medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
do we know anything more about [Abelard's] teaching during that
pre-rainstormy period
than what he tells us in the H.C.? [Brenda?]
I have no detailed notes but my impression is that A's teaching was at what
we might equate with "University Level"
viz., that he was a *private tutor* to the adolescent daughter of a
dignatary
of the cathedral chapter.
Please. She - if you mean Heloise - was the NIECE of a canon of Paris
cathedral. Her parentage is unknowm but the vocabulary used to refer to
Uncle Fulbert - avunculus - means maternal uncle not paternal uncle who
would be a patruus. The fact that her guardian was a maternal uncler
suggests that she was illegitimate and that her father was either unknown or
had shrugged off responsibility. [And yes, I have come across the nasty
suggestion that Fulbert was both her uncle and her father ....]
Heloise was, presumably, somewhat older when tutored (and etc.) by Abelard,
and i can't quite see him (or the other, relatively high-powered scholards
of
the cathedral school) as being an elementary school teacher.
[What kind of grammatical construct is "and etc" ????????]
My evaluation of this relationship is that Heloise was the equivalent of at
least a post-graduate student if not post doctoral. (to use utterly
anachonistic concepts). Popular literature / Victorian clerics depict her
as a precocious dewey-eyed teenager. (Born c. 1101 in most published
reference books. This is PURE guesswork) Michael Clanchy thinks she was a
lot older, born c. 1090. Personally I opt for about 1095/7. And most modern
scholars now believe that A's mutilation took place in 1117 and not 1118 as
is plastered all over popular ref. works and the House in Paris. And if you
follow Constant Mews and "The Lost Love Letters", then the A & H affair
began in 1114 not 1117......
I think elementary teaching was done by private tutor / family chaplain /
parish priest or Dad's amanuensis in his spare time. The next level was Song
School at the Cathedral where the small boys learned to pronounce written
Latin, had to learn chunks of the liturgy and the psalms &c by heart and how
to sing the texts correctly at the canonical Hours. Slightly older boys
would be taught (also in the Cathedral School) how to comprehend the Latin
they were reading and singing together with other texts. But the technical
ability to read came first. Understanding of what they were reading came
later. It's a completely different approach to education from ours. Their
grammar books were in poetry and also had to be learned by heart, then they
were taught to use the rules of grammar to construe and compose. Then they
went on to the Trivium: Grammar, Logic & Rhetoric which polished up these
skills. At least this is my understanding from recent dipping into Nicholas
Orme's "Medieval Schools." (2006)
The point at which a boy not destined for a clerical career stopped in this
process is unspecified: probably when he or his dad reckoned he's done
enough.
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