HIST 223 Medieval Europe: History Illuminated: 2015-11-01

While reading through the calamities of Peter Abelard’s life I was struck with a modern day practice found in the public letters of Abelard. Subtweeting. I noticed the comparison between the concept of public letter writing and the idea of Twitter. Both are public and both involve calling someone out. In The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, Abelard talks of his enemies, one being Bernard of Clairvaux, but he never calls him by name.

“My former rivals could do nothing by themselves, and therefore stirred up against me some new apostles in whom the world had great faith…They went up and down the country, slandering me shamelessly in their preaching as much as they could, and for a while brought me into considerable disrepute in the eyes of the ecclesiastical as well as of the secular authorities; and they spread such evil reports of my faith and of my way of life that they also turned some of my chief friends against me…” (p. 32-33).

To the modern historian as well as many of those times it is apparent that one of his rivals was Bernard of Clairvaux and the lack of mentioning him reminds me of the ever present trend among the social media world we live in today.

According to the Oxford online dictionary, subtweet can be defined as “a post that refers to a particular user without directly mentioning them, typically as a form of furtive mockery or criticism”

Subtweeting is not only popular with the youth of today, but also with the elite of society. Musical artist Chris Brown is famous for his subtweeting ways.

Just like Abelard’s lack of the mentioning oh his specific rivals, Brown fails to mention the direct enemy in these tweets. Yet at the time it was most likely clear to all his followers just whom he was attacking.

For centuries people have been finding ways to subtly throw a punch at their enemy, a practice I feel will not disappear in the near future.

Sources:

Abelard, Peter, Peter Abelard, Héloïse, Peter Abelard, Peter Abelard, and Betty Radice. The Letters of

Abelard and Heloise. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. Print.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/subtweet

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/the-subtle-art-of-the-subtweet/

The tomb of Abelard and Helose is located in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery. The latter is located north-east of Paris between the former towns of Belleville and Ménilmontant (today, they form the current 19th and 20th districts). It opened in the park of Folie Régnault, property of Régnault de Vendôme, wealthy merchant of spices. Popular people whose ashes are in the cemetery include Balzac, Chopin, Jean-Bapiste Clement, Géricault, and Editch Piaf. In addition, the tombs of the Hugo family, La Fontaine, Oscar Wilde, Molière, Proust, and Rossin are located in the cemetery.
Abelard and Heloise were the cemetery's first guests. Their bodies were transferred from the Paraclete in 1817. The tomb was created in the 19th century in the High Gothic style, also known as the Rayonnant style. The latter was the second phase of the Gothic style and was characterized by the creation of rich visual effects through decoration, as well as the application of elaborate geometrical designs to the already established structural forms. Most of this virtuosity was seen in private tombs and monuments. Abelard and Heloise's tomb's architect was Albert Alexandre Lenoir and Louis Pierre Desseine was the sculptor. It is composed of pointed arches, quatrefoils containing three lobes instead of four, columns, different sculptural ornamentations, and the sculptures of Abelard and Heloise.