FAMOUS LOVERS
In Pere Lachaise, the famous cemetery of Paris, there is none among the
hundreds of monuments upon which the traveller looks with more interest
than that of the lovely and unhappy Heloise. There her body lies, with
that of her lover-husband, Pierre Abelard. It is her story that we wish
to tell; but her fame and that of Abelard are so intimately associated
that one cannot tell of Heloise without first telling something of
Abelard. The debt to fame, however, is not all on her side; to translate
the words of a great French historian: "Alone, the name of Abelard would
be known to-day only to scholars: linked with the name of Heloise, it is
in every heart. Paris, above all,... has kept the memory of the immortal
daughter of the Cite with exceptional and unchanging fidelity. The
eighteenth century and the Revolution, so pitiless towards the Middle
Ages, revived this tradition with the same ardor which led them to
destroy so many other memories. The children of Rousseau's disciples
still go in pilgrimage to the monument of this great saint of love, and
each spring sees pious women placing fresh crowns of flowers upon the
tomb in which the Revolution reunited the two lovers." We shall not,
therefore, attempt to part those whom love has for more than seven
centuries joined together, and shall tell of Abelard as well as of
Heloise.
The great University of Paris was already famous in the twelfth century.
Professors, most of them ecclesiastics, lectured on all the foolish
subtilties of the learning of the day to crowds of students collected
from every quarter of Europe. At the monastic school of Notre Dame the
most distinguished lecturer on dialectic,--meaning philosophy and logic
as applied to philosophy,--at the close of the eleventh century, was
Guillaume de Champeaux. The method of instruction was, necessarily,
almost entirely oral, for books were worth almost their weight in coin.
It was the custom for the professor to encourage discussions with the
students and to overwhelm them with the weight of his wisdom and the
acuteness of his reasoning. In this fashion Guillaume had long
triumphed, and had, we may fancy, acquired no little of that dogmatic
habit of mind which is fostered by unchallenged teaching. About the year
1100 his ascendency was seriously threatened by a young Breton, scarcely
yet a man, who had come to his school as a student and had had the
temerity to overcome him in argument. This was Pierre Abelard, soon
famous as a logician, philosopher, and theologian, now remembered
chiefly because of his connection with the fair and noble Heloise.
Abelard was born at Pallet, or Palais, not far from Nantes. He was the
eldest son of a family of some distinction, and his father, Berenger,
was determined to give his son an education in keeping with his own
knightly rank. Berenger himself was better educated than most of the
gentlemen of his class, and there seems to have been a decided leaning
to devoutness in the family, since both Berenger and his wife, Lucie,
took monastic vows later in life. At any rate, Pierre, after a taste of
learning, determined to devote himself entirely to the pursuit of
knowledge. Let us see how he tells this part of his own story. "The
progress that I made in learning attached me to its pursuit with an ever
increasing ardor, and such was the charm that it exercised over my mind
that, renouncing the glory of arms, my own heritage, my own privileges
as eldest son, I abandoned forever the camp of Mars to take refuge in
the bosom of Minerva. Preferring the art of dialectic to all the other
teachings of philosophy, I exchanged the arms of war for those of logic,
and sacrificed trophies of the battlefield for the joys of contest in
argument. I took to travelling from province to province, going wherever
I heard that the study of this art received special honor, and always
engaging in argument, like a veritable emulator of the Peripatetics."
In this way, Abelard, still under twenty, came to the school of
Guillaume de Champeaux. Received at first with honor, as an intelligent
pupil, Abelard remained some time, perhaps two years. But his restless,
inquisitive, and, above all, rational mind could not accept calmly what
seemed to it untrue. Abelard, a mere boy, dared to dispute with his
master, Guillaume, and, what is far worse, to get the better of
arguments on Guillaume's own peculiar subject. The school was divided
into two parties. Guillaume, being the more influential, prevented his
pupil from establishing himself as a lecturer in Paris, and Abelard
removed to Melun, at that time a royal residence and a city of some
importance. Here he opened a school of his own, which prospered so
greatly, in spite of the jealousy of Guillaume and the older teachers,
that he removed to Corbeil, near Paris, and was soon recognized as more
than the equal of his old instructor. But his health broke down under
the strain; he retired to rest and recuperate in his native land, and
remained there several years. Returning about 1108, he again met
Guillaume in argument, in the convent of Saint-Victor, outside Paris,
and again vanquished him, this time so completely that Guillaume gave up
his chair in Paris. His jealousy, however, still kept Abelard from
establishing himself in the great city. The young philosopher opened his
school on Mont Sainte-Genevieve, a hill just outside the walls of the
Paris of that day, where he taught with brilliant success, till summoned
to Brittany by his mother Lucie, then about to take the veil. On his
return from this trip he determined to study theology. The venerable
Anselm of Laon was the most distinguished teacher of theology, and to
him Abelard went. Here is part of his comment on Anselm, which will help
us to understand something of the writer's character.
"He enjoyed marvellous facility of speech, but his thought was without
value, even without good sense. The fire that he kindled filled his
house with smoke, but did not illuminate it. He was a tree dense with
foliage and beautiful from afar, but found fruitless when examined more
closely. I had come to him to gather fruit; I found in him the fig tree
cursed by the Lord, or the old oak to which Lucan compares Pompey: But
the shadow of a great name, the lofty oak in the midst of the fruitful
field." With such an opinion of his preceptor, it is not surprising that
Abelard grew impatient and talked imprudently. The immediate result was
that the young scholar proved, to his own satisfaction and apparently to
that of his hearers, that he could lecture on theology, as Anselm
understood theology, by the aid of ordinary intelligence alone. The
ultimate result was that he made an enemy of Anselm. He returned to
Paris--about 1115--in triumph, was given the chair formerly held by
Guillaume de Champeaux, and became a canon of the cathedral of Notre
Dame.
During the three or four years that followed this signal triumph over
his old master, Abelard enjoyed a popularity and a reputation for
learning almost without parallel. He was of handsome presence, polished
and winning in manners, accomplished even in the little arts and graces
of the society of the period. All this would account for his personal
popularity; but his was really a brilliant mind, fascinatingly if
dangerously logical, and straightforward in dealing with vexed questions
of philosophy and theology. And with all his learning he knew how to
meet the difficulties of ordinary minds, to present his arguments in a
style not only simple but lucid and entertaining. He brought to his work
a precious quality--enthusiasm. From all parts of Europe students
flocked to him, by hundreds, by thousands; and with the offerings they
brought he was rich. Then it was that pride prepared his ruin.
