1. Letter Nine . To the Nuns of the Paraclete
letter nine. To the Nuns of the Paraclete Toward the end of the Historia calamitatum Peter Abelard complains of having been cornered into a "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't" stance. Specifically, he tells of the criticisms he endured first for not having been more solicitous of Heloise and her nuns and then for having intensified his attentiveness to the spiritual needs of the community.1 While delivering these ministrations, and at the instigation of Heloise, Abelard generated a large and heterogeneous array of texts for Heloise and the nuns of her convent (or, to give credit where it is richly due, often with Heloise).
Letter Nine belongs to this body of writings, which has been styled collectively as the Corpus Paraclitense (Paraclete Corpus), in recognition of the convent named by Abelard and presided over by Heloise. The corpus comprises Letter Nine, The Paraclete Hymnal, the lament poems (planctus), the Problemata, The Commentary on the Six Days of Creation, and The Sermons. Whether the correspondence between Heloise and Abelard (Letters One through Eight) fits within this corpus is debatable, partly because of their contents, partly because of their transmission (which is less restricted and less bound to the Paraclete than that of the other texts).
The only major item in the corpus that may have been lost would 1. Ed. Monfrin, p. 101, lines 1341–50; trans. Radice, p. 36.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete be a commentary on the Song of Songs.2 In addition, it cannot be determined exactly what the psalter was that Abelard mentions in Letter Three to Heloise. Possibly it contained antiphons he chose.
In any case, the reference to the psalter, which is not anticipated by any request for one in Letter Two from Heloise, demonstrates at least that already when writing Letter Three, Abelard was immersed in the Paraclete liturgy. The extended passage at the end of Letter Three makes apparent that he and she tailored the liturgy of the Paraclete sometimes to respond to particularities in Abelard's life and psychological state. Sorting out which of these features owe to him or to her individually would be troublesome under the best of circumstances, but it is all the more difficult because extant manuscripts only record practices from later than Abelard's lifetime, after other influences had made themselves felt.3
The array of writings is unparalleled: no other twelfth-century author, male or female, composed for a female religious community anything approaching either the number or the variety of these texts.4
Making the dossier all the more extraordinary is the extent to which it represents a close engagement of two astounding minds, since Heloise was most definitely an active partner in articulating questions, espousing opinions, and making demands. In fact, the Paraclete corpus (and remember that the name is modern) was the result of her initiative, if anyone's. She solicited from Abelard a history of nuns, a rule designed for women, hymns, sequences, sermons, answers to theological and scriptural questions, and a commentary on the opening of Genesis. Letter Five records her request for the history and rule. Abelard's preface to the first book of The Paraclete Hymnal preserves large portions of her request for hymns. Although the dedication letter to The Commentary on the Six Days of Creation does not quote
2. See Abelard, Sermon 29, in PL 178: 555A, as discussed by Paola De Santis, "Abelardo interprete del Cantico dei Cantici per il Paracleto?" in Pascua Mediaevalia:
Studies voor Prof. Dr. J. M. de Smet, ed. Robrecht Lievens, Erik van Mingroot, and Werner
Verbeke (Leuven, Belgium: Universitaire pers Leuven, 1983), 284–94.
3. On Abelard's role in the liturgy of the Paraclete, the researches of Chrysogonus
Waddell have been foundational.
4. See McLaughlin, "Peter Abelard and the Dignity of Women," 287–333.
to the nuns of the paraclete
her letter of petition, it at least refers to it. The same holds true for the prologue to The Sermons. Finally, the Problemata opens with the letter from Heloise that laid the groundwork for the subsequent queries from her and responses from Abelard.5
When Abelard obliged Heloise by presenting the women with these writings, the sisters no longer resided at Argenteuil (on the Seine northwest of Paris, of which it is now a suburb) but instead occupied the Paraclete (five miles southeast of Nogent-sur-Seine, on the road from Paris to Troyes, close to the village Quincey and the river Ardusson). Abelard had founded the Paraclete as an oratory after leaving the monastery of St. Denis and had transferred it to Heloise and some other of the nuns in their hour of need, after their eviction from Argenteuil by Abbot Suger.
The text is only implicitly a letter, in that it lacks a formal salutation and valediction. Its abruptness has fostered speculation that it is actually not a complete letter in its own right, but rather the continuation and completion of Letter Eight, which breaks off abruptly.6
Arguing against this theory is the emphasis placed in Letter Nine on the study of biblical languages, which marks it apart from the earlier letters as well as from the Problemata, even though a few of these texts
5. What can be determined of Heloise's standpoint on monasticism, liturgy, exegesis, and other topics has begun to be interrogated intensively only in the past two decades. Notable studies include Joan M. Ferrante, To the Glory of Her Sex: Women's Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 56–
67; Linda Georgianna, "Any Corner of Heaven: Heloise's Critique of Monasticism,"
Mediaeval Studies 49 (1987): 221–53, repr. in revised form as "'In Any Corner of Heaven': Heloise's Critique of Monastic Life," in Listening to Heloise, 187–216; and 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. Most recently, Mews covers some of the same terrain in Abelard and Heloise, 145–73.
6. For instance, see John Benton, "A Reconsideration of the Authenticity of the Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise," in Petrus Abaelardus, 41–52, at 43; Chrysogonus 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), 55–56; and Mary Martin McLaughlin, "Heloise the Abbess: The Expansion of the Paraclete," in Listening to Heloise, 1–17, at 12, n. 4. Compare
David E. Luscombe, "From Paris to Paraclete: The Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise," Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988): 247–83, at 265–66.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete (Letter Three, Letter Eight, and the Problemata) at least glance at the study and interpretation of the Bible.7 Whatever decision we reach on the relationship between Letters Eight and Nine, no one would dispute that the two are related closely to each other as well as to the Problemata. Yet whether Letter Nine antedated or postdated the Problemata has not been established definitively.8
Another possibility is that Letter Nine is an integral text but not a letter. Indeed, in the sole surviving medieval manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 14511 (late fourteenth or early fifteenth century), Letter Nine is heralded: "Incipit sermo magistri
Petri Abaelardi ad uirgines Paraclitenses de studio litterarum" (Here begins the sermon of Master Peter Abelard to the virgins of the Paraclete on the study of literature). From the last three words of this incipit derived the title that has sometimes been given to it, De studio litterarum (On the Study of Literature). But what are we to make of the second word? In content Letter Nine does in fact show a slight overlap with one of The Sermons (Sermon 18), which touches incidentally upon the study of languages while pursuing its larger theme of Pentecost and the gift of tongues.9
But there is no call to force Letter Nine upon the Procrustean bed of the sermon genre solely on the basis of the Latin word sermo.
Taken more generally, sermo meant "talk," and in medieval thinking about the epistolary genre letters were regarded as one side of a conversation with a person or people who were absent. Favoring the notion that Letter Nine passes muster as a letter are two facts. One is that the writings with which it is most closely related are all letters
(Letters One through Eight) or at least strongly letterlike (Problemata). The other is that Letter Nine eluded being absorbed into The Ser7. De Santis, I sermoni, 143.
8. Alcuin Blamires, "No Outlet for Incontinence: Heloise and the Question of Consolation," in Listening to Heloise, 287–301, at 297, accepts the arguments in favor of placing Letter Nine after the Problemata that were advanced by Van Den Eynde,
"Chronologie des écrits," 340–43. Constant J. Mews, "On Dating the Works of Peter Abelard," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 52 (1985): 73–134, at 131–32, repr. in Abelard and His Legacy, has Letter Nine preceding the Problemata.
9. Edmé Renno Smits, Letters IX–XIV: An Edition with an Introduction (Groningen, The Netherlands: Bouma's Boekhuis BV, 1983), 114–15, and De Santis, I sermoni, 142–43.
