THE PROPORTION OF HIS PURPOSE: PETER ABELARD'S "HISTORIA CALAMITATUM" AS

SACRED HISTORY
Author(s): Chad Schrock
Source: Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age , 2010, Vol. 77 (2010),
pp. 29-46
Published by: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44513825

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AHDLMA 77(2010)29-46

THE PROPORTION OF HIS PURPOSE :

PETER ABELARD'S HISTORIA CALAMITA TUM
AS SACRED HISTORY

par Chad Schröck

Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages
Lee University
Cleveland, TN 373 11
USA
Résumé

Le récit de 1' Historia calamitatum dépend, au niveau thématique, d'une proportion

logique que Pierre Abélard annonce au commencement de son épître de consolation.
Abélard suggère que la souffrance ressentie par le lecteur de son Historia est en rapport
avec la souffrance d Abélard, tout comme la souffrance d Abélard est en rapport avec la
souffrance du Christ et des pères de l'Église. La distance entre chaque terme de cette
proportion mesure en effet la consolation disponible au souffrant.

Abstract
The narrative of the Historia calamitatum depends at a thematic level on a logical
proportion that Peter Abelard announces at the beginning of his letter of consolation.
Abelard proposes that the troubles suffered by the unknown reader of his letter are to
Abelard' s troubles as Abelard' s troubles are to those of Christ and the Church Fathers.
The distance between each term in this proposition measures in effect the consolation
available to the sufferer.

Zusammenfassung
Die Erzählung der Historia calamitatum hängt auf der thematischen Ebene von
einem logischen Verhältnis ab, das von Petrus Abelard am Anfang seines Trostbriefs
vorgestellt wird. Abaelard erklärt, daß die von dem unbekannten Leser seines Briefes
erlittenen Leiden im Verhältnis zu denen von Abaelard stehen, wie Abaelards Leiden im
Verhältnis zu denen von Christus und den Kirchenvätern. Der Abstand zwischen den
jeweiligen Figuren dieser Vergleiche kann tatsächlich dazu benutzt werden, den für den
Leidenden vorhandenen Trost zu Bestimmen.

[Mots-clés : Abélard, Héloïse, Historia calami tum, proportion]

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 30 CHAD SCHRÖCK

Peter placesplaces
Abelard and disciplines.
and disciplines. had ofthewords
A study habitand
A study of confidently
arguments, not thingsof(whose
words and obtruding arguments, logic not into things unexpected (whose
study for Abelard would be physics), logic seemed an ideal tool to examine theo-
logical claims : human language and argument about God1. Abelard' s scriptural
exegesis, as he himself announced, needed no further training than a logician's
ingenium 2, the distinguishing feature of his wildly popular lecture series on
Ezekiel. His relentlessly dialectical pedagogy in Sic et non forces his students to
contend intellectually not just with apparent contradictions but with gaps in
patristic explanations. These applications of logic were particularly controversial
in the twelfth century because Abelard believed that the relationship between
words and things is both vexed and artificial. For a logician to study theological
language is to confront gaps, to be forced into incomplete analogies or similitudes
between arguments themselves and between language and the real. Logic in this
respect measures and contends with distances between. It is as much about
relations as propositions; indeed, Abelard' s formal logical treatises view the
arrangement of particular propositions into the relations of valid reasoning much
more favorably than the simple identification of particular phenomena with
universal propositions. Charges of heresy and two formal trials (1121, 1140)
disclose his contemporaries' concern at how his logicism seemed to destabilize
received theology and exegetical method. Abelard' s thought deliberately exposed
gaps in received knowledge and attempted to reconcile these gaps by means of
human reason, not by divine authority as it had previously been conceptualized. In
the Historia calamitatum, this dialectical concern for relation takes rhetorical
form3. Abelard structures his unprecedented blend of autobiography, theology,

(1) Abelard uses logica and dialéctica interchangeably. M. T. Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli,

The Logic of Abelard, trad. S.Pleasance, Dordrecht, D.Reidel, 1969, p. 17, identities two crucial
differences for Abelard between the verbal arts of logic and rhetoric : logic requires rational, not
psychological, criteria to judge a discourse; and rhetoric persuades toward an orator's preconceived
end, while logic inquires and explores, oriented toward an end that emerges out of the argumentative
process.
(2) All citations of the Historia are taken from La Vie et les Épistres : Pierres Abaelart et Heloys
sa fame, 1, ed. E. Hicks, Paris-Genève/H. Champion-Slatkine (Nouvelle Bibliothèque du Moyen
Âge, 16), 1991, p. 8.
(3) That Abelard remarks that logic and rhetoric do not cover the same material ( Logica
« Ingredientibus » in Peter Abaelards Philosophische Schriften , I, ed. B.Geyer, Münster,
Aschendorff [Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und der Theologie des Mittelalters, 21], 1933,
p. 273, 1. 37-39) has puzzled commentators who rightly note that his logical and rhetorical work
repeatedly encroach upon each other's territory. See C. J. Mews, «Peter Abelard on Dialectic,
Rhetoric, and the Principles of Argument», in C.J.Mews-C. J. Nederman-R. M.Thomson (ed.),
Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100-1540. Essays in Honour of John O. Ward, Turnhout,
Brepols, 2003, p. 37-53, on Abelard' s use of logic in the service of Scriptural and patristic rhetorical
exegesis, and P. von Moos, « Literary Aesthetics in the Latin Middle Ages : The Rhetorical Theology
of Peter Abelard », in C. J. Mews-C. J. Nederman-R. M. Thomson, Rhetoric and Renewal, op. cit.,
p. 81-97, for Abelard' s use of rhetoric in the service of a logica Christiana. Although P. von Moos
mentions Abelard' s planctus composition, both essays focus more on Abelard' s dialectics with
reference to the Scripture he calls rhetorical than they do his rhetorical practice in the Historia.