"Believing myself henceforth the only living philosopher, fancying that
I had no more opposition to encounter or accusation to fear, I commenced
to give rein to my passions, I who had always lived in the greatest
continence. The more I advanced in the paths of philosophy and theology,
the further I was getting, by my impure life, from philosophers and
saints." How much of this confession is real humility, and how much mere
pretence, exaggeration, and vain rhetoric, we cannot say. It is an
unfortunate fact that what is recognized as the language of religion is
so highly colored, so tropical, so manifestly not to be taken in its
absolute and literal sense, that one cannot estimate a character by
autobiographic testimony of this sort. What Rousseau meant when he
confessed that he "gave rein to his passions" we know full well, for he
tells us. What, or rather how much, Abelard means we cannot tell, since
his language is evidently in large part figurative. We do not think,
however, that he was ever really a libertine.
In his own account of his love story Abelard says that he was attracted
by the beauty, the youth, and the mental attainments of Heloise, the
niece of Fulbert, a canon of Notre Dame, who had loved her tenderly and
had educated her with unusual care. Smitten more by the physical than by
the mental graces of the girl, then about eighteen, Abelard sought a
pretext to ingratiate himself with Fulbert, and to enter his house as a
lodger. The opportunity of having his beloved niece instructed by a
person of such distinction was more than Fulbert could let pass. In the
intimate relations of teacher and pupil Abelard also found his
opportunity; and the two were soon plainly lovers in the eyes of all the
world save Fulbert, who refused to believe in the treachery of his
friend and the shame of his niece. Abelard, who was in his thirty-ninth
year, loved with all the ardor of youth; he wrote passionate love songs,
which were long popular but have been lost; he neglected his work, and
devoted his time to Heloise instead of to his lectures on theology. At
last even Fulbert could no longer refuse to believe. The lovers were
separated, but continued to meet in secret. Not long after the first
discovery of their relations by her uncle, Heloise found herself about
to become a mother. Abelard stole her away one night, while Fulbert was
absent, and fled with her to Brittany, where she remained with his
sister until after the birth of her son, whom she named Astrolabe.
To appease Fulbert, who was thirsting for revenge but dared not pursue
the pair into Brittany, the stronghold of Abelard's family, Abelard
proposed to marry Heloise, provided the union be kept secret, so as not
to jeopardize his interests or prospects in the Church. Heloise, devoted
body and soul to Abelard, would not hear of a marriage which might ruin
his career, and was with difficulty brought to consent even to a secret
union. Fulbert, seeing no other means of redress, accepted Abelard's
proposition, and gave his word to keep the marriage a secret. Heloise
and Abelard secretly came back to Paris and were wedded a few days
later, the ceremony being performed at dawn, in the presence of Fulbert
and a few of his friends.
But the temporary disappearance from Paris of so noteworthy a person as
Abelard could not be concealed. The whole town had known of his passion
for Heloise, and the gossips now guessed, no doubt, why he had
disappeared, and why Heloise also had gone. We do not need to be told
that the surmises made, all so dishonorable to his niece, must have been
galling in the extreme to Fulbert. He could not endure the shame of his
niece, and tried to quell the scandal by letting the news of the
marriage leak out. Abelard says that Fulbert told it himself, in
violation of his oath of secrecy--for which we can hardly blame him as
much as Abelard does. The devoted Heloise, to protect Abelard, flatly
denied the marriage; not all Fulbert's entreaties and threats could move
her to admit that she was anything but Abelard's mistress. Beside
himself with anger and shame, Fulbert grew so violent that Heloise fled
to a nunnery at Argenteuil, near Paris, Abelard aiding her in her
flight. At Argenteuil Abelard had her dressed in the monastic habit,
though she did not take the vows.
We must admit that there were some grounds for supposing, as Fulbert and
his family believed, that Abelard meant to rid himself of his wife by
having her shut up in the convent: and they had experienced enough of
her self-sacrificing firmness to know that she would offer no resistance
to Abelard's wishes, if such were his wishes. Determined at least to
punish him, they bribed one of his servants, broke into his house at
night, and inflicted upon him the most severe and brutal mutilation. If
Heloise was forced to be a nun, Abelard should be fit for nothing but a
monk.
The perpetrators of this Draconian vengeance fled. Paris was all agog
with the shame of the brilliant philosopher. There were partisans in
plenty on his side, and Abelard takes pleasure in telling us that two of
the perpetrators of the crime, including his servant, were captured,
blinded, and mutilated as he had been. The justice of the Middle Ages
never erred on the side of mercy. Abelard fell into the most abject
despair, but still we see in him the same dominant regard to his career
in the world. When his friends came about him, particularly the clerks,
with their lamentations and their manifestations of compassion, he says:
"I suffered more from their compassion than from the pain of my wound; I
felt my shame more than my actual mutilation." He felt not only the
shame, but the ruin of all his ambitions. "In this state of hopelessness
and of utter confusion it was, I admit, rather a feeling of shame than
predilection for the vocation that impelled me towards the shades of a
cloister." Ever ready to obey his wishes, Heloise took the veil in the
convent of Argenteuil at the same time that Abelard entered the abbey of
Saint-Denis. Heloise was not yet twenty; did her youthful heart, full of
love of life, yearn for the cramped life of the nunnery? We shall later
see what she herself says upon this score; for the present suffice it to
note that even Abelard pauses in the account of his woes to praise her
complete abnegation of self, and to tell us that she went to the altar
where the irrevocable vows were to be taken, repeating in the midst of
her sobs the lament of Cornelia: "O my husband, greatest of men! worthy
of a bride far better than I! Had Fate such power over a head so
illustrious? Wretch that I am, why did I wed thee only to bring woe upon
thee? Be thou now avenged in the sacrifice I so willingly make for
thee!"--(Lucan, Pharsalia, VIII., 1. 94.) The convent was to her a
punishment; but as she goes to it she does not think of her punishment,
but only of his.
Let us leave Heloise for the present and pursue the story of Abelard.
His troubles were just beginning; henceforth almost everything seemed to
go wrong with him. Scarcely recovered from his injuries, he was besought
by his former pupils to resume his lectures, while the monks of
Saint-Denis, thinking to gain credit through their illustrious recruit,
also urged him to teach again. These same monks Abelard had found far
from congenial. They were covetous, narrow-minded, and outrageously
licentious. He was, therefore, the more willing to undertake his old
work, and opened a modest school at the little village of Maisoncelle,
in Brie, where the monks of Saint-Denis had a priory. Here, once more,
crowds came to hear him, and he felt so encouraged that he ventured to
put in book form some of his theological and philosophical opinions, at
the instance and for the use of his students. Neither misfortune nor the
wish of Job that his adversary had written a book had taught him
caution; in his book, probably the _Introductio ad Theologiam_ that has
come down to us, he ventured to discuss even the most obscure and
jealously guarded mysteries of the faith, and to discuss them with the
same lucidity, directness, and acuteness of reason that had made him
famous as a lecturer. He was, indeed, in the habit of acting upon one of
the phrases which one may cull from his writings as characteristic of
the man's mental attitude: "Understand, that you may believe." Abelard
found, like hundreds of others who have proceeded in this way, that his
reason could not account, to its own satisfaction, for all the things
called of faith. He was constantly allowing himself to be led on in
discussion until he found himself confronted with a dilemma: either to
follow logic still further and end in infidelity, or to silence, as best
he could, the voice of reason by an appeal to authority and to faith. On
the present occasion it was an utterance on the dogma of the Trinity
that his enemies seized upon. The leaders of the persecution were two
former classmates, who now intrigued against him. Without examining him,
without giving him a chance to discuss, justify, or explain his
doctrine, a council, assembled at Soissons in 1121, condemned his book,
not so much for what it taught, as because the author had presumed to
teach theology without definite authority from the Church. Summoned
before the council--the decision had been reached and the trial
conducted without his presence--Abelard was forced to throw his book
into the flames. As a confession of faith he was made to recite the
Athanasian creed, and, to humiliate him still further, they brought him
the text, as if he could not recite from memory that which was known by
every child. The man's overwrought nature gave way under this last
exhibition of petty malice. He tells us: "I read (the creed) as well as
I could for sobs and tears." He was then delivered to the abbot of
Saint-Medard to be confined to the monastery for an indefinite period.
