Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes)
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Henry Adams Bellows
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~33,900 words · 161 passages
Cite this work
- APAPeter Abelard. (n.d.). Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes) (Henry Adams Bellows, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/peter-abelard/historia-calamitatum-the-story-of-my-misfortunes
- MLAPeter Abelard. Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes). Translated by Henry Adams Bellows. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/peter-abelard/historia-calamitatum-the-story-of-my-misfortunes.
- ChicagoPeter Abelard. Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes). Translated by Henry Adams Bellows. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/peter-abelard/historia-calamitatum-the-story-of-my-misfortunes.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The Story of My Misfortunes (c. 1132): Europe's first modern autobiography.
Context and history
Abelard recounts his career, the affair with Heloise, the castration that followed and the heresy condemnations, all as a letter of consolation to a friend. That anyone should set out their own humiliation in writing was, in the twelfth century, new.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
mark they had set as their standard. As there was not only one religion and one social system, but one universal language as well, this gathering from all the four quarters of Europe was perfectly possible, and had much to do with the maintenance of that unity which marked society for three centuries. At the time of Abélard the schools of Chartres and Paris were at the height of their fame and power. Fulbert, Bernard and Thierry, all of Chartres, had fixed its fame for a long period, and at Paris Hugh and Richard of St. Victor and William of Champeaux were names to conjure with, while Anselm of Laon, Adelard of Bath, Alan of Lille, John of Salisbury, Peter Lombard, were all from time to time students or teachers in one of the schools of the Cathedral, the Abbey of St. Victor or Ste. Geneviève.
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