by Lyndon Orr
ABELARD AND HELOISE
Many a woman, amid the transports of passionate and languishing love,has cried out in a sort of ecstasy:
"I love you as no woman ever loved a man before!"
When she says this she believes it. Her whole soul is aflame with theardor of emotion. It really seems to her that no one ever could haveloved so much as she.
This cry--spontaneous, untaught, sincere--has become almost one of thoseconventionalities of amorous expression which belong to the vocabularyof self-abandonment. Every woman who utters it, when torn by the almostterrible extravagance of a great love, believes that no one before herhas ever said it, and that in her own case it is absolutely true.
Yet, how many women are really faithful to the end? Very many, indeed,if circumstances admit of easy faithfulness. A high-souled, generous,ardent nature will endure an infinity of disillusionment, of misfortune,of neglect, and even of ill treatment. Even so, the flame, though itmay sink low, can be revived again to burn as brightly as before. Butin order that this may be so it is necessary that the object of such awonderful devotion be alive, that he be present and visible; or, ifhe be absent, that there should still exist some hope of renewing theexquisite intimacy of the past.
A man who is sincerely loved may be compelled to take long journeyswhich will separate him for an indefinite time from the woman whohas given her heart to him, and she will still be constant. He maybe imprisoned, perhaps for life, yet there is always the hope of hisrelease or of his escape; and some women will be faithful to him andwill watch for his return. But, given a situation which absolutely barsout hope, which sunders two souls in such a way that they can never beunited in this world, and there we have a test so terribly severe thatfew even of the most loyal and intensely clinging lovers can endure it.
Not that such a situation would lead a woman to turn to any other manthan the one to whom she had given her very life; but we might expectthat at least her strong desire would cool and weaken. She might cherishhis memory among the precious souvenirs of her love life; but that sheshould still pour out the same rapturous, unstinted passion as beforeseems almost too much to believe. The annals of emotion record only onesuch instance; and so this instance has become known to all, and hasbeen cherished for nearly a thousand years. It involves the story of awoman who did love, perhaps, as no one ever loved before or since; forshe was subjected to this cruel test, and she met the test not alonecompletely, but triumphantly and almost fiercely.
The story is, of course, the story of Abelard and Heloise. It has manytimes been falsely told. Portions of it have been omitted, and otherportions of it have been garbled. A whole literature has grown uparound the subject. It may well be worth our while to clear away theambiguities and the doubtful points, and once more to tell it simply,without bias, and with a strict adherence to what seems to be the truthattested by authentic records.
There is one circumstance connected with the story which we mustspecially note. The narrative does something more than set forth the onequite unimpeachable instance of unconquered constancy. It shows how, inthe last analysis, that which touches the human heart has more vitalityand more enduring interest than what concerns the intellect or thoseachievements of the human mind which are external to our emotionalnature.
Pierre Abelard was undoubtedly the boldest and most creative reasonerof his time. As a wandering teacher he drew after him thousands ofenthusiastic students. He gave a strong impetus to learning. He was amarvelous logician and an accomplished orator. Among his pupils were menwho afterward became prelates of the church and distinguished scholars.In the Dark Age, when the dictates of reason were almost whollydisregarded, he fought fearlessly for intellectual freedom. He waspractically the founder of the University of Paris, which in turn becamethe mother of medieval and modern universities.
He was, therefore, a great and striking figure in the history ofcivilization. Nevertheless he would to-day be remembered only byscholars and students of the Middle Ages were it not for the fact thathe inspired the most enduring love that history records. If Heloisehad never loved him, and if their story had not been so tragic and sopoignant, he would be to-day only a name known to but a few. His finalresting-place, in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, in Paris, would notbe sought out by thousands every year and kept bright with flowers, thegift of those who have themselves both loved and suffered.
Pierre Abelard--or, more fully, Pierre Abelard de Palais--was a nativeof Brittany, born in the year 1079. His father was a knight, the lord ofthe manor; but Abelard cared little for the life of a petty noble; andso he gave up his seigniorial rights to his brothers and went forth tobecome, first of all a student, and then a public lecturer and teacher.
His student days ended abruptly in Paris, where he had enrolled himselfas the pupil of a distinguished philosopher, Guillaume de Champeaux; butone day Abelard engaged in a disputation with his master. His wonderfulcombination of eloquence, logic, and originality utterly routedChampeaux, who was thus humiliated in the presence of his disciples. Hewas the first of many enemies that Abelard was destined to make in hislong and stormy career. From that moment the young Breton himself setup as a teacher of philosophy, and the brilliancy of his discourses soondrew to him throngs of students from all over Europe.
