TH E N E W M I DDL E AGES

BONNIE WHEELER, S E RIE S E D ITO R

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THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF
HELOISE AND ABELARD
PERCEPTIONS OF DIALOGUE IN
TWELFTH-CENTURY FRANCE
SECOND EDITION

Constant J. Mews

With a translation by
Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews

palgrave
macmillan
THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD
Copyright © Constant J. Mews, 1999, 2008. Translation, “From the Letters
of Two Lovers,” Copyright © Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews,
1999, 2008.

All rights reserved.

First edition published in 1999 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the

US—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10010.

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this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

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and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

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the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978-0-230-60813-9 ISBN 978-1-137-05921-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-05921-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the

Library of Congress.

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Letra Libre.

Second edition: September 2008

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Transferred to Digital Printing in 2008

For Maryna
CONTENTS

Introduction xiii
Abbreviations xix

I
Perceptions of Dialogue
1. The Discovery of a Manuscript 3
2. Memories of an Affair 29
3. Paris, the Schools, and the Politics of Sex 57
4. Traditions of Dialogue 87
5. The Language of the Love Letters 115
6. The Voice of Heloise 145
7. New Discoveries and Insights (1999–2007) 179

II
From the Letters of Two Lovers
Edited by Ewald Könsgen
Translated by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews

The Edition 205

Ex epistolis duorum amantium (From the Letters of Two Lovers) 215

Notes 315
Select Bibliography 401
Bibliography since 1999 407
Index 411
INTRODUCTION

his book is the product of a journey that began in 1976 when I first
T came across Ewald Könsgen’s edition, Epistolae duorum amantium:
Briefe Abaelards und Heloises? (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974) in Auckland Uni-
versity Library, New Zealand. I was attracted by the subtitle and was cu-
rious to find out how those letters related to the more well-known
correspondence between Heloise and Abelard. As things turned out, the
direction of my studies changed after I went to Oxford to pursue doctoral
research. I heeded the suggestion of Sir Richard Southern that I turn my
attention to Abelard’s Theologia, a treatise which Abelard continued to re-
vise for over twenty years. That research, guided by David Luscombe,
brought me into direct contact with one of the most subtle minds of the
twelfth century. Between 1980 and 1985, I was fortunate enough to at-
tend the seminar of Jean Jolivet on medieval philosophy at the École pra-
tique des hautes études (Ve section), in Paris. Jolivet played a key role in
helping me understand the evolution of Abelard’s thinking about logic as
well as about theology. I was able to complete a critical edition of
Abelard’s Theologia Summi boni and Theologia Scholarium, initiated by Fr.
Eligius-Marie Buytaert, while working on a research project funded by
the Leverhulme Foundation and directed by David Luscombe at the Uni-
versity of Sheffield. My research into the Epistolae duorum amantium is the
fruit of these scholastic labors. To all my teachers, I owe an enormous debt
of gratitude.
This book also draws on interaction with many colleagues, students,
and friends here in Australia. They made me aware how important issues
of gender are to understanding Latin tradition and to putting in perspec-
tive the skills that I had absorbed in the schools of Oxford and Paris. Be-
coming interested in the writing of Heloise’s direct contemporary,
Hildegard of Bingen, also enabled me to see more clearly how the ideas of
both Abelard and Heloise were shaped by the deeper structures of the so-
ciety in which they lived.
xiv THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

It was when reading afresh the Epistolae duorum amantium in 1993, this
time with greater awareness of Abelard’s vocabulary as a logician, that I en-
countered words and ideas that sent a shiver down my spine. Terms like
“without difference” (indifferenter) and “knowability” (scibilitas) were words
to which Abelard paid great attention in his logic. Could an incomplete
copy have been made in the fifteenth century of the lost love letters of
Heloise and Abelard? I put aside my research into Roscelin of Compiègne
and his influence on Peter Abelard to explore the significance of these let-
ters. Heloise demanded attention in her own right. The relatively recent
capacity to search large quantities of Latin text on CD-ROM now makes
it much easier to pursue such research. Comparing these love letters to a
wide range of other Latin texts, literary, philosophical, and theological, I
gradually became persuaded that, for all the limitations of the fifteenth-
century transcription, they were indeed written by Heloise and Abelard.
They made me consider the Historia calamitatum in a new light. Over the
years I had identified a number of anonymous texts as written or inspired
by Abelard in the domain of either logic or theology, but here I was deal-
ing with texts that dealt with human relationships at a much more pro-
found level.
At an initial reading, the love letters present such an idealized picture of
a relationship, far removed from the details of everyday life, that it might
seem impossible to identify their specific context. Könsgen made an im-
portant step in arguing that they were written by two articulate individu-
als who lived in the Île-de-France in the first half of the twelfth century
and were fully conversant with the classical authors known at that time. I
argue that while Könsgen’s insights are fundamentally correct, they can be
taken much further. I believe that this transcription has much to contribute
to our understanding of the early relationship between Heloise and
Abelard and the literary climate in which it evolved.
This book focuses not just on the authorship of these letters, but on the
broader issue of relationships between educated women and men in twelfth-
century France. Heloise and Abelard have long occupied a key role in the col-
lective mythology of European civilization as epitomizing values of love and
reason respectively.The protracted debate over the authenticity of the famous
letters of Abelard and Heloise is part of an ongoing process of re-interpreta-
tion of their legacy. By looking at the wider phenomenon in the twelfth cen-
tury of men and women communicating with each other through the
written word, always through the filter of the manuscript record, I hope to
show how the relationship of Abelard and Heloise brings to a head many cen-
tral tensions within French society in the twelfth century.
 INTRODUCTION xv

My argument is presented as a journey. I begin by inviting the reader

to discover the letters that Johannes de Vepria copied at Clairvaux in the
late fifteenth century and to gauge the context in which he did so. To an-
swer the questions these letters raise, we need to go back in time. In a sec-
ond chapter, I consider the more well-known exchange of letters between
Abelard and Heloise discovered by Jean de Meun in the thirteenth cen-
tury, and their role in shaping the way their relationship has been remem-
bered. Debate about the authenticity of the famous letters of Heloise has
often been influenced by assumptions that her professions of love for
Abelard are incompatible with monastic tradition. Such claims, I argue, are
based on a profound misunderstanding of Heloise’s reflection on love. The
third chapter considers the relationship of Heloise and Abelard from a
range of historical records other than the Historia calamitatum. It cannot be
understood outside the context of a volatile political environment, in
which ecclesiastical authority was anxious to assert itself over the clerical
community as a whole, and over women in particular. The love letters pre-
served at Clairvaux constitute perhaps the richest surviving example of ed-
ucated women and men writing to each other. While there will always be
debate about whether such women are invented by men, I argue in the
fourth chapter that Heloise was not so unusual in reflecting in prose and
verse on the demands of love. In a fifth chapter, I compare the vocabulary
of the love letters to that of the known writings of Abelard and Heloise.
Here I argue that these textual and stylistic parallels are so complex that it
stretches plausibility to argue that the letters were written by anyone other
than Abelard and Heloise. In a final chapter, I sketch out what this implies
for our understanding of the subsequent evolution of their relationship and
of their thought. Abelard so often commands attention by the sheer out-
put of writings on logic and theology attributed to him by his disciples
that those unseen voices to whom he responds are often concealed. These
anonymous love letters enable us to listen more attentively to voices long
hidden from view. They deserve far more critical attention than they have
hitherto received. The translation offered of these letters in the second part
of the book is not intended to be definitive, but rather is provided to
waken interest in a remarkable set of texts from the twelfth century.
Heloise’s concern that words should not mouth empty rhetoric echoes
a wider interest among reforming circles in the twelfth century that mean-
ing is more important than verbal convention. These shared concerns help
explain why it may not be so extraordinary that a record which she kept
of her early exchange with Abelard should surface in the abbey of Clair-
vaux, a community founded in 1115 in a wave of enthusiasm for living out
xvi THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

the true meaning of the monastic life. The conversations of Abelard and
Heloise about love are part of a larger dialogue taking place among a lit-
erate elite in early twelfth-century France about the nature of authentic
relationships. There have been no shortage of books written about Abelard
this century. Two new studies of Abelard appeared too late for me to give
them detailed attention: John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Michael T. Clanchy,
Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). Only after this book was
completed did I learn from C. Stephen Jaeger that he had suggested, quite
independently of my own research, that the love letters were those of
Abelard and Heloise in a forthcoming book, Ennobling Love: In Search of a
Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). It is
a measure of the richness of this subject that so many good new studies
can be written. I was delighted to discover that Marenbon and Clanchy
argue that Heloise was a major intellectual influence on Abelard. I wish to
take their arguments further, and consider Heloise as a major figure in her
own right. At the same time, I have been anxious to show that both
Abelard and Heloise need to be understood within the broader context of
cultural change in twelfth-century France. It is only by penetrating the
mythology which surrounds both Abelard and Heloise that we can begin
to look at the deeper structures which shape their thought.

By training, I am a historian rather than a philologist or literary critic. In

the course of this study, I have inevitably trespassed into a variety of disci-
plinary traditions that are not my own. I believe, however, that it is imper-
ative for historical and literary disciplines to learn from each other and
transcend the factionalism by which they have sometimes been divided. I
acknowledge a particular debt to Ewald Könsgen for the painstaking at-
tention that he has given to my arguments and to the translation of the let-
ters, as well as for allowing me to reproduce his critical text. I also register
a great debt to Peter Dronke for doing so much to demonstrate the on-
going vitality of Latin literature in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The
translations of Latin texts offered here are often indebted to his readings.
Inevitably, many nuances of meaning can still be debated, new sources dis-
covered, and new questions posed. If, however, I can encourage readers to
study the Latin language and engage in dialogue with neglected strands of
Latin tradition, both secular and religious, it will have been worthwhile. At
a time when the study of Latin is disappearing from many universities, it
is imperative that literary and philosophical treasures jealously guarded by
devoted scholars continue to revitalize cultural debate.
 INTRODUCTION xvii

The practical process of engaging in detailed research into the twelfth

century from an Australian standpoint has been much assisted by many in-
stitutions and individuals. Invitations from the Institute for Advanced
Study, Princeton, in 1990 and the École pratique des hautes études, Paris,
in 1993 enabled me to pursue research into Abelard’s scholastic milieu, the
basis for my subsequent inquiry into the love letters. This book has also
benefited from the financial support of Monash University and the Aus-
tralian Research Council, sponsors of a larger project on gender and reli-
gious life in the twelfth century. My special thanks go to the graduate
students with whom I have discussed many aspects of this study, in partic-
ular to Neville Chiavaroli, to whom I proposed the project of translating
the letters in 1993. Many ideas germinated in our discussions of how to
translate the letters. The chance to present a reading of these love letters at
a Melbourne restaurant in 1994 enabled us to appreciate their impact in
the public domain at an early stage in the project. I am immensely grate-
ful to Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, John O. Ward, Julie Hotchin, Juanita Ruys,
Jeremy du Quesnay Adams, and John Lewis for their comments on drafts
of this book, Marjorie Mitchell for typing the Latin text, Kathryn Mews
for discussing the translation, and to Hilary Davies and Sebastian Barker for
sharing ideas about Abelard and Heloise, while benefiting from their hos-
pitality to me in London. I am grateful to the many librarians who have
made their collections available to me. Bonnie Wheeler has played a par-
ticularly important role in this book’s development, offering advice and
guidance throughout. Rick Delaney of St. Martin’s Press has been ever pa-
tient with the process of its production. Responsibility for error is of
course entirely my own. I am grateful to Oxford University Press for giv-
ing permission to reproduce Frances Horgan’s translation of part of The
Romance of the Rose (1994), and to University of Pennsylvania Press for re-
producing Gerald Bond’s translation of the poem by a scholar-nun in The
Loving Subject. Desire, Eloquence, and Power in Romanesque France (1995). I
also thank Michel Lemoine for introducing me to the vast lexicographic
resources of the Comité Du Cange, available to medievalists at the Institut
de France, Paris and the staff of the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des
textes (Section latine) for their unstinting assistance over the years. Many
other friends and spiritual guides, too numerous to name, have shaped my
thoughts about Heloise, Abelard, and the schools of Paris. I must conclude
by singling out my debt to the one person who has contributed more than
anyone else to understanding the issues of dialogue and communication
that lie at the heart of this book: Maryna. Only she can know what it is
really about.
ABBREVIATIONS

BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France.

CCCM Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 1966– ).
CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols,
1954– ).
Checklist Julia Barrow, Charles S. F. Burnett, and David Edward
Luscombe, “A Checklist of the Manuscripts Containing
the Writings of Peter Abelard and Heloise and Other
Works Closely Associated with Abelard and his School,”
Revue d’Histoire des Textes 14–15 (1984–85): 183–302.
Constable Peter the Venerable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed.
Giles Constable (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1967).
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vi-
enna-Leipzig: Teubner, 1866– ).
CSS Cistercian Studies Series.
DHGE Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographique ecclésiastique, ed.
A. Baudrillart et al. (Paris: Le Touzey et Ané, 1912– ).
Dronke, ML Peter Dronke, Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European
Love Lyric, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1968).
Dronke, WW Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages. A Critical
Study of Texts from Perpetua (†203) to Marguerite Porete
(†1310) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Dufour Recueil des Actes de Louis VI roi de France (1108–1137), ed.
Jean Dufour, 4 vols. (Paris: Diffusion de Boccard,
1992–94).
HC Historia calamitatum, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Vrin,
1959).
xx THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Hicks La Vie et les epistres Pierres Abaelart et Heloys sa fame, ed.

Eric Hicks (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1991).
Könsgen Epistolae duorum amantium: Briefe Abaelards und Heloises?,
ed. Ewald Könsgen, Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 8
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974).
Luchaire Achille Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros: Annales de sa vie et de son
règne (Paris: Piccard, 1890; repr. Brussels: Culture et Civil-
isation, 1964).
MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptorum Series
PL Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina (Paris: Garnier,
1844–).
Radice The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Betty Radice (Lon-
don: Harmondsworth, 1974).
Recueil Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Martin
Bouquet et al., 24 vols. (Paris: [various publishers],
1738–1904).
SBO Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. Jean Leclercq, 8 vols. (Rome:
Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–75).
SC Sources chrétiennes.
Vita Ludovici Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. Henri Waquet (Paris: Les
Belles Lettres, 1964); The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans.
Richard C. Cusimano and John Moorhead (Washington
D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1992).

Note. Medieval scribes observed a variety of orthographical conventions.

Editors of texts vary in the extent to which they reproduce conventions
like e for ae or ci for ti. Latin texts are cited in this book according to the
edition being followed. Names also present a problem. Although Abaelar-
dus was originally pronounced as five syllables (Aba’elardus), I use
“Abelard” for the sake of consistency with a corrupt orthographical tradi-
tion, aware that “Abaelard” may get lost in a computer search.Twelfth-cen-
tury names are generally cited in their English form. “Heloise” is written
without the diaresis employed in the French spelling (Héloïse), but should
still be pronounced with three syllables.
The love letters are cited by the numbering of Könsgen’s edition, rather
than by page numbers, the man’s letters being numbered in italics. My
numbering of the famous letters of Abelard and Heloise follows that es-
tablished by André Duchesne in the 1616 edition of the Opera Omnia,
reprinted in PL 178: 113–314 and followed by Victor Cousin in Petri Abae-
lardi opera hactenus seorsim edita, 2 vols. (Paris: Durand, 1849, 1859), 1:
 ABBREVIATIONS xxi

1–213: The first, second and third letters of Heloise are thus Ep. 2, 4 and
6, the replies of Abelard Ep. 3, 5, 7 (on the religious life) and 8 (the Rule
for the Paraclete). Radice identifies these letters as 1–7, rather than as 2–8
in her translation, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Harmondsworth: Pen-
guin, 1974), following the numbering used by J.T. Muckle: “Abelard’s Let-
ter of Consolation to a Friend,” Mediaeval Studies 12 (1950): 163–213
[HC]; The Personal Letters between Abelard and Héloïse,” Mediaeval Stud-
ies 15 (1953): 47–94 [Ep. 2–4]; “The Letter of Héloïse on the Religious
Life and Abelard’s First Reply,” Mediaeval Studies 17 (1955): 240–81 [Ep.
5–7]; T. P. McLaughlin, “Abelard’s Rule for Religious Women,” Mediaeval
Studies 18 (1956): 241–92 [Ep. 8]. I refer to the page numbers of the
Radice translation, even though I might offer my own translation, to con-
vey the particular nuance of the Latin. I use . . . to indicate my own short-
ening of a quotation, as distinct from ..... to indicate a scribal ellipse in the
manuscript copied by Johannes de Vepria.
 I

Perceptions of Dialogue
CHAPTER 1

THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT

lairvaux, 1471. A young monk is rummaging through cupboards full

C of manuscripts. He is looking for examples of good Latin prose to in-
clude in an anthology of letters from Christian antiquity to the present that
he is compiling. There is no complete inventory to help him find his way
through the mass of parchment that has accumulated at the abbey during
the three and a half centuries since it was founded by St. Bernard in 1115.
Most of the official letters he finds begin with a standard formula: “To X,
Y: greeting (salutem).” His eye then falls on the rhyming phrases of a very
different kind of letter, one that does not identify the sender by name:

Amori suo precordiali omnibus aromatibus dulcius redolenti, corde et cor-

pore sua: arescentibus floribus tue juventutis viriditatem eterne felicitatis.

To her heart’s love, more sweetly scented than any spice, she who is his in
heart and body: the freshness of eternal happiness as the flowers fade of your
youth.1

Who is this woman whose voice is preserved in an abbey to which women

are denied access? Is she real, or is she the creation of a vivid literary imag-
ination? Who is the man whom she imagines to be so wonderful? Is it not
fiction to imagine that one can eavesdrop on a dialogue of the heart from
so many centuries ago?
The monk begins by transcribing only the extravagant greetings that
they send each other and their farewells. Meticulously, he makes sense of
his text by adding M[ulier] or V[ir] to the margin to distinguish whether a
woman or a man is speaking, sometimes just adding a paragraph mark. The
early letters reveal little of the identity of the two lovers. She praises him
in letter 21 as “glory of young men, companion of poets” (o decus juvenum,
4 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

consors poetarum). The word iunvenis is applied to men aged between

twenty-one and forty-eight.2 Only in letter 49 does the woman reveal
more about the identity of the man to whom she is writing. Here she em-
ploys extravagant language, with carefully sought out literary allusions, in
order to apologize for daring to address such a famous teacher:

magistro inquam tanto, magistro virtutibus, magistro moribus, cui jure cedit
francigena cervicositas, et simul assurgit tocius mundi superciliositas, quili-
bet compositus qui sibi videtur sciolus, suo prorsus judicio fiet elinguis et
mutus.

a teacher so great, I declare, a teacher of virtue, a teacher of character, to

whom French pigheadedness rightly yields and for whom at the same time
the haughtiness of the whole world rises in respect, that anyone who con-
siders himself even slightly learned, would be rendered completely speech-
less and mute by his own judgment.

In letter 49 she discusses at length the nature of the true friendship that
she considered to bind them both. Our first clue to her identity occurs in
his reply (50), when he calls her the only female student of philosophy
among all the puellae of his day:3

Soli inter omnes etatis nostre puellas philosophie discipule, soli in quam
omnes virtutum multiplicium dotes integre fortuna conclusit . . .

To the only disciple of philosophy among all the young women of our age,
the only one on whom fortune has completely bestowed all the gifts of the
manifold virtues . . .

He praises her as so skilful in arguing about the laws of friendship that she
seems not to have read Cicero, but instead to have taught him. She iden-
tifies him as her teacher on two further occasions: in her first major at-
tempt at metrical verse within the exchange (66), when she asks the Muses
to bestow favor on a teacher with whose light “the throng of the clergy
shines” and in her final letter (112), when she addresses him for the first
time as her teacher rather than as her lover. Although there are more let-
ters from him than from the woman with whom he is in love (sixty-five,
compared to forty-eight), the exchange presents itself as initiated by the
woman. It closes with a short note (112a) from her, saying that she no
longer wants to reply to him, and a poetic lament from him (113), begging
forgiveness and explaining that he had been seduced by her beauty.
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 5

The monk who transcribed these letters and poems identifies himself at
the end of the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris, a previous item that he had
copied in his anthology: “In the year 1471, the day after the feast of the
Magdalen [23 July], by me, brother Johannes de Vepria.”4 We can only pre-
sume that Johannes de Vepria copied the love letters sometime after this
date. It is not even absolutely certain that he discovered this exchange of
letters and poems at Clairvaux. What is certain, however, is that his tran-
scription of those letters survives in an anthology of various letter collec-
tions that he compiled, now in the possession of the municipal library of
Troyes (MS 1452, fols. 159r–167v).This workbook was one of over a thou-
sand manuscripts of the library of Clairvaux transferred to Troyes during
the French Revolution. It did not attract scholarly attention until Dieter
Schaller suggested to Ewald Könsgen that he edit the Latin text of these
love letters for a doctoral thesis. In his edition, published in 1974, Könsgen
presented a remarkable set of texts from the twelfth century. By studying
other transcriptions Johannes de Vepria made, copied from known manu-
scripts of Clairvaux, Könsgen established that this hitherto unknown
monk was an accurate scribe with a wide knowledge of often very rare
Latin texts.
The subtitle attached to Könsgen’s edition of these letters (Briefe Abae-
lards und Heloises?) raises a tantalizing possibility: are these letters of Abelard
(1079–1142) and Heloise (d. 1164)? Although Könsgen was more con-
cerned to establish a reliable critical edition than to resolve questions of
authorship, the question remains. Could these be the love letters that Peter
Abelard says he composed in order to seduce Heloise when he was teach-
ing at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame? Abelard mentions these letters
in passing:

Tanto autem facilius hanc mihi puellam consensuram credidi, quanto am-
plius eam litterarum scientiam et habere et diligere noveram; nosque etiam
absentes scriptis internuntiis invicem liceret presentare et pleraque audacius
scribere quam colloqui, et sic semper jocundis interesse colloquiis.

I believed that she would consent all the more easily to me, the more I knew
that she both possessed and loved knowledge of letters, and that even when
separated, we could be present to each other through intermediary messages
and that it was more daring to write about many things than to discuss
them; thus we could always enjoy delightful conversations.5

Heloise refers to these letters as great in number at the end of the letter
she wrote to Abelard after reading his Historia calamitatum:
6 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Cum me ad turpes olim voluptates expeteres, crebris me epistolis visitabas,

frequenti carmine tuam in ore omnium Heloysam ponebas: me platee
omnes, me domus singule resonabant. Quanto autem rectius me nunc in
Deum, quam tunc in libidinem excitares? Perpende, obsecro, que debes, at-
tende que postulo; et longam epistolam brevi fine concludo: vale, unice.

When you sought me out for shameless pleasures, you showered me with
incessant letters, you placed your Heloise on the lips of everyone through
frequent song: I resounded through every market-place, each house. But
how much more rightly might you now arouse me in God, as then you
aroused me in lust! Consider, I beg you, what you owe me; listen to what I
demand; and so I finish a long letter with a brief conclusion: Farewell, my
only one.6

Könsgen argued that the differences between the style and vocabulary of
the man’s letters and those of the woman were so great that the exchange
could not be a rhetorical exercise, but had to be a record of correspon-
dence between two distinct individuals. His analysis of literary allusions in
the letters led him to date them to the first half of the twelfth century. He
mentioned some obvious parallels between these anonymous lovers and
Abelard and Heloise, but avoided saying any more than that they were
written by a couple “like Abelard and Heloise.”7 More concerned to es-
tablish that they were written by two distinct individuals than to examine
the significance of the contrast between their arguments, Könsgen claimed
that both were writing about worldly love (amor carnalis) rather than spir-
itual love (amor spiritualis). Expressions like “I hold God as my witness,” fre-
quent in the woman’s letters, he interpreted simply as formal turns of
phrase. He did not relate the contrasting perceptions of love in these let-
ters to wider discussions of love in other twelfth-century literature. If these
love letters were written by a couple other than Abelard and Heloise, the
question remains as to who these individuals could be. I argue for the sim-
plest solution, that they are indeed written by Abelard and Heloise.
Könsgen’s edition attracted relatively little notice in the two decades
following its initial appearance, appearing too late to be examined within
a study of love letters as a literary genre in the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies.8 The letters were translated into Italian and (in part) into French,
but in both cases without extending Könsgen’s analysis to any significant
degree.9 Anonymous texts rarely attract the attention accorded writings by
“big name” authors. The most common response of reviewers has been to
steer away from making any firm judgment about the authorship of these
love letters.10 Some excellent recent biographical studies of Abelard and
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 7

Heloise either do not mention them or dismiss them as problematic.11 Per-

haps the most influential comments made about Könsgen’s letters have
been those of Peter Dronke. While accepting that they originated from a
genuine exchange, he was skeptical about the possibility that they could be
letters of Abelard and Heloise.12 He judged them to be stylistically closer
to a set of love letters from Tegernsee, comparing them to the record of a
similar liaison between a teacher and a student preserved in a manuscript
from Regensburg.13 Dronke subsequently suggested that the love letters
could not have been written by Abelard and Heloise because “it emerges
from one of her letters that his high bond of love, though full of erotic in-
tensity, had not yet led—or perhaps would never lead—to physical fulfil-
ment.”14 He interpreted a phrase in letter 84, in which the woman
conflates two Pauline texts (1 Cor. 9.24 and 2 Tim. 4.7), as being about
sexual consummation: “Thus far you have remained with me, you have
manfully fought the good fight with me, but you have not yet received the
prize.” Dronke suggested that this was an unconsummated relationship,
very different from that which Abelard describes in the Historia calamita-
tum. Wolff similarly judged the love letters as characterized by “absence of
sensual allusion.”15 Such hypotheses are fragile. The differences between
the two sets of letters can better be explained in terms of the contrast be-
tween the way a relationship is seen by lovers and the way it might be re-
membered by a couple reflecting on a past affair.
The reluctance of scholars to engage in the issues raised by the ex-
change is certainly related to an ongoing controversy about the authentic-
ity of the Abelard–Heloise letters, particularly intense in the late 1970s and
early 1980s. If this famous exchange has generated so much debate, what
hope is there of resolving such issues in relation to a much less well-known
exchange? Within a short paragraph about these letters, Jean Charles Payen
has confidently asserted that they form “an epistolary novel from the pe-
riod, perhaps written by a disciple of Abelard.” Another scholar has
claimed in passing that the exchange is a literary collection giving an arti-
ficial sense of temporal development, “like Elizabethan sonnets.” In neither
case was any argument offered to substantiate the claim put forward.16
The problem is particularly acute in relation to women’s writing. If one
cannot be sure that a woman wrote the letters of Heloise, how can one
make any comment about the extent of women’s writing in the Middle
Ages? Heloise is not mentioned in some important repertories of medieval
authors, except under the rubric “Peter Abelard.”17 Even if her authorship
of the famous letters is recognized, she tends to be subsumed within dis-
cussions of Abelard. Georges Duby is only one of a number of scholars
8 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

who have thought that the letters of Heloise were probably written by a
man. He argued that twelfth-century writing about love was essentially a
male invention by which young men sought to escape the constraints of
feudal society. His views are related to a larger debate about the literature
of fin’amor, or so-called courtly love.18 The suggestion that medieval texts
attributed to women may have been written by men is often driven by as-
sumptions that medieval women could not exercise their own voice. Peter
Dronke has played an important role in arguing that between the second
and the twelfth centuries there is a continuous tradition of women writ-
ing in Latin. A common feature of this tradition, he argues, is that they
demonstrate an immediacy not found in their more erudite male contem-
poraries.19 Debate about the interpretation of the letters of Heloise
touches on the larger issue of women’s involvement in literary culture in
twelfth-century France. In recent years there has been growing awareness
of the extent of female literacy in medieval culture, as well as of the way
women are presented as objects of admiration.20 The letters copied by Jo-
hannes de Vepria can contribute significantly to these discussions.
The Historia calamitatum provides such a detailed narrative of Abelard’s
affair with Heloise that it is often assumed that their early relationship was
an explicitly carnal affair, at odds with the spiritual direction of their later
lives. Do the letters copied by Johannes de Vepria at the abbey of Clairvaux
enable us to reconsider that relationship, or are they simply an imagined
fiction, conceived in the silence of the cloister? How do they relate to the
flowering of interest in love in the twelfth century? What are secular love
letters doing in a monastic library? Before addressing these questions, we
need to examine the trustworthiness of the monk who copied this ex-
change, the gatekeeper through whom these letters survive. He was him-
self someone who saw no difficulty in crossing between secular and
religious literature.

Johannes de Vepria (ca. 1445–ca. 1518)

Little is known about Johannes de Vepria other than that he took monas-
tic vows at an early age at Châtillon, transferred to Clairvaux sometime be-
fore 1471, and was its prior between 1480 and 1499. He died sometime
between 1517 and 1519.21 In 1471/72 Johannes de Vepria compiled for
abbot Pierre de Virey (1471–96) the first major catalogue of the library of
Clairvaux, a task that required him to explore the vast collection of man-
uscripts preserved at the abbey.22 It had been decided in 1459 that all ab-
bots of the Order of Cîteaux should see to the cataloguing of books and
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 9

papers in their communities.23 Like Pierre de Virey, Johannes de Vepria was

a lover of books. His transcription of the love letters was part of a wider
process whereby monastic communities in the late fifteenth century redis-
covered the literary treasures which they owned. Johannes de Butrio (d.
1522), a fellow monk of Clairvaux and a doctor of theology in Paris, re-
membered him in 1511 as a Latinist of great sophistication who devoted
himself to the study of secular as well as religious texts. He recalled that Jo-
hannes de Vepria was generous in passing manuscripts to others to be
printed, a detail that might explain why the manuscript from which he
copied the love letters has not survived at Clairvaux.24
The only non-epistolary text that Johannes de Vepria included in his
anthology was Cicero’s De Officiis, placed after extracts from the Variae of
Cassiodorus. He then attached excerpts from the correspondence of less
well known early Christian authors (Sidonius Apollinaris, Ennodius, and
Cyprian) and anthologies on the art of letter writing by Transmundus, a
papal notary (d. 1216), and John of Limoges (d. ca. 1250), both monks of
Clairvaux.25 These he followed by excerpts from the Epistolae familiares of
a Louvain humanist, Carolus Virulus (ca. 1413–93), extended with his own
comments on particular words and phrases from a range of authors, ancient
and modern.26 On a separate gathering he copied out extracts from the
Gesta Regum Anglorum of William of Malmesbury (d. 1143) and two letters
of William to David of Scotland and the Empress Matilda, found otherwise
only in a twelfth-century manuscript of Clairvaux.27 He transcribed the
love letters on a single gathering (fols. 159r–167v), leaving its last leaf (fol.
168r) blank. On its reverse side he copied out five other letters relating to
complaints about the condition of the Cistercian Order and of the
Church.28 Könsgen established that Johannes de Vepria copied many of
these items from manuscripts belonging to Clairvaux. He probably came
across them while compiling the inventory of 1471/72.29 Only his tran-
scription is recorded in the catalogues of Clairvaux, not the original man-
uscript from which he copied the love letters.30 He copied out these letters
because he wanted to remember a dialogue that impressed him for its lit-
erary merit and interest.
The workbooks kept by Johannes de Vepria reveal him to be a dis-
cerning student of both classical and medieval literature. A comment he
appends to Gerson’s On the Consolation of Theology provides us with a
rare insight into his thinking. Inspired by Petrarch’s explanation that the
figure of Monicus in his first Bucolic Eclogue refers to his brother Ger-
ard, Johannes comments that the word monachus should be spelled mon-
icus as meaning one who flies: “A monicus is a meditative and inquisitive
10 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

intellect.”31 The breadth of his literary interests is amply illustrated by

an anthology that he completed in 1475. It contains Latin poems by Pe-
trarch and later Italian humanists as well as by ancient authors, includ-
ing Ovid’s Sappho to Phaon and the Art of Loving.32 Johannes de Vepria
supplied Josse Badius Ascensius (1461/62–1535), the Parisian printer of
both religious and classical texts, with manuscripts of Pierre Bersuire’s
Ovid Moralized and Jean de Hauville’s Architrenius. This latter verse epic,
a masterpiece of twelfth-century satire, relates the pilgrimage of a young
man initiated into the pleasures of Venus and of Gluttony, who advances
through the schools of Paris to arrive at Ambition and Presumption be-
fore Lady Nature gives him a wife, Moderation.33 In 1482 Johannes de
Vepria transcribed another Latin epic about amorous adventure that he
found at Clairvaux, On the Deeds of Knights, composed in the mid-thir-
teenth century by Hugh of Mâcon. This epic was unknown to scholars
until Könsgen edited both this work and a medieval commentary on
it.34 The only publications attributed to Johannes de Vepria are a collec-
tion of French proverbs, published in 1495, and a translation into French
of the divine office for the use of Cistercian nuns.35
Johannes de Vepria was an admirer of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini
(1405–64), the humanist scholar who became Pope Pius II in 1458. He
transcribed Aeneas’ treatise on educating the young in 1474.36 There is no
evidence, however, that Johannes was familiar with Eurialus and Lucretia, an
epistolary novel about two lovers that Aeneas Sylvius composed in 1444.37
Johannes de Vepria was a humanist scholar rather than a creative writer. His
only comments on the love letters are a scribbled diffinicio added alongside
a philosophical definition of love in letter 24, and a Nota added to a com-
ment in letter 75 about loving wisely. The bulk of his annotations reflect a
desire to establish correct Latin syntax. By studying Johannes de Vepria’s
transcriptions of known Clairvaux manuscripts, Könsgen established that
he was an accurate philologist who took great care to indicate whenever
he was abbreviating a text that he had come across with the sign // (re-
produced in Könsgen’s edition and the translation attached to this study
as .....).38 It is most unlikely that he composed these love letters as a liter-
ary exercise.
By copying out rare and unusual texts, Johannes de Vepria was able to
distance himself from a raft of problems then besetting the Cistercian
Order. His interest in writing about love between man and woman stands
in sharp contrast to the frequent complaints issued by the general chapter
about the worldliness of Cistercian monks and nuns, “caught up in pollu-
tion of the flesh.” A ruling of 1461 decreed that an abbot or abbess found
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 11

guilty in this way had to face a year in confinement, a monk or nun, six
months. Abbots were urged to raise educational standards in the Order by
sending two young monks to Paris each year to study at the Collège Saint-
Bernard, and to take care that they did not fall victim to sexual tempta-
tion. We do not know for certain whether Johannes de Vepria was one of
those young monks sent to Paris in order to improve educational standards
within the Order. After arriving at the age of sixteen or seventeen, a monk
might spend six years studying the liberal arts and then another three
studying theology.39 In 1476, Jean de Cirey (d. 1503) became the new
abbot of Cîteaux and launched a campaign against what he perceived to
be laxity in the Order. Besides centralizing finances, he issued stern
warnings about the tendency for young monks studying in Paris to be led
astray from their manner of life and insisted that they study only at the Cis-
tercian College there.40 In 1488 Johannes de Vepria’s abbot, Pierre de Virey
(abbot of Clairvaux 1471–1496; d. 1504), was condemned by Jean de Cirey
for seeking the arbitration of the Parlement of Paris (the body entrusted
with governing the University of Paris) in the dispute between Clairvaux
and Cîteaux. Jean de Cirey succeeded in imposing strict reforms on the
College Saint-Bernard in 1493, suppressing what he considered as dis-
solute behavior among its students. Pierre de Virey resigned as abbot of
Clairvaux in 1496. Johannes de Vepria resigned as prior three years later.
Both monks of Clairvaux defended a humanist tradition within the Cis-
tercian Order, under attack in the late fifteenth century from centralizing
reformers like Jean de Cirey. The humanism of monks like Johannes de
Vepria has tended to be overshadowed by more prominent critics of the
religious orders like François Rabelais (ca. 1494–1553), himself a former
monk. Johannes de Vepria did not see a contradiction between his interests
in secular Latin writing about love and in religious literature.

Letter Collections and Epistolary Fiction

In many ways, it is impossible to separate literature and history in the
study of medieval epistolography.41 Letter writing was a craft learned by
imitation of different kinds of literary models. The poetic letter could also
be a literary device for developing ideas about love. These love letters
draw extensively on the writing of Ovid (43 B.C.E.–17/18 C.E.). In his Art
of Loving, Ovid instructed both men and women about the letters and
verses they should craft. Ovid also composed the Heroides, fictive poetic
letters from a variety of mythological heroines to their absent lovers.42 In
letter 45, the woman proclaims that her love for him was greater than that
12 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

of various lovers described by Ovid, Biblis for Cauno, the nymph Oenone
for Paris, or Briseis, a captive concubine, for Achilles.43
Although the principles of the art of letter writing were not theorized
systematically until the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the art of
learning how to write letters was a traditional skill. It was learned by study-
ing and imitating letters written in the past.44 Letter collections provided
not just models of literary style, but guidance about the various kinds of
relationships that could exist between people, from the most formal to the
most intimate. Most surviving letters preserved within manuals from the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries offer guidance about how students or
clerics should communicate either with each other or with their superi-
ors.45 By the second half of the twelfth century, sample love letters are be-
ginning to surface in anthologies serving as models of epistolary
composition.46 A twelfth-century anthology from northern Italy, for ex-
ample, contains alongside examples of letters by famous people, a brief ex-
change between a young man and the girl whom he is wooing. Begging
for the opportunity to talk to her, the young man refers to the judgment
of Tiresias, as told by Ovid, that women obtained more pleasure in love
than men, to express regret that she had not yet allowed her lips to be
joined with his. She replies that she is not opposed to further conversa-
tion.47 Whether or not this is an imaginary exchange, the fact that it is of-
fered as a guide for epistolary composition is significant. Perhaps the most
original example of such a treatise is the Rota Veneris (Wheel of Venus) of
Boncompagno da Signa (ca. 1165–ca. 1240).48 It offered guidance as to
how men and women should communicate with each other, as well as re-
flection on the rules of love. Over the centuries, collections of letters came
to provide a basis for fictional writing.49
The popularity of letters as literature inevitably raises the question of
their authenticity. From the early nineteenth century, positivist scholarship
has sought to distinguish historical from literary elements not just within
the canon of Christian scripture, but within other key texts of the Western
canon. The question is particularly acute in relation to Heloise, perceived
so often as selfless in her love for Abelard, that questions have been raised
about whether she really composed the letters attributed to her. Similar
questions can be raised about the letters copied by Johannes de Vepria. As
they do not refer to identifiable events, they cannot be authenticated by
conventional means. His transcription offers a record of two contrasting
voices, both of which seem at first sight to be very different from the con-
ventional voices one expects to encounter in a monastic library. In a sense
this exchange offers a multiplicity of voices such as one might find in a
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 13

novel. Johannes de Vepria, however, was a scholar rather than a creative

writer. His transcription articulates not just the literary interests of a fif-
teenth-century monk, but the concerns of a twelfth-century teacher and
student.50 Attempts to relate love literature to social context are inevitably
controversial. Paul Veyne has argued that Roman love poetry is a record of
male fantasy, not of actual relationships between men and women. Duby
makes a similar claim about writing about love in the twelfth century.51 In
the nineteenth century, Jules Michelet argued that phenomena like the
writings of Heloise, Robert of Arbrissel’s foundation of Fontevrault, and
the rise of courtly love literature all manifested a new prominence ac-
corded women in the twelfth century.This interpretation implied that cul-
tural change was a result of men changing their attitudes toward women.
Feminist critics have often argued that eulogies of ideal women may con-
ceal a tendency to reduce them to passive objects. They point out that the
literature of “courtly love” developed at the same time as patriarchal au-
thority asserted itself with new vigor both in feudal society and in the
Church.52 In the light of such criticisms, is it possible to make any claims
about educated women in twelfth-century France?

The Process of Writing Letters

It has been claimed that no private letters from the medieval period exist
“in the modern sense of the term.”53 Yet a degree of privacy was secured
by affixing a seal to a wax tablet or parchment letter. This helped authenti-
cate a confidential message.54 In 1120 Abelard was using a seal showing two
heads, which Roscelin of Compiègne construed as that of a man and a
woman.55 The letters copied by Johannes de Vepria seem originally to have
been written on wax tablets, fixed with a seal, and then carried by a male
messenger (mentioned in 37 ). In letter 14 the man says that he would write
much more if he could hold on to her tablets. It was normal practice for
the person sending a message on a wax tablet to keep a record on parch-
ment of that message, to which she or he would add the message received
in reply. The tablet was then ready to be used again for a separate message.
In the case of the love letters, the exchange seems to have been kept by the
woman, from whom the opening greeting comes.The fact that Johannes de
Vepria was not always able to distinguish one letter from another suggests
that he was copying from a continuous record of a correspondence, in
which there was not always a clear break between one letter and the next.
The transcription of another intimate exchange, rather less sophisticated
than the love letters copied by Johannes de Vepria, is preserved in an early
14 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

twelfth-century manuscript from Regensburg. It also seems to be the

record of an exchange originally conducted on wax tablets, either by the
teacher or by the female student with whom he was engaged in dialogue.56
Wax tablets provided essentially the same medium of communication
between men and women as was customary in the ancient world.57 Parch-
ment was simply too expensive and slow to prepare for quick communi-
cation. Baudri of Bourgueil (1046–1130) describes how he would enclose
his wax tablets in an embroidered bag, which were sometimes sent as let-
ters, and then wait for them to be returned in order to write something
else. He would have a good copy made of the text he had inscribed on the
tablets.58 Every medieval student was in possession of wax tablets with
which to record lectures and send messages to his teacher. A thirteenth-
century manual advises a student always to keep such tablets (generally two
tablets on a hinge) by his side, so that if he was for any reason not in his
teacher’s presence, “he can carefully inscribe what he feels to be revealed
to his conscience and to ask for clarification of what is uncertain.”59 The
brevity of letters 1–21 may have been influenced by the limited size of
their tablets. Longer letters, like 22–25 and 49–50, may have needed addi-
tional tablets. A transcript of messages conducted in this way represents a
record of a relationship, perhaps edited or improved for posterity.
At a very basic level, these love letters function as a device by which the
two parties develop their skills in the art of composition (ars dictaminis).
This was more than the art of simply writing well. It is about communi-
cating matters of substance with style and grace. It would have been nor-
mal for Heloise to have used such tablets for her study with Abelard. This
most intimate form of communication between teacher and student only
survives when the student preserves a copy of the dialogue. Our knowl-
edge of medieval correspondence, as indeed of school literature in general,
derives only from edited copies of dialogues otherwise lost from the
record. In their way, the love letters are as much an exercise in the art of
composition as a genuine communication of ideas.
Although Johannes de Vepria entitled his transcription Ex epistolis duo-
rum amantium, the lovers describe what they send each other as litterae, a
term that embraces poems (as in 69) as well as letters, rather than the more
formal epistolae.60 Some are simply short messages of greeting, others met-
rical poems without a formal salutation. They do not necessarily adhere to
the prescriptions of theorists about the constituent parts of the standard
letter, as is not uncommon in letters from the early twelfth century.61 They
serve to stand in place of the sender (6 ). Unlike Eurialus and Lucretia, they
do not tell a continuous story. They do not always address each other di-
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 15

rectly and sometimes seem to respond to spoken conversations. The only

way to evaluate Könsgen’s argument that the transcription is a record of
letters exchanged between two distinct individuals is to examine their
content. While they are not arranged according to any formal structure,
certain distinct phases can be observed in the relationship.

The Formulae of Greeting (Letters 1–21)

Johannes de Vepria was not interested in matters of historical substance or
practical information. His initial concern was simply with the elaborate
greetings in these letters, very different from the sober Ciceronian style ad-
vocated by Petrarch. This epistolary technique is a characteristic feature of
letters in the age of Abelard and Heloise. In an important study of greetings
in medieval letters, Carol Lanham has shown how the practice of replacing
the greeting (salutem) with more personal and elaborate expressions devel-
oped in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These more elaborate phrases
served to define a more intimate form of relationship.62 Ivo of Chartres, St.
Anselm, and St. Bernard all experiment with the device when writing to
women, although never with the intimacy of the greetings in these love let-
ters. In this exchange, they single out the other person as unlike any other.
In the first letter that Johannes de Vepria copies, the woman preserves the
formal structure of a polite greeting (To X,Y: salutem), but describes herself
as “She who is his in heart and body” (sua corde et corpore). She draws on im-
agery from the Song of Songs (4.10), “Your breasts are more beautiful than
wine and the scent of your perfumes beyond every spice,” to transform the
standard greeting into half-rhyming phrases of unusual originality. She of-
fers him “the freshness (viriditatem) of eternal happiness.”63 In return, he
replies (2) by emphasizing the comfort she gives his mind:

Singulari gaudio, et lassate mentis unico solamini, ille cuius vita sine te mors
est: quid amplius quam seipsum quantum corpore et anima valet.

To the singular joy and only consolation of a weary mind, that person whose
life without you is death: what more than himself, in as much as he is strong
in body and soul.

His greeting assumes that he is active, while she represents peace and
tranquility.
The letters do not all address each other directly. Rather they offer
ever more elaborate greetings from one lover to the other. For the first
16 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

seventeen letters or so, they strive to outdo each other in the originality
of their greetings. In many of these letters (3, 5, 7, 9, 21, 25, 27) she does
not identify herself at all in her greeting, whereas her teacher tends more
often to follow standard epistolary format. Frequently he addresses her as
his “lady” (domina) to whom he is bound (6, 8, 36, 61, 72, 87, 108). The
most important issue that they write about is the “love” (amor) and “joy”
(gaudium) they share. She in particular is interested in defining the nature
of their relationship. He tends more to express his feelings for her than
to analyze them, except when she prompts him to do so. As early as let-
ter 9, she speaks of her desire that their true “friendship” (amicitia) be
strengthened, a term he does not use until 12. By contrast, he speaks in
letter 6 of his being driven “by the burning flame of love,” imagery dif-
fused by Ovid in the Amores and Art of Loving. He often describes her as
a source of eternal light and develops sometimes elaborate astronomical
imagery to present her as his star (4, 6, 20), his moon (91), and his sun
(22, 33, 80, 108). She comes to share in this rhetoric, addressing him as
her star (76) and as both her light and solstice (92) and moon (94). Each
is led on by the other’s light.64
From letter 14 on, Johannes de Vepria starts to transcribe much more of
the substance of the correspondence. He does not indicate any omissions in
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. In 18, she adopts a daringly original tone that
she does not often repeat. Instead of employing the polite convention of an
inferior writing to a superior, she opens with a formula that deliberately
challenges any idea of her inferiority: “An equal to an equal, to a reddening
rose under the spotless whiteness of lilies: whatever a lover gives to a lover.”
Although she had twice addressed him as her love, this is the first time she
speaks of her breast burning with the ardor of love (amor). This prompts him
to reply that he has read her words many times. He then sends her his first
metrical poem (19–20). She reverts to this bold formula of parity in 48, “a
lover to a lover: the freshness of love,” in which she also says that she has been
kindled by the fire of love. She addresses him similarly in 62 as “a beloved to
a beloved” and in 100 as “Faithful to faithful:The knot of an intact love never
untied.” He never reverses the order of a polite greeting like this. Only in
112, the last major communication preserved from the woman, does she
change to a traditional greeting devoid of any particular intimacy.

The Discussion of Love and Friendship (Letters 22–53)

The first letter that Johannes de Vepria transcribes at length is letter 22, in
which the man replies to the woman’s (not wholly successful) attempt in
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 17

21 to employ philosophical terminology in her greeting. He is fascinated

by the way she transcends words by the richness of what she does. The
words he directs to others are not as important as the intention he directs
to her. She responds with an equally lengthy letter (23) in which she ar-
ticulates an inner conflict within herself between the burning desire of her
spirit (animus), and the dryness of her talent (ingenium). She may have been
provoked by some criticism that her teacher had made of her letter 21.65
Where Gregory uses the image of a boat, she uses that of linter about to
cross a stormy ocean. Isidore describes linter as a skiff or shallow boat used
to cross the marshes of the river Po.66 In reply (24), he marvels at the rich-
ness of her letter, which he claims offers proof of overflowing faith and
love, according to the saying of scripture (Luke 6.45; Matthew 12.34):
“The mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart.” This is not an epis-
tolary novel in which each letter responds to the one before. He mentions
in letter 24 that she often asked him about the nature of love (quid amor
sit). Her letters are preoccupied with defining their relationship. He bases
his answer not on the Ovidian texts that he had previously used to protest
his affection, but on Cicero, whose definition of friendship as a union of
selves he applies to amor. Letter 24 provides a rare moment when he moves
beyond articulating his passionate desire for her to thinking philosophically
about the nature of love. His discussion enables us to see him as a philoso-
pher as well as a lover. Where Cicero had spoken of love creating an iden-
tity of minds, he specifies that love makes two wills the same “without
difference” (indifferenter). They cannot be essentially the same as they are
two individuals, but they are not different. His elaboration upon the word-
ing of the De amicitia betrays a distinct philosophical position on an im-
portant issue in dialectic. While following the Ciceronian theme that
friendship brings about union, he rephrases Cicero’s definition to explain
that two individuals bound by love are not different (as distinct from being
essentially the same). He argues that amor is a “universal thing” that exists
only among themselves. The teacher’s argument that love makes two souls
the same “without difference” recalls that which Peter Abelard early in his
career forced William of Champeaux to concede in a public debate and
which Abelard adopted in his early writing on dialectic.67
In reply (25), she launches into her own reflections on love, drawing on
both scriptural themes and Ciceronian ideas to explain her conviction that
“true love” (verus amor) had not yet been reached. Love that quickly disap-
peared was not true love. While he had employed dialectic to interpret Ci-
cero’s definition, she relates amor to dilectio, which she understands not as a
synonym for caritas, as common in Christian tradition, but as a special form
18 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

of love. Dilectio, used in the Latin Vulgate translation of the Song of Songs
and St. John’s Gospel (13.34–17.26), evokes a more deliberate idea of con-
scious esteem and choice than amor, love from inclination or passion. Au-
gustine considered amor to be a carnal form of dilectio, a purer form of love.68
Cicero considered that it was a natural tendency for all creatures to bind with
one another and that friendship was a particular form of this natural state.
The woman on the other hand is influenced by a Christian sense that cari-
tas needs to be displayed to all; where Cicero had related caritas to special
friendship, she prefers the term dilectio to denote a special form of the gen-
eral category of caritas. She sees herself as his amica, a friend in both the clas-
sical sense and his beloved, as used in the Song of Songs (1.8, 2.2, etc.). This
is a different perception of amor from the capricious affairs of the heart about
whose vicissitudes Ovid had written with such biting wit. It is also subtly
different from the Ciceronian ideal of friendship that her teacher had in-
voked to define amor. In her perception there did not yet exist the true iden-
tity that he has claimed did exist “without difference” between them. Her
love is one of longing. She is moved by the songs of the birds and the green-
ness (viriditas)of the woods. Above all, her desire is for stability and loyalty.
The contrast between their perspectives is vividly apparent in his reply
(26) to her letter. Unlike her, he does not connect amor to dilectio and never
mentions caritas. Instead he begs her to reveal herself more fully, praising
her body as “full of moisture” (an allusion to the classical idea that the fem-
inine body was always more moist than that of the male). He identifies her
love for him not as dilectio, but as “all your love” (amor tuus totus). She replies
with a cryptic note (27), offering him “The spirit of Bezalel, the strength
of three locks of hair, the beauty of the father of peace, and the depth of
Ididia.” Whereas he yearns for physical union, she urges that he absorb the
qualities of great men in scripture, referring to Samson, Absalom, and
Solomon by coded allusion.69
Difficulties become apparent in their relationship after letter 28. He
complains about jealousy creating problems for them. After he experiences
some illness, she expresses joy at his recovery in a letter that talks of snow
melting and a springtime thaw (32). In 33 he urges that they begin a new
eagerness for literary composition (33: novus dictandi fervor sumendus). By
letter 34, she is advising him that careful delay is better than incautious
haste of the mind. The first sign of a major rift occurs after letter 35, when
he says rather enigmatically that she has not sinned. He then addresses her
(36) in the formal vos rather than the intimate tu. His letter 37 concludes:
“Ask the messenger what I did after I wrote this letter: there and then I
threw myself onto the bed out of impatience.”
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 19

After a group of messages (35–44) to which she does not reply, apart
from a few verses (38b), and after some illness on his part, she offers a long
letter (45) in which she gives thanks to God that he is well. Her compar-
ing herself in this letter to heroines portrayed by Ovid is of great impor-
tance, as the Heroides circulated in a relatively restricted literary circle in the
early twelfth century.70 As if showing off her classical learning, she alludes
to the pleasure she hopes to offer him by referring to the lovers in Terence’s
play The Self-Torturer (Heautontimorumenos): “I send you as many joys as An-
tiphila had when she welcomed back Clinia. Do not delay in coming; the
quicker you come, the more quickly you will find cause for joy.”
Letter 49 is far longer than any of the previous letters. She develops fur-
ther her ideas about the nature of love and asks him to engage in a fuller
discussion of the subject. She insists that her relationship to him is based
not just on amor, but on a firm friendship founded on uprightness, virtue,
and dilectio. This was a love that did not consider pleasures or riches or any
self-concern. She sees their dilectio as not like that which bound people
who loved each other for the sake of things and had no permanence. Her
thoughts are inspired by Cicero’s ideals of true friendship, transposed onto
the level of love between a man and a woman, but also fused with the vo-
cabulary of scripture. The literary polish that she applies to this letter, her
extravagant praise for his greatness, coupled with her protestations about
her own lack of ability, serve to build up to a more important complaint,
that his letters were not satisfying her completely, that they were not long
enough.This is the first letter in which she addresses him as a great teacher,
a device to get him to respond to her with intellectual seriousness. It suc-
ceeds in winning a reply in which he addresses her as “the only student of
philosophy among all the young women of our age.” There is an element
of truth in his exclamation that she had not just read Cicero, but given Ci-
cero instruction about the laws of friendship. For the first time in his let-
ters, he refers to their love as dilectio, but does not continue the discussion
that she had initiated. In letter 53, on the other hand, she stretches language
to the limit to express what she feels in her spirit, “if a droplet of knowa-
bility trickled down to me from the honeycomb of wisdom,” she still
could not find words “throughout all Latinity” to express the intent of her
spirit, as she loves him with a special love.

Crisis and Resolution (Letters 54–98)

References to “the consuming envy of evil men” (edax malorum hominum
invidia) preventing them from coming together as they wished begin to
20 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

surface in letter 54, although they were alluded to in 28. He suggests that
it would be better to communicate in writing. She refers to malicious gos-
sip and enforced separation in letter 57, possibly written after a lapse of
time. Some issue must have arisen by letter 58, as she uses the formal plural
(Valete) rather than the intimate singular (Vale) for the first time. When he
explains in letter 59 that he is guilty of some sin, she protests that there is
nothing to forgive. This provokes great distress on her part (60). This is the
first major crisis in their relationship. He has not returned her devotion to
him. Unlike her teacher (35, 59, 61), she never uses the verb “to sin” (pec-
care) or “sin” (peccatum) and speaks of “sinners” (peccatores) only once, when
reciting a liturgical blessing of forgiveness at the end of letter 60. His men-
tion of sin and blame in 59 and 61 suggests that he is not fully at ease with
his own behavior. At one level, he invites her to reveal herself fully (as in
38a), while at another he accuses himself of committing a sin.
In letter 60 the woman brings the crisis in their relationship to a head.
Her unusual greeting to him, difficult to translate, suggests that she was
frustrated with the nature of their relationship: “To one till now faithfully
adored, hereafter not to be loved with the chain of an infirm passion: the
firm guarantee nonetheless of love and faith.” She opens a letter of great
importance by combining allusion in her greeting to three different de-
grees of love. She then reflects on her ideals about love, invoking her pre-
ferred notions of caritas and dilectio in a scriptural context: “I had revealed
myself to you with a great pledge of loving care, while your true love was
founded on a firm root; for I had placed all my hope in you, as though you
were an invincible tower.” Her image picks up the vocabulary of Ps. 60.4:
“Because you have become my hope, a tower of strength in the face of the
enemy.”71 She insists that she had never been duplicitous to him. She can-
not describe how strongly, how quickly “I began to love you” (te cepi
diligere). She did not want the “bond” (foedus, another word he never uses)
between them to be broken again. She had hoped for many good things,
but only tearful sighs of the heart had arisen. At the end of her letter, she
recites an ecclesiastical blessing from the liturgy of Good Friday and then
asks for all written communication between them to cease (propterea omnis
nostra amodo pereat scriptura).
His response is to send a tearful letter (61) in which he speaks again of
his having sinned. He initially insists that he does not blame her, saying
only that everything was his fault. He then accuses her of adding further
to his wounds: “If you loved me, you would have said less” (Si me amares,
minus locuta fuisses). As if to add insult to injury, he goes on to argue that
she has sinned more against him than he against her and that she was being
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 21

cold to him. These are harsh words, very different in character from any-
thing the woman might say. He closes the letter by exclaiming that he
sends it “with tears.”
Johannes de Vepria unfortunately omits two passages from the letter
that she sends in reply. She fears that he risks incurring danger for him-
self, while she faces scandal. She simply wants to see him. From this point
on in the exchange, she begins to express herself in metrical verse. Her
first long poem (66) follows her plea that they cease from mutual recrim-
ination against each other (62), an appeal to the Muses to serve the great
master. She composes two further poems (69 and 73) before her most
emotionally powerful composition (82) about the purity of her love, in
which she voices her fears about the future. Her sense is that grief and
mourning will follow their love, which will end up burning to death as
on a funeral pyre. She creates the image of a tragic heroine of Roman an-
tiquity, not unlike that of Dido as Aeneas leaves her or perhaps of Cor-
nelia at the cremation of Pompey.72 There is a steady intensity to her
affection, idealistic and ultimately self-denying, very different from his en-
thusiasm and mood swings. He apologizes for overhasty words by ex-
plaining himself in letter 74 with the terminology of dialectic. He had
spoken words that meant nothing and carried no weight. What mattered
were not his words, but his deeds (facta), a frequent theme in his writing
(12, 22, 74, 75, 105).73
He subsequently (75) becomes very concerned about their public rep-
utation (fama): “But we shall be able to love wisely, because we shall
shrewdly look out for our reputation while mixing our joys with the
greatest delight!” In her reply (76) she has decided that they should stop
exchanging harsh words with each other. Growing fear of external opin-
ion drives him in letter 101 to say: “If you care to note, I am now speak-
ing to you more cautiously, and approaching you more cautiously; shame
tempers love, modesty checks love, lest it rush out in its immensity. This
way we can fulfil our sweet desires and gradually stifle the rumor (famam)
that has arisen about us.”
She never expresses concern about their public image. Rather, she
constantly affirms the constancy and purity of her love for him, as in let-
ter 84, in which she employs scriptural imagery to say that he had stayed
with her, manfully fought the good fight, but had not yet received his
reward. She promises to reward him for a prologue he had written with
“the obedience of love” (cum amoris servitute). He protests that behind
the weakness in himself of which he is aware, his love is sincere (85). It
is never clear how long a period of time might have passed between
22 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

messages. In a long poetic reflection (87), the man reflects on the year
that has passed. He regrets those words which had provoked tears. In let-
ter 90 she is still protesting her love but reflects more openly on the
troubles she is enduring. He too (93) is aware that love (amor) and shame
(pudor) are pulling them in opposite directions. Their emotional distress
is provoked by the conflicting demands of public image and private pas-
sion. Although he starts to define his relationship to her more consis-
tently as dilectio in these last letters (85, 96, 101, 103, 105), there is still
a sharp contrast in how they view their relationship. He speaks of him-
self as conquered by amor; she speaks of their amor as based on dilectio
firma. Whereas his dominant image of love is that of a passion by which
he is overtaken, her preferred image is that of a true and lasting friend-
ship (98).

The Breakdown of a Relationship (Letters 94–113)

The final letters (94–113) bring to the surface tensions already evident
midway in the exchange. She takes particular exception to his remarks
about being pulled in two ways, by love and shame. She accuses him of not
sharing her ethic of total, committed love and throws at him the gibe that
“you throw words to the winds” (Verba das ventis, from Ovid’s Amores
1.6.42). He is not worthy to be a friend if he throws such stones (94). His
words come too easily. In letter 95 she is even more harsh, describing him
as a tottering ship without anchor. With limpid conciseness, she expresses
how “suspended in hope, I barely kept hoping: “Pendula expectacione vix
expectavi.” He defends himself by claiming that he is still the same person.
She never doubts the constancy of love for him (102), but cannot hide the
sorrow in her heart (104).
Something serious must have happened to prompt letter 106, in
which the man says that he is “paying the price for stupidity” and that he
has not been able to keep “that good thing” which he ought. The woman
is similarly distraught, but develops a totally new idea in letter 107 in the
form of advice given to her by a wise woman (an image adapted from the
opening of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy), that beauty and noble
family were as nothing without the grace of the Holy Spirit. The man al-
ludes to her physical absence in a poem (108) composed in her honor.
While he is happy to see her again, her reply (109), wishing him to be
clothed in virtue, wisdom, good behavior, and “adornment of style,” is
more measured in tone. She then answers his professions of continuing
devotion (110, 111).
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 23

Her last major letter (112) is the only one in the exchange in which
she addresses him as her teacher rather than as her beloved. The shift in
tenor of the greeting, so important in defining the relationship that a let-
ter writer seeks to establish with someone, suggests a subtle shift in the
way she interprets her relationship toward him. He is no longer simply
her beloved, as in previous letters: “To her most noble and most learned
teacher: well-being in Him who is both salvation and blessing.” Unfortu-
nately, Johannes de Vepria’s unusually limited transcription of letter 112
makes it also one of the most enigmatic in the exchange. Why does she
address him as her teacher? The meaning of her first complete sentence is
itself far from clear, and has been corrected by the editor to read: “If you
are well and moving among worldly concerns without trouble, I am car-
ried away by the greatest exultation of mind.”74 Does she mean that she
is carried away by great joy if he is faring well, or is she contrasting his
situation of going about daily business without problem with her own
mental exultation? The first alternative seems less likely, given that the rest
of the letter as transcribed by Johannes de Vepria explores the inexpress-
ible joy that she feels.
Unfortunately so many omissions are indicated in his transcription of
this letter that it never becomes clear what is the cause of the joy she speaks
about. In the second and third sentences she explains that in the past she
has been carried away by his letters and lifted to the third heaven (2 Cor.
12.2) “through a certain agility of mind” (quadam agilitate mentis).75 She
seems to be deliberately contrasting this intellectual delight in the past
with her present exultation. She seems to be happy not just because he is
well. Crucial sentences are missing which may well have explained more
fully the rejoicing she now feels. Ever faithful to his practice of indicating
whenever he is abbreviating his text, Johannes de Vepria picks out just two
separate sentences from the passage that follows: “nourished at the hearth
of philosophy, you have drunk at the fountain of poetry” and “To thirst for
God and to cling to him alone is necessary for every living creature.” The
first comment belongs to a passage in praise of her teacher as immensely
gifted in both philosophy and poetry. She speaks about the pleasure his let-
ters had given her in the past. Johannes de Vepria then resumes his tran-
scription with her comment on the glorious future she sees for him: “I
already see the mountaintops bowing down before you,” a future that she
is sure will be fulfilled by divine providence. Again she speaks about him
in terms of his public career. By mountaintops she may be alluding to the
greatest teachers of her day who will in time recognize his genius. She
contrasts this with her own situation, one of a great joy that she cannot put
24 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

into words. Her language is again veiled in a literary image: “Secure and
not ungrateful, I am reaching the haven of your love.” In letter 78, the man
had used the image of being secure, “coming to port” and “sitting in port”
after he had received a letter which he interpreted as implying that the dif-
ficulties in their relationship were over.76 Religious texts frequently speak
of the soul reaching the portum salutis, “the haven of salvation.” She uses the
image of “coming to port” to refer to a new stage of happiness, that she
cannot describe in any words, greater than any pleasure that his letters had
brought her in the past. Is the woman here referring to her joy at con-
ceiving a child?
The sentences that Johannes de Vepria omits from letter 112 make it
impossible to know whether the woman explained her meaning more
fully in the rest of her letter. His transcription of this letter is most unusual
in that it does not provide the customary farewell. Johannes follows it with
a marginal annotation Ex alia, “from another [letter],” to introduce the line
Ubi est amor et dilectio, ibi semper fervet exercicium (Where there is desire and
love, there always rages effort). Her parody of the great Maundy Thursday
hymn Ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est (Where charity and love are, there God
abides) captures precisely the tension evident throughout the correspon-
dence, between the Ovidian idea of amor, the man’s favorite term for his
feelings for her, and dilectio, the term for love enjoined by scripture. She
finds it an effort to marry the two understandings of love. She then adds a
note (112a) which has none of the exultation of the previous missive: “I
am already tired, I cannot reply to you, because you are accepting sweet
things as burdensome, and because of this you sadden my spirit. Farewell.”
These sweet things (dulcia) seem to refer to the source of exultation about
which she speaks in the previous letter (112).
The final item in the exchange (113) is a lament from the man, ex-
plaining that he has been tricked by love (amor). He begs for forgiveness.
“Love urges me to enlist in its service, to respect its laws.” He confesses that
he has been obsessed with her and still longs to embrace her, but he is
afraid of popular gossip. To distance himself from these feelings he explains
that he has been dazzled by her beauty and demeanor, which make her
“outstanding in our city” (Urbe te nostre conspicuam faciunt). He does not
pick up the woman’s message about the demands of true love. Instead he
retreats to the mock heroic language of Ovid’s Amores about being driven
on by love without an act of free will on his part. The military metaphor
employed by Ovid in jest is seen by him to be peculiarly appropriate to his
situation. He has been conquered by love, a victim of what he judges to be
fascination for what is ultimately superficial. He thinks of love more as a
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 25

game of the heart than the woman, who is more interested in combining
the passionate aspect of amor with the high seriousness of dilectio. Her de-
sire to fuse the ideas of Ovid, Cicero, and scripture about love is not some-
thing which her teacher readily grasps.
The vicissitudes in the relationship presented in this exchange follow
an inner logic, crystallized in the final letters. While his understanding of
his relationship to the young woman is shaped by Ovid, she is develop-
ing a much more refined idea of her relationship to him as based on an
ideal of selfless love. Her idea of amor is that it is founded on true dilectio
for him. He is concerned for his own reputation. At times, she sees his
caution as a sign of lack of sincerity. The relationship threatens to come
apart by letter 60. Her ideals of love were not satisfied by his often con-
fused claims of ardent feeling for her. Her final note in the exchange
(112a) suggests that she does not wish to speak to him further because he
considered burdensome something sweet which had given her cause of
great joy. His response is to consider that he had been tricked by amor into
falling in love with a seductive beauty that was ultimately based on su-
perficial attraction. He never rises to her sense that love is an ideal which
embraces both amor and dilectio.

The Location and Authorship of the Letters

The city to which the teacher refers in his final poem (113) is never ex-
plicitly identified. One valuable clue about the place where this teacher is
prominent occurs in her description of him in letter 49 as so famous that
he is able to subdue “French pigheadedness” (francigena cervicositas) and “the
haughtiness of the whole world” (tocius mundi superciliositas). While Köns-
gen thought the relationship could have unfolded anywhere between the
Île-de-France and the region around Clairvaux, Clairvaux in the twelfth
century was in Champagne, not Francia, a relatively small landlocked re-
gion stretching from north of Paris to south of Orléans, roughly equiva-
lent to the modern Île-de-France.77 The technical sophistication of the
man’s letters in the vocabulary of dialectic, coupled with the allusions to
him confronting the arrogance of the whole world, suggests that the ac-
tion takes place in the schools of Paris, preeminent in dialectic in the early
twelfth century. The other city in the Île-de-France where the study of
Ovid was strong was Orléans, but there was no tradition here of expertise
in dialectic.
The contrast between the prose style and vocabulary of the man’s let-
ters and those of the woman make it difficult to believe that these letters
26 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

are all written by a single person.Two distinct identities emerge in this cor-
respondence: a famous teacher with a command of dialectic, who is also a
poet, and an articulate young woman, very familiar with classical literature
and unusually gifted in the study of philosophy. She is particularly inter-
ested in ethical issues, above all, the nature and demands of love. Könsgen’s
observation that these letters are about amor carnalis rather than amor spiri-
tualis does not distinguish sufficiently between the contrasting attitudes to-
ward love of the man and the woman. She develops the more original
synthesis between ideas of Ovidian amor, Ciceronian amicitia, and scriptural
dilectio. By contrast his vision of amor is that of passionate love, not refined
by some higher ideal. He sees love more as an escape from a professional
career. The letters document the disintegration of a relationship, as well as
unfulfilled potential on the part of the young woman.
The absence of any overarching argument in these letters makes it dif-
ficult to consider this exchange as a work of fiction. As Könsgen argued,
the differences in prose style and vocabulary between the letters of the
man and the woman are simply too great to make this a likely possibility.
There are too many letters which do not respond directly to each other,
but refer to conversations outside the literary dialogue. This does not
mean, however, that an editorial process has not taken place. One of the
two parties, more likely the woman, seems to have kept a running record
of an exchange originally conducted on wax tablets. Johannes de Vepria
came across such a continuous transcription, endeavoring to identify the
two parties as “Man” and “Woman.” Johannes de Vepria was interested
above all in the stylistic merit of these letters, and so did not transcribe
them in their entirety. His transcriptions of known Clairvaux manuscripts
leave us in no doubt, however, that he was an accurate scribe, who always
noted whenever he was omitting a passage.
As Könsgen observed, the figures presented in these love letters are very
like Abelard and Heloise. Far more parallels can be adduced than he men-
tioned in his edition. The duration of the correspondence, perhaps over a
year, matches what we know about the affair of Abelard and Heloise.There
is no doubt, however, that it presents the relationship between a teacher
and his female student rather differently from the way Abelard presents his
affair with Heloise in the Historia calamitatum. Before we can examine the
authorship of these love letters, we need to look closely at the more fa-
mous letters attributed to Abelard and Heloise, discovered in the thirteenth
century by Jean de Meun and the subject of much debate over the cen-
turies. How do these love letters compare to other discussions about love
and human relationships in the early twelfth century?
 THE DISCOVERY OF A MANUSCRIPT 27

These love letters offer a remarkable insight into twelfth-century re-

flection on love. While they are rich in imaginative expression, they seem
at first sight to be plagued by a lack of precise context. The obvious ques-
tion that arises concerns their authorship. Are these the lost love letters of
Abelard and Heloise? Any discussion of the love letters must come to
terms with the better known correspondence of Abelard and Heloise, ex-
changed some fifteen or so years after the end of their physical relation-
ship. Is Abelard’s account of his liaison with Heloise fundamentally at odds
with the record presented in these love letters? The debate that surrounds
the famous exchange between Heloise and Abelard has great significance
for how we are to interpret the letters copied by Johannes de Vepria at
Clairvaux.
CHAPTER 2

MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR

She herself was not ashamed to write in her letters to her beloved, whom
she loved so well that she called him father and lord, strange words that
many people would think absurd. It is written in her letters, if you examine
the chapters carefully, that even after she became abbess she sent an explicit
letter to him saying “If the emperor of Rome, to whom all men should be
subject, deigned to marry me and make me mistress of the world, I call God
to witness that I would rather,” she said, “be called your whore than be
crowned empress.” But, by my soul, I do not think that there has ever been
such a woman since; and I believe that her erudition enabled her better to
conquer and subdue her nature and its feminine ways. If Peter had believed
her, he would never have married her.1

n this passage of The Romance of the Rose, an allegorical epic about the
I nature of love, Jean de Meun (d. 1305) introduces his readers to an ex-
change of letters between Abelard and Heloise, very different from that dis-
covered two centuries later by Johannes de Vepria at Clairvaux. Jean de
Meun was particularly interested in Heloise’s declaration of love for Abelard
in a letter that follows the Historia calamitatum, addressed to an anonymous
friend. He picks out from Heloise’s letter a sentence which he reads as ar-
ticulating the selflessness of her love for Abelard, that she would rather be
called his prostitute (meretrix) than empress (imperatrix) of Caesar. He subse-
quently translated these letters (although not the Rule) into French.2
Jean de Meun discovered the Abelard–Heloise letters sometime before
1278. He was not a monk like Johannes de Vepria, but a secular cleric com-
mitted to creating a literature in the French language from the wealth of
examples and literary devices familiar to him from Latin tradition. Little is
known about his life other than that he was born at Meung-sur-Loire, be-
came an archdeacon of the diocese of Orléans, but also owned a house in
30 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Paris. Apart from the letters of Abelard and Heloise, he translated into
French On Spiritual Friendship by Aelred of Rievaulx, Vegetius’s On
Chivalry, Gerald of Wales’s The Marvels of Ireland and Boethius’s Consolation
of Philosophy.3 Jean de Meun was most remembered, however, for The Ro-
mance of the Rose, a poem that transformed twelfth-century celebration of
joi and fin’amor into a didactic synthesis of epic proportions.4 By including
Abelard and Heloise within his poem, he ensured that they were remem-
bered as mythic lovers existing beyond the constraints of human existence
rather than as figures of history.
Any attempt to understand the love letters copied by Johannes de Vepria
must come to terms with the debates surrounding the more famous
monastic correspondence of Abelard and Heloise discovered by Jean de
Meun. Over the last two centuries, great controversy has been provoked
by the suggestion that these letters are themselves a literary fiction, com-
posed either by Abelard or by a third party. With such a long history of de-
bate over these letters, how can we establish the authorship of an
anonymous collection of love letters? Such debates about the authenticity
of the Abelard–Heloise letters deserve attention for what such arguments
reveal about the way the figure of Heloise is interpreted. At issue is not so
much the authenticity of the text as the authenticity of the image being
presented. Jean de Meun created a powerful myth of Heloise by present-
ing her as the object of a lover’s pursuit, even before copies began to cir-
culate of the Latin text of the letters. He effectively turned the
correspondence into a great work of fiction.5 Jean de Meun’s idealization
of Heloise is not unlike that by which the man in the love letters elevates
his beloved into a fictional creature, the embodiment of dazzling light. In
this perspective, the same relationship can be seen at different times both
as an expression of amor and as one of carnal lust.
Ever since the thirteenth century, our perception of Abelard’s love affair
with Heloise has been filtered through the lens of the Historia calamitatum
and the associated exchange with Heloise, as well as through a set of as-
sumptions about the love which Heloise professes for Abelard as pro-
foundly at odds with the monastic environment in which she lives. This
assumed contrast between an image of Heloise as a patron saint of worldly
love and her public reputation for piety and religion (lauded by Peter the
Venerable) has been used to argue that a medieval abbess like Heloise
could not have written the letters attributed to her. Even those who ac-
cept the authenticity of her letters have often viewed the first two letters
as outpourings of the heart, at odds with the monastic concerns of her
third letter.Yet the exchange between Heloise and Abelard can also be in-
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 31

terpreted as serving a moral purpose, as an account of how worldly love

has to be subservient to spiritual love. Not the least intriguing aspect of the
way in which Abelard and Heloise have been remembered through the
centuries is the way in which Heloise’s professions of love for Abelard have
been assumed to assert “worldly” love at odds with “spiritual” love. This
distinction is dangerous. Before comparing Heloise’s love letters with those
copied by Johannes de Vepria, we need to understand the extent to which
Heloise has been mythologized over the centuries, and why doubts have
been raised about whether she wrote the letters attributed to her.

Abelard’s Report of the Affair

The opening document in the exchange which Jean de Meun had discov-
ered was the Historia calamitatum, more correctly titled a letter of consolation
to a (male) friend. Abelard subsequently addresses this friend as “dearly
beloved brother in Christ, most intimate companion from the religious life.”6
Whether or not this friend is a real person, Abelard addresses him by the per-
sonal tu rather than the more formal vos such as he employs in less intimate
correspondence, such as to Bernard of Clairvaux.7 Abelard’s professed inten-
tion is to relate how the consoling power of the Holy Spirit had enabled him
to survive many difficulties and turn from a life of arrogance and debauch-
ery to one devoted to the will of God. Abelard implies that the friend to
whom he addresses the Historia calamitatum was personally familiar with the
great financial reward and reputation he gained as a teacher in Paris, as well
as the fact that his love songs were still being sung “by those who enjoyed
that sort of life.” This friend serves as a literary device to whom he can ad-
dress his story. Abelard imagines his reader as fundamentally sympathetic to
the presentation of his life as a moral example. He shapes events to fit in with
his theme of how a successful, but morally profligate teacher turned to a life
lived for God. Even though he does not accept Augustinian beliefs about
original sin, Abelard still accepts the traditional assumption, inherited from
classical antiquity, that the truly philosophical life transcends carnal sexuality.
He is not interested in the complex political situation in France, which had
so much shaped his career. His principal concern is to dispel the many ru-
mors still circulating about both his religious orthodoxy and his affair with
Heloise. While he recognizes that he had been guilty in the past of both de-
bauchery and pride, he insists that many of the accusations being made about
him are quite false. Writing that treatise provided a way of making sense of
the past and of instructing others (perhaps including Heloise) about how
they ought to remember the past.
32 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Still the most widely remembered aspect of his career is his affair with
Heloise. Impossible to render easily in English is the distinction Abelard
draws in the Historia calamitatum between the way Fulbert loved (dilige-
bat) his niece and his own desire to win her love (in amorem mihi copulare)
by capitalizing on her love (diligere) of letters. Abelard presents the affair
as beginning with an act of deliberate seduction for which he alone was
responsible:

There was in the city of Paris a certain young woman by the name of
Heloise, niece of a canon called Fulbert. Just as he loved her, so he devoted
himself assiduously as far as he could to having her advance in the study of
letters in general. Not undistinguished in appearance, she was outstanding in
the abundance of her literary gift. This asset, namely knowledge of letters,
made the girl all the more attractive and all the more famous in the king-
dom, given that it is rather rare among women. So, considering everything
that traditionally delights lovers, I thought it would be more agreeable to
bind her to me in love. I believed I could do this very easily. I then enjoyed
such a great reputation, youth and good looks, that I was not afraid of being
rejected by any woman to whom I might offer my love.8

In translations of this passage, adolescentula is frequently rendered as “young

girl” even though Abelard describes himself as an adolescentulus when he
started to teach at Melun ca. 1102, at the age of twenty-three or so.9 In
medieval usage, the word refers not to “adolescent” in the modern sense,
but to anyone between fifteen and twenty-eight. The claim that Heloise
was aged between sixteen and eighteen at the time of her affair with
Abelard does not rest on any firm evidence, but was first circulated in
translations of the letters published in the late seventeenth century. Identi-
fying Heloise as a teenager at the time of her affair reinforces a romantic
image of her as a sacrificial lamb when she first fell in love with her
teacher.10 Many years later, Peter the Venerable recalled to Heloise that he
had admired her literary gift before she became a nun at Argenteuil. He
described her as even then a woman (mulier) who had already “transcended
her sex” through her commitment to the study of secular literature and
wisdom. These comments suggest that Heloise is more likely to have been
of at least about the same age as Peter the Venerable (ca. 1094–1156) in
1116, in other words in her early twenties.11 Abelard was then thirty-seven.
In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard describes his affair with Heloise as
flawed from the outset. He refers only briefly to messages (scriptis internun-
tiis) that he exchanged with her. He devotes more attention to how they
abandoned their books for sexual pleasure. He does not dwell on Heloise’s
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 33

desire to engage in literary exchange with himself.12 He mentions that his

lectures became stale as he was more inspired to compose love songs
(carmina amatoria), still widely sung in many regions, “as you know, by those
who delight in that sort of life.”13 Abelard relates the events which fol-
lowed as the living out of Ovid’s fable about the unrestrained passion
(amor) of Mars and Venus. When Fulbert discovered their intimacy, they
were forced to live apart. “Opportunity denied inflamed passion further
(negata sui copia amplius amorem accendebat).”When she fell pregnant, Heloise
wrote to him “in great exultation” (cum summa exultatione), asking what she
should do. Abelard then sent her in disguise to Brittany to be looked after
by his sister. Eventually, he acknowledged to Fulbert that he had been led
astray by “the power of love” (vim amoris), and offered to marry her, in se-
cret so as to avoid damage to his reputation (fame detrimentum). He reports
a long speech of Heloise in which she raised pagan arguments against mar-
riage provided in Jerome’s Against Jovinian which he had earlier quoted in
his Christian Theology (composed ca. 1122–26) to commend pagan wisdom
on the subject.14 Almost as an afterthought, he adds that she thought it
“dearer for her and more honest to be called friend (amica) rather than
wife, so that grace alone would keep me for her, not the constraining force
of any chain of marriage.”15 He was more at ease reporting arguments
from patristic authority than those based on the demands of love. He
wanted to explain that Heloise knew that marriage was a foolish mistake,
punished by harsh consequences, which eventually led to their entering
the religious life. Abelard insists that she chose of her own free will to fol-
low his desire that she take the veil. Presenting their affair as a classical
tragedy, he reports that when Heloise took the veil from the bishop of
Paris, she recited Cornelia’s lament that she had brought about Pompey’s
fall (quoting from Lucan, Pharsalia 8.94).
Abelard perceives the male friend to whom he directs the Historia
calamitatum as sympathetic to the idea that his relationship with Heloise
was one of purely physical lust, which deserved to end the way it did. He
presents himself as once an excessively arrogant young teacher, in order to
reinforce the contrast he makes with his life as a monk. He insists that the
punishment meted out to him by Heloise’s uncle eventually is part of
God’s providential plan. He argues that like Origen, he was now freed by
castration from the chains of physical desire. He sees the burning of his
treatise of theology at Soissons in 1121 as a lesson in humility. Abelard plays
up his vices in order to show how they are eventually overcome through
divine providence. At the same time, he explains that much of the criticism
that he has received is simply the result of jealousy (livor, invidia) of his past
34 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

success, a trope much used by Jerome, Ovid, and other classical authors to
protest their innocence against false calumny.16
His theme is that true consolation comes not from a woman, but from
the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete or Comforter and the very goodness of God.
It is in honor of the Holy Spirit that he dedicates the oratory or chapel
which he built ca. 1122 on the banks of the Ardusson. He explains that
Providence came to his aid again in 1129, when, two years after with-
drawing to Brittany, an opportunity arose to re-establish the Paraclete
under the direction of Heloise, who had been expelled with her nuns from
Argenteuil by abbot Suger (1081–1151). Abelard justifies his decision to
re-dedicate his oratory to the Paraclete rather than to the Holy Trinity at
some length, and also defends the cause of male concern for the religious
life of women. He asks his reader to turn to scripture and in particular to
the letters of Jerome to gain comfort in times of adversity, so as to recog-
nize the will of God. The thrust of his narrative is to emphasize that the
consolation offered by divine providence is far beyond that offered by car-
nal pleasure.

Heloise’s Memory of the Affair

The first letter that Heloise wrote after reading the Historia calamitatum
communicates an intensity of passion very different from that of Abelard’s
narrative. She is wounded that Abelard should think to offer consolation
to a male friend rather than to herself and the community of women he
had established at the Paraclete.17 Reminding him of the example of those
holy Fathers who had written treatises for women, she expresses astonish-
ment at his neglect of her since their entry into religious life. Whereas
Abelard had downplayed the importance of the love songs and letters he
had written in the past, she confronts him with the inconsistency between
what he proclaimed then and what he was saying in the Historia calamita-
tum. The discrepancy between his declarations of love and his neglect of
her after he became a monk provokes her to remind him that her love for
him had been completely pure, not concerned with any personal gain or
pleasure.

God knows, I sought nothing in you except you yourself: simply you, not
lusting for what was yours. I expected no bonds of marriage, no dowry of
any kind, not any pleasures or wishes of my own, but I sought to fulfil yours,
as you yourself know. And if the name of ‘wife’ seems more holy and more
binding, the word ‘friend’ (amica) will always be sweeter to me, or, if you do
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 35

not object, of concubine or whore; so that, the more I might humble my-
self because of you, the more I might win your favor, and thus I would dam-
age less the glory of your reputation. You did not completely forget this in
the letter you sent to give comfort to a friend; there you did not disdain to
present some of the arguments by which I tried to call you back from our
marriage, with its doomed union, but you ignored many about how I pre-
ferred love to marriage, freedom to chains. I call God as my witness, that if
Augustus, presiding over the whole world, saw fit to honor me with mar-
riage and confirmed the whole world on me to possess for ever, it would
seem dearer and more honorable for me to be called your prostitute (mere-
trix) than his empress (imperatrix).18

This passage is often construed as meaning that Heloise was offering Abelard
sexual favors outside of marriage. This emphasis is compounded by a ten-
dency to translate amica as “mistress” rather than as friend. Heloise’s argument
here is not that she wants to be a prostitute, but that unfettered friendship
means more to her than any derogatory names that might be given to her.
She recognizes that he was a great teacher in logic and in theology, but points
out that his understanding of ethical arguments was wanting. Words must
conform to inner intent. She accuses him of passing over her arguments
against marriage based on the purity of love as an ideal. She closes this first
letter by reminding him of the many letters that he had showered on her in
the past and of the songs that had made her famous. He ought to commu-
nicate with her now much as he had during their affair.This is the only time
Heloise refers directly to these letters of Abelard in the past; she never men-
tions any letters or poems she may have sent in reply. The comment she
makes in this letter that he was most unusual as a philosopher in being able
to compose songs about love as well as to pursue a philosophical vocation
echoes the woman’s observation in letter 112 of the anonymous exchange:
“Already nourished at the hearth of philosophy, you have drunk from the
fountain of poetry.” Abelard’s unusual ability to compose verse as well as to
philosophize is also remembered in an epitaph on his tomb and in a poem
by Hilary of Orléans.19 Heloise does not see these two roles as incompati-
ble, as Abelard had implied in the Historia calamitatum. As a philosopher, he
had been fascinated by the distinction between words and what they signi-
fied. Heloise wants to know whether those love letters and songs that he sent
her ever meant what they proclaimed. Her first letter recalls the lament of
Penelope to Ulysses, as told by Ovid in the first of his Heroides. Penelope ex-
presses her concern for the dangers Ulysses faces, but demands that he re-
turn, as her love for him has been so faithful. Heloise takes the voice of an
Ovidian heroine in order to shape her own reflection on love.20
36 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Abelard replies by urging her to forget the past and think of herself in-
stead as a bride of Christ. His emphasis on respectful distance and correct
religious devotion reflects his anxiety to distance himself from the image
of a wayward teacher that he had acquired in the past. Heloise then sends
him a second letter in which she again recalls the purity of her intention
towards him, insisting that it had nothing to do with physical lust. She
evokes, even more eloquently than before, her demand that Abelard com-
municate more fully with her than he had in the past. Whereas in her first
letter she relies more on classical imagery, in her second she draws on
scripture as well to make her point. She laments the hypocrisy of her sit-
uation, judged pious by the world, but racked by inner anguish as she
cannot forget the pleasures they had enjoyed in the past, even during cel-
ebration of the Mass. She describes the reality of physical desire to dis-
close her human frailty, rather than to condemn it as sinful. Her letter
provokes a fuller response from Abelard, in which he urges her to direct
her devotion to Christ rather than to himself. Distancing himself from in-
timate dialogue with Heloise, he recalls past episodes of debauchery and
deceit to present physical desire as something which should be left in the
past. He reminds her of their physical indulgence in the refectory of Ar-
genteuil during Holy Week, and his forcing her to have sex with him
when she was unwilling. Abelard was not interested in talking about the
love he had professed for her in the past except as selfish indulgence. “My
love which entangled both of us in sins is to be called lust, not love (con-
cupiscentia, non amor).”21
Heloise never mentions again those “incessant letters” which she says
Abelard sent her during the time of their affair. In her third letter, she adopts
a different tone. She opens by explaining why she had poured herself out
in her two earlier letters by: “the mouth speaks from the abundance of the
heart” (Luke 6.45; Matthew 12.34), the same scriptural phrase as the man
uses in letter 24 in the love letters to observe how fully the woman would
pour herself out in her letters. Heloise gets him to communicate with her
and her community by putting forth two requests to which he does re-
spond: that Abelard explain the origins of the religious life for women and
that he supply a monastic Rule especially adapted for women. She is ap-
palled by the hypocrisy of living according to rules which women are un-
able to observe. She observes many details in the Benedictine Rule which
simply do not cater to women’s needs. She insists that the essential virtue
to be observed is moderation. Central to her analysis is the theme of self-
knowledge. She is fully aware of the frailty of her body. Extravagant reli-
gious ideals are of little use if they do not relate to an individual’s situation.
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 37

Abelard responds to her third letter by sending her a treatise on prece-

dents for women’s religious life in both scripture and classical antiquity,
and a Rule for the Paraclete. These two treatises have never attracted the
same attention as Heloise’s first two letters.Yet they do show how Abelard
was forced to think for the first time about the role of women in the re-
ligious life. Like Heloise, he emphasizes the primacy of intention in dis-
tinguishing between right and wrong behavior, as well as the important
role that study should occupy in the lives of the nuns of the Paraclete.
Abelard’s argument at the end of the Rule that Heloise and her nuns
should imitate the example of the holy women around Jerome is very
similar to that expressed in his letter 9 “On the study of letters.” This is a
letter to the nuns of the Paraclete from the early 1130s, transmitted quite
separately from the famous Abelard–Heloise correspondence. In a subse-
quent letter she writes to Abelard, introducing forty-two questions (Prob-
lemata) about scripture, Heloise expands on Abelard’s advice in his Rule
by comparing herself to the holy women who put so many questions
about scripture to Jerome.

Twelfth-Century Perceptions of Abelard and Heloise

Most twelfth-century chroniclers who mention Peter Abelard do not talk
about Heloise. Particularly influential was Geoffrey of Auxerre’s account of
St. Bernard’s condemnation of Abelard’s errors at the council of Sens, 25
May 1141.22 Geoffrey (d. ca. 1188), who had heard Abelard lecture in Paris
in January of that year, but had been converted to the Cistercian way of
life by hearing Bernard preach, describes Abelard as an arrogant intellec-
tual without ever mentioning Heloise.23 As the secretary responsible for
compiling one of the earliest collections of letters of St. Bernard, Geoffrey
was able to shape public perception of his master as hostile to self-impor-
tant intellectuals. By incorporating Pope Innocent’s condemnation of
Abelard’s errors into his collection of St. Bernard’s letters (but not the sub-
sequent lifting of the sentence of excommunication), Geoffrey created the
impression that Bernard had succeeded in securing Abelard’s condemna-
tion through his letters to various cardinals of the curia, as well as to the
Pope himself.24 Otto of Freising, a Cistercian writer not afraid to criticize
Bernard of Clairvaux for his attack on Gilbert of Poitiers in 1148, similarly
does not mention the pardon given to Abelard. He also never refers to the
Paraclete and alludes to Heloise only indirectly, when he comments that
“following certain circumstances well-known enough, he [Abelard], not
well treated, became a monk at Saint-Denis.”25 While these words suggest
38 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

a certain sympathy for Abelard’s situation, Otto passes over the name of
Heloise in discreet silence.
The information that St. Bernard and Abelard agreed to cease their at-
tacks on each other through the efforts of the abbots of Cîteaux and Cluny
to mediate a truce, was not widely known in the twelfth century except
through a little circulated letter of Peter the Venerable to Innocent II.26
The abbot of Cluny also mentions that he was successful in restoring
Abelard to apostolic favor in a letter to Heloise, written after Abelard’s
death.27 The only other twelfth-century chronicler to report this informa-
tion is William Godel, an Englishman who spent much of his life as a
monk in the diocese of Sens. Writing ten years or so after the death of
Heloise (16 May 1164), he is one of the few contemporary historians to
be completely uninfluenced by Geoffrey of Auxerre’s version of events.
Godel recalls Heloise’s devotion to Abelard and supplies certain details ei-
ther distorted or completely suppressed by other chroniclers. While ac-
knowledging St. Bernard’s influence as a preacher, he devotes more
attention in his chronicle to affirming Abelard’s fundamental orthodoxy
and to praising the love of Heloise, Abelard’s vera amica, for the man who
had been her husband:

At this time flourished Bernard, lord abbot of Clairvaux, a flower of the

catholic Church in his time, who spread a great perfume of wisdom far and
wide. For he was this to many people through the grace of God. There also
flourished at this same time master Peter Abelard. Most subtle in genius, he
wrote and taught many things. Indeed he was also criticized by some, in par-
ticular by the aforementioned abbot Bernard. For which reason he attended
an assembled council, and firmly removed a number of things of which he
had been accused, and brilliantly demonstrated that very many things
claimed to have been written or said by him, were not held by him. Indeed,
he eventually denied every heresy and confessed and maintained that he was
a son of the catholic Church, and after this finished his life in fraternal peace.
He also built a monastery which he called the Paraclete in the region of
Troyes, in a certain meadow where he used to read alone, in which he gath-
ered together a number of nuns by epistolary authority. He put in charge
over these nuns his former wife, a religious woman, educated in both He-
brew and Latin letters, by the name of Heloise. This true friend of his pre-
served great loyalty towards him after his death with assiduous prayers. They
now rest in this place most honorably in tombs by the holy altar.28

Godel’s information about the location of the tombs may derive from a di-
rect visit to the Paraclete. He certainly visited other women’s religious
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 39

communities, and saw Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) in person in

1172.29 His reference to Abelard’s foundation of the Paraclete from epis-
tolary authority (ex epistolari auctoritate) is particularly valuable as it provides
precious evidence of familiarity with the Abelard–Heloise epistolary cor-
pus in the twelfth century. The information that Heloise was educated in
Hebrew as well as Latin echoes the testimony of Abelard in a letter to the
nuns of the Paraclete, that Heloise was competent in Latin, Greek, and He-
brew (a tribute conventionally accorded only to St. Jerome).30 A few other
monastic chroniclers in the twelfth century reproduce imperfectly ele-
ments of Godel’s account, sometimes merging it with more widely circu-
lated hostile reports about Abelard. Robert of Auxerre changes Godel’s
epistolari to episcopali, presumably because he could not understand or ac-
cept what Godel meant.31
The failure of most twelfth-century chroniclers to recognize Abelard’s
Rule for the Paraclete may reflect the influence of the II Lateran Council
in 1139, which condemned women who called themselves nuns but did
not live according to the Rule of either Benedict, Basil or Augustine, as
leading lives of shameful depravity.32 The way of life of the nuns of the Par-
aclete needed to be authorized by one of the recognized Fathers of the
Church. Another ruling of 1139 explicitly prohibited nuns from singing
psalms alongside canons or monks in the same choir.33 For a monastic
community to base its existence on “epistolary authority” was irregular to
say the least. Heloise’s request that Abelard compose a new monastic Rule,
as distinct from a commentary on the Rule of Benedict ran counter to re-
ceived ecclesiastical tradition. The Institutiones nostrae, found immediately
after Abelard’s Rule in the Troyes MS 802 and composed to codify obser-
vances at an early daughter house of the Paraclete, reveals that Abelard’s
Rule was not followed at that abbey as the normative guide for the reli-
gious life. Whereas Abelard imagined that the Paraclete could sustain a rel-
atively affluent lifestyle, these observances suggest that life at the Paraclete
was more austere than Abelard had envisaged.
Godel’s emphasis on the devotion of Heloise to Abelard was also un-
usual in the light of growing reserve in the Church hierarchy in France
towards interaction between men and women in the religious life. There
had been a flowering of religious communities embracing both women
and men in the first half of the twelfth century. Fontevrault in the Loire
valley (founded by Robert of Arbrissel in 1101), Prémontré (founded by
Norbert of Xanten in 1120), and Rhineland abbeys like St. Disibod, all
accommodated both women and men in the first half of the twelfth cen-
tury. Concerns about the dangers of proximity between men and women
40 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

in religious life become more pronounced after the II Lateran Council in

1139. Sometime between 1124 and 1135, Bernard of Clairvaux warned
Luke de Roucy, abbot of an early Premonstratensian community at
Cuissy, near Soissons, about the risks presented by cohabitation between
men and women in the religious life.34 The nuns at Prémontré, who fol-
lowed a way of life similar to the women at the Paraclete, moved to a
more remote location ca. 1141. At Fontevrault, nuns came to occupy the
nave, while monks remained in the choir.35 By the 1170s, a time of
marked reduction in number of new foundations for women, Godel’s ac-
count of the interaction between Abelard and Heloise was unusual, to say
the least.
A few chroniclers in the late twelfth century were familiar with Godel’s
image of Abelard and Heloise as bound by love and devotion. Sometime
around 1200 the chronicler of Tours added a story that when Heloise was
laid to rest, Abelard’s arms rose from the grave to receive her.36 Jean de
Meun was not the first person to invent the image of Abelard and Heloise
as noble lovers, but he did come to learn much more about their relation-
ship than any earlier writer by reading their correspondence.

The Discovery of Abelard and Heloise

(Thirteenth–Sixteenth Centuries)
Heloise had no successor at the Paraclete as fluent in Latin letters as her-
self. Nothing is known about her library in the twelfth century or any of
the books which she may have brought with her from Argenteuil.37 Al-
though the Paraclete prospered under her guidance, its nuns did not have
the economic resources to maintain a large library or scriptorium. The
oldest document surviving from the Paraclete is from the late thirteenth
century, a translation into French of an Ordinal, giving guidance to the dis-
tinctive liturgical practices of the Paraclete. The fact that these instructions
and information about burial sites and processions at the Paraclete are
given in French suggests that Latin literacy declined among the nuns after
the death of Heloise.
It seems likely that Heloise kept her exchange of letters with Abelard at
the Paraclete. Our only manuscript of the correspondence to include the
complete text of Abelard’s Rule for the Paraclete (Troyes MS 802, from the
late thirteenth or early fourteenth century) also contains specific obser-
vances for the Paraclete drawn up during the time of Heloise, as well as a
range of other texts relating to the religious life for women.38 In the other
important early copy of the correspondence (Paris, BNF lat. 2923, from
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 41

the late thirteenth century), the exchange of Abelard–Heloise letters, with-

out the Rule, is followed by the Apologeticus of Berengar of Poitiers. This
was a vitriolic attack by Abelard’s loyal disciple on St. Bernard for his be-
havior at the council of Sens in 1141. The manuscript also contains vari-
ous minor writings of both Berengar and Abelard, notably the Soliloquium
(from the early 1120s), the Confessio fidei Universis (1141), and an otherwise
unknown letter to bishop Girbert of Paris (ca. 1120). As Berengar cites a
private letter of Abelard to Heloise within his Apologeticus, it is possible that
Berengar was entrusted by Abelard with transmitting letters to the Para-
clete, and subsequently assembled various writings by his master.39
In the absence of any twelfth-century manuscript of the famous
Abelard–Heloise letters, it is difficult to untangle the early history of their
text, but this is not an argument against their authenticity. Most extant
copies of the correspondence emanate not from the Paraclete, but from the
Parisian region. Robert de Bardi, a canon of Notre-Dame and chancellor
of the Sorbonne, bought the Troyes MS 802 from the cathedral chapter in
1347. Petrarch obtained his copy of the correspondence (Paris, BNF lat.
2923) sometime between 1337 and 1343, perhaps from Robert de Bardi,
who invited him to Paris in 1340.40 In Petrarch’s manuscript, the
Abelard–Heloise exchange (without the Rule) and the Berengar–Abelard
anthology are followed by letter collections of Cassiodorus, Stephen of
Orléans (1128–1203, abbot of Sainte-Geneviève in 1176 and bishop of
Tournai from 1192), and two thirteenth-century letter collections, many
from Parisian students.41
Petrarch’s fascination with Heloise is evident from the many comments
that he appended to the margins of her letters in his manuscript.While liv-
ing as a secular canon at Parma between 1344 and 1349, Petrarch used a
flyleaf of his Abelard–Heloise manuscript to record a list of dates, each ac-
companied by an undeciphered code of dots and dashes, a record of his
own struggle at this time with sexual desire.42 His idealized image of
Heloise, evident in marginal notes he made to his copy of the correspon-
dence, has much in common with that of another secular cleric, Jean de
Meun. After discovering Cicero’s letters to Atticus in 1345, Petrarch culti-
vated rigorously classical notions of friendship with other male scholars,
while writing love poetry in Italian. He singled Abelard out as a philoso-
pher who loved solitude in his treatise On the Solitary Life (in which he also
observed that there was no poison as destructive to the quiet life as the
company of women).43 Petrarch’s fascination with ancient Rome led him
to gloss over the extent to which the study of classical letters, vividly ex-
emplified by Abelard and Heloise, had flourished in the twelfth century.
42 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

He was interested in the example of Abelard more as a man of learning

than as a theologian.
The letters of Abelard and Heloise acquired a mythic status in France
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, not least because of the
popularity of The Romance of the Rose.44 Petrarch’s claim that there were
no great writers or poets outside Italy led Jean de Hesdin to remind him
in 1369/70 of the example of Abelard.45 Although Coluccio Salutati
asked Jean de Montreuil (1354–1418) in 1395/96 for a copy of the let-
ters of Abelard and Heloise, no manuscripts of the correspondence sur-
vive in Italian libraries.46 Jean de Montreuil was part of an influential
circle of humanists loyal to the French king, who defended Jean de
Meun’s reputation against the criticism of Christine de Pisan and Jean
Gerson. Christine had accused Pierre Col, a canon of Notre-Dame, of
stooping to the level of Heloise in preferring to be called a meretrix (pros-
titute) in his enthusiasm for Jean de Meun’s poem.47 Christine resented
the way that Jean de Meun portrayed women as the focus of male sexual
indulgence, effectively offering inspiration only to men. Although she
quotes a Latin word used by Heloise, her negative response to Heloise
suggests that she had not read much further than Jean de Meun’s version
of her letter in The Romance of the Rose.48 She saw Heloise as a symbol of
a debased form of love.
Abelard and Heloise were seen by educated Parisians in the fourteenth
century as embodying values very different from those represented by
Bernard of Clairvaux. Gontier Col, brother of Pierre Col and secretary to
the king, transcribed Jean de Meun’s translation of the correspondence, ap-
pending translations of Berengar’s Apologeticus, Abelard’s Confession of Faith
to Heloise, and the letter Peter the Venerable sent to Heloise after Abelard’s
death.49 Nicolas de Baye (ca. 1364–1419), a royal counselor active in the
Parlement of Paris, owned an unusually large collection of Abelard’s writ-
ings, including an unbound copy of the Rule for the Paraclete.50 In 1396
Benedict XIII, an Avignon Pope in conflict with the Roman Pope Boni-
face IX, had offered a fifty-day indulgence for all who helped rebuild the
Paraclete after its near total destruction wrought by war in the mid-four-
teenth century.51 Notre-Dame came to own a number of manuscripts of
Abelard’s writing.52 In vernacular literature, Heloise was associated with
the art of love. A fictional guide for lovers, modeled on the De amore of An-
dreas Capellanus, is entitled Les epistres de l’abesse Heloys du Paraclit in a
manuscript from ca. 1500.53 From a different angle, Jean Molinet offered
the image of Heloise as a repentant sinner in his moralization of The Ro-
mance of the Rose (ca. 1483).54
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 43

The history of the Troyes MS 802 of the letters is complex, but reveals
much about the way Abelard and Heloise were remembered in the later
medieval period. Although it contains a set of texts seemingly put together
at the Paraclete, the manuscript itself was bought by Robert de Bardi in
1347 from the cathedral chapter of Notre-Dame. This manuscript, identi-
cal in every respect to the exemplar Paraclitense obtained by François d’Am-
boise and André Duchesne from the abbess of the Paraclete, Marie III de
La Rochefoucauld, prior to 1616, must have been given to the Paraclete
sometime between 1347 and the late fifteenth century (perhaps as part of
a program of reconstruction of the abbey).55 Copied into the Troyes man-
uscript in a late fifteenth-century hand are various rubrics and epitaphs, as
well as Peter the Venerable’s formula of absolution of Abelard, all apparently
preserved or engraved on the tomb in the twelfth century. These texts, in-
cluding the formula of absolution, were also added in the late fifteenth
century to an important liturgical manuscript of the Paraclete (Chaumont,
Bibliothèque municipale 31). It seems no coincidence that these epitaphs
were transcribed soon after the solemn opening of the tombs of Abelard
and Heloise at the Paraclete on 2 May 1497. Their remains were then
transferred from le petit moustier or “little monastery” (Abelard’s original
chapel) to the left and right hand side of the grill, separating the choir from
the altar in a new abbey church constructed by Catherine II de Courcelles,
abbess 1482–1513.56 Two other copies of the correspondence containing
abbreviated versions of the Rule were also produced in the late fifteenth
century.57 The attention given to Abelard and Heloise as monastic figures
in these late fifteenth-century manuscripts reflects a culture of monastic
humanism not unlike that which prompted Johannes de Vepria, not far dis-
tant at Clairvaux, to transcribe a collection of love letters. This interest in
the monastic context of the correspondence was subtly different from the
interest of Jean de Meun in Abelard and Heloise as noble lovers.