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 PETER ABELARD' S HISTORIA CALAMITATUM AS SACRED HISTORY 3 1

typology, and querulousness according to a proportional relation : the troubles of

his intended reader are to Abelard' s troubles as Abelard is to Christ and the church
fathers. The interstices in this proportion are unexpectedly not gaps to be
reconciled but sources of stability : measurements of the consolation available
within suffering.
In the Historia , Abelard constitutes himself through allusions to a variety of
figures from classical and sacred history : figures as diverse as Ajax, Aristotle,
Mars, Christ, Athanasius, and the apocryphal Susanna. This range of allusion is so
bafflingly broad that no criticism has yet comprehended them all in a single
study4. Because of their variety, the Historia does not identify Abelard primarily
with any one allusion in particular5. Like them each at various points, he is the full
incarnation or representation of none. Nor do all the allusions cluster around or
refract through an archetype or antitype like that of Christ. For the purposes of
self-construction, Abelard reads history as he read theological authorities in Sic et
non , culling significant examples and placing them alongside each other.
By using roughly chronological allusions to numerous figures from classical
and Christian history, Abelard structured his life according to the pattern of
Christian sacred history, the only metatextual form broad enough to accommo-
date his diverse calamities. Siich a direct identification of his personal story with a
sacred story that has itself outlived its own climax at Incarnation would have been
enough to anchor his plight in a consolatory metanarrative. But, using techniques
from his logical expertise, Abelard goes further. He reifies the ontological gap
between himself and greater figures of suffering into a source of consolatory
stability as the interstice of a proportion. He announces in the Historia' s

(4) N. A. Jones, « By Woman's Tears Redeemed : Female Lament in St. Augustine's Confessions
and the Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise », in B. K. Gold-P. A. MiLLER-Ch. Platter (ed.), Sex
and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts. The Latin Tradition , Albany (NY), State University
of New York Press (SUNY Series in Medieval Studies), 1997, p. 15-39 ; J. Chance, « Classical Myth
and Gender in the Letters of "Abelard" and "Heloise" : Gloss, Glossed, Glossator», in B. Wheeler
(ed.), Listening to Heloise. The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman , New York, St. Martin's Press
(The New Middle Ages), 2000, p. 161-178; and J. Pucci, The Full-Knowing Reader. Allusion and the
Power of the Reader in the Western Literary Tradition , New Haven (Conn.), Yale University Press,
1998, p. 178-198, confine themselves chiefly to classical allusions. D. Frank, « Abelard as Imitator of
Christ », Viator , 1 (1970), p. 106-1 13, catalogues the allusions to Christ. M. T. Clanchy, « Documen-
ting the Self : Abelard and the Individual in History », Historical Research , 76 (2003), p. 308, notes
the shift from classical to Christian allusions. W. Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth-
Century. The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres , Princeton, Princeton University Press,
1972, p. 1 34, observes that Biblical allusions in the Historia appear to be « quasi-typological ».
(5) Perhaps the most persuasive case is R. W. Southern, « The Letters of Abelard and Heloise »,
Medieval Humanism and Other Studies , Oxford, B. Blackwell, 1970, p. 91, and R. R. Edwards, The
Flight from Desire. Augustine and Ovid to Chaucer , New York, Macmillan (The New Middle Ages),
2006, p. 62-63, that Abelard eventually settles upon the identity of Jerome. This « settling » is more
likely to occur definitively in the fuller correspondence with Heloise, however, as their epistolary
relation to each other increasingly resembles Jerome's and Marcella' s. See also A. Blamires, «No
Outlet for Incontinence: Heloise and the Question of Consolation», in B.Wheeler, Listening to
Heloise , op. cit. , p. 288-289, p. 296-297.

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32 CHAD SCHRÖCK

introduction and conclusion that con

the lesser term in a proportion : « In
módicas temptationes recognoscas et t
[. . .] oppressionem tuam in comparat
judices, et tanto earn patientius feras
Abelard compares himself to figures
usually uses either explicit simile ma
the speaker's name. These comparison
on the surface of the text. Abelard
himself and these figures, as if he and
ontological category. But Abelard mo
the apostles, in unattributed quota
correspondences of narrative form.
Placing the more overt equivalences
these deferential examples to constru
history of his life in which Christ an
has a fourfold structure : first, the yo
classical figures and Christ before ex
sufferings of castration and the hum
and indirect allusions to Christ; third
figures of the early church (some def
fourth, the allusion-free present- tense
church demand eschatological redem
both a linear progression through th
alternation between equivalence an
structure of these allusions not merely
Ethiopian eunuch, and so on) but, perh
relation Abelard discerns between hi
interstice between the terms of the pr
argument from lesser to greater provi
Abelard' s chosen rhetorical mode o
simultaneous identity and differe
allusion is an impassable gap between
sionally bridged. This practice of allu
Abelardian, a rhetorical manifestation

(6) According to R. W. Southern, Medieval

well-known feature of the consolatio genre, and
that feature but in variations on its practice.
(7)S.Bagge, «The Autobiography of Abel
Medieval History , 19 (1993), p. 334-335, disc
suggests a structural allusion to the seven ag
Abelard's story is too repetitive and cyclical to
direct way.

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 PETER ABELARD' S HISTORIA CALAMITATUM AS S ACRED HISTORY 33

occupy his wider thought8. An impassable gap bounded by relatio and similitudo
at once stabilizes and frees. It validates semiotics or theology because they discuss
things, real if inaccessible to language. The objects of these disciplines are more
real than quasi-real language about them. But also the gap between language and
things of any kind provides the theoretician the infinite interpretive freedom that
lack of closure brings. Nothing can ever be said fully, so there is always more to be
said. This wide variety of allusions constitutes a bold and liberating claim to
personal and hermeneutic originality, uncontainable by singular previous models.
Most of Abelard' s attention to relatio defines a relation not as an accident
shared by two substances, but as an accident intrinsic to one substance and catego-
rizable alongside another accident from another substance9. The propositional
language of universais is established by common and subjective likeness (com-
munis similitudo ), not ontological relation 10. Logic (and its synonym dialectic) is
an account of words not things, of language as the space of relation between sign
and referent, separable from both11. This concept of relation as signification and
therefore as the object of logical study appears not merely in his Logica
« Ingredientibus » and Dialéctica but also in his theological discussions of the
Trinity12. Along with similitudo , relatio helps Abelard to define the equivalent
relation of but ontological distinction between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 13.
While both of these terms identified relational equivalence when applied to
metaphysics and had marked technical discussion of the Trinity since Tertullian
and Augustine, similitudo also had important deferential implications when used
in a methodological context. As famously exemplified in Augustine's near-
retraction of De trinitate in its book 15, describing one's theological language as
similitude could mean that the author understands human language to be
hopelessly inadequate in comprehending the ineffable subject of discussion.
Similitudes mean the poor best humans can do because we explicitly acknow-
ledge that they describe an aenigma (15.9,11). Nevertheless, according to
G. R. Evans, they are the very best medieval exegetes could do, because God made
humans a similitudo as well as an imago of God (Gen. 1.26), enabling them to
achieve partial knowledge of God through analogy between divine and human.

