PERIPATETICUS PALATINUS - (1)
Most of what we know of Peter Abelard's life is to be found in his
autobiography, the Historia Calamitatum, which can be augmented from other
sources, notably his correspondence with Heloise, and references to him by
other people, such as St Bernard the implacable Abbot of Citeaux, Peter the
Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, and John of Salisbury, who studied under many
teachers, including Abelard, and has left us his opinions of them.
Abelard was born in 1079 at Le Pallet, near Nantes. His parents were
Bretons, his father was a knight called Berengar and his mother was called
Lucie. His nationality may be significant. Brittany was at the time an
independent duchy; it did not become part of France until the 15th century.
Abelard was not a Frenchman. The Bretons were a Celtic people, akin to the
British, speaking a language cognate with Welsh (although Abelard's
communication problems when he was Abbot of the Breton monastery of St
Gildas suggest that he was not himself a Breton speaker). Abelard tells us
himself, 'I owe my volatile temperament to my native soil and ancestry, and
also my natural ability for learning.'
He was the eldest son, but renounced his rights of inheritance and military
career in order to pursue the life of a scholar. He tells us, 'I began to
travel about in several provinces disputing, like a true peripatetic
philosopher, wherever I had heard there was keen interest in the art of
dialectic.' The original peripatetic philosopher was Aristotle, who got the
title from his habit of walking up and down as he taught in his school, the
Lyceum. Perhaps Abelard understood the term differently; at all events, he
became known as Peripateticus Palatinus, the peripatetic from Le Pallet.
* * * * *
Oriens.
(To be continued)
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