Before proceeding with the story of Abelard it is well to reconstruct,however slightly, a picture of the times in which he lived. It was anage when Western Europe was but partly civilized. Pedantry and learningof the most minute sort existed side by side with the most violentexcesses of medieval barbarism. The Church had undertaken the gigantictask of subduing and enlightening the semi-pagan peoples of France andGermany and England.
When we look back at that period some will unjustly censure Rome for notcontrolling more completely the savagery of the medievals. More fairlyshould we wonder at the great measure of success which had alreadybeen achieved. The leaven of a true Christianity was working in thehalf-pagan populations. It had not yet completely reached the nobles andthe knights, or even all the ecclesiastics who served it and who wereconsecrated to its mission. Thus, amid a sort of political chaoswere seen the glaring evils of feudalism. Kings and princes and theirfollowers lived the lives of swine. Private blood-feuds were regardedlightly. There was as yet no single central power. Every man carried hislife in his hand, trusting to sword and dagger for protection.
The cities were still mere hamlets clustered around great castles orfortified cathedrals. In Paris itself the network of dark lanes,ill lighted and unguarded, was the scene of midnight murder andassassination. In the winter-time wolves infested the town by night.Men-at-arms, with torches and spears, often had to march out from theirbarracks to assail the snarling, yelping packs of savage animals thathunger drove from the surrounding forests.
Paris of the twelfth century was typical of France itself, which washarried by human wolves intent on rapine and wanton plunder. There weregreat schools of theology, but the students who attended them fought andslashed one another. If a man's life was threatened he must protect itby his own strength or by gathering about him a band of friends. Noone was safe. No one was tolerant. Very few were free from the grosservices. Even in some of the religious houses the brothers would meetat night for unseemly revels, splashing the stone floors with wine andshrieking in a delirium of drunkenness. The rules of the Church enjoinedtemperance, continence, and celibacy; but the decrees of Leo IX. andNicholas II. and Alexander II. and Gregory were only partially observed.
In fact, Europe was in a state of chaos--political and moral and social.Only very slowly was order emerging from sheer anarchy. We must rememberthis when we recall some facts which meet us in the story of Abelard andHeloise.
The jealousy of Champeaux drove Abelard for a time from Paris. He taughtand lectured at several other centers of learning, always admired, andyet at the same time denounced by many for his advocacy of reason asagainst blind faith. During the years of his wandering he came to havea wide knowledge of the world and of human nature.
If we try to imaginehim as he was in his thirty-fifth year we shall find in him a remarkablecombination of attractive qualities.
It must be remembered that though, in a sense, he was an ecclesiastic,he had not yet been ordained to the priesthood, but was rather acanon--a person who did not belong to any religious order, though he wassupposed to live according to a definite set of religious rules and as amember of a religious community. Abelard, however, made rather lightof his churchly associations. He was at once an accomplished man of theworld and a profound scholar. There was nothing of the recluse abouthim. He mingled with his fellow men, whom he dominated by the charm ofhis personality. He was eloquent, ardent, and persuasive. He could turna delicate compliment as skilfully as he could elaborate a syllogism.His rich voice had in it a seductive quality which was never without itseffect.
Handsome and well formed, he possessed as much vigor of body as of mind.Nor were his accomplishments entirely those of the scholar. He wrotedainty verses, which he also set to music, and which he sang himselfwith a rare skill. Some have called him "the first of the troubadours,"and many who cared nothing for his skill in logic admired him forhis gifts as a musician and a poet. Altogether, he was one to attractattention wherever he went, for none could fail to recognize his power.
It was soon after his thirty-fifth year that he returned to Paris, wherehe was welcomed by thousands. With much tact he reconciled himself tohis enemies, so that his life now seemed to be full of promise and ofsunshine.
It was at this time that he became acquainted with a very beautifulyoung girl named Heloise. She was only eighteen years of age, yetalready she possessed not only beauty, but many accomplishments whichwere then quite rare in women, since she both wrote and spoke a numberof languages, and, like Abelard, was a lover of music and poetry.Heloise was the illegitimate daughter of a canon of patrician blood; sothat she is said to have been a worthy representative of the noble houseof the Montmorencys--famous throughout French history for chivalry andcharm.
Up to this time we do not know precisely what sort of life Abelardhad lived in private. His enemies declared that he had squandered hissubstance in vicious ways. His friends denied this, and representedhim as strict and chaste. The truth probably lies between these twoassertions. He was naturally a pleasure-loving man of the world, who mayvery possibly have relieved his severer studies by occasional revelryand light love. It is not at all likely that he was addicted to grosspassions and low practices.
