Peter Abelard: To the Nuns of the Paraclete On Studies

Abstract

Background: Often misunderstood and neglected, here in its first English translation, this significant work survives, with the Problemata, in a single manuscript, Paris BnF 14511, dating from the very late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. Formerly Saint-Victor MS 297, the manuscript had come to the abbey as a bequest from its late medieval owner, the scholar and early humanist, Simon de Plumetot, a notable collector of Abelardian works. The second part of the manuscript, containing these two texts, was copied for him; the first part of the manuscript includes several briefer writings by Abelard.