiographie, 3.1, p. 703. See my “Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and Medieval Parent-Child Didactic Texts,” p. 221–222. P. Vergili Maronis, Opera, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 109. William of Conches, Dragmaticon philosophiae, ed. I. Ronca and A. Badia, CCCM 152 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), Bk VI, Cap. 9, §2: “DVX: Facta conceptione cetera animalia cessant a coitu, mulieres uero tunc libentius coeunt. Cuius rei nisi rationem audiero admiror.” Ibid., §3: “PHILOSOPHVS: In hoc differt homo a ceteris animalibus, quod illa habent solum sensum praesentium, homo uero cum illo habet memoriam praeteritorum et coniecturam futurorum. Inde fit quod mulier reminiscens praeteritae delectationis similem desiderat.” See my “Heloise, Monastic Temptation, and Memoria: Rethinking Autobiography, Sexual Experience, and Ethics,” in Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and LiteraryAnthropological Theme, ed. Albrecht Classen, Fundamentals of Medieval Culture, 3 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 383–404.

312

NOTES

96. Gernot Wieland, “Latin Lemma—Latin Gloss: The Stepchild of Glossologists,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 19 (1984), 91–99, (p. 91). 97. For a description of P, see Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, pp. 26–28. 98. Wieland, “Latin Lemma—Latin Gloss,” p. 98; see also John O. Ward, “Lawrence of Amalfi and the Boundary between the Oral and the Written in EleventhCentury Europe,” in What Nature Does Not Teach, pp. 305–343, for a discussion of glosses as indicative of classroom contexts. 99. See Suzanne Reynolds, Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 67–71. 100. Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius in Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.5.35, Studies and Texts, 61 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983), p. 13; also “Latin Lemma—Latin Gloss,” pp. 96–97; this approach is endorsed by Reynolds, Medieval Reading, p. 31. 101. Wieland, The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius, p. 15. 102. Wieland, “Interpreting the Interpretation: The Polysemy of the Latin Gloss,” The Journal of Medieval Latin, 8 (1998), 59–71, (p. 62). 103. See Wieland, “Interpreting the Interpretation,” p. 68, on the likelihood of a glossator being a schoolmaster. 104. Reynolds, Medieval Reading, p. 28. 105. For a full description of the manuscript see Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, pp. 24–26. 106. Rubingh-Bosscher describes these as “the scribe’s hand and a later (15th c.?) hand,” Carmen ad Astralabium, p. 25. 107. See, for example, fol. 70r, which marks out in the left margin a passage that reads “Tu ergo in tota anima tua time deum et sacerdotes illius honorifica dilige uenerare eos” and includes a gloss in the right margin that notes “Episcopus quid interpretatur.” 108. For a discussion of the Vatican manuscript see Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, pp. 40–42. 109. This distich, known as the “Distichon de Jesu crucifixo” is found in a number of medieval manuscripts: see André Boutemy, “Notes additionnelles à la notice de Ch. Fierville sur le manuscrit 115 de Saint-Omer,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 22 (1943), 5–33, (p. 9). 110. This line appears commonly in medieval manuscripts; a version can be found in Hildebert of Lavardin’s Inscriptionum Christianarum libellus, no. XXXV (PL 171. 1284A) where it reads “Cur homo miraris? morior ne tu moriaris.” 111. “Facit quod Christus amat dum pauper ad hostia clamat” is proverbial, and is usually found preceded by another proverb that makes something of a distich with it: “Ne sis securus, cras forsitan es moriturus”; see Boutemy, “Analyse d’une anthologie poétique de l’abbaye de Saint-Martin de Tournai,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 17 (1938), 727–746, (p. 744; n° XLII). 112. Mews, “In Search of a Name and Its Significance,” Traditio, 44 (1988), 171–200, (p. 172): “Quid canis plenus nisi lardum baiare consueuit.” 113. Two additional verses appear after this in B, added by a later hand; the second of these is a repetition of a line on fol. 17v. 114. Schroeder, Der deutsche Facetus, p. 16, #35: “A fumo, stillante domo, nequam muliere | te remove; tria namque solent haec saepe nocere.” 115. See G. Kentenich, Die philologischen Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek zu Trier (Trier: Selbstverlag der Stadtbibliothek, 1931), p. 71; and Franz Brunhölzl, “Florilegium

NOTES

116.

117.

118.

119.

120.

121.

122. 123.

124. 125.

126.

127. 128. 129.

313

Treverense,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 1 (1964), 65–77 (discussion), and 3 (1966), 129–217 (edition and apparatus). See Brunhölzl (1966), p. 183, citing PL 171. 1321–1340. Interestingly, in the single manuscript that contains Abelard’s six Planctus (Vatican, Reg. Lat., 288), these follow a verse version of Hildebert’s Life of Mary of Egypt: 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). Brunhölzl (1966), p. 140, line 292 (Carmen, 802): “Tamquam nil scierit talis habendus erit,” where only M reads “scierit”; P reads “scitur” and omits “talis” and B reads “sciret”; p. 140, line 298 (Carmen, 1041): “Pauper sufficiens sibi soli diues habetur”; where only M reads “soli”; P and B read “solus”; p. 184, line 1539 (Carmen, 675): “Plus famam quam res amittere vitat honestus,” where only M reads “honestus”; P reads “honestas” and B reads “honesta.” Brunhölzl (1966), p. 184, line 1525 (Carmen, 359): “Quid voveas, discerne prius multumque diuque” where “discerne” is found only in O and Recension II manuscripts; P reads “decerne,” B reads “docet ne,” and M reads “dicere.” Brunhölzl (1966), p. 140, line 288 (Carmen, 762): “Namque datis Dominus premia plura dabit”; where P reads “magna” and B reads “multa”; p. 140, line 294 (Carmen, 967): “Dissimulat, simulat sapiens per tempora multa” where P and B read “pro”; p. 184, line 1525 (Carmen, 359): “Quid voveas, discerne prius multumque diuque” where P and B read “Que.” Brunhölzl (1966), p. 184, line 1536 (Carmen, 588): “In populo fama plus tibi vita nocet” where Recension II manuscripts read “nocet” but Recension I mansucripts read “ualet” (this line does not appear in any Recension III manuscripts). Brunhölzl (1966), p. 183, line 1519 (Carmen, 173): “Cui male fecisti, ne te commiseris ulli,” where all manuscripts except C (Recension III) read “illi” rather than “ulli.” Lines 919–920: “uituperare cauens uitabis uituperari: | est dignus meritum sumere quisque suum,” where only line 920 was abstracted. For an edition and facsimile reprint of the fragment, see Carsten Wollin, “Ein Liebeslied des Petrus Abaelardus in Bloomington (Indiana),” Revue bénédictine, 119 (2009), 121–163, (pp. 125–128). Ibid., pp. 130–131; the lyric appears in Florence, Laurenziana Edil. 197, fol. 131v. See Ragne Bugge, “Effigiem Christi, qui transis, semper honora: Verses Condemning the Cult of Sacred Images in Art and Literature,” Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia, 6 (1975), 127–139, (p. 134). Jack M. Greenstein argues that this distich was originally composed “in about 1100 for use as an inscription on cult images” and “circulated widely in manuscripts and on images,” particularly crucifixes: see “On Alberti’s ‘Sign’: Vision and Composition in Quattrocentro Painting—Leon Battista Alberti’s ‘Commentary on Painting,’” The Art Bulletin, 79 (1997), 669–698, (p. 675). Another possible origin is Baudri of Borgueil’s “Circa crucifixum”: see Baldricus Burgulianus carmina, ed. Karlheinz Hilbert (Heidelberg: Winter, 1979), n° 125; and G. F. Warner and J. P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: 1921) on London, BL, Royal 10 A.vii, fol. 199, and London, BL, Royal 8 D.iii, fol. 1. Bugge, “Effigiem Christi, qui transis, semper honora,” p. 134. Wollin, “Neue Textzeugen des Carmen ad Astralabium,” p. 191. Ibid., p. 208.

314

NOTES

130. Decimi Magni Ausonii Opera, ed. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p. ix. 131. Hauréau, “Le poème adressé par Abélard à son fils Astralabe.” 132. P, fol. 35v: “liber astralabi”; fol. 54v: “Explicit liber astralabi.” 133. Petrus Abaelardus, Opera, ed. Victor Cousin, 2 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970; first pub. Petri Abælardi Opera, Paris, 1849–1859), I, pp. 344, 340. 134. Brinkmann, “Astrolabius,” p. 188. 135. Dag Norberg, An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Latin Versification, trans. Grant C. Roti and Jacqueline de La Chapelle Skubly (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004; first pub. as Introduction à l’étude de la versification latine médiévale, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1958), pp. 87–88. 136. Haye, Das lateinische Lehrgedicht im Mittelalter, pp. 61–63. 137. Charles Guittard, Carmen et prophéties à Rome, Recherches sur les rhétoriques religieuses, 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 34–35. 138. In his 1911 study of Abelard’s metrical poetry, Fortunato Laurenzi listed a “Carmen morale ad Astralabio, in distici,” but did not discuss it further because it was “non ritmico.” He then added in a footnote that in all likelihood the poem was not written to Abelard’s son at all, but rather to a disciple, and he described it as lacking in import and originality, being largely drawn from the biblical Wisdom books: see Fortunato Laurenzi, Le poesi ritmiche di Pietro Abelardo (Rome: Federico Pustet, 1911), p. 10 n. 1. 139. Ballanti, Insegnamenti al figlio, p. 75: “La genialità di alcune intuizioni pedagogiche; l’attinenza al metodo abelardiano della controversia fra opposti, avvertibile nel gioco dialettico dei distici; la corrispondenza a livello di definizioni comuni con le tesi delle opere di logica, teologia ed etica di Abelardo, sono altrettante testimonianze di autenticità del poema.” 140. Edélestand du Méril, “Poésies d’Abailard,” Journal des savants de Normandie, 44 (1844), 119–153, (135–138). 141. Hauréau, “Le poème adressé par Abélard,” pp. 154–156; see esp. p. 156: “Une dernière citation va complètement dissiper les doutes qu’a pu susciter la critique de M. Du Méril. Nous ne lisons pas seulement dans ce poème le nom d’Astralabe. Héloïse y est aussi nommée.” 142. See Michel Lemoine, “Un philosophe médiéval au temps des Lumières: Abélard avant Victor Cousin,” in L’art des confins: Mélanges offerts à Maurice de Gandillac, ed. Annie Cazenave and Jean-François Lyotard (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985), pp. 571–584. Lemoine notes that French historian Jules Michelet described Abelard as “fils de Pélage, père de Descartes,” while Cousin saw him as the Descartes of the twelfth century (pp. 571, 584). Mews observes that “scholars have invested Abelard’s thought with a mythic status as an emblem of modernity,” Peter Abelard, Authors of the Middle Ages, Volume 2, Number 5; Historical and Religious Writers of the Latin West (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), p. 30. 143. Hauréau, “Le poème adressé par Abélard,” p. 187: “l’on ne s’étonne pas que plusieurs, devenus proverbiaux, aient été cités par les compilateurs et les scoliastes. Le moyen âge nous a laissé d’autres poèmes du même genre, mais où il y a peu de traits originaux, et il y en a beaucoup ici. Il y a même des maximes trop personnelles pour être universellement acceptables.” 144. Du Méril, “Poésies d’Abailard,” p. 137 n. 3: “Comme les autres moralistes réguliers du moyen-âge, l’auteur de ces vers est d’une grossièreté pour les femmes que certainement Abailard ne se fût pas permise.”

