Peter Abélard

by Joseph McCabe

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.