DEAD SEA FRUIT
The great cemetery of Père Lachaise at Paris is a city of historic
tombs. Names of world-fame look down on you from the marble dwellings
of the dead, as you pass along its alleys and broad avenues. Paris
loves to wander there on Sundays; to scatter floral symbols of a
living memory on the youngest graves, and to hang wreaths of unfading
honour over the ashes of those who have fought for it and served it.
The memory of the dead soon fades, they say, yet you will see men and
women of Paris, on many a summer’s day, take flowers and wreaths in
solemn pity to lay on the tomb of a woman who was dust seven hundred
years ago. It is the grave of Heloise, and of her lover, Abélard.
It is scarcely necessary to say that in a serious endeavour to
depict the historical Heloise much myth and legend must be soberly
declined. Even historians have been seduced from their high duty in
writing her praise: witness the fond exaggeration of M. de Rémusat,
which would make her ‘the first of women.’ Yet it must be admitted
that impartial study brings us face to face with a very remarkable
personality. This will be easily accepted in the sequel, when we have
followed the course of her life to some extent—when, for instance,
we see the affection and the extraordinary respect with which she
inspires the famous abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable. It is
more difficult to recall her at the period of her fateful meeting
with Abélard. We have, however, the sober assurance of Peter the
Venerable that, even at this early date, she was ‘of great repute
throughout the entire kingdom’; and there is no reason whatever to
resent Abélard’s assertion that she was already distinguished for her
knowledge.
The mythic additions to the portraiture of Heloise refer almost
exclusively to her parentage and her beauty. Abélard introduces
her to us as the niece of a canon of the cathedral chapter, named
Fulbert. It is quite clear that Abélard considered her such
throughout life, and that it was the belief of Heloise herself; but
of her parentage neither of them speaks. In strict justice, the only
inference we may draw from this is that she lost her parents at an
early age. We should never have known the parentage of Abélard but
for his own autobiography. However, the tradition that has charged
itself with the romance of Abélard’s life found in this silence a
convenient pretext for weaving further romantic elements into the
story. There is a pretty collection of myths about Heloise’s birth,
most of them, of course, making her illegitimate. The issue of lawful
wedlock is ever too prosaic and ordinary for the romantic faculty—in
spite of facts. The favourite theory is that Heloise was the daughter
of Canon Fulbert; even Hausrath thinks Fulbert’s conduct points to
this relationship. Two other canons of Paris are severally awarded
the honour by various writers. On the other hand, it was inevitable
that she should be given a tinge of ‘noble’ blood, and this is traced
on the maternal side. Turlot makes the best effort—from the romantic
point of view—in describing her as the daughter of an abbess, who was
the mistress of a Montmorency, but who gave an air of respectability
to her family matters by passing for the mistress of Fulbert. From
the less interesting point of view of history, we can only say that
she lived with her uncle, Canon Fulbert, and we must admit that we do
not know whether she was illegitimate or an orphan. But the former
category was very much the larger one, even in those violent days.
It was also natural that tradition should endow her with a singular
beauty: an endowment which sober history is unable to confirm. She
must, it is true, have had a singular grace and charm of person. It
is impossible to think that her mental gifts alone attracted Abélard.
Moreover, in the course of the story, we shall meet several instances
of the exercise of such personal power. But we cannot claim for her
more than a moderate degree of beauty. ‘Not the least in beauty of
countenance,’ says Abélard, ‘she was supreme in her knowledge of
letters.’ The antithesis does not seem to be interpreted aright by
those writers who think it denies her any beauty. ‘Not the least’ is
a figure of rhetoric, well known to Abélard, which must by no means
be taken with Teutonic literalness.
But that ‘repute throughout the kingdom,’ which Peter the Venerable
grants her, was based on her precocious knowledge. It is generally
estimated that she was in her seventeenth or eighteenth year when
Abélard fell in love with her. She had spent her early years at the
Benedictine nunnery at Argenteuil, a few miles beyond St. Denis.
