HIST&126 week 8

Heloise, a French Scholar and NunA scandalous love affair between two brilliant people, Abelard and Heloise, reveals much about medieval life and values, including church politics and attitudes toward sexuality. Ever since then the romance and its sad reper-cussions have inspired count-less works of poetry, prose, and song. Often portrayed as a forbidden affair between a smitten schoolgirl and her unprincipled teacher, a famed but controversial theologian, the relationship between the two figures was far more complex.Coming from a wealthy, influential family, Heloise (1101–1164), the niece of a high church official in Paris, had more educational oppor-tunities than most women of her time and studed at a well-financed convent where she showed a keen intelligence. In 1117 her uncle Fulbert, a high-ranking cleric, arranged for the seventeen-year-old to study with Peter Abelard (1079–1142), a famous teacher but a nonclergyman, at the Notre Dame Cathedral school. Born into an aristocratic fam-ily in Brittany (northwest France), Abelard studied with renowned teachers and taught at several schools. Notorious for both his arrogance and intellect, he made enemies in the church by championing reason, logic, and progressive think-ing on religious doctrine.Despite a twenty-year age difference, Abelard and Heloise fell passionately in love. Abelard wrote of how they went from reading books to kissing and composing love songs and letters to each other. But their affair also reflected friendship and intellectual respect, her letters revealing good knowledge of Roman and Christian writers. The two lovers tried to keep their affair quiet and were secretly married after she became pregnant. Their son, raised by Abelard’s sister, eventually became a church official. Their romance came at a time when the church was not just encouraging but mandating that clergy as well as secular teachers, such as Abelard, and students in church schools remain celibate. Abelard realized his marriage would end his current position and future church career. But Heloise’s family, upon learn-ing of the affair, sought revenge, and Fulbert hired two men to beat and then castrate Abelard. Now disgraced, Abelard joined a Benedictine monastery, and, at his encouragement, Heloise entered a convent, eventually becoming the com-munity’s director.

Although separated, Heloise and Abelard contin-ued to write to each other. Expressing her affection, Heloise wrote him that “I seek to please thee rather than [God]. Thy command brought me, not the love of God, to the [nunnery].” Strongly influ-enced by Aristotle’s thought, Abelard restored his scholarly reputation by writing books and essays about mixing phi-losophy and religion, views his critics considered heresy. Later, as an abbot (head) of a large monastery, while maintaining a personal distance he helped Heloise and her nuns estab-lish a new convent. Her ability to gain support and funding helped her convent flour-ish. She remained ambivalent about her career, however, writ-ing Abelard that “I am judged religious at a time when there is little in religion that is not hypocrisy.” Heloise became known for her learning, and one top male cleric praised her knowledge of the liberal arts: “You have surpassed all women and have gone further than almost every man.” However, Heloise resented Abelard’s desire to remain aloof from her, writing: “Of all the wretched women I am the most wretched, for the higher the ascent, the heavier the fall.”Although dying twenty years apart, the pair was buried alongside each other at the convent, a fitting conclusion to a relationship and an era. Heloise was one of the last educated churchwomen to maintain close contact with male scholars and church officials. Obsessed with celibacy, the church increas-ingly separated men and women engaged in religious life.