He soon obtained permission to return to Saint-Denis, but here his
tongue once more got him into trouble. The patron saint of the abbey,
the patron saint of all France, was Saint Denis, whom the ignorant monks
of the abbey, jealous of the dignity of their patron, identified with
Dionysius the Areopagite, the convert of Saint Paul. Abelard pointed out
to them a passage in Bede which proved the whole thing a legend. Abelard
was perfectly right, but in the eyes of his brother monks he was
certainly a traitor, probably an emissary of the devil. His life at
Saint-Denis becoming unbearable, he fled at night to Champagne, and,
after some little opposition, was permitted to retire to a desert place
not far from Troyes. Here he built an oratory of reeds and thatch,
dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and here he dwelt as a hermit. But even
here pupils sought him out. To gain his living, he opened a school; and
the desert gave birth to scores of little huts and tents, in which his
eager hearers lived. His own little oratory being too small to
accommodate the crowds, the students built for him a new and larger
temple, which, in gratitude for the consolation he had found here, he
dedicated to the Trinity and named Paraclete, in honor of the Holy
Ghost, the Comforter.
But he was tormented by new dangers, or at least by new fears. A nature
so hypersensitive perhaps conjured up hobgoblins of persecution out of
pure imagination. "I could not hear of an assemblage of churchmen
without thinking that its object was to condemn me." He even cherished
the idea of flying from Christendom, to live among the infidels. When
the abbacy of Saint-Gildas de Rhuys, a remote place on the coast of
Brittany, was offered to him, he hastened to accept, thinking that if he
gave up teaching the persecution would cease. This was about 1128, and
for nearly ten years Abelard struggled on there. It was a struggle, for
he found the monks not only undisciplined, and given to licentious
pleasures, but positively criminal. One gets a picture of the abbot and
the abbey in Longfellow's _Golden Legend_, where Lucifer, in the guise
of a monk, gets into the refectory of the convent of Hirschau and tells
the monks how much more delightful is life in his own abbey of
Saint-Gildas de Rhuys:
From the gray rocks of Morbihan
It overlooks the angry sea;
The very sea-shore where,
In his great despair,
Abbot Abelard walked to and fro,
Filling the night with woe,
And wailing aloud to the merciless seas
The name of his sweet Heloise!
Whilst overhead
The convent windows gleamed as red
As the fiery eyes of the monks within,
Who with jovial din
Gave themselves up to all kinds of sin!.
Abelard!...
He was a dry old fellow....
There he stood,
Lowering at us in sullen mood,
As if he had come into Brittany
Just to reform our brotherhood!...
Well, it finally came to pass
That, half in fun and half in malice,
One Sunday at Mass
We put some poison into the chalice.
But, either by accident or design,
Peter Abelard kept away
From the chapel that day,
And a poor, young friar, who in his stead
Drank the sacramental wine,
Fell on the steps of the altar, dead!
The facts here presented are essentially the same as those vouched for
by Abelard himself, even to the poisoning of the young monk. There were
two attempts of this kind, and the wicked monks also hired assassins to
waylay their abbot, who lived in constant terror of his life. He strove
to control his monks by every sort of means, but at length was forced to
fly to the protection of a friend in Brittany. He did not definitely
abandon his abbey for some time, probably not before 1138; but his
regular connection with it ceased some years earlier.
The years of his struggle with the monks of St. Gildas were not without
their periods of relief. In the midst of his selfish preoccupation with
his own tribulations his thoughts were distracted by solicitude for
Heloise. Heloise, in the nunnery of Argenteuil, had led a life so
exemplary that she had won universal esteem. But it happened, says
Abelard, "that the Abbot of Saint-Denis had claimed, as a dependency
formerly subject to his jurisdiction, the Abbey of Argenteuil, in which
my sister in Christ, rather than my spouse, had taken the veil. Having
obtained possession, he expelled the congregation of nuns, of whom my
companion was prioress." When this happened Abelard bestirred himself to
provide for Heloise and her nuns, and at the same time to provide for
the maintenance of religious services in his old temple of the
Paraclete. He returned thither, and invited the nuns to come. He donated
to them the oratory and its dependencies, and Pope Innocent II.
confirmed the donation to them and to their successors forever. For some
time Heloise and her nuns endured great privations, for the Paraclete,
after its abandonment by Abelard, had relapsed into the condition of a
wilderness; "but," continues Abelard, "for them, too, the Lord, showing
himself in very truth the Comforter, touched with pity and good-will the
hearts of the people in the neighborhood. In one single year... the
fruits of the earth multiplied around them more than I could have made
them do had I lived a century... The Lord granted that our dear sister,
who directed the community, should find favor in the eyes of all men:
bishops cherished her as their daughter, abbots as their sister, laymen
as their mother; all admired equally her piety, her wisdom, and her
incomparably sweet patience."
It has been doubted by some biographers whether Heloise ever saw her
lover after she took the veil. His language in the passage just quoted
as well as that in the following would seem to leave no room for doubt
that they met frequently at this time: "All their neighbors blamed me
for not doing all that I could, all that I ought, to help them in their
misery, when the thing would have been so easy for me to do, by
preaching. Accordingly I made them more frequent visits, in order to
work for their good." The voice of calumny, he continues, would not even
yet be still; but, in spite of evil tongues, "I was resolved to do my
best to take care of my sisters of the Paraclete, to administer their
affairs for them, to increase their respect by my very bodily presence
in such a way as to give me, at the same time, a better opportunity to
look out for their wants." When or how often he visited the Paraclete we
do not know; but in some of these visits Heloise and Abelard must have
met again.
