TWELFTH CENTURY By the twelfth century, western European philosophy had enveloped Christianity risen from its first century beginnings and was now dominated by Roman Catholicism. Love of wisdom had come to mean love of God. Nevertheless, there was also a tum in the twelfth century back toward classical writings. The letters of Heloise and Abelard quoted the classical writings of Cicero, Seneca, and Ovid as well as Christian Scripture, Gregory, and Ambrose. The Greek works of Aristotle known mainly in Latin translation, were, however, mostly unavailable. Letter writing itself was growing in importance as a source of discourse. While the University of Paris was in its gestation, Bologna in Italy had already gained a reputation for its study of law and medicine. A leading thinker Abelard developed new methods of reasoning that would eventually be referred to as the Scholastic method, whereas Heloise emphasized human power, an stress that would became a mark of the Renaissance. Until the universities were fully instituted, convent schools for women expanded in twelfth century France alongside men's schools. Still, Heloise, who was educated in a convent school, proved to be like Pan Chao in first century China a singular intellect. Heloise's references display her familiarity with an impressive history of philosophy to include Aspasia and Origen, the Neo­ Platonists and Augustine of Hippo (354-430). 1 Augustine, a classical scholar, in systematizing Christian doctrine, had initiated the rise of medieval philosophy that conceived of knowledge as being subordinate to the ends of Christianity and viewed women as being subordinate to men. 2 If women were thought to be inferior to men, women in image were often portrayed as being superior. Prior to the twelfth century a tradition had developed of the image of woman depicting wisdom as in the Old Testament, Book of Siraach. The Greek and Roman Athena and Minerva-Goddesses of Wisdom­ were later transformed by Boethius (480-525) into Lady Philosophy. By empowering her with the role of healing teacher in the Consolations, Boethius 1 While Aspasia was one of the earliest known non-Christian philosophers dating from Periclean Greece, women scholars in the church date at least from 4th century CE Rome when Marcella offered instruction to women in Origen 's On First Principles. and Melania and Paula, Scripuralists, journeyed to Jerusalem and founded monasteries. (Monique Alexandre 1992 Early Christian women, A history of women in the west. P.S. Pantel, ed., Cambridge: Harvard UP): 409-44. 2 Mary T. Clark, RSCJ reminds us that despite Augustine's negative attitude toward women, he believed women to be "co-heirs of grace" and images of God in both mind and sense. 126 (1994, Augustine, London: Geoffrey Chapman.) 32 Twelfth Century personified philosophy as a woman. Boethius, a Roman senator and scholar, provided Medieval philosophy with translations of Greek Classics, such as Porphyry's introduction to Aristotle. Boethius' Lady Philosophy's mantle is referred to ironically by (H) Roswitha of Gandersheim (935-1 00 l) in her play "Sapientia" in which she replaced women as image with representative women philosophers: given ... a perspicacious mind, but one that lies fallow and idle when it is not cultivated ... I have been at pains, whenever I have been able to pick up some threads and scraps torn from the old mantle of philosophy, to weave them into the stuff of my own book ...that the creator of genius may be honoured since it is generally believed that a woman's intelligence is lower. 3 Boethius' portrayal of philosophy as a caring and dramatically alive instructor countered a history of many negative concepts adopted from the ancients forward. The following examples illustrate some of these negative perceptions. Pythagoras's principle that evil created chaos, darkness and woman and Aristotle's male principle that conceived woman as defective or not fully developed males were complimentary. These concepts superseded Plato's more positive perception of woman in the Republic and the Timeas. The interpretation of Eve being the transgressor was often at the root of Christian notions about women. Augustine rendered St. Paul's view of women as the "devil's gateway" to mean that sin originated through women. Other perceptions that persisted in philosophical arguments rested on women's being less rational and in that sense less spiritual. That woman's nature resides in her body rather than in her mind was emphasized in On the Divisions of Nature by John Scotus Erigena (81 0-877) and John of Salisbury's (d.ll80) theories. When St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033- 1109) argued that St. Paul and Jesus "are mothers ... giving birth to the soul," he figuratively gave women's "bodies" to men. 4 Hence, this brief outline demonstrates that the history of the perceptions of women by philosophers prior to the twelfth century often committed women to representative image, their minds to matter rather than to spirit, and their minds and bodies to an inferior position to their male counterparts. Medieval philosophy debated various perceptions of women. In the philosophical climate in which Heloise lived. Bernard of Chartres's "Natura," 3 Prudence Allen, 257 (1985, The concept ofwom en, Montreal: Eden). 