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mons, which Abelard put together for the Paraclete. A perspective that helps in delineating the genre of Letter Nine, as of Letters Twelve and Thirteen, is to consider them as "letter-treatises."10
Until recently, Letter Nine was roundly ignored. Because it had the misfortune not to have been copied within the principal manuscripts that transmit the earlier letters, it failed to be printed in the editions of the correspondence between Abelard and Heloise that have become modern standards or in the English translations that are the only exposure to the writings of the couple that most people in the Anglophone world receive. Worse still, it has sometimes been judged astringently. One famous scholar who scrutinized it concluded that "[i]t is, by far, the least original" and categorized it as "only a florilegium of extracts from [Jerome's] works and a recollection of his deeds."11 This denigration of the letter misses the point, since its imposition of Jerome and Marcella upon Abelard and Heloise was deliberate and sophisticated, and its evocation of a Hieronymian education for women is as engrossing now as it was idealistic and unrealistic then.
In Letter Nine Abelard encourages the sisters to apply themselves to biblical studies and, to that end, to delve into the three sacred languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Latin) under the guidance of their leader, Heloise. This threesome, enunciated already by Isidore of Seville (about 560–636), qualified as being sacred because all three were attested in the Sacred Scriptures;12 Latin passed the test mainly on the somewhat tenuous grounds that the phrase "Iesus Nazarenus rex
Iudaeorum" (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews), often reduced to the acronym INRI, or some section of it was identified in the Gospels as having been inscribed on the cross.13 Additionally, Abelard re10. The term is used by Marenbon, Philosophy of Peter Abelard, 72, n. 62.
11. Jean Leclercq, "'Ad ipsam sophiam Christum': Le témoignage monastique d'Abélard," Revue d'ascétique et de mystique 46 (1970): 161–81, at 177. The same article also appeared in German, under the title "'Ad ipsam sophiam Christum.' Das monastische Zeugnis Abaelards," in Sapienter ordinare. Festgabe für Erich Kleineidam, ed. Fritz
Hoffmann, Leo Scheffczyk, and Konrad Feiereis, Erfurter theologische Studien 24 (Leipzig, Germany: Sankt-Benno-Verlag, 1969), 179–98.
12. Etymologiae 9.1.3, ed. Wallace M. Lindsay (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1911).
13. See Matthew 27.37, Mark 15.26, Luke 23.38, and especially John 19.19.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete veals in this letter his adherence to a belief, common since Christian antiquity, that Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans in their language, namely, Latin.
More than once, Abelard asserts that Heloise commanded not only Latin but also Greek and even Hebrew. Jerome, for his grasp of the three sacred scriptural languages, was touted as the vir trilinguis (man of three languages); evidently, at least to Abelard's way of thinking, Heloise could be certified as a femina trilinguis (woman of three languages). Although Abelard and Peter the Venerable glorified
Heloise for her erudition, no other source but Letter Nine claims that she knew any Greek, and only the chronicler William Godel(l) and later sources indebted to him also call her knowledgeable about Hebrew.14 William was a monk of St. Martial in Limoges who wrote about a decade after Heloise's death; the text ends with the year 1173.
Perhaps her Hebraism consisted in the familiarity with the meaning of basic vocabulary and names that was much valued in the etymologically minded Latin Middle Ages.15 Yet Abelard specifies that she had the capacity to compare biblical texts in the three languages.16 In any event, the caution has been issued that envisaging the Paraclete as "a kind of Erasmian collegium trilingue" was more a dream on Abelard's part than a reality.17 Above all, the letter espouses a return to an apostolic life, to be achieved through deep study of the Gospels. It is for attaining an understanding of the Bible and 14. "Litteris tam hebraïcis quàm latinis adprimè eruditam" (exceedingly learned in Hebrew literature as well as in Latin). For an edition of the text (which in this entry for 1137 presents one after the other Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, and Heloise), see Ex Chronico Willelmi Godelli, Monachi S. Martialis Lemovicensis, Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Léopold Delisle (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1869), 13: 671–77, at 675. The passage was reedited in Petri Abaelardi opera theologica 3, ed. Constant J. Mews,
CCCM 13 (1987): 291, and translated by Mews, Lost Love Letters, 38.
15. For a few pages that trace the pervasiveness of "Etymology as a Category of Thought," see Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans.
Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series 36 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1990), 495–500.
16. Peter Dronke, in a review of Walter Berschin, Griechisch-lateinisches Mittelalter. Von
Hieronymus zu Nikolaus von Kues (Bern, Switzerland, and Munich, Germany: Francke,
1980), Romance Philology 38 (1985): 531–36, at 534–35.
17. McLaughlin, "Abelard and the Dignity of Women," 330.
to the nuns of the paraclete
a fulfillment of it in life that he urges upon the nuns immersion in scriptural languages.
In setting forth a curriculum for the women, Abelard takes as a point of departure Jerome's letter to Laeta (Letter 107, written in 403). Laeta had written to Jerome to request advice on how to raise her infant daughter as a virgin consecrated to Christ. The daughter, named Paula, is sometimes designated "the younger Paula" to differentiate her from Laeta's mother-in-law, Paula. (Laeta's husband and Paula's father was Toxotius, son of the older Paula and brother of Eustochium.) In his reply Jerome delivered lengthy counsel on the education and upbringing of a young girl. Abelard's extensive appropriations and invocations of Jerome's letter serve to bring out the parallels between Jerome and himself in offering spiritual guidance to women, composing texts for them, and suffering slanderous criticism as an outcome.18
Simultaneously Abelard presses upon Heloise the place of Jerome's female correspondents and advisees, such as Laeta, the two
Paulas, Asella, Eustochium, and other Roman women. Then again, Heloise may have embraced the role of Marcella even before Abelard attempted to cast her as any of the women in Jerome's circle, and she may have given the impetus for his identification with Jerome.19 In the letter that introduces the Problemata she cites Jerome on Marcella, reminding Abelard how greatly Jerome admired the woman not merely for studying the Bible but also for posing questions to him. In any case, in writing this epistle to Heloise and her spiritual daughters, Abelard resorts to more than a dozen quotations from various writings by Jerome, particularly letters to women.20 The grand design behind this intentionally heavy reliance is to ensure that 18. On Abelard's response to Jerome throughout his writings, see Constant J.
Mews, "Un lecteur de Jérôme au XIIe siècle: Pierre Abélard," in Jérôme entre l'Occident et l'Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à Bethléem, Actes du Colloque de Chantilly (septembre 1986), ed. Yves-Marie Duval (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1988), 429–44 (440 on Letter Nine), repr. in Constant J. Mews, Abelard and His Legacy, Variorium Collected Studies CS704 (Aldershot, Hampshire, U.K.: Ashgate, 2001).
19. See especially Blamires, "No Outlet for Incontinence," 287–301.
20. In addition to Letter 107, he relies on Letters 39, 65, 108, 127, and 148.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete the idealized monasticism Abelard foresees for the nuns (and for himself as their mentor) will have the validation of the earliest and purest models for a Christian community. In sum, Letter Nine raises intriguing questions about monasticism and the education of women as well as about other narrower topics, such as the knowledge of Greek and the reputation of Hebrew in the twelfth century.
The letter is to be dated between 1132 and roughly 1135, probably after the writing of Letters One through Eight and the Problemata but before the assembly of the The Sermons.21 It survives in a single manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 14511 (toward
1400, copied probably in Paris, from St. Victor), fol. 18r–44v, where it caps an initial section of Abelardiana that encompasses the Apologia
"Universis," Sermon 14, the commentary on the Athanasian Creed, and the Problemata, fol. 44v–50v (for the last of which this manuscript is also our unique witness). The standard edition is that of Smits.
