a certain young girl named Heloise and the great teacher Abelard
 

    NOW there dwelt in that same city of Paris a certain young girl named Heloise, the
     neice of a canon who was called Fulbert. Her uncle's love for her was equalled only by
     his desire that she should have the best education which he could possibly procure for
     her. Of no mean beauty, she stood out above all by reason of her abundant knowledge
     of letters. Now this virtue is rare among women, and for that very reason it doubly
     graced the maiden, and made her the most worthy of renown in the entire kingdom. It
     was this young girl whom I, after carefully considering all those qualities which are wont
     to attract lovers, determined to unite with myself in the bonds of love, and indeed the
     thing seemed to me very easy to be done. So distinguished was my name, and I
     possessed such advantages of youth and comeliness, that no matter what woman I
     might favour with my love, I dreaded rejection of none. Then, too, I believed that I
     could win the maiden's consent all the more easily by reason of her knowledge of
     letters and her zeal therefor; so, even if we were parted, we might yet be together in
     thought with the aid of written messages. Perchance, too, we might be able to write
     more boldly than we could speak, and thus at all times could we live in joyous intimacy.

     Thus, utterly aflame with my passion for this maiden, I sought to discover means
     whereby I might have daily and familiar speech with her, thereby the more easily to win
     her consent. For this purpose I persuaded the girl's uncle, with the aid of some of his
     friends to take me into his household--for he dwelt hard by my school--in return for the
     payment of a small sum. My pretext for this was that the care of my own household
     was a serious handicap to my studies, and likewise burdened me with an expense far
     greater than I could afford. Now he was a man keen in avarice and likewise he was
     most desirous for his niece that her study of letters should ever go forward, so, for
     these two reasons I easily won his consent to the fulfillment of my wish, for he was
     fairly agape for my money, and at the same time believed that his niece would vastly
     benefit by my teaching. More even than this, by his own earnest entreaties he fell in with
     my desires beyond anything I had dared to hope, opening the way for my love; for he
     entrusted her wholly to my guidance, begging me to give her instruction whensoever I
     might be free from the duties of my school, no matter whether by day or by night, and
     to punish her sternly if ever I should find her negligent of her tasks. In all this the man's
     simplicity was nothing short of astounding to me; I should not have been more smitten
     with wonder if he had entrusted a tender lamb to the care of a ravenous wolf. When he
     had thus given her into my charge, not alone to be taught but even to be disciplined,
     what had he done save to give free scope to my desires, and to offer me every
     opportunity, even if I had not sought it, to bend her to my will with threats and blows if
     I failed to do so with caresses? There were, however, two things which particularly
     served to allay any foul suspicion: his own love for his niece, and my former reputation
     for continence.

     Why should I say more? We were united first in the dwelling that sheltered our love,
     and then in the hearts that burned with it. Under the pretext of study we spent our hours
     in the happiness of love, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our
     passion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the books which lay open before
     us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words. Our hands sought less the book
     than each other's bosoms -- love drew our eyes together far more than the lesson drew
     them to the pages of our text. In order that there might be no suspicion, there were,
     indeed, sometimes blows, but love gave them, not anger; they were the marks, not of
     wrath, but of a tenderness surpassing the most fragrant balm in sweetness. What
     followed? No degree in love's progress was left untried by our passion, and if love itself
     could imagine any wonder as yet unknown, we discovered it. And our inexperience of
     such delights made us all the more ardent in our pursuit of them, so that our thirst for
     one another was still unquenched.

     In measure as this passionate rapture absorbed me more and more, I devoted ever less
     time to philosophy and to the work of the school. Indeed it became loathsome to me to
     go to the school or to linger there; the labour, moreover, was very burdensome, since
     my nights were vigils of love and my days of study. My lecturing became utterly
     careless and lukewarm; I did nothing because of inspiration, but everything merely as a
     matter of habit. I had become nothing more than a reciter of my former discoveries,
     and though I still wrote poems, they dealt with love, not with the secrets of philosophy.
     Of these songs you yourself well know how some have become widely known and
     have been sung in many lands, chiefly, methinks, by those who delighted in the things of
     this world. As for the sorrow, the groans, the lamentations of my students when they
     perceived the preoccupation, nay, rather the chaos, of my mind, it is hard even to
     imagine them.