Her education was then continued by her uncle. Canon Fulbert has no
reputation for learning in the chronicles of the time; in fact, the
only information we have of him, from other sources than the story of
Abélard, is that he was the happy possessor of ‘a whole bone’ out of
the spine of St. Ebrulfus. However, it is indisputable that Heloise
had a reputation for letters even at that time. Both Abélard and
Peter of Cluny are explicit on the point; the latter says to her, in
one of his admiring letters, ‘in study you not only outstripped all
women, but there were few men whom you did not surpass.’ From this
it is clear that the learning of Heloise was not distinguished only
when compared with the general condition of the feminine mind. In
fact, although Abbot Peter speaks slightingly of womanly education in
general, this was a relatively bright period. We have already seen
the wife and daughters of Manegold teaching philosophy at Paris with
much distinction at the close of the eleventh century, and one cannot
go far in the chronicles of the time without meeting many instances
of a learned correspondence in Latin between prelates and women.
Nevertheless, the learning of Heloise cannot have been considerable,
absolutely speaking. Her opportunities were even more limited than
the erudition of her time. That she knew Hebrew is explicitly stated
by Abélard and Peter of Cluny, and also by Robert of Auxerre; but
she probably learned it (with Greek) from Abélard, and knew no more
than he. Her Latin is good; but it is impossible to discuss here
her famous _Letters_, which give us our sole direct insight into
her personality. Learned, critical, penetrative, she certainly was,
but Rémusat’s estimate is entirely inadmissible. Beside Aspasia or
Hypatia she would ‘pale her ineffectual fire.’
It is not difficult to understand how the two were brought together.
Both of high repute ‘in the whole kingdom,’ or, at all events, in
Paris, they could not long remain strangers. Abélard was soon ‘wholly
afire with love of the maid,’ he tells us, and sought an opportunity
of closer intercourse with her. Though Cotter Morison’s theory of
the sated sensualist looking round for a dainty morsel is utterly at
variance with Abélard’s narrative—the only account of these events
that we have—it is, nevertheless, clear that Abélard sought the
intimacy of Heloise for the purpose of gaining her love. He says so
repeatedly; and, though we have at times to moderate the stress of
his words, we cannot refuse to accept their substance. Mr. Poole
considers the idea of a deliberate seduction on the part of Abélard
‘incredible.’ It is strange that one who is so familiar with the
times should think this. ‘I thought it would be well to contract a
union of love with the maid,’ Abélard says. From the circumstance
that he had to approach Fulbert (who was, however, only too willing)
through the mediation of friends, it does not seem rash to infer that
he had had no personal intercourse with the canon and his niece. It
was through her fame and, perhaps, an occasional passing glance that
he had come to love her. He had, however, little diffidence about
the issue. Though between thirty-five and forty years of age, he
looked ‘young and handsome,’ he tells us; and we learn further from
Heloise that he had gifts ‘of writing poetry and of singing’ which
no female heart could resist. The ‘Socrates of Gaul’ set out on a
love-adventure.
And one fine day the little world of Paris was smirking and
chattering over the startling news that Master Peter had gone
to live with Heloise and her uncle. The simple canon had been
delighted at the proposal to receive Abélard. Alleging the expense of
maintaining a separate house and the greater convenience of Fulbert’s
house for attending the school, Abélard had asked his hospitality in
consideration of a certain payment and the instruction of Heloise in
leisure hours. It may or may not be true that Fulbert was avaricious,
as Abélard affirms, but the honour of lodging the first master
in Christendom and the valuable advantage to his niece are quite
adequate to explain Fulbert’s eager acceptance. ‘Affection for his
niece and the repute of my chastity,’ says Abélard, blinded the canon
to the obvious danger, if not the explicit intention. The master was
at once established in the canon’s house. One reads with pity how the
uncle, blind, as only an erudite priest can be, to the rounded form
and quickened pulse, child-like, gave Abélard even power to beat his
niece, if she neglected her task.
A tradition, which seems to have but a precarious claim to credence,
points out the spot where the idyll of that love was lived. In
the earlier part of the present century there was a house at the
corner of the Rue des Chantres (on the island, facing the Hotel de
Ville), which bore an inscription claiming that ‘Heloise and Abélard,
the model of faithful spouses, dwelt in this house.’ If we accept
the vague legend, we can easily restore in imagination the little
cottage of Fulbert. It lay a few yards from the water’s edge, and
one could look out from its narrow windows over the gently sloping
garden of the bank and the fresh, sweet bosom of the river; the quays
were beyond—where the Hotel de Ville now stands—and further still
outspread the lovely panorama that encircled Paris.
