4. Letter Sixteen. Prologue to The Sermons
letter sixteen. Prologue to The Sermons Near the close of the Historia calamitatum Abelard avers that he began frequenting the Paraclete after the neighbors faulted him for not having helped the nuns in the hard times after they took up residence in his former hermitage. He specifies that these unnamed detractors carped at him, since he could have easily given the women counsel "if only through my preaching."1 The following text is the preamble to a collection that draws together the preaching Abelard eventually did for the nuns, as well as sermons originally addressed to other audiences.
The authenticity of this very brief letter is unimpeachable.2 It responds to an earlier missive from Heloise, no longer extant, in which she requested that Abelard send her sermons for her "spiritual daughters," the nuns of the Paraclete.3 It serves as a preface to a collection, now totaling thirty-four sermons, that he furnished in response to her request, and presumably it survives thanks to having been preserved in the holdings of the Paraclete. The Paraclete codex
1. "Nostra saltem predicatione," ed. Monfrin, p. 101, lines 1343–44; trans. Radice, p. 36.
2. Paola de Santis, "Osservazioni sulla lettera dedicatoria del sermonario di Abelardo," Aevum 55 (1981): 262–71.
3. Abelard used the same phrase to describe the nuns in the Dedication Letter to The Commentary on the Six Days of Creation.
prologue to the sermons
of the sermons is likely to have been the basis for the most influential early printed edition, after which time the manuscript disappeared. At least six extant manuscripts transmit isolated sermons, in no case more than a handful, all of which are also found in the collection as a whole. One manuscript that contained two sermons was destroyed in the Second World War.4 Finally, one additional sermon, discussed in the General Introduction and not in the collection, has been attributed definitively to Abelard.5
The sermon book was put together, and the preface was written, between 1132 and 1135, when (as has been pointed out before)
Abelard wrote the Historia calamitatum; corresponded with Heloise in Letters Three, Five, Seven, and Eight; answered her Problemata; wrote
Letter Nine to the nuns of the Paraclete; and wrote the prefaces to The Paraclete Hymnal. It should be noted that not all the sermons need to have been composed during this period. In fact, near the end of the preface Abelard appears to acknowledge that his achievement in producing The Sermons lay in arranging them rather than in writing them.6 The implication would be that the individual sermons had existed already. Many of them may have been tailored for delivery by Abelard before either the nuns of the Paraclete or the monks of his monastery of St. Gildas, where he was abbot, but others could have been pronounced before other audiences and could have been written years earlier.7 Thus, for example, it has been reasoned that three
4. De Santis, I sermoni, x.
5. L. J. Engels, "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 Eligio Dekkers O.S.B. XII lustra complenti oblata, vol. 2 (Bruges,
Belgium: Sint Pietersabdij / The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975),
195–228 (1–34).
6. I translate "in his . . . scribendis seu disponendis" as "when writing or rather arranging these," whereas De Santis, I sermoni, 87 and 97, construes the phrase instead as "Nello scriverli e nel disporli" (my emphases). Waddell, "Peter Abelard as Creator," 278–79, sees Abelard as having composed sermons afresh for the book of sermons, which he regards as having differed substantially in its contents from the sermons we have, which is "the fusion of a homogeneous collection with a great many disparate and occasional pieces."
7. Engels, "Adtendite a falsis prophetis," 199–203, 210, and 223, presents arguments in support of the idea that Sermon 33 was originally meant for the monks of St. Gildas.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete of The Sermons were at least drafted before the core of sermons that Abelard prepared for the nuns.8
Other medieval sermons were composed, delivered, and dedicated by male writers for female religious communities, but Abelard's collection is remarkable for its girth and (insofar as the extant manuscripts allow us to gauge) structure.9 As such, it forms a worthy constituent of the so-called Corpus Paraclitense, as has been called the extraordinary body of writings that Abelard designed for the Paraclete at the instance of Heloise. It follows logically upon Letter Eight, which mentioned en passant that the daily round should include the reading and explication of either a sermon or a part of the monastic rule.10 Such sermons, which would be read aloud in the refectory during mealtimes as well as before compline, would allow Abelard to project his words and (through a feminized ventriloquism) his voice within the Paraclete.
In the prologue Abelard makes cursory but clear reference to the organization of The Sermons.11 In arranging the sermons he reenacts the chronology of Christ's life, starting with the Feast of the Annunciation and the Incarnation (25 March), proceeding to Christmastide, and moving forward eventually to Easter season, Rogation Days,
Ascension, and Pentecost. At that point he shifts to salvation history as it proceeded after Christ, with a few sermons connected with the apostles; he caps this section with a sermon on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Thereafter the collection as we have it offers a few
De Santis examines in detail which sermons harbor clues that their audiences were nuns, which monks.