Between History and Literature

(Seventeenth–Eighteenth Centuries)
Abelard’s writings had been included in the first edition of the Index of Pro-
hibited Books, issued in 1559, even though they had not yet found their way
into print. This made the publication in 1616 of the Opera Omnia of
Abelard and Heloise an important and potentially controversial event.58
André Duchesne’s still invaluable commentary on the Historia calamitatum
draws on a wide range of historical sources to provide a far more nuanced
picture of Abelard as a theologian and Heloise as an abbess than suggested
44 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

by Jean de Meun. The doctors of the Sorbonne had their censure of many
specific statements made by Abelard (as well as a warning about Heloise’s
lack of penitence about her past) included in a reprinted version of the
1616 edition, in which an elaborate preface by d’Amboise replaced that of
Duchesne.59 At the Paraclete, no mention was made of Abelard and
Heloise in a rigidly orthodox commentary on the Rule of Benedict writ-
ten for the nuns of the Paraclete and published in 1632 with the approval
of the bishop of Troyes. Their fall from honor at the Paraclete was made
complete when their remains were transferred from the main church to a
small crypt in 1626. The post-Tridentine attitude towards Abelard is ex-
emplified in a study of Abelard’s life and thought published by the Cister-
cian scholar, Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, in 1644. He presented Abelard
as a heretic who came back to orthodoxy through the efforts of St.
Bernard, but hardly mentioned Heloise at all.60 Duchesne’s critical effort
to deepen historical awareness was blocked by enduring stereotypes of
Abelard circulated by St. Bernard.
Enthusiasm for Heloise as the embodiment of tragic love was re-ignited
in the mid-seventeenth century by the first translations of her letters into
French to be made from the 1616 edition. In 1642, François de Grenaille
included translations of the letters of Heloise within a manual of letters
from various women, both fictive and genuine: mythical queens of antiq-
uity, Mary Queen of Scots, and the sixteenth-century actress, Isabella An-
dreini, to many kinds of lover.61 De Grenaille explains that he is presenting
Heloise not as debauched, but as a “French Magdalen,” a true penitent
converted to the path of virtue.62 By implication she was a sinner who
converted. His exchange begins with a fictitious letter from Heloise to
Abelard warning against marriage, followed by relatively free paraphrases
of the first two letters of Heloise as published in 1616.63 De Grenaille then
introduces a letter, deliberately invented “to make Heloise as serious as she
seems to be free in the other letters,” as well as an imaginary missive in-
troducing Abelard’s Confession of Faith to Heloise.64 He presents Heloise’s
voice within a framework that makes her respectable in the eyes of the
Church. De Grenaille’s translation may have stimulated the composition of
the Lettres portugaises (Paris: Cl. Barbin, 1669), a collection of letters osten-
sibly from a Portuguese nun to her lover, in fact composed by Gabriel de
Lavergne, vicomte de Guilleragues. In this reworking of the Heroides, a
woman’s voice was yet again taken over by a man.65
Heloise first became widely known as a tragic heroine through a novel
attributed to Jacques Alluis, as much about Fulbert as Heloise, imagined as
Fulbert’s daughter and in her fourteenth year when she met Abelard.66
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 45

Roger de Rabutin (1618–93), once imprisoned in the Bastille for writing

the Histoire amoureuse des Gaules, an exposé of morals at the court of Louis
XIV, may have been inspired by Alluis’ novel to make his own translation
of the Abelard–Heloise correspondence in 1687 for Madame de Sévigné,
not published until 1697. She admired the way de Rabutin gave esprit to
Heloise.67 A French translation of Heloise’s first letter to Abelard was pub-
lished in 1693, the first of a number of translations of the personal letters
in the correspondence to gain a wide audience throughout the eighteenth
century. It promulgated an influential picture of Heloise as victim of
Abelard’s passion: “Love is easily persuaded for a girl, especially at the age
of eighteen years.”68 Strict censorship during the reign of Louis XIV
(1643–1715), particularly severe after 1685, meant that these translations
were perceived as subversive of religious life. Like the Lettres portugaises and
the more explicitly erotic Vénus dans le cloître, the letters of Abelard and
Heloise were often seized by the authorities.69 Pierre Bayle praised
Abelard’s skeptical spirit in encyclopedia articles about both Abelard and
Heloise as symbols of resistance to the establishment.70 Their letters, often
printed alongside the Lettres portugaises, provided a vehicle for communi-
cation between women and men within the salon culture of the late sev-
enteenth century. Although a translation was presented as published “at the
Paraclete” in 1696, the Abelard–Heloise letters were not officially allowed
to be printed in Paris until 1714.71 Heloise’s letters had acquired canoni-
cal status as models of good style by early in the reign of Louis XV
(1715–74). In 1724 Malherbe offered Rabutin’s translations of the corre-
spondence as the first of a series of models of exemplary prose, along with
his comment that in her letters “it is not art, but nature which expresses it-
self.”72 The monastic context of the Abelard–Heloise exchange was all but
forgotten, except at the Paraclete itself.
The 1693 translation inspired the first popular translation of Heloise’s
letter into English within an anonymous publication, A Continuation of the
Dialogue Between Two Young Ladies Concerning the Management of Husbands.
Part the Second. Wherein is a most Passionate Letter Full of Wit and Affection,
written by Eloisa (a Young French Lady,) to her Husband, Abelard, who was Emas-
culated by the Malice of her Uncle (London, 1696). Its author described
Heloise as of “about Sixteen Years, of a quick and sparkling Wit, and of a
Beauty able to touch the most Insensible,” and of exemplary wisdom in
managing a difficult husband.73 John Hughes translated a fuller version of
the correspondence, based only loosely on Abelard’s autobiographical nar-
rative which had been renamed the Letter to Philinthus.74 He inspired
Alexander Pope (1688–1744), after translating Ovid’s Sappho to Phaon, to
46 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

compose Eloisa to Abelard in 1717, and send it to Lady Mary Wortley Mon-
tague (1689–1762), then travelling around Europe.75 Pope’s poem pro-
voked an admirer, Judith Madan, née Cowper (1702–81) to compose
Abelard to Eloisa in 1720, frequently printed alongside Eloisa to Abelard and
Hughes’s translation.76 A French translation of Pope, originally published
in Berlin in 1751, inspired a famous version by Colardeau, presented as
published at the Paraclete in 1758.77 Heloise became an emblem of en-
lightenment and the focus of literary admiration. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712–78) capitalized on this vogue when he published in 1761 Julie, ou la
Nouvelle Héloïse: Lettres de deux Amans. He had Saint-Preux proclaim to
Julie that “Heloise had a heart made for loving” while expressing revulsion
for the dishonesty of Abelard.78 Abelard’s career exerted a particular fasci-
nation for enlightenment philosophes, often critics of clerical celibacy, even
though many were not married themselves.79 Whether in the twelfth, fif-
teenth, or eighteenth centuries, epistolary dialogue provided a vehicle
through which men and women could discuss relationships. The idea that
Heloise and Abelard had once exchanged love letters provided an ideal op-
portunity for writers to present their own version of what such a dialogue
should have been like.These translations and paraphrases were read in a lit-
erary climate in which Ovid’s Heroides were still much appreciated as ex-
pressions of feminine emotion. They drew on the classical imagery within
Heloise’s letters, even if they did not understand the monastic context in
which they were written.
At the Paraclete, strict Tridentine orthodoxy gave way to enthusiastic
devotion to both Abelard and Heloise. In 1701, Catherine III de La
Rochefoucauld (abbess 1675–1706) had a memorial to them both erected
in the choir, and re-established there a stone statue representing the Trin-
ity, said to come from the time of Abelard.80 In 1720 Dom Armand Ger-
vaise, former abbot of La Trappe, published a study of the lives of Abelard
and Heloise, drawing on a much wider range of texts than earlier accounts.
Dedicating it to the new abbess of the Paraclete, Gervaise sought to guide
the reader “firmly on the paths of Truth” rather than through the falsifica-
tions of contemporaries. Gervaise followed this in 1723 with the first pub-
lication to reproduce both the Latin text and a translation of the
correspondence, supposedly based on “an old Latin manuscript found in
the library of François d’Amboise.” (In fact he used only the 1616 edi-
tion.)81 Gervaise presented both Abelard and Heloise as models of Chris-
tian humanism and Peter the Venerable as the embodiment of Christian
forgiveness. There was such enthusiasm for Abelard and Heloise as lovers
at the Paraclete that in 1780 there was a solemn exposition of their remains
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 47

in the main church.82 Dom Charles Cajot, last chaplain of the Paraclete
and a believer in the need for Benedictines to justify themselves as socially
useful, studied the history of the Paraclete. When the abbey was dissolved
in 1792, Dom Cajot took with him a number of its printed books (in-
cluding an annotated copy of the 1616 edition of the works of Abelard and
Heloise) to Verdun, where he helped establish its public library. The last re-
maining manuscripts of the abbey, mostly liturgical in nature, were dis-
persed among friends of the last abbess, Charlotte de Roucy.83 While the
policy of transferring medieval manuscripts from abbeys like Clairvaux to
the municipal library of Troyes occurred without difficulty, the library of
the Paraclete was dispersed before the commissioners arrived because of
the degree of popular interest in its founders. The house in Paris where
Abelard and Heloise were thought to have lived under one roof (first iden-
tified as such in 1787) became a place of pilgrimage, as did their new rest-
ing place at the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris after 1817, the only
medieval figures to be accorded such an honor.84 They were perceived as
independently minded spirits, out of sorts with the culture of their time,
but united by their love.

The Authenticity Debate

(Nineteenth–Twentieth Centuries)
Abelard, considered a hypocrite by Rousseau, began to be recognized as
an important thinker in the early nineteenth century through the research
of Victor Cousin into previously unread logical manuscripts of Abelard,
transferred at the Revolution to the national library of France. Cousin
showed that there was a firm foundation to the claims of the Historia
calamitatum that Abelard was a great logician in his time. Cousin portrayed
Abelard as an intellectual rebel, who laid the foundations of French intel-
lectual tradition long before the more recent achievements of German
philosophy.85 He focused more on dialectic than on ethics, and did not
study the writings of Heloise, who remained in nineteenth-century imag-
ination the mythic embodiment of love. Charles de Rémusat spoke in el-
evated terms about the intensity of Heloise’s passion and her outward
submission to Abelard, but concentrated on his achievement in philosophy
and (unlike Cousin) theology.86 In their different ways, Cousin and de Ré-
musat were heirs to those fourteenth-century clerics so fascinated by
Abelard. Nineteenth-century readers continued to see Heloise as the em-
bodiment of tragic love, a classical heroine above the cut and thrust of aca-
demic debate. It was a fictional image which created its own problems.
48 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

The apparent inconsistency between her image as a “patron saint” of

love and her reputation for piety and learning has led a number of critics
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to question whether Heloise
wrote the letters attributed to her in the manuscript tradition. Peter von
Moos has provided a brilliant account of the ideological issues at stake in
that debate.87 In 1806 Ignaz Fessler, a Capuchin monk who turned protes-
tant and became a professor at Berlin, suggested that a third party might
have extended Abelard’s Historia calamitatum with a fictional dialogue to
communicate a traditional theme about the struggle between human love
and the values of the cloister. Is the dialogue not like a novel? Did not
Abelard’s claim to have visited the Paraclete frequently after its re-founda-
tion in 1129 contradict Heloise’s claim that he had not offered her per-
sonal support, either in person or in letter?88 Fessler’s argument was picked
up by Orelli, while Lalanne (editor of Rabutin’s correspondence) argued
that it was impossible for “compromising passion” to have co-existed with
Heloise’s reputation for piety and religion, but confusingly argued that
original letters “of the heart” had been revised at a later date, by Heloise.
Gréard accepted the possibility that the letters had been edited by a third
party, but maintained that Heloise “gave them her soul.”89 Enthusiasts for
the correspondence effectively created Heloise as an idealized figure, re-
moved from history. This double standard is vividly illustrated by remarks
of Henry Adams in 1904:

With infinite regret, Héloïse must be left out of the story, because she was
not a philosopher or a poet or an artist, but only a French woman to the last
millimetre of her shadow. Even though one may suspect that her famous let-
ters to Abélard are, for the most part, by no means above scepticism, she was,
by French standards, worth at least a dozen Abélards, if only because she
called Saint Bernard a false apostle.90

While he recognized Abelard to be an intellectual, Adams considered

Heloise to be like Isolde, “uniting the ages,” more myth than history.
Such attitudes have continued to shape twentieth-century scholarship.
Bernhard Schmeidler developed the hypothesis once suggested in passing
by Martin Deutsch in 1883 that Abelard composed the entire exchange.91
Schmeidler’s early studies stimulated Charlotte Charrier in the interwar
period to devote a monumental study to the fabrication of the legend of
Heloise. Following Schmeidler’s lead, she identified various Latin phrases
(tanto/quanto, saltem, obsecro) which occur in the letters of both parties to
argue that Abelard had composed the entire correspondence.92 This inter-
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 49

pretation, which emphasizes a conflict between worldly and spiritual love

in the correspondence, is often maintained by German scholars, notably
Georg Misch, author of a major history of autobiography.93 D.W. Robert-
son has espoused a similar interpretation of the letters as part of a wider
argument that all medieval literature about amor is informed by a sense of
irony, and subordinates worldly love to spiritual values. Acknowledging
that Heloise and Abelard might have originally exchanged letters, he ar-
gued that the existing letter collection was designed for the nuns of the
Paraclete as a record of spiritual conversion. He questioned the authentic-
ity of Heloise’s letters, doubting whether she could ever have adopted
what he calls the “ludicrous” position on marriage attributed to her in the
Historia calamitatum: “the ‘character’ Heloise, like the ‘character’ Abelard,
serves as an extreme example, both in degradation and in the final triumph
of reasonableness.”94
Emphasis on the monastic structure of the correspondence also in-
formed an ingenious hypothesis put forward by John Benton in 1972 that
the entire correspondence had been invented in the late thirteenth cen-
tury in relation to a disputed abbatial election at the Paraclete. He subse-
quently came to accept that Abelard did write the Historia calamitatum, but
then reverted to Schmeidler’s rather shaky argument that similarities in vo-
cabulary and prose rhythm are evidence of a single author of the whole
correspondence, namely Abelard.95 Debate was muddied further by Hu-
bert Silvestre, the only scholar to support Benton’s first hypothesis. He sug-
gested that the entire correspondence had been written by Jean de Meun
or a colleague and then translated into French as part of a campaign against
clerical celibacy.96 The hypothesis, which reads Heloise’s letters as about
“free love” at odds with spiritual norms, stretches the linguistic evidence
to an impossible degree. Such arguments do not explain the close verbal
and thematic interconnections between the correspondence and other
known writings of Abelard and Heloise. It has often been argued that the
ideals of love touched on in Heloise’s letters anticipate theories of pure
love (fin’amor) in romance literature. Helen Laurie has argued that Chré-
tien de Troyes was familiar with the correspondence in the second half of
the twelfth century.97 Rather than assessing Heloise’s declarations of love
as “worldly” and thus incompatible with her situation as a respected abbess,
it makes more sense to relate them to new thinking about love being de-
veloped by clerics such as Chrétien.
Debates about the authenticity of the correspondence have often de-
generated into acrimonious polemic between “believers” and “non-be-
lievers.” In lectures first delivered at the Collège de France in 1936–37
50 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Étienne Gilson explored the correspondence as evidence of the medieval

(and indeed specifically French) roots of values traditionally identified with
the Italian renaissance. He considered the correspondence of Abelard and
Heloise as a heroic monument to a dialogue between two systems of
morality, both endowed with grandeur, the fundamentally pagan ethos of
Heloise and the Christian ethos of Abelard. Ultimately his sympathy was
with Abelard as a genuinely contrite soul.98 He rebutted skepticism about
the authenticity of the correspondence as an attack on texts which were
“obviously” true. Peter Dronke has defended the view that Heloise did not
repent of her love for Abelard, while also arguing forcefully for reading her
letters as sophisticated works of literary art.99 By contrast, Peter von Moos
inherits a line of interpretation that goes back to Fessler, Deutsch, and
Schmeidler in arguing that Heloise’s silence at the beginning of her third
letter about her past cannot be used as evidence of “the state of her soul.”
Von Moos urges that the correspondence be taken seriously as an exem-
plum of religious conversion.100 Fascinated by the literature of consolation
(of which he has written the definitive study), he reads the correspondence
as Abelard might view it, as a rhetorical debate about spiritual ideals.101
While his arguments offer important criticism of the idea that texts reveal
psychological truth, they have been criticized for imposing too much ide-
ological unity on an exchange between dissonant voices.102 The weakness
with both the “unrepentant Heloise” and the monastic exemplum hy-
potheses is that they both interpret the professions of love in Heloise’s let-
ters as at odds with spiritual ideals. Indirectly such readings reflect the
influence not just of The Romance of the Rose, but of the Historia calamita-
tum and a masculine literary tradition which Abelard inherited. The letters
can be interpreted as a monastic memorial to the founders of the Paraclete,
but this avoids discussion of Abelard and Heloise as thinkers with distinct
ideas about love, both of whom present their own lives as exempla to make
their point.103
The mere existence of uncertainty about the authenticity of Heloise’s
letters has provoked some prominent medievalists to steer away from them.
When Georges Duby declared that the correspondence presented a ficti-
tious image of Heloise, he was continuing to read Heloise’s letters as about
“worldly” love, at odds with the monastic context of the correspondence.
This dichotomy mirrors a common theme in historiographical perception
of the twelfth century as a time of contest between a secular vision of so-
ciety, exemplified by perception of Abelard as a kind of secular warrior,
and an ecclesiastical model, as defined by Ivo of Chartres and other canon-
ists. Duby is more interested in what knights and clerics have to say about
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 51

women than in women’s reactions to men.104 Duby’s influence underpins

the opening statement of a recent essay on women in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries: “Women almost never speak for themselves. Scholars are
still not sure whether Heloise wrote the letters traditionally attributed to
her.”105 This is not a position shared by most English speaking scholars
writing on Abelard in the 1990s. David Luscombe in particular has em-
phasized the close relationship of the correspondence to a range of other
historical sources relating to the Paraclete.106
The defense of Heloise has been taken up by many feminist scholars
since the pioneering studies of Charlotte Charrier and Enid McLeod.
Heloise is often seen as struggling against a male ideology. Barbara New-
man has defended the authenticity of the letters of Heloise by identifying
the absurd consequences that follow from reading Abelard as author of
letters critical of himself. She reads Heloise as herself a victim of Abelard’s
own repressive tendencies, “a failed mystic,” devoted to Abelard rather
than to God.107 Peggy Kamuf has looked at Heloise’s letters as models of
a process by which the narrative of the Historia calamitatum is decon-
structed. Yet feminist readings of Heloise’s letters can also repeat tradi-
tional images of an unrepentant heroine, trapped in a male monastic
world, recasting a traditional religious/secular conflict as male/female am-
bivalence. Juanita Ruys has astutely observed that Kamuf ’s interpretation
of Heloise (adopting outward signs of piety while remaining inwardly un-
repentant) unconsciously echoes the position taken by Gilson.108 A num-
ber of recent studies consider the artificial nature of any distinctions
between public and private in relation to Heloise’s letters and the strate-
gies of persuasion and negotiation within the correspondence. Abelard
provides a particularly fascinating example of the construction of a mas-
culine identity after his castration.109
Heloise’s third letter and Abelard’s two long treatises about the
monastic life have never attracted the same attention as her declarations
of love. Yet her third letter provides a brilliantly probing critique of the
limitations of the Rule of St. Benedict in dealing with the practicalities
of the situation of women in the religious life. As Linda Georgianna has
pointed out in an incisive analysis of that third letter, it documents her
own search for authenticity within the religious life.110 Even less well
studied than this letter of Heloise is the collection of monastic obser-
vances (Institutiones nostrae) which follow Abelard’s Rule in the Troyes
MS 802, rarely included in translations of the correspondence. Chryso-
gonus Waddell has argued convincingly that this text draws extensively
on monastic observances as practiced in Cistercian communities prior to
52 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

1147.111 This finding complemented his earlier discovery that the litur-
gical manuscripts from the Paraclete lay down prayers and rituals very
similar to those practiced in early Cistercian communities, although with
the inclusion of certain hymns, sequences, and prayers devised by
Abelard.112 The research of Georgianna and Waddell offers a very differ-
ent image of Heloise’s relationship to monastic life from the romantic
picture of a soul arguing with her beloved Abelard, that can be traced
back to The Romance of the Rose.
Readers of the letters of Heloise have often interpreted them as at odds
with the what is assumed to be the predominantly other-worldly focus of
medieval culture. This leads to perception of Heloise as either a complete
rebel against her society or as a mythic construction devised to contradict
the dominant values of medieval culture. The 1988 film Stealing Heaven,
for example, emphasizes the contrast between carnal and spiritual love
rather than the subtlety of Heloise’s thought.113 From a different perspec-
tive, Richard Southern has rejected romantic interest in the figure of
Heloise and has claimed that she shares the same monastic attitude towards
sex as Abelard, “their age not having developed a plausible ethic for the
secular life.”114 The difficulty with these interpretations of Abelard and
Heloise is that they impose a single ideology on individuals who do not
share a uniform concept of ethical behavior. Good poetic fiction about
Heloise and Abelard can sometimes grasp these contrasts with more per-
spicacity than much scholarly writing.115
Questions of authenticity have tended to be directed more against the
letters attributed to Heloise than those of Abelard. Yet the reliability of
the Historia calamitatum is just as problematic. In trying to elicit sympa-
thy for his teaching, Abelard presents his career as continually harassed by
forces claiming to represent the cause of ecclesiastical reform. His desire
to present himself as a teacher who has overcome vices of lust and intel-
lectual arrogance distorts the way he describes his early relationship to
Heloise. Framed within conventions of ascetic discourse, the Historia
calamitatum alludes only in passing to the culture of secular clerics who
delighted in amatory verse. Abelard dismisses his love songs as erotic tri-
fles, the product of an inflated ego justly punished through the ven-
geance of Heloise’s uncle. There is an internal repression at work in
Abelard’s narrative, not just of Heloise, as Barbara Newman has pointed
out, but of his own sexuality, consistent with the ascetic milieu to which
he belonged. In Heloise’s letters, the love lyrics and intimate letters are
accorded much more importance as expressions of a love which Heloise
trusted and returned in kind. The Historia calamitatum seeks to quell the
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 53

rumors still in circulation about his past by presenting a “true account”

of the events leading up to his castration and the burning of his book of
theology at the council of Soissons in 1121. She counters his explanation
of their past relationship as based on lust alone by affirming that she
based her actions on ideals of pure love.
One consequence of the often acrimonious debate of the 1970s and
1980s about the authenticity of the famous correspondence of Abelard
and Heloise has been that the Epistolae duorum amantium, edited by Köns-
gen, have been largely neglected by scholars. Yet Könsgen has uncovered
a major literary text from the twelfth century. It is part of a larger reper-
toire of secular Latin writing about love from the eleventh and early
twelfth centuries, little known outside a small circle of specialists. Betty
Radice, for example, made the confident assertion in a footnote to her
translation of the Historia calamitatum that “not only do none of the love
lyrics composed by Abelard survive, but no love-poems are known in
north France from this time.”116 While no love poems in Old French can
be securely dated to the early twelfth century, many Latin love poems sur-
vive from this period. The letters and poems copied by Johannes de Vepria
belong to a wider corpus of exchanges in Latin between educated men
and women, and deserve to be more widely known as part of the litera-
ture of dialogue.117
The Historia calamitatum is such a crafted narrative that it is tempting
to rely on it as an “authentic” presentation of Abelard’s life. Its careful
shaping of Abelard’s identity only becomes apparent when we consider
this narrative and the associated correspondence both in relation to other
texts from the twelfth century, and to the particular constellation of po-
litical forces at work in Paris in the early twelfth century. The love letters
and poems copied by Johannes de Vepria at Clairvaux throw intimate in-
sight into a world normally excluded from view. They create an imagi-
nary space of intimacy and openness very different from that created by
the more well-known letters of Abelard and Heloise. They are not con-
cerned with the hurly-burly of political conflict, academic life, and eccle-
siastical obligation. Nonetheless, they issue from the same social
environment as that from which Abelard seeks to remove himself in the
Historia calamitatum. In the latter narrative, Heloise is presented in a static
form, as both the passive object of his early lust and a saintly abbess. The
love letters present a woman much more actively engaged in an intellec-
tual relationship with her teacher. The Historia calamitatum is certainly an
authentic text of Abelard, but it does not provide an authentic record of
his relationship with Heloise.
54 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Conclusion
The exchange copied by Johannes de Vepria records a relationship between
an eminent teacher and a brilliant student very similar to that of Abelard
and Heloise, although from a different viewpoint. A young woman is daz-
zled by the attention given her by a famous teacher, and reflects much
about the ethics of their relationship. She admires his gifts in both philos-
ophy and poetry. He is someone before whom “French pigheadedness
rightly yields,” and before whom she predicts “the mountaintops will pros-
trate themselves.” Occasional comments from the teacher suggest that he
is worried about his public reputation. He thinks of his behavior more as
driven by passion than as the focus of ethical commitment. The exchange
concludes with his reflecting that he has been seduced by external charms
of a woman “famous in the city.” In the Historia calamitatum, a teacher sim-
ilarly wants to affirm that he has now transcended the chains of lust. The
woman he once loved challenges this picture, urging him to enter into a
dialogue as intimate as that which they once enjoyed. Abelard’s ethical
schema in the Historia calamitatum, based on admiration for the example of
ancient philosophers, is challenged by an ethical vision drawing on prin-
ciples of selfless love.
At the same time as the schools of Paris were buzzing with rumors of
scandal in the heart of the cathedral cloister, St. Bernard (1090–1153),
freshly ordained by William of Champeaux (d. 1121), was establishing a
idealistic monastic community in the woods around Clairvaux. In both
places, the favorite topic of conversation was the nature of love, perceived
with a new intensity as a force which bound together individuals far more
closely than any institutional structure. William of Saint-Thierry (ca.
1075–1148) responded to the question “what is love?” with a treatise On
the Nature and Dignity of Love, written ca. 1121–24, in which he explains
that he is responding to the popularity of Ovid’s reflections on the sub-
ject.118 His theme is that amor is divine in origin, but embraces many kinds
of love, including human love and the love of God. He does not talk at all
about love between man and woman. Bernard of Clairvaux shared
William’s interest in the process of love, but gave more attention to the role
of experience and feeling. He was fascinated by the psychology of love, as
mediated by the Song of Songs. Bernard was a stronger orator than
William. The abbot of Clairvaux could hold an audience spellbound with
his reflection on the power of love, and the experience of being visited by
the Word of God, the lover of the soul. He saw Cistercian communities as
differentiating themselves from old established monastic institutions by
 MEMORIES OF AN AFFAIR 55

their emphasis on authenticity and their rejection of empty conventions.

The Cistercian ideal of community based itself on caritas rather than au-
thority.119 The irony was that both Bernard’s admirers and his detractors
insisted on portraying him as first of all a man of authority.
The letters copied by Johannes de Vepria might be concerned with re-
lationships in a secular rather than a monastic sphere, but they share with
the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux a common concern to base ethics on
an ideal of true love. The woman in these love letters is concerned with
the sincerity of her love, watched over by God. In these letters, she is not
having to confront traditional ascetic teaching about sexual relationships.
The questions that have been raised about the authenticity of Heloise’s let-
ters reflect doubts about whether Heloise could really have been so com-
mitted to worldly love while also being a respected abbess. This problem
disappears if she is seen as sharing a common concern of her generation
to establish a code of conduct not based on empty words. The close inter-
connections between their correspondence and their other writings leaves
no doubt that Abelard and Heloise did write the correspondence attrib-
uted to them. Both in these monastic letters and in the love letters copied
by Johannes de Vepria, it is the woman who is most interested in develop-
ing ethical reflections on the demands of love. Heloise’s assertion that she
would rather be called Abelard’s prostitute than enjoy the wealth of Cae-
sar Augustus puts in more dramatic terms an idea which the woman offers
in letter 82, that if she possessed the riches of Caesar, such wealth should
be as nothing to her. In both cases, a classical ideal about true friendship is
applied to love.
While the historical record is dominated by the achievements of men,
we need to consider Heloise not just as the object of a lover’s attention,
but as an active agent in her society.Tensions about gender surface in many
different political and religious debates within twelfth-century France. Just
as Duchesne enlarged awareness of Abelard and Heloise by investigating a
wide range of historical sources beyond the Historia calamitatum, and as
Cousin uncovered a previously unknown dimension of Abelard by read-
ing hitherto neglected writings on logic, so it is necessary to relate their
correspondence to wider discussions about relationships between men and
women in twelfth-century France. The letters copied by Johannes de
Vepria may not talk explicitly about political or social events, but they do
present a sharp portrait of a woman intellectually independent from her
teacher. To understand the situation in which a young woman could de-
fine herself in this way, we need to look more closely at the situation of
the schools of Paris in the early twelfth century.
CHAPTER 3

PARIS, THE SCHOOLS,

AND THE POLITICS OF SEX

aris, 1116.1 On the eastern end of the island stands the cathedral of
P Notre-Dame, not the Gothic edifice that Maurice de Sully will con-
struct fifty years later but a Merovingian building over five hundred years
old. The front porch faces Saint-Étienne, the largest church in Gaul when
it was built in the sixth century, now a broken ruin.2 The canons are proud
of being guardians of the cathedral, but they are aware that it needs re-
building. They want to promote its school as a center of learning. There is
a climate of optimism abroad, of many new ideas for the future. The pre-
centor is Adam, a brilliant young poet and musician, whose compositions
bring a new vitality to its liturgy.3 The cloister of Notre-Dame, an area
stretching from the north side of the cathedral down to the Seine, outside
the jurisdiction of the bishop, is alive with activity.4 Students lodge in the
canons’ houses, a practice that leads some to complain that the tranquillity
of the cloister is being disturbed.5
In 1116 a new teacher is attracting students to the cathedral school from
far outside France: from Brittany, Anjou, Poitou, Gascony, Spain, Normandy,
Flanders, even Germany, Sweden, and Rome itself.6 Peter Abelard’s ap-
pointment there, probably in late 1113, was the responsibility of the chap-
ter rather than the bishop. In particular he has the esteem of canon Fulbert,
one of the three subdeacons at the cathedral since at least 1099, who lives
in a house near the cathedral school.7 Although a cleric, Abelard is not or-
dained to higher orders, and thus does not carry any major liturgical re-
sponsibilities. He is a canon, not at Notre-Dame, but at Sens, center of the
archdiocese of which Paris is a part.8 Such positions do not demand resi-
dence, but provide both income and status, to the outrage of those who de-
58 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

test such sinecures. Abelard is also making money by charging fees from his
students, not a practice followed by teachers who were monks.9
A young woman is living in one of the canons’ houses in the cathedral
cloister. Heloise is from a privileged background, having been raised and
educated at the abbey of Notre-Dame at Argenteuil, a richly endowed
community on the banks of the Seine with strong connections to the
crown.10 Her mother, Hersende, is from a noble family.11 Her father’s
identity is unknown.12 It is not unusual for cathedral canons to have mem-
bers of their family living with them. Some canons are married, like Du-
rand, one of the three priests of the cathedral. He and his sons had
apparently built a house outside the cloister, which was subsequently
pulled down by Louis VI (1108–37). Louis compensated the cathedral
chapter for this when he married Adelaide of Maurienne in March 1115,
and formally acknowledged that the houses of the canons “inside and out-
side the cloister” were free from interference.13 The cloister was a place of
legal sanctuary theoretically independent from either the king or the
bishop.14 The independence of the cathedral canons is disliked by Galo,
bishop of Paris (1104–1116) and William of Champeaux (d. 1120). In
1109, William had left the cloister in order to establish a stricter religious
life not far away, at Saint-Victor. There, canons regular lead a communal
life, observing precepts of chastity and austerity, without distraction from
any women.
In 1116 Heloise already has a reputation for literary brilliance, but is
keen to further her studies. Fulbert eventually agrees that Abelard should
offer tuition to his niece, in return for lodging in his house. What then
happened is reported by Roscelin of Compiègne in a letter written to
Abelard no more than two or three years after the scandal broke. Roscelin
had taught Abelard before he came to Paris. He is merciless in his account
of what happened:

I have seen indeed in Paris that a certain cleric called Fulbert welcomed
you as a guest into his house, fed you as a close friend and member of the
household, and also entrusted to you his niece, a very prudent young
woman of outstanding disposition, for tuition.You, however, were not un-
mindful but contemptuous of that man, a noble and a cleric, a canon even
of the church of Paris, your host and lord, who looked after you freely and
honorably. Not sparing the virgin entrusted to you whom you should have
protected as entrusted to you and taught as a disciple, whipped up by a
spirit of unrestrained debauchery, you taught her not to argue but to for-
nicate. In one deed you are guilty of many crimes, namely of betrayal and
fornication and a most foul destroyer of virginal modesty. But God, the
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 59

Lord of vengeance, the God of vengeance, has acted freely; he has deprived you
of that part by which you had sinned.15

Roscelin describes the relationship between Abelard and his student as one
of unbridled sexual indulgence in the same way as Abelard recalls the af-
fair in the Historia calamitatum. He considered Fulbert’s action in having
Abelard castrated, not an action condoned by ecclesiastical or Roman law,
to be divinely ordained retribution for such debauchery.16
Orderic Vitalis, a monk of Saint-Évroul in Normandy, tells an intrigu-
ing story about Fulbert, that may be related to his involvement in Abelard’s
castration. Sometime between 1108 and 1118, Fulbert traveled to Nor-
mandy in order to return “for his own reasons” a complete bone of St.
Évroul stolen from the chapel of Henry I of France, that he had been given
by a certain chaplain as “a pledge of affection” (pignus amoris). Orderic does
not reveal what twinge of conscience had prompted Fulbert to betray the
chaplain’s trust and return the relic to Normandy, at war with France for
much of this time.17 This journey fits in with an independent report of
Fulbert’s temporary exile from Notre-Dame and loss of property after
Abelard’s castration.18 The fact that Fulbert does not sign documents of
Notre-Dame in 1117 suggests that this was the year of his disgrace. By
1119 Fulbert is back at the cathedral signing charters until 1124, when he
seems to have passed away.19 By returning the bone of St. Évroul to Nor-
mandy, Fulbert was hoping to make peace with God.
Roscelin’s account of Abelard’s relationship with Heloise reinforces the
image given in the Historia calamitatum that it fell far short of serious in-
tellectual exchange. The love letters copied by Johannes de Vepria, on the
other hand, present a picture of a relationship in which teacher and stu-
dent communicate a great deal in writing and speak for the most part in
very idealized tones. To argue that these differences make it impossible for
Heloise and Abelard to have written the love letters does not take account
of the rhetorical structure of the Historia calamitatum. Abelard emphasizes
the carnal aspect of their relationship to bring out his theme that he has
now successfully transcended the lusts of the flesh. Roscelin uses similar
rhetoric to vilify his former student. To understand how idealistic discus-
sions about love could be conducted in a society in which there was also
fierce condemnation of sexual promiscuity, we need to consider the degree
to which educated young women could enter into literary dialogue with
clerics. The relationship between Heloise and Abelard was not just a pri-
vate matter. It developed at a time when ecclesiastical authorities were en-
deavoring to prohibit clergy ordained to the rank of subdeacon and above
60 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

from any form of unchaste association with women. Relationships be-

tween clerics and women could easily be seen as dangerous if correct be-
havior was not observed.

Cathedral Politics and the

Kingdom of France 1100–1116
Abelard describes his early career in the Historia calamitatum in terms of
personal hostility between himself and other teachers, in particular William
of Champeaux (d. 1121) and other disciples of Anselm of Laon (d. 1117).
He glides over the political struggles, still very intense at the time he is
writing (ca. 1132/33), that had shaped his career. He wants to explain that
he has been unjustly hounded by rivals, while at the same time recogniz-
ing that his affair with Heloise was wrong and that it merited the punish-
ment that ensued. His relationship to Heloise he thus presents as an
episode in which he allowed himself to be overtaken by amor and dis-
tracted from his studies. His affair with Heloise was inextricably related,
however, to much larger conflicts dividing both the cathedral chapter and
the clerical order as a whole within France.
The bishop of Paris during the time of Abelard’s ascent to prominence
as a teacher was Galo (1104–1116), former provost of the collegiate church
of Saint-Quentin, Beauvais. At Saint-Quentin, Galo had led the strict,
quasi-monastic life of canons regular, based on the Rule of St. Augustine.20
Galo was a disciple of its first dean, Ivo of Chartres (ca. 1040–1115), a
canon lawyer who wished to return ecclesiastical practice to what he
imagined were the norms of the early Church. Galo shared Ivo’s insistence
that bishops should be elected freely by the canons of a cathedral chapter,
without interference from secular authority. When the see of Beauvais be-
came vacant in 1101, Philip I (1060–1108) took an oath never to accept
Galo as its bishop. To Ivo’s horror, Philip supported the rival candidature of
Stephen of Garlande (d. ca. 1147), a relatively young cleric who had been
since 1095 one of the three archdeacons of Paris. An archdeacon (not a
grade of holy orders, like subdeacon or deacon), responsible for collecting
tithes from diocesan clergy and looking after the physical fabric of church
buildings, could become very wealthy.21 Ivo complained to the Pope that
Stephen was “not ordained in holy orders, not yet a subdeacon, a gambler,
a womanizer, publicly condemned for adultery, and excommunicated for
this by the archbishop of Lyons, then papal legate.”22 Nothing is known
about this accusation of sexual misconduct, made by an archdeacon of
Beauvais who subsequently withdrew the charge, to Ivo’s embarrassment.
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 61

Abelard rose to prominence in Paris at the same time as Stephen of

Garlande and his brothers came to dominate senior positions in the royal
court. Stephen’s family was not from the old nobility, but had been pro-
moted by Philip I late in the eleventh century to assist in the government
of the royal domain. Abelard acknowledges that he was supported by cer-
tain powerful enemies of William of Champeaux in establishing a school
at Melun (ca. 1102), “at that time a royal palace.”23 The growth in influ-
ence of the Garlande brothers coincides with the action of Philip I in cast-
ing aside Bertha of Holland, mother of prince Louis (born ca. 1081), and
taking as his wife Bertrada of Montfort, until then married to Count Fulk
IV of Anjou (1043–1109). This union signaled a shift in royal policy away
from Flanders toward the Montfort family and the Anjou.24 Bertrada’s
brother, William of Montfort, became bishop of Paris in 1096.25 Ivo of
Chartres and Galo refused to recognize Philip’s union with Bertrada, but
this went against the tendency of most bishops in France.26 Bertrada pro-
vided two further sons for Philip I, Philip and Florus, and a daughter, Ce-
cile. In his Life of Louis VI, Suger describes Bertrada as “a virago, more
powerful than all these others, seductive and clever in that amazing artifice
of women by which they boldly trample on their husbands after torment-
ing them with abuse.”27 Her critics accused her of being a “sorceress” who
plotted against the young prince Louis in favor of her own children by
Philip.28 When Philip died (29 July 1108), Ivo of Chartres and Galo were
involved in the hasty consecration of Louis VI at Orléans, in order to neu-
tralize the threat from his half-brother.29 Bertrada and her sons then re-
turned to Anjou. She became a nun at Fontevrault but continued to style
herself as “Queen of the Franks” in the first seal to survive in France from
a woman, issued in 1115.30
After William of Montfort’s death in 1103, a new bishop was chosen by
the cathedral chapter: Fulco, former dean of the cathedral and supported
by Stephen of Garlande and Vulgrin. When Fulco died unexpectedly on 8
April 1104, an outsider to the chapter was chosen much more sympathetic
to policies of ecclesiastical reform. Galo had recently returned from Rome,
having visited Poland as papal envoy.31 On 2 December 1104, Galo
presided over a council at Paris at which Philip I finally acceded to the de-
mand of the assembled bishops that he renounce “the sin of carnal and il-
licit union” with Bertrada.32 Galo’s victory over the aging king reflected
the pro-Norman policy then supported by prince Louis, who invited St.
Anselm to France in 1104/5. Galo gave St. Anselm a relic of the virgin
martyr Prisca, acquired in Rome.33 In 1106, in a ceremony presided over
by Ivo of Chartres and Adela of Blois, sister of Henry I of England, Louis’
62 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

sister, Constance, married Bohemond of Antioch, a Norman prince re-

turned in glory from the first Crusade.34 The Garlande brothers tem-
porarily lost influence during these years, after Guy of Rochefort returned
from Crusade in 1104 and reacquired the post of seneschal. Unlike the
Garlande brothers, Guy of Rochefort was of old noble stock. In 1105 the
betrothal was announced of his daughter, Lucienne, to prince Louis (a pro-
posal annulled at the council of Troyes in 1107).35 This period of tempo-
rary disgrace of the Garlande brothers coincides with the years (ca.
1104–7) when Abelard returned to his home region, apparently having
fallen ill through overwork. Suger blamed the rupture of Louis’ relation-
ship to Guy of Rochefort on the influence of the Garlande brothers to
whom Louis entrusted the castle of Gournay in 1107 after a prolonged
military engagement. In December 1108, Louis came to the assistance of
Anselm of Garlande against Hugh of Crécy, who had taken prisoner the
count of Corbeil.36 Abelard returned to Paris by 1108, to take up a posi-
tion at the abbey school of Sainte-Geneviève.
Stephen of Garlande is first identified as a royal chancellor, responsible
for drawing up documents in the king’s name, in 1106/7, when Philip and
Bertrada visited both Orléans and Angers.37 Stephen retained this position
for most of the reign of Louis VI, apart from a critical period between 1127
and 1132. Not long after 1108, Louis made Stephen dean of Sainte-
Geneviève, an ancient abbey on the Parisian left bank that Stephen did
much to rebuild.The canons of the abbey enjoyed legal immunity from ex-
ternal influence, being answerable only to the king. Galo gave these canons
permission to live with their own households in private houses, but not (in
theory) with any women.38 By 1116, Stephen of Garlande and his brothers
dominate all major positions of power within the French kingdom. Anselm
of Garlande is seneschal or senior military adviser to the king, and Gilbert
of Garlande the king’s butler. Stephen subsequently becomes seneschal
himself in 1120, holding the position until the crisis of 1127. Stephen’s in-
fluence prior to this date was so great that the Benedictine chronicler of
Morigny described him as effectively controlling rather than serving the
king.39 Such hostile rhetoric creates the misleading impression that Stephen
represents a conservative secular tradition. Stephen is in fact a reformer of
his own kind, eager to strengthen royal authority through effective admin-
istration. The numerous charters that he draws up for the king show him
to be involved with establishing and reforming a wide range of important
religious houses. Stephen has strong connections in Orléans, where he is
dean of Sainte-Croix and several other churches. He is well placed to in-
troduce the cultural traditions of Orléans and the Loire valley into Paris.
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 63

William of Champeaux, master of the schools at Notre-Dame when

Abelard first came to Paris ca. 1100, is a very different figure from
Stephen.40 Appointed an archdeacon of Paris by Galo soon after 1104, his
first and only major recorded action as archdeacon was to assist Galo in
May 1107 in expelling the nuns from the ancient abbey of Saint-Éloi on
grounds of sexual impropriety and replacing them with monks.41 Like
many old religious houses, Saint-Éloi (physically adjacent to the royal
palace) was under the direct control of the crown. Its nuns had long en-
joyed the right to accompany the canons of Notre-Dame in procession at
Rogationtide and the Feast of the Ascension, and at funerals of members
of the cathedral chapter, ceremonies also observed by nuns of the sixth-
century abbey of Sainte-Croix, Poitiers.42 By excluding the nuns from par-
ticipation in Rogationtide processions, bishop Galo was endeavoring to
remove these women from public gaze. Pope Pascal II (1099–1118) had
raised rumors about the nuns’ sexual behavior to Galo in 1104, presum-
ably in response to information from the bishop.43 The abbey had been in-
volved in protracted litigation with the monks of Morigny over the sale of
some land. Stephen of Garlande and Herluin, tutor to prince Louis, acted
as witnesses for the nuns. The monks used archdeacon Rainald as a witness
along with canon Fulbert.44 In 1107 Galo gave this property to monks
from Saint-Pierre-des-Fossés. While the monks benefit from taxes paid by
residents living in houses that belong to Saint-Éloi, itinerant traders on the
site pay rent to the king.45 The expulsion of the nuns provided a symbolic
victory for Galo and William of Champeaux prior to the council of Troyes.
The king was also able to enlarge the royal palace.46 The charter confirm-
ing the expulsion of the nuns of Saint-Éloi in 1107 was signed on the
king’s behalf not by any of the Garlande brothers (then still out of influ-
ence in court) but by Hugh of Crécy, son of Guy of Rochefort and for a
short time seneschal.47
On 23 May 1107 William of Champeaux and Galo attended the coun-
cil of Troyes, presided over by Pope Pascal II. The bishops implemented a
range of measures, including the prohibition of simony (obtaining ecclesi-
astical office through financial means).48 Some rulings concern society as
a whole, such as the prohibition of fighting that disturbed “ecclesiastical
property and people, merchants and pilgrims” between Thursday evening
and dawn on Tuesday. Marriage is not to take place between parties of less
than twelve years or without legitimate witnesses and cannot be dissolved
except in the presence of the bishop. Most relate to ecclesiastical standards,
such as the enforcement of sexual continence on deacons and priests.
Priests cannot profit from holding two positions at once. There is to be no
64 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

buying and selling of ecclesiastical benefices, or receiving such property

from laymen. Another ruling prohibits deacons and priests “from wearing
long hair, beak-shaped pointed shoes, sewn clothes and from having laces
on tunics or shirts, or from using games of chance.”49 Like many rigorists,
William and Galo advocate a strict ascetic code for priests and deacons,
whose dress they complain often differed little from that of affluent lay
folk. They think that clerics engaged in public ministry should dress and
behave like monks. Ecclesiastical complaints about secular fashions among
the clergy reflect wider fears that patterns of behavior often associated with
the Angevin court are making deep inroads into both Norman and French
society.
The expulsion of nuns from Saint-Éloi in 1107 is one of a number of
attempts to reform old-established female communities in the early twelfth
century. In 1098 Ivo of Chartres had complained to the bishop of Meaux
that he had heard about the nuns of Faremoutiers in the diocese of Meaux
having turned their abbey into a brothel where they prostituted themselves
“to all kinds of men.” He advised that if they could not reform themselves,
they should be replaced by monks. Similar arguments were later used to
justify expulsion of nuns from the abbey of Saint-Jean, Laon in 1128, and
from Argenteuil in 1129.50 Whether or not communities of nuns were
more dissolute than those of monks, rhetoric about sexual pollution pro-
vided a common way of asserting ecclesiastical authority.51
While the reform of Saint-Éloi in 1107 reflected an attempt to alter the
balance of power in the Île-de-la-Cité, no single institution or individual
enjoyed complete control over the city. Between the royal palace on the
western part of the island and the cathedral on its eastern corner is the
central market place, known for over two hundred years as the Jewish
quarter (vicus Judaeorum) with its own synagogue, not transformed into the
church of Sainte-Madeleine until Philip Augustus expels the Jews in
1180.52 Unlike Rouen, Paris did not witness any major persecution of
Jews during the first Crusade.53 The population of Paris is growing on the
northern side of the river, connected to the Île-de-la-Cité by a new stone
bridge. There is much new commercial activity around the Châtelet and
along the rue Saint-Denis, connecting Paris to the abbey of Saint-Denis to
the north. By 1120 the annual royal fair of Lendit, held every June on this
road, is blessed by the bishop with a fragment of the true cross, sent from
Jerusalem to the chapter of Notre-Dame.54 In 1121 the merchants of the
city acquire the right from the king to impose a tax on boats carrying
wine.55 The left bank is less commercially developed. Vines still grow on
the slopes of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the hill that overlooks the
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 65

city. Many students attend the public school of Sainte-Geneviève, an abbey

outside the bishop’s jurisdiction. While the lives of most of the population
in and around Paris are hidden from view, the occasional charter hints at a
new freedom in relationships. In 1114 Stephen of Garlande draws up a
royal charter instructing that serfs of Notre-Dame be given freedom to tes-
tify against freemen, as equals.56 Also in that year he draws up a document
allowing Sancelina, daughter of a certain Ascho, to be freed from the yoke
of serfdom so that she can marry a man of Notre-Dame, as she wants.57
Prosperity makes possible a new degree of freedom, but it also demands
procedures by which freedom can be regulated.
Paris is not the only important city in the royal domain, a relatively
small, landlocked region straddling both the Loire valley and the Seine
basin. The other city where the king spends much time is Orléans, which
shares cultural and economic ties with the major towns on the Loire under
the control of the Counts of Anjou. In 1108, Philip I had been buried at
his express wishes at the ancient monastery of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, near
Orléans.58 Suger reports that travel between the two cities was difficult
until prince Louis took firm action against armed bands from the castle of
Montlhéry in 1105.59 North and east of the royal domain are important
cities under episcopal lordship: Beauvais, Laon, and Châlons-sur-Marne,
important to the king strategically and economically. Louis has little effec-
tive power in regions like Anjou, Blois, and Champagne, whose allegiance
to the king of France is largely nominal. Blois was governed for much of
the early twelfth century by Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror and
close friend of both Ivo of Chartres and St. Anselm. Her son, Theobald of
Blois (d. 1152) became count of both Blois and Champagne after Count
Hugh of Champagne renounced his inheritance to become a Templar
knight in 1125.60 Suger considered that Louis VI did much to strengthen
royal authority over his vassals by recognizing the privileged position of
Saint-Denis in the kingdom, and thus the role of Paris.61 The political am-
bitions of Henry I of England (1100 - 35) demanded that Louis VI pay
more attention to the Seine basin than to the Loire. Economic rivalry be-
tween these two regions fuelled the political competition between the
Garlande brothers on one hand, and a faction that embraced William of
Champeaux, Galo, and Suger of Saint-Denis on the other.

Abelard’s Studies in Anjou

Born in 1079 in the western part of Brittany at Le Pallet, near Nantes,
Peter Abelard always saw himself as an outsider to France. His cultural
66 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

associations were formed in Anjou, where he pursued his early studies.

When he came to Paris ca. 1100, he brought with him an intellectual and
literary culture shaped by the educational traditions of the Loire valley. In
the Historia calamitatum, he mentions that his father, Berengar (a Poitevin,
according to Richard of Poitiers), encouraged all of his sons to pursue an
education in letters before acquiring the skills of war, but says nothing at
all about his sisters.62 Abelard’s attachment to his mother is suggested by
his recollection that “my dearest mother Lucia” obliged him to return
home when she was preparing to follow his father in entering the religious
life.63 Lucia was Breton.64 In a society where Breton and Nantais elements
competed for influence, the loyalties of Abelard’s father were towards
Anjou. The marriage of Alan IV Fergant (duke of Brittany 1084–1112) to
Ermengard, daughter of Fulk IV of Anjou ca. 1096, cemented these ties.65
Abelard had left his family by the age of fourteen, following his father’s
ambition that he become an educated knight before taking over the fam-
ily estate. Breton ancestry on his mother’s side did not stop him from com-
menting in his Dialectica that the word brito was applied to someone who
was a brute. When he took up a position in 1127 as abbot of Saint-Gildas,
in a more remote part of Brittany, he complained that he could not un-
derstand the local dialect.66 With a Poitevin father, Abelard may have been
as familiar with the tongue used by Count William IX of Poitiers in his
songs about love as with the French dialect of the Anjou. He was sent to
Loches, a major castle of the Counts of Anjou, in order to acquire fluency
in Latin and thus become like his father, an educated knight.67
The teacher who inspired Abelard to turn away from inheriting the
family estate was Roscelin of Compiègne. Roscelin later chided his for-
mer student for forgetting what he had learnt at Loches, “where you sat so
long at my feet as the youngest of the disciples.”68 Only a few years ear-
lier, Roscelin had been accused of teaching heresy at a council in Soissons
ca. 1090 by Fulco, a monk of Bec whom St. Anselm was supporting as
bishop of Beauvais. Fulco was then facing accusations from clerics in
Beauvais that he had acquired his bishopric in 1088/89 illegitimately from
the king of France. After seeking help unsuccessfully from Ivo of Chartres,
and being accused for a second time of teaching heresy by St. Anselm,
Roscelin was given sanctuary by the Count of Anjou. Anselm labeled
Roscelin as one of “those modern dialecticians of our time, who do not
think universal substances to be anything but the puff of a word, who can-
not understand color to be other than a body, or the wisdom of man dif-
ferent from the soul.”69 Roscelin emphasized that an individual term
signified a separate thing. His argument that God the Father could not be
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 67

described as the same thing as God the Son seemed to St. Anselm’s disci-
ples to fly in the face of tradition. It re-ignited tensions which had flared
earlier in arguments between Berengar of Tours (ca. 1000–88), supported
for a long while by the Counts of Anjou, and Lanfranc of Bec (ca.
1010–89), supported by Duke William of Normandy.
Abelard broke away from Roscelin after arriving in Paris, provoking
Roscelin to accuse his former student of gross ingratitude soon after the
affair with Heloise:

If you had savored even a little of the sweetness of the Christian religion,
which you chose in habit or were not unmindful of the profession of your
order and forgetful of the many and great benefits which I have showered
on you, from being a boy to being a young man, under the name and ac-
tion of being a teacher . . . 70

Abelard subsequently endeavored to distinguish his thinking about both

dialectic and theology from that of his teacher, while extending Roscelin’s
concern to explain statements about reality as linguistic constructions of
human origin.
Roscelin was not the only figure in the Loire valley to make an impact
on Abelard. In 1101 Robert of Arbrissel (ca. 1045–ca. 1117) established an
abbey for both women and men at Fontevrault, midway between Tours
and Angers. The rapid growth of his order (which counted some nineteen
priories in 1117) owed much to the support Robert received from
Bertrada of Montfort, her son Fulk V (count of Anjou 1109–42), and her
step-daughter, Ermengard, married to the Duke of Brittany. Wives and
husbands are often mentioned together in charters granting property to
the Order. Peter the Venerable’s mother was one of those many women
who came under Robert’s influence as a preacher.71 Abelard defended
Robert as “an outstanding preacher of Christ” against Roscelin’s criticisms
that Robert encouraged women to abandon their conjugal duties to pur-
sue a religious life.72 Husbands were apparently complaining about Robert
to the local bishop. Roscelin thought that Robert shared the blame if an
abandoned husband “sinned from necessity.”73 A contemporary of
Roscelin also critical of Robert of Arbrissel is Marbod (ca. 1035–1123),
bishop of Rennes from 1096 until his death. Sometime after 1100, an
aging Marbod accused Robert of excessive intimacy with women under
the guise of religion.74 Marbod did not believe that Robert could remain
chaste, when he was tied to women “by desire, sight, conversation, con-
nection.” Antagonism towards Robert of Arbrissel in Anjou was related to
68 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

the fact that not everyone sympathized with Robert’s particular vision of
a reformed Church. Geoffrey of Vendôme accused Robert of ignoring the
wickedness of women. Geoffrey mentions that Robert was a supporter of
bishop Rainaud of Martigné (1102–25), and that he also benefited from
the support of “an actress and a public woman” in ousting the aristocratic
Geoffrey of Mayenne (1094/95–1101) from the see of Angers.75 In their
old age, Roscelin, Marbod, and Geoffrey of Vendôme all feared that Robert
was disrupting the social order by associating with women. Like the early
Cistercians, Robert sought to distinguish a true religious life from stultify-
ing convention, although he differed from them in wanting to involve
women with men in the process of reform.
Abelard cannot have been unaware of these upheavals taking place in
the Loire valley at this time. In the Historia calamitatum, he describes him-
self simply as a kind of knight engaged in an intellectual adventure: “wan-
dering through different provinces in disputation, I imitated the
peripatetics wherever I heard that study of that art was flourishing.”76
Abelard may have consciously modeled his vocabulary here on the ac-
count offered by Baudri of Bourgueil of the early studies of Robert of
Arbrissel:

He wandered restlessly through regions and provinces, unable not to be

concerned for the study of letters. And since France then flourished more
richly in scholarly reward, he left his paternal home, like an exile and fugi-
tive, went to France and entered the city which is called Paris, found there
the study of letters which he sought for himself alone, to be as helpful as he
hoped; and the diligent reader began to live there. . . . He gave back to
scholastics because he was a scholastic, and did not meanwhile offer himself
any the less to the service of God.77

Baudri saw no contradiction between Robert of Arbrissel being educated

in the schools and living a life dedicated to God. Writing not long after
Robert’s death ca. 1117, Abelard sympathized with Robert’s interest in
opening religious life to women. Fifteen years later, Abelard was more re-
served towards Robert’s practice of subordinating men to the authority of
a woman as “against the natural order.”Yet he still raises many of the same
arguments as Baudri about the possibility that men can live chastely along-
side women, denied by Roscelin and Marbod of Rennes.78
Abelard supported the cause of involving women with men in the re-
ligious life at a time that some people in France considered such interac-
tion subversive. Guibert of Nogent reports the case in 1114 of Clement
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 69

and Everard of Bucy, from near Soissons, burned to death by an angry

crowd outside the city because they had established communities (conven-
tus) outside the Church and were thought to hold heretical opinions.79 Al-
though Guibert accused them of being depraved in their practices and
beliefs, he also mentions that Count John of Soissons considered no one
wiser than Clement. They apparently invoked the word of God by some
long invocation of words, and rejected child baptism, the eucharist and sa-
cred burial sites. Guibert’s comment that they live, “men with men, women
with women” may simply refer to both sexes living an ascetic lifestyle as
part of a single community. Guibert’s lurid stories, familiar to him from ru-
mors which Augustine had reported about Manichaean heretics, serve to
pour scorn on the claim that this community at Soissons lives the apostolic
life according to the Acts of the Apostles. Like Robert of Arbrissel,
Clement appealed to Christ’s statement “Blessed are you when men hate
you” to justify his vision of an ideal community.80 The support Clement
received from the Count of Soissons was not as powerful as that which
Robert of Arbrissel enjoyed from the Count of Anjou. The involvement of
both women and men in the movement attracted suspicions of sexual im-
morality. Abelard stood for a different set of ideals.

The Argument with William of Champeaux

Sometime after the coronation of Louis VI at Orléans on 3 August 1108,
William of Champeaux gave up his post as archdeacon to establish a new
foundation for canons regular at Saint-Victor on territory adjacent to the
abbey of Sainte-Geneviève but outside the jurisdiction both of the abbey
and of the cathedral canons. The canons of Saint-Victor followed a stricter
way of life in common, similar to a reformed monastic community. Great
importance was attached from the outset to the copying of books and to
the training of novices in its school.81 William bequeathed his house in the
cloister to the cathedral, a gift witnessed by all the canons (including Ful-
bert, now the senior subdeacon).82 William’s departure from the cathedral
chapter coincided with the return to royal favor of Anselm of Garlande and
Louis’ appointment of Stephen of Garlande as dean of Sainte-Geneviève.
The canons of this abbey followed a less austere way of life than the canons
of Saint-Victor.83 They encouraged external students to attend its public
school on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, overlooking the city.
Peter Abelard was invited to teach at Sainte-Geneviève at the same mo-
ment as Stephen became its dean. Abelard soon engaged in a public dis-
putation with William of Champeaux, forcing him to concede during
70 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

lectures on rhetoric that two individuals of the same species or genus could
be described as the same, not because they shared an essence, but because
they were not different from each other. Abelard forced William to recog-
nize that two identical individuals were the same indifferenter (without dif-
ference) rather than essentialiter (by essence). This is the same argument as
appears in the teacher’s letter (24) in the exchange copied by Johannes de
Vepria, about love making two wills into one indifferenter (without differ-
ence). Abelard was not the first teacher to question traditional ideas about
language.The biographer of Goswin, who once dared challenge Abelard to
debate at Sainte-Geneviève ca. 1110, mentions that a certain celebrated
commentary on Priscian’s Grammatical Institutes was then provoking much
controversy because of “the novelty of meanings” students were reading
into Priscian’s text.84 This is very likely to be the Glosule, a late eleventh-
century commentary which emphasizes the distinction between the
meaning of individual words and their various grammatical forms.
Abelard’s achievement was to make William acknowledge that it was no
longer possible speak about shared essences as St. Anselm had done.
Abelard was not the only contemporary critic of William of Champeaux,
as student notes preserved at Fleury by a disciple of Joscelin of Vierzy (a
teacher in Paris before he became bishop of Soissons 1126–52) confirm.85
Joscelin also ridiculed the idea that Socrates could be informed by some
universal thing which could be at Rome and Athens at the same time, and
defined universality as a collection of individuals.86
The position which Abelard attacked in 1111 was a traditional assump-
tion which sharp minded dialecticians liked to question. There was also a
political dimension to Abelard’s attack on William. St. Anselm’s influence
in France had begun to spread after his monk Fulco obtained the bishopric
of Beauvais. St. Anselm was friendly with Walerann, cantor at Notre-Dame
in the 1090s, and later with bishop Galo.87 After the accession of Louis VI
and the decision of William of Champeaux to move from Notre-Dame to
the abbey of Saint-Victor in 1111, Abelard was ideally placed to challenge
the authority of St. Anselm and his admirers.88 Not long after St. Anselm’s
death (21 April 1109) Stephen of Garlande denounced as unjust the con-
trol of certain estates in and around Paris by the Norman abbey of Bec.
Stephen then acquired them from the abbot of Bec through an exchange
for other property.89 Bec had managed to obtain certain privileges in
France between 1093 and 1108.90 By 1109 hostilities had re-opened be-
tween Normandy and France. Louis VI engaged in a bloody campaign
against Henry in the Vexin, laying waste the lands of Robert of Meulan,
close adviser to Henry I.91 As an act of revenge, Robert sacked the royal
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 71

palace on the Île-de-la-Cité while Louis VI was at Melun, preventing him

from coming into Paris by destroying the bridges. Robert is said to have
been driven out with the assistance of Parisian citizens.92 Louis then con-
structed a new stone bridge to connect the Île-de-la-Cité to the royal do-
main at Châtelet rather than to property held by the count of Meulan
between the Monceau Saint-Gervais and the Grève. After 1111, Louis VI
started to spend more time in Paris, although still taking care to spend time
at Orléans and other major cities in France.93 In March 1111 he granted
Stephen of Garlande the right for canons of Sainte-Geneviève to answer
charges within the chapter of the abbey rather than at the king’s court, “in
accordance with the just traditions of the Church.”94 Abelard’s rise to
prominence coincides with that of Stephen of Garlande. Scholastic debate
runs along similar lines to a property dispute or a feudal argument, fought
out in the classroom or the lawcourt rather than in the battlefield. The dis-
putes in which Abelard participates provide a structure to regulate issues in
contention within a masculine world.
Perhaps the most misleading aspect of Abelard’s narrative is his claim
that William’s influence started to decline after that public debate. When
Abelard wrote the Historia calamitatum (ca. 1132/33) the conflict between
the abbey of Saint-Victor and the abbey of Sainte-Geneviève was at its
height. Sainte-Geneviève had been put under interdict by the bishop of
Paris, Stephen of Senlis, who blamed partisans of Stephen of Garlande for
the murder in 1133 of Thomas, prior of Saint-Victor. When Abelard re-
called his debate with William of Champeaux he was stoking the fire of an
ongoing argument that was as much political as intellectual. Abelard’s con-
flict with William was not just one of personality or of ideas about logic.
It related to a struggle between a pro-royal Stephen of Garlande, eager to
reform government by strengthening the administration of written law,
and a pro-clerical William of Champeaux, who considered that the only
legitimate path of reform was by transforming the clerical order into a
morally upright, independent force within society.

Conflict at Laon
In June/July 1113 William of Champeaux was elected bishop of Châlons-
sur-Marne. Louis VI signaled his support for William by endowing the
canons regular of Saint-Victor with much property in a ceremony wit-
nessed by the archbishops of Sens and Rheims, and many other bishops,
including Ivo of Chartres and Galo of Paris.95 William thus became both
spiritual and temporal lord of an independent territory outside the royal
72 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

domain and a valuable ally for Louis VI. This royal patronage marked a
turning point in the fortunes of Saint-Victor and the reform movement as
a whole in France. While at Châlons-sur-Marne, William befriended
Bernard, a young monk who had come to Cîteaux in 1112, ordaining him
in 1115 abbot of Clairvaux.96
William’s departure from Paris provided the opportunity for Abelard to
go to Laon to study divinity.The libraries in Laon contained many rare and
precious books from the time of Charlemagne. Anselm of Laon was cele-
brated for his ability to summarize patristic exegesis and to answer a vari-
ety of questions about Christian doctrine, all in the cause of ecclesiastical
reform.97 Goaded by his students, but against Anselm’s wishes, Abelard
started to lecture on Ezekiel. Abelard’s difficulties were compounded by a
volatile political situation in the city. On 25 April 1112 the bishop of Laon
had been murdered during a civic disturbance. Gaudry (also known as
Waldric) was Henry I of England’s former royal chancellor, and had ob-
tained the bishopric by dubious means in 1106, when prince Louis was
temporarily pursuing a pro-Norman policy in France. It was widely sus-
pected that Gaudry had been involved in the assassination in 1110 of Ger-
ard of Quierzy, lay protector of the nuns of Saint-Jean in Laon.98 Gaudry
initially supported the establishment of a commune in the city, but subse-
quently revoked his promise. Gaudry’s assassination followed his action of
crushing the commune in 1112, with the support of Louis VI. Although
not enthusiasts for communal government, both Guibert and Orderic Vi-
talis agree that Gaudry was notorious for his exploitation of the financial
resources of the city. Anselm of Laon took care to distance himself from
the policies of his bishop, but was inevitably tarred by association with the
corrupt bishop.
The murder of the bishop made any criticism of ecclesiastical au-
thority look like seditious behavior to the authorities. The situation was
complicated by the fact that Hugh, a cleric from Orléans chosen with
the support of Stephen of Garlande to succeed Gaudry, died the next
year. This led the way to the election of Barthélemy de Jur, a relation of
Bernard of Clairvaux, as bishop of Laon (1113–51).99 The hostility
Abelard encountered from Alberic of Rheims and Lotulf of Novara,
both disciples of Anselm of Laon, was part of a political struggle shak-
ing the city. Guibert of Nogent is dismissive about Stephen of Gar-
lande’s attempt to gain influence in Laon. The violence that followed
the crushing of the commune meant that any intellectual who chal-
lenged authority could be seen as questioning the established order of
Christian society.
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 73

The Affair with Heloise

Abelard returned to Paris after only a short time (post paucos itaque dies) at
Laon in order to take up the position at Notre-Dame that he had long
coveted. He reports that he held that office “quietly, for some years” (annis
aliquibus quiete possedi). There he completed glosses on the prophet Ezekiel,
which he had started to compose at Laon. The chancellor of the cathedral
at Notre-Dame was Girbert, a colleague of Stephen of Garlande and Galo’s
successor as bishop of Paris (1116–23).100 The relative absence of official
proclamations from Girbert as bishop suggests that he did not interfere in
the traditional privileges of the canons, a policy that made it easier for
Abelard to develop his relationship with Heloise. The cause of ecclesiasti-
cal reform was still extremely weak across Europe before the election of
Pope Calixtus II (1119–24).101 In Paris, ecclesiastical authority began to as-
sert itself only after the death of bishop Girbert in 1123 and the election
as bishop of Stephen of Senlis, an outsider to the cathedral chapter. In 1116
there were still few controls on a successful cleric to prevent him from be-
having as he wished.
In the Historia calamitatum Abelard explains his affair with Heloise as a
consequence of worldly success: “The more I advanced in philosophy or
divinity, the more I slipped away from philosophers and divines in impu-
rity of life.” The two vices into which he says he slipped were debauchery
(luxuria) and pride (superbia). He wants his reader to learn how divine grace
provided a remedy for both those vices “from the affair itself, rather than
from hearsay, in the order in which they happened.”102 His debauchery
was punished by castration, and his pride by the burning of his treatise at
Soissons in 1121. He describes himself as an arrogant rebel in his youth,
the intellectual scourge of William of Champeaux, in order to present his
life as an example of how pride had to give way to humility. In his account
of his early relationship with Heloise, Abelard similarly dwells on his de-
bauchery in order to heighten the dramatic significance of his castration.
By presenting his affair as one of carnal lust, he glides over the extent to
which it was a literary relationship, developed through the exchange of
messages. He has no interest in wanting to present Heloise’s attitude to
their relationship as one of desire to participate in philosophical discussion.
Abelard interprets his relationship with Heloise as deliberate seduction
on his part rather than as the working of mutual desire. He explains how,
through the intervention of “certain friends” Fulbert allowed him to lodge
in his house as well as to offer tuition to his niece. While Abelard is keen
to admit his physical debauchery, he does not explain the actual process by
74 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

which he maintained his relationship with Heloise. To maintain secrecy

from Fulbert, he needed to communicate with her by written messages.
There is little psychological subtlety in Abelard’s account. He remembers
that Fulbert discovered the relationship “after several months had gone by.”
There then followed an enforced separation, and subsequent communica-
tion by letter. Abelard then explains that not much later Heloise discovered
that she was pregnant and wrote to him in great exultation to ask what
should be done. He decided to send her, disguised as a nun, to his sister in
Brittany, where she gave birth to a boy baptized Peter, to whom she gave
the cognomen Astralabe. (Patrilineal surnames did not become common
until the following century.) The astrolabe was an instrument pointed at
the stars or at the sun. Heloise’s choice of name recalls the astronomical
imagery of the man’s letters copied by Johannes de Vepria about the
woman he loves, as his morning star, his sun.103 She may have chosen it to
signify that the child was the means through which both she and Abelard
could gaze at celestial light.
The love letters copied by Johannes de Vepria tell a story not incom-
patible with the sketchy details Abelard supplies in the Historia calamitatum.
In the early love letters, the woman is uncertain whether she can respond
adequately to her teacher, whom she describes in letter 23 as overflowing
“with the riches of your philosophy.” His comment in letter 24 that she is
accustomed to ask him “what is love?” seems to refer not to any earlier let-
ter, but to spoken conversations. His remark (22) that he directs “to oth-
ers words, to you intention” and stumbles in words because his thought is
far from those words echoes Abelard’s comment in the Historia calamitatum
that his lectures became dull and repetitive because he was now thinking
only about Heloise. The expression “to direct the intention” is also a char-
acteristic phrase of Abelard’s theological writing in the 1120s and 1130s,
in relation to directing intention to God.104 While many letters respond to
each other, others could have been written after a period of time had
elapsed. In letter 28, for example, he worries that envy is troubling their
“great friendship.” He had been much more confident in his previous let-
ter (26), in which he professes his ardent desire that she reveal herself to
him. She mentions that snow is melting, as if it were spring (32). By letter
57, she refers to the fact that “for a long time” they had not been able to
see each other. At the end of letter 84 she promises that she will reward
him “with an act of thanks and the obedience of love” for composing for
her a certain prologue. While there is no clue as to what kind of treatise
this prologue introduced, it is significant that he is sharing academic work
with her. The only clue to the passing of time in the correspondence is his
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 75

comment at the outset of a long poem (87) that it has been a year since
he has been conquered by her love. His comment “Now the year is new,
and a new love is to begin,” need not relate to the beginning of January,
but to the beginning of a new phase he wishes to begin in the relation-
ship. In a subsequent poem (108), he refers to the earth “being caressed by
flowers” as if it were the season of spring.
Dronke’s suggestion that the letters copied by Johannes de Vepria reflect
an unconsummated relationship between teacher and pupil and therefore
cannot be written by Abelard and Heloise, depends on reading her Pauline
allusion in letter 84 as about sexual intercourse: “Until now you have re-
mained with me, you have manfully fought the good fight, but you have
not yet received the prize.”105 Even if her allusion is to consummation (far
from certain), her overriding concern in this letter as elsewhere is not with
sexual union, but with the fulfillment of the relationship itself. In the His-
toria calamitatum on the other hand Abelard deliberately contrasts a sinful
past of physical indulgence, with his present relationship to Heloise as
based on spiritual concern alone. His suppression of the intellectual aspect
of his early relationship to Heloise is the attitude to which she reacts so
harshly.
A consistent theme that emerges from the women’s love letters is the
value she attaches to their correspondence (53, 79). She is overwhelmed by
“the riches of your philosophy” and her sense of inadequacy in being able
to respond (23, 71). In letter 69 she fears that it exceeds her mental capac-
ity to think of what “sweetness of composition” (dictaminis dulcedine) she
could use to speak to her beloved. In verses which begin that letter she
begs that he remember the tears which he had shed for her and asks why
he is coming so infrequently, breaking her heart. She does not want any
jealous eye to read these verses. In letter 71 she says that she wants to speak
to him for an hour but is distressed that when she should be working, she
is thinking completely about him. The man in turn marvels at the quality
of her prose and verse, surpassing that of Cicero and Ovid (75). In her last
major letter (112), she again recalls the immense pleasure that his letters
had given her although she now implies that this was in the past and can-
not compare to her present joy. In the letters of Heloise that follow the
Historia calamitatum there is far more emphasis on Abelard’s proclamation
of his love for Heloise in song and in frequent letters than in Abelard’s own
recollection of the past, in which this aspect of his early career is presented
as typical of a debauched life. Just as the woman is fascinated by the com-
bination of gifts of philosophy and poetry in her teacher (112), so Heloise
also singled out this combination of gifts as making Abelard so unusual.106
76 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Abelard’s presentation of his seduction of Heloise as the consequence

of an insane passion is itself very close to the man’s emphasis on amor in
his feelings for his student in the Troyes love letters. By contrast she often
combines the words dilectio, an ideal form of love, with amor, passionate
love, to emphasize the purity of her love. The contrast between the two
positions becomes acutely evident in the final poem in the exchange
(113), in which he laments that he had been driven by love to follow its
commands and that he had been seduced by the glamour of “beauty, noble
birth, behavior” which “make you famous in our city.” Unlike her, he falls
back on conventional clichés about love for a woman being ultimately su-
perficial. Both lovers are writers of distinction, each aware of the other’s
reputation. Their contrasting attitudes to love echo the contrast between
the attitudes of Abelard and Heloise in their correspondence. In the Histo-
ria calamitatum Abelard reports that after Heloise had announced “with
great exultation” that she had become pregnant, he explained to Fulbert
that to someone who knew the force of love (amor) he had not done any-
thing unusual. “Had not women laid low the greatest men since the be-
ginning of time?”107 Heloise is fully familiar with this argument but is
convinced that her love for him was pure and selfless. When Abelard went
back to Brittany to tell her of his plan that they should marry, Heloise re-
sisted his plan, but eventually succumbed and they returned to Paris where
they were married in secret, so as to protect his reputation. Abelard saw this
as at least the semblance of a moral reform on his part. Fulbert was partic-
ularly furious when Heloise slipped out of his house at Notre-Dame and
took refuge at Argenteuil, where she had been brought up and educated.
A plan was hatched to have Abelard punished. Fulbert’s change in attitude
toward Abelard was complete.

The Rhetoric of Pollution and Moral Decline

The remarks in both the Historia calamitatum and in Heloise’s response to
that text, show how their relationship acquired a significance far beyond
the private lives of those two individuals. In the public mind, Abelard and
Heloise were seen as crystallizing tendencies which the traditionally
minded feared were gaining ground among the young. Ecclesiastics who
prided themselves on the cause of “reform” were often profoundly con-
servative. Heloise’s conviction that love was more important than social
convention was not simply the concern of an isolated individual. The love
letters reflect a tendency to talk about love which Guibert of Nogent
complained was widespread among young women of his own day. They
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 77

dressed extravagantly and no longer respected values of chastity, “the width

of sleeves, the tightness of dresses, the curling beaks of shoes from Cor-
doba, proclaiming everywhere that modesty has been cast aside.”108 Guib-
ert was appalled by the intimacy of communication between men and
women, as revealed through their dress and through the way they talked
about their relationships. He saw these new fashions as symbolizing an un-
toward desire by women to throw off established convention. Orderic Vi-
talis is another monastic writer who associates new fashions with dissolute
sexual morality. He singles out the pointed shoe, identified by Guibert as
coming from Cordoba, as a symbol of these new vices. He blames their
popularity “among rich and poor alike” on Count Fulk of Anjou, husband
of Bertrada. Orderic describes in detail what he sees as symptoms of per-
nicious Angevin influence: curled long hair, the front part of the head
shaven but covered by a cap, a trimmed beard, tight shirts, trailing robes and
extravagant shoes.109 Similar complaints about men adopting effeminate
patterns of dress and behavior were made in Norman England by William
of Malmesbury.110
These fashions were not introduced by any single individual. They de-
veloped out of expanding trade and travel between regions north of the
Loire and territories where dialects of Provençal were spoken.With Chris-
tian expansion into the Iberian peninsula, new fashions were coming from
Moorish Spain. Conservative chroniclers had long complained that ex-
travagant fashions came into the north from the regions of Auvergne and
Aquitaine. Raoul Glaber blamed these new fashions on the marriage of
Robert the Pious to Constance of Arles in 1002/3.111 The marriage of
Agnes of Poitou to the Emperor Henry III in 1043 was blamed by
Siegfried of Gorze for introducing the fashions of her Poitevin courtiers
into the Empire, including trimmed beards and tight-fitting clothes.112 The
fall of Toledo to Christians in 1085 was much more important than the
capture of Jerusalem in 1099 for introducing new products and fashions
into the Latin West. When Pope Urban II, former archdeacon of Rheims,
urged Latin Christians to march towards Jerusalem, he wanted to re-assert
traditional Latin values against what many monks saw as a process of moral
decline that had crept into the West.
The complaints raised at the council of Troyes in 1107 about the dress
and behavior of priests and deacons reflect wider concern about a per-
ceived weakening of traditional divisions between men and women, clergy
and laity. In England and Normandy, it was not unknown for a powerful
sermon to conclude with the preacher cutting the hair of those present. In
1096 St. Anselm had his congregation have their hair cut after a Lenten
78 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

sermon. The council of Westminster in 1102 had insisted that clergy have
their heads shaved, and that men cut their hair so as not to cover their ears
and eyes. Anselm of Canterbury decreed that those who did not wish to
cut their hair should not enter a church. If they did enter, a priest need not
stop the service, but should warn such long-haired reprobates that they
were coming into the church to their own damnation.113 In 1090 bishop
Radbod of Tournai (1068–98) is said to have solemnly cut the hair of a
thousand young men and have trimmed robes that flowed down to the
ground. This followed a sermon delivered in the cathedral of Tournai dur-
ing a time of plague. Herman of Tournai, an admirer of St. Anselm and
critic of “modern dialecticians,” recalled this event in order to contrast
such zeal with contemporary vices “of visiting women or of irregularities
in hair, dress and the like that we see being practiced everywhere.”114 At
Rouen in 1102 it was forbidden for those with long hair to enter a church.
Serlo, bishop of Séez, preached a sermon at Carentan in Normandy before
Henry I and all his court in 1105, berating them for their long hair “by
which they make themselves seem like imitators of women and by wom-
anly softness they lose their manly strength and are led to sin, and often fall
wretchedly into hateful apostasy.” Henry I, Robert of Meulan, and most of
the assembled magnates then had their hair trimmed by the bishop.115 A
similar event occurred at Saint-Omer in 1106 in the presence of Robert
II Count of Flanders (1093–1111), one of the heroes of the first Crusade.
There is no record of such public rituals taking place in France, despite the
efforts of bishop Galo and William of Champeaux to reform clerical dress.
Only with the growth of enthusiasm for going to Jerusalem, actively sup-
ported by Bernard of Clairvaux and other preachers, was an alternative put
forward to fashions which Guibert of Nogent and Orderic Vitalis com-
plained were so widespread.
The original concerns of reformers in the eleventh century had not
been with new fashions among the clergy and laity, but with the practice
of buying ecclesiastical office from secular rulers: simony or the heresy of
Simon Magus. Pope Leo IX had the council of Rheims rule in 1049 that
positions of authority in the Church should be chosen by clergy and peo-
ple, rather than simply bestowed by a secular ruler.116 Ecclesiastical
prebends were frequently passed from father to son, without regard for the
capacity of sons of ordained clerics to perform their role. Reformers ar-
gued that chastity was essential if clerics occupying senior liturgical and
pastoral responsibilities were to command respect from the Christian com-
munity. They modeled their vision of a reformed clergy on a monastic
ideal, which they believed to have been followed by the early Church.
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 79

Such concerns led Pope Nicholas II (1058–61) to call a council which

ruled that the Pope had to be chosen by a college of cardinals, represent-
ing the universal Church and acclaimed by the people, rather than by the
Emperor alone. He instructed the laity to avoid attending the services of
unchaste clergy and insisted to the bishops of Gaul that those priests who
had taken concubines should not celebrate mass.117
The rhetoric of reform became more authoritarian with the advent of
Pope Gregory VII (1073–85). It was easier to blame women for introduc-
ing impurity into the Church than powerful families, suspected of obtain-
ing ecclesiastical office through illegitimate means. Gregory VII insisted that
clerics ordained to higher orders must observe chastity (castitas) and a com-
munal way of life, in other words that they live like monks. The key con-
cept in his legislation was not so much celibacy as chastity. He instructed
bishops to suspend priests guilty of fornication.The reaction of French cler-
ics to these reforms is revealed in the Life of Walter, abbot of Saint-Martin,
Pontoise. When bishops and abbots assembled at a council in Paris (proba-
bly ca. 1074), they declared these rulings to be “intolerable and therefore ir-
rational” and attacked Walter for daring to suggest that the decrees of the
supreme pontiff should always be obeyed, even if one thought them wrong.
The bishops arrested Walter as a blasphemer and had him brought in chains
to the king. There were similar disturbances at Rouen and Poitiers, pro-
voked by married clergy hostile to these reforms.118 Ivo of Chartres once
complained to archbishop Daimbert of Sens about a certain senior figure in
the Church who had publicly linked himself to two whores and was
preparing to marry a third.119 The problem was equally difficult in Norman
England. In 1102 St. Anselm advised that archdeacons and canons who had
physically separated from their wives could be tolerated so long as they re-
frained from sexual intercourse or speaking to them without witnesses.
Priests who had not given up their women could not celebrate mass.120
Treatises were still being written in the late eleventh century in defense of
clerical marriage by authors who supported loyalty to secular authority.
Particularly controversial was the right of priests’ sons to acquire prebends,
defended by Serlo of Bayeux against rigorists in the Church.121 An Oxford
master, Theobald of Étampes, criticized the argument of Roscelin of Com-
piègne that sons of clergy were not to be admitted to holy orders, observ-
ing that the genealogy of Christ included Thamar and three other women
of whose lives scripture disapproved. He considered it catholic belief to
claim: “It is more use to live well than to spring from righteous parents. God
considers the life, not the birth, of a human being.”122 Marbod of Rennes
was similarly critical of those who censured unchaste clerics.
80 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

The prohibition on clerical marriage for subdeacons, deacons, and

priests was not firmly imposed in France until the council of Rheims,
held in the presence of Calixtus II (1119–24) in October 1119. After a
long period of internal weakness within the papacy, the new pope (who
happened to be uncle to Adelaide, queen of France) was eager to impose
firm discipline on the Church, and resist what he saw as moral laxity and
undue secular influence in the Church.123 One of its rulings was that all
subdeacons, deacons and priests who kept concubines should be deprived
of their benefices.When this decision was promulgated at Rouen in 1119,
priests of the diocese protested about the conflict this provoked between
body and soul. One of their number was taken off to prison by the arch-
bishop, leading to a general riot quelled only by force. The responses of
those women repudiated by clergy anxious to regularize their situation
are not recorded, although it is reported that a number of such women
had burned themselves to death in the time of Gregory VII.124 Whereas
accusations of simony often involved challenging influential families,
charges that women were a source of sexual corruption for the clergy
were easier to make and deflected suspicions that ecclesiastical reformers
had reached too close an accommodation with political authority. The
sexual scandal associated with Abelard’s behavior as a teacher at Notre-
Dame provided ample opportunity for his critics to claim that he had
been polluted by the fires of lust.

Sexual Mores
Ivo of Chartres included in his Decretum the demands of the council of
Elvira that sex outside marriage demanded one year’s penance (five years
if the couple did not marry). He insisted that sex was legitimate only if
there was intention to conceive a child.125 According to the strict letter of
canon law, there were severe penalties for sexual intercourse between un-
married persons and for adopting contraceptive measures. In practice, in-
formation about contraceptive and abortifacient plants was widely
available.126 There was little stigma attached to a man having a mistress, and
offspring could be well looked after. In spring 1117, two years after his
marriage to Adelaide of Maurienne, the king allowed his illegitimate
daughter, Isabelle, to marry William, son of Osmond of Chaumont.127 As
Louis was born in 1081, he is unlikely to have been more than twenty
when he conceived Isabelle by an unknown woman. No less a person than
Clemence of Burgundy, countess of Flanders, sister to Calixtus II and aunt
to Queen Adelaide, is reported as having used female art so that she would
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 81

no longer become pregnant after bearing three children in three years. She
was afraid of the political consequences of her children fighting over Flan-
ders. Herman construed the early death of all her offspring as divine
vengeance for her behavior.128 For all their desire to speak for the Christ-
ian community, canon lawyers were powerless to influence sexual behav-
ior. When both Ivo of Chartres and bishop Galo passed away in 1116, their
vision of a chaste clerical elite was an unrealized ideal.
Secular clerics were frequently the butt of accusations about sexual im-
morality from those committed to a monastic way of life. In a letter writ-
ten to Abelard soon after his castration, Fulco of Deuil reports rumors that
he had frequented the company of prostitutes:

Whatever you could acquire by selling your learning through speech mak-
ing, apart from daily victuals and necessary requirements (as I have heard by
report) you did not stop throwing into the whirlpool of a fornicating ap-
petite. The rapacious greed of prostitutes robbed you of everything. No age
has heard of a prostitute wanting to have compassion on another or to spare
the passions which in a certain way they are able to consume.129

Abelard’s insistence in the Historia calamitatum that he did not visit prosti-
tutes may well have been a reaction to rumors of this kind about his re-
putation.130 Meretrix (prostitute) was a common term of abuse. Heloise’s
proclamation that she would rather be called Abelard’s prostitute than em-
press of Augustus threw into question one of the most common labels used
to define pollution. Later that century Parisian prostitutes, said to frequent
the cathedral cloister, were to become significant enough as a group to
offer chalices and stained glass windows to the new cathedral. The offer
was turned down by Maurice de Sully for fear of giving approval to their
profession.131 Abelard was less critical of such women. He once advised his
son that prostitutes were not as bad as sodomites or chaste women who
were proud or talkative.132
In a clerical milieu from which women were officially excluded, accu-
sations of sodomy served as a way of asserting authority. Homoerotic rela-
tions were perceived as a difficult problem by St. Anselm, who complained
that sodomy was “so common that hardly anyone is ashamed of it and that
many people, ignorant of its magnitude, fall headlong into it.” He advised
his archdeacon that excommunication was to be considered for this of-
fence, although one had to consider for how long the sin had been prac-
ticed and whether the sinners had wives or not.133 There is a good deal of
verse from the eleventh and twelfth centuries which either celebrates or
82 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

denounces homosexual relationships within a clerical milieu.134 According

to one poem, Orléans was particularly celebrated for sodomy, as well as
Paris and Chartres.135 Ivo of Chartres was so incensed by the behavior of
the new bishop of Orléans, nicknamed Flora by his fellow canons because
of alleged sexual intimacy with King Philip, that he sent such a poem to
the archbishop of Lyons to prove his depravity. He wrote about this
episode to Pope Urban II in 1097:

For some of his boyfriends, calling him Flora, have composed many rhyth-
mical songs about him, which are sung by depraved young men through the
cities of France at market places and crossroads, a scourge as you know of
this land. He did not blush to sing them sometimes himself and have them
sung for himself. As proof, I have sent one of them, which I snatched vio-
lently from someone singing it, to the archbishop of Lyons.136

This archdeacon had successfully competed against Baudri of Bourgueil

for the see of Orléans, even though Bertrada had apparently promised
Baudri the position. Ivo reported that the real reason was that Baudri did
not have as much money as the archdeacon with which to press his case
at the royal court.137 Ivo’s comments about the songs of “depraved young
men” show how the rhetoric of sexual pollution very often had a political
focus, in this case against a bishop, suspected of being too close to the king.
The wandering clerics about whom Ivo complains, made fun of the es-
tablished ecclesiastical order. They sang about political corruption as easily
as about love. Guibert of Nogent recalls that clerics would wander from
town to town in search of employment as teachers.138 This was the cleri-
cal milieu of the young Peter Abelard. Sexual mores were fluid. If the
bishop of Orléans could be held up to such ridicule, what possibility was
there of imposing strict moral standards on cathedral clergy?
What made Peter Abelard so unusual in the eyes of Heloise was his gift
for combining his skill in philosophy with a gift for composing and singing
songs of love.139 When she read the Historia calamitatum, she reminded him
of these public declarations of love and of the incessant letters which he
had showered on her in the past. From her perspective, a true relationship
was not an illicit sexual encounter but a mutual profession of true love. She
professed to be unconcerned about whatever label might be given her, as
all she was concerned about was true love. The letters copied by Johannes
de Vepria reflect attitudes which Ivo of Chartres and Guibert of Nogent
found deplorable among the younger generation. The lovers mock the
jealousy of those who would deny them their intimate pleasure. She de-
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 83

scribes the man she loves as a great teacher, before whom the French have
to yield (49), a “companion of the poets” (21) and in letter 112 as one
“who is both nourished by philosophy and who drinks from the source of
poetry.” The technical sophistication of the prose and verse letters, in par-
ticular the mastery of certain philosophical terms by the man (notably the
allusion to “non-different” identity in letters 16 and 24) shows that they
are far beyond student doggerel. The woman’s emphasis on the purity of
her relationship to her teacher is very different from Abelard’s description
of their behavior in the Historia calamitatum as one of pure lust. Only in the
concluding poem of the exchange copied by Johannes de Vepria does the
man suggest that he has been seduced by the charms of her beauty, noble
birth, and behavior, as if these are all external qualities. The conventional
stereotype of women as the source of seduction, encountered so often in
ecclesiastical documents from the twelfth century, surfaces both in this final
poem and in the Historia calamitatum.

Conclusion
Abelard’s account in the Historia calamitatum of his early career, culmi-
nating in a vivid description of his affair with Heloise, is rich in circum-
stantial detail about the life of a successful cleric in early twelfth-century
Paris. It also glides over much of importance. His affair with Heloise was
much more than simply a moral lapse on his part. Heloise was wanting
to participate in a culture of intellectual debate, in which many tradi-
tional ideas and institutions were being questioned. It is misleading to in-
terpret the early twelfth century as a time of conflict between
“reformers” and “traditionalists.” Many different ideas for reforming tra-
ditional patterns of behavior were being discussed. Ecclesiastical reform-
ers viewed Stephen of Garlande, dean of Sainte-Geneviève, chancellor
and eventually seneschal, as a symbol of the worldliness they wished to
eliminate from the clerical order. Abelard’s early rebellion against William
of Champeaux was part of a wider political struggle between Stephen
and William. Abelard’s liaison with his student can be seen as an act of
rebellion against the policies of clerical austerity which Galo and William
of Champeaux sought to impose.
Educated in Anjou in the late eleventh century, Abelard had absorbed
an intellectual culture very different from that of William of Champeaux
and Anselm of Laon. At Loches, a stronghold of the counts of Anjou, he
became acquainted with a sophisticated cultural milieu, frequently blamed
by some Norman and French ecclesiastics as responsible for a decline in
84 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

contemporary moral standards and for the popularity of new fashions of

dress. The refusal of many ecclesiastical reformers to recognize Bertrada of
Montfort as the legitimate wife of Philip I was only one manifestation of
their hostility to a culture which they associated with the Angevin court.
They preferred the crusading ambitions of the Norman princes as a no-
bler form of aristocratic culture.The complaints of Guibert of Nogent that
men and women devoted too much attention to boasting about love were
directed against precisely the sort of people that Abelard says in the Histo-
ria calamitatum were still performing the love songs which he once com-
posed for Heloise.
The love letters copied by Johannes de Vepria belong to this cultural
milieu. The woman in particular articulates very different attitudes from
the ecclesiastical moralists. Her letters celebrate the love between a woman
and a man as a noble form of friendship, one which combines both amor,
passionate love, and dilectio, a love that actively esteems another person.This
woman is very like Heloise, in that she celebrates her teacher as skilled in
both philosophy and poetry. She is searching for an authentic relationship,
based not on social convention, but on a true love that is known to God.
The man by contrast celebrates his relationship to her more as an amorous
passion which operates quite differently from his friendships with other
people. Although he does once try, at her request, to define amor philo-
sophically (24), he is generally less original in the way he explores the
obligations of love, which he sees more as an escape from his normal ac-
tivity. Toward the end of the exchange he becomes worried about his pub-
lic reputation, and defines his behavior to her as a sin (peccatum), a concept
she never invokes. Abelard manifests very similar attitudes in the Historia
calamitatum. He recalled how his lectures became stale and uninspired as he
was thinking about the songs he was composing for her. His relationship
to Heloise he now interpreted as one of base passion, quite at odds with
philosophical inquiry, and meriting the punishment which ensued.
Heloise wanted to share in the atmosphere of excitement which pre-
vailed in Paris in the early twelfth century. Inevitably there was friction be-
tween competing visions of an ideal community. William of Champeaux
established a community at Saint-Victor, where an all-male community
was committed to following apostolic ideals according the Rule of St. Au-
gustine. Stephen of Garlande, by contrast, was more interested in building
up schools at the abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, where he was dean. Bernard
of Clairvaux, ordained in 1115 by William of Champeaux, saw himself as
developing a more authentic community at Clairvaux, defined by simplic-
ity and mutual love rather than by the opulence and hierarchy associated
 PARIS, THE SCHOOLS, AND THE POLITICS OF SEX 85

with much traditional monasticism. In their different ways, both Bernard

and Heloise sought to define ethical relationships in terms of sincerity and
love rather than social convention. In wanting to deepen her relationship
with Peter Abelard, Heloise was fascinated by the possibility that a woman
and a man could share in the most intimate form of friendship. At the out-
set Heloise believed that Abelard was a teacher willing to share his wisdom
with herself as much as with his other students. The ideal was easier to
imagine than to implement in practice.The love letters copied by Johannes
de Vepria illustrate what can happen when an educated woman engages in
sophisticated dialogue with her teacher, drawing on ethical models pro-
vided by classical literature. Heloise is not the first young woman to have
an affair with a cleric or to be exposed to the anger of her family. More
unusual is the extent of her commitment to the study of literature, through
which she hopes to escape the confines of her situation.
CHAPTER 4

TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE

Vernum tempus est amenum Springtime is pleasant

et amoris melle plenum; and rich in the honey of love;
quicquid est in mundo rerum whatever is in the world of things
novum facit ac serenum. it makes fresh and clear.

In hoc uere uernant flores, In spring flowers truly bloom,

quia tellus dat humores; because the earth gives sap;
puellarum nunc dolores now girls’ sorrows
risus petunt et amores. chase laughter and love.

Iam qui amat uel amatur Already he who loves or is loved

illud petit quo letatur, seeks what makes him happy,
et si locus umquam datur, and if a chance is ever given
trahit palpat osculatur. he draws near, touches, gets a kiss.

his simple song, included within an anthology sent to Marbod of

T Rennes sometime before 1100, relates spring to the delights of love.
It provides as good an introduction as any to a world of imagined inti-
macy celebrated both in the Loire valley and beyond in the late eleventh
century.1 The association of love and nature, a theme as old as the Song
of Songs (2.10–12, etc.), often surfaces in the love letters copied by Jo-
hannes de Vepria, particularly in those of the woman. Just as she offers her
beloved the freshness (viriditas) of eternal happiness (1) and of love (48),
so this song celebrates an imaginary union of lovers as spring returns. In
letter 25 she exclaims that she languishes with love for him, “stirred by
the songs of the birds and the freshness of the woods” and relates her love
to the passing of winter in letter 32. She refers to flowers and flowering
more often than he does (1, 49, 53, 66, 73, 79, 90, 109), although in one
88 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

of his last poems (108) he evokes an Ovidian image of nurturing earth

(alma tellus): “Mother Earth is caressed with its flowers. / All nature pre-
pares itself for your praises.”2 The song about spring evokes an enthusiasm
for both nature and love much developed by the woman in her love let-
ters. Latin writing about love from the early twelfth century provides a
cultural context against which we can better appreciate the love letters
and poems copied by Johannes de Vepria in the late fifteenth century. The
phenomenon of educated men and women exchanging Latin verse and
prose about love was not in itself unusual.

The Literature of Love in Anjou ca. 1070–1100

The love letters betray no direct literary parallels with the lyrics of William,
ninth duke of Aquitaine and sixth count of Poitiers (1071–1126) and other
early troubadours.3 Latin and vernacular love lyrics from this period share
a common concern, however, to define a code of values based around ideals
of true or pure love (fin’amor). The earliest identifiable authors of trouba-
dour literature are men. Women troubadours (trobairitz) do not appear in
the written record until the second half of the twelfth century. It has often
been assumed that this literature is essentially masculine in initiative, and
principally concerned with putting women on a pedestal.4 Bezzola argued
that the poetry of William of Aquitaine provided a secular equivalent to the
esteem with which Robert of Arbrissel accorded women within the reli-
gious life.5 It is often assumed that this literature originated in the aristo-
cratic courts of Aquitaine, and was brought to northern France by Eleanor,
granddaughter of William of Aquitaine, when she married the young Louis
VII in 1137.6 Denis de Rougemont postulated that the major influence on
troubadour ideas of love was the Cathar heresy (disregarding the fact that
no troubadour is known to have been a Cathar).7 René Nelli argued that
troubadours emphasized equality with women rather than traditional patri-
archal values.8 All these interpretations assumed that vernacular literature
about love had little in common with Latin writing about love or with eth-
ical thought in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.9
The scholarly debates about the sources of this code of pure love de-
veloped in vernacular poetry are too complex to be explored here. By
contrast, the originality of Latin writing about love in the late eleventh and
early twelfth century has been relatively neglected. One scholar who has
done much to interpret vernacular writing about love in the twelfth cen-
tury in the context of Latin verse is Peter Dronke.10 In a major two-
volume study of medieval lyric poetry, Dronke edited and translated a
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 89

range of Latin texts about love from the early twelfth century, including
women’s love letters in a manuscript from Tegernsee and a verse exchange
between a teacher and a female student in a manuscript from Regensburg.
Dronke placed the exchange copied by Johannes de Vepria within this tra-
dition of men and women writing to each other in Latin.11 The love let-
ters are considerably more sophisticated, however, than the Tegernsee or
Regensburg texts. The woman’s concern with the definition of love looks
forward to the more elaborate reflection on the ethics and obligations of
love developed in vernacular literature later in the twelfth century.
The influence of Latin literature on vernacular writing has begun to at-
tract attention in recent years. Tony Hunt has considered Chrétien de
Troyes and Andreas Capellanus as clerics informed by Aristotelian dialec-
tic.12 Gerald Bond has argued that in the Latin poetry of Baudri of Bour-
gueil and Marbod of Rennes, as in the lyrics of William of Aquitaine, a
new, more secular definition emerges of the individual as “the loving sub-
ject.” Bond interprets the verse that Baudri of Bourgueil exchanged with
his friends throughout the Loire valley as the creation of an Ovidian “sub-
culture.”13 The shared feature of both the troubadour lyrics and this Latin
verse is a common concern with the correct behavior demanded by love.
The same is true of the letters and poems copied by Johannes de Vepria.
The late eleventh and early twelfth centuries witnessed a sharp growth in
the number of “wandering clerics” (clerici vagantes), who moved from town to
town in search of employment either as teachers or as secretaries to impor-
tant people. Some clerics acquired a reputation for composing and perform-
ing songs, the most famous of whom was Peter Abelard. Hennig Brinkmann
paid particular attention to the role of literary exchanges between clerics and
women in promoting twelfth-century love literature in both Latin and Ger-
man.14 The best-known secular Latin lyrics of the period are the Carmina bu-
rana, songs about love, drinking, and the corruption of the world, preserved
in a thirteenth-century manuscript from Benediktbeuern.15 The collection
seems to have been compiled by clerics at the cathedral school of Brixen in
the Tyrol, one of whom spoke French.16 At least two are by Hilary of Orléans,
a cleric educated at Sainte-Croix, Orléans, who taught at Angers 1109–22,
before joining Abelard’s early community at the Paraclete. Hilary’s letters to
other clerics living in towns along the Loire valley, from Nantes to Orléans,
provide valuable insight into the sophisticated clerical culture with which the
young Peter Abelard was familiar. Hilary composed Latin poems in honor of
a number of religious women, including the recluse Eve of Wilton (who lived
near Angers with a companion, Hervé), two nuns identified as Bona and Su-
perba, and an unknown lady called Rosea.17
90 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

In a poem about “the pope of the schools,” Hilary certainly alludes to

Abelard when he praises a great teacher who is loved by his students and
who composes pleasant songs. Another of the poems in the Carmina burana
may possibly be by Abelard himself. It is a lament on the bitterness of sep-
aration from the poet’s beloved: “The star of joyful countenance is dulled
by [my] heart’s cloud” (Hebet sydus leti visus cordis nubilo). Its reference to
“the light of Phoebus” has been interpreted by Dronke as a play on both
helios (sun) and Heloisa.18 Its opening verse is strikingly similar to the man’s
first poem in the Johannes de Vepria exchange (20):

Stella polum variat, et noctem luna colorat,

Sed michi sydus hebet, quod me conducere debet.

The star turns around the pole and the moon colors the night,
But that star is fading which should be my guide.

Hebet sydus in the Carmina burana is more sophisticated than this poem, but
it develops a similar comparison of the beloved to a fading star. It echoes
a more general fascination in the man’s love letters with imagery about
heavenly light. Other poems in the Carmina burana could possibly have
been composed by Abelard, but it is difficult to be certain about this.
While the exchange copied by Johannes de Vepria is unusual in its
length, it is not the only surviving example of a Latin dialogue between a
man and a woman. Such exchanges are attested to in a number of manu-
scripts from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, although often
only one side of an exchange is preserved.19 Marbod of Rennes and Bau-
dri of Bourgueil are early pioneers in addressing Latin verse to women,
while Hildebert of Lavardin (1055–1133) became one of the most cele-
brated practitioners of the genre.20 In eleventh-century Germany, it be-
came common for clerics to forge friendship networks by exchanging
letters informed by a love of classical literature, Cicero in particular.21 In
Anjou and France, however, writers were particularly fascinated by the
theme of love, above all as articulated by Ovid. This is the dominant liter-
ary tradition from which the Troyes love letters draw their inspiration.

