The True Story of Heloïse and Abelard

 

Yves read out an inscription carved on a smallish manor which overlooked the river.  There had lived, in the same century that Notre Dame was built, the ill-fated medieval lovers, Heloise and Abelard.  He explained that they were France’s Romeo and Juliet, with the difference that their story was real and in a way even more tragic, because they had to live with their separation into old age, rather than dying at the theatrically correct moment.

But then the 19^th century came along and prettified the whole story, turning it into a cherished legend, in which the Catholic Church played a role in redeeming the pair from sin.  Heloise and Abelard were transformed from real-life lovers into an inspirational tale of how two people who have tasted the heinous pleasure of carnal lust, and made to pay heavily for it, can then rise above their misfortune, indeed consider their misfortune to be a blessing, to share a pure, Platonic- and respectably Christian - love.

As taught in French schools until today, the tale is meant to prove that male and female can love not only without sex, but even without sexual organs.  This may be possible, but it was not the case of Heloise and Abelard, who were all too similar to the flesh-and-blood lovers of today, even though they lived at the time of the Crusades. 

But this only makes them all the more touching, in my opinion.  So, as a fierce enemy of legends and historical revisions in general, I will pause in my recollections of my first enchanting winter in Paris – which, if I am not careful, could turn into a legend of its own! – to tell their real story, as it transpires from their own words.

Pierre Abelard was born to a noble family in western Brittany, and although few remember him now for anything but his fateful love affair with Heloise, he became one of the shining intellectual lights of his day.  As a young man, Abelard, as he was known to all, went to Paris where he gained fame as a very contentious theologian and philosopher, which, in the effervescent “little Renaissance” of the 12th century, gave him the glamour a left-wing radical would have today.  He used his formidable gift for logical argument, notably, to expose the empty rhetoric of the master of the Paris cathedral school and take over his position, which earned him both the admiration and resentment of his peers. 

But he aroused the envy of lesser minds because he was also a popular poet and writer of love songs, and, it is said, a very handsome man, greatly admired by women of all ranks and conditions.  It can be assumed, therefore, that in spite of the reputation for abstinence which he was careful to cultivate, he had made many conquests before the one which earned him his tragic place in history. 

At the seasoned age of 40, Abelard conceived a passion for the precocious Heloise, a teenager who following the death of her parents had come to Paris to live with her uncle Fulbert, at the house on the Ile de la CIté.  Canon Fulbert had a high position at the Cathedral, which was then the Cathédrale de Saint Etienne, since the tale unfolds half a century before it was replaced by the much larger Notre Dame de Paris.

Heloise impressed Abelard, less for her looks, which in his memoirs he condescendingly describes as “not of the worst”, but for her intelligence and culture. She could read Latin and Greek at a time when most men, let alone women, were illiterate, which was undoubtedly a refreshing change from the ladies he knew, who, one may assume, were versed in little else than the arts of love and grooming.  

To carry out his lustful designs, Abelard approached Canon Fulbert with an offer to become the girl’s teacher, in exchange for room and board in their house and a small fee, inventing the excuse that he couldn’t afford to keep a household of his own. The old man gladly accepted this au pair arrangement, for he was proud of his brilliant niece and admired the charismatic Abelard, whose fame had spread to the four corners of Europe.

Even better, according to Abelard’s mournful memoir “The Story of My Calamities”, the doting uncle encouraged him to stay as close to his young charge as possible.  Whenever Abelard had a free moment, he begged him, he should visit the girl’s room to instill her with wisdom, even after she had gone to bed, “as if he were entrusting a tender lamb to the care of a ravenous wolf”. 

 

 

The girl’s tutor was even allowed to discipline her, if he needed to get his way, “with threats and blows if I failed to do so with caresses”.  But caresses must have been quite sufficient, for soon teacher and pupil had put aside their texts and were indulging in every known form of carnal pleasure.

“We were joined together, first under the same roof and then in the same heart.  Under the pretext of our lessons we abandoned ourselves entirely to love. With our books open before us, we spoke more of love than learning, and we kissed far more than we studied. Each time my hand turned a page, it somehow found its way to her throbbing bosom..."

When Heloise became pregnant, Abelard sent her away to his sister’s house near Nantes, where she gave birth to a boy whom she fancifully named Astrolabe.  Fulbert was furious and threatened revenge for having abused his hospitality and trust, so Abelard offered to appease him by making her his wife.

But the hardened bachelor and half-hearted husband insisted that this be done privately, and that the marriage be kept secret because it would ruin his chances to be accepted into the ranks of the higher clergy, given that priests had mistresses but not wives.  Rather than live with his new family, he left little Astrolabe to be brought up by his aunt far away in Brittany, and put Heloise, much against her will, in a convent near Paris, as a pensionnaire. 