NOTES

315

145. Du Méril, “Poésies d’Abailard,” p. 136. 146. Du Méril, Poésies populaires latines du moyen âge (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977; first pub. Paris: Didot Frères, 1847), p. 433. 147. Rodolphe Dareste, “Vers d’Abailard à son fils Astralabe, nouvelle leçon,” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 7 (1845–1846), 406–421, (p. 407): “Le texte de Saint-Omer renferme 308 vers qui manquent dans celui de la bibliothèque Cottonienne: en revanche, ce dernier en offre 92 qui ne sont pas dans l’autre. Il est remarquable, d’ailleurs, que les vers communs aux deux manuscrits y soient placés dans un ordre tout différent, sauf les trois distiques qui forment comme la préface de l’ouvrage.” For a description of S, see Rubingh-Bosscher, Carmen ad Astralabium, pp. 33–40. 148. Du Méril, Poésies populaires latines du moyen âge, p. 432. 149. Steven J. Williams’s examination of the Latin history of the Secret of Secrets makes a compelling study in this regard: see The Secret of Secrets: The Scholarly Career of a Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); see also my “Introduction: Approaches to Didactic Literature—Meaning, Intent, Audience, Social Effect,” in What Nature Does Not Teach, pp. 16–17. 150. Du Méril, Poésies populaires latines du moyen âge, p. 434: “des vers hexamètres qui, sans être suivis de leur complément métrique, forment un sens qui ne laisse rien à désirer à la pensée, et un littérateur aussi instruit qu’Abailard n’eût certainement pas violé les premiers principes de la versification, en les introduisant ainsi au milieu d’une pièce en vers élégiaques.” 151. Cousin had earlier produced the first published edition of the Carmen, including the form of the poem found in the London Cottonian manuscript under the title “Vers inédits d’Abélard à son fils Astralabe” in the 1838 third edition of his twovolume work, Fragments philosophiques, II, p. 132. Du Méril mistakenly describes this as the second edition: see “Poésies d’Abailard,” p. 135 n. 3. 152. Du Méril, Poésies populaires latines antérieures au douzième siècle (Paris: Brockhaus et Avenarius, 1843), p. 175 n. 2: “La découverte que l’on a faite à Rome et à Bruxelles d’une assez grande quantité de poésies latines (six à Rome et quatre-vingt-seize à Bruxelles) confirment encore cette opinion. Nous espérions publier quelques pièces inédites; mais malheureusement, lorsque nous sommes allé exprès à Bruxelles, le no 10158, qui les contient, était prêté à M. Cousin, sur la demande du ministre de l’Instruction publique. Quoique cette bienveillante intervention fût encore plus dans l’intérêt des lettres que dans celui de M. Cousin, et que nous eussions l’autorisation du ministre de l’Intérieur belge, M. Cousin n’a tenu aucun compte du voyage que nous venions de faire, et nous a refusé, par l’intermédiaire de son domestique, de nous communiquer chez lui le ms. d’Abailard. Si M. Cousin, qui a gagné sa réputation d’homme politique par ses travaux littéraires, redevient jamais ministre, nous espérons qu’il retrouvera dans les traditions de ses prédécesseurs le souvenir de la reconnaissance qu’il doit aux lettres, et des égards auxquels ont droit ceux qui les cultivent en ne leur demandant rien que les plaisirs de l’étude.” 153. This point is also noted by Hubert Silvestre, “Héloïse et le témoignage du ‘Carmen ad Astralabium,’” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 83 (1988), 635–660, (p. 651 n. 4): “Le jugement de Du Méril était notamment faussé par son désir de contrer Victor Cousin, qui visiblement excitait son animosité.” Nikolaus M. Häring also notes the animosity between du Méril and Cousin, though without

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considering its implications for the production of the Abelardian corpus: see “Abelard Yesterday and Today,” in Pierre Abélard—Pierre le Vénérable: les courants philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en Occident au milieu du XIIe siècle. Abbaye de Cluny, 2 au 9 juillet 1972, ed. René Louis, Jean Jolivet, and Jean Châtillon, Colloques internationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 546 (Paris: CNRS, 1975), pp. 341–403, (p. 377). This bad blood would also explain Cousin’s rather ad hominem refutation of du Méril’s inauthenticity claims in his 1849 edition of the Carmen.

2

Planctus Analysis

1. Michel Huglo, “Abélard, poète et musicien,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 22 (1979), 349–361 (pp. 356–357): “Le planctus ne constitue pas, de par la prosodie, un genre particulier: il peut tout aussi bien être composé en mètres classiques ou suivre les règles de la poésie rythmique basée sur l’accentuation du mot latin. En somme, c’est un choix parmi divers themes élégiaques . . . qui constituent l’élément formel du planctus.” 2. Nicolas Bell, “Les planctus d’Abélard et la tradition tardive du planctus,” in Pierre Abélard: Colloque international de Nantes, ed. Jean Jolivet and Henri Habrias (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2003), pp. 261–266, (p. 262). See also Ann Buckley, “Abelard’s planctus and Old French lais: Melodic Style and Formal Structure,” in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan, Musicological Studies, 78 (Ottawa: The Institute of Mediæval Music, 2003), pp. 49–59, (p. 49): “All of the planctus are in lai form, and thus provide a bridge between the Latin Lays contained in the Cambridge Songbook . . . and the earliest vernacular examples.” Also Lorenz Weinrich, “Peter Abaelard as Musician—I,” The Musical Quarterly, 55 (1969), 295–312 (p. 305): “Abaelard’s planctus deserve a significant position in musical history, filling the gap between the Latin liturgical sequence outside the Mass and the French secular lai.” 3. Bell, “Les planctus d’Abélard et la tradition tardive du planctus,” p. 263. 4. See Caroline Cohen, “Les elements constitutifs de quelques planctus des Xe et XIe siècles,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 1 (1958), 83–86. 5. Ibid., p. 85: “Il est rare d’ailleurs que l’auteur du planctus se montre personnellement ému.” 6. Weinrich, “Peter Abaelard as Musician—I,” p. 304. 7. Bell, “Les planctus d’Abélard et la tradition tardive du planctus,” p. 262. 8. Ibid., p. 263. 9. 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), pp. 26–27. 10. Wolfram von den Steinen, “Les sujets d’inspiration chez les poètes latins du XIIe siècle. II: Abélard et le subjectivisme,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 9 (1966), 363–373, (p. 369): “Abélard voit les figures mythiques de la Bible non seulement comme des instruments au service du Maître inexplorable, mais comme des sujets souffrants et gémissants.” 11. Constant J. Mews, Abelard and Heloise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 171.

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12. PL 178. 430A; he then adds: “In quo ad modum captivorum, quos diximus, organa nostra suspendentes, et a canticis cessantes, mœrori magis quam exsultationi vacare nos convenit, semper attendentes exsilium quod sustinemus, et ad patriam suspirantes, ad quam creati sumus.” 13. Joseph Szövérffy, Peter Abelard’s Hymnarius Paraclitensis: An Annotated Edition with Introduction, 2 vols (Albany, NY: Classical Folia Editions, 1975), Vol. 2, p. 79. 14. The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, Ep. V, p. 208: “Vide, soror, quantus sit planctus his qui regem diligunt super morte primogeniti eius et unigeniti . . . Hic tuus, soror, planctus; hic tuus sit ululatus, que te huic sponso felici copulasti matrimonio.” 15. PL 178. 580D: “naturalis affectus pietatis qui maxime vestro sexui inest.” 16. Judges 11. 40: “conveniant in unum filiae Israhel et plangant filiam Iepthae Galaaditae”; 2 Samuel 1. 24: “filiae Israhel super Saul f lete.” 17. See also Giuseppe Vecchi who argues for a psychological and literary distinction between the Hymns and the Planctus: “Sorti per richiamo interno, nella suggestione creata dalle lettere di Eliosa, hanno più umano respiro, più appassionate risonanze. Lo stesso testo biblico vi determina un’atmosfera mistica, che emotivamente connette fatti lontani e personali richiami, su di un piano lirico, più che con raccordi logici, nel f luido gioco dei temi metrici e musicali”: Pietro Abelardo, I “Planctus,” ed. and trans. Giuseppe Vecchi (Modena: Società tipografica modenese, 1951), p. 18. Similarly, Dronke argues that due to their paraliturgical function, “the planctus were able to be poetically of a far more intimate nature than anything in the Liber Hymnorum”: Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages, p. 139 n. 1. 18. See, for example, von den Steinen, “Les sujets d’inspiration,” p. 368: “Il connaît bien d’ailleurs le pouvoir qu’a le lyrisme d’adoucir la douleur et de rétablir l’équilibre . . . C’est l’expérience de David, c’est aussi celle d’Abélard”; W. G. East, “This Body of Death: Abelard, Heloise and the Religious Life,” in Medieval Theology and the Natural Body, ed. Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis, York Studies in Medieval Theology, 1 (York: York Medieval Press, 1997), pp. 43–59 (p. 53): “Abelard, himself a poet and musician, author of a volume of sacred songs designed to accompany and complement the psalms in the daily office, may well have seen something of himself in the figure of David.” See also Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages, pp. 118–119, where he argues that Abelard may have found music and poetry a way of turning his sorrows into “a creation that gives them objective dignity.” 19. Massimo Sannelli nevertheless reads this concluding strophe as hopeful: see Pietro Abelardo, Planctus (Trento: La Finestra, 2002), p. 10: “Poi, chiudendo il planctus VI, il silenzio dopo il canto (la fine dell’opera) è il segno del solatium promesso dall’incipit: la parola è denuncia/enunciazione, il canto è remedium, il silenzio—la pausa della parola e del canto—è una possibile catarsi, per l’autore e per il personaggio.” 20. PL 178. 610C: “Tunc ergo Rachel tempus habuit mœroris, sed nunc jam adepta tempus consolationis. Quæ tunc f levit ad inferos descendentes, nunc super eos gaudeat cum Christo regnantes.” 21. Eileen C. Sweeney, Logic, Theology, and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard, and Alan of Lille: Words in the Absence of Things (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 96. 22. Ibid., p. 96.

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23. 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), p. 195; and Vera Morton, Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), p. 122 n. 1. 24. PL 178. 678C: “Proinde quæstiunculas quasdam discipulæ doctori, filiæ Patri destinantes, supplicando rogamus, rogando supplicamus . . . ’; McLaughlin and Wheeler, The Letters of Heloise and Abelard, p. 214: “So, as pupils to their teacher, daughters to their father, we are sending you some small questions, asking you as supplicants, supplicating as petitioners . . . ” 25. See Szövérffy, Peter Abelard’s Hymnarius Paraclitensis, Vol. 2, pp. 9–13, 79–81, and 169–170; Szövérffy, “‘False’ Use of ‘Unfitting’ Hymns: Some Ideas Shared by Peter the Venerable, Peter Abelard and Heloise,” Revue bénédictine, 89 (1979), 187–199; and Mews, “Liturgy and Identity at the Paraclete: Heloise, Abelard and the Evolution of Cistercian Reform,” in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, pp. 19–33 (esp. pp. 27–33; including a translation of the three Hymnary Prefaces at pp. 30–33). 26. Expositio in Hexameron, ed. Mary Romig, with David Luscombe, CCCM 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), Preface, §4, lines 30–37, p. 4: “Supplicando itaque postulas et postulando supplicas, soror Heloysa . . . quatinus in expositionem horum tanto studiosius intendam quanto difficiliorem eorum esse constat intelligentiam, et specialiter hoc tibi et filiabus tuis spiritualibus persoluam. Vnde et rogantes uos rogo, ut que me rogando ad hoc compellitis, orando deum michi efficaciam impetretis”; Wanda Zemler-Cizewski, Peter Abelard, An Exposition on the Six-Day Work, Corpus Christianorum in Translation, 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), p. 32: “And so by pleading you demand and by demanding you plead, sister Heloise . . . that I might look into the interpretation of these texts, so much the more zealously, the more difficult their meaning is known to be, and especially that I should explain this for you and your spiritual daughters. Hence also I ask you, who ask, that you who compel me to this by asking, obtain strength for me by your prayer to God.” 27. PL 178. 379: “juxta petitionem tuam, tam tibi quam spiritalibus filiabus tuis in oratorio nostro congregatis.” 28. See Fiona J. Griffiths, “‘Men’s Duty to Provide for Women’s Needs’: Abelard, Heloise, and Their Negotiation of the cura monialium,” Journal of Medieval History, 30 (2004), 1–24. 29. There has long been discussion as to whether Abelard was referring to the Planctus in his prefatory letter to the Sermons, sent to Heloise, where he spoke of “the little book of hymns or sequences” that he had recently completed at her behest: see PL 178. 379–380: “Libello quodam hymnorum vel sequentiarum a me nuper precibus tuis consummato.” Scholarly consensus appears to be that this constitutes a reference only to the Hymns; see David Wulstan, “Novi modulaminis melos: The Music of Heloise and Abelard,” Plainsong and Medieval Music, 11 (2002), 1–23, (p. 3 and n. 9); and Thomas J. Bell, Peter Abelard after Marriage: The Spiritual Direction of Heloise and Her Nuns through Liturgical Song (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2007), pp. xx–xxvi. 30. Pierre Abélard, Lamentations; Histoire de mes malheurs; Correspondance avec Héloïse, ed. and trans. Paul Zumthor (Arles: Actes Sud, 1992), p. 19: “La composition de l’Hymnaire, œuvre de commande, avait représenté une lourde et, on peut le supposer, monotone tâche . . . Les Planctus marquent la revanche de la spontanéité, de la liberté, de la pure joie créatrice.”

