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- Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
This edition includes a biographical sketch about the author. Historia Calamitatum (A history of my calamities), also known as Abaelardi ad Amicum Suum Consolatoria, is an autobiographical work in Latin by Peter Abelard, one of medieval France's most important intellectuals and a pioneer of scholastic philosophy. It is one of the first autobiographical works in medieval Western Europe, written in the form of a letter. It is clearly influenced by Augustine of Hippo's Confessions. This extensive letter provides an honest self-analysis of Peter Abelard, who at that time was a pioneer of philosophy and university alike. The Historia Calimatatum provides readers with knowledge of his views of women, learning, monastic, life, Church and State combined, and the social milieu of the time. Within this important piece of literature, not only is one side of one of history's best-known love stories told, but integral parts of the history of the Middle Ages are revealed. It should be particularly noted that this book was written at a time when Western Europe had no intellectual endeavors but was just surfacing into the world of philosophy. The Historia is exceptionally readable, and presents a remarkably honest self-portrait of a man who could be arrogant and often felt persecuted. It provides a clear and fascinating picture of intellectual life in Paris before the formalization of the University, of the intellectual excitement of the period, of monastic life, and of his affair with Heloise, one of history's most famous love stories. Throughout this letter, it is greatly expressed how persecuted Abelard feels by his peers. He quotes saints, apostles, and at one point, compares his struggles in likeness to those of Christ. (from wikipedia.com)
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Historia Calamitatum -The Story Of My Misfortunes
Peter Abelard
Contents:
Peter Abelard – A Biographical Sketch
Historia Calamitatum
Foreword
Chapter I - Of The Birthplace Of Pierre Abelard And Of His Parents
Chapter Ii - Of The Persecution He Had From His Master William Of Champeaux
Chapter Iii - Of How He Came To Laon To Seek Anselm As Teacher
Chapter Iv - Of The Persecution He Had From His Teacher Anselm
Chapter V - Of How He Returned To Paris And Finished The Glosses Which He Had Begun At Laon
Chapter Vi - Of How, Brought Low By His Love For Heloise, He Was Wounded In Body And Soul
Chapter Vii - Of The Arguments Of Heloise Against Wedlock Of How None The Less He Made Her His Wife
Chapter Viii - Of The Suffering Of His Body
Chapter Ix - Of His Book On Theology And His Persecution At The Hands Of His Fellow Students Of The Council Against Him
Chapter X - Of The Burning Of His Book If The Persecution He Had At The Hands Of His Abbot And The Brethren
Chapter Xi - Of His Teaching In The Wilderness
Chapter Xii - Of The Persecution Directed Against Him By Sundry New Enemies Or, As It Were Apostles
Chapter Xiii - Of The Abbey To Which He Was Called And Of The Persecution He Had From His Sons That Is To Say The Monks And From The Lord Of The Land
Chapter Xiv - Of The Vile Report Of His Iniquity
Chapter Xv - Of The Perils Of His Abbey And Of The Reasons For The Writing Of This His Letter
Historia Calamitatum - The Story Of My Misfortunes, P. Abelard
Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck
86450 Altenmünster, Germany
ISBN: 9783849623685
www.jazzybee-verlag.de
Cover Design: @ infanta – fotolia.com
PETER ABELARD – A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Peter Abelard, an eminent scholar, was the son of Berenger, of noble descent, and born at Calais, near Nantes in Brittany, in the year 1079. At the age of sixteen he had acquired, under Rosceline, the founder of the sect of the Nominalists, a considerable acquaintance with metaphysics and logic; together with a subtileness of thought and a fluency of expression, which qualified him for the literary contests in which he was afterwards engaged. Ardent in the pursuit of fame, and of that kind of science, which then prevailed, he settled at Paris, in the twentieth year of his age, and devoted himself to the study of dialectics under William de Champeaux, called the venerable doctor. He afterwards applied himself to the study of divinity. He delivered lectures on theology and philosophy at Paris, and was attended by a great number of students who resorted to his school, not only from various parts of France, but from Spain, Italy, Germany, Flanders, and Great Britain. At the age of forty, Abelard sacrificed the reputation which he had acquired, as an able disputant and popular preceptor, to the love of pleasure, and disgraced himself by forming and executing a deliberate plan for the seduction of female innocence. During his residence at Paris, where he was acquiring affluence as well as renown, he boarded in the house of Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral church, who had a niece called Heloise, about the age of eighteen years, and equally celebrated for her beauty and literary attainments.