There, in Argenteuil, her existence would be forgotten by the world, like that of any other well-born girl who had “gone wrong”, while Abelard could pursue his career as a philosopher and visit her whenever the urge possessed him.  Years later, in his letters to Heloise, he was to remorsefully, nostalgically, and at the same time rhetorically, ask her, “Do you not remember the day I went to the convent to see you, and what, in my uncontrollable lust, I did with you there in a corner of the refectory, since we had nowhere else to go?”. 

Uncle Fulbert soon balked at the duplicitous arrangement, because all and sundry would think his niece was an unwed mother who had been locked away to avoid disgracing her family.  In a fit of rage, feeling that Abelard had made a fool of him, he wrought a terrible revenge on the rogue who had so impudently stained his honour.

I say “rogue”, in spite of Abelard’s claims that he was a chaste and virtuous fellow who had been “brought low” by Heloise, as if he had only sinned with woman once in his life.  But in his memoir Historia Calamitatum he makes no bones of recalling how he planned to seduce her, like any Don Juan about to snare an innocent maid.

“I was sure that it would be easy to win her love, because I knew that, being famous, young and handsome, I could obtain the favours of any woman I might desire.  And I knew that, as a philosopher, it would be even easier to conquer one like Heloise because of her knowledge and love of letters.”  Even though this element has been weeded out of the traditional version of the story, we may assume that when he met her he was already a veteran lady-killer, and that once she had become an embarrassing burden he moved on to greener pastures.

Nothing else, in any case, can explain why Fulbert was driven to seek such a terrible and explicitly sexual revenge.  His natural indignation at seeing his niece wed in the middle of the night at an out-of-the-way church and then shunted off to a convent would have turned to bloodthirsty outrage, upon discovering that Abelard had immediately found another, less problematical wench to take her place.

One thing is certain, though. If Abelard had been whipped, wounded or even murdered, their escapade would have remained the stuff of gossip rather than history. But by castrating him, he and Heloise were only left the mental, if not spiritual side of their relationship, which made room for the legend of the two lovers who sublimated their desire to be united in God.

Canon Fulbert sent three henchmen to Abelard’s house at night with orders to tie him to his bed and cut off his genitals – precisely, in his mortified words, “the parts with which I had committed my sin”.  Whether this meant his testicles only or also his penis, castration was the punishment reserved for men who seduced other men’s wives, and Fulbert judged that Abelard’s crime was every bit as bad. 

To hide his shame, the victim withdrew to a monastery, after forcing his wife to become a nun, to make sure – knowing how hot-blooded she was - that she would never give herself to someone else.  For poor Abelard, all was lost, not only his virility but also his career, since he was now that despised thing, a eunuch, and as such could no longer aspire to priesthood.

But the vows they took did not dissuade the passionate Heloise from expressing her feelings, and her words clearly show that the love was all on her side, rather than shared as the legend would have it.  After several years of total separation, a copy of his memoirs found its way into her hands, and she began sending him desperate letters in which she longingly – and by Abelard’s now chaste way of thinking, shamelessly - recalled their love-making.

It is ironic that these letters which - when stripped of the long-winded displays of erudition which were obligatory in all medieval writing - are so heart-breaking and erotic, might never have been written had Heloise not by a twist of fate become the prioress of a convent founded by Abelard. There was nothing, therefore, improper about them writing to one another in their capacity as the leaders of religious communities, even though much of what they said was personal, and on Heloise’s side, scandalously so.

“The amorous pleasures which we enjoyed together are, for me, filled with such delight that I cannot find anything hateful about them.  Even when I am praying at Mass, when one’s thoughts should be pure and chaste, obscene images torment my unhappy soul, increasing my despair.  And I dare not ask God for help, for I have never done a single thing for Him, only for you… I should now be lamenting my sins, rather than sighing for those which I can no longer commit…  Everything we did, even the times and places, are engraved on my heart alongside your image, so vividly that I live it all over again, with you.”

Her pitiful pleas for “some words of love” got no more from the morose old monk than advice to devote herself to her new husband, the Lord Jesus.  But it was not for lack of eloquence that she failed to touch his heart, since her letters can still touch our hearts, even over the yawning abyss of the centuries. 

Every outburst of love is followed by a cry of anger at the coldness and indifference he shows her in his begrudging responses.  Heloise may have been erudite, but she displays her ignorance of men’s natural callousness when she indignantly accuses Abelard of having desired her as a plaything and then forgetting her.  When he makes his periodical visits to the convent, she complains, he makes sure they are always surrounded by nuns and only addresses her as the Abbess.  It was the ultimate indignity, after all the intimacies they had shared.

“Why have you neglected me so?  You neither speak to me when you are here nor write to me when you are absent.  I know now, and everyone around me says, that your love was nothing more than the flame of lust which was soon quenched.  In the past, when you sought me out for sinful pleasures, you wrote beautiful songs for me which put Heloise on everyone's lips, so that each street and house in Paris echoed with my name… And I never even wanted to marry you, because of the damage it would cause to your future.  Other women may revere the title of wife, but I would rather be known as your lover, or, if you will permit me, as your concubine or whore.  If Augustus, Emperor of the whole world, wanted to make me his wife, I would tell him that I would be more honoured to be not his Queen but Abelard’s whore.”