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31. Bell, Peter Abelard after Marriage, p. xi. 32. The nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reception of the Planctus reveals that the poems were read equally as personal and liturgical texts. Their first editor, Karl Johann (Carl) Greith, included them in his 1838 study Spicilegium Vaticanum under the heading “Minnelieder” (Love Songs), and described them as “belonging to the earliest love songs of the Middle Ages to have come down to us.” He identified the Planctus with, or at least with the period of, the love songs written by Abelard about Heloise that were sung in Paris early in their relationship, and noted that the planctus-form in the Middle Ages was designed to commemorate loved ones, friends, and benefactors: see Carl Greith, Spicilegium Vaticanum: Beiträge zur nähern Kenntniss der vatikanischen Bibliothek für deutsche Poesie des Mittelalters (Frauenfeld: Ch. Beyel, 1838), pp. 121–131. In his massive two-volume biography of Abelard, published in 1845, Charles de Rémusat tied the composition of the Planctus to the period of Abelard’s arrival at St. Gildas, where the lowering immensity of the Breton landscape and the intractable behavior of his monks drew him into a deep melancholy that colored all his writings of the time. Accordingly, de Rémusat reads the Planctus as deeply autobiographic, so that “under the transparent veil of the biblical stories, Abelard utters his own griefs”: see Charles de Rémusat, Abélard, 2 vols (Paris: Libraire philosophiqe de Ladrange, 1845), I, 122–124. However, in 1844, Edélestand du Méril took exception with Greith’s characterization of the Planctus as the early love songs of Abelard for Heloise, and pointed out that they were in fact religious songs based on biblical stories: see Edélestand du Méril, “Poésies d’Abailard,” Journal des savants de Normandie, 44, (1844), 119–153, (p. 139). In 1890, in his extensive study of the meter of the Planctus, Wilhelm Meyer declared that the Planctus must have had a similar liturgical purpose to Abelard’s Hymns, dealing as they did with material from the books of Genesis, Judges, and Kings: see Wilhelm Meyer, Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur mittellateinischen Rythmik, 3 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970; first pub. Berlin: Weidmann, 1905–1936), I, “V. Petri Abaelardi Planctus I II IV V VI,” pp. 357–374 (p. 357). In 1905, Guido Maria Dreves included the Planctus in the Analecta Hymnica, clearly attributing to them a religious function: see Guido Maria Dreves, Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, Vol. 48: Hymnographi Latini / Lateinische Hymnendichter des Mittelalters (Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1905), pp. 142 and 223–232. In his 1911 study of Abelard’s rhythmic poetry, Fortunato Laurenzi returned to an autobiographical reading of the Planctus, this time finding their inspiration not in Abelard’s own melancholy interior, but rather in Heloise’s plangent cries as expressed in her Ep. IV. Yet Laurenzi also countenanced a liturgical, or at least semi-liturgical, function for the texts, given their sequence form, which was generally associated with the liturgy: see Fortunato Laurenzi, Le poesie ritmiche di Pietro Abelardo (Rome: Federico Pustet, 1911), pp. 18–20 and 52–60. Vecchi followed many of Laurenzi’s suggestions in his 1951 edition of the Planctus. He saw them as a synthesis of a life of sorrow as experienced by Abelard, expressed through biblical allegory and symbolism, yet he also read their number six as representing the hexaemeron, the six days of Creation, so that the nuns would sing a lament for each day: see Vecchi, I “Planctus,” pp. 13–17 and 29. 33. Wulstan, “Novi modulaminis melos,” p. 16; see also Zumthor, Lamentations, p. 28: “Les Planctus ne passèrent jamais dans le répertoire sacré et ne furent conservés que par hasard.”

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34. Huglo, “Abélard, poète et musicien,” p. 357: “qui n’étaient pas, eux, destinés à l’usage liturgique.” 35. von den Steinen, “Les sujets d’inspiration,” p. 366: “ces événements ne sont pas symboles d’éprouves ou d’expériences primordiales de l’âme chrétienne, de l’Ecclesia chrétienne; mais bien plutôt échos des expériences intérieures d’Abélard. Il en résulte que les planctus n’ont pas pu devenir des chants liturgiques, bien que leur forme artistique les apparente aux proses. Ils étaient à un trop haut degré l’œuvre lyrique d’un individu”; see also p. 365: “Les six chants qui y figurent ne s’insèrent pas dans la liturgie traditionnelle.” 36. Bell, Peter Abelard after Marriage, p. xxiv; see also p. 168, where he describes a planctus as “typically a non-liturgical song of lamentation in sequence form.” 37. Bell, “Les planctus d’Abélard et la tradition tardive du planctus,” p. 262: “Il paraît évident aussi que beaucoup de ces planctus n’ont jamais été écrits pour être chantés mais étaient considérés seulement comme un phénomène purement littéraire.” 38. Huglo, “Abélard, poète et musicien,” p. 360: “Ne s’agirait-il pas de divertissements pieux à l’usage des moniales du Paraclet? En quelque sorte, ces pièces ressemblent fort aux joca monachorum . . . ” This idea is revisited by Zumthor, Lamentations, p. 20. 39. Bell, “Les planctus d’Abélard et la tradition tardive du planctus,” p. 264. See also Zumthor, Lamentations, p. 28: “Sans doute Planctus comme Hymnaire étaient-ils trop peu conformistes pour résister aux pressions du conservatisme clérical, trop originaux au sein d’une littérature latine en recul devant la montée des langues romanes.” 40. Nils Holger Petersen, “Les planctus d’Abélard et la tradition des drames liturgiques,” in Pierre Abélard, pp. 267–276 (p. 268): “la mise en place de ce planctus ne semble avoir aucun rapport avec les usages liturgiques . . . De manière générale, les planctus d’Abélard ne suggèrent aucun rapport à la liturgie.” 41. Gunilla Iversen, “From Jubilus to Learned Exegesis: New Liturgical Poetry in Twelfth-Century Nevers,” in Sapientia et eloquentia: Meaning and Function in Liturgical Poetry, Music, Drama, and Biblical Commentary in the Middle Ages, ed. Gunilla Iversen and Nicolas Bell, Disputatio, 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 203–258, (p. 236): “Normally, a planctus is not part of the liturgy. The four songs presented together in the Nevers collection, however, presumably were intended to have some place and function in the liturgy, albeit an unspecified one, and might even have been used as sequences of a new kind.” 42. See my “Quae maternae immemor naturae: The Rhetorical Struggle over the Meaning of Motherhood in the Writings of Heloise and Abelard,” in Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 323–339. 43. Letter Collection, Ep. V, pp. 204 / 205. 44. Zumthor, Lamentations, p. 18: “Le nombre de six ne peut être aléatoire: il réfère à l’hexameron . . . Les poèmes se suivent dans l’ordre des livres et versets auxquels ils se réfèrent. Seule exception: les deux derniers, intervertis dans le manuscrit; j’ai rétabli la succession régulière. Ce bref recueil offre donc, pour chaque jour de la semaine, un chant spirituel évoqant, selon la chronologie sacrée, un épisode dramatique de l’histoire du peuple élu.” As seen above, this argument for the daily use through the week of the Planctus by the nuns of the Paraclete draws from Laurenzi and Vecchi.

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45. Marie-Noël Colette, “A Witness to Poetic and Musical Invention in the Twelfth Century: The Troper-Proser of Nevers (BnF n.a.lat. 3126),” in Sapientia et eloquentia, pp. 259–300, (p. 288). 46. For an edition of the Epithalamica, see Chrysogonus Waddell, “Epithalamica: An Easter Sequence by Peter Abelard,” The Musical Quarterly, 72 (1986), 239–271, (pp. 248–253). 47. A further correspondence between the two lyrics comes in their use of the verse in Song of Songs 2. 8 that references the Bridegroom seeking his Bride. In the Epithalamica, 3a and 3b, this appears as a joyful event, as in the Song of Songs and Abelard’s Hymn 62; in the Planctus uirginum, however, it has been reworded to evoke the sorrow of the two months prior to her execution during which Jephthah’s daughter will mourn the fact that she will never be wife and mother (III, 66–67). 48. William Flynn, “Letters, Liturgy, and Identity: The Use of Epithalamica at the Paraclete,” in Sapientia et eloquentia, pp. 301–348, (p. 345). 49. See 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), p. 172; Wulstan, “Novi modulaminis melos”; and Mews, “Heloise and Liturgical Experience at the Paraclete,” Plainsong and Medieval Music, 11 (2002), 25–35, (pp. 31–33). 50. Giovanni Orlandi, “On the Text and Interpretation of Abelard’s Planctus,” in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, ed. John Marenbon, Mittellateinischen Studien und Texte, 29 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 327–342 (p. 342). 51. Willemien Otten, “The Poetics of Biblical Tragedy in Abelard’s Planctus,” in Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity: The Encounter between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation, ed. Willemien Otten and Karla Pollmann (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 245–261, (p. 258): “It seems that Abelard would probably not write a poetic cycle about New Testament figures as long as doing so would require him to endorse a view of New Testament characters as reflecting the straightforward acceptance of salvation, while the Old Testament contains only figures deeply fraught with ambiguity”; (p. 261): “in the end Abelard seems to have found not just the reason for lament but especially the beginning of consolation.” 52. This accords with my argument that in the Planctus Dine, Abelard was employing a particular reading of Dinah’s subsequent history as expounded by the great medieval Jewish scholar Rashi in which she became a Canaanite woman (see Notes to Planctus Dine, line 12); as such, she would no longer have been considered a part of Jacob’s family and legacy. 53. In the biblical exemplar, David is still recalling Joab’s treachery on his deathbed and demands that Solomon punish it (1 Kings 2. 5). 54. This argument is explored in greater detail in my “Ut sexu sic animo: The Resolution of Sex and Gender in the Planctus of Abelard,” Medium Ævum, 75 (2006), 1–23. 55. See also Sannelli, Planctus, p. 8: “Il percorso dalla famiglia di Giacobbe agli affetti di Davide contiene le forme di rapporto (e di distruzione o fallimento del rapporto . . . ): paternità/filialità, amore, amicizia.” 56. See similarly Zumthor, Lamentations, p. 23: “le ton amoureux dont David s’adresse au jeune prince abattu n’ évoque-t-ils pas on ne sait quelle inversion des rôles: Héloïse, désormais séparée, la très jeune maîtresse de jadis, comme un éphèbe?” 57. Yves Ferroul, “Abelard’s Blissful Castration,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 129–149, (p. 143).

