Peter Abelard and Disputation: A Reexamination (Rhetorica, 2014)

Alex J. Novikoff Peter Abelard and Disputation: A Reexamination Abstract: This paper examines Abelard’s engagement with disputation (disputatio) from the vantage point of twelfth-century scholasticism. Eschewing the well-worn details of Abelard’s personal life and philosophical positions, analysis is instead focused on two parallel dimensions of his career: the manner in which he attempted to face-off with his adversaries through public debate and his underlying theory of disputation. It is argued that Abelard’s theory is to be found not in his theological or logical works, but in his polemical letters and his ethical dialogue, the Collationes, which together offer a coherent hermeneutical strategy for discerning truth. Abelard’s contribution to the art of disputation needs to be assessed in light of his broader involvement in the scholastic method and contemporary Jewish-Christian relations. Keywords: disputatio, dialectic, rhetoric, Jewish-Christian relations, dialogue genre, polemic eter Abelard (c. 1079–1142) stands at the fruitful intersection of two related phenomena in the medieval history of P the rhetorical arts: the early development of the scholastic method and a renewed interest in the language arts of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic). No stranger to academic scrutiny, Abelard’s fame has long served as a port of entry into the robust dynamics of medieval intellectual life. The controversy he attracted because of his theological and nominalist positions, the peripatetic career that he led as a private master in northern France, and the vivid details of his forbidden affair with his pupil Heloise have sustained his reputation from medieval to modern times as the leading logician, Rhetorica, Vol. XXXII, Issue 4, pp. 323–347, ISSN 0734-8584, electronic ISSN 15338541. ©2014 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/RH.2014.32.4.323. 324 RHETORICA teacher, and paramour of the twelfth century, to say nothing of his putative co-authorship of the controversial Epistola duorum amantium.1 These areas of Abelardian studies assured, it is his role as disputant— often relegated to a means to an end rather than treated as a formal development in the rhetorical arts—which I wish to single out for reexamination. Disputation was for Abelard not a mere byproduct of his controversial career, but a formal and constructive element of his approach to logic and theology in an emerging scholastic environment that placed increasing emphasis on persuasive argumentation and the art of delivery. A close inspection of Abelard’s engagement with literary dialogue and classroom disputation informs us more about the practical applications of medieval disputatio than has traditionally been recognized and, when viewed against a twelfth-century backdrop, can help uncover the critical process by which the oral performance of debate laid the groundwork for future developments in the rhetorical arts (including the ars praedicandi) and became a central feature of western intellectual discourse. Abelard’s very reputation as a master dialectician poses an initial challenge. Of the many adjectives that can be, and have been, imputed to him, “disputatious” would seem especially apt. His own declarations in the beginning of his autobiographical Historia calamitatum invite the epithet: “I began traveling across several provinces disputing, like a true peripatetic philosopher, wherever I heard that the study of my chosen art most flourished.”2 Trading the court of 1 The starting points in this vast corpus of scholarship include M. T. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Constant J. Mews, Abelard and Heloise, Great Medieval Thinkers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Jean Jolivet, La théologie d’Abélard (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1997); Jolivet, Arts du langage et théologie chez Abélard (Paris: J. Vrin, 1982); and the various essays contained in The Cambridge Companion to Abelard, ed. Jeffrey E. Brower and Kevin Guilfoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). An informed discussion of Abelard and his censors forms the backbone of an eloquent and animated study by Peter Godman, The Silent Masters: Latin Literature and its Censors in the High Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). A succinct and highly informed précis of an otherwise considerable corpus of Abelardian scholarship is provided in the introduction to Jan M. Ziolkowsi’s recent translation of several lesser studied “nonpersonal” letters cited below: Ziolkowski, Letters of Peter Abelard: Beyond the Personal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), xiii-lii. For the latest installment in the debate over the authenticity of the “lost love letters,” see Constant J. Mews, “Discussing Love: The Epistolae duorum amantium and Abelard’s Sic et Non,” Journal of Medieval Latin, vol. 19 (2009): 130–147. 2 Historia calamitatum, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1959), 64: “Proinde diversas disputando perambulans provincias, ubicunque hujus artis vigere studium Peter Abelard and Disputation 325 Mars for the bosom of Minerva, he tells us in one of his most memorable turn of phrases, he relinquished the weapons and trophies of war in order to do battle in disputation (conflictus pretuli disputationum).3 That Abelard was argumentative, short-tempered, and even bellicose toward his intellectual rivals is a characterization that few question and one that even Abelard would unlikely have contested.4 Still, the literalness of his disputatious career should not be given over entirely to the figurative image of a brilliant but cantankerous scholar who perpetually challenged authority and ran afoul of the law. The consequences of his actions and the sheer forcefulness of his personality have too often masked our appreciation of his particular contribution to the argumentative and rhetorical functions of the scholastic method. As a leading interpreter of Abelard has commented, “the superfluity of images, claims, and counterclaims generated by Abelard’s eagerness to engage in public debates makes it difficult to determine the underlying threads behind Abelard’s diverse output.”5 By eschewing his professional triumphs and personal misfortunes in favor of broader developments in scholastic discourse and Jewish-Christian relations, this paper brings into focus a central feature of Abelard’s legacy that is often assumed but rarely subjected to critical examination.6 audieram, peripateticorum emulator factus sum.” Translation mine. For a slightly different rendition, see The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Betty Radice, revised by Michael Clanchy (New York: Penguin, 2003), 3. 3 Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin, 63–64. 4 The violent and feudal side of Abelard’s writings is expertly exposed by Andrew Taylor, “A Second Ajax: Peter Abelard and the Violence of Dialectic,” in David Townsend and Andrew Taylor, eds., The Tongues of the Fathers: Gender and Ideology in Twelfth-Century Latin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 14–34. 5 Mews, Abelard and Heloise, 12. 6 Pioneering studies of the scholastic method include Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der Scholastischen Methode, 2 vols. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1909– 11); and M.-D. Chenu, “Un essai sur la méthode théologique du douzième siècle,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 24 (1935): 258–67; M.-D. Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, trans. A.-M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regent Company, 1964), esp. part 1. For recent discussions of Abelard’s rhetoric, see the essays by Constant J. Mews, Karin Margareta Fredborg, and Peter von Moos in Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thompson, eds., Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West, 1100–1540: Essays in Honor of John O. Ward (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). For a recent assessment of Jewish-Christian relations in the age of Abelard by a leading authority in the field, see Anna Sapir Abulafia, “Continuity and Change in Twelfth-Century Christian-Jewish Relations,” in Thomas F. X. Noble and John Van Engen, eds., European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 314–37. 