ABELARD AND ELOISA.
A. D. 1140.
We had already collected many notes with the intention of examining critically the celebrated history of these two lovers of the 12th century, when we read an article by Mr. F. W. Rowsell in the St. James’s Magazine for October 1864, in which he gives a sketch of the lives of both of them. The writer has succeeded in condensing into half a dozen very amusing pages a complete résumé of the leading events in their history; only he has followed the commonly received opinion held by many English and French historians who have taken up the subject, and he does not enter into a critical examination of several points at issue.
Everybody knows how great an attraction the monument erected to the memory of Eloisa and Abelard is to the crowds who visit the cemetery of Père la Chaise, recalling to their minds the letters full of love and passion written by Eloisa, which have elicited so many imitations both in prose and verse in England and in France.
The history of the two lovers being true as a whole, we are far from wishing to take away from the sympathy that their constancy and hapless love so well deserve. Our only object is to separate the true from the false, and to show that the celebrated letters imputed to Eloisa were not written by her at all, and that the tomb in Père la Chaise is altogether a modern construction.
Abelard, born in 1079, died in 1164, and Eloisa survived him upwards of twenty years, dying in 1184.
The works and correspondence of Abelard were published for the first time in 1616 by the learned Duchesne, and we therein find three letters from Eloisa to Abelard and four from Abelard to Eloisa. These are the letters on which Pope, in England, and Dorat, Mercier, Saurin, Colardeau, &c., in France, founded their poems.
Out of these seven letters, four only can strictly be termed the amatory correspondence of the two lovers. The remainder, and those that have been brought to light and published in later years, are pious effusions which contain no trace whatever of those passionate emotions which pervaded the four other letters. We must remind the reader that the oldest manuscript existing of these epistles is nothing more than an alleged copy of the originals made one hundred years after the death of Eloisa. It is preserved in the library of the town of Troyes, and belongs to the latter half of the 13th century.
A modern French historian, M. Henri Martin, having written some pages in a melodramatic style on these letters of Eloisa, a critic, M. de Larroque,[22] pointed out to him the error into which he had fallen, they having evidently been composed some years after the death of the heroine.
The learned Orelli published in 4ᵗᵒ at Zurich, in 1841, what may be termed the memoirs of Abelard, entitled, Historia Calamitatum: also the seven letters of the two lovers.
In the preface to this work, Orelli declares, that on many grounds he believes that these letters, so different from such as might have been expected from Eloisa, were never written by her. The grounds, which Orelli omits to state, are supplied by M. Lalanne in “La Correspondance Littéraire” of the 5th December 1856.
In order to arrive at a clear perception of the improbabilities and contradictions contained in these epistles, all the bearings of the case should be kept well in mind.
In the Historia Calamitatum, Abelard opens his heart to a friend who is in affliction and whom he endeavours to console by drawing a counter picture of his own misery. The writer relates his life from his birth; his struggles and his theological triumphs; his passion for Eloisa, the vengeance of Fulbert, her uncle, the canon of Paris; his wandering life since he assumed the cowl in the abbey of St. Denis; the foundation of the convent of the Paraclete, where he received Eloisa and the nuns of the convent of Argenteuil; and lastly his nomination as Abbé of the monastery of St. Gildas, where the monks more than once conspired against his life.
This is about the only document we possess regarding the life of Abelard, for it is remarkable that the contemporary writers are singularly concise in all that concerns him. Otho, bishop of Freisingen, who died in 1158, is the only one who makes even an allusion to the vengeance of Fulbert; and he expresses himself so vaguely that his meaning would be incomprehensible were we not able to explain it by the help of the Historia Calamitatum.
According to these memoirs, Abelard was thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age when he became enamoured of Eloisa, who was then sixteen or seventeen years old. He introduced himself into the household of the Canon Fulbert, was appointed professor to the young girl, and soon became domesticated in the family. Eloisa, becoming soon after pregnant, fled to Brittany, where she gave birth to a son. She afterwards returned to Paris, and after frequent negotiations between Fulbert and Abelard, the lovers were at length married, but the marriage was kept secret.