In a very short time master and pupil were lovers. He did assuredly
fulfil his promise of teaching her. Most probably it was from him
that she learned what Greek and Hebrew she knew; for Abélard, in
later years, not only reminds her nuns that they ‘have a mother who
is conversant with these tongues,’ but adds also that ‘she alone has
attained this knowledge,’ amongst the women of her time. It is also
clear that he taught her dialectics, theology, and ethics. But it was
not long, he confesses, before there were ‘more kisses than theses,’
and ‘love was the inspirer of his tongue.’ He does not hesitate to
speak of having ‘corrupted’ or seduced her, but it is only prejudice
or ignorance that can accept this in the full severity and gravity of
the modern term. Heloise had been educated in a nunnery; but before
many years we find these nuns of Argenteuil turned on the street
for ‘the enormity of their lives.’ The charge must not be taken too
literally just yet, but it should make us hesitate to credit Heloise
with a rigorous moral education. She lived, too, in a world where,
as we saw, such liaisons were not considered sinful. It is far from
likely that she would oppose any scruple to Abélard’s desire. Indeed,
from the study of her references to their love, in the letters she
wrote long years afterwards—wrote as an abbess of high repute—one
feels disposed to think that Abélard would have had extreme
difficulty in pointing out to her the sinfulness of such a love. It
is with an effort, even after twenty years of chaste, conventual
life, that she accepts the ecclesiastical view of their conduct.
Abélard sinned; but let us, in justice, limit his sin at least to
its due objective proportion; its subjective magnitude I shall not
venture to examine.
In a few months the famed philosopher appeared in a new character,
as ‘the first of the troubadours,’ to use the words of Ampère. ‘À
mesure qu’on a plus d’esprit les passions sont plus grandes,’ said
Pascal. Of all false epigrams that is surely the falsest, but it
would be easily inspired by the transformation of Pierre Abélard. The
sober-living man of forty, whom all had thought either never to have
known or long since to have passed the fever of youth, was mastered
by a deep, tyrannical passion. The problems of dialectics were
forgotten, the alluring difficulties of Ezechiel unheeded. Day after
day the murmuring throng was dismissed untaught from the cloistral
school; whilst passers-by heard songs that were ardent with deep love
from the windows of the canon’s house. All Paris, even all France,
caught the echo, says Heloise, and ‘every street, every house,
resounded with my name.’ The strange ‘Story of love and learning,’
as an old ballad expressed it, was borne through the kingdom in
Abélard’s own impassioned words.[16]
[16] Not a single one of Abélard’s songs has come down to us. A
few songs are to be found which bear his name, but they are not
genuine. It is an unfortunate loss, since the religious hymns
of his later years convey no better impression of his true and
unspoiled poetic faculty than the moonlight does of the rays of
the sun.
Months ran on, and the purblind priest remained wholly unconscious
of what all Paris sang nightly in its taverns. At length the truth
was forced upon his mind, and he at once interrupted the love-story.
He drove Abélard from the house, and raised the usual futile barriers
to the torrent of passion. Whether the canon was really more earnest
than the majority of his order, and therefore sincerely shocked at
the thought of the liaison, or whether it had disturbed some other
project he had formed, it is impossible to say. Heloise herself,
in her sober maturity, affirms that any woman in France would have
thought her position more honourable than any marriage. However that
may be, Fulbert angrily forbade a continuance of the relation. Once
more Abélard must have felt the true alternative that honour placed
before him: either to crush his passion and return to the school, or
to marry Heloise and sacrifice the desire of further advancement in
ecclesiastical dignity.