The Ovidian Revival

When the man in the love letters protests his inability to express his feel-
ings fully, he explains that even Ovid would not have been up to the task
in verse, just as Cicero could not have articulated those feelings in prose
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 91

(75). Earlier in the correspondence (45), she had compared her love for
him as like that of Biblis for her twin brother Cauno, celebrated in Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, or like that of the nymph Oenone for Paris, or the love of
Briseis for Achilles, heroines of Ovid’s Heroides.22 Her letters, which never
allude to the much wider range of Roman love poets familiar to human-
ists in the fifteenth century, enable us to glimpse a precious moment in the
mutation of European literature, before Petrarch fostered perception of
cultural decline after an imagined collapse of classical culture.The tradition
of writing love poems in Latin never disappeared in the medieval period.
The love letters testify to the vitality of an ongoing tradition, that is not
always as visible as other forms of literature in the manuscript record.
Their debt to Ovid is not simply a matter of borrowed images or
phrases.The very practice of exchanging letters and verses was itself shaped
by the advice that Ovid gave both men and women in the Art of Loving on
how they should communicate with each other.23 Ovid makes fun of love
letters written by women in his Amores.24 In Cures for Love, he mockingly
warns that once a relationship was over, a woman’s love letters were best
destroyed.25 The chance discovery of an intimate letter from a woman to
a Roman official suggests that women in the Greco-Roman world were
more literate than the canon of authors transmitted by monastic scriptoria
would suggest.26 Juvenal mocked the practice of women keeping compro-
mising love letters.27 Most letters written in Antiquity have been lost. Just
as the New Testament leaves only an echo of the voices of the first women
followers of Jesus, so the surviving body of classical texts tends to filter out
the voices of articulate Roman women.
Ovid was always fascinated by relationships between women and men.
In his Tristia, he defends himself against the accusation adduced as the rea-
son for his exile by the Emperor Augustus, that his Art of Loving had cor-
rupted women. He recalled how he and his stepdaughter Perilla used to
read their poetry aloud to each other. He encouraged her verse composi-
tion, proclaiming that she would be surpassed only by Sappho, “the Les-
bian singer” whom Ovid held in high esteem.28 In the Heroides Ovid
invents poems written by mythic women to men (Penelope to Ulysses,
Dido to Aeneas etc.) as well as poetic exchanges between a man and a
woman (Paris to Helen, Helen to Paris, etc.). The one historical woman
whose voice Ovid recreates in the Heroides is that of Sappho to Phaon (no.
15). That epistle provided the Latin West with its only major image of Sap-
pho prior to the sixteenth century. It is also the only one of the Heroides
to have its Ovidian authorship questioned by some critics.29 The allusions
to Ovid’s heroines in the love letters are particularly valuable given the
92 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

relative rarity of the Heroides in the twelfth century.They show how an ed-
ucated woman could invoke a literary fiction to express herself.
By amor, Ovid was referring not to passion of the heart in Stendhal’s
sense of amour–passion but to sexual seduction usually outside of marriage.
Paul Veyne has argued that Roman love poetry is radically different from
that of a later period in Western civilization because amorous passion was
not conceived of ethically “as an experience or as a relationship with the
loved object but in relation to the subject who underwent it.”30 Certainly
many Roman authors dismissed women writers as superficial.31 Ovid was
unusual in writing as much as he did about the interaction of women with
men. Juvenal jokes about arguments that literary women would raise about
Dido or the relative merits of Virgil and Homer.32 His Satires, widely
copied in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, sustained a set of attitudes of
great influence in ensuring that women’s voices be mocked rather than lis-
tened to with respect. While educated Roman women undoubtedly did
discuss and write poetry, hardly anything has survived of this writing, apart
from a few lines written by Sulpicia, a female contemporary of Tibullus.33
Ovid’s writing about amor was considered potentially subversive of the
established order not just by the Emperor Augustus, but by Latin Christ-
ian authors influenced by Stoic thought. The Latin Fathers inherited clas-
sical assumptions that serious philosophical debate took place only among
male friends. Patriarchal themes were read into the canon of scripture to
make it conform more closely to the dominant assumptions of established
tradition. Only one letter of the many female correspondents of St. Jerome
(Ep. 46 from Paula and Eustochium) is preserved within collections of his
letters. St. Augustine similarly never abandoned traditional assumptions
about the superiority of male friendship over relationships with women,
although he did reflect much more than Jerome on the psychological roots
of uncontrolled sexuality.34
Ovid was more appreciated in late antiquity as a source of information
about ancient myths than as a commentator on human relationships.35 Few
early copies survive of his writings on love.36 The first poems to draw ex-
tensively on the Heroides are two laments, attributed in the surviving man-
uscript to Venantius Fortunatus (ca. 535–ca. 600), but quite possibly
composed by Radegund (ca. 520–587) herself. She was a Thuringian
princess who escaped marriage to Clothar I by being consecrated deacon
and then establishing a monastic community for women at Sainte-Croix,
Poitiers.37 Venantius may have brought the single manuscript of Ovid, from
which all surviving copies of the Heroides derive, from Italy to the region
of the Loire in the sixth century.38 It is in the Loire valley that Ovid’s verse
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 93

epistles inspired Carolingian writers to imitate the genre. Theodulf of Or-

léans (ca. 760–ca. 820) drew from Ovid the literary topos of Envy unjustly
defaming true genius, used in both the love letters and the Historia calami-
tatum.39 One of the earliest signs of interest in the Art of Loving can be seen
in the brief glosses preserved in a ninth-century manuscript subsequently
belonging to St. Dunstan (909–88).40 Our earliest witness to the Tristia and
the Heroides is an anthology of often rare classical texts, including Sappho
to Phaon and many works of Cicero, assembled probably at Fleury or Or-
léans in the mid-twelfth century.41 The classical allusions in Johannes de
Vepria’s love letters are more likely to derive from anthologies than from
complete texts of ancient authors.
The enthusiasm for Ovid in the love letters contrasts with suspicions in
more conservative monastic circles that his love poems were risqué. Guib-
ert of Nogent confesses that as a young monk he used to compose “Ovid-
ian and bucolic” verse about love in the form of epistles that he would
recite to select monastic friends, but now thinks of such activity as at odds
with his religious vocation.42 A German Benedictine, Conrad of Hirsau
(ca. 1070–ca. 1150), recognizes that Ovid is popular in monasteries, but
warns novices of the dangers of certain of his poems:

Why, when so many great authors are at hand [Arator, Prudentius, Cicero,
Sallust, Boethius, Lucan, Virgil, and Horace], the honest reading of whom
sharpens us in the mind and provokes us to virtue, why is corrupting liter-
ature to be sought out, the sense of which refuses to allow the mind to be
exercised? Why does the Christian novice dumbly submit his mind to Ovid-
ian books? Although gold can be found there amidst filth, the stench next
to the gold soils the seeker, although he may be eager for gold.43

In Conrad’s dialogue, the master then explains that while certain works of
Ovid were morally acceptable, others were of lesser value: “who can put
up with his cawing about love, his sordid digressions in different letters, if
he has a taste for what is healthy?”
Abelard offers a subtly different perspective in his Christian Theology,
written in the early 1120s. Here he quotes from Ovid’s Amores to prove
that pagan authors glimpsed the same insight as St. Paul into the frailty of
human nature: “We always strive for the forbidden and desire what is re-
fused.”44 Ovid’s presentation of himself as a literary exile, expelled from
Rome because of unjust jealousy of his genius, appealed to Abelard. He
quoted Ovid’s Cures for Love to describe how as a young but brilliant
teacher he had been pursued by jealous rivals: “Envy attacks the highest, as
94 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

winds scour mountain summits.”45 Just as Ovid wrote the Tristia to win
back his public reputation in Rome after being unjustly persecuted by
jealousy of his genius, so Abelard sought to restore his own reputation in
Paris against the “gnawing envy” of his rivals.46 This Ovidian theme of “the
jealousy of evil men” recurs in the letters copied by Johannes de Vepria
(54: edax malorum hominum invidia; 69: ne versus oculus legat invidiosus). In
her third letter to Abelard, Heloise quoted the Art of Loving of Ovid, “mas-
ter of sensuality and shame” to support her point that hospitality could eas-
ily provide opportunity for fornication.47 She countered traditional
monastic ambivalence towards Ovid by judgment that he provided a fount
of wisdom on human relationships.48
Enthusiasm for Ovid became strong in the twelfth century in the
schools of Orléans, doubtless facilitated by the access of its teachers to rich
monastic libraries in the region, such as Fleury (Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire).
Anthologies were compiled of many rare classical texts.49 By holding im-
portant positions at both Orléans and Paris, Stephen of Garlande was well
placed to promote access to these texts in Paris. Ovid’s poetry in particu-
lar provided a stimulus for much new writing in Latin and then in French
in the twelfth century.50

Marbod of Rennes (ca. 1035–1123)

One poet whom Könsgen considered to manifest a direct influence on
certain of the letters and poems copied by Johannes de Vepria was Marbod
of Rennes, a teacher and then archdeacon at Angers, appointed bishop of
Rennes in 1096.51 The parallels that he identified all occur within the
woman’s writing (including her one allusion to natura).52 Marbod was a
prolific writer of both religious and secular poetry, saints’ lives, and writ-
ings on eloquence.53 When he came to write his Book of Ten Chapters (one
chapter of which is about woman as the root of all evil in the world), he
rejected much of what he had written as a young man as both indecent
and trivial and poorly expressed, but confessed that it was impossible to
withdraw what had been uttered.54 He admitted that in his youth he had
been gripped by sexual passion, but now advocated moral rigor.55 The
image he projected of himself in these writings is that of a sophisticated
writer who applies his literary skills to defend traditional moral values that
he acknowledges he had not always observed.
Precious insight into a less well publicized part of Marbod’s output has
been provided by Walther Bulst’s discovery that certain poems included in
the rare Rennes (1524) edition of Marbod’s verse, were expurgated from
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 95

subsequent editions.56 No medieval manuscript is known of most of these

poems, but the printed collection seems to reproduce an anthology of ear-
lier writings, probably put together by Marbod himself. It begins with a
commendation of chastity and verses to a dedicated virgin. Poems ad-
dressed to Ermengard of Brittany and to Matilda, wife of Henry I, are fol-
lowed by “Persuasion against venereal love” and other verses of a more
erotic nature, some with an introductory rubric “under an assumed per-
sona” (sub assumpta persona). Of particular interest among the poems
unique to the 1524 edition are various verses addressed to an unidentified
female friend (amica), a girl or young woman (puella) for whom Marbod
professes love-sickness. The first is addressed “to a friend preparing to re-
turn home.”57 The poet says that this was not the first time that he had
loved a girl, but only now did he know what it was to love.58
One of the poems expurgated from later editions carries the title “a girl
to a friend promising gifts” (puella ad amicum munera promittentem). A girl re-
jects the advances of a lover as empty of substance. This particular poem
also occurs in the anthology of verse sent to Marbod in the late-eleventh
century, as well as in a copy of the letters of Walter of Mortagne to vari-
ous theologians, including Peter Abelard:59

You promise the joys of nymphs, violets, and rose-flowers, lilies of wonderful
whiteness, and tasty apples, like that of doves joined by their mother, purple
clothes dressed in which I would be able to subdue the woods by elegance
and surpass them in appearance, above silver, jewels, and gold. You promise
everything, but you send me nothing. If you love me and you have what you
promise, things would come first and words would follow. Therefore either it
is fictitious and you do not know the blows of desire or you are rich in empty
words and empty in things. If you are filled with many riches, you are a rus-
tic who believe that I love your things, rather than you yourself.60

As this poem is included in the anthology sent to Marbod, it seems un-

likely to have been one of Marbod’s own compositions, attributed to
someone else.The poem raises the same theme as letter 49 in the exchange
copied by Johannes de Vepria, that those motivated by true love loved each
other not because of wealth, but because of each other. Heloise insists on
the same theme in her first letter to Abelard:

God knows, I never sought anything in you apart from yourself, desiring
purely you, not what was yours. I did not seek the bonds of marriage, any
dowry, not even my own pleasures or desires, but I was anxious to imple-
ment yours, as you yourself know.61
96 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

The next poem in the anthology of Marbod’s verse is presented as a reply

to this young woman:

Dearest, joyfully I read what was sent by you to me, for it is contained there
that I have pleased you. If I knew truly what you are saying, most beautiful
of all, I would then be happier than if I became king. I would rather not cre-
ate the treasures of the great Octavian than not please you, as is mentioned
there. The letter which says that I am so sweet to you has conquered me, the
kisses which it tells, the heart asks for me.62

In a moving poem copied by Johannes de Vepria (82), the woman reiter-

ates the theme that if she possessed whatever had been owned by Caesar,
such riches would have been as nothing to her. This image of spurning
Caesar’s wealth is also raised by Heloise, when she protests that if Augus-
tus had honored her with marriage and endowed her with the whole
world, she would rather be called Abelard’s prostitute (meretrix) rather than
Augustus’ empress.63 She is here proclaiming with more dramatic power a
moral argument, raised by the puella to Marbod and repeated by Marbod
in reply, that true love ignores wealth.
In the next poem, “Reply to the reply of the same person,” Marbod
refers to her having “to put up with words of a father, and quarrels of a
mother, because of which you are fasting at nights and keeping vigils.”64
This is followed by “A reply to the girl loved passionately,” articulating a
new degree of intimacy:

I am happy at last, because now I know what I have entrusted to you, since
I no longer fear that I displease you. What hope beckoned, fear till now used
to prevent. I swear through the quiver of Venus, by which you also seem
wounded, through the eyes under which you lie: . . . For your appearance
has hurt me with a wound in my breast, your face shining again as a cloud-
less day.Your hair was combed, not folded with any tie, long and golden col-
ored, your forehead white as a swan, your sloping side and smooth belly and
what stands from the beginning, a lower abdomen that is too taut, these and
what remains create wounds for me; unless I touch them, I cannot live.65

A short final poem in the 1524 anthology is addressed “to a female friend
placed under protection”:

I can neither live without you nor with you. For fear prevents the latter, love
the former. O would that I could live without you or with you. But I would
rather live with you than without you.66
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 97

A comment made by the woman to her lover in letter 13 may also be a

direct quotation from this poem: “in you is my death and life.”
Bulst thought that these poems were exchanged between distinct indi-
viduals. It is impossible to be certain, however, whether the puella in these
poems is a real young woman or a creation of male poet’s fantasy. What
matters about these poems, excluded from the most widely-circulated an-
thologies of Marbod’s verse circulating in the twelfth century, is that they
open up a space in which a woman’s voice is able to be heard, within the
rules and conventions of the literary game being played. As much as Mar-
bod might dismiss his early verse as erotic fancy, he did not completely re-
press memories from the past within his Book of Ten Chapters. Erotic poems
could serve a moral purpose. Marbod’s poems do not just provide occa-
sional phrases picked up in the letters copied by Johannes de Vepria. They
furnish their readers with a rudimentary framework for discussion of rela-
tionships between women and men. When Heloise argued that she would
rather be called Abelard’s prostitute than be endowed with the treasures of
Augustus, she was taking further an argument about the relationship be-
tween love and possessions raised in a poetic (and perhaps fictional) ex-
change between Marbod and an unidentified puella, already part of Latin
imagination by the late eleventh century.

Fulcoie of Beauvais (fl. 1070–1100)

Less well known than Marbod’s poetry is the verse of Fulcoie of Beauvais,
an archdeacon of Meaux and a married priest of the second half of the
eleventh century who composed a major biblical epic, rich in classical im-
agery, on the marriage of Christ and his Church.67 His verse epistles are
much concerned with the sexual proclivities of his fellow clerics.68 He ex-
plains why sexual intercourse was morally superior to sodomy in a verse
epistle to Ingelrann, archdeacon of Laon: “We humans drink wine, wear
robes, linen; we take the turns of Venus, gentle, sometimes harsh—may we
take them, experiencing that by which we become compassionate.”69 In
an epistle addressed to Milo, dean of Paris, Fulcoie evokes the love of Mars
and Venus and the jealousy of Vulcan to berate him for getting too jealously
attached to a nun also being pursued by a rival:

You cannot escape like Mars. . . . You excuse yourself thus, that you refuse
marriage. . . . “I do not know whom I would marry or whom I want to
marry, but I want to marry a beautiful girl, for whom I would be the only
one. This companion is a burden, nor does he divide up equally. If she be
98 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

ugly, she would not be the only one for me. . . . “‘Be continent,’ you say, but
being continent is an effort. . . .” What are you doing with such a one, a vir-
gin, a nun? . . . Many come together, many men and many women students,
but which school orders one man to be with one woman? . . . What are
these instruments, this pen and polished tablets? Virgil does not take up these
concerns with “Of arms and men.” They do not make poems worthy to be
read. . . . She whom your violence injured has given a reply. By reasoning,
know your guilt, not hers.70

Fulcoie implies that he is responding to Milo’s verses, but claims that he

also knew what the nun had written to the dean. He argues that Milo is
being unnecessarily jealous about a rival’s affections for this nun and sym-
pathizes with her in this affair. As with the anthology of Marbod’s verse, it
is impossible to ascertain the extent to which Fulcoie is commenting on
specific situations. Fulcoie may be satirizing a situation that he finds hu-
morous, a situation in which a senior cleric got into emotional difficulties
with an educated nun. Such sexual freedom provoked bishop Galo and
William of Champeaux to expel nuns from the abbey of Saint-Éloi. Like
Guibert of Nogent and Marbod, Fulcoie mentions having written juvenile
verse of which he is now ashamed.71 His poetry is not of the kind to at-
tract a wide audience. To ecclesiastical authorities trying to impose strict
observance of chastity on the priesthood, his satirical inventions could
seem dangerously subversive.

Baudri of Bourgueil (1046–1130)

Baudri of Bourgueil engages more seriously than Marbod in reflective di-
alogue with other women, but his verse never circulated widely in the
twelfth century. Baudri shares with the woman in the love letters a com-
mon interest in the ethical basis of love.72 Born eight miles from Orléans
at Meung-sur-Loire, Baudri became a monk at Bourgueil, mid-way be-
tween Angers and Tours, and its abbot sometime after 1078. He tried un-
successfully to become bishop of Orléans in 1096 through the help of
Bertrada of Montfort. In 1107 he gained the less important bishopric of
Dol, a position from which he was suspended in 1120 by the papal legate,
Conon of Preneste.73 Baudri’s public reputation as a writer was ensured by
a history that he wrote of the first crusade, as well as lives of various saints,
including one of Robert of Arbrissel. A more intimate picture of his circle
of friends and admirers is provided by a collection of his verse epistles pre-
served in a single twelfth-century manuscript. Some of these are epitaphs
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 99

for knights, citizens, and clerics of Angers.74 While the majority are ad-
dressed to various clerical and monastic friends, often in exchange for
verses received from them, a number are directed to noble women, mostly
nuns at the abbey of Notre-Dame du Ronceray, Angers.75 Founded in
1028 by Fulk Nerra and his wife, Hildegard, Le Ronceray attracted daugh-
ters and widows mainly from the nobility.The wealth of the abbey is amply
attested in its charters.76 Baudri complains when Beatrice has not replied
in verse as he had asked and then adds a witty four-line verse about her si-
lence.77 He praises Muriel for her skill in the recitation of poetry. Ex-
plaining that he had not written directly to any other puella, he asks her to
respond to his verses in like manner. This Muriel is also the recipient of a
long poem by a certain Serlo, who describes her verse as better than his
own.78 Describing Emma’s poetry as “spiced with nectar,” Baudri wants to
become her disciple, if her order allowed, “like the other female students
who flock to her as to a “queen bee.”79 The women to whom Baudri ad-
dresses these verses do not seem to be any less real than his many male cor-
respondents, scattered through the Loire valley and beyond.
Whereas Marbod considers amor to be a passion of the heart, sometimes
at odds with a chaste ideal, Baudri perceives amor to be synonymous with
true friendship (amicitia). Baudri always emphasizes the purity of true love,
even if he uses erotic language to do so. He was inspired in particular by
Ovid’s writing about sincere love, as articulated by women in the Heroides.
In his epistle to Constance, he writes:

Believe me and I want both you and the readers to believe that a filthy love
has never driven me to you. I want virginity to live in you as a fellow citi-
zen; I do not want modesty to be shattered in you.You are a virgin, I a man:
I am young, you are younger. I swear by all that is: I do not want to be your
man. I do not want to be your man, nor you to be my woman: let mouth
and heart strengthen our friendship.80

Baudri explicitly contrasts the purity of his intentions toward Con-

stance, to baseness of other youths “following the impious deeds of
Jupiter.” He wants her to pursue virtue, as counseled by pagan authors,
so that she may be a virgin spouse truly worthy of God. He repeats
Ovid’s argument in the Tristia that writing erotic verse is not necessar-
ily a sign of dubious morality.
Baudri’s poem to Constance is followed by an eloquent profession of
delight from her, written after she had received Baudri’s poem. Jean-Yves
Tilliette has argued that Baudri himself composed the poem attributed to
100 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Constance. Her poem contains the same number of lines as that of Baudri
and alludes to passages elsewhere in Baudri’s verse.Yet there is a significant
contrast in tone between Baudri’s poem and her reply, which combines
imagery from both the Song of Songs and the Heroides to reflect on a
theme of great seriousness, the correct relationship between a man and a
woman in the religious life. She voices frustration that he is so long absent:

Woe is me that I cannot often see the one I love! Miserable me! I cannot
behold what I desire. I am weakened by desire and day long prayers; in vain
I pour out vows and prayers to God.81

She expands on Baudri’s theme of chastity, but demands that he not play
with her emotions. This is not a theme which Baudri articulates elsewhere
in his verse.

I have been chaste, I am chaste now, I want to live chaste. Oh would that I
could live as a bride of God.Yet not for this do I detest your love; the bride
of God should love God’s servants. . . . May law and rule always protect our
love. May a modest life grace our games. Let us therefore hold to simplicity
as pure as a dove, and do not prefer any woman to me.82

At the climax of her poem, she insists that he should visit her, finding some
reason why he might come to Angers:

Your crime is great if you do not feed one hungry, do not satisfy one who
pleads. Long awaited one, come, and do not linger long; often have I called
you; you who are called often, come!83

To read this verse as an expression of sexual desire does not do justice to

the particular values that she is asking him to uphold: greater communica-
tion with Baudri based on a relationship of “dove-like” simplicity. Her
poem uses literary artifice to present an ethical demand. It offers the image
of an articulate woman quite different from the conventional Mary Mag-
dalene figure constructed by many male authors. Whereas Baudri’s verse is
about the appropriate physical distance they should maintain, her concern
is that he should not hide behind literary jest or the pleasure of the writ-
ten word. She is able to go along with the literary form of an agreeable di-
version, but she does not want the purity of their relationship to be
betrayed. The moral seriousness of Constance’s poem is comparable to that
evident in the woman in the letters copied by Johannes de Vepria. While
the man in the exchange remains influenced by Ovidian conception of
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 101

amor as an external force that undermines reason, the woman he loves ex-
plains amor as dilectio, a more deliberate form of love. Like Constance, she
identifies more with the ideals of love articulated by women in Ovid’s
Heroides than with the rhetoric of intense passion for a woman, satirized in
the Amores.
The contrast between the attitudes of Marbod and Baudri toward
Robert of Arbrissel’s association with women parallels that which divides
Roscelin and Abelard in their attitude toward Robert. Marbod suspected
that any relationship between a man and a woman could only be sexual.
Baudri developed a more sophisticated argument that amor was divine in
origin. Within an imagined exchange between the exiled Ovid and his
male companion, Florus, Baudri has Florus say:

God has driven our nature to be full of love; nature teaches us what he
taught her. If love is to be blamed, the agent of love is to be blamed; for the
agent of love will be the agent of the crime. That we exist is a crime if it is
a crime that we love; God who gave being, granted me loving. And God
himself, who made love, did not make hate; for what is hate is born from
vice. You talked about love, but did not create it; no flame was lit by your
teaching.84

Baudri viewed amor as a sublime force rather than as a degrading passion,

a conviction that anticipates the ideals celebrated by some vernacular poets
in the twelfth century.While the situation of the female student in the love
letters is different from that of Constance, they share a common belief that
God recognizes true love, a common formula in subsequent troubadour
and trouvère lyric. Baudri composed fictive dialogues, modeled on the
Heroides. He also exchanged poems with a network of friends, including a
few women whose literary gift he admired. Like Jean de Meun, Baudri
employs the device of fictional speech to explore for himself the nature of
love. Baudri believed that the insights of Ovid and other classical authors
were fully compatible with the insights of Christian tradition.85 The
woman who exchanged those love letters with her teacher shared the same
conviction.

The Regensburg verse exchange and Tegernsee letters

The phenomenon of educated men and women exchanging messages
in prose and verse was not confined to Anjou and the Île-de-France in
the early twelfth century. The letters and poems copied by Johannes de
102 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Vepria can usefully be compared to the verses preserved in a twelfth-

century manuscript, apparently the record of an exchange between a
teacher and his female pupil (or pupils).86 An internal reference to a
new boy ruler may allude to the accession of Henry V in 1105.87 The
teacher is from Liège, the woman, probably a nun or a student at one of
the old-established Benedictine communities in Regensburg.88 The ex-
change may have begun simply as an exercise in verbal dexterity, con-
ducted on wax tablets, but copied onto parchment by one of the two
parties. It begins with a poem about the fable of the fox in the vineyard,
thinly disguised sexual innuendo.89 Then follows a reply by a woman
who treats the exchange as a game. She protests that “he who is far from
sight is far from light of heart. I shall hate if I can, if not I shall love un-
willingly . . . nor am I an old woman—let the play go on!”90 The man
becomes more specific in his demand that she yield to him, earning a
sharp reply from the woman: “You should be called monkey or sphinx
to which you are similar in your deformed face and immoderate hair!”91
She emphasizes the importance of virtue (virtus) in relationships.92 The
lack of form and the quite distinct voices recorded in the manuscript
argue against their being the composition of a single author. In one, the
girl complains that the teacher is giving his attention to Bertha.93 In
some verses, the girl speaks for a whole group of women. Others con-
vey a private message:

It is I whom you know, but do not betray your lover. I beg you to come to
the old chapel at dawn. Knock lightly, for the sacristan lives there.Then what
the breast now hides, the bed will reveal to you.94

Her immediate concern is to negotiate a satisfying relationship with her

teacher. Not all the letters express glowing fondness for the other. Near the
end of the exchange, the man accuses her of fleeing from him, and of not
bringing him “whatever secret you have.” She accuses him of dallying with
another girl, and eventually announces that she is leaving him.95 He had
not lived up to her ethical principles. The exchange concludes with her
deciding not to pursue the relationship any further, an ending that paral-
lels the desire expressed in the woman’s final note (112a) as copied by Jo-
hannes de Vepria. This latter exchange draws on a far wider range of
literary sources and elaborates much more sophisticated ideas about the
nature of love.Whereas the Regensburg verses are remarkable for their im-
mediacy and openness, the complex literary allusions in the love letters are
much more difficult to interpret.
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 103

Comparing these love letters to a collection of women’s letters pre-

served in a twelfth-century manuscript from Tegernsee is similarly instruc-
tive.96 The Tegernsee letters are written in the same rhyming prose style as
the woman’s love letters, copied by Johannes de Vepria. They do not con-
stitute a continuous exchange, however, and lack any level of formal philo-
sophical analysis. The author of the first letter defines herself not as lover
but as a female friend (amica), writing to her male friend (amico). Like the
woman in the Troyes love letters, the female writer apologizes for her lack
of sophistication when writing to someone who is more educated:

Trusted one, accept the reply to your letter. I do not know if I am capable
of writing what I consider worthy, especially since it is a shame to assault
the ears of a learned man with uncultivated language, and it would be
wrong to let it pass in silence. I will reply to you, however, as I can. It seems
a hard and difficult thing what you are trying to ask from me, namely my
complete trust, which I have never promised to any mortal. But if I know
that I shall be loved by you with a pure love, and that the pledge of my
chastity is not to be violated, I do not refuse effort or love. If it exists with-
out suffering, it cannot be called love, and thus certainly is the greatest ef-
fort. Take care that no one sees these words, because they were not written
by authority.97

The closing caution, so similar to the woman’s warning in letter 69, pro-
vides valuable evidence that such a letter was meant to be private. Literary
communication created a private sphere needing to be protected from the
outside world. She invokes familiar feudal imagery to describe the ethos of
love (amor) by which she wishes to be bound. Although the fourth letter
in the collection has no salutation identifying firmly whether the author is
a man or a woman, it could be a reply to the preceding letter, written in
the same rhyming prose.98 The fifth letter may be written by a woman to
another woman (“C. darling dearest”), as it closes with a final greeting:
“The convent of young women also greets you, sweet pearl.” It voices the
conviction that two friends are separated by great distance, but are joined
by “equanimity of souls and true friendship, which is not artificial, but
which is fixed in my heart.” The writer protests with the same sort of af-
fection as Baudri reserves for his male friends: “I want to love you until the
moon falls from the sky because before everyone who is in the world, you
are fixed in the depth of my heart.”99
The second letter in the Tegernsee collection is rather different from
the others in that it is from “an abandoned friend” to a (male) friend. She
berates the man with an intensity not unlike that of the first letter of
104 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Heloise to Abelard. She insists on her innocence, shifting the blame firmly
to his quarter:

My soul is consumed with sorrow and filled with bitterness, because I seem
to have been completely wiped out from your memory; I always hoped for
trust and love from you to the end of my life. What strength, H., do I have
that I may bear this patiently and not weep over what is now and for ever?
Is my body bronze, or my mind like a rock or my eyes stony that I may not
mourn the evil of my misfortune? What have I done? What have I done?
Did I ever reject you first? In what am I found guilty? Indeed, I have been
rejected without any fault of mine. If you are looking for guilt, you have
yourself, yourself, as the guilty one! For often, indeed very often, I sent a
message of mine to you, but I never obtained either in great or even in the
least part consoling words from you. May all men depart, not seeking trust
and love further from me! Take particular care that no third eye comes be-
tween us. Farewell, farewell; follow better ways.100

The Tegernsee letters do not present a continuous exchange, as in the Re-

gensburg and Troyes manuscripts. They are preserved in a monastic library
not for any spiritual content, but as models of literary style, respected for
their command of language. Nothing is known about who wrote them.
The two subsequent poems are certainly love letters, although they are
written in metrical verse. One sings the physical praise of a woman, “By
the plenty [ubere, also meaning breast] of your many delights, dearest, by
your looks, see how you punish me endlessly . . .”; another asks why love
has grown lukewarm: “It is enough and too much that our letter between
us is delayed.”101 Although these letters were preserved at Tegernsee for
their literary interest, they originated from outside its confines. They do
not share the same complex fusion of literary and philosophical themes as
makes the exchange copied by Johannes de Vepria so unusual.

The Zurich anthology

The Troyes love letters are also more sophisticated than a collection of
verses preserved in a late twelfth-century Zurich manuscript (perhaps from
Schaffhausen), containing some four hundred items, mostly anonymous,
but with some poems by Marbod of Rennes and Hildebert of Lavardin
and a few texts in German.102 The anthology contains many verses that il-
lustrate the literary and intellectual concerns of a cleric studying in France
in the mid twelfth century when Abelard and Heloise were already well
known. Some are satirical, such as those about sodomitical clergy.103 Oth-
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 105

ers relate to Poitiers and Orléans. One is about a teacher of logic called
Galo, perhaps the Gualo who succeeded Abelard at Notre-Dame after
1117, and who came into conflict with bishop Stephen of Senlis in
1127.104 The compiler of this anthology was interested as much in writing
about women as about famous people. One of his verses begins with a sim-
ilar invocation to the Muse as the first poem by the woman in the Troyes
anthology (66), although now addressed by a man to his “sweet friend”:

The Muse of a friend greets you with happy augury. My Muse sings of you,
she delights to play for you alone. . . . 105

This is followed by another poem, employing images sometimes similar to

those of the man’s love letters: “My sweet friend, more beautiful than
Galatea, the glory, flower, mirror, light, and beauty of women, the one hope
of my life, sweet friend. . . . As Lucifer is set over the stars, thus you are set
over young women. . . . Remember these things, beloved, lest you do not
give them to the wind. Live, always fare well, another does not worship
you more than me.”106 The comparison to Lucifer recalls an image used by
the man in his first poem in the anthology (20); the Ovidian phrase “words
to the wind” is also cited in the love letters (75, 94). The next two poems
in the Zurich manuscript are epitaphs for Abelard and Heloise, evidence
that this part of the anthology must have been completed after 1164. One
is an epitaph celebrating the love of Abelard and Heloise; the other is re-
ported in the late fifteenth century as having been engraved on an image
above Abelard’s tomb. It records that Abelard both composed verse and en-
gaged in the study of philosophy, the same combination of gifts as cele-
brated by Heloise in her famous letter to Abelard and in the last of the
woman’s love letters (112).107
The Zurich anthology also contains a number of verse epistles in which
the poet asks for proof of a lady’s love:

I have often written to you and at the same time have received your writ-
ings. I beg you not to be light-hearted towards us; or if your love has turned
into boredom with us, write briefly to me what you want. Do not keep our
mind further in suspense. If you wish that I love you, I shall always love you,
I say; and although you do not, you will always be my concern.108

Perhaps the most moving poem in this anthology is addressed “To a fugi-
tive” (Ad fugitivum), written in the voice of a woman who feels abandoned
by her lover. She has lost her virginity, and complains that she is being
106 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

beaten by her father or guardian because of her relationship to the man.

Its intense lament is worth quoting at length because it parallels the
rhetoric employed in Heloise’s first two letters to Abelard:

All things are becoming cheap, my limbs becoming limp with sorrow; there
is no need to explain what difficulties of a settler they sustain. Sense weak-
ens, the body, the voice grows silent. Therefore come back, in case you de-
serve death. . . . I beg the living God that he give you back to me as a friend.
Take thought for a delirious mind, already lost. . . . Writings are empty for
me, because they bring sad things to the heart. What may I say to one who
is absent—woe is me—to a fugitive? What does it help to assault absent ears
with verses? You have become harder than stone, until you pine for me: I am
not able to overcome your stony self far away. Come with me, let me make
you not be with yourself; I wanted to speak many things with you, if I had
time and places which suited our tears. May my writings speak these things
on my behalf because they are not given, and may parchment stand for my
living voice. May I gain what I deserve, by no spoken permission, dwelling
with you in hidden places. If you do not want to yield to me in private, at
least allow my parchment to say a few things. . . . May the gold streams of
the Rhine turn into the Histria before you do not wish to speak to me. By
what reason I might be more shameful to you than before, I cannot say at
all. This came from you, whatever displeased you in me: Surely you have
tested what I am? Why do you weaken me? Then I was a jewel, then a
flower, then the lily of the field; then I was unlike any woman in the world.
What I was then I am now, apart from being a virgin; nor can I ever be that:
over that I weep. I weep over this, night and day, because fate has not car-
ried my life with sweet virginity. To triumph by deceit is nothing apart from
wanting praise. Promising me good things, you have often given me much,
and in place of good things, I have taken much that is bad. Often because
of you, I am given many beatings that my soft limbs can scarcely bear. The
reputation of dishonor hurts more than beating of limbs. Suffering beatings
is easier than suffering words. What previously gave delight, now makes me
burst into tears.109

Is this poem an imaginary composition or is it the copy of a genuine let-

ter? It recalls the second letter in the Tegernsee collection in the intensity
of its demand that the man return to the woman he once loved. She wants
him to be her friend again. She alludes to previous epithets applied to her
(like “lily of the field,” drawn from the Song of Songs), and asks why he
has changed in his attitude. She describes her letter as a poor substitute for
her voice. The directness of her complaint makes this poem difficult to
imagine as a male invention. Heloise was not the only educated woman in
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 107

the twelfth century to rebel against the injustice of the way she was treated
by the man she loved. Most women who suffer violence do not have their
voices heard. This poem was sufficiently eloquent for some cleric to in-
clude it in his anthology (if he was not himself the fugitive to whom the
poem is addressed).
This poem is followed by five verse epistles (nos. 117–121), of interest
for their immediacy rather than any literary merit. The first begins: “No
woman can be found, I testify, equal to you . . .”; the second: “May God
turn away from punishment and give you pleasant dwelling places, but
with me, because I want to live with you.” The fourth missive recalls the
early protestations of the man in the Troyes exchange: “I put off every-
thing, I love you with my whole breast; you are the living spring of
worldly delights. I worship you, I want you, I look for you, I am worn out
in my breath. About to die, I sigh for you and look for you. . . .”110 The
fifth refers to poems that a woman sent: “You have sent songs, you have
given what my Muse loves; they make bronze and gold squalid, as songs
alone they are strong.”111 These poems may form a sequence directed to
the woman who wrote the poetic epistle “To a fugitive.”

The Fleury poems

Verses about Abelard and Heloise also occur at the end of a twelfth-cen-
tury manuscript from Fleury, of great interest because they include an ex-
change in which the rights and wrongs of Abelard’s behavior in 1117 are
debated.112 The first poem voices sympathy for Heloise and hostility to-
wards Abelard for his having forced her to enter the religious life unwill-
ingly. Its first line alludes to a detail mentioned in the Historia calamitatum,
that Abelard came back from Brittany after his mother had decided to
enter the religious life:

Peter set out for Paris when his mother had taken the veil. Nor will the
cruel man’s beloved come back other than veiled. The mother takes the
veil of her free will, the friend unwillingly. It was appropriate for an old
woman who is cold in body; it is damnable for a tender and less fearsome
girl, whose face had set her above many, whose philosophy had set her
above all girls, she through whom alone Gaul has worth. Yet her cruel
friend endured abandoning her—if anyone calls him “friend” not because
he loves, but is loved: he ordered her whom he had abandoned to be
veiled. She obeyed, nor could she have left unfulfilled for her husband
whatever love can fulfil.113
108 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

This poem confirms what Heloise says in her letter to Abelard, that she en-
tered the religious life at his behest. It sympathizes strongly with her
predicament.
The next poem sides with Abelard as a philosopher brought low by be-
trayal, just as women had brought down famous men in the past. It com-
pares Abelard’s fate to that of Matthias, probably the count of Nantes (d.
1101), according to this poem castrated because of adultery:

Two jewels, Gaul, adorned you once: Matthias the consul and Peter the
philosopher. One the glory of knighthood, the other the light of the clergy.
Envious fate deprived both these exalted men of their genitals; an unlike
charge made them alike in the wound. The consul was undone by a just
charge of adultery; the philosopher fell by a supreme betrayal. The shameful
wound attached the philosopher to the monks, and took study away from you,
philosophy. A woman destroyed Adam, Samson, Solomon: Peter alas has been
destroyed by a like fall. This was the public downfall of the highest men.114

After a missing line or lines, a verse follows that presents a diametrically op-
posite viewpoint. It defends Heloise on the grounds that she is innocent:

Only the wife of Peter is free of the crime. There was no consent on her
part to make her the guilty one.

The contrast in opinions is difficult to comprehend unless these poems

record a verse exchange between two people, like the Regensburg ex-
change of verses between a teacher and a female student. In the Fleury
manuscript, the couplet defending Heloise is followed, after two lines on
another subject, by a verse that proclaims the speaker’s frenzy of passion
and unwillingness to remain a virgin. A shorter version of this verse is also
contained in the Zurich anthology:

Either the frenzy of love will excuse me in my blindness or I will be guilty

of a great betrayal. A providing host has given everything to me apart from
you: I want nothing but you, nor will I be another Joseph!115

Taken literally, these four lines present a declaration of passion from a man
who does not wish to preserve his virginity, like Joseph. This plea is fol-
lowed by a verse asking Robert whether he is truly a monk:

Do you keep the substance of being a monk, Robert, if you dislike the
name, or do you rejoice in the name of canon? If I am not mistaken, the
cowl alone frightens you, brother.
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 109

He then confronts her with a similar accusation:

Sister, often I ask you to spurn precious clothes, which the one you have
loved does not love, rather forbids. . . . May your clothing show that you
have put on Christ, my friend.116

These fragmentary verses seem to record repartee between a monk and a

nun, exchanging contrasting views about Abelard and Heloise.The woman
admires Heloise for her great learning, and feels that she has been badly
treated by Abelard, while the man (Robert?) sympathizes with Abelard for
having suffered a brutal punishment. The repartee, much less sophisticated
than that recorded in the Troyes love letters, shows how quickly Abelard
and Heloise acquired legendary status during the time of their early affair.
This exchange is preserved in a monastic library rich not only in works of
Ovid, but also in copies of early logical glosses of Peter Abelard from the
second decade of the twelfth century. They may have been brought to
Fleury by a monk who had studied in Paris at the time of Abelard’s affair
with Heloise. Like the exchanges preserved in German libraries, the Fleury
exchange does not show any of the literary sophistication of the Troyes
love letters, but it provides further evidence that the practice of men and
women in the early twelfth century exchanging Latin verse was not in it-
self unusual.

Letters and friendship

The love letters, as well as the verse exchanges preserved in anonymous an-
thologies within monastic libraries at Regensburg, Tegernsee,
Schaffhausen, and Fleury, constitute only a small proportion of surviving
dialogues of the period celebrating values of friendship and intimacy. The
vast majority are between men.Yet the tradition of women participating in
literary exchanges stretches back to the early medieval period. In the
eighth century, educated Anglo-Saxon nuns exchanged verse with Boni-
face, archbishop of Mainz. Lioba asked Boniface to accept her “in place of
a brother” and begged him not to forget her so that “the bond of true
love” (vere dilectionis ligatura) between them would remain for ever. She sent
him verses “composed according to the discipline of poetic tradition,” a
skill she had learned from Eadburgh, abbess of Thanet, another correspon-
dent of Boniface.117 The modest revival of religious communities for aris-
tocratic women in the tenth and eleventh centuries enabled these literary
traditions to be preserved into the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.118
110 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Nuns and recluses were not allowed to preach, but they did copy manu-
scripts, for which a high degree of literacy was required.119 Clear evidence
of the literacy of aristocratic religious communities for women is provided
by the contributions they made to obituary rolls, carried round from one
abbey to the next by a messenger to celebrate the death of an important
figure. The contributions from nuns at Wilton in England, Le Ronceray at
Angers, Sainte-Trinité at Caen, and Sainte-Croix at Poitiers are all of a
consistently high standard, not to speak of those from Argenteuil.120
Vernacular verse composed by women is even more difficult to glimpse
than that in Latin, except through the filter of persistent ecclesiastical con-
demnations of “shameless songs” and “girls’ songs.” Legislation of Charle-
magne in 789 prohibited nuns and abbesses exchanging love songs
(winileodas) with monks.121 A substantial body of songs in a woman’s voice
are preserved in kharjas in Spanish and Galician-Portuguese dialects, and to
a lesser extent in Provençal and Old French.122 Gerhoch of Reichersberg’s
remark in 1148 that both holy women in monasteries and married women
whose husbands were on Crusade were singing new religious songs in the
vernacular, shows how women could be recognized as creative in their
own right.123
Exchanges between women and men in the vernacular tend to be
recorded only when they attract negative attention from the authorities.
One such comment is noted by Dronke in the Life of a bishop of Iceland
in the late eleventh century:

There was a favorite game among the people—which is unseemly—that

there should be an exchange of verses: a man addressing a woman, and a
woman a man—disgraceful strophes, mocking and unfit to be heard. Bishop
Jon had it discontinued—he utterly prohibited the practice. Poems or stro-
phes of love-song he would not hear recited or allow to be recited; nonethe-
less he did not altogether succeed in getting them stopped.124

While nothing is known about these love songs (mansaungs), these con-
demnations suggest that the authorities were never able to suppress such
exchanges between women and men.The Cambridge songbook, compiled
in the Rhineland ca. 1050, includes a Latin love poem written as a letter
from a bride to her dearest spouse.125 Another presents itself as a verse di-
alogue in both German and Latin between a nunna and a man.126
Records of Latin exchanges between women and men survive mostly
from the period between 1050 and 1150. The Troyes love letters provide a
rare example of a literary genre that may have been much more wide-
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 111

spread than the surviving record suggests. By the second half of the twelfth
century, opportunity for women to practice such literary skills seems to
have become more rare, as the education offered by women’s monastic
communities was unable to complete with urban schools, to which
women were denied access. The monastic correspondence of Heloise and
Abelard represents perhaps the last great flowering of the genre. It articu-
lates with unusual clarity the tension between traditional perception of
amor as a lapse from commitment to God, and an ethic based on the oblig-
ations of love which Heloise struggles to define to Abelard.

The Poems in the Troyes Anthology

The letters and poems copied by Johannes de Vepria represent a high point
in the genre of Latin dialogue within a secular context. They are not just
derivative of an existing literary tradition. They manipulate literary themes
in a far more complex way than any surviving exchanges from Anjou or
southern Germany.The woman’s literary skills develop in the course of the
exchange. The first metrical poems in the exchange are by her teacher,
who initially uses a traditional “leonine” meter, in which the last syllable
of the second half of the line (not necessarily the accented syllable) rhymes
with the first half. In his old age, Marbod condemned the type of rhyme
that he had used in his youth, also found in the Regensburg exchange, as
clumsy.127 This is the style of the first metrical poem in the exchange (20),
in which the teacher celebrates his beloved as a star who should lead him
but threatens to fade (also an image in the poem Hebet sydus of the
Carmina burana, often attributed to Abelard).128 The key image of the man’s
poem in letter 20 is that the woman is a light or morning star (lucifer) who
drives out darkness.
Her first metrical verse occurs in response to verses she receives from
him (38a).129 He composes five lines, each with its own internal rhyme, to
express his longing to touch her. The woman continues in the same style,
insisting that she will be faithful to him, no matter what he thinks, and re-
iterates a prayer raised in her second letter (3). The final verses are from the
man, picking up on her profession of fidelity. They proclaim his love for
her without her religious allusions. He develops an idea he raised in his
first letter to her, that living without her is death (the same idea as used by
Marbod). His rhymes fit into the same pattern of literary exchange as the
Regensburg verses.
Apart from short metrical lines in letters 48 and 49, the first major long
poem from the woman is letter 66, an appeal to Clio and then to each of
112 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

the Muses to sing their greetings to her teacher, whom she sees as dis-
pelling all darkness. She begins by using a different rhyme in each syllable,
although she does not keep this up. Her list of the nine Muses (Clio, Eu-
terpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsicore, Calliope, Urania, Polimnia, and
Erato) derives not from Ovid, but from Fulgentius, a fifth-century au-
thor.130 While the convention of invoking the Muses (Camenae) for inspi-
ration had fallen out of fashion in late classical poetry, Boethius and some
Carolingian writers exploited the convention.131 Baudri of Bourgueil
drew more extensively on Fulgentius to describe each of the nine Muses
in a long mythological poem, than the woman in the love letters.132 Her
direct appeal to each of the Muses is closer to a poem of Hildebert of
Lavardin that she could have known.133 She imagines these Muses as still
alive. In a sense, she is Sappho singing to her Apollo. Her first major poem
in the anthology boldly asserts that she sees herself to be in direct conti-
nuity with this antique tradition. The crisis in the relationship that pro-
voked her to insist in letter 60 that all communication between them
should cease, seems to have unleashed a new degree of creativity in her.
She now sees herself more self-consciously as a poet.
In her next poem (69), she experiments with elegiac distichs: “Go, let-
ter, and take my complaints to a friend” (Littera, vade meas et amico ferte
querelas), an opening that recalls Ovid’s address to Perilla (Tristia 3.7). She
begs that jealous eyes not read her verses. After a third poem (73), written
in the more joyful spirit of letter 66, she composes a lament (82), singled
out by Peter Dronke for its arresting quality. Here she protests that Cae-
sar’s riches were nothing to her, compared to the treasure that she loved.
Like the stones on a funeral pyre “our body completely vanishes in love.”
She sees herself as a classical tragic heroine, not unlike Dido immolating
herself in her love for Aeneas. This is the first time she does not always
make both halves of her verses rhyme. Her teacher avoids this practice
completely in his first major metrical poem (87), in which he considers
how he has been conquered by love in a year that was both short and long,
and apologizes if he has brought his beloved at any time to tears. There are
three other metrical poems from the man near the end of the exchange.
They all avoid those obvious rhymes found in the Regensburg exchange
and in the early verses of the Troyes correspondence. The man’s mood is
different in the last communication (113) copied by Johannes de Vepria, a
lament begging forgiveness and explaining how he had been led astray by
amor. He complains about the obstacle presented by the murmuring of
people “which I fear” (Obstant et populi murmura, que timeo). With elegiac
detachment, he considers his feelings for her to have been ultimately based
 TRADITIONS OF DIALOGUE 113

on deception, precisely that trickery about which Ovid was considered

such a wise and prudent guide.The man’s style of carefully structured verse
is subtly different from the emotional intensity with which the woman in-
vests her letters and poems.

Conclusion
Much more can be said about the letters and poems in the Troyes an-
thology and their relation to twelfth-century writing about love than in-
dicated in this brief survey of their literary context. While the exchange
is remarkable for its size, it builds on an existing tradition of literary di-
alogue between women and men belonging to an educated elite. Aristo-
cratic monastic foundations for women, like those of Notre-Dame at
Argenteuil and Le Ronceray at Angers were able to provide privileged
young women, generally from noble families, with the opportunity to
study Latin literature. The closest literary connections of the Troyes love
letters and poems are to the verse epistles of Marbod of Rennes ad-
dressed to an unnamed amica. A major difference between the Troyes love
letters and these verse epistles, however, is that most of the letters are
written in crafted prose rather than in metrical verse. The love letters
demonstrate a greater degree of freedom and spontaneity. The woman in
the love letters displays a distinct character not found in any of the other
exchanges. She has an ardent desire to learn the philosophy which she
admires in her teacher, and is particularly keen to discuss the concept of
love. She offers her own thoughts about love as an ideal, subtly trans-
forming the thought of Cicero by transfusing it with imagery and ideal-
ism drawn from scripture. As the man observes in letter 50, she is unique
among all the young women of her time in being a female student of
philosophy.
The love letters manifest a view of love infused not just by Ovidian
satire but by ideals of amicitia normally articulated within an all-male con-
text by Latin writers, whether pagan like Cicero, or Christian like Ambrose
and Jerome. Belief that a chaste relationship could develop between
women and men was fostered by apocryphal texts like the Acts of Paul and
Thecla. The revival of the idea of a chaste union between a man and a
woman in the eleventh and twelfth centuries provided an alternative vi-
sion of male/female relationships, traditionally viewed as legitimate only
for sexual procreation.134 Ivo of Chartres may have been a strong advocate
of the ideal of chastity for the clergy, but he also advocated a greater sense
of moral seriousness in relationships between men and women. He saw
114 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

marriage as based on true consent between two individuals rather than

simply on the existence of a physical relationship.135
One of the most fascinating features of the letters copied by Johannes
de Vepria is the tension they portray between two views of love. While the
man is highly educated and speaks of the amicitia they share, it is the
woman who reflects more fully on the implications of applying ideals of
selfless friendship to both amor and dilectio. She identifies more with the
moral seriousness of the heroines about whom Ovid wrote in his Heroides
than with the flippant wit of the Amores. The few Latin verses presented in
a woman’s voice in poetic anthologies from the twelfth century strengthen
the argument that some educated women did engage in exchanging writ-
ing in Latin with men. In doing so, these women were participating in a
wider cultural phenomenon practiced among an educated elite in the late
eleventh and early twelfth century, of exchanging intimate verse and let-
ters in order to forge a friendship network. Just as St. Anselm and St.
Bernard broke out of monastic convention by expressing themselves with
greater intimacy to their friends, so the teacher and his student create their
own secret world, shielded from the gaze of jealous outsiders through a
complex web of allusions to scripture and classical literature.
The letters copied by Johannes de Vepria celebrate an imaginary world
of idealized love at a time of much questioning about traditional relation-
ships between women and men. They throw precious light on the devel-
opment of new thinking about conduct between women and men in
France before such ideas are developed in the langue d’oeuil in the second
half of the twelfth century. The only way of establishing more firmly
whether or not these letters are written by Abelard and Heloise is to com-
pare their vocabulary and style to that of known texts by this famous cou-
ple. The love letters are like fragments of a mosaic of which only certain
sections remain, but which allow us to appreciate a larger picture once they
are put correctly into position.They record in much greater detail than the
Historia calamitatum the evolution of a love affair between a celebrated
teacher and a young woman of great literary promise.
CHAPTER 5

THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS

When you saw these letters from my eager hand

could your eye recognize the sender
or did you fail to recognize their author
until you could read my name, “Sappho”?1

he opening lines of Sappho to Phaon provoke the question of female

T authorship in acute form. How do we ever really know that we are
listening to a woman’s voice? The same question could be posed of the let-
ters copied by Johannes de Vepria. While twelfth-century readers were fas-
cinated by the literature of dialogue, whether it be Cicero’s discussions
about friendship or Augustine’s philosophical conversations about truth,
happiness and God, women’s voices were rarely encountered except as
imagined in scripture or in poems like Ovid’s Heroides. The exchange
copied by Johannes de Vepria is unusual in recording such a lengthy dia-
logue between a woman and a man. The controversy surrounding the au-
thenticity of the famous Abelard–Heloise correspondence may have had
the effect of discouraging scholars from exploring these anonymous love
letters. It seems astonishingly bold to suggest that a copy of the intimate
correspondence of two famous lovers could survive unnoticed in a mu-
nicipal library in France without its significance being recognized. The
only way to establish whether Johannes de Vepria did come across a copy
of their intimate correspondence is to compare the language of these let-
ters with that of other known writings of Abelard and Heloise.

The Process of Dialogue

The dialogue recorded in these love letters is quite different from the
formal speeches invented by Abelard in philosophical dialogues which
116 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

explore a single, unified argument. In his Soliloquium (ca. 1122), Abelard

invents an imaginary conversation between Petrus and Abaelardus to ex-
plore the common goal of philosophy and religion.2 He develops these
interests further in his Collationes, fictional dialogues of an imaginary
philosopher with both a Jew and a Christian, written ca. 1126–33.3 In
both these treatises Abelard pursues a theme implicit in the woman’s love
letters, that the ethical wisdom of the ancients is fully consistent with the
message of the Gospel. Abelard never includes a woman’s voice in these
dialogues, in which different protagonists share the same literary style
and vocabulary. Abelard is quite conventional in all his scholastic writing,
whether about logic or theology, in consistently presenting arguments in
a male voice. One treatise in which a woman’s voice does appear is The
Problems of Heloise (Problemata Heloissae), a collection of forty-two ques-
tions put by Heloise, many of them dealing with ethical issues raised by
scripture, each followed by a response from Abelard. They are introduced
by a letter from Heloise in which she presents herself as imitating Paula
and Eustochium in questioning Jerome. The use of a Greek word for the
title of this work, rather than the standard Latin term, Quaestiones, may
reflect a deliberate desire on Heloise’s part to emulate sophisticated
scholastic usage.4 The questions and answers do not form a continuous
dialogue as in the love letters. Heloise supplies a series of questions to
which Abelard provides answers.
The love letters do record some elements of a scholastic exchange be-
tween teacher and pupil. In letter 5, she articulates her desire to absorb
the philosophical gifts which he so richly manifests. In letter 24, he re-
sponds to her question about the nature of love. For most of the corre-
spondence, however, she addresses him not as her teacher, but as her
beloved. Her desire is for a relationship of full equality, a goal that proves
ultimately beyond his capacity. There is a similar tension in the more fa-
mous Heloise–Abelard correspondence. Heloise strives to develop a more
philosophical exchange, as she forces Abelard to address the ethical
dilemma in which she finds herself. She is plagued by the contrast be-
tween her public reputation for piety and religion and her own convic-
tion that she cannot repent of her love for Abelard, which she insists was
always true and selfless. To argue, as Schmeidler and others have done, that
the correspondence is a literary dialogue invented by Abelard to instruct
Heloise in the religious life, is to silence the voice of Heloise. Such claims
also fail to recognize the vast stylistic gulf between formal scholastic dia-
logues and a literary exchange in which two distinct personalities emerge.
It is more plausible to argue that Heloise was forcing Abelard to address
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 117

ethical issues both in relation to herself and to her community than to in-
sist that Abelard anticipated all these ideas.
Only in letter 112 does the woman address her beloved as her teacher.
She explains that although his letters had once raised her to the heights of
ecstasy, she now has a quite different cause for joy, one which she cannot
put into words. The very act of addressing her teacher as her beloved has
transformed her relationship to him. At the same time, she struggles with
feelings of anxiety that she does not have the technical eloquence to pro-
fess her feelings. By letter 23 she is overwhelmed by internal conflict be-
tween the desire of her spirit (animus) to write and the advice of her ability
(ingenium) to advance more cautiously, she exclaims that she lacks the “salt
of learning” to answer him, while he is rich in philosophy. Even in letter
49 she still professes in extravagantly rhetorical phrases that she is unwor-
thy to respond to such a great teacher. In a sense these love letters are the
report of a discussion between a teacher and a student who believed for a
short while that they had transcended these labels through their love. She
is fascinated by the idea that true love (amor) imposes all the ideals of
friendship (amicitia) as defined by Cicero, except that she sees their friend-
ship as between a man and a woman. While he does once define amor in
terms of Ciceronian amicitia, he is not as at ease as she is in understanding
amor as an ideal intimacy and sharing between people who have tran-
scended self-concern. His understanding of love in letter 24 is that it is “a
universal thing” which already resides in both of them, proven by his sense
that the two of them already shared the same thoughts. He does not quite
say that they have become one person, as Cicero imagined was the ideal
of friendship, but he thinks that the two of them are “not different.”
The argument that these love letters could not be written by Abelard
and Heloise because they document an idealized relationship depends on
reading a phrase in letter 84, “Hitherto you have stayed with me, you have
manfully fought the good fight with me, but you have not taken your re-
ward,” as evidence that this relationship was unconsummated. In this let-
ter, however, the woman is using religious imagery to profess the
constancy of her love, a love that looks forward to eternal joy.The religious
imagery in her letters must be taken seriously. She does not yet think that
their relationship has arrived at its goal. In the man’s letters, there is more
explicit allusion to sexual gratification (as in letter 26). Her tendency is to
divert his eagerness with moral exhortation (as in 27). What he construes
as her tendency to delay (17) makes him upset. The woman balances her
comments in letter 84 about his not having gained his reward by offering
to reward him with “the obedience of love” for having composed a cer-
118 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

tain prologue for her. Even if letter 84 does refer to the promise of sexual
favors, this is not in itself an argument against the possibility that the lovers
are Heloise and Abelard. In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard passes over the
period during which he began to get to know Heloise very quickly, in
order to dwell on the period of physical debauchery in Fulbert’s house.
The letters before 87 could have been exchanged before their union was
consummated.
In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard gives the impression that he delib-
erately seduced Heloise. He gives no consideration to Heloise’s desire to
engage in any relationship with her teacher other than to provide him
with an opportunity to vent his lust. He mentions the messages they ex-
changed only as a device by which he could get to know her. In her rec-
ollections of their relationship, Heloise does not shrink from talking about
their past intimacy as a time of physical pleasure: “When we were uneasily
enjoying the joys of love and, to use a rather vulgar but more expressive
term, were giving ourselves up to fornication, divine severity spared us.”5
Her attitude toward the relationship is different from his. While she admits
to having submitted to carnal desire, she is troubled that she cannot find
her way to true repentance.6 Unable to accept Abelard’s castration as the
working of providence, she considers that her love for him was not in it-
self wrong. Abelard, by contrast, has no doubt that his love for her is wrong.
Heloise does not deny that they had engaged in sinful physical pleasure,
only that their love was not in itself so wrong as to merit the punishment
which it received. She is ruthlessly honest in her self analysis. How can it
be sinful to remember past pleasure? She wants him to respond to her ideal
of love as not concerned with any material reward, one which she thinks
they had once shared. Heloise is preoccupied with the obligations of love,
which she feels Abelard does not live up to. The same concerns are held by
the woman in the love letters. The man in that exchange, overwhelmed by
what he sees as her depth in discussing love, tries to respond to her ideals,
but eventually retreats behind traditional Ovidian rhetoric about being
tricked by love and dazzled by the brilliance of her gifts (113).

Rhyming Prose in the Love Letters

A characteristic feature of the woman’s prose is regular use of half-rhyming
phrases, in which the rhyme does not necessarily involve the last stressed
syllable. This is evident from letter 1: Amori suo precordiali / omnibus aromat-
ibus dulcius redolenti / . . . (To her heart’s love, more sweetly scented than
any spice . . .). This style of rhyming prose, quite out of fashion in human-
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 119

ist prose in the fifteenth century, was much cultivated in monastic circles
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.7 It is used in the women’s love let-
ters from Tegernsee, as also in an exchange between an Italian merchant
and his wife, written ca. 1132–36.8 Prose writers more influenced by a
classical prose style tended to avoid excessive rhyme in formal writing, fol-
lowing the warnings of the Rhetorica ad Herennium against overusing words
with similar endings.9 In scholastic treatises, Berengar of Tours, Peter
Abelard, and Gilbert of Poitiers were all more concerned with logical ar-
guments than with the musical effects of language in their prose. The use
of unstressed rhyme in the woman’s love letters (and in some of the man’s
metrical verse, but not his prose) is a stylistic feature which falls out of fash-
ion after the first quarter of the twelfth century. Abelard uses the technique
in his hymns and laments (planctus), but does not imitate the dominant
trend of the twelfth century verse toward stressed rhyme, evident in the se-
quences of Adam of Saint-Victor (d. ca. 1140).10
In her monastic letters to Abelard, Heloise reserves rhyming prose for
passages of particular intensity:

Hujus quippe loci tu post Deum solus es fundator, / solus hujus oratorii
constructor, / solus hujus congregationis edificator. / Nichil hic super
alienum / edificasti fundamentum. / Totum quod hic est, / tua creatio est. /
Solitudo hec feris tantum sive latronibus vaccans, nullam hominum habita-
tionem noverat, / nullam domum habuerat. /

After God, you alone are the founder of this place, alone the builder of this
oratory, alone the inspiration of this flock. You have built nothing here on
another’s foundation. All that is here is your creation. The isolation here,
open to wild beasts as much as to brigands, had not known any human
dwelling, did not contain any house.11

Heloise’s half-rhyming phrases have a particular potency when read aloud:

Que cum siccis oculis neminem / vel legere vel audire posse estimem, / tanto
dolores meos amplius renovarunt / quanto diligentius singula expresserunt, /
et eo magis auxerunt / quo in te adhuc pericula crescere retulisti.

Since I think no one can read or hear of these things dry-eyed, they renewed
my grief all the more for being each expressed so carefully; they have in-
creased all the more in that you say that dangers you face are still growing.12

Heloise uses this rhyming style again in a short letter to Peter the Venera-
ble written sometime after Abelard’s death (the authenticity of which has
120 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

never been questioned). She asks for a formula of absolution to be attached

to his tomb, as well as for assistance for Astralabe:

Visitante nos dei misericordia, / dignationis uestrae nos uisitauit gratia. / . . .

Est siquidem uestra uisitatio / magna magnis quibuslibet gloriatio. / Norunt
alii, quantum eis utilitatis / uestrae contulerit praesentia sublimitatis. / Ego
certe non dicam enarrare dictu, / sed nec ipso ualeo comprehendere cogi-
tatu, / quam utilis, quam iocundus uester michi fuerit aduentus. /

With the mercy of God coming upon us, the grace of your eminence has
visited us. . . .Your visit is indeed of great pride for some great people. Oth-
ers do not know how much advantage for them the presence of your sub-
lime person has brought. I certainly am not able to explain in words, nor am
I capable of understanding in thought how useful, how joyful your visit has
been to me.13

In his response, Peter the Venerable, employs more rhyming prose than is
normal in his letters.14 Heloise was more traditional in her prose style in
making her phrases rhyme.
Both the man and the woman employ dramatic antithesis and parallel
constructions, such as “as much as/so much” (tantum/quantum) in the love
letters. While their presence in the letters of both Heloise and Abelard has
sometimes been used to argue that Abelard composed Heloise’s letters, any
medieval writer influenced by Augustine and Gregory the Great employed
these stylistic devices.15 The same observation can be made about the pres-
ence of the cursus (fixed prose rhythms at the end of sentences) in the let-
ters of both Abelard and Heloise, as well as in both the man’s and the
woman’s love letters. A common stylistic device can easily be shared by two
people.16 While further study is needed of the cursus in the love letters, it
seems premature to construct arguments which do not recognize that its
practice can be traced back to late antiquity.17

The Rhetoric of Individuality

A distinctive feature of both the love letters and the monastic correspon-
dence of Abelard and Heloise is the significance attached to formulae of
greeting. As Carol Lanham has so well documented, letter writers in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries paid particular attention in their personal
correspondence to using these greetings to define a more intimate rela-
tionship than normal in conventional correspondence.18 Literary experi-
mentation was a mark of intimacy, showing the extent to which one was
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 121

prepared to break with convention. In her very first letter, the woman de-
scribes herself as “she who is his in heart and body” (sua corde et corpore) and
offers her love (Amori suo) “the freshness of eternal happiness” (viriditatem
eterne felicitatis). The man does not employ rhyming phrases or scriptural
imagery in reply (2), but emphasizes from the outset her uniqueness: “To
the singular joy and only solace of a tired mind” (Singulari gaudio et lassate
mentis unico solamini ille). In his second reply (4), he describes himself as
“her only one” (singularis eius), an image that recurs in 54. In 56 he offers
her whatever good thing is reserved “specifically” (singulariter) for lovers.
By contrast, she never describes him as singularis. The only occasion she
uses the word is in letter 23 to explain that a well constructed statement
of praise demands one think about “the qualities of individual parts.”There
is a similar contrast between his fondness for unicus to emphasize her
uniqueness (2, 31, 37, 47, 63, 75, 89, 99, 110), and her lack of interest in
the term. The first time Johannes de Vepria records her as using it in is let-
ter 48, “Farewell, my one salvation” (Vale unica salus mea) when she delib-
erately picks up his conclusion to letter 47: “Farewell . . . my one peace”
(Vale . . . unica quies mea).
Whereas the woman never describes him as singular, she does call him
special. The first time that she does so is in letter 21, in which she makes a
bold attempt to employ a number of philosophical concepts. She opens
with a greeting that is far from easy to translate: “Dilecto suo speciali, et ex
ipsius experimento rei, esse quod est.” Literally this can be rendered as: “To
her beloved, special from experience of the reality itself: the being which
she is.”19 As in some of her earlier letters (3, 5, 9), she does not identify her-
self at all in this greeting, but offers herself to her beloved. While she at-
tempts to employ philosophical terminology, the effect is rather clumsy.
Her use of res (thing) to refer to the essence of what he is, is characteristic
of the woman’s letters (used twenty-two times, against eleven in the man’s
letters). She concludes letter 21 with another term from dialectic, to ex-
plain that she loves him whether he is present or absent: “In either case, I
love you” (equipolenter te diligo).20 Equipolenter literally means “with equal
value.” She does not repeat such phrases in subsequent letters, preferring to
draw on the vocabulary of classical poets as well as of scripture. His greet-
ing in reply (22) is a more elegant effort in which he compares her to a
jewel and hopes that she will shine with natural light.
The woman gives some indication as to why she prefers specialis to
singularis in her own reflection on the meaning of amor in letter 25.
When observing that we do not love everyone equally, she contrasts
charity, which we should show to all people, with the love that is special
122 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

for certain people. The observation, not in itself original, draws on a

commonplace distinction between generale and speciale. Her definition is
very different from that offered by her teacher in the previous letter (24),
according to which love is “a universal thing” which makes two wills one
thing “without difference” (indifferenter). The distinction that she draws is
between a general love for everyone, and a special love that is shared with
a close friend rather than between two unique individuals. She repeats
specialis in letter 76, when she calls him her “special beloved,” usage that
echoes Baudri of Bourgueil’s phrase, specialis amicus.21 She sends letter 79
“To one deserving to be embraced with the longing of a special love,”
(Merito specialis dilectionis amplectendo amore) by which she is bound to her
beloved.
The contrast between the man’s use of singularis and the woman’s pref-
erence for specialis echoes that contained within the unusual greeting with
which Heloise opens her third letter to Abelard: “To him who is hers spe-
cially, she who is his singularly” (Suo specialiter, sua singulariter).22 Latin is far
more succinct than English. While both St. Bernard and Hato of Troyes
(Heloise’s bishop and a good friend of Peter the Venerable) use specialis and
singularis effectively as synonyms, Heloise seems to draw a deliberate con-
trast between the fact that she saw him as “specially hers,” while in his eyes
she was “singularly his.”23 This is precisely the contrast between the woman
and the man in the Troyes love letters. While it has been suggested that
Heloise was alluding to a phrase of Abelard in his first letter to her (“Al-
ways remember in your prayers that one who is specially yours”), it seems
more likely that she was reminding him of the contrasting ways each of
them used to single out the other.24 From a dialectician’s perspective, “spe-
cial” means “of a species,” and thus embraces a plurality of individuals, as
Abelard explains in glossing Porphyry.25 His preference for the term “sin-
gular” may reflect an idea which he once floated in these early glosses on
Porphyry (but never returned to), of adding “individual” to Porphyry’s
standard list of five broad predicables in the tree of being: genus, species,
difference, the particular, accidence.26
Heloise’s greeting to Abelard in her third letter is itself a carefully
thought out response to the earlier greetings in the exchange. There is no
conventional epistolary greeting to the Historia calamitatum, written as a
treatise rather than as a letter. In the oldest manuscripts, it is simply titled:
“Consoling things of Abelard to his [male] friend” (Abaelardi ad amicum
suum consolatoria). By contrast, Heloise’s first letter in response to that nar-
rative is carefully constructed so that she begins with the most general and
concludes with the most particular:
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 123

Domino suo immo patri, conjugi suo immo fratri, ancilla sua immo filia, ip-
sius uxor immo soror, Abaelardo Heloysa.

To her lord or rather father, to her husband or rather brother, his servant or
rather daughter, his wife or rather sister, to Abelard Heloise.27

While the greeting begins by addressing Abelard in standard fashion, “To

my lord,” it then picks up the ambiguities in their relationship, moving to-
wards an ever more intimate address. A standard greeting would conclude
with some variant on salutem. The absence of any salutation being offered
marks this out as an unusual exchange. Heloise continues the crescendo
initiated in the greeting by then addressing Abelard in her letter as
“beloved” (dilectissime) and then “only one” (unice). She concludes the let-
ter similarly: vale, unice.28 She wants Abelard to address her not just in gen-
eral terms, but as an individual. She was angry at the way that Abelard
related to her only from a distance, not communicating in the same way as
he did to the male friend to whom he addressed his autobiographical nar-
rative. She closes her first letter by reminding him of the frequent letters
he had sent her in the past. Her emphasis on unicus has a particular signif-
icance in the light of the love letters. This was a favorite term of the man
to describe his beloved’s uniqueness. In the man’s last greeting to her in
that exchange (110), he addresses her as Unice sue. By repeating unice at the
beginning and end of her first response to the Historia calamitatum, Heloise
was signaling her desire to return to the intimate dialogue that Abelard had
once lavished on her in the past.
Abelard’s first greeting in reply to Heloise modifies her greeting. He
emphasizes that he now relates to her in Christ, rather than as an individ-
ual: “To Heloise, his beloved sister in Christ, Abelard, her brother in the
same” (Heloise, dilectissime sorori sue in Christo, Abaelardus, frater ejus in ipso).29
She responds in her next letter by cleverly combining the notions of sin-
gularity conveyed by unicus with his emphasis that they are greeting each
other in Christ: “To her only one after Christ, she who is his alone in
Christ” (Unico suo post Christum, unica sua in Christo).30 She accepts that her
relationship with him is in Christ, but she wants to communicate with him
as an individual, the way he used to speak to her. As if to drive home her
frustration, she then chides Abelard for putting the name of Heloise before
his own, contrary to the convention of how a superior should address an
inferior. If he does not want to engage with her at a personal level, he
should begin “Abelard to Heloise.” She points out that he is employing an
epistolary convention normally used by friends in correspondence, but is
124 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

not actually addressing her as an individual. Abelard counters in his second

reply by re-emphasizing the general terms in which he wishes to address
her: “To the Bride of Christ, the servant of the same” (Sponse Christi, servus
ejusdem).31 There is an ambiguity here, as he could be defining himself as
the servant of Christ or as the servant of the bride of Christ. He repeats
this theme in the farewell to his letter. As if in direct rejoinder to such a
general greeting, she replaces unicus/unica in her earlier greeting by invok-
ing the two different ways they used as lovers to address each other: “To
him who is hers specially, she who is his singularly” (suo specialiter, sua sin-
gulariter). Heloise brought more than her memories with her when she
came to the Paraclete in 1129. She brought with her a record of the in-
tense exchange of messages that they had shared in the past. When she re-
minds Abelard of how he visited her “with frequent letters” (crebris me
epistolis visitabas), she was forcing Abelard to remember a collection of texts
which he had effectively erased from his conscience when writing the His-
toria calamitatum. Her three letters to Abelard all attempted in their differ-
ent ways to persuade him to engage in the form of intimacy which they
had once enjoyed in the past. She is reminding Abelard that he was once
fascinated by the rhetoric of individuality, and that he has an obligation to
consider Heloise not just as a spiritual daughter, but as a separate person.

Philosophical Vocabulary in the Love Letters

The clearest demonstration of the teacher’s skill in philosophical termi-
nology can be seen in letter 24, when he offers his own definition of love.
His answer is delivered in the pedagogical tone of a teacher familiar with
Cicero’s De amicitia. He says that he is not uninformed about amor since it
has subdued him to its rule:

cum ita me idem amor imperio suo subiecerit, ut non extranea res, sed mul-
tum familiaris et domestica, immo intestina videatur. Est igitur amor, vis
quedam anime non per se existens nec seipsa contenta, sed semper cum quo-
dam appetitu et desiderio se in alterum transfundens, et cum altero idem effici
volens, ut de duabus diversis voluntatibus unum quid indifferenter efficiatur.

For that very love has brought me under its own command in such a way
that it seems not to be external but very familiar and internal, even visceral.
Love is therefore a particular force of the soul, existing not for itself nor con-
tent by itself, but always pouring itself into another with a certain hunger
and desire, wanting to become one with the other, so that from two diverse
wills, one is produced without difference.
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 125

After an omission mark, the discussion in letter 24 continues:

Scias quia licet res universalis sit amor, ita tamen in angustum contractus est,
ut audacter affirmem eum in nobis solummodo regnare, in me scilicet et in
te domicilium suum fecisse. Nos enim duo amorem integrum, invigilatum,
sincerum habemus, quia nichil est dulce, nichil quietem alteri, nisi quod in
commune proficit; eque annuimus, eque negamus, idem per omnia sapimus.
Quod inde facile probari potest qui tu sepe meas cogitaciones anticipas;
quod ego scribere concipio, tu prevenis, et si bene memini tu illud idem de
te dixisti.

Know that although love may be a universal thing, yet it has nevertheless
been condensed into so confined a place that I would boldly assert that it
reigns over us alone—that is to say, it has made its very home in me and in
you. For the two of us have a love that is pure, nurtured, and sincere, since
nothing is sweet or carefree for the other unless it has mutual benefit.We say
yes equally, we say no equally, we feel the same about everything. This can
easily be shown by the way that you often anticipate my thoughts: what I
think about writing, you write first, and if I remember well, you have said
the same thing about yourself.

He asserts that although true love (amor) is “a universal thing” (i.e., able to
be shared by many different individuals), in reality it is so restricted that it
prevails only between the two of them.
He is here drawing on Cicero’s definition of friendship (amicitia) to help
define love (amor). For Cicero, as indeed for the educated Roman establish-
ment of which he was a part, amicitia was a social concept, the foundation of
all social relationships, involving men bound by common ideals of virtue, but
not women. Cicero accepted that amicitia took its name from amor, under-
stood as the cause of benevolence, but he never formally defined amor as
such.32 Cicero defined friendship as existing for its own sake rather than for
personal advantage. A true friend was another self (alter idem). When Cicero
spoke of amor it was to comment on the natural tendency of all living crea-
tures to love first themselves and then others of their species with an eager-
ness like human love: “For a man loves himself and searches for another,
whose spirit (animum) might thus mix with his own, so that it might become
almost one from two.”33 Cicero believed that true friendship was the fruit of
virtus, and was not driven by need or personal advantage.34 In letter 24 the
teacher adjusts Cicero’s definition to apply to the relationship between a man
and a woman. His addition of “without difference” (indifferenter) to Cicero’s
statement that friendship creates “one [spirit] from two” is of particular
126 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

significance. He is not claiming that there is a common underlying essence

between two individuals, only that there are no differences between them.
The man uses indifferenter similarly in letter 16 to wish her “Affection, the
more enduring as the well-being of each of us is made a shared concern
without difference” (quo in unius nostrum salute res communis indifferenter agi-
tur). This idea that two things could be the same “without difference” was
the position that Abelard forced William of Champeaux to admit, according
to his recollections of the debate in the Historia calamitatum.35 While Abelard
was not the first logician to question the idea that two individuals of the
same species were essentially the same, he created an issue out of the topic
through the intensity of his rivalry with William of Champeaux.36
Cicero had defined the force of friendship as “able to be understood
from the fact that from the infinite society of human kind which nature has
bound together, it is such a restricted thing led into something narrow, that
complete charity joins either two people or a small number.”37 The teacher
expands this statement by turning the word “thing” (res) which Cicero had
used, into “although love may be a universal thing” (licet res universalis sit
amor), it has nevertheless been condensed into so confined a space that I
would boldly assert that it reigns in us alone.” With patronizing confidence,
he claims that this is proven by the fact that she always anticipated what he
intended to write to her, as well as, according to her, the other way round.
In other words, the only true identity is that which they share. By implica-
tion, the rest of the world is made up of separate individuals. Her teacher is
implying that the only universal in a world of individuals was the love that
he shared with her.Where Cicero had spoken glibly of love making a single
unity, the man adds that this unity is made “without difference,” precisely
the point that Abelard forced William of Champeaux to accept. William
subsequently incorporated into his theological teaching the idea that the
humanity of Peter was the same as that of Paul “without difference” rather
than by essence in recognition of Abelard’s argument.38
The man’s use of indifferenter in letter 24 echoes closely Abelard’s ter-
minology in one of his earliest writings on logic, the Sententie secundum
magistrum Petrum, preserved in a Fleury manuscript (Orléans, Bibl. mun.
266) that reports the lectures of a number of teachers active in Paris ca.
1109–1113. Abelard here defines the way in which Socrates the man was
the same as Plato the man, while resisting the idea that Socrates and Plato
are the same person:

Similarly when we say in this argument that the expression “Socrates is a

man” enunciates “Socrates is that which he is himself,” we utter “that” not
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 127

separately according to person, but indifferently according to nature as much

as to person. For the proposition does not state that Socrates is that person
which he is himself, but we state that he has that human nature, namely that
he is a man, just as when we say “Socrates is a man and Plato is the same
thing.”39

Abelard was using indifferenter to mean that Socrates and Plato shared the
status of being a man without any differentiae, although they were not the
same person.40 He subsequently made the same point about the liturgical
expression “the woman who damned [us], has saved [us]” in relation to
Aristotle’s On Interpretation (ca. 1120).

. . . just as when it is said “through woman came death, through the same
one life” and “woman who has damned [us], has redeemed [us],” we apply
pronouns indifferently, not personally, as if one said “the woman has damned
and the same one has redeemed, that is that which is her sex has redeemed
[us],” namely similarly, so that it is said according to the non-difference of
sex rather than according to the identity of person.41

His point is that Eve and Mary are not the same person, although the same
term (mulier) is applied to both. Abelard’s use of indifferenter is not found in
discussions of the subject by his contemporaries.42 When Abelard defines
the meaning of a term which stands for a noun (a pronoun) and comments
on the phrase “a woman damned the world and the same one saved it” in
his Christian Theology (ca. 1122–26; after the gloss on Aristotle’s On Inter-
pretation), he does not mention the term indifferenter. He simply says that
the expression is false in relation to person or number but true in relation
to the identity of the definition of “woman.”43
Abelard uses the expression “universal thing” (res universalis) just once in
his Dialectica (probably written in large part before his castration) and never
again in his later writings on logic: “For the quantity of a universal thing
consists in its diffusion through inferiors.”44 Such terminology does not
necessarily imply conscious philosophical realism, but rather is an example
of Abelard reverting, perhaps unconsciously, to traditional usage to refer to
that which is signified by a universal. Abelard subsequently rejected the
idea that a universal was any kind of “thing” (res) in his Logica Ingredientibus.
Among the views that he rejected in this work was the opinion which he
had once forced William of Champeaux to accept, that a universal was a
thing shared “indifferently” by different individuals.45 Abelard avoided this
notion when he commented again on the expression “The same woman
who damned the world has saved it” in his Christian Theology.
128 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Letter 24 is written by someone intimately familiar with Abelard’s

philosophical vocabulary as recorded in the Sententie secundum magistrum
Petrum, before it was refined in his later glosses on Porphyry and Aristotle.
This parallel provides yet further evidence for arguing that the male part-
ner in this exchange is Peter Abelard. Letter 24 suggests that the one shared
reality whose existence he was prepared to admit was the love he shared
(or so he believed) with Heloise. The irony of these letters is that Abelard
certainly did not share the same ideas as Heloise about the nature of love.
The letter has implications for our understanding of the subsequent evo-
lution of Abelard’s thinking about logic. The subsequent collapse of his re-
lationship with Heloise may have reinforced his sense that a universal term
did not signify a universal thing, only some common characteristic predi-
cated on different subjects. Abelard inherited from Roscelin a fascination
with the problem of how to respect the identity of an individual object or
person. He distrusted any philosophical language which interpreted uni-
versal categories as real substances. In the love letters, he sees Heloise as an
individual like no other, through whom he thinks (for a while) that he can
transcend the limitations of his own identity. By the end of the exchange,
it becomes apparent that the relationship is beginning to come apart at the
seams. In the Historia calamitatum Abelard completely glides over the inner
dynamics of his relationship with Heloise. He does not refer to any diffi-
culties in their relationship before she fell pregnant.That event transformed
the situation. Abelard simultaneously blamed these events on his getting
carried away by love (amor) for a beautiful woman, and then thought that
he could resolve the situation by marrying her, a decision he subsequently
recognized was a tragic mistake. Abelard’s philosophical perspective made
him acutely sensitive to what made one individual different from another.
In his personal life, he found it difficult to accept that Heloise had ideas
different from his own.

The Woman’s Imagery in the Love Letters

The woman in this exchange, “the only disciple of philosophy among the
young women of our age” (50) was no pale imitation of her teacher. Köns-
gen’s careful tabulation of the contrasting modes of address in these letters
highlights the distinctiveness of her vocabulary.46 She is much more fond
than he is of speaking about the heart (cor), mentioned thirty-one times in
her letters, but only thirteen times in those of the man. In her very first
letter she identifies herself as his “in heart and body,” and addresses him as
“my heart and body” in letter 18. In letter 24, he identifies himself as
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 129

“flesh,” and calls her “his soul” (anima).This image, which recurs frequently
in his letters (15, 46, 47, 51, 61, 65), is itself an echo of the scriptural
image used in David’s lament over Jonathan (the inspiration for one of
Abelard’s Laments), that Jonathan was David’s own soul (1 Samuel
20.17).47 Other images the man applies to her are abstract qualities like
sweetness, joy, hope, life, Lady (domina). Many are passive in nature: quiet
(15, 47, 50), restoration (28), refreshment (47, 50), rest (6, 8, 57, 67), so-
lace (2, 105). Her preferred imagery is more naturalistic and often more
bold. In letter 18, after he chides her for not writing (17), she breaks with
convention by addressing him as “An equal to an equal, to a reddening rose
under the spotless whiteness of lilies: whatever a lover [gives] to a lover.”
She repeats this inversion in letter 48, “A lover to a lover: the viridity of
love,” and again in letter 84,”A lover to lover: joy . . .” The man never de-
scribes himself as a lover (amans) except in a general sense when talking
about lovers (56, 61, 63, 87). He prefers to use images which contrast her
to himself, like her being light (2), his star (4, 6, 20) or the sun (22), giv-
ing light to the moon or his dark self. His other images of her include heat
(50), food (47), consolation (4), delight (75), expectation (37), lily (43, 53),
light (2, 93, 108).
She applies many different epithets to him, such as fragrance (94), city
(9), consort of poets (21), elegance (21, 73), desire (69, 86), half of my heart
(86), flower (73, 109), foundation (88), jewel (76, 79), fire (86), happiness
(21), medicine (76), grove of virtues (90), a rose (18, 49), a star (76), breath
(66). The epithet to which she persistently returns is “most beloved” (dilec-
tissimus). This variety in the woman’s greetings is characteristic of her gen-
eral tendency, quite different from that of her teacher, to use a word only
once.48 She sometimes employs rare forms of words, possibly making them
up herself by analogy with other words. Thus in letter 49 she uses the rel-
atively rare cervicositas (pigheadedness), applied to the Romans by St.
Bernard, and to the Jews by Peter the Venerable.49 She then matches this
with the even more unusual superciliositas (haughtiness or disdain).”50 She
also creates some rarely used adjectives: inepotabilis (86) or “unquenchable”
from the verb epoto, to drink up; innexibilis (94) or “bindable” from innecto,
to bind; dulcifer (98) or “sweetness-bearing.”
One neologism employed in letter 53 is of particular significance. She
combines the concept of scibilitas or “knowability” with imagery that the
bride applies to her beloved in the Song of Songs (4.11): “If a droplet of
knowability trickled down to me from the honey-comb of wisdom . . .”
(De favo sapiencie si michi stillaret guttula scibilitatis . . .).51 Scibilitas is not used,
to my knowledge, by any major classical or medieval author prior to the
130 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

mystical philosopher Ramon Llull (ca. 1232–1315) apart from Peter

Abelard. In his Dialectica, Abelard invokes the concept to explain that every
adjective can be related to an abstract form.52 Thus scibilis can apply to
something known and to an ideal form of “knowability.”53 He makes a
similar point about scibilitas, defined as “the power of knowing” in his In-
gredientibus gloss on Aristotle’s Categories.54 The woman turns this abstract
concept into a very physical image by speaking of “a droplet of knowabil-
ity” as like a drop of nectar so as to reinforce her point that she can find
no speech (sermo) in all Latinity to express the special love (dilectio) which
she has for the man she loves. The word scibilis also occurs in an epitaph
reported as having been engraved on Abelard’s tomb:

Est satis in titulo: Petrus hic iacet Abaelardus

cui soli patuit scibile quidquid erat.

It is sufficient as a heading: here lies Peter Abelard

To whom whatever was knowable was clear.

The most likely person to have composed this epitaph, placed on his tomb,
is Heloise. She remembered him as someone who understood everything
capable of being known.55
Heloise’s practice of creating new words and new combinations of
words was singled out by Hugh Metel (d. ca. 1150), an Augustinian canon
of Toul, who sought to engage in an epistolary dialogue with her after
Abelard’s death. Hugh praised not only Heloise’s reputation for religion,
but also her fame as a writer:

Your reputation, flying through the void, has resounded to us, worthy of
sound from you, it has made an impression on us. It has informed us that
you have surpassed the female sex. How? By composing, by versifying, by
joining new words, making known words new, and what is more excellent
than everything, you have overcome womanly weakness and have hardened
into virile strength.56

Hugh then sent a second letter to Heloise, repeating the request to enter
into correspondence. Hugh, who had written a hostile letter to Abelard ca.
1140 and was an ardent admirer of St. Bernard, William of Champeaux,
and Anselm of Laon, saw Heloise as a figure quite different from Abelard.
Like Peter the Venerable, he saw her as a woman “of virile strength.” Lit-
erary genius was perceived as a masculine quality. Hugh’s comments about
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 131

Heloise’s vocabulary are immensely valuable, as he is the only twelfth-cen-

tury writer who acknowledges her literary reputation. The aspect of her
literary gift which he found remarkable, the invention of new words and
phrases, is a characteristic feature of many innovative writers in the twelfth
century, as they struggled to articulate concepts not available to them in
the texts of Latin antiquity. Most new words, however, were generated to
address the demands of philosophy, theology, science, and administration.
The woman in these love letters is particularly adept at employing new
words in an imaginative way. Her remark in letter 53 that she cannot find
an expression (sermo) in all Latinity to express the intent of her spirit gives
voice to her sense that she is exploring the boundaries of language. Hugh’s
remark provides further support for identifying this woman as Heloise.

The Rhetoric of Inner Disposition in the Love Letters

A key concern of both the teacher and the student in the love letters is a
common conviction that words are not as important as their inner mean-
ing. They strive to find words to express their inner intention. In letter 22
her teacher contrasts the words which he delivers to other people with the
intention (intencionem) he directs to her: “To others I address words, to you
my intention. Often I stumble over words, because my thought is far from
them.” The comment recalls Abelard’s remark that at the height of his pas-
sion for Heloise, he began to lose inspiration in his lectures, and that he
started to compose love songs.57 In subsequent letters the man prefers vol-
untas to intencio, as in letter 89: “Consider not the words but the will of the
sender” (non verba consule sed mittentis voluntatem). He uses intencio only once
again, in letter 72. By contrast, the woman employs intencio seven times in
her letters, the first time in letter 23, immediately after he has introduced
the term within a long monologue about her uncertainty whether to con-
tinue the relationship: “Where does the unthinking intention of your hasty
spirit drive you?” Often she employs “intention” to denote her own will,
as in letter 76: “My intention has decided this, that further conflict be-
tween us should cease.” In her next letter (79), intencio occurs twice:

If through reflection a person’s inner intention (hominis interioris intencio)

conceives anything great, it is often not brought to fruition without a cer-
tain external force. . . . For a long time, and with a blazing struggle of heart
and body, I have considered how I should address you, my graceful jewel,
but the difficulty of expected failure has so far defied the intention of my
feelings (intencionem mei affectus).58
132 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Whereas her teacher uses intencio in the more precise sense of intention of
words, she refers to this term as a metaphor for inner identity. This ten-
dency is particularly marked in her later letters: in 88, “you do not slip from
the intention of the mind” (ab intencione mentis non labescis); in 102, “I pray
with the best intention of the heart” (summa opto cordis intencione); in 104,
“who never slips from the intention of my mind” (qui nunquam labescit ab
intencione mentis). Abelard had always paid attention to the different ways in
which words could be used, but he does not speak of intention in writing
about dialectic except to refer to “the intention of Porphyry.”This is a stan-
dard scholastic device, employed for example in an introduction to the
Heroides to refer to Ovid’s intention in those poems.59 Abelard says in the
Historia calamitatum that “sincere intention and love for our faith” provoked
violence from his enemies, but he never justifies his behavior towards
Heloise in terms of right intention. In her subsequent letters, she empha-
sizes the role of intention in her relationship to Abelard. He reminds her
of the lustful acts which they had committed.60 When discussing the reli-
gious life, Abelard subsequently expands on Heloise’s emphasis that inte-
rior disposition was more important than outward observances in relation
to food and drink.61 Only in the Ethics (circulated under the title Scito teip-
sum or “Know Yourself ”; commenced ca. 1138/39 but never completed),
does Abelard reflect more generally on the theme that intention alone can
distinguish what is good and bad.62
The exchange between Heloise and Abelard reflects a similar contrast
to that evident in the later love letters. In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard
never discusses the intentions behind his behavior towards Heloise, which
he identifies quite simply as the fruit of debauchery (luxuria). It is Heloise
who raises the purity of her intentions towards Abelard. She also raises the
theme of purity of intention in relation to the religious life in her third
letter, when reflecting on the impulses which drive human nature:

Nothing is less in our power than the spirit (animus), and we are more forced
to obey than to rule it. And so when its affections (affectiones) provoke us,
nobody repels their sudden impulsions so that they do not easily burst out
into effects and pour out more easily through words—which are the ever-
ready indications of the passions of the spirit: as it is written: “From the full-
ness of the heart, the mouth speaks.”63

Heloise’s use of animus to identify her impulsive spirit is like that of the
woman in letter 23, when she contrasts “the burning feeling of the spirit”
(animi fervens affectus) with the weakness of dried-up talent (aridi defectus in-
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 133

genii). She supports her psychological discussion of animus as an irrepress-

ible dimension of her identity by quoting the saying of Jesus (Luke 6.45;
Matthew 12.34) about the mouth speaking from the abundance of the
heart. In letter 24 the man uses precisely this scriptural quotation to sup-
port his comment that “the abundant and yet insufficient richness of your
letter provides me with the clearest evidence of two things, namely, your
overflowing faith and love; hence the saying: ‘From the fullness of the
heart, the mouth speaks.’” In his Christian Theology, Abelard quoted this
same verse to explain that “speech of the heart” (locutionem cordis) was a
scriptural way of defining “a thought of the mind.”64 Heloise also speaks
about the heart as the source of behavior, and alludes to Matthew 5.28 to
insist that evil thoughts, adultery, and homicide stem from nothing exter-
nal, but from the heart.65 Although Bernard of Clairvaux frequently al-
ludes to this saying of Jesus when preaching on the Song of Songs, he uses
it only twice in his correspondence. On both occasions, it is to defend his
own right to speak out rather than to praise someone else’s directness.66
The phrase occurs only once in the letters of Peter the Venerable.67 In both
letter 24 and the third letter of Heloise, as well as in Abelard’s Christian The-
ology, the quotation is used not to justify speaking out, but to comment on
the relationship between words and the heart. It is insufficient to say that
this is simply another “typical” phrase in medieval letters.
Another key term used both in Heloise’s third letter and in the woman’s
love letters is affectus (disposition or feeling), employed nine times in the
woman’s letters, but never in his. She first uses the term in letter 7 in a
phrase that is potentially ambiguous: tota sua re et affectu. The punctuation
in the manuscript indicates that it describes the greeting she offers and
translates as “with all her being and disposition” rather than as “she who is
completely his in being and disposition.” Frequently she uses affectus to
emphasize the state of her inner spirit, as in letter 21: “handsome in ap-
pearance, yet more distinguished in disposition” (decorus aspectu, praestabil-
ior affectu); in 23: “the burning feeling of my spirit” (animi fervens affectus);
in 76: “a feeling of inner sweetness encourages me” (interne dulcedinis me
hortatur affectus) and “I am unable to reveal in any way at all just how greatly
my feeling burns for you” (Quantus igitur erga te meus ardeat affectus, ullo modo
tibi manifestare nequeo); in 79: “the intention of my feeling” (intencionem mei
affectus). The expression affectus animi, often used by St. Augustine to define
interior disposition, is also a favorite phrase of St. Bernard to describe his
interior state. Abelard himself uses the expression affectus animi in his theo-
logical writing to relate the term “Holy Spirit” or “Holy breath” to the
breath of human emotion:
134 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Nomine uero spiritus sancti affectus benignitatis et caritatis exprimitur, eo

uidelicet quod spiritu oris nostri, id est anhelitu, maxime affectus animi
patefiant, cum aut pre amore suspiramus, aut pre laboris uel doloris angustia
gemimus.

By the name “Holy Spirit” the feeling of kindness and love is expressed in
the same way as by the breath or panting of our mouth the feelings of the
spirit are made obvious, when we either sigh out of love or groan out of dif-
ficulty of effort or sorrow.68

Abelard turned to the experience of making love to explain a theological

concept central to his argument about the nature of God.
Heloise uses animus in a very similar way when protesting her own in-
nocence of the crime of Abelard’s castration:

Que plurimum nocens, plurimum—ut nosti—sum innocens: non enim rei

effectus, sed efficientis affectus in crimine est, nec que fiunt, sed quo animo
fiunt, equitas pensat.

Wholly guilty though I am, I am also—as you know—wholly innocent; it

is not the effect of something which makes the crime, but the disposition of
the doer; justice does not consider what happens, but how they happen in
the spirit.69

Animus, often mistranslated in this passage as “heart,” refers to “spirit” or

that part of a person which influences rational capacity (as distinct from
anima, that part which gives life to the body). For Augustine, animus and
anima are two sides of one coin, both immortal.70 Heloise is saying that
true justice is concerned with what goes on in this highest part of the
human spirit. Like the woman in the love letters, Heloise dwells at great
length on her own inner disposition, making the point that, even if she was
not entirely without fault, the devil had not dragged her into sin from con-
sent.71 This echoes the woman’s phrase in letter 5 “in accord with my will”
(ad consensum mee voluntatis), an Augustinian expression used by Bernard of
Clairvaux among others.72 The word consensus does not appear in any of
the man’s love letters.
Abelard refined his thinking about sin only in the late 1130s. In his
Ethics he explains that “lusting after a woman is not a sin, only consent to
lust, the will to intercourse is not damnable, but consent of the will.”73 In
his earlier discussion of sin within commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the
Romans (probably written in the early to mid 1130s), Abelard does not
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 135

mention consent, but argues that one deserves reward or punishment from
God simply through having a good or bad will. As Marenbon has sug-
gested, this is likely to be one of those aspects of Abelard’s thought on
which Heloise’s influence was decisive.74 It is quite erroneous to think that
Heloise derived her ideas about ethical intention from her studies with
Abelard. At the time of his affair with Heloise, Abelard was more a spe-
cialist on logic than a theorist of ethics.75

Religious Vocabulary in the

Love Letters and Concepts of Love
The woman in the love letters employs religious vocabulary far more often
than her teacher. In the first letter that Johannes de Vepria copies, she of-
fers him “the freshness of eternal happiness” (viriditatem eterne felicitatis).
Gregory the Great had often spoken of “eternal freshness” (or eternal
greenness) to describe true well-being in relation to the sufferings of Job.76
When she uses viriditas again in a greeting (48), it is to offer him “the fresh-
ness of love,” an image less dependent on the language of Gregory.The one
twelfth-century writer to make extensive use of the word viriditas in both
naturalistic and spiritual senses is Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179).77 The
term viriditas occurs only once in the writings of Peter Abelard, within a
sermon to the nuns of the Paraclete. He remarks that secular life is like
chaff, “cut from the earth, without the strength of its viridity.”78 Like
Hildegard, the woman in the love letters is more at ease than her male con-
temporaries in drawing on imagery from the natural world.
In her second letter to him (3) she prays that God watch over them, an-
other characteristic feature of her letters. She often asks God to be her wit-
ness (11, 23, 32, 53, 55, 86; cf. Romans 1.9) or gives God thanks (3, 7, 9,
38b, 45, 49, 60, 62, 79, 84, 112). Compared to her twenty references to
deus, he invokes God only ten times. He does so for the first time in letter
24, in response to her long reflective letter 23 on the mixed emotions in
her heart. She uses invocations such as “God knows” (Deus scit) and “I call
God as my witness” (Deum testem invoco) very like those of Heloise in writ-
ing to Abelard.79 After the man feels burdened by some unspecified guilt,
the woman concludes her letter 60 by reciting her version of the Good
Friday prayer for souls deceived by the Devil.80 She then asks that all writ-
ing cease between them. In this letter she mentions for the first time “the
bond that we had established” (fedus quod pepigeramus), a phrase that recalls
the bond or covenant between God and his people as well as between
David and Jonathan.81 Her final accusation in letter 60 about his wisdom
136 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

and learning having deceived her draws on Isaiah’s lament (Isa. 47.10) over
the degradation and false learning of Babylon.
The woman’s use of dilectio, employed alongside amor in letter 60 as
elsewhere, is itself rooted in the Vulgate translation of scripture. She goes
beyond scripture, however, to emphasize that there is no discontinuity be-
tween the love which comes from her heart (amor) and selfless love (dilec-
tio). Amor occurs fifty-two times and dilectio forty-one times in those
extracts of her letters copied by Johannes de Vepria. By contrast, dilectio oc-
curs just ten times in his letters, whereas amor occurs forty-seven times.
There is a similar imbalance in their use of the verb diligere (to love), oc-
curring twenty-eight times in her letters, but just three times in his letters.
His vocabulary reflects a perception, dominant in masculine writing, that
love for a woman has little to do with the love enjoined by scripture. She
does not see any antithesis between passionate and spiritual love. As early
as her second letter (3), she defines her love as true dilectio within a reli-
gious sense of being watched over by God. He on the other hand prefers
words connected to amo. She never uses amabilis (able to be loved) in her
letters, used by him four times. He first employs dilectio immediately after
her lengthy discussion of love in letter 49. He exclaims in letter 50: “you
seem not to have read Tully, but to have given those precepts to Tully him-
self.” He approves her argument that “true dilectio does not bind us the way
it customarily binds those who seek their own.” The next time he employs
dilectio is in allusion to the scriptural injunction in letter 52: “Given that
we do not keep the Lord’s commandment unless we have love for each
other, we should obey divine scripture” (Quia mandatum domini non obser-
vamus, nisi dilectionem ad invicem habeamus, oportet nos divine scripture obedire).
His meaning here may be less than spiritual. By letter 54 he begins to use
both dilectio and amor in a single letter. He never employs pignus in his let-
ters; by contrast she speaks in 60: caritatis pignore (pledge of charity); in 69,
pignus fidei (pledge of faith); in 84, tecum pignus (a pledge with you); in 104:
inviolabile pignus amoris (inviolable pledge of love). Pignus, a word rich in
scriptural association, reinforces her sense of their relationship as sacred, as
in 2 Cor. 1.22 and 5.5: pignus spiritus (the pledge of the Spirit). The woman
similarly twice invokes f(o)edus (60 and 88), a term much used in the Vul-
gate version of the Old Testament to mean “covenant,” but another word
never used by the man.82
The woman emphasizes in her letters that true love is entirely selfless,
a theme she adapts from Cicero’s argument that true friendship disregards
outward advantage. This is Heloise’s central theme in her first letter to
Abelard, in which she complains about his portrayal of their relationship
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 137

in the Historia calamitatum. She accuses him of leaving out her arguments
about how she preferred “love to marriage, freedom to chains” (plerisque
tacitis quibus amorem conjugio, libertatem vinculo preferebam). Heloise describes
her love for Abelard in terms of both amor and dilectio: “Would, beloved,
that your love for me trusted in me less, so that it would be more con-
cerned for me” (Utinam, dilecte, tua de me dilectio minus confideret, ut sollicitior
esset).83 Heloise’s distress was based on her sense that the love (dilectio)
which Abelard now offered her as his sister in Christ was not as intimate
as it had been before. To insist that there had been no selfish desire for
wealth and honor in her love for Abelard, she scorns the wealth of the Em-
peror Augustus, the same image as the woman had used in letter 82.
This doctrine of selfless love was one which the woman articulates at
some length in her letter 49. True dilectio scorned pleasure and wealth. Too
many people loved each other for the sake of things, rather than for the
sake of each other (non propter se res, sed se propter res). The image of self-
less love was one which Marbod had used in a poem addressed to an un-
named young woman.84 Heloise wanted to know whether it was lust or
true friendship which had bound him to her. In his first two replies to
Heloise, Abelard asks her to transfer her devotion to Christ, as his bride,
but does not refer to any redeeming qualities in their past affair. Abelard
recalls an occasion after their secret marriage when he satisfied his lust in
the refectory of Argenteuil, because there was no other place to go.85
Heloise remembered this period between their secret marriage and his
castration as a time when they were living chastely.86 The sense of shared
guilt on which Abelard insists in his second letter to Heloise recapitulates
the same attitudes as the man in the love letters, when he feels guilt over
some unspecified sin, and wishes to introduce a note of caution into their
relationship, as in letter 59. In his second reply to Heloise, Abelard re-
minds her of their debauchery during Holy Week and of his forcing her
to have sex, even when she was unwilling. He does so to argue that there
was no connection between the dilectio shown by Christ for sinful hu-
manity, and his own amor which bound both of them into sin. Such amor
was not love but lust.87
There are interesting parallels between the man’s definition of love in
letter 23 and Abelard’s understanding of love as expressed in the opening
of the Theologia Scholarium, drafted probably in the early 1130s. Here he
defines amor as a good will for the sake of him to whom it ought to be
directed. It is a false love if it is directed purely for personal advantage. The
idea of selfless love is not unique to Abelard. Abelard may have picked up
some aspects of this theme from the De caritate of Walter of Mortagne,
138 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

perhaps composed in the 1120s. Walter addressed a critical but not un-
friendly letter to Abelard when he was still drafting the Theologia Scholar-
ium. Marenbon’s suggestion that Abelard’s ideas of selfless love were
prompted by Heloise is plausible.88 The possibility that Heloise was artic-
ulating these ideas at the time of their affair makes it all the more re-
markable how unwilling Abelard was to develop these ethical ideas in his
early writing. Heloise was voicing attitudes toward love occasionally ex-
pressed in some verse from the late eleventh century. By coincidence, the
single surviving twelfth-century manuscript of the letters of Walter of
Mortagne (possibly assembled by Walter himself) also includes a copy of
the poem “from a girl to a friend who promises a reward” that Marbod
of Rennes includes within his collection of love poems. This poem in-
cludes the line “If you are filled with many riches, you are a rustic who
believes I love your things, rather than you yourself.”89 Walter may have
been interested in the ethical message of this young woman’s argument to
her beloved. Abelard was not alone in developing ethical definitions in re-
sponse to ideas first raised within a purely secular context.