(8) G. R. Evans, Old Arts and New Theology. The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic
Discipline , Oxford-New York, Clarendon Press-Oxford University Press, 1980, p. 53, explains that
although analogies were typically the province of rhetoricians, fluidity between the disciplines
permitted dialecticians to use them. M. T. Clanchy, Abelard. A Medieval Life , Oxford, Blackwell,
1997, p. 1 15, sees Abelard' s theological use of similitudines as distinctly dialectical.
(9) J. E. Brower, «Abelard' s Theory of Relations: Reductionism and the Aristotelian
Tradition », The Review of Metaphysics, 5 1 (1998), p. 605-63 1 .
(10)B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy. Written Language and Models of Interpretation in
the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries , Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983, p. 395.
(11) Ibid. , p. 384. Words in fact conjure mental images of that which is already absent (p. 379).
(12) For his logical treatment in particular, see Peter Abelard, Logica «Ingredientibus»,
op. cit., p. 200-223 ; Id., Dialéctica, ed. L. M. de Ruk, Assen, Van Gorkum-Prakke, 1970, p. 83-88.
(13) For example, Peter Abelard, Theologia « Christiana », 1, 104; 3, 167-68, 170; 4, 82-85,
155 and Id., Theologia « Scholarium », 2, 166.

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 34 CHAD SCHRÖCK

The image of God is substantial and e

transitory, dependent on the rectitud
is accidental or temporal, it is ph
unreliable but necessary starting poin
time. Not just words but things signif
Despite Abelard'
co s widely reputed
theology demonstrates that he kno
analogy to describe the divine 16. Ab
is clearest in language about God; h
extent to which his logical discussion
distance to divine reality 17 . Eileen
his logic in general, is more apophati
dent, readier to recognize disjuncti
correlation 18. Specifying points of c
disclaiming any pretension toward to
the procedural mode of Abelard' s di
his time 19. The fallibility of the hum
fication of things, programmed by
standard medieval semiotics, des
necessarily inexact concession to tim
Such deferential caution is not for
deference inherent in the dialectical and rhetorical use of similitudes results from
the epistemological inadequacy of subjectivity. Abelard can aggressively correct

(14) G. R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible . The Earlier Middle Ages , Cambridge-
New York, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 101-102. Her broader discussion of similitudo in
medieval theological method occurs on p. 101-105. P. Dronke, Fabula. Explorations into the Uses of
Myth in Medieval Platonism , Leiden, Brill (Mittellateinische Studien und Texte, 9), 1974, p. 32-45,
gives a helpful background of the term's history in classical and early medieval rhetoric and
hermeneutics. In addition to Evans, see also J. Jolivet, Arts du langage et Théologie chez Abélard ,
Paris, Vrin (Études de philosophie médiévale, 57), 1982, p. 300-306, and P. Dronke, Fabula, op. cit.,
p. 66-67, for Abelard' s use of similitudo in his theology.
(15) According to Abelard, God prefers to use things of nature not words for his similitudes
(! Theologia « Christiana » 3.8). B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy, op. cit., p. 402-403, explains
that Abelard is interested in both words and things, but not necessarily together.
(16) See J. Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1997, p. 57-61, on Abelard's revision of the Theologia « Summi Boni » into later forms such as
the Theologia « Christiana » and the Theologia « Scholarium ». Marenbon notes Abelard's increasin-
gly deferential tone, subject to correction by church authorities, although Abelard's claims that reason
could achieve some, necessarily limited, knowledge of the Trinity did not substantially alter.
(17) P. H. Jussilla, Peter Abelard on Imagery. Theory and Practice with Special Reference to
His Hymns, Helsinki, Suomalainen Tiedeakademia, 1995, p. 114-115, p. 128. M. T.Clanchy,
Abelard, op. cit., p. 106-107, underscores that Abelard did not conceptualize his dialectical theology
as applying to God, only to language about God, its proper purview.
(18) E. C. Sweeney, Logic, Theology, and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard, and Alan of Lille. Words
in the Absence of Things, New York, MacMillan (The New Middle Ages), 2006, p. 63-125.
( 19) G. R. Evans, Language and Logic, op. cit. , p. 1 , identifies the epistemological incapability of
humans after the Fall as a presupposition undergirding all medieval exegesis.

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 PETER ABELARD' S HISTORIA CALAMITATUM AS SACRED HISTORY 35

linguistic usage and sharpen or refute the arguments of his opponents, but he
cannot say for certain whether an improved syllogism better corresponds to
reality. Much of his methodological innovation is traceable to his conceptual
separation of the knower from what is known20. His dialectical practice refines
ways of knowing ; it leaves what is known comparatively unscathed21. It improves
argumentative processes but does not offer the closure of objectively reliable
propositions concerning the real or true22. Although Abelard is supremely confi-
dent in applying dialectical method to language of all disciplines, he strictly
confines that application to language. Analogical deference, then, was also
available for his rhetorical attempt to name his own elusive identity in the terms of
sacred history.
In the first stage of his autobiographical sacred history, Abelard narrates his
rise to fame by comparing himself to classical figures and a young human Christ
in terms of direct equivalence fitting his early ambition. Twice he pairs a classical
with a Christological comparison, as if to imply some kind of formal parity
between all three : himself, the classical figure, and Christ. At the point of his
greatest philosophical triumph, when he and his party drove his former teacher
William of Champeaux from Paris into a monastic life through disputational
prowess alone, Abelard is heady enough when recalling that success to claim :
« Illud vero Ajacis, ut temperantius loquar, audacter proferam : "Si queritis hujus /
Fortunám pugne, non sum superatus ab ilio"» (p.7)23. The introductory litotes
and the mock-humility of the quotation from Ajax, placing the responsibility for
the boast on the audience who requests an accurate report of the fight, convey the
hubris of an epic hero peering through only a perfunctory veil. Directly after the
quotation from Ajax, however, Abelard adds in the same aggrandizing spirit :
« Quod si ego taceam, res ipsa clamai et ipsius rei finis indicat » (p. 7). His allusion
here is to Jesus' statement in Luke 19.40: «Quia si hii tacuerint lapides