     A thing so manifest could deceive only a few, no one, methinks, save him whose shame
     it chiefly bespoke, the girl's uncle, Fulbert. The truth was often enough hinted to him,
     and by many persons, but he could not believe it, partly, as I have said, by reason of
     his boundless love for his niece, and partly because of the well-known continence of
     my previous life. Indeed we do not easily suspect shame in those whom we most
     cherish, nor can there be the blot of foul suspicion on devoted love. Of this St. Jerome
     in his epistle to Sabinianus (Epist. 48) says: "We are wont to be the last to know the
     evils of our own households, and to be ignorant of the sins of our children and our
     wives, though our neighbours sing them aloud." But no matter how slow a matter may
     be in disclosing itself, it is sure to come forth at last, nor is it easy to hide from one what
     is known to all. So, after the lapse of several months, did it happen with us. Oh, how
     great was the uncle's grief when he learned the truth, and how bitter was the sorrow of
     the lovers when we were forced to part! With what shame was I overwhelmed, with
     what contrition smitten because of the blow which had fallen on her I loved, and what a
     tempest of misery burst over her by reason of my disgrace! Each grieved most, not for
     himself, but for the other. Each sought to allay, not his own sufferings, but those of the
     one he loved. The very sundering of our bodies served but to link our souls closer
     together; the plentitude of the love which was denied to us inflamed us more than ever.
     Once the first wildness of shame had passed, it left us more shameless than before, and
     as shame died within us the cause of it seemed to us ever more desirable. And so it
     chanced with us as, in the stories that the poets tell, it once happened with Mars and
     Venus when they were caught together.

     It was not long after this that Heloise found that she was pregnant, and of this she wrote
     to me in the utmost exultation, at the same time asking me to consider what had best be
     done. Accordingly, on a night when her uncle was absent, we carried out the plan we
     had determined on, and I stole her secretly away from her uncle's house, sending her
     without delay to my own country. She remained there with my sister until she gave birth
     to a son, whom she named Astrolabe. Meanwhile her uncle after his return, was almost
     mad with grief; only one who had then seen him could rightly guess the burning agony
     of his sorrow and the bitterness of his shame. What steps to take against me, or what
     snares to set for me, he did not know. If he should kill me or do me some bodily hurt,
     he feared greatly lest his dear-loved niece should be made to suffer for it among my
     kinsfolk. He had no power to seize me and imprison me somewhere against my will,
     though I make no doubt he would have done so quickly enough had he been able or
     dared, for I had taken measures to guard against any such attempt.

     At length, however, in pity for his boundless grief, and bitterly blaming myself for the
     suffering which my love had brought upon him through the baseness of the deception I
     had practiced, I went to him to entreat his forgiveness, promising to make any amends
     that he himself might decree. I pointed out that what had happened could not seem
     incredible to any one who had ever felt the power of love, or who remembered how,
     from the very beginning of the human race, women had cast down even the noblest
     men to utter ruin. And in order to make amends even beyond his extremest hope, I
     offered to marry her whom I had seduced, provided only the thing could be kept
     secret, so that I might suffer no loss of reputation thereby. To this he gladly assented,
     pledging his own faith and that of his kindred, and sealing with kisses the pact which I
     had sought of him--and all this that he might the more easily betray me. MORE
 

