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    Letters of Abelard and Heloise
    Letters of Abelard and Heloise
    Letters of Abelard and Heloise
    Ebook163 pages4 hours

    Letters of Abelard and Heloise

    By Pierre Bayle

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Peter Abelard was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. The story of his affair with and love for Heloise has become legendary.
    Héloïse d'Argenteuil was a French nun, writer, scholar, and abbess, best known for her love affair and correspondence with Peter Abélard.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateNov 2, 2021
    ISBN9781515453574
    Letters of Abelard and Heloise

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    Reviews for Letters of Abelard and Heloise

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Despite my interest in the middle ages, I avoided H&A for a long time. I was under the impression that it was all moaning about love and so on; but no! These letters are actually fascinating. Two incredibly intelligent people, neither of whom I'd want to spend too much time with, write to each other about their amazing lives (famous philosopher gets castrated, hounded by church, hated by monks; famous poet/composer/humanist falls dementedly in love, has a child with her lover, becomes powerful abbess), but mixed in are very, very smart philosophical, theological, and social debates and discussions.

      It would be the 'right' thing to do here for me to complain about how Abelard was a misogynist and Heloise was a victim and how her fabulous emancipatory light has been hidden under his having a penis. But if you read these letters with any care, you'll recognize Heloise for what she is: someone who is simply too brilliant, and too strong willed, to live a life filled with anything but soap opera level drama. Abelard is less recognizable as a type, in part because although he seems to have been just like Heloise when younger, he resist her attempts to engage in that kind of behavior in his later years. Heloise might have been more oppressed, but Abelard certainly suffered more, and that seems to have mellowed his brilliance and will.

      Rather than Heloise-as-hero or Abelard-as-villain, these letters are definitive proof that 'the renaissance' didn't spring fully loaded from the head of some ancient Greek statue. H&A both know and quote at length from the classics; they both assume that secular learning is important; they both conduct their lives as such. These letters put paid to the silly belief of many historians of the early modern period that their period was the first time that anyone was an individual, or had a conflicted relationship with religion etc... And they're just damn entertaining.

      They're also enlightening. Abelard's 'biography', the first letter, is a fine piece of life writing; Heloise's request that Abelard compose a rule for the community she headed is deeply learned and hilariously precise (essentially, her letter is an exercise in close reading of the Rule of St Benedict, showing just how unsuitable it is for women, in gloriously fine detail); Abelard's rule is a perfect response (excepting the residual "weaker vessel" nonsense).

      There's a problem with this edition, though: for some baffling reason, Abelard's letter to Heloise on the history of nuns is greatly abridged. Why? And if you don't find it odd enough to begin with, consider that it can't have been to save paper; the book ends with a few anonymous letters from the period that some enterprising historian decided, for no particularly good reason, had also been written by H&A.

      Here's something from one of the original set of letters:

      "Who is there who was once my enemy, whether man or woman, who is not moved now by the compassion which is my due? Wholly guilty though I am, I am also, as you know, wholly innocent. It is not the deed but the intention of the doer which makes the crime, and justice should weight not what was done bu the spirit in which it is done. What my intention towards you has always been, you alone who have known it can judge. I submit all to your scrutiny, yield to your testimony in all things." Thus, Heloise to Abelard: introspective, philosophically sophisticated, conflicted.

      Here's something from the unnecessarily appended "Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard":

      "Since my mind is turning with many concerns, it fails me, pierced by the sharp hook of love... Just as fire cannot be extinguished or suppressed by any material, unless water, by nature its powerful remedy, is applied, so my love cannot be cured by any means - only by you can it be healed." Thus, we're asked to believe, 'Heloise' to Abelard: ignorant (lots of things extinguish fire), foolish (if your love can't be cured by any means, then it can't be cured by Abelard), dull. I guess at least we have evidence that even twelfth-century people (though not necessarily H&A) could write drivel under the 'inspiration' of love.

      If I could do it all over again, maybe I'd read the Hackett volume, which includes some of the love letter drivel, but at least gives us all of Abelard's letter to compensate.
    • 4/5
      A work which has a surpricing immediacy, centuries later. A good example of why you shouldn't cross potential fathers-in-law.

    Book preview

    Letters of Abelard and Heloise - Pierre Bayle

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