The avaricious canon, wishing to have his niece instructed without expense, employed Abelard as her preceptor, but instead of improving her in the sciences, he betrayed his trust, taught her to love, and determined to seduce her. From this time Abelard became remiss in the performance of his public functions, and wrote nothing but amorous verses. The canon, deluded by his respect for the preceptor of his niece, remained ignorant of an amour, which became the subject of general conversation. In a little time, however, the pregnancy of Heloise discovered the culpable conduct of her lover, and roused the resentment of the infatuated uncle. She was soon removed to the house of Abelard's sister in Brittany, and there delivered of a son. When the child was born, Abelard made a proposal to Fulbert of privately marrying his niece, to which the canon consented. Heloise, however, hesitated in accepting the offer, partly from a regard to the honour of Abelard, whose profession bound him to celibacy, and partly from a romantic notion that her passion ought not to submit to ordinary restraints. Abelard at last prevailed, and they were privately married at Paris ; though it is said, that she protested to her uncle that she was not married, and that this was one cause of Abelard's unkind and severe treatment of her. Abelard made this a plea for removing her from his house, to the abbey of Benedictine nuns, in which she had been educated. Fulbert concluded, perhaps not without reason, that Abelard had taken this step, in order to rid himself of an incumbrance which obstructed his future prospects. Deep resentment took possession of his soul, and he meditated great revenge. He employed several ruffians to enter his chamber by night, and inflict upon his person a disgraceful and cruel mutilation. The deed was perpetrated; the ruffians were taken, and suffered, according to the " lex talionis," the punishment they had inflicted ; and Fulbert, for his savage, though not unprovoked revenge, was punished with the deprivation of his benefice, and the confiscation of his goods. Abelard, unable to support his mortifying reflections, resolved to retire to a convent. At the same time he formed the selfish resolution, that, since Heloise could no longer be his, she should never be another's, and ungenerously demanded from her a promise to devote herself to religion; so little was he disposed to repay her fond attachment with confidence, that he even insisted upon her taking the holy vow before him, suspecting, as it seems, that, if he first engaged himself, she might violate her promise, and return to the world ; a circumstance with which she afterwards thus tenderly reproached him: " In that one instance, I confess, your mistrust of me tore my heart; Abelard, I blushed for you." [Epistolae Helois, i.] Heloise submitted to the harsh injunction, and professed herself in the abbey of Argenteuil. At the moment when she was receiving the religious habit, she exclaimed, in the words of Cornelia:
Ah ! my once greatest lord ! Ah ! cruel hour! Is thy victorious head in fortune's power ? Since miseries my baneful love pursue, Why did I wed thee, only to undo ? But see, to death my willing neck I bow ; Atone the angry gods by one kind blow."
The romantic ardour of Heloise's affection supported her through this sacrifice, and seems never to have forsaken her to the latest moment of her life. A few days after Heloise had taken her vows, Abelard assumed the monastic habit of St. Denis, but the disorders of that house soon drove him from thence. He was afterwards charged with heresy; but after several persecutions for his religious sentiments, he settled in a solitude in the diocese of Troyes, where he built an oratory, to which he gave the name of the Paraclete. He was afterwards chosen superior of the abbey of Ruis, in the diocese of Vannes; when the nuns being expelled from the nunnery in which Heloise had been placed, he gave her his oratory, where she settled with some of her sister nuns, and became their prioress. Abelard mixed the philosophy of Aristotle with his divinity; and in 1140 was condemned by the council of Rheims and Sens. Pope Innocent II. ordered him to be imprisoned, his books to be burned, and forbid him ever teaching again. However he was soon after pardoned, at the request of Peter the Venerable, who received him into his abbey of Cluni, where he led an exemplary life. He died in the priory of Marcellas, at Chalons, April 81, 1142, aged sixty-three.
In what manner Heloise received the tidings of Abelard's death is uncertain. She requested, however, that his body might be sent for interment to the Paraclete, and this was said to have been in consequence of a wish formerly expressed to her by Abelard. Her request was complied with, and the remains of her lover deposited in the church with much solemnity. For one and twenty years after we hear no more of her, only that she was held in the highest estimation; that she was a pattern of every monastic and Christian virtue; and that, ever retaining the tenderest affection of a wife, she prayed unceasingly at her husband's tomb. In 1163, she fell sick ; history does not inform us what her disorder was, nor does it relate the circumstances of her death. She expired, however, on Sunday, May 17th, in the sixty-third year of her age ; and her body was deposited, by her own orders, in the tomb by the side of Abe lard. Their bones have lain in the abbey of the Paraclete, in the diocese of Troyes, in France, ever since 1142 and 1163.
