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Paris, at the beginning of the 12th century: Of all the mighty flourishing cities of Europe, the French metropolis was the most interesting. Teeming with life everywhere - merchants and troubadours, market women and musicians, professors and streetwalkers. In the midst of brimming zest for living, superstitious fears flared up. Fleshy pleasures tempted next to universities and cloisters, which made Paris a revolving stage of European spirit.

But in this year, 1117, Paris had a scandal stirring this metropolis, which seemed to be shocked by nothing, like a consuming fire: the love story between the almost 40-year old prominent theologian Petrus Abaelardus (Peter Abelard), and 16-year old Héloïse, niece of a canon of Notre Dame. Of course, wild rumors circulated, but this unlikely pair did not care about gossip. On the contrary, Abelard used his brilliant writing skills to create glowing love songs about Héloïse, that were soon being sung all over Paris. His students smirked at their childish professor, who started to spice up his lessons about logic with indecent examples.

The tragic love story of Abelard and Héloïse has been retold from century to century. The cynic Voltaire let himself be moved by it; literati of romanticism have thought of numerous variations for this old plot, for, what fate of people from the Middle Ages could better fire the imagination?

It is said that Héloïse was as beautiful as she was intelligent. The Abbott of Cluny later attested that she had "a passionate bent for real education, discipline at studying, and extensive knowledge." But obviously, Abelard wasn't attractive to her just because of his gift of gab and scholarship: "Which woman, which girl wasn't longing for you when you were away, wasn't inflamed for you when you came near?" Of course, it was Héloïse who gushed about him: "Which queen wouldn't have envied me for my luck, for the bed of my love?"

Abelard was the son of a knight from Brittany. He was so intrigued by science that he relinquished his inheritance to devote himself to is studies. Being a bright thinker with a partiality to daring speculations and techniques, but also being arrogant and intolerant, he fell into disagreement with all of his teachers. Having become a living legend at a young age, he had to establish his first school in Paris on the banks of the Seine. Later, he earned a professor in Paris, where Canon Fulbert took him to his house as a tutor for his lovely niece, Héloïse.

The relationship between the middle-aged, idolized scholar and the blossoming girl, with its cultivated intelligence, must have been born of its own charm. Both of them were intellectually curious, not willing to conform to bourgeois ideas of morality, but completely inexperienced in erotic practices. Abelard: "The delights we experienced were so phenomenal, since we had never known them before, and could not get tired of them."

And Abelard the poet, with loving pride, let all of Paris share in this amorous happiness. When dignified Fulbert finally discovered what was going on behind his back, the story became a cross between Shakespeare and peasant theatre: Professor Abelard eloped with his Héloïse, who was disguised as a nun, under cover of night to his sister's house in Brittany. There, Héloïse gave birth to a son, who was given the crazy name, Astrolabius ("He who reaches for the stars"), by his happy parents. Abelard agreed to a marriage in secret to appease the furious Canon Fulbert.

But suddenly, Héloïse, who had been so obedient before, balked, and refused this marriage. At that time, it was by no means forbidden for clerics and canons to marry, but such an enlightened philosopher as Abelard, she coaxed her lover, should not be burdened with the "hangups" of matrimony: "Just think of how easily it could happen that you, while you are wrapped up in your studies, could be disturbed by the whining of little children!" A real philosopher should have to flee the world, she persisted.

Did so much selfless humility just hide a massive criticism on the institution of marriage(divorce was rarely permitted in that time, a fact which forced many women to flee from their existences as servants in a household to the cloisters)? She would much more have preferred to be his lover rather than his wife, Héloïse admitted to her perplexed betrothed. And when he finally had his way with his wish for marriage, she bitterly cried her disappointment: "So we are not to be spared losing one another! And perhaps to become even more unfortunate than we've been fortunate with one another!"

Alas, she was right - while the relieved Canon Fulbert was spreading the news about the relationship that was put right again (through marriage), the loving couple was still denying their marital status. And when Abelard even hid his bride in the Argenteuil convent, her uncle felt that this action was not enough, and the romantic love story soon moved inexorably to a horrible end. Abelard was assaulted at his house at night and was castrated while fully conscious - an act of revenge not that usual in the 12th century...

Though humiliated, his manliness forever broken, the authoritarian lover subjected Héloïse once again to his will - just as he fled, dispirited, to the Abbey St. Denis near Paris, Héloïse was forced to assume the nun's veil in Argenteuil. Bitterly weeping, but determined, she stalked to the altar, defiantly quoting an elegy of the heathen poet, Lukan. Years later, she confessed her cruel disappointment to Abelard: "I never would have hesitated one single moment to walk in front, or follow you, to Hell... My soul had left me; it belonged to you."

At almost twenty years old, Héloïse matured and she became an ideal member of the order, eventually becoming an abbess. Written during 1134- 1135, a moving exchange of letters has been preserved, which showed how superior she was to her former teacher in experiencing her love consciously. For Abelard repressed, forgot, and betrayed what was once so dear to him. He adapted himself to his new circumstances, tearing their joint happiness to pieces, as "impure desire" and "most disgusting lust," eagerly delivering self-criticism and awkward, striking repentance to his moralizers. He even saw the sense of his castration as "proof of poetic justice already on earth" - "God's mercy," he wrote, "healed me from sensuality by depriving me of the thing that made me a slave to it."

Not so Héloïse... While he vacillated, she would not allow her feelings to be forbidden. While he dissociated coldly from the last year of tenderness and passion, she kept the memory of it as a treasure her whole life long. "The joys of love we both experienced were so blissfully sweet to me that I can neither condemn them nor ban them from my mind. Wherever I may go, they crowd into my mind - those fleeting pictures of memory, they stoke my longing, even pursuing me while I sleep... and instead of crying ruefully about what I've done, I can only sigh about what I've lost."