While visiting a friend, during one of his enforced flights from
Saint-Gildas, Abelard wrote the history of his woes, _Historia
Calamitatum_, to which we owe most of the details given previously. This
work, in the form of a letter, is addressed to a friend whose name we do
not know. Abelard calls him "my old friend and very dear brother in
Christ, my intimate companion," so that it is at least certain that he
was a clerk. It may have been that this letter was meant for Peter the
Venerable, who afterward showed himself a devoted friend to Abelard as
well as to Heloise. But to whomsoever the letter was written, it came
into the hands of her who had sacrificed so much for the writer. All the
old love awoke in Heloise's heart when chance threw in her way the
story, in Abelard's own hand, of their misfortunes. Moved beyond her
powers of repression, her feelings overflowed in a beautiful letter to
her lost husband. In all the literature of love there is nothing finer
than this letter, either for passion or for tenderness and pathos. It is
no wonder that Abelard replied, as she besought him to do. A sort of
correspondence was opened; she wrote three letters in all, and he four.
The actual text of these letters is in a Latin manuscript of a date one
hundred years later than the time of Heloise. The preservation of such a
series of letters has seemed to some investigators improbable, but there
is every reason to believe that Heloise herself would have collected and
preserved with the greatest care a correspondence so precious to her.
That the letters excited the highest admiration from the very first we
have ample proof, for one of the authors of the _Romance of the Rose_,
Jean Clopinel, translated them as early as 1285. In the fifteenth
century they were printed, and since then numberless translations,
imitations, and perversions have appeared. We need feel no doubt,
therefore, that we are reading an actual love letter, dating from about
1135, when we follow the glowing lines addressed to Abelard by Heloise.
There is naturally a marked difference in the tone of the letters, due
to a difference of character and to different environment. While
passages in the first letter of Heloise are almost lyric in their
intensity, like the words of a Juliet, at times almost of a Sappho, the
reply from Abelard is apparently cold in many places, certainly
constrained, only occasionally throbbing an answer to the touch of her
whom he had loved. As we shall have some very unfavorable things to say
of Abelard's character in general, it seems but fair to say that this
constraint and evident desire to suppress the violence of Heloise's love
and to direct her thoughts to the duties of her calling cannot be
charged against him as a fault. Not one of his replies shows lack of
affection. In justice to him we may say that he was seeking to teach her
resignation; to divert her thoughts from the past, where was only storm
and shipwreck in their brief love.
It is pleasant to believe that, when he wrote these letters, Abelard was
in some sort aware of and repentant for the great wrong he had done.
There was never a more disgustingly deliberate and inhumanly selfish
seduction than that of Heloise by Abelard. He was by nature excessively
vain of his personal appearance no less than of his attainments. We have
seen how he speaks of Anselm; in the same tone, in the same florid,
turgid, pedantic style he was constantly boasting of his achievements.
Having won all the laurels available in the intellectual world, he
sought new experiences. It has been remarked, not inaptly, that this
sudden awakening of the man in the scholar is a reproduction of the
Faust legend with living actors. As the scholar, Faust, bent with age
and labors, is suddenly transformed into the youthful, ardent, and
selfish lover, so Abelard's long dormant passions transform him. But his
real nature is not altered; he is always fundamentally selfish. The very
terms in which he relates his first feelings toward Heloise are almost
brutal. He praises the unusual extent of her knowledge, an attraction of
special force for him; and then, "physically, too, she was not bad."
While he condescends to allow that Heloise was "not bad" as regards
looks, it is quite another tale with regard to himself: "Seeing her
adorned with all the charms that attract lovers, I thought to enter into
a liaison with her, and I felt sure that nothing would be easier than to
succeed in this design. I enjoyed such reputation, and had so much grace
of youth and good looks, that I thought I should have no rebuff to fear,
whoever might be the woman whom I should honor with my love."
All through the man's career one finds the same exaggerated self-esteem,
the same preoccupation with his own selfish interests. He positively
chuckles over the perfect success of his ruse to deceive Fulbert.
"Fulbert was fond of his money. Add to this the fact that he was eager
to procure for his niece all possible advantages in belles-lettres. By
flattering these two passions, I easily won his consent, and obtained
what I desired.... He urged me to devote to her education all of my
spare time, by day as well as by night, and not to fear to punish her
should I find her at fault. I wondered at his naivete!... Entrusting her
to me not only for instruction but for chastisement, what was this but
allowing full licence to my desires and furnishing me, even against my
will, with the opportunity of conquering by blows and threats if
caresses should be unavailing?" When he has ruined this niece, of whom
Fulbert was so proud, a moment of apparent remorse comes to him as he
witnesses the old man's distress: "I promised him any reparation which
it might please him to demand; I protested that what I had done would
surprise no one who had ever felt the violence of love and who knew into
what abysses women had, since the very beginning of the world, plunged
the greatest men. To appease him still further, I offered him a sort of
atonement _far greater than anything he could have hoped: I proposed to
marry her whom I had seduced, on condition only that the marriage be
kept secret, so as not to injure my reputation._" The italics are ours;
they can but faintly indicate our astonishment at the impudence no less
than the selfishness of this piece of condescension. This passage is
followed by four pages devoted to pedantic arguments, enforced by appeal
to historic cases, seeking to prove how prejudicial a thing marriage is
to holy men, to wise men, to great men, and that therefore it must be so
to Abelard. All this argument he ascribes to Heloise, who implored him
not to marry her; but the tone is his own; there is never a thought of
what it may mean for her, only for himself. In the same way, after
Fulbert has taken vengeance on him, in two pages of lamentations over
his fate there is not one word of pity for the grief of the woman who
had given all to him. It is: How shall I appear in public? What a wreck
I have made of my life! Not once: How shall I care for Heloise? What
amends can I make her for the wreck of her young life? One need not
wonder--since this was the sentiment of the period--that he fears the
vengeance of God only because he has broken the rule of continence, not
at all because he has led into wrong doing one who trusted and loved
him.
The shame of his punishment and the griefs of his life do seem to have
made some impression on him, however. Abelard actually learns to speak
of "the shameful treachery of which I was guilty towards your uncle."
One can but compare him with Rousseau; those who have read the latter's
fascinating, eloquent, but disgusting _Confessions_ cannot fail to
remember that there is the same inordinate vanity and selfishness in
them as young men, the same misery and insane fear of foes, sometimes
purely imaginary, in them as old men.
Beginning as a vulgar passion, there is no doubt that Abelard's feeling
for Heloise afterward became more honorable. After their separation, and
the softening, chastening influence of his misfortunes, he developed for
her a real affection. Though there is a constraint, a coldness in the
address of his letters, and often too much solicitude about form and too
much display of erudition, the heart of the man is moved in spite of
himself. He begins his first letter to her: "To Heloise, his
well-beloved sister in Christ, Abelard, her brother in Christ;" the
second: "To the spouse of Christ, the servant of that same Christ." But
he shows a tenderness for her at the very start; if he has not written
to her and advised her before, he says, it is because he had such
absolute confidence in her judgment. He calls her his "sister, once so
dear in the flesh," and sends her a Psalter, which she is to use in
imploring the Divine mercy for him. He will give counsel to her and to
her nuns, if she desires it. And here he can dissemble no longer: "But
enough of your holy congregation,... it is to you, to you whose goodness
will, I know, have such power with God, that I address myself....