Allusions to Jerome in the Woman’s Love Letters

One of Könsgen’s important contributions in his edition was to identify
allusions to a wide range of classical, scriptural, and patristic texts in the
love letters. The woman’s very first letter alludes to the Song of Songs.
Elsewhere she draws on phrases and imagery from the books of Job,
Psalms, John, Matthew, and the Pauline Epistles. Her knowledge of scrip-
ture is evident in her cryptic letter 27, in which she sends to him “the spirit
of Bezalel” (a divinely inspired craftsman; Exodus 31.2), “the strength of
three locks of hair” (an allusion to Samson; Judges 16.13), “the beauty of
the Father of peace” (Absalom, the son of David famed for his beauty, who
wore his hair long; 2 Samuel 14.25) and “the profundity of Ididia”
(Solomon). She draws these images not just from scripture itself, but from
her reading of Jerome (or possibly Isidore).90 Jerome mentions Samson in
his commentary on Ezekiel (also a possible source for the comment on
Ididia), a work which Abelard must have drawn upon to complete his own
commentary on Ezekiel (now lost), written between 1113 and 1115.91 In
letter 16 he describes her as his seal and himself as the image of that seal,
imagery inspired by Ezekiel 28.12. Did the prologue which he composed
for her introduce this commentary on Ezekiel in the same way that a let-
ter from Abelard to Heloise introduces his commentary on the Hexae-
meron, written over fifteen years later? The woman’s love letters show that
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 139

she already had a formidable knowledge of scripture. Whatever the nature

of the prologue, it seems that she was certainly interested in his wider aca-
demic work.
Könsgen also identified a number of allusions to the correspondence
of Jerome in the woman’s letters. When she offers her own reflections on
the nature of love in letter 25, she does not only allude to Cicero’s dis-
cussion of friendship. She adapts comments made by Jerome about friend-
ships that wane into comment about true love (verus amor) between a man
and a woman.92 She longs to fulfil “the debt of true love” (vere dilectionis
debitum) but feels unable to do so fully. She applies to herself phrases about
the dangers of proximity which Jerome had used in writing to Marcella.93
Könsgen identifies some eight allusions to Jerome’s writing in the
woman’s letters, but none in those of her teacher.94 The famous letters of
Heloise demonstrate a greater maturity of literary style in the freedom
with which they handle traditional ideas, culled from Ovid, Cicero, and
the Fathers. In these love letters, her concern is to make a conscious ef-
fort to create elegant and original prose by transforming phrases from
model letters of the past.
The woman’s familiarity with Jerome sheds light on one of the most
enigmatic features of the Historia calamitatum, the speech about marriage
which Abelard attributes to Heloise, in fact culled from Jerome’s Against
Jovinian. It has long been known that all the passages which Abelard at-
tributes to Heloise in the Historia calamitatum had already been quoted by
Abelard in the second book of his Christian Theology.95 The woman’s fa-
miliarity with Jerome’s correspondence in the love letters raises the pos-
sibility that Heloise did indeed raise the arguments of Theophrastus
against marriage, reported in Jerome’s Against Jovinian, in her effort to dis-
suade Abelard from marriage. It is not clear if the one argument which
Abelards recalls having with Heloise was conducted through letter or in
person. While it is impossible to assess the extent to which Abelard sub-
sequently elaborated upon her argument, it is significant that she felt that
she had not been accurately represented by Abelard in the Historia calami-
tatum. She complained that Abelard had glossed over her insistence on the
absolute priority of the ideal of love and her preference for freedom over
the chains of marriage. He had not done justice to the overall context of
her arguments, in which she used Jerome to present her own very ideal-
istic vision of love. It is not impossible that Heloise presented arguments
culled from Jerome in a letter to Abelard, and that he drew selectively
from this letter when writing about the greatness of the pagan philoso-
phers in both the Christian Theology and the Historia calamitatum.
140 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

The Final Love Letters

The love letters present a relationship which goes through a number of
difficult stages. She wants to break off the relationship in her letter 60, but
he then persuades her to continue with their exchange. Troubled by his
impulsiveness, she seems to have been upset at his statement in letter 59:
“I am guilty, I who compelled you to sin.” She sees such attitudes as a be-
trayal of her true love (vera dilectio) for him. He seems to have alternated
between eager enthusiasm for sexual satisfaction and remorse for behavior
that he then condemns as sinful. By letter 101, he is wanting to withdraw
from seeing her too often because of the notoriety they are acquiring. In
letter 106 he seems to be stricken with remorse for his behavior. He con-
fesses that he bears the cost of foolishness because “I have not known how
to keep that good, of which I have been completely unworthy, as I ought.”
This prompts her to go through a major crisis, recorded (unfortunately
only in excerpt) in letter 107. These tearful outbursts resolve themselves
with an expressive poem from him (108) and a letter from her (109), wish-
ing him to be “clothed with the grace of the virtues, covered with the jew-
els of wisdom, endowed with honesty of behavior.” Her message seems to
be that she wishes him every respectable virtue. She simply does not talk
about any behavior that he worried was sinful. He in turn cannot put her
out of his mind, as she to him is his very spirit (110, 111).
These final letters hint at complexities in the relationship between
Abelard and Heloise never touched on in the Historia calamitatum. In that
narrative, there is no suspicion of any emotional crisis in their relationship
prior to the moment that she got pregnant. Abelard’s story line is simply
that lust led to pregnancy, which in turn led him choosing to marry
Heloise (a decision which does seem strange if Abelard’s relationship was
simply based on lust). Human relationships are never easy to define. These
letters suggest that he was certainly infatuated with her, but that he was
unable to understand why he behaved in the way he did. He considered
his relationship with Heloise as one of amor, exciting because it seemed to
flout the sort of strict moralizing he associated with teachers like William
of Champeaux and bishop Galo. He had not developed any alternative
ethical system by which to interpret his behavior. Heloise was also fasci-
nated by Ovid, but she saw amor as about much more than the sexual
games satirized in the Art of Loving and the Amores. Drawing on ideas al-
ready expounded by some of the Loire valley poets in the late eleventh
century, Heloise was developing her own code of love, in the same way as
poets who performed in a vernacular context.
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 141

The woman’s tone changes dramatically in letter 112. She greets him
not as her beloved (as she had done for the last time in 104), but as her
teacher, to whom she respectfully offers “well-being in Him who is both
salvation and blessing” (salutem in eo qui est salus et benedictio). Why does her
tone become so formal? Her first phrase is controlled, “If you are well and
moving among worldly concerns without trouble,” but then rises to a new
excitement: “I am carried away by the greatest exultation of mind.” She in-
vokes mystical imagery of St. Paul (2 Cor. 12.2) to describe how she has
been carried away by his literary gift and reminds him that he is a philoso-
pher with great poetic talent, but then implies that this is not enough and
reminds him of the need to thirst for God alone. She forecasts a brilliant
future for him, but then explains her own exultation (mentis exultacione) as
an experience which she cannot describe in any way. She has reached (lit-
erally “obtains” or “holds”) the portum, the harbor or haven of his dilectio.
He had used the image of “coming to port” in letter 78 after he had re-
ceived a letter which he interpreted as implying that the difficulties in their
relationship were over. He may here be reiterating a phrase of Virgil about
sitting in port.96 In letter 112 she uses portum rather differently. She now
has reached a source of joy too wonderful to put into words. Instead of
being fixed on him, she has now reached “the haven of his love.” All she
wants is to be free (vacare) to be fully devoted to him. Because Johannes de
Vepria indicates four separate omission marks in his copy of letter 112, we
cannot tell if the woman originally explained more clearly what she means
by this source of great joy. Was there something in this letter which a Cis-
tercian monk could not bring himself to transcribe?
Her words suggest that her happiness stems from much more than his
well being. Her formal greeting and comments about her being sure that
he has a great professional future ahead of him imply that she wants him
to succeed in the world as a teacher. An obvious possibility is that she is
now telling him that their relationship can no longer be the same as be-
fore, because she has conceived a child. Even in letter 109, when she
wishes him wisdom and virtue, she seems to be signaling a desire that their
relationship become more like that of spiritual friendship. The fact that she
compares the joy his letters had given her in the past with her present, in-
describable joy, itself suggests that she has now grown to a new stage of un-
derstanding. By bearing his child, she has all that she wants.
Johannes de Vepria provides no explanation when he copies a small
note (112a), with the marginal annotation Ex alia (From another [letter]),
in which she says that he accepts sweet things (dulcia) as burdensome (pro
gravibus) and that she no longer wishes to speak to him. As Johannes de
142 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Vepria supplies no omission mark in his transcription of this message, it

may well be that this letter did just contain two sentences. As the message
(112a) is so different in tone from 112, there seems no reason to doubt that
it is a separate letter, or is from a separate letter. In the transcription which
Johannes was copying, the random character of his attempts to distinguish
one letter from another suggests that he was copying a text in which one
letter followed another without break. He seems to have come across a
running register, kept by the woman in the exchange, of messages sent by
her and received from her lover.
In this final message from her (112a), she alludes to some response from
the man, not recorded by Johannes de Vepria, which makes her less than
happy:

Ubi est amor et dilectio, ibi semper fervet exercicium. Jam fessa sum, tibi re-
spondere nequeo, quod dulcia pro gravibus accipis, ac per hoc animum
meum contristaris. Vale.

Where there is passion and love, there always rages effort. Now I am tired,
I cannot reply to you because you are taking sweet things as burdensome,
and in doing so you sadden my spirit. Farewell.

The implication of her letter is that she is disappointed her teacher does
not share her joy in expecting a child. According to the Historia calamita-
tum, Abelard reacted to her pregnancy by taking her away from her
uncle’s house and sending her to his sister in Brittany. In his second letter
to Heloise, he mentions that he sent her to Brittany disguised as a nun in
order to emphasize the deceit in their behavior.97 Such a reaction may be
the cause of the woman’s distress in letter 112a. Abelard implies that he
stayed in Paris and tried to make amends with Fulbert, her uncle. When
he went to Brittany to fetch Heloise and marry her, Abelard reports that
they had a major argument in which she urged him against that course of
action.
The final item in the exchange is an elegy (113) begging forgiveness
for his behavior: “I do not love patiently” (non patienter amo). He had been
driven by amor to follow its demands. He had been dazzled by her beauty,
family (genus), and behavior. The implication of this poem is that the rela-
tionship between teacher and student, at least as passionately intense lovers,
is at an end. The man’s explanation for his behavior is not fundamentally
different from that which Abelard records in the Historia calamitatum that
he put to Fulbert: that he had done nothing unusual in the eyes of anyone
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOVE LETTERS 143

who knew the power of love, and that women had always brought the no-
blest men to ruin.98 He had “fallen” in love, away from the pedestal of
philosophic behavior expected of him. He interprets his relationship to
Heloise as one of superficial attraction, without any reference to her un-
derstanding of their love. Abelard’s explanation of his behavior, shaped by
Ovidian imagery, betrays a very traditional pattern of thought, not incon-
sistent with his attitude throughout the love letters. For all his effort to be
philosophical about love when she asked for his definition of amor (24), he
never becomes as sophisticated as Heloise in formulating ethical ideas dur-
ing his early relationship with her. If this exchange were a literary inven-
tion composed by a single author, one might ask why it should conclude
in such an unsatisfactory way, with the relationship between the two par-
ties still unresolved. There is no attempt to round things off, by proposing
that worldly love should be replaced by spiritual friendship. The reader is
left to imagine what might have happened.

Conclusion
The relationship between the teacher and his student in these letters shows
striking parallels to that remembered in different ways by Abelard and
Heloise. To argue that the love letters constitute a literary fiction demands
that we postulate the existence of an author with an astonishingly intimate
knowledge of their attitudes, vocabulary, and prose style. Könsgen’s argu-
ment that these are genuine letters between two lovers can be taken fur-
ther. These letters must have been written by Abelard and Heloise. When
we compare the exchange copied by Johannes de Vepria to poems written
about Abelard and Heloise from the twelfth century, or other love letters
from the period, we simply do not find anything approaching the depth
and sophistication of this exchange. The contrasting perceptions of love in
these love letters are so similar to those evident in the Abelard–Heloise let-
ters, that it seems most unlikely that they could have been written by a
male disciple of Abelard intimately familiar with his master’s philosophical
vocabulary. The only student of Abelard in a position to record this ex-
change was Heloise. The copy she made of her exchanges with Abelard is
like any letter collection from the twelfth century, the product of a careful
literary process. We cannot say to what extent she may have edited the
original messages etched onto wax, just as we do not know for certain
whether Johannes de Vepria came across Heloise’s own transcription, or a
copy some other monk had made of those letters. The fact that an episto-
lary exchange uses literary artifice to interpret a relationship does not
144 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

make that exchange any less authentic. Literature always provides an imag-
inative response to whatever is perceived as other.
It is dangerous to describe these love letters as “written from the heart.”
Expressions of mutual devotion are always shaped by cultural convention.
Dogmatic assertions that Abelard “was driven by lust” or that Heloise “was
motivated by pure love” fail to recognize that these are rhetorical phrases,
used by Abelard and Heloise respectively, each fulfilling a certain function.
The love letters help us probe beyond Abelard’s attempt to distance him-
self from his past in the Historia calamitatum, but they do not provide “the
real truth” about their relationship.These letters lend substance to Heloise’s
argument that her love for him was not based on any desire for material
reward. She saw the demands of amor as no different from classical ideals of
friendship except that she believed them to apply as much to an amica as
to an amicus.99 Heloise certainly liked to invent dramatic contrasts to make
her point, such as when she says that she preferred to be called a prostitute
rather than to marry Abelard. She did not want to be a prostitute. Her ar-
gument is that true love disregards public opinion. With all its limitations,
the transcription prepared by Johannes de Vepria at Clairvaux in the late
fifteenth century records an echo of the voices of both Abelard and
Heloise.
CHAPTER 6

THE VOICE OF HELOISE

At a time when nearly the whole world is indifferent and deplorably apa-
thetic towards such occupations, and wisdom can scarcely find a foothold
not only, I may say, among the female sex from whom it has been banished
completely, but even among the minds of men, you have surpassed all
women in carrying out your purpose and have gone further than almost all
men. Subsequently you turned your zeal for learning to a better direction
and as a wholly and truly philosophical woman you left logic for the Gospel,
natural science for the Apostle, Plato for Christ, the academy for the clois-
ter, according to the words of the Apostle: “It pleased God who had set you
apart since you were in your mother’s womb to call you through his grace.”
(Gal. 1.15)1

eter the Venerable does not allude at all to Heloise’s early love for
P Abelard in this letter, written perhaps one or two years after Abelard’s
death (21 April 1142).2 The abbot of Cluny prefers to recall how he him-
self once admired her for her learning before she became a nun. His letter
is a carefully tuned panegyric about the transition from philosophical in-
quiry to the monastic life. St. Bernard’s criticism of the theology of Peter
Abelard at Sens in 1141 was still fresh in many people’s minds. He ex-
presses delight in reports of her learning and religion and praises her as like
Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, and Deborah, a leader to her commu-
nity.3 She has overcome “the proud prince of this world” and will justly
receive a heavenly reward, when she will be united again with Abelard,
who spent his last years as a humble monk of Cluny and whom God now
keeps in his bosom.
This image of Peter Abelard was not widely known in the twelfth cen-
tury. The Latin text of this letter, translated into French in the fourteenth
century, is known only through a single fifteenth-century copy and the
146 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

1522 edition of Peter the Venerable’s letters, based on a lost manuscript of

Cluny.4 Far more widely known in the Middle Ages were letters of St.
Bernard about the opinions of Peter Abelard that presented him as an ar-
rogant logician “who disputes with boys and consorts with women.”5 Peter
the Venerable’s sympathetic portrayal of both Heloise and Abelard is itself
colored by rhetorical convention. Heloise protests against her public rep-
utation for piety in her letter of complaint about how Abelard had de-
scribed her in the Historia calamitatum. She wants Abelard to address her as
an individual, fully aware of her situation. Accepting the love letters dis-
covered by Johannes de Vepria as those of Heloise and Abelard enables us
to appreciate the complexity of a relationship that Abelard grossly over-
simplifies in his account of the past. Public criticism did not prevent him
from exerting influence in the schools and rejecting the accusations that
he provoked.6 Heloise had a much more difficult task in confronting her
admirers. Abelard’s remark that the less she allowed herself to be seen in
public, the more her admirers sought her out for spiritual conversation,
highlights her desire for privacy.7 At the same time, she could not avoid the
publicity that surrounded her relationship with the most famous teacher
of the day. Accepting the letters as those of Heloise and Abelard enables us
to probe more deeply a private world thrown by force of circumstance
into a maelstrom of rumor and gossip.

The End of the Affair

The love letters and poems seem to have been exchanged by Heloise and
Abelard over a period of at least a year, perhaps between late 1115 and
sometime in 1117.8 Many of the letters may have been exchanged before
Abelard obtained lodging in Fulbert’s house. Because they speak so much
in ideal terms and lack specific historical allusions it is impossible to be
certain. Even if they were living in the same house, Abelard would neces-
sarily have had to live separately from Heloise and communicate with her
by written messages, exchanged by a servant. Abelard’s account of their
physical union in Fulbert’s house is itself like a novel, colored by dramatic
irony as he imagines their relationship in the past. The contrast in the love
letters between his discourse and hers suggests that for all their shared in-
terests, they still inhabited different worlds. Even their prose styles reflected
the contrast in their background. He praised the way she shone in her be-
havior, but had difficulty in understanding what she wanted to say about
love, informed by a particular fusion of religious and classical idealism. Al-
though Abelard was an authority on linguistic convention, he could not
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 147

easily see the extent to which many of his own attitudes were themselves
deeply rooted in clerical convention. In letter 60 she tried to break off the
relationship after he apologized for “forcing her to sin” (59). He then ac-
cused her of sinning against himself in wanting to rupture their relation-
ship (61). Something similar seems to have happened in letter 106 when
he exclaims that he bears “the price for stupidity” because he has not
known how to keep “that good thing as I ought.” He becomes caught in
a contradiction between delight in receiving her letters (110) and a sense
of the folly of his own behavior.The remorse he expresses in letters 59 and
101 suggest that there was some truth to his later comments that he forced
Heloise to have sex with him when she was unwilling. He was stricken
with guilt by his own behavior.
Whether Abelard consciously set out to seduce her, as he maintains in
the Historia calamitatum, is another matter. Initially thrilled by the elo-
quence of his letters, she gradually begins to define their relationship in a
way quite distinct from her teacher. Heloise’s ideal of love integrated three
normally distinct concepts: amor, the passion or subjective experience of
love; dilectio, an act of choice by which one consciously decided to love an-
other person; and amicitia, or friendship. She develops ideas similar to those
formulated by Baudri of Bourgueil in poems exchanged with various
friends, including nuns at Le Ronceray, Angers. Heloise does not see any
inconsistency between her love for Abelard and their shared study of phi-
losophy. The quality which he so much admired in her was that her words
were matched by her behavior. Other people’s words seemed to him to be
empty by comparison.
After their intimacy was discovered by Fulbert, Abelard was forced to
move out of his house. The final letters of the correspondence, very diffi-
cult to interpret clearly, imply that their relationship was going through
various difficulties, even before she sends letter 112, in which she reports
an experience of joy that she cannot put into words. The fact that she ad-
dresses this letter to her teacher rather than to her lover suggests that she
wants to put their relationship on a different footing. She acknowledges
that his letters had raised her to heights of ecstasy, and affirms her confi-
dence that he has a glorious future before him. He has a public role, while
she now has reached her own source of joy. Her last note (112a) implies
that Abelard took the news of her pregnancy badly. In his final poem
(113), Abelard falls back on a traditional view of amor as an insane passion
provoked by fascination with external beauty. While not explicitly blam-
ing his behavior on a woman, he implies that a woman’s beauty and rep-
utation is a dangerous trap for a man. Abelard reports that he used very
148 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

similar arguments to Fulbert after he had sent Heloise to Brittany for the
duration of her confinement. He then decides that they should return to
Paris to marry in secret, leaving Astralabe to be brought up by his sister
in Brittany. His insistence that they should get married in secret, but then
live apart, represents a pious hope that he can strengthen their relation-
ship by making it respectable in the eyes of Fulbert. Abelard was afraid of
losing control over Heloise. As she recognized, it was a disastrous decision
which only put her more firmly than ever under Abelard’s authority.
Abelard went back to live in lodgings after a secret ceremony, while
Heloise returned to her uncle’s house. The idea was that this would be a
chaste marriage. When Fulbert started to abuse her and spread rumors
about the marriage, Abelard sent her to her old convent at Argenteuil,
where she had been raised and educated as a child. Fulbert, who thought
this a device by which Abelard could continue to have his way with
Heloise, was so enraged by this apparent theft of Heloise that he and other
members of her family decided to have him castrated.9 Abelard does not
mention in the Historia calamitatum a detail that we know about from a let-
ter from Fulco of Deuil, that Abelard wanted to take legal action in Rome
against both the bishop and the canons of Notre-Dame. Fulco warned
Abelard that this was unrealistic because of the money necessary to obtain
a favorable verdict from a corrupt papal court.10 Two of the thugs involved
in the crime were punished with blinding and castration; Fulbert was sent
into temporary exile in 1117 by the cathedral chapter. Abelard then decided
to become a monk at Saint-Denis at the same time as Heloise took the veil
at Argenteuil. He sought to disassociate himself from his past. Abelard was
able to sublimate his energies by returning to the study of logic and start-
ing to write about Christian doctrine. The voice of Heloise became trans-
muted into his own reflection on the goodness of God.Yet the issues raised
in those love letters did not disappear. To grasp the deeper continuities be-
tween her love letters and the exchange she initiated with Abelard after she
came across the Historia calamitatum, we need to understand how their lives
were shaped by political developments much larger than themselves.

Abelard at Saint-Denis: Escape through Reason

Abelard’s castration marked more than the end of a phase in his career. It
signaled a reaction against moral laxity both in the diocese of Paris and in
the Latin Church as a whole.While Fulbert’s act of revenge turned Abelard
into a kind of martyr in the eyes of his admirers, it also reinforced public
perception of him as a dangerous outsider. Many people thought of him as
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 149

an overclever logician who could not be trusted as a teacher of Christian

doctrine and morality. Abelard responded to his castration by immersing
himself in intellectual study, distancing himself from all association with
Heloise. This at least is the picture which he gives in the Historia calamita-
tum. Abelard may not have removed himself from Heloise as much as he
claims in that account. Roscelin reports rumors that Abelard was continu-
ing to visit “his prostitute” and bring her money, even though he was now
a monk.11 Abelard did not engage in intimate conversation, however, with
Heloise. He was anxious to maintain a public image of respectability in a
monastic environment which considered any intimate association with a
woman dangerous. By identifying himself as an ascetic teacher like Ori-
gen, famous for having castrated himself, he sought to re-assert himself as
a teacher, unmoved by feminine distraction. Just as he saw the spirit tri-
umphing over the flesh, so he saw reason as triumphing over the senses.12
Becoming a monk at Saint-Denis enabled Abelard to escape from the
past. The abbey also boasted an important library and offered connections
directly to the royal court, being traditionally independent of the bishop
of Paris.13 According to St. Bernard, Saint-Denis was a hive of activity
prior to the reforms implemented by Suger in 1127, its cloister “crowded
with knights, with affairs being negotiated, with disputes being conducted,
and sometimes open to women.” Stephen of Garlande, whom Bernard im-
plies was once friendly with Suger, may have played a role in Abelard’s
choice of a monastic refuge.14
Abelard responded relatively quickly to suggestions that he teach for
the service of God rather than for personal gain, as in the past. This
brought him into conflict with his fellow monks, whom he accused of
worldliness. He withdrew from the abbey to a certain cella, a church of
Saint-Denis where he was able to teach both logic and theology, drawing
on the wisdom of philosophy to illuminate traditional Christian doctrine.
In both the Historia calamitatum and the preface to his Theologia Scholarium
(drafted in the early 1130s) Abelard makes the point that he undertook
this approach in response to the demands of his students for a rational ap-
proach to matters of belief.15 Heloise was the most articulate of his stu-
dents. The specific focus of his argument was criticism of the thesis of his
former teacher, Roscelin of Compiègne, that the three persons of the
Trinity had to be described as separate things to avoid identifying God
the Father with God the Son. Abelard insisted that only Roscelin’s con-
clusions were wrong, not his basic method of discussing Christian faith
through philosophical argument. He shared Roscelin’s conviction that
secular philosophy provided a path for understanding Christian belief.16
150 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Abelard’s eagerness to demonstrate that pagan philosophers had glimpsed

the supreme good has particular significance in the light of Heloise’s en-
thusiasm for classical authors in her love letters. She herself was very in-
terested in fusing the ideas of classical authors about human relationships
with the Christian understanding of the demands of love. Little phrases in
his theological writing suggest reminiscences of her love letters. The
scriptural phrase which he had used to describe Heloise’s eloquence (24)
is one he now employs to explain that the Word of God is divine wisdom
flowing out in speech from the abundance of the heart.17 He speaks lit-
tle about the meaning of divine omnipotence, traditionally so important
for describing God as the supreme ruler. He is more interested in talking
about divine goodness as glimpsed by the ancient writers. He describes
“Holy Spirit” as a name given to express the affectus or disposition of di-
vine kindness and charity, just as breathing expresses a disposition of the
spirit, like sighing in love or groaning in effort or sorrow.18 When he be-
came a monk, Abelard transferred his attention away from the consolation
offered by Heloise to the consolation offered by divine goodness, in his
view the true meaning of what Plato described as the soul of the world.
These reflections on the meaning of the words pater, filius, and spiritus
sanctus provoked hostility not just from Roscelin, but from those teachers
who saw themselves as continuing the traditions of Anselm of Laon (d.
1117). Abelard tells the story of their persecution of his treatise at the
council of Soissons (March/April 1121) as if it were an attack against him
personally. Alberic of Rheims and Lotulph of Novara resented the way in
which the Parisian schools were taking over in popularity from those of
Laon and Rheims.William of Champeaux had already sensed future trends
in 1109 by establishing a reformed community at Saint-Victor, just outside
Paris. In his theological lectures, William expanded on the technique for
which Anselm of Laon had become famous, of presenting rational solu-
tions to a range of questions about Christian belief and behavior. William’s
admirers were worried by the extent to which Abelard seemed to under-
mine the solutions of established authorities in his On the Unity and Trin-
ity of God. After the death of William of Champeaux in 1120, Alberic and
Lotulf were anxious that the Church should rule against arguments that
seemed to subvert patristic authority. One charge in particular was made
against Abelard, that he defined only the Father as omnipotent, not the Son
or the Holy Spirit. William of Saint-Thierry (ca. 1075–1148), present at
Soissons in 1121, made the same complaint later in his letter to Bernard of
Clairvaux.19 The charge pinpointed Abelard’s unwillingness to view God
as an all-powerful being, able to do as he pleased.20
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 151

After a short confinement at Saint-Médard, Soissons, Abelard returned

to Saint-Denis to set about revising and enlarging his controversial treatise,
now calling it his Christian Theology (appropriating a Greek word, theologia,
normally associated with the mystical writing attributed to Denis the Are-
opagite). He incorporated his own accusations against those who argued
that he was relying too much on pagan wisdom and was questioning the
omnipotence of God.21 While researching patristic teaching, which he in-
sisted had to be investigated rationally as it embraced many different opin-
ions, he commented on the common confusion between Denis the
Areopagite and Denis bishop of Corinth. This led to accusations that he
was questioning the identity of the patron saint of France. In a separate let-
ter to the abbot of Saint-Denis, Abelard explained that he did not doubt
the traditional belief, but argued that it had to be defended by reference to
the most reliable sources.22

Abelard at the Paraclete: Responding to Criticism

Abelard recalls that the hostility of his fellow monks provoked him to es-
cape (in 1122) both from the abbey and from France itself. He took
refuge with monastic friends at the abbey of Saint-Ayoul, Provins, in the
territory of the Count of Champagne. While abbot Adam of Saint-Denis
had wanted Abelard to return to the abbey, Stephen of Garlande played a
key role in persuading Suger, Adam’s successor, to allow Abelard to with-
draw from Saint-Denis, as long as he did not come under the authority
of any other abbot. Abelard then set about constructing an Oratory or
chapel, which he initially dedicated to the Holy Trinity, on land that he
had been given not far from Nogent-sur-Seine. He did so with the bless-
ing of the new bishop of the region, Hato of Troyes, recently arrived from
the cathedral of Sens.23 When describing the community of students of
philosophy which gathered at this site, Abelard quoted from Jerome’s pan-
egyric of pagan philosophers who spurned the delights of the senses and
the assaults of lust which he had earlier quoted in his Christian Theology:
“If anyone takes pleasure in . . . a woman’s beauty, the splendor of jewels
and garments . . . the liberty of his soul is captured through the window
of the eye.”24
Intellectually, these were productive years. Abelard distinguished his ideas
about words and their signification more clearly from that of Roscelin,
within the context of both logic and theology. He gave much more atten-
tion than his teacher to the role that a word plays in generating an under-
standing in the mind, building on ideas Aristotle had raised in his On
152 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Interpretation (Periermeneias). No word or concept established any final truth.

Complete truth was known only to God. When he applied these linguistic
principles to pronouncements on Christian doctrine, as in the Prologue to
his Yes and No (Sic et Non), he invited his students to consider that no
Church Father had ever delivered the final word on any disputed question.
Abelard was most at home in analyzing patristic definitions of the Trin-
ity. He began his discussions of any subject by pointing out the inconsis-
tencies present within patristic tradition, of which he developed an
encyclopedic knowledge. He then gradually worked out a rational solution
which embraced the teaching of the most important authorities. The sub-
ject matter which Abelard found the most difficult to deal with was that
of human behavior. When he was drafting the Christian Theology in the
early 1120s, his thoughts were still largely guided by his reading of Cicero
and other classical authors. While Abelard did not include any of the sub-
tle reflection on love which he had marveled at in the love letters of
Heloise, he defended vigorously the value of reading those authors to
whom she was so attached. He hinted at the idea that the incarnation pro-
vided an opportunity for God to instruct us in wisdom and draw us to the
love of those things which he knows, a subject he may have discussed at
more length in his lectures during this period.25 He gave most attention
to the Holy Spirit, the comforting goodness or benignity of God. His de-
cision to re-dedicate his Oratory to the Paraclete reflected this concern, a
shift which Abelard took pains to justify in the face of criticism that he was
lessening respect for God the Father and God the Son. Abelard did not
think of God as a Being who could do whatever he willed. His God was
the supreme good, manifest in the goodness of creation.
In the Historia calamitatum, Abelard blames the collapse of the Paraclete
community ca. 1126/27 on false rumors propagated by two “new apos-
tles,” whom he identifies as famous for resurrecting the life of regular (i. e.
reformed) canons and of monks. There seems little reason to doubt that he
had in mind Norbert of Xanten (ca. 1080–1134) and Bernard of Clairvaux
(1090–1153).26 In a sermon written ca. 1127, Abelard is cynical about cer-
tain miracles that Norbert attempted to perform after leaving Prémontré
to become archbishop of Magdeburg.27 Bernard, ordained as abbot of
Clairvaux by William of Champeaux in 1115, was then already politically
aligned with Abelard’s critics. In 1126 Bernard wrote to Pope Honorius II
(1124–30) to support the promotion of Alberic of Rheims, Abelard’s an-
tagonist at Laon, to the bishopric of Châlons-sur-Marne.28 Bernard was
then working with Norbert on various ecclesiastical causes.29 He was also
emerging as an authoritative writer on Christian doctrine. In 1127/28,
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 153

Bernard replied to various questions of Hugh of Saint-Victor in Paris

about arguments of an unnamed teacher who mocked traditional doctrine
about baptism, claimed that righteous people before Christ had full
knowledge of the incarnation, and taught that no one could sin through
ignorance.30 Although Bernard may not have known the identity of the
teacher about whom Hugh was talking, as he affirms in this letter, Abelard
could easily have perceived Bernard as an unfriendly rival. Eleven years
younger than Abelard, Bernard was then emerging as a significant figure in
Champagne. After Count Hugh of Champagne decided to join the
Knights Templar in 1125, Bernard encouraged Count Theobald II of Blois,
who had just inherited governance of the County of Champagne
(1125–52), to hold a council at Troyes in January 1128. Bernard’s role in
gaining official recognition for the Templar Order was important in turn-
ing him into a figure of public prominence.31 Bernard was not a politician
or diplomat like Suger, but a preacher, able to inspire an audience about
great themes of love and self-knowledge in a prose style of great original-
ity. Unlike William of Champeaux, he could exploit popular interest in the
theme of love between a woman and a man to talk about the spiritual life.
Like Norbert, Bernard saw himself as a spiritual adviser to the powerful. It
is perhaps not surprising that Abelard should blame Norbert and Bernard
for the collapse of the Paraclete. We have no firm documentary evidence,
however, that Abelard was correct in these accusations. The collapse of the
Paraclete may have had more to do with the difficulties Abelard experi-
enced in building up a network of support at a time of great political in-
stability in France and Champagne between 1127 and 1132.

The Political Crisis of 1127–32

Abelard’s fortunes had already begun to wane in 1123, when the cathedral
canons elected as bishop of Paris an outsider to the chapter, Stephen of
Senlis (d. 1141). Member of a family long opposed to the Garlande broth-
ers, Stephen of Senlis imposed a more austere life style on the canons of
Notre-Dame and obtained from Louis VI significant financial privileges for
Saint-Victor.32 In the process the new bishop came into conflict with
Stephen of Garlande over the latter’s support for Gualo, a logician who had
replaced Abelard at Notre-Dame.33 Stephen of Senlis excommunicated
Gualo and his students, prompting Gualo to appeal to the archbishop of
Sens and to Rome itself.34 The disagreement between Stephen of Senlis
and the cathedral chapter over control of the school was related to a larger
dispute about the power of archdeacons in general.35 It led to the bishop’s
154 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

decision in 1127, witnessed by Suger of Saint-Denis and the abbot and

prior of Saint-Victor, to transfer the cathedral school from the cloister to
the episcopal court, on the south side of the Church. The bishop’s plan to
introduce canons of Saint-Victor into Notre-Dame was resisted by the
king. The bishop also encountered difficulties with the archbishop of Sens
to whom Stephen of Garlande had appealed.36 Stephen of Senlis and the
abbot of Saint-Victor had the full support of Bernard of Clairvaux.37 The
bishop’s actions helped polarize the Parisian clerical community into two
camps, one pro-monastic, the other opposed to monastic influence in the
Church.
The immediate cause of Stephen of Garlande’s fall from grace in 1127
was the planned marriage of one of his nieces to Amaury IV of Montfort,
nephew of Bertrada of Montfort.38 Stephen had long been disliked by
Queen Adelaide, who accused him of wanting to keep the position of
seneschal within the control of his own family. Ralph of Vermandois,
cousin to Louis VI, took part in the military action against the Montforts,
and quickly became senior adviser to the king, although he did not offi-
cially become seneschal until 1132. Louis of Senlis, brother of the bishop,
took over the post of butler to the king from Gilbert of Garlande.39 Ralph
of Vermandois had played a key role in the expedition of Louis VI against
the Emperor Henry V in 1125, and was the true beneficiary of the fall of
the Garlandes. Ralph was also involved in a brutal, but ultimately unsuc-
cessful campaign of Louis in 1127 to assert royal authority in Flanders
through his support for William Clito (1101–28), after the assassination of
the king’s cousin, Count Charles.40 Suger downplays the political signifi-
cance of these events in his life of Louis VI by never giving prominence to
Stephen of Garlande. There can be no doubt, however, that Stephen’s fall
from grace was a significant event. Angevin culture was seen as a perni-
cious influence by ecclesiastical moralists, who saw the reform movement
in the Church as now gaining the political support of the highest people
in the land.
Abelard and Heloise were caught in the slipstream created by these
events. Family connections enabled Abelard to take a position as abbot of
Saint-Gildas-de-Ruys, in a remote part of Brittany ca. 1126/27. In 1127
Suger implemented reforms at Saint-Denis to ensure that monastic life was
not disturbed by secular affairs, while he himself took an active part in po-
litical decision making. Early in 1129, Suger forged a charter, supposedly
issued by Louis the Pious and his son Lothar, to prove his claim that Ar-
genteuil traditionally belonged to Saint-Denis.41 Cardinal Matthew of Al-
bano reported to the Pope at a council at Saint-Germain-des-Prés that
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 155

there had been an outcry over “irregularity and scandal” at an abbey where
a few nuns had lived for a long time “polluting all the neighborhood of
the place by their foul and debauched way of life.”42 On 14 April 1129,
Suger acquired approval from Louis VI and Queen Adelaide, as well as from
Ralph of Vermandois, for expelling Heloise and her nuns from Argenteuil.
Suger also secured a promise from Louis that he be buried at Saint-Denis
rather than at Fleury. Access to Argenteuil provided Suger with a valuable
port on the Seine, essential for him to undertake his plans to rebuild the
abbey of Saint-Denis. Abelard would never have invited Heloise to take
over the Paraclete if Suger had not intervened to take control of Argen-
teuil. Abelard always insisted that good could come out of bad.
The accusations invoked by Suger were the same as those used at Arras
on 10 May 1128 to justify the expulsion of nuns from the abbey of Saint-
Jean, Laon. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke approvingly to Haimeric, the papal
chancellor, about “the restoration at Laon of a sanctuary to God formerly
the brothel of Venus.”43 Pope Innocent confirmed the expulsion of nuns
from both Saint-Jean and Argenteuil on 2 November 1130.44 Just as in
1107, when William of Champeaux and bishop Galo justified the expul-
sion of nuns from Saint-Éloi on grounds of sexual immorality (an action
confirmed in 1134 by Stephen of Senlis), so the rhetoric of pollution was
again invoked to justify claims to political control.45 It served to distract at-
tention from complaints from some quarters that bishops who claimed to
advocate reform were in fact serving to legitimize secular authority (pre-
cisely the situation that reformers in the eleventh century were fighting
against).
The expulsion of Heloise and her nuns from Argenteuil presented
Abelard with an opportunity that he interpreted as a gift of the Paraclete,
the giver of true consolation. Presumably at her suggestion (he is silent
about her initiative in this), Abelard invited Heloise and some of the nuns
with her to take over the Paraclete, and transferred to them ownership of
the site. Heloise must have written to Abelard demanding that he do some-
thing for her community. Those nuns who did not want to lead a life of
austerity and hardship, moved to the abbey of Sainte-Marie de Footel,
Malnouë, near Champigny. Thirty years later, bishop Maurice de Sully
(1163–96) claimed episcopal jurisdiction over Argenteuil and tried to re-
turn the nuns who had taken refuge at Malnouë to Saint-Denis, but was
not successful in this.46
Between 1130 and 1139 Bernard of Clairvaux was closely involved in
winning support for Pope Innocent II, elected by a minority of cardinals
(led by Haimeric, papal chancellor) on 13 February 1130, after the death
156 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

of Honorius II. The majority of cardinals supported the election of Ana-

cletus II, a scion of the important Pierleoni family who enjoyed the sup-
port of the city and clergy of Rome. At the same time as Bernard was
soliciting the support of Louis VI, Norbert of Xanten was persuading the
new German emperor, Lothar III (1125–37) to recognize Innocent II as
the legitimate pope.47 Anjou, ruled by Fulk V (1109–42, son of Bertrada of
Montfort), preferred Anacletus II to Innocent II. Bernard tried to get
Hildebert of Lavardin, archbishop of Tours 1125–33, to recognize Innocent
II as Pope in 1131, but could not prevent Hildebert’s successor from being
consecrated by Anacletus. Duke William X of Aquitaine was similarly op-
posed to Innocent II.48 Only with the death of Gerard of Angoulême,
papal legate of Anacletus, in 1136 could Innocent II be sure of recognition
by the bishops of Aquitaine.49 In such an atmosphere, anyone perceived as
not supporting Innocent II could be accused of fomenting schism within
the Church.
Heloise survived the political turbulence of the late 1120s and early
1130s more successfully than Abelard. Her request to take over the Para-
clete was a bold move, as she could have followed those nuns who settled
at Malnouë. Abelard pays tribute in the Historia calamitatum to her success
in winning support from bishops, abbots, and laypeople.50 The accusations
made by Suger of sexual profligacy at Argenteuil did not prevent her from
obtaining papal confirmation of the community’s possessions at Auxerre
on 28 November 1131. Abelard’s own public reputation was beginning to
improve. In January 1131 Innocent consecrated an altar at Morigny in the
presence of many distinguished ecclesiastics, including Bernard of Clair-
vaux and Peter Abelard. The Benedictine chronicler of Morigny described
him as “a monk and abbot, a most distinguished religious man and teacher
of the schools, to whom educated men flocked from almost the whole
Latin world.”51 While Abelard may have enjoyed more professional con-
nections in Paris than he reveals in the Historia calamitatum, he still thought
of himself as an outsider, driven east by the jealousy of the French.
Exactly when Abelard resumed teaching at Sainte-Geneviève is not
known. Stephen of Garlande, re-appointed royal chancellor by October
1132, still faced continued opposition from the bishop of Paris and the
abbot of Saint-Victor. The bishop laid an interdict on the churches of
Sainte-Geneviève in 1132/33.52 Tensions flared in August 1133 after
nephews of archdeacon Theobald attacked the bishop of Paris as well as
the abbot and prior of Saint-Victor as they returned from “reforming” the
female community at Chelles.53 Prior Thomas was killed in the fray.
Bernard of Clairvaux complained loudly about the slowness with which
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 157

those guilty of Thomas’ murder were prosecuted.54 This was also the year
that Adam, the musically gifted precentor of Notre-Dame, left the cathe-
dral to join Saint-Victor.55 The polemical tone of Abelard’s Historia calami-
tatum is directly shaped by the intensity of this conflict between Stephen
of Garlande and the bishop of Paris. In order to re-establish himself at
Sainte-Geneviève, Abelard needed to distance himself from the taint of his
past. At the same time, he needed to explain that he had for years been vic-
tim of rumor and false innuendo. In trying to establish the truth as he saw
it, he inevitably colored his account in very particular ways.

Heloise and Cistercian Observances at the Paraclete

Unlike Abelard, Heloise was able to establish good connections to indi-
viduals from a number of different ecclesiastical networks. Abelard’s com-
ments about the admiration she won from ecclesiastics and laypeople alike,
coupled with her manifest success in winning gifts for the Paraclete, testify
to her skill in handling public matters. She herself remained suspicious of
the flattery of admirers. Particularly important was the support that she
won from Matilda, Countess of Blois and Champagne.56 Her capacity to
negotiate with a wide range of people was perhaps the most obvious dif-
ference between herself and Abelard.
Heloise’s relationship to the Cistercian order is of particular significance
given Abelard’s reserve towards the abbot of Clairvaux. While she professes
sympathy for Abelard against the attacks of “those two pseudo-apostles”
(perhaps in a tone of gentle irony), she is not hostile to the values of au-
thenticity of religious observance for which the Cistercians stood. The fact
that Hugh Metel, a fervent admirer of Bernard of Clairvaux and a stern
critic of Peter Abelard, was anxious to win her friendship in the 1140s is
itself significant. Hugh saw her as a woman of piety and religion, quite dif-
ferent from Abelard.57 An important discovery about the Paraclete in re-
cent years has been the finding by Chrysogonus Waddell that the early
observances of the Paraclete, the Institutiones nostrae, are largely influenced
by early Cistercian usage. These observances follow Abelard’s Rule in the
Troyes MS 802. In the thirteenth century, they were extended with certain
additional conciliar decisions about the religious life for women. John
Benton was the first scholar to draw attention to a number of discrepan-
cies between Abelard’s Rule and the observances established in this docu-
ment. Waddell’s discovery that the observances of the Paraclete draw
heavily on Cistercian monastic practices as they existed prior to far-reach-
ing reforms within the Cistercian Order in 1147 is of great significance.58
158 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

He concluded that the observances were drawn up under the supervision

of Heloise in order to establish harmony of observance between the Par-
aclete and its daughter houses, such as at Trainel and La Pommeraye.
The document is structured around the theme that the nuns should fol-
low the teaching of Christ. They should practice poverty, humility, and
obedience in imitation of the apostles. It uses rhyming phrases, character-
istic of the prose style of Heloise:

Domino super nos prospiciente et aliqua loca nobis largiente misimus quas-
dam ex nostris ad religionem tenendam numero sufficiente. Annotamus
autem boni propositi nostri consuetudines, ut quod tenuit mater incom-
mutabiliter, teneant et filie uniformiter.

With the Lord looking over us and bestowing certain places to us, we have
sent some women in sufficient number from among ourselves to observe
religion. We are adding however observances for our good plan so that
what the mother has adhered to unchangeably, the daughters may adhere
to uniformly.59

The usage of religio rather than vita monastica in these observances echoes
Heloise’s usage in her third letter when she describes what she wanted
Abelard to establish at the Paraclete.60 Religion was an all embracing way
of life, not just that practiced by monks. Heloise’s whole third letter is
about the importance of true religio, and the need to avoid any situation
which gives rise to hypocrisy. The Paraclete observances do not refer ex-
plicitly to the authority of Abelard’s Rule. In a few details, they modify
Cistercian emphasis on simplicity of dress, such as by prescribing lambskin
and linen clothes, as well as those of wool. In her third letter to Abelard,
Heloise had observed how awkward it was for women to wear wool next
to the skin, given their monthly periods. A few small details, like the use
of feather mattresses and linen sheets, echo elements in Abelard’s Rule in
which he had responded to observations of Heloise. The observances are
much simpler than Abelard’s Rule, in which broad principles are some-
times overwhelmed by a mass of prescriptive detail and theoretical discus-
sion. For example, the observances simply lay down that meals are without
meat, whereas Abelard devotes an involved discussion to the subject, al-
lowing its consumption with certain restrictions. Heloise had asked him
what basis there was to forbidding meat not so much to change the diet as
to raise a more important principle about the distinction between outward
and inward virtue.61 Just as in her letters, she had insisted that words be
backed up by right behavior, so in practical matters she insisted that ob-
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 159

servances respond to the realities of daily life. The fact that the nuns did
not include meat in their diet may have as much to do with economic ne-
cessity as anything else.
Waddell’s discovery that most of the practical details in the Institutiones
nostrae are based on early Cistercian usage matched his finding that the cal-
endar, hymns, and prayers of the Paraclete also reflect Cistercian practice.62
A number of extra saints have been added to the Cistercian calendar as it
stood in 1147, notably many women: Adelgund, Margaret, Radegund,
Thecla, Faith, the 11,000 virgins, Cirilla, Katherine, Anastasia, Eugenia, and
Columba. The collects and antiphons are similarly based on Cistercian
usage, as is also the choice of scriptural readings and canticles. Abelard had
composed a complete cycle of hymns for the Paraclete, in response to
complaints of Heloise about the inadequacy of many traditional hymns
and their lack of strict meter, but about a third of these were not used
within the Paraclete liturgy. The community paid particular attention to
celebrating Pentecost, and employed Abelard’s special prayers to the Holy
Spirit. Abelard’s sermons were read on important feasts, such as during the
octave of Pentecost. These liturgical manuscripts of the Paraclete may not
affirm the voice of Heloise as an individual, but they give some clues to
the liturgical direction that she chose for her community. She drew on the
writings of both Abelard and the early Cistercians in order to implement
her own vision of the religious life.

Heloise and Bernard of Clairvaux

The complex relationship between Heloise, Abelard, and Bernard of Clair-
vaux is fully evident in a letter which Abelard sent to the abbot of Clair-
vaux sometime in the 1130s, after hearing that Heloise had welcomed him
at the Paraclete:

When recently I came to the Paraclete, driven by the need to conduct some
business, your daughter in Christ and our sister, who is said to be abbess of
that place, informed me with the greatest rejoicing that you had come there
for the sake of a holy visitation, something long wanted, and that you had
given strength both to her and her sisters by pious exhortations not as a
man, but as an angel. In secret she intimated to me that you were a little
disturbed—with that charity with which you have embraced me in
particular—that in that Oratory [the Paraclete] the Lord’s prayer is not cus-
tomarily recited during the daily services as in other places, and that since
you thought that this was my doing, I had made myself distinguished be-
cause of this, as if through a kind of novelty. When I heard this, I decided to
160 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

write some kind of explanation for you, particularly since I am rightly sorry
to offend you above all others.63

Abelard’s comment about “your daughter in Christ” and Heloise’s expec-

tation of this visit suggests that there already existed close ties between
Bernard and Heloise. The changes made to the wording of the Lord’s
Prayer brought tensions to the surface. Abelard argued that it was more au-
thentic to recite the Lord’s Prayer according to the version supplied by
Matthew 6.9–13 (give us this day our “supersubstantial” bread) than by
Luke 11.1–4 (our daily bread), as Matthew wrote his Gospel before Luke,
and (it was thought) originally in Hebrew rather than Greek. Such argu-
ments took principles laid out in the prologue to the Sic et Non danger-
ously close to questioning the authority of the Gospels. To the charge of
novelty laid against him, Abelard retorted that a number of specifically Cis-
tercian liturgical reforms could be accused of being equally novel. Abelard’s
detailed knowledge of primitive Cistercian practice could stem, as Waddell
has suggested, from their already having been adopted by Heloise in the
1130s. The Order of the Paraclete was never officially part of the Cister-
cian Order, but it shared Cistercian ideals of simplicity and authenticity
with a number of other new women’s communities established in the
twelfth century.
It is not clear whether the initiative for this reform of the Lord’s Prayer
came from Abelard or Heloise. Heloise certainly had strong opinions about
liturgical texts, as Abelard makes clear in his prologues to the hymnal of the
Paraclete. Abelard confessed that he had thought it was superfluous to
write new songs when so many were supplied by tradition, but then de-
voted the rest of the preface to the first book of hymns to rehearsing ar-
guments he reported as having been raised by Heloise:

While different things were said to me by different people, you put forward
among other things, I recall, reasoning like this: We know that the Latin, and
particularly the Gallican Church follows custom rather than authority in
hymns, just as it does in psalms. For we are still uncertain who is the author
of the translation which the Gallican Church uses. If we want to judge from
the sayings of those who have exposed the diversities of translations, it departs
far from a universal interpretation and carries no weight of authority, as I
think. Indeed, long habit of tradition has prevailed in this, so that while with
other texts [of scripture] we have copies corrected by blessed Jerome, with the
psalter, which we use a great deal, we are following what is inauthentic. There
is now so much confusion in the hymns which we use, that there is no or only
infrequently a heading to distinguish which or whose they are. . . .You added
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 161

that for several feasts, particular hymns were lacking, as for the Innocents and
the Evangelists and indeed for those women saints who scarcely lived as vir-
gins or martyrs. Finally, you asserted that there were several in which it was
necessary for those who sing them to lie, sometimes because of the necessity
of the season, sometimes because of the insertion of falsehood. . . . By these
or similar persuasive arguments, the holiness of your reverence has driven our
mind to compose hymns for the cycle of the whole year.64

Abelard implies that Heloise was particularly interested in having good

hymns which were easy to sing, appropriate for a particular time of day.
Heloise’s comments echo those of the early Cistercians to recover au-
thentic Christian practice, although she went further than the Cistercians
in complaining about the texts themselves. She was troubled not only by
the frequently uncertain source of the hymns used, but also by the “in-
equality of syllables,” which made it very difficult for them to be sup-
ported by a melody.65 In its strict fidelity to the earliest sources of
liturgical tradition, early Cistercian observance ran the risk of monotony.
Heloise took greater liberties than the Cistercians in asking Abelard for
new hymn texts as well as new melodies (all lost to us, apart from that for
O quanta qualia). When the Cistercians undertook major liturgical reform
under the direction of Bernard of Clairvaux, they replaced the relatively
dull Ambrosian melodies with more expressive melodies, while keeping
the same texts. Under Heloise’s guidance, the Paraclete combined Cister-
cian reforms with some of Abelard’s hymns, although not all of them.
Whether she was talking about love or the liturgy, she insisted that the
words one proclaimed had to conform to the spirit in which they were
spoken or sung. The ideals to which the nuns at the Paraclete were in the-
ory committed were not so different from those revered by the early Cis-
tercians. They remembered the entire Cistercian community in their
prayers on 14 December of every year.66 While Bernard was certainly
critical of Abelard at Sens in 1141, he did not extend any such hostility to
Heloise. In 1148 he wrote to Pope Eugenius III in 1148 to support an
unspecified favor for the abbess of the Paraclete.67

Heloise and Vital of Mortain

Although Heloise had been brought up in a wealthy religious community,
she seems to have been sympathetic towards simplifying religious obser-
vance at an early date. A funerary roll commemorating the death (16 Sep-
tember 1122) of Vital of Mortain includes a poem of unusual sensitivity
162 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

offered by a nun of Argenteuil.68 Vital, a friend of Robert of Arbrissel,

founded a religious community for men at Savigny in 1112 and a separate
community for women at Neufbourg under the guidance of his sister,
Adelina, by 1115.These communities were formally admitted into the Cis-
tercian Order in 1147. Vital imitated many of the practices established in
the early years of Cîteaux, such as replacing the traditional black monastic
habit with clothes of gray, undyed wool.Vital had a reputation for accept-
ing followers from all walks of life, in particular those from an impover-
ished background. According to Orderic Vitalis, his sermons spared neither
rich nor poor, “causing wealthy ladies delicately clad in silk garments and
fine lambskins to tremble when he attacked their sins with the sword of
God’s word.”69 Baudri described Vital as rivaling Cicero in his eloquence
and as another Orpheus in his voice.70 Even Marbod of Rennes, a critic of
Robert of Arbrissel, conceded that Vital of Mortain enabled a girl to ob-
tain an education for little cost, in a letter to a woman unable to afford
sending her daughter to a traditional religious house.71
Compared to the contributions from other religious communities, the
poem from Argenteuil is remarkable for its sophistication and interest in
human sorrow. The entry begins with a prayer for Vital and the souls of all
the faithful departed, and then prayers for “Count Baldwin, Abbess Basilia,
Abbess Adela, Abbess Judith, the nun Helvide, the nun Adela, dean (decana)
Eremburga, Adelaide, Havide, Dodo the lay brother, and for all those
whose names God may write in the book of life. Amen.”72

Flet pastore pio grex desolatus adempto;

Soletur miseras turba fidelis oves.
Proh dolor! hunc morsu sublatum mortis edaci,
Non dolor aut gemitus vivificare queunt.
Ergo quid lacrime? Quid tot tantique dolores
Prosunt? Nil prodest hic dolor, imo nocet.
Sed licet utilitas ex fletu nulla sequatur,
Est tamen humanum morte dolere patris,
Est etiam gaudere pium, si vis rationis
Tristitie vires adnichilare queat.
Mors etenim talis, non mors sed vita putatur
Nam moritur mundo, vivit et ipse Deo.
Ores pro nobis; omnes oramus ut ipse
Et nos ad vitam [above the line: Christum] perveniamus. Amen.

The deserted flock weeps over the shepherd who has been taken away;
let the faithful multitude comfort the miserable sheep.
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 163

What sorrow! Neither sorrow nor groans can restore to life

one taken away by the devouring jaws of death.
Therefore why should there be tears? What use so much and so
widespread sorrow?
Sorrow here is good for nothing, rather it harms.
But although nothing useful follows from mourning,
it is human, however, to mourn the death of a father;
it is also pious to rejoice, if the force of reason
is able to annihilate the powers of sadness.
For such a death is thought not to be death, but life.
For he dies to the world, living himself for God.
May you pray for us; we all pray that he and we ourselves
may come to life [above the line: to Christ]. Amen.73

This poem stands out from the other poems and epitaphs in the funerary
roll by its concern not with the sanctity of Vital, but with the grieving of
the people whom he had left behind. What point was there to being sad?
Sorrow achieved nothing and could be harmful. It was a human quality,
however, to mourn. Rejoicing was a good and pious act if it meant that
the “force of reason” (vis rationis) could dispel the power of sadness. The
original version of the final line, “that we may come to life” has been cor-
rected to read “that we may come to Christ.” Apart from playing on the
meaning of the name of Vital of Savigny, the poem reflects on the dilemma
of human emotions.
Less than a quarter of the epitaphs in this funerary roll are written in
verse. Many are simply just names of monks or nuns who wished to
record their sympathy for the loss experienced by the community at Sav-
igny. The poem from Argenteuil demonstrates greater literary skill than
the subsequent contribution from the cathedral of Notre-Dame, which
picked up on the Argenteuil poem’s image of a flock abandoned by its
shepherd. It begins with heavy handed word play on the name of Vitalis,
and then offers theological clichés about the redemption, inspired by
some of the vocabulary of the Argenteuil poem, but without its reflection
on human suffering.74 Given that no other poet is known to have being
living at Argenteuil in 1122, there seems little reason to doubt that
Heloise is its author.

An Unidentified Poem by Heloise?

The comment of Hugh Metel that Heloise was famous for her literary
composition alerts us to the fact that she enjoyed a reputation in her own
164 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

right as a poet. Does any of her poetry survive in the mass of little studied
anonymous Latin poetry that survives from the twelfth century? Normally
such anonymous verse does not make any specific allusion to the gender
of the poet. One exception, however, occurs within a twelfth-century
verse anthology from Bury St. Edmunds, also containing poems by Hilde-
bert of Lavardin and Marbod of Rennes.75 The poem in question articu-
lates the frustration of a woman forbidden to practice the craft of writing
(littera). This woman is an admirer of Aristotle and the discipline of logic.
She appeals to Clio in the same way as one of the woman’s poems (66)
copied by Johannes de Vepria:76

Laudis honor, probitatis amor, gentilis The honor of praise, love of probity,
honestas, pagan virtue
Cuncta simul quali, quo periere How, in what way could they all
modo? perish at the same time?
Liuor edax, ignaua quies, detractio Gnawing envy, idle inaction, base
turpis, slander,
Quid prosunt regni totius What good are they to the rule
imperio? of the whole kingdom?
Caesaribus dilecta uiris hoc tempore The grace of the Muses and the
sordent fountain of Pegasus
Gratia Pieridum Pegaseusque so beloved to the emperors are
liquor. worthless to men nowadays.
Romanae quondam non ultima gloria Once not the least glory of the
gentis, Roman people,
Virgilius, Naso, nomina uana Virgil, Ovid lie dead as empty
iacent. names.
Pellimur orbe nouo, studium quia We are expelled from the new world
littera nostrum. because our concern is writing.
Clio, fida comes, pellimur, Clio, faithful companion, we are
egredere! driven out, leave!

Principibus si quod placuit noua lectio Though new reading [once] pleased
nostris, our leaders,
Subque nouis regnat lex noua Under new leaders a new law
principibus. rules.
Carmine leniri dudum fera corda Formerly fierce hearts used to be
solebant, softened by poetry,
At modo carminibus mollia corda But now weak hearts are enraged
tument. by our poems.
Mitius exilium meruerunt carmina The poems of the poet [Ovid] earned
uatis a milder exile
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 165

Carminibusque fuit Caesaris ira And Caesar’s anger toward poetry

minor. was less.
Nostris principium dat littera nostra Our writing provides a source of rage
furoris, to ours,
Nostris nulla placent carmina No poems now please our
principibus. leaders.
Accusor, sed enim quo praecedente I am indicted, but in fact for what
reatu? foregoing misdeed?
Ars michi si quaeras crimen et If you want to know: art is my
ingenium, crime, and genius.
Grande mihi crimen genuit mea littera My lofty writing gave birth to my
grandis. great crime.
Clio, [fida comes, pellimur, Clio [faithful companion, we are
egredere!] driven out, leave!]

O noua relligio uitae discretio sancta Oh new religion, holy withdrawal

from life,
Iam si quod quid sit littera nosse Now if only I knew what
scelus! wickedness our writing might be.
Illa uel ille bonus cui cernua semper She or he is good whose face always
imago, looks to the ground,
Qui, quoniam nil scit, se putat Who, knowing nothing, thinks
esse bonum. that she or he is good.
Esse tamen sanctum cui de nihilo Yet is that existence holy to which
meditari meditating about nothing
Vel cui scire nihil contulit esse Or knowing nothing has brought
nihil? nothing to be?
Si capitur sense deus et capitur If God is grasped by sense and grasped
ratione, by reason,
Plus capiet cui plus iam rationis That person will grasp more in
inest. whom there is already more
reason.
Esse bonum non me prohibebit littera Much writing will not stop me from
multa, being good,
Dat mihi, non prohibet, littera writing allows me, not forbids me
nosse deum. to know God.
Credimus et ratione deum We believe and know rationally that
cognoscimus esse, God exists
Hoc quoque quod facimus non And also that what we do God
prohibere deum. does not forbid.
Quod facimus prohibet, uos quod If he forbids what we do, we shall
facitis prohibemus. forbid what you do.
Clio, [fida comes, pellimur, Clio [faithful companion, we are
egredere!] driven out, leave!]
166 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Carminibus recitare nouis bene uel To recite in new verses good and bad
male gesta: deeds—
Iste fuit noster, si tamen error That was our mistake, if such it
erat. was.
Detrectare bonis, se quae laudanda Your mind desired to condemn what
fuerunt, it could not do,
Quoque nequit uestra mens cupit To disparage the good things, if
arguere, they were worthy of praise.
Si tamen ad laudem uos uel pudor Yet even if shame compelled you to
impulit illud, praise it,
Heu quam [ . . .] esse bonum! Alas how [ . . .] to be good!
O noua calliditas—sed nobis cognita: O what new cunning—but known to
quaerit us: Envy
Sub specie recti liuor habere seeks its place under the guise of
locum. correctness.
Non est sanctarum mulierum fingere It is not for holy women to compose
[MS frangere] uersus, verses,
Quaerere nec nostrum quis sit Nor for us to ask who Aristotle
Aristotiles. might be.
Ista uetus probitas, nil carmina This virtue is ancient, poems are
tempore uestro, nothing in your age,
Nil genus aut species Genus or species or rhetorical
rhetoricusue color. color as nothing.
Quid seruare modos iuat, argumenta What good is it to keep measures, to
notare? record disputes?
Clio, [fida comes, pellimur, Clio [faithful companion, we are
egredere!] driven out, leave!]

Scire tamen magis est hoc quod Yet knowing this holy thing is better
reprehendere sanctum: than faulting it:
Quid carpat nescit, carpit at illa He does not know what he
tamen. criticizes but still criticizes it.
Quisquis es, hoc quod tam sapienter Whoever you are, what you so wisely
corrigis in me, correct in me
Si uelles in te, uir bone, tunc You would know, good man, if
saperes. you wanted to do so in yourself.
Carmina componas, lacertor carminis, Compose verses, you slanderer of
ut te verse, so that I may think
posse quidem se de fingere nolle That you of course can create but
putem. do not want to.
Et tibi grata forem, si littera grata I would be acceptable to you if my
fuisset: writing were acceptable:
Par solet ingenium conciliare Equal genius usually reconciles
duos! two people!
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 167

The poet articulates her gender only through a single word in the penul-
timate line (grata). She is upset that her new poems about “good and bad
deeds” have led her to be sent into an exile, a fate she believes to be worse
than that suffered by Ovid. She observes that voracious envy (cf. Ovid,
Amores 1.15.1) and base slander now seem to govern the world in place of
the virtues once observed in Antiquity. Mockingly she appeals to Clio, her
trusty companion, to leave as she has now been expelled. The implication
of her verses is that what she has written has been perceived as a direct
challenge to the new authorities. Her wrath is directed against a particular
form of religion which elevates ignorance of learning into a worthwhile
cause. She sees no point in meditating on nothing. She sees her writing as
part of her coming to understand God “by reason.” The craft of writing
was not opposed by God. She makes fun of remarks apparently made
against her: “it is not for holy women to compose (fingere, more likely than
frangere or shatter) verses, to ask who Aristotle might be.” This is a woman
of unusual learning, an enthusiast for Aristotle and other ancient authors.
While she begins by addressing the person responsible for her being dri-
ven into exile by the formal vos, she changes to the more familiar tu in her
final verse to invite him to compose verse himself. Her final line, “equal
genius usually reconciles two people,” voices savage sarcasm against the
hypocrisy of this individual responsible for her situation.
There are a number of parallels here with both the Troyes love letters
and the more famous letters of Abelard and Heloise. The appeal to Clio as
her constant companion recalls the invocation at the outset of the poem
which makes up letter 66. Her description of the Muses and the fountain
of Pegasus could be drawn from Fulgentius, as in Letter 66. Her comments
about the jealousy of the present age persecuting genius (ingenium) recall
not just comments about livor and invidia in the Troyes love letters (e.g., 22,
54, 69, 85) but a central theme of the Historia calamitatum. The arguments
which the woman raises in defense of littera as deepening understanding of
God are precisely those which Abelard was making in the early 1130s. His
Theologia Scholarium contains a passionate attack on those “who seek solace
in their own ignorance.”77 The stinging nature of the attack in this poem
takes on particular significance in light of the political developments shak-
ing France in 1129. The one famous woman writer, deeply versed in clas-
sical authors, whom we know to have been expelled from her monastery,
is Heloise. The poem is particularly critical of those who do not think it
appropriate for women to engage in learned study. She cannot understand
why a woman or a man (Illa uel ille) is judged good for knowing nothing.
Writing (littera) was not a crime, but allowed her to know God. These are
168 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

the arguments that Abelard was making with great force in the intellectu-
ally polarized situation of the early 1130s.
The complaint of the woman poet that a new generation of leaders has
come to power, opposed to too much intellectualism in religion, mirrors
the situation facing Heloise in 1129 very closely. In that year, Suger ob-
tained official sanction to expel Heloise and her nuns from Argenteuil, on
the grounds that it had been “defamed by the deplorable conduct of the
young women” (puellarum miserrima conversacione infamato).78 While it was
conventional for ecclesiastics to invoke sexual misconduct as sufficient rea-
son to replace nuns by monks, the poet is implying that the real reason
why she was being driven out is that she had written “about good and bad
deeds.” When Heloise was expelled from Argenteuil in 1129, Stephen of
Garlande, traditionally a protector of the royal abbey, was still in disgrace.
The king had been persuaded to grant new privileges to Saint-Denis. His
cousin, Ralph of Vermandois, was now the king’s principal adviser and mil-
itary commander. Royal attention was now shifting away from the Loire
valley to the great regions north of France. At the same time, new privi-
leges were being given to the Cistercians and to the order of Saint-Victor.
The woman’s allusions to a change of political direction in the kingdom
as well as to the ideals of a “new religion” in which study was considered
dangerous make good sense if she was directing her poem against the ac-
tions of Suger of Saint-Denis.
There is no obvious clue as to whether this woman poet also composed
other verses in the Bury St. Edmunds anthology. Many of these poems re-
flect a daring and questioning tone, informed by pagan imagery. The two
poems immediately preceding the nun’s elegy relate to different subjects:
(no. xii) a trick by which Aristotle succeeded in begging peace from
Alexander the Great, “tricked by the cunning of the man,” and (no. xiii) a
mistake of nature by which a man was made into a hermaphrodite, whose
“Venus” was entered by both sexes.79 Another (no. xvii) is similar to the
elegy in its complaint that while the Muses were once honored, now they
were cheap, silent, and scattered.80 The next one (no. xviii) asks someone
why he (or she) thinks the writing sent by the poet was aliena (strange or
foreign) and holds the writer in suspicion. One poem (no. xxiv) is ad-
dressed to “dear Matilda,” while another (no. xxvii) is to a woman and
complains of the restlessness of love, “Oh what have I done wrong or what
have I deserved that for so long our passion does not purify? . . . You are
taken with your Mars, under the sign of Phoebus. Revenge has moved
him, virgin to be sought by God. . . . If you were found with Mars by the
fault of Phoebus, why does wretched Leucothoe purge the acts of God?”81
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 169

This last poem echoes a number of the themes in Heloise’s letters. It also
recalls Abelard’s comment about Fulbert’s discovery of affair with Heloise
as like that of Vulcan coming across Mars and Venus. Further research is
needed to establish whether a single author is responsible for this group of
poems in the Bury St. Edmunds anthology, which apply a detailed knowl-
edge of classical imagery to profound ethical questions.
How this anthology came to Bury St. Edmunds is not known.The pres-
ence of poems by Marbod of Rennes and Hildebert of Lavardin make it
likely that it is based on an exemplar from Anjou, closely connected to
England after 1128, when the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I of
England, married the Count of Anjou. Suger feared that this Norman-
Angevin alliance was dangerous to France. Closely related to the Bury St.
Edmunds manuscript is a very similar anthology which begins with verses,
attributed to “Serlo of Paris,” and addressed to Muriel, a nun. This Muriel,
who seems to have lived both at Wilton in England and at Le Ronceray,
Angers, is like Heloise in being a famous poet. Her verse has not yet been
identified.82 Serlo shares with the anonymous nun-poet a tone of caustic
satire toward established authority. Her poem, Laudis honor, deserves much
greater attention than it has so far been given. It gives valuable insight into
the difficult situation confronting any educated woman daring to pursue
the study of philosophy. There were strong pressures on such women not
to write or acquire a reputation for being outspoken. Poems that were po-
litically or theologically sensitive might be circulated anonymously to
avoid negative repercussions for their author. While none of the other
poems in this anthology reveal the name or even the gender of their au-
thor, some of them strike a daring note in their familiarity with classical
imagery, turned to reflect on personal themes.

Heloise and Abelard as Writers

Heloise undoubtedly wrote far more than the three letters preserved along-
side the Historia calamitatum, discovered by Jean de Meun in the thirteenth
century. The love letters transcribed by Johannes de Vepria suggest that she
was an accomplished writer of Latin verse. Like so many other women,
however, any verse that she might have written was not acknowledged
specifically as hers. Only a single contemporary, Hugh Metel, acknowledges
her reputation as a writer. The letters copied by Johannes de Vepria are far
more sophisticated than the short love poems between Marbod and the girl
he loves, or the Regensburg exchange between a girl and her teacher, from
the early twelfth century. While the technical philosophical vocabulary in
170 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

the man’s letters corresponds very closely to that of Abelard’s early writings
on logic, Heloise is more experimental in her use of language. She longs to
fuse philosophical themes with poetic language. Above all she argues for the
supremacy of the ideal of selfless love, drawing both on classical ethical phi-
losophy and scripture. The doubts which have been raised about whether
Heloise wrote the letters attributed to her, and about whether Abelard and
Heloise could have written the love letters preserved at Clairvaux, reflect an
unwillingness to accept that such a gifted and independently minded
woman could have existed in twelfth-century France.
Heloise emerges in both her early and later letters as a writer pro-
foundly familiar with classical literature, but preoccupied from the outset
by ethical concerns. She combines classical rhetoric, such as found in the
letters of Peter the Venerable, with an intensely personal interest in self-
knowledge, much more reminiscent of the meditative writing of Bernard
of Clairvaux. Bernard himself was profoundly aware that his contempo-
raries were fascinated by the literature of love. Heloise shares these con-
cerns, but was not afraid to draw on pagan literature to pursue these
themes.
Abelard’s initial reputation was in dialectic. His lyric and melodic gifts,
singled out by Heloise as making him so unusual among philosophers, pro-
vided him with an opportunity to escape from the rigid expectations
placed on him by his professional work. Her comment that he treated such
composition like a game is significant, however. He did not, at least in his
early years, seek to fuse his philosophical and poetic gifts. He saw himself
first of all as an academic eager to establish himself within the schools of
Paris. The system worked to the advantage of male intellectuals who were
not married. Abelard’s life changed after he was castrated. He became a
monk at Saint-Denis, but then fled from conventional monasticism. At the
Paraclete, he began to develop his ideas about theological language and
ethical behavior. His discussions, however, were always with other men.
Even after he transferred the Paraclete to women, Heloise complained that
he was unwilling to listen too closely to what she was saying. These were
difficult years. Accusations of sexual promiscuity could easily be invoked
by those who feared that any interaction between men and women in re-
ligious life was potentially dangerous.
The writing of the Historia calamitatum marked a turning point in
Abelard’s life. He wanted to exorcise those vices of arrogance and lust with
which he was associated in the eyes of many of his contemporaries. He did
so by playing up those vices in his past, to emphasize the extent to which
he had learned from the calamities which had befallen him. Yet Abelard
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 171

scarcely acknowledges the significance of the many love letters which he

had written over fifteen years earlier. He passes over in silence any literary
achievement of Heloise either before or after she took solemn vows at the
abbey of Argenteuil. His first concern was to re-establish his reputation as
a teacher within the schools of Paris.
The correspondence that Heloise initiated after reading the Historia
calamitatum resulted in Abelard starting to compose treatises specifically for
Heloise and the nuns of the Paraclete. Their dialogue was inevitably very
different from that which it had been in Paris over fifteen years earlier.
After they resumed contact, Abelard became more attuned to discussing
the meaning of scripture with Heloise. His growing interest in the 1130s
in explaining the redemption as achieved through the example of Christ’s
love may reflect the belated influence of Heloise’s own longstanding in-
terest in the ideals of love. By urging Heloise to turn her love away from
himself to Christ, Abelard was obliged to develop a Christology which re-
sponded to her own insistence on the supremacy of selfless love. He pro-
jected onto Christ the values which he wished to see in himself. At her
request, he composed a commentary on the Hexaemeron, the six days of
creation as told in the book of Genesis. He also answered forty-two prob-
ing questions that Heloise put to him from her reading of scripture.
Whereas in the past he had composed love songs for her, he now turned
his attention to composing a complete cycle of hymns for the liturgy. A
number emphasize the presence of both sexes among the ranks of the
blessed.83 Perhaps the closest Abelard comes to exploring personal emo-
tion is in his composing a sequence of Laments on scriptural themes for
which he wrote both text and music.84 Abelard’s rendering of David’s
lament over Saul and Jonathan has a particular poignancy in its exploration
of David’s grief over the death of Jonathan. David’s lament that he has lost
half his soul echoes those love letters in which Heloise had offered him
“half a soul” and described herself as part of his soul (11 and 86, also 97).
While writing about the parting of David and Jonathan, Abelard was
mourning a relationship with Heloise which had never been allowed to
come to fruition.85
Chrysogonus Waddell has also argued that Abelard composed an Easter
sequence used at the Paraclete: Epithalamica, a dramatized version of the
Song of Songs, charged with erotic emotion:86

Iam video quod optaveram, / iam teneo quod amaveram, / iam rideo quae
sic fleveram, / plus gaudeo quam dolueram: / Risi mane, / flevi nocte; /
mane risi, / nocte flevi. /
172 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Now I see what I had desired, now I clasp what I had loved, now I laugh at
what I had so wept over, I rejoice more than I mourned, I laughed in the
morning, I wept at night, in the morning I laughed, at night I wept.

The building up of rhyming imagery recalls that of the woman in letter 84:

diligendo quaesivi, querendo inveni, inveniendo amavi, amando optavi, op-

tando omnibus in corde meo preposui. . . . In te, quod quesivi habeo, quod
optavi teneo, quod amavi amplexata sum. . . .

Through loving you, I searched for you; searching for you, I found you; find-
ing you, I desired you; desiring you, I chose you; choosing you, I placed you
before everyone else in my heart. . . . In you, I have what I searched for, I
hold what I chose, I embrace what I desired. . . .

While Waddell has argued in favor of Abelard’s authorship of the Epithala-

mica, the similarity between the sequence and this love letter raises the
possibility that it was written by Heloise, or alternatively by Abelard in di-
rect echo of that letter of Heloise. Similar questions need to be raised
about two other sequences certainly performed at the Paraclete, which
Waddell has attributed to Abelard, Virgines castae, De profundis, and perhaps
also some of the hymns sung by the nuns.87
Although he wrote much for the nuns of the Paraclete, Abelard’s prin-
cipal involvement in the 1130s was with the Parisian schools. He could not
avoid being caught up in the theological arguments between himself and
the theologians attached to the abbey of Saint-Victor. While he continued
to teach logic at a school on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, his major
intellectual effort was now directed towards the study of scripture and
Christology. By the late 1130s he was starting to reconsider some of his
ideas about ethics.The voice of Heloise seems to have made its biggest im-
pact on Abelard in these years. Abelard came closer to acknowledging her
concerns, without ever explicitly acknowledging her contribution. It is
fascinating to observe the extent to which the questions that he confronts
in his last major work, his Ethics or Know Yourself (Scito teipsum), com-
menced ca. 1138/39 but never completed, are issues that Heloise had
raised much earlier in his life. Only in these years did Abelard reflect on
the difference between a lustful thought and active consent to a lustful
thought in the heart, in deliberate contempt of God. He had matured con-
siderably since first establishing himself as a brilliant analyst of language, in
relation to both logic and theology. His critics never recognized this evo-
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 173

lution in his range of interests. To them, Abelard always remained an over-

clever logician with little wisdom about Christian teaching and behavior.

The Final Years

Abelard’s position in Paris became increasingly precarious after the death
of Louis VI on 1 August 1137. Bishop Stephen of Senlis and Abbot Gilduin
of Saint-Victor heard the king’s final confession, and Suger then took the
body to Saint-Denis for burial. Things had changed much since Philip I
was buried at Fleury in 1108.88 Only two months earlier, Louis VI had
asked Suger to accompany Ralph of Vermandois,Theobald of Champagne,
and five hundred knights as they took Louis, the king’s sixteen-year-old
son, to Bordeaux in order to marry Eleanor, the fifteen-year-old daughter
of the duke of Aquitaine.89 Marriage of the young Eleanor to the crown
prince was a strategic victory for Suger in that France now gained control
of Aquitaine and isolated Anjou. While it has often been claimed that the
marriage of Eleanor to Louis introduced Occitan culture into France in
the mid-twelfth century, the Poitevin court is likely to have provided a
conduit for Occitan culture into the Loire valley since the late eleventh
century. Even before 1137, a variety of competing traditions had estab-
lished themselves in the royal domain, culturally far less unified than Suger
liked to imagine. When he completed his biography of Louis VI in the
early 1140s, Suger did not know that the situation would change dramat-
ically in 1152 when Eleanor left Louis VII in 1152 to marry Henry Plan-
tagenet, son of Geoffrey V Count of Anjou, and heir to the English throne
through his mother, the Empress Matilda. The victory of Angevin culture
was then complete.
In 1137, however, Suger could feel confident about the future of
France. England was stumbling into a period of protracted conflict, with
many barons refusing to accept the authority of the Empress Matilda.
Stephen of Garlande retired from his post as royal chancellor with the
coronation of Louis VII and the advent of a new generation of advisers to
the young king. Abelard’s departure from the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève,
which seemed so premature to John of Salisbury (only recently arrived
from England), may be connected to these events.90 Abelard was then al-
most sixty years old, a teacher who had once dominated the schools, but
was no longer fully up-to-date with the new texts of Aristotle which were
being read in the schools of Paris. Abelard may have retired from Paris sim-
ply to engage in his writing. Whether he went to stay at the Paraclete is
not known. In any case, he no longer had a friendly ear in the royal court.
174 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

In Lent 1140, William of Saint-Thierry asked Bernard to act against

Peter Abelard, whose writings he feared were circulating in the curia it-
self.91 He had grounds for concern. Master Guy of Castello, an influential
Cardinal priest in the curia owned a copy of Abelard’s working manuscript
of the Christian Theology and Yes and No. Guy subsequently succeeded In-
nocent II as Pope Celestine II on 26 September 1143 (but died on 8
March 1144, by poison according to one report). William feared that if
Abelard’s ideas gained ground in Rome, there was a risk that schism could
again tear apart the Latin Church, especially as Innocent II was nearing the
end of his pontificate. William was conscious of the political tensions
which surfaced at the II Lateran Council, held in April 1139. Arnold of
Brescia, expelled from Italy by Innocent II at the Lateran Council, attached
himself to Abelard in Paris. Arnold was popular in Rome (particularly
among Roman women, it is recorded), and was perceived as fomenting
outright conflict with Innocent II.92 Relying for his information on
William of Saint-Thierry, Bernard of Clairvaux played up the risk that
Abelard’s ideas would tear apart the Church, and that schism would again
rear its head. Bernard never mentioned Heloise or the Paraclete in any of
the many letters which he sent to Rome. Instead he presented Abelard as
a dangerous logician who threatened to tear apart catholic unity with his
questioning of Christian doctrine.
Abelard appealed to the archbishop of Sens to ask if he could defend
himself against these accusations at a forthcoming Council (held on the
octave of Pentecost, probably 1141). A propaganda war developed between
the two parties. When Abelard discovered that on the eve of the Council,
Bernard had persuaded the bishops to condemn him in advance, he de-
cided to appeal directly to Rome itself. Through Peter the Venerable, we
learn that the differences between Abelard and Bernard were settled
through a compromise agreement arranged by himself and the abbot of
Cîteaux. Bernard’s secretary, Geoffrey of Auxerre, subsequently circulated
a collection of Bernard’s letters to Rome which included the Pope’s con-
demnation of Abelard, but did not mention the lifting of that sentence
achieved by Peter the Venerable.93 The image Geoffrey perpetuated of
Abelard as an arrogant logician hostile to a great man of God, was of enor-
mous influence.
Abelard was a sick man when he retired to Cluny. He died at Chalon-
sur-Sâone, where he had been moved for the sake of his health, on 21 April
1142.The abbot of Cluny allowed Abelard’s body to be brought to the Par-
aclete. He also promised that the monks of Cluny would offer thirty
masses for Heloise after her death.94 Sometime between 1144 and 1154,
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 175

she asked him for a formal document of absolution for Abelard, and also
asked him if he could help find a position for Astralabe, preferably in the
diocese of Paris. Its bishop was now Theobald (1143–58), a less politically
vigorous figure than Stephen of Senlis. The abbot of Cluny provided the
required document, but expressed his fears that it could be difficult to ob-
tain a post for Astralabe. He remarked that bishops tended to be unwilling
to assist in such cases, as it had become illegal for children of ordained
clergy to acquire benefices. It is not certain what happened to Astralabe.
According to a Breton charter of 1150, an Astralabe was a canon at Nantes,
as was his uncle, Porcarius. If this was Heloise’s son, then it would seem
that she never fulfilled her desire to remove him from Abelard’s family and
bring him closer to the Paraclete.95
When Heloise died on 16 May 1164, the Paraclete had already estab-
lished itself as a religious community with a number of dependent houses.
There is no evidence that she ever established a significant scriptorium
which could preserve the voices of its founders in the same way as Clair-
vaux, some eighty miles distant. What happened to the manuscript books
which she owned is a mystery, none more tantalizing than those which
contained the record of her exchanges with Peter Abelard. Heloise had no
successor at the Paraclete as distinguished as herself in Latin letters.
One person who may have been involved in preserving her exchanges
with Abelard is Berengar of Poitiers, whose writings occur alongside those
of Abelard in the manuscript acquired by Petrarch.96 The exact path by
which the letters of Abelard and Heloise came to public attention in the
thirteenth century can only be speculated upon. One possibility is that
Eudes Rigaud (ca. 1215–75), archbishop of Rouen, papal legate, and close
adviser to Louis IX, came across them when he visited his sister, newly in-
stalled as abbess of the Paraclete in 1248.97 Eudes was very interested in
legislation about religious communities, and was one of the first commen-
tators on the Rule of St. Francis. In the Troyes MS 802, bought from the
chapter of Notre-Dame in 1347, a scribe has appended to the original Par-
aclete observances thirteenth-century conciliar decisions from Rouen
about the religious life for women.98 Whatever the precise path by which
these letters surfaced, it was only after Jean de Meun gave them publicity
in The Romance of the Rose that they started to attract interest. The most
copied section of the correspondence was not Abelard’s Rule, but the His-
toria calamitatum and the first letters of Heloise.
The path by which the love letters came to be transcribed by Johannes
de Vepria at Clairvaux is similarly uncertain. It seems most likely that Heloise
always kept a parchment record of those messages which she exchanged with
176 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Abelard on wax tablets during the time that she was staying in the house of
her uncle. The original messages which they inscribed on the wax are lost.
The manuscript which Johannes de Vepria transcribed appears to record
Heloise’s memories of her early relationship with Abelard. In a very real
sense, it was a literary composition by Abelard’s most distinguished student.
The connections between the nuns of the Paraclete and the early Cis-
tercians raise the possibility that either Heloise or her nuns decided to be-
queath her record of the love letters to Clairvaux, some eighty miles from
the Paraclete to the east of Troyes. Alternatively, a sympathetic monk might
have come across these letters from the Paraclete after her death, and de-
posited a copy at Clairvaux. Heloise keeps her mystery. Whatever hap-
pened to those letters between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, it
was not so extraordinary that a well-read Cistercian monk should become
interested in texts that are rich in allusion to scripture and classical litera-
ture. Her letters are much concerned with issues of the heart and interior
disposition (affectus), themes also of great interest to Bernard of Clairvaux.
She was more interested than Bernard in drawing on classical literature and
philosophy to understand the human condition. Here she was closer to the
intellectual interests of Peter Abelard. It was not inappropriate, however,
that an abbey so celebrated as a center of reflection on the nature of love
should come to acquire a copy of her letters. Clairvaux owned many works
written outside the immediate circle of the Cistercian Order. Johannes de
Vepria was well placed to appreciate this exchange of letters as an unusu-
ally rich example of epistolary art.
These letters have been unjustly ignored by subsequent generations for
no other reason than that they do not carry explicit identification of a
name to whom they can be attached. Their language is so close to that of
other writings of Abelard and Heloise that there seems no reason to doubt
their authorship. These letters help confirm the authenticity of the famous
correspondence of Abelard and Heloise. They also suggest that the Historia
calamitatum cannot be relied upon as the final word on Abelard’s early re-
lationship with Heloise. Much more than Heloise, Abelard distances him-
self from his past in order to save his reputation. She, by contrast, was
rigorously hostile to hypocrisy both in love and in the religious life.
Heloise belonged to one of the last generations of educated women for
whom writing Latin prose and verse was a natural facility. By the second
half of the twelfth century, French was beginning to rival Latin as the lan-
guage in which to speak about love. Even in Heloise’s own lifetime, it was
becoming increasingly difficult for women brought up in old-established
monastic houses to maintain close literary contact with male friends, at
 THE VOICE OF HELOISE 177

least in France. The expanding influence of the Parisian schools effectively

marginalized women from benefiting from the education which Heloise
had once enjoyed at Notre-Dame. The love letters copied at Clairvaux in
the late fifteenth century offer a glimpse into a relationship from which
Abelard wanted to distance himself. In transcribing those letters, Johannes
de Vepria discovered the power of voices all too easily lost.
CHAPTER 7

NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS

(1999–2007)

uch has happened since the publication in 1999 of my study of the

M Epistolae duorum amantium (EDA), a remarkable and enigmatic col-
lection of over one hundred love letters and poems, discovered by Johannes
de Vepria, a bibliophile monk of Clairvaux in the late fifteenth century.1
New insights continue to emerge about an exchange in which the man
reveals himself to be a celebrated and controversial teacher, while the
young woman with whom he is infatuated presents herself as an ardent
student of philosophy, with a particular interest in ethics. Sylvain Piron has
produced a new translation of the entire corpus into French, that fully
brings out their originality and great beauty. He brings forward fresh ar-
guments for attributing them to Abelard and Heloise.2 There have also
been new translations into German and Italian, although without detailed
analysis of their content.3 A popular biography by James Burge that draws
on these love letters has helped generate wider interest in Heloise as a
woman who challenged convention.4 Umberto Eco silently incorporated
extracts from these letters into a historical novel, implying that they were
an elaborate hoax of his twelfth-century male hero, writing to the wife of
Barbarossa.5 While there has been positive support for the attribution from
a number of scholars, others have expressed caution about accepting argu-
ments too quickly. Could not the imagery about love in these letters be
conventional medieval tropes, invented by anybody?6 Even if the authen-
ticity of the famous monastic correspondence between Heloise and
Abelard, questioned periodically by scholars for almost two hundred years
in response to public interest in the famous letters, is now largely accepted,
some critics have raised widely divergent hypotheses about the authorship
of the EDA.7 This postscript reflects on new insights that have emerged
180 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

relating to these love letters since 1999 and their relationship to the art of
letter writing in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, as well as on
the debate that these letters have provoked.

Discussion of the Epistolae duorum amantium

Arguments in favor of Abelard and Heloise as having written the original
letters excerpted by Johannes de Vepria were put forward quite indepen-
dently from myself by C. Stephen Jaeger in 1999 in his important study of
ennobling love in medieval literature, a theme that he traces back to the
eleventh century and earlier.8 In a volume of essays about male-female dia-
logue, Jaeger summarizes his arguments in favor of the authorship of Abelard
and Heloise in a chapter that is followed by a short essay from Giles Con-
stable voicing caution about claiming that such polished letters constitute a
personal outpouring of the heart, to which Jaeger offers a further response.9
In 2003, Peter von Moos published a heavily footnoted study of the
EDA, arguing against Könsgen that these love letters constitute a unified
Hauptwerk of the art of epistolary composition (ars dictaminis) about “a sec-
ular religion of love.” He compared them to Boncompagno’s Rota veneris,
a thirteenth-century anthology of love letters showing how one ought to
address one’s beloved, and Machaut’s Voir dit, a fictional dialogue written
in French from the fourteenth century.10 Attaching little weight to the ar-
gument that teacher’s identity is revealed in technical terms, he argues that
these are simply medieval commonplaces.11 He dismisses Könsgen’s argu-
ment that the contrasting prose styles and vocabulary in the EDA suggest
two distinct authors, by arguing that the phenomenon of one correspon-
dent developing a phrase used in a previous letter (enjambement) is evidence
of a single author.Von Moos describes the rhyming prose style used in the
women’s letters, a style that reached its highpoint in the eleventh century,
as “excessive” and “mechanical elocutio.”12
Making some big claims about the evolution of medieval culture, he
suggests that themes of doubt and questioning in the love letters are more
characteristic of the skepticism of the fourteenth century than of the
twelfth-century cultural renaissance, which he describes as marked by “a
sense of harmony between inner and outer,” and of contrast between “true
and untrue love.”13 He argues that the love letters can provide a key to un-
derstanding the intellectual history of the fourteenth and fifteenth century,
if one moves away from attributing these letters to Abelard and Heloise.14
This is despite the fact that they allude to no classical text discovered after
the mid-twelfth century, such as the writings of Aristotle who took over
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 181

from Cicero as the dominant authority in ethics in the mid-thirteenth

century. He associates the letters not with the great period of experimen-
tation in writing Latin letters between the late eleventh and mid-twelfth
centuries, but with the dolce stil nuovo of thirteenth-century Italy. His study,
which relies on making a few parallels with love letters quoted by later
theorists of letter writing, does not come to terms with the radical differ-
ences in perspective about love between the man and the woman in the
EDA. He claims that the man’s definition of love in letter 24 was influ-
enced by Aelred’s treatise on friendship, even though the ideas in this let-
ter about love existing between two lovers are very different from the
religious ideals of a monastic writer. Aelred follows Cicero in speaking of
friendship creating a single mind, without adding the term indifferenter.15 In
a subsequent study, von Moos has not pursued this claim further, but has
continued to doubt that there could be any private exchanges of letters in
the twelfth century—even though both Abelard and Heloise refer to ex-
changing personal messages, and the seal achieved wide use in the twelfth
century precisely to facilitate such private exchanges.16 It would have been
standard practice in such an exchange (as for example with the Regens-
burg verses) for one party to transcribe onto parchment an exchange orig-
inally written on wax tablets.
While von Moos rightly points out that love letters could accompany
manuals of letter writing, such as the Rota veneris of Boncompagno da
Signa, there is no precedent for any epistolary exchange as extended as the
EDA being composed as an elaborate literary fiction that had no intro-
duction or conclusion. The Speculum virginum is an extended fictional dia-
logue between a priest and a nun from the 1130s, that clearly does offer a
systematic and structured vision of religious life.17 The Epistolae duorum
amantium offer no such coherent perspective. Rather, they present an ex-
change of letters, written in contrasting literary styles and presenting two
quite distinct personalities, each with their own understanding of love, that
do not come to any final resolution.
Peter Dronke has put forward a quite different hypothesis, one he first
put forward in 1976, namely that the EDA do record a genuine exchange
between a twelfth-century teacher and his brilliant female student of phi-
losophy, but that they are a couple different from Abelard and Heloise.18
Pointing to similarities between these love letters and the Regensburg
verses (exchanged between a master and a female student in the early
twelfth century), he has suggested that the literary formation of the young
woman in the EDA could have been Bavarian, but that she pursued stud-
ies in France. Giovanni Orlandi argues from slight differences in preferred
182 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

prose rhythm in sentence endings (the cursus) that they are written by two
people, different from Abelard and Heloise.19 Ziolkowski points to the ab-
sence in the man’s love letters of small function words like quippe and
autem, favored by Abelard in his monastic letters, as pointing to two dis-
tinct authors. He also observes that while the man’s verse in the EDA
sometimes relies on internal rhyme, this is not a style found in Abelard’s
Carmen ad Astralabium, written near the end of his life. He holds that the
verse within the exchange is of inferior quality, and generally “unworthy”
of Abelard.20 Neither Dronke, Orlandi, or Ziolkowski focus on what the
two voices in the exchange have to say about love, and how those ideas re-
late to those of Abelard and Heloise.
Both the hypothesis put forward by von Moos that the EDA constitute
a literary fiction by a single author, recreating an archaic style of rhyming
prose for the woman’s letters, and the very different suggestion of Dronke,
that they were composed by an authentic couple, different from Abelard
and Heloise, are highly speculative. Because these love letters survive only
as excerpts, without any concrete references that permit unequivocal iden-
tification of the writers, it is necessary to combine philological, literary, and
intellectual analysis, as well as the broader discipline of cultural history, to
accomplish this task. No single discipline can claim a monopoly in estab-
lishing the “truth” of a text.21

New Insights into the Epistolae duorum amantium

An excellent example of careful philological analysis of the EDA has been
that of Francesco Stella, who has made a detailed inventory of textual par-
allels (two words or more in a single verse) between poetry within the
EDA and medieval poetry. He shows that the overwhelming influences
on the love letters are poets from the late-eleventh or early-twelfth cen-
tury (Marbod of Rennes, Baudri of Bourgueil, Fulcoie of Beauvais, and
Hildebert of Lavardin). Stella also identified a few isolated cases of paral-
lel words within a single verse by a later twelfth-century poet, not
matched in the late eleventh-century corpus.22 Yet these few parallels
could also be explained by shared dependence on earlier texts not yet rec-
ognized. For example, Abelard’s love songs (most of which have not been
identified) were apparently widely known, and could have been an un-
conscious influence on later poets.23 It is the clustering of regular paral-
lels between the poetry in the EDA with poetry from the late-eleventh
or early-twelfth century, mostly from the Loire valley, that is the most sig-
nificant result.
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 183

In a detailed statistical study of the EDA Stella has confirmed Könsgen’s

argument that the vocabulary of the woman’s letters was so distinct from
that of the man that it was impossible for them to have been written by a
single author, as claimed by von Moos.24 Stella notes Ziolkowski’s obser-
vation about the differing use of a few function words (notably autem and
quippe) between the man’s letters and those of Abelard, but also observes
that little terms are less useful than distinct terms and ideas on which to
build an argument. Stella’s lexical analysis leads him to consider that in
word frequency the man’s love letters are further removed from the
monastic and even more from scholastic writings of Abelard, than are those
of the woman from Heloise. Yet lexical analysis has to confront the way
usage may change over time and be influenced by specific literary genres
(the love letter declaring fidelity, the homiletic letter promoting piety and
distancing itself from emotion). Words which qualify an argument (like
autem) are hardly appropriate for declaring emotion. Stella leans toward the
notion that the love letters emanate from an authentic couple, connected
to Paris in the mid-twelfth century and in contact with Abelard, yet a dif-
ferent person.Yet he also asks which couple could be responsible for such
letters other than Abelard and Heloise. While the love letters create a per-
sona different from the persona presented in the Historia calamitatum, can we
use slightly differing word usage as evidence of a different person? Lexical
analysis needs to be buttressed by awareness of literary genre, and key ideas,
as well as cultural and social context, if it is to be persuasive.
The man in these love letters is a brilliant but controversial teacher,
whose preferred imagery of love, largely couched in terms of amor, or pas-
sionate longing in a general sense, is profoundly shaped by Ovidian vo-
cabulary. By contrast, the young woman, whom he singles out as the most
brilliant student of philosophy, among all the women of his age, is fasci-
nated by the ethics of love and friendship, and wants him to think in this
way. He largely avoids her practice of invoking religious rhetoric to de-
scribe his love, and avoids her rhyming prose, more characteristic of a
monastic than a scholastic education. The gradual unraveling of the rela-
tionship that becomes apparent in the second half of the exchange is the
consequence of a breakdown in trust between the two parties. Even if one
disregards the question of who these lovers are, their exchange is of ex-
ceptional interest in articulating the evolution of a relationship that be-
comes increasingly difficult to sustain. The young woman, initially
infatuated by his teaching and eager to absorb the richness of philosophy,
evolves into a tragic figure. She is torn by conflicting emotions of selfless
love and disappointment as he is unable to fully reciprocate her ideals. The
184 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

contrasting ways in which the two voices in the exchange perceive their
relationship parallel the contrasting perceptions of Abelard and Heloise
with remarkable closeness. The issue then becomes one of how likely it is
that another couple, similar to Abelard and Heloise, existed in the early-
twelfth century who have otherwise escaped attention.
The parallels between the love letters and the known writings of
Abelard and Heloise go much further than I had realized in 1999. For ex-
ample, in her penultimate letter (112), in which the young woman ad-
dresses him for the first time, not as her beloved, but as her “most noble
and learned teacher” and sends a conventional religious rather than ama-
tory greeting (“well-being in Him who is both salvation and blessing”),
she observes: “It has pleased your nobility to send those letters to my in-
significance (mee parvitati; literally ‘smallness’).” In Heloise’s first response
to Abelard’s Historia calamitatum, she observes that “your excellence knows
better than our smallness (nostra parvitas) how many and how large treatises
were completed by the holy fathers, and with what care they composed
them.”25 In her letter to Peter the Venerable, Heloise employs similar
rhyming prose to give glory that “your greatness has descended to our
smallness.”26 The young woman’s use of parvitas, completely out of place
in love letters, echoes a patristic modesty topos much used, for example,
by St. Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux, but never employed by Abelard
or Peter the Venerable.27 Although the young woman only uses parvitas of
herself once in the love letters, she regularly contrasts what she considers
to be the modesty or her capacity with what she sees as his greatness, as in
her letter 23, in which she debates her capacity to address him adequately,
and in her letter 25: “However, if the duty of greeting you according to my
meager talents in not enough.” (At si pro parvitate ingenii in te salutandi offi-
cio non suffici.) In letter 49, she contrasts his great virtue and learning with
what she claims is her inadequacy to return a stylistically adequate reply.
Her sense of modesty, inculcated by tradition, is at odds with her desire,
evident from early in the exchange, to offer her own perspective frequently
at odds with those of her beloved.
Letters 24 and 25 are particularly significant because they provide a rare
moment when the lover is forced to adopt a professorial tone, as he at-
tempts to respond to a question she has apparently put to him about the
nature of amor (either in conversation or a letter not preserved in the
EDA). She then answers with her own thoughts on the topic, showing that
her strategy of asking a question is a way for her to develop her own
thoughts, the same strategy as Heloise would adopt to Abelard in later
writings. While I had observed in 1999 that he adapts Cicero’s definition
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 185

of friendship with the vocabulary of dialectic, I had not appreciated that

that the passage of Cicero’s De amicitia paraphrased in letter 24, about love
confining itself so tightly that it seems to exist in two people alone, is the
only passage from this treatise that Abelard includes in the Sic et Non (138:
21) to debate “whether caritas once acquired can ever be lost.”28 Given that
the vast bulk of texts quoted in the Sic et Non are patristic, this passage from
the De amicitia was clearly of great importance to Abelard.
The fact that the teacher in letter 24 modifies Cicero’s definition of
love by referring to it as a “universal thing” (res universalis) reveals his par-
ticular interest in issues of dialectic. He reflects with some skill on what
kind of thing (res) love is, by saying that he cannot excuse himself on
grounds of ignorance “as if I had been asked about a thing (res) unfamiliar
to me; for that very love has brought me under its own command in such
a way that it seems to be a thing not external (ut non extranea res), but very
familiar and personal, even visceral.” He then presents love as the only true
universal thing, shared by the lovers alone, proven by the fact that they
share the same opinions on everything. Although Abelard would become
well known for asserting in the Porphyry gloss of the Logica Ingredientibus
(written around 1118) that a universal was not any kind of thing (res), this
was a significant new step in his thinking. Three times in his Dialectica
(written between 1111 and 1117), Abelard uses the traditional phrase “uni-
versal thing” (res universalis) to refer to whatever is universal.29 Modifying
Cicero’s claim that love makes from two wills a single will with a term
from dialectic that explains they are not different (indifferenter) parallels ex-
actly the position that Abelard says he forced William of Champeaux to
concede, namely that two identical individuals were the same indifferenter
rather than essentialiter.30
Abelard’s debate with William about universals occurred not in 1109 (as
I had assumed in 1999), but sometime after Easter 1111, when William re-
signed his position at Notre-Dame and moved to a disused chapel of St-
Victor.31 Abelard took issue, not with the traditional phrase “universal
thing,” but with William’s assumption, as voiced for example in his Intro-
ductiones, that a universal was a substance essentially the same in two iden-
tical individuals. William certainly conceded this in recognizing that two
such individuals were the same indifferenter in theological sentences deliv-
ered at St-Victor between 1111 and 1113. His student, Joscelin (Goslenus,
subsequently bishop of Soissons, who took over William’s teaching at
Notre-Dame between 1107 and 1111/1112, but was forced out by
William after he offered the position to Abelard), maintained the same idea
that two individuals were not different, as distinct from essentially the
186 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

same, developing the notion that a universal was a collection of things.32

The small philosophical discussion in letter 24 reflects Abelard’s terminol-
ogy during the period in which he wrote the Dialectica (ca. 1111–1117),
but before he had developed the more radical position articulated in the
Porphyry gloss of the Logica Ingredientibus, written around 1118.
The teacher in letter 24 is interested in what sort of thing love is, as if
it existed already, rather than in the obligations as an ideal. He bases his de-
finition of amor on Cicero’s explanation of caritas in the De amicitia as that
which binds only the closest of friends, the only passage of that treatise in-
cluded by Abelard in the Sic et Non (138.21).33 The teacher’s comments
about his holding the same thoughts as her allude to a very early defini-
tion of Cicero of friendship, articulated in the De inventione, that it is “a
will towards anyone for the sake of good things for that person who is
loved, reciprocated within an equal will,” also included by Abelard along-
side the text from Cicero’s De amicitia in the Sic et Non (138.20), as if he
expected students to appreciate the distinction between the two passages.34
In the Theologia ‘Scholarium’ (written probably in the early 1130s), Abelard
defines caritas, not like Augustine as a movement of the soul to enjoy God
and one’s neighbor for the sake of God, but as pure love (amor honestus),
directed to its proper end, namely God, rather than for one’s own benefit.
He supports this definition by quoting from that of Cicero in the De in-
ventione of friendship as good will to another, but missing out the words
“with equal will,” probably because this implied some sort of reciprocity.35
Cicero had observed the problem of calculating equality of friendship, as
implied by this earlier definition, in the De amicitia, written towards the
end of his life.36 By comparison with Abelard’s mature definition of caritas,
the teacher in letter 24 seems more interested in his understanding of love
as already existing between them than as an ideal.
By contrast, his student thinks about love very differently, with a strong
awareness of its ethical demands. Her response, letter 25, is a carefully
worked composition that develops an idea raised by Jerome at the end of
his letter (3) to Rufinus: “Friendship that can cease, was never true” (Am-
icitia quae desinere potest, vera numquam fuit). Abelard quotes this final line of
Jerome’s letter in the Sic et Non (138.7), but here it is extended by a dis-
cussion of how true friendship seeks the will rather than things (an idea it-
self culled from Jerome’s letter 68) that he mistakenly assumes is part of the
letter to Rufinus.37 In letter 25, the young woman builds on the final line
of Jerome’s letter 3 by claiming that because of the smallness of her skill,
she does not have the capacity to fulfill the duty of true love, although she
hopes that her will (velle) to greet him would be sufficient. She quotes from
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 187

another letter of Jerome (45) to explain that in her case, regularity of see-
ing him does not introduce over-familiarity, and thus neglect. Her letter
then introduces a theological point, namely that although there is an oblig-
ation to show complete caritas to all, in practice what is general for all, be-
comes special to certain people. She emphasizes the importance of interior
intention. Sitting at the table of a prince is quite different from being
drawn to him by love.
This observation that although all people are to be loved equally, par-
ticular attention is given to those we see regularly is made by Augustine in
the De doctrina Christiana in a passage that Abelard quotes at the outset of
opening question of the Sic et Non (136.1) about whether or not dilectio
embraces all people.38 This question, together with questions 137 (whether
only caritas is a virtue) and 138 (whether caritas once acquired can ever be
lost), effectively introduces the third section of the Sic et Non, about caritas
as the foundation of all ethical behavior. While Abelard borrowed many of
the patristic quotations in the Sic et Non from the Decretum of Ivo of
Chartres, the texts in these three questions are not culled from any known
anthology.39 All of them deal with the nature of love, whether as caritas,
dilectio, or amor. Abelard started to compile the Sic et Non as a manual for
his teaching about faith, sacraments, and love from relatively early in the
1120s.40 While the parallels between letters 24 to 25 and questions 136 to
38 of the Sic et Non could conceivably be explained in terms of a forger
drawing on this anthology for rival ideas about love, it does seem strange
that it is the woman who has the most patristic allusions. The other possi-
bility is that Abelard and Heloise were already discussing contrasting ideas
about love found in Cicero, Jerome and Augustine during their early rela-
tionship, and that Abelard drew on these texts while compiling the Sic et
Non. Letters 24 to 25 constitute a reflection on at least four different texts
included within questions 136 to 138.
The young woman’s distinction between love as either generale or spe-
ciale is not patristic. Her inspiration is more likely to be Baudri of Bour-
gueil (1045–1133), who makes the notion of “special love” (amor specialis)
a particular theme of verses that he addresses to particular friends, both
male and female.41 Baudri was aware that his writing about love (amor)
to both young women and boys had evoked criticism, but he defends the
practice by observing that his verses pleased both sexes, as he explained
to Godfrey of Reims, “not a common, but a special friend.”42 Whereas
her teacher had defined love as a universal thing that the two of them
had already attained, her student, who had been pestering him to come
up with a definition of love, constructs her argument in more general
188 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

terms, drawing not just on Cicero, but on Jerome and Augustine, as well
as a notion that had been developed in the late eleventh or early twelfth
century by Baudri. The young woman invokes this notion of a “special
love” in letters 21 (Dilecto suo speciali), 76 (pre cunctis specialis dilectus) and
79 (Merito specialis dilectionis amplectendo amore), although it is not one
which her teacher ever uses. He prefers to identify her as his singular or
only love, as in his letters 2 (singulari gaudio et lassate mentis unico solamini),
4 (singularis eius), 54 (de fide singularis amici tui), and 56 (quicquid boni sin-
gulariter amantibus servatum est). As I argued in 1999, without realizing that
Baudri might have inspired the young woman’s preference for the term
specialis, this echoes precisely the contrast that Heloise makes in the
greeting to her third letter to Abelard: “To him who is hers specially, she
who is his singularly” (Suo specialiter, sua singulariter).43 He had previously
urged her to pray for him who is “specially yours,” but without speaking
of a more personal aspect to their relationship.44 In each of her three
greetings, Heloise had been trying to make Abelard speak to her as an in-
dividual, rather than in purely general religious terms. After she re-
sponded to the presentation of their relationship in the Historia
calamitatum, she formulated a greeting that emphasized the intimacy that
she wished to achieve: “To her Lord, or rather Father; to her wife, or
rather brother; his maidservant, or rather daughter; his wife, or rather sis-
ter, to Abelard, Heloise.” Abelard answered her with a relatively imper-
sonal religious greeting, “To Heloise, his most beloved sister in Christ,
Abelard, his brother in Him,” prompting her to respond in a more point-
edly personal fashion: “To her only one after Christ, his only one in
Christ,” to which Abelard responds with a more neutral, “To the Bride
of Christ, his/her servant.”45 Her third greeting Suo specialiter, sua singu-
lariter introducing her questions about religious life, served to remind
him one more time of the personal relationship that she wished to re-
store. Heloise was drawing on discourse of intimate friendship, in part
picked up from Baudri of Bourgueil, to explain that whatever word they
used of each other, whether special or singular, she wished to return to
the intimacy of her past relationship with Abelard.
While much of the exchange is a rhetorical exercise as both parties
compete with each other to express their love, the young woman uses let-
ter 49 to reflect for a second time on the reasons behind love, stimulated
in particular by Cicero’s comments in the De amicitia about true friendship
as not based on desire for personal gain or pleasure, but extended to dilec-
tio (a term unknown to Cicero). The phrase she comes up with is one of
great simplicity. For some people, when wealth and pleasure fail, their dilec-
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 189

tio also fails, because “they love things not because of each other but each
other because of things.” She has been awakened by his letters, she reports,
but is not yet fully satisfied.
Although he had referred to her from early in the exchange as dilecte
and dilectissime, he had always referred to their love as amor rather than in
her terms of a fusion of dilectio and amor. Only in letter 50, after her par-
ticularly important discussion of dilectio, does he use this scriptural term,
and then simply to refer admiringly to her discussion of friendship (in
which he astutely observes that she is giving instruction to Cicero).46
Apart from his ironic use of dilectio in letter 52 (“Since we do not keep
the Lord’s mandate until we have love for each other, we ought to obey
Holy Scripture”) and acknowledgement of her dilectio in letter 54, he
does not describe their love in this way until letters 85, 96, 101, and
103.47 He never raises her sense of the difficulty of describing fully the
nature of this love. In letter 53, she responds to his rather trite and hasty
message about obeying Scripture by observing that if a “droplet of
knowability” might trickle down to her “from the honeycomb of wis-
dom,” she would try with all her effort to describe her love, but that she
had found discourse (sermo) in all Latinity to describe the particular char-
acter of her love (dilectio) for him. The term scibilitas is first known to have
been coined by Abelard in his Dialectica, and used again in his Logica ‘In-
gredientibus’ to refer to the abstraction by which anything was knowable,
but extremely rare prior to its use by Albert the Great in the mid-thir-
teenth century.48 Both Ziolkowski and Dronke have suggested that if Al-
bert devised the term on his own, then an intelligent young woman other
than Heloise (equivalent to Abelard and Albert the Great in linguistic in-
ventiveness) could also have invented the term to refer to an ideal of
knowledge, of which she wanted only a small droplet in order to describe
her love. Both this hypothesis, and the contrary view of von Moos, that a
remarkably gifted literary artist has carefully created an exchange that em-
ploys rare terminology and texts known to Abelard and Heloise, stretch
credulity in the extreme. In a poem (82), the woman remarks that even if
she had the wealth of Caesar, these riches would be as nothing to her, an
image close to that invoked by Heloise in her first response to the Histo-
ria calamitatum. After a series of crises, separations, and reconciliations in
the later part of the exchange (most acute at letters 93–95 and 106–107),
letter 112—the only one addressed to him as a teacher—implies that she
is wishing to change the character of the relationship. He should focus on
what will be a great career (“I already see the mountaintops bowing down
before you”), while she now has a joy that cannot be put into words. In
190 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

letter 112a, in fact taken from another letter (according to a rare note
from the copyist), she parodies the liturgical chant Ubi caritas et amor, Deus
ibi est (“Where charity and love are, there God abides”), with the lament
that where there is amor and dilectio, there always rages effort (exercicium).
This may have been the original ending of the correspondence. It has
been suggested that the final poem in the exchange (113), in which the
man explains that he has been forced to act in the way he has by passion
(amor), driven by her beauty, but that he fears the murmuring of the
crowd, and therefore cannot see her as often as he would wish, is an ear-
lier poem, placed here as a coda to the exchange.49 Yet the poem is not so
much a declaration of love as an explanation of why he has fallen for her:
“Beauty, noble birth, character . . . / All make you outstanding in our city.
/ So is it then surprising if I am lured by their brilliance/ If I succumb to
you, conquered by your love.” Whether this poem was written earlier or
whether it was his subsequent explanation of why he loved her as much
as he did, it articulates a sense of amor as inspired by external attraction
very different from her sense of amor as an ethical ideal that disregards ex-
ternal appearance and behavior.

