Selections
from Akeldama: Editor's Note
from issue Number 2, September 2009 by Nora Delaney
The selection here offers glimpses
through the broken Rose Window into the nuns’
lives at the Paraclete. Akeldama is divided
up, firstly, by Feast Days, and, secondly, according
to the canonical hours—segments of time
between prescribed daily prayers.
At the hour of Prime—6
am or the first hour—the cellaress (in charge
of the nuns’ food) thinks about preparing
cheeses and cooking plums with the help of a particularly
scrawny and useless child. At Terce—9 am
or the third hour—students are learning
how to limn and illuminate in the scriptorium;
amongst other things, they learn what types of
feathers make the best pens.
Heloïse, Abbess of the
Paraclete, only appears in the text at Nones—3
pm, the ninth hour—when she reflects on
her lessons with Abélard, her lessons in
love. We include sections of the glossary Green
has assembled, as an aid to the modern reader
in deciphering the Old English and Early English
words.
