by Sherry Jones
“I thought you had ceased to love me,” I said, “or that you had never loved me at all.”
“You are the only one I have ever loved,” he said, beginning to tremble again. I tightened my embrace, but, this time, his shivers did not abate for a long while. A sob formed in my throat but I swallowed it, not wanting to hinder his soul’s unburdening in his final hours. My reward came soon enough, as, once his body had calmed, he told me through laboring breaths all that I had wanted to know.
Abelard had never blamed me for my uncle’s cruel act, he said. Again, the urge to confess seized me, but again I forbore, not only because I feared extinguishing the light of love from his eyes but also because I would have him rest, now, in peace. If he had treated me coldly, he did so out of shame, he said, and also out of confusion. Even after his body’s wounds had healed and the pain diminished, the desire that once had burned for me stirred him no more.
“When I beheld you—forgive me!—I felt nothing.” Shame increased by his body’s failure to feel what a man ought to feel, he wanted only to be rid of me, the reminder of all he once had been.
“And now I must confess. Heloise, the bishop of Paris did not decree that you must take the veil; nor did Suger suggest it. The idea was mine, and mine alone.”
He began to weep anew, but I begged him to dry his tears. I’d given up my life for no one’s sake but his, I said. Only Abelard could have prompted me to make that sacrifice.
“I hoped that you would repay your debt to me with your love,” I said.
“How could I do so when I abhorred myself?”
His shivering commenced; I cradled his clattering bones awkwardly, as though clutching a bundle of twigs.
“I have never ceased to love you, my precious jewel; my unique one; my amica, amor, dilectio, and caritas,” he said.
I smiled through my tears. At last, he knew: love is love. I had won our debate.
Yet, I realized, Abelard’s love had differed from mine. As I had argued so passionately all those years ago, each of us feels love differently. My experience of love—selfless, sacrificial, all-consuming—differed from his, which considered his own interests first and foremost. He loved himself first, but he did not love me less.
Out of love, he’d given me the most exquisite pleasures rather than simply taking his from me; out of love, he’d sent me to Brittany with all the money he could gather to ensure my safety and well-being. Out of love had he married me, imperiling all that he’d worked so long to build; out of love had Abelard moved me to Argenteuil to flee my uncle’s abuse, knowing that Uncle might turn his hand against him, instead.
Out of love had Abelard given me his only possession in the world, his land for the Paraclete. Out of love had he made an abbess of me, knowing that I would be cared for no matter what might befall him, and also that, as the Paraclete’s adviser, he would be able to visit me from time to time.
“I did not wish to harm you further,” he gasped. “God is my witness, Heloise: all I have done since we parted has been for your sake. And yet mine is a selfish love, yes. I want you with me in heaven.”
His eyes brimmed and overflowed, blue pools into which I yearned to dive, immersing myself in what had been denied to me for so long. Abelard loved me as much as I loved him, only differently. Why had I ever thought otherwise? Abandoned by my mother, never knowing my father, abused by my uncle, I had expected Abelard to hurt me, as well. Indeed, I thought many times that he had done so. I could not have erred more grievously. He had remained true to me since the day we met. He had not betrayed me, but, in allowing doubt to govern my mind, I had betrayed myself, and him.
I knew nothing else that night, cradling Abelard, my heart of hearts, but I knew this: he had never ceased to love me, and he never would. And, on that night, he repaid his debt to me.
His eyes pleaded. I opened my mouth to answer, oui, that I loved him, and always had loved him, and always would love him. But he foundered like a drowning man, grasping at my clothes as if to keep from slipping away.
“Pray for me, Heloise. Swear it. Take my body to the Paraclete. Pray over me every day. Ask for God’s mercy and forgiveness. I should not have led you into sin. Please—beg him to forgive me.”
“Shh. Do not speak of these things.” Had he forgotten that I had never repented of our indulgences? Nor have I done so now, two decades after Abelard’s death. Instead, I relive every hour we spent together and indulge, again, in every delightful transgression. Why would God listen to me, a sinner yet twisting with desire for my former lover and utterly unrepentant? I doubted that my prayers would provide any benefit—but I did not say so. Instead, I made the promise as he drifted away, his eyes’ light diminishing, lanterns set on a vessel that, now, drifted out to sea.
“Abelard,” I said, crying now, “don’t leave me.”
“Heloise,” he said, gasping. “I shall never leave you. I will await you in heaven, my only one. We shall be together again someday, God willing.”
“But what if God does not will it?” I began to sob. “I have never repented of sinning with you. I cannot, not in my heart. You say you have done so? Tell me how, I beg you.”
His eyes’ expression told me all. Elation swept through me. His admonishments; the calls for repentance in his letters; his claims that lust, not love, had ruled him—all were false.
“Or have you repented?” I whispered. “Are you forgiven?”
“I don’t know.”
He pressed his mouth to mine, as for a kiss. I felt my fears subside as, with a long sigh, he released his spirit, giving himself to me at last, the greatest gift of all, taking up residence in my soul, becoming a part of me as never before. Warmth rushed through my blood like the fresh breath of springtime, filling me with hope where, for so long, the cold winds of desolation had blown.