Letter Writing and the Cultivation of Intimacy

The Epistolae duorum amantium constitute a major monument in the cor-
pus of epistolary exchanges in medieval Latin literature, so unusual that it
is not easy to situate them within a broader practice.Von Moos has rightly
drawn attention to the rich development of the ars dictaminis in the late
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and there is still much to learn from this
literature. It is important to distinguish, however, between the art of writ-
ing letters as an epistolary skill, absorbed through conscious imitation of
other letters, and the codification of this art by theorists of the ars dicta-
minis, from the time of Alberic of Montecassino and Adalbertus Samari-
tanus in the late eleventh and early twelfth century.50 These early theorists
did not include guidance in writing love letters, as did those from the sec-
ond half of the twelfth century, clearly responding to a demand from read-
ers of such manuals.51 One of the earliest witnesses to usage of an
epistolary manual is a letter from a nun of Lippoldsberg in the mid-twelfth
century, requesting from her brother, Sindold, a copy of the ars dictaminis
of Adalbertus Samaritanus.52 While this nun’s letters, like those of her
brother, were preserved for their stylistic interest and are replete with lit-
erary convention, they do not all follow the strict Ciceronian rules laid
down by Adalbertus about the necessary sections of the ideal letter. The
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 191

fact that private letters were preserved as public documents does not mean
that they were not initially intended to be private.
The contrast between the two prose styles within the EDA is of great
interest. From the second half of the twelfth century, theorists imbued with
Ciceronian ideals were familiar with elaborate greetings, but they preferred
to follow the warnings of Cicero against excessive use of rhyme, such as
became widely popular in the tenth and eleventh centuries (as for exam-
ple in the writings of Hroswitha of Gandersheim, who combines dramatic
motifs from Terence with a very non-classical style of rhyming prose). The
woman’s style of rhyming prose would continue to be used in a later pe-
riod “to promote piety and joy,” according to John of Garland, and might
still be employed in homiletic literature or even in some letters copied
with a treatise, but theoreticians did not consider it an educated style.53 If
the love letters are an extended device to teach the art of composition, the
author has succeeded brilliantly in evoking the contrast between two prose
styles practiced in the early twelfth century. In her later letters (including
one to Peter the Venerable, the authenticity of which has never been chal-
lenged), Heloise employs prose rhyme to a greater degree than Abelard, al-
though more in passages of special intensity than as a consistent pattern.
The prose style of the woman’s letters in the EDA is marked by the same
fusion of traditional prose rhyme and classical imagery, also found in the
letters of Hugh Metel, who celebrated Heloise’s reputation as a writer and
her capacity “to join words in a new way.”54
The Epistolae duorum amantium are noteworthy for the way they do not
follow specific rules about what each letter should contain. Rather they
demonstrate a conscious desire to experiment with received epistolary tra-
dition. As Carol Lanham has shown in her study of one part of the saluta-
tion, the art of letter writing developed significantly in the eleventh
century. Following her comments about the importance of the letters of
St. Anselm (1033–1109), attention should be given to the possibility that
they may have been known to the young Heloise.55
The letters of St. Anselm are significant because of the way he uses the
greeting to identify a personal relationship with his close friends. Regu-
larly, when writing to friends, he employs the phrase “To my lord and
friend” (Domino et fratri, a formula not found in any other writer). Anselm
once criticized his own teacher, Lanfranc, for not being sufficiently per-
sonal in his salutation.56 Heloise wished Abelard would create an equality
and intimacy between themselves in a friendly exchange, such as Anselm
wished to create with Lanfranc. Thus in letter 68, Anselm writes to a fel-
low monk: “To his lord, his brother, his dearest friend, lord Gundulf,
192 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

brother Anselm sends what is his own for him.”57 There is a similar
crescendo in greeting in his letter 85: “To his lord, loving freely, deservedly
beloved, not as one unknown, but as a familiar friend, Walter, brother
Anselm [offers] what is his own.”58 Anselm regularly replaces the conven-
tional salutem with “what is his own” (quod suus) in letters to close friends.
St. Bernard does so much less frequently, only after he observes its use in
a letter he had received, as if it were unusual.59 Not only may St. Anselm’s
desire to emphasize intimacy through a greeting have influenced Heloise
in her first response to the Historia calamitatum, but it echoes a frequent
practice early in the EDA, of one party offering himself or herself to the
other.60 It may also help unlock the rather enigmatic greeting of letter 21,
in which she sends to him, “her special beloved, from the experience of
the thing itself, the being that she is [or: the being that is].”61 Given that
both the man and the woman offer themselves to the other, esse quod est,
she could be trying to offer the being that she is (although one could read
the phrase simply as the being that exists).
The woman’s interest in linking notions of caritas, amor, and dilectio in
her letters also echoes a common theme of St. Anselm, who writes in a
rhyming Latin prose impossible to emulate fully in English:

Your letter, so full of the wholesome advice by which your sweet love [dilec-
tio] and beloved prudence deigned to make yourself known to my poverty,
is aglow with such ardor of charity [caritatis], scented with such fragrance of
kindness, and merry with such sweetness of mind that my eyes will not rest
until my eyes have seen his face, my ears have heard his voice and my soul
has enjoyed the presence of him who, without knowing me, obscure as I am,
freely took me on with such love [amore].62

In his prayers and meditations, Anselm similarly delights in combining no-

tions of amor, dilectio and caritas.63 Augustine had himself drawn these links,
but had also observed that amor was not necessarily virtuous, and was bet-
ter called dilectio and caritas.64 While not the first writer to combine amor
and dilectio, Anselm was certainly influential in re-asserting a positive sense
of amor within a religious context in the late eleventh century in letters not
just to monks, but also to certain aristocratic and religious women.65
There were other writers, however, who similarly explored the lan-
guage of intimacy within a spiritual context. In around 1080, Goscelin of
St-Bertin (ca. 1040–1114) wrote a Liber confortatorius addressed to Eve,
soon after she had left the aristocratic abbey of Wilton in England, and had
settled in Angers, at Saint-Eutrope, a dependency of Le Ronceray.66
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 193

Goscelin had been a chaplain at Wilton, then aged around forty, while Eve
was then in her early twenties. A flurry of recent interest in this work (in-
cluding two independent translations into English) has highlighted the
complexity of his writing, as well as signalling potential parallels with the
situation of Abelard and Heloise, some thirty-five years later.67 The Liber
confortatorius seems to have been the climax of an exchange of letters men-
tioned by Goscelin: “Frequent sheets and pages from me brought Christ to
you, nor did I lack chaste letters from you.”68 He describes the Liber con-
fortatorius as “a private document of two people, sealed with Christ as me-
diator, touching first on the duty owed by virginal simplicity and pure
love.”69 Goscelin’s terminology echoes that of the young woman in letter
3, “May the rule of heaven be a mediator between us, and be a compan-
ion to our faith.” Unlike St. Anselm, however, Goscelin only speaks of dilec-
tio and caritas, never amor, to describe his affection for Eve, possibly because
there seems to have been some hint of scandal in their previous relation-
ship, from which he was eager to distance himself. Rejecting false rumors
that had arisen about their relationship, Goscelin argues that God has sep-
arated them, so that they could long for each other more ardently: “The
more distance he has put between us physically, the more inseparably at
some time he will join together again one soul of two people.”70 He al-
ludes vaguely to some indiscretion that he hopes writing can heal: “And
so, because your soul-friend was not able and did not deserve to visit you
in corporeal presence, he seeks you now with anxious letters and long
complaints. The provident mercy of God has made this consolation for us,
that although far distant in place, we can be present to one another in our
faith and our writings.”71
Given that Eve lived as a recluse for some forty years in Angers between
around 1080 and her death in around 1120, she may have kept a copy of
the letters and the treatise that Goscelin wrote to her.Yet she is not known
to have continued her relationship to Goscelin. She became a recluse at
Angers, first at Saint-Eutrope and then at Saint-Laurent, where she lived
with another hermit, Hervé, in a relationship defended as spiritual dilectio
by Hilary of Orléans (a companion of Abelard at the Paraclete) in an epi-
taph he wrote for her around 1120.72 The poetic flowering in the Loire
valley, associated in particular with Marbod and Baudri of Bourgueil, was
clearly facilitated by an environment in which educated women could
enter into literary relationships with male clerical and monastic friends,
with only occasional voices of suspicion being raised. Fulbert’s decision to
allow Heloise to study under Abelard reflected a similar acceptance that
chaste relationships were possible between educated women and men.
194 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Heloise’s connections to the dynamic literary and religious life of the

Loire valley in the late eleventh and early twelfth century may well be
even closer than I realized in 1999.73 In 2001, Werner Robl published a
study in which he observed that Hersende, mother of Heloise (who died
December 1 according to the obituary of the Paraclete), had the same
name and date of decease as Hersende, the first prioress of Fontevrault,
recorded in its obituary as having died on November 30 (December 1 ac-
cording to the obituary of Saint-Jean-en-Vallée, Chartres, November 29
according to that of Saint-Père-en-Vallée, Chartres).74 Hersende’s father
was Hubert III of Champagne, who had a grandmother called Heloise,
and was descended on his father’s side from the Montmorency family, tra-
ditional lay guardians of Argenteuil (and the family of Heloise of the Par-
aclete, according to d’Amboise in the early seventeenth century).75 This
explanation of Heloise’s family background seems easier to accept than
the suggestion offered by Lobrichon, that her father was related to the
Garlande family.76
Nothing is known for certain about Hersende after the death of her
husband William of Montsoreau in 1087 until 1100, when she changed
from being a lay disciple (conversa) of Robert of Arbrissel to a fully en-
closed nun at Fontevrault, a community built on land given by her step-
son,Walter of Montsoreau. Robert of Arbrissel started to preach in Angers
around 1095, during the time of the highly corrupt bishop, Geoffrey of
Mayenne (1094/95–1101). Unusually, Marbod remained as archdeacon at
Angers, serving bishop Geoffrey, even though he had been appointed
bishop of Rennes in 1095. Robl suggests that Heloise was born in around
1095, but was given up by Hersende to the abbey of Argenteuil in around
1100, when she became a fully enclosed nun at Fontevrault. Through her
Montmorency family connection, she would have had direct access to Ar-
genteuil. Fulbert, who acquired a canonry at Notre-Dame between 1099
and 1102, may have been charged with watching over her. The suggestion
of Hersende sending her child to Argenteuil is quite plausible. Marbod
complained (in around 1098) about Robert’s scandalous intimacy with
female followers, alluding to a past sexual transgression, as well as to his
disciples being accompanied by wailing of children, who could not have
been accommodated within a cloistered abbey.77 Robl also suggested,
more boldly, that Robert was himself the illegitimate father of Heloise.
Yet it could also be that Heloise was born from an otherwise unrecorded
marriage, to a father who did not come back from the first Crusade.
Whatever the case, Hersende was clearly a significant figure who played a
key role in promoting the cause of religious reform and in building up
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 195

Fontevrault. She may well have known Eve, who had exchanged writings
with Goscelin of St-Bertin, and became celebrated for her spiritual
friendship with Hervé, a monk of Vendôme. Hersende died around 1113,
to be succeeded by Petronilla de Chemillé, whom Robert appointed the
community’s first abbess in 1115, shortly before his own death (February
16, 1116).
Baudri of Bourgueil was commissioned by Petronilla to write the first
Life of Robert of Arbrissel sometime between 1116 and 1119. A phrase
that Abelard uses of himself in the Historia calamitatum, that he went from
Brittany to Paris, “wandering through the provinces” may have been di-
rectly lifted from Baudri’s narrative.78 In 1120 Abelard defended Robert
as a great preacher against accusations made by Roscelin of Compiègne
(who viewed Robert as establishing a precedent for Abelard’s own be-
havior with Heloise).79 Baudri certainly knew William of Montsoreau,
for whom he writes an epitaph, and speaks with great reverence for
Hersende.80 We know that Robert had wished to be buried alongside
Hersende in a simple cemetery, signaling a very close relationship be-
tween the two.81 As it happened, however, Robert was buried in a place
of honor in the newly built church, without the simplicity which he
wished to retain.
Baudri, a great admirer of Robert, maintained a wide network of
friends through sending epitaphs and poems to a host of correspondents,
male and female, throughout the Loire valley and beyond. Although a
highly literate Benedictine monk rather than a popular preacher, he culti-
vated a sense of personal relationship through his poems in the same way
as Robert developed such connections with his closest disciples (provok-
ing not a little controversy). In particular, Baudri cultivated aristocratic fe-
male friends at Le Ronceray, an abbey at Angers not unlike Argenteuil,
north of Paris. Robert was particularly famous for preaching against
hypocrisy in religious life, as is evident from his sermon to Ermengard,
wife of the Duke of Brittany. Although we do not know of any letters that
he wrote, he cultivated a sense of intimacy with his female disciples in a
way which was quite different from that of conventional monasticism. In
this respect, Heloise’s distaste for hypocrisy in religious life may indirectly
owe much to the preaching of Robert of Arbrissel as well as to the writ-
ings, both religious and poetic, of Baudri of Bourgueil.
The permission Fulbert gave Abelard to tutor Heloise, traditionally per-
ceived as a sign of naivety, makes much more sense in terms of a climate
of unusual intimacy between educated men and women in religious life
that developed in the Loire valley and northern France between around
196 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

1080 and 1115. The complex exchange of letters and poems that we know
as the Epistolae duorum amantium, shared between a teacher and his brilliant
student of philosophy makes perfect sense as a product of an intellectual
climate that sought to transform the writing of letters and verse into a
more intimate form. To argue that they were written by a couple similar
to, but different from Abelard and Heloise, is to postulate a remarkable
couple for whom there is otherwise no documented evidence. The easiest
way of explaining the many parallels between these letters and the many
different writings of Abelard and Heloise, including the Dialectica and the
Sic et Non, is to posit that they are an incomplete copy of the letters that
both Abelard and Heloise say they exchanged in their early relationship.
There is simply no evidence for the existence of another couple like them.
If they are a fiction modeled on Abelard and Heloise, why do they recap-
ture so many subtle connections with their writings, but not provide the
most well-known details of their story? There are differences in vocabulary
between the love letters and the Dialectica because these are texts written
for different circles, even if they were produced in the same decade. To
argue from minor lexical differences between these love letters and the let-
ters of spiritual guidance exchanged by Abelard and Heloise in the 1130s,
that these must be two distinct couples is to fail to recognize that different
times and contexts generate different ways of communicating, with differ-
ent texts providing a stimulus for conversation.
In the late-eleventh and early-twelfth centuries, the exchanging of lit-
erary texts between educated men and women was perfectly feasible
within the constraints of religious life, in which individuals were in theory
committed to ideals of chastity. Within the looser constraints of the secu-
lar clergy, there were not as many safeguards. Traditional standards of be-
havior could not be monitored in the same way as in a monastery. This
freedom made it possible for the relationship of Abelard and Heloise to
evolve in the way it did, and thus for Fulbert to turn against Abelard and
wreak his revenge. The kind of exchange between a teacher and a student
that we see in the Epistolae duorum amantium (or for that matter, at an in-
tellectually less sophisticated level within the Regensburg verses, from
around 1106), was simply not possible after Pope Calixtus II imposed cler-
ical discipline throughout the Church, at the Council of Reims in 1119,
and more widely after the I Lateran Council in 1123.82 It became harder
for educated women to maintain regular and sophisticated discourse with
their male friends. The story of Abelard’s increasing distance from Heloise
during the 1120s and renewed devotion to study, reflected a more austere
climate, in which such relationships were viewed with suspicion.
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 197

The Monastic Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise

The cliché that Abelard’s letters articulate an ideal of spiritual love, while
those of Heloise in response to the Historia calamitatum profess worldly
love, has severely impaired our understanding of these letters. It is now
becoming much clearer that Heloise has her own ideal of love, as well as
a horror of hypocrisy in religion. Growing awareness of issues relating to
gender and identity influenced a new wave of scholarship in the 1980s
and 1990s, emphasizing the distinctness of the voice of Heloise as well as
of her achievement as abbess of the Paraclete.83 Guy Lobrichon’s biogra-
phy of Heloise has similarly focused on her desire to assert herself, against
the preference of Abelard, as an abbess in her own right.84 There has also
been no shortage of interest in the Historia calamitatum, as evident from a
volume edited by Dag Hasse, that brings together a range of interpreta-
tive models that can be applied to this text, all of which are acutely aware
of the rhetorical structure both of Abelard’s narrative account as well as of
the correspondence as a whole.85 Yet to a public more familiar with psy-
chology than with scholastic theology or monastic spirituality, Heloise is
still commonly presented as the heroine of a tragic love affair, in which
erotic passion had to be subordinated to an otherworldly religion, while
Abelard is often viewed as the intellectual who lives in the mind rather
than the body.86
Warning against a naïve, “psychological-biographical” reading of the
monastic letters, Peter von Moos has emphasized what he sees as the uni-
tary character of the famous correspondence.87 In a study published in
2002, he withdrew his earlier hypothesis that it was the work of a single
author, and argued instead that Heloise had co-operated with Abelard in
the construction of an exchange in which Abelard develops the theme
that out of suffering and human sinfulness, emerges what is good.88 His
study is highly critical of scholarship that focuses on Heloise as a signifi-
cant figure in her own right, fearing “the eternal return of hermeneutic
naivety.” While there is no doubt that the correspondence as a whole
serves to provide a conception of the monastic life for women, as Mor-
gan Powell has persuasively shown, this perspective need not be at odds
with the observation that there is a subtle contrast between the ethical
positions of Abelard and Heloise, in relation to their past relationship.89
Not only is it impossible to imagine Abelard constructing the letters of
Heloise, but no single theological message can be extracted from this cor-
respondence, which effectively offers two distinct points of view about
the nature of love (amor) and religious life more generally. While there
198 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

might have been light general editing, when transcribing these letters into
a single manuscript, they still represent two distinct voices.90

The Contribution of the Epistolae duorum amantium

Accepting the Epistolae duorum amantium as imperfectly preserved copies of
letters by Abelard and Heloise allows us to grasp the complexity of a rela-
tionship that Abelard deliberately presents in the Historia calamitatum as an
example of worldly passion, quite different from the consoling love of
God, as mediated through the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. It also allows us
to understand that Heloise really was an unusually gifted student, probably
of around twenty in 1115.91 At the time Abelard was a specialist in dialec-
tic. Tutoring Heloise enabled him to broaden his skills in the study of lit-
erature and rhetorical expression. Yet while he seems to have maintained
the liaison as a diversion from his intellectual life, Heloise viewed the rela-
tionship with great seriousness, as a means for her to develop her own
thinking and writing about her favorite theme, that of love.
The fact that the young Heloise drew not just on poetic texts, but on
Cicero’s De amicitia and the letters of Jerome, some of which are included
by Abelard in questions 136–38 of the Sic et Non, the opening to its section
on caritas as the foundation of ethical behavior is also significant. Although
Abelard devoted himself to issues of dialectic and theology in the years im-
mediately following his castration, he was still interested in collecting pa-
tristic texts about ethical questions, and above all the nature of love. A
favorite text for Abelard was the saying of Augustine, “Love and do what
you will” (Dilige, et quod vis fac), which he incorporated into the prologue
of the Sic et Non, itself containing extended reflection on the importance
of love as the foundation for resolving any textual conflict.92 Abelard was
one of the first known authors to make use of the authentic Augustinian
version of this text, which would become widely known in the course of
the twelfth century. He also quoted a more well known paraphrase of this
text, slightly modified from what Augustine wrote, but which he knew
from Ivo’s quotation of an unknown treatise, De disciplina Christiana that he
assigned to Augustine: “Have charity, and do whatever you will” (Habe car-
itatem et fac quidquid uis).93 The earliest known writer to use the authentic
Augustinian version was Robert of Arbrissel, in his sermon to Ermengard,
in which he attacks many types of hypocrisy in religious life.94 This may
well have been one of those texts that Abelard and Heloise discussed in their
early relationship, and that assumed an important role when Abelard started
to compile the Sic et Non, perhaps sometime around 1120.
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 199

The Historia calamitatum and the subsequent response of Heloise to

Abelard’s account of their past are in many ways more sophisticated and
carefully structured documents than the Epistolae duorum amantium. It is
absurd to expect otherwise. The vocabulary of each exchange is inevitably
influenced by its particular social and literary context. Nonetheless both
Abelard and Heloise were aware that they had exchanged messages of love
in the past. Heloise wanted Abelard to return to the kind of intimacy they
had once enjoyed within the framework of the religious life. There was
much precedent for such letter writing, as the letters of St. Anselm to many
friends, both male and female, demonstrated. Abelard was relatively slow to
respond in the way she wanted, and insisted on reminding her of the sex-
ually corrupt character of their past relationship. Heloise insisted on re-
calling the purity of her devotion to him. The issue of the nature of love
and whether suffering and evil in this life must be endured for the sake of
a heavenly reward is a central feature of their discussion, which prompts
Heloise to claim that she does not seek a martyr’s crown.95 Abelard had
adopted a traditional position that one must endure hardship for the sake
of this reward. Heloise argues that love should never strive for any reward
other than one’s beloved. In the Collationes Abelard sets up a not dissimilar
debate between the philosopher, committed to ethica, or the path to the
supreme good, and the Christian, whose religion teaches him about di-
vinitas, or the supreme good itself. He explores the same concept of what
it means to speak of an eternal reward as Heloise rejects for herself in her
discussion with Abelard.96 In many ways the arguments that Abelard as-
signs to the philosopher as concerned with the ethical life and religious
observances as helpful only in so far as they lead to both the love of God
and the love of neighbor, echo concerns of Heloise.
Abelard’s response was to urge her to devotion to Jesus, whose re-
deeming work he reflected on at length in his Commentary on St. Paul’s
Epistle to the Romans. This in turn laid a basis for the ideas developed in
his Ethica (Scito teipsum), in which he presents caritas as the foundation of
all Christian virtue. The passage of Cicero’s De amicitia about caritas as ex-
isting between two close friends, paraphrased in letter 24, and included
alongside many Augustinian texts about caritas within the Sic et Non (138:
21) provided him with a definition very different from the standard Chris-
tian understanding of caritas as a transcendent ideal, fully embodied only
within the Trinity. While Abelard would radically develop his understand-
ing of caritas from the time Heloise originally asked him to define amor, he
still remained fascinated by the contribution that Cicero could make to a
definition of friendship. Controversially, he taught that one need not have
200 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

lost caritas from one’s heart, when one fell into fornication or murder, as
happened to David, sinning with Bathsheeba.97 Abelard drew on Augus-
tine to support his claim that caritas was the greatest of the virtues, and
their foundation. While Abelard seems to have expanded his ethical focus
only after resuming dialogue with Heloise during the 1130s, he had al-
ready been exposed to some of these ideas during his early conversations
with her in 1115/1117.

The Oldest Manuscripts of the

Letters of Abelard and Heloise
A significant recent discovery about the fullest manuscript (Troyes Bibl.
Mun. 802) of the letters of Abelard and Heloise, beginning with the His-
toria calamitatum and concluding with Abelard’s Rule for the Paraclete fol-
lowed by monastic observances (Institutiones nostrae) compiled between
1140 and 1147, is that it was copied not in the late-thirteenth century, as
had long been assumed, but before 1250, even in the 1230s.98 The redat-
ing of the Troyes manuscript, itself bought by Robert de Bardi from the
cathedral chapter of Notre-Dame in 1349, makes it much more compre-
hensible that Jean de Meun should have come across the letters by the
1260s, when he composed his continuation to The Romance of the Rose.
Jean de Meun subsequently translated the entire correspondence, apart
from the Rule, from a lost exemplar of the correspondence, presumably
that from which the Troyes copy was made, as well as that which came into
Petrarch’s possession in the 1330s.99 Whether or not William of Auvergne
was responsible for the copying of the manuscript, as Dalarun suggests,
there is little doubt that the original copy of the Historia calamitatum and
subsequent exchange with Heloise was originally preserved at the Para-
clete, but was brought to the Paris region by the 1230s. The Troyes copy
must have been commissioned sometime after 1231, as various other texts
about the religious life, including certain canons of the Council of Rouen
(1231), were then added to the Institutiones nostrae.100
Dalarun’s suggestion that the correspondence itself is an artificial cre-
ation, intended to lead into Abelard’s Rule and Institutiones nostre, in which
Abelard wrote the Historia calamitatum in order to justify the exchange that
follows seems unlikely, given that Heloise herself responds to that narra-
tive. It is easier to view the correspondence as a cumulative compilation of
two distinct voices, with only the lightest editing. Whether Abelard’s Rule
was itself part of the original manuscript containing the letters is not cer-
tain. An isolated reference to a manuscript in private possession in the
 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INSIGHTS 201

early-fifteenth century records an otherwise unknown manuscript, in

which an unbound copy of the Rule (separated from its introductory let-
ter) was separate from the previous letters.101 Given that a number of other
manuscripts conclude with the introduction to the Rule, it is quite possi-
ble that the copyist of the Troyes manuscript consciously copied the Rule
immediately after the introductory letter, in the way that would be repro-
duced by Duchesne in his 1616 edition. The Troyes manuscript seems to
have been given to the Paraclete by the late fifteenth century, as part of a
process of reconstruction of the abbey and a new interest in its founders,
but was given away in the early-seventeenth century, as a consequence of
strict introduction of Tridentine reforms at the abbey.
One important feature of the Institutiones nostrae preserved in the Troyes
manuscript, is that they show that Heloise never enforced Abelard’s Rule
at the Paraclete. As Waddell demonstrated, these observances were influ-
enced by the earliest Cistercian practices, although with a significant ref-
erence. While the Cistercians based their way of life on strict observance
of the Rule of Benedict, the Institutiones, drawn up on the occasion of the
first daughter house of the Paraclete (probably that of Mary Magdalene,
Trainel, in around 1140), based their way of life on imitation of the exam-
ple of Christ and the early apostles.102 The liturgical manuscripts of the
Paraclete, from the early thirteenth and late fifteenth century respectively,
confirm the picture given by the Institutiones that this was an abbey with a
most unusual character. While the Paraclete liturgy used the early version
of the Cistercian hymnal, supplanted in Cistercian houses by 1147, it also
incorporated a good many (though not all) of the cycle of hymns that
Abelard had composed for the Paraclete. Building on a suggestion that I
had made in 1999, David Wulstan has proposed that Heloise composed,
not just the sequence, Epithalamica (certainly sung at the Paraclete), but var-
ious Easter plays, from which Epithalamica seems to have been taken.103 Al-
though these manuscripts do not go back to the twelfth century, it seems
very likely that Heloise carefully combined elements from Abelard with el-
ements of Cistercian tradition to create an original liturgical synthesis, that
made the Paraclete an abbey like no other.
These Cistercian connections may help explain why the Epistolae duo-
rum amantium should have been preserved at Clairvaux.That she once asked
Bernard of Clairvaux to support her interests while visiting Rome in 1148
is a sign that she was not as estranged from Bernard as Abelard had been at
the height of the controversy surrounding his writing, at the Council of
Sens in May 1141.The nuns of the Paraclete regularly prayed for the monks
of the entire Cistercian Order.104 As Sylvain Piron has observed, Jacques de
202 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Bar, a monk of Clairvaux and confessor to the nuns at the Paraclete, be-
queathed two liturgical manuscripts to Clairvaux in 1440.105 Whether he
or another monk may have deposited at Clairvaux a manuscript containing
the letters of two lovers, is impossible to say. There were good relations be-
tween the two abbeys. It was not inappropriate that Johannes de Vepria, li-
brarian at an abbey, whose founder was so well-known for talking about the
ideal of growing in love for God and neighbor, should copy a set of letters
that talk with such eloquence about love. Johannes de Vepria was reported
to have been generous with manuscripts in his possession, and could have
given the original copy of the letters to another scholar, after transcribing
them.106 Perhaps a future discovery within another scholar’s notebook
might shed more light.
 II

From the Letters of Two Lovers

Edited by Ewald Könsgen

Translated by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews
THE EDITION

he text of the love letters reproduced here is that established by Ewald

T Könsgen in his edition, Epistolae duorum amantium. Briefe Abaelards und
Heloises? (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974). No effort is made to reproduce the so-
phisticated analysis of the manuscript and its copyist, Johannes de Vepria,
provided by Könsgen in his introduction. The text of the love letters is
based on a single manuscript (Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale 1452, ff.
159r–167v), copied at Clairvaux probably sometime around 1471, the year
cited in the colophon of another item in the manuscript. As Könsgen de-
termined, the text copied and corrected by Johannes de Vepria is of re-
markable quality. In most cases, the scribe correctly distinguishes the
woman’s letters from those of the man by adding to the margin of his man-
uscript M[ulier] or V[ir]. Könsgen’s numbering of individual letters is
maintained, with the slight modification that the man’s letters are always
cited in italics (a practice Könsgen employs in the invaluable lexical con-
cordance to the letters included at the end of his edition). Johannes de
Vepria does not always identify letters as V and M (MAN and WOMAN).
When there is a series of letters by the man, for example, he often draws
lines from a single letter V to the beginning of each of the subsequent let-
ters. Following Könsgen’s method, single angle brackets around V and M
indicate that only a paragraph mark identifies the beginning of a new let-
ter. Double angle brackets indicate that no separation between one letter
and another is given in the manuscript.
Könsgen supplies on pp. 64–67 of his edition detailed discussion of cer-
tain textual anomalies in the transcription, which may be the result of
scribal error. It is impossible to be sure whether Johannes de Vepria is at
fault, or whether the text he was copying was less than perfect in spelling,
syntax, and prosody. Könsgen’s text has been reproduced with three minor
changes (in letters 23, 49, and 87) for which we assume responsibility.
In letter 23, the unknown word conorare can be interpreted in various
ways. One of the possibilities that Könsgen raises (p. 64) is followed here,
206 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

that it is a mistake for honorare. There is also a problematic phrase in letter

49, given in the manuscript as invenit erga te mee dilectionis fervens affectio.
Könsgen (p. 66) persuasively suggests adding inpulit at the end of the sub-
ordinate clause before invenit. He also corrects erga (toward) to ergo (there-
fore) reading the last part of this sentence as “the ardent feeling of my love
has therefore found you, so that . . ..” Here erga te (cf. M 84) is preserved,
reading the Latin as “the ardent feeling of my love for you finds that. . . .”
In letter 112, perhaps the most important and enigmatic in the entire
exchange, the manuscript reads summa effero mentis exultacione (I bear great
things in exultation of mind). Könsgen corrects effero to efferor, reading
summa not as neuter plural, but as in agreement with exultacione: “I am car-
ried away by great exultation of mind.” While the manuscript could be
correct here, Könsgen’s suggestion is preferred. A brief explanation of these
occasional differences in interpretation of the text is included in footnotes
to the text of individual letters.
The general impression that emerges from a close reading of the tran-
scription made by Johannes de Vepria is that he must have been copying a
manuscript relatively free from scribal error. The corrections that Johannes
de Vepria makes suggest that he paid close attention to elucidating obscu-
rities in the text before him. In letter 87 Johannes de Vepria originally tran-
scribed line 17 as in lumine me fore credo (I believe myself to be in light). He
subsequently added to the margin of his text, vel nil tunc michi defore (or
nothing to be lacking to me). At the foot of f. 165va he subsequently
rewrote the entire line: His ego quando fruor, nil tunc michi defore credo (When
I enjoy these things, I believe that I lack nothing). The phrases nil tunc and
in lumine could be confused if they had been abbreviated. Although Köns-
gen follows the original in lumine version within his edition, the alterna-
tive reading has been adopted here, as the next line seems to offer a
deliberate contrast, His ego cum careo, defore cuncta puto (When I am denied
them, I think that I lack everything).
As is his custom when copying other manuscripts in the library of
Clairvaux, Johannes de Vepria takes care to indicate when he is omitting a
passage with the sign // (sometimes a single /). Könsgen’s identification of
scribal ellipses (indicated here as ....., as distinct from . . . to indicate my
own abbreviation of a passage) is generally accurate; in only a few cases has
it been felt that there is insufficient marking in the manuscript to justify
identifying a scribal ellipse (as in 50, 56, 59, 60, 79, 98). The same mark
occurs immediately after the title with which Johannes de Vepria intro-
duced his anthology: “Ex epistolis duorum amantium.//” While Könsgen
does not consider these two parallel lines to be palaeographically signifi-
 THE EDITION 207

cant, they may indicate another scribal ellipse, indicating that Johannes de
Vepria was omitting certain text before the first greeting that he copies.
Johannes de Vepria generally indicates versus when he is transcribing
metrical poetry. In certain poems of the woman (notably 69 and 82),
Könsgen has judged irregularity in the prosody to be evidence that the
scribe has omitted a line. The Latin text does make sense, however, as it
stands in the manuscript. It is possible that the person who composed the
poem was inexperienced in prosody. Johannes de Vepria is normally very
careful about indicating ellipses in his transcription. In the final poem
(113), he twice indicates that he is leaving out certain lines. As in both
cases the text surrounding the scribal ellipse has sexual allusions, it is pos-
sible that Johannes de Vepria found certain lines too explicit to include.
One last area for which we take responsibility is punctuation. We have
not followed Könsgen’s practice of placing a comma before every subor-
dinate clause, as is standard in German prose. In the Troyes manuscript,
phrases like ille qui (he who is) and illa quae (she who is) are never inter-
rupted by punctuation, while larger phrases are separated by a punctus (pre-
sented here as a comma, when it is not followed by a new sentence). Terms
of endearment like dulcissima (sweetest) are similarly never separated from
the surrounding text. On the other hand, a punctus is used before et (and)
and nec (neither) for rhetorical effect, to indicate a pause in the way a sen-
tence should be read. The punctuation of the manuscript is particularly
important in showing how Johannes de Vepria understands a greeting,
which never contains a main verb, but normally comprises three parts: “To
X [dative], Y [nominative]: salutem (or a variant).” Because Könsgen does
not always supply punctuation between the sender and the greeting being
sent, it is not always immediately clear just where the break occurs. In the
manuscript, there is almost always a punctus before the salutation proper
(either a noun in the accusative or an infinitive verb). This punctus before
a salutation is here presented as a colon. One example of punctuation af-
fecting the sense of a greeting occurs in letter 21, punctuated in the man-
uscript as: “Dilecto suo speciali, et ex ipsius experimento rei, esse quod
est.” Many readings are possible of this rather obscure greeting, but here we
propose: “To her beloved, special from experience of the reality itself, the
being which she is.” Könsgen omits the comma after rei, but adds a comma
after esse, making it unclear whether or not esse belongs to the third part
of the sentence. Given that elsewhere she offers him herself (as in 5), it
seems likely that she is sending the being (esse) which she is, as suggested
by the scribe’s punctuation. In letter 94, however, a punctus occurs before
luna plena innexibilis amoris delicia. If luna plena belonged to the third part
208 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

of the greeting, the woman might be offering “the delights of love in a full
moon.” In this case, however, luna plena, is interpreted here as a nomina-
tive image (a full moon) that the woman uses of herself, following his
image of her in letter 91. In the sentence which follows, she rebukes his
fickleness. As with so many other phrases in this exchange, the final inter-
pretation of this greeting must be left open to debate.
Johannes de Vepria seems to transmit two layers of punctuation within
his text, unfortunately impossible to distinguish with normal typography.
Besides using the punctus to mark the most important clauses in the text,
Johannes de Vepria inserts a light stroke to indicate sense units within a
phrase or sentence. While it is impossible to be sure whether they corre-
spond to punctuation marks in the manuscript that he was copying, they
have been used here as a guide to the sense of the text. In the case of the
longer poems that occur in the second half of the manuscript, the scribe
uses punctuation sparingly at the end of lines, a practice that is retained
here. In the manuscript, there are no paragraph marks within individual
letters, and no break is indicated between the greeting and the substance
of the letter.
No critical edition can avoid offering an interpretation of the text
being transmitted. In the case of the Troyes manuscript, we are dealing with
the effort of Johannes de Vepria to come to terms with a text that has been
lost to us. Könsgen’s painstaking editorial work on the text of these letters
must provide the point of departure for any study of their significance. No
attempt has been made to reproduce all the details about the scribal era-
sures and corrections in the manuscript that Könsgen observes in his crit-
ical apparatus. The Latin text is offered here as an encouragement to
readers to come to terms themselves with a remarkable collection of let-
ters and to engage in ongoing debate about what they mean.

The Translation
This translation is intended to make more broadly available to students of
medieval culture, perhaps the most important example of amatory letter
writing in the twelfth century. Literary Latin of the kind employed in these
letters presents its own challenges to any translator. As the meaning of indi-
vidual letters is often far from clear, a great deal is left up to the imagina-
tion. The reader must often work hard to know what is being discussed. In
general we have tried to remain as faithful to the Latin as the English lan-
guage can tolerate, believing that the way an idea or sentiment is phrased
can be as instructive as its content. At times this has meant that we have
 THE EDITION 209

tried to maintain the original imagery even when the phrase may seem un-
natural in English. If the result is one that bears unmistakable traces of hav-
ing been translated, we are not convinced that this is undesirable; in another
context, a different approach may have been warranted. At the same time,
we have tried to avoid non-English constructions and outdated words that
have for too long rendered medieval texts excessively foreign, if not unin-
telligible, to modern students forced to rely on translations.
This translation has not endeavored to imitate the prose rhyme used by
the woman, nor the poetic metre of the metrical verses. We have also not
sought to “improve” the style simply for the sake of euphony in English.
When certain words or their derivatives are repeated in the Latin, we have
tried to retain this repetition in English, believing that an author’s choice
of words, particularly in the face of viable synonyms, ought to be re-
spected. We do not see the tendency to avoid such repetition in English as
sufficient reason to deviate from the style of the original (see, for example,
37, 100, and 112). Conversely, when the Latin uses synonyms rather than
repetition, we have attempted to convey this feature of style. We are thus
walking a fine line between fidelity to the original and naturalness of ex-
pression. We readily concede that we have not always achieved this to our
complete satisfaction. But therein lies both the great joy and frustration of
translating.
We have preserved the fundamental structure of the formula of greet-
ing of any letter addressed to someone perceived to be one’s superior. In
this sentence, the verb “send” or “offer” is implicitly understood: “To X,Y:
greeting.” A letter from a superior to an inferior follows the form: “Y to
X: greeting.” The particular form of the greeting defines the nature of the
relationship a correspondent wished to establish (pp. 15–16 above). The
conventional term salutem can be replaced by a more elaborate phrase, like
“the best of health” or even a verbal clause depending on the implied verb
of wishing, hoping, etc.: “[I want you] to live a long and happy life.” This
structure is encoded in the morphology of the words, with each compo-
nent requiring its particular case: the receiver in the dative, the sender in
the nominative, the greeting in the accusative. This formal structure was
expected and immediately recognizable to the eye (or ear) trained in the
art of Latin letter writing, even though it might not be physically separated
from the rest of the letter. In our translation, we introduce the greeting
wished for by the sender with a colon, following the punctuation of the
manuscript. Sometimes the woman does not identify herself in the nomi-
native case at all (as in 3, 5, 7, 9 etc.) or she identifies herself before him,
as in 18: “An equal to an equal.” Only occasionally have we supplied a verb
210 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

of wishing (often the weak auxiliary “may”), usually when the greeting
contains a verbal clause or when clarity seemed to warrant it.
The closing greeting of these letters also provided an opportunity to
develop a particular theme, beyond the traditional vale or “farewell.” The
lovers are particularly fond of exploring different nuances in the term vale
as meaning both “Farewell” and “Keep well.” While we have translated vale
as “farewell” in most cases, we use “fare well” when the Latin seems to em-
phasize vale as a verb (as in 8 and 28).
The vocabulary of these love letters inevitably presents many problems
for a translator, as the same word may range over concepts for which Eng-
lish uses different words. Salus for example means both salvation in a reli-
gious sense and good health or well-being in a temporal sense. In a formal
salutation, it was conventional simply to offer another person salutem, often
translated as “greetings.” We have adopted the latter term only when the
context clearly indicates that salus or its derivatives are being used in such
a neutral sense. In most cases we have opted for “well-being,” which if un-
derstood to imply both physical and spiritual well-being, is perhaps not too
far removed from the Latin sense. The woman often employs religious lan-
guage, however, to express the sincerity of her love. Occasionally we have
proposed salvation, as in the greeting to letter 112.
A particular problem is presented by the woman’s subtle explorations of
the nuances between amor, dilectio, and caritas, which in English can all be
rendered by “love.” Classical usage recognized only amor and caritas as sep-
arate concepts, while dilectio was a particular contribution of the Latin
translation of the Christian Bible (pp. 16–19 above). The verb amo means
“I love” from inclination or passion, whereas diligo means “I love” in the
sense of “I esteem or prize highly.” Often, the difference in nuance in
meanings of “love” is indicated simply by a footnote. At other times, amor
is translated as passion or longing. In a sexual context, it often evokes the
idea of something that happens to an individual rather than that which the
individual initiates. These writers are similarly careful about using the
terms anima, animus, and spiritus. In traditional understanding, anima is the
principle of physical life, as distinct from animus, the principle of spiritual
and intellectual life (and thus subtly distinct from mens, the mind). These
are distinguished as “soul” and “spirit” respectively, while spiritus is gener-
ally rendered as breath.
Könsgen meticulously identified many classical and scriptural allusions
in the apparatus to his edition, of which only the more important are in-
dicated here. Certain further allusions to scriptural and patristic texts have
been added. References to scripture are to the Latin Vulgate, the Psalms ac-
 THE EDITION 211

cording to their Vulgate numbering (Psalms 10–145 corresponding to

Psalms 11–146 in subsequent translations). He transcribed metrical verse
on separate lines, adding the comment versus in his margin. These editor-
ial marks are included in our translation.
Peter Dronke’s translations of parts of several letters in Women Writers (p.
289 n. 14 above) have been of assistance. Graziella Ballanti’s translation of
the entire text into Italian (p. 292 n. 9 below) has also been consulted. We
would also like to express our profound gratitute to Ewald Könsgen, Gavin
Betts, Naomi Norris, Kathryn Mews, Maryna Mews, and John O. Ward for
offering their careful attention to drafts of our translation. Responsibility
for any errors or misinterpretations is of course entirely our own.

N. C. and C. J. M.
The Letters
EX EPISTOLIS DUORUM AMANTIUM

1
M Amori suo precordiali omnibus aromatibus dulcius redolenti,a
corde et corpore sua: arescentibus floribus tue juventutis, viridi-
tatem eterne felicitatis.
..... Vale salusb vite mee.

2
V Singulari gaudio, et lassate mentis unico solamini, ille cuius vita
sine te mors est: quid amplius quam seipsum quantum corpore et
anima valet.
..... Vale lux mea, vale pro qua mori velim.

3
M Purissimo amori suo, et intime fidelitatis digno: per vere dilec-
tionis statum,a care fidei secretum.
..... Celi regnator sit inter nos mediator, et sit socius fidei nos-
tre.b Vale, et Christus rex regum, te dulcissimum salvet in evum.
Vale in illo qui cuncta gubernat in mundo.

1. a) cf. Song of Songs 4.10: pulchriora ubera tua vino et odor unguen-
torum tuorum super omnia aromata: “Your breasts are more beauti-
ful than wine and the fragrance of your perfumes above all spices.”
b) or “salvation” as salus embraces both physical and spiritual
senses.
3. a) a punctuation mark after digno suggests that per vere dilectionis
statum qualifies secretum or “hiding place” rather than digno. b) M
38b.
FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS

1
WOMAN To her heart’s love, more sweetly scented than any spice,a
she who is his in heart and body: the freshness of eternal happi-
ness as the flowers fade of your youth.
..... Farewell, well-beingb of my life.

2
MAN To the singular joy and only solace of a weary mind, that per-
son whose life without you is death: what more than himself, in so
far as he is able in body and soul.
..... Farewell, my light, farewell, you for whom I would willingly
die.

3
WOMAN To her love most pure, worthy of inner fidelity: through the
state of true love,a the secret of tender faith.
..... May the Ruler of Heaven mediate between us and may He
accompany our faith.b Farewell, and may Christ, King of Kings,
save you, my sweetest, for eternity. Farewell in Him who governs
all things in the world.
216 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

4
V De die in diem dulciori et nunc quam maxime dilecte et semper
super omnia diligende, singularis eius: eandem et immutabilem
sincere fidei constanciam.
..... Vale clarissima stella mea, nobilissima dulcedo mea, et
sola consolacio mea. ..... Vale o mea valitudo.

5
M Iocunde spei mee: fidem meam, et cum omni devocione meip-
sam quamdiu vivam.
Tocius artis largitor, et humani ingenii largissimus dator, mei
pectoris interna philosophie artis impleat pericia, quo te possim
dilectissime ita salutare scriptis, ad consensum mee voluntatis.
Vale vale, spes juventutis mee.a

6
V Clarissime stelle sue, cuius nuper radiis delectatus sum: ita in-
deficienti splendore nitere, ut nulla eam nebula possit offuscare.
Quia tu ita dulcissima domina mea precepisti, vel ut verius
dicam, quia ardentissima amoris flamma compellit, se dilectus
tuus continere non potuit, quin in vice sue presentie eo quo
potest litterarum officioa te salutet. Ita ergo salva esto, sicut ego
tui salute indigeo. Ita vale sicut in tuo meum constat valere. In te
spes mea, in te requies mea. Nunquam tam subito evigilo, quin
animus meusb te intra se locatam inveniat.

7
M Hucusque dilecto semperque diligendo:a tota sua re et affectu,
salutem, gaudium totiusque utilitatis ac honestatis profectum.

5. a) Ps. 70.5.
6. a) “the office of letters;” cf. Cicero, Ep. 6.6.1 and 17; see too HC, ed.
Monfrin, p. 70; ed. Hicks, p. 10; trans. Radice, p. 66. b) animus is
consistently translated here as “spirit” rather than “mind” to evoke
the idea of the seat of human thought.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 217

4
MAN To one who is sweeter from day to day, is loved now as much
as possible and is always to be loved more than anything, her only
one: the same unchanging constancy of sincere faith.
..... Farewell, my brightest star, my noblest delight, and my only
consolation. ..... Farewell, my well-being.

5
WOMAN To my joyful hope: my faith and my very self with all my de-
votion, as long as I live.
May the Bestower of every art and the most bountiful Giver of
human talent fill the depths of my breast with the skill of the art
of philosophy, in order that I may greet you in writing, most
beloved, in accord with my will. Farewell, farewell, hope of my
youth.a

6
MAN To his brightest star, whose rays I have recently enjoyed: may
she shine with such unfailing splendor that no cloud can obscure
her.
Because you, my sweetest lady, have so instructed me, or to
speak more truly because the burning flame of love compels me,
your beloved could not restrain himself from greeting you as he
can, through the agency of a lettera in place of his actual presence.
Therefore keep well, just as I need your keeping well. And fare
well, just as my faring well depends on your doing so. In you is my
hope, in you my rest. Never do I wake so suddenly that my spiritb
does not find you present within itself.

7
WOMAN To one loved thus far and always to be loved:a with all her
being and feeling, good health, joy, and growth in all that is bene-
ficial and honorable.

7. a) A punctuation mark after diligendo suggests that tota sua is abla-

tive rather than nominative, as in “she who is his in being and dis-
position.” She here recapitulates his phrase in V 4.
218 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

..... Vale vale et tamdiu vale quoadusque regnum dei videatur

permanere.

8
V Dilectissime domine sue, cuius memoriam nulla intercipere
potest oblivio, fidelissimus eius tunc primum tui nominis obliv-
ionem, cum mei nominis memor non ero.
..... Vale, in pace in idipsum dormi et requiesce.a Dormi dul-
citer, cuba suaviter, ita firmiter dormias, ut latus non mutes.b Vale
o requies mea, vale et semper vale.c

9
M Ardenti lucerne, et civitati supra montem posite:a sic pugnare ut
vincat, sic currere ut comprehendat.b
. . . .. Volo et inhianter cupio ut litteris iuxta preceptum tuum in-
tercurrentibus precordialis inter nos firmetur amicicia, donec illa
michi nimium felix dies illucescat, qua votis omnibus desideratam
tuam faciem videam.c Sicut lassus umbram, et siciens desiderat
undam, ita te desidero videre.d . . .. Nihil unquam erit tam labo-
riosum corpori meo, nichil tam periculosum anime mee, quod tue
non impendam caritati. . . .. Vale in deo, quo validior est nemo.

10
V Preciosissime gemme sue, suo naturali splendore semper radi-
anti, aurum eius purissimum:a letissimis amplexibus eandem gem-
mam circumdare et decenter ornare.
..... Vale que me valere facis.

8. a) Ps. 4.9: the Vulgate phrase in idipsum is not translated here. b)

“that you do not change sides.” c) a play on vale as meaning both
“farewell” and “may you flourish.”
9. a) John 5.35; Matthew 5.14. b) 1 Cor. 9.24. c) cf. Proverbs 7.18: veni
inebriemur uberibus donec inlucescat dies et fruamur cupitis am-
plexibus: “Come, let us get drunk in abundance until the day dawns
and let us enjoy longed for embraces.” d) Job 7.12; Psalm 41.2.
10. a) cf. 2 Chronicles 9.1, 9 (the gift of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon)
and Ecclesiasticus 32.7.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 219

..... Farewell, farewell, and fare well for as long as the kingdom
of God is seen to endure.

8
MAN To his most beloved lady, the memory of whom no forgetting
can steal away, her most faithful one: may the first time I forget
your name be when I no longer remember my own.
..... Farewell, sleep, and rest in peace.a Sleep sweetly, lie com-
fortably, may you sleep so soundly that you do not stir.b Farewell,
my rest. Farewell and fare well always.c

9
WOMAN To a burning lamp and city set on a hill:a may he fight in
order to conquer, run in order to win.b
..... I wish and eagerly desire that by exchanging letters ac-
cording to your bidding, the heartfelt friendship between us may
be strengthened until that exceedingly happy day shines on me
when I shall see your face,c the desire of all my prayers. Just as
the weary desire shade and the thirsty long for water, so I desire
to see you.d ..... Nothing will ever be so laborious for my body,
nothing so dangerous for my soul, that I would not expend out of
care for you. ..... Farewell in God, than whom no one is more
strong.

10
MAN To his most precious jewel, ever radiant with its natural splen-
dor, her purest gold:a may he surround and fittingly set that same
jewel in a joyful embrace.
..... Farewell, you who make me fare well.
220 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

11
M Omnium virtutum continentia clarissimo, et super favum mellis
iocundo,a inter omnes eius fidelissima: dimidium anime,b et seip-
sam in omni fide.
..... Deum testem habeo, quem neque latet, nec latere potest
ulla secreti machinacio, quam pure, quam sincere, cum quanta
fide te diligo. ..... Nunc igitur, quia ocium in scribendo non habeo,
ut valeas centies clamo, ac milies repeto, tuumque vale nulli sit
equale.

12
V Ardenter amate, et ardentius amande,a pre omnibus fidelis, et
ut verius dicam solus fidelis: quicquid sincerissimi amoris regula
exigit.
Non opus esse reor dulcissima ut fidem tuam quam factis evi-
denter exhibes, verbis dilecto tuo commendes. (f. 159v) Si omnes
vires meas in tuum servitium contendam, nichil me fecisse
putabo, inanem me operam sumpsisse comparacione tuorum
meritorum judicabo. Si quicquid bonorum secularium conferri
potest, totum congeratur in unum,b ut aut hec aut tuam amiciciam
eligere debeam, per fidem quam tibi debeo, nullius ea precii rep-
utabo. ..... Certe fecisse iuvat. Vale decus meum,c que omnibus
que dulcia sunt, incomparabiliter dulcior es, et omnia tempora ita
leta ducas ut ego tibi cupio, quia non melius opus est.

13
M ..... Grata mentis mee benivolencia, pro se et officio suo tibi
semper obnoxia, cum omnes quas vellet salutes expedire non po-
tuit permultas, et iam siluit, ne plures enumerando, offendere sibi

11. a) Psalm 18.11; Ecclesiasticus 24.27. b) Horace, Carmina 1.3.8.

12. a) modeled on her greeting in M 7. b) Cicero, Tusculan Orations
5.117. c) cf. Horace, Carmina, 1.1.2.
13. a) Marbod, Rescriptum ad amicam, ed. Bulst (1984), p. 186: “In te
namque sita mea mors est et mea vita (For in you is placed my death
and my life).”
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 221

11
WOMAN To one most brilliant in possessing every virtue, more de-
lightful than honey from the comb,a his most faithful one of all:
half her soulb and her whole self in complete faith.
..... God is my witness, from whom no secret plotting is hidden
nor can ever be hidden, how purely, how sincerely and with how
much faith I love you. ..... Therefore, because I do not have time
for writing now, I cry out a hundred times and repeat a thousand
times my wish that you keep well and that your faring well may
have no equal.

12
MAN To one loved intensely, and to be loved even more intensely,a
one faithful beyond all others, and to speak more truly, the only
faithful one: whatever the rule of sincerest love demands.
I do not think there is any need, sweetest, for you to recom-
mend with words to your beloved the faith that you clearly show
through actions. If I were to exert all my strength in your service,
I would deem that I had done nothing and would consider that I
had undertaken a trifling matter compared with what you deserve.
If whatever is of worldly value could be brought together and gath-
ered up in one placeb so that I had to choose between them and
your friendship, out of the faith that I owe you I would consider
them to be worthless. ..... Certainly I am glad to have done so.
Farewell, my beauty,c you who are incomparably sweeter than all
sweet things. May you prolong your years as happily as I wish for
you, for nothing better is needed.

13
WOMAN ..... Since the grateful benevolence of my mind, of its own
accord and out of duty always bound to you, could not send all the
greetings that it wished, it has remained silent up to now over
many, lest by listing several it might seem to undermine them all.
I think it neither a burden for you nor difficult for me to write to
222 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

videretur universas. Sepe me tibi scribere, eadem iterum atque

iterum repetere, nec tibi onerosum reor, nec michi est difficile,
quippe quem sicut memetipsam diligo, ita te toto cordis conamine
diligere non negligo. ..... Vale carior vita. Scias quod in te mea
mors est et vita.a

14
V Si tabulas tuas dulcissima diutius retinere michi liceret, plurima
scriberem sicut plurima occurrerent. Nam si semper scribere pos-
sem, ita, ut nichil aliud facerem, sufficientem sine dubio mate-
riam haberem: tuam scilicet probitatem, tua merita que circa me
tanta sunt, ut quanta sint estimari non possit. Vale certissima spes
mea.

15
V Cordi suo, fidelissimus eius: noctem candidam, et utinam
mecum.a
Vale anima mea,b quies mea.

16
<V> Signaculo suo, mentis interioribus artius impresso, ille qui eius-
dem signaculi expressa similitudo est:a eo tenaciorem affectionem
quo in unius nostrum salute res communis indifferenterb agitur.
Tu o dura, anime tue quomodo immemor esse potuisti? Nam
ubi mei oblita es, si ego anima tua sum, anime tue quoque oblita
es. Vale dulcissima. Totus tecum sum, et ut verius dicam, totus in
te sum.

17
<V> Inexhausto tocius sue dulcedinis vasculo, dilectissimus eius:
neglecto celi lumine, te solam indesinenter aspicere.

15. a) Ovid, Heroides 16.320 (Paris to Helen). b) cf. 1 Samuel [= I

Regum, Vulgate] 20.17: sicut animam sua ita diligebat eum: “For he
[David] loved him [Jonathan] as his own soul.”
16. a) Song of Songs 8.6; cf. Ezekiel 28.12 b) cf. V 24.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 223

you often, repeating the same things again and again, for just as I
love you as my very self, so I do not neglect to love you with all
the effort of my heart. ..... Farewell, dearer than life. Know that in
you lies my death and my life.a

14
MAN If I may be permitted to keep your writing tablets a while
longer, sweetest, I would write many things, just as many things
would come to mind. For even if I could write to you continuously
so that I did nothing else, I would undoubtedly still have enough
material: namely your integrity and your merits, which for me are
so many that I could not count them all. Farewell, my surest hope.

15
MAN To his heart, her most faithful: an unclouded night—would
that it were with me!a
Farewell, my soul,b my rest.

16
<MAN> To his seal, imprinted very firmly inside his mind, he who
is the visible likeness of that seal:a affection, the more enduring as
the well-being of each of us is made a shared concern without dif-
ference.b
How could you, unfeeling woman, forget your soul? For when-
ever you forget me, if I am indeed your soul, you forget your own
soul as well. Farewell, sweetest. I am wholly with you, or to speak
more truly I am wholly within you.

17
<MAN> To the inexhaustible vessel of all his sweetness, her most
beloved: may I gaze endlessly at you alone, having ignored the
light of day.
224 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Cum dies in noctem vergeret, ulterius me continere non potui,

quin salutandi officiuma ultro arriperem, quod tu tarda distulisti.
Vale, et scias quia sine tua valitudine, nec salus nec vita mea con-
sistit.

18
M Par pari, rubenti rose sub immarcido liliorum candore: quidquid
amans amanti.
Quamvis sit hiems in tempore, estuat tamen pectus meum
amoris fervore. Quid ultra? Plura tibi scriberem, sed sapientem
pauca monebunt. Vale, cor et corpus meum, et omnis dilectio
mea.

19
V Pauca quidem verba tua sunt, sed ea plura feci sepe relegendo,
nec ego penso quantum dicas, sed de quam fecundo corde pro-
cedat quod dicis. Vale dulcissima.

20
<V> Stella polum variat, et noctem luna colorat,
versus Sed michi sydus hebet quod me conducere debet.a
Nunc mea si tenebris oriatur stella fugatis,
Mens mea iam tenebras meroris nesciet ullas.
5 Tu michi Luciferb es, que noctem pellere debes.
Te sine lux michi nox,c tecum nox splendida lux est.

Vale stella mea que splendoris sui damna non patitur. Vale
summa spes mea in qua sola michi conplaceo,d quam nunquam
reduco ad memoriam, quia nunquam amitto a memoria. Vale.

17. a) V 6.
20. a) cf. Ovid, Fasti 3.449; Lucan, Pharsalia 1.661–62; Ovid, Metamor-
phoses 2.144. In ancient thought, the stars revolve around the north
pole; cf. Carmina burana no. 169 (Hebet sidus). b) the morning star
or planet Venus; cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.723. Lucifer is used in
this sense in 2 Peter 1.19 and Job 11.17, without the connotation of
a fallen star as in Isaiah 14.12. c) cf. V 38c line 4. d) cf. Matthew 3.17.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 225

Since day was turning into night, I could not contain myself any
longer from seizing the duty of greeting youa of my own accord,
something which you, tardy one, have put off. Farewell and know
that without your good health, neither well-being nor life exists for
me.

18
WOMAN An equal to an equal, to a reddening rose under the spot-
less whiteness of lilies: whatever a lover gives to a lover.
Although it is wintertime, yet my breast blazes with the fervor
of love. What more? I would write more things to you, but a few
words instruct a wise man. Farewell, my heart and body, and my
total love.

19
MAN Indeed your words are few, but I made them many by re-read-
ing them often. Nor do I measure how much you say, but rather
how fertile is the heart from which comes what you say. Farewell,
sweetest.

20
<MAN> The star turns around the pole, and the moon colors the
night,
But that star is fading that should be my guide.a
Now if through the retreating shadows my own star should
appear,
No longer will my mind know the darkness of grief.
5 You to me are Lucifer,b who must banish the night.
Without you day is night to me,c with you night is splendid day.

Farewell, my star, whose splendor never dies. Farewell, my

greatest hope, in whom alone I find favor,d and whom I never
bring back to mind since you never slip from mind. Farewell.
226 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

21
M Dilecto suo speciali, et ex ipsius experimento rei: esse quod
est.a
Cum mens mea versetur circa plurima rerum negocia, deficit
acuto percussa dilectionis hamo. ..... Sicut ignis inextinguibilis
est, nulla materia rerum superabilis, nisi adhibeatur aqua que nat-
uraliter est ei potens medicina, sic omnibus est amor meus in-
sanabilis, tibi autem soli est medicabilis.b Quo munere te ditabo,
mens mea anxiatur ignorando.c O decus juvenum, consors poet-
arum, quam decorus aspectu, sed prestabilior es affectu; tu mea
presens leticia, et est michi meror tui absencia; equipolenter te
diligo. Vale.

22
V Gemme sue presenti luce gratiori et lucidiori, ille qui sine te
crassis est tenebris obvolutus: quid aliud, nisi ut in tuo naturali ful-
gore indeficienter glorieris.
Fateri solent physici, quod luna nisi a sole non luceat. Itaque
cum hoc lumine privatur, omni caloris et splendoris beneficio des-
tituta, orbem suum mortalibus fuscum et pallidum ostendit.a
Huius nimirum rei similitudo inter me et te aperte exprimitur. Tu
enim sol meus es, que me vultus tui iocundissimo splendore sem-
per accendis (f. 160r) et illuminas. Ego lumen nisi a te nullum
habeo, sine te ebes, obscurus, enervis et mortuus sum. Et ut
verum fatear, maius est quod tu michi quam quod sol lunari globo
accomodat. Quia luna quo soli propior fit plus obscuratur, ego
quo plus tibi admoveor, quo tibi vicinior sum, plus ardeo et in tan-
tum inflammor, ut, sicut ipsa sepe notasti, cum iuxta te sum, totus
in ignem transeam, totus medullitus urar.b
Quid ergo tuis innumerabilibus beneficiis equum reponam?
Nihil equidem, quia dulcissima verba tua factorum quantitate tran-

21. a) a punctuation mark after rei suggests that the woman does not
identify herself in this greeting, but offers her own being. b) cf. Ovid,
Heroides 5.149. c) While Könsgen reads this as one sentence, the
MS shows a period here, followed by a new sentence.
22. a) cf. Rhabanus Maurus, De computo 1.45, ed. Wesley M. Stevens,
CCCM 44 (1979): 257; Bede, De natura rerum 20, ed. Charles W.
Jones, CCSL 123A (1975): 211. b) cf. Ovid, Heroides 18.177; Meta-
morphoses 1.494. c) cf. V 6. d) Horace, Carmina 4.1.36.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 227

21
WOMAN To her beloved, special from experience of the reality it-
self: the being which she is.a
Since my mind is turning with many concerns, it fails me,
pierced by the sharp hook of love. ..... Just as fire cannot be ex-
tinguished or suppressed by any material, unless water, by nature
its powerful remedy, is applied, so my love cannot be cured by any
means—only by you can it be healed.b My mind is bothered by not
knowing through what gift I can enrich you.c Glory of young men,
companion of poets, how handsome you are in appearance yet
more distinguished in feeling. Your presence is my joy, your ab-
sence my sorrow; in either case, I love you. Farewell.

22
MAN To his jewel, more pleasing and more splendid than the pre-
sent light, that man who without you is shrouded in dense
shadow: what else except that you glory unfailingly in your natural
brilliance.
Scientists often say that the moon does not shine without the
sun, and that when deprived of this light, it is robbed of all bene-
fit of heat and brightness and presents to humans a dark and
ashen sphere.a Surely the similarity of this phenomenon to you
and me is very plain to see: for you are my sun, since you always
illumine me with the most delightful brightness of your face and
make me shine. I have no light that does not come from you and
without you I am dull, dark, weak, and dead. But, to tell the truth,
what you do for me is even greater than what the sun does for the
sphere of the moon. For the moon becomes more obscure the
closer it gets to the sun, whereas the nearer I am brought to you
and the closer I get, the more on fire I become. So much do I burn
for you, that, just as you yourself have often noted, when I am
next to you I become completely on fire and am burned right
down to the marrow.b
What then shall I offer in return to equal your innumerable ben-
efits? Nothing, actually, because you transcend your sweetest
228 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

scendis, ipsa amoris exhibicione transgrederis, ita ut pauperior

michi in verbis quam in factis videaris. Inter cetera que pre aliis in-
numera possides, hoc quoque tenes egregium, ut in amicum plus
agas quam dicas, in verbis pauper, in factis copiosa; quod eo tibi
est gloriosius, quanto facere quam dicere difficilius. .....
In pectore meo immortaliter sepulta es, de quo sepulcro me
vivente non emerges; ibi cubas, ibi quiescis. Usque ad somnum
me comitaris, in somno me non deseris, post somnum statim ut
oculos aperio ante ipsum celi lumen te video.c Ad alios verba, ad
te intencionem dirigo. Sepe in verbis cado,d quia cogitacio mea ab
eis extranea est. Quis ergo negare poterit, quin veraciter in me
sepulta sis?. ..... Invidum amori nostro tempus imminet, et tu
tamen ita differs quasi ociosi simus. Vale.

23
M Dulcissimo anime sue presidio, et in eius caritatis radice plan-
tato, illa in cuius dilectione firmiter es constitutus, et in cuiusa
mellifluo amoris sapore bene fundatus:b quod ab ira distat et
odio.
Cum vellem tibi rescribere, reiecit me impar viribus meisc rei
magnitudo. Volui enim et non potui, incepi et defeci, sustuli et eli-
sis gravitate humeris corrui. Voluit animi fervens affectus, renu-
itque aridi defectus ingenii. Horum duorum altercaciones
plenasque litibus persuasiones sustinui, et perpensa utriusque
racione cui pocius cederemd examinare nequivi. Ait enim animi
affectus: “Quid agis ingrata? Quamdiu suspendis me longa et
certe indigna taciturnitate? Nonne te excitat dilecti tui liberalis
benignitas, et benigna liberalitas? Contexe plenas graciarum lit-
teras, refer abundanti pietati, quas debes, gracias. Beneficium
enim non videtur gratum et acceptum, de quo multum graciarum
non fuerit relatum.”
Persuasionibus his parendum credidi, et certe parere volui, sed
restitit ingenii ariditas temeritatis mee inceptum acri correptionis
flagelloe castigans. “Quo,” inquit, “stulta et infirma ruis? Quo te
procellitf inconsiderata intencio festini animi? Incipiesne, cum sis

23. a) cuius Könsgen] eius MS. b) Expanding on Ephesians 3.17 with

three different words for love. c) Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.610. d)
cederem Könsgen] celerem MS.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 229

words with the number of your actions and you have so surpassed
them by the demonstration of your love that you seem to me
poorer in words than in actions. Among other things that you pos-
sess in infinite number compared with other people, you have this
distinction too, that, poor in words, but rich in actions, you do
more for a friend than you say; this is all the more to your glory
since it is more difficult to act than to speak. .....
You are buried inside my breast for eternity, from which tomb
you will never emerge as long as I live. There you lie, there you
rest. You keep me company right until I fall asleep; while I sleep
you never leave me, and after I wake I see you, as soon as I open
my eyes, even before the light of day itself.c To others I address
my words, to you my intention. I often stumble over words,d be-
cause my thought is far from them. Who then will be able to deny
that you are truly buried in me? ..... Envious time looms over our
love, and yet you delay as if we were at leisure. Farewell.

23
WOMAN To the sweetest protector of her soul, planted at the root of
her caring love, she in whose love you are firmly established and
in whose honeyed taste of love you are well founded:a whatever is
far from anger and hate.
Although I wanted to write back to you, the magnitude of the
task, being beyond my powers,b drove me back. Indeed I wanted
to but could not, I began then grew weak, I persisted but collapsed,
my shoulders buckling under the weight. The burning feeling of my
spiritc longed to do so but the weakness of my dried-up talent re-
fused. I endured the numerous disputes and litigious arguments of
both, and after weighing up rationally to which of the two I would
rather yield,d I was unable to decide. For the feeling of my spirit
said: “What are you doing, ungrateful woman? For how long do you
keep me in suspense with long and surely undeserved silence?
Does not the generous kindness and kind generosity of your
beloved stir you? Compose a letter full of thanks, give the thanks
which you owe for his abounding integrity. For a kind act does not
seem pleasing and welcome when many thanks are not received.”
I thought that I ought to heed these arguments, and certainly I
wanted to heed them, but the dryness of my talent resisted, re-
buking the attempts of my temerity with the harsh whip of re-
proach,e saying: “Where are you rushing, you foolish and feeble
woman? Where does the unthinking intention of your hasty spirit
throwf you? Do you begin to speak mighty words, though you are
unskilled and have unrefined lips?g Surely you are no match for
230 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

rudis et incircumcisis labiis, grandia loqui? g Non enim sufficis ma-

terie tali et tam magnifice. Quippe qui rem quamlibet assumit lau-
dare, debet tandem in partes distribuere singularumque partium
qualitates summa cautione pensare et quamque secundum digni-
tatem congrue laudis celebritate honorare.h Alioquin rei laudande
iniuriam facit, qui speciosa eius narracione < ..... >, eleganciam
enormi narracione deterit.i Sed unde tibi est hec scribendi copia,
ut digne dicas sublimia? Attende te et rem, quam affectas. Multi-
formia et ampla sunt beneficia, quibus tu litteris tuis gracias re-
ferre paras. Quid estuas multis cogitacionum procellis?j Respice
pectus tuum brutum et frigidum, prorsus carens sale sciencie et
tantum crassi aeris segnicie turgidum. Contrahe audacie tue vela,k
lintrem qua imperiosum pelagusl tranare paras, cito nisi caves
mersura.”
Hac hortaminis et dehortaminis alternacione suspensam, hu-
cusque debitam graciarum actionem distuli, parens consiliis, im-
becillitatem suam erubescentis ingenii. Quod queso abundans in
te divine suavitatis excellencia michi non imputet, sed cum sis
vere dulcedinis filius, cognita tibi mansuetudinis virtus super me
magis abundet.m Scio quidem et fateor ex philosophie tue diviciis
maximam michi fluxisse et fluere copiam gaudiorum, sed ut inof-
fense loquar, minorem tamen quam que me faciat in ea re per-
fecte beatam. Venio enim sepe aridis faucibus desiderans suavi
oris tui refici nectare, diffusasque in corde tuo divitias sicienter
haurire. Quid pluribus opus est verbis? Deo teste profiteor, quia
nemo in seculo vitali spirat aura quem te magis amare
desiderem. ..... Sit tibi vale dilecto meo, medullas interiores dul-
citer penetrare.

e) cf. Judith 8.27. f) procellit MS propellit Könsgen-Schaller g) cf. Exo-

dus 6.12, 30 about Moses’ slowness of speech; Daniel 7.20. h) hono-
rare] conorare MS; Könsgen (p. 64) suggests various interpretations of
conorare; here it is taken as a scribal mistake for honorare. i) Könsgen
(p. 64) suggests that words have been accidentally omitted between
narracione and eleganciam. A possibility which he considers less likely
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 231

such matter so distinguished. For anyone who assumes to praise

anything at all must in the end divide it into parts and with the ut-
most care weigh the qualities of each individual part, honoringh
each one according to its merit with a suitable tribute of praise;
otherwise he who diminishes its brilliance by < ..... > description,
its elegance with outrageous description, harms the object to be
praised.i But from where will you get such ability in writing that you
might speak of great things worthily? Look at yourself and at the
task you are undertaking. Abundant and various are the benefits
for which you are preparing to give thanks in your writing. Why are
you tossed about by so many storms of deliberations?j Look at
your cold and brutish breast, utterly lacking the salt of learning and
so inflated with the sluggishness of dense air. Draw in the sails of
your audacity,k the skiff in which you are preparing to cross the im-
perious ocean,l quickly, for unless you take heed, you will drown.”
Suspended between this alternating encouragement and dis-
couragement, I have until now deferred the due act of thanks,
yielding to the advice of a mental capacity ashamed of its own in-
eptitude. I pray that the excellence of divine amiability abundant
in you will not blame me for this, but rather, since you are the son
of true sweetness, may the virtue of mildness familiar to you flow
over me even more.m Indeed I know and admit that from the trea-
sures of your philosophy the greatest amount of joys have flown
and still flow over me, but, if I may speak freely, still less than what
would make me perfectly happy in this regard. For I often come
with parched throat longing to be refreshed by the nectar of your
delightful mouth and to drink thirstily the riches scattered in your
heart. What need is there for more words? With God as my witness
I declare that there is no one in this world breathing life-giving air
whom I desire to love more than you. ..... May this farewell, my
beloved, sweetly penetrate your inner marrow.

is that speciosa eius narracione was copied by the scribe from a mar-
ginal gloss serving to correct enormi narracione; in this case the
phrase translates as “he who diminishes elegance with specious (or su-
perficially attractive) description. . . .” j) Gregory the Great, Liber pas-
toralis 1.9. k) cf. Ovid, Tristia 3.4.32; Horace, Carmina 2.10.23. l)
Baudri of Bourgueil, Carmina 193.64. m) 1 Thess. 4.1, 4.10.
232 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

24
V Anime qua nec candidius, nec michi carius terra protulit, caro
quam eadem anima spirare facit et moveri: quicquid ei debeo per
quem spiro et moveor.
Litterarum tuarum copiosa et tamen insufficiens (f. 160v) uber-
tas, duarum rerum evidentissimum michi testimonium prebet, re-
dundantis scilicet fidei et amoris. Unde dictum est: “Ex abundancia
cordis os loquitur.”a ..... Ego autem litteras tuas ita avide suscipio,
ut michi semper breves sint quia desiderium meum et saturant et
accendunt, ad similitudinem in ardore laborantis, quem potus ipse
quo plus reficit, plus accendit. Deum testor quod novo modo cum
eas diligencius intueor, novo inquam modo commoveor, quia ipse
animus leto horrore concutitur, et corpus in novum habitum ges-
tumque convertitur; et tales littere laudabiles sunt, que sensum au-
dientis quocumque volunt impellunt.
Soles a me querere dulcis anima mea quid amor sit, nec per ig-
noranciam excusare me possum quasi scilicet de re incognita sim
consultus, cum ita me idem amor imperio suo subiecerit, ut non ex-
tranea res sed multum familiaris et domestica, immo intestina videa-
tur. Est igitur amor,b vis quedam anime non per se existens nec
seipsa contenta, sed semper cum quodam appetitu et desiderio, se
in alterum transfundens, et cum altero idem effici volens ut de du-
abus diversis voluntatibus unum quid indifferenterc efficiatur. .....
Scias quia licet res universalis sit amor, ita tamen in angustum
contractus est,d ut audacter affirmem eum in nobis solummodo
regnare, in me scilicet et in te domicilium suum fecisse. Nos enim
duo amorem integrum, invigilatum, sincerum habemus, quia
nichil est dulce, nichil quietum alteri, nisi quod in commune
proficit; eque annuimus, eque negamus, idem per omnia sapimus.
Quod inde facile probari potest quia tu sepe meas cogitaciones
anticipas; quod ego scribere concipio, tu prevenis, et si bene
memini, tu illud idem de te dixisti. Vale et sicut ego te, ita tu me
indefesso amore contuere.

24. a) Luke 6.45; Matthew 12.34. b) in the margin: diffinicio. c) cf. Ci-
cero, Laelius [De amicitia] 81. d) Laelius 20.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 233

24
MAN To a soul brighter and dearer to me than anything the earth
has produced, the flesh which that same soul causes to breathe
and move: whatever I owe her through whom I breathe and move.
The abundant and yet insufficient richness of your letter pro-
vides me with the clearest evidence of two things, namely, your
overflowing faith and love; hence the saying: “From the fullness of
the heart the mouth speaks.”a ..... And yet I receive your letters so
eagerly that for me they are always too brief, since they both sat-
isfy and stimulate my desire: like someone who is suffering from
fever—the more the drink relieves him, the hotter he feels. God is
my witness that I am stirred in a new way when I look at them
more carefully; in a new way, I say, because my spirit itself is
shaken by a joyful trembling, and my body is transformed into a
new manner and posture. So praiseworthy are your letters that
they direct my sense of hearing to whatever place they wish.
You often ask me, my sweet soul, what love is—and I cannot ex-
cuse myself on grounds of ignorance, as if I had been asked about
a subject unfamiliar to me. For that very love has brought me under
its own command in such a way that it seems not to be external but
very familiar and personal, even visceral. Love is thereforeb a par-
ticular force of the soul, existing not for itself nor content by itself,
but always pouring itself into another with a certain hunger and de-
sire, wanting to become one with the other, so that from two di-
verse wills one is produced without difference.c .....
Know that although love may be a universal thing, it has never-
theless been condensed into so confined a placed that I would
boldly assert that it reigns in us alone—that is, it has made its very
home in me and you. For the two of us have a love that is pure,
nurtured, and sincere, since nothing is sweet or carefree for the
other unless it has mutual benefit. We say yes equally, we say no
equally, we feel the same about everything. This can be easily
shown by the way that you often anticipate my thoughts: what I
think about writing you write first, and, if I remember well, you
have said the same thing about yourself. Farewell, and regard me
with unfading love just as I do you.
234 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

25
M Thesauro suo incomparabili, super omnes delicias seculorum
delectabili: beatitudinem sine fine, salutem sine defectione.
Quid sit amor, vel quid possit naturali intuitu ego quoque per-
spiciens morum nostrorum studiorumque similitudinea que
maxime contrahit amicicias, et conciliatb perspecta vicissitudinem
amandi tibi rependere et in omnibus obedire. ..... Si amor noster
tam facili propulsione discedit verus amor non fuitc; verba mollia
et plana que inter nos hactenus contulimus, non fuerunt vera sed
amorem simularunt. Amor enim cui semel aculeum infigit, non
facile deserit. Nosti o mi amor precordialis, quod tunc veri amoris
officia bene persolvuntur quando sine intermissione debentur, ita
ut pro amico secundum vires faciamus et super vires velle non
desinamus.d
Hoc ergo vere dilectionis debitum persolvere studebo, sed proh
dolor ad plenum nequeo. At si pro parvitate ingenii in te salutandi
officio non sufficit, saltem proficiat apud te meum indesinens
velle. Scias enim dilecte mi et vere scias ex quo dilectio tua cordis
mei hospiciolum vel tugurium sibi vendicavit, semper grata et de
die in diem delectabilior permansit, nec sicut plerumque fieri
solet assiduitas familiaritatem, familiaritas fiduciam, fiducia negli-
genciam, negligencia fastidium peperit.e Magno quidem studio
tempore inter nos nascentis amicicie me appetere cepisti, sed
maiori desiderio ut augeretur et permaneret dilectio nostra con-
tendisti. Unde sicut res tue se habent, noster variatur animus, ut
tuum gaudium, meum deputem profectum, et tuam adversitatem
meam amarissimam deiectionem. Non idem michi videtur impleri
quod ceperis, et augere quod perfeceris, quia ibi additur quod
deest, hic cumulatur quod perfectum est. Et nos licet omnibus in-
tegram caritatem exhibeamus, non tamen omnes equaliter
diligimus,f et ita quod omnibus est generale quibusdam efficitur
speciale. Aliud est sedere ad mensam principis, aliud eius inter-
esse consilio, et plus est ad amorem trahi quam ad consessum in-
vitari. Non itaque tantum gracie tibi debeo si me non repellas,
quantum si obvia manu suscipias. Simpliciter candide menti et
purissimo pectori tuo loquar. Non magnum est si te diligo, immo

25. a) cf. Cicero, De officiis 1.56. b) cf. Laelius 100. c) cf. Jerome, Ep.
3.6, CSEL 54: 18. d) desinamus Könsgen] desinemus MS. e) Jerome,
Ep. 60.10.3. f) The contrast is between integram caritatem exhibea-
mus and non tamen omnes diligimus.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 235

25
WOMAN To her incomparable treasure, more delightful than all the
pleasures of the world: blessedness without end and well-being
without weakening.
I too have been considering with innate reflection what love is
or what it can be by analogy with our behavior and concernsa, that
which above all forms friendships,b and, once considered, leads
to repaying you with the exchange of love and obeying you in
everything. ..... If our love deserted us with so slight a force, then
it was not true love.c The plain and tender words which to date we
have exchanged with each other were not real, but only feigned
love. For love does not easily forsake those whom it has once
stung. You know, my heart’s love, that the services of true love are
properly fulfilled only when they are continually owed, in such a
way that we act for a friend according to our strength and not stopd
wishing to go beyond our strength.
This debt of true love, therefore, I shall endeavor to fulfil, but
alas I am unable to do so in full. However, if the duty of greeting
you according to my meager talents is not enough, at least my
never ending desire to do so may be of some merit in your esti-
mation. For know this, my beloved, and know it truly, that ever
since your love claimed for itself the guest chamber—or rather the
hovel—of my heart, it has always remained welcome and day after
day more delightful, without, as often happens, constant presence
leading to familiarity, familiarity to trust, trust to negligence, and
negligence to contempt.e Indeed, you began to desire me with
much interest at the very beginning of our friendship, but with
greater longing you strove to make our love grow and last. And so
our spirit fluctuates according to how your affairs turn out, so that
your joy I count as my gain and your misfortune my most bitter
loss. But your fulfilling what you have begun does not seem the
same to me as your increasing what you have completed, because
in one case what is lacking is added, in the other what is com-
pleted is added on. And even if we show perfect kindness to every-
one, we still do not lovef everyone equally; and what is general for
everyone is made particular for certain people. It is one thing to
sit at the table of a prince, another to be there in order to advise
him, and a greater thing to be drawn out of love, rather than just
to be invited to a gathering. So I owe you fewer thanks for not
spurning me than for receiving me with open arms. Let me speak
plainly to your resplendent mind and heart so pure. It is not a
236 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

pessimum si unquam tui oblita fuero.g Ergo care mi tam fideli

amice rarus esse noli. Hactenus aliquo modo supportare potui, ast
nunc tui presencia dum careo cantibus volucrum, viriditate nemo-
rum permota, amore tuo langueo.h His omnibus utique congaud-
erem si tui colloquio et presencia secundum velle meum perfrui
possem. Sicut tibi cupio, ita michi faciat deus. Vale. (f. 161r)

26
V Dilecte sue nondum cognite, sed adhuc interius cognoscende,
juvenisa qui tanti boni noticiam intrinsecus ardet perscrutari: in
tam abstruso et inexhausto boni fonte semper redundare, et per
eum haustu non deficere.
..... O quam fecundum suavitatis pectus tuum, o quam integra
venustate prefulges, o corpus succi plenissimum,b o ineffabilis
odor tuus, profer quod latet, revela quod habes absconditum,
totus ille copiosissime dulcedinis tue fons ebulliat, amor tuus
totus in me suas laxet copias, nichil penitus devotissimum servum
tuum celes, quia nichil actum credo, dum aliquid restare video.c
De hora in horam tibi vicinius astringor, sicut ignis qui ligna com-
burit, plus eo voracior, quo in alimentis est copiosior.d ..... Per-
petua luce et inextincto fulgore immortaliter coruscas. Vale.

27
M Oculo suo: Bezelielis spiritum,a trium crinium fortitudinem,b pa-
tris pacis formam,c Idide profunditatem.d

g) cf. Psalm 136.5. h) Song of Songs 2.5; 5.8.

26. a) cf. M 1. b) Terence, Eunuchus 318. In classical physiology, the fe-
male body was considered more moist than the male. c) cf. Lucan,
Pharsalia 2.657. d) cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.837–40.
27. a) Exodus 31.2: a skilled craftsman inspired by God. b) Judges
16.13–17 (Samson, normally referred to as having seven locks of
hair). c) 2 Samuel 14.25 [Absalom]. d) Isidore, Etymologiae 7.6.65
(Solomon).
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 237

great thing if I love you, but rather a wicked thing if ever I shall for-
get you.g Therefore, my dear, do not make yourself so scarce to
your faithful friend. So far I have somehow been able to bear it,
but now, deprived of your presence and stirred by the songs of
birds and the freshness of the woods, I languish for your love.h
Surely I would have rejoiced in all these things if I had been able
to enjoy your conversation and presence according to my will.
May God do for me such as I desire for you. Farewell.

26
MAN To his beloved not yet known, and still to be known more in-
timately, the young mana who deep within yearns to probe the un-
derstanding of such a great good: may you always abound in such
a secret and inexhaustible fountain of goodness, and through it
never be without refreshment.
..... How fertile with delight is your breast, how you shine with
untouched beauty, body so full of moisture,b indescribable scent
of yours! Reveal what is hidden, uncover what you keep con-
cealed, let that whole fountain of your most abundant sweetness
bubble forth, let all your love release its abundance in me, and
may you keep absolutely nothing from your most devoted servant,
because I believe nothing has been done as long as I see some-
thing remaining.c Hour by hour I am bound closer to you, just like
fire devouring wood: the more devouring the more plentiful its
fuel.d ..... You glitter with perpetual light and inextinguishable
brightness immortally. Farewell.

27
WOMAN To her eye: the spirit of Bezalel,a the strength of the three
locks of hair,b the beauty of the father of peace,c the depth of
Ididia.d
238 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

28
V Dilecte in eterna memoria tenaciter recondite: quicquid ad illud
esse conducit, cuius plenitudini nichil deficit.
Qui nobis invident, utinam invidendi longa eis materia detur et
utinam nostris opimis rebus diu marcescanta quandoquidem ita
volunt. Me a te separare, ipsum si nos mare interluat, non potest;
ego te semper amabo, semper in animo gestabo. Nec mirari debes
si in nostram tam insignem, tam aptam amiciciam prava emulacio
suos obliquat oculos, quia si miseri essemus sine omni profecto
livida notacione vivere cum aliis utcumque possemus. Rodant
ergo detrahant, mordeant,b in seipsis liquescant, nostra bona
suam amaritudinem faciant; tu tamen mea eris vita, meus spiritus,
mea in angustiis recreacio, meum denique perfectum gaudium.
Vale que valere me facis.

29
M Omnibus omissis sub alas tuas confugio,a tue dicioni me sup-
pono obnixe tibi per omnia subsequendo. Dicere vix possum tris-
tia verba. Vale.b

30
V Deus tibi dulcissima propicius sit. Ego servus tuus sum, in tua
iussa promptissimus. Vale.

31
<V> Dulcissime sue in omni egritudine unico remedio suo: nichil
unquam molestie sentire, nulla temptari egritudine.
..... Collige quantum ipsa presentia tua fecisset, si tantam vim
absens habuisti. Certe si uno saltem intuitu in iocundissimam fa-
ciem tuam intendissem, nunquam quicquam doloris sensis-
sem. ..... Manda michi quo in loco fortuna mea sit, quia penes te
tota est. Vale, et valere non desine. .....

28. a) Horace, Epistulae 1.2.57. b) Ovid, Tristia 4.10.123.

29. a) Ruth 2.12. b) Ovid, Tristia 1.3.80.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 239

28
MAN To his beloved, firmly stored in eternal memory: whatever
leads to that state in whose fullness nothing is lacking.
May prolonged cause for envy be given to those who envy us,
and may they long pine away for our prosperity,a since that is what
they want. But it is not possible to separate you from me, even if
the sea itself should flow between us; I will always love you, I will
always carry you in my spirit. Nor should you be surprised that
twisted jealousy should turn its eyes towards such a conspicuous
and fitting friendship as ours, because if we were miserable, we
could undoubtedly live among others however we liked without
any malicious attention. Therefore let them backbite, let them
drag us down, let them gnaw,b let them waste away inside, let
them derive their bitterness from our good things; you will still be
my life, my breath, my restoration in difficulty, and finally my com-
plete joy. Farewell, you who make me fare well.

29
WOMAN Having given up everything, I take refuge under your
wings,a I submit myself to your rule, resolutely following you in
everything. I can scarcely speak these sad words: “Farewell.”b

30
MAN May God be gracious to you, sweetest. I am your servant,
most ready for your commands. Farewell.

31
<MAN> To his sweetest, his only remedy in every affliction: may
you never have worries or be troubled by any affliction.
. . . .. Consider how much you would have achieved by your ac-
tual presence if you had such power when absent. Surely if I could
have directed my gaze to your most delightful face just once, I
would have felt no grief whatsoever. ..... Send me to the place in
which lies my destiny, since it is completely within your power.
Farewell and never stop faring well.
240 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

32
M Ut convalescis, neminem me letiorem ipse scis. Crede quidem
tibi solem oriri meridianum, tue saluti jocundari concentus avium,
te propter eadem,a dum infirmabaris, elementa non rectum ser-
vasse ordinem;b cuius rei testis est aeris temperies hucusque de-
bilitata, que iam, ut te sospitari sensit, tibi congratulando est
mutata. Ecce quidem hac modica nive liquata reviviscent omnia,
arridebunt sibi tempora nobis quoque per dei graciam non insolita
leticia. Tu tantum sis incolumis, et omnia adiciuntur nobis.c

33
V Excutienda pigricia est, et cum fervore temporis novus dictandi
fervor sumendus. Nisi tu precurras, ego precurram. Vale luna pre-
senti multo lucidiora et sole cras orituro gratior.

34
M Vale et premeditare quod melius est provida dilacio quam in-
cauta mentis festinatio. Aptum colloquio nostro tempus elige, et
michi manda. Vale.

35
V Electe sue dilectus eius: eidem incepto amori fixis insistere ves-
tigiis.
Ego tibi dilectissima facile condonarem, eciam si grave aliquid
in me commisisses, quia nimium durus esset, quem sermo tuus
tam mollis, tam suavis emollire non posset. Nunc vero venia tibi
opus non est, quia nichil in me peccasti. Vale.

32. a) eadem Könsgen] eandem MS. b) Marbod of Rennes, Carmina, PL

171: 1717A; cf. Song of Songs 2.11–12. c) Matthew 6.33; Luke
12.31.
33. a) cf. Song of Songs 6.9.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 241

32
WOMAN You yourself know that no one is happier than I that you
are getting better. Know indeed that the midday sun has risen for
you, that the chorus of birds is rejoicing over your health, and that
on your account, while you were sick, those samea elements did
not keep their natural order.b The proof of this lies in the weather,
which till now has been bleak; but when it sensed that you had
been kept safe, it changed by congratulating you.
And look too how, now that this slight snow has melted, all
things flourish again; the seasons will smile on them, and by the
grace of God there will be for us too a not unfamiliar joy. May you
just keep well, and all things are provided for us.c

33
MAN This laziness must be shaken off, and along with the fervor of
the season, a new fervor for composition must be taken up. If you
do not do so first, I will. Farewell, you who are much brighter than
the present moona and more welcome than tomorrow’s rising sun.

34
WOMAN Farewell and remember that thoughtful delay is better than
imprudent haste. Choose a suitable time for our meeting and let
me know. Farewell.

35
MAN To his chosen one, her beloved: may you keep with sure step
to the same love that has begun.
I would have forgiven you readily, most beloved, even if you had
committed some serious act against me, because too hard would
he be whom your speech so tender and amiable could not soften.
But truly you have no need of forgiveness, because you have not
wronged me in any way. Farewell.
242 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

36
<V> Reverende domine sue, humilis servus eius: devotum servi-
tium.
Sic enim vos appellare iam michi opus est,a ut non dicam tu,
sed vos, non dulcis, non cara, sed domina, quia non sum famil-
iaris ut antea, et vos michi nimis estis extranea.

37
<V> Unice expectacioni sue qui expectans expectat:a ut felix sis,
sine me tamen felix esse nolis.
Tuus servus sum, ad te corpus totum, ad te totum animum
dirigo. Cum te non video, lumen me videre non judico. Miserere
tabescentis dilecti tui, et fere deficientis nisi cito michi succur-
ras. ..... Interroga nuncium quid egi, postquam litteras perscripsi:
ilico certe in lectum pre inpatiencia me conieci. Vale. (f. 161v)

38a
<<V>> Ardorem mentis his cogor pandere verbis,
versus Qui mentem mordet cordis secretaque torret
Ut laticesque petit quosa ardor solis inurit
Tangere sic pectus iam gestio temetb anhelus
5 Iam facio finem concludens ista sigillo.

38b
<<M>> Nolis atque velis tibi corde manebo fidelis
Celi regnator sit nobis hic mediator

36. a) This letter hinges on the difference between the intimate address
tu (the singular form of “you”) and the more respectful address vos
(the plural form). Dronke uses tu and vous in his translation of this
letter, Women Writers, p. 94. “Your Ladyship” is employed here to
convey the force of vos.
37. a) Psalm 39.2.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 243

36
<MAN> To his lady, worthy of respect, her humble servant: his de-
voted service.
For this is how I must now address your ladyship:a no longer
saying you, but Madam, not “sweet” nor “dear” but “lady” because
I am not the confidant I was before and your ladyship is too much
a stranger to me.

37
<MAN> To his only longing, he who longs longingly:a may you be
happy, but may you not wish to be happy without me.
I am your servant; my whole body, my whole spirit I direct to-
wards you. When I do not see you, I do not feel that I see daylight.
Have pity on your beloved, wasting away and almost fading away,
unless you quickly come to help me. ..... Ask the messenger what
I did after I wrote this letter: there and then I threw myself onto
the bed out of impatience. Farewell.

38a
<<MAN>> With these words I am compelled to disclose the burning of
my mind,
Which gnaws at my mind and scorches the secrets of my heart,
Just as one parched by the heat of the sun seeks water,a
So now do I, breathless, long to touch your breast and your
very self.b
5 Now I shall close, signing this off with a seal.

38b
<<WOMAN>> Whether you wish it or not, in my heart I shall remain faithful to
you.
May the Ruler of Heaven mediate here between us,

38a-c. a) quos MS, Könsgen, p. 65. Isidore relates latex (pl. latices) to water
which hides (lateat) in the veins of the earth, Etymologiae 13.20.4;
cf. V 26 and Psalm 41.2. b) temet Könsgen-Schaller] tumet MS. c) cf.
M 3. d) Ovid, Amores 1.6.42. e) cf. V 2.
244 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Sit socius fideic que constat amore duali

Hos versus scribo tibi quos carissime dono
5 In quis perpendas quod sum tibi corde fidelis
Namque fides vera repetit bene facta priora.
His autem demptis datur hec pariter quoque ventisd
Ergo quicquid amet hec nobis semper inundet
Alma dei dextra te protegat intus et extra.

38c
<<V>> Vite causa mei, tu clemens esto fideli
Cuncta mee vite quoniam spes permanet in te.
Diligo te tantum non possum dicere quantum
Hec michi lux nox est, sine te michi vivere mors este
5 Sic valeas vivas sic cuncta nocentia vincas,
Ut volo ceu posco ceu totis viribus opto.

39
<<V>> Dilecte sue super mel et favum dulci:a si quid dulcedinis ac-
cedere potest ei que plene totam possidet.
Tu mea vita es, tu meum desiderium es. Vale.

40
<<V>> Amice nobili ac multum amabili: precor mecum sis stabilis,
ut ego tecum volo.
Tu mecum esto, meus animus esto, meum gaudium esto. Vale
ceraso pulcrior et dulcior.

41
<<V>> Soli in quam mens et oculus inreflexos habet intuitus: quic-
quid meus tota animi et corporis directione valet conatus.

39. a) M 11 note a.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 245

May He accompany our faith,c which stands firm in mutual

love.
These verses which I give to you, dearest, I write
5 So you may perceive that in my heart I am faithful to you,
For true faith rightly looks back to previous actions.
But if these are removed, this faith is equally given to the
winds.d
Therefore may whatever faith loves always flow over us.
And may the nurturing right hand of God protect you within
and without.

38c
<<MAN>> My reason for living: be kind to your faithful one,
Since all hope in my life resides in you.
I cannot say how much I love you.
Without you this light is night to me, and to live is death.e
5 May you be well, live, and overcome all harm
As much as I wish, ask, and pray with all my strength.

39
<<MAN>> To his beloved, sweeter than honey and the honey-
comb:a if anything at all sweet can come close to the one who pos-
sesses all sweetness in full.
You are my life, you are my desire. Farewell.