The rest is known. Abelard, fearfully mutilated, became a monk in the abbey of St. Denis, and at his bidding, to which she was ever entirely submissive, Eloisa took the veil in the convent of Argenteuil.
These events occupied about the space of two years, and bring us to 1118 or 1119.
In a council held in Paris ten years later (1129) a decree was passed expelling Eloisa and the other nuns from the convent of Argenteuil, which the Abbé Suger had claimed as being a dependance of the Abbaye de St. Denis.[23]
This expulsion coming to the ears of Abelard, he offered the nuns an asylum in the Paraclete, which he had lately founded, and which he soon after made over to them as a gift.
Pope Innocent II. confirmed this gift in 1131. Abelard speaks further, in his Historia Calamitatum, of events befalling a year later, and of his return to the abbey of St. Gildas. We see therefore that this memoir, written with much care and attention, cannot have been published before 1133, and perhaps even long after that. Abelard was then in his fifty-fourth year and Eloisa in her thirty-second or thirty-third. About fourteen years had elapsed since both had embraced the monastic life: in the meanwhile they had met and had spent more or less time together in the Paraclete between 1129 and 1132.
Let us now enquire if the subject matter contained in these seven letters, all of which were written after the latter date (a fact that should be carefully noted) agrees with that which has preceded.
The amorous correspondence of the lovers is confined to four letters. The first is written by Eloisa. She says, that if she writes to Abelard at all, it is that she has by accident seen the Historia Calamitatum; and in order to convince him that she has read it, she touches briefly on each circumstance recorded in it, every one of which must have been only too familiar to them both.
Does the reader think this a natural or a probable style of commencement? Does it not denote something artificial in the composition? Farther on she complains that Abelard has forsaken her: “her to whom the name of mistress was dearer than that of wife, however sacred this latter tie might be.”[24]
And finally she adds: “Only tell me if you can, why, since we have taken the monastic vows, which you alone desired, you have so neglected and forgotten me that I have neither been blessed by your presence nor consoled by a single letter in your absence. Answer me, I beseech you, if you can, or I may myself be tempted to tell you what I think, and what all the world suspects.”[25]
This letter, full of passionate reproach, contains contradictions and improbabilities perceptible to all who have read that which has preceded.
Let us first call attention to the style, which is hardly to be explained. The passionate expressions of Eloisa would have been quite natural in the first years that followed her separation from Abelard, but fourteen years had elapsed—fourteen years of monastic life to both one and the other.
She appeals to a man of fifty-four years of age, cut off for the space of fourteen years from all intercourse with her, worn out by his theological contests, his wandering life, and the persecutions of which he had been the victim; and who prays only, according to his own letters, “for eternal rest in the world to come.” But nothing checks the flow of her passion, which she pours out with a vehemence the more remarkable as proceeding from a woman of whom Abelard had not long since written, in his Historia Calamitatum: “All are alike struck by her piety in the convent, her wisdom, and her incomparable gentleness and patience under the trials of life. She is seldom to be seen, but lives in the solitude of her cell, the better to apply herself to prayer and holy meditation.”
But the continuation seems even more incomprehensible.
Admitting, which is somewhat difficult, that Eloisa had not seen Abelard since his severe affliction until his reception of her in the Paraclete in 1129, on her expulsion from Argenteuil, is it at all certain that they did meet then, and that moreover the frequency of their interviews gave rise to scandalous reports which obliged them again to separate? How then can Eloisa complain that since their entrance upon a religious life (that is to say since 1119) she has “neither rejoiced in his presence, nor been consoled by his letters?” And she wrote this in 1133 or 1134! It is incredible that these lines should have been penned by her.
The second letter of Eloisa is not less ardent than the first. She mourns in eloquent language over the cold tone of sadness pervading the answer sent to her by Abelard. She reverts at some length to the cruel cause of their separation, and deplores her misfortune in such unequivocal terms, that we think it better to give her words in their original latin. “Difficillimum est a desideriis maximarum voluptatum avellere animum. ... In tantum vero illæ quæs pariter exercuimus amantium voluptates dulces mihi fuerunt ut nec displicere mihi nunc, nec a memoria labi possint.