(20) B.Stock, Implications of Literacy, op. cit., p. 531, argues that, for Abelard, texts reveal
relatio as a way of knowing. Thus he could separate epistemology from ontology, knower from
known, experience from ratiocination. Elsewhere, B. Stock, « Medieval Literacy, Linguistic Theory,
and Social Organization», New Literary History, 16 (1984), p. 15, extends his characterization of
Abelard' s semiotics : Abelard saw that language permits language to be studied, operative as both
subject and object.
(21) This is another way of putting E. C. Sweeney's key insight - both throughout her Logic,
Theology, and Poetry and her «Abelard' s Historia Calamitatum and Letters: Self as Search and
Struggle », Poetics Today , 28 (2007), p. 303-336 - that Abelard is much better at taking apart failed
arguments and assertions than he is at constructing positive and stable ones of his own.
(22) See C.J. Mews, «Faith as ex istimatio rerum non apparentium: Intellect, Imagination
and Faith in the Philosophy of Peter Abelard », in M. C. da Costa Reis Monteiro Pacheco-
J. F. Meirinhos (ed.), Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy. Actes du XIe Congrès
international de philosophie médiévale de la Société internationale pour l'étude de la philosophie
médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, Turnhout, Brepols (Rencontres de philosophie
médiévale, 11), 2006, p. 920-926, on the ontological uncertainties inherent in Abelard' s practice of
dialectic and rhetoric.
(23) The quotation is from Ovid' s Metamorphoses , 13, 89-90.

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 36 CHAD SCHRÖCK

clamabunt»24. The contrasting verbs

speak of Christ's greatness which the
would be obligated to fill the silence.
between Abelard' s personal authority
Christ all have audiences or witnesses
prowess25.
Similarly, Abelard compares his destruction of another pedagogue to
destruction of both biblical fig and classical oak. In this case, the target of
Abelard' s scorn is Anselm :

Arbor ejus tota in foliis aspicientibus a longe conspicua videbatur, sed

propinquantibus et diligentius intuentibus infructuosa reperiebatur. Ad hanc
itaque cum accessissem ut fructum inde colligerem, deprehendi illam esse
ficulneam cui maledixit Dominus (p. 7).

According to Matt. 21.18-22, Christ sees a leafy tree and approaches it in

hopes of something to eat, but upon finding it fruitless, immediately withers the
tree with a curse. Anselm was leafy, or apparently fecund, and Abelard had to
inspect him closely to discover the barrenness of his rhetoric. If anyone cursed
Anselm and made his reputation wither visibly, it was, of course, Abelard, who
goaded Anselm to jealousy and the malicious, publicly infamous act of forbidding
Abelard to teach the Bible. Abelard immediately adds an allusion to Pompey,
however : « Seu illam veterem quercum cui Pompeium Lucanus comparât » (p. 7).
Pompey is a tall oak casting shadow on a field of wheat, but, as the context in the
Pharsalia makes clear, the impressive-looking oak is ready to topple at the first
breath of the East wind26. This wind is Caesar, Pompey's younger and fresher
rival. Abelard omits a direct attribution of agency to himself, but the stories of the
fig and the oak leave clear room for himself as catastrophic force similar to the
Messiah or Caesar27.

(24) All Latin biblical citations are taken from Biblia Sacra. Iuxta Vulgátám Versionem,
Stuttgart, 1994. Abelard' s statement reduces the involved parties from three - Christ, the disciples,
and the stones - to two : Abelard himself and the facts. If Abelard were silent, from false humility, the
facts would self-reflexively clamour about the end of themselves.
(25) R. W. Hanning, The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance , New Haven, Yale University
Press, 1977, p. 22-34, sees Abelard' s claim to ingenium as the organizing principle of his conception
of himself. His ingenium gave his life meaning : without its fecundity and expression, he was
impotent; without the agon it generated between him and uncritical slaves to authority, his life was
without narrative.
(26) Abelard quotes from Lucan, Pharsalia , 1,135-136.
(27) Abelard implicitly compares himself to Pompey later in the Historia by having Heloise
quote the lament of Cornelia, Pompey's wife. See N.A.Jones, «By Woman's Tears Redeemed»,
op. cit., p. 23, and W.Wetherbee, «Literary Works», in J. E. Brower-K. Guilfoy (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Abelard, Cambridge-New York, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 50.
Like the mighty Pompey, he has fallen.

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 PETER ABELARD' S HISTORIA CALAMITATUM AS S ACRED HISTORY 37

Abelard the retrospective narrator does not condemn the confidence

exemplified in this initial series of direct comparisons, but they function within
the narrative to set up Abelard the character' s overweening pride and lust :

Quoniam prosperitas stultos semper inflat et mundana tranquillitas vigorem

enervai animi et per camales illecebras facile resol vit, cum jam me solum in
mundo superesse philosophum estimarem nec ullam ulterius inquietationem
formidarem (p. 9).