40
<<MAN>> To a noble and very lovable friend: I beg you, be stead-
fast with me, as I want to be with you.
Be with me, be my spirit, be my joy. Farewell, sweeter and more
beautiful than the cherry.

41
<<MAN>> To the only one on whom my mind and my eyes hold
their undeflected gaze: whatever the effort and application of my
entire spirit and body can manage.
246 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Ego preceptum in te non habeo, fac quod vis. Aliquid scribe

duo saltem verba si potes. Vale.

42
<<V>> Amate et semper amandea solitarius in tectob merens et
curis estuans: salutem quam velim tecum habere, et te sine me
non habere.
..... Talis opposicio non amantis est, sed recedere volentis, oc-
casiones frigidas querentis. Non olim in me talis eras, amiciciam
ad calculum non vocabas.c Ego duricia tecum nequeo contendere,
nimis enim in te mollis sum; meas accipe litteras, que tuas michi
mittere gravaris. Dic ergo dulcissima quousque torquebor,
quousque flammis estuantibus interius ardebo, et nullo dulcissimi
sermonis tui refrigerio eas levabo? Multa dicenda supersunt. De
die in diem magis in amore tuo ferveo, et tu frigescis. ..... Nil
celes, nude dicas. Vale.

43
V Lilio suo, non illi lilio quod marcescit, sed quod odorem mutare
nescit, cor eius: quantum tota vi corporis et animi valet.
Sine dubio quicquid est suavitatis, in te natura transfudit, quia
quocumque me verto nusquam aliquid suave nisi te solam repe-
rio. Te ergo pre animo habens vivo, sencio, discerno, iocundor,
omnium laborum obliviscor, ad omnia sum negocia fortior. In te
igitur qui valeo, perpetuam tibi valitudinem opto vehementer.
Vale, in animo me semper habe.

44
<<V>> Integro gaudio suo quo dum careo vere exul et infortuna-
tus sum: feliciter vivere, summe gaudere, si fas est ut sine me
gaudeas.
Vale deum testor quod istud vale oculis stillantibus protuli.

42. a) cf. V 12. b) Psalm 101.8: “I stay awake and have been made like
a sparrow alone on the roof.” c) Cicero, Laelius 58.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 247

I have no instructions for you, do what you wish. Write anything,

even a couple of words, if you can. Farewell.

42
<<MAN>> To one loved and forever to be loved,a he “who grieves
alone on the roof”b and is consumed with troubles: well-being,
which I want to have with you, and do not want you to have with-
out me.
..... Such contentiousness is not that of a lover, but of one want-
ing to withdraw, of one looking for opportunities to be cold. Once
you were not like this with me, you used not to call friendship to
account.c I cannot contend with you in harshness, for I am too soft
towards you. Take my letter, you who are unwilling to send me
yours. So tell me, sweetest, for how long shall I be tortured, for
how long shall I burn inside with blazing flames and not extinguish
them with the refreshment of your sweetest speech? Much still re-
mains to be said. Day after day I burn more for your love, while
you grow cold. ..... Conceal nothing and speak openly. Farewell.

43
MAN To his lily, not the lily that withers but one that knows not how
to change its scent, her heart: as much as he can manage with all
the strength of his body and spirit.
Without doubt, nature has poured into you whatever is delight-
ful, for wherever I turn, I find nothing of delight apart from you
alone. And so, holding you before my spirit, I live, I feel, I observe,
I enjoy, I forget all toils, and I am stronger in all my affairs. There-
fore I who keep well through you, fervently pray for perpetual well-
being for you. Farewell, and keep me in your heart always.

44
<MAN> To his entire joy, whose absence truly leaves me an exile
and wretched: may you live happily and enjoy fully—if it is right for
you to enjoy without me.
Farewell. God is my witness that I expressed this farewell
through tear-filled eyes.
248 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

45
a
M Cedrine domui sue, eburnea statua, supra quam domus inniti-
tur tota:b nivis albedinem, lune fulgorem, solis candorem, stel-
larum splendorem, rosarum odorem, lilii pulcritudinem,
balsamique suavitatem, terre fertilitatem, celi serenitatem, et
quicquid in eorum dulcedinis comprehenditur ambitu.
Cithara cum timpano tibi serviat dulciter modulando. Si volun-
tatem meam amantissime consequeretur effectus, quicquid nunc
per litteras, totum tecum per corporalem conferrem presen-
ciam. ..... Te discedente tecum discessi spiritu et mente, nec aliud
relictum fuit patrie, nisi corpus stolidum et inutile, et quantum
longa tue discessionis absencia me cruciarit, illius solummodo
novit sciencia qui cuiusque cordis rimatur secreta. Ut enim arden-
tis tempore Syrii areac siciens imbrem expectat e celo,c sic mens
mea te desiderat merens et anxia. Nunc sit deo in celis gloria,
michique gaudium in terra,d quod te quem super omnes diligo, vi-
vere scio et valere. Nam quociens fortuna deposuit, tue dulcedinis
consolacio me restituit. Tu vadis in rotis virtutum,e ideo michi
longe preciosior es super aurum et topazium.f Non enim me magis
possum negare tibi, quam Biblis Cauno, aut Oenone Paridi, vel Bri-
seis Achilli.g ..... Quid plura? Tot mando tibi gaudia, quot habuit
Antiphila recepto suo Clinia.h Ne tardes venire; quanto cicius
veneris, tanto cicius invenies unde gaudebis. Vivas, valeas, ut
Helye tempora cernas.i (f. 162r)

46
V Desideratissime spei et tali bono, quo habito ulterius nichil
desiderari possit: opto ut ego illi bono incorporari merear, quod
cum tanta desidero impatiencia, quanta vix dici vel credi potest.

45. a) 2 Kings 7.2; 1 Chronicles 17.1 etc. b) cf. Song of Songs 7.4; Ju-
dith 16.29. c) area Könsgen, cf. Joel 1.20] ardea MS. d) cf. Luke
2.14. e) Könsgen (p. 23 n.9) suggests an allusion to Jerome, Ep.
52.13.3, in which the Ciceronian virtues of prudence, justice, mod-
eration and courage are four wheels of the chariot of Christ. f) Psalm
118.127. g) Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.454–665; Heroides, 5 and 3. h)
Clinia Könsgen (a character with Antiphila in Terence, Heautontimo-
rumenos)] oluna MS. i) cf. Malachi 4.5; Ecclesiasticus 48.11.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 249

45
a
WOMAN To the house of cedar, the ivory statue on which the whole
house rests:b the whiteness of snow, the gleam of the moon, the
brightness of the sun, the splendor of the stars, the scent of roses,
the beauty of lilies and the pleasantness of balsam, the fertility of
the earth, the serenity of the sky, and whatever sweetness is con-
tained within their compass.
Let the harp be at your service with the sweetly beating tam-
bourine. If the result followed my wish, most beloved, all that I
now convey by letter I would discuss with you in person. ..... After
you left, I left with you in spirit and mind, and there was nothing
left at home, except my stupid and useless body; and just how ex-
cruciating your long absence since you left has been for me is
known only to the one who looks into the secrets of everyone’s
heart. For just as the thirsty landc of Syria longs during summer for
rain from the sky, so does my mind, grieving and troubled, desire
you. But glory to God in heaven and joy for me on earth,d for now
I know that you whom I love more than any one are alive and well.
For every time I am struck down by fortune, the solace of your
sweetness restores me. You travel with the wheels of the virtues,e
and for this reason you are far more precious to me than gold or
topaz.f For I cannot deny myself to you any more than Byblis could
to Caunus, or Oenone to Paris, or Briseis to Achilles.g ..... What
more? I send you as many joys as Antiphila had when she wel-
comed back Clinia.h Do not delay in coming; the quicker you
come, the quicker you will find cause for joy. Live and be well, that
you may see the time of Elijah.i

46
MAN To my most desired hope and good so great that, once at-
tained, nothing else can be desired: I pray that I may deserve to
be incorporated into that good which I desire with an impatience
such as can scarcely be expressed or believed.
250 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Ego anime mi quantum litteris tuis delecter, quanta animi ex-

ultacione tuo in me amori velim occurrere, potius opere volo ex-
hibere, quam verbis demonstrare. Videre te nimis desidero, pre
desiderio tabesco. Vale anima mea formosa mea,a omne gaudium
meum, qua nulla pulcrior meo iudicio, nulla melior.

47
<V> Anime qua sub celo terra nichil protulit candidius, ille om-
nium hominum infelicissimus: ita omnem felicitatem sicut ipse
qui optat, omni caret felicitate.
O noctem infaustam, o dormitationem odiosam, o execrabilem
desidiam meam. Vale sola refectio mea, solus cibus meus, unica
quies mea; ubicumque ego sum, tu veraciter es.

48
M Amans amanti: amoris viriditatem.
Nemo debet vivere, nec in bono crescere, qui nescit diligere, et
amores regere. Quid pluribus opus est verbis? Igne amoris tui suc-
censa, te diligere volo per secula. Vale unica salus mea, et solum
in mundo quod amem.

49
<M> Rose immarcessibili beatudinis flore vernanti illa que te super
omnes homines diligit: florendo crescere, et crescendo florere.
Nosti o maxima pars anime meea multos multis se ex causis
diligere, sed nullam eorum tam firmam fore amiciciam quam que
ex probitate atque virtute,b et ex intima dilectione proveniat. Nam
qui ob divicias vel voluptates sese diligere videntur,c eorum nullo-

46. a) Song of Songs 2.10. There may be a deliberate linking of animus

(spirit) and anima (soul) to describe her.
49. a) Baudri of Bourgueil, Carmina 6.16. b) Cicero, Laelius 20. c) Ci-
cero, De officiis 3.43; Laelius 20. d) Boethius, De Arithmetica, Praef.
3.8. e) Persius, Satires 1.106. The image of “nibbled nails” contrasts
with the previous image of someone “learned to his finger-nails.” f)
Jerome, Ep. 48.3 or 125.6. g) cf. Boethius, Consolation of Philoso-
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 251

Just how much, my spirit, I am gladdened by your letter and

with how much exultation of spirit I would like to meet your love
for me, I would rather show through action than describe in words.
I desire very much to see you and am wasting away because of
this desire. Farewell, my soul, my beautiful one,a my every joy,
than whom in my opinion no woman is more beautiful, no woman
better.

47
<MAN> To his soul, brighter than anything which the earth has pro-
duced under the sun, he who is the unhappiest of all men: as
much total happiness as he who makes this wish lacks all happi-
ness.
Unlucky night, hateful sleep, cursed idleness of mine. Farewell,
my only restoration, my only food, my one peace; wherever I am,
truthfully you are.

48
WOMAN A lover to lover: the freshness of love.
No one ought to live, or grow in good, who does not know how
to love, and rule his desires. What need is there for more words?
Aflame with the fire of desire for you, I want to love you forever.
Farewell, my one salvation and all that I love in the world.

49
<WOMAN> To the rose that does not wither, blooming with the
flower of blessedness, she who loves you above all men: may you
grow as you flourish and flourish as you grow.
You know, greatest part of my soul,a that many people love each
other for many reasons, but no friendship of theirs will be as con-
stant as that which stems from integrity and virtue,b and from deep
love. For I do not consider the friendship of those who seem to

phy, Proem. 1.2. h) invenit erga MS] Könsgen (p. 66) inserts <inpulit>
before invenit and changes erga to ergo. It is suggested here that in-
pulit should be inserted before licet and that it is not necessary to
change erga to ergo. The sentence brings together three different
kinds of love (caritas, dilectio, amor), to describe her friendship (am-
icicia) for her teacher. i) Virgil, Aeneid 1.233.
252 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

modo diuturnam arbitror amiciciam, cum res ipse propter quas

diligunt, nullam videantur diuturnitatem habere. Quo fit, diviciis
vel voluptate deficientibus eorum eciam deficiat simul et dilectio,
qui non propter se res sed se propter res dilexerunt.
Sed mea dilectio, pacto longe tibi alio sociata est. Nec enim me
ignava opum pondera, quibus nichil est ad nefas instructius, cum
habendi sitis incanduit,d te diligere compulerunt, sed sola excellen-
tissima virtus, penes quam omnis honestatis, tociusque prosperi-
tatis causa consistit. Illa quidem est que sibi sufficiens, nullius
indiga, cupiditates omnes refrenat, amores reprimit, gaudia tem-
perat, dolores extirpat; que cuncta apta, cuncta placentia, cuncta jo-
cundissima sumministrat nichilque se melius reperire valet. Habeo
sane repertum in te, unde te diligam, summum scilicet atque om-
nium prestantissimum bonum. Quod cum constet esse eternum, est
michi causa procul dubio, qua eterno maneas in mei dilectione.
Crede igitur michi o desiderabilis non opes non dignitates non
omnia que sectatores huius seculi concupiscunt, poterunt me a tui
dilectione secernere. Non erit vere ulla dies qua mei meminisse
valeam, que sine tui memoria possit a me transduci. Quin a te illud
idem sperem, nullo me scias scrupulo permoveri.
Magne temeritatis est litteratorie tibi verba dirigere, quia cuique
litteratissimo et ad unguem usque perducto, cui omnis disposicio
artium per inveterata incrementa affectionum transivit in habitum,
non sufficit tam floridum eloquencie vultum depingere, ut iure
tanti magistri mereatur conspectui apparere, nedum michi que vix
videor disposita ad queque levia, que demorsos ungues non sapi-
unt, nec pluteum cadunt:e magistro inquam tanto, magistro vir-
tutibus, magistro moribus, cui jure cedit francigena cervicositas,
et simul assurgit tocius mundi superciliositas, quilibet compositus
qui sibi videtur sciolus,f suo prorsus judicio fiet elinguis et mutus.g
Unde sit michi credula benignitas tua, nisi scirem vere dilectio-
nis indefectam amiciciam tibi insitam esse, impolitas tam rudis stili
litteras non tibi mittere presumerem. Sed quia indefective caritatis
dulcedinisque stimulus in tue dilectionis amorem me, licet eciam
tibi foret ingratum, quod absit <inpulit>, invenit ergah te mee dilec-
tionis fervens affectio, ut nunquam potest aliqua interveniente mo-
lestia perfecta excludi devocio. Qua de re si mea voluntas expleri
potuisset, essent profecto iste pluresque littere tibi directe, ut tibi
tantum scriberem si sic mea res exigeret, nec una die curarem
stilum feriatum habere, quamvis te pigeat michi scribere.
Certe famem meam litterarum tuarum incepcione suscitasti,
non pleniter adhuc exsaciasti. Cum enim more meo, intimo ami-
corum meorum tabescam desiderio, multum dolorem meum re-
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 253

love each other for riches and pleasuresc to be durable at all, since
the very things on which they base their love seem to have no dura-
bility. Consequently, when their riches or pleasure runs out, so too
at the same time love may fail, since they loved these things not
because of each other but each other because of these things.
But my love is united with you by a completely different pact.
And the useless burdens of wealth, more conducive to wrongdo-
ing than anything when the thirst for possession begins to glow,d
did not compel me to love you—only the highest virtue, in which
lies the root of all honors and every success. Indeed, it is this
virtue which is self-sufficient and in need of nothing else, which
restrains passion, keeps desires in check, moderates joys and
eradicates sorrows; which provides everything proper, everything
pleasing, everything delightful; and than which nothing better can
be found. Surely I have discovered in you—and thus I love you—
undoubtedly the greatest and most outstanding good of all. Since
it is established that this is eternal, it is for me the proof beyond
doubt that you will remain in my love for eternity. Therefore be-
lieve me, desirable one, that neither wealth, distinctions, nor all
the things that devotees of this world lust after, will be able to
sever me from love for you. Truly there will never be a day in which
I would be able to think of myself and let it pass without thinking
of you. Know that I am not concerned by any doubt that I may
hope the same thing from you.
It is very rash of me to send studied phrases to you, because
even someone learned right down to his fingertips, who has trans-
formed every artistic arrangement into habit through long-estab-
lished practice, would not be capable of painting a portrait of
eloquence florid enough to justly deserve being seen by so great a
teacher (a teacher so great, I declare, a teacher of virtue, a teacher
of character, to whom French pigheadedness rightly yields and for
whom at the same time the haughtiness of the whole world rises in
respect, that anyone who considers himself even slightly learnedf
would be rendered completely speechless and muteg by his own
judgement), much less myself, who hardly seem adept at trifles
“which neither taste of nibbled nails nor bang the desk.”e
And so may your generosity trust me: unless I knew the unfailing
friendship of true love to be implanted in you, I would not presume
to send you inelegant letters of such unrefined style. But because
the spur of tireless care and sweetness has driven me into a pas-
sion for loving you, although it might be unpleasing for you (heaven
254 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

frigeres, si eloquio prolixiore usus fuisses. Hoc tamen tantillum

caritative salutacionis compendium, accipio quasi angelum, atque
per horas singulas legens et relegens. Interdum eciam vice tua de-
osculans, operam do ut ferventissime aviditati mee satisfaciam.
Nichil enim hac in vita michi delectabilius esse existimes quam te
loqui, vel scribere, aut audire loquentem. Heret quippe cordi meo
illa tue scriptionis mellita (f. 162v) dulcedo, que dum recolo a tris-
ticia ad gaudium, a merore vero ad hylaritatem deducit. Quo
verius deus scit nichil credi potest. Sed si forte minime credis, erit
ut estimo dies illa si deo placuerit, qua nichil verius te audivisse
fatebere. Cesset iam exclamacio, quia reddita est racio, qualiter
sit tenenda nostri dilectio.

versus Sicut in axe poli nil est equabile soli

Sic tibi consimilis meta non clauditur orbis.i
Dum vivis valeas, post mortem gaudia sumas.

Ne amplius te fatigem sermone impexo, esto cure salvatori al-

tissimo; vale qui in tui recordacione omnes michi molestias ab-
stergis. Vale sine termino.

50
V Soli inter omnes etatis nostre puellas philosophie discipule, soli
in quam omnes virtutum multiplicium dotes integre fortuna con-
clusit, soli speciose, soli graciose, ille qui tuo munere etheriis
auris vescitur,a ille qui tunc solum vivit, cum tue certus est gracie:

50. a) Virgil, Aeneid 1.546. b) The man’s first use of dilectio in the cor-
respondence. c) cf. 1 Corinthians 13.4–5. d) Ovid, Ponticae 2.3.10.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 255

forbid), the ardent feeling of my love for youh finds that complete
devotion can never be hindered by any intervening difficulty. There-
fore, if my will could have been fulfilled, certainly that letter and
more would have been sent to you, so that I would write to you only
if my situation demanded, nor would I care to give my pen a single
day’s holiday, even though it might annoy you to write to me.
At the beginning, you certainly aroused my hunger for your let-
ters, and you have not yet fully satisfied it. For when, as is usual,
I pine deep inside with longing for my friends, you could have re-
lieved much sorrow if you had delivered a longer speech. Never-
theless I accept this tiny abridgment of a caring greeting as if it
were an angel, reading and re-reading it every single hour. Some-
times even kissing it in place of you, I apply myself to satisfying
my intense longing. For you might think that there is nothing in
this life more delightful to me than to speak or write to you or to
hear you speak—indeed, that honey-like sweetness of your writing
clings to my heart and, whenever I think about it, leads me from
sorrow to joy and even from grief to cheerfulness. God knows,
nothing can be considered more true. Perhaps you scarcely be-
lieve it, but I believe the day will come—if it pleases God—when
you will admit that you have never heard anything more true. But
let my declaration come to an end, for I have given an account of
how our love should be maintained.

Just as in the axis of the pole nothing is equal to the suni

So the ends of the earth do not enclose anything like you.
While you live, may you fare well, and after death taste joy.

Lest I wear you out any more with my unkempt words, may you be
in the care of the supreme Savior; farewell, you who wipe away all
troubles from me whenever I think of you. Farewell without end.

50
MAN To the only disciple of philosophy among all the young
women of our age, the only one on whom fortune has completely
bestowed all the gifts of the manifold virtues, the only attractive
one, the only gracious one, he who through your gift is nourished
by the upper air,a he who lives only when he is sure of your favor:
256 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

in ulteriora semper profectum, si proficere potest que ad sum-

mum pervenit.
..... Tuum admiror ingenium, que tam subtiliter de amicicie leg-
ibus argumentaris ut non Tullium legisse, sed ipsi Tullio precepta
dedisse videaris. Ut ergo ad respondendum veniam si responsio
jure vocari potest, ubi nichil par redditur, ut meo modo respon-
deam: verum dicis o omnium mulierum dulcissima, quod vere
talis dilectiob nos non colligavit, qualis solet colligare qui sua tan-
tum querunt,c qui amiciciam questum faciunt, quorum fides cum
fortuna stat et cadit,d qui virtutem sui ipsius precium non putant,
qui amiciciam ad calculum vocant,e qui id quod ad se rediturum
sit,f sollicitis articulis supputant,g quibus demum sine lucro nichil
dulce est.h
Nos vere alio pacto, ne dixerim fortuna, immo deusi coniunxit;
ego te inter multa miliaj ob innumeras virtutes tuas elegi: nullum
veraciter ob aliud commodum, nisi ut in te quiescerem, nisi ut om-
nium miseriarum michi lenimen esses, ut de terrenis bonis om-
nibus, sola tua venustas me reficeret et omnium dolorum oblivisci
faceret. Tu michi in fame saturitas, tu in siti refectio, tu in lassitu-
dine quies, tu in frigore calor, tu in calore umbraculum, tu demum
in omni intemperie saluberrima michi et vera temperies.
Tu eciam me ob aliquam fortasse bonam opinionem quam de
me habuisti, me in tuam noticiam vocare dignata es. Tibi multis
modis impar sum, et ut verius dicam omnibus modis impar sum,
quia in hoc eciam me excedis, ubi ego videbar excedere. Inge-
nium tuum, facundia tua, ultra etatem et sexum tuum iam virile in
robur se incipit extendere. Quid humilitas, quid omnibus con-
formis affabilitas tua! Quid in tanta dignitate admirabilis tempe-
rancia tua! Nonne te super omnes magnificant, nonne te in
excelso collocant? ut inde quasi de candelabro luceas et omnibus
spectabilis fias?k Ego credo et confidenter affirmo quod nemo sit
mortalium non cognatus non amicus, quem michi anteponas, et
ut audacius dicam quem michi conferas. Non enim plumbeus
sum,l non stipes sum, non corneum rostrumm habeo, ut acute non
olfaciam, ubi verus amor sit, et quis me ex corde diligat. Vale que

e) Cicero, Laelius 58. f) Ovid, Ponticae 2.13.17–18. g) supputant

Könsgen; cf. Ovid, Ponticae 2.3.18] suppetant MS. h) Terence,
Heautontimorumenos 234. i) Matthew 19.6; Mark 10.9. j) Song of
Songs 5.10. k) Matthew 5.15. l) Terence, Heautontimoruemos 877.
m) Corneum Könsgen] cornicum MS. Literally, “I have no horny
beak,” meaning that he is not so insensitive that he cannot sense
where true love is.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 257

may you advance ever further—if she who has reached the sum-
mit can advance any further.
. . . .. I admire your talent, you who discuss the rules of friend-
ship so subtly that you seem not to have read Tully but to have
given those precepts to Tully himself! Therefore, so that I may
come to the reply, if it can rightly be called a reply when nothing
equal is given back, I shall reply in my own manner. What you say
is true, sweetest of all women, that truly such a loveb does not
bind us as often binds those who seek only their own interests,c
who make friendship a source of profit, whose loyalty stands firm
or collapses with their fortunes,d who do not consider virtue to be
of value for its own sake,e who call friendship to account,f those
who with busy fingers keep count of what they ought to get back,g
for whom indeed nothing is sweet without profit.h
Truly we have been joined—I would not say by fortune but
rather by Godi—under a different agreement. I chose you among
many thousandsj because of your countless virtues: truthfully for
no other benefit than that I might rest in you, or that you might
lighten all my troubles, or that of all the good things in the world
only your charm might restore me and make me forget all sorrows.
You are my fill when hungry, my refreshment when thirsty, my rest
when weary, my warmth when cold, my shade when hot, indeed
in every storm you are my most wholesome and true calm.
Perhaps because of some good report you heard about me, you
also thought fit to invite me to make your acquaintance. I am in-
ferior to you in many ways, or to speak more truthfully, I am infe-
rior in every way, because you surpass me even where I seemed
to surpass you. Your talent, your command of language, beyond
your years and sex, is now beginning to extend itself into manly
strength. What humility, what affability you accord to everyone!
What admirable moderation with such dignity! Do not people es-
teem you more than everybody else, do they not set you up on
high, so that from there you can shine forth like a lamp and be ob-
served by all?k
I believe and confidently assert that there is no mortal, no rel-
ative, no friend whom you would prefer to me, or to speak more
boldly, whom you would compare with me. For I am not leaden,l I
am not a blockhead, I am not so hard-nosedm that I cannot scent
acutely where true love exists and who loves me from the heart.
Farewell, you who make me fare well, and in whatever way I stand
258 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

me valere facis, et quomodo in gracia tua sim, certum me fac,

quia tua gracia mea sola festivitas est.

51
V Anime sue toti et integro <gaudio>:a diem hanc felicem, et omne
tempus. Manda michi dulcissima quomodo te habeas quia sanus
esse non potero, nisi tua valitudo causam michi sanitatis prebeat.
Vale feliciter, donec iuga montis amabit aper.b

52
<V> Lilio ligustrum: florere perpetuum.
Quia mandatum domini non observamus, nisi dilectionem ad
invicem habeamus, oportet nos divine scripture obedire.a Vale,
donec tua valitudo michi tedio sit.

53
M Sapiencie lumine per nobilitatis insignia mirabiliter prefulgenti,a
candentis lilii et vernantis rose similitudinem pretendenti, tocius
corporis juvenili flore vigenti, tocius expers pericie: omnia que
prospiciunt ad vere dilectionis profectum.
De favo sapiencie si michi stillaret guttula scibilitatis,b aliqua
olenti nectare cum omni mentis conamine, alme dilectioni tue lit-
terarum notulis conarer depingere. Ergo in omni latinitate non est
sermo inventus qui aperte loquatur erga te quam sit animus meus
intentus, quia deo teste cum sublimi et precipua dilectione te
diligo. Unde non est nec erit res vel sors que tuo amore me sepa-
ret nisi sola mors. Quapropter quotidianum michi inest
desiderium et optio, ut presentie tue reficiar refrigerio, et dies
michi mensis, septimana quoque videbitur annus, donec dulcis-
simus tue dilectionis appareat aspectus. ..... Cordi meo surgit et
virescit dolor tam magnus, ut in eius descriptione saltem nec in-

51. a) Könsgen (p. 30) notes that integro could be a mistake for integre,
but opts for adding gaudio by analogy with V 2, 89 and 105. b) Vir-
gil, Eclogues 5.76.
52. a) John 13.34.
53. a) Wisdom 6.23. b) cf. Abelard, Dialectica 1.2.3, ed. De Rijk, p. 85.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 259

in your favor, make me certain, for your favor is my only enjoy-

ment.

51
MAN To his whole soul and undivided joy:a may this day and every
season be happy.
Write to me, sweetest, about how you are, because I shall not
be able to be healthy unless your well-being provides a reason for
my health. Fare well and be happy, for as long as the wild boar
loves the mountain tops.b

52
<MAN> To the lily, the privet: may you flourish forever.
Given that we do not keep the Lord’s commandment unless we
love each other, it behoves us to obey divine scripture.a Farewell,
until your well-being becomes tedious to me.

53
WOMAN To one shining wonderfully with the light of wisdoma
through the signs of his nobility, spreading out in the likeness of
the radiant lily and the blooming rose, flourishing with the youth-
ful flower of his whole body, she who is totally devoid of skill: all
things that provide for the advance of true love.
If a droplet of knowabilityb trickled down to me from the hon-
eycomb of wisdom, I would try with every effort of my mind to por-
tray in the jottings of my letter various things with a fragrant nectar
for your nourishing love. But throughout all Latinity, no phrase has
yet been found that speaks clearly about how intent on you is my
spirit, for God is my witness that I love you with a sublime and ex-
ceptional love. And so there is not nor ever will be any event or cir-
cumstance, except only death, that will separate me from your
love. For this reason every day there is in me the desire and wish
that I may be restored by your soothing presence, and one day will
seem a month to me and a week a year until that sweetest vision
of your love appears. ..... So much pain sprouts and thrives in my
heart that not even a whole year would suffice for its description.
260 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

teger sufficiat annus. Corpus autem meum contristatum est, ani-

mus a solita hilaritate mutatus. Vale. (f. 163r)

54
V Dilecte et semper diligende fidelissimus eius: ut amor noster
finem non senciat et semper in melius convalescat.
Si tu o omnium rerum dulcissima de fide singularisa amici tui
dubitares vel si ego de tua dilectione non essem certissimus, tunc
ad commendacionem mutui amoris longiores littere querende,
plura argumenta in patrocinium vocanda essent. Nunc quia sic
amor invaluit, ut per se sine adiumento luceat, verbis minime
opus est, quia in rebus abundantes sumus. Verumtamen non ab-
surdum est si aliquando vel sic nos invicem visitemus et corpo-
ralis presencie littera locum suppleat, cum edax malorum
hominum invidia, nos pro libito nostro iungi non patitur. Quid
multa? sicut cum multis suspiriis frequenter exopto, deus om-
nipotens te michi incolumem diu conservet. ..... Abire permitta-
mus, quos retinere non possumus. Bonum inde consilium erit.

55
M Viventium carissimo, et super vitam diligendo, intime devocio-
nis amica: queque optima ex toto corde et anima.
Non te ignorare credo o meum dulce lumen quod nunquam su-
perpositi cineres suffocant sopitum ignem,a et si prohibent lucere,
tamen non vetabunt semper ardere. Ita nulla extrinsecus acci-
dentia aliqua racione poterunt obsolere tui memoriale, quod cordi
meo adnexui aureo vinculamine. Quid ultra? Deum enim testem
habeo, quod vera et sincera dilectione te diligo. Vale maxima dul-
cedo mea.

56
V Super omne quod desiderari potest desiderabili unanimis ami-
cus: quicquid boni singulariter amantibus servatum est.

54. a) cf. V 2, 4, 56.

55. a) Virgil, Aeneid 8.410.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 261

My body too is sad, my spirit transformed from its usual cheerful-

ness. Farewell.

54
MAN To one loved and always to be loved, her most faithful: may
our love not know an end and always recover for the better.
If you, sweetest of all things, doubted the faith of your particu-
lara friend, or if I were not absolutely certain of your love, then a
longer letter commending mutual love would be required, and
more arguments in its defense called for. But now that our love
has grown so strong that it shines forth by itself without help,
there is little need for words because we are overflowing with what
is real. Nevertheless it is not unreasonable if sometimes or now for
example, we alternate between visiting each other and having a
letter take the place of physical presence, when the consuming
envy of evil men does not allow us to be united according to our
desire. What more? Just as I often wish with many sighs, may
almighty God keep you safe for me for a long time. ..... Let them
go away, those whom we cannot hold back. It will be good advice.

55
WOMAN To the dearest of all living things, to be loved more than life
itself, a deeply devoted friend: whatever is best from all my heart
and soul.
I believe that you are not unaware, my sweet light, that ashes
placed on a sleeping fire never put it outa and that, even if they
prevent it from giving off light, they cannot keep it from burning
for ever. And so not for any reason will external events be able to
wipe out the thought of you, which I have bound to my heart with
a chain of gold. What else? God is my witness that I love you with
a true and sincere love. Farewell, my greatest sweetness.

56
MAN To one desirable over everything that can be desired, a friend
of one mind with you: whatever good that is reserved specifically
for lovers.
262 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Sermo tuus super mel dulcisa sincerissime fidei planissime

testis est. Quid dicam tibi dubius sum, quia tantum te amo quod
amorem exprimere prout se habet non valeo. Ad hoc o summa
vite mee requies, ad hoc inquam res devenit, ut excellentissimis
meritis tuis nomen invenire non possim. Cum vales, nichil est
quod me contristare possit. Cum egrotas, nichil est quod
delectare possit. Si ergo vis dilecto tuo integre consulere, sana
esto, tunc et ego sanus ero. Scit deus quem nichil latere potest
quod cordi meo ita infra es, ut omnis cogitacio mea in te directa
sit. Vale dulcissima non mulierum, immo generaliter omnium
rerum.

57
M Pulcherrimo ornamento suo, virtute, non forma eius amica:
summe suavitatis plenitudinem.
Multum uti ipse nosti iam temporis fluxit, in quo nulla nos proh
dolor familiaris confabulacio iunxit; scias tamen, quamvis tua
presencia ad libitum meum uti nequeam, tamen nulla re impedi-
ente, visibus internis te non cesso respicere, tuamque salutem et
prosperitatem diligere. Vale dilectissime, et me meo erga te amore
dilige.

58
<M> Amico ut reor, illa olim pre ceteris in verbis dilecta, que im-
merito nunc caret amoris privilegio: quod nec oculus visu per-
cepit, nec in interiora cordis pertransiit.a
Valete,b onus meum propensius alleviate.

56. a) Ecclesiasticus 24.27.

58. a) 1 Cor 2.9. b) Valete, the formal plural (as in 36), but never used
previously by the woman, who always uses the intimate singular,
Vale. A serious rift has taken place between letters 57 and 58.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 263

Your speech, sweeter than honey,a is the clearest proof of your

sincerest faith. I am not sure what I should say to you, because I
love you so much that I cannot manage to express the extent of
my love. The matter has come to such a point, greatest repose of
my life, to such a point, I declare, that I cannot even find words
for your outstanding virtues. When you are well, there is nothing
that can make me sad. When you are ill, there is nothing that can
make me happy. If therefore you wish to take full care of your
beloved, keep well, and then I shall be well too. God, from whom
nothing can be hidden, knows that you are so deep within my
heart that my every thought is directed to you. Farewell, sweetest
not of all women, but rather of all things in general.

57
WOMAN To her most beautiful ornament, in virtue not appearance,
his friend: the fullness of greatest delight.
As you yourself know, much time has passed since we—sad to
say—were last joined by any intimate conversation. Yet know that
even though I am unable to enjoy your company as much as I
would like, nothing can stop me from constantly seeing you with
my mind’s eye and yearning for your health and prosperity.
Farewell, most beloved, and love me with the love I have for you.

58
<WOMAN> To a friend, so I believe, she who was once loved above
all others with words, now unjustly deprived of the privilege of
love: that which neither the eye has seen by sight nor has pierced
the inside of the heart.a
Sir, farewell.b Lighten my burden more readily.
264 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

59
V Dilectissime sue supra omne quod est vel esse potest diligende:
continuam salutem, et in omnibus bonis affluentissimos profec-
tus.
Causa necessaria obstitit, que meo desiderio pedem sinistrum
opposuit.a Ego nocens sum qui te peccare coegi.

60
M Hucusque fideliter adamato postmodum vinculo egri amoris
non diligendo: tamen stabilitum vadimonium dilectionis et fidei.a
Magno caritatis pignore me tibi intimaveram quamdiu vera
dilectio tua firma in radice pendebat; nam et omnem spem meam
quasi turrim invictamb in te fundaveram. Nosti quoque si tantum
dignaris, quod nunquam fui erga te duplici animo, nec esse volo.
Nunc cogita et recogita hec et his similia. Ego vere semper pro te
supportavi plurima satis plene et perfecte, nunquam possum
scribere quam fortiter quam acriter te cepi diligere. Si necesse
erat rumpi fedusc quod pepigeramus, quamvis in se multum amar-
itudinis contineat, tamen altera iam vice non frangetur. Clamor
tuus recedat a me, verba tua ultra non audiam.d Nam unde michi
profutura multa speravi bona, inde lacrimabilia cordis creverunt
suspiria.
Omnipotens deus qui neminem vult perire qui supra paternum
amorem diligit peccatores, illuminet cor tuum gracie sue splen-
dore, et reducat ad viam salutis, ut cognoscas que sit voluntas
eius beneplacens et perfecta.e Vale, sapiencia et sciencia tua me
decepit,f propterea omnis nostra amodo pereat scriptura.

59. a) Ovid, Ponticae 4.6.7–8.

60. a) Three different notions of love are here arranged in a crescendo:
adamato “to one fallen in love with;” egri amoris “infirm desire” or
“infirm passionate love;” vadimonium dilectionis “guarantee of true
love.” b) Cf. Ps. 60.4 and Cassiodorus, Expositio in Psalmos 60.4,
ed. Adriaen, CCSL 97 (1958): 539. c) on bond or covenant in scrip-
ture, Deuteronomy 5.2 and 29.1. d) Cf. Deuteronomy 18.16 (recall-
ing the covenant made at Horeb). e) Romans 12.2. f) Isaiah 47.10.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 265

59
MAN To his most beloved, to be loved more than everything that is
or can be: continuous well-being and abundant success in every-
thing good.
An unavoidable matter has intervened and put its left foot
against my desire.a I am guilty, I who compelled you to sin.

60
WOMAN To one till now faithfully adored, hereafter not to be loved
with the chain of an ailing passion: the firm guarantee nonetheless
of love and faith.a
I had revealed myself to you with a great pledge of loving care
while your true love was founded on a firm root; for I had placed
all my hope in you, as though you were an invincible tower.b You
also know, if you will only grant this, that I have never been de-
ceitful towards you, nor do I wish to be. Now consider and reflect
on these and other similar matters. I have truly always borne for
you a great many things fully enough and completely, and can
never express how strongly, how intensely I began to love you. If
it was necessary for the bond that we had establishedc to be bro-
ken, even though this might contain much bitterness, at least now
it will not be broken again. Take your complaints away from me, I
will not hear your words any more.d For where I expected many
good things to be of benefit to me, there emerged instead tearful
sighs of the heart.
May almighty God, who wants no one to perish and who loves
sinners with more than paternal love, illuminate your heart with
the splendor of His grace and bring you back to the road to sal-
vation, so that you may understand that His will is favorable and
perfect.e Farewell; your wisdom and knowledge have deceived
me,f and therefore from now on may all our writing cease.
266 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

61
V Domine sue amate et semper amande,a miserrimus amicus
eius, cuius vite et mortis nullum fere discrimen est: velis, nolis, in-
cepte amicicie talem cursum qui ad finem non veniat.
Nescio quod meum peccatumb tam magnum precesserit, ut
tam brevi tempore omnem in me animum misericordie et famil-
iaritatis penitus abicere volueris. Necesse est enim alterum horum
fuisse, ut vel ego nimis in te peccaverim, vel tu parvum antehac
amorem habueris, quem tam facile, tam incuriose abieceris. Ego
nisi diligentius a te sum monitus, nullam (f. 163v) in te culpam
meam recognosco, nisi si culpam vocare vis, miserias suas et anx-
ietates apud eum deplorare, ubi remedium speratur consolacio
expectatur. ..... Non sunt hec dicta amici, non sunt verba eius qui
unquam ex corde benivolus fuerit, sed eius qui occasiones
querit,c eius inquam qui diu expectaverit, ut aliquid ad amoris
scissionem cause invenire potuerit. Quo facto, aut verbo, queso
te, tam contumeliosa verba provocavi? Tu semivivum me in
mediis fluctibusd involvisti, que vulneribus meis nova vulnera in-
flixisti, et dolorem doloribus addidisti. ..... Si me amares, minus lo-
cuta fuisses. Quemvis inter nos constituas judicem, et manifeste
convincam, te plus in me, quam me in te peccasse, et certe
quisquis verba tua diligencius consulit, reperiet ea non esse aman-
tis, sed discidium querentis; nusquam in eis cor molle respicio,
sed pectus durum et amori inexpugnabile adverto.e ..... Verumta-
men o anima mea sicca lacrimas tuas, quod tamen ego meas non
possum. Vale, cum lacrimis tuis scripta recepi, cum lacrimis mea
scripta remitto.

62
M Dilecta dilecto: quicquid beatius apud deum, quicquid hon-
estius atque jocundius apud homines esse potest.
Si inesset michi tanta sermonum facecia, ut verbis tuis pru-
denter respondere valerem, quantocunque decentius possem
libenti animo tibi responderem. At tamen licet satisfacere non

61. a) cf. M 7, V 12, 42, 54. b) cf. V 59. c) cf. V 42. d) Exodus 14.27. e)
Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.766–67.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 267

61
MAN To his lady, loved and always to be loved,a her most miserable
friend, for whom there is scarcely any difference between life and
death: whether you want it or not, a path for the friendship begun
such as may never come to an end.
I do not know what so great sinb of mine preceded, that in such
a short time you could wish to throw away completely all feeling of
compassion and intimacy for me. For either one or the other of
these must have been the case: that I have sinned against you ex-
cessively, or that you previously had little love, which you have
thrown away so easily, so indifferently. For my part, unless en-
lightened by you more thoroughly, I admit no guilt of mine towards
you except, if guilt you wish to call it, to lament one’s misfortunes
and troubles before the person from whom remedy is hoped for,
consolation expected. ..... These are not the words of a friend,
they are not the words of one who was always kind in her heart,
but of one who looks for opportunities,c of one, I maintain, who
for a long time has waited to be able to find some reason for a sev-
ering of love. By what action or word, I implore you, did I provoke
such reproachful words? You have tossed me half dead into the
midst of waves,d you who have inflicted new wounds on my
wounds and added sorrow to my sorrows. ..... If you loved me, you
would have said less. Whoever you appoint as judge between us,
I will clearly prove that you have sinned against me more than I
have against you. Certainly if anyone examined your words more
thoroughly, he would find them to be not those of a lover but of
one seeking estrangement. Nowhere in them do I detect a tender
heart, but rather I perceive a cruel breast and one impregnable to
love.e ..... Nevertheless dry your tears, my soul, though I cannot
dry my own. Farewell. I received a message containing your tears;
I return my message with tears.

62
WOMAN Beloved to beloved: whatever there can be more blessed in
God, whatever more honest and joyful among mortals.
If such cleverness of expression were within me that I could re-
spond prudently to your words, I would reply to you however
gracefully I could with a willing spirit. But nevertheless, although I
am not capable of doing so satisfactorily, I shall reply as best I can
268 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

valeam, pro posse et modulo scienciole mee respondeo. Sic inter

nos res agatur, ne et tu periculum, et ego scandalum incurram. O
viri duritiam verum est proverbium illud quod vulgo dici solet,
pietatem viri talo ligari.a Si vincula, si ferrum, si carceres, si ca-
thenas, eciam si gladium pati debuisses,b sperabam te abstinere
non potuisse, quin quoquo pacto ad me venires, et mecum de his
que michi litteris mandasti, una voce presentialiter ageres.
Lacrimas ulterius nolo ab oculis tuis prorumpi, quia indecens
est virum flere, cum honesti rigoris debeat in se severitatem
tenere. Tempus est carissime ut has amaras atque flebiles de-
scriptiones proiciamus, secundis autem et letioribus manus cere
imprimamus. Ergo dilecte mi letum scribe, letum cane, prospere
feliciterque vive; fere mei oblite dulcedo mea, quando te videbo?
Saltem unam michi horam concede letam.

63
V Dilectissime sue: quicquid inter unice amantes sincera poscit
devocio.
..... In litteris quas misisti, mature fuerunt sentencie, racionalis
et ordinata composicio; nunquam certe aptius vidi dispositas. Ego
dulcissima multas horas deo volente tibi prestabo dulcissimas et
letissimas. Vale, anime mi.

64
<V> Dilectissime sue: salutem quam ego tibi presens afferre
cupio.
Vale et vide ut nunquam lacrimas tuas videam, sed leta sis,
certa de fide tui fidelis.

65
<V> Anime sue, anima eius: in una anima diu unum esse.

62. a) A talus is an ankle-bone or die with four flat sides, made out of an
ankle-bone. b) Hebrews 11.36.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 269

and within the limits of my small learning. Let the matter between
us be managed in such a way that neither you face danger nor I
scandal. Harshness of man, how true is the proverb that people
often say: “A man’s integrity is tied to dice.”a Even if you had had
to suffer chains, irons, prison, shackles, even the sword,b I had
hoped that you could not refrain from coming to me by whatever
means to discuss those things about which you wrote to me in
your letter, harmoniously with me in person.
I do not want to cause any further tears to flow from your eyes,
because it is not proper for a man to cry, since a man of honor-
able firmness ought to be strict with himself. It is time, dearest,
that we dispense with these bitter and tearful discussions; instead
let us apply our hands to the wax for favorable and more cheerful
ones. Therefore my beloved, write something cheerful, sing some-
thing cheerful, live prosperously and happily. You who have almost
forgotten me, my sweet, when shall I see you? Allow at least one
happy hour for me.

63
MAN To his most beloved: whatever sincere devotion demands of
lovers alone.
..... The letter which you sent had a logical and orderly arrange-
ment and contained mature judgements; certainly I have never
seen anything more fittingly set out. God willing, I shall keep aside
for you, sweetest, many very sweet and joyful hours. Farewell, my
spirit.

64
<MAN> To his most beloved: greetings, which I want to convey to
you in person.
Farewell, and see that I never see your tears, but that you be
happy about the sure faith of your faithful one.

65
<MAN> To his soul, her soul: may we be one in one soul for a long
time.
270 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

66
M Omine felici ceptis assis, Clio, nostri,a
versus Carmine sis comens tabulas et suavia promens.
Mens vigila queso tali ditata patrono
Organa cuncta Jovis flabris spirate secundis
5 En lux adventat, nox et discedere temptat
Enb lux advenit, nox et confusa recedit
Ecce manus cleri splendescit luce magistri,
Splendor doctoris noctem fugat <at>quec prioris.
Muse qua causa laudes date voce sonora.
10 Concine prima Clio: “flos cleri semper aveto.”
Dic post Euterpe: “florens felicia carpe.”
Dicque Thalia: “vale, crescunt dum cornua lune.”
Annue Melpomene: “spirant dum frigora brume.”
Addeque Tersicore: “felix per secula salve.”
15 Huic quoque Calliope rogo dulcia carmina prome.
Dic Urania simul: “vivat virtutibus auctus.”
Moribus hunc ornes et honore Polimnia dones.
Dic et nunc Erato: “felix sit corpore mundo.
Felix sit mundo sed gaudens postque secundo
20 Quo sibimet grati gaudent sine fine beati.”
“Salve, vive, vige,” cuncte resonate Camene.
“Gaudia tot retine quot habent guttas maris unde.c
Quotque virent herbe quot pisces sunt maris amne.”
Quid plus, quid dictem, pace fruatur, amen.

Vale spiraculum meum.

66. a) On Clio and the other Muses named in this poem, Fulgentius
Mythographus, Mitologiarum 1.15; see Könsgen, p. 67. Fulgentius
explains Clio as the thought of knowledge to be gained, Euterpe as
seeking knowledge, Thalia as capacity or of planting shoots,
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 271

66
WOMAN Clio, assist my undertaking with an auspicious sign,a
Decorating tablets with song and uttering sweet things.
Mind, endowed by such a patron, please pay attention,
Every instrument, blow with the propitious breezes of Jove.
5 Lo, day approaches, and night tries to leave,
Lo,b day has come, and confounded night recedes,
See, the throng of the clergy shines with the light of the
master,
And the teacher’s splendor expelsc his predecessor’s night.
Therefore, Muses, give praises with sonorous voices.
10 Sing first, Clio: “Hail, flower of the clergy, forever.”
Speak next, Euterpe: “Flourish and gather joys.”
Speak, Thalia: “Be strong, for as long as the crescent moon
grows.”
Nod in agreement, Melpomene: “For as long as winter
breathes cold.”
And join in, Terpsicore: “Be well and happy forever.”
15 For this also I ask, Calliope, “Utter sweet songs.”
Speak also, Urania: “Let him live enriched with virtues.”
Adorn him with courtesy and grant him honor, Polymnia.
And now speak, Erato: “May he be happy bodily in this world.”
May he be happy in this world, but rejoicing afterwards in
the next,
20 Where, each welcome to the other, the blessed rejoice for-
ever.
“Be well, live, and thrive” echo together, Muses all.
“Hold on to as many joys as the waves of the ocean have
drops,
As many as the grasses that grow, as many as the fish in the
waters of the ocean.”d
What more, what shall I compose? Let him enjoy peace.
Amen.

Farewell, my breath.

Melpomene as making meditation last, Terpsicore as delighting in in-

struction, Calliope as of the best voice, Urania as heavenly, Polymnia
as making deep memory, Erato as what is similar. b) En Könsgen] Et
MS c) fugat <at>que Könsgen] fugatque MS d) Ovid, Ponticae 2.7.28.
272 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

67
V Vale dulcissima mea, et tuam licenciam dilecto tuo concede.
Vale et sencias de me, quod de te ipsa. Tu semper es meta ad
quam tendo, tu cursus mei terminus et requies. Vale super omne
quod dici potest amabile.

68
V Dulcissime dulcissimus: quicquid dulcius excogitari potest.
Vale omnibus dulcior que dulcia esse noscuntur. Precor te ob-
nixe ut michi mandes quomodo te habeas, quia tua prosperitas,
est mea summa voluptas. Manda michi quando venire possim.
Vale. (f. 164r)

69
M Littera vade meas et amico ferte querelas,
versus Dans ex parte mei verba salutis ei.
Tu licet invitum converte precamur amicum
Dic, quia pro merito non meritum capio,a

Eius sermonis credula facta dolis.

Sit memor illarum michi quas fudit lacrimarum
Cum michi dicebat quod moriturus erat,
Si tam formose non perfrueretur amore
10 Et tunc laudavit, quod modo vile facit.
Dic ubi ploratus, ubi sint inquire, rogatus,
Et pignus fidei quod dedit ultro michi.
Cur tam raro venit? mea cur precordia ledit?
Ah! Sic deludi non ego digna fui.
15 Hos rogo ne versus oculus legat invidiosus
Hosque sciant nolo pectora plena dolo.

Qua dictaminis dulcedine te alloquar dilectissime mentis mee

excedit valenciam, quia sicut cor humanum in medio sanguine
principalem sedem elegit exultacionis, ita mens mea te sibi sum-
mum desiderium in omni genere proposuit dilectionis.

69. a) Könsgen judges a line or lines to be missing in the transcription be-

tween lines four and five. The fourth line is here translated as a con-
tinuation of the imperative verbs in lines one and three. b) Matthew
11.21. c) Jeremiah 14.17. d) cf. Psalm 44.6; Isaiah 5.28 etc.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 273

67
MAN Farewell, my sweetest, and give your permission to your
beloved. Farewell, and may you feel about me as you do about
yourself. You are always the goal at which I aim, the end and re-
pose of my journey. Farewell, more lovable than anything that can
be named.

68
MAN To his sweetest, her sweetest: whatever sweeter thing that can
be imagined.
Farewell, sweeter than everything known to be sweet. I
earnestly beg you to tell me how you are, because your good for-
tune is my greatest pleasure. Tell me when I may come. Farewell.

69
WOMAN Go, letter, and take my complaints to a friend,
Giving him words of greeting on my behalf.
Change this friend, I beg you, even if he be unwilling,
Speak, because I do not receive my just reward,a
5
I came to believe in the guile of his speech.
May he remember those tears, which he shed for me,
When he told me that he would die
If he could not enjoy the love of one so beautiful.
10 Then he praised what he now deems worthless.
Say to him, where is the weeping? Ask him, where are the
pleas
And the pledge of faith which he gave me of his own accord?
Why does he come so rarely? why does he break my heart?
Ah! I did not deserve to be so deceived.
15 Let not jealous eyes read these verses, I ask:
I do not want hearts full of guile to know them.

With what sweetness of composition might I appeal to you,

most beloved? It goes beyond the capacity of my mind, for just as
the human heart chose the principal seat of its exultation at the
center of the bloodstream, so my mind has set you up as its high-
est desire in every kind of love.
274 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Anima mea incomparabili amore ad fontem visionis tue sitit,

neque unquam beatam vitam sine te ducere valet. ..... Quot lit-
teris hec eadem verba componuntur, tot doloris aculei cordi meo
cum unda cruoris infiguntur. O pars pectoris mei quid fecisti?
Miror quomodo ulla coactus vi a me tam subito mutari potuisses,
quem tenaci dilectionis anchora in corde meo sigillavi. Idcirco cul-
trix cineris facta sum et ciliciib et per diem ac noctem lacrimas de-
ducunt oculi mei.c Quid plura? Super omnia me acutissima doloris
penetrat sagitta,d et durior permanebit adamante, quem suspiria
mee non movent miserie. Vale in eternum et ultra, si fieri potest.

70
V Expectato desiderio suo et semper expectando: quicquid boni
desiderari vel expectari potest.
Vale.

71
M Dominica sentencia perterrita per quam dicitur: “difficile est
contra stimulum calcitrare,”a has inornatas litteras tibi mitto,
earum probans indicio quam devote in omnibus me tuis preceptis
subicio. Multum distat ortus ab occidente,b sed fides rependitur
fide per multa temporum spacia disiunctis, nec puncto distabit si
eos vinculum vere dilectionisc concathenavit.d Quacunque enim
morantur parte, anima tamen juncti erunt et mente. Multa habui
loqui,e sed nimia mentis amaritudinef prepedior. Vellem ad horam
tibi collaterari, et tecum confabulari; nam parva liceretg tristicia,
sed plura cordis increscunt suspiria, dum studiosa mei laboris
tempora, in te funditus perpendam neglecta. Unum autem de mul-
tis ago, te saluto vere pacis osculo. Vale, et licenciam eundi michi
concede.

71. a) Acts 26.14, a proverb meaning that resistance is useless. b) Psalm

102.12. c) cf. Jerome, Ep. 55.11. d) cf. Romans 8.35. e) cf. John
8.26. f) Job 3.20, 7.20. g) liceret Könsgen] licere MS.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 275

My soul thirsts with incomparable love for the source of your

image, and it can never lead a happy life without you. . . . As many
as the very letters which make up these words, so many are the
stabs of pain driven into my heart with every surge of blood. Part
of my heart, what have you done? I marvel at how, without any
force of compulsion, you could be removed from me so quickly,
you whom I have secured to my heart with the tenacious anchor
of love. That is why I have taken to ashes and sackcloth,b and why
night and day tears drop from my eyes.c What more? Above all, I
am pierced by the sharpest arrow of pain,d and harder than steel
would be the man who stands firm, unmoved by my sighs of mis-
ery. Farewell for eternity and beyond, if that is possible.

70
MAN To his longed for desire, always to be longed for: whatever
good thing that can be desired or longed for.
Farewell.

71
WOMAN Terrified by the Lord’s judgement, which says: “It is hard to
kick against the goad,”a I send you this unadorned letter as proof
of how devotedly I submit myself to your instructions in all mat-
ters. There is a great distance between East and West,b but faith is
repaid with faith for those separated for long periods of time—yet
not for one second will they be distant if the bond of true lovec
keeps them chained together.d For in whatever region they may
linger, they will still be joined in soul and mind. I had many things
to say,e but I am hindered by too much bitterness of mind;f for I
would like to be next to you and be talking with you for an hour.
Now some sadness might be acceptable,g but many sighs of the
heart keep increasing when I consider that times set aside for my
work are completely abandoned because of you. But of those
many things I had to say, I do one: I greet you with a kiss of true
peace. Farewell, and give me license to go.
276 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

72
V Irate, et in ira misericordiam non deserenti, receptus in graciam:
ut tamdiu feliciter vivas, donec ego gracia tua carere velim.
Sic amor noster immortalis erit si uterque nostrum felici et am-
abili concertacione preire laboret alterum, et neutri nostrum con-
stet se ab altero superatum esse. Fit siquidem ut amicus in
amando languescat, si se ab amico minus amari videat quam ipse
promereatur. Nunquam ergo dixisse velim quod plus te amem,
quam me amari sentiam, quia talis vox stulta est, et discidium
parit. Immo hoc multo melius dictum recolligo, quod in mutuo
amore inferior esse nolo, et uter nostrum alterum vincat du-
bito. ..... Quidam cum spinam pulcerrimos de se flores profer-
entem videret, “talis est” inquit “domina mea, qua nulla spina est
asperior cum irascitur, nullus flos gratior vel nitidior cum pla-
catur.” ..... Vale et ut neminem mortalium michi compares, dili-
genter observa, quia ego in eadem circa te intencione tenaciter
perseverabo. Salve dilectissima, et me semper tuum in memoria
habe.

73
M Salve et tu dilectissime, omni dulcedine digne.

Flos juvenilisa ave, lux et decus imperiale,

Imperiale decus, flos juvenilis ave.
Cum te plasmavit, sat te natura beavit:b
Viribus interius, laudibus exterius.
5 Forme splendorem, tantum dedit atque decorem,
Quantum vel nequeo dicere, vel stupeo.
Plurima narrarem de te si crederet ullus,
Quod mea mens sentit de probitate tua.
Nunc faciam finem licet et plus dicere possem:
10 Vivere gaudere, volo te minimeque dolere.
Quot celo stelle, quot sunt et in orbe puelle,c
Quot maris undisone, tot tibi dico vale.

73. a) cf. M 1, 5, 21, 53. b) Marbod, Carmen 24, PL 171: 1660. c) Ovid,
Ars Amatoria 1.56–59.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 277

72
MAN To one angered but not forsaking compassion in her anger, he
who is restored to favor: may you live happily until such time as I
might wish to be without your favor.
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. Indeed, it happens that a
friend may grow weary of love if he sees himself loved by a friend
less than he deserves. Therefore I would never want to say that I
love you more than I feel loved, because such a statement is fool-
ish and invites division. On the contrary, I hold this assertion to be
much better: that in a mutual love, I do not want to be the lesser,
and which of us surpasses the other, I do not know. ..... Someone
once said on seeing a thorn sprouting very beautiful flowers from
itself: “Such is my lady: no thorn is sharper when she is angry, no
flower more delightful or beautiful when she is pleased.” .....
Farewell, and make sure that you compare no mortal with me, for
I will tenaciously persist with the same intention towards you.
Greetings, my most beloved, and keep me in your memory as for-
ever yours.

73
WOMAN Greetings to you too, most beloved, worthy of every de-
light!

Flower of youth,a hail, light, and imperial glory,

Imperial glory, flower of youth, hail.
When she formed you, nature blessed you well enough:b
Internally with strength, externally with acclaim.
5 To your form she gave such splendor and beauty
That either I cannot describe or am struck dumb.
Much more could I say of you, if anyone would believe
What my mind feels about your worth.
Now I shall end, although I could still say more:
10 I want you to live, enjoy and suffer little.
As many as the stars in the sky, as young women in the world,c
As roaring waves over the sea—so many times do I bid you
farewell.
278 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

74
V Nunc demum intelligo dulcissima quod ex toto corde et ex tota
anima mea es,a cum oblivisci vis omnis iniurie, quam ego stultus
et improvidus mente nimis precipiti, et nimium molli ad resisten-
dum doloribus sine omni deliberacione dilectissime mee intuli. (f.
164v) Vox illa cassa fuerit, nichil significans, nichil habens pon-
deris; et tu anime mi si verba cum factis velis conferre: verba illa
vere tantum fuerunt, que nullo opere claruerunt. De valetudine
mea requiris? Si tu vales, ego valeo, si gaudes gaudeo, ad omnes
demum fortunas tuas me coaptare volo. Vale anime mi.

75
V Unice suavitati sue: quicquid in vita suavissimum reperiri potest.
..... O stulta promissio, o vox nimium preceps et temeraria, o
dictum hominis, qui vel amens vel ebrius aperte videatur. Quis
enim tanta sciencia plenus tam labiis circumcisus,a tam magnum
de se audeat promittere? Pretermitto huius temporis litteratos. Si
ipse Tullius de se tale aliquid iactasset, vere copiosa eius facun-
dia in solvendo deficeret, quia nichil tanta promissione dignum af-
feret. Si ad metrum totas Ovidius vires suas intenderet, in hoc
incepto planissime deficeret. Quis ergo sum ego aut que in me
facultas, ut tales litteras dictare queam que me aureo sinu tuo,
eburneis brachiis tuis,b lactea cervice tuac dignum exhibeant?
Verba omitto que ventisd similia sunt: quis labor, quod opus,
tanti sit, ut tam admirandam suavitatem sufficienter mercari pos-
sit? Si mare in spe talis boni transeam, exiguus labor est, si Alpes
in asperrimo frigore transcendam, vel si de medio igne, cum vite
discrimine te petam, in omnibus his nichil fecisse videbor. Rogo
igitur suppliciter graciam tuam, ut litteras istas secundum
promissa mea non metiaris, ne in proverbium illud incidam: “Par-
turient montes nascetur ridiculus mus,”e quia tam superbo
promisso nichil dignum affero.f .....

74. a) cf. Deuteronomy 6.5; Matthew 22.37.

75. a) cf. M 23. b) Ovid, Amores 3.7.7. c) Virgil, Aeneid 10.137. d) Ovid,
Amores 2.19.19. e) Horace, Ars poetica 139. f) Horace, Ars poetica
138. g) Song of Songs 2.10. h) Horace, Ars poetica 389–90. i) Ovid,
Ars amatoria 2.511. j) cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.64.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 279

74
MAN Now at last I understand, sweetest, that you are mine with all
your heart and all your soul,a since you are willing to forget all the
wrongs which I, stupidly and thoughtlessly and with a mind too im-
petuous and too weak to resist my sorrows, inflicted on my most
beloved without any consideration. That remark was empty; it
meant nothing and had no weight; and you, my spirit, if you wish
to compare words with deeds, will see that truly they were only
words, not backed up by any action. You ask about my health? If
you are well, I am well, if you are happy, I am happy; in fact, I want
to attach myself to your every fortune. Farewell, my spirit.

75
MAN To his only delight: whatever is the most delightful thing in life
which can be found.
. . . So foolish a promise, words too impetuous and ill consid-
ered, a remark made by one apparently out of his mind or drunk.
For who is filled with such knowledge and is so refined in speecha
as to dare promise such a great thing from himself? Never mind
the educated people of our own time: if Cicero had made such a
claim about himself, even his abundant eloquence would fail to
deliver, for nothing worthy of such a promise would emerge. If
Ovid had focused all his energies on his meter, he would very
clearly have failed in this undertaking. Therefore who am I or what
quality is there in me that I could compose such a letter which
would prove me worthy of your golden breast, your ivory arms,b
your milk-white neck?c
I give up on words, which are like the winds;d what effort, what
action is great enough to be sufficient to buy such wonderful de-
light? If I were to cross the sea in the hope of such good, it would
be but little effort; if I were to climb the Alps in the bitterest cold
or search for you in the midst of fire and risk my life, in all this I
would deem that I had done nothing. Therefore, I humbly beg for
your favor and ask that you do not measure that letter according
to my promises, lest the proverb “Mountains will be in labor, but
will give birth to a laughable mouse”e should apply to me, because
after such a proud promise I produce nothing of worth.f . . .
280 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Aliquanto iam tempore formosa meag de fide dilectissimi tui du-

bitasti propter quedam verba, que subita impulsus contumelia, in
ipso doloris cursu dictavi, et utinam non dictassem, quia tu nimis
ea memoriter signasti, que rogo ut a corde deleas, et apud interi-
ora tua radicem non figant, sicut ego ea deo teste nunquam fixi,
sed ubi ea a manibus dimisi, statim revocare volui, si vox emissa
reverti nosset.h
Idem tibi sum qui fueram; noli verba sed facta consulere. Non
michi vetus es; quotidie cordi meo innovaris, sicut anni iocunda
temperies, equaliter semper ingruente vere, nova est. Tempus
ipsum nobis sua commoditate blanditur, temporis oportunitate
fruamur. Sapienter amare poterimus, quod tamen rarum est, cum
quidam dixerit: “quis unquam sapienter amavit?”i Nos vere sapi-
enter amare poterimus, quia et fame nostre sollerter consulemus,
et tamen gaudia nostra cum summa suavitate miscebimus. Ille
ignis fortius estuat qui tegitur, quam ille cui exundare conceditur.j
Vale amabilis delectacio mea.

76
M Cunctorum vinculo amorisa alligantium carissimo certe sodali-
tatis amica: integerrime dilectionis summam.
Quam intime carus michi sis, plene nullatenus denudare valet
scribentis manus, quia interne dulcedinis me hortatur affectus, ut
sis michi pre cunctis specialisb dilectus. Quantus igitur erga te
meus ardeat affectus, ullo modo tibi manifestare nequeo. ..... Vere
fateor dilectissime quod multociens ut pecus ignavumc via sub-
sisterem, nisi magisterialis institucionis tui sollercia, me prono di-
gressam assidue revocaret tramite. “Nunc autem claudamus rivos
sat prata biberunt.”d Decrevit hoc mea intencio ut cesset ultro al-
terna contencio; satis iam dire iactis mutuo sermonibus intu-
muere ire.e ..... Quid prolixis moror ambagibus? Unius michi
peticionis annuas effectum: ut scilicet me animam tuam tali nun-
quam ambiguitate inquietare presumas. Vale mi stella clara, sydus
aureum, gemma virtutum, corpori meo dulce medicamentum.

76. a) cf. M 60, 71. b) cf. M 21, 25. c) Virgil, Georgics 4.168. d) Virgil,
Eclogues 3.111. e) Statius, Thebaïd 1.411–12.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 281

For some time now, my beautiful one,g you have doubted the
faith of your beloved because of certain words which I wrote, pro-
voked by an unexpected reproach, while in the very throes of sor-
row. Would that I had never written them—for you engraved them
into your memory too much. I ask that you erase them from your
heart and not let them establish roots inside you; just as, God
knows, I never let them, but rather after they had left my hands, I
immediately wanted to call them back—if only an uttered remark
knew how to return.h
I am the same towards you as I was; look not to words but
deeds. You are not outmoded to me, but each day are renewed in
my heart, just as the pleasant period of the year is always and
equally renewed by the coming of spring. The season itself favors
us with its compliance, let us enjoy the opportunities of the sea-
son. We shall be able to love wisely, which admittedly is rare; for
as someone once said: “Who ever loved wisely?”i But we shall be
able to love wisely, because we shall shrewdly look out for our rep-
utation while mixing our joys with the greatest delight. The fire
which is sheltered burns more strongly than one left to burn
freely.j Farewell, my lovable delight.

76
WOMAN To the chain of love,a of all that binds the dearest, a friend
of sure companionship: fulfilment of the most complete love.
Just how intimately dear you are to me, the hand of this writer
is in no way able to fully reveal, because a feeling of inner sweet-
ness urges me to make you my specialb beloved above everyone
else. And so I am unable to reveal to you in any way at all just how
greatly my feeling burns for you. ..... Truly I admit, most beloved,
that many times I would have halted like an idle sheepc along the
way, if the masterly skill of your instruction had not kept calling me
back as I strayed from the proper path. “But now let us block the
streams, the fields have drunk enough.”d My intention has decided
this: that further conflict between us should cease. Dreadful anger
has already swelled enough with words thrown at each other.e .....
Why do I linger with long-winded ramblings? May you grant the ful-
filment of one of my requests; namely, that you never think that I
am troubling your soul with such uncertainty. Farewell, my bright
star, golden constellation, jewel of virtues, sweet medicine for my
body.
282 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

77
V Gaudio suo: gaudium et leticiam.
Quid dicam tibi dulcissima nisi quod sepe dixi? Toto te pectore
gero. Interioribus ulnisa te amplector, dulcedinem tuam quo plus
haurio plus sitio. Omnes copie mee in te unam se congesserunt,
omne quod possum tuum est. Ut ergo operas mutuas demus, tu
es ego, et ego sum tu.b Hoc dixisse satis sit. Vale, protegat te val-
ida manus omnipotentis dei.

78
<V> Ille sollicite scribat qui non habet, ut quod non habet repe-
riat.a Ego securus sum, ego navigando ad portum veni; qui
naufragium patitur vota faciat; ego in portu sedeo, et ideo votis
non egeo. Vale.

79
M Merito specialis dilectionis amplectendo amore, incendium tui
amoris: quot ameno tempore redolent flores, tot percipere
salutes.
Si grande aliquid meditando concipit hominis interioris inten-
cio,a profecto interdum non consumitur sine quadam vi exterioris.
Aut enim perficiendi desperacio confundit aut priusquam perficiat
nimietas laboris graviter contundit. Unde fit, ut utriusque hominis
labor vel studium in se videatur (f. 165r) plerumque deficere, cum
ad votum quod cupit non potest pervenire.
Ego tamdiu tractavi cordis et corporis flagranti nisu, qualiter te
o gemma decora appellarem, sed intencionem mei affectus hu-
cusque distulit difficultas suspecti defectus. Scio enim et fateor
pro singulis quibusque tuis beneficiis quod grates persolvere nul-
latenus sufficio animi vel corporis officio. Verumtamen pro uno
quod auro et topaziob preciosius duco, quamdiu hic spiritus in
corpore viget, tue dilectioni nunquam scribere piget. Nam quan-

77. a) Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.818, 11.63. b) Plautus, Stich. 731.

78. a) cf. Matthew 25.29; Mark 4.25; Luke 19.26.
79. a) cf. Ephesians 3.16. b) Psalm 118.127. c) Psalm 44.16. d) 1
Corinthians 9.22.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 283

77
MAN To his joy: joy and happiness.
What shall I say to you, sweetest, except that which I have often
said? I hold you with my entire breast. I embrace you with inner
arms,a and the more I drink of your sweetness, the more I thirst.
All my resources have been gathered around you alone; everything
that I can do is yours. Therefore, to care for each other, you are
me and I am you.b May it be enough to have said this. Farewell,
may the strong hand of almighty God protect you.

78
<MAN> Let the man who has not, write anxiously, so that he may
recover what he does not have.a I myself am safe, I have come sail-
ing into port. He who has been shipwrecked, let him make offer-
ings. I am settled in port and therefore have no need for offerings.
Farewell.

79
WOMAN To one deserving to be embraced with the longing of a spe-
cial love, a fire of longing for you: may you gather as many greet-
ings as flowers give perfume in the season of delight.
If through reflection a person’s inner intentiona conceives any-
thing great, it is often not brought to fruition without a certain ex-
ternal force. For either it is confounded by despair of ever being
completed or it is severely crushed by too much effort before it is
completed. As a result, in either case the effort or endeavor itself
seems very often to fail when the desired goal cannot be reached.
For a long time, and with a blazing struggle of heart and body,
I have considered how I should address you, my graceful jewel,
but the difficulty of expected failure has so far defied the intention
of my feeling. For I know and confess that I am in no way adequate
to render thanks for each and every one of your benefits, through
the service of either spirit or body. Except for one way, which I
hold more precious than gold or topaz:b for as long as this breath
thrives in its body, it will never be a burden to write to your love.
For no description in a letter or expression of will can reveal the
284 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

tum leticie et exultacionisc tua mellita michi conferat dilectio, non

pandit ulla litterarum descriptio sive voluntatis confessio.
Tuus honor meum geminasse videretur si usque ad finem fa-
talem nos conversari liceret pariter. Nunc autem satius eligo mor-
tis terminari periculo, quam vivens dulcifluo tui aspectus privari
gaudio. ..... Cum omnia factus sis michid excepta solius dei gracia,
nil amplius desiderare michi necesse est per durantia seculi spa-
cia, nisi ut vite tue dies augeat ille, qui ut unum eque facile
prestare potest et mille.

80
V Hiberno sole gratiori, et estiva umbra dulciori,a ille qui familiar-
ius calore tuo uritur et suavi spiritu leniter reficitur: ut suaviter
vivas, nichil nisi quod dulce est experiaris.
Si esurio, tu sola me saturas, si sitio, sola me reficis. Sed quid
dixi? Immo reficis et non saturas. Nunquam tui satur fui, ut puto
nec ero. Vive in leticia, que nunquam tibi desit. Vale.

81
M Dilectissimo meo, et ut verum fatear in amore peritissimo, cui
non satis ad plenum gracias agere valeo: tamen laudes omnium
rerum tibi simul famulantium et tocius pulcritudinis ascribo.
Vale tu, et illi pereant qui nos disiungere temptant.

82
<M> Quam michimet vellem mitti tibi mitto salutem.
versus Nescio quod magis hac esse salubre queat.
Si quicquid Cesar unquam possedit haberem,
Prodessent tante nil michi divitie.a
5
Gaudia non unquam te nisi dante feram,

80. a) Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.793.

82. a) cf. Marbod, Rescriptum ad amicam, ed. Bulst (1984), p. 185.
Dronke also discusses this poem in Women Writers, pp. 96–97. Köns-
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 285

amount of joy and exultationc which your honey-sweet love be-

stows on me.
Your glory might seem to have doubled mine had we been
equally allowed to remain together right to the ordained end. But
now I prefer to be confined by the threat of death rather than live
and be deprived of the sweet-flowing joy of the sight of you. .....
Since you have become everything to me,d except for the grace of
God alone, it is not necessary for me to wish for anything more for
the span of centuries to come; except that He who can just as eas-
ily grant one day as he can a thousand, increase the days of your life.

80
MAN To one more pleasing than winter sun and sweeter than
summer shade,a he who burns more intimately by your heat and
is gently refreshed by your delightful breath: may you live delight-
fully and not experience anything except what is sweet.
If I am hungry, only you fill me; if I am thirsty, only you refresh
me. But what have I said? Indeed you refresh me, but you certainly
do not fill me. I have never had enough of you, nor do I think I
ever will. Live in happiness which may never fail you. Farewell.

81
WOMAN To my very beloved, and to confess the truth, very skilled
in love, to whom I am incapable of giving thanks fully enough:
nevertheless I assign to you praises of everything both useful and
totally beautiful.
May you fare well, and may those who try to separate us perish.

82
<WOMAN> I send you the salutation which I would like sent to me.
I know of nothing more salutary than this.
If I could have all that Caesar ever owned,
Such wealth would be of no use to me.a
5
I will never have joys except those given by you,

gen interprets the metrical irregularity as indicating that the scribe

missed out line 5. She seems to be contrasting the passing pleasures
286 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Et dolor et luctus nos tempus in omne secuntur

Ni dederis michi res nulla salubris erit.
De rebus cunctis quas totus continet orbisb
10 Denique semper eris gloria sola michi
Suppositi terre lapides velut igne liquescunt
Cum quibus imposita liquitur igne pyra
Sic nostrum late corpus vanescit amore
Sicque vale vive per tempora longa Sibille.c
15 Vincas ut metas habuit quas Nestoris etas.

Miserere mei quia vere coartor dilectione tui. Vale.

83
<M> Dies ista feliciter orta sit tibi, feliciter currat tibi, feliciter oc-
cidat tibi. Quid plura? Condicione pari per me te noris amari. Vale,
tu vitro es lucidior, et calibe fortior.

84
M Amans amanti: gaudium cum salute optanti illud dico salutare
quod non finiatur, et gaudium quod a te non tollatur per evum.
Post mutuam nostre visionis allocucionisque noticiam, tu solus
michi placebasa supra omnem dei creaturam, teque solum dilexi,
diligendo quesivi, querendo inveni, inveniendo amavi, amando op-
tavi, optando omnibus in corde meo preposui, teque solum elegi
ex milibus, ut facerem tecum pignus;b quo pignore peracto, dul-
cedinisque tue melle gustato, sperabam me curis finem posuisse
futuris. ..... Nemorum umbrosa diligunt volucres, in aquarum
rivulis latent pisces, cervi ascendunt montana,c ego te diligo
mente stabili et integra. Hactenus mecum mansisti, mecum
viriliter bonum certamen certasti, sed nondum bravium ac-
cepisti.d ..... Si fides illius titubat, vinculumque eius dilectionis
non firmiter se continet,e in quem omnem spem meam, fiduci-

provided by wealth with the joys she receives from him. b) Ovid,
Metamorphoses 7.59. c) Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.132–53.
84. a) Ovid, Ars amatoria 1.42. b) Song of Songs 5.10. c) Cf. Psalm
103.18. d) a fusion of 1 Timothy 6.12, 2 Timothy 4.7, 1 Corinthians
9.24. e) continet Könsgen (p. 66)] contineat MS.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 287

And grief and sorrow follow us through every season.

Unless you give it, nothing will be salutary to me.
Of all things which the entire world contains,b
10 You will in the end be my only glory forever.
As stones placed on the ground dissolve in fire,
When the pyre set over them dissolves in fire too,
So our body completely vanishes in love.
And so fare well, live the long life of the Sybil.c
15 May you accrue and surpass the years that Nestor lived.

Pity me, for I am truly constrained by love for you. Farewell.

83
<WOMAN> May this day dawn happily for you, may it pass by happily
for you, may it close happily for you. What more? You know that
you are loved in the same manner by me. Farewell; you are clearer
than glass and stronger than steel.

84
WOMAN A lover to a lover: joy with well-being for one desiring that
saving joy, I declare, never ending and never to be taken away
from you.
Ever since we first met and spoke to each other, only you have
pleased mea above all God’s creatures and only you have I loved.
Through loving you, I searched for you; searching for you, I found
you; finding you, I desired you; desiring you, I chose you; choos-
ing you, I placed you before everyone else in my heart, and picked
you alone out of thousands, in order to make a pledge with you.b
With that pledge fulfilled and having tasted the honey of your
sweetness, I hoped to put an end to future cares. ..... Birds love
the shady parts of the woods, fish hide in streams of water, stags
climb mountains,c I love you with a steadfast and whole mind.
Thus far you have remained with me, you have manfully fought the
good fight with me, but you have not yet received the prize.d .....
If the faith falters of the one in whom I had placed—and still
keep—all my hope and trust, and if the chain of his love should
288 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

amque positam habui, et habeo, cui postea credere possim pror-

sus ignoro.
Velis, nolis, semper meus es et eris, nunquam erga te meum
mutatur votum neque a te animum abstraho totum. In te quod
quesivi habeo, quod optavi teneo, quod amavi amplexata sum, tui
solius conveniunt mores, te nisi mors michi adimet nemo, quia
pro te mori non differo. Vale, et in continuis horis memento nos-
tre dilectionis. Prologum tuum quem composuisti michi, cum gra-
ciarum actione, cum amoris servitute recompensabo tibi. Cor tibi
letetur; desit quod triste vocetur.

85
V Si in eodem corpore ulla potest esse alteritas, vel divisio, tunc
divise a se optime parti sui corporis: indivisam dilectionem, in-
corruptam, et integram, et interminabilem vivacissimi amoris dul-
cedinem.
Si verba dilecti tui notare perspicaciter velis, aperte notare (f.
165v) potes dulcissima quod plus volo, quam possim, quod verba
querendo deficio, quia ita usitatum modum superexcellit affectio
mea, ut usitatis verbis exprimi nullomodo ad plenum possit. Si ali-
qua in me notatur segnicies, si aliquis perpenditur defectus,
utique defectus est non in amore frigescentis, sed pre nimia men-
tis alienatione, quid dignum dicat dubitantis, multa volentis, et
minus facientis. Nec dignum est ut verba sufficienter recom-
pensent, quod tu in rebus beneficium prestas.
Si quicquid mundus habet preciosius in unum congeratur,a tuis
beneficiis collatum omnimodo sordescat, nullius estimari queat.
Tanta est suavitas tua, tam mirabilis continuitas tua, tam ineffa-
bilis demum eloquii habitus, et omnium que circa te aguntur pul-
critudo et gracia, ut si quis hec verbis equiparare presumat,
magna videatur contumacia. Ignis noster novis semper crescat al-
imentis, quo magis tegitur magis exestuet,b invidos et insidiantes
decipiat, et semper in dubio servetur, uter nostrum magis alterum
diligat, quia ita semper pulcerrima inter nos erit concertacio ut
uterque vincat.c Vale.

85. a) cf. V 12. b) exestuet Könsgen (p. 66)] exestuat MS. c) cf. V 72.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 289

not firmly hold fast,e I have no idea at all in whom else I can sub-
sequently believe.
Like it or not, you are mine and always shall be. Never shall my
desire for you be altered, nor will I ever take back my whole spirit
from you. In you I have what I searched for, I hold what I chose, I
embrace what I desired; only your qualities will do. Nobody—ex-
cept Death—will ever take you from me, because I would not hes-
itate to die for you. Farewell and remember our love hour after
hour. I shall repay you for your Prologue, which you composed for
me, with an act of thanks and the obedience of love. Let your
heart be glad; begone whatever may be called sad.

85
MAN If there can be any alterity or division in the same body, then,
to the best part of his body, parted from him: undivided love, un-
corrupted and whole, and endless sweetness of the most vigorous
love.
If you wish to note closely the words of your beloved, sweetest,
you can clearly note that I want to say more than I am able, that I
fail when searching for words, because so much does my feeling
exceed ordinary measure that in no way can it be fully rendered
by ordinary words. If you note any slowness in me, or perceive any
weakness, it is certainly not the weakness of one growing cold in
love, but the result of too much mental distraction of one unsure
of what he should rightly say, of one wanting much but doing less.
Nor is it appropriate that words should suffice to repay the bene-
fits you provide through actions.
If whatever the world considers precious were gathered up
together,a compared with your benefits they would be utterly
worthless and they would be deemed to have no value. Such is
your amiability, so marvelous your constancy, so indescribable
even your way with words and the beauty and grace of everything
that surrounds you, that it would seem great arrogance if one pre-
sumed to match them with words. May our flame always increase
with new nourishment, may its blazeb be greater the more it is cov-
ered, may it defy the envious and those who wait in ambush, and
may it always be kept uncertain which of us loves the other more,
since this way there will always be between us a most beautiful
contest in which both of us will win.c Farewell.
290 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

86
M Inepotabili fonti dulcedinis, pars anime eius individua: post sol-
licitudinem Marthe, et fecunditatem Lie, possidere optimam
partem Marie.a
Immensa vis tui amoris, indesinenter, incessanter, indubitan-
ter, inenarrabiliter permanens in statu sui tenoris, secundum
posse meum ac nosse, me cogit pauca ad te dilectissimum
scribere. Sed quid potissimum eloquar prorsus ignoro; tociens me
verbis tuis dulcissimis prevenis, tociens michi tue intime, et sin-
cere dilectionis affectum ostendis, ut absque omni ambiguitate
amor et desiderium tui semper in me ardescat, et nunquam re-
frigescat.
O si nutu dei acciperem volucris speciem quantocius volando
te visitarem.b ..... Id enim quod nunc optavi, si salva gracia dei
posset fieri: deo teste cui difficile est verba dare fallacie, nichil est
in omni orbe terrarum quod maius optarem. Impinguat me affec-
tus tuus, sed non potest me implere amor tuus. In tua vita est
salus mea, tu es totum desiderium meum, et omne bonum meum.
Vale cordis dimidium, et tocius leticie ac amoris incendium.

87
V Et brevis et longus presens michi transiit annus
Ex quo cara tuus me sibi vinxit amor.
Nam repetendo tue decus insaciabile forme
Et bonitatis opus familiare tibi
5 Noticie brevis una tue, vix hora videtur
Sic semper votis es nova cura meis.
At repetens quam rara tuo contingis amanti,
Annos innumeros estimo preteritos.
Quelibet una dies ter denos continet annos
10 Quam sine te cogor ducere dulcis amor
Sole carens fluit illa dies, et lucis honore,
Qua tua ceu michi sol non oritur facies.
Sol certe meus est vultus tuus, et mea lux est,
Contingit faciem quando videre tuam.
15 Sidera si queras, duo sunt mea, nescio plura.
Sidereos oculos hec ego dico tuos.

86. a) Genesis 29.31–35; Luke 10.41–42. On the Mary/Martha theme,

see Giles Constable, “The Interpretation of Mary and Martha” in his
Three Studies in Medieval and Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1–142, especially 74–75. b)
Psalm 54.7.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 291

86
WOMAN To the inexhaustible fount of sweetness, the indivisible
part of his soul: after the worries of Martha and the fertility of Lia,
may you possess the best part, that of Mary.a
The immense strength of my love for you, unceasingly, inces-
santly, unquestioningly and indescribably holding its own course,
impels me to write a few words to you, most beloved, as best I can
or know. But I have no idea at all what is the most important thing
I should say: every time you anticipate me with your sweetest
words, you show me the affection of your innermost and sincere
love, so that passion and desire for you always burn in me without
any uncertainty and never grows cold.
If only with a nod from God I could take the form of a bird, I
would fly to visit you as soon as possible.b ..... If it could be done
with the saving grace of God, there is nothing in the whole world
which I could wish for more than that which I just wished for, as
God, to whom it is difficult to give deceitful words, is my witness. I
may grow fat with your affection but your love cannot fill me. My well-
being is in your life, you are my complete desire and all my good.
Farewell, half of my heart and fire of all my happiness and love.

87
MAN Both short and long has this year seemed to me,
Since, my dear, your love bound me to itself.
For when I recall the insatiable glory of your form
And the work of goodness present within you,
5 It seems barely one short hour since we met:
So you are always a fresh concern for my desires.
But recalling how rarely you happen upon your lover,
I consider countless years to have gone by.
Any single day I am forced to spend without you,
10 Sweet love, seems like three decades.
A day without your face rising like the sun over me,
Goes by without sun or the gift of its light.
Certainly your visage is my sun and my light,
Whenever it happens that I see your face.
15 My stars, if you should ask, are two. I know no others:
I declare them to be those starry eyes of yours.
292 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

His ego quando fruor, nil tunc michi deforea credo,

His ego cum careo, defore cuncta puto.
Sic dici possum felicior omnibus esse,
20 Sic dici possum nil habuisse boni,
Sic igitur verum, quod diximus ante, probatur,
Qualiter annalis hec mora transierit. (f. 166ra)
Nunc novus est annus, novus est amor incipiendusb
Vultque fides aliam nostra tenere viam
25 Non amor ulterius ullis ledendus amaris
Nil mea vita tibi, iam nisi dulce dabo,
Nec dicam nec agam, nisi que tibi nosco placere
Ad nutus domine me cohibebo mee;
In nullis rebus unquam diversa probemus
30 Tu quod vis jubeas protinus ipse sequar.
Corpus sic tenerum, nichil ultra ledat amarum
Carminibus duris, nec locus ullus erit.
Ignoscas formosa tuo, si scripsimus unquam,
Irasci posses unde michi merito
35 Non hoc consilio, non hoc egi racione
Qui male consuluit, impetus ipse fuitc
Emissam vocem, si quis revocare valeret
Hanc fateor vocem quod revocasse velim.d
Quando tuas animo lacrimas dilecta reduco
40 Non possum lacrimas ipse tenere meas
Suscipias igitur sua qui delicta fatetur
Suscipe, nec culpe sis memor ulterius.
Suscipe, nam lacrimis precor hoc carissima largis.
Orabo flexis hoc eciam genibus
45 Lux oculis hodierna meis extrema sit ortae
Femina si vivit, quam tibi pretulerim. (f. 165vb)

88
M Firmissimi amoris fundamento, domus bene superedificata
atque optime consummata: vicinitatem federis et stabilitatem.a

87. a) nil tunc michi defore] written as a correction in the margin and at
the foot of f.165v. Könsgen prefers the uncorrected version of the text
in the MS: in lumine me fore (I believe I am in light). b) cf. Ovid, Fasti
1.149–50 and Remedium amoris 452. c) Statius, Thebaïd 10.704–5.
d) Horace, Epistulae 1.18.171; cf. V 75. e) Ovid, Heroides 9.167.
88. a) on the idea of covenant, see M 60; on the image of a house, see
M 45.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 293

When I enjoy them, I believe that I lack nothing,a

When I am denied them, I think that I lack everything.
Thus can I be said to be happier than everyone,
20 Thus can I be said to have nothing of worth,
Thus what I said before is proven true,
About how this space of a year has passed by.
Now the year is new, and a new love is to begin,b
And our faith wants to pursue another path:
25 No more bitterness should wound this love, my life;
Nothing but sweet things shall I now give to you;
Nor say nor do, save what I know pleases you.
Only the approval of my lady will matter to me.
Let us not differ on anything at all.
30 Command what you will, I shall obey straight away.
May no more bitterness wound a body so delicate,
Nor will there be cause for any more harsh poems.
Forgive me, fair lady, if something I wrote
Ever made you justly angry with me:
35 I did not do deliberately or with reason.
It was Impulse itself which counseled badly.c
If one could recall an uttered remark,
Such words, I confess, I would wish to recall.d
When I bring back to mind your tears,
40 Beloved, I cannot hold back tears of my own.
So receive one who confesses his own faults,
Receive him, and remember his guilt no more.
Receive him, dearest lady, for with many tears do I beg
And plead with you, even on bended knee.
45 May the day’s risen light be the last that I see,e
If there lives a woman I could prefer over you.

88
WOMAN To the foundation of firmest love, the house that is well
built upon it and perfectly completed: the closeness and stability
of a bond.a
294 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Montes et nemora, silvarumque omnia respondent umbrosa,b

et quomodo michi gloria difficilis esset rescribendi? Fallit enim
labor laborantem,c animus dum se voluntarius expedit ad rem.
Immo nil difficile quod ex voluntate.
Raro quenquam invenimus in hoc salo tam composite felici-
tatis, tam perfecte virtutis, quin corpus eius non bene politum,
deesse sibi peniteat multum, nisi tu solus, qui per omnia et in om-
nibus extas virtuosus. Igitur cordi meo firmiter infixus semper ad-
heres, et adherebis, nec saltem horam unam dormiendo neque
vigilando inde recedis neque recedes.d
Non est nec unquam erit dilectio firma, que tam cito flectitur
fallacia. Quicquid unquam michi iniurie intulisti, a memoria
actenus non recessit cordis mei, sed nunc pure ac sincere et plen-
iter tibi condonabo omnia, eo tenore ut deinceps a te tali non
movear iniuria. Tecum permanebo fida, stabilis, immutabilis, et
non flexibilis, et si omnes homines capiendos in unicos scirem,
nunquam a te nisi vi coacta, et penitus expulsa, recederem. Non
sum harundo vento agitata,e neque me a te movebit asperitas
ulla, nec alicuius rei mollicia. (f. 166rb)
Ignis enim amoris tui semper in me renovabitur et crescet, al-
tius inardescit et non refrigescit, et quanto interius plus abscondi-
tur, et servatur, tanto magis augetur et multiplicatur. Et licet
tociens, ut velim, ut optem, ut desiderem, oculis corporeis a me
non videaris, tamen ab intencione mentis non labescis. Facilius
enim ignis servatur, si caute cineribus sepelitur, nec fumus inde
generatur; ita et nos invicem diligamus.f Vale interminabili gaudio
letare.

89
V Unico gaudio suo: salutem si tibi dare possum, quod nisi a te
non habeo.a
Si verba que mitto, aliquantulum pauciora desiderio tuo esse vi-
dentur, non verba consule, sed mittentis voluntatem. Inopem me
copia facit. Volunt siquidem multa simul erumpere, et ita se in-

b) Virgil, Eclogues 10.8–9. c) Horace, Satires 2.2.12; Ovid, Meta-

morphoses 6.60. d) cf. V 6, 22. e) Matthew 11.7; Luke 7.24. f) 1
John 4.7.
89. a) cf. V 51.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 295

The mountains and shady groves of the forests reply:b so how

can the glory of writing back be difficult for me? For work leads
the worker astrayc while the spirit willingly frees itself for the task.
Indeed nothing is difficult which comes from the will.
It is rare to find on these high seas anyone with such composed
happiness and such complete virtue that he does not have cause
to regret greatly the failing of his unrefined body—apart from you
who stand out as virtuous through everything and in everything.
Therefore, you cling and will always cling firmly attached to my
heart; not even for one hour, whether I am asleep or awake, do
you leave or will you ever leave me.d
There does not exist nor will there ever be a firm love that is
turned away by deceit so quickly. Whatever injuries you inflicted
on me have not yet gone from the memory of my heart, but I shall
now genuinely and sincerely and fully forgive you for everything
connected with them, so that I shall not be upset by such injuries
from you again. I shall remain faithful to you, stable, unchange-
able and unwavering, and, even if I knew all men as individuals, I
would never leave you unless compelled to by force and com-
pletely expelled. I am not a reed shaken by the wind,e nor shall
any severity or weakness of any kind take me from you.
For the fire of love for you will always be renewed and grow
within me; it burns deeper and does not grow cold, and the more
it is hidden and kept inside, the more it enlarges and multiplies.
And even if you are not seen by me with corporeal eyes as often
as I wish, hope and desire, nevertheless you do not slip from the
intention of my mind. For a fire is kept going more easily if it is
carefully buried under ashes and smoke is not produced from it.
Let us love each other like this.f Farewell, enjoy unending happi-
ness.

89
MAN To his only joy: well-being, if I can give you that which I do not
have except from you.a
If the words that I send seem to be somewhat fewer than you
desire, consider not the words but the will of the sender. Abun-
dance makes me poor: indeed, many words want to pour out all
296 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

vicem officiunt; dum dubitando moras facio tempus fluit. Vale

gemma tocius Gallie.

90
M Frondoso nemori omnigenarum virtutum odore redolenti, flos
et liliuma eius: fidei augmentum, et amoris incrementum.
Libenti animo ac mente devota ad te mi dilecte scriberem
multa, nisi quod tot me impediunt cure, que animum meum
trahunt diverse, ut pre nimio dolore cordis, vix proferam aliqua
verba salutacionis. Nunc autem te obtestor per tuam fidem, et mei
amoris sollicitudinem, ut sicut me ab inicio in dilectionem tuam
accepisti, acceptam serves, et amorem nostrum ex animo non
amoveas. Vale, vive, bene valendo per secula letare.

91
V Lune splendidissime omnes tenebras fuganti, lune inquam
cuius splendor non deficit, ille cui sine te nunquam dies est: sem-
per fulgere, semper gratissime lucis incrementis gaudere.a
Cure dulcissima quas pro dilecto tuo geris, tanto michi dul-
ciores sunt, quanto maius fidei tue argumentum tribuunt. Si ergo
presens essem, ego tibi curas omnes eluerem, ego dulcissimas
lacrimas a sidereis oculis tuis abstergerem,b amplexibus sollicitum
pectus tuum ambirem, leticiam tibi integre reformarem. Vale.

92
M Lumini clarissimo, et solsticio suo,a nunquam fuscis tene-
brarum labenti, sed semper candoris colorem inferenti, illa quam
nullus nisi tu sol uret in die, nec luna per noctem:b acrius can-

90. a) Song of Songs 2.1.

91. a) cf. V 50. b) Revelations 7.17, 21.4.
92. a) The summer solstice, when the earth is closest to the sun. b)
Psalm 120.6. c) Mark 9.49.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 297

at once and so get in each other’s way. While I hesitate, I delay,

and time flies by. Farewell, jewel of all Gaul.

90
WOMAN To the leafy grove, scented with the fragrance of every kind
of virtue, his flower and lily:a increase in faith and growth in love.
With a willing spirit and devoted mind, my beloved, I would
write a great deal to you, were it not for the fact that I am impeded
by as many different cares as distract my spirit, such that I can
barely find any words of greeting because of the great grief in my
heart. But now I appeal to you, by your faith and concern to love
me, to look after the one whom you have welcomed, just as you
welcomed me into your love from the beginning, and not to let our
love slip from your spirit. Farewell, prosper, and in faring well, re-
joice forever.

91
MAN To the most brilliant moon, driving away all darkness, a moon
whose brilliance, I declare, does not diminish, he for whom with-
out you it is never day: may you always shine and always enjoy an
increase of that most gratifying light.a
The cares which you, sweetest, bear for your beloved are all the
more sweet for me, in that they offer stronger proof of your faith.
If I were there, I would wash away all cares from you, I would wipe
sweetest tears from your starry eyes,b I would surround your trou-
bled breast with my embrace, I would restore your happiness com-
pletely. Farewell.

92
WOMAN To her clearest light and solstice,a never falling into the shad-
ows of darkness but always imparting the color of radiance, she
whom no sun but you warms by day nor moon at nightb: may you
298 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

descere, splendidius fulgere, in fervore nostri amoris non defi-

cere, salis condimentum habere, conditaque servare.c
Vale.

93
V Splendidissime luci sue, que in mediis tenebris lucere solet: dul-
cissime lucis nullos sentire defectus.
Nullus nobis infelicior est, quos amor simul et pudor in diversa
rapiunt.a

94
M Perfecti decoris, et optimi odoris aromati, germine suavitatis in
campo heremi centuplicato,a luna plena: innexibilis amoris deli-
cia.b
Verba das ventis.c Si me pro talibus lapidas, quid faceres ferenti
iniurias? Ille amicus non est laudandus, nec ex omni parte per-
fectus, qui non est memor amici nisi in tempore usus necessarii.
Vale.

95
M Navi periclitanti,a et anchoram fidei non habenti, illa quam non
movent ventosa que tue infidelitati sunt congrua.
Tu non equo mecum sentis animo, sed mutasti mores; idcirco
nusquam est tuta fides. Penitet me non modice, quod te solum
pre omnibus cordi meo tam firmiter affixi, quia frustra laborat, cui
laboris mercedem nemo recompensat. Pendula expectacione vix
expectavi. Sed quid hec spes michi profuit, que nullum profectum
attulit? Vale. (f. 166v)

93. a) Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.618–619; Heroides 15.121.

94. a) cf. Matthew 13.8, 13.23; Mark 4.8, 4.20. b) Here luna plena is
taken as an image of herself (picking up his image of her in V 91).
c) Ovid, Amores 1.6.42.
95. a) Jonah 1.4.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 299

radiate more brightly, shine more brilliantly, not diminish in the fer-
vor of our love, be seasoned with salt and preserve your flavor.c
Farewell.

93
MAN To his most brilliant light, who is used to shining in the midst
of darkness: may you experience no diminishing of your sweetest
light.
No one is unhappier than we who are simultaneously pulled in
different directions by love and shame.a

94
WOMAN To the spice of perfect quality and finest fragrance, multi-
plied a hundredfolda with the seed of sweetness in the wasteland,
a full moon: the delights of binding love.b
You give words to the wind.c If you stone me for such things,
what would you do to one inflicting injuries on you? He who does
not remember a friend except in time of necessity is no friend de-
serving of praise nor perfect in every part. Farewell.

95
WOMAN To the imperiled boata not having the anchor of faith, she
who is not moved by the winds which fan your faithlessness.
You are not being fair to me, but have changed your ways; and
so trust is not secure anywhere. I regret in no small way having fas-
tened you alone over everyone so firmly to my heart, because it is
wasted effort when nobody repays the price of that effort. Sus-
pended in hope, I barely kept hoping. But what good has such ex-
pectation been to me when it has brought no result? Farewell.
300 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

96
V Speciose sue, cuius laudi nec mens nec lingua sufficit: quid
aliud, nisi ut totum tibi proveniat, quod dilectissimi tui estuans
dilectio iugiter affectat?
Mea verissime in te dilectio de die in diem proficit, nec tempo-
rum vetustate minuitur, immo sicut sol quotidie novus est, ita tua
suavissima dulcedo novitate sua florescit, germinat, et vivide
crescit. Vale martyr mea, ut ego tui sic memor esto mei.

97
<<V>> Cordi dimidio, parti animea mando, quod sum: tibi sum
dum vivo.
Vale quamvis nullum miseris michi salve.

98
a
M Tyroni et amantium dulcissimo: fundamentum stabilis amicicie
infidelitatis fusca nescire, frigidum neque tepidum fieri in dulcif-
ero nostri amoris ardore, sed solito more ardentius estuare,
meque promerentem amicabili fomite pectoris semper sine tedio
gestare.
Mea vota nil michi prosunt, quia ego et mea tibi vilescunt, et
delectacionem desiderati gaudii, tu quasi iratus sustulisti.

99
V Amoris leges bene scienti et optime implenti, amicus idem qui
fuerat: eandem unici amoris constanciam.

100
M Fidelis fideli: nodum qui nunquam denodatur amoris integri.

97. a) cf. M 11, 49.

98. a) Isidore defines tirones as strong boys (pueri) chosen to bear arms,
Etymologiae 9.3.36.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 301

96
MAN To his beautiful one, whom neither mind nor tongue is capa-
ble of praising enough: what else but that everything which the
burning love of your most beloved continually strives for, may
come about for you.
Most truly my love for you grows from day to day and is not di-
minished by the passing of time. On the contrary, just as the sun
is new every day, so your most delightful sweetness flourishes in
its newness, sprouts, and grows vigorously. Farewell, my martyr,
be as mindful of me as I am of you.

97
<<MAN>> To half my heart and part of my soul:a I send what I am;
I am yours, as long as I live.
Farewell, even though you sent no greeting to me.

98
a
WOMAN To a tiro, the sweetest of lovers, the foundation of a sta-
ble friendship: may you never know the darkness of faithlessness;
may you become neither cold nor lukewarm in the sweet-flowing
fire of our love, but rather blaze more ardently than usual; and
may you always carry me deservedly in the friendly kindling of
your breast without tiring.
My wishes are of no use to me, because I and everything I have
are worthless to you, and because you have borne the pleasure of
desired joy as if angry.

99
MAN To one who knows well and is best equipped with the rules of
love, the same friend as he had been: the same constancy of a
unique love.

100
WOMAN Faithful to faithful: the knot of an intact love never untied.
302 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Dignum est et benefactum ut possessio que possidetur a pos-

sessore attencius exerceatur, neque in corde eius vilescat, sed
magis ac magis omni hora crescat.

101
V Sidereo oculo suo: semper videre quod placeat, nunquam sen-
tire quod displiceat.
Ego sum qui fui. Nichil in me de tuo amore mutatum est, nisi
quod in maius quotidie flamma tue dilectionis exuberat. Hec sola
mutacio fatenda est, hec sola iuste conceditur quod tuo amori
apud me in omni tempore proficitur. Cautius modo te alloquor si
notare vis, cautius aggredior, pudor se amori contemperat,
amorem verecundia cohibet, ne in immensum proruat, ut et nos-
tris dulcibus votis copiam demus, et famam que de nobis orta est
paulatim attenuemus. Vale.

102
M Lacte et melle mananti,a candor lactis et dulcedo mellis:
liquorem tocius suavitatis et augmentum gaudii salutaris.b
Te dilectissimum cordique meo amantissimum, amori meo ap-
tissimum, voto meo convenientissimum semper valere, et semper
dulciter vivere, summa opto cordis intencione. Quod preciocissi-
mum habeo, tibi do, scilicet meipsam, in fide et dilectione fir-
mam, in amore tuo stabilem, et nunquam mutabilem. Vale, letare,
nil te offendat, nec me per te ledat.

103
V Argento nitidiori, omni precioso lapide splendidiori,a omnia pig-
menta odore et sapore superanti, ille qui semper novis reficitur
donis tuis, et gaudiis: blanda semper novitate delectari.

102. a) Deuteronomy 26.15. b) cf. M 84.

103. a) cf. Proverbs 8.19. b) Gregory the Great, Hom. in Evangelia 2.30.2,
PL 76:1221B.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 303

It is right and proper that a possession which is possessed by

the possessor is utilized attentively and not made worthless in his
heart, but grow more and more every hour.

101
MAN To his starry eye: may it always see what is pleasing and never
perceive what is displeasing.
I am the person I have been. Nothing has changed in me con-
cerning my ardor for you, except that every day the flame of love
for you rises even more. I admit this change alone, this alone do
I rightly concede, that it grows in love for you within me in every
season. If you care to note, I am now speaking to you more cau-
tiously, and approaching you more cautiously; shame tempers
love, modesty checks love, lest it rush out in its immensity. This
way we can fulfil our sweet desires and gradually stifle the rumor
that has arisen about us. Farewell.

102
WOMAN To one flowing with milk and honey,a the whiteness of milk
and the sweetness of honey: outpouring of every delight and in-
crease of saving joy.b
Most loved and most cherished in my heart, so much suited for
my love and the complete answer to my prayer, I hope with the
greatest intention of my heart that you may always fare well and
always live in sweetness. The most precious thing I have I give to
you, namely, myself, firm in faith and love, stable in desire for you
and never changeable. Farewell, rejoice, may nothing upset you
nor hurt me through you.

103
MAN To one more shiny than silver, more brilliant than any pre-
cious stone,a and surpassing all spices in aroma and taste, he who
is always restored by your new gifts and joys: may you always de-
light in lovely newness.
304 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Amor ociosus esse non potest.b Se enim semper in amicum

erigit, semper ad nova obsequia contendit, nunquam dormit, nun-
quam desidia labascit. Hec anime mi sentencia in te liquido con-
probatur que in incepte dilectionis cursu firmiter durans, amico
tuo qualis in eum sis, novis semper declaras indiciis. Quanti dona
tua faciam vel cuius apud me sint ponderis, tibi familiariter in-
timabo.