“Quocumque loco me vertam, semper se oculis meis cum suis ingerunt desideriis. Nec etiam dormienti suis illusionibus parcunt. Inter ipsa missarum solemnio, obscæna earum voluptatum fustasmata ita sibi penitus miserrimam captivant animam ut turpitudinibus illis magis quam orationi vacem. Quæ cum ingemiscere debeam de commissis, suspiro potius de amissis; nec solum quæ egimus, sed loca pariter et tempora in quibus hæc egimus ita tecum nostro infixa sunt animo, ut in ipsis omnia tecum agam, nec dormiens etiam ab his quiescam. Nonnunquam et ipso motu corporis, animi mei cogitationes deprehenduntur, nec a verbis temperant improvisis ... castam me prædicant qui non deprehenderunt hypocritam.”[26]...
These expressions, scarcely equalled by the delirium of Sappho, succeed at length in rekindling the expiring passion of Abelard. He replies by quotations from Virgil, from Lucanus, and by passages from the Song of Solomon. To convince her that their sorrows are not unmerited, he reminds her on his side of their past pleasures, and among others, of a sacrilegious interview held in the refectory of the convent of Argenteuil, where he had visited her in secret.
He then, and more than once, enlarges in praise of eunuchs, and ends by enclosing a prayer he has composed for her and for himself.
This closes the amorous correspondence, for in the next letter Eloisa declares her resolution, to which she remains firm, of putting a restraint on the ardour of her feelings, although she cannot at the same time refrain from quoting some equivocal lines from Ovid’s Art of Love.
We must here once more ask whether, circumstanced as these two lovers were, and taking into consideration the piety and resignation apparent in all the writings of Abelard, he being at the time fifty-four years of age, and Eloisa thirty-three—and after fourteen years’ separation, it is credible or possible that the letters we have quoted, letters in which all modesty is laid aside, should have been written by Eloisa? Allowing that she had preserved Abelard’s correspondence, is it easy to suppose that Abelard, continually moving from place to place, should have preserved hers to the day of his death, so that their letters might eventually be brought together?—letters, too, breathing an ardour so compromising to the reputation of both?
Is it likely that Eloisa should have kept copies of her own letters, the perusal of which, it must be confessed would not have tended to the edification of the nuns?
Remember also that all these events occurred in the first half of the 12th century, in an age when it was very unusual to make collections of any correspondence of an amorous nature.
We can then only arrive at the same conclusion as Messieurs Lalanne, Orelli, Ch. Barthélemy, and others, viz. that the correspondence which has given such renown to the names of Abelard and Eloisa as lovers, is in all probability apocryphal.
M. Ludovic Lalanne has another supposition, which is curious, and which appears to us not to be impossible:
“These letters,” says he, “are evidently very laboured. The circumstances follow each other with great regularity, and the vehement emotions that are traceable throughout, do not in any wise interfere with the methodical march of the whole. The length of the letters, and the learned quotations in them from the Bible, from the fathers of the church, and from pagan authors, all seem to indicate that they were composed with a purpose and with art, and were by no means the production of a hasty pen. Eloisa, we must remember, was a woman of letters, and a reputation for learning was of great value in her eyes. Did she, who survived her lover upwards of twenty years, wish to bequeath to posterity the memory of their misfortunes, by herself arranging and digesting at a later period, so as to form a literary composition, the letters that at divers times she had written and received? Or has perhaps a more eloquent and experienced pen undertaken the task? These are questions difficult to resolve. Anyhow, the oldest manuscript of this correspondence with which we are acquainted, is upwards of a hundred years posterior to the death of Eloisa. It is, as we have already said, the manuscript of the library of the town of Troyes.”
Let us now proceed to examine the authority for the so-called tomb of these lovers in the cemetery of Père la Chaise.