Every year without Abelard in my life has seemed, to me, a lifetime. But what are Earthly years? With his dying breath, he became mine for eternity.
And I, as ever, am his.
Love urges me to enlist in its service, to respect its laws,
And what I had not learnt, love forces me to learn.
No man but stone is he whom your beauty does not move.
I believe that I am moved, nor can I be stone.
Poets have tried hard to portray the body of Venus,
. . . .
But did they ever produce anyone equal to you? Certainly I think not.
For your beauty surpasses even the goddesses themselves.
Should I go on or be silent? By your grace, I will speak.
I will speak, for a traitor is devoid of words . . .
You have conquered me, whom no woman could conquer.
Thus I burn more strongly, this being my first love;
For never before has that flame penetrated my marrow.
If ever there was love before, I was only lukewarm.
You alone make me eloquent; such glory has happened to
No one, that she be worthy of my song.
You are like no one else, you in whom nature has placed
Whatever excellence the world can have:
Beauty, noble birth, character—through which honor is begotten—
All make you outstanding in our city.
So is it then surprising that I am lured by their brilliance,
If I succumb to you, conquered by your love?
—Abelard to Heloise
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Love in all its passion, glory, pathos, and pain: That’s what first drew me to the story of Heloise and Abelard, that “ill-starred” couple whose shocking tale has intrigued so many over the centuries. But where others have seen tragedy, I’ve found inspiration, especially in the life of Heloise d’Argenteuil. Her unconditional, self-sacrificial devotion to Abelard never wavered in spite of tremendous obstacles, including Abelard’s own flawed humanity; nor did it prevent her becoming one of the most influential women of her day and one of the greatest writers of all time.
&
nbsp; As soon as I encountered their story—while researching medieval philosophy for my thirteenth-century historical novel, Four Sisters, All Queens—I knew Heloise and Abelard would be the focus of my next book. Why did they appeal to me so? The tale’s shock value grabbed my attention, of course, but so did the paradox of Heloise, a rare woman scholar who matched wits with the greatest of minds yet gave up everything that mattered for his sake.
When I began The Sharp Hook of Love, I was newly in love with an artistic man of true genius whose need for ample time and space alone clashed with my desire for companionship and connection. As we fought and parted, then reunited with passion and joy, our love deepened and grew—and I wrote and read and revised, searching for the true meaning of love, confronting my own deepest fears, anxieties, and desires.
My quest began with the couple’s letters. Years after being forced to part, Heloise and Abelard continued to correspond. Eight of their letters survive, written when he was an abbot and she an abbess, starting with Abelard’s autobiography, Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes), in which he tells the tale of his affair with Heloise. She responded, correcting him in some of his accounts and embellishing others, and emphasizing that, in the fifteen years having passed since their parting, she had never stopped loving him.
Apparently, the same is true for Abelard. Before he died, Abelard asked permission to live his final days at the Oratory of the Paraclete, where Heloise was now abbess. The Church refused, so he requested that, after his death, his body go to the Paraclete so that Heloise might pray over him until she died—which she did for twenty years.
As for Heloise, her deathbed wish was to be buried with her beloved. “When her dead body was carried to the opened tomb, her husband, who had died long before her, raised his arms to receive her, and so clasped her closely in his embrace,” an anonymous chronicler wrote, lending an air of legend to the lovers’ already famous story.
When, one hundred years later, the great poet Jean de Meun translated their letters from Latin into French and excerpted them in his continuation of the popular tale Roman de la Rose, the pair became famous again, taking their place alongside Tristan and Iseult and Aucassin and Nicolette as embodying the spirit of enduring love against all odds—Romeo and Juliet before their time. Unlike these couples, however, Abelard and Heloise were not fictional characters. They truly lived, and loved.
Imagine my excitement to hear these lovers’ tale for the first time. I had to retell it. As I began my research, my admiration for Heloise grew. Here was a woman of intellect, heart, and indomitable spirit who gave up her child, her freedom, her very life, for the sake of the man she loved. In doing so, she benefited not only Abelard but all posterity.
In 1129, twelve years or so after Heloise took the veil, Suger, now abbot at Saint-Denis, took possession of the Argenteuil Royal Abbey after accusing the nuns of “disgraceful and filthy relations.” Suger expelled the sisters and their abbess, most of whom headed to the Saint-Marie-of-Malnoué convent in Brie. Heloise, however, followed a different path.
Abelard, hearing of her situation, had offered her his only possession, a tract of wild ground on the Ardusson River near Troyes, on which to build an abbey. She and her followers made the long journey to Abelard’s oratory, which comprised a few mud-and-thatch huts and a small stone chapel. At first the women had to forage, hunt, and fish to stay alive, but in a few years the Oratory of the Paraclete had become one of the largest religious institutions in the French realm with five daughter houses, rivaling the Fontevraud Abbey.