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58. This is despite the fact that Abelard references Jacob’s deathbed prophecy of Benjamin as a ravening wolf (Genesis 49. 27) elsewhere in his writings: Hymn 91, 3/1–4, Sermon 24 (PL 178. 532D), and Commentary on Romans (I.I.1, p. 51, lines 135–137; IV.XI.25, p. 265, lines 325–326). 59. See also Sannelli, Planctus, p. 10: “Rimane fermo—ed è irriducibile a qualunque questione biografica—il problema estetico e teologico dell’appartenenza ad Abelardo del punto di vista dei cori nei planctus III e IV.” Sanelli’s problem, however, appears to lie in the pre-Christian point of view that these voices espouse, as they do not recognize and value the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter and Samson as a prefiguring of Christ. 60. I am indebted to Professor Flynn for pointing out the way that Abelard’s Hymn 60 presents several key Old Testament moments as occurring simultaneously: “Golias prostratus est . . . | Cum suis submersus est | Ille Pharao” (60, 1/1–6). 61. “iudice” (I, 20); “iudicio” (I, 27); “plus iusto” (II, 32); “iudicis” (III, 120); “iuditia” (IV, 2); “iusticie zelum” (V, 27); “iustior” (VI, 5). Swords feature in three of the laments as a means by which a form of human justice is dispensed: “gladio” (II, 4), “ensem” (III, 111), “gladius” (III, 118), and “gladio iugulatur” (VI, 32). 62. Sweeney analyzes Abelard’s complex evocation of the role played by God and his providence in the life of humans in the Planctus Iacob in Logic, Theology, and Poetry, pp. 100–101; see particularly p. 101: “The story of Joseph and his brothers is, as Abelard tells it, the story of the suffering of human beings ignorant of providence, of human inability to read the signs correctly and, even when they read signs correctly, to take the wrong action in the face of them”. 63. As Sweeney notes: “Like the others who mourn in these laments, David sees his loss from a totally human perspective; he does not address God because at this moment of grief his cannot imagine a God who could allow or right the wrong. His appeal to human princes does not seem like a realistic plan for avenging the death, nor does it seem to stem from any faith in human agency. Rather it is a cry for vengeance that comes from overwhelming grief and anger,” Logic, Theology, and Poetry, p. 111. 64. See also Sannelli, Planctus, p. 9: “il fallimento del rapporto a causa di una morte o evitabile o condivisibile.” 65. For Abner, see 2 Samuel 3. 27: “et percussit illum ibi in inguine et mortuus est”; see also Annelies Wouters, “‘Abner fidelissime’: Abelard’s Version of a Biblical Lament,” in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, pp. 60–66. 66. Sweeney notes, “The paradox of Abelard’s lament is that Jacob laments the loss of Joseph, who is not lost, and laments how he was lost, which is not accurate. This moment of sorrow and anguish is cut out from the middle of a comedic, not a tragic narrative.” She points out that at the heart of this deception stand not just human actors but God himself (Logic, Theology, and Poetry, p. 101). 67. For more detailed discussion see my “‘He Who Kills Himself Liberates a Wretch’: Abelard on Suicide,” in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette S. Hellemans, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 229 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 230–249. 68. Sweeney, Logic, Theology, and Poetry, p. 111. 69. See also Sannelli, Planctus, p. 9: “lo stupro di Dina come eccesso di amore e il nimis nella punizione di Sichem, lo zelo insanus di Iefte, la prigionia e il nimius labor di Sansone . . . ” 70. See Martine Irvine, “Abelard and (Re)Writing the Male Body: Castration, Identity, and Remasculinization,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages,

NOTES

71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80.

81.

82. 83. 84. 85.

86.

323

pp. 87–106, (pp. 99 and 102); and Bonnie Wheeler, “Origenary Fantasies: Abelard’s Castration and Confession,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, pp. 107–128. Ferroul, “Abelard’s Blissful Castration,” p. 129. Sannelli, Planctus, pp. 79–83. While generally urging caution in applying a personal reading from Abelard’s Historia to the Planctus, Dronke recognizes the particular resonances between the two in the case of the Planctus Dine: “Most overtly in the lament of Dina: here it is in external events as much as in thoughts and feelings that art and life confront each other” (Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages, p. 117). With regard to the Planctus Dine, however, Gilbert Dahan disagrees: “ . . . la circoncision de Sichem (qui n’a rien à voir avec une castration) . . . ”; “La matière biblique dans le Planctus de Dina de Pierre Abélard,” in Hortus troporum: Florilegium in honorem Gunillae Iversen. A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Gunilla Iversen at the Occasion of her Retirement as Chair of Latin at the Department of Classical Languages, Stockholm University, ed. Alexander Andrée and Erika Kihlman (Stockholm: Stockholms Universitet, 2008), pp. 255–267, (p. 266). Letter Collection, Historia, pp. 44, 46; see also “ultio,” p. 44. Ibid.: “lamentatione”; “‘planctu”; “lamentis et eiulatibus.” See, for example, Marenbon and Orlandi, Collationes, §§ 17 and 30. Irvine, “Abelard and (Re)Writing the Male Body,” p. 100. Wheeler, “Origenary Fantasies,” p. 113. This seems to lay to rest Zumthor’s observation that in the Planctus Dine “Un épisode qui, dans le Genèse, apparaît comme une sanglante et brutale vendetta est traité ici avec tendresse et un sentiment très fin des responsabilités individuelles” (Lamentations, p. 24). See Irvine, “Abelard and (Re)Writing the Male Body,” and Wheeler, “Origenary Fantasies.” Indeed, Abelard’s attempt to do so in his Planctus Dine prompted the criticism by one of the earliest editors of the laments, Edélestand du Méril, that such terminology was unwieldy and evidence of the deficiency of eloquence and purity of style in the Planctus: “Poésies d’Abailard,” Journal des savants de Normandie, 44 (1844), 119–153, (p. 139 n. 2). See, for example, Abelard’s Sermon 3, “In circumcisione Domini”; Expositio in Hexameron, §§ 233 and 239; Sic et non, Q. CIX: “Quod tantumdem valebat circumcisio in antiquo populo quantum nunc baptismus et contra”; Commentary on Romans, I.II.16 and II.IV.11 (both of which passages are heavily invested with the same terminology as the Planctus Dine); and Collationes, especially the first Conference of the Jew with the Philosopher. Wheeler, “Origenary Fantasies,” p. 111. See, for example, Letter Collection, Ep. V, pp. 210–213. Wheeler, “Origenary Fantasies,” p. 112. Letter Collection, Historia, pp. 44–45: “Quo audito, auunculus et consanguinei seu affines eius opinati sunt me nunc sibi plurimum illusisse, et ab ea moniali facta me sic facile uelle expedire. Vnde uehementer indignati et aduersum me coniurati . . . ”; “At this news her uncle and his relatives and connections imagined that I had tricked them and had found an easy way of ridding myself of Heloise by making her a nun. Wild with indignation they bound themselves by oath against me . . .” See John R. Clark, “The Traditional Figure of Dina and Abelard’s First Planctus,” Proceedings of the PMR Conference, 7 (1982), 117–128, (pp. 120–122), and Dahan, “La matière biblique dans le Planctus de Dina de Pierre Abélard.”

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87. Letter Collection, Ep. VIII, p. 493; “Egressa est Dina ut alienigenas uideret et corrupta est,” p. 492. 88. Bernard of Clairvaux, De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae, X. 29, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, Vol. 3 (1963), 1–59, (p. 39): “O Dina, quid necesse est ut videas mulieres alienigenas? Qua necessitate? Qua utilitate? An sola curiositate?” 89. Clark, “The Traditional Figure of Dina and Abelard’s First Planctus,” p. 123. 90. Jeremiah 31. 15: “vox in excelso audita est lamentationis f letus et luctus, Rachel plorantis filios suos et nolentis consolari super eis quia non sunt.” 91. Matthew 2. 18: “vox in Rama audita est ploratus et ululatus multus, Rachel plorans filios suos et noluit consolari quia non sunt.” 92. Janthia Yearley, “A Bibliography of Planctus in Latin, Provençal, French, German, English, Italian, Catalan and Galician-Portuguese from the Time of Bede to the Early Fifteenth Century,” Journal of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, 4 (1981), 12–52: L 53, L 63, L 94, L 95, L 96, L 124, L 134. 93. John Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 351, and see generally, “Dramatic Emotion: ‘Mourning Rachel,’” pp. 351–361. See also Dronke, Nine Medieval Latin Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. xxviii–xxxi. 94. PL 178. 580C: “Hic est ille ploratus et ululatus multus Rachelis vestræ . . . Et vos ergo, sorores in Christo charissimæ, . . . pia lamentatione plangite . . . ” 95. PL 178. 610C: “Flevit Rachel, compassione filiorum aff licta.” 96. PL 178: 533A: “Benjamin itaque, fratres, fratrum novissimus, et patri dilectissimus Paulus ipse est, qui novissime post apostolos a Deo vocatus, tanto exstitit Deo charior, quanto in meritis fuit excellentior.” 97. Commentary on Romans, I.I.1, p. 51, lines 141–146. 98. Sermon 24, PL 178. 533D; this passage appears almost identically in the Commentary on Romans, I.I.1, p. 51, lines 146–157. 99. Genesis 35. 18: “vocavit nomen filii sui Benoni id est filius doloris mei”; see Abelard, Sermon 24 (PL 178. 534A); identically in the Commentary on Romans, I,I.1, p. 51, lines 157–161. 100. Genesis 35. 18: “pater vero appellavit eum Beniamin id est filius dexterae”; see Abelard, Sermon 24 (PL 178. 534A); also Commentary on Romans, I.I.1, pp. 51–52, lines 161–166. 101. PL 178. 535A. 102. Citing Genesis 49. 27; see also Sermon 24 (PL 178. 534B) and Commentary on Romans, I.I.1, p. 52, lines 168–175. 103. Letter Collection, Historia, p. 36/38: “Quis denique sacris uel philosophicis meditationibus intentus, pueriles uagitus, nutricum que hos mittigant nenias, tumultuosam familie tam in uiris quam in feminis turbam sustinere poterit?”; p. 37: “Who can concentrate on thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying, nurses soothing them with lullabies, and all the noisy crowd of men and women about the house?” 104. Genesis 22. 12: “timeas Dominum et non peperceris filio tuo unigenito propter me”; Genesis 22. 16: “quia fecisti rem hanc et non pepercisti filio tuo unigenito”. 105. Commentary on Romans, II.IV.11, p. 128, lines 200–203: “Isaac uero, qui postea natus est, gentilis populi postea uocati spiritualem a uitiis circumcisionem exprimit, quam et proselyti praefigurabant.”

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106. Dronke, “Medieval Poetry—I: Abélard,” The Listener (November 25, 1965), 841–845, (p. 842); Dronke and Margaret Alexiou, “The Lament of Jephtha’s Daughter,” in Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992), pp. 365–388 (first pub. Studi medievali, 3a serie, 12 [1971], 819–863), pp. 381–382; Dronke, Poetic Individuality, p. 115. 107. See, for example, Expositio in Hexameron, §233, p. 55: “Circumcisio quippe quamuis idem quod baptismus operata esse dicatur in remissionem peccatorum, non tamen hanc efficaciam in tot habuisse potuit in quot baptismi gratia persistit; non enim nisi mares circumcidebantur, et soli iudei siue proseliti”; Zemler-Cizewski, An Exposition on the Six-Day Work, p. 74: “In fact although circumcision is said to have the same effect as baptism upon the remission of sins, it could not have had this efficacy among as many as those in whom the grace of baptism has remained; for none except males were circumcised, and only Jews or proselytes.” 108. Sermon 3 (PL 178. 404D): “postmodum in baptismo corpori ejus, quod est Ecclesia, convenimur, tanquam si sponsa post balneum in amplexus sponsi suscipiatur.” 109. Sermon 3 (PL 178. 404A): “ita post circumcisionem baptismi subiit sacramentum quod tam viros quam feminas æque sanctificat.” 110. See the words Abelard attributes to the Jew in Collatio 1, §36, pp. 44–45. 111. For a fascinating study of the images of burnt offerings in the Hymns and their relation to Abelard’s construction of a monastic hierarchy at the Paraclete, see Flynn, “Abelard and Rhetoric: Widows and Virgins at the Paraclete,” in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette S. Hellemans, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 229 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 155–186, esp. pp. 161, 173, 175. 112. “Integratam | spiritu quam corpore, | Holocaustum | verum fit ex virgine.” 113. In this I disagree with Dronke’s assessment that “the ceremony is seen as an atonement and a catharsis,” “Medieval Poetry,” p. 842. 114. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 239. 115. Gerald Bond, The Loving Subject: Desire, Eloquence, and Power in Romanesque France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), esp. pp. 50–51, where he notes: “Because of this inherent ambiguity of the word amor, Baudri is able to f lirt simultaneously with codes of friendship between monks and codes of desire between males” (p. 50), and “Homosexual love is always a potential meaning in these texts . . . The force of Baudri’s letter-poems . . . lies precisely in their hazardous play with the taboo, their display of the dialectic between the public language of restraint and the private thought of release” (p. 51). 116. Mews, “Cicero and the Boundaries of Friendship in the Twelfth Century,” Viator, 38 (2007), 369–384 (pp. 381–382). 117. See Mews, The Lost Love Letters, Letter 23, pp. 228–229. 118. Letter Collection, Ep. V, p. 210. 119. PL 178. 686B. 120. Marenbon and Orlandi, Collationes, §99, p. 118. 121. While it could be argued that “amor” might have been chosen over “dilectio” for metrical reasons, the Planctus Dine makes it clear that Abelard is not cowed by metrics: a poet who can include “circumcisio” and “proselitum” (I, 14),