None of this did her any good, because the mere thought of love filled Abelard with pain, which makes me wonder why he bothered to answer her at all, and at such length.  Perhaps his sheer loneliness, drifting from one monastery to the other among brutish and even murderous monks, who often made him fear for his life, drove him to seek solace in her refined company, even if she meant nothing to him as a woman. 

But Heloise was finally allowed to sleep in his bed, after a fashion.  When he died his body was sent for burial to the convent he had created and which had since become her cloister, Le Paraclet.  And, on her own instructions, when she followed him 22 years later, hers was dutifully placed alongside it in the tomb. 

Legend-lovers claim that when it was opened his arms reached out to embrace her, but skeptics such as me are equally touched that they should both have died at the same age, 63, especially since that is my own age at this writing.  How could I fail to see a similarity both between myself and Abelard, and the loose and learned ladies I have loved and Heloise?

With the Revolution, their coffin was transported to one of the newly-created national museums, where some misguided soul, remembering that they were abbot and abbess after they had been husband and wife, prudishly inserted a leaden divider between the skeletons.  Finally, Heloise and Abelard were transferred to a cemetery which had been created on the outskirts of the city, in accordance with modern hygienic standards, the “Cimetière de l’Est”. 

The Parisians were reluctant to bury their loved ones so far from the crowded church graveyards in the center, so the Revolutionary government decided to add a touch of ancien régime glamour by bringing in some famous skeletons.  As well as the legendary lovers of the Ile de la Cité, the “Eastern Cemetery” featured Molière and La Fontaine, whose remains – after being virtually forgotten for centuries - were covered with sumptuous, historically allusive monuments. 

The Revolutionaries were right about the French thirst for gloire et grandeur, and their clever tactic touched off the craze which made Père Lachaise, as it is known today, the world’s most famous cemetery. The incumbent statues of Heloise and Abelard were surrounded by a cloister of ornately-carved neo-Gothic arches, and, to the satisfaction of their growing legion of devotees, there was no metal plate in their coffin to keep them apart – or, rather, to keep her away from him. 

 

 

 

The lovers' tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.

 

 

 

 

Pilgrimage to Le Pallet

On the 30th of October, 2005, I made my pilgrimage to the tiny village of Le Pallet, just south of the city of Nantes.  It is the birthplace of the medieval philosopher Pierre Abelard, whose ill-fated love affair with the brilliant young Heloise earned him an atrocious punishment and permanent exile from the intellectual life of 12th century Paris. 

Their tragic love story is the oldest non-fictitional romance in European history, rather than a purely literary invention like Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde - even though it was used by 19th century romantic writers to create a cult-legend of its own. 

I was warmly received by M. Guy Demangeau, President of the Pierre Abelard Cultural Association.  He showed me the remains of the castle where Abelard was born in 1079 to a noble Breton family, and where Heloise gave birth to their child Astrolabe. 

Although there are no documents to prove that the small castle is that old, a recent Carbon 14 test has shown that it was indeed built before Abelard's birth. It is therefore one of the first medieval fortresses in France to be made of stone rather than wood, at the beginning of the millenium.

Next to the remains of the castle stands the chapel where, it is thought, Abelard was baptized.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the remaining walls of the tower have been stripped of their outer, smooth stones, leaving only the filler composed of rubble and mortar.  Roman and medieval ruins were routinely used as quarries by local builders, in later centuries.

 

 

 

 

The villagers were cleaning the graves of their loved ones in the adjacent cemetery, for the 1st of November, "la Fête de la Toussaint".  In the foreground is M. Guy Demangeau, President of the Pierre Abelard Cultural Association.  The handsome white dog is that curious traveller par excellence, Valentino.

 

 

The site is marked by a crucifix, atop the knoll where the family's original, wooden fortress stood.

 

The Association had just received an extraordinary donation for their small museum. 

When the skeletons of Heloise and Abelard were buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, in the early 19th century, some of their bones were removed by M. Alexandre Lenoir, who was the archaeologist in charge of the Museum of French Monuments, at the time.

Lenoir gave these remains to several prominent "Heloise and Abelard" fans of the day, one of whom bequeathed his estate to his friend authoress George Sand, famous in turn for her affair with Chopin. Her heiress, Mme. Christiane Sand, decided that the curious but no less precious relics - almost 900 years old - would be best off in Le Pallet.

 

 

 

I had the honour of touching the relics myself (although the finger shown is that of M. Demangeau).  It gave me a "certain frisson", imagining the palpitating flesh of the ardent lovers which once gave them life! 

Below is the envelope in which the fragments were kept since they were removed from the lovers' mutual coffin.  Heloise saw to it that, after a forced separation of twenty years, she and Abelard were finally allowed to lie side by side, in death.

 

 

 

"Restes d'Heloise et d'Abelard, recueillis dans le cerceuil en 1816 par Monsieur Alexandre Lenoir, administrateur du Musée."