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Peter Abelard, Heloise and Jewish Biblical Exegesis in the Twelfth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2010

CONSTANT J. MEWS  and
MICHA J. PERRY
CONSTANT J. MEWS
Affiliation:
School of Historical Studies, Monash University, Bldg 11, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia; e-mail: [email protected]
MICHA J. PERRY
Affiliation:
The Program for Judaic Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Ct, USA: e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper revisits the question of the influence of Jewish biblical exegesis on Christian scholars in twelfth-century France, by focusing in particular on Abelard's response to a question of Heloise in her Problemata about questions raised by 1 Samuel ii.35–6 (=1 Regum ii.35–6) concerning ‘the faithful priest’ prophesied as Eli's successor, the meaning of ‘will walk before my anointed’ and the nature of the offering his household should make. Abelard's discussion of the views of an unnamed Jewish scholar illustrates a consistent movement evident in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries for certain Christian exegetes to approach Jewish scholars to resolve problems posed by the text of the Old Testament. While the passage in 1 Samuel was traditionally interpreted in a Christocentric fashion, Heloise implicitly supports a more historical reading of the text in the question she puts to Abelard. The Jewish scholar's interpretation reported by Abelard is very close to that of Rashi's twelfth-century disciples.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 3 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Growing Christian anxiety about Jews in the twelfth century has been well documented by various scholars, including Anna Sapir Abulafia in Christians and Jews in the twelfth-century renaissance, London 1995, and her papers collected in Christians and Jews in dispute: disputational literature and the rise of anti-Judaism in the West (c. 1000–1150), Aldershot 1998. See also the introduction by John Van Engen to Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen (eds), Jews and Christians in twelfth-century Europe, Notre Dame 2001, 1–8.

2 Pseudo-Jerome, Quaestiones on the book of Samuel, ed. Avrom Saltman, Leiden 1975, 4–13: on its use by Raban Maur, the compiler of the Glossa ordinaria on Kings, Andrew of St Victor and other authors see pp. 23–58, and Frans van Liere's introduction to his edition of Andrew of St Victor's Expositio hystorica in librum Regum, CCCM liiiA, Turnhout 1996, pp. xix–xxviii. Its influence is not mentioned in Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon (eds), Le Moyen Âge et la bible, Paris 1984.

3 The main works on Christian acquaintance with Jewish exegesis in the Middle Ages include Herman Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian scholars, Pittsburgh 1963; Beryl Smalley, The study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Notre Dame 1970; Grabois, Aryeh, ‘The Hebraica veritas and Jewish-Christian relations in the twelfth century’, Speculum i (1975), 613–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elazar Touitou, ‘Rashbam's exegetical method against the background of his times’, Festschrift E. Z. Melamed, Ramat Gan 1982, 48–74; Sarah Kamin, Jews and Christians interpret the Bible, Jerusalem 1991 (partly in Hebrew); Gilbert Dahan, Les Intellectuels chrétiens et les juifs au moyen âge, Paris 1990, 229–307, and ‘La Place de Rachi dans l'histoire de l'exégèse biblique et son utilisation dans l'exégèse chrétienne du moyen âge’, and Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, ‘Rachi en latin: les gloses latines dans un manuscrit du commentaire de Rachi et les études hébraïques parmi des chrétiens dans l'Angleterre médiévale’, in René-Samuel Sirat (ed.), Héritages de Rachi, Paris–Tel Aviv 2006, 95–115, 137–50; Rebecca Moore, Jews and Christians in the life and thought of Hugh of St. Victor, Atlanta 1998; and Deborah L. Goodwin, ‘Take hold of the robe of a Jew’: Herbert of Bosham's Christian hebraism, Leiden 2006.

4 Peter Abelard, Collationes, ed. and trans. J. Marenbon and G. Orlandi, Oxford 2001. In his introduction Marenbon (pp. xxvii–xxxii) reviews the arguments for its date, opting for between 1127 and 1132 as the most likely. See also Constant J. Mews, ‘Peter Abelard and the enigma of Dialogue’, in John Christian Laursen and Cary Nederman (eds), Beyond the persecuting society: religious toleration before the enlightenment, Philadelphia 1998, 25–52, and ‘Abelard and Heloise on Jews and hebraica veritas’, in Michael Frassetto (ed.), Christian attitudes toward the Jews in the Middle Ages, London 2007, 83–108.