4 Joan Gibson, 88 (1989 Herrad ofHohenbourg Waithe, M. E., ed. A history ofwom en philosophers. v. 2/500-1600, Dordrecht, Netherlands, Kluwer): 85-98. Twelfth Century 33 personifies woman as philosophy notably differently. 5 According to Peter Dronke, she is one of a triad of goddesses, "a cosmic power" with a "philosophical name" who offers "spiritual nourishment." Some years after Heloise's death, Abbess Herrad ofLandesberg's Hortus Delciarum (1185) presented a personified "human wisdom" to inform and nourish all knowledge through the seven liberal arts, but in profiling a portion of the century's philosophical canon with Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, and Peter Lombard, Herrad includes a woman, Hildegard of Bingen. Hence, the elevated image of woman as philosophy, knowledge, creatrix or virgin mother of God was countered by the concepts of woman in the natural order as inferior, woman guilty merely by being woman. These contrasting views of woman with occasional exceptions were celebrated in the Middle Ages in both hymns to immaculate Mary and in troubadour's songs celebrating illicit sexual and romantic encounters.6 While some women in the twelfth century in France had access to convent education few philosophical writings by women were preserved, and those that were, were apt not to be acknowledged.7 Following the entertaining Prologue to her poetry advising people to study and heed the models and axioms for moral guidance: "which philosophers did find/ And wrote about and kept in mind ... ," Marie de France made note of this problem in the Epilogue: "And it may hap that many a clerk/Will claim as his what is my work. "8 At times singular scholars envisioned afresh, traditional issues in medieval philosophy. One example was the mysticism as a method for acquiring new knowledge. This spiritual discipline aimed at attaining union with God through contemplation, and it particularly allowed women a voice in matters of the mind. Hildegard of Bingen ( 1098-1179), a contemporary of Heloise ( 1100-1164) of France, was one of the greatest of the medieval mystics. Her works, often the descriptions and interpretations of visions, are of considerably greater number than are the writings of Heloise.9 Hildegard, a Benedictine abbess, honored with the ' Peter Dronke, 41-47 (1992, Intellectuals and poets in medieval Europe. Rome: Edizioni di Storia E. Letteratura. Chartres, the seat of Platonism, was also the center for study of the natural world. ' Countess Dia, a woman troubadour sang such words as, "I should like to hold my knight/Naked in my anns at eve," 96 (194, R.T. Hill and T. G. Berg, eds., Anthology of provencal troubadours. New Haven: Yale UP). Hildegard's liturgical choral compositions are currently available on tape. 7 Fourth century Makrina's On the Soul and Resurrection, which for some time was attributed to her brother Gregory of Nyssa, is an example. Makrina occupied herself with "philosophy;" her concept of soul rejected the loss of the soul's rational character at the death of the body. Cornelia Wolfskeel. Makrina, 163 (1987, A history of women philosophers. v.l600/500, M.E. Waithe, ed., Dordrecht, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff): 139-68. 8 Harriet Spiegel, 29 (1987. Marie de France: Fables. University of Toronto Press). 9 Beer, 2-3 Heloi"se wrote only "a sixth of what remains of Hrotswitha's work" and "little more than a hundredth of Hildegard's" 109 (1984. Peter Dronke, Women writers of the middle ages.London: 34 Twelfth Century epithet "Sibyl of the Rhine," practiced medical science and healing, taught the secular seven liberal arts to her "daughters," wrote on cosmology, theology, science, and ethics, composed music, produced art, and late in life lectured abroad. While her works were preserved, translation was not begun for seven hundred years. Poignantly, the advice Hildegard sought in a letter to the mystic Bernard of Clairvaux on whether to publish or keep silent about her first book Scivias, her labor of ten years, would continue to be sought by others more than seven centuries later. Hildegard began the letter in the humility "topos" or stance, "wretched in my existence as a wornan." 10 This "humility stance," was a rhetorical opening, used by writers as early as the first century C. E. by Pan Chao to as late as Petrarch, but used regularly as a commonplace denoting inferior status by women writers until the nineteenth century. While both Hildegard and Heloise gave voice to divergent philosophy, they both demonstrated a familiarity with philosophy of the medieval canon, and they both wrote with great command of language.