Juanita Feros Ruys (Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney) Peter Abelard's Carmen ad Astralabium and Medieval Parent-Child Didactic Texts: The Evidence for Parent-Child Relationships in the Middle Ages In his Introduction to this volume, Albrecht Classen relates the story of Konrad von Wiirzburg's Engelhard, and asks whether the parental behaviors displayed in medieval narratives can be taken as indicative of real medieval parental attitudes. This is a key question, since a scarcity of other sources often requires medievalists to press fictional narratives into service in this way, as for example Doris Desclais Berkvam's study of childhood and maternity in the romances and epics of medieval France,1 and Classen's own study of family life in medieval German literary sources indicate.2 A modern reader of the actions that Engelhard undertakes and the arguments he espouses might find them so contradictory as to nullify their usefulness as evidence of true medieval attitudes towards children, but this is not necessarily the case. In fact, Engelhard's views match remarkably well with those stated by the twelfth-century French philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard, who was himself the father of a son named Astralabe. Like the fictional Engelhard, Abelard is capable of expressing great parental love, and his Planctus Jacob super filios suos (Lament of Jacob over his Sons) contains touching images of the elderly Jacob recalling with fondness the lisping first words of his son Benjamin: "informes in facie teneri sermones / omnem eloquentie favum transcendentes" ("as yet unformed upon your lips, the tender words surpassing 1 I wish to thank the Australian Research Council for the provision of a post-doctoral Fellowship which has funded this research. Enfance et maternite dans la litteraturefrangaise des XII' et ΧΙΙΓ siecles, Collection essais, 8 (Paris: Honore Champion, 1981). 2 'Family Life in the High and Late Middle Ages: The Testimony of German Literary Sources', in Medieval Family Roles, ed. Cathy Jorgensen Itnyre. Garland Medieval Casebooks, 15 (New York and London: Garland, 1996), 39-65. DOI 10.1515/9783110895445.203, ©2017 Juanita Feros Ruys, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. 204 Juanita Feros Ruys every sweetness of eloquence").3 Yet on another occasion, also like Engelhard, Abelard can view children as necessary sacrifices to adult causes. Thus in his Letter 7 to Heloise on the history of nuns he extols the virtue and piety of the mother of the Maccabees who stood firm in her faith as her seven sons were killed before her eyes,4 and in his Hymns 99 and 109, written for the nuns of the Paraclete, he pictures children as an integral part of a family martyrdom, with mothers exhorting their children to self-sacrifice, in this way rebirthing for Heaven the children they bore once on earth.5 Unlike Engelhard, however, Abelard is under no illusions regarding the innocence of children and makes it clear in his Ethics that since even newborn children are tainted with original sin, a child who dies before baptism will suffer eternal damnation: "it is not absurd that some should undergo bodily punishments which they have not deserved, as is evident 3 Latin text of the Planctus cited from Wilhelm Meyer, Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur mittellateinischen Rythmik (Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1970; facsimile reprint of Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1905), 368, II. 23-24(hereafter Meyer); all English translations of the Planctus are from Ruys and John O. Ward, The Repentant Abelard: Abelard's Thought as Revealed in his Carmen ad Astralabium and Planctus (New York: Palgrave Press, forthcoming). 4 La vie et les epistres Pierres Abaelart et Heloys safame: Traduction du Xllle sie cle attribuee Jean de Meun. Avec une nouvelle edition des textes latin d'apr s le ms. Troyes Bibl. mun. 802, ed. by Eric Hicks. Nouvelle Biblioth que du Moyen Age, 16 (Paris and Geneva: Champion-Slatkine, 1991), (hereafter Hicks), 131,11.836-43: "Quisincomparabilemmatris.vii.filiorumconstantiamnonmiretur,quos una cum matre apprehensos, sicut Machabeorumhystoria narrat, rex impiissimus Antiochus ad carnes porcinas contra Legem edendas nisus est frustra compellere? Que materne immemor nature et humane affectionis ignara, nec nisi Deum pre oculis habens, quot sacris exhortationibus suis ad coronamfilios premisit tot ipsa martyriis triumphavit, proprio ad extremum martyrioconsummata"; Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents, trans, by Vera Morton, with an interpretive essay by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 77-78: "Who does not marvel at the incomparable courage of the mother of seven sons, captured with their mother, as the history of the Maccabees tells, when the impious king Antiochus tried in vain to force them to eat the flesh of pigs against the law. And she, forgetful of her natural maternal love and untouched by human affections and having nothing before her eyes but the Lord, sent her children with so many exhortations to their crown and herself triumphed in so many martyrdoms, and finally ended in her own martyrdom." 