. At best, then, Abelard' s uncritical equivalences of himself and greatness are

simplistic and unreflective enough to permit the temptation of hubris; at worst,
they are steps on a path to corruption. He has experienced no significant setback to
his purposes or foil to his power of ingenium ; nothing has forced him to undergo
the sophisticating process of having been checked. His early classical or Christian
allusions flatten into reinforcements of a confident ego seeing mere reflections of
itself in heroes and gods (Mars as well as Christ)28. Constant Mews describes
Abelard' s account of the seduction of Heloise in the same way : a straightforward
narrative, depicting and imagining no serious setback to Abelard' s desires from
Heloise or her uncle Fulbert, once those desires had settled on a target29.
Abelard the character experiences remorse at his prideful, lustful folly when,
upon discovery, his secret affair with Heloise lies open to public eye and rumor.
External rage and scorn forces his self-image to become less complimentary and
more complex. But before he begins to detail that account of Heloise, Abelard the
narrator diverges from Abelard as character, in part by means of an allusive
contrast :«[...] antea vixeram continentissime. Et quo amplius in philosophia vel
sacra lectione profeceram, amplius a philosophis et divinis immunditia vite
recedebam » (p. 9). Whereas every allusion to this point has been comparison, the
narrator's retrospect can mark the place where equivalence must cease and where
a gap between his earlier self and his exemplars, caused by sin, begins. Similitudes
are accidents, based on behavior; they can change. The distance this now-contrast
inserts between Abelard and his exemplars helps the narrator achieve an ironic
distance from his hapless protagonist-self30. In comparison, the earlier, merely
recollective, boastfully enthusiastic narrator was synonymous enough with the
protagonist to be considered unsophisticated, even innocent.

(28) Abelard and Heloise are caught in the sexual act as Mars and Venus were ( Historia , p. 1 3).
(29) C. J. Mews, Abelard and Heloise , Oxford-New York, Oxford University Press (Great
Medieval Thinkers), 2005, p. 60.
(30) B. Stock, « The Self and Literary Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages », New
Literary History , 25 (1994), p. 843, says of the Historia more generally that Abelard is both an actor
and narrator in the text, but that his inwardness belongs to the narrator alone. I employ the distinction
between actor and narrator here to indicate that, in the circumstances surrounding his marriage and
castration, Abelard' s inward narrator evinces more separation from his narrative protagonist than in
the story to this point.

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38 CHAD SCHRÖCK

This innocence of equivalence, the

prelapsarian 3 1 . His life before lust w
an uncomplicatedly hard fall, and hi
was a quest for further knowledge, be

Nullus a cupidis intermissus est gr

excogitare potuit, est additum; et
ardentius illis insistebamus, et minus in

When Abelard narrates the story of

in the form of an ordinary spiritual te
as love, typically, does :

Nec ulli mirabile id videri asserens, qu

quanta ruina summos quoque viros
mulieres dejecerint memoria retineret (

In the medieval gendered account of

men : an original or at least everlasting
love, via a woman as empty catalyst 32 .
must pass from innocence to kno
narrative model set at the beginning o
Abelard' s pagan allusions are explicab
occur before his fall into knowledge
innocent or naïve as long as further r

(3 1 ) É. Gilson, Heloise and Abelard , trad. L

that Abelard' s marriage would have harme
compromised his freedom to devote his life
vigorously for himself. Marriage, although
incontinence(p. 10-36). Gilson diagnoses it, as
marriage state very much resembled a fall f
wanted to keep the marriage secret because it
that « loss of glory » which he dreaded in himsel
(32) Perhaps only Abelard
anal could make an
squarely in the context of exonerating his be
Vie et les Épistres , op. cit., p. 13) imply that h
fallen, it is a fall common to all men, as original
(33) It is possible to see Abelard' s intentional
of « original sin », particularly because, in P
Oxford, Clarendon Press (Oxford Medieval t
between sin and ignorance when his contemp
original sin (ibid., p. xxxv). J. Root, Spac
Literature, New York, P. Lang (American Univ
knowing consent, Abelard can dismiss the "de
that weighed so heavily on Augustine ». Abela
Adam's original sin to « posteritatem [...] t
peccatum » to little children (p. 56). For Abelar
discussion of sin, which remains intrinsic.

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 PETER ABELARD' S HISTORIA CALAMITATUM AS SACRED HISTORY 39

During his second stage of allusion, Abelard abandons equivalence for

deference. He makes this sensible move because this stage compares his
sufferings almost exclusively to Christ's passion. Such a bold comparison is even
more startling because Abelard has just undergone a fall34. The most thorough
collator of these allusions to Christ, Donald Frank, sees in them Abelard' s « sense
of proud emulation of the career of the earthly Jesus», historical in
contradistinction to Bernard of Clairvaux's symbolic appropriation of Christ's
presence35. Deference greatly lessens the offense of the strategy, however. The
knowledge into which Abelard falls is a nominalist revelation of particularity,
contrast, distance from, not simplistically universalized equivalence. By
employing the greatest model of all, yet suppressing that comparison to indirect
allusions (as he is now capable), Abelard rhetorically humbles himself even as he
employs Christ' s unjust suffering for consolatory ends 36.
This methodological shift to indirection mirrors a similar shift in the topic of
his proportion : from the accidents of suffering to the substance of being or
identity. The suffering implicit in Abelard' s trial at the council of Soissons is in
fact much like that incurred by Christ' s trial, but Abelard' s person is much inferior
to Christ's person. Nowhere does Abelard assert that he is like Christ; he implies
that his sufferings are like Christ's sufferings. The Christological allusions
consist almost entirely of verbal Biblical echoes describing both Abelard' s sound
rhetorical defense of himself before inquisitors and the innocent suffering which
motivates that defense. Alberic demands that Abelard produce sufficient external
authority for his teaching, a type of challenge Christ himself underwent and
overturned, like Abelard, by craftily undermining the authority of his accuser
(Matt. 21.23-27 ; Mark 1 1.27-33 ; Luke 20.1-8). Abelard' s accusers echo Christ's
in their specific concerns that Abelard' s powerful rhetoric could lead the world
astray (p. 24, cf. John 12.19) and that «hoc perutile futurum fidei Christiane, si

(34) The few scattered Christological resonances in the castration account are ironic, depicting
Abelard as a perverse Christ-figure. First, as the Old Testament prophesies the suffering of Christ,
Heloise prophesies the suffering of Abelard, and « nec in hoc ei, sicut universus agnovit mundus,
prophecie defuit spiritus » (p. 17). Instead of prophecy predicting Christ's atonement for sin, it warns
of just punishment for Abelard' s sin. Second, as Peter with curses denied his affiliation with Christ on
the night of Christ's betrayal, Heloise denied the perfectly true news of her marriage that Fulbert and
his minions were spreading, and cursed the tellers (p. 17). Finally, Christ's human perfection allowed
his death on the cross to be an effective sacrifice for sin, but Abelard twice quotes the Old Testament
law to explain how his own castration has rendered him unfit to participate in an Israelite community
of worship, as a worshipper or even an acceptable bodily sacrifice (p. 19). The pain and punishment he
experiences is deserved and therefore superfluous to Christ's example ; Christ suffered for the sins of
the world, but did not need to add his own to them. Nevertheless, because the castration supplied
Abelard with a remedy «luxurie quidem his me privando quibus hanc exercebam » (p. 9-10), the
suffering proved remedial and redemptive.
(35) D. Frank, « Abelard as Imitator of Christ », op. cit., p. 1 1 1 . The article assembles allusions to
Christ from both Abelard and Heloise throughout their correspondence.
(36) Abelard' s Commentario in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos describes Christ's incarnation as
in large part the provision of an exemplary divine shape for human behavior.