Remember in your prayers him who is your very own." He sends a form of
prayer which she and her nuns are to use for him. Then the man once more
gets the better of the monk: "If it chance that the Lord deliver me up
into the hands of mine enemies, and that they, victorious, put me to
death, or if, while far from you, some accident should bring me to that
goal whither all flesh is tending, let my body, whether it be already
buried or simply abandoned, be brought under your care, I implore you,
to your cemetery."
It is pleasant to read his letters, after one has become convinced that
the man really loved Heloise; then, one finds in them gentleness and
consideration for her feelings. With patience and adroitness, he answers
the questions she asks, distracts her thoughts, still too much intent on
him, and works out for her an elaborate scheme of government for use in
the Paraclete; and one can understand that this, if anything, would have
been a consolation to Heloise, to feel that the whole tenor of her life
was regulated by the affectionate legislation of the man whom she had
loved.
About the love of Heloise we need not hesitate. "Truly, she did love
him," says the old chronicler of Saint Martin de Tours, and the ages
since have been but echoing this. We must try, however, to form some
more definite idea of the personality of one who is perhaps the greatest
figure in an actual romance that the world has known. Of her beauty
there can be no question; but we neither know nor very greatly care
whether she was tall and dark or slender and fair. Probably we should be
safe in assuming, on general principles, that she was a blonde, since
the predilection for that style of beauty was so strong that Saint
Bernard devotes a whole sermon to proving that there is no contradiction
in the statement in the Song of Songs: "I am black, but comely." The
most remarkable thing about her was her learning. Even when Abelard
first met her, she was "most distinguished for the extent of her
learning,"... "in great renown throughout the kingdom" for her
proficiency. Her knowledge included not only Latin, but Greek and even
Hebrew, both rarely understood even among men in a day when men usually
got all and women none of the education that could be had. Her monastery
at the Paraclete became a school as famous in its way as Abelard had
made Paris.
Of another trait in her character, too, we can speak with certainty.
Together with her learning went firmness of judgment and perfect sanity,
the elements which go to make up what we vaguely call character. We have
seen Abelard expressing his confidence in her wisdom and judgment. Saint
Bernard, the bitter enemy of Abelard, could not withhold his admiration
from her, although she herself, a faithful partisan of her husband,
always spoke of Saint Bernard as "the false Apostle." The latter, as was
natural in a man renowned for intellect and for asceticism, was more
struck by the grandeur of her character than moved by her personal
charms, and he wrote a letter to the Pope, commending her as a prioress,
in a tone of lofty esteem rather than sympathy. Her own conduct, we have
remarked, was above reproach, and her convent was so well governed that
its rule became the standard for all the convents of her day. Whatever
may have been the violence of her grief over the separation from
Abelard, she was too proud to expose her feelings to the world. She
lived on bravely, honorably, respected by high and low, yet making no
secret of the fact that she had loved and still did love Abelard. One
does not wonder that she won the popular fame which has kept her name
alive, and which has fixed the epithet applied by Villon some three
centuries later: _La tres-sage Heloise_. In all the happy phrases of the
_Ballade des Belles Dames du Temps Jadis_ there is no juster epithet.
In striking contrast to the brutal selfishness of Abelard is the noble
disinterestedness and complete effacement of self seen in the conduct of
Heloise. Realizing that with him success in his vocation is everything
and love but an episode, she is content. More than this, she does
everything in her power to make him sacrifice her for the sake of the
career which she knows he is bent upon. She flatters him, feeds his
vanity, already overgreat, and consistently keeps out of view her own
woman's feelings. When Abelard, with what he considers unusual and
exemplary generosity, offers to marry her--one can fancy that he was not
very urgent--this is part of the argument she uses to dissuade him: "She
asked," says Abelard, "what atonement would not the world have a right
to require of her should she deprive it of such a light? What curses she
would call upon her head! What a loss this marriage would be to the
Church! What tears it would cost philosophy! Would it not be an unseemly
and deplorable thing to see a man whom nature had created for the whole
world made the slave of one woman?... The marriage would be a shame and
a burden to me... What agreement could there be between the labor of the
school and the cares of a house, between the desk and the cradle?... Is
there a man who, devoted to the meditations of philosophy or to the
study of the Scriptures, could endure the cries of a child, the singing
of the nurse as she put it to sleep, the continual coming and going of
the servants, the incessant worries of young children?"
That Abelard has reported her arguments with accuracy we need not doubt
when we come upon this remarkable and often quoted passage in her first
letter: "I never thought... of my own wishes; it was always yours, you
know yourself, that my heart was bent upon satisfying. Although the name
of wife seems both more sacred and more enduring, I should have
preferred that of mistress, or even concubine... thinking that, the more
humble I made myself for your sake, the more right I should have to your
favor, and the less stain I should put upon the brilliancy of your
glory."
When their misfortunes came upon them and Abelard wanted her to enter
the cloister she obeyed without complaint; but the truth comes out at
the close of her first letter: "When you entered the service of God, I
followed, nay, I preceded you... You made me first take the veil and the
vows, you chained me to God before yourself. This mistrust, the only
lack of confidence in me you ever showed, filled me with grief and
shame, me, who would, God knows, have followed you or have gone before
you unhesitatingly into the very flames of hell! For my heart was no
longer with me but with you." In this letter are the only things that
even look like reproaches on her part; she complains of his not writing
to her, of his grudging her even the poor consolation of a letter, when
she had done all for him: "Only tell me, if you can, why, since the
retirement from the world which you yourself enjoined upon me, you have
neglected me. Tell me, I say, or I will say what I think, and what is on
everybody's lips. Ah! it was lust rather than love which attracted you
to me... and that is why, your desire once satisfied, all demonstrations
of affection ceased with the desire which inspired them." She implores
him, therefore, to write and silence these disquieting voices in her
heart.