326 RHETORICA Abelard intersects with twelfth-century dialogue and disputation in both obvious and less apparent ways. He has long been heralded as a pioneer of the so-called scholastic method that pitted opposing arguments or conflicting statements against one another, pro and contra.7 For this it is common to point to his Sic et non where he famously placed 158 opposing and seemingly incompatible statements from scriptural and patristic authorities side by side, much to the consternation of ecclesiastical authorities such as Bernard of Clairvaux who accused him of heresy.8 It is in the preface to this work that Abelard articulates his famous dictum that “by doubting we come to question, and by questioning we arrive at truth,” a phrase that is sometimes misattributed as an expression of theological uncertainty or skepticism.9 More likely, the conflicting texts were presented in a systematic fashion in order to stimulate reflection and debate on the points at issue. Abelard is also the author of a celebrated dialogue, the Collationes (c. 1132), which is sometimes misleadingly called the Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher, and Jew. While the rhetorical merits of the work have not gone unnoticed (it in fact consists of two dialogues set in a dream, the first between the Philosopher and a Jew and the second between that same Philosopher and the Christian), the Collationes has traditionally been examined in either the context of his ethical writings or in the context of Jewish-Christian relations, both areas in which Abelard made original contributions.10 This enigmatic dialogue, as we shall 7 Martin Grabmann called Anselm the “father of the Scholastics” but considered Abelard a key innovator in the Scholastic approach of harmonizing reason and faith. See Grabmann, Geschichte, 1:258. 8 Cf. Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy. Volume 2: Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 47: “In the heyday of medieval universities, a favourite teaching method was the disputation. . . Abelard’s Sic et Non is the ancestor of these medieval disputations.” 9 Cf. Sabina Flanagan, Doubt in an Age of Faith: Uncertainty in the Long Twelfth Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). The underlying interpretive principles of the prologue are more satisfactorily explained by Cornelia Rizek-Pfister, “Die hermeneutischen Prinzipien in Abaelards Sic et non,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 47 (2000): 484–501. 10 Peter Abelard: Collationes, ed. John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), with further bibliographic orientation in the introduction by the editors. On the literary scope and autobiographical hermeneutics of the medieval dream, see Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Conversion of Herman the Jew: Autobiography, History, and Fiction in the Twelfth Century, trans. Alex J. Novikoff (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), who discusses Abelard in chap. 3. Peter Abelard and Disputation 327 see, is nevertheless fully consistent with his overall hermeneutical strategy, for as he says in the preface, “no debate is so frivolous that it does not teach us something,” and the virtue of disputatio is a recurrent theme as the dialogue progresses from theological to ethical considerations.11 A second dialogue is Abelard’s short Soliloquium in which he presents an imaginary conversation between his two selves, “Peter” and “Abelard.”12 Unlike Augustine’s Soliloquia, on which it is loosely modeled, Abelard does not offer an examination of his selfhood but instead presents a theoretical dialogue on the love of wisdom and the meaning of the name of Christ.13 In both works an even exchange between the participants is imagined in order to yield a deeper truth. The Sic et non, the Collationes, and the Soliloquium all reflect Abelard’s propensity for philosophical debate and critical inquiry, but the crux of Abelard’s contribution to the emerging art of disputation neither begins nor ends with these celebrated works.14 Abelard did not begin the scholastic practice of disputation, which was already thriving in the days of Lanfranc and Anselm, but he did reorient it in significant ways.15 To better appreciate Abelard’s role in this field it is necessary to take stock of his other writings as well, to consider his always deliberate choice of language, and to situate his writings and vocabulary in the wider intellectual context of his contemporaries who also grappled with this emerging art of disputation. This context will in turn reveal Abelard’s contribution to the rhetorical and performative beginnings of the ars praedicandi. It is well known that Abelard thought very highly of his intellectual abilities, but it is especially his ability to out-perform his 11 Collationes, ed. Marenbon and Orlandi, 6–7: “. . .nullam adeo friuolam esse disputationem arbitror, ut non aliquod habeat documentum.” All translations from this work are after Marenbon. 12 Charles Burnett, “Peter Abelard Soliloquium: A Critical Edition,” Studi Medievali, 25 (1984): 857–94, at 885–94. 13 The resemblance to the Collationes concerns the importance given to philosophy. In the Collationes the character of the Philosopher scores points against both the Jew and the Christian and in the Soliloquium the character “Peter” says that pagan philosophers expounded the whole sum of faith in the Trinity more thoroughly than the prophets. 14 Martin Grabmann for instance only considered the Sic et Non as an example of the scholastic method. “Disputatio” is treated, but in a strictly theological context, by Jean Jolivet, Arts du langage, cited in n. 1 above, 306–20. 15 On the early development of disputation, see Alex J. Novikoff, “Anselm, Dialogue, and the Rise of Scholastic Disputation,” Speculum 86, 2 (2011): 387–418, to which may now be added the complementary discussion by Eileen C. Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), chap. 7. 328 RHETORICA opponents in classroom and public disputation that he chooses to emphasize in his moralizing autobiography. When forced to leave Paris early in his career because of one master’s jealousy, Abelard set up a school in Melun where he built his fame as a teacher of dialectic: “Consequently my self-confidence rose still higher, and I hurried to transfer my school to Corbeil, a town closer to Paris, so that I could assault him through more frequent encounters in disputation.”16 Disputation served Abelard as an instrument of revenge, but it could also serve him as he went on the offensive. When he famously contested his teacher William of Champeaux on the question of universals some years later, it was “in the course of our debates” (inter cetera disputationum nostrarum) that he was able to force William to modify his position, thus humiliating him and destroying his reputation.17 This belligerent display of dialectical skills contributed to his notoriety and would prove to be a pattern in his career. A later disagreement with another former teacher, Roscelin of Compiègne, over the nature of the Trinity, and specifically over an early version of Abelard’s theological treatise, the Theologia summi boni (c. 1118), led to a condemnation at the Council of Soissons in 1121, the first of two ecclesiastical condemnations in his troubled career. Roscelin did not live to see his former student turned opponent condemned and his book burnt, but in the years leading up to the council Abelard attempted to settle the matter in the manner he knew best: through public disputation. Sometime prior to the Council of Soissons Abelard sent a letter to the Bishop Gilbert and the clergy of Paris requesting that a public debate be organized in front of witnesses, the intent of which, presumably, was to secure victory and inflict another humiliation in a verbal contest.18 This time the ploy did not work out in Abelard’s favor, since Gilbert considered the dispute too serious a matter for his diocese and remitted it to the 16 Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin, 64–65: “Hinc factum est ut de me amplius ipse presumens ad castrum Corbolii, quod Parisiace urbi vicinius est, quamtotius scolas nostras transferrem, ut inde videlicit crebriores disputationis assultus nostra daret importunitas.” 17 Historia calamitatum, ed. Monfrin, 64–65. 18 The most recent edition with commentary of the letter (no. XIV) is by Edmé Renno Smits, Peter Abelard. Letters IX-XIV. An Edition with an Introduction (Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit, 1983), 279–80. See pp. 180–202 for a discussion of the authenticity and dating of the letter. Letter Fourteen, as it is more familiarly known, is extant in one manuscript from the second half of the thirteenth century: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 2923. It has recently been given its first translation into English by Jan M. Ziolkowski, Letters of Peter Abelard, 194–96, who follows Smits and Mews in offering 1120 as the most plausible date of the letter. Peter Abelard and Disputation 329 papal legate, who promptly put Abelard, and Abelard alone, on trial at Soissons.19 If Abelard was so predisposed to debating his teachers, it must follow that this is how he conducted himself in his classroom. The first part of his teaching career (c. 1102–17) was almost exclusively devoted to the study of logic, when he was a private master successively at Melun, Corbeil, and Mount Sainte Geneviève, and culminating in his appointment as master of the cathedral school of Notre Dame in Paris. The content of his lectures during these early years is preserved in his detailed logical works as well as in some unattributed twelfth-century commentaries on the Old Logic that likewise seem to preserve the records of Abelard’s teachings.20 Four logical treatises survive whose attribution to Abelard is certain: the Logica ingredientibus, the Dialectica (a lengthy textbook that scholars now date to c. 1116–18), the Tractatus de intellectibus, and the Logica nostrorum petitioni.21 The opening line of the fourth of these works announces its pedagogical purpose clearly: “At the request of my fellows (nostrorum petitioni socii) I have undertaken the labor of writing logic, and in accord with their wishes I shall expound what I have taught about logic.”22 The logic that Abelard was concerned with is what we would today classify as ontology or philosophical semantics. In what is presumed to be the first of these four works, the “Logic for Beginners,” Abelard defines the subject as the art of judging and discriminating between valid and invalid arguments or inferences. The ancient theory of topics, as transmitted by Boethius’ De topicis differentiis, had been concerned with finding rhetorically convincing rather than irrefutable arguments. Abelard wishes to use the theory to explore the conditions for logically valid reasoning in all its forms. 