Once upon a time in medieval Paris, a man and a woman met and fell madly in love. Their names were Peter Abelard and Heloise: two intellectuals whose relationship, though ill-fated, has inspired and fascinated people through the ages. But how do we know their story, and why are they remembered with such veneration? The simple answer is that the pair wrote a series of remarkable letters to one another in their later lives, recounting the story of how they met and discussing their relationship as well as matters of philosophy and religion. These letters have been preserved and studied since they were first discovered around 100 years after their deaths, and have provided an incredible insight into a loving, if doomed, relationship from the medieval period.
EXPERT BIO
CONSTANT J MEWS
Constant J Mews is a professor of medieval religious history and thought, and director of the Centre for Religious Studies at Monash University in Melbourne. He is the author of The Lost Love Letters Of Heloise And Abelard: Perceptions Of Dialogue In TwelfthCentury France (Macmillan, 1999).
AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER
In 1115, Peter Abelard was hired to tutor the young Heloïse by her uncle and guardian Fulbert, a canon at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. “We do know that Abelard was a teacher and like any other teacher of his day he was a cleric. He was a very brilliant, argumentative figure and he would have been probably in his