There was no hypocrisy in Heloise; she never was resigned to her
seclusion in the convent, and never pretended to be. She wrote to
Abelard that she was continuing to live in the convent only to obey him,
"for it was not love of God, but your wish, your wish alone which cast
my youth into the midst of monastic austerities." From the very
monastery of which she was prioress she writes her burning letters. The
first is superscribed: _Domino suo, imo patri, conjugi suo, imo fratri;
ancilla sua, imo filia; ipsius uxor, imo soror; Abelardo Heloissa_: "To
her lord, nay, to her father; to her husband, nay, to her brother; his
servant, nay, his daughter; his wife, nay, his sister; to Abelard,
Heloise." She seems to lack words to voice the passionate devotion of
her heart, and comes at the last to the best and simplest, a veritable
cry of the heart it is To Abelard, Heloise. Even in the letters
subsequent to Abelard's patient endeavor to allay the transports of
devotion to a mere man in one who had vowed her life to Christ, she does
not restrain her feelings entirely. She superscribes them: "To him who
is all for her after Christ, she who is all for him in Christ," and
finally, "To her sovereign master, his devoted slave." It is true that
the passion is more under control, but it is there nevertheless; for in
one of these letters she ever and anon addresses Abelard as "my greatest
blessing," and deliberately says: "Under all circumstances, God knows, I
have feared offending you more than I have feared offending Him; and it
is you far more than God whom I wish to please; it was a word from you,
no divine call, that made me take the veil." And she says, in reply to
Abelard's request to be buried in the cemetery of the Paraclete: "I
shall be more intent on following you without delay than upon providing
for your burial."
Bigotry or narrow piety, which are so much alike as to be scarcely
distinguishable, might find fault with the uncompromising frankness of
Heloise in confessing the persistence of love after she is a nun. She
admits that she loved Abelard passionately; moreover: "If I must indeed
lay bare all the weakness of my miserable heart, I do not find in my
heart contrition or penitence sufficient to appease God. I cannot
withhold myself from complaining of His pitiless cruelty in regard to
the outrage inflicted on you, and I only offend Him by rebellious
murmurings against His decrees, instead of seeking to allay His wrath by
repentance. Can it be said, in fact, that one is truly penitent,
whatever be the bodily penances submitted to, when the soul still
harbors the thought of sin and burns with the same passions as of old?"
She cannot bring herself to regret or even to forget and to cease to
long for the pleasures of their love. "They praise me for purity of
life; it is only because they do not know of my hypocrisy. The purity of
the flesh is set down to the credit of virtue; but true virtue is of the
soul, not of the body." These confessions, it strikes us, are proof of
the purity and loftiness of her ideals; she will not accept credit for
virtues that are only skin deep; she honors the robe she wears too much
to soil it by any sort of indulgence that might give occasion for
scandal or for irreverent scoffing. But she bravely owns: "I do not seek
the crown of victory (over my evil thoughts), it is enough for me to
avoid the danger."
In a person so honest with herself we are not surprised to find a
charity for the weaknesses of others and a catholicity of view in regard
to things moral and religious quite in advance of the rather cramped
asceticism distinctive, for example, of Saint Bernard, whom we take as a
typical representative of the religious feeling of the age. In the last
of her letters, she shows her learning, it must be admitted, with a
little too much pedantry; but that was in accord with the habit of the
day. She overloads her letter with useless erudition in the way of
appeals to this and that holy man or this and that text of Scripture to
support a point which the reader would accept as axiomatic. But behind
this there is good sense and kindness. She asks Abelard to determine, in
the rule he is to make for her convent, all sorts of practical points.
Can women, being physically weaker, fast as rigidly as men? Yet meat is
not so necessary for women; is it really a deprivation, then, to make
them abstain from meat? Women are not so prone to intemperance as men,
and at times they really need some stimulant; how shall we determine in
regard to wines? We should avoid, of course, male visitors; but do not
vain, gossiping, worldly women corrupt their own sex just as much as men
would? Above all, she says, nuns must learn to eschew Pharisaism, the
better-than-thou frame of mind. "The blessings promised us by Christ
were not promised to those alone who were priests; woe unto the world,
indeed, if all that deserved the name of virtue were shut up in a
cloister."
The close of this last letter is in a tone of religious exaltation which
but poorly conceals the more human sentiments of the noble Abbess
Heloise: "It is for thee, O my master, it is for thee, as long as thou
livest, to institute the rule which we are to follow evermore. For,
after God, thou wast the founder of our community; it is for thee, then,
with God's assistance, to legislate for our order."
The two letters in which Abelard answers this request are more coldly
formal, less personal, than any of the others. At the end, for example,
instead of some tender reminiscence, some hint that it was at the
bidding of love that he had poured forth his erudition on the subject of
the monastic life, we find merely an exhortation such as might be
addressed by any father confessor to one seeking his direction:
"Imitate, in the love of study and of good books, those blessed
disciples of Saint Jerome, Paula and Eustochia, at whose request this
great doctor wrote so many works that are a guiding light to the
church."
What were the rules by which Heloise and her nuns were to live? In
essence not fundamentally different from those in use in regular
monasteries of the Benedictine rule, they are yet of sufficient interest
to warrant us in giving a brief account, a mere abstract, of the very
lengthy and verbose commentary on monasticism which Heloise received
from Abelard. We cannot doubt that a person of her intelligence and
strength of character followed the spirit, not the letter, of the law,
and made her nuns live as she lived, beyond the utmost reach of evil
report.
The three cardinal virtues in the view of monasticism are Chastity,
Poverty, Silence. These the nuns must observe most strictly, and such
observance involves the renunciation of all family ties, of all worldly
affections and desires. As there is less of temptation to worldliness in
the solitary places of the earth, the convent should be remote. The
absurd extent to which the cult of mere chastity was exalted in the
mediaeval mind has been commented on by many a writer; but one little
incident or illustration from the book by which Heloise was to govern
herself and her community may be forgiven us. Abelard quotes from a
letter of Saint Jerome. In the life of Saint Martin, written by
Sulpicius, we read that the saint wished to pay his respects to a virgin
renowned for her exemplary conduct and her chastity, who, it seems, had
spent all her life since girlhood shut up in a small cell. She refused
to allow Saint Martin to come into her dwelling, but, looking out of the
crevice which served for a window, she said: "Father, pray where you
are, for I have never received a visit from any man." Saint Martin "gave
thanks to God that, thanks to such a mode of life, she had preserved her
chastity." The humor, the irony, of such a remark appeals to us; but it
never occurred to Saint Martin, to Saint Jerome, to Abelard, or to
Heloise, that she who had continued chaste merely because she had
bottled herself up in a living tomb did not merit praise for any
extraordinary virtue: one might as well praise Robinson Crusoe on his
island for not indulging in the dissipations of society.
To continue the rules for the Paraclete, which was certainly situated in
a place remote enough to protect its inmates from worldly intrusions, we
may add that the rule advises that the grounds or inclosure of the
convent should contain "all that is needful for the life of the convent,
that is to say, a garden, water, a mill, a bolting house and a bakery
oven," in short, everything that can be thought of, in order to obviate
the necessity of communication with the outside world.
Heloise's monastery, we may be assured, did not want for a diligent
abbess, who was to be assisted by six subordinates: "For the entire
administration of the convent we believe that there ought to be seven
mistresses, so many and no more: the porteress, the cellaress, the
vesturess (_robaria_), the infirmaress, the precentress (_cantaria_),
the sacristan, and finally a deaconess, called now an abbess.... In this
camp of Heaven's militia... the deaconess takes the place of the
general-in-chief, to whom all are in all things obedient." The six other
sisters called officers, who command under her, rank as colonels or
captains. The rest of the nuns belonging regularly to the order are the
soldiers of the Lord, while the lay sisters, who were employed in menial
offices and were not initiated into the order, but merely took vows
renouncing the world, were to be the foot soldiers.