The reason for which Letter Nine failed to be preserved with the letters to Heloise may be that it is not addressed to her and in fact that it epitomizes the turns in their relationship he and not she sought to achieve. These very vicissitudes may have rendered the letter less suited to be stored carefully with the earlier ones, especially the personal letters. The letter is directed to the nuns collectively, of whom Heloise is prima inter pares on the strength of her erudition, rather than owing to her past history with him; and yet at the same time that shared past history no doubt contributes to Abelard's evaluation of Heloise, as well as to his extolling of learning as desirable for the women of the Paraclete. letter nine Among the other things that blessed Jerome, who is very much concerned with the education of virgins of Christ, writes for their edification, he especially recommends to them the study of sacred literature, and he does not so much encourage them to it by words
21. Smits, Letters IX–XIV, 115 and 120. For further details, see Van den Eynde, "Chronologie des écrits," 467–80.
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as summon them by example.22 In fact, mindful of the opinion he uttered when informing the monk Rusticus ("Love the knowledge of the Scriptures and you will not love the sins of the flesh"), he judged love of this study to be all the more needful for women as he perceived them to be weaker by nature and feebler in the flesh.23 In thus encouraging virgins, he adduces an argument from an analogy that is not derived solely from virgins; for this reason, to achieve a comparison with an element of lesser worth, he takes as an example widows and wives, so that through the matrons of the world he might arouse all the more to study those who are betrothed to Christ and so that by citing the virtue of laywomen he might dislodge or even destroy the sloth of nuns.
And since in accord with that dictum of Gregory's "Everyone starts out from the most modest things so as to arrive at greater ones," it helps to state at the outset with what great steadfastness he desired to steep young virgins in sacred literature.24 For this reason, to leave out the rest, let that statement now come out into open view which commends to Laeta, in regard to the upbringing of her daughter Paula, instruction in literature, for the teaching of morals:25
22. The contrast here between words and examples is matched at the end by the characterization of Jerome as being "distinguished in writings as well as in deeds."
23. Jerome, Letter 125.11, ed. Isidor Hilberg, Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae, 3 vols.,
CSEL 54–56 (1910–1918), at CSEL 56: 130, also quoted in Abelard, Letter Eight, and in the Problemata, in PL 178: 678C. Rusticus (died 461), who became an ascetic at Jerome's urging, was by 427 bishop of Narbonne.
24. The dictum appears in Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem prophetam, 2.3, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CCSL 142 (1971): 238, lines 54–55; compare Moralia in Iob, 26.6,
29.33, 31.34, 32.12, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CCSL 143B (1985), at 1271, line 29; 1489, lines
8–9; 1602, line 40; 1641, line 38; and elsewhere. Later it is also found in Bede, In Marci euangelium expositio, 3.9, ed. David Hurst, CCSL 120 (1960): 427–648, at 549, lines 287–
88, and In Lucae euangelium expositio, 5.17, ed. David Hurst, CCSL 120 (1960): 1–425, at 309, lines 549–50. Abelard uses it repeatedly: see Sermon 8, in PL 178: 439C; Sermon
16, in PL 178: 498C; Sermon 26, in PL 178: 544D; and Sermon 29, in PL 178: 555D.
25. On this and two other uses of the noun disciplina (here in the phrase "hanc litterarum disciplinam") in Letter Nine, see David E. Luscombe, "'Scientia' and 'dis-
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete A soul that is to be a temple of God (he said) must be trained in this way: [. . .] Have a set of letters made for her, of boxwood or of ivory, and let them be called by their names. Let her play with them and let play be her learning. And not only should she hold fast to the sequence of the letters [. . .], but also the sequence should be jumbled frequently and final letters should be mixed up with middle ones, middle ones with initial [. . .]. When she has begun to guide with her hand the stylus upon the wax [. . .], either let her tender fingers be controlled by another's hand or let the rudiments be marked on the tablet so that her own tracings, kept within the margins, may be drawn along the same grooves and may not be capable of straying outside.
Let her spell out syllables for a prize and let her be motivated by the little gifts by which that age is won over. In learning let her have other girls as companions, so that she may envy them and be fretful when they receive praise. She must not be scolded if she should be a little slow, but her talent should be encouraged by praises, so that she both rejoices when she has outdone others and grieves when she has been outdone herself.
First and foremost, care must be taken that she not hate her studies and that a bad association with them acquired in childhood not persist beyond unformed years. Let the very nouns from which she grows accustomed little by little to form sentences not be random but diligently selected and arranged, for example, the names of prophets and apostles; and let the whole list of patriarchs out of Matthew and Luke ensue, going down from Adam, so that as she accomplishes one task, she may also be made ready for future recollection of them.26
A tutor of proper age, manner of life, and learning is to be chosen.
Not even a learned man can be ashamed to do for a relative or for a virgin of noble kind what Aristotle did for Philip's son, so that in the lowly manner of copyists he might impart to her the rudiments of letters.27 ciplina' in the Correspondence of Peter Abelard and Heloise," in "Scientia" und "Disciplina": Wissenstheorie und Wissenschaftspraxis im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, ed. Rainer Berndt
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002), 79–89, at 80. Of the other two instances, I translate one as "training in the liberal arts" and the other as "knowledge of their language."
26. The lists are provided in Matthew 1.1–17 and Luke 3.23–38.
27. The Philip in question was the king of Macedonia, whose son was Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.e.). The philosopher Aristotle was indeed his tutor, after Leonides (whose name is also found as Leonidas).
to the nuns of the paraclete
Things should not be scorned as trifles, if without them great things cannot take form. The very sound of the letters and the first teaching of the instructor are produced in one way by an educated mouth and in another by a coarse one. [. . .] And she should not learn in tender youth what she must unlearn afterwards. [. . .] What unformed minds have absorbed is removed with difficulty. [. . .] Greek history relates that King Alexander
[. . .] could not lose the failings of his tutor Leonides in both conduct and bearing with which he had been imbued while still a small boy.28
Moreover, so that she might commit to memory Scripture as read aloud, the same [Jerome] also wishes a fixed amount of reading to be stipulated for every single day, and when she completes the recollection of this by rote, he directs that pains be taken not only with Latin but also with Greek literature, since both languages were then used widely in Rome, and especially because of Scriptures translated from Greek into Latin, so that she could understand them better from their original and could discriminate more truly between them.29 For the Latin world was not yet making use of translations from the true Hebrew version.30 And so he said:
28. Jerome, Letter 107.4, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55: 293.
29. The Latin for "discriminate" (diiudicare) in the last phrase carries a special charge within Abelard's writings, with earlier attestations in both the Sic et non and Letter Eleven. In the first he seems to have been inspired in his choice of the word by a passage in Jerome's letter to Laeta. In both the Sic et non and Letter Eleven Abelard employs the verb to denote the evaluation of scriptural or patristic authorities through logical comparison of them. Here he expands its application to include collating Bible texts in different languages, Greek and Latin. Later he adds Hebrew to the mix, to complete coverage of the three scriptural languages.
30. Abelard here employs the Latin phrase Hebraica ueritas, which Jerome had applied to the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible over the Greek (and Latin), and elsewhere uses the expression twice in quick succession in commenting on the second day of creation in his Expositio in Hexameron, ed. Mary F. Romig, in Petri Abaelardi opera theologica, 5, ed. Charles S. F. Burnett and Mary Romig, CCCM 15 (2004): 1–111, at p. 24, lines 553–54 (section 76: "Hebraica veritas") and line 555 (section 77: "veritas
Hebraica"). For further information on what Jerome meant by the phrase, see Dennis Brown, Vir Trilinguis: A Study in the Biblical Exegesis of Saint Jerome (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1992), 55–86, and Stefan Rebenich, "Jerome: The 'Vir Trilinguis' and the 'Hebraica Veritas,'" Vigiliae Christianae 47 (1993): 50–77.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete Let her recite to you daily a fixed portion of Scriptures and let her learn a number of Greek verses. Let her become acquainted with Latin also immediately thereafter. If from the beginning Latin has not set in order the youthful mouth, the tongue is corrupted to a foreign accent and the native language is sullied by flaws belonging to another.31 Instead of jewels and silk, let her love manuscripts of the Bible, in which she should take pleasure not in sinuous paintings of gold and Babylonian parchment but in faithfully corrected and learned punctuation.32
Let her learn first the psalter, let her amuse herself with those songs; in the proverbs of Solomon let her be schooled for life; in Ecclesiastes let her grow accustomed to trample down those things which are of this world; in Job let her follow examples of virtue and patience. Let her pass on to the Gospels, never to set them down from her hands. Let her drink in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles with all the will of her heart. And when she has filled the storehouse of her mind with these riches, let her commit to memory the Prophets, and Heptateuch, the books of Kings and Chronicles, and the volumes of Ezra and Esther.33 In the end she may learn without danger the Song of Songs. If she read it in the beginning, she would not understand that beneath the fleshly literal level it was the wedding song of a spiritual marriage, and she would be injured.