Abélard was not a priest at that time. He was probably a canon of
Notre Dame, but there are very satisfactory reasons for holding
that he did not receive the priesthood until a much later date. In
the ‘Story’ he makes Heloise address him, about this time, as ‘a
cleric and canon,’ but he is nowhere spoken of as a priest. Had
he been a priest, the circumstance would have afforded Heloise one
of the most powerful objections to a marriage; in the curious and
lengthy catalogue of such objections which we shall find her raising
presently she does not mention the priesthood. But even if he were
a priest, it is not at all clear that he would have considered this
in itself an impediment to marriage. From the acts of the Council of
London (1102), the Council of Troyes (1107), the Council of Rheims
(1119), and others, we find that the decree of the Church against the
marriage of priests, and even bishops, was far from being universally
accepted. Indeed, we have specific reason for thinking that Abélard
did not recognise an impediment of that character. In a work which
bears the title _Sententiae Abaelardi_, we find the thesis, more or
less clearly stated, that the priest may marry. The work is certainly
not Abélard’s own composition, but the experts regard it as a careful
summary of his views by some master of the period.
Apart from the laxer view of love-relation which Abélard probably
shared, we can only find firm ground to interpret his reluctance to
marry in the fear of injuring his further ambition. Marriage was
fast becoming a fatal obstacle to advancement in the ecclesiastical
world; a lover—with wealth—was not a serious difficulty. Even this
point, however, cannot be pressed; it looks as though his ambition
had become as limp and powerless as all other feelings in the new
tyranny of love. Historians have been so eager to quarrel with
the man that they have, perhaps, not paid a just regard to the
fact that Heloise herself was violently opposed to marriage, and
conscientiously thought their earlier union more honourable. This
will appear presently.
Whatever struggle may have distracted Abélard after their separation,
he was soon forced to take practical measures. Heloise found means
to inform him—not with the conventional tears, but, he says, ‘with
the keenest joy’—that she was about to become a mother. Fate had cut
the ethical knot. He at once removed her from Fulbert’s house during
the night, and had her conveyed, in the disguise of a nun,[17] to his
home at Pallet. It is not clearly stated that Abélard accompanied
her, but, beside the intrinsic probability, there is a local
tradition that Abélard and Heloise spent many happy months together
at Pallet, and there is a phrase in the ‘Story’ which seems to
confirm it. However that may be, we find him in Paris again, after a
time, seeking a reconciliation with Fulbert.
[17] This detail is found in Abélard’s second letter to Heloise.
It is characteristic of Mr. Cotter Morison’s ‘sketch’ of Abélard
that he should have missed it, and thought fit to deny it.
Deutsch reads him a severe lesson on the duty of accuracy in his
_Peter Abälard_.
Fulbert was by no means the quiet, passive recluse that one would
imagine from his earlier action, or inaction. The discovery of
Abélard’s treachery and the removal of his niece had enkindled
thoughts of wild and dark revenge. He feared, however, to attack
Abélard whilst Heloise remained at Pallet; it is a fearful commentary
on the times that Abélard should coolly remark that a retaliation on
the part of his own relatives was apprehended. Revenge was considered
a legitimate daughter of justice in those days. A compromise was at
length imagined by Abélard. He proposed to marry Heloise, if Fulbert
and his friends would agree to keep the marriage secret. In this we
have a still clearer revelation of the one serious flaw in Abélard’s
character—weakness. No doubt, if we had had an autobiography from
an unmaimed Abélard—an Abélard who identified himself with, and
endeavoured proudly to excuse, the lover of Heloise—we should be
reminded of many extenuating elements; the repugnance of Heloise, the
stupid anti-matrimonialism of the hierarchy, the current estimate
of an unconsecrated liaison, and so forth. Even as it is, Abélard
perceives no selfishness, no want of resolution, in his action. ‘Out
of compassion for his great anxiety,’ he says, he approached Fulbert
on the question of a private marriage. The canon consented, though
secretly retaining his intention of taking a bloody revenge, Abélard
thinks; and the master hastened once more to Brittany for his bride.
Abélard probably flattered himself that he had found an admirable
outlet from his narrow circumstances. Fulbert’s conscience would be
salved by the Church’s blessing on their love; the hierarchy would
have no matrimonial impediment to oppose to his advancement; Paris
would give an indulgent eye to what it would regard as an amiable
frailty, if not a grace of character. Unfortunately for his peace,
Heloise energetically repulsed the idea of marriage. The long passage
in which Abélard gives us her objections is not the least interesting
in the ‘Story.’