Heloise would accord quite well with the requirements for an abbess or
deaconess. Such a one must have learning sufficient to read and to
comprehend the Scriptures and the rules of her order. She must be
dignified, able to command respect and obedience. "Only as a last resort
and for pressing reasons should women of high rank or of great fortune
be chosen as abbesses." Full of the importance of their titles, they are
ordinarily vain, presumptuous, proud. Being the guardian of the whole
community, the abbess should keep a close watch over her own conduct,
lest she corrupt by evil example. Above all, the abbess is forbidden to
"live in greater comfort, greater ease, than any of her nuns. She shall
not have any private apartments for dining or sleeping; she shall share
all with her flock, whose needs she will comprehend so much the better."
When guests are to be entertained at table the abbess is not to make
this an excuse for providing delicacies on which she herself may feast,
the guest is to sit at the table with the other nuns, though a special
dish may be provided for her, and the abbess herself is to wait on her,
and afterward to eat with the servants. According to a maxim of Saint
Anthony, as fish that are kept long out of water die, even so monks who
live long out of their cells in communication with worldly folk break
their vow of seclusion. We may recall that Chaucer's jolly monk held
this same text "not worth an oyster"; but the abbess of the Paraclete is
specially enjoined "never to leave the convent to attend to outside
business." This reminds us that it was provided that the Paraclete
should have a certain number of monks attached to it. Convents, indeed,
were rarely if ever independent of masculine supervision, if not
control, and in this case it is specially provided that the convent
"shall be subject always to a monastery, in such sort that one abbot may
preside, and... that there be but one fold and one shepherd." The
relations, however, are decidedly to the advantage of the nuns; their
subjection is only nominal, and every provision is made, in the letter
of the law, that the monks shall attend merely to things outside of the
convent and shall not meddle with its administration: "If we wish that
the abbot... should have control over the nuns, it is only in such sort
that he shall recognize as his superiors the spouses of Christ, whose
servant only he is, and that he shall find pleasure in serving, not in
commanding them. He should be like the intendant of a royal household,
who does not venture to make his mistress feel his power.... He or his
representatives shall never be at liberty to speak to the virgins of the
Lord in the absence of their abbess.... He shall decide nothing
concerning them or their affairs until he has taken counsel with her;
and he shall transmit his instructions or orders only through her....
All that concerns costume, food, even money, if there be any, shall be
gathered together and put in the custody of the nuns; out of their
superfluity they shall provide what is needful for the monks. The monks,
therefore, shall take charge of all outside affairs, and the nuns of all
those things which it becomes women to attend to in the house, to wit,
to sew the frocks of the monks, to wash them, to knead the bread, to put
it in the oven and bake it. They shall have charge of the dairy and its
dependencies; they shall feed the hens and geese; in short, they shall
do all that women can do better than men.... Men and women both shall
vow obedience to the abbess."
Though not so radical in some respects as the constitution which Robert
D'Arbrissel imposed upon his monastery of Fontevrault, where women were
exalted above men in all respects, the provisions cited above seem
sufficient to insure the independence of the nuns. There are, of course,
careful rules to safeguard the virtue of both monks and nuns in the
close relations necessitated by the conventual scheme; but as these are
not different from what ordinary prudence would suggest--and ordinary
craft circumvent--we need not pause to give them.
The deaconess or abbess was not absolute; she must take counsel with her
subordinates, and for some things she must convene the whole convent to
ask advice and consent. Her subordinates had duties and responsibilities
of no mean sort. The sacristan, who is also treasurer, shall have charge
of the chapel and its ornaments, their repairs, etc. She must care for
the things needful for the services of the church, such as the incense,
the relics, the bells, and the communion wafers, which latter the nuns
are to make of pure wheat flour. The sacristan, too, having to decorate
the church in keeping with the seasons of the religious year, must be
enough of a scholar to know how to compute and determine the feast days
according to the calendar.
With the precentress, or mistress of the choir, rested the
responsibility for the church music. She was to train the choir, and to
teach music, in which she must be well versed. Besides this, she was the
librarian, must give out and take in the books, and take care of books
and illuminations. In case of the illness or other incapacity of the
abbess, the precentress took her place.
One of the most trying places must have been that of infirmaress, who
not only had charge of the sick in the capacity of nurse, but "must keep
herself supplied with proper medicines, according to the resources of
the place, and this she can do the better if she knows a little of
medicine.... She must know how to let blood (the medicine of the period
relied very largely upon phlebotomy), so that this operation may not
require the access of any man among the nuns." Much of the simpler
knowledge and practice of medicine was permitted to women; the simpler
medicine, indeed, was the only hope of the unfortunate sick in the days
of drastic doctoring.
The nun called the _robaria_, who had charge of the wardrobe, we have
christened "vesturess," for lack of a better name. She provided and
cared for the clothing of both monks and nuns, not so simple a matter as
it might seem, for "she shall have the sheep sheared, and shall receive
the leather (for shoes, etc.); she shall collect and take care of the
wool and linen and see to the making of the cloth from them; she shall
distribute thread, needles, and scissors (to the nuns assigned to work
under her). She shall have charge of the dormitory and of the beds; and
she shall be charged with directing the cutting, sewing, and washing of
the table-cloths, napkins, and all the linen of the monastery.... She
shall have all the necessary implements for her work, and shall regulate
the tasks assigned to each sister. She shall have charge of the novices
until they are admitted to the community." The novices, by the way, were
regularly taught in the convent, and a good deal of the work for which
religious exercises left the nuns little time was assigned to them.
The clothes worn by the nuns of Heloise's convent were to be of the
simplest kind. "The clothes shall be of black woollen stuff; no other
color, for that best accords with the mourning of penitence; and no fur
is more fitting than the fleece of lambs for the spouses of Christ...."
And this black robe was not to extend lower than the heel ("to avoid
raising the dust"), or to have sleeves longer than the natural length to
cover arm and hand,--a provision which one can understand only after
seeing pictures of the immense sleeves in fashion. "The veils shall not
be of silk, but of cloth or dyed stuff. They shall wear chemises of
cloth next the skin, and these they shall not take off even to sleep.
Considering the delicacy of their constitutions, we will not forbid the
use of mattresses and sheets.... For covering (at night), we think a
chemise, a robe and a lamb skin, adding over these, during the cold
weather, a mantle for covering to the bed, will suffice. Each bed must
have a mattress, a bolster, a pillow, a counterpane, and a sheet." In
order to guard against vermin and dirt, all clothing should be provided
for each nun in double sets. On their heads the nuns were to wear a
white band with the veil over it; when necessary, on account of the
tonsure, a bonnet of lamb skin might be worn. When a nun died, she was
dressed in clean but coarse garments, with sandals on her feet, and the
garments sewn or fastened to the body, so that they might not be
disarranged in the presence of the priests officiating at her funeral.