5 von Moos, Peter, ‘Les Collationes d‘Abélard et la “question juive” au xiie siècle’, Journal des savants (1999), 449–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Earlier studies include Liebeschutz, Hans, ‘The significance of Judaism in Peter Abaelard's Dialogue’, Journal of Jewish Studies xii (1961), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lemoine, Michel, ‘Abélard et les juifs’, Revue des études juives cliii (1994), 253–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Thomas F. Glick, ‘“My master, the Jew”: observations on interfaith scholarly interaction in the Middle Ages’, in Harvey J. Hames (ed.), Jews, Muslims and Christians in and around the crown of Aragon: essays in honour of Professor Elena Lourie, Leiden 2004, 157–82.

7 Israel Ta-Shema suggested an inner Jewish Byzantine origin for this method in the Jewish world: ‘Byzantine biblical exegesis from the turn of the 10th–11th centuries’, in his Studies in medieval rabbinic literature, III: Italy & Byzantium, Jerusalem 2006, 247–8 (in Hebrew). On possible linguistic Greek roots to Rashi's work see Menahem Banitt, Rashi: interpreter of the biblical letter, Tel Aviv 1985, 79–130. Avraham Grossman suggests a Judeo-Arab influence: ‘The school of literal exegesis in northern France’, in Saebo Magne (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: the history of its interpretation, I: From the beginnings to the Middle Ages (until 1300), Göttingen 2000, 326–31.

8 Hailperin, Rashi, 107–9; Smalley, Study of the Bible, 102–5; Moore, Jews and Christians in the life and thought of Hugh of St Victor, 81–9. See also Hugh, Adnotationes elucidatoriae in Pentateuchon, PL clxxv.72A, 78B, 80D.

9 ‘Sicubi tibi in translatione videor errare, interroga Hebraeos, utrum scilicet nostra, an illorum translatio verior sit … cum e contrario veriora sint Graeca quam Latina, et Hebraea quam Graeca’: Hugh, Adnotationes elucidatoriae, PL clxxv.32AB. The critical edition of Jerome's Prologus in Pentateucho reads ‘emendatiora’ rather than ‘veriora’: Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed. B. Fischer, J. Gribomont, H. F. D. Sparks, W. Thiele and R. Weber, Stuttgart 1975, 3–4.

10 Dahan, ‘La Place de Rachi’, 99.

11 ‘Unde nos multum de discordia nostrorum librorum, quos ab uno interprete suscepimus, admirantes, Judaeos quosdam in sua scriptura peritos adivimus, ac diligentissime lingua romana inquisivimus de omnibus illis scripturarum locis, in quibus illae partes et versus, quos in praedicto nostro exemplari inveniebamus, et jam in hoc opere nostro inserebamus, quosque in aliis multis historiis latinis non inveniebamus. Qui suos libros plures coram nobis revolventes, et in locis illis ubi eos rogabamus, hebraicam, sive chaldaicam scripturam romanis verbis nobis exponentes, partes vel versus, pro quibus turbabamur, minime repererunt. Quapropter hebraicae atque chaldaicae veritati, et multis libris latinis, qui illa non habebant, sed per omnia duabus illis linguis concordabant, credentes, omnia illa superflua prorsus abrasimus, veluti in multis hujus libri locis apparet, et praecipue in libris Regum, ubi major pars erroris inveniebatur’: Stephen Harding, Censura de aliquot locis Bibliorum, PL clxiii.1373D–1376A (Dijon, Bibl. mun. 13, fo. 150v). See also Light, Laura, ‘Versions et revisions du texte biblique’, in Riché and Lobrichon, Le Moyen Âge et la bible, 73–4Google Scholar.

12 Weber, Robert, ‘Deux Préfaces au psautier dues à Nicolas Maniacoria’, Revue bénédictine lxiii (1953), 3–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goodwin, ‘Take hold of the robe of a Jew’, 144.