19 Clanchy, Abelard, cited in n. 1 above, 296. The finding, transcribing, editing and appraising of these twelfth-century logical commentaries owes a great deal to the work of Yukio Iwakuma, even if not all of his attributions have been followed. For a recent revisiting of his earlier work, see Yukio Iwakuma, “Vocales Revisited,” in Tetsuro Shimizu and Charles Burnett, eds., The Word in Medieval Logic, Theology and Psychology (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 81–171. 21 The chronology of these writings is a matter of considerable scholarly dispute. To complicate matters, there are important portions missing and the transmission of these texts (whether they are multi-layered or not) is far from clear. Still, there is little reason to doubt that they preserve the substance of a master’s lectures and discussions, even if they have reached us in a perhaps slightly edited fashion. See the discussion by Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, cited in n. 1 above, 43–44. 22 The text, also known as the Glossulae, is edited in B. Geyer, ed., Peter Abaelards philosophische Schriften, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, vol. 21 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1933), 505–588, here at 505. 20 330 RHETORICA He does not restrict inferences to syllogisms, but instead is interested in a more general notion of consequence, a problem grounded in his reading of Boethius. The fundamental problem for Abelard is identifying the conditions under which one proposition follows from another. The Dialectica offers the lengthiest and most complete treatment of logical consequences. The novelty of his arguments has been much analyzed before. Interspersed within the work are numerous polemical references to the statements of his contemporaries that would seem to derive from the argumentative and oral form of his classroom disputations. Here, for instance, is an attack on his former teacher William of Champeaux on infinitizing expressions: It is customary to ask why Aristotle did not mention infinite expressions here, since such expressions are often formed. . . Some hold that Aristotle is concerned here only to demonstrate the formation of simple assertions. Others will in no way concede that an expression may be infinitized, with whom, I recall (memini), master V. agreed. And indeed he denied this not so much with respect to sense as with respect to the nature of the construction. You will find his weak and false account of the conjunction of words in his Glossulis super periermenias.23 Many passages of the Dialectica evoke the statements, the beliefs, and the positions of others who spoke (dicebat), or whom Abelard heard or remembered (memini).24 They hearken back to the debates of his student days while simultaneously suggesting an oral delivery in the form of questions and answers characteristic of a teacher’s disputation. Throughout the treatise, a position held by one disputant is shown, through a series of formal steps, to entail an obviously false conclusion. The characterization of the Dialectica as a “textbook” thus belies the fact that this was in fact, like his Historia calamitatum, a very polemical work. The prologue to the fourth and final book of Petrus Abaelardus: Dialectica, ed. L. M. de Rijk, 2nd ed. (Assen: Van Gorcum), 141: “De orationibus inde infinitis quare hoc loco Aristoteles mentionem non fecerit, solet quaeri. . . Alii itaque Aristotelem simplici enuntiationis constitutionem demonstrasse hoc loco volunt, alii vero nullomodo orationem infinitari concedunt, quibus, memini, magister V. assentiebat; nec quidem id tam secundum sententiam negabat quam secundum constructionis naturam; cuius quidem invalidam de coniunctione dictionum calumniam in Glossulis eius super Periermenias invenies.” 24 Cf. Dialectica, ed. de Rijk, 123: “Sed ad haec, memini, Magister noster V. opponere solet: ‘si, inquit, verbum propriam significationem inhaerere dicat, verum autem sit eam inhaerere, profecto ispum verum dicit ac sensum propositionis perficit’. Verum ipse verbis deceptus erat ac prave id ceperat verbum dicere rem suam inhaerere, ut ‘currit’ cursum, quod dicebamus. 23 Peter Abelard and Disputation 331 the Dialectica is, among other things, an explicit defense against “the malicious new charge concerning my writing on logic which has been made against me by those who are envious of me.”25 Abelard is not only making a clear reference to his earlier logical works, he is also introducing the very accusation that will become central to his later autobiography. Dialectic and rhetoric, in other words, were bilateral weapons in Abelard’s progression from classroom pedagogy to literary polemic. There are other reasons to suspect that the Dialectica preserves his classrooms debates, or at any rate his notes on the content of these debates. For example there are inconsistencies in the arrangement of material. At one point Abelard makes reference to a position mentioned above (ut supra meminimus) where there has in fact been no allusion to this position before then.26 At another point he makes reference to indirect and direct contraries as if the distinction had been explained, which it is not until later.27 And on at least one occasion Abelard refers back to his earliest “introduction” on logic as an “altercation” (altercatione), again underlying the oral and disputative delivery of his teachings.28 There is still the question of what Abelard’s classroom looked and sounded like. The Dialectica and his other logical commentaries preserve his own formal logic by means of enumerating the positions that he sought to defeat, but they do not give much sense of how his disputations may have unfolded in the classroom. The most explicit evocation of the give-and-take of Abelard’s classroom is given not in his own work, but in the little-known Vita prima Gosvini (c. 1173) that vividly describes how the young St. Goswin of Anchin (d. 1166) disputed with Abelard during his teaching days at Mount Sainte Geneviève (c. 1110). A fellow monk who knew Goswin personally wrote down this hagiographical Vita, and it recounts how Goswin studied grammar and dialectic in his native Douai, moved to Paris to attend the classes of several erudite scholars (quamplures eruditissimi), and then returned to his native city where, disillusioned by the academic lifestyle, he converted to the monastic life. The description 25 Dialectica, ed. de Rijk, 469. See Dialectica, ed. de Rijk, 374 and 377. 27 See Dialectica, ed. de Rijk, 379. Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, 44 n. 32, notes the slip. 28 Dialectica, 232: “. . . in illa altercatione de loco et argumentatione monstrauimus quam ad simplicem dialecticorum institutionem conscripsimus.” See Christopher J. Martin, “A Note on the Attribution of the Literal Glosses to in Paris, BnF, lat. 13368 to Peter Abelard,” in Arts du langague et de théologie, ed. Rosier-Catach, 608. 26 332 RHETORICA of Paris in the age of Abelard reads like a formal rebuttal to the Dialectica: At that time Peter Abelard, having gathered around him many students, was leading a public school [i.e. open to other religious orders] in the cloister of Sainte Geneviève. His knowledge was well tested and his eloquence sublime, but he was the inventor of strange and unheard of things and asserted entirely novel claims, and in order to establish his own theories he set out to disprove what others had proved. Thus he came to be hated by those of saner mind, and just as he turned his hand against everyone, so everyone took up arms against him. He said what no one had before him presumed to say and everyone was amazed at him. So when the absurdity of his inventions came to the notice of those who were involved in teaching in Paris, they were first stunned, then gripped with a great zeal to confute his falsities, and began to ask one another who among them would undertake the business of disputing him (ex eis aduersus eum disputandi negotium subiturus).29 The fact that the account stresses both the novelty of Abelard’s teachings and the need for him to be dismantled through disputation makes it all the more tantalizing that Goswin’s biographer is giving us a deliberate counter-thesis to Abelard’s autobiography. On account of his talent and readiness for the task, Goswin is chosen by