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or “perturbastis” and “execrandi” (I, 24) in a single line, could make use of “dilectio” over “amor” if he wished. 122. See similarly Dronke, Poetic Individuality, p. 116: “David recalls not only the oneness of love they shared, but a shared agony of guilt . . . of which the Bible knows nothing, and which is never explained within the planctus itself ”; and Sweeney, Logic, Theology, and Poetry, p. 110: “A morally compromised David . . . alludes to his disproportionate love for Jonathan and a guilt (homoerotic or patricidal?) shared with Jonathan that is never explained.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

List of Frequently Cited Editions and Translations of Writings of Abelard and Heloise Abelard, Carmen ad Astralabium. Latin: 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. ——— Josepha Marie Annaïs Rubingh-Bosscher, Peter Abelard, Carmen ad Astralabium: A Critical Edition (Groningen: [privately published], 1987). Latin and Italian: Graziella Ballanti, Pietro Abelardo, Insegnamenti al figlio: Commento, traduzione e testo latino (Rome: Armando Editore, 1991). Abelard, Collationes. Latin and English: John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi, Peter Abelard, Collationes, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001). Abelard, Commentary on Romans. Latin: Eligius M. Buytaert, Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica, I: Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos; Apologia contra Bernardum, CCCM 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). Abelard, Expositio in Hexameron. Latin: Mary Romig, with David Luscombe, Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica, V: Expositio in Hexameron, CCCM 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). Abelard, Hymns. Latin: Joseph Szövérffy, Peter Abelard’s Hymnarius Paraclitensis: An Annotated Edition with Introduction, 2 vols, Medieval Classics: Texts and Studies, 2 and 3 (Albany, NY: Classical Folia Editions, 1975), Vol. 2. Abelard, Letters: Historia calamitatum, Epp. III, V, VII, and VIII (Rule for the Paraclete). Latin and English: The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, ed. David Luscombe, with a revised translation by David Luscombe after the translation by Betty Radice, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013). Heloise, Letters: Epp. II, IV, and VI. Latin and English: The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, ed. David Luscombe, with a revised translation by David Luscombe after the translation by Betty Radice, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013). Heloise and Abelard, Problemata Heloissae cum Petri Abaelardi solutionibus. Latin: PL 178. 677–730. English: 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. 211–267.

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Abelard, Scito te ipsum. Latin: Rainer M. Ilgner, Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica, IV: Scito te ipsum, CCCM 190 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). Abelard, Sermons. Latin: PL 178. 379–610. Abelard, Sic et non. Latin: Blanche B. Boyer and Richard McKeon, Peter Abailard, Sic et non: A Critical Edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976–1977). Epistulae duorum amantium. Latin and English: Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France, with translations by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999; 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Manuscripts Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, 569 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, lat. oct. 172. Bloomington, IN, Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Poole 99. London, British Library, Arundel 244. London, British Library, Royal 6.C. VIII, now part of London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius, C.VIII. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, 9210. Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 1761 (415). Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 79. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 6469. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 8207. Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 561. Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 3061. Paris, Bibiothèque nationale de France, n.a. lat. 3126. St-Omer, Bibliothèque muncipale, 115. Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 1898. Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. Lat. 288. Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rossi 933.

Editions and Translations of the Carmen ad Astralabium (long recension) Ballanti, Graziella. Pietro Abelardo, Insegnamenti al figlio: Commento, traduzione e testo latino (Rome: Armando Editore, 1991). Hauréau, Jean-Barthélemy. “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. Rubingh-Bosscher, Josepha Marie Annaïs. Peter Abelard, Carmen ad Astralabium: A Critical Edition (Groningen: [privately published], 1987).

Editions and Translations of the Carmen ad Astralabium (short recensions) Cousin, Victor. Fragments philosophiques, 2 vols (Paris: Ladrange, 3rd ed., 1838).

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——— Petrus Abaelardus, Opera, 2 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970; first pub. Petri Abælardi Opera, Paris, 1849–1859). Dareste, Rodolphe. “Vers d’Abailard à son fils Astralabe, nouvelle leçon,” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 7 (1845–1846), 406–421. Migne, Jacques-Paul. Patrologia Latina, Vol. 178 (Paris, 1855).

Editions and Translations of the Planctus (full series) Dreves, Guido Maria. Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, Vol. 48: Hymnographi Latini/ Lateinische Hymnendichter des Mittelalters (Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1905). Greith, Carl. Spicilegium Vaticanum: Beiträge zur nähern Kenntniss der vatikanischen Bibliothek für deutsche Poesie des Mittelalters (Frauenfeld: Ch. Beyel, 1838). Laurenzi, Fortunato. Le poesie ritmiche di Pietro Abelardo (Rome: Federico Pustet, 1911). Meyer, Wilhelm. Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur mittellateinischen Rythmik, 3 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970; first pub. Berlin: Weidmann, 1905–1936). Migne, Jacques-Paul. Patrologia Latina, Vol. 178 (Paris, 1855). Sannelli, Massimo. Pietro Abelardo, Planctus (Trento: La Finestra, 2002). Vecchi, Giuseppe. Pietro Abelardo, I “Planctus” (Modena: Società tipografica modenese, 1951). Zumthor, Paul. Pierre Abélard, Lamentations; Histoire de mes malheurs; Correspondance avec Héloïse (Arles: Actes Sud, 1992).

Editions and Translations of the Planctus (individual) Dronke, Peter. Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry 1000–1150 (London: Westfield College, University of London Committee for Medieval Studies, 2nd ed., 1986; first pub. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). du Méril, Edélestand. Poésies populaires latines antérieures au XIIe siècle (Paris: Brockhaus et Avenarius, 1843). ——— “Poésies d’Abailard,” Journal des savants de Normandie, 44 (1844), 119–153. ——— Poésies populaires latines du moyen âge (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977; first pub. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1847). Kearney, Eileen F. “Peter Abelard’s Planctus ‘Dolorum solatium’: A New Song for David,” in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette S. Hellemans, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 229 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 253–281. Steinen, Wolfram von den. “Die Planctus Abaelards—Jephthas Tochter,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 4 (1967), 122–144. Weinrich, Lorenz. “‘Dolorum solatium’: Text und Musik von Abaelards Planctus David,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 5 (1968), 59–78. ——— “Peter Abaelard as Musician—I,” The Musical Quarterly, 55 (1969), 295–312. ——— “Peter Abaelard as Musician—II,” The Musical Quarterly, 55 (1969), 464–486. Wouters, Annelies. “‘Abner fidelissime’: Abelard’s Version of a Biblical Lament,” in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan, Musicological Studies, 78 (Ottawa: The Institute of Mediæval Music, 2003), pp. 60–66.

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Editions and Translations of Other Works of Abelard Boyer, Blanche B. and Richard McKeon. Peter Abailard, Sic et non: A Critical Edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976–1977). Burnett, Charles S. F. “‘Confessio fidei ad Heloisam’: Abelard’s Last Letter to Heloise? A Discussion and Critical Edition of the Latin and Medieval French Versions,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 21 (1986), 147–155. ——— “Peter Abelard, Confessio fidei ‘Universis’: A Critical Edition of Abelard’s Reply to Accusations of Heresy,” Mediaeval Studies, 48 (1986), 111–138. Buytaert, Eligius M. Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica, I: Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos; Apologia contra Bernardum, CCCM 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). ——— Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica, II: Theologia christiana; Theologia scholarium (recensiones breviores); Capitula haeresum Petri Abaelardi, CCCM 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969). ——— and Constant J. Mews. Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica, III: Theologia “summi boni”; Theologia “scholarium,” CCCM 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987). De Rijk, L. M. Petrus Abaelardus, Dialectica: First Complete Edition of the Parisian Manuscript, 2nd rev. ed. (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1970). Engels, L. J. “Adtendite a falsis prophetis (Ms. Colmar 128, ff. 152v/153v). Un texte de Pierre Abélard contre les Cisterciens retrouvé?,” in Corona gratiarum: Miscellanea patristica, historica et liturgica, 2 vols (Bruges: F. T. de Vries, 1975), Vol. 2, pp. 195–228. Ilgner, Rainer M. Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica, IV: Scito te ipsum, CCCM 190 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). Klibansky, Raymond. “Peter Abailard and Bernard of Clairvaux: A Letter by Abailard,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 5 (1961), 1–27. Luscombe, David E. Peter Abelard’s Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). ——— The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise, ed. David Luscombe, with a revised translation by David Luscombe after the translation by Betty Radice, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013). Marenbon, John and Giovanni Orlandi. Peter Abelard, Collationes, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001). McLaughlin, Mary Martin, with Bonnie Wheeler, The Letters of Heloise and Abelard: A Translation of Their Collected Correspondence and Related Writings (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Mews, Constant J. The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France, with translations by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999; 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). [Edition and translation of Epistulae duorum amantium]. Minnis, A. J. and A. B. Scott, with David Wallace. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100-c. 1375: The Commentary-Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). [translation of Prologue to Sic et non, pp. 87–100]. Morton, Vera. Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003). [Translations of Abelard’s Ep. VII on the history of nuns and Ep. IX on the value of learning, pp. 52–95 and 121–138]. Romig, Mary, with David Luscombe. Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica, V: Expositio in Hexameron, CCCM 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). Smits, Edmé Renno. Peter Abelard. Letters IX-XIV. An Edition with an Introduction (Groningen: [privately published], 1983). Szövérffy, Joseph. Peter Abelard’s Hymnarius Paraclitensis: An Annotated Edition with Introduction, 2 vols, Medieval Classics: Texts and Studies, 2 and 3 (Albany, NY: Classical Folia Editions, 1975).

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INDEX

Entries in italics refer directly to the texts; OT = Old Testament; NT = New Testament Abelard. See Peter Abelard (works of ) Abner, OT figure of, 70, 72, 75, 76, 78, 207, 236, 263–4, 288, 289, 290, 292, 293 see also David, OT figure of; Joab, OT figure of Abraham, OT figure of, 70, 85, 86, 107, 150, 169, 190, 245, 248, 257, 260, 268, 275, 277, 280, 281 advice. See counsel; wisdom Aeneas, 38, 188, 207, 218 Albertano da Brescia, 50, 169, 170 Alfsonsi, Petrus, Disciplina clericalis, 29, 202, 309n57 almsgiving, 26, 201, 232, 233 see also avarice; generous/generosity; miserliness/misers Ambrose, Abelard’s citations of, 176 amicus, amicitia (friend, friendship), 89, 95, 99–101, 103, 108, 140, 179, 180, 204, 212, 226, 253, 256, 293 see also friends, friendship amor (love, carnal love), 69, 79, 81, 88–9, 100, 106, 118, 126, 209, 253, 256, 269, 272, 278, 281, 288, 293, 325n115, 325–6n121 see also dilectio (love, brotherly/ filial love) Anchises, 169, 188, 190, 218 antifeminism in Carmen, 36, 44, 45, 56, 77, 208 in Planctus Israel, 62, 74, 78, 252–3, 286–8 see also gender appearances, inner and outer. See reputation: inner–outer consonance

Aristotle, 57, 138, 166 Astralabe, 1, 2, 5, 15, 34, 38, 58, 75, 143, 168, 306n3 Abelard’s advice to, on teachers/ learning, 17, 30, 143–4, 170 age at composition of Carmen, 16, 27 imagined reaction of, to Historia, 13, 306n1 see also Cistercians Augustine, Abelard’s citations of/ references to, 172, 186, 191, 197, 219, 221, 229, 231, 280, 286, 289 Confessions, 179, 240, 293 De baptismo, 187 De bono conjugali, 182 De civitate Dei, 176, 188, 205, 211, 230, 282 Sermons, 192, 196, 230, 283 avarice, 19, 25, 200, 215 Bailey, Merridee L., 16, 225, 307n17, 307n20, 307–8n26 Ballanti, Graziella, 7, 8, 22, 24, 56, 190, 194, 198, 204, 213, 233, 240, 241, 304n20, 308nn36–7, 314n139 baptism, NT sacrament of, 48, 86–7, 267, 281, 282, 325n107 superseding burnt offering sacrifice, 87 barrenness, OT curse on, 186, 261, 280 battle/war, 88, 89, 151, 155, 194, 259, 263, 265, 278, 289, 292, 294 Abelard, in schools, 14, 217 in the f lesh, 160, 226 in religious houses, 167 in words, 18, 149 Baudri of Borgueil, 53, 88, 296n4, 313n126, 325n115