‘She asked,’ he writes, ‘what glory she would win from me, when she
had rendered me inglorious, and had humbled both me and her. How
great a punishment the world would inflict on her if she deprived
it of so resplendent a light: what curses, what loss to the Church,
what philosophic tears, would follow such a marriage. How outrageous,
how pitiful it was, that he whom nature had created for the common
blessing should be devoted to one woman, and plunged in so deep a
disgrace. Profoundly did she hate the thought of a marriage which
would prove so humiliating and so burdensome to me in every respect.’
Then follows an elaborate, rhetorical discourse on the disadvantages
of matrimony, with careful division and subdivision, arguments from
reason, from experience, from authority, and all the artifices of
rhetoric and dialectics. That the learned Heloise did urge many
of its curious points will scarcely be doubted, but as a careful
and ordered piece of pleading against matrimony it has an obvious
ulterior purpose. St. Paul is the first authority quoted; then follow
St. Jerome, Theophrastus, and Cicero. She (or he) then draws an
animated picture of the domestic felicity of a philosopher, reminding
him of servants and cradles, infant music and the chatter of nurses,
the pressing throng of the family and the helplessness of the little
ones. The example of monks, of Nazarites, and of philosophers is
impressively urged; and if he will not hesitate, as ‘a cleric and a
canon,’ to commit himself ‘irrevocably to domestic joy,’ at least
let him remember his dignity as a philosopher. The sad fate of the
married Socrates is adduced, together with the thunder and rain
incident. Finally, she is represented as saying that it is ‘sweeter
to her and more honourable to him that she should be his mistress
rather than his wife,’ and that she prefers to be united to him ‘by
love alone, not by the compulsion of the marriage vow.’
When the letter containing this curious passage reached Heloise,
nearly twenty years after the event, she, an abbess of high repute
for holiness, admitted its correctness, with the exception that ‘a
few arguments had been omitted in which she set love before matrimony
and freedom before compulsion.’ Holy abbess writing to holy abbot,
she calls God to witness that ‘if the name of wife is holier, the
name of friend, or, if he likes, mistress or concubine, is sweeter,’
and that she ‘would rather be his mistress than the queen of a
Cæsar.’ They who disregard these things in sitting in judgment on
that famous liaison are foredoomed to error.
But Abélard prevailed. ‘Weeping and sobbing vehemently,’ he says,
‘she brought her discourse to an end with these words: “One thing
alone remains for us now, we must exhibit in our common ruin a grief
as strong as the love that has gone before.”’ It is an artistic
termination to Abélard’s discourse, at all events.
Back to Paris once more, therefore, the two proceeded. Heloise had
a strong foreboding of evil to come from the side of Fulbert; she
did not trust his profession of conciliation. However, she left her
boy, whom, with a curious affectation, they had called Astrolabe
(the name of an astronomic apparatus), in the charge of Abélard’s
sister Denyse. They were married a few days after their arrival
at Paris. The vigil was spent, according to custom, in one of the
churches: they remained all night in prayer, and the ceremony took
place after an early Mass in the morning. Their arrival in Paris had
been kept secret, and only Fulbert and a few friends of both parties
were present at the marriage. Then they parted at the altar: the man
weakly proceeding to follow his poor ambition in the school, the
noble young wife making herself a sad sacrifice to his selfishness
and irresolution.
During the next few dreary months they saw each other rarely and in
secret. Abélard was a man of the type that waits for the compulsion
of events in a serious conflict of desires, or of desire and duty. He
could not lay aside his day-dream that somehow and some day the fates
would smooth out a path along which he could carry both his whole
ambition and his love. Events did decide for him once more. Fulbert,
it seems, broke his faith with Abélard and divulged the marriage.
But when people came to Heloise for confirmation, she did more than
‘lie with the sweetness of a Madonna,’ in Charles Reade’s approving
phrase; she denied on oath that she was the wife of Abélard. Fulbert
then began to ill-treat her (the circumstance may be commended to
the notice of those historians who think he had acted from pure
affection), and Abélard removed her secretly from her uncle’s house.