Let her beware of all the apocrypha and if ever she should wish to read them (not for the truth of their doctrines but out of respect for their miracles), let her know that they are not the work of those with whose names they are entitled, and in addition that many faulty things are interspersed in them and that it demands great care to seek out gold in mud.34 Let her keep Cyprian's works ever in her hand;35 let her run
31. Jerome, Letter 107.9, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55: 300.
32. The adjective "Babylonian" implies exotic luxury.
33. The Heptateuch comprehends the first seven books of the Bible, namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges. The books of Ezra (Esdras) and Esther figure in the Greek Old Testament and hence in the Vulgate, but not in the Hebrew Bible.
34. Jerome here presents his version of a proverb that enjoyed a long life in Latin after him; see lutum 6, in August Otto, Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der
Römer (Leipzig, Germany: B. G. Teubner, 1890), 202. Compare Sic et non, Prologue, line
62, ed. Boyer and McKeon, 91.
35. Bishop (and St.) Cyprian of Carthage (died 258) left writings, primarily short treatises and letters, that won immediate and lasting popularity.
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through the letters of Athanasius and the books of Hilary without stumbling.36 Let her take delight in the treatises and thoughts of these men, in whose books a devotion to faith does not waver. Let her read others in such a way that she exercises judgment rather than becomes a follower.37
You will reply, "How will I, a woman of the world, be able to keep watch over all these conditions amid the great density of people in Rome?" Then do not undertake a burden that you cannot bear but instead, after weaning her, [. . .] send her to her grandmother and aunt; put the precious jewel in Mary's bedchamber and set her in the cradle of Jesus when he was a wailing infant. Let her be raised in a monastery, let her be among troupes of virgins; [. . .] let her be unknowing of the world, let her live as an angel, let her be in the flesh without the flesh; let her think that the entire human race is like her and, though I will remain silent about other things, surely let her free you from the challenge of keeping her safe and the danger of guarding her. It is better for you to long for her when she is absent than to be alarmed at everything. [. . .]
Turn over the little girl to Eustochium.38 [. . .] Let her admire from her first years that woman,39 whose speech, style of dress, and bearing are an education in virtues. Let her be in the lap of a grandmother [. . .] who from long experience has learned to raise, teach, and watch over virgins.40 [. . .] After Hannah offered to the tabernacle the son whom she had pledged to God, she never took him back.41 [. . .] If you send us Pau36. Bishop (and St.) Athanasius of Alexandria (about 296–373) is now known better for works other than his letters. Bishop (and St.) Hilary of Poitiers (about 315–367) produced a number of writings, including a treatise on the Trinity and biblical commentaries.
37. This sentence and the two preceding ones are also found in Sic et non, Prologue, lines 307–10, ed. Boyer and McKeon, 102.
38. St. (Julia) Eustochium (370–about 419), who along with her mother, St. Paula
(347–404), tried to emulate the life of the Egyptian hermits, under the guidance of Jerome. It is after St. Paula that the little girl in question in Jerome's letter is named.
Laeta, her mother, is Paula's daughter-in-law.
39. Jerome's phrasing ("illam primis miretur ab annis") is indebted to Virgil, Aeneid, 8.517 (". . . primis et te miretur ab annis").
40. The grandmother is Eustochium.
41. Of the four women named Hannah (or Anna) in the Bible, Jerome refers to the mother of Samuel (1 Kings 1–2.21), who remained barren until she vowed that if God blessed her with a son, she would consecrate him as a Nazarite (1 Kings 1.9–11).
After her prayer was answered, she weaned the male child she had borne and hon-
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete la, I promise myself as both tutor and foster father, I will carry her on my shoulders; as an old man I will give shape to her stammering words; more glorious by far than the philosopher of the world, I who will teach not a king of the Macedonians who will die by Babylonian poison, but a bride of Christ who will be offered to the kingdom of heaven.42
Ponder thoroughly, sisters who are dearest in Christ at the same time as being fellow servants, how much care such a great doctor of the Church expended upon the education of a single little girl, how he marked out so carefully everything that he judged needful for her instruction, beginning with the alphabet itself. He introduces teaching not only about pronouncing syllables and joining letters but about writing them too, and also he thinks ahead about providing classmates, by envy or praise of whom the girl may be greatly motivated. In addition, so that she may do this of her own free will rather than under duress and so that she may embrace study with a greater love, he advises that she be encouraged by enticements and praises, as well as by little gifts. He also stipulates the very names that are to be garnered from the Sacred Scriptures. By first training herself in pronouncing them, she commits these very much to her memory, in keeping with that dictum of a poet, "A jar will keep for a long time the scent with which it was once imbued when new."43
He describes duly also what sort of teacher should be chosen for this purpose, and he does not omit that there ought to be a set amount of reading for her to accomplish daily, held fast in her ored her vow by bringing him to Silo (1 Kings 1.24–28). Abelard refers to her in Letter Seven.
42. Jerome, Letter 107.12–13, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55: 302–5. Abelard uses parts of this same section in the Sic et non, Prologue, ed. Blanche Boyer and Richard McKeon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 91, lines 60–62, and p. 102, lines
307–10. The philosopher who needs no further clarification is Aristotle. The king of the Macedonians is Alexander the Great, who died on 13 June 323 b.c.e. after being stricken suddenly by a violent fever that led to a twelve-day illness and culminated in his death. It has been suspected for millennia that he was poisoned.
43. Horace, Epistle 1.2.69–70, quoted in Jerome, Letter 107.4, ed. Hilberg, CSEL
55: 295 (and in Abelard, Collationes 1.7, ed. and trans. Marenbon and Orlandi, 10–11).
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very heart. And because at that time familiarity with Greek literature too existed in abundance in Rome, he does not allow her to be destitute of Greek literature, especially (in my opinion) because the translation of the holy books came down to us from the Greeks.
For this reason she could also determine what in our version fell short or was off, and perhaps thanks as well to training in the liberal arts which confer a certain advantage upon those who work toward completeness in learning. He even places this knowledge before the Latin language, as if our mastery began with it.
Moreover, when she has passed from the sound of words to their sense, so that she might wish to understand now what she has learned to pronounce, he specifies for her various texts, from the canon of the two testaments as well as from the minor works of scholars by whose erudition she may advance toward being crowned. Among the canonical Scriptures, furthermore, he recommends to her the Gospels in such a way that he counsels that the virgin never let them part from her hands, as if he might enjoin something more of Gospel reading upon deaconesses than deacons; since those men may have that reading read in church, those women ought never take a rest from reading the Gospels.