13 Ysagoge in theologiam, ed. Arthur Landgraf, Écrits théologiques de l'école d'Abélard, Louvain 1934, 61–289, esp. pp. 126–8. The rubric of the letter of dedication, ‘magistro scolarium patri cenobitarum G[ilberto] Folioth suus Odo’, implies that it must have been sent from Gallia to England between 1139 and 1148, when Gilbert Foliot moved back from France to become abbot at St Peter's Gloucester. Luscombe, See David E., ‘The authorship of the Ysagoge in theologiam’, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge xxxv (1968), 7–16Google Scholar, and Evans, Michael, ‘The Ysagoge in theologiam and the commentaries attributed to Bernard Silvestris’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes liv (1991), 1–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the twelfth-century renaissance, 94–6.

15 Van Liere, ‘Introduction’, CCCM, 53A, pp. xxix-xxxvii. See Reiner Berndt, André de Saint-Victor (d. 1175): exégète et théologien, Turnhout 1991, 82-8, and the useful annotated chronology relating to St Victor supplied by Dale M. Coulter, Per visibilia ad invisibilia: theological method in Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173), Turnhout 2006, 243–4.

16 Judith Oszowy-Schlanger, ‘The knowledge and practice of Hebrew grammar among Christian scholars in pre-expulsion England: the evidence of “bilingual” Hebrew-Latin manuscripts’, in Nicholas de Lange (ed.), Hebrew scholarship and the medieval world, Cambridge 2001, 107–28.

17 Avraham (Rami) Reiner, ‘Rabbénu Tam et le comte Henri de Champagne: deux hommes marchent-ils ensemble sans s’être entendus d'avance?', in Sirat, Héritages de Rachi, 27–39.

18 Goodwin, ‘Take hold of the robe of a Jew’, 29–30.

19 Loewe, Robert, ‘The medieval Christian hebraists of England: Herbert of Bosham and earlier scholars’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England xvii (1953), 225–49Google Scholar, and ‘Herbert of Bosham‘s commentary on Jerome's Hebrew Psalter’, Biblica xxxiv (1953), 44–77Google Scholar; Goodwin, ‘Take hold of the robe of a Jew’, 67–69. Not yet seen are Eva de Visscher, ‘Closer to the Hebrew: Herbert of Bosham's commentary on the Psalms’, in Ineke van ‘t Spijker (ed.), Medieval exegesis: the multiple meaning of Scripture, Leiden 2008, 249–72, and ‘Putting theory into practice: Hugh of Saint Victor's influence on Herbert of Bosham’, in Bibel und Exegese in Sankt Viktor zu Paris: Form und Funktion eines Grundtextes im europaeischen Rahmen, ed. Rainer Berndt, Frankfurt 2009.

20 Olszowy-Schlanger, ‘Rachi en latin’, 138 and passim.

21 Letter 9 in Peter Abelard: letters IX-XIV, ed. Edmé Smits, Groningen 1983, 231; trans. Vera Morton, in Guidance for women in 12th-century convents, ed. and trans. Vera Morton and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Cambridge 2003, 133; trans. Jan Ziolkowski in Letters of Peter Abelard: beyond the personal, Washington, DC 2008, 25–6.

22 Letter 9 (ed. Smits), 35.

23 ‘Construxit denique cenobium in territorio Trecassino, in prato quodam ubi legere solitus fuerat, in quo sanctimoniales plurimas epistolari auctoritate congregauit, quod Paraclitum nominauit. Quibus sanctimonialibus quondam uxorem suam religiosam feminam et litteris tam tebraicis quam latinis adprime eruditam nomine Heluisam prefecit abbatissam. Que uere ipsius amica magnam ei post mortem in assiduis precibus fidem conseruauit. Qui in loco nunc ambo coram sancto altari honorificentissime sepultis quiescent’: William Godell, Chronicon, cited from Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, ms lat. 4893, fo. 56v, in Constant J. Mews, introduction to Theologia ‘Scholarium’, ed. E.-M. Buytaert and Constant J. Mews, CCCM xiii, Turnhout 1987, 291

24 See the Chronicle of Tours, edited as an appendix by Peter Abelard: Abelard and Heloise in medieval testimonies, Glasgow 1976, 51, repr. in P. Dronke, Intellectuals and poets in medieval Europe, Rome 1992, 247–94, esp. p. 286, and Robert of Auxerre, Chronicon (c. 1203), ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH, SS xxvi (1882), 235.