8. On Sermons 27, 30, and 33, in PL 178: 547B–50D, 564A–69C, and 582B–607A, see Damien Van den Eynde, "Le recueil des sermons de Pierre Abélard," Antonianum
37 (1962): 17–54, at 52–54.
9. For information on other sermons, see De Santis, I sermoni, xi, n. 2, and 87–88, n. 19.
10. Letter Eight, ed. T. P. McLaughlin, "Abelard's Rule for Religious Women,"
Mediaeval Studies 18 (1956): 241–92, at 264: "Ubi postmodum vel aliquo sermonis edificio fiat vel aliquid de regula legatur et exponatur" (In that place then either there should be some edifying sermon or something from the Rule should be read and expounded upon).
11. The foundational study of the order in which the sermons would have originally been arranged is Van den Eynde, "Le recueil des sermons," 17–54.
prologue to the sermons
other sermons, mostly designed for topics or circumstances that he seems to have deemed particularly well suited to the sisters of the convent. The Sermons conclude with four (two on St. Stephen and one each on St. John the Baptist and the Holy Innocents) that bring the calendar full circle to the Christmas season (26–28 December). As it stands, the collection amounts to thirty-four sermons, a total that, perhaps by sheer happenstance, embeds numerologically the Christological spread of The Sermons, since Christ was thirty-three years old but in the thirty-fourth year of his life when he died.12
The salutation and valediction of the prologue are characterized by the same beautifully delicate complexity as are those of the more famous personal letters. In the Latin of the salutation, the word order of the vocative has an ambiguity that vanishes in English:
"veneranda in Christo et amanda soror Heloissa" could be translated most literally as "sister to be revered in Christ and loved" but more appropriately (in terms of medieval Christian values) as "sister to be revered and loved in Christ." In the valediction Abelard plays upon Heloise's past ties to him and her present duties toward God, upon flesh and spirit, and, at greatest length, upon her bonds to him as wife, sister, and, most daringly, consort. The last word may evoke the spousal relationship Heloise once had with Abelard as well as the status they share in their new vocations as nun and monk. As a whole, the valediction reflects as great a level of comfort with the whole spectrum of relationships Abelard has had with Heloise as emerges in any of the letters. He has passed far beyond the direct emotional engagement that she once coveted (and still may have done so), but in counterbalance he lavishes his intellectual, scholarly, and literary skills upon the needs of the Paraclete as she defines them.
In this preface Abelard refers tantalizingly to a "libellus hymnorum vel sequentiarum" (small book of hymns and/or sequences) that he had earlier completed at Heloise's bidding. The hymns would presumably be Abelard's hymnal for the Paraclete. If here he used se12. For a thumbnail sketch of the number symbolism, see Heinz Meyer and Rudolf Suntrup, Lexikon der mittelalterlichen Zahlenbedeutungen, Münstersche MittelalterSchriften 56 (Munich, Germany: W. Fink, 1987), column 706.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete quences as an alternative description of hymns ("hymns or sequences"), then The Paraclete Hymnal is the only work under discussion. This interpretation has the advantage of fitting better with what vel usually means, but it would strain all usual senses of sequentia to have it apply to the forms of poetry found in the hymnal. Another possibility is that Abelard means the two nouns to designate two different genres and that the libellus comprised not only all or part of the hymnal but also other songs in the form known technically as the sequence.
Although the last word in the phrase is too vague to permit certainty, the mention of "sequences" could pertain to the six planctus, or laments, by Abelard that are still extant.13 The planctus have come down to us without an accompanying dedication, but it is hard to imagine that they were devised and sent to anyone other than Heloise and the nuns of the Paraclete.14 All six are in the voices of Old
Testament figures and lament other Old Testament figures. Planctus One is by Dinah, daughter of Jacob, for Shechem (Genesis 34); Planctus Two is by Jacob for his sons (Genesis 42.36, 43.14, 37.7–9, 35.18);
Planctus Three is by the virgins of Israel for the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite (Judges 11.29–40); Planctus Four is by Israel for Samson
(Psalm 35.7, Judges 13–16); Planctus Five is by David for Abner, son of Ner, whom Joab slew (2 Kings 3.26–39); and Planctus Six is by David, for Saul and Jonathan (2 Kings 1.17–27). These sequences survive as a group in only one manuscript (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reginensis latinus 288, fol. 63v–64v), although Planctus Six is preserved separately in two others as well. Beyond the six planctus, it has been argued that Abelard should be credited with three other
13. See Marenbon, Philosophy of Peter Abelard, 80. On p. xviii Marenbon gives information on the best separate editions and treatments of individual planctus. The chief advantage of two Italian editions is that they present all six planctus as a group; see
Giuseppe Vecchi, ed., Pietro Abelardo, I "Planctus": Introduzione, testo critico, trascrizioni musicali, Istituto di filologia romanza della Università di Roma: Collezione di testi e manuali 35 (Modena, Italy: Società tipografica modenese, 1951), and Massimo Sannelli, ed. and trans. (Italian), Pietro Abelardo: Planctus, Littera 3 (Trento, Italy: La Finestra,
2002). A new edition, with English translation and accompanying studies, has been announced as forthcoming by Juanita Feros Ruys and John O. Ward, to be entitled
The Repentant Abelard (Palgrave MacMillan).