Accordingly, writing these things to a mother about a daughter so that the mother might not claim as an excuse that a worldly woman could not accomplish all these things at Rome amid the great density of people, he advises her to free herself of this burden and to commit her daughter to a convent of virgins where she could be raised without danger and be instructed more completely in those things he mentioned. Finally, precluding every chance that the mother should be anxious in the end about a teacher of the sort he had described, he volunteers to be teacher at the same time as foster father of the girl sent from Rome to Jerusalem to the grandmother (namely, the holy Paula) and aunt Eustochium.44
44. Paula and Eustochium are the grandmother and aunt, respectively, of Laeta (the mother) and not Paula (the child).
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete And he bursts forth into so great a promise (it is a marvel to say it) that this great scholar of the Church, even though feeble with age, says that he does not disdain to bear the virgin on his shoulders, like a porter. Certainly this would hardly come to pass without suspicion among suspicious people nor without scandal among religious ones.45 Yet the man, full of God and known to everyone for so long a time on account of the blamelessness of his life, pledged boldly all these things, if only he could instruct one virgin in such fashion that he might leave her as schoolmistress to others and that in her a person who had not seen Jerome might still catch with the eye a glimpse of Jerome.
However, to proceed from the youngest virgins to older ones whom he always challenges very much to the study of literature, as much of course in writing for them what they should read as in praising them for their perseverance in reading or learning, let us hear what he says when writing to the virgin Principia about the forty-fourth Psalm:
Principia, my daughter in Christ, I know that I am reproved by very many people as I sometimes write to women and prefer the weaker sex to males, and on that score I should first respond to my detractors and thus arrive at the little debate you requested. If men should pose questions about the Scriptures, I would not speak to women. If Barak had wished to go to battle, Deborah would not have triumphed over her conquered enemies.46
45. This aside and the beginning of the next paragraph surely relate to Abelard's indignation about the suspicions he incurred for his ministrations to Heloise and the nuns of the Paraclete. See Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin, 101–5; trans. Radice, 36–
40. Those innuendoes received their bluntest voice from Bernard of Clairvaux, who in a letter (Letter 332) against Peter Abelard addressed to Cardinal Guy (Guido of Città di Castello), the future Pope Celestine II (1143–1144), and a former student of Abelard, capped a sentence that lambasted Abelard as a monk, prelate, and abbot by insinuating that his dealings with boys and women were questionable: "disputantem cum pueris, conversantem cum mulierculis" (debating with boys, dallying with little women).
46. Jerome, Letter 65.1, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 54: 616. According to Judges 4.4–22,
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And after some other observations he adds:
Aquila and Priscilla educate and inform Apollo, an apostolic man most learned in the law, about the path of the Lord.47 If it was not debasing for an apostle to be taught by a woman, why is it debasing for me to teach women too after men? I have touched briefly upon these matters and others of this sort, my daughter, so that you should not rue your sex and so that men, in condemnation of whom the life of women is praised in the Sacred Scriptures, should not become puffed up on account of being called men.48
After virgins, it is helpful to pay attention to widows, how much they too may avail in the study of sacred literature according to Jerome's witness and praise. Therefore the same sage, writing to the same virgin Principia on the life of Saint Marcella (as Principia requested), said among the distinguishing features of her virtue:
Her ardent love for divine Scriptures was beyond belief, and she always used to sing: "Thy words have I hidden in my heart, that I may not sin against thee" [Psalm 118.11], and that verse about the perfect man: "And on the law of the Lord he shall meditate day and night" [Psalm 1.2] [. . .] and "By thy commandments I have had understanding" [Psalm 118.104].49
Finally, when the need of the Church brought me also to Rome together with holy pontiffs50 [. . .] and I would modestly avoid the gaze of nobleBarak was first summoned by Deborah to wage war against Jabin and then accompanied by her into battle. She gave the signal to attack, whereupon Barak's small company routed Jabin's much larger host. Deborah's role in the episode is mentioned in Abelard, Letter Seven.
47. Aquila was a Jew of Pontus; Priscilla, his wife. She was an early convert to Christianity who is mentioned a half dozen times in the New Testament. Their interaction with Apollo, a Jew born in Alexandria, takes place in Ephesus, where Aquila and Priscilla accompanied St. Paul. See Acts 18.24–28.
48. Jerome, Letter 65.1–2, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 54: 618.
49. The passage that ends with the final quotation from the Psalms is lightly excerpted from Jerome, Letter 127.4, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 56: 148. Compare Letter 65 to Principia. St. Marcella (324–410) was one of the Christian women who had been living an ascetic life of study under Jerome's spiritual direction. Later she was martyred by the Goths when they looted Rome.
50. In the text that Abelard abridges here, Jerome tells that he came to Rome
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete born women, [Marcella] acted so insistently "in season, out of season"
[2 Timothy 4.2] (in the words of the Apostle [Paul]) that her persistence overcame my sense of shame, and because at that time I was held to be of some renown in study of the Scriptures, she never met me without asking something about the Scriptures; nor would she be content at once, but instead would produce questions from the opposing point of view—not so as to be contentious, but so as by asking to learn the answers to these questions which she understood could be raised in objection.
What virtues, what intellect [. . .] I found in her, I hesitate to say for fear that I should exceed the bounds of credulity and should prompt greater sadness in you as you recall how great a boon you have lost. I will say only this, that whatever was assembled in me through long study and turned as it were into part of my nature by unceasing meditation, she tasted it, learned it, and made it her own, in such a way that after my departure, if contention arose about some evidence in the Scriptures, people would go to her to adjudicate. And because she was extremely practiced [. . .], when thus questioned she would reply by saying that even her own words were not hers but either mine or those of any other person at all, so that even in that which she taught, she professed herself a student; for she knew that the Apostle [Paul] said, "But I suffer not a woman to teach" [1 Timothy 2.12], so that she would not seem to commit an outrage against the male sex and sometimes against priests when they posed questions about obscurities or ambiguities.51
We consoled ourselves for our separation by an exchange of encouragement, and what we could not maintain bodily, we did spiritually. Always our letters crossed, outdid each other in courtesies, anticipated each other in greetings. Separation, which was healed by constant letters, did not cause much loss. In the midst of this serenity and service of God a storm of heresy arose in these provinces, roiled up everything, and was aroused to such frenzy that it spared neither itself nor anything good, and as if it were a small matter to have stirred up one and all here, it with Bishops Paulinus of Antioch (died about 388) and Epiphanius of Salamis (died
403).
51. Jerome, Letter 127.7, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 56: 150–51. The bishop of Rome in question would be Pope Siricius (384–399). Jerome felt that Siricius treated Rufinus too clemently in 398.
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brought a ship filled with blasphemies to the port of Rome. [. . .] At Rome this poisonous and filthy teaching found people to lead astray.
[. . .] Saint Marcella for a long time held back, so that she would not be thought to do something or other out of rivalry. But after she noted that the faith [. . .] was being dishonored in many people (such that heresy drew to its support priests as well as some monks and especially laymen and was deluding them in their naïveté), she preferred to please God rather than men, and she took a stand publicly against the bishop, who judged others according to his own character.52
She was the beginning of the condemnation of the heretics, when she brought forward witnesses who previously had been educated by them and afterward had been reformed of their heretical mistake, when she showed the great number of people who had been misled, when she forced upon them the impious books On First Principles which were on display as amended by the hand of that scorpion, and when heretics, called forth by repeated letters to defend themselves, did not dare to come.53
And the impact of their consciousness about sinning was so great that they preferred to be condemned when absent rather than to be proven guilty when present. The source of so glorious a victory is Marcella.54
You see, dearest ones, how much fruit the praiseworthy study of one woman bore who had been set as head over all the faithful in crushing heresies in the city. And you see with how great a lantern of learning one woman dispelled the darknesses of even the very sages of the Church. As for the studious zeal for sacred literature by which she earned this triumph, the same doctor of the Church [Jerome] thus recalled for your encouragement in his first book on the epistle of Paul to the Galatians:
52. Jerome, Letter 127.8–9, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 56: 152.
53. Jerome adverts here to the Periarchon, known in Latin as the De principiis (composed 220–230), the most important theological work by Origen (about 185–about 254). It was the first synthesis of Christian dogma that substantially incorporated
Platonism. Origen's followers subscribed to a group of theories that have come to be designated as Origenism. Central among these theories was a Trinitarian doctrine that is espoused in this work. The scorpion to whom Jerome refers is his former friend Rufinus (about 345–410), who in 398 published under the title De principiis a free Latin translation of Origen's Greek text.
