medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
"Ms Brenda M. Cook" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I never thought Peter Abelard was EVER a proper (= prebendial) canon of Paris
because if he had been surely he would have had a house with servants and
emoluments as his prebend.
perhaps.
circumstantial (all we've got, actually), but a point.
>In that case he would not have been living in lodgings and would not have
wangled an invitation from Canon Fulbert to live with him to save them both
money and to pay for his accommodation by tutoring Heloise in his spare time.
i'd "forgotten" that he actually lived in the same house.
duh.
really does make it more unlikely that he enjoyed a prebend, doesn't it?
>Also, if he had been living in a prebendial house with a full staff of
servants, it would have been unlikely that the thugs sent to castrate him
would have gained admittance or that his servant (singular) would have been
quite so susceptible to take a bribe.
viday soupra.
>The whole scenario of the Historia Calaminatum suggests that P A was an
outsider living on the fringes of the cloister in unsatisfactory "digs" with
one venial man-servant, tolerated in the cloister as a licensed teacher but
with no economic standing there.
ditto.
>The income from tuition fees, and gifts, would have been erratic, sporadic
and unreliable. Interesting how P A 's life is dogged by this kind of
insecurity. Money troubles ....
yes, this is called "BAD MONEY KARMA."
i'm actually something of an expert, in this field.
>I would like to ask if anyone has any notion how large a house a prebendial
house would have been at that date and how many servants would
have been on the strength ?
my ignorance is as near to complete as it can be, so i'll weigh in with some
definitive opinions.
i suspect that not much in the *contemporary* documents will enlighten us on
these questions --i don't have access to a copy of the cathedral cartulary,
but have seen it, and the introduction of Guerard's edition of the c. for St.
Peter's of Chartres contains quite a *mine* of information about all sorts of
things, drawn from the documents.
there *may* be something about the "cloister" there --but i suppose you've
already looked.
extrapolating from later documents and from the situation at other places
(known, mostly, from later documents) is the only way to get some idea of what
the early 12th c. situation would have been.
there is a book on the history of the "cloister" at Chartres, the author and
exact title of which i've forgotten, and this might have some interesting
collateral material for you.
>Fulbert's house must have had at least three "good" chambers, one for Canon F
himself, one for Heloise ...and one for P.A. himself. In addition there must
have been a Hall or other public room, a kitchen and all the usual
outbuildings. Would I be right in thinking in terms of a three-storey house
with garden, "the usual offices" and possibly even a washing place and landing
stage backing onto the Seine ? ...And at least three male (cook, valet,
scullion) and one female servant, possibly more ?
all this sounds perfectly reasonable, to me.
about the oldest house surviving in the Chartres cloister is this one :
http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/town/rp_house.jpg
which is marked "F" on this wretched map page i once tried to construct :
http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/town/erland_text.html
(hold your cursor over various parts of the plan and you'll get an explanatory
text, eventually).
a quite substantial building (which originally had a courtyard and out
buildings in back), with magnificent, ****, sculpted tympani over the windows,
only discovered in about 1900 :
http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/town/rp_house_left.jpg
http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/town/rp_house_rt.jpg
these windows (and, presumably, the upper parts of the house itself) can be
reasonably dated to the second quarter of the 13th century.
almost as amazing (to me) as the wonderful sculptures is the *size* of those
windows on the _piano nobile_ : explained (i believe) by the lovely view which
they give of the facade of the cathedral (the rose window of which would have
been "new" when the house was built/enlarged).
i have yet to be able to determine --if such a determination is, indeed,
possible-- who might have built the house (surely a dignatary of the chapter),
but feel relatively certain that it was a fellow who really enjoyed "a room
with a view."
(btw, outside the cloister, the 13th c. tithe barn of the canons survives
--marked "8" on the map
:http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/town/loens.jpg )
a hypothetical reconstruction of what the quarter around the cathedral might
have looked like in, say, the 13th c. was used on the cover of a recently
published book and is useful for idle speculation :
http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/prache/prache_cover.jpg
some of its details :
the West close :
ftp://centrechart@ariadne.org/../../web/centrechartraine/prache/prache_W_close.jpg
the hospital :
http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/prache/prache_hotel_dieu.jpg
the South close :
ftp://centrechart@ariadne.org/../../web/centrechartraine/prache/prache_S_close.jpg
you mentioned "gardens" and, as i recall, there is a 13th c.(?) document which
speaks of such behind a house in the cloister --and also of some kind of
"bridge" over a street --but my memory fails, at this point.
ah, yes.
once upon a time i came across a rather nice article (in the Bibliotheque de
l'Ecole des Chartes???) on house prices in Paris in the 13th century.
by Leopold Delisle, or someone of his calibre, i believe.
quite a few transactions survive --the most expensive house was on one of the
bridges (expensive commercial property, apparently) and went for 400 livres or
so.
the cheapest house was right on the river --in the flood plain, i
assume-- belonged to "Marie Belle Bouche" and sold for 5 livres.
i don't recall, but perhaps there was a house or two in the cloister which was
mentioned as well.
best from here,
christopher
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