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 40 CHAD SCHRÖCK

exemplo mei multorum similis presum

Abelard' s trial even fulfils Old Testam

lile autem statim michi precepit lib

meis defferre, quatinus ipsi inde judic
in me etiam compleretur : « Et inimici

As Christ's accusers went through u

witness until they had to ram through
before the end of Passover, so multip
evidence for his condemnation, forci
until the last council meeting. Durin
the council, Christ and Abelard free
had nothing to hide even though the
them. Their innocent positions wer
confront them publicly at allě Abela
this reluctance of the authorities in the terms Christ's crowds used for a similar
situation : « "Ecce nunc palam loquitur", et nemo in eum aliquid dicit » (p. 22) 31 .
Delivering a cautionary speech at Abelard' s trial, Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres,
directly quotes Nicodemus on the legal troubles of Christ (John 7.51).
Although these many examples demonstrate that the accusers of Christ and
Abelard construct themselves rhetorically in much the same way, and therefore
that Abelard' s trial is much like Christ's trial, Abelard directly raises the
possibility of his own likeness to Christ only to dismiss it in favor of an argument
from proportion : « Multo difficilius erat cum ipso contendere Christo, ad quern
tarnen audiendum Nichodemus juxta legis sanctionem invitabat » (p. 24). Christ is
the greater rhetorician and Abelard is the lesser, thought still on the same
continuum of suffering. That Christ is ontologically superior actually exacerbates
the injustice done to Abelard, since Christ the Word was more rhetorically
dangerous but was given a legal voice, whereas the less formidable Abelard was
not. The injustice of the trial is the consolation Abelard is seeking, of course ; he
wishes to be innocent and justified.
The most startling and significant deferential allusion to Christ occurs as
Abelard transitions from his second to his third stage, from Christ to the early
church. Like Christ, Abelard brings the Paraclete. But in Abelard' s case the
Paraclete is a monastery that he founds and names for the Holy Spirit whom
Christ had brought. Critics have supplied several different motives for Abelard' s
unusual onomastic choice38, but within the logical context of the Historia it

(37) The Vulgate reads « ecce palam loquitur et nihil ei dicunt » (John 7.26). Hicks and Radice
mark only the first half of the quotation as direct allusion, but similarities between the second halves of
these sentences are strong enough to call the rest of Abelard' s use allusive as well.
(38) M. T. Clanchy, Abelard , op. cit. , p. 243, believes that the term « Paraclete » was attractive to
Abelard because it had the intellectual cache of being Greek and memorably defined by Origen;

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 PETER ABELARD' S HISTORIA CALAMITATUM AS S ACRED HISTORY 41

carries emphatic Christological significance. Abelard fills one of Christ' s primary

roles with respect to the church by helping to bring the Paraclete into the world.
His account, careful to preserve deference, ascribes such a meaning to this event
retroactively, accidentally, even passively. He backs into founding the Paraclete.
At first he dedicates it for the collective Holy Trinity, then he shifts ground and
names it for the very specific comfort he had been given at the site. Unlike Christ,
Abelard names the Paraclete for the grace he received from God, not the grace he
had actively given to his followers. Unlike Christ, Abelard did not deliberately
invoke the Paraclete but came to recognize the place as manifesting the specific
work of the Holy Spirit. Yet the fact remains : Abelard founded an abbey called
the Paraclete on the banks of the Ardusson river. God may have been final cause,
but Abelard was efficient cause. He found the site; he focussed the migration of
ascetics ; he chose the name. In this way, he is like Christ in founding the Paraclete,
but less than Christ in that neither his intention nor agency accomplishes that
founding.
In fact, the passage which announces the New Testament shift in emphasis
from Christ to the Paraclete (John 14-17) is the most obvious occasion when the
example of Christ forces Abelard to include the proportion of deference, not just
equivalence, in his consolatory project. The passage is important to Abelard in
the Historia 39 ; he quotes John 14.16, the first occurrence of the word « Paraclete »
in the New Testament, to defend his oratory's name (p. 32), and John 15. 20, 18,
19 as his concluding model for how the consolation of exemplary proportion
works40. Christians are consoled in their sufferings only when they realise that the
world hated and persecuted even Christ, so persecution for his inferiors must be
inevitable. On these doctrinal grounds, even the greatest human who ever lived
experienced persecution by the misguided; we who are so much less should
expect persecution so much more, not interpreting it as our personal failure. Yet
this Christ of John, 14-17 to whom Abelard so markedly defers is a deferring, self-
abnegating model. Christ defers to the Father, flatly, in John 14.28 (« Pater maior
me est »), to the Paraclete in John 1 6.7 by announcing that he must leave so that the
Paraclete can come, (« si enim non abiero, Paraclitus non veniet ad vos; si autem
abiero, mittam eum ad vos »), and even to his followers in John 14. 12 (« qui credit
in me opera quae ego facio et ipse faciet et majora horum faciei »). As the founder
of the Paraclete, Abelard is trapped by his divine exemplar into humility.
Equivalence with Christ becomes necessarily a practice of deference.

J.Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, op. cit., p. 19, that its Trinitarian reference was «a
defiant reference to his condemnation at Soissons ».
(39) It may appear in Heloise's writing as well. In describing the Paraclete as Abelard' s vineyard
in her first letter, Heloise may not only be alluding to 1 Cor. 3, but also to the Christ of John 15, who,
after introducing the concept of the Paraclete, elaborates a neat logical proportion : Christ : vine =
disciples : branches. The abbey itself would surely have been well aware of passages mentioning the
divine sponsor in whom their identity was grounded, particularly when appealing to Abelard as their
own sponsor, father, and teacher.
(40) « Si me persecuti sunt et vos persequenter » is a direct quotation of John 15.20 in the Vulgate.