54. Jerome, Letter 127.10, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 56: 153.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete Indeed I know that her ardor, I know that her faith, which she has like a flame in her heart, surpasses her sex, forgets humankind, and crosses the Red Sea of this world as the tambourine of the divine tomes rings out.55
Assuredly when I was at Rome, she never saw me so hurriedly that she did not ask some question about the Scriptures. Nor indeed did she think correct whatever I replied in Pythagorean fashion,56 nor did any authority hold validity in her eyes which had been determined beforehand without analysis; but she investigated everything and evaluated one and all with her wise mind, so that I felt I had not so much a student as a judge.57
At that time so great and studious a zeal for literary learning burned among saintly women, just as also among men, that, not at all satisfied with knowledge of their language, they sought from the very sources the rivulets of the Scriptures that they had, and they believed that the paltriness of one language was not adequate for them.58 On this topic is also that passage of the aforementioned doctor to Paula on the death of her daughter Blaesilla as he writes thus, among other words, in the highest praise of her:59
Who could pass over without sobbing her persistence in prayer, the purity of her language, tight grasp of her memory, shrewdness of her insight? If you heard her speaking Greek, you would think that she knew no Latin.
If her tongue turned to the language of the Romans, her speech would smack not in the least of the foreign. Now indeed, as to what Greece ad55. This metaphor relates to Exodus 15.
56. The reference to Pythagoras pertains to his reputation not as a man of science but rather as an exponent of mystic doctrines.
57. Jerome, Commentarii in iv epistulas Paulinas (Commentary on the Four Epistles of Paul, here the Epistle to the Galatians), Prologue, in PL 26: 307–618 (331–656), at 307A–8A (331B–32B). This passage is quoted by Abelard in both the Sic et non 1.26, ed.
Boyer and McKeon, p. 117, lines 131–41, and the Theologia "Scholarium" 2.3, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 432, lines 767–75. It is also quoted by Heloise in her letter to Abelard at the beginning of the Problemata.
58. The metaphor of the sources and rivulets that Abelard develops here in characterizing different sources is also found in Letter Ten.
59. St. Blaesilla was daughter of St. Paula and sister of St. Eustochium. Born about 363, she died in Rome of a fever after having subjected herself to a harsh asceticism.
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mires too in the famous Origen, she had surmounted the challenges of the Hebrew language in a few I will not say months but days, to such an extent that she vied with her mother in learning and singing the Psalms.60
Certainly the same doctor of the Church does not pass over that her own mother Paula and Paula's other daughter Eustochium, a virgin consecrated to God, were no less engaged in the same study of literature and language. Thus certainly he mentions these things in writing the life of this very Paula and saying about her:
Nothing was more easily instructed than her intellect. She was slow to speak, swift to listen,61 mindful of the injunction "Listen, O Israel, and be silent" [Deuteronomy 27.9]. She retained the Sacred Scriptures by rote. [. . .] In short, she coerced me to read through both the Old and the New Testament with her daughter as I expounded. Refusing this out of modesty, on account of her perseverance and repeated demands I offered to teach what I had learned. [. . .] If at any point I hesitated and admitted frankly that I had no idea, she did not want at all for me to leave it at that but forced me through unremitting questioning to point out which of the many various opinions seemed likelier to me. I will speak of yet another circumstance which may seem unbelievable perhaps to her rivals. She wanted to learn the Hebrew language, which I learned from adolescence on through much sweat and toil and with tireless practice [. . .] which even now I still do not abandon, lest I be abandoned by it. And she reached the point where she could sing the Psalms in Hebrew and could sound out Greek speech without any telltale characteristic of the Latin language. In fact we perceive this even today in her saintly daughter Eustochium.62
To be sure, they knew that the wisdom of Latin texts had come from Hebrew and Greek writings and that the idiom of any language whatsoever could not be maintained by a translator in a for60. Jerome, Letter 39.1, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 54: 294. On Origen, see note 53 above regarding On First Principles.
61. Compare James 1.19: "Let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and slow to anger."
62. Jerome, Letter 108.26 (Epistula ad Eustochium), ed. CSEL 55.344–45.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete eign tongue. The Hebrews as well as the Greeks, priding themselves on their perfection, were accustomed sometimes to insult our translations as imperfect, and to prove their point they adduced the similar circumstance that any kind of liquid when poured out in turn into many vessels must be diminished from its full volume, and its same amount cannot be found in various vessels as it had in the original one. For this reason too it often happens that when we strive to refute Jews with some citations, they have the habit of rebuking us readily for not knowing Hebrew, because (as they say) of the wrongness of our translations.63
Taking careful heed of this, the women who have been mentioned were in their great wisdom not at all satisfied with learning their own language. As a result they were able not only to instruct their own coreligionists but also to refute others and to slake their thirst in the clearest water of the source. Unless I am mistaken, Jerome himself stimulated them greatly to this by his example, being learned in these languages. In fact, by how much toil and outlay he gained the perfection of this learnedness, he writes in these words to Pammachius and Oceanus:64
When I was a young man, I was impelled by a marvelous love of learning and I did not teach myself, as is the presumptuousness of certain men.
63. Disputations between Christians and Jews were a pressing issue when Abelard made this observation. As this passage illustrates, the tradition of Christian Hebraism originated at least in part as an attempt to refute Jews in disputes; see Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in Dispute: Disputational Literature and the Rise of Anti-Judaism in the West (c. 1000–1150), Variorum Collected Studies Series CS621 (Aldershot, U.K.:
Ashgate, 1998). There has been controversy, most of it centered upon the Collationes, over the scope of Abelard's familiarity with Hebrew and Judaism. For a review of the question with up-to-the-date bibliography, see the edition of the Collationes by John
Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi, xlvi–l. The studies that sift the most evidence on Abelard's knowledge of Judaism are Michel Lemoine, "Abélard et les Juifs," Revue des études juives 153 (1994): 253–67, and Peter von Moos, "Die Collationes Abaelards und die
Lage der Juden im 12. Jahrhundert," in Moos, Abaelard und Heloise, 327–77.
64. St. Pammachius (about 340–410) was a Roman Christian friend to whom Jerome not only addressed letters but also dedicated commentaries. His wife was the daughter of St. Paula. Oceanus was the husband of Fabiola (see p. 169 n. 63).
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Often I heard the lectures of Apollinarius of Laodicea at Antioch;65 I studied and although he instructed me in the Sacred Scriptures, I never accepted his controversial teachings on sense. My head was already sprinkled with white hairs and it was more fitting for me to be a teacher than a student. Yet I went to Alexandria and attended the lectures of Didymus.66 I give him thanks in many regards: what I did not know, I learned; what I knew, I did not forget, as he taught all manner of things. People thought that I had made an end to learning. I came again to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. With great toil and expense I had Baraninas as my teacher by night.67 For he feared the Jews and represented another Nicodemus to me.68 I make mention frequently of all these men in my works.69
Pondering this zeal for the divine Scriptures that so great a teacher and saintly women have had, I have advised and I wish unceasingly for you to bring about that, insofar as you are able and have a mother superior expert in these three sacred languages, you proceed to this completion of study so that whatever doubt may arise about different translations, a final decision can be reached by you.70
65. Apollinarius the Younger (about 310–about 390) became bishop of Laodicea about 360. Apollinarianism, to which Jerome soon alludes, was a Christological heresy that denied that a human soul or mind was present in Christ and that Christ redeemed more than the physical elements of human nature.
66. Didymus the Blind (about 313–398) was an Alexandrian theologian whose students included both Jerome and Rufinus.
67. Baraninas of Tiberias, whose name is sometimes written as Bar-anina.
68. Nicodemus was a Jew who is mentioned in John (3.1–15, 7.50, and 19.39) as having been learned in the Law, as having been well disposed to Christ, and as having helped to bury him.