Two learned archæologists will enlighten us on the subject. Monsieur Lenoir,[27] in his Musée des Monuments français, and Monsieur de Guilhermy, in an article of the Annales Archéologiques de Didron for 1846.
During the French Revolution of 1792, the convent of the Paraclete, founded by Abelard, was sold. In order to protect the remains of the lovers from desecration, which was too common in those days, some worthy inhabitants of Nogent-sur-Seine, took possession of the coffins and deposited them in the church of that town. Seven years later M. Lenoir obtained the permission of the minister to transfer these remains to Paris, and it occurred to him at the same time, that it would be expedient to enclose them in a tomb of the period in which the lovers had lived. He was told that in the chapel of the infirmary of Saint Marcel-les-Chalons, Peter the Venerable had erected a monument to Abelard. Several denied this fact; but be that as it may, Monsieur Lenoir obtained possession of part of this monument, which had been purchased by a physician of the town in order to save it from destruction. M. Lenoir then constructed a monument with the fragments of a chapel of the abbey of St. Denis, and, as he tells us, placed the sarcophagus, which was of the style of architecture in vogue in the 12th century, in a room of the museum entrusted to his care.
The following information given by M. de Guilhermy[28] will show us how far M. Lenoir succeeded in his architectural device, and how far the sarcophagus contains the actual remains of Abelard and Eloisa:
“How many illusions,” says M. de Guilhermy, “would vanish into thin air if the pilgrims who came to visit the shrine of these celebrated lovers in the cemetery of Père la Chaise only knew, that in the construction of the sepulchral chapel there is not one single stone from the abbey of the Paraclete. The pillars, the capitals, the rose-works, which decorate the facings of the tomb belonged to the abbey of St. Denis. It does not require a very practised eye to discover that the sculptures are not in harmony, and were never intended to form a whole. It was the former director of the Musée des Monuments Français, who conceived the idea of putting together some fragments placed at his disposal, and with these to erect a monument worthy of receiving the bones of the two illustrious lovers of the 12th century.
“A wooden case sealed with the republican seal of the municipality of Nogent-sur-Seine, carried to Paris in 1799 the remains which were taken out of the grave in the Paraclete; but before depositing them in their new asylum, it was thought necessary to satisfy the amateurs of relics of this nature. The republicans opened the box, and all that was left of the bodies after a period of six hundred years was stolen out of it.” M. de Guilhermy says that: “Actually a tooth of Eloisa was offered for sale at the time. At any rate it was in the following manner that the tomb of Abelard was completed. A bas-relief which represented the funeral procession of Louis, the eldest son of Louis IX. of France, was taken from St. Denis, and it was decided that for the future this piece of sculpture should do duty for the mausoleum of Abelard. Two medallions, the work of a second-rate artist of the 16th century, represented Abelard with curled mustachios, and Eloisa under the form of a half-naked woman.”
“But this is not all. On the sarcophagus are two recumbent figures. One is draped in priestly robes and was purloined from one of the numerous cloisters demolished in Paris; the other is the statue of some noble lady in the costume and style befitting the 14th century, which once reclined on a tomb in the chapel of St. Jean de Beauvais in Paris.”
It is as well to recall such details as these in order to expose errors which, unless refuted, would from their long standing end by being accepted as truths. But after reading all the circumstances narrated above, can it be believed that Monsieur Guizot, who is so well acquainted with the real facts, or who at any rate ought to be acquainted with them, should, in order to gratify the public taste for sentiment, write as follows in the preface to a translation of the letters of Abelard and Eloisa:[29]
“Vingt-et-un ans après la mort d’Abailard, c’est-à-dire en 1163, agée de 63 ans, Héloïse descendit dans le même tombeau. Ils y reposent encore l’un et l’autre, après six cent soixante-quinze ans, et tous les jours de fraiches couronnes, déposées par des mains inconnues, attestent pour les deux morts la sympathie sans cesse renaissante des générations qui se succèdent!”
It would be difficult to find a more inflated style with which to decorate an historical error.