Authenticity Revisited

Abstract

In 1974, the distinguished literary historian Peter von Moos published a book called Minelalteforschung und Ideologie (Medieval Research and Ideology). It might seem, at first, an odd title for a book discussing the authenticity of the love letters of Abelard and Heloise, especially for one taken up entirely by a survey of previous scholarly controversy. But von Moos’s work is no ordinary history of scholarship. He makes clear from the start that his main concern is not about whether the Letters are authentic or not. He is interested, rather, in the controversy itself, because it enables him to make a general point about the history of scholarship that has important implications for how medieval scholars understand and go about their work. For nearly two centuries—from 1616, when they were first printed, until early in the nineteenth century—the Letters of Abelard and Heloise were widely read, translated, and imitated, with no suggestion that they were not genuine. Questioning their authenticity was part of the move to make history a properly scientific discipline, which by going back to the sources and scrutinizing them, no longer regarding them as at once “strange” and yet “distanceless,” provides an objective, demythologized account of the past.¹ Von Moos’s main point is that such historical objectivity is an illusion: behind “‘objective data,’ ‘assured facts,’ and ‘better readings,’ there is played out a conflict between views of the world,….”² Historians cannot take a purely objective, unideological standpoint, for there is none. But they can, argues Von Moos, scrutinize their own and others’ acknowledged or concealed ideologies. His book aims to begin this task, taking for its material one of the longest-running controversies in medieval scholarship.

This chapter assesses the attitudes toward evidence and argument in the debate over the authenticity of the Abelard-Heloise correspondence during the last twenty-five years, including the impact of feminism on the discussion.