104
M Insaciabili amoris dulcedini, cuncta delectabilia suavitate su-
peranti, illa cui nichil preciosius in toto mundo conparatur: ut dig-
nitas tua ineffabili gloria renovetur.
Amoris tui incendium quod in me crescit, semper me scribere
cogit. Sed quid potissimum dicam ignoro, nisi quod dilectionis in-
dicium cordi meo insitum tibi revelabo. Jure pro illo doleo, quem
tam tenere, tam interne diligo, cuius dulcedinis benignitas, suavi-
tates precellit humanas, et illum non datur oculis cernere corpor-
eis, qui nunquam labascit ab intencione mentis. Huius ergo
doloris incrementum non est alio modo sanandum, nisi in modo
turturisa tibi servem inviolabile pignus amoris, illud optans voce et
votis, ut tibi multiplicentur anni vite, et adipiscaris quandoque
coronam immortalitatis eterne.b Vale.

105
V Summo lassorum animorum solamini, gaudio integro, spei
solide, omnium demum que iocunda sunt domicilio, ille cui tuus
spiritus mellis est haustus, cui tuus intuitus clarissimum lumen
est: quid aliud nisi ut magne suavitati tue longissima vita sufficiat?
Quod amorem meum dulcissima scribendi necessarium tibi
causam constituis, ita gratanter accipio, sicut artissima vere dilec-
tionis cathena te firmiter astrictam teneo. Verbis eciam tuis ut
facillima fides sit, opera tua probant, que ita frequentibus ben-
eficiis redundant, ut apertum sit amorem tuum frigidum non esse,

104. a) Isidore, Etymologiae 12.7.60; cf. Song of Songs 2.12. b) cf.

Proverbs 4.10; James 1.12.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 305

Love cannot remain idle.b It always rises for a friend, always

strives for new ways to be of service, never sleeps, never falls into
laziness. These maxims are clearly confirmed in you, my spirit;
firmly persisting in the course of the love that has begun, you al-
ways indicate to your friend with new signs how you feel about
him. How much I value your gifts and how important they are to
me, I shall reveal to you privately.

104
WOMAN To the insatiable sweetness of love, surpassing every de-
light in pleasantness, she for whom nothing in the whole world is
more precious: may your excellence be renewed with indescrib-
able glory.
The fire of passion for you which is always growing in me drives
me to write. But I do not know what is the most important thing
to say, except to show you evidence of the love planted in my
heart. Rightly I grieve for him whom I love so tenderly and so
deeply, whose generous gift of sweetness surpasses mortal de-
lights and whom it is not granted to see with corporeal eyes, but
who never slips from the intention of the mind. An increase of this
grief can therefore only be alleviated if, like the turtle dove,a I pre-
serve for you an inviolable pledge of love, wishing in word and
prayer that the years of your life be multiplied and that some day
you will obtain the crown of eternal immortality.b Farewell.

105
MAN To the greatest comfort of weary spirits, to untainted joy, solid
hope, and home of all things joyful, he for whom your breath is
honeyed draught and your gaze the clearest light: what else but a
very long life to suffice for your great delightfulness?
I accept just as gladly as I hold you firmly clasped in the tight-
est chain of true love, the fact that you, sweetest, establish my
love as the essential reason for your writing. Indeed, your actions,
which overflow with so many recurring benefits that it is obvious
that your love is not cold, prove that it is very easy to trust in your
306 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

et eum quem te amare testaris, lingua eciam tacente, factis suffi-

cienter loqueris. (f. 167r)

106
<<V>> ..... Nichil insipiente fortunato gravius est.a Nunc primum
ante actam fortunam recognosco, nunc leta tempora respexisse
vacat, quia spes recedit nescio an unquam recuperanda. Ego pre-
cium ob stulticiam fero, quia bonum illud quod retinere sicut de-
cuit nescivi, quo utique indignus fui, illud inquam bonum perdo,
alio avolat, me relinquit, quia me sua possessione indignum
recognoscit. Vale.

107
M ..... Cuius animus dividitur in multa, minus valet ad singula. .....
Vidi michi assistere mulierem, etate senem, aspectu decoram, et
per omnes compages membrorum ultra humanum modum ele-
gantem, que me torvis oculis inspiciens, iustaque increpacione
has voces proferens inquit:a “Cur tam negligenter agis? Nonne
vides quod nullum nobilitas generis, nec forma decoris, nec as-
pectus pulcritudinis juvat, nisi quem spiritus sancti gracia pre-
venit, diviciasque sapiencie et sciencie in se recipit ut his munitus
secularibus calliditatibus possit resistere salvus?.” ..... Reducto in
vires animo, hoc eam allocuta sum responso.....etc. Vale, quot
folia queque gerunt arbores, tot mando prosperitates.

108
V Sol meus atque serena dies mea lux mea salve.
versus Tu mea dulcedo, te sine dulce nichil
Si queris quis verba tibi tam dulcia mittat
Vita manes cuius hoc facit ille tuus
5 Cui potus lacrime te discedente fuere
Cui dolor et gemitus mixta fuere cibus.

106. a) Cicero, Laelius 54.

107. a) cf. Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 1.1.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 307

words; and you speak through deeds sufficiently of the one whom
you assert you love even with a silent tongue.

106
<<MAN>> ..... There is nothing worse than a foolish man blessed by
fortune.a Now for the first time I realize the good fortune I previ-
ously enjoyed, now I have the opportunity to look back on happy
times, for hope is fading—I do not know whether ever to be re-
covered. I am paying the price for stupidity, because I am losing
that good thing of which I have been completely unworthy, that
good thing which I have not known how to keep as I ought. It is
flying elsewhere, forsaking me, because it realizes that I am not
worthy of having it. Farewell.

107
WOMAN ..... A spirit divided over many things is less effective on in-
dividual matters. ..... I saw a woman standing near me, advanced
in years, graceful in appearance and in every part of her body el-
egant beyond human measure. Looking at me with stern eyes and
speaking these words in rightful reproach,a she said: “Why do you
act so negligently? Do you not see that neither nobility of birth nor
attractive form nor beautiful appearance helps anyone for whom
the grace of the Holy Spirit does not come first and who does not
draw in the riches of wisdom and knowledge, so that, protected
by these, worldly cunning can be safely resisted?” ..... My spirit
having been restored to strength, I spoke to her with this re-
sponse. etc. Farewell. As many as the leaves borne by every tree,
so many prayers do I send for your prosperity.

108
MAN My sun and my serene day, my light, greetings.
You are my sweetness, without you nothing is sweet,
If you should ask who sends words so sweet to you:
He who is yours does so, whose life you remain,
5 Whose drink has been tears with you away,
Whose food has been mixed with grief and sighs.a

108. a) Isaiah 35.10. b) Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 3 m.1.7;

Lucan, Pharsalia 8.159–60. c) Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.272.
308 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Vita gravis mors suavis erat, hanc sepe precabar

Nam nec leta dies, nec michi grata quies
Sepe sequi dominam votum fuit, ire parabam,
10 Sed pudor atque metus continuere viam.
Fama tui reditus simul est audita, reversus,
Spiritus est cari dulcis amica tui.
Incalui totus, horror ferit intima letus,
Erigor, et mea vix gaudia percipio,
15 Nec mirum reduci tibi me dilecta favere,
Namque favent letis tempora blandiciis
Gratius astra nitent, sol clarior exerit orbem,b
Blanditur tellus floribus alma suis.c
In laudes natura tuas se preparat omnis
20 Cuncta tuas laudes o mea vita canunt.

109
M Quia uterque nostrum alter alterius conspectui modo in mo-
mento presentari valet, littere nostre salutacione non indigent.
Cupio te tamen esse salvum, virtutum decore indutum, sophie
gemmis circumtectum, morum honestate preditum, omnisque
composicionis ornatu decoratum. Vale, fons refrigerii. Vale flos
odoris gratissimi. Vale memoria leticie, oblivio tristicie.

110
V Unice sue: gaudium quod nulla egritudo corrumpat.
Deo teste dilectissima quotiens tuas legere litteras incipio,
tanta interius suavitate perfundor, ut litteram quam legi sepe
cogar repetere, quia attencionem michi magnitudo aufert leticie.
Facile ergo perpendere potes quam iocunda michi sit ipsius gratis-
sime persone tue presencia et quantum in se ponderis habeant
viva verba tua, cum tantum me vox eminus missa letificet. Vale.

111
<<V>> Lucida nox tua sit, preter me nil tibi desit
<versus> Dum me pulcra cares defore cuncta putes.
Me sopita vide, me dum vigilas meditare,
Et velut ipse tuus sum, michi sis animus.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 309

Life was difficult, death sweet and often prayed for;

Day was not joyful nor sleep pleasing to me.
I often wished to follow my lady, and was preparing to go,
10 But shame and fear blocked the way.
As soon as news of your return was heard, sweet friend,
The breath of your dear one was restored.
I became hot all over, joyous trembling pounded inside,
I am revived and scarcely grasp my joys.
15 Nor is it any wonder that I favor your return,
Beloved, for the season favors delightful joys.
The stars shine more pleasingly, the sun shows its orb more
brightly,b
Mother Earth delights with its flowers.c
All Nature prepares itself for your praises,
20 Everything, my life, sings your praises.

109
WOMAN Since each of us is able to see the other in a moment now,
our letters do not need a greeting. Nevertheless I want you to be
well, clothed with the grace of the virtues, covered with the jewels
of wisdom, endowed with honesty of behavior, and decorated with
the adornment of complete composure. Farewell, font of refresh-
ment. Farewell, flower of the most pleasing scent. Farewell, mem-
ory of joy, end of sadness.

110
MAN To his only one: joy which no sickness can destroy.
God is my witness, most beloved, that every time I begin to
read your letters, I am flooded with so much delight inside that I
am often forced to go back over the letter I have read, because
the extent of my happiness takes my attention away. So you can
easily imagine how joyful for me is the very presence of your so
pleasing person, and how important are your living words, when
just a word sent from afar makes me happy. Farewell.

111
<<MAN>> May your night be clear, may you lack nothing but me.
And lacking me, beautiful woman, may you feel deprived of
everything.
Imagine me when you sleep, think of me while awake,
And just as I am yours, be my spirit for me.
310 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

112
M Magistro suo nobilissimo atque doctissimo: salutem in eo qui
est salus et benedictio.
Si bene vales et inter mundana curris sine offensione, summa
efferora mentis exultacione. Placuit tue nobilitati eas litteras mit-
tere mee parvitati, in quibus me appellando, et tue dilectionis con-
solacionem promittendo, pre nimio gaudio sicut michi visum est
quadam agilitate mentis, me usque ad tercium celum rapuisti.b Ev-
identius verum dicam: litterarum tuarum immensa iocunditas ex
improviso me rapuit, et quasi per internam revelacionem ad voti
mei consolacionem instituit. ..... Jam philosophie laribus nutri-
tus,c poeticum fontem ebibisti. ..... Sitire deum et illi adherere soli
necessarium est omni viventi. ..... Quamvis futurum sit, tamen
iam tibi moncium cacuminad supplicare conspicio. Nec dubito,
quin in te impleatur hoc quod opto divino consilio. Verum nullo
genere linguarum, nulla verborum facundia potest sufficienter ex-
plicari, quantum gaudeo, quod portum tue dilectionis secura nec
ingrata optineo.e Cum ergo tanti beneficii meritis dignam repen-
dere vicem nullatenus valeam, tamen desiderio, desiderof indefi-
cienter tuo vacare studio. .....

112aa
<<M>> Ubi est amor et dilectio, ibi semper fervet exercicium.b Jam
fessa sum, tibi respondere nequeo, quod dulcia pro gravibus ac-
cipis, ac per hoc animum meum contristaris. Vale. (f. 167v)

112. a) efferor] Könsgen corrects effero in the MS (“I bear [great things]”)
to efferor (“I am carried away [by great . . .]”), a more elegant con-
struction. It is difficult to be certain which is the correct reading.
Given a number of scribal corrections in this passage, it seems un-
usual that the scribe did not notice this mistake. b) 2 Corinthians
12.2. c) cf. Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 1.2; 1.3. d) Genesis
8.5. e) On the image of sailing into port, see V 78. f) Luke 22.15.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 311

112
WOMAN To her most noble and most learned teacher: well-being in
Him who is both salvation and blessing.
If you are well and moving among worldly concerns without
trouble, I am carried away by great exultation of mind.a It has
pleased your nobility to send those letters to my insignificance, in
which by naming me and promising me the solace of your love,
you snatched me—from so much joy, it seemed to me, and
through a certain agility of mind—right up to the third heaven.b
But I shall speak more plainly: the immense pleasure of your let-
ters has seized me unexpectedly, and, as though by some internal
revelation, provided solace for my desire. ..... Already nourished at
the hearth of philosophy,c you have drunk from the fountain of po-
etry. ..... To thirst for God and to cling to Him alone is necessary
for every living creature. ..... Although it may be in the future, nev-
ertheless I already see the mountaintopsd bowing down before
you. Nor do I doubt that this, which I hope for, will be fulfilled in
you by divine plan. But no manner of speech nor way with words
can sufficiently express how happy I am, that, secure yet not un-
grateful, I am reaching the haven of your love.e Therefore, al-
though I am totally incapable of appropriately repaying the worth
of such a great benefit, I nevertheless long with desiref to be free
to be unfailingly devoted to you. .....

112aa
<<WOMAN>> Where there is passion and love, there always rages ef-
fort.b Now I am tired, I cannot reply to you, because you are tak-
ing sweet things as burdensome, and in doing so you sadden my
spirit. Farewell.

112a. a) In the margin: Ex alia <epistola> “From another <letter>.” b) cf.

the Maunday Thursday hymn, Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est
“Where charity and love are, there God abides.”
312 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

113
<<V>> Urget amor sua castra sequia sua jura vereri
Et quod non didici discere cogit amor.b
Non homo sed lapis est quem non tua forma movebit.c
Credo quod moveor, nec lapis esse queo.
5 Cura fuit Veneris effingere membra poetisd
.....
Sed tibi num finxere pares? Non estimo certe
Exuperat veras nam tua forma deas.e
Eloquar an sileam?f Si sit tua gracia dicam.
10 Dicam nam verbis proditor omnis abest
Qualia sunt que veste tegis? Vix mente quiesco.
Que palpasse volo cum subeunt animo.
Sed fortuna pudorque meis dulcissima votis
Obstant et populi murmura que timeo.
15 Ut quociens opto te possim cara videre
(Quod ter quaque die posse velim fieri)g
.....
Candidior medio nox foret illa die.h
Da veniam quia dictat amor que scribere cogor
20 Da veniam fasso, non patienter amo.i
Tu me vicisti, potuit quem vincere nulla.
Fortius hinc uror, est quia primus amor;j
Nam non ante meas penetravit flamma medullas.k
Si quis amor fuerat ante fui tepidus.
25 Facundum me sola facis,l hec gloria nulli
Contigit, ut fuerit carmine digna meo.
Tu nulli similis, in qua natura locavitm
Quicquid precipuum mundus habere potest
Forma genus mores per que pariuntur honores
30 Urbi te nostre conspicuam faciunt.
Ergo quid est mirum si me nitor attrahit horum?
Si tibi succumbo, victus amore tuo?

113. a) Ovid, Amores 1.2.17–18, 1.9.1, 3.8.26; Ars amatoria 3.559. b)

Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.515. c) Terence, Hecuba 214; Statius, Sil-
vaid 2.1.139. d) Könsgen conjectures from the meter a missing line
at this point; the scribe indicates an ellipse. e) Ovid, Heroides 18.68.
f) Virgil, Aeneid 3.39. g) Scribal ellipse indicated, although there is
no major lapse in sense. h) Ovid, Heroides 16.320. i) Ovid, Heroides
19.4; cf. Ponticae 1.7.22, 4.2.23. j) Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.452. k)
Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.351. l) Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.469. m) cf.
43, 73. n) Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.619; Heroides 15.176.
 FROM THE LETTERS OF TWO LOVERS 313

113
<<MAN>> Love urges me to enlist in its service,a to respect its laws,
And what I had not learnt, love forces me to learn.b
No man but stone is he whom your beauty does not move.c
I believe that I am moved, nor can I be stone.
5 Poets have tried hard to portray the body of Venus,d
.....
But did they ever produce anyone equal to you? Certainly I
think not.
For your beauty surpasses even the goddesses themselves.e
Should I go on or be silent?f By your grace, I will speak.
10 I will speak, for a traitor is devoid of words.
What are they like, what you conceal with clothing? My mind
can scarcely rest.
I want to stroke them, when they come to mind.
But fortune and shame and, that which I fear, sweetest,
The murmuring of people, obstruct my desires.
15 If I could see you, my dear, as often as I wished
(Three times a day I would want it to be)g
.....
That night would be brighter than the middle of day.h
Forgive me, since love dictates what I am forced to write.
20 Forgive me, for I admit that I do not love patiently.i
You have conquered me, whom no woman could conquer.
Thus I burn more strongly, this being my first love;j
For never before has that flame penetrated my marrow.k
If ever there was love before, I was only lukewarm.
25 You alone make me eloquent;l 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 placedm
Whatever excellence the world can have:
Beauty, noble birth, character—through which honor is begot-
ten—
30 All make you outstanding in our city.
So is it then surprising if I am lured by their brilliance,
If I succumb to you, conquered by your love?n
NOTES

Chapter 1
1. Letter 1, ed. Ewald Könsgen, Epistolae duorum amantium. Briefe Abaelards und
Heloises? (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974). Letters are cited according to the num-
bering established by Könsgen (italic numerals denoting letters from the
man), rather than by page numbers. On the punctuation followed in these
letters, see p. 183–84.
2. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 11.2.4–6, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1912); Adolf Hofmeister discusses different systems of under-
standing age, noting that one could be a puer up to twenty-eight, “Puer,
Juvenis, Senex. Zum Verständnis der mittalterlichen Altersbezeichnungen,”
in Papsttum und Kaisertum. Paul Kehr zum 65. Geburtstag dargebracht, ed. Al-
bert Brackmann (Munich: Münchener Drucke, 1926), pp. 287–316; see
also Georges Duby, “Les ‘jeunes’ dans la société aristocratique dans la
France du Nord-Ouest au XIIe siècle,” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisa-
tions 19 (1964): 834–46; trans. Cynthia Postan, “Youth in aristocratic soci-
ety. Northwestern France in the twelfth century,” included in a collection
of Duby’s essays, The Chivalrous Society (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1977), pp. 112–22. This translation omits inverted commas around
“youth,” creating the misleading impression that Duby is talking about
young people in the modern sense of the word.
3. Isidore, Etymologiae 9.7.12, 20.11.5. Baudri of Bourgueil uses puella of both
Muriel and Beatrice, nuns with whom he exchanged sophisticated Latin
verse, Baldricus Burgulianus Carmina, ed. Karlheinz Hilbert, Editiones Hei-
delbergenses 19 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1979), nos. 137 and 140, pp.
189–90 and 193. I have not been able to consult the new edition and trans-
lation of Baudri’s Carmina, prepared by Jean-Yves Tillette and being pub-
lished by Les Belles Lettres, Paris; on Baudri, see, pp. 98–101. Carla
Casagrande comments on the clerical tendency to divide women into
young or old, “The Protected Women,” in A History of Women in the West.
II. Silences of the Middle Ages, ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992), p. 75.
316 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

4. Könsgen, p. 10. I follow Könsgen’s practice of using the Latin form of his
name (Johannes de Vepria), given on fol. 41v.Vernet identifies him as Jean de
Vepria (n. 21 below), following a vernacular form used in the colophon to
his translation into French of a liturgical text (n. 35 below). The catalogues
of the BNF and British Library identify him as “La Véprie, Jean de.”
5. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 71; ed. Hicks, p. 10; trans. Radice, p. 66.
6. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 117; ed. Hicks, p. 53. Radice (p. 118) translates the
end of the first sentence as “resounds with my name,” as if these songs used
the name Heloysa, when the Latin simply means that they made her fa-
mous as a woman praised by Abelard. For further discussion of these pas-
sages, see, pp. 31–36.
7. Könsgen, pp. 97–103, with discussion of kinds of love on pp. 88–90.
8. Ernstpeter Ruhe, De amasio ad amasiam: Zur Gattungsgeschichte des mittelal-
terlichen Liebesbriefes, Beiträge zur romanischen Philologie des Mittelalters
10 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1975).
9. Graziella Ballanti, trans., Un Epistolario d’Amore del XII secolo (Abelardo e
Eloisa?) (Rome: Edizioni Anicia, 1988). Ballanti downplays Könsgen’s
achievement in her introduction (pp. 9–10), unfortunate given that the full
richness of Könsgen’s commentary is not fully explored. Étienne Wolff
only translates some of the love letters in La Lettre d’amour au moyen âge:
Boncompagno da Signa, La Roue de Venus; Baudri de Bourgueil, Poésies; Manu-
scrit de Tegernsee, Lettres d’amours; Manuscrit de Troyes, Lettres de deux amants
(Héloïse et Abélard?) (Paris: Nil Editions, 1996), pp. 117–51.
10. The only reviews recorded in the Citation Index are those of Edward Little,
Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 19.2 (1976): 181–82; A. Pattin, Tijdschrift voor
Filosofie 41.3 (1979): 521; G. Chiarini, Maia. Rivista di Letterature Classiche
33.3 (1981): 245–46. Jean Jolivet comments that “the question mark to his
subtitle has all its value” in “Abélard entre chien et loup,” Cahiers de civilisa-
tion médiévale 20 (1977): 312 n. 20. Giles Constable observes that “there is no
sure evidence of their authorship” in Letters and Letter-Collections, Typologie
des sources du moyen âge occidental 17 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), p. 34 n.
100. The letters are briefly commented on by Annie Cazenave, “Yseut et
Héloïse, ou la passion et l’amour éternel,” in Tristan et Iseult, mythe européen et
mondial, ed. Danielle Buschinger (Goppingen: Kummerle, 1987), pp. 87–96.
11. They are mentioned only in passing by Jacques Verger, L’amour castré. L’his-
toire d’Héloïse et Abélard (Paris: Hermann, 1996), p. xiii and not at all by
Mariateresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri, Eloisa e Abelardo (Milan: Arnoldo
Mondadori, 1984), John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) or Michael T. Clanchy, Abelard.
A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
12. Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Testimonies, W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture 26
(Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1976), pp. 24–26, repr. in Dronke,
 N OT ES 317

Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Let-

teratura, 1992), pp. 270–72.
13. Dronke, ML 2: 422–47.
14. Dronke, WW, pp. 94–95.
15. Wolff, La Lettre d’amour au moyen âge, p. 24 (n. 9 above).
16. Jean Charles Payen, Histoire de la littérature française. Le Moyen Age, new re-
vised ed. (1990; Paris: GF Flammarion, 1997), p. 58; Neil Cartlidge, Me-
dieval Marriages: literary approaches 1100 – 1300 (Woodbridge: Boydell &
Brewer, 1997), p. 60 n. 142.
17. Index Scriptorum Novus Mediae Latinitatis ab anno DCCC usque ad annum
MCC, ed. Franz Blatt (Copenhagen: Einar Munksgaard, 1993). There is an
entry on Pierre Abélard by Jean Jolivet, but none on Héloïse in Dictionnaire
des lettres françaises. Le Moyen âge, eds. Robert Bossuat, Louis Pichard and
Guy Raynaud de Lage; new edition by Geneviève Hasenohr and Michel
Zink (Paris: Fayard, 1992), pp. 1152–55.
18. Georges Duby, Dames du XIIe siècle. I. Héloïse, Aliénor, Iseut et quelques autres
(Paris: Gallimard, 1995), pp. 73–110; Women of the Twelfth Century, trans.
Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), pp. 42–65. He had mentioned
these doubts in Que sait-on de l’amour en France au XIIe siècle? (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1983) and Mâle moyen âge. De l’amour et autres essais (Paris:
Flammarion, 1988), pp. 45, 120; Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages, trans.
Jane Dunnett (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), p. 31, 96. For further dis-
cussion of the authenticity question, see, pp. 47–53.
19. Dronke, WW, p. x.
20. On frequent visual associations of women with the book, see Lesley Smith,
“Scriba, Femina: Medieval Depictions of Women Writing,” in Women and
the Book. Assessing the Visual Evidence, eds. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M.Tay-
lor (London: British Library, 1997), pp. 21–44. On women’s writing in
Anglo-Norman in the second half of the twelfth century, see Jocelyn
Wogan-Browne and Glyn S. Burgess, Virgin Lives and Holy Deaths.Two Ex-
emplary Biographies for Anglo-Norman Women (London: J. M. Dent, 1996), pp.
xiv-xvi and Wogan-Browne, “Clerc u lai, muïne u dame,” in Women and
Literature in Britain, 1150 – 1500, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1993), pp. 61–85. For wide-ranging anthologies of
women’s writing, see Marcelle Thiébaux, ed., The Writings of Medieval
Women, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), much expanded
from the 1987 edition, and Carolyne Larrington, ed., Women and Writing in
Medieval Europe (London: Routledge, 1995).
21. On Johannes de Vepria, see Könsgen, pp. xx-xxvii; on Pierre de Virey, see
André Vernet, La Bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux du XIIe au XVIIIe siè-
cle (Paris: CNRS, 1979), pp. 27–34 and “Un abbé de Clairvaux bibliophile:
Pierre de Virey (1471 – 96),” Scriptorium 6 (1952): 76–88.
318 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

22. Edited by Vernet as the catalogue of Pierre de Virey, La Bibliothèque de l’ab-

baye de Clairvaux, pp. 67–372. The handwriting of Troyes, Bibliothèque
municipale 2299, reproduced by Vernet in Plate II of that volume, is iden-
tical to that of MS 1452 reproduced by Könsgen as a frontispiece to his
edition; see also Anne Bordérelle-Souchier, Bibliothèques cisterciennes dans la
France médiévale. Repertoire des abbayes d’hommes (Paris: CNRS, 1990), pp.
91–93, and Jean-Paul Bouhot, “La Bibliothèque de Clairvaux,” in Bernard
de Clairvaux. Histoire, mentalités, spiritualité, eds. Dominique Bertrand and
Guy Lobrichon, SC 380 (Paris: Cerf, 1992), pp. 141–53.
23. Josephus-Maria Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cistercien-
sis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, 8 vols. (Louvain: Bibliothèque de la
Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 1933–41), 5: 33: “Praecipitur omnibus et
singulis patribus abbatibus, quatinus habeant inventoria omnium et singu-
lorum librorum et iocalium monasteriorum utriusque sexus sibi subdito-
rum.” On Cistercian efforts at this time to organize their monastic
libraries, see Louis J. Lekai, The Cistercians. Ideals and Reality (Kent, Ohio:
Kent State University Press, 1977), pp. 89–90.
24. Charles de Visch, Bibliotheca scriptorum sacri ordinis Cisterciensis (Cologne:
Ioannes Busaeus, 2nd. ed. 1656), pp. 231–32 and 177–78, quoting com-
ments made by Johannes de Butrio (Beurreyo) in De perseverantia religionis
(Paris: Berthold Rembolt, 1511).
25. Sheila J. Heathcote surveys this tradition in relation to Transmundus and
John of Limoges, in “The Letter Collections Attributed to Master Trans-
mundus, Papal Notary and Monk of Clairvaux in the Late Twelfth Cen-
tury,” Analecta Cisterciensia 21 (1965): 35–109, 167–238, in particular
49–66. See too Transmundus, Introductiones dictandi, ed. and trans. Ann
Dalzell (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995).
26. Könsgen comments that Johannes de Vepria may not rely on the printed
text of the Epistolae, first printed in 1476, pp. xii-xiii. On Virulus (Man-
neken), see the article of Judith Rice Henderson in Contemporaries of Eras-
mus, ed. Peter G. Bietenholz, 3 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1987), 3: 401–2. Another connection with a Flemish humanist is suggested
by a note in another Troyes manuscript (1226) about a book sent to him
by Cornelius Godefridus of Ghent; Könsgen, p. xxiii.
27. Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale 294bis; Könsgen, “Zwei unbekannte
Briefe zu den Gesta Regum Anglorum des Wilhelm von Malmesbury,”
Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 31 (1975): 204–14.
28. Könsgen (p. xiv) lists the opening and closing phrases of these anonymous
letters, still unidentified.They are addressed “to the General Chapter,” and to
the persecutor of the Church,” “to the Counsel of the King,” “to Pope J.”
(perhaps Pope John XXII, 1316 – 34); the last is simply called “Complaint.”
29. My account is indebted to Könsgen’s detailed analysis, pp. ix-xiv and pp.
xxviii-xxxi.
 N OT ES 319

30. Vernet, La Bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux, p. 577 (no. 1658): “Deflo-

rationes ex epistolis duorum amantium, incipientes Amori suo.” See also pp.
483 (no. 822b), 545 (no. 1432).
31. Könsgen, Epistolae, p. xxv. See Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen, trans.Thomas G.
Bergin (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 3, 217 and Petrarch’s
explanation in Familiares 10.41.
32. Troyes, Bibl. mun. 2471; Könsgen, Epistolae, pp. xxii-xxiii. A handwritten
analysis of this manuscript is kept at the Institut de recherche et d’histoire
des textes, Paris. It is not clear if Johannes de Vepria himself added the early
printed editions of Tibullus and Sidonius Apollinaris into this manuscript.
On the Epistula Sapphus, see, pp. 296, n. 42 and 332, n. 29.
33. Könsgen, pp. xxv-xxvi; Architrenius was first edited by Thomas Wright, The
Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century, Rolls Se-
ries, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1872), 1: 240–392. A new critical text, pre-
pared in 1974 by P. G. Schmidt, is included alongside a translation by
Winthrop Wetherbee, Architrenius (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994).
34. Die Gesta Militum des Hugo von Mâcon. Ein bisher unbekanntes Werk der
Erzählliteratur des Hochmittelalters, Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 18
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990); see the informative review by Christopher J. Mc-
Donough, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 28 (1993): 186–93.
35. Les prouerbes communs (Paris: Estienne Jehanot, 1495), translated into Latin
by Gilles le Noyer, Proverbia gallicana secundum ordinem alphabeti reposita et ab
J. Egidio Nuceriensi latinis versiculis traducta (Troyes: Johannes Lecocq, 1519).
A. Vainant mentions that fifty proverbs were censored in 1558 in a con-
cluding note to his unpaginated reprint of the 1539 Lyons edition, Les
Proverbes communs, Collection de Poésies, Romans, Chroniques publiées
d’après d’anciens Manuscrits et d’après des Editions des XVe et XVIe siè-
cles (Paris: Silvestre, 1838). See also L’Ordinaire de lordre de Cisteaux ceste
annee MCCCCXVI corrige et a bonne forme redige par ung moyne du dicte ordre
por Englebert et Geufroy de Marnef (Paris, 1516); it concludes: “Cy fine lor-
dinaire du service divine selon lordre de cysteaux extraict du latin et mis
en francois pour les religieuses dudit ordre de cysteaux par frere jehan de
vepria Lors prieur de cleruaulx Lan mil cccc iiiixx et xv. Et nouvelement
corrige et bien emende par ung moyne dudit ordre et imprime lan mil
cccc xvi pour englebert et geuffroy de marnef libraires iures de luniversite
de paris demourans au pellican de la rue saint Jacques.” See Vernet, La Bib-
liothèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux, p. 570, no. 1606.
36. Troyes, Bibl. mun. 1447, fols. 7r–27r. Könsgen, p. xxii.
37. Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II) and Niklas von Wyle, The Tale of Two
Lovers. Eurialus and Lucretia, ed. Eric John Morrall, Amsterdamer Publika-
tionen zur Sprache und Literatur 77 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988). Morrall
discusses the historical context to this work, as well as a letter of Aeneas in
320 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

which he asks his father to adopt a son fathered while attending the Coun-
cil of Basel. The original Latin text circulated in the Holy Roman Empire,
but is not known to have been read at Clairvaux or elsewhere in France;
Morrall, pp. 21–24 and 39–42.
38. Könsgen, pp. xxviii-xxx. See also p. 182.
39. Canivez, Statuta, 5: 77, 79–80 (n. 23 above). See also Louis J. Lekai, “The
Cistercian College of Saint Bernard in Paris in the Fifteenth Century,” Cis-
tercian Studies 6 (1971): 172–79 and “The College of Saint Bernard in Paris
in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Analecta Cisterciensia 28
(1972): 167–218.
40. Canivez, Statuta, 5: 376 [1476], 421–24 [1481], 445–48 [1482], 481–85
[1484]. The final section of a dialogue between a prior and a subprior, jus-
tifying the condemnation of Pierre de Virey, followed by the sentence of
excommunication in 1488, is preserved in Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale
MS 602. On the centralizing reforms of Jean de Cirey, see Roger de
Ganck, “Les pouvoirs de l’Abbé de Cîteaux de la Bulle Parvas Fons (1265)
à la Révolution Française,” Analecta Cisterciensia 27 (1971): 3–63, esp.
53–57.
41. Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections, pp. 11–12 (n. 10 above).
42. P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum, ed. Heinrich Dörrie (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 1971); Heroides. Select Epistles, ed. Peter E. Knox (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995) [Heroides 1–15]; Heroides XVI-XXI, ed.
E. J. Kenney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); trans. Harold
Isbell, Heroides (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990).
43. For the letters of Oenone and Briseis, see Heroides, nos. 5 and 3, ed. Dör-
rie, pp. 83–91 and 64–71; trans. Isbell, pp. 40–45 and 21–25. On Biblis and
Cauno, see Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.454–665, ed. William S. Anderson
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1977), pp. 218–24; trans. Mary M. Innes (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1955), pp. 234–40.
44. Against the view that the ars dictaminis was invented in the late eleventh
and early twelfth centuries, see William D. Patt, “The Early ‘ars dictaminis’
as Response to a Changing Society,” Viator 9 (1978): 133–55, and more
fully Carol Dana Lanham, “Freshman Composition in the Early Middle
Ages: Epistolography and Rhetoric before the Ars Dictaminis,” Viator 23
(1992): 115–34. Major treatises are edited by Ludwig Rockinger, Briefsteller
und Formelbücher des elften bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, Quellen und
Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte 9, 2 vols. (Mu-
nich, 1863, 1864, repr. New York: Johnson Corporation, 1961, 1969), 1:
9–94: Alberic, De dictamine [ca. 1087], Hugh of Bologna, Rationes dictandi
prosaice [1119 – 24]; Rationes dictandi [1135; once attributed to Alberic]; see
also Adalbert of Samaria, Praecepta dictaminum [ca. 1115], ed. Franz-Joseph
Schmale, MGH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 3 (Weimar:
Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1961). James J. Murphy translates the Ra-
 N OT ES 321

tiones dictandi in Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts (Berkeley: University of Cal-

ifornia Press, 1971), pp. 5–25.
45. Charles Homer Haskins draws extensively on students’ letters preserved in
these anthologies, “The Life of Mediaeval Students as Illustrated by Their
Letters,” in Studies in Mediaeval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), pp.
1–35. Richard Sharpe emphasizes the wide use of Latin in conversation as
well as in writing in “Latin in Everyday Life,” in Medieval Latin. An Intro-
duction and Bibliographical Guide, eds. F.A. C. Mantello and A. G. Rigg (Wash-
ington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), pp. 315–41.
46. See Ruhe, De amasio ad amasiam, pp. 61–97 with a valuable appendix of
edited texts, pp. 297–343 (n. 8 above). Dieter Schaller questions Ruhe’s no-
tion that these letters form a genre, in “Erotische und sexuele Thematik in
Musterbriefsammlungen des 12. Jahrhunderts,” in Fälschungen im Mittelal-
ter. Internationaler Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München
16.–19. September 1986, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Schriften Band
33, 6 vols. (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1988 – 90), 5: 63–77 and
a review of Ruhe, in Arcadia 12 (1977): 307–13; see also Albrecht Classen,
“Female Epistolary Literature from Antiquity to the Present: An Introduc-
tion,” Studia Neuphilologica 60 (1988): 3–13 and the essays in Dear Sister.
Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre, eds. Karen Cherewatuk and Ul-
rike Wiethaus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). Mar-
tin Camargo explores vernacular forms of the genre, “The Verse Love
Epistle: An Unrecognized Genre,” Genre 13 (1980): 397–405.
47. Helene Wieruszowski, “A Twelfth-Century ‘Ars Dictaminis’ in the Bar-
berini Collection of the Vatican Library,” Traditio 18 (1962) 382–93, repr.
in Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy (Rome: Edizioni di storia
e letteratura, 1971), pp. 331–45, at 343. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.316–38.
48. Boncompagno da Signa: Rota Veneris Facsimile Reproduction of the Strasburg In-
cunabulum with Introduction, Translation and Notes, ed. Josef Purkart (Delmar,
NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1975) and Rota Veneris, ed. Paolo
Garbini (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1996); part of Purkart’s translation is
reprinted within Larrington, Women and Writing, pp. 61–63. See too Josef
Purkart, “Spurious Love Letters in the Manuscripts of Boncompagno’s
Rota Veneris,” Manuscripta 28 (1984): 45–55 and on its context, Friedrich
Baethgen, “Rota Veneris,” Mediaevalia. Aufsätze, Nachrufe, Besprechungen
(Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1960), pp. 363–84.
49. Bernard Bray discusses the transformation of letter collections into the
novel in L’Art de la lettre amoureuse. Des manuels aux romans (1550 – 1700)
(The Hague-Paris: Mouton, 1967). See also Janet Gurkin Altman, “The Let-
ter Book as a Literary Institution 1539 – 1789: Toward a Cultural History
of Published Correspondence in France,” Yale French Studies 71 (1986):
17–62, Marie-Claire Grassi,“Friends and Lovers (or The Codification of In-
timacy),” ibid., 77–92 and L’Art de la lettre au temps de la Nouvelle Héloïse et
322 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

du Romantisme (Geneva: Slatkine, 1994); see also Alain Viala, “La Genèse des
formes épistolaires en français et leurs sources latines et européennes,” Revue
de littérature comparée 218 (1981): 168–83. A more recent model of the genre
is Louis Chauffurin, Le parfait secrétaire (1954; Paris: Larousse, 1979).
50. Cf. Mikhail Bakhtin, François Rabelais and his World, trans. Helene Iswolsky
(1965; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968).
51. Paul Veyne, Roman Erotic Elegy. Love, Poetry and the West, trans. David Pel-
lauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 7; originally pub-
lished as L’Élégie érotique romaine: L’amour, la poésie et l’Occident (Paris: Seuil,
1983). On Duby, see n. 18 above.
52. R. Howard Bloch argues that the rise of courtly love in the twelfth cen-
tury was a new form antifeminism, transformed from earlier Christian an-
tifeminism by being secularised and fused with ideals of suffering,
proposing (paradoxically) that romantic love was a reaction “on the part of
a marriage-minded nobility against the increasing economic power of
women;” Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 10, 195–96. More nu-
anced doubts about such blanket generalizations are made by Penny
Schine Gold in her preface to The Lady and the Virgin. Image, Attitude, and
Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1985). Laurie Finke comments on a variety of recent interpretations in
“Sexuality in Medieval French Literature: Separés, on est ensemble,” in
Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, eds. Vern L. Bullough and James A.
Brundage (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996), pp. 345–68.
53. Constable, Letters and Letter Collections, p. 11 (n. 10 above).
54. Constable, “Forged Letters in the Middle Ages,” in Fälschungen im Mittelal-
ter 5: 11–37, especially 33, in which he discusses the explanation of Bernard
of Clairvaux about the difference between a sealed and an unsealed letter,
Ep. 223, SBO 7: 90 (n. 46 above). See also Hartmut Hoffman, “Zur mitte-
lalterlichen Brieftechnik,” in Spiegel der Geschichte. Festgabe für Max
Braubach, eds. K. Repgen and S. Skalweit (Münster: Aschendorff, 1964), pp.
141–70. Michael Clanchy discusses the growth in use of seals in the twelfth
century in From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066 – 1307 (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979).
55. Roscelin describes Abelard’s seal in his Epistola ad Abaelardum, ed. Joseph
Reiners, in Der Nominalismus in der Frühscholastik. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte
der Universalienfrage im Mittelalter, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie
des Mittelalters, Bd 8.5 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1910), p. 80. John Benton
suggested that Abelard’s seal could have contained a traditional image of
Rusticus (bearded) and Eleutherius (unbearded), companions of St. Denis,
to whose memory the abbey of Saint-Denis was also dedicated. “A recon-
sideration of the authenticity of the correspondence of Abelard and
Heloise,” in Petrus Abaelardus, ed. Thomas, p. 47 (see p. 314 n. 95 below).
 N OT ES 323

56. See above n. 13 and pp. 101–102.

57. Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, “The Vocabulary of Wax Tablets,” Harvard
Library Bulletin 12 (1990): 12–19. On the use of wax tablets, see Elisabeth
E. Lalou, “Les Tablettes de cire médiévales,” Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes
147 (1989): 123–40, and her “Inventaire des tablettes médiévales en présen-
tation générale,” in Les tablettes à écrire, de l’antiquité à l’époque moderne. Actes
du colloque international du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris,
Institut de France, 10–11 octobre 1990, ed. Elisabeth E. Lalou (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1993), pp. 233–88. Parisian ivory writing tablets from ca. 1300 de-
picting a pair of lovers hawking and exchanging roses for a wreath (British
Museum, Ivories 360) are illustrated in Larrington, Women and Writing, p.
43 (see above, n. 20).
58. Carmina, ed. Hilbert, nos. 12, 144, 148, 148, 196, pp. 42–43, 197–98,
200–201, 262–64 (n. 3 above); see Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections,
p. 45 (n. 10 above).
59. Pseudo-Boèce, De disciplina scolarum 4.1, ed. Olga Weijers (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1976), p. 110: “Si autem discipulus specialiter magistro suo, ut neces-
sarium est, nequeat exhibere presenciam, tum propter mansionis distan-
ciam, tum propter alterius rei causam, dipticas semper lateri promciores
habeat cedulamve, quibus diligenter imprimat quod consciencie sue
senserit intimatum eiusque explicite inquirat dubitatum.” Weijers dates this
Parisian manual to ca. 1230 – 40.
60. Letters 6, 9, 23, 24, 37, 42, 45, 46, 49, 53, 54, 62, 63, 69, 71, 75, 79, 109,
110, 112. Cf. Isidore, Etymologiae 19.18.4 and De differentiis uerborum 159,
PL 83: 27A.
61. Constable observes that only the salutation and subscription are consistent
elements of medieval letters, not necessarily the exordium (commonplace
generality), narration and petition, as defined by theorists, Letters and Let-
ter-Collections, pp. 16–17 (n. 10 above).
62. Carol Dana Lanham, Salutatio Formulas in Latin Letters to 1200: Syntax,
Style, and Theory, Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance-
Forschung 22 (Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1975), especially pp. 7–12.
63. Modern English translations of Cant. 4.10 (pulchriora ubera tua vino et odor
unguentorum tuorum super omnia aromata), have the image refer not to the
breasts of the bride, but to her love.
64. The relative frequency of use of any word is evident from the immensely
useful concordance to the Letters, supplied by Könsgen, pp. 113–37. Also
of great value is his comparative list of metaphors, pp. 68–71.
65. See, p. 121.
66. Liber pastoralis 1.9, ed. Floribert Rommel, SC 381 (Paris: Cerf, 1992), p.
160: “semper cogitationum procellis nauis cordis quatitur.” Cf. Isidore, Et-
ymologiae 19.1.25.
67. See, pp. 69–70, 125–28.
324 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

68. Augustine, In Iohannis epistulam ad Parthos tractatus 8, PL 35: 2038: “omnis

dilectio quae carnalis dicitur, quae non dilectio sed magis amor dici solet—
dilectionis enim nomen magis solet in melioribus rebus dici, in melioribus
accipi—tamen omnis dilectio, fratres carissimi, utique benevolentiam
quandam habet erga eos qui diliguntur.”This distinction is not commented
upon by Pierre Rousselot, Pour l’histoire du problème de l’amour au moyen âge
(Münster: Aschendorff, 1907) or Irving Singer, The Nature of Love, vol. 1,
Plato to Luther, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
69. See, p. 138.
70. See, pp. 91–93.
71. Cassiodorus, Expositio psalmorum Ps. 60.4, ed. Marc Adriaen, CCSL 97
(1958): 539.
72. Virgil, Aeneid 4.630–705; Lucan, Pharsalia 8.87–109, 637–793.
73. The words/deeds contrast is often made by Augustine, as in: Ep. 246, ed.
Alois Goldbacher, CSEL 57 (1911): 585; In Iohannis euangelium 42.6, ed.
Radbodus Willems, CCSL 36 (1954): 364; In Iohannis epistulam 6, PL 35:
2028. See also Abelard, Commentaria in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos 3 (9.3),
ed. Buytaert, CCCM 11 (1969): 229; Theologia Summi boni 2.3, eds. Buy-
taert and Mews, CCCM 13 (1987): 114; Theologia christiana 2.53, 3.3, ed.
Buytaert, CCCM 12 (1969): 153, 195.
74. In the manuscript, her phrase reads: “Si bene vales et inter mundana curris
sine offensione, summa effero mentis exultacione.” Without correcting the
Latin, this translates as “I bear great things with exultation of mind.” Köns-
gen corrects the stylistically awkward effero to efferor. It is surprising that Jo-
hannes de Vepria did not correct this mistake, given that he made two
corrections to lines of text immediately preceding, missa over emissa (110)
and an added O to indicate that pulcra is a vocative (112) as well as cor-
recting his word order after this line.
75. The plural eas litteras . . . litterarum tuarum can theoretically refer to “that
letter . . . your letter” in the singular, but the context suggests that she is re-
ferring to his letters as a whole.
76. Könsgen (p. 44) notes parallels in Virgil’s Aeneid 7.201 (portuque sedetis) and
Terence’s Andria 480 (Ego in portu navigo).
77. Könsgen, p. 93. Bernd Scheidmüller, Nomen patriae. Die Entstehung Frankreiches
in der politisch-geographischen Terminologie (10.–13. Jahrhundert) (Sigmaringen:
Jan Thorbecke, 1987), p. 13; Charles T. Wood, “Regnum Francie: A Problem
in Capetian Administrative Usage,” Traditio 23 (1967): 117–47; Elizabeth M.
Hallam, Capetian France 987 – 1328 (London: Longman, 1980), pp. 27–62.

Chapter 2
1. Le Roman de la Rose lines 8808–32, ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris: Garnier-
Flammarion, 1974), pp. 253–54; the complete passage relating to Abelard
 N OT ES 325

and Heloise occupies lines 8759–832. The translation quoted here is that
of Frances Horgan: Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance
of the Rose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 135. For the Latin
text of the passage cited by Jean de Meun, see below, n. 15.
2. La Vie et les epistres Pierres Abaelart et Heloys sa fame, ed. Eric Hicks (Paris:
Honoré Champion, 1991).
3. Only a single copy survives of his translation of the Abelard–Heloise cor-
respondence, in the hand of Gontier Col (n. 49 below); about twenty each
of his translations of Boethius and Vegetius, but none of Aelred or Gerald
of Wales;V. L. Dédeck-Héry, “Boethius’ De Consolatione par Jean de Meun,”
Mediaeval Studies 14 (1952): 165–275 and the introduction of Hicks, La vie
et les epistres, pp. xxvii-xxix.
4. Kristeva comments on this transition in “The Troubadours: From “Great
Courtly Romance” to Allegorical Narrative,” Tales of Love, trans. Leon S.
Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 280–96.
5. Heather Arden dissects Jean de Meun’s presentation of Heloise and of
women in general in “Women as Readers, Women as Text in the Roman de
la Rose,” in Women, the Book and the Worldly, pp. 111–117 (p. 293, n. 20).
6. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 107; ed. Hicks, p. 43. Radice (p. 104) translates ex div-
ina conversatione familiarissime comes simply as “close friend and long-stand-
ing companion.”
7. HC, ed. Monfrin, pp. 67, 70, 71, 73, 107; ed. Hicks, pp. 6, 9, 10, 12, 43; trans.
Radice, pp. 61, 65, 68, 104. See Abelard’s Ep. 10 to Bernard, ed. Smits, p.
239.
8. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 71; ed. Hicks, p. 10; trans. Radice, p. 66 (translating ado-
lescentula as young girl, rather than as young woman): “Erat quippe in ipsa
civitate Parisius adolescentula quedam nomine Heloysa, neptis canonici
cujusdam qui Fulbertus vocabatur, qui eam quanto amplius diligebat tanto
diligentius in omnem qua poterat scientiam litterarum promoveri
studuerat. Que cum per faciem non esset infima, per habundantiam litter-
arum erat suprema. Nam quo bonum hoc literatorie scilicet scientie in
mulieribus est rarius, eo amplius puellam commendabat et in toto regno
nominatissimam fecerat. Hanc igitur, omnibus circunspectis que amantes
allicere solent, commodiorem censui in amorem mihi copulare, et me id
facillime credidi posse. Tanti quippe tunc nominis eram et juventutis et
forme gratia preminebam, ut quamcunque feminarum nostro dignarer
amore nullam vererer repulsam. Tanto autem facilius hanc mihi puellam
consensuram credidi, quanto amplius eam litterarum scientiam et habere et
diligere noveram; nosque etiam absentes scriptis internuntiis invicem
liceret presentare et pleraque audacius scribere quam colloqui, et sic sem-
per jocundis interesse colloquiis.”
9. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 64; ed. Hicks, p. 4; trans. Radice, p. 59; cf. Isidore, Et-
ymologiae 11.2.3–6 (p. 291, n. 2 above).
326 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

10. See n. 68 below. Radice states (p. 66 n. 1) that “as she was a young girl (ado-
lescentula), it can only be assumed that she was about seventeen at this time,
and born in 1100 or 1101,” a claim repeated by Verger, L’amour castré, p. 42
(p. 292, n. 11). The lack of evidence for her age was pointed out in Histoire
littéraire de la France 12 (Paris: Huart et Moreau, 1763): 629. Charlotte
Charrier thought that she was a teenager, Héloïse dans l’histoire et dans la lé-
gende (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1933; repr. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints,
1977), p. 52; Enid McLeod was more cautious, Héloïse. A Biography, 2nd ed.
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1971), pp. 8 and 287–89.
11. Ep. 115, ed. Giles Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 2 vols, 1:303–4; trans. Radice, pp.
277–78. Constable (2:257) indicates that Peter was born in either 1092 or
1094; it seems likely that the chronicle of Cluny pushed up his age to ex-
plain his appointment as abbot in 1122 more respectable. Clanchy rightly
criticizes the young age imputed to Heloise, Abelard: A Medieval Life, pp.
173–74.
12. HC, ed. Monfrin, pp. 72–73; ed. Hicks, p. 10; trans. Radice, p. 67.
13. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 73; ed. Hicks, p. 12; trans. Radice, p. 68.
14. HC, ed. Monfrin, pp. 75–78; ed. Hicks, pp. 14–17; trans. Radice, pp. 71–74,
alluding to passages in Theologia christiana 2.38, 67, 96–97, 101, ed. Buy-
taert, CCCM 12:148, 159–60, 173–74, 177.
15. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 78; ed. Hicks, p. 17; Radice, p. 74 (translating amicam
as mistress): “Addebat denique ipsa et quam periculosum mihi esset eam
reducere, et quam sibi carius existeret mihique honestius amicam dici
quam uxorem ut me ei sola gratia conservaret, non aliqua vinculi nuptialis
constringeret.” Curiously this central passage is missing from Jean de
Meun’s translation of HC. On the passages from Jerome, see pp. 139 and
353, n. 95 below.
16. Abelard quotes Ovid, Remedia Amoris line 369, ed. A.A. R. Henderson (Ed-
inburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979), p. 13: “Summa petit livor, perflant
altissima venti” in HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 66; ed. Hicks, p. 6; trans. Radice, p.
61; in HC, ed. Monfrin, pp. 85–86 and 94; ed. Hicks, pp. 23 and 31; trans.
Radice, pp. 81 and 90, Abelard quotes classical allusions from Jerome, Liber
quaestionum hebraicarum in Genesim 1, ed. Paul de Lagarde CCSL 72 (1959):
1: “semper enim in propatulo fortitudo aemulos habet, feriunt que sum-
mos fulgura montes [Horace, Odes 2.10.11]: me uero procul ab urbibus,
foro, litibus, turbis remotum, sic quoque (ut Quintilianus [Declamationes,
13.2] ait) latentem inuenit inuidia.” Cf. Ovid, Tristia 4.10 line 123 and
Epistulae ex Ponto 3.3 line 101. Jerome speaks of invidia in Ep. 15.2, 21.2,
36, 45.4, 54.3, 77.12, 78.3, 99.2, 108.18, ed. Isidorus Hilberg, 3 vols. CSEL
54–56 (1910 – 18), 54:63, 112, 136, 325, 468; 55:49, 53, 212, 329.
17. Jean de Meun reads vestrum in her opening sentence as nostrum and leaves
out forte, so as to diminish the sense of outrage in her opening remark:
 N OT ES 327

“Your man lately showed me your letter which you sent to our friend as
consolation.” In Women Writers, p. 304 n. 12, Dronke suggests that Jean de
Meun might have preserved Heloise’s original words, but this has no sup-
port in the Latin manuscripts. Hicks (p. 45) notes that voz homs and nostre
in the manuscript of Jean de Meun’s translation could be misreadings of
uns homs and vostre, thus agreeing with the Latin text.
18. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 114; ed. Hicks, p. 49: “Nichil umquam—Deus scit!—
in te nisi te requisivi; te pure, non tua concupiscens. Non matrimonii fed-
eram non dotes aliquas expectavi, non denique meas voluptates aut
voluntates, sed tuas, sicut ipse nosti adimplere studui. Et si uxoris nomen
sanctius ac validius videtur, dulcius mihi semper extitit amice vocabulum,
aut—si non indigneris—concubine vel scorti; ut quo me videlicet pro te
amplius humiliarem, ampliorem apud te consequerer gratiam, et sic etiam
excellentie tue gloriam minus lederem. Quod et tu ipse tui gratia oblitus
penitus non fuisti in ea directa, ubi et rationes nonnullas quibus te a con-
jugio nostro et infaustis thalamis revocare conabar exponere non es dedig-
natus, sed plerisque tacitis quibus amorem conjugio, libertatem vinculo
preferebam. Deum testem invoco, si me Augustus universo presidens
mundo matrimonii honore dignaretur, totumque mihi orbem confirmaret
in perpetuo possidendum, karius michi et dignius videretur tua dici mere-
trix quam illius imperatrix.” As in her translation of Abelard’s version of her
argument, Radice (pp. 74, 113) renders amica as “mistress.” Jean de Meun
renders it as amie in his translation of Ep. 2, but does not include this sen-
tence in The Romance of the Rose, only her later sentence that she would
rather be called “your prostitute” than his empress (n. 1 above).
19. On the epitaph and Hilary’s comment, see, pp. 90, 105, 341, n. 107.
20. Michael Calabrese, “Ovid and the Female Voice in the De Amore and the
Letters of Abelard and Heloise,” Modern Philology 95 (1997): 1–26; see also
pp. 90–93.
21. Ep. 5, ed. Hicks, pp. 78–79, 84; trans. Radice, pp. 146–47, 153.
22. Although the traditional view has been that the council of Sens was held
on the octave of Pentecost 1140 (2 June), it has been convincingly argued
that William of St Thierry must have written to Bernard in Lent 1140, and
that the council of Sens was held on the octave of Pentecost 1141 (25
May), as Stephen, cardinal bishop of Palestrina (formerly a monk of Clair-
vaux and recipient of Bernard’s Ep. 336 on the errors of Abelard) was not
made a cardinal bishop until 8 April 1141; see Piero Zerbi, “Les différends
doctrinaux,” in Bernard de Clairvaux, eds. Bertrand and Lobrichon, pp.
429–58 (p. 294, n. 22, referring to research of R. Volpini), and Ferruccio
Gastaldelli, “Le piu antiche testimonianze biografiche su san Bernardo.
Studio storico-critico sui ‘Fragmentum Gaufridi’,” Analecta Cisterciensia 45
(1989): 3–80, esp. 60–61, and “‘Optimus Praedicator’. L’Opera oratoria di
San Bernardo,” Analecta Cisterciensia 51 (1995): 321–418, esp. 339; see also
328 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Adriaan Hendrik Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux. Between Cult and History

(Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Erdmanns, 1996), p. 285. An 1141 date
was originally put forward by S. Martin Deutsch, Die Synode von Sens 1141
und die Verurteilung Abälards (Berlin: Weidmann, 1880), pp. 50–54. Consta-
ble (2: 317–20) observed that Nicholas of Montiéramy, likely to be Nico-
laus iste meus, immo et vester, whom Bernard mentioned in a codicil to Ep.
330 as able to advise the pope about Abelard (SBO 8: 268), was in Rome
between 1140 and August/September 1141, and so opted for an 1141 date
for the condemnation (issued on 16 July), but an 1140 date for the coun-
cil. It seems more likely, however, that the council was held on 25 May
1141, and the condemnation issued seven weeks later. Nicholas may have
brought Bernard’s treatise on the errors of Abelard (Ep. 190) to the pope
in 1140, but could not have taken Ep. 330, written by Bernard to the pope
immediately after the council, to Rome. Instructions attached to Inno-
cent’s letter of condemnation to have Abelard and Arnold of Brescia
thrown into confinement, printed by Jean Mabillon from an unknown Vat-
ican manuscript, were never carried out, Sancti Bernardi Opera Omnia 1.1
(Paris: Gaume, 1839), col. 896.
23. S. Bernardi Vita Prima 3.5, PL 185: 310D-312A. Bredero observes that Ge-
offrey’s later revision of this passage (after 1163) eliminated description of
Abelard as a heretic, Bernard of Clairvaux. Between Cult and History, p. 47 (n.
22 above); on his conversion to Bernard, ibid., pp. 93–94. Bredero also dis-
cusses the relationship between the Vita prima and the push to canonize
Bernard in “The Canonization of Bernard of Clairvaux,” Saint Bernard of
Clairvaux: Studies commemorating the Eighth Centenary of his Canonization,
ed. M. Basil Pennington, CSS 28 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publica-
tions, 1977), pp. 63–100 and “The Canonization of Bernard of Clairvaux
and the Rewriting of his Life,” Cistercian Ideals and Reality, ed. John R.
Sommerfeldt, CSS 60 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1978),
pp. 80–105. Michael Casey reflects on the limitations of Geoffrey’s presen-
tation of Bernard in “Towards a Methodology for the Vita prima: Translat-
ing the First Life into Biography,” Bernardus Magister. Papers Presented at the
Nonacentenary Celebration of the Birth of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. John
R. Sommerfeldt, CSS 135 (Spencer, Mass.: Cistercian Publications, 1992),
pp. 55–70. Excerpts from the Vita prima, as compiled by William of St.
Thierry, Arnold of Bonneval and Geoffrey of Auxerre (although unfortu-
nately not the passage relating to Abelard) are translated by Pauline
Matarasso, The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1993), pp. 19–41.
24. Bernard of Clairvaux, Ep. 188–94, SBO 8: 10–48. A separate sequence of
letters about Abelard, Ep. 330–38, SBO 8: 266–78 did not circulate until
later in the twelfth century. On the development of these collections of let-
ters relating to Abelard see my study, “The lists of heresies imputed to Peter
 N OT ES 329

Abelard,” Revue bénédictine 95 (1985): 73–110. Leclercq discusses the cor-

pus of letters assembled by Geoffrey of Auxerre ca. 1145, as well as a sub-
sequent collection, in the introduction to SBO 7: xii-xvi.
25. Ottonis et Rahewini Gesta Friderici Imperatoris 1.49, eds. Georg Waitz and
Bernard von Simson, 3rd ed. (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1912,
repr. 1978), p. 69: “Ubi occasione quadam satis nota non bene tractatus
monachus in monasterio sancti Dyonisii effectus est.” Even John of Salisbury
was under the impression that Abelard had been officially condemned, al-
though John was aware that the cardinals of the curia in 1148 were opposed
to Bernard’s efforts to influence the Pope in this way, Historia pontificalis, ed.
and trans. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 16–20.
26. Ep. 115, ed. Constable, 1: 307: “Sacramenta caelestia, immortalis agni sac-
rificium deo labore meo, apostolicae gratiae redditus est, pene continua-
bat.” Trans. Radice, p. 282.
27. Ep. 98, ed. Constable, 1: 258–59; trans. Radice, pp. 275–76. Only one
twelfth-century copy of this letter is known.
28. Chronicon, Recueil, 13: 675, re-edited from Paris, BNF lat. 4943, fol. 56v in
my introduction to the Theologia Scholarium, CCCM 13 (1987): 291.While
doubts have been raised about a rubric attributing it to William Godel,
monk of Saint-Martial, Limoges (on the grounds that he does not discuss
Limoges), there seems no reason to call him pseudo-Godel, as sometimes
is the case.
29. Godel’s comments about his admiration for Elisabeth of Schönau and
Hildegard of Bingen were omitted from the edition printed in Recueil 13;
ed. Léopold Delisle, Histoire littéraire de la France, 32 (Paris: Imprimerie na-
tionale, 1898): 254–55.
30. Ep. 9, ed. Edmé Smits, Peter Abelard. Letters IX – XIV (Groningen: Bouma,
1983), p. 231: “et dum potestis et matrem harum peritam trium linguarum
habetis.” On Jerome’s knowledge of the three languages, see Augustine, De
Ciuitate Dei 18.43, ed. Bernard Dombart and Alphonsus Kalb, CCSL 48
(1955): 639 and Isidore, Etymologiae 6.4.5 and 9.1.3.
31. Robert of Auxerre, Chronicon (ca. 1203), ed. Bouquet, Recueil, 12: 294A, ed.
O. Holder-Egger MGH SS 26 (1882): 235.
32. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, canon 27, ed. Josepho Alberigo et al.,
trans. Norman Tanner, 2 vols. (London and Georgetown: Sheed & Ward
and Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1: 203. See Jo Ann Kay McNa-
mara, Sisters in Arms. Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 221.
33. Ecumenical Councils, Canon 27, 1: 203: “Simili modo prohibemus ne sanc-
timoniales simul cum canonicis vel monachis in ecclesia in uno choro con-
veniant ad psallendum.”
34. Ep. 79, SBO 7: 211. On Luke de Roucy and the subsequent separation of
women from men at Cuissy, see Bruce L.Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and
330 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890 – 1215 (Ithaca: Cor-
nell University Press, 1997), pp. 69, 164 n. 114.
35. Venarde, Women’s Monasticism, pp. 70 and 164–65 (n. 34); Sally Thompson,
Women Religious. The Founding of English Nunneries after the Norman Con-
quest (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 134–36; McNamara, Sisters in
Arms, p. 296. On the separation of monks and nuns that took place at
Fontevrault in the second half of the century, see Lorraine N. Simmons,
“The Abbey Church at Fontevraud in the Late Twelfth Century: Anxiety,
Authority and Architecture in the Female Spiritual Life,” Gesta 31 (1992):
99–107.
36. Peter Dronke edits the passage from the Chronicle of Tours, composed be-
fore 1227 (from Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Phill. 1852) in Medieval
Testimonies, p. 51 (Intellectuals and Poets, p. 286; p. 292, n. 12 above).This pas-
sage is also found in Bern, Bürgerbibliothek MS 22, fols. 112v–113r.
37. Constant J. Mews, “La bibliothèque du Paraclet du XIIIe siècle à la Révo-
lution,” Studia Monastica 27 (1985): 31–67. On the liturgical manuscripts
of the Paraclete, see the publications of Waddell (n. 112 below).
38. Monfrin describes this MS in his introduction to the Historia calamitatum,
pp. 10–13, noting that the date of 1346 given by Robert de Bardi on its
flyleaf in fact refers to 1347.
39. Berengar’s Apologia and other letters are edited by Rodney M. Thomson,
“The Satirical Works of Berengar of Poitiers: An Edition with Introduc-
tion,” Mediaeval Studies 42 (1980): 89–138. Charles Burnett has edited the
three works of Abelard in this dossier: “Peter Abelard. ‘Soliloquium’—A
Critical Edition,” Studi Medievali 25 (1984): 857–94; “‘Confessio fidei ad
Heloisam’—Abelard’s last Letter to Heloise?,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 21
(1986): 147–55; “Peter Abelard, Confessio fidei ‘Universis’: A Critical Edition
of Abelard’s Reply to Heresy,” Mediaeval Studies 48 (1986): 111–38. The
correspondence occurs alongside the Berengar corpus in Paris, BNF lat.
2923 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Add. C.271.
40. Monfrin, pp. 18–19; Posteritati in Prose, eds. G. Martellotti, P. G. Ricci, E.
Carrara, and E. Bianchi (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi Editore, 1955), p. 14.
The Abelard manuscript is not mentioned in a list of Petrarch’s books
drawn up in 1337, ed. Pierre de Nolhac, Pétrarque et l’humanisme, 2 vols.
(Paris: Honoré Champion, 1965), 2: 293–96.
41. Paris, BNF lat. 2923, fols. 91–93 and 172–77. Jean Leclercq, “L’amitié dans
les lettres au moyen âge. Autour d’un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque de Pé-
trarque,” Revue du moyen âge latin 1 (1945): 391–410. Leclercq notes
(405–6) that a number complain of financial hardship; one is from a stu-
dent to his mother saying he wishes to return home for the vacation, fol-
lowed by his mother’s reply. His unsubstantiated remark (391) that the
manuscript was probably written in the south of France is repeated by
Monfrin (p. 19), who assigns it to the late thirteenth rather than the mid-
 N OT ES 331

thirteenth century. The Parisian origin of the students’ letters in the trea-
tises point to Paris as the more likely provenance.
42. Pierre de Nolhac, Pétrarque et l’humanisme, 2: 287–92. He edits this list,
spanning 21 April – 23 August 1344, 21–27 July, and 2–25 October 1345,
30 May 1348 – 2 August 1349, without noting the coded nature of the
accompanying dots, dashes, and crosses. On Petrarch’s sexual struggles at
this time, see Posteritati [ca. 1351], in Prose, ed. Martellotti, p. 4. In a let-
ter to Boccaccio (Seniores 8.1) written in 1366, Petrarch says that he had
freed himself “more perfectly” from sexual temptation only after the
Great Jubilee, in 1350; in a letter of 11 June 1352 to his brother Gerard,
the Carthusian monk, Petrarch says that he now fears as more serious
than death the company of women, without whom he previously could
not live; “and although I am often disturbed by very sharp temptations,
yet when it comes back to mind what a woman is, all temptation imme-
diately flies away and I return to my freedom and peace” (Familiares
10.5). Ernest Hatch Wilkins discusses Petrarch’s ecclesiastical career in
the period after 1341 in Studies in the Life and Works of Petrarch (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1955), pp. 8–13. Petrarch
first came to Parma on 22 May 1341, restored the house he had obtained
there in 1344 and took possession of his canonry at Parma in 1347, his
archdeaconry in 1348; see Fortunato Rizzi, “Date e opere parmense nella
vita del Petrarca,” Parma e Francesco Petrarca (9–10 Maggio 1934). Atti del
Convego. Communicazioni. Memorie (Parma: Editore Mario Fresching,
1934), pp. 279–88.
43. Dronke comments on these notes of Petrarch in Medieval Testimonies, pp.
56–58 (Intellectuals and Poets, pp. 290–91; p. TKTK, n. 11 above). Petrarch
refers to Abelard, but not Heloise, in his De vita solitaria 2.12, in Prose, ed.
Martellotti, p. 528; trans. Jacob Zeitlin, The Life of Solitude by Francis Petrarch
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1924), p. 270; see 2.44, ed. cit., p. 434;
trans. Zeitlin, p. 205. Whether Petrarch wrote the paragraph on Abelard in
1346 is not known, as he was still making emendations to The Life of Soli-
tude in 1371.
44. Most surviving manuscripts of the correspondence are from the fourteenth
or early fifteenth centuries: Checklist, nos. 131, 154, 99, 37; Monfrin, pp.
20–28. See also a fourteenth-century copy in private possession, described
by Colette Jeudy, “Un nouveau manuscrit de la Correspondance d’Abélard et
Héloïse,” Latomus 50 (1991): 872–81.
45. This comment in the letter of Jean de Hesdin directed against Petrarch,
found in Paris, BNF lat. 16232, fols. 144–49 was noted by Beryl Smalley,
“Jean de Hesdin, O.Hsp.S.Ioh.,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale
28 (1961): 293. Petrarch responded to Jean de Hesdin in his Invectiva contra
eum qui maledixit Italie, within Prose, ed. Martellotti, pp. 678–807 (with
valuable notes on pp. 1175–76).
332 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

46. F. Novati, Epistolario di Coluccio Salutati, 4 vols. (Rome: Istituto storico ital-
iano, 1891 – 1911), 3: 76 and 146. Pico della Mirandola (1469 – 1533)
owned a manuscript of Berengar’s Apologia which might have included the
letters; Checklist, nos. 244, 260.
47. Ed. Éric Hicks, Le Débat sur le Roman de la Rose (Paris: Honoré Champion,
1977), p. 146: “Tu ressambles Helouye du Paraclit qui dist que mieux
ameroit estre meretrix appellee me maistre Pierre Abalart que estre royne
couronnee; si appert bien que les voulantés qui mieux plaisent ne sont pas
toutes raisonnables.” La Querelle de la Rose: Letters and Documents (Chapel
Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures,
1978), trans. Joseph L. Baird and John R. Kane, p. 141, based on an earlier,
less accurate edition of Christine’s text.
48. Earl Jeffrey Richards comments on Christine’s avoidance of Heloise in
“‘Seulette a part’—The Little ‘Woman on the Sidelines’ Takes Up Her Pen:
The Letters of Christine de Pizan,” in Dear Sister, ed. Cherewatuk and Wi-
ethaus, pp. 139–70 (p. 293, n. 46 above). While her use of meretrix might
indicate familiarity with the Latin, her knowledge of Heloise’s letter is
shaped by Jean de Meun’s quotation from it.
49. Carla Bozzolo, “L’humaniste Gontier Col et la traduction française des Let-
tres d’Abélard et Héloïse,” Romania 95 (1974): 199–215.
50. He owned a manuscript, valued at 10s., containing La Exortation Pierre
Abalard, avec aultres traitiez (almost certainly Abelard’s lost “Exhortation to
my brothers and fellow monks”); an unbound copy of the sermons of Peter
Abelard, valued at 24s; a paper copy of the letters of Abelard, valued at 2s;
a manuscript valued at 8s, in which Abelard’s Rule for the Paraclete was
attached on eight gatherings, separated from its letter of introduction;
Checklist, no. 212.
51. Benedict XIII [1396], Cartulaire de l’Abbaye du Paraclet, no. 44, ed. C.
Lalore, Collection des principaux cartulaires du diocèse de Troyes, vol.
2 (Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1878), pp. 60–61: “Cum itaque, sicut accepimus,
ecclesia et alia edificia monasterii monialium Paracliti ordinis sancti
Benedicti, Trecensis diocesis, propter guerras, que in illis partibus diucius
viguerunt, adeo sint destructa quod absque Christi fidelium elemosinis
commode reparari non possint: Nos cupientes ut dicta edificia reparen-
tur, et ut Christi fideles eo libentius causa devotionis confluant ad ean-
dem et ad reparationem hujusmodi manus promptius porrigant
adjutrices, quo ex hiis ibidem uberioris dono celestis gracie conspex-
erint se refectos. . . .” See also Lalore, pp. xxi-xxii. Gontier Col (see
above, n. 49) was an important member of a royal delegation to Bene-
dict XIII in Avignon in 1395. Given his interest in Abelard and Heloise,
it might be worth investigating whether he helped obtain this indul-
gence for the Paraclete and even helped return Robert de Bardi’s man-
uscript to the abbey.
 N OT ES 333

52. Sometime before 1326 Annebale de Ceccano, a canon of Notre-Dame,

bought from the cathedral chapter a twelfth-century copy of Abelard’s
commentary on Genesis, introduced by a letter of Abelard to Heloise (Vat-
ican, Biblioteca apostolica, Vat. lat. 4214) see Checklist, no. 188. Pierre de
Joigny bequeathed sermons of Abelard to Notre-Dame in 1297; Checklist,
no. 250. In the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century Simon de Plume-
tot (1371 – 1443), a humanist moving in the same circle as Gontier Col,
Nicolas de Baye and Jean de Montreuil, prepared an elegant copy of the
Theologia Scholarium (Paris, BNF lat. 14793). Simon also commissioned the
only surviving copy (Paris, BNF lat. 14511) of the Problemata of Heloise
and Abelard’s Ep. 9 to the nuns of the Paraclete.
53. Ed. Leslie C. Brook, Two Late Medieval Love Treatises. Heloise’s Art d’Amour
and a Collection of Demandes d’Amour. Edited with Introduction, Notes and
Glossary from British Library Royal MS 16 F II, Medium Aevum Mono-
graphs New Series XVI (London: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Lan-
guages and Literature, 1993). This edition is not known to Véronique
Walkerley, “Heloys: André or Andreas? A problem of authorship in MS
Royal 16 F II in the British Museum Library,” Nottingham French Studies
35 (1998): 18–26.
54. Discussed by Charrier, Héloïse dans l’histoire et dans la légende, pp. 386–88
(n. 10 above).
55. For further detail of my criticism of Monfrin’s hypothesis that the exemplar
Paraclitense used by Duchesne is an exact duplicate of the Troyes MS, and
existed at the Paraclete until it was lost at the Revolution, see Mews, “La
bibliothèque du Paraclet du XIIIe siècle à la Révolution,” 39–42 (n. 37
above). The epitaphs and formula of absolution are edited by Mews and
Charles Burnett in an appendix, 61–67.
56. On this and subsequent re-burials, see Charrier, Héloïse dans l’histoire et dans
la légende, pp. 304–9 and McLeod, Héloïse. A Biography, pp. 229–31 (n. 10
above). Charrier also mentions antagonism between the Paraclete and the
bishop of Troyes at ths time over a separate matter, complaints that the nuns
danced and sang vernacular song in procession to the Croix du Maître, said
to have been established by Abelard.
57. These two related paper manuscripts, Paris, BNF lat. 2545 and BNF lat.
nouv. acq. lat. 1873, described by Monfrin, pp. 25–28, are important be-
cause they include a letter from Fulco to Abelard not found in any earlier
manuscript, but which existed in their common exemplar. Monfrin (p. 27)
notes that Paris, BNF lat. 2545 includes a rubric specifically about the year
of Bernard’s death in 1153, the foundation of Cîteaux, and Bernard’s age
when he became a monk there. This might suggest Cistercian provenance
for the manuscript, which also included the letters of Bernard of Clairvaux
against Abelard. Late fifteenth-century interest in Abelard’s writings for the
Paraclete is also demonstrated by the copy of Abelard’s sermons ad virgines
334 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Paraclitenses et alia quaedam, bequeathed by Jean L’Huillier (d. 1500) to the

library of the Sorbonne; Checklist, no. 235, p. 233.
58. Abelard’s writings are prohibited in the Index Auctorum et Librorum . . . Pro-
hibitorum (Rome: Antonius Bladus, 1559) [unpaginated, under letter P, but
in many subsequent editions under A]; see also Catalogue des ouvrages mis à
l’index (Paris: Edouard Garnot, 2nd ed. 1825), p. 1.
59. Repr. PL 178: 109–112. Monfrin provides an excellent discussion on pp.
31–46 of how the edition was published twice in 1616, once under the
name of André Duchesne (the more accomplished scholar) and with dif-
ferent prefatory matter, but an identical text, under the name of François
d’Amboise. When d’Amboise’s edition was reprinted with additional texts
by Jacques-Paul Migne in 1885 as vol. 178 of the Patrologia Latina, it was
published as Petri Abaelardi abbatis Rugensis Opera Omnia, without reference
to writings by Heloise.
60. Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, O.Cist., Bernardus Petrum Abailardum eiusque
potentissimos sectarios triumphans (Louvain: Everard de Witte, 1644). Interest
in Abelard’s theology was maintained during the mid-seventeenth century
by a group of English scholars who transcribed then still unpublished
works of Abelard from a major fourteenth-century manuscript (Oxford,
Balliol College 296), unknown to Amboise or Duchesne; see my intro-
duction to the Theologia Scholarium, CCCM 13: 258–61.
61. François de Grenaille, Nouveau recueil de lettres des dames tant anciennes que
modernes, 2 vols. (Paris: Toussainct Quinet, 1642), 1: 273–381. This transla-
tion, unknown to Charrier, has been ignored by subsequent scholars writ-
ing about the image of Heloise and the Lettres portugaises. On de Grenaille,
see Katherine A. Jensen, “Male Models of Feminine Epistolarity; or, How
to Write Like a Woman in Seventeenth-Century France,” Writing the Fe-
male Voice. Essays on Epistolary Literature, ed. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), pp. 25–45, especially 35–36
and Linda Timmermanns, L’accès des femmes à la culture (1598 – 1714)
(Paris: Honoré Champion, 1993), pp. 200–1. Altman discusses the rarity of
collections of women’s letters in the seventeenth century in “The Letter
Book as a Literary Institution 1539 - 1789,” 42–49 (p. 293, n. 49 above).
62. De Grenaille, 1: 274.
63. The first letter is quite fictitious (1: 275–300), but the second and third are
based more closely on Heloise’s first letter (1: 302–34, 336–63). De
Grenaille then introduces an invented letter (1: 364–71) and has Heloise
introduce the Confessio fidei ad Heloisam (1: 374–80) as a letter to a third
party.
65. Frédéric Deloffre and Jacques Rougeot argue for the possible influence
on Guilleragues of the de Grenaille translation, in their edition of his
writing, Chansons et bon mots, Valentins, Lettres portugaises (Geneva: Droz,
1972), pp. 106–8, developing arguments of Leo Spitzer, “Les Lettres por-
 N OT ES 335

tugaises,” Romanische Forschungen 65 (1954): 94–135, repr. in Romanische

Literaturstudien 1936 – 1956 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1959), pp. 210–47, and
translated into English by David Bellos, “The Lettres portugaises,” Essays on
Seventeenth-Century French Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983), pp. 255–83 and by Guido Waldman, The Love Letters of a Por-
tuguese Nun (London: The Harvill Press, 1996). Dronke had earlier de-
fended Marianne’s authorship in “Heloise and Marianne: Some
Reconsiderations,” Romanische Forschungen 72 (1960): 223–56, arguing
against Spitzer (both unaware of the de Grenaille translation) that they
could not have been based on the letters of Heloise given that Bussy-
Rabutin’s translation only appeared in 1687. Yves Florenne argues for
Marianne’s authorship in his edition of the Lettres portugaises (Paris: Li-
brairie générale française, 1979).
66. Charrier discusses this novel and subsequent translations in Héloïse dans
l’histoire et dans la légende, pp. 406–32, with detailed bibliography on pp.
605–13 (n. 10 above); Les Amours d’Abailard et d’Héloïse (Amsterdam: Pierre
Chayer, 1695), p. 8. I have not found a copy of the first edition, which
Charrier reports (pp. 407 and 450) was published in Amsterdam in 1675.
67. Les Lettres de Messire Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, 2 vols. (Paris: Flo-
rentin et Pierre Delaulne, 1697), 2: 116–51; Correspondance, ed. Ludovic
Lalanne, 6 vols. (Paris: Charpentier, 1858 – 59), 6: 61–63 (letters of 16–18
April 1687); see Durant W. Robertson Jr., Abelard and Heloise (London:
Millington, 1974), pp. 156–64.
68. Lettre d’Héloïse à Abailard (Amsterdam: Pierre Chayer, 1693), p. A.3:
“L’Amour est aisée à persuader à une fille, surtout à l’age de dix-huit ans.”
Rémond des Cours produced a study and a translation Histoire d’Éloïse et
d’Abélard, avec la Lettre passionnée qu’elle lui écrivit (The Hague: Louis et
Henry van Dole, 1693), reprinted many times subsequently under the
name of F.-N. Du Bois, that was in turn based on that of Rabutin.The Am-
sterdam translation was published alongside the Portuguese letters, Recueil
de Lettres galantes et amoureuses d’Héloïse à Abailard, d’une Religieuse portugaise
au chevalier ****; avec celles de Cléante et de Bélise, et leur Réponse (Amster-
dam: François Roger, 1699).
69. The letters were among books seized in Paris in 1694, 1696, 1701; Anne
Sauvy, Livres Saisis à Paris entre 1678 et 1701 (The Hague: Martinus Ni-
jhoff, 1972), nos. 481, 518, 942, 1111, 1113; see also nos. 183, 202 as well
as many other examples of such literature, seized by the authorities.
70. Bayle is reported as attributing the 1693 (The Hague) translation to a
woman because of their subtlety of perception, in the introduction to Let-
ters of Abelard and Heloise (London: J. Watts, 1718), p. iv, but I have not lo-
cated this remark in his articles on Abélard and Héloïse in Dictionnaire
historique et critique (Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1697; 4th revised ed. Paris:
P. Brunel, 1730), 2 tomes in 4 vols, 1.1: 23–31 and 2.1: 40–48.
336 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

71. P.-F. G. de Beauchamps, Les Lettres d’Héloïse et d’Abailard, mises en vers

françois (Paris: J. Estienne, 1714, expanded in 1721); see also Charrier, pp.
424, 606, nos. 49, 53–54.
72. V. Malherbe, La langue françoise expliquée dans un ordre nouveau (Paris: Nicole
Lebreton, 1725), p. 244: “ce n’est point l’art, c’est la nature qui s’exprime.”
The translations of letters 2–5 occur on pp. 245–74.
73. Wing Catalogue of Early English Books, 1641 – 1700: Ann Arbor, Mich.:
University Microfilms International, reel 1400: 26, p. 5. Charrier’s listing of
English translations of the correspondence (p. 614) is very incomplete.
74. The Letters of Eloïsa and Abelard, translated by John Hughes (London: J.
Watts, 1714) from the version attributed to Du Bois (n. 68 above).
75. Pope’s esteem for Hughes is evident in a letter of 7 October 1715, The Cor-
respondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1956), 1: 316. See Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope. A Biography
(New Haven-London:Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 302–6, 319–31 and
Ellen Polak, The Poetics of Sexual Myth. Gender and Ideology in the Verse of
Swift and Pope (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 183–87.
76. Letters of Abelard and Heloise: to which is prefix’d a particular account of their lives,
amours and misfortunes, extracted chiefly from Monsieur Bayle, by John Hughes.To
which are added the poem of Eloisa to Abelard by Mr Pope and Abelard to Eloisa
by Mrs Madan (London, 1773). Durant W. Robertson Jr. emphasises the
links between Pope’s composition and Ovid’s Sappho to Phaon, in Abelard
& Heloise, pp. 182–214 (n. 67 above).The poem by Mrs Madan is not men-
tioned by Charrier or Robertson, but was published alongside the Hughes
translation many times between 1773 and 1818; see Lonsdale, Eighteenth-
Century Women Poets, pp. 93–96, 520 (n. 75 above).
77. Colardeau’s translation of Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard was printed alongside a
reply from Abelard to Heloise by a M. C**, as well as versions by M. Feu-
try, M. Dorat, M. Mercier. M. G** Dourxigné, M. Saurin; Les Lettres et
Epitres amoureuses d’Héloïse et d’Abeillard, traduits librement en vers et en prose
n. d. (Au Paraclet: [1774]); Charrier, p. 609 no. 82. According to Charrier
(p. 607, nos. 61), the first translation of Pope into French was published in
Berlin in 1751, prompting that of Colardeau in 1758; Charrier, pp. 440–92
and pp. 607–8 (nos. 58–91).
78. Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse. Lettres de deux Amans, Habitans d’une petite Ville
au pied des Alpes receuillis et publiées par Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. René
Pomeau (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1960), lettre 24, p. 60; trans. Judith H. Mc-
Dowell, La Nouvelle Héloïse. Julie or the New Eloise. Letters of Two Lovers, In-
habitants of a small town at the foot of the Alps (University Park and London:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1968), p. 68.
79. Eric Walter, “Le Complexe d’Abélard ou le célibat des gens de lettres,” Dix-
Huitième Siècle 12 (1980): 127–52; Charrier lists works inspired by
Rousseau, pp. 644–45.
 N OT ES 337

80. Charrier, pp. 310–11.The stone statue was described by Dom Martène and
Dom Durand in 1706 as comprising three figures of the same size, one
with the inscription Filius meus es tu, another Pater meus es tu, and a third
Utriusque spiraculum ego sum, in Voyage littéraire de deux religieux bénédictines,
2 vols. (Paris: Florentin Delaulne, 1717), 1: 85.
81. La vie de Pierre Abeillard, abbé de Saint-Gildas-de-Ruis, de l’ordre de Saint-
Benoist, et celle d’Héloïse son épouse, première abbesse du Paraclet, 2 vols. (Paris:
Jean Musier, 1720), and Les Veritables Lettres d’Abeillard et d’Heloise, 2 vols.
(Paris: Jean Musier, 1723), discussed by Charrier, pp. 432–37. In 1718
Richard Rawlinson reprinted the 1616 Latin text with spurious manu-
script variants, Petri Abaelardi Abbatis Ruyensis et Heloissae Abbatissae Para-
clitensis Epistolae. A prioris Editionis Erroribus purgatae, et cum Cod. MS collatae
(London: E. Curll & W. Taylor, 1718); see Monfrin, pp. 46–49.
82. Charrier, pp. 313–14. In 1780 the bones of Abelard were completely re-
duced to dust; the skull of Heloise was well preserved, but one tooth was
taken out by the abbé Pernitti.
83. Mews, “La Bibliothèque du Paraclet,” 56–57 (n. 37 above).
84. Valuable documentation about the reputed house of Fulbert (11 Quai des
Fleurs) is given by Charrier, pp. 76–82 and 504–505. Charles de Rémusat
describes the house, demolished in 1849, recorded by local tradition as that
of Fulbert, in Abélard (Paris: Ladrange, 1845), p. 51. Charrier (p. 78 n. 6)
notes that the claim made for this site is very likely an eighteenth-century
invention.
85. Maurice de Gandillac, “Sur quelques images d’Abélard au temps du roi
Louis-Philippe,” in Jean Jolivet, ed., Abélard en son temps (Paris: Belles Let-
tres, 1981), pp. 197–209; Michel Lemoine observes that Cousin did not
initiate this enthusiasm in “Un philosophe médiévale au temps des Lu-
mières: Abélard avant Victor Cousin,” in A. Cazenave, J.-F. Lyotard, H.
Gouhier eds., L’art des confins: Mélanges offerts à Maurice de Gandillac, (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1985), pp. 571–84.
86. Abélard, 2 vols. (Paris: Ladrange, 1845), 1: 148–63, commenting on
Heloise’s outward obedience to Abelard, 1: 160.
87. Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, Abälard und Heloise, 2 vols. (Berlin: Friedrich Mau-
rer, 1806, 1807), p. 623; see Peter von Moos, Mittelalterforschung und Ideolo-
giekritik. Der Gelehrtenstreit um Héloïse (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag,
1974), with further detail on Fessler in “Le silence d’Héloïse et les idéolo-
gies modernes,” in Pierre Abélard—Pierre le Vénérable: les courants
philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en occident au milieu du XIIe siècle (Paris:
CNRS, 1975), pp. 441–42.
88. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 101; ed. Hicks, p. 37; trans. Radice, p. 98; Ep. 2, ed.
Hicks, p. 51; trans. Radice, p. 116.
89. Jo. Caspar Orelli, ed. Magistri Petri Abaelardi epistola quae est Historia calami-
tatum . . . (Zurich: Officina Ulrichiana, 1841); Ludovic Lalanne, “Quelques
338 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

doutes sur l’authenticité de la correspondance amoureuse d’Héloïse et

d’Abailard,” La Correspondance littéraire 1 (Nov. 1856 – Oct. 1857): 27–33
and 109, summarized by von Moos, Mittelalterforschung und Ideologiekritik,
pp. 45–49 (n. 87 above); Octave Gréard, Lettres complètes d’Abélard et
d’Héloïse (Paris: Garnier, 1869), pp. xli-xlviii.
90. Henry Adams, From Mont St Michel to Chartres (1904; Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1986), pp. 270–71.
91. Bernhard Schmeidler, “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Abälard und Heloise
einer Fälschung?,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 11 (1914): 1–30; “Der
Briefwechsel zwischen Abälard und Heloise als eine literarische Fiktion
Abälards,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 54 [3.F.5] (1935): 323–38; “Der
Briefwechsel zwischen Abälard und Heloise dennoch eine literarische Fik-
tion Abälards,” Revue bénédictine 52 (1940): 85–95. See also S. Martin
Deutsch, Peter Abälard. Ein kritischer Theologe des zwölften Jahrhunderts
(Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1883), pp. 43–44.
92. Héloïse dans l’histoire et dans la légende, pp. 573–90 (n. 10 above).
93. Georg Misch, Geschichte de Autobiographie, 3.1 (Frankfurt: G. Schulte-
Bumke, 1959), pp. 523–719; Ruhe, De amasio ad amasiam, pp. 56–57 (p.
292, n. 8 above).
94. Durant W. Robertson Jr, Abelard and Heloise, pp. 121–24 (n. 67 above).
95. “Fraud, Fiction and Borrowing in the Correspondance of Abelard and
Heloise,” in Pierre Abélard-Pierre le Vénérable, pp. 469–511 (n. 87 above); “A
Reconsideration of the Authenticity of the Correspondence of Abelard
and Heloise,” in Petrus Abaelardus (1079 – 1142). Person,Werk und Wirkung,
ed. Rudolf Thomas (Trier: Paulinus Verlag, 1980), pp. 41–52; “The Corre-
spondence of Abelard and Heloise,” in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, 5: 95–120
(p. 297, n. 46 above).
96. “Réflexions sur la thèse de J.F. Benton relative au dossier ‘Abélard et
Héloïse’,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 44 (1977): 211–16;
“L’idylle d’Abélard et Héloïse: la part du roman,” Bulletin de la classe des let-
tres et des sciences morales et politiques, 5e sér. 71 (1985): 157–200; “Die
Liebesgeschichte zwischen Abaelard und Heloise; der Anteil des Romans,”
in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, 5: 121–65 (p. 297, n. 46 above); “Héloïse et le
témoignage du ‘Carmen ad Astralabium,’” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 88
(1988): 635–60.
97. Helen C. R. Laurie, “The ‘Letters’ of Abelard and Heloise: A Source of
Chrétien de Troyes?,” Studi Medievali 3a ser. 27 (1986): 123–46; The Making
of Romance. Three Studies (Geneva: Slatkine, 1991), pp. 95–119 [“Heloise
and her achievement”]; “‘Cligès’ and the Legend of Abelard and Heloise,”
Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 107 (1991): 324–42; “The Letters of
Abelard and Heloise: Classical, Patristic and Medieval Models. A Recon-
sideration,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 28 (1993): 35–45.
98. Gilson, Héloïse et Abélard, 3rd revised ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1978).
 N OT ES 339

99. Dronke, WW, pp. 107–43.

100. Peter von Moos, “Le silence d’Héloïse et les idéologies modernes,” (n. 87
above); “Palatini quaestio quasi peregrini. Ein gestriger Streitpunkt aus der
Abaelard-Heloise-Kontroverse nochmals überprüft,” Mittellateinisches
Jahrbuch 9 (1973): 124–58; “Die Bekehrung Héloïses,” Mittellateinisches
Jahrbuch 11 (1976): 95–125.Von Moos also contributed valuable studies on
classical exempla within the correspondence, notably derived from Lucan:
“Cornelia und Heloise,” Latomus 34 (1975): 1024–59 and “Lucan und
Abaelard,” in Hommages à A. Boutemy, ed. G. Cambier, Collection Latomus
145 (Brussels, 1976), pp. 413–43; “Post festum—Was kommt nach der Au-
thentizitätsdebatte über die Briefe Abaelards und Heloises?,” Petrus Abae-
lardus, ed. Thomas, pp. 75–100 (n. 95 above); “Heloise und Abaelard,” in
Gefälscht. Betrug in Politik, Literatur, Wissenschaftliche Kunst und Musik, ed.
Karl Corino (Nördlingen: Greno, 1988), pp. 150–61.
101. Peter von Moos, Consolatio, Studien zur Mittellateinischen Trostliteratur über
den Tod und zum Problem der Christlichen Trauer, 4 vols. (Munich: Wilhelm
Fink, 1971), especially 1: 212–20.
102. Ileana Pagani, “Epistolario o dialogo spirituale? Postille ad un’interpre-
tazione della corrispondenza di Abelardo ed Eloisa?” Studi Medievali 27
(1986): 241–318.
103. Karl Schmid, “Bemerkungen zur Persona – und Memorial Forschung nach
dem Zeugnis von Abaelard und Heloise,” in Memoria in der Gesellschaft des
Mittelalters, eds. Dieter Geunich and Otto Gerhard Oexle (Göttingen:Van-
denhoek and Ruprecht, 1994), pp. 74–127.
104. See above, p. 293, n. 18 and Duby, Le chevalier, la femme et le prêtre. Le mariage
dans la France féodale (Paris: Hachette, 1981), trans. Barbara Fey, The Knight,
the Lady and the Priest (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983).
105. Paulette Hermite-Leclercq, “The Feudal Order,” in A History of Women. Si-
lences of The Middle Ages, p. 203.
106. David Edward Luscombe, “From Paris to the Paraclete: the correspon-
dence of Abelard and Heloise,” Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988):
247–83. Other major Abelard specialists all accept their authenticity, as for
example Verger, Beonio Brocchieri and Marenbon (p. 292, n. 11 above).
107. The studies of Charrier and McLeod are cited p. 302, n. 10 above. Barbara
Newman, “Authority, authenticity, and the repression of Heloise,” The Jour-
nal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22 (1992): 121–58, repr. in From Vir-
ile Woman to WomanChrist. Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 46–75.
108. Peggy Kamuf, Fictions of Feminine Desire: Disclosures of Heloise (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1982). See Juanita Feros Ruys, “Role-play-
ing in the Letters of Heloise and Abelard,” Parergon 11 (1993): 53–78. Feros
Ruys is submitting a Ph.D thesis being prepared at the University of Syd-
ney, Genre, Gender, and Authenticity: Reading Heloise in the Twentieth Century.
340 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

109. See for example Andrea Nye, “Philosophy: A woman’s thought or a man’s
discipline? The letters of Abelard and Heloise,” Hypatia 7.3 (Summer
1992): 1–22; Glenda McLeod, “‘Wholly guilty, wholly innocent’: Self-
definition in Héloïse’s letters to Abélard,” in Dear Sister, eds. Cherewatuk
and Wiethaus, pp. 64–86 (p. 297, n. 46 above); Catherine Brown,
“Muliebriter: Doing Gender in the Letters of Heloise,” in Gender and Text
in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Jane Chance (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 1996), pp. 25–51. Elizabeth Freeman, “The public and private
functions of Heloise’s letters,” Journal of Medieval History 23.1 (1997):
15–28. Mary Ellen Waithe contributes a chapter on Heloise within a vol-
ume she edits, A History of Women Philosophers Volume II. Medieval, Re-
naissance and Enlightenment Women Philosophers A.D. 500 – 1600
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), pp. 67–83. On Abelard,
see the essays of Martin Irvine, “Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body:
Castration, Identity, and Remasculinization,” and Bonnie Wheeler, “Ori-
genary Fantasies: Abelard’s Castration and Confession,” in Becoming Male
in the Middle Ages, eds. Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1997), pp. 87–106 and 107–28. Martin Irvine makes
good points about Heloise’s linking of amor and amicitia, “Heloise and the
gendering of the literate subject,” in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle
Ages, ed. Rita Copeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), pp. 87–114.
110. Linda Georgianna, “Any Corner of Heaven: Heloise’s Critique of Monas-
ticism,” Mediaeval Studies 49 (1987): 221–53.
111. The original text was printed in PL 178: 313C-317B, with the erroneous
reading of Instructiones for Institutiones, reprinted with translation by
Gréard, Lettres d’Abailard, pp. 453–81; Chrysogonus Waddell, ed., The Par-
aclete Statutes. Institutiones Nostrae. Introduction, Edition, Commentary, CLS 20
(Gethsemani Abbey, Trappist: Cistercian Publications, 1987).
112. Chrysogonus Waddell, “Peter Abelard as Creator of Liturgical Texts,” in
Petrus Abaelardus, pp. 267–86 (n. 95), and in more detail in E. Rozanne
Elder and John R. Sommerfeldt, eds., “Saint Bernard and the Cistercian
Office at the Abbey of the Paraclete,” The Chimaera of his Age. Studies on
Bernard of Clairvaux, Cistercian Studies Series 63 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cis-
tercian Publications, 1980), pp. 76–121. His editions of Paraclete liturgical
texts were published as volumes 3 – 7 of the Cistercian Liturgy Series,
published in 1985 by Gethsemani Abbey, Trappist, Kentucky: The Old
French Paraclete Ordinary and the Paraclete Breviary I. Introduction and Com-
mentary [CLS 3]; The Old French Paraclete Ordinary II. Edition [CLS 4]; The
Paraclete Breviary IIIA Edition, Kalendar and Temporal Cycle. IIIB Edition. The
Sanctoral Cycle. IIIC Edition of the Saints, Varia, Indices [CLS 5 – 7].
113. Stealing Heaven (Heaven Productions Ltd, 1988), directed by Clive Donner
and produced by Amy International/Jadran Films, was based on Marion
 N OT ES 341

Meade, Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard (New York:
William Morrow, 1979).
114. Richard William Southern, “The Letters of Abelard and Heloise,” Medieval
Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), p. 95.
115. Hilary Davies includes a major poem about Abelard and Heloise, “In a Val-
ley of this Restless Mind,” within a collection of her verse, In a Valley of this
Restless Mind (London: Enitharmon Press, 1997), pp. 50–73.
116. Radice, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, p. 68 n. 1.
117. Peter von Moos announces a project on the study of Latin dialogue in the
Middle Ages in “Zwischen Schriftlichkeit und Mündlichkeit: Dialogische
Interaktion im lateinischen Hochmittelalter (Vorstellung des neuen Teil-
projekts H im SFB 231),” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 300–314.
118. Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, De natura et dignitate amoris 3, 18–23, ed. M.-
M. Davy, Deux traités de l’amour (Paris: Vrin, 1953), pp. 72–74, 94–98.
119. On this theme, see Martha G. Newman, The Boundaries of Charity. Cister-
cian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098 – 1180 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1996).

