Astrolabe, abbot of Hauterive

Astrolabe, son of Abelard and Heloise

Astralabe, retrieved from French Wikipedia, 2 April 2022

Astralabe, Astralabius in Latin, Astrolabe in modern French, was a Nantes canon born in the fall of 1116 [1118?] in Le Pallet, Brittany, and died on August 5, 1171 at the Cistercian Abbey of Hauterive, in Imperial Transjurane (currently in the canton of Friborg in Switzerland). Son of the famous lovers Héloïse and Abélard, he may have participated in the assassination [ 1 ] of Geoffroy Plantagenêt le Vieux and will end his career as a Cistercian abbot .

Song for Astrolabe

Raised in Brittany in an aristocratic family, Astralabe, having become a teenager, pursued the course of liberal arts and then higher education at the cathedral school of Nantes . It was probably there that he received from his sixty-year-old father , who had again become a schoolteacher at the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève du Mont since 1136, congratulations in the versified form of a sort of new , more practical Nicomachean Ethics of one thousand and forty stanzas, the Song for Astrolabe [ 14 ] .

• “Astrolabe my son, sweetness of a father's life
• Do more to learn than to teach.
• If what you are learning has escaped you, stop learning.
• Be attentive not to whom it is said but to what is said [ 15 ] . »

— First advice from the professor of logic and exegete Abelard to his student son [ 16 ] .

Heloise, retrieved from English Wikipedia, 2 April 2022

Shortly after the birth of their child, Astrolabe, Heloise and Abelard were both cloistered. Their son was thus brought up by Abelard's sister (soror), Denise, at Abelard's childhood home in Le Pallet. His name derives from the astrolabe, a Persian astronomical instrument said to elegantly model the universe[47] and which was popularized in France by Adelard. He is mentioned in Abelard's poem to his son, the Carmen Astralabium, and by Abelard's protector, Peter the Venerable of Cluny, who wrote to Héloise: "I will gladly do my best to obtain a prebend in one of the great churches for your Astrolabe, who is also ours for your sake".

'Petrus Astralabius' is recorded at the Cathedral of Nantes in 1150, and the same name appears again later at the Cistercian abbey at Hauterive in what is now Switzerland. Given the extreme eccentricity of the name, it is almost certain these references refer to the same person. Astrolabe is recorded as dying in the Paraclete necrology on 29 or 30 October, year unknown, appearing as "Petrus Astralabius magistri nostri Petri filius" (Peter Astrolabe, son of our magister [master] Peter).[48]

"Heloise (c. 1100–1163) ." Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. . Retrieved March 28, 2022 from Encyclopedia.com: < link >

When Abelard died in 1142, his body was taken to the Paraclete for burial. Heloise's great loss elicited a warm letter from Abbot Peter of Cluny, one of the most respected ecclesiastics of his day. He assured Heloise that her beloved husband had experienced a peaceful and holy death at one of Cluny's affiliated monasteries. From Heloise's response to this letter, we know that her son Astrolabe was pursuing an ecclesiastical career, for she asked Abbot Peter to attempt to secure a prebend from the archbishop of Paris for her son.

References

• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astralabe
  • B. M. Cook, Abelard and Heloise: some notes towards a family tree archive, Genealogists' Magazine, vol. 26, no 6, p. 208, London, June 1999.
  • B. M. Cook, One Astralabe or two? The mystery of Abelard's son [archive , Cultural Association Pierre Abelard archive, Le Pallet , June 1999.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Abelard#Astrolabe,_son_of_Abela...
  • 21. Williams, Harold. The Universe in Your Hand: Teaching Astronomy Using an Astrolabe. 1994. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1996ASPC...89..292W
  • 22. Necrology of the Paraclete, in Enid McLeod, Héloise, London: Chatto & Windus, 2nd edn., 1971, pp. 253, 283-84
• Abbaye d'Hauterive … Astralabe, abbot around 1164;