She accepted her destiny. She did not regard life in the cloister as annoying duty but rather as a chance to come near to God - but, she didn't succumb to false repentance. Instead of soiling her memory by recanting her disgusting acts, she laid her soul's boundless affection for Abelard into the hands of God: "It is solely love," she declared categorically, "that distinguishes God's children from those of the Devil."

At the same time, she was just as critical in her own observations - Abelard must have felt more desire of the flesh than affection of the heart for her, she stated bitterly - as sober and fair: "We were two in sin, but you were the only one who paid (the price)." she commented about his castration. "It wasn't really fair that you were the one to be blamed in front of everyone, in front of God and these traitors."

But, at the same time, the young nun was superior enough to admit her feelings and to ask her former companion for a sign of love - "even if you can only be with me by words instead of in the flesh." In a touching manner, she reminded him: Don't forget that I belong to you!" and she confessed - as bashful as a schoolgirl - that she had always been more afraid to displease him than God.

Indeed, Héloïse, who was both soft and self-confidant, managed to lead Abelard - who clung to his leading role while he became deeply unsure about his manliness - to an amazingly mature tribute to female dignity that was ahead of his time. Self-critical, he recalled the brave endurance of the women at the cross, while the disciples had been frightened, scattering in all directions (after Jesus' death). Abelard's amazing explanation for this: Women instinctively turned toward reality while men specialized in debating endlessly about it.

Did the separation from his lover force him to withdraw to the world of philosophical/theological ideas? Or wasn't it also that Héloïse's encouragement and the fruitful correspondence of both independent thinkers that made Petrous Abaelardus reach his top form? His "Ethic", annotations of the Bible, and "Theology", remained as fragments, an introduction for scholarly methods - all these works show Abelard to be clearer, more uncompromising, and more brightly shining than ever as someone who thought independently instead of repeating mechanically the classical doctrines. Consequently, like almost no other theologian before him, he brought reason into thinking about God, and the scared destination of Man. After all, did not Christ himself say: "I am the way, the truth, and the life", and not "I am what has been stated once, forever!"

So, this passionate searching and restless questioning without taboos should be God's will! In all subjects, scientific understanding had increased, so why should there not be progress on the subject of belief? All men - of this Abelard was absolutely convinced - could arrive at the conclusion of God's Trinity by reason; the rest He would give to that.

Neither the fact that this star-theologian from Paris also found elements of truth in non-Christian theories, nor his conviction that every single man, just like Adam, was responsible for the original sin, would be forgiven by is envious fellow teachers.

Abelard's keenness for discussions seemed too dangerous - in his last book he even dared to let a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim philosopher debate with each other - too unusual was his opinion that there had been pictures and premonitions in antique philosophy that found their final clarification and realization in Christianity; too suspicious was his wish to convince unbelievers with arguments of reason instead of "missionizing" them with the sword.

The ethics of his sentiments also offended - as shared by Héloïse: It was not the deed itself that counted, but also the mental attitude - more the inner intention than the outer way of acting. Regarded that way, the same deed could be good as well as bad; it depended on the manner in which it had been carried out. Abelard said: "God doesn't pay attention to what we do, but to the spirit in which we do it."

Once again, he was accused of arrogance and obstinacy. His accusers emphasized the existing dark sides of his dazzling personality, to which had been added a genuine persecution complex. The modesty he showed frequently in his books was easily forgotten in such a context. Like tiny David against the mighty Goliath, he would run forward with the sword of logic, he once wrote. "We do not presume to be teaching the whole truth, but at most the shadow which is cast by truth, not more than a facsimile of it."

All this was for nothing. Without giving him the chance to defend himself, a synod of Soissons condemned his book about the Trinity - the legacy of the Pope let it be burned unseen. Certainly, he never lacked true pupils, and he was also able to see Héloïse again when her community of nuns moved to the hermitage of Paraclet, which he founded in the Champagne region. Héloïse became the abbess, and made this location a center of spiritual life; her relationship to Abelard was confined to inviting him for lectures and engaging him as a poet for hymns.

Once again, this restless scholar moved somewhere else. He became Abbott of St. Gildas de Rhuys, which lies isolated on the wild, rugged Breton coast. He got on the nerves of the coarse, ragged monks so badly with his moral lectures that they mixed poison in his chalice - unsuccessfully, thank God! This was not the way he had pictured his life in idyllic isolation. Relieved, he accepted an offer to teach in Paris again - where his old rivals still lurked, their arguments now lead by Bernhard of Clairvaux, one of the most fascinating figures of the Middle Ages - a radical, penitential sermonizer and glowing mystic, a powerful thinker and stimulator of plain folks' piety, all in one - a defender of freedom of opinion and fanatical crusader preaching against heretics and Muslims. As complicated as Petrus Abaelardus, he became his most implacable enemy. He sent a list of Abelard's false doctrines to the pope who condemned this difficult Frenchman (Abelard) to perpetual silence, then reversed this judgement again later because of the intercession of the Abbott of Cluny where Abelard found refuge. One year later (1142), Petrus Abaelardus was dead.

Héloïse survived her beloved friend and teacher by 22 years. The magnanimous Abbott Petrus Venerabilis of Cluny was so moved by her devotion that he secretly transported Abelard's body to Héloïse's cloister at Paraclete, and let him be buried there. "Now God has taken him from you to Him," he comforted the Abbess, "and He will keep him in His grace until you are reunited again."

Their reunion happened in 1164 - Héloïse found her last resting-place beside her long-lamented love.

© 1997 by Astrid Ostheimer - thanks to Elaine Gunter for editing the above -

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