346

IN DEX

behavior bad; outward (see false-seeming; hypocrisy; reputation: inner–outer consonance) hierarchies of (see ethics) Bell, Nicolas, 61, 62, 66, 275, 316nn2–3, 316n7, 320n37, 320n39 Bell, Thomas J., 66, 275, 318n29, 319n31, 320n36 Benjamin, OT figure of, 72, 76, 83, 84, 246, 258, 271, 272, 273, 274, 290, 322n58, 324n96 Bernard of Clairvaux, 36, 82, 175, 187, 194, 209, 233, 234, 268, 269, 324n88 see also Cistercians Bernard of Cluny, 192, 198, 202 betrayal, 3, 163, 176, 180, 221 of Christ, 191, 275, 285 in the Planctus, 69–70, 72, 75, 78, 80, 82, 257, 264, 265, 270, 289 of Samson, 70, 73, 78, 285, 286 and trust in friends, 23, 147, 180 Blamires, Alcuin, 220 Bond, Gerald, 88, 325n115 Boswell, John, 87–8, 325n114 Brentano, Mary Theresa, 173, 176, 186, 225 Brinkmann, Hennig, 16, 17, 55, 307n21, 314n134 Brundage, James A., 182, 183, 184, 185, 220, 222 burnt offerings, OT concept of, 85–7, 279, 325n111 see also daughter of Jephthah, the, OT figure of Bynum, Caroline Walker, 4, 172, 223, 304n12 Cadden, Joan, 184, 223 Carmen ad Astralabium additional didactic elements accreted to, 46–50 authenticity of, 56–8 comparison with other didactic texts, 22, 27–31 dating of, 14–16 description of, 6 glosses, glossators of, 27, 31, 39–43, 44–6, 312n107

Heloise section, 37–9, 152 lack of organization of, 21, 22–4 late style in, 20, 76, 170, 188, 237, 308n27 manuscripts/recensions/editions of, 6–8, 32–6 medieval excerpts, 36, 50–4 Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 1761 (415), 52, 54, 57, 195, 207, 241, 301 Poole 99, 52–4, 217, 230, 270, 296n4 Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 1898, 37, 45, 50–1, 52, 53, 176, 186, 189, 195, 197, 199, 201, 205, 212, 217, 225, 227, 233, 238, 241 read as pragmatic political advice, 49–50, 238 reason for composition of, 13–14 sources for, 26 title of, 54–5 Carruthers, Mary, 201, 236 castration, 1, 4, 71, 80–2, 199, 216, 222, 268, 278, 282, 303n3, 323n73 Cato, 57, 96, 144, 174–5 narrator of Cicero’s De senectute, 24, 194 see also Disticha Catonis chastity/unchastity, 19, 25, 45, 51, 147–8, 157, 159, 182, 185, 213, 219, 220, 268, 282 childbirth, as female suffering, 86 Cicero, 26, 36, 171, 188–9, 309n52 De amicitia, 26, 179, 223, 308n40 De inventione, 177, 187 De officiis, 15, 29, 171, 178, 214–15, 307n14 De senectute, 24, 192–3, 194, 217, 229 circumcision, 77, 80, 81, 257, 267, 268, 323n81, 324n105, 325nn107, 109 spiritual, 85–7 uncircumcised (people), 257, 267, 291 see also sacrifice, in the Planctus uirginum Cistercians antagonism towards/critiques of, 17, 33, 190, 191, 211 connection with Carmen MS and Astralabe, 5, 33–4 see also Bernard of Clairvaux Clanchy, Michael T., 214, 217, 236, 306n6, 310n71, 310–11n84 Clark, John R., 82, 271, 323n86, 324n89

IN DEX

Cohen, Caroline, 61–2 Colette, Marie-Noël, 68, 275, 321n45 consolation, consolations, 156, 162, 241, 258, 271, 274, 321n51 Abelard’s own, 5, 15, 64 failure of, in this world, 5, 10, 64–5, 67–8, 76, 77, 83, 85 Cook, Brenda M., 310n76 corporal punishment. See punishment: corporal, of children, in education counsel giving/taking, 19, 24, 45, 151, 155, 175, 194 primacy of, over might, 19, 144, 166, 195, 205, 213 surrendered to women, 156 see also wisdom Cousin, Victor, 34, 55, 58, 310n75, 314n133, 314n142, 315n151–2, 315–16n153 Daedalus, 124, 159, 169, 188, 218 Dahan, Gilbert, 268, 271, 323n73, 323n86 daughter of Jephthah, OT figure of the, 61, 63–4, 68, 70, 73, 75, 76, 77, 85–7, 195, 206, 232, 259–62, 268, 269, 274, 275–82, 292, 322n59 daughters of Israel, the. See maids of Israel, the David, OT figure of, 61, 64, 69, 72, 74, 76, 78, 79, 88–90, 167, 169, 188, 239, 240, 263, 278, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290, 291–2, 293–4, 317n18, 321n53, 322n63, 326n122 failure to find consolation of, 62, 68, 77 see also friends, friendship; Jonathan, OT figure of; soul, souls death, dying, 19, 24, 75, 79, 151, 158, 160, 161, 165, 192–3, 203, 210, 215, 219, 221, 293 and bequests/legacies, 20, 76, 168, 199–200, 224, 236 “cups of,” 202, 263, 284, 286–7 preparation for, 20, 76, 86, 190, 235 see also daughter of Jephthah, OT figure of the; Rachel, OT figure of; Samson, OT figure of; Saul, OT figure of deception, 19, 145, 177, 215 inevitability of, 176 see also false-seeming

347

Delilah, OT figure of, 70, 75, 119, 156, 252, 262, 263, 284, 285, 288 see also Samson, OT figure of; woman, women: essentialized “Woman” Dhuoda, Liber manualis, 16, 34, 45, 169, 203, 307n15, 310n77 didactic literature, medieval, parent-child Abelard’s/Carmen’s departure from tradition of, 14, 17, 18, 27–31, 46, 49, 171, 173, 184 age of recipients, 15–16 conduct/courtesy, 17, 46, 48, 225, 233 conventional advice found in, 173, 174, 175–6, 188, 189, 202, 219 function of, 27, 35, 224 nature/structure of, 22, 33, 42, 43, 51, 54, 55, 57, 169 transmission histories of, 34 dilectio (love, brotherly/filial love), 49, 81, 89, 249, 278, 293, 299, 303n6, 325–6n121 see also amor; love Dinah, OT figure of, 64, 69, 72, 75, 77, 80, 217, 257–8, 267, 321n52 brothers of, 70, 77, 279, 285, 289, 294 ravishment/sexuality of, 70, 78, 79, 81, 82, 268, 269, 288 see also circumcision; Planctus; Sechem, OT figure of discipline. See punishment Disticha Catonis, 2, 16, 21, 22, 26, 27–8, 57, 309n44, 309n59 citations from, 27, 30, 31, 170–1, 172, 185, 187, 188, 193, 199, 200, 204, 211, 212, 215, 218, 227, 229, 238, 239, 242 dolor (sorrow, suffering), 38, 68, 79, 80, 96, 129, 132, 174, 193, 228, 233, 247, 252, 254, 256, 271, 273, 274, 284, 286, 290, 291, 301, 324n99 “Dolorum solatium.” See Nevers troper-proser see also Peter Abelard (works of ): Epithalamica Dronke, Peter, 9, 62, 86, 213, 219, 240, 251n3, 252n1, 253nn1–2, 255n8, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 294, 305n29, 308n31, 316n9, 317n17–18, 323n73, 324n93, 325n106, 325n113, 326n122

348

IN DEX

du Méril, Edélestand, 56–8, 268, 314n144, 315nn.145–52, 315–16n153, 319n32, 323n80 education. See learning, value of Elliott, Dyan, 223 emasculation. See castration; circumcision see also gender emotions, emotional states Abelard’s, context, 2, 176, 179 anger, 49, 62, 69, 147, 160, 167, 205, 214, 222, 226, 322n63 apatheia, 239 in relation to God, 159, 219, 233 and human nature, 21, 49, 146, 158, 214 and im/moderation, 49, 75, 205, 218 and the Planctus, 62, 69, 73, 75, 81, 85, 288, 291, 323n73 Engels, L. J., 191 envy, 24, 44, 70, 109, 131, 151, 155, 162, 177, 190, 194, 219, 228, 246, 258, 272, 273, 288, 293 Epistulae duorum amantium (“Lost Love Letters”), 89, 179, 180, 212, 273, 274, 276, 293 ethics Abelard’s, individual/mature/subtle, 3, 4, 10, 17, 25, 36, 43, 48, 185 of behavior, in Carmen, 4, 14, 18–20, 23, 25, 27–8, 49, 50, 238 of excess, 77, 269 of intention, 165, 176, 199, 213, 236 of memoria, Heloise’s, 39 see also vices; virtues; family, familial relationships excess, 24, 194, 263 dangerous, and families/sentiment, 4, 70, 71, 72, 75, 77, 81, 82, 180, 214, 222, 270 see also vices: excess turns virtues into Facetus (Cum nihil utilius), 31, 48, 49, 50, 173, 176, 180, 181, 186, 189, 202, 233, 309n62, 312n114 Fall, the, 26, 86, 222 Adam/Eve’s guilt relating to, 26, 156, 157, 209 false-seeming, 17, 25, 26, 49, 157, 185, 186, 197, 205–6, 212, 215, 219, 227, 281 see also deception; reputation

false-speaking, 198, 227, 233 family, familial relationships, 3–4, 10, 20, 49, 70, 71, 74, 75, 78, 79, 82, 87, 154, 169, 196, 204, 240, 269, 278, 288 Abelard’s antifamilial rhetoric, 4, 13, 205, 269 Abelard’s own, 1–2, 4, 9, 13, 14, 58, 66, 74, 75, 82 see also betrayal: in the Planctus; excess: dangerous, and families/sentiment; friends, friendship; love: familial; relationships: hierarchies of father–son advice-texts. See didactic literature, medieval, parent–child fathers, fatherhood, 70, 72, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83–5, 218, 304n13 curse of father, 154, 203 Jacob, curse of sons, 270, 272, 274, 294 see also family, familial relationships; Jacob, OT figure of; Jephthah, OT figure of feeling, feelings. See emotions, emotional states Ferroul, Yves, 71, 79, 278, 321n57, 323n71 Findley, Brooke Heidenreich, 191, 192, 213 Flynn, William T., 68, 275, 321n48, 322n60, 325n111 foreskin, 81, 257, 268 friends, friendship, 3, 46, 144, 167, 176, 179, 180, 202, 203, 205, 212, 223, 239, 264, 266, 272, 293, 325n115 Ciceronian, 20, 22–3, 36, 51 freely chosen, pure, 67, 69, 71, 88, 90, 224 section in Carmen, 22–4, 146–7, 44 true, 22–3, 89, 146 see also amicus, amicitia (friend, friendship); amor (love, carnal love); dilectio (love, brotherly/ filial love); family, familial relationships; love Fulbert (uncle of Heloise), 82, 180, 270–1, 286 gender, 3, 4, 17, 77, 88, 219, 278 imperatives/stereotypes/extremes of, 5, 71, 78 neutrality, 5, 69, 71, 78–9, 81, 86, 88, 90

