Abelard and his Legacy (review)

Short Notices 241 Parergon 21.1 (2004) of love and sex have been dominated respectively by the academic figures of C. S. Lewis and Michel Foucault. Lewis’ theory of ‘courtly love’ has been criticised on multiple grounds, but courtly love remains the dominant model for understanding medieval notions of romantic love. For sex, Foucault’s theorising of the gaps between modern and pre-modern categories of sexuality and sexual conduct, remain similarly dominant. For example, Aquinas, in discussing ‘unnatural’ sex ‘seems to make no essential distinction between various “unnatural” sexual acts, like masturbation, bestiality and sodomy’ (pp. 9-10). In contrast, there is no dominant model of medieval marriage, and McCarthy discusses several in passing. McCarthy also covers the medieval notion that the ideal sexual state of humans was arranged in the hierarchy of virginity, widowhood and marriage. His essay covers briefly controversial theorist John Boswell, who in 1980 argued for an acceptance of same-sex unions in the early medieval period. McCarthy wryly notes that his study of medieval period makes him conclude that ‘the moralizing texts presented below from all periods show very little tolerance for any sort of sex, and that includes heterosexual as well as homosexual sex’ (p. 12). The modern reader cannot fail to be fascinated by such cases as that of the transsexual prostitute John/Eleanor Rykener (extract 35) and much of the other material is very interesting, if not so instantly controversial. The bibliography is excellent; further reading is suggested for each extract. In conclusion, this is a very useful book for the teacher or student of medieval society. Carole M. Cusack Studies in Religion University of Sydney Mews, Constant J., Abelard and his Legacy (Variorum collected studies series, CS704), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2001; pp. xii, 330; hardback; RRP £57.50; ISBN 086078861X. Peter Abelard’s theological writings, though crucial to any intellectual history of the twelfth century, exist in various different versions and have proved notoriously difficult to date with any certainty. Abelard was continually adding to and correcting his texts over a period of more than 20 years, and a number of the different versions of these works still survive in manuscript form. In this series of studies, originally published in the 1980s, Constant Mews examines 242 Short Notices Parergon 21.1 (2004) the complex history of Abelard’s texts and offers a revised dating for many of them. Mews proceeds by means of a close and careful textual analysis of the different states of these works, focussing mostly on the Theologia in its three main versions: De trinitate (or Theologia ‘Summi boni’), Theologia christiana, and Theologia ‘Scholarium’. He examines the relationship between the different manuscripts of this work as well as comparing it with the text of Sic et non. He also considers their relationship with various sententie previously attributed to Abelard’s disciples, and argues that they are more likely to reflect Abelard’s own teaching as recorded by his students and brought to him for correction. The dating of two of Abelard’s other works – the Dialectica and the Collationes (or Dialogus) – is also discussed. The result is a detailed, closely argued and convincing case for redating many of these works. Mews suggests a date of c. 1125/6 for the Collationes, traditionally dated to 1140/2, and argues for c. 1117 for the Dialectica, variously dated between before 1118 and as late as 1140/2 by earlier authors. Mews assigns the different versions of the Theologia to c. 1119/20, c. 1122/6 and the 1130s respectively. An indication of the wider significance of this kind of close analysis is given in the paper which deals with the manuscript tradition of the list of heretical statements attributed to Abelard. More than 45 such manuscripts are extant, but none appears to represent the official condemnation at the Council of Sens in 1140, in which Bernard of Clairvaux played a major role. By comparing the varying lists with the works of Abelard and Bernard, Mews is able to clarify the way in which Bernard and his associates drew up and revised the initial list and circulated it in letters, as well as the way in which the council simply endorsed...