CHAPTER VII
 

     FORTHWITH I repaired to my own country, and brought back thence my mistress,
     that I might make her my wife. She, however, most violently disapproved of this, and
     for two chief reasons: the danger thereof, and the disgrace which it would bring upon
     me. She swore that her uncle would never be appeased by such satisfaction as this, as,
     indeed, afterwards proved only too true. She asked how she could ever glory in me if
     she should make me thus inglorious, and should shame herself along with me. What
     penalties, she said, would the world rightly demand of her if she should rob it of so
     shining a light! What curses would follow such a loss to the Church, what tears among
     the philosophers would result from such a marriage! How unfitting, how lamentable it
     would be for me, whom nature had made for the whole world, to devote myself to one
     woman solely, and to subject myself to such humiliation! She vehemently rejected this
     marriage, which she felt would be in every way ignominious and burdensome to me.

. . . . . . . .

     Now, she added, if laymen and gentiles, bound by no profession of religion, lived after
     this fashion, what ought you, a cleric and a canon, to do in order not to prefer base
     voluptuousness to your sacred duties, to prevent this Charybdis from sucking you
     down headlong, and to save yourself from being plunged shamelessly and irrevocably
     into such filth as this? If you care nothing for your privileges as a cleric, at least uphold
     your dignity as a philosopher. If you scorn the reverence due to God, let regard for
     your reputation temper your shamelessness. Remember that Socrates was chained to a
     wife, and by what a filthy accident he himself paid for this blot on philosophy, in order
     that others thereafter might be made more cautious by his example. Jerome thus
     mentions this affair, writing about Socrates in his first book against Jovinianus: "Once
     when he was withstanding a storm of reproaches which Xantippe was hurling at him
     from an upper story, he was suddenly drenched with foul slops; wiping his head, he
     said only, 'I knew there would be a shower after all that thunder.'"

     Her final argument was that it would be dangerous for me to take her back to Paris,
     and that it would be far sweeter for her to be called my mistress than to be known as
     my wife; nay, too, that this would be more honourable for me as well. In such case, she
     said, love alone would hold me to her, and the strength of the marriage chain would not
     constrain us. Even if we should by chance be parted from time to time, the joy of our
     meetings would be all the sweeter by reason of its rarity. But when she found that she
     could not convince me or dissuade me from my folly by these and like arguments, and
     because she could not bear to offend me, with grievous sighs and tears she made an
     end of her resistance, saying: "Then there is no more left but this, that in our doom the
     sorrow yet to come shall be no less than the love we two have already known." Nor in
     this, as now the whole world knows, did she lack the spirit of prophecy.

     So, after our little son was born, we left him in my sister's care, and secretly returned to
     Paris. A few days later, in the early morning, having kept our nocturnal vigil of prayer
     unknown to all in a certain church, we were united there in the benediction of wedlock
     her uncle and a few friends of his and mine being present. We departed forthwith
     stealthily and by separate ways, nor thereafter did we see each other save rarely and in
     private, thus striving our utmost to conceal what we had done. But her uncle and those
     of his household, seeking solace for their disgrace, began to divulge the story of our
     marriage, and thereby to violate the pledge they had given me on this point. Heloise, on
     the contrary, denounced her own kin and swore that they were speaking the most
     absolute lies. Her uncle, aroused to fury thereby, visited her repeatedly with
     punishments. No sooner had I learned this than I sent her to a convent of nuns at
     Argenteuil, not far from Paris, where she herself had been brought up and educated as
     a young girl. I had them make ready for her all the garments of a nun, suitable for the
     life of a convent, excepting only the veil, and these I bade her put on.

     When her uncle and his kinsmen heard of this, they were convinced that now I had
     completely played them false and had rid myself forever of Heloise by forcing her to
     become a nun. Violently incensed, they laid a plot against me, and one night while I all
     unsuspecting was asleep in a secret room in my lodgings, they broke in with the help of
     one of my servants whom they had bribed. There they had vengeance on me with a
     most cruel and most shameful punishment, such as astounded the whole world; for they
     cut off those parts of my body with which I had done that which was the cause of their
     sorrow. This done, straightway they fled, but two of them were captured and suffered
     the loss of their eyes and their genital organs. One of these two was the aforesaid
     servant, who even while he was still in my service, had been led by his avarice to betray
     me.