69. Jerome, Letter 84.3, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55: 122–23. Part of this passage is cited in Abelard, Letter Eight.
70. At first blush Abelard's aspiration to have Heloise usher the nuns to a mastery of the tres linguae sacrae looks wildly improbable and indeed it is most unlikely ever to have been even largely fulfilled. At the same time, Abelard was only trying to have the Paraclete compete with what he would have regarded as rival institutions—competing schools—such as St. Victor, where Andrew of St. Victor (died 1175) took to their height exegetic practices that demanded knowledge of Hebrew and that relied on rabbinic guidance. See Rainer Berndt, "La pratique exégétique d'André de SaintVictor. Tradition victorine et influence rabbinique," in L'abbaye parisienne de Saint-Victor au Moyen Age, ed. Jean Longère, 271–90.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete The very inscription on the Lord's cross, written in Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin,71 seems not unfittingly to have prefigured that in his Church the teaching of these preeminent languages should abound, diffused everywhere in the world; for the text of each testament is encompassed in the letters of these languages.72 You have no need, as blessed Jerome chanced to have, of journeying afar or of many payments to learn these languages, since, as has been stated, you have a mother superior adequate to this pursuit.
After virgins and widows too, let faithfully married women offer you stimulus to learn and either chide your negligence or increase your keenness. To you worthy Celantia offers an additional example, who wishes to live also according to a rule in marriage and who seeks earnestly that a law for marriage be prescribed for her by this very Jerome.73 At which he writes back to her on this topic and recalls thus:
Summoned by your letter to write [. . .], I hesitated for a long time about replying, with shame enjoining silence upon me. [. . .] For you request, and you request anxiously and passionately, that we delineate for you a rule determined on the basis of the Sacred Scriptures by which you may set in order the course of your life, so that after understanding the will of the Lord amid worldly honors and the enticements of wealth you may cherish instead the trappings of your morals and so that you may be able, while established in a marriage, to please not only your spouse but also him who allowed the very marriage. Not to satisfy so saintly a request and so pious a longing, what else would it be than not to love another's gain? Accordingly, I will obey your entreaties and I will strive to stir you, already prepared to fulfill the will of God, with his opinions.74
71. On the languages of the inscription, see Luke 23.38 and John 19.20.
72. This thought, reiterated slightly later in this same letter, is also articulated in Sermo 18, in PL 178.511–12.
73. Celantia was a wealthy noblewoman (fifth century) who took a vow of chastity without obtaining her husband's prior consent. The letter to her was probably by Pelagius (350/4–423/9), a theologian from Britain who taught in Rome in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Later it was attributed mistakenly to Jerome.
74. Pelagius, Ad Celantiam (Pseudo-Jerome, Letter 148.1–2), ed. Hilberg, CSEL 56:
329–56, here 329–30.
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Perhaps this matron had heard what the Scripture relates in praise of saintly Susanna.75 When it had first stated that she was
"a very beautiful woman, and one that feared God" [Daniel 13.2], it immediately appended the source from which this fear and true comeliness of soul issued, saying: "For her parents, being just, had instructed their daughter according to the law of Moses" [Daniel
13.3]. Amid the bothers of marriage and disturbances of worldly concerns Susanna was mindful of that instruction, and even when condemned to death she merited to damn her judges themselves and the elders. Indeed, Jerome himself, explicating the passage in Daniel where it is said "For her parents being just, had instructed their daughter" [Daniel 13.3] and so forth, took it appropriately as an occasion for encouragement and said: "This is to be employed as evidence to encourage parents to instruct according to God's law and divine utterance not only sons but also their daughters."76
And because wealth is accustomed very much to hinder the pursuit of letters as well as of virtues, let that wealthiest queen of Sheba dispel from you all sloth of heedlessness. This is that queen
[3 Kings 10.1–13, 2 Chronicles 9.1–12] who with great toil on account of her weaker sex and with exhaustion from the long route, as well as with extreme perils and expenses, came from the ends of the earth to test Solomon's wisdom and to compare with him what she knew with what she did not.77 Solomon approved of her
75. Abelard takes for granted that his readers know the story of Susanna, as recounted in the Book of Daniel 13. Susanna, the beautiful wife of Joachim, was spied upon while bathing by two elders who were judges. When they demanded her sexual favors, she cried out for help, whereupon they claimed to have seen her with a young man under a tree. She was sentenced to death, but Daniel halted the execution and asked for the elders to be questioned separately about the tree. When they identified different trees, Susanna was vindicated and the elders were stoned. The Historia calamitatum recounts how at the Council of Soissons Thierry (perhaps the famous master, Thierry of Chartres) compares the unjust accusations against Abelard to those against Susanna; see ed. Monfrin, p. 88, lines 882–90; trans. Radice, p. 24.
76. Jerome, Commentarii in Danielem 4.13.3, ed. François Glorie, CCSL 75A (1964):
945. Abelard quotes this very passage to comment upon the same Bible passage in Sermo 29, in PL 178.556–57.
77. Compare Jerome, Letter 65.1, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 54: 617.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete scholarship and hard work to such an extent that in reward he gave her everything she asked, except those things which he had offered her of his own accord, following royal custom. Many powerful men flocked together to hear his wisdom, and many of the kings and leaders of the land honored his learning with great gifts; and although he received many gifts from them, it is read that he rewarded for the gifts none of them, except the woman who has just been mentioned. By reason of this he demonstrated openly how much he approved of the woman's saintly scholarship and zeal for learning and how much he judged it to be pleasing to the Lord. As presently the Lord himself and true Solomon (but actually more than Solomon) did not omit to point out in condemnation of men who scorned his learning: "The queen of the south shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it" [Matthew
12.42] and so forth.78
In this generation, dearest ones, be watchful that your heedlessness not condemn you too. That you may be less readily excused in this, it is not needful for you to undertake the exhaustion of a long journey or to make provision for great expenses. In your mother superior you have guidance which can be adequate for you to all purposes, namely, to exemplify virtues as well as to learn scholarship. Grounded not only in Latin but also in Hebrew as well as in Greek texts, she alone in this age seems to have acquired expertise in the three sacred languages. Of all the ones in blessed Jerome, she is extolled as a unique grace and is commended by him especially among the respectable women who have been mentioned.
The two testaments comprehended in these three (and have no doubt) chief languages have come to our attention. The inscription on the Lord's cross, distinguished by these very languages, which is to say, composed in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, plainly signals that 78. The true Solomon is Christ, since although Solomon is reputed to have been wise (3 Kings 3.12), Jesus is said to have possessed all wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2.2–3). The same biblical verse is quoted in Letter Seven.
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especially in these languages the Lord's teaching and Christ's praises and the mystery of the Trinity itself would be pointed out and strengthened in the threefold breadth of the world, just as the very wood of the cross, upon which the inscription was set, was threefold.79 Certainly it was written: "in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand" [Deuteronomy 17.6 and Matthew
18.16].80 Consequently, both so that the Sacred Scriptures would be hallowed by the authority of the three languages and so that the learning in each language would be bolstered by the witness of the other two, divine providence ordained that the Old together with the New Testament be comprehended in these three languages.
It is evident also that the New Testament itself, which surpasses the Old Testament in worthiness as well as in usefulness, was written first in these three languages, just as that inscription set atop the cross foretold it would be. In fact, some things written in it for the Hebrews demanded their language; likewise, it was needful that others be written in their own languages for the Greeks and still others be written for the Romans, to whom they were directed. To be sure, first the Gospel according to Matthew, inasmuch as it was for the Hebrews, was thus first written in Hebrew.81 So too
79. In referring to "the threefold breadth of the world," Abelard could have in mind the world visualized as a circle with a cross superimposed upon it, as found in the maps of the period now called "T-O maps" (because the circumference resembles a letter O and the cross laid over them, with its top more or less transecting the middle, the letter T). Asia occupies the top half of the map, with Europe and Africa splitting evenly the semicircle below. Jerusalem stands at the intersection of the two lines of the T in the center of the map. The cross may be interpreted as being threefold, with a lower vertical limb (sometimes seen as symbolizing matter), a horizontal one (animal), and an upper vertical one (man).