14. Dronke, Women Writers, 134.
prologue to the sermons
sequences, but the ascription of these to him has been contested. If these other sequences were authentically Abelardian, they could also be the ones to which he makes reference in this letter.15
The term "sequence" requires a bit of explanation. In much lyric poetry the text is the primary element, to which the music is merely an adjunct. The opposite holds true for the trope and sequence, two musico-poetic forms that (in the view of many) emerged mainly from liturgical chant. In fact, one could even argue that the sequence is really only an elevated prose set to music.
The classical liturgical sequence had a specific location in the mass. The alleluia served as a conclusion to the gradual (the antiphon sung after the Epistle) and as a preamble to the Gospel. It was delivered in the following way: after the cantor sang the alleluia, the choir repeated it with a long vocalization of the -a (the iubilus). Then the cantor recited the versus. Finally, the choir repeated the alleluia with the iubilus, which was expanded considerably in its musical form. This prolonged melody (which is called a melisma) came to be known as the sequentia of the alleluia, since the sequence "follows" the alleluia. By the middle of the ninth century people had begun to supply the music of the sequentiae with texts. They called such a composition sequentia cum prosa, prosa ad sequentiam, or, simply, prosa.
Although the thousands of surviving sequences display considerable variety, all of them are characterized by two features. First, the text is set syllabically to the music (although the music is not always extant). Under ideal circumstances, the text is preserved with the medieval equivalent of a musical note or melodic phrase above each syllable. Second, the text is constructed in couples of isosyllabic lines, with each pair sharing the same melody. Thus the typical sequence is distinguished by its structure, which is designed to lend itself to performance by a double choir. Because the two choirs sing versicles in 15. Chrysogonus Waddell, "Epithalamica: An Easter Sequence by Peter Abelard,"
Musical Quarterly 72 (1986): 239–71, at 241–42, has proposed that Abelard wrote Epithalamica, in AH 8: 45–47; De profundis ad te clamantium, AH 10: 54–55; and Virgines castae,
AH 54: 133–35. These ascriptions have been questioned or rejected more than once by Peter Dronke, who sets out fully the many grounds for doubt in Dronke and Orlandi, "New Works by Abelard and Heloise?" 123–46.
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete alternation, the sequence must be composed of carefully paired versicles. Single lines were often but not always used to begin and end the composition. Often the word alleluia remained in the text of the sequence; if not, its melody dictated that the first stanza open with a four-syllable word and its pronunciation suggested (mainly to French composers) that the lines of the sequences end in -a.
In constituting the text of the preface Paola De Santis relied not only on the 1616 editio princeps (which was based on at least one lost manuscript, from the Paraclete, and possibly also on another from the Sorbonne), but also on a transcription printed in 1577 that formed part of a report on a manuscript then preserved at the Sorbonne. This report, by the humanist Jean-Papire Masson (1544–1611), was published in his Annalium libri quatuor: Quibus res gestæ Francorum explicantur (Paris: apud N. Chesneau, 1577), 260. The Sorbonne manuscript used by Masson is likely to have been the same as that consulted in preparation for the editio princeps of The Sermons by François d'Amboise and André Du Chesne, editors, Petri Abaelardi . . . et Heloisae conivgis eivs . . . Opera (Paris: Sumptibus Nicolai Bvon, 1616). Nonetheless, there are significant variations between the texts offered by Masson, on the one hand, and d'Amboise and Du Chesne, on the other.
See De Santis, I sermoni, 85 (for the Latin text), 85–86 (for an Italian translation), and 86–97 (for commentary on the text), as well as 35–
36 and 85–86 (on the lost manuscripts and early editions).