his companions to take up the challenge of formally disputing with Abelard. First, however, he receives advice from Master Jocelin, the future bishop of Soissons, who opposes the idea of a confrontation. He tells Goswin that Abelard is “not a debater but a sophist” (disputatorem non esse, sed cauillatorem) and that he “acts more like a jester than a doctor.”30 The terminology calls attention to the farcical ele- 29 Beati Gosvini vita. . .Aquicinctensis monasterii abbatis septimi, a duobus diversis ejusdem coenobii monachis separatim exarata; e veteribus ms. nunc primum edita, ed. Richard Gibbons (Douai, 1620), bk. 1.4, 12–13: “Tunc temporis magister Petrus Abailardus, multis sibi scholaribus aggregatis in claustro S. Genouefae schola publica utebatur: qui probatae quidem scientiae, sublimis eloquentiae, sed inauditarum erat inuentor et assertor nouitatum; et suas quaerens statuere sententias, erat aliarum probatarum improbatur. Vnde in odium uenerat eorum qui sanius sapiebant; et sicut manus eius contra omnes, sic omnium contra eum armabantur. Dicebat quod nullus antea praesumpserat, ut omnes illum mirarentur. Cum igitur inaduentionum eius absurditas in notitiam peruenisset eorum qui Parisiis doctrinae causa morabantur, primo stupore, deinde zelo quodam ducti confutandae falsitatis, coeperunt inter se quaerere quis esset ex eis aduersus eum disputandi negotium subiturus; indignum esse dumtaxat apud tot sapientes huiusmodi naeniarum dictorem non habere contradictorem, taliter oblatrantem baculo non arceri ueritatis; plura adinuenturum, et liberius declamaturum, si infaustis coeptis redargutor defuisset.” 30 Beati Gosvini, ed. Gibbons, 13. Peter Abelard and Disputation 333 ment of scholastic debate, while simultaneously distinguishing the rhetoric of performance from the substance of a debate. If an anonymous logical commentary from the early twelfth century does reflect Abelard’s classroom discussions, as some scholars believe, then the vernacular jokes and vulgar language of its examples would confirm his reputation for classroom frivolity.31 Despite his appreciation for Master Jocelin’s advice, Goswin sets out in youthful exuberance to Abelard’s school, taking several of his companions with him. It is what happens next that is most revealing: Upon arriving at the place of combat, in other words the entryway to his [Abelard’s] school, he found him lecturing and inculcating his novelties to his students. As soon as he was there he began to speak, and he [Abelard] gave him scornful looks. A warrior from his youth, and seeing that the newcomer was just starting to grow a beard, he disdained him in his heart, no less than the Philistine did David. He [Goswin] was indeed of fair and handsome appearance, though of moderate height and weight. But the egotist was forced to respond to his pressing assailant: ‘Keep quiet and be careful not to disturb the course of my lesson (lectionis)’. But he had not come there to be quiet and so he fiercely persisted. Meanwhile his adversary, holding him in disdain, paid no attention to the words that were being uttered, judging it undignified that so great a professor should answer to such a puny youth. But he was judging him on appearance, finding him contemptible on account of his age, and he did not take notice of the perceptive intelligence of his heart. But his disciples knew this young man well, and, so that he would not fail to give an answer, told him that he [Goswin] was a sharp debater supported by great learning (disputatorem 31 The text in question is from a manuscript preserved in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14779, with significant portions transcribed by Yukio Iwakuma, “Pierre Abélard et Guillaume de Champeaux dans les premières années du XIIe siècle: une étude préliminaire,” in Joël Biard, ed., Langage, sciences, philosophie au XIIe siècle. Actes de la table ronde internationale des 25–26 mars 1998 (Paris: Vrin, 1999), 92–123. Cf. fols. 53v-55v (here translated from the transcription by Iwakuma at 95): “THE ONE RATHER. I have said that in both one is more likely to occur, but nevertheless that one does not occur determinately, because it may be impeded by chance or by utrumlibet. Here he indicates that there is a division such as the following: there are utrumlibets which are equally likely to result in affirmation and negation, such as ‘she will fuck’, ‘she will not fuck’, others which are more likely to turn out one way rather than another, such as ‘she will rub you down’, ‘she will not rub you down’, which is more likely to turn out one way, that is to rub, because she is from Chartres. Likewise, chances are equally likely to turn out either way, such as ‘Peter will close the door’, ‘P. will not close the door’: more likely to turn out one way, such as ‘P. will fall into the toilet’, ‘P. will not fall into the toilet’, which is more likely to turn out one way, that is to fall ‘into the toilet’ because he is small, though his patience is great.” 334 RHETORICA acutum et multum ei scientae suffragari), and that it was not dishonorable to take on the business of disputing someone like him, whereas it was most dishonorable to continue refusing. “So let him speak up,” said [Abelard], “if he has something to say.” Speaking his mind, he [Goswin] asserted propositions so competently that they exuded neither levity nor garrulous verbosity, and on account of their depth they drew the attention of all who were listening: the one assumed, the other affirmed, the former unable to respond to the affirmations of the latter. As those games of sophistry were shut off by the one who knew nothing of these cunning tricks, he [Abelard] was finally forced to admit that he was not in accord with reason.32 The Life of Goswin offers not only a rebuttal of Abelard’s self-image, but a revealing glimpse into the confrontational and improvisatorial character of early twelfth-century teaching. It is important to note that the content of the disputation is never actually given. But this too is in a sense revealing, for evidently the substance of the debate was less important than the public performance of the classroom encounter. The fact that Goswin got the better of Abelard is more important than what they actually discussed. Not surprisingly, the Life goes on to stress Goswin’s turn away from the vainglories of the academic classroom and toward the solitude of monastic life, where among 32 Beati Gosvini, ed. Gibbons, 15–17: “Cum uenisset igitur ad locum certaminis (1 Sm 17, 22), id est scholam eius introisset, reperit eum legentem, et scholaribus suis suas inculcantem nouitates. Statim autem ut loqui orsus est qui aduenerat, ille toruos in eum deflexit obtutus; et cum se sciret uirum ab adolescentia bellatorem (1 Sm 17, 33), illum autem uideret pubescere incipientem, despexit eum (1 Sm 17, 42) in corde suo, forte non multo minus quam Dauid sanctum spurius Philistaeus (1 Sm 17, 4; 17, 23). Erat enim albus quidem et decorus aspect (cf. 1 Sm 17, 42), sed exilis corpulentiae et staturae non sublimis. Cumque superbus ille ad respondendum cogeretur, et impugnans eum uehementer immineret: “Vide, inquit, ut sileas, et caue ne perturbes meae series lectionis.” Ille qui non ad silendum uenerat, acriter insistebat, cum aduersarius e contra eum habens despectui, non attenderet ad sermons oris eius, indignum iudicans a doctore tanto tantillo iuueni responderi. Iudicabat secundum faciem, quae pro aetate sibi contemptibilis apparebat; sed cor perspicaciter intellegens non attendebat. Cum autem ei diceretur a scholasticis suis, qui iuuenculum satis nouerant, ut non omitteret respondere, esse illum disputatorem acutum et multum ei scientiae suffragari, non esse indecens cum eiusmodi subire negotium disputandi, indecentissimum esse talem ulteris aspernari: “Dicat, inquit, si quid habet as dicendum.” Ille, dicendi nacta facultate, es his unde mouebatur propositionem facit adeo competentem, ut nullatenus leuem et garrulam redoleret uerbositatem, sed audientiam omnium sua mercaretur grauitate. Assumente illo, et affirmante isto, et affirmationibus eius illo penitus non ualente refragari; cum diuertendi ei penitus suffragia clauderentur ab isto qui non ignorabat eius astutias, tandem conuictus est asseruisse se quod non esset consentaneum rationi.” Peter Abelard and Disputation 335 the illustrious personalities that he shared company with were two popes and Bernard of Clairvaux. In an epitaph that combines female and male biblical figures, Goswin’s accomplishments are compared to those of Martha, Mary, Leah, Rachel, Jacob, Moses, and Phineas.33 Abelard’s most serious battle was with the Cistercian reformer Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and his powerful entourage, most notably William of St. Thierry. The numerous events and points of contention that punctuated Abelard’s increasingly hostile relationship with the church have been told many times before.34 What needs emphasis is the manner in which disputation literally, and literarily, entered into the conflict. Sometime in 1140 William of St. Thierry contacted Bernard in order to solicit his aid in reprimanding Abelard for asserting what he believed to be doctrinal errors. As an abbot in Rheims and a former cathedral school student, William would have long been aware of Abelard and his teachings. It has even been suggested that William and Abelard met while students at Laon, but this cannot be confirmed.35 In any event it was following his conversion to the Cistercian “Order” around 1134 or 1135 that William first became preoccupied with Abelard’s teachings, and particularly his disputatious method of handling Scripture.36 His course of action was to compose a treatise detailing the heresies of which Abelard was guilty. The result was the Disputatio adversus Petrum Abaelardum—the title is significant. It was sent to both the bishop of Chartres and Bernard of Clairvaux. Accompanying the Disputatio was a letter requesting that action be taken against Abelard and copies of two of Abelard’s book, his Theologia and his Liber sententiarum, the records of his teachings. While William was above all concerned with the theological and doctrinal positions that Abelard was allegedly disseminating to his captive audiences, it is also clear that he was disturbed by Abelard’s 33 Historia Monasterii Aquicinctini, ed. G. Waitz, MGH Scriptores XIV (Hannover: Magna Germaniae Historiae, 1883), 590. 