But such as he was, when he first saw Heloise he conceived for hera violent attachment. Carefully guarded in the house of her uncle,Fulbert, it was difficult at first for Abelard to meet her save in themost casual way; yet every time that he heard her exquisite voice andwatched her graceful manners he became more and more infatuated. Hisstudies suddenly seemed tame and colorless beside the fierce scarletflame which blazed up in his heart.
Nevertheless, it was because of these studies and of his greatreputation as a scholar that he managed to obtain access to Heloise. Heflattered her uncle and made a chance proposal that he should himselfbecome an inmate of Fulbert's household in order that he might teachthis girl of so much promise. Such an offer coming from so brilliant aman was joyfully accepted.
From that time Abelard could visit Heloise without restraint. He washer teacher, and the two spent hours together, nominally in the study ofGreek and Hebrew; but doubtless very little was said between themupon such unattractive subjects. On the contrary, with all his wideexperience of life, his eloquence, his perfect manners, and hisfascination, Abelard put forth his power to captivate the senses ofa girl still in her teens and quite ignorant of the world. As Remusatsays, he employed to win her the genius which had overwhelmed all thegreat centers of learning in the Western world.
It was then that the pleasures of knowledge, the joys of thought, theemotions of eloquence, were all called into play to charm and move andplunge into a profound and strange intoxication this noble and tenderheart which had never known either love or sorrow.... One can imaginethat everything helped on the inevitable end. Their studies gave themopportunities to see each other freely, and also permitted them to bealone together. Then their books lay open between them; but either longperiods of silence stilled their reading, or else words of deepeningintimacy made them forget their studies altogether. The eyes of the twolovers turned from the book to mingle their glances, and then to turnaway in a confusion that was conscious.
Hand would touch hand, apparently by accident; and when conversationceased, Abelard would often hear the long, quivering sigh which showedthe strange, half-frightened, and yet exquisite joy which Heloiseexperienced.
It was not long before the girl's heart had been wholly won. Transportedby her emotion, she met the caresses of her lover with those asunrestrained as his. Her very innocence deprived her of the protectionwhich older women would have had. All was given freely, and evenwildly, by Heloise; and all was taken by Abelard, who afterward himselfdeclared:
"The pleasure of teaching her to love surpassed the delightful fragranceof all the perfumes in the world."
Yet these two could not always live in a paradise which was entirelytheir own. The world of Paris took notice of their close association.Some poems written to Heloise by Abelard, as if in letters of fire, werefound and shown to Fulbert, who, until this time, had suspected nothing.Angrily he ordered Abelard to leave his house. He forbade his niece tosee her lover any more.
But the two could not be separated; and, indeed, there was good reasonwhy they should still cling together. Secretly Heloise left her uncle'shouse and fled through the narrow lanes of Paris to the dwelling ofAbelard's sister, Denyse, where Abelard himself was living. There,presently, the young girl gave birth to a son, who was named Astrolabe,after an instrument used by astronomers, since both the father andthe mother felt that the offspring of so great a love should have noordinary name.
Fulbert was furious, and rightly so. His hospitality had been outragedand his niece dishonored. He insisted that the pair should at oncebe married. Here was revealed a certain weakness in the character ofAbelard. He consented to the marriage, but insisted that it should bekept an utter secret.
Oddly enough, it was Heloise herself who objected to becoming the wifeof the man she loved. Unselfishness could go no farther. She saw that,were he to marry her, his advancement in the Church would be almostimpossible; for, while the very minor clergy sometimes married in spiteof the papal bulls, matrimony was becoming a fatal bar to ecclesiasticalpromotion. And so Heloise pleaded pitifully, both with her uncle andwith Abelard, that there should be no marriage. She would rather bearall manner of disgrace than stand in the way of Abelard's advancement.
He has himself given some of the words in which she pleaded with him:
What glory shall I win from you, when I have made you quite ingloriousand have humbled both of us? What vengeance will the world inflict onme if I deprive it of one so brilliant? What curses will follow such amarriage? How outrageous would it be that you, whom nature created forthe universal good, should be devoted to one woman and plunged into suchdisgrace? I loathe the thought of a marriage which would humiliate you.
Indeed, every possible effort which another woman in her place wouldemploy to make him marry her she used in order to dissuade him. Finally,her sweet face streaming with tears, she uttered that tremendoussentence which makes one really think that she loved him as no otherwoman ever loved a man. She cried out, in an agony of self-sacrifice:
"I would rather be your mistress than the wife even of an emperor!"