Letter Sixteen Having completed recently a small book of hymns and sequences at your entreaty, Heloise, sister to be revered in Christ and loved,
I have hurried more than is my custom to write in addition as best as I can some minor works of sermons at your request, for you as well as for your spiritual daughters who are assembled in our oratory.16
16. In some instances the first-person plural as used in Abelard's letters in this volume is mainly a variation on the first-person singular, but here the "our" probably serves to include Heloise in addition to Abelard himself. The word "oratory" is also
prologue to the sermons
Certainly, given more to lecturing than to sermonizing, I devote myself to explanation, striving for plainness, not construction of verbal art—for literal meaning, not rhetorical embellishment.17
Perhaps a clean rather than an embellished style, as it is plainer, will be more suited to the understanding of simple people; and, in proportion to the nature of the listeners, the very roughness of unadorned speech will be a kind of cultivated embellishment, and the ready understanding of little women will be a kind of dash of good taste.18 complex, in that it is a place at once of prayer and (when sermons are given) of oratory in the rhetorical sense. The salutation merits comparison with the openings of Letter Seven, Letter Eight, the preface to the first book of The Paraclete Hymnal, and the Dedication Letter to The Commentary on the Six Days of Creation.
17. The sentence is freighted with words that may seem straightforward or even banal at first but that upon closer study reveal complications. Lectio, translated here as "lecturing," could also refer to reading. If Abelard were not giving the preamble to a collection of sermons, it would be feasible to construe sermo as 'talking,' in contrast to lectio, which could then mean '(meditative) reading' in a monastic sense. Expositio is similarly ambiguous, since it could refer to explanation in the technical sense of biblical exegesis or in a variety of other ways.
Abelard is indebted to Boethius, De syllogismo categorico libri duo, Prologue, in PL
64: 793–832, at 794C: "Non enim eloquentiae compositiones, sed planitiem consectamur: qua in re, si hoc efficimus, quamlibet incompte loquentes, intentio quoque nostra nobis perfecta est" (For I do not pursue constructions of verbal art, but plainness: in this endeavor, if I achieve this, even though speaking in unadorned style, I have fulfilled my aim). Within Abelard's own writings the closest parallel to the aesthetic judgment expressed here comes in the Carmen ad Astralabium, 869–70, ed. José
M. A. Rubingh-Bosscher, Peter Abelard—Carmen ad Astralabium (Groningen, The Netherlands: n.p., 1987), 155: "Planiciem quemcumque sequi decet expositorem, / quantumcumque rudis sermo sit eius in hoc" (It is proper for a commentator to use a simple style, / however rough his language might be in this matter). Compare 12–14, p. 107: "et sensus verbis anteferendus erit / ornatis animos captet persuasio verbis / doctrine magis est debita planicies" (and the sense will have to be preferred to the words. / Yet persuasion seizes minds with ornate words: / for instruction, plainness is required instead). For context, see L. C. Engels, "Abélard écrivain," in Peter Abelard:
Proceedings, 12–37, at 23–26.
18. This sentence too is packed with terminology that carried heavy charges in Medieval Latin. On the words here translated as "roughness" and "cultivation," see
Michael Richter, "Urbanitas—rusticitas: Linguistic Aspects of a Medieval Dichotomy,"
Studies in Church History 16 (1979): 149–57. The expression condimentum saporis (a certain
heloise and the nuns of the paraclete Moreover, in maintaining the sequence of the feast days when writing or rather arranging these,19 I have begun at the very beginning of our redemption.20 Farewell in the Lord, you who are his handmaiden, once dear to me in the world, now dearest to me in Christ; then wife in flesh, now sister in spirit and consort in the profession of a sacred way of life. dash of good taste) appears in apposition to the "salt of the earth" (Christ's metaphor in Matthew 5.13) in a number of sources, with pseudo-Augustine, Sermo 222 De sanctis apostolis (= Hrabanus Maurus, Homilia 35), being the earliest: PL 39: 2156–58, at 2157. In addition, Abelard himself dishes out a broader food metaphor in Letter Eight.
In discussing this passage, De Santis, I sermoni di Abelardo, 86, points out that the word paruula (little woman, young woman, mere woman) is frequent in Jerome, Letter
107, and that as a consequence it appears three times in Abelard, Letter Nine, which quotes heavily from Jerome. She also observes, 91, that there were young women at the Paraclete at this time, and she takes the word as connoting relative youth.
19. If Abelard has in mind the same structure as he follows in the second book of The Paraclete Hymnbook, he means by the phrase ordo festivitatum the feast days de tempore, taken separately from those of the saints. Alternatively, he could have in mind a distinction to mark apart the feast days of saints from other solemnities. This other possibility would gain weight from Sermo 13, in PL 178: 486. See Van den Eynde,
"Chronologie des écrits," 21, 31, 47, and 52.
20. He refers here to the Feast of the Annunciation, which, by commemorating the Incarnation, celebrates the beginning of redemption.
part ii Bernard of Clairvaux