34 An exhaustive bibliography of the scholarship pertaining to the struggle between Abelard and Bernard is given by Constant J. Mews, “The Council of Sens (1141): Abelard, Bernard, and the Fear of Social Upheaval,” Speculum 77, 2 (2002): 343, n. 2. But see also Pietro Zerbi, “Philosophi” e Logici”: Un ventennio di incontri e scontri: Soissons, Sens, Cluny (1121–1141) (Rome: Nella sede dell’Istituto, Palazzo Borromini, 2002). 35 Jean Marie Déchanet, “L’amitié d’Abélard et de Guillaume de Saint Thierry,” Revue d’Histoire Ecclesiastique 35 (1939): 761–74. 36 The independent existence of the Cistercian Order in Bernard’s time needs to be used cautiously in light of the revisionist history offered by Constance Hoffman Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). 336 RHETORICA method of shamelessly questioning authorities and pointing out existing contradictions among them, a method perhaps exemplified by his Sic et non, to which William also makes reference.37 “Truly that man,” William wrote of Abelard, “loves to question everything, wants to dispute everything, divine as well as secular.”38 Not to be ignored is William’s own strategy to controvert Abelard. In composing his Disputatio William adopts the very method of argument and counter-argument, thus giving Abelard, mutatis mutandis, a taste of his own medicine. Offending passages from Abelard’s writings are quoted and followed by opposing passages from Scripture and church authorities. This, of course, is precisely the method used by Abelard in his Sic et non, and, judging from Abelard’s surviving Sententiae, it seems reasonable to assume that this was also the pedagogical method recorded in his Liber sententiarum.39 This is no novel observation, but it must be integrated within the wider culture of debate that develops in the twelfth century. It is a method typical of the day and it was widely practiced among the glossators (or commentators) of Roman law. In addition to Gratian (c. 1140), who applied hermeneutic principles in the task of reconciling the contradictions in his Decretum (or Concordia discordantium canonum), the canonist Ivo of Chartres also addressed the problem of contradictions in the prologue to his own Decretum (c. 1090’s).40 If William thought it clever to use Abelard’s disputational method against him, he was not alone. Thomas of Morigny, also a former friend of Abelard, lists fourteen heresies supposedly perpetrated by Abelard in his own Capitula haeresum XIV, which includes quotations from the same works cited by William of St. Thierry.41 Like William, 37 William mentions the Sic et non in one of his letters to Bernard. See Clanchy, Abelard, cited in n. 1 above, 100–01. 38 Disputatio adversus Petrum Abaelardum, Patrologia Latina 180, cols. 249–250: “Ipse vero de omnibus amat putare, qui de omnibus vult disputare, de divinis aeque ac de saecularibus.” 39 Some of Abelard’s Sentences do survive. See Constant J. Mews, “The Sententie of Peter Abelard,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 53 (1986): 159–84. 40 On the connection between Gratian and Abelard, see David Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), chap. 9. The dating of Gratian’s Decretum and knowledge of Roman Law in Bologna has been heavily revised following the conclusions of Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), who distinguishes between Gratian I (c. 1140) and Gratian II (c. 1150–55). 41 The authorship of this work has been contested. The attribution to Thomas of Morigny is made by Constant Mews, “The Lists of Heresies Imputed to Peter Abelard,” Revue bénédictine 95 (1985): 73–110. Peter Abelard and Disputation 337 Thomas also eschews the straight format of the treatise and proceeds by supplying counter-arguments to the statements of Abelard. Whether Bernard commissioned the work from Thomas after having received William’s Disputatio and copies of Abelard’s books or whether Thomas wrote his list independently remains uncertain. What is known is that Bernard drew heavily from both these works in drafting his own letter to the papal curia condemning Abelard. Yet another work attacking Abelard, probably also by Thomas of Morigny, can be included among the polemical tracts that use the title and procedures of scholastic disputation. Written within a year after the trial of Sens (1141), this Disputatio catholicorum patrum adversus dogmata Petri Abaelardi took aim at Abelard’s own post-council Apologia and the third version of his theological treatise, the Theologia scholarium.42 Here Thomas, if he was indeed the author, was less interested in reviewing Abelard’s doctrinal and methodological errors. He sought instead to show through argument and counter argument that Abelard’s Apologia was an unconvincing attempt to demonstrate his orthodoxy and that (most damningly of all) he had treated the attributes of God not catholically but philosophically (non tam catholice quam philosophice). Here again, like William of St Thierry before him, Thomas of Morigny is employing the same strategy of quoting Abelard’s sources against him, the same literary formula of composing a “disputatio,” and the same essential commitment to integrating the tools of rhetoric and dialectic. These anti-Abelardian disputations are decidedly not original in their conception or execution; they are noteworthy precisely because they represent the pervasive use of scholastic disputatio even among those who seek to limit its use. As such they remind us that it is the improper application of disputation that is being objected to rather than the employment of dialectical reasoning itself. Bernard of Clairvaux was the central figure in the literary and ecclesiastical campaign against Abelard, particularly during the second half of Abelard’s career. Although Bernard had known of Abelard for some time, his correspondence and subsequent meetings with William of St. Thierry seem to mark the turning point in his efforts 42 The Disputatio is printed in Patrologia Latina 180, cols. 283–328, but misattributed to William of St. Thierry, whose own Disputatio adversum Petrum Abaelardum it follows. It has more recently been edited by Nicholas M. Haring, “Thomas von Morigny. Disputatio catholicorum partum dogmata Petri Abaelardi,” Studi Medievali 3rd ser. 22 (1981): 299–376. It is also discussed by Mews, “The Council of Sens (1141),” 367–368 and passim. 338 RHETORICA to silence Abelard.43 What is more, the ensuing controversy which led to Abelard’s condemnation at Sens in 1141 had apparently as much to do with Abelard’s overall approach to knowledge of faith, an approach that placed logic and disputation at its center, as with the doctrinal mistakes Abelard was accused of committing and his apparent diminution of divine power.44 Bernard’s first step was to alert the archbishop of Sens and the bishop of Paris in the hope that an order would be issued preventing Abelard from teaching. Neither official, however, was willing to intervene in the matter. Bernard then wrote a long and now famous letter-treatise (Ep. 189) to the papal curia detailing Abelard’s errors, but this proved scarcely more effective since Abelard’s supporters, Bernard soon found out, included members of the papal curia itself.45 True to form, and in a nearly exact repetition of the earlier incident at Soissons in 1121, it was Abelard who escalated the affair by writing to Rome in the hope of setting up a public disputation, in Abelard’s mind the ideal opportunity for the two adversaries to confront one another and one in which Abelard must surely, and no doubt correctly, have seen himself as the clear favorite.46 There were good reasons for Abelard to play to the masses. The students he had won over in the intervening years (and they were many) would surely have produced for him a solid base of support. The desire for the encounter to be a public event is repeated in a letter addressed “to his most beloved comrades” that Abelard circulated in the run-up to Sens and in which he requests 43 John Marenbon, Philosophy of Peter Abelard, 27, believes it “most probable that there had been covert dislike, if not open hostility, for some years.” For the opposite view, less likely but not to be ruled out, see Edward F. Little, “Relations between St Bernard and Abelard before 1139,” in M. Pennington, ed., St. Bernard of Clairvaux (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 155–168. See also, Godman, Silent Masters, passim. 