25 ‘Et quia hoc nomen Debora, ut tua nouit eruditio, lingua Hebraica apem designat, eris etiam in hoc et tu Debora, id est apis’: Peter the Venerable, letter 115, in The letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. G. Constable, Cambridge, Ma 1967, 305.

26 ‘debbora apis siue eloquentia … debbora apis uel loquax’: Jerome, Liber interpretationis hebraicarum nominum, ed. C. Lagarde, CCSL lxxii, Turnhout 1959, 64, 99. See also Jerome, Commentarii in Ezechielem 4, ed. F. Glorie, CCSL lxxv, Turnhout 1965, 178.

27 ‘et insuper litteras hebraicas et graecas peritissimus legendi et scribendi’: Historia Sancti Florentii Salmurensis, ed. P. Marchegay and E. Mabille, in Chroniques des églises d'Anjou, Paris 1869, 296; ‘Nec solummodo christianis, sed et iudeis in eadem urbe commanentibus erat carissimus, pro eo quod hebraicam veritatem a caeteris editionibus secernere erat peritus, et in his quae secundum hebraicam veritatem dicebant, Judeorum erat consentiens assertionibus’: Godescalc, Gesta abbatum Gemblacensis, PL clx. 641BC.

28 Donatella Nebbiai-Guardia, La Bibliothèque de l'abbaye de Saint-Denis en France du IXe au XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1985, 29–35.

29 Problema xxxvi, PL clxxviiii.717B–D.

30 ‘quod autem ait: Coram Christo meo transibit, de ipsa domo utique intellegendum est, non de illo sacerdote, qui est Christus ipse mediator atque saluator’: Augustine, De civitate dei xvii.5, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, CCSL xlviii, Turnhout 1955, 564.

31 Solutio Abaelardi, PL clxxviii. 717D–718B.

32 Augustine, De civitate dei xviii.5, CCSL xlvii.562–4.

33 Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum 1.23, PL xxiii.253.

34 ‘Et offerat nummum argenteum, et tortam panis, quid per nummum argenteum, nisi oris confessio designatur, quae fit credentibus ad salutem?’: Isidore, Mysticorum expositionum sacramentorum seu quaestiones in Vetus Testamentum, 1 Reg. ii. 7, PL lxxxiii.394D

35 ‘Futurum est autem ut quicumque remanserit in domo tua ueniat ut oretur pro eo et offerat nummum argenteum et tortam panis’: Bede, In primam partem Samuhelis libri IV 1.2, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL cxix, Turnhout 1962, 33; ‘Argento quippe eloquia diuina signantur, quia per prophetam dicitur: eloquia domini igne argentum examinatum’: Gregory the Great (?), In librum Regum expositionum libri VI, ed. P. Verbraken, CCSL cxliv, Turnhout 1963, 158–9; ‘Qui ergo a peccati uia, ut pro se oretur, uenit, nummum argenteum offerre debet: quia nihil ei prodest, quod paenitendo conpungitur, nec quod flendo confitetur, si inemendata et incorrecta interius pulchritudine bonae uoluntatis luce dei imaginis nequaquam radiare cognoscitur’ (p. 176); ‘Hunc tortum panem argenteo nummo socians, idem ipse loquitur dicens: quoniam iniquitatem meam ego pronuntio et cogitabo pro peccato meo’ (p. 178).

36 Pseudo-Jerome, Quaestiones on the book of Samuel, 74 (question 18).

37 For the Rashi texts see Mikra‘ot gedolot ‘haKeter‘: a revised and augmented scientific addition of ‘Mikra‘ot gedolot‘, based on the Aleppo codex and early medieval mss, ed. M. Cohen, II: Samuel I & II, Ramat Gan 1993. On the manuscripts see vol. i, Ramat Gan 1992, 84*–85*.

38 For example in Avot de-Rabbi Natan: synoptische Edition beider Versionen, ed. Hans-Jürgen Becker and Christoph Berner, Tübingen 2006, version B, 37.10, p. 372.