80. In Letter Eleven Abelard refers to this same verse from Matthew.
81. The tradition that Matthew wrote in Hebrew is very old. It is found already in Eusebius of Caesarea (about 260–about 340), Historia ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastic History) 3.39.16, as translated and continued by Rufinus in Latin, Greek text ed. Eduard Schwartz, Latin translation ed. Theodor Mommsen, Eusebius Werke 2/1–3, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 9/1–3 (Leipzig,
Germany: J. C. Hinrichs, 1897–1941), 3 vols. (1903–1908), 1: 293, line 4, quoting Pa-
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete it is evident that by the same token the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews, that of James to the twelve tribes which already were scattered abroad [James 1.1], and that of Peter [1 Peter 1.1], as well as likewise some others perhaps, were written in Hebrew.82 In fact, who would doubt that the three Gospels were written in Greek to the Greeks, as well as all the Epistles, both of Paul and of the rest, which were directed to them, and also the Apocalypse sent by him to the seven churches [Apocalypse 1.11]? But we know one
Epistle of Paul written to the Romans, with the result that we Latin speakers may exult to have a little on our side and that we may ponder how much the learning of others is needed for us.83
If we are eager to know this learning fully, it must be sought out in the source itself rather than in the rivulets of translations, especially since the divergent translations of this learning produce for the reader ambiguity rather than certainty. For, as I recalled above, it is not easy for a translation to preserve the idiom, which is to say, the characteristics of every single language, and to adapt a trustworthy interpretation for every single point, so that we can thus convey in our own language anything whatever just as it has pias (about 60–130), "Matthaeus quidem scripsit Hebraeo sermone" (Matthew in fact wrote in the Hebrew language), and Irenaeus of Lyon (about 130–about 200),
Adversus haereses (Against Heresies) 3.1.1, ed. and trans. (German) Norbert Brox, Fontes
Christiani 8/1–5 (Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 1993–2001), 3 (1995): 24, lines 1–2: "Ita
Matthaeus in Hebraeis ipsorum lingua scripturam edidit evangelii" (Thus Matthew, among the Hebrews, produced the written form of the Gospel in their language). In addition, it is accepted by Origen and Jerome.
82. The identification of the Epistle of James paraphrases information in the first verse of its first chapter. Since Abelard uses only a singular to refer to the letter of Peter, he probably means the First Epistle. In any case, he and other medieval Christians who believed these epistles to have been composed originally in Hebrew were mistaken; the language was Greek.
83. Just as the medieval belief was erroneous that a few of the Epistles and the Gospel according to Matthew were composed in Hebrew, so too was the assumption that the Epistle of Paul written to the Romans would have been in Latin and not Greek. Abelard expresses the same view about the Epistle to the Romans in Commentaria in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, 1.2.15, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 11 (1969): 86.
to the nuns of the paraclete
been said in the foreign tongue. For often we fail even in one language when we want to explain some word by way of another, since we do not have a word in our own language which can express it more plainly.84
We know that even blessed Jerome, among us especially learned in these three languages, sometimes is much in discord with himself in his translations and in the commentaries on them. Indeed he often says in his commentaries thus: "It is rendered in the Hebrew text," which nevertheless is not to be found in his translations made, as he himself asserts, on the basis of the Hebrew.85 What then is to wonder at if different translators are at odds with each other, if even one is discovered sometimes to be in discord with himself? Whoever wishes therefore to be sure about these matters should not be satisfied with the water of a rivulet but should seek out and take a draft of its cleanness from its source.
For this reason too the translation of blessed Jerome, which was the most recent and carefully researched from the Hebrew or Greek itself (as far as he was able) as if from the wellspring, surpassed the old translations among us, and the old have been cast away with "the new coming on," as has been written in the Law
[Leviticus 26.10].86 On this basis Daniel too said: "Many shall pass over, and knowledge shall be manifold" [Daniel 12.4].87 Jerome did
84. Here Abelard states succinctly the challenges of translation. For information on translation theory in the Middle Ages, see Jeanette Beer, ed., Translation Theory and Practice in the Middle Ages, Studies in Medieval Culture 38 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval
Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1997), and The Medieval Translator 1– (1989–).
85. The phrase "habetur in Hebraeo" occurs dozens of times in Jerome's writings.
86. This sentence alludes to the displacement of the pre-Hieronymian Vetus Latina or Old Latin translations of the Bible by Jerome's version, made at the instruction of Pope Damasus I (366–383), which became the Vulgate (the versio vulgata, or "common version").
87. It has been pointed out that here and below Abelard urges upon the nuns of the Paraclete scientia not to denote the "science of dialectic" (as it is used in Letter
Thirteen) but rather "knowledge of language and literature." Accordingly, I trans-
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete as he was able to do in his age, and almost alone in his command of the foreign language and not having a Christian but rather a Jewish translator, on whose aid he was very much reliant, as he himself attests, he caused displeasure to many, because he did not believe that the translations which had already been made were adequate; and because he persevered in his project, he prevailed with the help of God, as if heeding and fulfilling that verse of Ecclesiasticus: "Unto the place from which the rivers come, they return, to flow again" [actually Ecclesiastes 1.7]. Like the wellspring of translations are those Scriptures from which those very translations derive; and translations swiftly fail, rejected as false, if they stray from their source and are not shown to return to it in harmony.
But so that we may not believe that this one translator is equipped for everything, as if he had acquired a fullness of expertise about everything, let us hear his own testimony on this, especially when he is said to be paramount among us in Hebrew, so that we may not presume to ascribe more to him than he has. On this topic he writes these words to Pammachius and Marcella and against his accuser:88 "We, who have at least a modest knowledge of the Hebrew language and yet who are not lacking Latin, can pass judgment more about other matters and set forth in our language what we ourselves understand."89 Blessed is that soul which, meditating "day and night in the Law of the Lord" [Psalm 1.2], is much occupied in drinking each of the Scriptures like the cleanlate the word as "knowledge." See Luscombe, "'Scientia' and 'disciplina,'" 84–85 and 87–88.
88. Writing in 402 from Bethlehem, Jerome addressed a three-book treatise to Pammachius and Marcella, who had urged him to respond to attacks that had been made on him by his former friend, Rufinus. The controversy had many facets, of which a major one was the bitter differences between the two men over Rufinus's free translation, De principiis, of Origen's Periarchon.
89. Jerome, Contra Rufinum (Against Rufinus), known also as Apologia aduersus libros Rufini (Apologia against the Books of Rufinus) 2.28, ed. Pierre Lardet, CCSL 79
(1982): 1–72, at 66.
to the nuns of the paraclete
est water at the fountainhead itself, so that he does not, out of ignorance or for want of another possibility, mistake cloudy rivulets that run in different directions for clear ones and so that he is not compelled to vomit forth what he had drunk.
Now for a long time this expertise in foreign languages has been lacking in men and, with the neglect of literature, knowledge of it has perished. What we have lost in men, let us recover even in women and, to the condemnation of men and judgment of the stronger sex, let the queen of the South again seek out among you the wisdom of the true Solomon [Matthew 12.42]. You can work all the harder at it, as nuns have a lesser capacity to sweat in manual labor than do monks and can slip more easily into temptation owing to the quiet of leisure and the weakness of their nature.
For this reason also the sage who has been cited, distinguished in writings as well as in deeds, rouses you to toil in literary studies for your learning and encouragement, especially for fear that it should ever be necessary for men to be brought in for the purpose of learning or that a mind focused in vain upon the body should stray outside and after abandoning its spouse fornicate with the world.