44 The most detailed case for a dating of 1141 (and not 1140 or 1139) for this council is made by Mews, “The Council of Sens (1141).” 45 A remarkable instance of this is in 1144 when Pope Celestine II left his copies of Abelard’s Theologia and Sic et Non to his church of Città di Castello. Celestine’s predecessor, Innocent II, had in the wake of the Council of Sens (1141) ordered Abelard’s “erroneous book” burned wherever they were found and Celestine was previously a senior cardinal in Rome. See Luscombe, School of Peter Abelard, 22 n. 1. 46 Here I disagree slightly with Mews, “The Council of Sens (1141),” who says, “Bernard was a powerful speaker who could easily outclass Abelard in public oratory” (371). Bernard was indeed an accomplished orator to the masses, but Abelard was the sharper debater and debate is what he was hoping for. See also Wim Verbaal, “Sens: une victoire d’écrivain. Les deux visages du process d’Abelard,” in Jean Jolivet and Henri Habrias eds., Pierre Abélard: Colloque International de Nantes (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003), 77–89, at 88. Peter Abelard and Disputation 339 their presence at the eventual encounter.47 It is hard to know from this letter alone what exactly Abelard expected from this occasion, for his earlier attempt to produce a similar encounter failed. Nevertheless, the desire for his students and friends to be present suggests some level of active participation from the crowd and the public nature of this would-be debate anticipates the performance elements of the quodlibetical debates that are indeed the outgrowth of this scholastic environment.48 Indeed, it was a chief complaint of the bishops of France in their letter to Pope Innocent II that “throughout France, in cities, villages and castles, the doctrine of the Trinity is being debated not only by scholars and within the schools, but casually (triviatim), by everyone.”49 Bernard declined to go up against Abelard in such a setting, positioning sacred truth as the antithesis of bellicose, public argumentation. “I refused,” Bernard explains in another letter to Pope Innocent, “because I am but a child in this sort of warfare and he is a man habituated to it from his youth, and because I believed it an unworthy deed to bring faith into the arena of controversy, resting as it does on sure and immutable truth.”50 Bernard knew, or knew well of, Abelard’s debating abilities, and he was ready to admit that he was not up to the task of disputing with the leading master in Paris, who was also several years his senior. Bernard was also making explicit for the first time his position that disputation represents an inappropriate method of instruction in the study of Christian doctrine. On this point there is no reason to believe that Bernard’s discom- 47 This is counted as “Letter Fifteen” among his correspondence, preserved in a single manuscript, Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Codex Heidelbergensis 71, fols. 14v-15v and edited twice, most recently by Raymond Klibansky, “Peter Abailard and Bernard of Clairvaux. A Letter by Abailard,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1961): 1–27, at 6–7. It has recently been translated by Ziolkowski, Letters of Peter Abelard, cited in n. 1 above, 108–110. 48 On the performative nature of scholastic university disputations, particularly the quodlibetical disputations, see Jody Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 89–96; and Enders, “The Theater of Scholastic Erudition,” Comparative Drama (1992): 341–63. The performance of university and especially extra-university disputations is closely analyzed in my recent book: Alex J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 49 Patrologia Latina 182, col. 540: “Itaque, cum per totam fere Gallium in civitatibus, vicis, et castellis, a scholaribus, non solum intra scholas, sed etiam triviatim. nec a litteratis aut provectis tantum, sed a pueris et simplicibus, aut certe stultis, de sancta Trinitate, quae Deus est, disputaretur. . .” 50 Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. Jean Leclercq and Henri-Marie Rochais (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1977), vol. VIII, Epistola 189, 14. 340 RHETORICA fort began with the controversy over Abelard, or ended with the latter’s condemnation at Sens. Jacques de Vitry (c. 1160–1240) in one of his sermons to scholars tells a story about Bernard’s shock upon hearing his first scholastic disputation in Paris.51 This shock need not necessarily suggest the radical dichotomy between scholastic and monastic circles that is often used to differentiate the two men and their circles. Suspicious intrigue might be more exact, for in one of his early treatises, De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae (Steps of Humility and Pride) (c. 1125), Bernard had actually attempted to proceed using the fashionable disputation of scholastic reasoning, and the result was hardly successful. Bernard did not pause to verify the quotation on which he based his argument. “I tried to prove the whole sequence of disputation from the basis of a false quotation,” he later explained, surely with some embarrassment.52 Realizing his error, Bernard wrote a Retractatio that was to be placed in front of the work in all future copies. This failed attempt to construct an argument along scholastic lines may well have been in the back of Bernard’s mind when he preempted the debate by delivering his objections to the bishops the night before, in addition to his resistance to debating matters of faith on principle. The encounter therefore never took place and at Sens in May of 1141 Abelard was condemned to silence all the same.53 Abelard’s career was punctuated with successful and unconsummated attempts at public disputation, but did Abelard himself have a coherent stance on the purpose of disputing beyond playing to his agonistic strengths? In the prefaces to the Sic et non and the Collationes Abelard clearly indicates that there is great value in questioning and debating because it allows us to perceive a greater truth. But whose truth? The Sic et non famously leaves the contradictions unresolved and, because Abelard never renders the verdict he promises in the preface, the Collationes has also been characterized as unfinished or unresolved.54 The clearest expression of Abelard’s opinions on the 51 Cited in Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The Schools of Paris and their Critics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), 49 n. 6. 52 The Steps of Humility, ed. and trans. George Bosworth Burch (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940), 118. See also G. R. Evans, The Mind of Bernard of Clairvaux (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 86–97, where she discusses this passage. 53 For an analysis of Bernard’s nineteen charges against Abelard and the council itself, see E. T. Little, “Bernard and Abelard at the Council of Sens,” in Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Presented to Dom Jean Leclerq (Washington, DC: Cistercian Publications, 1973), 55–71. 54 Cf. Collationes, ed. Marnebon and Orlandi, lxxxvi; Constant J. Mews, “Peter Abelard and the Enigma of Dialogue,” in John C. Laursen and Cary J. Nederman, eds., Peter Abelard and Disputation 341 value of open debate can be found not in his attempts to secure a one-on-one encounter with Bernard or his lengthy treatise on dialectic (Dialectica), but in one of the most polemical treatises that emanated from his characteristically poisonous quill.55 Coyly addressed “to an ignoramus in Dialectic”—little imagination is required to guess at the unidentified recipient(s)—the letter (Ep. 13) offers a passionate defense of logical disputation and a blistering attack against such a person who could be so ignorant as to misunderstand its true aims. Dated by most scholars to between 1130 and 1132, the broadside would seem to anticipate his reentry into academic life in Paris (c. 1132) after a hiatus of over ten years.56 For perhaps just that reason, it offers the single most penetrating glimpse into Abelard’s distinct theory of disputation. “Certain teachers of our own time, since they cannot attain the capacity of dialectical reasoning, curse it in such a way that they reckon all its teachings to be sophisms and deceptions rather than consider them to be forms of reason.”57 The accusation Abelard alludes to is familiar, encountered in the writings of numerous contemporaries. Abelard aims to show not only that the art of dialectic is not contrary to sacred Scripture, but also that it is in fact explicitly endorsed by the Church Fathers. First among his auctoritates is Augustine, and he quotes from both De ordine (2.13) and De doctrina Christiana (2.31) on the utility of disputation and particularly its ability to delve into and resolve the various questions that arise from the study of Scripture.58 The distinction between dialectic and sophistry, Abelard maintains, is that the former consists of the truth of reasoning while the latter consists of the appearance of such truth. Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenmnet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 45. 55 Ontology and philosophical semantics occupy the bulk of Abelard’s Dialectica. For an overview of this aspect of Abelard’s logic, see Christopher J. Martin, “Logic,” in The Cambridge Companion to Abelard, cited in n. 1 above, 159–199. 56 Edmé Smits dates the letter to around 1130 while Jean Jolivet dates it to around 1132 (Jolivet, Arts du langage, 269–72). The lack of an explicit recipient and the fact that no copy survives from before its 1616 editio princeps makes it very difficult to date with any certainty, but the authenticity of the letter itself has not been challenged. 57 The Latin text cited here is from Peter Abelard. Letters IX-XIV, ed. Smits, 271: “Sic et quidam huius temporis doctores cum dialecticarum rationum virtutem attingere non possint, ita eam execrantur ut cuncta eius dogmata putent sophismata et deceptiones potius quam rationes arbitrentur.” For a more recent edition of the letter, see Jean Jolivet, Abélard, ou la philosophie dans le langage. Présentation, choix de textes, bibliographie (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires, 1994), 150–56. Translation here is after Ziolkowski, Letters of Peter Abelard, 179–87, here at 179. 58 These are favorite citations of Abelard, and he uses them in the three versions of his Theologia as well as in his Collationes. 342 RHETORICA Second among his auctoritates is “the very prince of the Peripatetics,” Aristotle himself. Abelard invokes the Sophistical Refutations as a treatise on the art of dialectic, but he is unable to cite from the text itself, most probably because the text was not yet available to him in its entirety and his knowledge of its content was still secondhand.59 Further citations from Augustine and Jerome center upon the necessity to combat falsehoods and heresy, for “the doctors of the Church themselves also remind us to train in disputations (in disputationibus exercere) against this plague.”60 Maintaining that a training in dialectic offers much more than mere academic exercise for sharpening the mind, and that it possesses true value for the diligent faithful, Abelard draws a remarkable conclusion: For we are not equipped to rebut the attacks of heretics or of any infidels whatsoever, unless we are able to unravel their disputations and to rebut their sophisms with true reasoning...when we have refuted those sophists in this disputation, we will display ourselves as dialecticians, and we will be truer disciples of Christ.61 Again resorting to offense as his best defense, Abelard essentially reverses the accusations that disputation and sophistry are useless deceptions indistinguishable from one another by maintaining the unique value of disputation for achieving nothing less than true Christian knowledge. This statement pushes significantly further his general claims about the superiority of dialectic made in the prologue to the fourth tract of his Dialectica, where he had asserted that, “Dialectic, to which all judgment of truth and falsehood is 59 The study and translation of Aristotelian texts in the twelfth century is best surveyed by Bernard G. Dod, “Aristoteles latinus,” in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 45–79, although a number of points relating to knowledge of Aristotle’s Old Logic have been modified since. Among those modifications, see especially John Marenbon, “Medieval Latin Commentaries and Glosses on Aristotelian Logical Texts, Before c. 1150 A.D.,” in C. Burnett, ed., Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts: The Syriac, Arabic and Medieval Latin Traditions (London: Warburg Institute, 1993), 77–127, published with “Supplement to the Working Catalogue and Supplementary Bibliography,” in his Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West (Ashgate: Variorum, 2000), 128–140. 60 Letters IX-XIV, ed. Smits, 274; Ziolkowski, Letters of Peter Abelard, 183. 61 Letters IX-XIV, ed. Smits, 274: “Non enim haereticorum uel quorumlibit infidelium infestationes refellere sufficimus, nisi disputationes eorum dissoluere possimus et eorum sophismata ueris refellere rationibus. . .”; Ziolkowski, Letters of Peter Abelard, 183. Peter Abelard and Disputation 343 subject, holds the leadership of all philosophy and the governance of all teaching.”62 Moreover, Abelard appears to be advancing an idea not heard since late antiquity, namely that disputation has a value in promoting orthodox belief against heretics and infidels. “To come to the point,” Abelard says with more than a hint of aggravation, “who would not know the art of disputation (artem disputandi), by which term it is established that dialecticians as well as sophists are known without distinction.”63 Both the utility and the definable scope of disputation are to Abelard self-evident and, no less importantly, disputation is an art (he uses the words ars and scientia interchangeably). Several things are striking in Abelard’s tendentious yet shrewdly constructed letter to an ignoramus in dialectic. While he articulates the merits of dialectic in his longer opus Dialectica, and quotes Augustine on the value of disputation in his theological works, the apologetic and indeed argumentative tenor of the letter reminds us that it is method as much as content that he so wishes to defend. In referencing but not quoting from Aristotle’s New Logic when searching for authorities to rely upon, Abelard shows himself to be on the cusp of a new chapter in the intellectual and cultural history of disputation, for the texts that are not yet available to him will in fact be widely used by the following generation of schoolmen (like John of Salisbury and Peter the Chanter) for whom disputation will need less defending but more defining. The missionary purpose that he cites in the letter for mastering disputation may serve him rhetorically in his epistolary counteroffensive, but it also anticipates the Dominican use of disputation in the thirteenth century when mendicant preachers went from town to town disputing openly with heretics and made disputation a formal component of their training exercises.64 The connection between this emerging art of disputation and the more famous rhetorical arts should not be missed. The 62 Dialectica, ed. L. M. De Rijk, 470: “Haec autem est dialectica, cui quidem omnis veritatis seu falsitatis discretio ita subiecta est, ut omnis philosophiae principatum dux universae doctrinae atque regimen possideat.” For further discussion, see Constant J. Mews, “Peter Abelard on Dialectic, Rhetoric, and the Principles of Argument,” in Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thompson, eds., Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100–1540: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 37–53, at 43. 63 Letters IX-XIV, ed. Smits, 274. Ziolkowski, Letters of Peter Abelard, 184. 64 On the role of disputation in Dominican education, see M. Michèle Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study”: Dominican Education Before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998), 167–75. For a lively account of Dominican preaching activities in the south of France, see Christine Caldwell Ames, Righteous 344 RHETORICA ars praedicandi that was later fueled by new translations of Aristotle’s New Logic, exploited by mendicant preachers, and eventually systematized by university masters and perceptive manuals in the thirteenth century builds directly upon a preexisting scholastic environment of discourse that Abelard not only employed, but fashioned into a coherent intellectual program.65 If Abelard is primarily concerned with defending the merits of disputation on theological grounds with recourse to patristic authorities, he is also attuned to its distinct relevance on another topic of great currency in the early twelfth century: the Jewish question.66 While often overlooked by scholars interested in Abelard’s ideas about the Jews, the final paragraphs of his letter clearly orient disputation in the direction of the Jewish-Christian controversy: To come to the point, who could not know that even the Lord Jesus Christ himself refuted the Jews in repeated disputations (crebris disputationibus) and crushed their slanders in writing as well as in reasoning (tam scripto quam ratione), that he increased the faith very much not only by the power of miracles but also by the strength of words? . . .Since, however, miraculous signs have now run short, one means of combat remains to Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 65 For an overview of the ars praedicandi and the medieval rhetorical arts, see James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from St. Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 269–355. For the rhetorical and performative dimensions of scholastic disputation, see Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation, cited in n. 48 above, with a focus on the university environment in chap. 5. 