As a special honor, the abbess could be buried in a garment of
haircloth, sewn around her like a sack.
The duties of the porteress were sufficiently simple, consisting chiefly
in guarding the gate and admitting only persons properly accredited. But
the cellaress had duties manifold. She "shall have charge of all that
concerns the feeding of the nuns: cellar, refectory, kitchen, mill,
bakery, bake ovens, gardens, orchards and fields, beehives, flocks,
cattle of all kinds, and poultry." With keen insight into human nature,
it is especially provided that she shall not reserve any tidbits for
herself at the table, with the admonition that this was precisely what
Judas did.
We have given but the merest sketch of the provisions by which Heloise
was to regulate her life. The rule determines points great and small;
meat can be allowed three times a week, except during Lent; wine may be
used in moderation; services must be held at such and such times, with
work or sleep between; nuns must never go bare-footed, nor gossip with
visitors, and so on. But one thing we must add, as illustrative of the
manners of the time: "There is one thing more which must be not only
forbidden but held in abhorrence, although it is a custom in use in most
monasteries: that is that the nuns should wipe their hands or their
knives with the pieces of bread remaining from dinner, which are the
portion of the poor. To save table linen it is not right to soil the
bread of the poor."
In the way of actual facts little is really known of the life of
Heloise. We have sought to trace the fortunes of the man to whom she was
so unselfishly yet so passionately attached and to reproduce from her
own scanty writings as much as may be of her character. We must now
conclude the story of Abelard. After his departure from Saint-Gildas his
days were still full of trouble. In 1136 we find him once more
triumphing in his old field, delivering his lectures to crowds of
students upon Mont Sainte-Genevieve. Not only did his teaching draw
crowds, but his book on theology was in every hand, and his doctrines
spread beyond the Alps. In the words of one of his enemies, writing to
Saint Bernard: _Libri ejus transeunt maria, transvolant Alpes_: "His
books are wafted across the seas, and fly over the Alps." Arnold of
Brescia, a disciple of Abelard, was preaching in Italy a more democratic
religion and a more liberal form of government, stirring up the wrath of
the Church as another Tribune of the People daring to incite the Italian
cities to proclaim their freedom. The final conflict of Abelard's life
was preparing.
At Clairvaux, in a valley so dismal as to have won the name of the
_Valley of Wormwood_, lived the very incarnation of asceticism, stern
religious orthodoxy, and uncompromising conservatism--Saint Bernard. To
him, a restless, daring innovator like Abelard was abhorrent. To profess
doctrines that led to the view that original sin was less a sin than a
punishment, that the redemption of man was an act of pure love, not one
of necessity for our redemption, that God, in short, was a God of Love,
not a God of Wrath--what was all this but striking at the very root of
that exquisite mortification of the flesh, the prayers, the fasting, the
actual corporeal torment inflicted upon himself by Saint Bernard in the
hope of purchasing remission of his sin? His sin, we may remark,
consisted merely in being descended from Adam, for he had been pure in
life from his youth up. Saint Bernard was looked upon even in his own
life as almost a saint; his influence was tremendous. He now began to
stir up the powers of the Church, from the Pope down, against Abelard.
The latter, puffed up with pride at his renewed success, or perhaps
willing to risk all at one throw, did not wait for the Church to proceed
against him: he challenged his enemies to prove his doctrines heretical;
he challenged Bernard himself to meet him in debate before a council
that was to meet at Sens in 1140. Fully aware of his inferiority as a
logician to this trained thinker, Saint Bernard reluctantly consented to
take up the battle for orthodoxy. All was ready; Abelard appeared before
the council, realized that his case was prejudged, and appealed to Rome.
Nevertheless, Saint Bernard got the council to pass judgment against
Abelard and to sentence him to silence and to perpetual reclusion in a
monastery, and Innocent II., the next year, confirmed the finding of the
council. Broken in spirit, Abelard nevertheless set out for Rome to urge
his plea in person, but at Cluni he broke down in health. Tenderly cared
for by the good abbot, Peter the Venerable, who effected a sort of
reconciliation between Abelard and the triumphant Abbot of Clairvaux,
Abelard lingered but a few months. To ease his dying days Peter the
Venerable had him removed to the little priory of Saint Marcel, a
dependency of Cluni, where he died, April 21, 1142.
In accordance with the wishes of Heloise and of Abelard himself, Peter
the Venerable sent his remains secretly to the Paraclete, writing to
Heloise: "May the Lord keep him for you, to give him back to you through
His mercy." There was a heart still in the breast of this old monk; we
trust that his prayer has been answered, even as we trust that the
absolution which he sent at Heloise's request has washed away the sins
of her lover: "I, Peter, Abbot of Cluni, who received into the monastery
of Cluni Peter Abelard, and granted that his body be borne secretly to
the Abbess Heloise and the convent of the Paraclete, by the authority of
God Almighty and of all the saints, absolve him, by virtue of my office,
from all his sins."
We hear nothing more of Heloise, except that she provided for her child,
left with Abelard's sister in Brittany; but we know that she lived her
life not only bravely, but honorably. For twenty-two years more she
lived on at the convent over which her husband had established her, and
here she died, on the 16th of May, 1164. Her body was buried beside that
of her husband in the cemetery of the Paraclete, and a touching legend
relates that when, according to the order given by herself, her body was
deposited in the tomb of her husband, "Abelard stretched out his arms to
receive her and closed them in a last embrace." Through all the
centuries love has guarded their remains; though often shifted, their
resting place is still known: in the famous Cimetiere de L'Est, Pere
Lachaise, at Paris, the traveller still sees the tomb of Abelard and
Heloise.
It is not her learning that has made Heloise famous; it is the accident
of her connection with Abelard which has served to keep her name alive.
It is not because she was learned or because she was loved by Abelard
that we admire her. Her greatness is a moral greatness rare in her time,
and not due to her intellect or to the tragic circumstances of her life.
The remarkable thing is that, overwhelmed in the ruin of her lover,
forced into a convent at twenty, where she obeys him and imitates him,
she yet does not change in her heart, she does not suffer the mystic
death of the cloister; of her love she never repents, though she does
repent of her faults; to the law of monastic asceticism her conscience
refuses to submit, let Abelard preach as he will, for she vaguely feels
that asceticism is in violation of some higher law of life. The great
love in her heart knew no faltering; so much like devotion was it that
one feels that she meant no name but that of Abelard to be associated
with the words of a dirge attributed to her:
"With thee I suffered the rigor of destiny;
With thee shall I, weary, sleep;
With thee shall I enter Sion."