Peter Abelard as textual critic and historian

Abstract

As a letter writer Peter Abelard is known best for the autobiographical Historia calamitatum, which presents itself ostensibly as a consolatoria [epistola] to an unnamed friend, and his correspondence with Heloise, which amounts to seven letters, often subsumed into the so-called Personal Letters (Letters 2–5) and the so-called Letters of Direction (Letters 6–8). These eight letters are now most often numbered continuously from one through eight, although confusingly they have been presented sometimes with the Historia calamitatum unnumbered and the letters from and to Heloise numbered one through seven, rather than two through eight. (This is to say nothing of the so-called Lost Love Letters, which have been argued recently and controversially to be excerpts from the billets doux exchanged by Heloise and Abelard during their love affair. ) All of these texts have been made easily accessible in good editions and translations and are generally familiar to medievalists. Less studied have been at least a half dozen other letters, among which are Letters 9–14, which were edited definitively by the late Edmé Smits (1950–1992). These other writings have the disadvantages of not being as closely associated with the personal engagement of Peter Abelard and Heloise, of having separate addressees, and of being transmitted separately rather than in an organic collection. But several of them stand out for being as extraordinary in their own right as is the personal correspondence, and they hold the potential to repay the effort of close examination. In this case I would like to probe two of them to glean insights into Peter Abelard’s practice as a historian and as a textual critic. Letters 11 and 10 will be treated chronologically, not according to the traditional numbering.