Nevertheless, the two were married, and Abelard returned to hislecture-room and to his studies. For months they met but seldom.Meanwhile, however, the taunts and innuendos directed against Heloiseso irritated Fulbert that he broke his promise of secrecy, and told hisfriends that Abelard and Heloise were man and wife. They went to Heloisefor confirmation. Once more she showed in an extraordinary way the depthof her devotion.
"I am no wife," she said. "It is not true that Abela
rd has married me.My uncle merely tells you this to save my reputation."
They asked her whether she would swear to this; and, without a moment'shesitation, this pure and noble woman took an oath upon the Scripturesthat there had been no marriage.
Fulbert was enraged by this. He ill-treated Heloise, and, furthermore,he forbade Abelard to visit her. The girl, therefore, again left heruncle's house and betook herself to a convent just outside of Paris,where she assumed the habit of a nun as a disguise. There Abelardcontinued from time to time to meet her.
When Fulbert heard of this he put his own interpretation on it. Hebelieved that Abelard intended to ignore the marriage altogether, andthat possibly he might even marry some other woman. In any case, he nowhated Abelard with all his heart; and he resolved to take a fearful andunnatural vengeance which would at once prevent his enemy from makingany other marriage, while at the same time it would debar him fromecclesiastical preferment.
To carry out his plot Fulbert first bribed a man who was thebody-servant of Abelard, watching at the door of his room each night.Then he hired the services of four ruffians. After Abelard had retiredand was deep in slumber the treacherous valet unbarred the door. Thehirelings of Fulbert entered and fell upon the sleeping man. Three ofthem bound him fast, while the fourth, with a razor, inflicted on himthe most shameful mutilation that is possible. Then, extinguishingthe lights, the wretches slunk away and were lost in darkness, leavingbehind their victim bound to his couch, uttering cries of torment andbathed in his own blood.
It is a shocking story, and yet it is intensely characteristic of thelawless and barbarous era in which it happened. Early the next morningthe news flew rapidly through Paris. The city hummed like a bee-hive.Citizens and students and ecclesiastics poured into the street andsurrounded the house of Abelard.
"Almost the entire city," says Fulques, as quoted by McCabe, "wentclamoring toward his house. Women wept as if each one had lost herhusband."
Unmanned though he was, Abelard still retained enough of the spirit ofhis time to seek vengeance. He, in his turn, employed ruffians whom heset upon the track of those who had assaulted him. The treacherous valetand one of Fulbert's hirelings were run down, seized, and mutilatedprecisely as Abelard had been; and their eyes were blinded. A third waslodged in prison. Fulbert himself was accused before one of the Churchcourts, which alone had power to punish an ecclesiastic, and all hisgoods were confiscated.
But, meantime, how did it fare with Heloise? Her grief was greater thanhis own, while her love and her devotion were absolutely undiminished.But Abelard now showed a selfishness--and indeed, a meanness--far beyondany that he had before exhibited. Heloise could no more be his wife.He made it plain that he put no trust in her fidelity. He was unwillingthat she should live in the world while he could not; and so he toldher sternly that she must take the veil and bury herself for ever in anunnery.
The pain and shame which she experienced at this came wholly from thefact that evidently Abelard did not trust her. Long afterward she wrote:
God knows I should not have hesitated, at your command, to precede or tofollow you to hell itself!
It was his distrust that cut her to the heart. Still, her love for himwas so intense that she obeyed his order. Soon after she took the vows;and in the convent chapel, shaken with sobs, she knelt before the altarand assumed the veil of a cloistered nun. Abelard himself put on theblack tunic of a Benedictine monk and entered the Abbey of St. Denis.
It is unnecessary here to follow out all the details of the lives ofAbelard and Heloise after this heart-rendering scene. Abelardpassed through many years of strife and disappointment, and even ofhumiliation for on one occasion, just as he had silenced Guillaumede Champeaux, so he himself was silenced and put to rout by Bernard ofClairvaux--"a frail, tense, absorbed, dominant little man, whose facewas white and worn with suffering," but in whose eyes there was alight of supreme strength. Bernard represented pure faith, as Abelardrepresented pure reason and the two men met before a great council tomatch their respective powers.
Bernard, with fiery eloquence, brought a charge of heresy againstAbelard in an oration which was like a charge of cavalry. When he hadconcluded Abelard rose with an ashen face, stammered out a few words,and sat down. He was condemned by the council, and his works wereordered to be burned.