As abbess, Heloise instituted a legacy benefiting future generations at the Paraclete: new rules governing convent life, the first ever written for women. She also left behind songs and poems, likely among those in the famous Carmina Burana, which scholars believe began as Abelard’s personal collection.
And then, the letters. Even with only the aforementioned eight, the couple’s story has captured imaginations for nearly nine hundred years. A glimpse at their Wikipedia entry reveals a long list of poems, music, novels, films, artworks, and more referring to the couple.
But in 1999, an extraordinary thing happened: a scholar in Australia, Professor Constant J. Mews, published excerpts from 113 more letters that he asserted the couple wrote to each other during their courtship. These “Lost Love Letters,” exquisite in their poetry and extraordinary in their passion, provide a much different portrait of the love affair between Heloise and Abelard than we find in the Historia Calamitatum. Abelard, writing his autobiography to emphasize his own sinfulness and salvation, had positioned himself as a callous seducer of his innocent student. The “Lost Love Letters,” however, show a Heloise fully engaged in the affair, an equal in love as well as intellect.
The Sharp Hook of Love is, to my knowledge, the first novel about the couple to incorporate these letters, not only their extraordinary language but also their themes, including the nature of true love. In this book, as in their letters, they debate whether different types of love exist, such as the love of a parent or child versus the love for a husband or wife versus the love for God, or whether love is, simply, love. They agree that, in considering the rightness or wrongness of an act, intention matters more than the deed itself. And they discuss the “perpetual debt” in which lovers ideally find themselves.
“You know, my heart’s love, that the services of true love are properly fulfilled only when they are continually owed,” Heloise writes. Abelard echoes this notion: “In this way will our love be immortal: if each of us strives to outdo the other in a friendly and loving contest and if neither of us agreed to be outdone by the other.” To this day, debate rages over which of the two loved, and lost, more.
Incorporating the beautiful language from the couples’ own letters was one of the great pleasures, for me, of writing The Sharp Hook of Love. Striving for authenticity of voice, I also wove in quotes from philosophers and poets they would have read—Boethius, Seneca, Cicero, Ovid—as well as from the Vulgate Scriptures. Knowing that Heloise and Abelard would have written and possibly spoken in Latin, I even tried to use only words of Latin origin. The result, I hope, is a book like no other in its blending of intellect and passion, of poetry and philosophy, of Heloise and Abelard.
If The Sharp Hook of Love and its poetry, themes, and story delight you as much as they do me, please spread the word about this book. Tell your friends and family members, your book group, your bookseller, your librarian, your social media friends and followers. Post your reviews wherever you hang out online.
And please do come to my website, http://authorsherryjones.com, for a plethora of resources to increase your understanding and appreciation of these remarkable lovers and the times in which they lived. While you’re there, connect with me on the social media links posted there, and write to me as well. I would love to hear from you, and I always write back.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My most heartfelt thanks go to Dr. Constant J. Mews, professor at Monash University in Australia and one of the world’s preeminent authorities on Abelard and Heloise. Not only did he read an early version of this novel with an eye for historical accuracy as well as generously and promptly answer all my emails but he also, with his publisher, Palgrave, gave me permission to freely excerpt from his excellent 1999 book, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard. I highly recommend this book to all who are interested in learning more about this fascinating couple.
I’m also deeply indebted to my literary agent, Natasha Kern, for her friendship, advice, and dedication to helping me further my career as an author; to my editor, Kate Dresser, for her brilliant editing suggestions and enthusiasm for this book; to Steven Boldt for first-rate copyediting; to friends who read early drafts and made comments so helpful: Richard Myers, AnneMarie Lewis, Todd Mowbray, Serena Belsby, and Mitchell James Kaplan; to my entire team at Gallery Books, including Louise Burke, Jen Bergstrom, Jean Anne Rose, and Liz Psaltis; to Kathy Sagan; and to the many friends, fans, librarians, and booksellers
who continue to offer their support and love.
Gallery Readers Group Guide
The Sharp Hook of Love
SHERRY JONES
INTRODUCTION
The Sharp Hook of Love retells the story of Heloise and Abelard, twelfth-century Parisian lovers. Beautifully incorporating language from the real couple’s letters to each other, the novel traces the story of their romance as it blossoms from a meeting of the minds into a forbidden love affair. United by love even when pulled apart by families, friends, and society, Heloise and Abelard learn what it means to truly sacrifice one’s life for a beloved. As intimate as it is erotic, as devastating as it is beautiful, The Sharp Hook of Love teaches readers that true love can never be thwarted.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. “For nothing is under less control than the heart—having no power to command it, we are forced to obey,” writes the historical Heloise in a letter to Abelard. This quote is used by the author as an epigraph for the novel, and as such, it frames the story that ensues as one about control—or lack thereof. Who or what is in control in The Sharp Hook of Love? Who or what is out of control? Do any of the characters successfully disobey their heart?
2. Heloise, the narrator, begins her story by claiming, “I was born in silence.” How does this statement act as an omen for what will occur in the novel? In addition to living a cloistered life, how else is Heloise silenced, literally and/or figuratively?