IN DEX

roles, reconsideration of, 73, 78, 83, 85, 242, 279, 281 see also antifeminism; masculinity; vices: un/gendered; woman, women generous, generosity, 19, 36, 45, 152–3, 157, 162, 164, 199, 229, 233, 265 see also avarice; misers/miserliness Glossa ordinaria, 279 Golden Mean, the, 17, 77, 189 Golden Rule, the, 17, 26, 36, 51, 175–6, 179, 212 Gratian, Decretum, 40, 183, 220, 221, 222 Greith, Carl (Karl Johann), 9, 245, 246, 247, 252, 253, 255, 305n30, 319n32 Griffiths, Fiona J., 318n28 Hauréau, Jean-Barthélemy, edition of Carmen, 1, 7, 8, 36, 54, 55, 56, 233, 235, 237, 240, 303n2, 314n142 Haye, Thomas, 21, 55, 308n33, 314n136 Heloise Ep. II, 180, 182, 183, 196, 226, 229, 237, 242, 303n8 Ep. IV, 14, 25, 26, 37, 38, 39, 56, 74, 182, 190, 197, 202, 208, 214, 283, 286, 287, 308n39, 311n89, 319n32 Ep. VI, 14, 26, 31, 65, 174, 182, 189, 190, 195, 196, 213, 218, 224, 228, 236, 238 inf luence of, on Abelard, 1, 15, 58, 62, 65, 67, 179 memory of sexual pleasure, 37–9, 169, 197, 223 inability to repent of, 33, 37, 152, 197 Planctus composed for, 2, 5, 65–6, 71, 90 Problemata Heloissae (cum Petri Abaelardi solutionibus), 4, 14, 26, 65, 89, 176, 179, 186, 197, 199, 202, 214, 222, 228, 239, 280, 307n8 Herchenefreda, 169–70 Hildebert of Lavardin, 50, 53, 230, 295n3, 296n4, 312n110, 313n116 Hugh of St. Victor, 29, 240 Huglo, Michel, 8, 61, 66, 280, 316n1, 320n34, 320n38

349

hypocrisy, 17, 21, 25, 34, 181, 191, 192, 212–13, 221, 229, 308n37, 308n39 Idley, Peter, Instructions to his Son, 34, 310n79 immoderation. See excess; moderation inuidia. See envy Irvine, Martin, 78, 80, 278, 322–3n70, 323nn77, 79 Isaac, OT figure of, 85, 86, 87, 268, 275, 277, 281, 324n105 Isidore of Seville, 74, 192, 238, 269 Iversen, Gunilla, 66, 275, 320n41 Jacob, OT figure of, 61, 65, 69, 70, 72, 75, 76, 81, 83, 84, 85, 267, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 285, 288, 290, 322n58, 322n68 Jaeger, C. Stephen, 7, 8, 17, 30, 171, 172, 194, 219, 278, 307n24, 309n61 jealousy. See envy Jephthah, OT figure of, 63, 64, 70, 73, 75, 76, 77, 85, 87, 195, 206, 276, 277, 279, 283, 294 see also daughter of Jephthah, OT figure of the Jeremia de Montagone, 36, 57 Jerome, 28, 183, 186, 194, 219, 221, 226, 229, 235, 238, 271, 280 Adversus Jovinianum, 186 Commentarii in Isaiam, 192 Contra Vigilantium, 208 De perpetua virginitate sanctae Mariae, 186 Letters, 173, 180, 215, 218 Joab, OT figure of, 70, 72, 77, 78, 240, 278, 289, 290 see also Abner, OT figure of; David, OT figure of John of Garland, Synonyma, 35, 39 John of Sacrobosco, Tractatus de sphaera, 35, 39 John of Salisbury, 54, 171, 175, 181, 209 Johnston, Mark D., 171, 184, 233 Jonathan, OT figure of, 67, 69, 71, 72, 77, 81, 88, 89, 90, 255, 265, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 326n122 see also David, OT figure of; friends, friendship; soul, souls Joseph, OT figure of, 70, 72, 76, 246, 258, 271, 272, 273, 274

350

IN DEX

judges, judgments, 75, 81, 85, 148, 149, 154, 157, 160, 162, 163, 164, 166, 173, 192, 193, 213, 214, 223, 238, 239, 257, 262, 264, 269, 270, 290 Day of, 211 God/divine/heavenly, 20, 42, 73, 76, 157, 214, 233, 262 own/self-, 20, 143, 154, 203 see also justice; punishment; reputation justice, 81, 82, 145, 157, 177, 196, 264, 282 God’s, 21, 68, 74, 214 human, 214, 322n61 and divine, 290 failure of, 67, 76, 290 machineries of, 75–6 of punishment, 162 summary, 76, 82 see also punishment; judges, judgment Karras, Ruth Mazo, 183, 184 Kearney, Eileen F., 294 Klibansky, Raymond, 194 lament. See consolation; Planctus, the: genre of Laurenzi, Fortunato, 314n138, 319n32, 320n44 learning, value of, 17, 27, 35, 143, 170–1, 175, 227, 228 Abelard’s/Carmen’s ambivalence/ suspicion of, 10, 18, 30–2, 65, 170 see also punishment: corporal, of children in education Lehrgedicht, Latin, 21–2 Liber proverbiorum. See Otloh of St. Emmeram, Liber proverbiorum love, 49, 88, 149, 154, 156, 159, 160, 163, 164, 180, 182, 185, 212, 222, 257, 258, 260, 265, 269, 278, 326n122 Abelard’s ideal of, 5, 67, 71, 81 and excess/ tragedy, 70, 71, 75, 77, 84, 214, 288 familial, 75, 89, 179, 202 giving of, to receive what is desired, 36, 45, 147, 157 of God, 21, 46, 144, 157, 167, 178, 206–7, 231, 292 hierarchy of, 23, 145–6 of parents, 20, 154, 203, 215

of teachers, 31, 143, 171 see also amor (love, carnal love); dilectio (love, brotherly/filial love); friends, friendship Luscombe, David, 27, 286, 308n31, 309n44 lust, 179, 202, 230, 287 natural end of in old age, 17, 46, 163, 229 and nature, of humans, beasts, 17, 20, 39, 69, 154, 155, 160, 223, 269 and women, 148, 154, 157, 160, 183 maids of Israel, the, 61, 63, 64, 73, 76, 85, 265, 274, 275, 276, 292 manuscripts. See Carmen ad Astralabium: manuscripts recensions/editions of; Planctus: manuscript sources of Marbod of Rennes, 181, 209, 229, 286–7 Marenbon, John, 17, 29, 176, 178, 207, 216–17, 303n3, 307n25, 308nn30, 40, 309nn51, 55 and Giovanni Orlandi, 35, 177, 207, 280, 307n8, 310n82 marriage, 25, 45, 148, 168, 183, 186, 220, 242, 271 concubine, 183, 204 and lust, 157, 160, 163, 222 preparations for, 159, 261–2, 281 remarriage, 157, 212, 230 Martha (and Mary), NT figures of, 131, 162, 228, 232 martyr, martyrdom, 63, 76, 83, 87, 191, 232, 267, 277, 284 Mary (mother of Jesus), NT figure of, 63, 163, 178, 221, 276, 277, 279, 281 Mary Magdalene, NT figure of, 185 Mary of Egypt, 50, 51 Life of, 50, 53, 313n116 masculinity, 78, 278, 288, 289 and Jephthah’s daughter, 70, 275, 277, 279, 281 performative, 78, 80 see also castration; circumcision; fathers, fatherhood; gender McLaughlin, Mary Martin, 220 McLaughlin, Megan, 4, 203, 274, 304n10, 304n13 McNamara, Jo Ann, 4, 304n11

IN DEX

medieval exegesis, conventional, comparisons with, 74, 82, 285 Mews, Constant J., 48, 62, 88, 172, 174, 204, 207, 209, 211, 215, 216, 217, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 268, 287, 303nn5–6, 307n8, 310nn72–3, 311n87, 312n112, 314n142, 316n11, 318n25, 321n49, 325n116 Meyer, Wilhelm, 9, 245, 246, 247, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 285, 305n31, 319n32 Misch, Georg, 16, 17, 21, 28, 179, 307nn19, 23, 308n32, 309n49, 311n90 misers/miserliness, 19–20, 29, 36, 45, 153, 157, 200, 215, 224, 269 see also avarice; generous, generosity moderation, 18–20, 24, 28, 29, 145, 155, 159, 177–8, 189, 194, 195, 219, 239 see also excess; vices: excess turns virtues into Moralium dogma philosophorum, 28, 178, 189, 239, 309n52 Murray, Alexander, 210, 279 Murray, Jacqueline, 222 mutilation, sexual/genital. See castration; circumcision Nature, 42, 43, 146, 149, 161, 166, 224, 227, 237 as compulsion, 20, 81, 146, 154, 157, 224, 237 instils love of parents in children, 154, 203 puts an end to lust, 163 unable to lie, 17, 162, 227 Nevers troper-proser, 8, 9, 66, 68, 280 see also Peter Abelard (works of ): Epithalamica Newman, Barbara, 220 Norberg, Dag, 55, 314n135 Norbert of Xanten, 192, 214 old age, 150–1, 194, 217, 258 and death (see death, dying) lust ended by, 19, 229 original sin. See Fall, the Orlandi, Giovanni, 68 see also Marenbon, John: and Giovanni Orlandi

351

Otloh of St. Emmeram, 28, 225 Liber proverbiorum, 28, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 180, 182, 185, 188, 189, 191, 195, 197, 198, 200, 208, 210, 215, 217, 218, 221, 222, 229, 233, 235, 239 Otten, Willemien, 68, 321n51 Ovid, Ovidian, 26, 50, 51, 82, 193 Amores, 181, 182, 269 Metamorphoses, 218 Remedia amoris, 194 Paraclete, the, documents relating to, 65, 66 see also Heloise; Peter Abelard (works of ): Ep. VII; Ep. VIII (Rule for the Paraclete); Hymns (for the Paraclete); Sermons paternity. See fathers, fatherhood penitence, 214, 220, 225, 226 see also repent/repentance, and punishment Perry, Mary Elizabeth, 184 Perry, Micha J., 268 Peter Abelard (works of ) Collationes, 4, 14, 26, 35, 68, 80, 89, 172, 177, 181, 191, 193, 195, 196, 206, 207, 211, 214, 215, 216, 218, 226, 230, 231, 232, 239, 280, 307n8 Commentary on Romans, 74, 83, 84, 86, 176, 232, 267, 268, 283, 324n97–100, 324n102, 324n105 Confessio fidei ad Heloisam, 3, 14, 173, 238, 240, 306n6 Confessio fidei “Universis,” 173, 238, 240 Dialectica, 14, 306n7 Ep. III, 195 Ep. V, 32, 63, 67, 89, 180, 187, 189, 191, 193, 199, 202, 210–11, 222, 274, 282, 293, 317n14 Ep. VII, 4, 65, 87, 185, 195, 212, 220, 228, 229, 270, 276, 279 Ep. VIII (Rule for the Paraclete), 4, 14, 16, 26, 65, 82, 170, 171, 174, 180, 182, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 195, 199, 200, 201, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209, 213, 218, 222, 225, 229, 234, 241, 267 Ep. IX, 65, 235, 236

352

IN DEX

Peter Abelard—Continued Ep. X, 187 Ep. XII, 228, 273 Epithalamica, 8, 68, 86, 275, 279, 280, 321nn46–8 Expositio in Hexameron, 14, 26, 65, 74, 172, 184, 186, 206, 208, 209, 216, 220, 222, 228, 283, 325n107 Historia calamitatum, 2, 3, 13, 16, 38, 79, 80, 81, 171, 173, 176, 178, 180, 183, 189, 194, 205, 206, 211, 217, 220, 227, 231, 232, 235, 241, 242, 273, 282, 285, 286, 306n1, 323n73 Hymns (for the Paraclete), 62–4, 65, 66, 68, 71, 74, 76, 78, 83, 84, 87, 185, 191, 195, 196, 201, 207, 217, 220, 226, 232, 275, 276, 277, 279, 281, 284, 287, 289, 292, 294, 317n17, 318n29, 319n32, 321n47, 322n58, 322n60, 325n111 Problemata Heloissae (see Heloise: Problemata Heloissae) Scito te ipsum, 4, 14, 19, 20, 26, 177, 178, 181, 187, 196, 200, 201, 203, 211, 212, 214, 215, 224, 232, 269, 277, 283 Sermons, 26, 57, 62, 63, 64, 65, 83–4, 86, 172, 181, 182, 190, 192, 193, 194, 200, 213, 214, 216, 220, 225, 226, 228, 232, 233, 267, 275, 276, 279, 280, 284, 287, 318n29, 322n58, 323n81, 324n98–100, 324n102, 325n108–9 Sermon 29 on Susannah, 26, 182, 183, 213, 219, 220, 232, 267, 280, 282 Sic et non, 4, 14, 26, 57, 172, 176, 192, 196, 197, 209, 216, 219, 221, 230, 231, 282, 283, 286, 323n81 Theologia Christiana, 15, 177, 226, 283, 286, 287 Theologia “Scholarium,” 178, 209, 216, 233 Theologia “Summi Boni,” 14, 215, 240 Peter Damian, 4, 184, 223, 236 Peter Lombard, 230 Sentences, 231 Peter the Venerable, 237, 269, 274 Petersen, Nils Holger, 66, 275, 320n40