All his later life was one of misfortune, of humiliation, and even ofpersonal danger. The reckless monks whom he tried to rule rose fiercelyagainst him. His life was threatened. He betook himself to a desolateand lonely place, where he built for himself a hut of reeds and rushes,hoping to spend his final years in meditation. But there were many whohad not forgotten his ability as a teacher. These flocked by hundredsto the desert place where he abode. His hut was surrounded by tents andrude hovels, built by his scholars for their shelter.
Thus Abelard resumed his teaching, though in a very different frame ofmind. In time he built a structure of wood and stone, which he calledthe Paraclete, some remains of which can still be seen.
All this time no word had passed between him and Heloise. But presentlyAbelard wrote and gave to the world a curious and exceedingly frankbook, which he called The Story of My Misfortunes. A copy of it reachedthe hands of Heloise, and she at once sent to Abelard the first of aseries of letters which have remained unique in the literature of love.
Ten years had passed, and yet the woman's heart was as faithful and asfull of yearning as on the day when the two had parted. It has beensaid that the letters are not genuine, and they must be read with thisassertion in mind; yet it is difficult to believe that any one saveHeloise herself could have flung a human soul into such franklypassionate utterances, or that any imitator could have done the work.
In her first letter, which was sent to Abelard written upon parchment,she said:
At thy command I would change, not merely my costume, but my very soul,so entirely art thou the sole possessor of my body and my spirit. Never,God is my witness, never have I sought anything in thee but thyself;I have sought thee, and not thy gifts. I have not looked to themarriage-bond or dowry.
She begged him to write to her, and to lead her to God, as once he hadled her into the mysteries of pleasure. Abelard answered in a letter,friendly to be sure, but formal--the letter of a priest to a cloisterednun. The opening words of it are characteristic of the whole:
To Heloise, his sister in Christ, from Abelard, her brother in Him.
The letter was a long one, but throughout the whole of it the writer'stone was cold and prudent. Its very coldness roused her soul to apassionate revolt. Her second letter bursts forth in a sort of anguish:
How hast thou been able to frame such thoughts, dearest? How hast thoufound words to convey them? Oh, if I dared but call God cruel to me!Oh, most wretched of all creatures that I am! So sweet did I find thepleasures of our loving days that I cannot bring myself to rejectthem or to banish them from my memory. Wheresoever I go, they thrustthemselves upon my vision, and rekindle the old desire.
But Abelard knew only too well that not in this life could there beanything save spiritual love between himself and Heloise. He wrote toher again and again, always in the same remote and unimpassioned way.He tells her about the history of monasticism, and discusses with hermatters of theology and ethics; but he never writes one word to feedthe flame that is consuming her. The woman understood at last; and bydegrees her letters became as calm as his--suffused, however, with atenderness and feeling which showed that in her heart of hearts she wasstill entirely given to him.
After some years Abelard left his dwelling at the Paraclete, and therewas founded there a religious house of which Heloise became the abbess.All the world respected her for her sweetness, her wisdom, and thepurity of her character. She made friends as easily as Abelard madeenemies. Even Bernard, who had overthrown her husband, sought outHeloise to ask for her advice and counsel.
Abelard died while on his way to Rome, whither he was journeyingin order to undergo a penalty; and his body was brought
back to theParaclete, where it was entombed. Over it for twenty-two years Heloisewatched with tender care; and when she died, her body was laid besidethat of her lover.
To-day their bones are mingled as she would have desired them to bemingled. The stones of their tomb in the great cemetery of Pere Lachaisewere brought from the ruins of the Paraclete, and above the sarcophagusare two recumbent figures, the whole being the work of the artistAlexandra Lenoir, who died in 1836. The figure representing Heloiseis not, however, an authentic likeness. The model for it was a ladybelonging to a noble family of France, and the figure itself was broughtto Pere Lachaise from the ancient College de Beauvais.
The letters of Heloise have been read and imitated throughout the wholeof the last nine centuries. Some have found in them the utterances ofa woman whose love of love was greater than her love of God and whoseintensity of passion nothing could subdue; and so these have condemnedher. But others, like Chateaubriand, have more truly seen in them a pureand noble spirit to whom fate had been very cruel; and who was, afterall, writing to the man who had been her lawful husband.
Some of the most famous imitations of her letters are those in theancient poem entitled, "The Romance of the Rose," written by Jean deMeung, in the thirteenth century; and in modern times her first letterwas paraphrased by Alexander Pope, and in French by Colardeau. Thereexist in English half a dozen translations of them, with Abelard'sreplies. It is interesting to remember that practically all the otherwritings of Abelard remained unpublished and unedited until a veryrecent period. He was a remarkable figure as a philosopher and scholar;but the world cares for him only because he was loved by Heloise.