It was to the convent at Argenteuil that Abélard conveyed his wife
this time. One passes almost the very spot in entering modern Paris
by the western line, but the village lay at a much greater distance
from the ancient island-city, a few miles beyond St. Denis, going
down the river. It was a convent of Benedictine nuns, very familiar
to Heloise, who had received her early education there. In order to
conceal Heloise more effectually, he bade her put on the habit of the
nuns, with the exception of the veil, which was the distinguishing
mark of the professed religious. Here she remained for some months;
Abélard waiting upon events, as usual, and occasionally making a
secret visit to Argenteuil. According to Turlot, the abbess of
Argenteuil was the mother of Heloise. We know, at least, that
the nunnery was in a very lax condition, and that, beyond her
unconquerable presentiment of evil, Heloise would suffer little
restraint. Indeed, Abélard reminds her later, in his second letter to
her, that their conjugal relations continued whilst she was in the
nunnery.
How long this wretched situation continued it is impossible to
determine. It cannot have been many months, at the most, before
Fulbert discovered what had happened; it was probably a matter
of weeks. Yet this is the only period in which it is possible to
entertain the theory of Abélard’s licentiousness. We have already
seen that Cotter Morison’s notion of a licentious period before the
liaison with Heloise is quite indefensible. The tragic event which we
have presently to relate puts the latest term to the possibility of
such licence. Now, there are two documents on which Abélard’s critics
rely: a letter to him from Fulques, prior in the monastery of Deuil
near Paris, and a letter from his former teacher, Master Roscelin.
Prior Fulques, however, merely says he ‘has heard’ that Abélard was
reduced to poverty through ‘the greed and avarice of harlots’; and
Roscelin explicitly states that he heard his story from the monks
of St. Denis. Indeed, we may at once exclude Roscelin’s letter; not
merely because it was written in a most furious outburst of temper,
when a man would grasp any rumour, but also on the ground that his
story is absurd and impossible. He represents Abélard, when a monk at
St. Denis, later, returning to his monastery with the money earned by
his teaching, and marching off with it to pay a former mistress. We
shall see, in a later chapter, that Abélard did not begin to teach
until he had left St. Denis.
If, however, Roscelin’s story is too absurd to entertain in itself,
it is useful in casting some light on Fulques’s letter. Fulques was
writing to Abélard on behalf of the monks of St. Denis. He would be
well acquainted with their gossip, and would, therefore, probably
be referring to the story which Roscelin shows to be impossible in
giving it more fully. It is not unlikely that the story was really
a perverse account of Abélard’s visits to Heloise at Argenteuil.
In any case we are reduced to the gossip of a band of monks of
notorious character (_teste_ St. Bernard), of indirect and uncertain
information, and of bitter hostility to Abélard.
And this is all the evidence which can be found in support of the
calumny. On the strength of this monkish gossip we are asked to
believe that Abélard grossly deceived his young wife, and made an
attempt, as ridiculous (if the rumour contained truth) as it was
hypocritical, to deceive the readers of his heart-naked confession.
We are to suppose that ‘the abhorrence of harlots,’ of which he spoke
earlier, entirely disappeared when he found himself united by the
sacred bonds of both religion and love to a noble and devoted wife.
We are to suppose that his apparent detestation and condemnation
of his past conduct was a mere rhetorical artifice to conceal the
foulest and most extraordinary episode in his career from the people
amongst whom he had lived—an artifice, moreover, which would be
utterly inconsistent with his life and character at the time he wrote
the ‘Story.’ It is almost impossible to take such a notion seriously.
Once more, then, we are in a period of waiting for the direction of
events. It came this time in tragic accents that for ever cured the
unfortunate Breton of his listless trust in fate.
Fulbert learned at length that Heloise had been sent to Argenteuil,
and had taken the habit. The canon at once inferred that this was
a preliminary step to a dissolution of the marriage. He would be
unaware that it had been consummated, and would suppose that Abélard
intended to apply to Rome for a dispensation to relieve him of an
apparent embarrassment. He decided on a fearful revenge, which should
at least prevent Abélard from marrying another.
