medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

From: Ms B M Cook <[log in to unmask]>

>>[ME] 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"

surely that's True (or, at a minimum, one of those Reasonable Assumptions
scholards love so much to foist upon a credulous public).

>> viz., that he was a *private tutor* to the adolescent daughter of a 
dignatary of the cathedral chapter.

> Please. 

sorry.

>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 ....]

styling her "daughter" was just a Slip of the Mind, a Senior Moment, nothing
particularly malevolent intended thereby.

i've not even heard the speculation about Fulbert's possible paternitariness.

>> 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" ????????]

technically, it is an "anti-dysphemism"

i couldn't think of the Latin for "diddled" and just settled for "cetera"

> 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). 

A. is certainly silent re *what,* eggsactly, he was teaching her.

and hiring him to do elementary teaching would seem to have been OverKill,
even assuming he (then in his somewhat arrogant phase, as i recall) would take
the commission.

>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. 

there's a Maison d'Abelard in Paris?

any good relics there, body parts, etc.?

following Clanchy, she would have been an old maid, at 28, in 1118.

accepting your date seems more a more reasonable 21-21.

but, she was obviously from a wealthy family --howscome she wasn't married off
by 16, like any Normal Girl?

>And if you follow Constant Mews and "The Lost Love Letters", 

i'm trying to Quit.

>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. 

denying the existence of Benedictine primary schools, then?

what about members of the Lesser Nobility, castelains and the like, rich
enough to be a "friend" of abbeys, but not so rich as to hire a "private
tutor," much less to have a "family chaplain" on the payroll.

>The next level was Song School at the Cathedral....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)

does Orme believe in the existance of Monastic elementary schools?
 
> 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.

gets us back to Square One (at last).

Louis Louison (writing as Louis VII) fondly recalls that the cloister of St.
Mary's of Paris was where he got his early _formation_.

from which Marcel Pacaut concludes that he was, as second son of Louis VI,
destined for a clerical career. [is *this* a necessary assumption??]

when his older brother, the co-king Philip, died in 1131 a Career Change was
forced upon him and he was jerked out of whatever educational environment he
was in and crowned co-king, joining his father's retinue, learning the Family
Business, appearing with him at court and in most of his charters, etc.

his kid brother, Henry, took his place as the Family Vice President in charge
of Clerical Affairs.

i'm assuming that Henry's educational career (about which we are utterly
uniformed) would have paralleled that of his predecessor, Louis.

i.e., grammar school teachers associated with the cathedral, or just private
tutors working in the "cloister" of St. Mary's, perhaps (given Henry's later
[aged 25 or so] radical conversion to Cistercianism) culminating in some
higher studies in theology.

c

**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html