Planctus, the biblical exemplars of (see Abner; Benjamin; David; daughter of Jephthah; Delilah; Dinah; Jacob; Jephthah; Joab; Jonathan; Rachel; Sechem; Samson; Saul (OT figures of )) function of, 5, 66–7 genre of, 61–5 distinct from cantus, 63, 68, 247, 274 manuscript sources of, 8–9 as musical text, 2, 8–9, 64, 66, 275, 305n21, 305n23, 316n2, 317n18 order of, 67–71 present tense of, 64 question of homosociality in, 87–90 speaking voices in (see voices, speaking (personas): in the Planctus) themes, discussion of, 74–9 planctus (laments). See consolation; Planctus, the: genre of Plato, 138, 166 pride, 21, 30, 49, 63, 70, 155, 177, 178, 191, 205, 206, 266 prostitutes, prostitution, 33, 148, 149, 185, 242, 285 definition of, in Middle Ages, 183, 184 false-seeming, 17–18, 148, 186, 212, 285 humble, 36, 49, 51, 148, 185, 288 male, 18, 33, 148, 184 see also Delilah; Mary of Egypt; Mary Magdalene providence, 17, 26, 56, 65, 76, 210, 230, 231, 239, 322n62 punishment, 157, 162, 187, 189, 217, 257, 258 after death/final, 26, 165, 203, 232 corporal, of children in education, 31–2, 198–9 God’s, 159, 164 of Lucifer, 177 and sin, 197, 214, 226 for sodomy, 183–4 see also judges, judgments; justice Purgatory, purgation, 68, 211, 232–3 see also suffering Quintilian, 199, 234

IN DEX

Raby, F. J. E., 10 Rachel, OT figure of, 204, 272, 273, 274 Abelard’s treatment of, elsewhere, 64, 84 in medieval planctus tradition, 83 Rashi, 268, 321n52 relationships family, familial (see family, familial relationships) heterosexual, and danger/tragedy, 69, 70, 75, 77, 81, 208 hierarchies of, 4, 20, 22, 23, 75, 179, 202, 203, 223, 239 homosexual (see sodomy, sodomites; word/lexical choices, Abelard’s: homoerotic potential of ) teachers and students, 30, 31, 170 ungendered (see friends, friendship: freely chosen, pure) religion, 17, 21, 34, 52, 159, 173, 191 hereditary, 21, 26, 167, 195–6, 241 multiple forms of, 21, 34, 236 piety, 14, 17, 21, 145, 164, 167 and reason, 21, 43, 152, 158, 162, 196, 227, 230 religious observance, 18, 31, 159, 234 “remasculinization,” Abelard’s project of, 78, 80 see also castration; circumcision; gender; masculinity de Rémusat, Charles, 181, 240, 319n32 repent, repentance, 1, 2, 9, 50, 51, 152, 185, 197, 214, 220, 240 see also Heloise; penitence reputation, 18, 26, 79, 144, 150, 157, 159, 166, 210, 219, 223, 267 beyond human lifespan, 21, 81, 166, 237, 238 fragility of women’s, 38, 79, 148, 182, 183, 219, 221 importance of, 201, 221 inner–outer consonance, 150, 173, 192, 205, 212, 220 see also false-seeming revenge, 49, 70, 79, 81, 279, 285, 288 see also vengeance Richard of St. Victor, 177, 198, 218 Rosenwein, Barbara, 169

353

Rubingh-Bosscher, José ( Josepha) Marie Annaïs, edition/commentary of, 6–7, 8, 93, 169, 210, 240, 298n8, 304nn16–19, 309n67, 310nn68–70, 74, 312nn97, 105–8, 315n147 Rule for the Paraclete (Ep. VIII). See Peter Abelard (works of ): Ep. VIII (Rule for the Paraclete) Rule of Benedict, 198, 205, 270 sacrifice, in the Planctus uirginum, 85–7, 259–61, 322n59 Samson, OT figure of, 73, 74, 76, 77, 262–3, 284, 285, 288, 294, 322n59 foolish trust of women/Delilah, 70, 75, 77, 78, 278, 284, 287 in Heloise’s Ep. IV, 208, 283, 286, 287 Sannelli, Massimo, 79, 305n29, 317n19, 321n55, 322n59, 322n64, 322n69, 323n72 Saul, OT figure of, 72, 76, 89–90, 265, 278, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 317n16 see also David, OT figure of; Jonathan, OT figure of Schultz, James A., 203 Sechem, OT figure of, 69–70, 75, 76, 77, 80–2, 85, 86, 217, 245, 257, 268, 269, 270, 279, 285, 288, 289 see also circumcision; Dinah, OT figure of self-murder. See suicide, suicides Seneca, 18, 26, 28, 37, 154, 190, 192, 201, 204, 207, 309n52 Ad Lucilium Epistulae morales, 171, 174, 180, 188, 193, 200, 204, 215, 237 De beneficiis, 29, 190, 200, 203 De ira, 205 De providentia, 207, 210, 231, 232, 239 Sentences of Sextus, 52, 54, 172, 173, 174, 177, 178, 189, 211 sexuality. See chastity/unchastity; Heloise: memory of sexual pleasure; relationships: heterosexual, and danger/ tragedy; woman, women: and sexuality, sexual pleasure simulation/dissimulation. See false-seeming; reputation

354

IN DEX

sins, sinning, 152, 154, 157, 162, 165, 176, 177, 179, 196, 197, 211, 214, 222, 226, 239, 265, 283, 290, 325n107 openly/discreetly, 25, 150, 192 see also hypocrisy; reputation: inner–outer consonance; wives: adulterous, putting aside of Socrates, 106, 138, 150, 166, 190, 237 sodomy, sodomites, 18, 26, 90, 148, 183–4, 292 Soissons, Council of (1121), 2, 194, 211 Sorabji, Richard, 181, 188, 210, 239 sorrow, sorrows, 144, 150, 269, 259, 263, 264, 266, 271, 286, 288, 321n47, 322n66 Abelard’s, 5, 39, 317n18 exceeding capacity of language, 77 Rachel as figura of, 64, 83 soul, souls, 30, 82, 89, 148, 150, 162, 165, 181, 182, 227, 260 shared, 67, 81, 88, 265, 266, 291, 293 suffering of, at death, 193, 211, 221 ungendered, 71, 81 speaking voices. See voices, speaking (personas) St. Gildas de Rhuys, monastery/monks of, 2, 15, 241, 303n5, 319n32 St. Louis, Enseignements, 26, 34 Steinen, Wolfram von den, 62, 248, 249, 250, 251, 283, 316n10, 317n18, 320n35 Stevens, John, 83, 324n93 Stock, Brian, 237 suffering, 161, 164, 165, 221, 258, 264, 322n62 suicide, suicides, 20, 26, 76, 210–11, 279, 282, 285, 286, 291, 294 Sweeney, Eileen C., 4, 28, 64, 65, 77, 304n15, 309n50, 317n21, 322nn62, 63, 66, 68, 326n122 Szövérffy, Joseph, 201, 226, 275, 317n13, 318n25 teachers, 4, 17, 18, 21, 30, 31, 41, 143, 159, 164, 165, 166, 171, 173, 175, 204, 235, 237 “master of morals,” 30–1, 171, 173, 201 teaching, 10, 17, 27, 30, 31, 32, 65, 143, 144, 163, 171, 172, 173, 175, 199, 201, 227, 229, 232, 235

via example, 18, 19, 25, 149, 165, 172–3, 174, 181, 187–8, 192, 201, 205, 210, 212, 213, 217, 223, 228, 229, 235, 260, 278 via plainness (planities) 7, 19, 35, 164, 172 see also learning, value of temperance. See moderation Tierney, Brian, 201 tongue, used for boasting, 18, 51, 149, 151 idle, 148 restraint of, 186, 229 sins of, 49, 184, 222 wounds of, 54, 149 unicus, -a, 248, 249, 276 vainglory, 25, 150, 164, 191, 205 van ’t Spijker, Ineke, 192, 205 Vecchi, Giuseppe, 305n29, 317n17, 319n32, 320n44 Venarde, Bruce L., 7, 8, 241 vengeance of God, 154 human, 62, 67, 69, 76, 258, 271, 322n63 vices, 23, 148, 153, 157, 226, 269 excess turns virtues into, 18, 31, 69, 70, 77, 159, 218 as failing, different from sin, 145, 176–7, 198 relativity of, 19, 69 servitude to, 147, 181 seven deadly, 155, 206 un/gendered, 69–71, 78 and virtues, 19, 26, 165, 215, 224 see also; avarice; emotions, emotional states: anger; envy; excess; lust; pride; vainglory Virgil, 201, 293 Aeneid, 38, 201 virgin, virginal, virginity, 63, 78, 81, 87, 149, 182, 185, 186, 259, 268, 269, 275, 277, 279, 280, 282, 283 see also chastity/unchastity; barrenness, OT curse on; Jephthah’s Daughter, OT figure of virtues. See vices: and virtues; vices: excess turns virtues into

IN DEX

voices, speaking (personas) in Carmen, 37 in the Planctus, 5, 62, 63, 64, 71–4, 76, 85, 272, 275, 284, 290, 322n59 feminine, success of, 71–2, 80–3 Waddell, Chrysogonus, 275, 280, 310n73, 321n46 Ward, John O., 7, 8, 237, 312n98 Weinrich, Lorenz, 9, 62, 254, 255, 256, 294, 305n21, 305nn23, 24, 29, 316nn2, 6 Wheeler, Bonnie, 2, 78, 80, 81, 278, 303n7, 322–3n70, 323nn78, 79, 82 Wieland, Gernot, 39, 40, 43, 312nn96, 98, 100–3 William of Conches, 28, 39, 223, 228, 311n93 William of Tyre, 233, 289 Williams, Steven J., 175, 315n149 wisdom, 30, 32, 144, 162, 167, 194, 196, 210, 217, 230, 238, 240 Abelard’s, un/conventional, 17, 21, 26, 28, 29–31, 36, 49, 171, 185, 199, 207, 218, 219–20 OT books of, 28, 171, 174, 206, 208, 230, 232, 281, 314n138 wives, 20, 45, 147, 148, 154, 160, 168, 181, 182, 204, 222, 242, 288 adulterous, putting aside of, 17, 25, 159, 161, 181, 220–1 and lust/chastity, 18, 147, 148, 157, 182, 183, 204 see also woman, women Wollin, Carsten, 36, 45, 53, 176, 186, 195, 205, 212, 217, 219, 270, 311n86, 313n123, 313n128

355

wolves in sheep’s clothing, image of, 17, 21, 34, 150, 191 woman, women, 205, 220, 278, 280 danger/treachery of, 70, 74, 208, 241–2, 286, 287 essentialized “Woman,” 70, 74, 78, 208, 285, 288 and sexuality, sexual pleasure, 39, 78, 154, 183, 184, 185, 222, 223, 267–8 see also antifeminism; chastity/ unchastity word/lexical choices, Abelard’s, 9, 18, 20, 22, 35, 38, 42, 64, 67, 69, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 84, 169, 170, 198, 210, 226, 234, 268, 274, 275, 276, 278, 279, 281, 282, 284, 286, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 325n110 homoerotic potential of, 87–90, 292, 293, 325n115, 326n122 words deeds valorized over, 19, 30, 143, 144, 151, 160, 163, 172, 174, 186, 201, 222, 229 longevity of written, 21, 166, 237 used to obfuscate the truth, 17, 19, 143, 167, 197, 239 worship of idols/images, 21, 53, 56, 163, 229, 230, 233, 296 Wouters, Annelies, 290, 322n65 Wulstan, David, 66, 318n29, 319n33, 321n49 Yearley, Janthia, 83, 324n92 Zumthor, Paul, 9, 66, 67, 305n33, 318n30, 319n33, 320nn38–9, 44, 321n56, 323n78