And one early morning, a little later, Paris was in a frenzy of
excitement. Canons, students, and citizens, thronged the streets, and
pressed towards Abélard’s house on St. Genevieve. ‘Almost the entire
city,’ says Fulques, went clamouring towards his house: ‘women wept
as though each one had lost her husband.’ Abélard had been brutally
mutilated during the night. Hirelings of Canon Fulbert had corrupted
his valet, and entered his room whilst he slept. They had perpetrated
an indescribable outrage, such as was not infrequently inflicted in
the quarrels of the Patareni and the Nicolaitæ. In that dark night
the sunshine disappeared for ever from the life of Pierre Abélard.
Henceforth we have to deal with a new man.
It is a pious theory of the autobiographist himself that this
mutilation led indirectly to his ‘conversion.’ There is undoubtedly
much truth in this notion of an indirect occasioning of better
thoughts and of an indirect influence being cast on his mind for
life. Yet we of the later date, holding a truer view of the unity of
human nature, and of the place that sex-influence occupies in its
life, can see that the ‘conversion’ was largely a direct, physical
process. We have, in a very literal sense, another man to deal with
henceforward.
As Abélard lay on the bed of sickness, the conversion gradually
worked onwards towards a critical decision. It is not clear that
the mutilation would prove of itself an impediment to scholastic
honour or ecclesiastical office, but the old life could not be faced
again by one with so little strength and so keen a sensibility. ‘I
pondered on the glory I had won and on the swift chance blow that had
obscured it, nay, wholly extinguished it: on the just judgment of
God by which I had been punished in the member that had sinned: on
the justice of treachery coming from him whom I had myself betrayed:
on the joy of my rivals at such a humiliation: on the endless sorrow
this wound would inflict on my family and my friends: on the speed
with which this deep disgrace would travel through the world. What
path was open to me now? How could I ever walk abroad again, to be
pointed at by every finger, ridiculed by every tongue, a monstrous
spectacle to all?... In such sorry plight as I was, the confusion of
shame rather than a devout conversion impelled me to seek refuge in
the monastery.’
To this natural ‘confusion of shame’ we must look for an explanation
of, not merely the folly, but the cruelty and selfishness, of
Abélard’s proposal. It involved the burial of Heloise in a nunnery.
No one could shrink more feelingly from the unnatural shade of the
cloister than did Heloise, as Abélard must have known, but in his
pain and despair he forgot the elementary dictates of love or of
honour. In any other circumstances the act would be deemed brutal.
Indeed, he wantonly increased the suffering of his young wife by
ordering her to take the vows first. Twenty years afterwards she
plaintively tells him the sorrow he gave her by such a command. ‘God
knows,’ she says, ‘I should not have hesitated, at your command, to
precede or to follow you to hell itself.’ She was ‘profoundly grieved
and ashamed’ at the distrust which seemed to be implied in his
direction. But hers was the love that ‘is stronger than death,’ and
she complied without a murmur, making of her sunny nature one more
victim on the altar of masculine selfishness.
Abélard has left us a dramatic picture of her taking the vows. It
shows clearly that the love which impelled her to such a sacrifice
was not the blind, child-like affection that is wholly merged in the
stronger loved one, but the deep, true love that sees the full extent
of the sacrifice demanded, and accepts it with wide-opened eyes.
At the last moment a little group of friends surrounded her in the
convent-chapel. The veil, blessed by the bishop, lay on the altar
before them, and they were endeavouring to dissuade her from going
forward to take it. She waved them aside—waved aside for the last
time the thought of her child and the vision of a sun-lit earth—and
took the fateful step towards the altar. Then, standing on the spot
where the young nun generally knelt for the final thanksgiving to
God, she recited with the tense fervour of a human prayer the words
of Cornelia in Lucan:
‘O spouse most great,
O thou whose bed my merit could not share!
How hath an evil fortune worked this wrong
On thy dear head? Why hapless did I wed,
If this the fruit that my affection bore?
Behold the penalty I now embrace
For thy sweet sake!’
And, weeping and sobbing, she walked quickly up the steps of the
altar, and covered herself with the veil of the religious profession.