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 42 CHAD SCHRÖCK

Christ's deference to the Paraclete t

Abelard' s relationship with the nuns
of oral presence to the deferred but
According to Robert Edwards : « Abe
is to privilege a textualized life ove
methodological statement is "ampliu
power of writerly absence over the
The Historia is the central event in a narrative movement from conversation
through textualization to consolation in absence, crucial because, more adequa-
tely than spoken words, it preserves a memory of presence for use in absence.
Similarly, in the New Testament, Christ's deferral to the Paraclete eventually
results in the textualization of his teaching and example in the Gospels. The
Paraclete administered Christ's example; as those who remembered Christ's
presence died away, increasingly the church claimed that the Paraclete's pedago-
gical function was to interpret the Christ of scripture. Only by conversion to
textuality, then, can Abelard become a Christological model42. Moreover, his
personal absence frees him to donate the land of the Paraclete to Heloise and her
associate nuns, exiled and scattered from their previous abbey. Although his
account of their arrival and early stay is brief, Abelard emphasizes divine activity
on their behalf. Although the nuns initially suffered financially, God «in brevi
consolatus est et se eis quoque verum exhibuitParaclitum,etcircumadjacentes
populos miséricordes eis atque propitios effecit» (p. 37). Certainly with
Abelard' s approval, God's favour narrows onto Heloise, establishing her as
abbess (p. 37). Abelard is no longer present at the Paraclete, but his physical
absence enables holy women to succeed him, to administer his resources, and to
achieve the aims Abelard believes that he shares with God.
The establishment of the Paraclete definitively moves the narrative into
Abelard' s third stage, in which he finally abandons indirect, deferential allusions
to a singular Christ in favour of direct comparisons between his experiences and
those of a roster of early church fathers. In his exegetical theory Abelard suggests
that the event of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, is the coming of
linguistic and rhetorical diversity43. Lesser characters who follow Christ need not

(4 1 ) R. R. Edwards, The Flight from Desire , op. cit. , p. 60.

(42) This shift from orality to textuality contradicts the suggestion by M.M.Mclaughlin,
« Abelard as Autobiographer : The Motives and Meaning of his Story of Calamities », Speculum , 42
(1967), p. 468, that Abelard wrote the Historia to rehabilitate his public reputation so that he could
return to teaching, orally of course, in Parisian schools.
(43) P. von Moos, « Literary Aesthetics in the Latin Middle Ages. The Rhetorical Theology of
Peter Abelard », op. cit., identifies the role of interpretation Abelard assigns to the Holy Spirit as inter-
penetrating a « human construct of rules, monolithic in character, about the polish of speech » with
«the protean, polysémie, imprecise, figurative, difficult language» of the Spirit (p. 86). Abelard' s
monastic conversion has turned him from logical philosopher of language to interpreter of Biblical
narrative, and he finds his linguistic model no longer in Genesis but in the Acts of the Apostles , when
«the miracle of Pentecost was the decisive entry of God into the human history of language». In

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 PETER ABELARD' S HISTORIA CALAMITATUM AS SACRED HISTORY 43

follow Christ's narrative model closely, because they have Christ's spirit,
presently responsive, free from the strictures of one narrative model. The coming
of the Paraclete fragments Abelard into that barrage of lesser models. He is still
wary of direct comparison with the twelve apostles. His complaint of being held to
greater moral standards than Christ and the apostles and prophets depends for its
claim of injustice primarily on their being greater than he (p. 39-40). Yet other
weighty names and figures like Origen and Jerome are available to be his equals.
His dedication of the Paraclete caused «apostolos» (p. 34) new and false to
challenge his orthodoxy, a situation frequent in the New Testament epistles : new
and therefore false apostles (not original to the twelve) would challenge authentic
apostolic teaching. Abelard relates die cruelty he experiences to that inflicted
upon St. Athanasius, « ut de pulice ad leonem, de formica ad elefantem compa-
rado ducatur » (p. 34). He may be a flea to Athanasius's lion, but their sufferings
are qualitatively the same. He is driven west as Jerome was driven east (p. 94).
Monks inside his monastery harry him until he felt like the apostle Paul : « Foris
pugne, intus timorés » (p. 36, cf. 2 Cor. 7.5). He has false friends, again like
Jerome (p. 37) ; he is a eunuch blameless toward women like the harem eunuchs
of Persia in the book of Esther, like the Ethiopian eunuch converted by the apostle
Philip, like Origen (p. 38). Like St. Benedict, he is the victim of attempted
poisoning by monks resisting a tightening of ascetic standards (p. 41). Finally, in
his conclusion, Abelard returns to Christ's example, then moves to the apostle
Paul and St. Jerome by means of a litany of quotations, establishing through their
teachings that any Christian - Paul, Jerome, Abelard, or the unnamed friend -
should expect persecution according to their master's example and prophecy.
Thus, as Christ experienced persecution while on earth, they would continue to
experience it, saint after saint, martyr after martyr. Uniting all these early
Christian models after the Paraclete has come, the experience of suffering flattens
or makes equivalent all true Christians into retroactive types of Christ.
The fourth and final stage of Abelard' s story - the interruption of a despairing
present tense44, the update of sacred history to the present dismal day, the cursory

consequence, the Christians rightfully own abundantia sermonis, that is, «not only plurality of
language but also the colourful spectrum of all styles and forms of speech » (p. 87). See Peter
Abaelard, « Letter XIII », Peter Abelard. Letters IX-XIV, ed. E. R. Smits, Gronigen, Bouma's
Boekhuis, 1983, p. 275-276, for Abelard's comments on Pentecost enabling dialectic. Smits claims
that Letter XIII demonstrates a more general development of Abelard's thought concerning the source
of a dialectician's knowledge : « In his earlier writings the origin is ingenium ; later it is a gift granted
by the grace of God and finally a gift from the Holy Spirit » (p. 1 88).
(44) Historia Calamitum , in La Vie et les Épistres : Pierres Abaelart et Heloys sa fame, op. cit.,
p. 41 : «Nunc autem ita me Sathanas impedivit, ut ubi quiescere possim aut etiam vivere non
inveniam, sed vagus et profugus, ad instar maledicti Caym ubique circumferar». This outburst
interrupts a story about abuse from his subordinate monks. After three sentences in the present tense,
he recalls his narrative purpose enough to finish the story of this particular escape, but after that word,
« evasi » (p. 43), Abelard escapes the past for good into a present no more congenial : « In quo adhuc
etiam laboro periculo, et cotidie quasi cervici mee gladium imminentem suspicio, [...] Quod nunc
[. . .] incessanterexperior » (p. 43).