5 See Peter Abelard's Hymnarius Paraclitensis: An Annotated Edition with Introduction, ed. by Joseph Szöverffy, 2 vols. Medieval Classics: Texts and Studies, 2 and 3 (Albany, NY and Brookline, MA: Classical Folia Editions, 1975), Hymn 99,206-07: "Viri cum uxoribus, / Fratres cum sororibus, / Filii cum matribus / Belli stant congressibus. / Virum uxor animat, / Natos mater roborat / Et coelo regenerat, / Quos terra genuerat" ("Husbands with their wives, brothers with their sisters, sons with their mothers, stand prepared for war. The wife impels her husband, the mother strengthens her sons, and births again for Heaven those whom she bore on earth," my translation); and Hymn 109, 227 (on the martyr Eustachius): "Cum viro coniugem / simul ac liberos / Fides et passio / misit ad superos" ("The wife with her husband, and their children likewise, faith and suffering sent on to Heaven," my translation). Peter Abelard's Carmen ad Astrolabium 205 with little children who die without the grace of baptism and are condemned to bodily as well as to eternal death; and even many innocents are cast out."6 These views clearly vary with the genre and intended audience of the texts in which they appear, but that they can all have been expressed by a single medieval author, himself a father, indicates the vast range of thinking on children and parenthood that was possible in the Middle Ages. It suggests that no medieval representation of parenthood, fictional or not, should be dismissed out of hand as unlikely, simply because it is more complex or even more contradictory than modern scholars would wish. In the context of this ambiguity and ambivalence regarding his attitudes toward children, Abelard's poem of advice to his own son, known as the Carmen ad Astralabium, assumes great significance. This is particularly the case since Shulamith Shahar, as Classen points out in his Introduction, has marked the existence of "educational theories and norms" as a key factor in the discussion of whether there existed a medieval concept of childhood. In fact, very little attention has been focused on the words of actual medieval parents to their own children. Classen argues that in the study of medieval childhood, "our selection of relevant documents need[s] to be refined and sensitized," and a perusal of parental didactic texts would appear a productive point of origin. Medieval Parent-Child Didactic Texts Abelard was not the first or only parent in the Middle Ages to feel the need to leave or present advice to his own child, nor was this form of care-giving the preserve only of fathers. The ninth-century Frankish gentlewoman Dhuoda anxiously wrote a handbook of advice for her young son William while he was absent from her, held as a political hostage. This work, which is discussed in more detail in Valerie L. Garver's chapter in this volume, opens with a verse inscription in which Dhuoda carefully spells out in acrostic the greeting: "Dhuoda dilecto filio uuilhelmo salutem lege" ("Dhuoda sends greetings to her beloved son William: Read").7 Louis IX, or Saint Louis, the King of France from 1226 to 1270, composed 6 "non absurdum est non nullos penas corporales sustinere quas non meruerunt, sicut et de paruulis constat sine babtismi gratia defunctis, qui tarn corporali quam aeterna morte dampnantur, et multi etiam innocentes affliguntur," Peter Abelard's Ethics, ed. and trans. D. E. Luscombe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 62-63. 7 Dhuoda, Handbook for her WarriorSon: Liber Manualis, ed. and trans. Marcelle Thiebaux. Cambridge Medieval Classics, 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 42-46. 206 Juanita Feros Ruys texts of advice for his eldest son Philippe and his daughter Isabelle. The Enseigne- tnenz to his son begin: "A son chier filz ainzne Phelippe salut et amitie de pere" ("To his dear first-born son Philippe, the greetings and friendship of his father"), and the vocative "chier(s) filz" or "chier(s) fils" recurs eighteen times within a few short pages.8 Similarly, Louis's Enseignement to his daughter begin "A sa chiere et amee fille Ysabel" ("To his dear and beloved daughter Isabelle"), and almost every point thereafter is prefaced with the vocative "Chiere fille."9 At the end of the thirteenth century Christine de Pizan wrote a poem of advice for her son Jehan, the Enseignemens Moraux, which runs to one hundred and