CHAPTER VIII

                     Abelard castrated, Heloise becomes a nun
 

     WHEN morning came the whole city was assembled before my dwelling. It is difficult,
     nay, impossible, for words of mine to describe the amazement which bewildered them,
     the lamentations they uttered, the uproar with which they harassed me, or the grief with
     which they increased my own suffering. Chiefly the clerics, and above all my scholars,
     tortured me with their intolerable lamentations and outcries, so that I suffered more
     intensely from their compassion than from the pain of my wound. In truth I felt the
     disgrace more than the hurt to my body, and was more afflicted with shame than with
     pain. My incessant thought was of the renown in which I had so much delighted, now
     brought low, nay, utterly blotted out, so swiftly by an evil chance. I saw, too, how justly
     God had punished me in that very part of my body whereby I had sinned. I perceived
     that there was indeed justice in my betrayal by him whom I had myself already
     betrayed; and then I thought how eagerly my rivals would seize upon this manifestation
     of justice, how this disgrace would bring bitter and enduring grief to my kindred and my
     friends, and how the tale of this amazing outrage would spread to the very ends of the
     earth.

     What path lay open to me thereafter? How could I ever again hold up my head among
     men, when every finger should be pointed at me in scorn, every tongue speak my
     blistering shame, and when I should be a monstrous spectacle to all eyes? I was
     overwhelmed by the remembrance that, according to the dread letter of the law, God
     holds eunuchs in such abomination that men thus maimed are forbidden to enter a
     church, even as the unclean and filthy; nay, even beasts in such plight were not
     acceptable as sacrifices. Thus in Leviticus (xxii. 24) is it said: "Ye shall not offer unto
     the Lord that which hath its stones bruised, or crushed, or broken, or cut." And in
     Deuteronomy (xxiii. 1), "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut
     off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord."

     I must confess that in my misery it was the overwhelming sense of my disgrace rather
     than any ardour for conversion to the religious life that drove me to seek the seclusion
     of the monastic cloister. Heloise had already, at my bidding, taken the veil and entered
     a convent. Thus it was that we both put on the sacred garb, I in the abbey of St. Denis,
     and she in the convent of Argenteuil, of which I have already spoken. She, I remember
     well, when her fond friends sought vainly to deter her from submitting her fresh youth to
     the heavy and almost intolerable yoke of monastic life, sobbing and weeping replied in
     the words of Cornelia:

          "O husband most noble
          Who ne'er shouldst have shared my couch! Has fortune such power
          To smite so lofty a head? Why then was I wedded
          Only to bring thee to woe? Receive now my sorrow,
          The price I so gladly pay."
          (Lucan, "Pharsalia," viii. 94.)

     With these words on her lips did she go forthwith to the altar, and lifted therefrom the
     veil, which had been blessed by the bishop, and before them all she took the vows of
     the religious life. For my part, scarcely had I recovered from my wound when clerics
     sought me in great numbers, endlessly beseeching both my abbot and me myself that
     now, since I was done with learning for the sake of pain or renown, I should turn to it
     for the sole love of God. They bade me care diligently for the talent which God had
     committed to my keeping (Matthew, xxv. 15), since surely He would demand it back
     from me with interest. It was their plea that, inasmuch as of old I had laboured chiefly in
     behalf of the rich, I should now devote myself to the teaching of the poor. Therein
     above all should I perceive how it was the hand of God that had touched me, when I
     should devote my life to the study of letters in freedom from the snares of the flesh and
     withdrawn from the tumultuous life of this world. Thus, in truth, should I become a
     philosopher less of this world than of God.

Amazon.com 100 Hot Books|100 Hot CDs|Top Electronics|Gift Ideas|Hot DVDs|Awards|Children's|Music
 

[home] [books] [women's] [movies]