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44 CHAD SCHRÖCK

nod to eschatology - occurs with

between himself and his contempora
altogether. The church and he are a
beliefs - innocent and benign as nam
hearted as teasing the monks of St. D
Paul they thought he was - without
sitorial and potentially lethal offen
he defends authentic Christianity a
Christendom45. If his opponents hav
None of his ecclesial opponents is e
rison with, much less deference from,
of his generation, most singularly w
monastic comrade, Abelard himself,
But neither Abelard nor his opponen
to the Paraclete, with Heloise at its
abbey has placed Abelard in a kind o
bitterlyrues for his own sake (p. 36).
were quickly alleviated through favor
chy, their consolation more directly
particular and her nuns in general co
Abelard' s subsequent monastic char
Abelard' s other situations are found
further correspondence with Heloise
demonstrate that he continued to ori

(45) See E.C.Sweeney, «Abelard' s Histori

Struggle », op. cit., p. 323-325. She also mark
and Alan of Lille, op. cit., p. 65, the irresolu
Abelard' s Historia and the model of Chris
Augustine's Confessiones. Whereas Augustine
the restlessness of its protagonist within the
and end of the book, Abelard' s restlessness is
rather than a journey toward the true »,
(46) In this context of inversion, Abelard' s
section gains even more force. The carrier of
forced to wander like Cain after the first fall a
were fallen, while fallen sinners masquer
opposition has reversed Abelard' s story, forc
untila man who stands at the end of time (as A
time's beginning. W. Otten, « The Poetics of
K. Pollman (ed.), Poetry and Exegesis in Pre
Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpr
Christianae, 87), 2007, believes that Abelard i
of self in that Old Testament because he does no
Christian should. His current time in history
(p. 259-260).

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 PETER ABELARD' S HISTORIA CALAMITATUM AS S ACRED HISTORY 45

site of his past consolation, impossibly absent from him because led by the wife
whose marriage and past he finds impossible to consummate47.
Although at the very end of the Historia Abelard does briefly mention an
eschatological resolution to suffering, a more conventional Christian source of
narrative consolation, his principal source for that consolation remains the
agonistic situation of his historical present. The present tense in introduction and
conclusion frames the past narration of the Historia proper. In both introduction
and conclusion, Abelard consoles his putative audience in overtly proportional
language: « [...]in comparatione mearum tuas aut nullas aut módicas tempta-
tiones recognoscas et tolerabilius feras » (p. 3), he offers first, and at the last :

Sufficiat, ut [...] oppressionem tuam in comparatione mearum aut nullam aut

modicum esse judices, et tanto earn patientius feras quanto minorem consideras,
illud semper in consolationem assumens quod membris suis de membris diaboli
Dominus predixit : "Si me persecuti sunt, et vos persequentur" (p. 43).

To the first deferential proportion - the reader's suffering is formally

equivalent to but substantively less than Abelard' s suffering - Abelard adds a
second: the reader's suffering is equivalent to Christ's suffering, although the
reader is ontologically less than Christ. Proportional relationship to Christ is the
consolation Abelard has used for himself throughout the work. In the end, he turns
this consolation over to his reader.

But in doing so he introduces a detailed catalogue of Christian sufferers,

implying that Abelard is their heir, participant in their history. A logical and
a typological consolation fuse. Abelard' s individual suffering extends sacred
history in a mode commensurate with its previous character. His calamities in a
way re-present those of Christ, the apostles, Jerome, and others into a present
situation that otherwise (with its incompetent teachers, inaccurate judges of
heresy, and murderous monks) bears little resemblance to the high points of
Christian history.
Abelard' s Historia calamitatum demonstrates his systematic and
sophisticated application of logical modes of thought to scriptural exegesis and its
typological relevance to the self, then his employment of all these resources to
console himself and others. His contemporaries were correct to identify his total
commitment to logic (or his inability to escape from it). Not only did he
unashamedly use logic to shape his theological discussions of the Trinity and his
exegetical discussions of Ezekiel and other biblical books, but he permitted it to
shape his own rhetorical practice. The Historia is nothing if not a rhetorically
charged work, meant implicitly to persuade readers of Abelard' s innocence and

(47) Their letters demonstrate how inadequate his consolation proves; he never manages to
convince her that monastic life is the best end to their marriage, no matter how hard he tries. Moreover,
their marriage continues to be present if vacant ; Abelard' s return to the Paraclete after the nuns took it
over garnered him charges of marital lasciviousness inappropriate for a monk but impossible for a
eunuch to express {La Vie et les Épistres : Pierres Abaelart et Heloys sa fame, op. cit., p. 37).

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46 CHAD SCHRÖCK

victimization and explicitly to move

example48. Yet the logical influence
somewhat chastened. This proportion
something greater, as the primary so
implies that Abelard is neither a who
pessimist. His discovery of certain e
enables him to intensify his own convi
Christ's own pattern of deference. It
larities between himself and Christ
lation precisely because what console
ruined person and situation. Not by a
hubristic equivalence to carefully qu
peers among the early church. But wi
me persecuti sunt, et vos persequentu
their utility to console. In his personal
enigmatic gap of proportion inheren
divine, experiencing it finally as the st
the instability of human epistemolog

(48) See E.B.Vrrz, Medieval Narrative and

Desire , New York, New York University Pres
Civilization), 1989, p. 33, and D. Visser, «
Calamities », Proceedings of the PMR Confer
explicitly rhetorical, meant to persuade, in or
strictly therapeutic confessional autobiography

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