39 Pseudo-Jerome, Quaestiones on the book of Samuel, 73 (question 17); on Abelard's acquaintance with this text see Pseudo-Jerome, ibid. 35; on Christian authors who cite this passage see p. 157 (under no. 17).

40 Abelard, Planctus David, ed. Peter Dronke, in Poetic individuality in the Middle Ages: new departures in poetry, 1000-1150, Oxford 1970, 205–6.

41 Hugh of St Victor, Adnotationes elucidatoriae in libros regum, PL clxxv.95D.

42 Pseudo-Jerome, Quaestiones on the book of Samuel, 157 (index under no. 17).

43 ‘Iudei putant tortas non in fugura set in quantitate differe ab illis panibus quos brainellos appellant’: Andrew of St Victor, Expositio hystorico in librum regum 1, ed. van Liere, CCCM liii. 24.

44 For example, Touitou, Elazar, ‘Exégèse et polémique en France médiévale’, Archives Juives xxii/4 (1986), 51–4Google Scholar.

45 “” Mikra‘ot gedolot ‘haKeter‘, ii. 18–19.

46 Jerome, Comm. In Ezechielem 14.2, ed. F. Glorie, CCSL lxxv, Turnhout 1964, 680.

47 ” “ Cited from the rabbinic edition: Mikra‘ot gedolot, Schneidmesser and Herschenhorn, Lublin 1897–9, 1 Samuel, 2: 36. Poznanski has demonstrated that this is not R. Yossef Qara's original exegesis, but that it may be assumed that it is in fact from northern France sometime in the twelfth century: Kommentar zu Ezechiel und den XII Kleinen Propheten von Eliezer aus Beaugency, ed. S. Poznanski, Warsaw 1913, p. xxvi. The only manuscript of R. Yossef Qara chooses the same interpretation and reads ‘LeAgorat, he will come to beg to be hired for money ()’: Mikra‘ot gedolot ‘haKeter, ii. 20; Eppenstein, Simon, ‘Karas Commentar zum I. Buch Samuel’, Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-literarischen Gesellschaft vii (1909), 9Google Scholar, repr. in his Perush R. Yosef Kara‘al nevi‘im rishonim, Jerusalem 1972, 59.

48 : Mikra‘ot Gedolot ‘HaKeter, Exodus II (2007), Ex. xxix. 23.

49 ‘Hoc adhuc sacrarum litterarum zelo judaicus populus in ipsis etiam tenebris caecitatis suae plurimum fervens, non mediocriter nostram, id est Christianorum negligentiam accusat. Tanto quippe ardore legem amplectuntur, ut quislibet eorum quantumcunque pauper, quotquot habeat filios, neminem divinas litteras ignorare permittat’: Abelard, sermon 29, PL clxxviii.557A. There is a fuller version of this passage in a commentary that was inspired by Abelard's teaching, the Commentarius Cantabrigiensis in epistolas Pauli e schola Petri Abaelardi, Notre-Dame 1937–45, 434, quoted in Smalley, The study of the Bible, 78.

50 Mews, Constant J.: ‘Heloise and liturgical experience at the Paraclete’, Plainsong and Medieval Music xi (2002), 25–35Google Scholar. This provides a condensed version of two fuller studies, ‘Liturgy and identity at the Paraclete: Heloise, Abelard and the evolution of the Cistercian reform’, and ‘Liturgy and monastic observance in practice at the Paraclete’, in Marc Stewart and David Wulstan (eds), The poetic and musical legacy of Heloise and Abelard, Toronto 2003, 19–33, 100–12.

51 Chrysogonus Waddell, ‘St Bernard and the Cistercian office at the abbey of the Paraclete’, in E. Rozanne Elder and John R. Sommerfeldt (eds), The chimaera of his age: studies on Bernard of Clairvaux, Kalamazoo 1980, 76–121. See also his editions of the key texts of the Paraclete: The old French Paraclete Ordinary and the Paraclete Breviary, Kalamazoo 1985; Hymn collections from the Paraclete, Kalamazoo 1989; and The Paraclete statutes: Institutiones nostrae, Kalamazoo 1987.