Produced by Nicole Apostola
An Autobiography by Peter Abélard
Translated by Henry Adams Bellows
Introduction by Ralph Adams Cram
The "Historia Calamitatum" of Peter Abélard is one of those humandocuments, out of the very heart of the Middle Ages, thatilluminates by the glow of its ardour a shadowy period that hasbeen made even more dusky and incomprehensible by unsympatheticcommentators and the ill-digested matter of "source-books." Likethe "Confessions" of St. Augustine it is an authentic revelation ofpersonality and, like the latter, it seems to show how unchangeableis man, how consistent unto himself whether he is of the sixthcentury or the twelfth—or indeed of the twentieth century."Evolution" may change the flora and fauna of the world, or modifyits physical forms, but man is always the same and the unrolling ofthe centuries affects him not at all. If we can assume the vividpersonality, the enormous intellectual power and the clear, keenmentality of Abélard and his contemporaries and immediatesuccessors, there is no reason why "The Story of My Misfortunes"should not have been written within the last decade.
They are large assumptions, for this is not a period in worldhistory when the informing energy of life expresses itself throughsuch qualities, whereas the twelfth century was of precisely thisnature. The antecedent hundred years had seen the recovery from thebarbarism that engulfed Western Europe after the fall of Rome, andthe generation of those vital forces that for two centuries were toinfuse society with a vigour almost unexampled in its potency andin the things it brought to pass. The parabolic curve thatdescribes the trajectory of Mediaevalism was then emergent out of"chaos and old night" and Abélard and his opponent, St. Bernard,rode high on the mounting force in its swift and almost violentascent.
Pierre du Pallet, yclept Abélard, was born in 1079 and died in1142, and his life precisely covers the period of the birth,development and perfecting of that Gothic style of architecturewhich is one of the great exemplars of the period. Actually, theNorman development occupied the years from 1050 to 1125 while theinitiating and determining of Gothic consumed only fifteen years,from Bury, begun in 1125, to Saint-Denis, the work of Abbot Suger,the friend and partisan of Abélard, in 1140. It was the time of theCrusades, of the founding and development of schools anduniversities, of the invention or recovery of great arts, of thegrowth of music, poetry and romance. It was the age of great kingsand knights and leaders of all kinds, but above all it was theepoch of a new philosophy, refounded on the newly revealed cornerstones of Plato and Aristotle, but with a new content, a newimpulse and a new method inspired by Christianity.
All these things, philosophy, art, personality, character, were theproduct of the time, which, in its definiteness and consistency,stands apart from all other epochs in history. The social systemwas that of feudalism, a scheme of reciprocal duties, privilegesand obligations as between man and man that has never been excelledby any other system that society has developed as its own method ofoperation. As Dr. De Wulf has said in his illuminating book"Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages" (a volume thatshould be read by any one who wishes rightly to understand thespirit and quality of Mediaevalism), "the feudal sentiment parexcellence … is the sentiment of the value and dignity of theindividual man. The feudal man lived as a free m