66 Abelard’s ideas about Jews and Judaism have the subject of scholarly interest for some time. Important investigations include Hans Liebeschütz, “The significance of Judaism in Abelard’s Dialogus,” Journal of Jewish Studies 12 (1961): 1–18; Aryeh Graboı̈s, “Un chapitre de tolérance intellectuelle dans la societé occidentale au XIIe siècle: le ‘Dialogus’ de Pierre Abélard et le ‘Kuzari’ d’Yehuda Halevi,” in René Louis and Jean Jolivet, eds., Pierre Abélard—Pierre le Vénérable, Les courants philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en Occident au milieu du XIIe siècle (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1975), 641–52; Anna Sapir Abulafia, “Intentio Recta an Erronea? Peter Abelard’s views on Judaism and the Jews,” in Bat-Sheva Albert, Yvonne Friedman, and Simon Schwarzfuchs, eds., Medieval Studies in Honor of Avrom Saltman (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1995), 13–30; Peter von Moos, “Les Collationes d’Abélard et la ‘question juive’ au XIIe siècle,” Journal des Savants (1999): 449–89; Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 275–89; and Constant Mews, “Abelard and Heloise on Jews and Hebraica Veritas,” in Michael Frassetto, ed., Christian Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Casebook (London: Routledge, 2007), 83–108. Peter Abelard and Disputation 345 us against any people who contradict us: that we may overcome with words, because we cannot do so through deeds. . .67 It may be more than coincidence that the date of this letter (c. 1131) is roughly contemporary with his Collationes (now placed between 1127 and 1132).68 Both give careful consideration to the Jewish-Christian debate and both underscore the fact that in the twelfth century it was precisely that: a debate between two parties, not merely an abstract theological issue. It is worth emphasizing that numerous Jewish-Christian dialogues exist from the twelfth century, many under the rubric of a disputatio.69 The reasons for this are plain: what population could be more directly implicated by the dialogical and disputational format of logical argumentation than the very neighboring communities who likewise profess adherence to God’s law, are themselves the living letters of that law (to use Augustine’s words), and yet refuse to accept the very premise of Christian doctrine?70 Since Jesus himself disputed with Jews and miraculous signs now are few, Abelard concludes, it is fully consistent that this same classroom exercise that probes for deeper truth be applied to the Jews.71 The wholesale merits of disputation for Abelard, therefore, are three: it promotes a greater understanding of Scripture and of the 67 Letters IX–XIV, ed. Smits, 276: “ Quis denique ipsum etiam Dominum Iesum Christum crebris disputationibus Iudaeos ignoret conuicisse et tam scripto quam ratione calumnias eorum repressisse, non solum potentia miraculorum, verum virtute verborum fidem plurimum astruxisse?... Cum autem miraculorum iam signa defecerint, una nobis contra quoslibet contradicentes supersit pugna, ut quod factis non possumus, verbis conuincamus, praesertim cum apud discretos vim maiorem rationes quam miracula teneant, quae utrum illusio diabolica faciat, ambigi facile potest.” Translation after Ziolkowski, Letters of Peter Abelard, 186. 68 On the date of the Collationes, see the introduction by Marenbon and Orlandi: Peter Abelard: Collationes, xxvii-xxxii. 69 For a good summary of the genre with generous citations from the sources themselves, see Gilbert Dahan, The Christian Polemic Against the Jews in the Middle Ages, trans. Jody Gladding (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), esp. 53–69. 70 Cf. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, who discusses this Augustinian precept at length in chap. 1. 71 Gerald of Wales in his Journey Through Wales tells a story of Peter Abelard disputing with a Jew in the presence of King Philip I of France, asking the Jew to explain why it appears that lightning never seems to land on synagogues. Apocryphal or not, and the setting does seems suspicious, it is interesting to note that Gerald’s only mention of Abelard is disputing against Jews. Itinerarium Kambriae, ed. J. F. Dimock (London, 1868), vol. 6, 95–96; Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales, trans. Lewis Thorpe (New York: Penguin, 1978), 153. 346 RHETORICA Christian faith as warranted by the Fathers; it equips one for rebuttals against heretics and infidels; and, because miraculous signs can no longer be counted upon, it serves as an essential weapon in debating with contemporary Jews, the Christian dialogical “other” par excellence. This final point can be further refined in light of the Collationes, which echoes the spirit of the letter. The letter to an ignoramus in dialectic provides a theoretical basis for disputing with Jews that the Collationes as a literary fiction evocatively upholds. The virtue of disputation above and beyond the presentation of authorities is explicitly made by the Christian in his collatio with the Philosopher, and with language that anticipates the university curriculum: “Debate, both about texts and about views, makes itself a part of every discipline, and in every clash of disputation (in quolibet disputationis conflictu) truth established by reasoning is more solid than the display of authority.”72 The idea that disputation will serve different ends depending on their contexts is underscored in the second dialogue of the Collationes, where the Christian says to the Philosopher that they must conduct their dispute differently from the way he and his fellow Christian colleagues would dispute together.73 If the tenor of the conversation with the Jew is polite and compassionate at points, this does not prevent the Jew from being wrong and ultimately out-performed in debate. The Christian and the Philosopher of the Collationes both agree that there is nothing to be gained by squabbling in a childish and uncivil shouting match. “From time to time, it is permissible to grant what is false for the sake of going on with the arguments.”74 Throughout the opus, Abelard returns to the form and function of disputation, matching theory with practice in the literary form of a dialogue. Several related conclusions emerge from a reexamination of Abelard’s involvement with disputation. First, he consistently projected disputation onto his intellectual battles. By this we do not simply mean that he belligerently fought to assert his interpretations over others; he memorializes his clashes with his former teachers in the context of classroom debates and he twice strove to set up public disputations with Bernard of Clairvaux, positioning his sic to Bernard’s non. Second, Abelard’s originality in regards to medieval disputatio and the scholastic method needs to be restated. He was neither the originator of scholastic disputations nor a promoter of 72 Collationes, ed. Marenbon and Orlandi, 96–97. Collationes, ed. Marenbon and Orlandi, 98–99. 74 Collationes, ed. Marenbon and Orlandi, 114–15. 73 Peter Abelard and Disputation 347 modern skepticism. To the contrary, Abelard thrived and failed in an age of widespread disputes, was himself the target of at least two literary disputationes, and had a firm sense that disputation could powerfully effect a Christian’s grasp of the truth and an unbeliever’s grasp of Christianity. As such, Abelard articulates the essence of his agenda in places where we perhaps least expect it: not in the preface to his Sic et non, which relates more properly to the contemporary notion of discordant harmonies, nor in his treatise Dialectica, though it contains glimpses into his classroom, but in his letter to an ignoramus in dialectic and in his Collationes, which offer theoretical and practical applications of the techniques for disputation respectively. To be sure, the Collationes is ultimately concerned with ethical matters (notably how to achieve the highest good), but this is only arrived at following a shrewd orchestration of the “art” or “discipline” of disputation in which all sides can be heard and evaluated. The absence of a final conclusion may arise from the fact that it was intended to be completed at a later date, as its recent editors suggest, but it may equally have been intended that way so as to emphasize the principle that arguments (rather than conclusions) promote true knowledge. Finally, Abelard’s engagement with non-believers can be further refined. Abelard clearly views disputation as a valuable weapon when confronting infidels, heretics, and Jews for it can serve polemically and persuasively in unraveling religious falsehood. This is fully consistent with his chief authority for promoting its virtues, Augustine, who famously triumphed in both his anti-heretical disputations and in his authorship of spiritual dialogues. Abelard seems to have seen himself as a new Augustine: master rhetorician and dialectician, unrivaled disputant in the academic arena, dutiful expositor of Christian theology, and champion of a philosophical Christianity in the face of heretics, unconverted Jews, and unlettered ignoramuses.