Chapter 3
1. My account of the geography and politics of Paris is indebted to Robert-
Henri Bautier, “Paris aux temps d’Abélard,” in Abélard en son temps, ed. Jean
Jolivet (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1981), pp. 21–77, especially 42–43 and 56
n. 1 on the chronology of the affair, which he sees as perhaps beginning in
the winter of 1115/16 with the castration quite possibly in 1117 rather
than 1118, as traditionally thought.
2. Bautier, art. cit., 28–29 and Jean Hubert, “Les origines de Notre-Dame de
Paris,” in Huitième Centenaire de Notre-Dame de Paris (Congrès de 30 Mai –
3 Juin 1964), ed. Gabriel Le Bras (Paris: Vrin, 1967), pp. 1–22, especially
14–16; see also Jacques Boussard, Nouvelle histoire de Paris. De la fin du siège
de 885 – 886 à la mort de Philippe Auguste (Paris: Hachette, 1976).
3. On Adam, precentor of Notre-Dame 1107 – 1134, then canon of Saint-
Victor until his death in the late 1140s, see Margot Fassler, Gothic Song.Vic-
torine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 197–210.
4. Louis VI defined the area of jurisdiction of the bishop between 1112 and
1117 after a dispute with the chapter, Dufour, no. 121, 1: 247–52.
5. Astrik L. Gabriel, “Les écoles de la cathédrale de Notre-Dame et le com-
mencement de l’université de Paris,” in Huitième Centenaire, pp. 145–66, es-
pecially 145–46. Cartulaire de l’Église Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. M. Guérard,
Collection des Cartulaires de France 7, 4 vols. (Paris: Crapelet, 1850), 1: 338.
6. Fulco of Deuil, Ep. ad Petrum Abaelardum, PL 178: 371D; ed. Cousin, 1:
87–88.
342 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

7. Fulbert is mentioned in an act of 31 March 1099, in Cartulaire générale de

Paris, ed. Robert de Lasteyrie (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1887), no. 122,
p. 147; see also: 1102, no. 130, p. 154; 1107, no. 145, p. 163; 1107/8, nos.
147–48, p. 168.
8. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 78; ed. Hicks, p. 16; trans. Radice, p. 70: “te clericum
atque canonicum.” His canonry at Sens is reported by Geoffrey of Courlon
(de Collone), a thirteenth-century chronicler of Sens, Chronicon Senonense,
cited by V. Le Clerc, Histoire littéraire de la France vol. 21 (Paris: Imprimerie
Nationale, 1845), p. 12. Abelard enjoyed the support of another canon of
Sens: Hato, canon, archdeacon and eventually dean of Sens between
1095/96 and 1122, before becoming bishop of Troyes (1122 – 45/46).
Hato, a good friend of Peter the Venerable, gave Abelard permission to es-
tablish the Paraclete; Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2: 97–98.
9. HC, ed. Monfrin, pp. 70, 81; ed. Hicks, pp. 9, 19; trans. Radice, p. 65, 77.
10. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 79; ed. Hicks, p. 17; trans. Radice, p. 74.
11. Roscelin mentions that Fulbert, her maternal uncle, was noble (n. 15
below). François d’Amboise claimed in his preface to the 1616 edition
(repr. PL 178: 74) that Heloise was related to the powerful family of Mont-
morency, but provided no evidence for this; André Duchesne made no
such claim in his detailed notes to the Historia calamitatum or in a separate
history of the Montmorency family. Bautier repeats Amboise’s claim with-
out citing further evidence, apart from suggesting alliances with the Gar-
lande family, art. cit., 76 (n. 1 above); see McLeod, Héloïse, pp. 9–10 (p. 302,
n. 10).
12. According to the Paraclete obituary, Hersindis died on December 1 of an
unknown year, Hubertus, canonicus, domine Heloise avunculus, presumably a
copyist’s mistake for Fulbertus, on 26 December; Recueil des historiens de la
France. Obituaires de la province de Sens. Diocèses de Meaux et de Troyes, ed.
Boutillier du Retail and Piétresson de Saint-Aubin, vol. 4 (Paris: Im-
primerie nationale, 1923), pp. 428–29. The significance of Fulbert being
her maternal uncle is picked up by Enid McLeod, Héloïse. A Biography, pp.
8–9 (p. 302, n. 10 above). Bautier notes that the absence of mention of
Heloise’s father may not signify illegitimacy, as the same record remembers
Abelard’s mother, but not his father, art. cit., 75 n. 6.
13. Lasteyrie, nos. 139 and 185, pp. 159–60 and 209–10; Luchaire, no. 192 and
284. Durand is still a priest in 1119, Lasteyrie, no. 182 (p. 204). On Berner’s
pronouncement of 1115, Dufour, no. 8, 3: 458–60. A date of late March
1115 for the marriage is argued by Andrew W. Lewis, “La date du mariage
de Louis VI et d’Adélaïde de Maurienne,” Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes
148 (1990): 5–16.
14. Beleth comments on these legal privileges in relation to the Parisian clois-
ter, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 2, ed. Heribert Douteil, CCCM 41A
(1976): 6.
 N OT ES 343

15. Roscelin, Ep. ad Abaelardum, ed. Reiners, p. 78 (p. 298, n. 55; PL 178:
369BC): “Vidi siquidem Parisius, quod quidem clericus nomine Fulbertus
te ut hospitem in domo sua recepit, te in mensa sua ut amicum familiarem
et domesticum honorifice pavit, neptim etiam suam, puellam prudentissi-
mam et indolis egregiae, ad docendum commisit. Tu vero viri illius nobilis
et clerici, Parisiensis etiam ecclesiae canonici, hospitis insuper tui ac do-
mini, et gratis et honorifice te procurantis non immemor, sed contemptor,
commissae tibi virgini non parcens, quam conservare ut commissam, do-
cere ut discipulam debueras, effreno luxuriae spirit agitatus non argumen-
tari, sed eam fornicari docuisti, in uno facto multorum criminum,
proditionis scilicet et fornicationis, reus et virginei pudoris violator spur-
cissimus. Sed deus ultionum dominus, deus ultionum libere egit [Ps. 93.1], qui
eam qua tantum parte peccaveras te privavit.”
16. Abelard alludes to the injunction of Leviticus 22.24 and Deuteronomy
23.1 about the ritual exclusion of those whose testicles have been crushed
or removed, in HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 80; ed. Hicks, p. 19; trans. Radice, p.
76. On this punishment, see Mathew S. Kuefler, “Castration and Eu-
nuchism in the Middle Ages,” in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Bul-
lough and Brundage, pp. 279–306 (p. 298, n. 52).Yves Ferroul observes that
castration was never of the penis in the medieval period; see “Abelard’s
Blissful Castration,” in Becoming Male (p. 316, n. 109).
17. Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History 6, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall,
6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969 – 78), 3: 336–38 (with chronolog-
ical notes on 3: 365–66). Orderic had previously explained how an earlier
French king had unjustly stolen the relics of St. Évroul from Normandy, 3:
306–22.
18. Fulco of Deuil to Abelard, PL 178: 375B; ed. Cousin, 1: 707: “Ille autem
qui per se factum abnegat, iam ab omni possessione sua bonorum suorum
comportatione exturbatus est.”
19. All the canons apart from Fulbert sign a charter in 1117, Lasteyrie, no. 174,
p. 200, suggesting to Bautier that his exile was in this year, art. cit., 56 n. 1.
Fulbert witnesses charters on: 1 April 1119, no. 182, p. 204; 1122, no. 194,
p. 217 and 1124, before 3 August, no. 203, p. 223, but is no longer subdea-
con later that year, no. 205, p. 226.
20. On Bishop Galo, see Gallia christiana (Paris: Typographia regia, 1744), 7:
54–58; P. Paris, “Galon, évêque de Paris,” Histoire littéraire de la France 10
(1868): 94–99; T. de Morembert, “Galon, évêque de Paris,” DHGE 19
(1981): 911, and Dictionnaire de biographie française 15 (1982): 266–68.
21. On Stephen’s significance and his many appointments, see Luchaire, pp.
xliii-lvi and Dufour, 1: 38–40. He is first mentioned as archdeacon in 1095,
in Guérard, Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Paris, 1: 305, for the last time in
1146/47, Lasteyrie, no. 344, p. 302; on the duties of an archdeacon, see
Hugh of Saint-Victor, De Sacramentis 2.4.17, PL 176: 431B.
344 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

22. Ivo, Ep. 89, PL 162: 110C: “utpote nondum subdiaconum, hominem illit-
eratum, aleatorem, mulierum sectatorem, publice olim de adulterio pub-
lico infamatum, et ob hoc a Domino Lugdunensis archiepiscopo tunc
temporis sedis apostolicae legato, Ecclesiae communione privatum;” see
too Ep. 87, 92 and 95, PL 162: 108A, 113AB and 115A-116D. On Galo’s
claim to Beauvais, see Bernard Monod, Essai sur les rapports de Pascal II avec
Philippe Ie (1099 – 1108) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1908), pp. 87–92.
23. HC, ed. Monfrin, pp. 64–65; ed. Hicks, pp. 4–5; trans. Radice, p. 59.
24. Fulk had married Bertrada “out of love” according to a speech quoted by
Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 8.10 and 20, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 4:
184 and 260–62. They had a son (Fulk V) in 1090. Michel-Jean-Joseph
Brial provides a detailed discussion of all known sources relating to
Bertrada in Recueil 16 (1814): xxviii-cxiv.
25. Yves de Chartres. Correspondance I, Ep. 50, ed. Jean Leclercq (Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 1949), pp. 200–206.
26. Orderic Vitalis claimed that the interdict lasted for fifteen years, from 1093
until Philip’s death, and remembered this as a great period of mourning in
France, Ecclesiastical History 8.20, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 4: 262.
27. Vita Ludovici 18, ed. Waquet, p. 122; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead, p. 81:
“Mater etiam, his omnibus potentior viragoque faceta et eruditissima illius
admirandi muliebris artificii, quo consueverunt audaces suis etiam lascessi-
tos injuriis maritos suppeditare. . . .”
28. Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 11.9, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 6: 50–54.
29. On the difficulties facing Louis in 1108 and the fate of his brothers and
sisters, see Andrew W. Lewis, Royal Succession in Capetian France: Studies on
Familial Order and the State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1981), pp. 50–54 and p. 245 n. 28–29.
30. Brigitte Bedos Rezak, “Women, Seals and Power in Medieval France, 1150
– 1350,” in Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds., Women and Power in
the Middle Ages (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 61–82. She
notes that while this is the first French seal of a woman at royal level, the
first German woman to use a seal was the Empress Kunegund in 1000. See
too M. Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship: Capetian France, 987
– 1237,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (1986): 6–7, 28.
Bertrada and Louis jointly established a priory of Fontevrault at Hautes-
Bruyères in 1112 (confirmed by Pope Paschal II in 1119). Bertrada trans-
ferred there from Fontevrault in 1115, but died not long after; Dufour, nos.
75, 113 and 153, 1: 168–69, 234 and 317–18.
31. Ivo of Chartres, Ep. 144 and 146, PL 162: 150–151; Bautier, art. cit., 60–61.
Annales capituli Cracoviensis, ed. Richard Roepell, MGH SS 19 (1856): 588.
32. Lasteyrie, no. 136, pp. 157–58.
33. Eadmer, Historia novorum in Anglia 4, ed. Martin Rule, Rolls Series 81
(London: Longman, 1884), p. 162; Vita Sancti Anselmi 55, ed. and trans.
 N OT ES 345

Richard Southern, The Life of St Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury (London:

Thomas Nelson, 1962), pp. 132–34. Louis’ letter of invitation is Ep. 432
among the letters of St. Anselm, ed. Schmitt, 5: 279; Dufour, no. 11, 1: 16.
34. Suger, Vita Ludovici 9, ed. Waquet, pp. 44–50; trans. Cusimano and Moor-
head, pp. 43–46.
35. Suger, Vita Ludovici 8, ed. Waquet, p. 38; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead,
p. 41; see Luchaire, pp. xxvii-xxxi and 21.
36. Vita Ludovici 11, ed. Waquet, pp. 68–77; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead,
pp. 55–58. In notes to their translation of The Deeds of Louis the Fat, p. 176
n. 5, Cusimano and Moorhead observe that while Suger claims the mar-
riage was annulled at the Council of Troyes in 1107 on grounds of con-
sanguinity, the chronicle of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif of Sens reported that
Lucienne of Rochefort was not acceptable to the counts of the kingdom,
as if this marked a victory for allies of the Montfort dynasty. Suger de-
scribes Louis’ attack on Hugh of Crécy in c. 15, ed. Waquet, pp. 88–96;
trans. Cusimano and Moorhead, pp. 64–68.
37. Actes de Philippe Ie, ed. M. Prou (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1908), nos.
154, 157, pp. 388, 392. On the rise of these families, see Jean Lemarignier,
Le Gouvernement royal aux premiers temps Capétiens (Paris: Picard, 1959), pp.
124–25, 154–58 and Hallam, Capetian France, pp. 90–91 (p. 300, n. 77
above). Gilbert (Païen) of Garlande holds the position 1095–1101, Anselm
1101–1118 (apart from 1104 7), William 1118-20, Stephen 1120–27.
Moorhead and Cusimano provide a useful summary of their dynastic am-
bitions, noting that Suger never describes Stephen as nobilis like Guy of
Rochefort in end-notes to The Deeds of Louis the Fat, pp. 208–9. The fam-
ily became connected in marriage to a powerful noble family, however,
through the marriage of Anselm’s daughter to Amaury IV of Montfort; see
above, p. 154.
38. Gallia Christiana 7: 706.
39. La Chronique de Morigny (1095–1152), ed. Léon Mirot (Paris: Alphonse Pi-
card, 1912), pp. 33–35 and 42–43. Stephen was not hostile to all monks.
Thomas, abbot of Morigny, had a particular grievance against Stephen,
who had not wanted monks of Morigny to take control of the churches
of Vieilles-Étampes and had been persuaded by abbot Boso of Fleury
(Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire) to grant them to that abbey (1118/27); Luchaire,
no. 402, pp. 186–87. See too Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis (London:
Longman, 1998), pp. 55–57.
40. Bautier assumes that William was already an archdeacon in 1102/3 when
Ivo wrote to the Pope about the appeal of Vulgrin and Stephen of Gar-
lande in favor of Fulco, dean of Notre-Dame to the bishopric, art. cit., 60.
William is not mentioned by Ivo of Chartres in the letter he writes about
this contested election, Ep. 139, PL 162: 147AB. Bautier does not repeat
the claim in “Les origines et les premiers développements de l’abbaye
346 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Saint-Victor de Paris,” in L’Abbaye parisienne de Saint-Victor au moyen âge,

ed. Jean Longère, Bibliotheca Victorina 1 (Paris: Brepols, 1991), pp. 23–52.
41. Bautier, art. cit., 34. William is first identified as an archdeacon in 1107,
alongside Stephen and Rainaldus (having replaced Vulgrin after 1102/3);
Lasteyrie, nos. 143–44, pp. 161–64, improving on the text in PL 162:
725C-728D (in which Fulbert is cited as Guilbert).
42. The same rituals as related in the charter about Saint-Éloi are discussed by
Penelope D. Johnson in relation to Poitiers, as well as attempts to restrict
such public activity, Equal in Monastic Profession. Religious Women in Medieval
France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 140–41. John
Beleth, writing in Paris in the mid-twelfth century, describes how nuns
take part in the Rogationtide processions of major churches, after monks
and canons, but before different categories of lay folk, Summa de ecclesiasti-
cis officiis c.123b, ed. Douteil, CCCM 41A: 235.
43. See Pope Paschal II, Ep. 149 (PL 163: 158A), Lasteyrie, no. 134, pp.
156–57. The action of Galo and William is described in a letter, Lasteyrie,
nos. 143–44, pp. 161–64; Dufour, no. 14, 1: 23–24. The bishop claims that
“moved by the devil, that weak sex has fallen into such disgusting
wretchedness, adhering without shame to general worldliness, having
broken the vow of chastity and having completely thrown away the
commitment to the religious life; it has turned the temple of God into a
cave of fornication and has not listened at all to our words of warning
and correction.”
44. Lasteyrie, no. 130, pp. 153–54 and Dufour, no. 5, 1: 6–7; see Boussard, Nou-
velle histoire de Paris, p. 148 (n. 2 above).
45. Dufour, no. 96, 1: 209–10 [1114, after 3 August].
46. Bautier, art. cit., 42.
47. Lasteyrie, no. 144, p. 164; on the unfaithfulness of Hugh of Crécy, de-
scribed by Suger as “a skilled and valiant young warrior, equally adept at
plundering and burning and very quick to make trouble for the whole
kingdom,” see Suger, Vita Ludovici 8, ed. Waquet, pp. 88–96, 128–36; trans.
Cusimano and Moorhead, pp. 64–68, 84–88. Constable discusses whether
this is the same Hugh of Crécy who became a monk at Saint-Martin-des-
Champs and an advisor to Louis VII, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2:
311–15.
48. Edited by Uta-Renata Blumenthal, The Early Councils of Pope Paschal II
1100 – 1108 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), pp.
92–97. Blumenthal notes the presence of William of Champeaux as
archdeacon on pp. 80–81.
49. The exact translation of this statute is far from clear; it is edited without
commentary by Blumenthal, The Early Councils of Pope Paschal II, p. 94, c.8:
“Presbyteris et diaconibus longos capillos, rostratos sotulares, fixas uestes,
laqueos in blialdis [MS blialibus] uel camisiis habere uel aleis seruire pro-
 N OT ES 347

hibemus.”The phrase rostratos sotulares (“toes in the form of a beak”) is pre-

sumably the same as the acutissimos subtolares (“very pointed toes”) spoken
about by Orderic Vitalis (n. 109 below). The Old French bliaud (bliaut,
bleaunt or bliadus) is discussed in Bildwörterbuch der Kleidung und Rüstung, ed.
Harry Kühnel (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1992), p. 34.
50. Ep. 70, ed. Leclercq, pp. 310–12 (n. 25 above). Leclercq notes that the trans-
fer of Faremoutiers to the monks of Marmoutier, from whom he heard
these rumors, as well as from the Countess of Blois, might have provoked
this letter. In Ep. 10 (pp. 40–48) Ivo had warned the nuns of Saint-Avit
against indulging in conversation with men.
51. Penelope Johnson argues from the evidence of Eudes Rigaud in the thir-
teenth century that lapses in chastity have been much exaggerated, Equal
in Monastic Profession, pp. 112–33 (n. 42 above). She questions the extent of
sexual dissolution portrayed by Graciela S. Daichman, Wayward Nuns in
Medieval Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
52. Bautier, art. cit., 33–39.
53. Guibert of Nogent, Monodiae 2.5; ed. Edmond-René Labande, Autobiogra-
phie (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1981), p. 248; Robert Chazan comments on
the absence of pogroms in France, Medieval Jewry in Northern France (Balti-
more: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 24–26. There are
translations of Guibert’s Monodiae by John Benton, Self and Society in Me-
dieval France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press and Medieval Academy
of America, 1984) and by Paul J. Archambault, A Monk’s Confession. The
Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania State
Press, 1995).
54. Lasteyrie, nos. 151–52, pp. 171–74; the letter accompanying this gift is ad-
dressed to Galo and Stephen of Garlande and is dated to 1108 in PL 162:
729–32; Geneviève [Bresc-]Bautier, “L’envoi de la relique de la vraie Croix
à Notre-Dame de Paris en 1120,” Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 129
(1971): 384–97 and on the fairs, Anne Lombard-Jourdain, “Les foires de
Saint-Denis,” ibid. 145 (1987): 273–338.
55. Dufour, no. 184, 1: 384–85.
56. Cartulaire de Notre-Dame, ed. Guérard, 1: 246–47 [1108]; 1: 223 [1114].
57. Guérard, 1: 449; see too Lasteyrie, nos. 179–80, pp. 202–203 [1118], in
which Stephen produces a similar authorization for Gibelina, daughter of
Burdini de Funtaneto.
58. Suger, Vita Ludovici 13, ed. Waquet, p. 84; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead,
p. 62.
59. Suger, Vita Ludovici 8, ed. Waquet, p. 38; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead,
p. 41.
60. Hallam, Capetian France, pp. 43–50 (p. 300, n. 77).
61. On the rise of royal authority in France, see Karl Ferdinand Werner, “King-
dom and Principality in Twelfth-Century France,” in The Medieval Nobility,
348 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

ed. Timothy Reuter (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1978),

pp. 243–90.
62. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 63; ed. Hicks, p. 3; trans. Radice, p. 57. Abelard is said
to be sixty-three at his death on 23 April 1142, according to an Old French
Paraclete obituary list, cited by André Duchesne in his notes to the Histo-
ria calamitatum (repr. PL 178: 176C). On Berengar, see n. 64 below.
63. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 67; ed. Hicks, p. 7; trans. Radice, p. 62.
64. Chronicon, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 26 (1882): 81. As Richard was al-
ready a monk at Cluny in 1141 when Abelard became a monk there, his
testimony is worthy of credence.
65. In 1087 Alan IV had been married to Constance (d. 1090), daughter of
William the Conqueror, but this marriage was without issue; Gesta Nor-
mannorum Ducum 8.34, ed. and trans. Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts, 2 vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 2: 260. On these divisions, see Noel-Yves
Tonnerre, “Le comté nantais à la fin du XIe siècle,” Abélard en son temps, pp.
11–20 and Mews, “In search of a name and its significance: a twelfth-cen-
tury anecdote about Thierry and Peter Abaelard,” Traditio 44 (1988):
175–200. Anti-breton sentiment is still evident in a chronicle written in
the 1150s by a member of Nantes cathedral, La Chronique de Nantes, ed.
René Merlet (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1896).
66. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 98; ed. Hicks, p. 35; trans. Radice, p. 95. Cf. Abelard,
Dialectica, ed. De Rijk, p. 128.
67. Jacques Boussard, “La vie en Anjou aux XIe et XIIe siècles,” Le Moyen Age
5 (1950): 29–68; Hironori Miyamatsu, “A-t-il existé une commune à
Angers au XIIe siècle?” Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995): 117–52; Jean
Vézin, Les scriptoria d’Angers au XIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1974),
pp. 1–17.
68. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 64; ed. Hicks, p. 4; trans. Radice, p. 58. Roscelin, Epis-
tola ad Abaelardum, ed. Reiners, pp. 64–65: “Neque vero Turonensis eccle-
sia vel Locensis, ubi ad pedes meos magistri tui discipulorum minimus tam
diu resedisti, aut Bizuntina ecclesia, in quibus canonicus sum, extra
mundum sunt, quae me omnes et venerantur et fovent et, quae dico, dis-
cendi studio libenter accipiunt.”
69. Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, Anselmi Opera
Omnia, 7 vols. (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1938 – 70), 2: 9–10.
70. Roscelin, Ep. ad Abaelardum, ed. Reiners, p. 63: “Si Christianae religionis
dulcedinem quam habitu ipso praeferebas vel tenuiter degustasses,
nequaquam tui ordinis tuaeque professionis immemor, et beneficiorum
quae tibi tot et tanta a puero usque ad juvenem sub magistri nomine et
actu exhibui oblitus . . .”
71. Charters of Fontevrault are printed in PL 172: 1052D and 1053D, as well
as PL 162: 1087D-1118D. Jacques Dalarun has uncovered a sixteenth-cen-
tury French translation of an early Life of Robert, L’Impossible Sainteté. La
 N OT ES 349

vie retrouvée de Robert d’Arbrissel (v. 1045 – 1116), fondateur de Fontevraud

(Paris: Editions de Cerf, 1985). See Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the
Virgin, pp. 93–115 (p. 298, n. 52 above); DHGE 14: 961–3 and W. Scott
Jessee, “Robert d’Arbrissel: Aristocratic patronage and the question of
heresy,” Journal of Medieval History 29 (1994): 221–35. Constable mentions
Robert’s influence on Peter the Venerable’s mother, The Letters of Peter the
Venerable, 2: 239.
72. Ep. 14, ed. Smits, p. 280.
73. Ep. ad Abaelardum, ed. Reiners, p. 67. A lost treatise of Roscelin against
Robert of Arbrissel is mentioned in a list of books from an unidentified
abbey, Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 1042, fol. 113v (s.
xii/xiii): Roscelinus contra Robertum liber I. I am indebted to François Dol-
beau for this reference.
74. Marbod, Ep. 6, PL 171: 1481B and 1482D-83A.
75. Geoffrey of Vendôme, Ep.11 to Rainaud, PL 157: 114A: “Mima quaedam
et mulier publica quae vos garruliter acclamabat;” a number of these de-
tails, although not that about the “actress and public woman,” are men-
tioned by Hildebert of Lavardin in Ep. 5, 6 (PL 171: 211D-213A).
76. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 64; ed. Hicks, p. 4; trans. Radice, p. 58.
77. Baudri of Bourgueil, Vita B. Roberti Arbrisselli, PL 162: 1047A, 1048B:
“Perambulabat regiones et provincias irrequietus, et in litterarum studiis
non poterat non esse sollicitus. Et quoniam Francia tum florebat in schol-
aribus emolumentis copiosior, fines paternos, tanquam exsul et fugitivus,
exivit, Franciam adiit, et urbem, quae Parisius dicitur, intravit, litterarum
disciplinam, quam unice sibi postulaverat, pro voto commodam reperit,
ibique assiduus lector insidere coepit. . . . Reddebat etenim scholasticis,
quod scholasticorum erat, nec propterea se Dei servitio minus coaptabat.”
Robert’s studies in Paris took place between 1079 and 1089.
78. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 105; ed. Hicks, pp. 40–41; trans. Radice, p. 101.
79. Guibert, Monodiae 3.17, ed. Labande, pp. 428–34; see also Mews, “An ex-
cerpt from Guibert of Nogent’s Monodiae (III, 17) appended to Augustine’s
De haeresibus,” Revue des études augustiniennes 33 (1987): 113–27.
80. Guibert thought that when Clement reminded the bishop of the verse in
scripture Beati eritis, he erroneously thought scripture said “Blessed are the
heretics” by confusing eritis with haereticos. Labande identifies the verse as
part of John 13.17, but Beati eritis makes better sense as a reference to Luke
6.23: “Beati eritis cum vos oderint homines.” Robert quoted this verse in
a sermon to Ermengarde, countess of Brittany quoted by Dalarun, L’Im-
possible sainteté, p. 218.
81. Liber Ordinis Sancti Victoris Parisiensis 19, 22, ed. Luc Jocqué and Louis Milis,
CCCM 61 (1984): 78–86, 103–110.
82. Lasteyrie, no. 148, p. 168.
83. Dufour, 3: 77, no. 1 [private acts agreed to by Louis VI]; see n. 38 above.
350 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

84. Vita Goswini, Recueil, 14: 444; see Mews, “Philosophy and Theology 1100
– 1150: The Search for Harmony,” in Le XIIe siècle: Mutations et renouveau
en France dans la première moitié du XIIe siècle, ed. Françoise Gasparri (Paris:
Le Léopard d’Or, 1994), pp. 182–83.
85. The most important such records occur within a manuscript from Fleury,
Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 266, described in detail by Lorenzo
Minio-Paluello, Twelfth-Century Logic. Texts and Studies II. Abaelardiana
Inedita (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1958), pp. xli-xlvi. The
manuscript contains fragments of two works by Abelard, the Positio vocum
sententie and Secundum magistrum Petrum sententie. Minio-Paluello edits the
latter work, while the former treatise has been edited by Iwakuma Y., “‘Vo-
cales,’ or Early Nominalists,” Traditio 42 (1992): 66–73, Another is also from
Fleury, Paris, BNF lat. 13368, described by Bernhard Geyer, Peter Abaelards
Philosophische Schriften. II Die Logica ‘Nostrorum petitioni sociorum’ (Münster:
Aschendorff, 2nd ed. 1973), pp. 592–97.There is an edition of so-called ‘lit-
eral glosses’ of Abelard (erroneously confused with the Introductiones parvu-
lorum, a lost work to which Abelard refers in the Dialectica) by Mario Dal
Pra, Pietro Abelardo. Scritti di logica (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 2nd. ed. 1969),
pp. 3–203.
86. John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 2.17, ed. J. B. Hall, CCCM 98 (1991): 83;
trans. Daniel D. McGarry, The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury (Gloucester,
Mass.: Peter Smith, 1955), p. 115.
87. Anselm expressed sympathy for Walerann’s thwarted desire to enter the
monastic life at Saint-Martin des Champs in Ep. 161–62 to bishop Geof-
frey in 1093, ed. Schmitt, 3: 351–54, trans. Walter Fröhlich, The Letters of
Saint Anselm of Canterbury, vol. 2 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publica-
tions, 1993), pp. 48–52. Walerann must subsequently have left Paris, if this
is the same person as the Walerann who writes to Anselm ca. 1107 about
diversity of eucharistic practice (ed. Schmitt, 2: 233–38), and to whom
Anselm sends his Epistola de sacramentis ecclesiae (2: 229–42) and De proces-
sione spiritus sancti contra Graecos (5: 362–63).
88. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 65; ed. Hicks, p. 5; trans. Radice, p. 60.
89. Lasteyrie, no. 155, p. 175–76 and Dufour, 3: 77.
90. Robert of Meulan intervened on Bec’s behalf to obtain significant tax ex-
emptions for their boats when travelling along the Seine in 1095, renewed
sometime between 1100 and 1108, Dufour, no. 18, 1: 31–32. Véronique
Gazeau observes the role of Robert of Meulan in “Le Domaine continen-
tal du Bec. Aristocratie et monachisme au temps d’Anselme,” in Les muta-
tions socio-culturelles au tournant des XIe – XIIe siècles, ed. Raymonde
Foreville, Spicilegium Beccense 2 (Paris: CNRS, 1984), pp. 259–71.
91. Vita Ludovici 16, ed. Waquet, pp. 98–112; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead,
pp. 69–75; Luchaire, no. 103, p. 56; Sally N. Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and
Robert of Meulan. The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent
 N OT ES 351

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 351–53 and Judith

Green, “Lords of the Norman Vexin,” in War and Government in the Middle
Ages: Essays in Honour of J. O. Prestwich, ed. John Gillingham and J. C. Holt
(Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1984), pp. 47–63.
92. Luchaire, no. 111, pp. 59–60.
93. Louis VI issues many charters from Paris between 1110 and 1117: Dufour,
nos. 40, 41, 43, 50, 56–57, 64–65, 70, 72–74, 89–90, 96–97, 101–103,
116–119, 123–128.
94. Dufour, no. 50, 1: 100–102.
95. Dufour, no. 80, 1: 173–80.
96. S. Bernardi Vita prima 1.7, PL 185: 245C-246A.
97. Philippe Buc argues that Anselm of Laon introduced an egalitarian di-
mension into scriptural exegesis in the early twelfth century, L’Ambiguïté
du livre. Prince, Pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen âge
(Paris: Beauchesne, 1994), pp. 30–33.
98. Guibert, Monodiae 3.4–9, ed. Labande, pp. 280–357. Gaudry’s Norman
links are mentioned by Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 11.20, ed. and
trans. Chibnall, 6: 90.
99. Guibert, Monodiae 3.14, ed. Labande, p. 394.
100. Bautier, art. cit., pp. 63–64.
101. On papal politics in this period, see J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of
Popes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 163–64 and Ian S.
Robinson, The Papacy 1073 – 1198. Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 63–64, pp. 430–32.
102. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 71; ed. Hicks, p. 10; trans. Radice, pp. 65–66.
103. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 74; trans. Hicks, p. 13; trans. Radice, p. 69. The full
name, Petrus Astralabius magistri nostri Petri filius is given in the necrology of
the Paraclete as having died on 30 October, Obituaire de la province de Sens
4: 425 (n. 12 above).
104. Theologia christiana 5.50, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 12: 369; Commentaria in epis-
tolam Pauli ad Romanos 3 (13.10), ed. Buytaert, CCCM 11 (1969): 290.
105. See above, p. 293, n. 14.
106. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 115; ed. Hicks, p. 51; trans. Radice, p. 115.
107. HC, ed. Monfrin, pp. 74–75; ed. Hicks, p. 13; trans. Radice, p. 70.
108. Autobiographie 1.12, ed. Labande, pp. 78–80.
109. Ecclesiastical History 8.10, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 4: 188; Orderic explains
earlier (p. 186) that Fulk established the fashion for pointed shoes (“pul-
ley-shoes” in Chibnall’s translation, or souliers à la poulaine, still popular in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in the seventeenth century accord-
ing to Chibnall, p. 187 n. 4), although it was a certain courtier of William
Rufus who bent these shoes into the shape of a ram’s horn. Geneviève
Brunel-Lobrichon and Claudie Duhamel-Amado discuss contemporary
fashion in Au temps des troubadours XIIe – XIIIe siècles (Paris: Hachette,
352 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

1997), pp. 169–80; Orderic’s evidence indicates that these new fashions
should be dated to earlier than 1150, as they suggest (p. 175).
110. Gesta Regum 4.314, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 90 (London: Long-
man, 1889), 2: 369–70.
111. Rodulphus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque 3.40, ed. and trans. John France
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 166 with similar comments in his Life
of St.William (p. 290 of the same volume). On perception of a distinct cul-
ture in Occitania, see Linda M. Paterson, The World of the Troubadours. Me-
dieval Occitan society, c. 1100 – c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993), pp. 6–9.
112. Henri Platelle, to whom I am indebted for much of what follows, “Le
problème du scandale: les nouvelles modes masculines aux XIe et XIIe siè-
cles,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 53 (1975): 1071–96 at 1074. In
Germany, new fashions were also blamed on the influence of Theophanu,
wife of Otto II; see C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels. Cathedral Schools
and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950 – 1200 (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 200, 210–211, 244.
113. Ep. 257, ed. Schmitt, 4: 169–70; trans. Fröhlich, 2: 248–49. Eadmer reports
these rulings in Historia novorum 3, ed. Rule, p. 143; Eadmer, Historia novo-
rum 1, ed. Rule, p. 48; PL 159: 576.
114. De restauratione S. Martini Tornacensis 3, 6, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 14
(1883): 276–77; The Restoration of the Monastery of Saint Martin of Tournai,
trans. Lynn H. Nelson (Washington DC: Catholic University of America,
1996), pp. 16, 21.
115. Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 9.3, 11.11, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 5: 22
and 6: 64–66; Platelle, “Le problème du scandale,” 1081.
116. Council of Rheims (1046), J.-D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et am-
plissima collectio, 31 vols. (Venice: Antonium Zata, 1725 – 98; repr. Graz:
Akademische Druk 1960 – 66), 19: 741–42: “Ne quis sine electione cleri
et populi ad regimen ecclesiasticum proveheretur”; trans. Brian Tierney,
The Crisis of Church and State 1050 – 1300 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Pren-
tice-Hall, 1964), p. 31.
117. Mansi, 19: 873, 898; MGH Constitutiones et Acta, 1 ed. L. Weiland (1893),
p. 547; trans. Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, p. 43.
118. Vita S. Galterii Abbatis 2.9, Acta Sanctorum 8 April, p. 752D and II Vita S.
Galterii, p. 756D, Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, 2 vols. (Brussels: Société
des Bollandistes, 1900 – 1901), nos. 8798 and 8796; repr. Mansi, 20:
437–38; Charles-Joseph Hefele, Histoire des Conciles, vol. 5 (Paris: Letouzey
et Ané, 1912), pp. 111–14; see Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 4, ed.
and trans. Chibnall, 2: 200. On the debate, see: Anne Llewellyn Barstow,
Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: the Eleventh-Century Debates (New
York: Edward Mellen Press, 1982), pp. 67–77; Charles A. Frazee, “The
Origins of the Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church,” Church History
 N OT ES 353

41 (1972): 140–67; Christopher N. L. Brooke, “Gregorian Reform in Ac-

tion: Clerical marriage in England 1050 – 1200,” in Cambridge Historical
Journal 12 (1956): 467–75, repr. Change in Medieval Society: Europe North of
the Alps, ed. Sylvia Thrupp (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1964),
pp. 49–71.
119. Ivo of Chartres, Ep. 200, PL 162: 206D-207B.
120. Ep. 257, ed. Schmitt, 4: 169–70; trans. Fröhlich, 2: 249.
121. Serlo, Defensio pro filiis presbyterorum, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Libelli de
lite 3 (1897): 579–83; see Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy,
pp. 105–73.
122. Theobald of Étampes, Epistola ad Roscelinum, ed. H. Boehmer, MGH Li-
belli de lite 3: 605; PL 163: 767D: “Plus itaque prodest bene vixisse, quam
de justis parentibus originem duxisse. Deus enim vitam hominis, non na-
tivitatem attendit.” Cf. Marbod, Ep. ad Ingilgerium, ed. Boehmer, MGH Li-
belli de Lite 3: 692–94.
123. On the council of Rheims, see Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 12.21,
ed. and trans. Chibnall, 6: 252–76; Hesso reports popular murmuring
against the Pope’s firm management of the council, Relatio de concilio Re-
mensi, ed. W. Wattenbach, MGH Libelli de Lite 3 (1897): 22–28 and
Robinson, The Papacy 1073 – 1198, pp. 131–33 (see above, n. 101).
124. Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 12.25, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 6:
290–94. Cf. Paul of Bernried, Gregorii VII Vita 116, in Pontificum Romano-
rum Vitae, ed. Johann Matthias Watterich, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1862; repr. Aalen:
Scientia, 1966) 1: 543.
125. Ivo, Decretum 8.77, 82 and 8.205, PL 161: 600B, 601A, 626C. See James A.
Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 189, 205–6.
126. John M. Riddle suggests that Marbod of Rennes, author of a treatise on
medicinal stones, De Lapidibus, may have also written De virtutibus
herbarum, attributed to Macer Floridus, in Aemilius Macer De herbarum vir-
tutibus cum Joannis Atrociani commentariis (1530), in Contraception and Abortion
from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1992), pp. 114–16. See also Riddle, “Contraception and Early
Abortion in the Middle Ages,” in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Bul-
lough and Brundage, pp. 261–77 (p. 298, n. 52).
127. Luchaire, no. 221, p. 108; Dufour, no. 437, 2: 374.
128. Herman of Tournai, De restauratione S. Martini Tornacensis 18, ed. Waitz, p.
282; trans. Nelson, pp. 35–36.
129. PL 178: 372D-373A, 373D (on sodomites); ed. Cousin, 1: 88–89.
130. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 71; ed. Hicks, p. 10; Radice (p. 66) translates laicarum
conversationem as “secular way of life.”
131. John W. Baldwin, The Language of Sex. Five Voices from Northern France around
1200 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 81–82.
354 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

132. Carmen ad Astralabium ll. 221–234, ed. José M. A. Rubingh-Bosscher

(Groningen [privately published], 1987), p. 119.
133. Ep. 257 (as in n. 120 above). On Christian teaching on sodomy in this pe-
riod, see Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
134. See for example, Medieval Latin Poems of Male Love and Friendship, trans.
Thomas Stehling (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984).
135. John Boswell translates this poem in Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosex-
uality. Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the
Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 261–62.
136. Ep. 66, ed. Leclercq, p. 296 (n. 25 above): “Quidam enim concubi sui ap-
pellantes eum Floram, multas rythmicas cantilenas de eo composuerunt,
quae a foedis adolescentibus, sicut nostis miseriam terrae illius, per urbes
Franciae in plateis et compitis cantitantur, quas et ipse aliquando cantitare
et coram se cantitari non erubuit. Harum unam domno Lugdunensi in tes-
timonium misi, quam cuidam eam cantitanti violenter abstuli.”
137. Ep. 65, ed. Leclercq, pp. 282–97 (n. 25 above), with detail about the boast
of Philip I that he had slept with John (282), and about Baudri’s failed ef-
fort to acquire the bishopric (288).
138. Guibert of Nogent, Monodiae 1.4, ed. Labande, p. 26.
139. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 115; ed. Hicks, p. 50; trans. Radice, p. 115.

Chapter 4
1. Carmina Leodiensia no. 4, ed. Walther Bulst, Sitzungsberichte der Heidel-
berger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1975, Abh. 1 (Heidelberg: Carl Win-
ter, 1975), p. 13, edited from Liège, Bibliothèque de l’Université 77 (47),
fol. 72r-v. M. Delbouille suggested that the poet who sent the anthology
was a friend of Marbod called Walter, “Un mystérieux ami de Marbode,”
Le Moyen Age, 4th ser. 6 (1950 – 51): 205–40. Bulst is cautious about the
claim that Walter wrote all the poems in the anthology. That he came from
France is suggested by no. 8, ed. Bulst, p. 18 (miratur Francia dulcis).
2. Metamorphoses 2.272.
3. The earliest known troubador lyrics are edited and translated by Gerald A.
Bond, The Poetry of William VII, Count of Poitiers, IX Duke of Aquitaine (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1980).
4. Collected in translation by Magda Bogin, The Woman Troubadours (New
York: Paddington Press, 1976).
5. Reto R. Bezzola, “Guillaume IX et les origines de l’amour courtois,” Ro-
mania 66 (1940): 145–237 and Les origines et la formation de la littérature cour-
toise en Occident (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1966), 2e partie, 2: 275–315.
Jacques Dalarun comments on Michelet’s vision of Robert of Arbrissel,
L’Impossible sainteté, pp. 120–34 (p. 324, n. 71 above).
 N OT ES 355

6. Bezzola, Les origines, 2: 323–26 (n. 5 above).

7. Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1983), trans. Montgomery Belgion, with a postscript of 1972;
originally published as L’Amour en Occident (Paris: Plon, 1940).
8. René Nelli, L’Erotique des troubadours (Toulouse: Privat, 1963).
9. Patterson, The World of the Troubadours, pp. 220–28 (p. 328, n. 111).
10. Apart from Dronke, ML and WW (see List of Abbreviations, p. xv), see
Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry 1000
– 1150 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).
11. See above, p. 292, n. 12.
12. Tony Hunt, “Aristotle, Dialectic, and Courtly Literature,” Viator 10 (1979):
95–129.
13. Gerald Bond, The Loving Subject. Desire, Eloquence, and Power in Romanesque
France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). For a fuller
version of one chapter, see his essay, “‘Iocus amoris’: the Poetry of Baudri
of Bourgueil and the Formation of the Ovidian Subculture,” Traditio 42
(1986): 143–93.
14. Geschichte der Lateinischen Liebesdichtung im Mittelalter (Halle: Max
Niemeyer, 1925; repr. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1979), pp. 8–19.
15. Carmina Burana, ed. Alfons Hilka, Otto Schumann and Bernhard Bischoff, 2
vols. in 4 parts (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1933 – 70). There have been nu-
merous translations into English, including David Parlett, Selections from the
Carmina Burana (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986) and P. G.Walsh, Love Lyrics
from the Carmina Burana (Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 1993).
16. Walsh voices caution about this image in his Love Lyrics from the Carmina
Burana, pp. xiv-xvii. Scholars rarely allude to Helen Waddell, The Wander-
ing Scholars (London: Constable, 1927), Medieval Latin Lyrics (London: Con-
stable, 1929) and Peter Abelard (London: Constable, 1933), but these were
books of enormous influence in shaping popular perception of twelfth-
century culture, like John Addington Symonds, Wine, Women, and Song
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1884) and George F. Whicher, The Goliard
Poets (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1949). The origins of the
Carmina burana are studied by Olive Sayce, Plurilingualism in the Carmina
Burana, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 556 (Göppingen: Küm-
merle, 1992).
17. Hilarii Aurelianensis Versus et Ludi, Epistolae, Ludus Danielis Belouacensis, ed.
Walther Bulst and M. L. Bulst-Thiele (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989), nos. 1–5,
pp. 21–29; see also no. 14, De papa scolastico, p. 48; nos. 16, 17 (ed. Bulst, pp.
59–61) occur as nos. 95 and 117 of the Carmina burana. Hilary’s connec-
tions with Sainte-Croix, Orléans are evident in an exchange of letters with
his teacher there, a certain Hugo, Ep. 2–3, ed. Bulst, pp. 82–83.
18. Carmina burana, no. 169: Hebet sidus leti visus . . . ; trans. Walsh, Love Lyrics
from the Carmina Burana, p. 192: “The bright star of my joyful countenance
356 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

is dulled by my heart’s cloud.” Dronke suggested Abelard’s authorship in

ML 1: 313–18.
19. Gerald Bond examines the wide range of authors who dedicate writing to
Adela of Blois in The Loving Subject, pp. 129–57; see below, n. 72.
20. On Hildebert, see A. B. Scott, “The Poems of Hildebert of Le Mans,” Me-
dieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1968): 42–83 and his edition, Hildeberti
Cenomannensis Carmina minora (Leipzig: Teubner, 1969), nos. 4 to Queen
Matilda, 10, 15 to Adela, 19 about Lucretia, 26 to Muriel of Wilton, 27 on
the virgin Bona, 30 on a certain matron, 35 to Queen Matilda, 46 to Ce-
cilia, abbess of Caen, 52 on a virgin married to an old man, 53 on Bertha.
The major study of Hildebert’s literary output is Peter von Moos, Hildebert
von Lavardin, 1056 – 1133. Humanitas an der Schwelle des höfischen Zeitalters
(Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1965).
21. Carl Erdmann studied these themes in detail within eleventh-century let-
ter collections, especially one from Hildesheim, in Studien zur Briefliteratur
Deutschlands im elften Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1938), pp.
117–224. See also Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: the
Monastic Experience, 350 – 1250 (Kalamazoo, Mi.: Cistercian Publications,
1988).
22. See, p. 296, n. 43.
23. Ars Amatoria 2.281–86.
24. Amores 1.11.19–28.
25. Remedia amoris 717–20.
26. Stanley K. Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1986), discussing letters of friendship on pp. 58–70. A
letter survives from Taus to her lover, Apollonius, a married man and civil
governor in Egypt in the second century C.E., Select Papyri 1, ed. A. S.
Hunt and C. C. Edgar, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1949),
no. 115, 1: 309–31.
27. Saturae 6.277–78; see also 6.141 and 6.234 on women writing love letters.
28. Tristia 3.7.53–54.
29. On Ovid’s debt to Sappho, and the legacy of the Heroides, see Linda S.
Kauffman, Discourses of Desire. Gender, Genre, and Epistolary Fictions (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 50–61, as well as pp. 64–89 on the let-
ters of Heloise. Ovid’s authorship of Heroides, no. 15 (Epistula Sapphus);
Heinrich Dörrie discusses the dubious grounds for such skepticism in P.
Ovidius Naso. Der Brief der Sappho an Phaon (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1975), p.
4. Knox attributes the Epistula Sapphus to an unknown author in Heroides.
Select Epistles, pp. 78–85 (p. 296, n. 42), arguing (pp. 7, 12–14) that it may
be an imitation of a lost poem of Ovid, if the reference to Ovid’s version
of a poem of Sappho in Amores 2.18.26 is not an interpolation. Isbell (p.
xvi) had written in 1990 that “scholarly opinion is nearly unanimous in
seeing this letter as of genuine authenticity.” The Epistula Sapphus occurs as
 N OT ES 357

part of the Heroides in the oldest witnesses to its text, twelfth-century an-
thologies from the Loire valley; it is displaced from other Heroides in the
earliest surviving complete manuscript of the poems, from the thirteenth
century (see below, n. 49).
30. Veyne, Roman Erotic Elegy, pp. 83, 188 (p. 298, n. 51).
31. For a full survey of testimony about Roman women, see Mary R.
Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, eds., Women’s Life in Greece and Rome, 2nd
ed. (London: Duckworth, 1992).
32. Juvenal, Saturae, 6.434–37.
33. Albii Tibulli aliorumque carminum libri tres, ed. Fridericus Waltharius Lenz and
Godehardus Carolus Galinsky (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971); extracts from her
verse letters are translated by Lefkowitz and Fant, Women’s Life in Greece and
Rome, pp. 8–9.
34. For an introduction to the large literature on Augustine and women, see
Kim Power, Veiled Desire. Augustine’s Writing on Women (London: Dart,
Longman and Todd, 1995).
35. William S. Anderson, ed., Ovid. The Classical Heritage (New York: Garland
Publishing, 1995), pp. xii-xviii.
36. Birger Munk Olsen, L’Etude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siè-
cles, 3 vols. (Paris: CNRS, 1982 – 89), 2: 126, 127, 145, 158, 251, 255
(copies from central Italy, Germany, Corbie, Tegernsee and Toul from the
ninth to the eleventh centuries).
37. These poems, De excidio Thoringiae and an epistle to her nephew Artachis,
are edited as an appendix to those of Venantius by Friedrich Leo, MGH
Auctores Antiquissimi 4.1 (1881): 271–79 and translated as poems of
Radegund by Marcelle Thiébaux, The Writings of Medieval Women, pp.
30–56 (p. TKTK, n. 20). See too the translations of Jo Ann McNamara and
John E. Halborg, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 1992), pp. 70–105.
38. Karen Cherewatuk, “Radegund and Epistolary Tradition,” in Dear Sister,
ed. Cherewatuk and Wiethaus, pp. 20–45 (p. 297, n. 46). Dronke discusses
her poems in WW, pp. 26–29, commenting on Ovid’s influence pp. 85–86
with refutation of the argument that Fortunatus, a much younger man, in-
vented her poems, p. 298 n. 14.
39. Peter Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London: Duckworth,
1985), p. 8. Godman translates Theodulf ’s verse on pp. 150–75 and com-
ments on his self-identification with Ovid in Poets and Emperors: Frankish
politics and Carolingian Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 101–106,
suggesting that Ovid inspired the idea of verse epistles to be read aloud
among friends on pp. 11 and 72.
40. On this manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library: Auct. F. 4. 32), see E. J. Ken-
ney, “The Manuscript Tradition of Ovid’s Amores, Ars amatoria and Remedia
amoris,” Classical Quarterly, N.S. 12 (1962): 1–31 and Texts and Transmission,
358 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

p. 261 n. 12. Its glosses are studied by Ralph Jay Hexter, Ovid and Medieval
Schooling: Studies in Medieval School Commentaries on Ovid’s Ars amatoria, Epis-
tulae ex Ponto and Epistulae Heroidum (Munich: Bei der Arbeo-Gesellschaft,
1986). Hexter comments on Carolingian interest in “The Poetry of Ovid’s
Exile,” in Ovid. The Classical Heritage, pp. 37–60 (n. 35 above).
41. Dörrie, Der Brief der Sappho an Phaon, pp. 52–54 (p. 332, n. 42) and Richard
H. Rouse, “Florilegia and Latin Classical Authors in Twelfth- and Thir-
teenth-Century Orléans,” Viator 10 (1979): 131–60; see also Ruhe, De ama-
sio ad amasiam, pp. 44–50 (p. 292, n. 8 above).
42. Monodiae 1.17, ed. Labande, p. 134.
43. Dialogus super auctores, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Accessus ad Auctores. Bernard
d’Utrecht. Conrad d’Hirsau (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), p. 114.
44. Theologia christiana 2.21, CCCM 12: 141, quoting Amores 3.4.17. This verse
is also quoted by Abelard in his Rule for the Paraclete, Ep. 8, ed. McLaugh-
lin, 275; trans. Radice, p. 239.
45. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 66; ed. Hicks, p. 6; trans. Radice, p. 61, quoting
Remedium Amoris 1.369.
46. For example, Tristia 4.10.23; see also Marbod, Contra invidum, PL 171:
1719D.
47. Ep. 6, ed. Hicks, pp. 89–90; trans. Radice, pp. 160–61.
48. Many commentaries of Arnulf of Orléans on Lucan and Ovid are still
unedited; see F. Ghislaberti, “Arnolfo d’Orléans, un cultore di Ovidio nel
sec. XII,” Memorie del Reale Istituto Lombardo di scienze e lettere 24 (1932):
157–234 and Bruno Roy, H. Schooner “Querelles de maîtres au XIIe
siècle: Arnoul d’Orléans et son milieu,” Sandalion 8–9 (1985–86):
315–41. See too B. M. Marti, “Hugh Primas and Arnulf of Orleans,”
Speculum 30 (1955): 233–38 and H. V. Schooner, “Les ‘Bursarii Ovidi-
anorum’ de Guillaume d’Orléans,” Mediaeval Studies 43 (1981): 405–24.
There is a vast literature on Ovid’s influence in the Middle Ages; for gen-
eral surveys: n. 36 above; James H. McGregor, “Ovid at School: From the
Ninth to the Fifteenth Century,” Classical Folia 32 (1978): 29–51;
Dorothy M. Robathan, “Ovid in the Middle Ages,” in Ovid, ed. J. W.
Binns (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), pp. 191–209; Winfried
Offermans, Die Wirkung Ovids auf die literarische Sprache der lateinischen
Liebesdichtung des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch,
Beiheft 3 (Wuppertal: Henn, 1970).
49. Besides “Sappho to Phaon,” the Florilegium Gallicum included works of Va-
lerius Flaccus, Tibullus, Petronius, and over a dozen orations of Cicero as
well as the De oratore and Epistulae ad familiares, a copy of which Petrarch
discovered at Verona in 1345, thinking it had been lost since antiquity. See
Birger Munk Olsen, “Les classiques latins dans les florilèges médiévaux an-
térieurs au XIIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire des textes 9 (1979): 47–121 (espe-
cially 75–83 and 103–115) and 10 (1980): 115–64, and Rosemary Burton,
 N OT ES 359

Classical Poets in the “Florilegium Gallicum,” Lateinische Sprache und Liter-

atur des Mittelalters 14 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1983).
50. M. A.-F. Sabot, “Ovid’s Presence in the Twelfth Century: Latin Elegiac Po-
etry, Provençal Lyric,” and Leslie Cahoon, “The Anxieties of Influence:
Ovid’s Reception by the Early Troubadours,” in Ovid. The Classical Her-
itage, pp. 61–83 and 85–117 (n. 35 above).
51. Marbod did not relinquish his position at Angers until 1102/3; see Oliver
Guillot, Le Comté d’Anjou et son entourage au XIe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: Picard,
1972), 1: 260–62, 275 and 2: 206.
52. Könsgen, pp. 93–95; cf. letter 13 and Marbod, “In te namque sita mea mors
est et mea vita” in Rescriptum ad amicam, ed. Bulst (1984) p. 186 (see n. 56
below); cf. Letter 32 and Marbod, “Et formam mentis mihi mutuor ex el-
ementis ipsi naturae congratulor” in Carmina, PL 171: 1717A; cf. Letter 73
and Marbod, Carmina 24, PL 171: 1660.
53. His saints’ lives and other writings are collected in PL 171. One of his
major compositions was the Liber decem capitulorum, ed. Walther Bulst
(Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1947), more recently edited with detailed com-
mentary by Rosario Leotta (Rome: Herder, 1984); see André Wilmart,
“Le Florilège de Saint-Gatien. Contribution à l’étude des poèmes
d’Hildebert et de Marbode,” Revue bénédictine 48 (1936): 235–58; Bond,
The Loving Subject, pp. 70–98, with a valuable bibliographical survey on
pp. 231–32.
54. Liber decem capitulorum 1, ed. Bulst, p. 5; ed. Leotta, pp. 59–62. His discus-
sion of woman comes in c.3 “On the prostitute,” ed. Bulst, pp. 12–15 (PL
171: 1698B-99D).
55. Carmen 17 (“Repentance for lascivious love”), PL 171: 1633D-36B.
56. Liber Marbodi quondam nominatissimi presulis Redonensis . . . , ed. Ivo Mayeuc
(Rennes: Johannes Baudouyn-Johannes Mace, 1524), used by Bulst,
“Liebesbriefgedichte Marbods,” in Liber Floridus. Festschrift Paul Lehmann,
ed. Bernhard Bischoff and Suso Brechter (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag der Abtei,
1950), pp. 287–301, repr. [with typographical corrections] in Bulst, Lateinis-
ches Mittelalter. Gesammelte Beiträge, ed. Walter Berschin (Heidelberg: Carl
Winter, 1984), pp. 182–96. Bulst observed that four of these poems had
been printed as anonymous poems from a twelfth-century MS, Zurich,
Zentralbibliothek C 58, by Jakob Werner, Beiträge zur Kunde der lateinischen
Literatur des Mittelalters, 2nd ed. (Aarau: Sauerländer, 1905; repr. Georg
Olms: Hildesheim, 1979); see Ruhe, De amasio ad amasiam, pp. 23–34 (p.
TKTK, n. 8 above).
57. No. 24 in the 1524 edition, Ad amicam repatriare parantem, ed. Bulst (1984),
p. 2184.
58. Dronke discusses them in ML 1: 213–16. Bulst suggested that she may have
been from Le Ronceray, like the women to whom Baudri of Bourgueil
sent poems.
360 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

59. Carmina Leodiensia 6, ed. Bulst, p. 16 from Liège, Bibliothèque universitaire,

MS 77, fol. 73, and Paris, BNF lat. 14193, fol. 1v. Charles S. F. Burnett ob-
serves that the text of the Confessio fidei ‘Universis’ in this latter manuscript,
perhaps preserved by Walter of Mortagne himself, is our closest witness to
the archetype of Abelard’s text, “Peter Abelard, Confessio fidei ‘Universis’: A
Critical Edition of Abelard’s Reply to Accusations of Heresy,” Mediaeval
Studies 48 (1986): 111–38, esp. 117–19 and 128–29.
60. Puella ad amicum munera promittentem, ed. Bulst (1984), p. 185: “Gaudia
nimpharum, violas floresque rosarum, / Lilia candoris miri quoque
poma saporis / Parque columbarum, quibus addita mater earum, / Vestes
purpureas, quibus exornata Napeas / Vincere tam cultu possim quam
transeo vultu, / Insuper argentum, gemmas promittis et aurum. / Omnia
promittis, sed nulla tamen mihi mittis. / Si me diligeres et que promit-
tis haberes, / Res precessissent et verba secuta fuissent. / Ergo vel es fic-
tus nescisque cupidinis ictus / Vel verbis vanis es diues, rebus inanis. /
Quod si multarum sis plenus diuiciarum, / Rusticus es, qui me tua, non
te credis amare.”
61. See above, p. 303, n. 18.
62. Rescriptum ad amicam, ed. Bulst (1984), p. 185: “A te missa michi gaudens,
carissima, legi, / Namque tenetur ibi me placuisse tibi. / Si scirem verum
quod ais, pulcherrima rerum, / Quam si rex fierem, letior inde forem. /
Non facerem tanti thesauros Octauiani / Quam placuisse tibi, sicut habetur
ibi. / Littera me vicit, que dulcem me tibi dicit, / Basia que recitat, cor
michi sollicitat.”
63. See above, p. 303, n. 18.
64. Rescriptum rescripto eiusdem, ed. Bulst (1984), p. 186: “Pro quo verba patris
toleres et iurgia matris, / Pro quo ieiunes noctibus et vigiles.”
65. Ad puellam adamatam rescriptum, ed. Bulst (1984), p. 187: “Sum felix tandem,
qui nunc scio quid tibi mandem, / Cum iam non timeam, ne tibi dis-
pliceam. / Quod spes suadebat, metus hactenus impediebat, / At modo
sum letus, transiit ille metus. / Per pharetram Veneris, qua tu quoque lesa
videris, / Iuro per atque faces, sub quibus ipsa iaces: / Ex quo te noui,
cunctas a corde remoui / Protinus inque tui totus amore fui. / Nam tuus
aspectus lesit michi vulnere pectus / Et renitens facies vt sine nube dies. /
Crinis erat pexus nulloque ligamine flexus, / Longus et auricolor, candida
frons vt olor, / Et decliue latus et venter continuatus / Quodque stat in
primis, ilia stricta nimis, / Hec et que restant, ex tunc michi vulnera
prestant, / Que nisi contigero, viuere non potero.”
66. Ad amicam sub custodia positam, ed. Bulst (1984), p. 194: “Viuere non pos-
sum sine te neque viuere tecum, / Istud namque metus impedit illud amor.
/ O vtinam sine te vel tecum viuere possem, / Sed mallem tecum viuere
quam sine te.” Cf. Letter 2: “cuius vita sine te mors est” and 38c: “sine te
michi vivere mors est.”
 N OT ES 361

67. Fulcoius of Beauvais intertwined biblical history with Virgilian imagery in

De nuptiis Christi et ecclesiae, ed. Mary I. J. Rousseau (Washington: Catholic
University of America Press, 1960) 1.20–24 and 6.206–14.
68. Twenty-six poetic letters to a wide variety of figures are edited by Marvin
L. Colker, “Fulcoii Belvacensis Epistulae,” Traditio 10 (1954): 191–273 with
summaries of these letters in English on 198–204.
69. Ep. 10.82–84, ed. Colker, 237: “Potamus uinum; portamus candida, linum;
Mitibus et Veneris uicibus, plerunque seueris, Vtimur—utamur passi quo
compatiamur.” Sexual humor and advice also occur in: nos. 9 to an adul-
terer friend; 10 to Fulcrad, archdeacon of Laon, whose homosexuality is
contrasted unfavorable with the author’s own married state; 16 and 17
more deferentially to matron Ida; 18 to Gervaise, archbishop of Rheims
advising him not to be too amorous or greedy; 20–23 about foolish rela-
tionships.
70. Ep. 19.79–108, ed. Colker, 258–59, with English summary on 203.
71. Fulcoius, Ep. 26.1–2, ed. Colker, 196 and 267.
72. While Hilbert’s edition of Baudri’s poems is followed here (p. 291, n. 3
above), that of Phyllis Abrahams is still valuable for its extensive notes, Les
oeuvres poétiques de Baudri de Bourgueil (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1926).
References to these poems are given by Hilbert’s numbering, followed by
line numbers, with page numbers in round brackets. On Baudri, see Ger-
ald Bond, “‘Iocus amoris’” and The Loving Subject, pp. 42–69 (n. 13 above).
Most of his writings are collected in PL 166: 1049–1212.
73. See pp. 82, 330, n. 137.
74. Bond notes that of eighty-seven direct or indirect participants of the letter
poems, there were only two abbots, three priors, and three bishops, “Iocus
amoris,” 187.
75. The longest of his poems to women is no. 134 (pp. 149–87) to Adela of
Blois, describing the tapestries in her chamber as a synthesis of learning,
discussed by Jean-Yves Tilliette, “La chambre de la comtesse Adèle dans le
c. cxcvi de Baudri de Bourgueil,” Romania 102 (1981): 145–71; see too nos.
135–36 (pp. 187–89) to Adela and to Cecilia, daughter of William I and a
nun at Caen. The Muriel to whom he writes no. 137 (p. 189) may be
Muriel of Wilton (perhaps then resident at Le Ronceray). See also poems
to Agnes, no. 138 (pp. 191–92); to Emma, magistra of the nuns, nos. 139 and
153 (pp. 192–93 and 203–4); to Constance, nos. 142 and 200 (pp. 194–96
and 266–71); on Constance’s death, no. 213 (pp. 284–85). Baudri also
wrote an epitaph for a recluse named Benedicta, no. 171 (245). Bond notes
that the names of these women occur in documents of Le Ronceray, in-
cluding an Emma grammatica listed in a charter of 1118, art. cit., 168 n. 74.
An Emma is listed by Jean Verdon as a widow who took the veil at the
abbey in 1100 in “Les moniales dans la France de l’Ouest au XIe et XIIe
siècles: Étude d’histoire sociale,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 19 (1976):
362 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

247–64 at 248. In no. 139.21 (p. 192) to Emma, Baudri asks to greet “my
Godehilde;” Verdon’s list mentions Godehold, a daughter of Ralph vis-
count of Sainte-Suzanne as consecrated around 1100 and Agnes, daughter
of Walter consecrated around 1110, but not Muriel, Constance or Beatrice.
76. Verdon, “Les moniales,” 261. Boussard (“La vie en Anjou,” 43; see p. 324,
n. 67 above) believes that a nun of Le Ronceray probably wrote the his-
tory of an ambitious serf, Constant le Roux, who acquired property from
the nuns (bequeathed them by a widow whose daughter had been mur-
dered by her husband), but then became a monk at Saint-Aubin while his
wife became a nun at Le Ronceray.
77. Ed. Hilbert, nos. 140–41 (pp. 193–94). Baudri’s verse of complaint is fol-
lowed by a witty four-line verse: “The mountain has brought forth a
mouse, because mute Beatrice speaks. She has written, composed, spoken
almost nothing. Either it is nothing which she says, or she protects what
she has written and defends her poems with poems.”This may be the Beat-
rice, magistra of the countess of Anjou, who signs a charter of Aremburga,
wife of Fulk V (PL 162: 1102B).
78. On Muriel of Wilton, remembered as inclyta versificatrix, see J. S. P. Tatlock,
“Muriel: the earliest English poetess,” Proceedings of the Modern Language As-
sociation 48 (1933): 317–21 and André Boutemy, “Muriel: Note sur deux
poèmes de Baudri de Bourgueil et de Serlon de Bayeux,” Le Moyen Age,
3rd ser. 6 (1935): 241–51. Serlo’s poem Ad Murielem sanctimonialem, is
edited by Thomas Wright, The Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists
of the Twelfth Century, Rolls Series, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1872), 2:
233–40.
79. Ed. Hilbert, no. 139.15–16 (p. 192); see also nos. 153 (pp. 203–4).
80. Ed. Hilbert, no. 200.37–44 (p. 267): “Crede michi credasque uolo credan-
tque legentes: / In te me nunquam foedus adegit amor. In te conciuem
uolo uirginitatem, / In te confringi nolo pudiciciam. / Tu uirgo, uir ego;
iuuenis sum, iunior es tu. / Iuro per omne, quod es: nolo uir esse tibi. Nolo
uir esse tibi neque tu sis femina nobis; / Os et cor nostram firmet amici-
ciam.” The whole poem is translated by Bond, The Loving Subject, pp.
170–81 (n. 13 above). Jean-Yves Tilliette discusses this poem and that at-
tributed to Constance in “Hermès amoureux, ou les métamophoses de la
chimère. Réflexions sur les carmina 200 et 201 de Baudri de Bourgueil,”
Mélanges de l’école française de Rome. Moyen âge 104 (1992): 121–61.
81. Ed. Hilbert, no. 201.60–64 (p. 273): “Me miseram, nequeo cernere, quod
cupio. / Afficior desiderio precibusque diurnis; / In cassum fundo uota
precesque Deo.” This translation is based on that of Bond, The Loving Sub-
ject, pp. 182–93.
82. Ed. Hilbert, no. 201.113–116, 121–24 (p. 274): “Casta fui, sum casta modo,
uolo uiuere casta; O utinam possim uiuere sponsa Dei. / Non ob id ipsa
tamen uestrum detestor amorem; / Seruos sponsa Dei debet amare sui. . . .
 N OT ES 363

Ius et lex nostrum semper tueatur amorem; / Commendet nostros uita pu-
dica iocos. / Ergo columbinam teneamus simplicitatem / Nec michi pre-
tendas quamlibet ulterius.”
83. Ed. Hilbert, no. 201.175–79 (p. 276): “Grande tibi crimen, nisi paueris es-
urientem, / Oranti si non ipse satisfatias. Expectate, ueni nolique diu re-
morari; / Sepe uocaui te, sepe uocate, ueni.”
84. Baudri, no. 97.51–60 (p. 105): “Naturam nostram plenam deus egit amoris;
/ Nos natura docet, quod deus hanc docuit. Si culpatur amor, actor cul-
patur amoris; / Actor amoris enim criminis actor erit. / Quod sumus, est
crimen, si crimen sit, quod amamus; / Qui dedit esse, deus prestat amare
michi. / Nec deus ipse odium fecit, qui fecit amorem; / Namque, quod est
odium, nascitur ex uicio. / Tu recitator eras nec eras inuentor amoris; /
Nulla flamma magisterio flamma reperta tuo est.” Trans. Bond, The Loving
Subject, p. 52.
85. Baudri of Bourgueil praised Godfrey of Rheims (d. 1095) for combining
“the seriousness of Virgil and the lightness of Ovid, no. 99 (112); see also a
short verse letter to Geoffrey, complaining that he had not yet received verses
in reply, and the series of five epitaphs on his death, describing him as “a
happy treasure of great philosophy,” nos. 100 and 35–39 (118 and 56–58).
86. The Regensburg love verses were edited and translated by Dronke, ML 2:
422–47 and re-edited by Anke Paravicini, Carmina Ratisponensia (Heidel-
berg: Carl Winter, 1979). Dronke comments further on Paravicini’s edition
in Sandalion 5 (1982): 109–17. The complexity of the texts in these folios
of the manuscript is such that there is considerable disagreement as to ex-
actly which verses form part of the exchange; Ruhe, De amasio ad amasiam,
pp. 34–41 (p. 292, n. 8).
87. Paravicini, Carmina Ratisponensisia, p. 13.
88. Paravicini, no. 40. Paravicini notes (p. 14) that the three communities for
women in Regensburg were all technically Benedictine rather than foun-
dations for canonnesses: Niedermünster (founded ca. 760), Mittelmünster
(founded 974) and Obermünster (founded 1010).
89. Paravicini, no. 1; the translation of these verses is my own, although here as
elsewhere I am indebted to the always poetic rendering of Dronke, ML 2:
422. The habit of training students by getting them to summarize a fable
is commented upon by Ruth Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle
Ages. Rhetoric, Representation and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1991), pp. 40–43.
90. Paravicini does not include this verse within the exchange, included by
Dronke as no. 2 in ML 2: 422. Preceding no. 3 is an outline of the stories
of Phyllis and Demophoon, Meleager and Atalanta, Briseis and Achilles.
91. Paravicini, nos. 3–5; Dronke, nos. iii-iv, ML 2: 424.
92. Dronke suggests that certain verses are written by different men and
women, ML 1: 225–26 and WW, pp. 91–92.
364 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

93. Paravicini, nos. 3–5; Dronke, nos. iii-iv, ML 2: 424: “Simia dicaris, vel spinx,
quibus assimularis / Vultui deformi, nullo moderamine comi!”
94. Paravicini, no. 16; Dronke, no. xiv, ML 2: 426: “En ego quem nosti, sed
amantem prodere noli! / Deprecor ad vetulam te mane venire capellam.
Pulsato leviter, quoniam manet inde minister. / Quod celat pectus modo,
tunc retegit tibi lectus.”
95. Paravicini, nos. 62 and 63; Dronke, nos. xlvii and xlix. Paravicini includes
four short verses (nos. 64–68) beyond those published by Dronke, ML 2:
442–43.
96. These letters are edited and translated by Dronke, ML 2: 472–82, with de-
scription of the manuscript (Munich, Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek, Clm
19411) on 2: 566–67, but does not discuss them in Women Writers. They
occur alongside The Play of the Antichrist, excerpts from Otto of Freising’s
Deeds of Frederick I, other letters to and from the abbey of Tegernsee, and
a treatise about letter writing by Alberic of Montecassino. On the texts in
this manuscript, Du bist mîn, ih bin dîn. Die lateinischen Liebes- (und Freund-
schafts-) Briefe des clm 19411. Abbildungen, Text und Übersetzung, ed. Jür-
gen Kühnel (Göppingen: Kummerle, 1977).
97. Dronke, ML 2: 474–75: “Accipe scriptorum o fidelis, responsa tuorum.
Quid dignum digno valeam scribere ignoro—presertim cum doctoris
aures pudor sit inculto sermone interpellare, et nefas sit silentio preterire;
tamen prout potero tibi respondebo. Duorum mihi videtur ac difficile
quod conaris a me inpetrare, scilicet integritatem mee fidei, quam nulli un-
quam mortalium promisisti. Attamen si sciero me casto amore a te adaman-
dam, et pignus pudicie mee inviolandum, non recuso laborem vel
amorem.—Si consistat absque dolore, non potest dici amor, unde constat
maximus labor.—Cave ne quis videat ista dicta, quia non sunt ex autori-
tate scripta.”
98. Dronke, ML 2: 475–76.
99. Dronke, ML 2: 476–77: “C. Cara karissime . . . quamvis nos disiungant
maxima intervalla locorum, tamen coniungit nos equanimitas animorum,
et veras amicicia, que non est ficta, sed cordi meo infixa. . . . Te amare volo
quousque luna cadat de polo, quia ante omnes qui sunt in mundo cordis
mei fixa es profundo. . . . Salutat te, dulcis margarita, et conventus iuven-
cularum.”
100. Dronke, ML 2: 473–74: “Anima mea consummabitur dolore et merore re-
pleta, quia a memoria tua funditus video deleta, que fidem et dilectionem
semper a te sperabam, usque ad vite consummationem. Que est enim, H.,
fortitudo mea, ut sustineam pacienter et non defleam nunc et semper?
Numquid caro mea est enea, aut mens mea saxea, aut oculus mei lapidei,
ut non doleam malum infortunii mei? Quid feci? Quid feci? Numquid
prior te abieci? In quo invenior rea? Vere abiecta sum absque culpa mea. Si
culpam queris, ipse, ipse, culpabilis haberis! Nam sepe et sepissime meam
 N OT ES 365

ad te direxi legationem, sed numquam in maximo vel in minimo verbo-

rum tuorum percepi consolationem. Ideo mortales cuncti dicedant, fidem
et dilectionem a me ulterius non querant! Cave diligentius, ne tercius in-
terveniat oculus. Vale, vale, meliora sectare.”
101. Dronke, ML 2: 463–64.The prose letters are followed by a poem, Instar solis
ave, expressing desire for a sublimely beautiful woman. By making a small
correction to the text and giving the title “To Mary mother of God,” a
fourteenth-century scribe has changed it from a secular to a religious
poem, ML 2: 518–19.
102. The verses in Zurich, Stadbibliothek C.58 were edited by Werner, Beiträge
zur Kunde der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, pp. 1–151 (n. 56 above).
Werner noted an earlier opinion of Wackernagel that identified the scribe
as a monk of Schaffhausen, although he did not commit himself to this (pp.
1 and 151). Its contents are discussed by Jean-Yves Tilliette, “Le sens et la
composition du florilège de Zurich (Zentralbibliothek, ms. C58). Hy-
pothèses et propositions,” in Non recedet memoria eius. Beiträge zur Lateinis-
chen Philologie des Mittelalters im Gedenken an Jakob Werner (1861 – 1944),
ed. Peter Stotz, Lateinsche Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters 28 (Bern:
Peter Lang, 1995), pp. 147–67.
103. Werner, nos. 60 and 61, p. 26, translated in Boswell, Christianity, Social Tol-
erance and Homosexuality, p. 217 (p. 330, n. 135).
104. Werner, no. 19, p. 17 about Poiters; nos. 46 and 133, pp. 21 and 54 about
Orléans; nos. 101 and 138, pp. 40–41 and 58 lamenting the departure of
Galo. No. 94 (p. 39) is an epitaph for Suger of Saint-Denis (d. 1152), while
the last major item is a sequence in honor of Thomas à Becket (d. 1170,
canonized in 1173). It includes too (no. 153, pp. 63–64) the Moralium
Dogma Philosophorum, a summary of moral teaching by pagan philosophers
sometimes attributed to William of Conches, and a version of the Verbum
abbreviatum of Peter the Chanter (no. 290, pp. 115–116; PL 205: 369–528),
as well as a commentary on Gratian (no. 289, pp. 114–115) possibly by the
same teacher, a master of theology in Paris from about 1173 to 1191/92.
105. Werner, no. 48, p. 22: “Omine felici te Musa salutat amici, / Te mea musa
canit, tibi soli ludere gestit.” translated by Dronke, ML 1: 260; see no. 66 in
the Troyes anthology: “Omine felici ceptis assis, Clio, nostri, / Carmine sis
comens tabulas et suavia promens!”
106. Werner, no. 49, p. 23: “Dulcis amica mea, specior es Galatea, / Gloria, flos,
speculum, lux atque decus mulierum, / Unica spes vitae, dulcis amica,
meae, . . . / Lucifer ut stellis, sic es prelata puellis; . . . / Hec tu ne vento
tradas, dilecta, memento: / Vive vale semper, te plus me non colit alter.”
107. The epitaph’s location is mentioned in a late fifteenth-century manuscript
copied at precisely the moment that the remains of Abelard and Heloise
were transferred to a new church at the Paraclete, Bern, Bürgerbibliothek
211, fol. 161. Dronke expands the letter V in the Zurich MS as: “V<ersibus
366 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

hic> studium coniunxit philosophie,” Medieval Testimonies, p. 50 (Intellectu-

als and Poets, p. 251; p. 292, n. 12 above) Versificandi fits the meter more
closely.
108. Werner, no. 66, p. 27: “Sepe tibi scripsi, semel et tua scripta recepi: / Te pre-
cor, ut nobis non levis esse velis; / Aut si versus amor tuus est in tedia nos-
tri, / Et breviter scribas tu mihi, quid cupias. / Ulterius animum noli
suspendere nostrum. Si te vis ut amem—fateor—te semper amabo, / Et,
quamvis nolis, cura perennis eris.” Dronke prints the first part of the poem,
subsequently turned into a poem to the Virgin Mary, from the Tegernsee
MS, Dronke, ML 2: 518–519.
109. Werner, no. 116, pp. 45–46, commented on briefly by Dronke, ML 1:
253: “Omnia vilescunt, artusque dolore liquescunt, / Non opus exponi,
tolerent que dura coloni, / Sensus marcescit, corpus, vox, atque tabescit;
/ Ergo revertaris, ne mortem promerearis. . . . / Oro deum vivum, quod
te mihi reddat amicum, / Insanae menti tu consule iam pereunti. / . . .
/ Scripta mihi desunt, quia cordi tristia presunt. / Quid loquar absenti,
me, pro dolor! et fugienti? / Quid iuvat absentes lacescere versibus
aures? / Durior es lapide factus, dum quereris a me: / Non te saxosum
valeo superare remotum. / Convenias mecum, faciam te non fore
tecum; / Multa loqui vellem tecum, si tempus haberem / Et loca, quae
nostris congruerent lacrimis. / Haec quia non dantur, pro me mea
scripta loquantur, / Et sit pro viva kartula voce mea. / Ei mihi, quid
merui, quod nulla licencia fandi / Tecum secretis est habitura locis. / Si
mihi privatim non vis concedere, saltim / Concedas kartae dicere pauca
meae: / Flava prius Rhenum sua flumina rebar in Histrum / Vertere,
quam soli te mihi nolle loqui. / Qua ratione tibi modo sim magis ipsa
pudori / Quam prius, omnino dicere non potero. / Venerat hoc ex te,
quicquid tibi displicet in me: / Nonne probasti mea? cur modo carpis
ea? / Tunc ego gemma fui, tunc flos, tunc lilia campi; / Tunc quoque
nulla fuit orbe mei similis. / Illud idem, quod eram, modo sum, nisi
virgo; nec umquam / Id fieri potero; quod sine fine fleo. / Hoc ego
nocte die fleo, quod non fata tulere / Cum dulci vitam virginitate
meam. / Fraude triumphare nichil est nisi laude carere. / Pollicitando
mihi bona plurima sepe dedisti / Proque bonis sumpta sunt mihi multa
mala. / Sepe tui causa mihi sunt data verbera plura / Mollibus et mem-
bris vix pacienda meis. / Verbera quam membris nocuit plus fama pu-
doris, / Verbera sunt levius quam mihi verba pati. / Quod dedit ante
iocum, modo dat mihi fundere fletum.”
110. Werner, no. 120, p. 48: “Omnia postpono, te pectore diligo toto, / Tu mun-
danarum fons vivus deliciarum. / Te colo, te cupio, peto te, lassatus anhelo,
/ Ad te suspiro moribundus, teque requiro . . .”
111. Werner, no. 121, p. 48: “Carmina misisti, quod amat mea Musa dedisti; /
Es, aurum squalent, carmina sola valent.”
 N OT ES 367

112. John Benton, Peter Dronke, and Elisabeth Pellegrin, “Abaelardiana,”

Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 49 (1982): 273–95.
113. Dronke edits and translates the poem in Medieval Testimonies, pp. 19, 45 (In-
tellectuals and Poets, pp. 263, 280; p. 292, n. 12 above). I reproduce Dronke’s
translation with modification of line 5 (Damnosum tenere minus
or<r>endeque puelle), which he renders as “destructive for a tender, not at
all venerable girl.”
114. Dronke identifies this Mathias with count of Nantes, suggesting that it
might have been written by somebody who knew Abelard’s home region,
and edits the poem with the subsequent verse, “Sola tamen Petri coniunx
est criminis expers, / Consensus nullus quam facit esse ream,” in “Abaelar-
diana,” 278–79, and with translation in Medieval Testimonies, pp. 19, 45–46
(Intellectuals and Poets, pp. 263, 281).
115. Ed. Dronke, “Abaelardiana,” 280: Aut me cecatum furor excusabbit amoris
/ Aut reus immense proditionis ero. / Omnia preter te mihi tradidit hos-
pes supellex: / Nil volo preter te, nec Iosep<h> alter ero!” In the Zurich
anthology these verses are introduced with the phrase “Peter about his
host, who entrusted everything to him,” Werner, no. 54, p. 25: “Petrus de
hospite suo, qui sibi omnia commendabat. / Aut me cecatum furor excus-
abit amoris / Aut reus immense prodicionis ero. / Omnia preter te mihi
tradidit hospes supellex: / Nil volo preter te, nec Ioseph alter ero.” In the
Zurich MS, mihi . . . Nil volo is omitted.
116. Ed. Dronke, “Abaelardiana,” 280: “Re<m> mona<c>hi, Roberte, tenes, si
nomen aborres? / Aut vero gaudes nomine canonici? Orret—ni fal<l>or
tibi, frater, sola cuculla. . . .” “Saepe, soror, rogo te preciosas spernere vestes,
/ Quas cui nupsisti non amat, immo vetat.”
117. Lioba’s letter is no. 29 with the corpus of Boniface’s letters, ed. Michael
Tangl, Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, MGH Epistolae Selectae
1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1955). Dronke, ML 1: 196–99 and WW, pp. 30–35,
discusses the correspondence with Boniface and Lul of Aelffled, Egburg,
Eangyth, Bugga and Lioba, preserved with their letters. Cf. Vita Leobae ab-
batissae Bischofesheimensis auctore Rudolfo 11, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 15.1
(1887): 126.
118. See too Mary Skinner, “Benedictine Life for Women in Central France,
850 – 1100: A Feminist Revival,” in Distant Echoes. Medieval Religious
Women, I, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank, CSS 71 (Kala-
mazoo, Mi.: 1984), pp. 87–119. Philibert Schmitz, Histoire de l’Ordre général
de Saint Benoît, 7 (Maredsous: Editions de Maredsous, 1956), pp. 255–71.
119. An eleventh-century glossed manuscript of Terence from St. Ursula, Augs-
burg (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F. 6. 27), carries a note on fol. 112v:
“Adelbert, Hedwich, Matthilt curiales aduluscentule unum par sunt ami-
ciciae”; Adelbert could be Adelheit or Adelaide (d. 1043), daughter of
Otto II and Theophano, later abbess of Quedlinburg (999) and then of
368 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Gandersheim (1039); Munk Olsen, Auteurs classiques, 2: 624 (n. 36 above).

Demoit was a famous woman scribe and recluse at the male monastery of
Saint-Pierre Wessobrun, who copied many of its books in the first half of
the twelfth century (ibid. 3: 272 for further references). An inventory of
books, including a Cicero, was copied and annotated by Margareta of Lip-
poldsberg in the mid-twelfth century (ibid. 3.1: 140).
120. Verdon, “Les moniales,” 261 (n. 75 above); Johnson, Equal in Monastic Pro-
fession, pp. 96–97 (p. 322, n. 42 above). See for example the poems edited
by Léopold Delisle, Rouleaux des morts du IXe au XVe siècle (Paris: Jules Re-
nouard, 1866), pp. 182, 187, 222, 242–44, 262; see also pp. 162–163.
121. The ruling of 789 is in MGH Cap. I, 63, c. 19. Jane Tibbetts Schulenberg
documents a range of this legislation in “Strict Active Enclosure and Its Ef-
fects on the Female Monastic Experience (ca. 500 – 1100),” in Distant
Echoes, pp. 51–86.
122. Dronke mentions these condemnations in relation to these kharjas pre-
served in a manuscript of the eleventh century, but possibly dating back
many centuries, even to before the Arab conquest of Spain, ML 1: 26–32.
Doris Earnshaw discusses whether these could be male compositions in
The Female Voice in Medieval Romance Lyric (New York: Peter Lang, 1988),
pp. 1–2.
123. Gerhoch of Reichersberg, In Psalmos, 4 at 39.4, PL 193: 1436AB, men-
tioned by Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 66.
124. The translation from the Icelandic is that of Dronke, WW, p. 105.
125. Carmina Cantabrigiensia, ed. Walther Bulst (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1950),
no. 25, pp. 50–51: “Sponso sponsa karissimo se ipsam in coniugio . . .”
126. On parallels between the Cambridge Songs and other vernacular tradi-
tions, see Dronke, ML 1: 271–81. Dronke reconstructs and offers a trans-
lation of a badly damaged dialogue as Suavissima nunna in 2: 353–55. One
of the oldest surviving Latin love poems is “May God love a girl, bright
and gracious,” tucked into a monastic manuscript of the early tenth cen-
tury, ML 1: 264–68.
127. Liber X Capitulorum 1, ed. Leotta, pp. 69–70; see Janet Martin, “Classicism
and Style in Latin Literature,” Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Cen-
tury, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1982), pp. 537–68, esp. p. 545.
128. See n. 18 above.
129. Könsgen, pp. 64–66.
130. Mitologiarum Libri Tres 1.15, ed. R. Helm, Fabii Planciadis Fulgentii Opera
(Stuttgart: Teubner, 1970), pp. 25–26. Könsgen notes this parallel in an ap-
pendix on this poem (p. 67). Fulgentius alluded to a wide range of Greek
and Latin authors, not all of whom can be verified; see Barry Baldwin,
“Fulgentius and his Sources,” Traditio 44 (1985): 37–57.
 N OT ES 369

131. Philosophiae consolatio 1 carmen 1, ed. Ludwig Bieler, CCSL 94 (1958): 1.

Ernst Robert Curtius passes over the eleventh and twelfth centuries in his
discussion of the Muses in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans.
William Trask (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953), pp. 228–46 and in
“Die Musen im Mittelalter,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 59 (1939):
129–88 and 63 (1943): 256–68. Among examples of invocation of the Muses
cited by Curtius is an eleventh-century hymn to St. Martial, in which the
nine Muses are individually named, ed. Guido Maria Dreves, Analecta Hym-
nica 19 (Leipzig, 1895; repr. New York: Johnson Corporation, 1961), no. 367,
207. See also Jan M. Ziolkowski, “Classical Influences on Medieval Latin
Views of Poetic Inspiration,” Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition, ed. Peter
Godman and Oswyn Murray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 15–38.
132. Ed. Hilbert, no. 154.151–164, p. 209. Bond notes that Baudri did not re-
peat Fulgentius’ comments about “mendacious Greeks,” but rather was
very interested in the relationship between myths and moral truth, so an-
ticipating the theory of fabula with which the humanists of Chartres came
to be associated, “Iocus Amoris,” 179–180 and The Loving Subject, p. 58. See
Robert Edwards, “The Heritage of Fulgentius,” in The Classics in the Mid-
dle Ages, ed. Aldo S. Bernardo and Saul Levin (Binghampton, NY: Center
for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1990), pp. 141–51.
133. Hildebert, Hactenus, O Musae, no. 17 in PL 171: 1448BC.
134. Dyan Elliott comments on the potentially destabilizing aspect of chaste
unions in Spiritual Marriage. Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 141.
135. John T. Noonan, “Power to Choose,” Viator 4 (1973): 419–34.

Chapter 5
1. Epistula Sapphus ad Phaonem, Heroides. Select Epistles 15, ed. Peter E. Knox,
p. 78 (p. 296, n. 42): “Ecquid, ut aspecta est studiosae littera dextrae, / prot-
inus est oculis cognita nostra tuis? an, nisi legisses auctoris nomina Sap-
phus, hoc breue nescires unde ueniret opus?” Trans. Isbell, p. 133.
2. Charles Burnett, ed., “Peter Abelard ‘Soliloquium’,” Studi Medievali, 3a Ser.
25 (1984): 857–94.
3. Rudolf Thomas, ed., Dialogus inter philosophum, Iudaeum et Christianum
(Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frooman, 1970); Pierre J. Payer, ed., A Dialogue of
a Philosopher with a Jew, and a Christian (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Me-
diaeval Studies, 1979). A new edition and translation is being prepared by
Giovanni Orlandi and John Marenbon; see also Constant J. Mews, “Peter
Abelard and the Enigma of Dialogue,” in Beyond the Persecuting Society. Re-
ligious Toleration Before the Enlightenment, ed. John Christian Laursen and
Cary J. Nederman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998),
pp. 25–52.
370 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

4. PL 178: 677B-730B, translated by Elizabeth Mary McNamer, The Educa-

tion of Heloise. Methods, Content, and Purpose of Learning in the Twelfth Cen-
tury (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), pp. 111–83. Problemata are
defined by Isidore as propositions or questions having something to be re-
solved by disputation, Etymologiae 6.8.14. John of Salisbury discusses prob-
lemata as philosophical questions in his Metalogicon 3.5–7, 9, ed. Hall,
CCCM 98: 120–23, 128.
5. Ep. 4, ed. Monfrin, p. 120; ed. Hicks, p. 63; trans. Radice, p. 130: “Dum
enim solliciti amoris gaudiis frueremur et—ut turpiore sed expressiore vo-
cabulo utar—fornicationi vaccaremus, divina nobis severitas pepercit.”
6. Ep. 4, ed. Monfrin, p. 121; ed. Hicks, p. 65; trans. Radice, p. 132.
7. Könsgen (p. 81) observes that the Troyes correspondence strictly speaking
uses “imperfectly rhymed prose.” Karl Polheim, Die lateinische Reimprosa
(Berlin:Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1925), p. 362. Polheim (pp. 201–26)
describes how prose rhyme in Latin was used in the second and third cen-
turies by African Christian writers such as Tertullian and Cyprian, follow-
ing a style developed by Apuleius of Madaura. Augustine of Hippo favored
prose rhyme much less, except in certain sermons such as those in which
he drew on Tertullian.
8. Dronke, ML 2: 472–82 (p. 340, n. 96).The exchange between the merchant
and his wife, preserved within an anthology from Lombardy, is edited by
Ruhe, De amasio ad amasiam, pp. 310–11 (p. 292, n. 8). She asks him to re-
turn from doing business in Cremona and Bologna for her sake and that
of the children. He replies by sending money, explaining that he had to at-
tend a forthcoming papal council at Piacenza, dating the exchange to ca.
1132 – 36.
9. De ratione dicendi ad C. Herennium 4.32, ed. and trans. Harry Caplan (Lon-
don: Heinemann, 1954), p. 309. On Cicero’s reaction to the rhetorical style
of Georgias, see Polheim, Reimprosa, pp. 133–200 and Michael Grant’s in-
troduction to On the Orator, in his translation of various works of Cicero,
On the Good Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), pp. 228–35.
10. Peter Dronke makes this point in “Virgines caste,” in Lateinische Dichtungen
des X. und XI. Jahrhunderts. Festgabe für Walther Bulst zum 80. Geburtstag, ed.
Walter Berschin and Reinhard Düchting (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider,
1981), pp. 97–98; see also Chrysogonus Waddell, who suggests that Virgines
caste is by Abelard, rather than an eleventh-century composition, “Epithal-
amica: An Easter Sequence by Peter Abelard,” The Musical Quarterly 72
(1986): 239–71 at 255.
11. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 113; ed. Hicks, p. 47; trans. Radice, p. 111.
12. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 111; ed. Hicks, p. 46; trans. Radice, p. 110. Dronke
documents other examples of rhymed prose in the letters of Heloise in an
appendix to “Heloise’s Problemata and Letters: Some Questions of Form
 N OT ES 371

and Content,” Petrus Abaelardus, ed. Thomas, pp. 53–73 (p. 312, n. 95), repr.
Intellectuals and Poets, pp. 295–322 (p. 292, n. 12).
13. Ep. 167, ed. Constable, 1: 400–1; trans. Radice, p. 285.
14. On Peter’s classicizing prose style, see Constable, 2: 38–41, and Martin,
“Classicism and Style in Latin Literature,” in Renaissance and Renewal (p.
344, n. 127), pp. 541–43. Martin implicitly counters Constable’s view that
there is no definite use of rhymed prose in his letters (acknowledging di-
vergent views on the matter). Deliberate rhyme is certainly not used ex-
tensively, although it is evident in Ep. 115 to Heloise, ed. Constable, 1: 303:
“Visum est ut affectui tui erga me quem et tunc ex litteris, et prius ex
michi missis xeniis cognoveram, / saltem uerborum uicem rependere fes-
tinarem, / et quantum in corde meo locum tibi dilectionis in domino
seruarem, / ostenderem.” Similarly in Ep. 168 to Heloise, ed. Constable, 1:
401: “Gauisus sum et hoc non parum, / legens sanctitatis uestrae litteras, in
quibus agnoui aduentum meum ad uos non fuisse transitorium, / ex
quibus aduerti non solum me apud uos fuisse, / sed et a uobis nunquam
postmodum recessisse.”
15. Charrier lists occurrences of quantus / tantus, and a few other constructions
in the letters of Abelard and Heloise to support the hypothesis that Abelard
was its sole author in Héloïse dans l’histoire et dans la légende, pp. 573–82.
Lodewijk Engels notes the influence of Augustine in his excellent study of
the literary style of Abelard, “Abélard écrivain,” Peter Abelard. Proceedings of
the International Conference, Louvain May 10 – 12, 1971, ed. Eligius-Marie
Buytaert (Leuven: University Press, 1974), pp. 12–37, especially 35–36.
16. Dronke explains the significance of Janson’s work on the cursus in relation
to the Abelard-Heloise correspondence in “Heloise’s Problemata and Let-
ters” (n. 12 above) and Women Writers, pp. 110–111. See also N. Denholm-
Young, “The Cursus in England,” Collected Papers of N. Denholm-Young
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1969), pp. 42–73, and Terence O. Tun-
berg, “Prose Styles and Cursus,” in Medieval Latin, ed. Mantello and Rigg,
pp. 111–21 (p. 297, n. 51).
17. Janson questioned Dronke’s hypothesis about the influence of Adalbert of
Samaria on Heloise’s use of the cursus in “Schools of Cursus in the XIIth
cent. and the letters of Heloise and Abelard,” Retorica e poetica tra i secoli XII
e XIV. Atti del secondi Convegno internazionale di studi dell’Associazione per il
Medioevo e l’Umanesimo latini (AMUL) in onore e memoria di Ezio Franches-
chini, Trento e Rovereto 3 – 5 ottobre 1985, ed. Claudio Leonardi and E.
Menesto, (Florence: Centro per il Collegamento degli Studi Medievali e
Umanestici nell’Università di Perugia, 1988), pp. 171–200.
18. Lanham, Salutatio Formulas (p. 299, n. 62).
19. In this translation, esse (rendered here as “true being”) is interpreted as in
apposition to her beloved, rather than to herself or to what she offers him.
372 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

20. Abelard discusses equipollence in Dialectica 2.2, ed. De Rijk, pp. 198–99,
207 etc.
21. Carmina 99.131, ed. Hilbert, p. 116, noted by Könsgen, p. 43 n. 4. St.
Bernard uses the phrase specialis amicus, not used by any major patristic au-
thor, when writing to Haimeric, Ep. 157, SBO 7: 364.
22. Ep. 6, ed. Hicks, p. 88. Jean de Meun provides the correct translation “Ou
sien specialment, la sieue senglement.” While the correct reading of Suo
rather than as Domino (the 1616 reading, repr. PL 178: 213A) was given
by Muckle in Mediaeval Studies 17 (1955): 241 (p. xvii above), Radice (p.
159) persisted in translating the erroneous text as “God’s own in species,
his own as individual”). Georgianna discusses the various interpretations
and translations of this greeting in “Any corner of heaven,” 238–40 (p.
316, n. 110).
23. Bernard, Sermo 23, SBO 1: 138: “Sine mora aperitur ei, tamquam domes-
ticae, tamquam carissimae, tamquam specialiter dilectae et singulariter
gratae.” (It is opened to him without delay, as if to an intimate, as if to a
dearest, as if to a specially one beloved and singularly pleasing.”) Hato of
Troyes, bishop responsible for the Paraclete and thus personally familiar
with Heloise, writes to Peter the Venerable in March 1138, Ep. 71, ed.
Constable, 1: 205: “Salutat uos Odo archidiaconus nepos meus, tam spe-
cialiter uester, quam singulariter noster.” (My nephew, archdeacon Odo, as
much specially yours as particularly ours, greets you.)
24. Ep. 3, ed. Hicks, p. 57; trans. Radice, p. 123, an allusion suggested by
Dronke, WW, p. 127.
25. Editio super Porphyrium, ed. Mario dal Pra, Scritti di Logica, 2nd ed. (Flo-
rence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1969), p. 16.
26. Ibid., ed. Dal Pra, p. 3.
27. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 111; ed. Hicks, p. 45; trans. Radice, p. 109.
28. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 117; ed. Hicks, p. 53; trans. Radice, p. 118.
29. Ep. 3, ed. Hicks, p. 54; trans. Radice, p. 119.
30. Ep. 4, ed. Hicks, p. 61; trans. Radice, p. 127.
31. Ep. 5, ed. Hicks, p. 70; trans. Radice, p. 127.
32. Cicero, Laelius [De amicitia], ed. and trans. L. Laurand (Paris: Belles Lettres,
1965); trans. Michael Grant in On the Good Life, pp. 172–227 (n. 9 above);
see especially Laelius 80–81, trans. Grant, pp. 216–217.
33. Cicero, Laelius 81: “qui et se ipse diligit, et alterum anquirit, cuius animum
ita cum suo miscet, ut efficiat paene unum ex duobus.” I translate this more
literally than Grant, p. 216.
34. Laelius 100; trans. Grant, pp. 225–26.
35. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 65; ed. Hicks, p. 5; trans. Radice, p. 60.
36. I relate Roscelin’s ideas to those on the Glosule on Priscian in “Nominalism
and Theology before Abaelard: New Light on Roscelin of Compiègne,” Vi-
varium 30 (1992): 4–33 and “The trinitarian doctrine of Roscelin of Com-
 N OT ES 373

piègne and its influence: twelfth-century nominalism and theology re-con-

sidered,” in Langages et philosophie. Hommage à Jean Jolivet, ed. Abdelali Elam-
rani-Jamal, Alain Galonnier, Alain De Libera (Paris:Vrin, 1996), pp. 347–64.
37. Cicero, Laelius 92 (trans. Grant, p. 221): “Nam cum amicitiae uis sit in eo, ut
unus quasi animus fiat ex pluribus . . .” Ibid. 20 (trans. Grant, p. 187):“Quanta
autem uis amicitiae sit, ex hoc intellegi potest, quod ex infinita societate
generis humani, quam conciliauit ipsa natura, ita contracta res est et adducta
in angustum, ut omnis caritas aut inter duos aut inter paucos iungeretur.”
38. William of Champeaux, Sententiae, ed. Odon Lottin, Psychologie et Morale
au XIIe et XIIIe siècles, vol. 5 (Gembloux: Ducoulot, 1959), pp. 192–94.
39. Secundum magistrum Petrum Sententie xxvii [sophisms about ‘totum’], ed.
Laurenzo Minio-Paluello, Twelfth-Century Logic. Texts and Studies. II Abae-
lardiana Inedita (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1958), p. 118:
“Similiter, cum in ista argumentatione dicimus hanc enuntiationem
‘Socrates est homo’ enuntiare ‘Socratem esse id quod ipse est,’ istud ‘id’ non
secundum personam discrete proferimus, sed indifferenter tam secundum
naturam quam secundum personam illud accipimus. Non enim propositio
proponit Socratem esse illam personam que ipse est, sed enuntiamus illum
humanam naturam habere, hoc est hominem esse, sicut et cum dicimus
‘Socrates est homo et Plato est idem.’”
40. For an excellent summary of Abelard’s position on differentiae, see Maren-
bon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 117–37 (p. 292, n. 11 above).
41. Logica ‘Ingredientibus’, ed. Bernhard Geyer, Peter Abaelards Philosophische
Schriften, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mit-
telalters Bd 21 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1919 – 1923), p. 397: “ . . . sicut et
cum dicitur: ‘per mulierem intravit mors, per eandem vita’ vel ‘mulier quae
damnavit, ipsa salvavit, scilicet similiter, ut videlicet eadem secundum in-
differentiam sexus, non secundum identitatem personae dicatur.”
42. C. H. Kneepkens discusses Abelard’s interpretation at length, alongside that
of his contemporaries in an invaluable study, presenting all the relevant
texts, “‘Mulier Quae Damnavit, Salvavit’: A Note of the Early Develop-
ment of the Relatio Simplex,” Vivarium 14 (1976): 1–25.
43. Theologia christiana 3.144, CCCM 12: 250.
44. Dialectica, ed. De Rijk, p. 186; see Yukio Iwakuma, “The Introductiones di-
alecticae secundum Wilgelmum and secundum G. Paganellum,” Cahiers de l’In-
stitut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin 63 (1993): 59. I argue against a late date
for the Dialectica in “On dating the works of Peter Abelard,” Archives d’his-
toire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 52 (1985): 73–134, a view supported
by Marenbon in The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 40–42 (p. 292, n. 11
above); I am now inclined to accept his view that much of the Dialectica
recapitulates positions arrived at before he became a monk at Saint-Denis.
45. Logica ‘Ingredientibus’, ed. Geyer, pp. 13–14 and Logica ‘Nostrum petitioni so-
ciorum’, ed. Geyer, p. 518.
374 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

46. Könsgen, pp. 68–71: Appendix 7 (Anrede-Metaphern). Also invaluable for

comparing frequency of word usage by the man and the woman is the
index on pp. 113–37.
47. Abelard develops this image from 1 Samuel 20.17, when he expands upon
David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1.19–27) in his version of
this lament: Plus fratre mihi Jonatha / In una mecum anima (More than a
brother to one, [you are] in one soul with me) and Nec ad vitam anima /
Satis est dimidia (Nor is half a soul enough for life); ed. Dronke, Poetic Indi-
viduality, pp. 202–209 (p. 327, n. 10 above).
48. If occasions are counted of single occurrences of words in the letters of the
woman and compared to those of the man within the first few columns of
Könsgen’s concordance (pp. 113–37), the following statistics are arrived at:
17/9 (i.e., 17 words used once by the woman, compared to 9 words by the
man); 15/11; 15/8; 16/14; 25/12; 25/11; 26/8; 18/21; 23/13; 13/14; 19/7;
17/11; 8/4; 18/12; 11/14; 18/18; 17/3 (words from abicere to fatalis).
49. Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratione 4.2, SBO 3: 449; Peter the Venera-
ble, Aduersus Iudaeos 3, ed. Yvonne Friedman, CCCM 58 (1985): 67.
50. Rupert of Deutz (ca. 1075 – 1129/30) speaks of the scribes and pharisees
as superciliosi or disdainful, De gloria et honore filii hominis super Matheum 4,
ed. Haacke, CCCM 29 (1979): 131; supercilium is defined as brow (as in the
protrusion above the eye) by Isidore, Etymologiae 11.1.42. The files of the
Comité Du Cange reveal just two usages of superciliositas, Guibert of No-
gent, Tropologiae 4.15, PL 156: 418B, and the Life of St.Vital of Savigny by
Stephen of Fougères (d. 1178), ed. E. P. Sauvage, “Vitae BB. Vitalis et
Gaufridi,” Analecta Bollandiana 1 (1882): 357–90, at 368.
51. I have searched the databases of the Patrologia Latina, Corpus Christianorum
and of Yukio Iwakuma, rich in texts of twelfth-century logic. According to
the CLCLT3 CD-ROM database (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996) Ramon Llull
(ca. 1232 – 1315) employs scibilitas thirty-three times. Scibilis is used just
once by Augustine, in De trinitate 9.12, ed. William J. Mountain, CCSL 50
(1968): 309, and by Boethius, In librum Periermeneias, II 5.11, ed. C. Meiser,
2 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880), 2: 376.
52. Dialectica 1.2.3, ed. De Rijk, p. 85: “Sicut enim dicitur scibile scientia scibile,
ita etiam uidetur bene dici scibile scibilitate scibile ac magis etiam proprie,
cum hoc sit propria forma scibilis, ut iam uidelicet contingat secundum
Platonem idem duo relativa habere aut fortasse etiam plura.”
53. Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 138–49 (p. 288, n. 11 above).
54. Logica ‘Ingredientibus,’ ed. Geyer, p. 214.
55. See p. 19.
56. Hugo Metellus, Ep. 16, ed. Charles-Louis Hugo, Sacrae Antiquitatis Monu-
menta, 2 vols. (Saint-Die: Joseph Charlot, 1731), 2: 348–49: “Helvidi Ab-
batissae Venerabilis Paracleti: Fama sonans per inane volans apud nos sonuit,
 N OT ES 375

quae digna sonitu de vobis, nobis intonuit. Foemineum enim sexum vos
excessisse nobis notificavit. Quomodo? Dictando, versificando, nova junc-
tura, nota verba novando, et quod excellentius omnibus est his, muliebrem
mollitiem exuperasti, et in virile robur indurasti.”
57. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 73; ed. Hicks, p. 12; trans. Radice, p. 68.
58. Letter 79: “Si grande aliquid meditando concipit hominis interioris inten-
cio, profecto interdum non consumitur sine quadam vi exterioris. . . . Ego
tandiu tractavi cordis et corporis flagranti nisu, qualiter te, o gemma dec-
ora, appellarem, sed intencionem mei affectus hucusque distulit difficultas
suspecti defectus.”
59. Alistair J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship (Aldershot: Wildwood
House, 2nd ed. 1988), pp. 55–57.
60. Ep. 5, ed. Hicks, p. 78; trans. Radice, p. 147.
61. Ep. 8, ed. McLaughlin, 276; trans. Radice, p. 241.
62. Ethics, ed. David Edward Luscombe (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1971), p. 28.
63. Ep. 3, ed. Hicks, p. 88. Radice (p. 159) translates animus as heart in this
passage.
64. Theologia christiana 1.16, CCCM 12: 78.
65. Ep. 5, ed. Hicks, pp. 102–3; trans. Radice, pp. 174–75.
66. Bernard, Ep. 231.1 and Ep. 505 (SBO 8: 101, 463). Cf. Sermones super Can-
tica Canticorum 7.2, 24.4, 24.8, 42.1, 67.2–3, 70.7, 78.8, 85.11 (SBO 1: 2,
155; 2: 33, 189–90, 212, 271, 314).
67. Ep. 182, ed. Constable, 1: 426.
68. Theologia Summi boni 1.17, CCCM 13: 92, reproduced with slight variation
in Theologia christiana 2.32, CCCM 12: 85 and Theologia Scholarium 72 and
1.65, CCCM 12: 430 and 13: 343. Augustine speaks of affectus animi in
Confessiones 2.9 and 9.4, ed. Louk Verheijen, CCSL 27 (1981): 25, 137.
69. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 116, ed. Hicks, p. 51. My translation is more literal
than Radice (p. 114), “It is not the deed but the intention of the doer
which makes the crime.”
70. Augustine, De immortalitate animae 4.6–6.11, ed. W. Hörmann CSEL 89
(1986), repr. with translation by Gerard Watson, Soliloquies and Immortality
of the Soul (Warminster: Aris and Philips, 1990), pp. 134–40 (translating an-
imus as soul).
71. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 121; ed. Hicks, p. 65; trans. Radice, p. 131.
72. Bernard, Liber de gratia et de libero arbitrio 4, 9, 38, 45 (SBO 3: 168–69, 172,
193, 198). Cf. Augustine, De diuersis quaestionibus 1.2.12, ed. Almut
Mutzenbecher, CCSL 44 (1970): 36; Contra Iulianum 3, 5, PL 44: 733, 796.
73. Ethics, ed. Luscombe, p. 14: “Non itaque concupiscere mulierem sed con-
cupiscentiae consentire peccatum est, nec uoluntas concubitus sed uolun-
tatis consensus damnpablis est.”
376 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

74. Comm. in epist. Pauli ad Romanos 1 (2.9), CCCM 11: 81. On this evolution
in vocabulary see Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 258–64 (p.
292, n. 11 above).
75. Radice’s footnote (p. 115 n. s) about the “ethic of pure intention” as
strongly held by both Heloise and Abelard is misleading in this respect.
76. E.g. Moralia in Iob 14.55, ed. Marc Adraien, CCSL 143A-143B, 3 vols.
(1979 – 81), 143A: 742: “Through moments in the seasons, we see bushes
loosing the viridity of leaves, ceasing from bearing fruit; and behold, sud-
denly we may see leaves springing out of the withering branch as if in a
kind of resurrection, fruit growing, and the whole tree being clothed in re-
stored magnificence.” Gregory refers to “the viridity of eternal life” in
Moralia in Iob 12.4, 143A: 631: “the teaching of eternal viridity” in 29.26,
143B: 1469; cf. 30.14.3, 143B: 1524.
77. Mews, “Hildegard of Bingen: The Virgin, the Apocalypse and the Exeget-
ical Tradition,” in Wisdom Which Encircles Circles. Papers on Hildegard of Bin-
gen, ed. Audrey Ekdahl Davidson (Kalamazoo, Mi.: Medieval Institute
Publications, 1996), p. 34 and “Religious Thinker: ‘A Frail Human Being’
on Fiery Life,” in Hildegard of Bingen: Voice of the Living Light, ed. Barbara
Newman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 57–58.
78. Abelard, Sermo 32, PL 178: 584D: “Quae enim ad saecularem pertinent
vitam feno comparanda sunt, quod abscisum de terra suae viriditatis vig-
orem amisit.”
79. Ep. 2, 4, ed. Hicks, pp. 49, 67.
80. Roman Missal, Prayers for Good Friday, as in Liber sacramentorum Augusto-
dunensis, ed. O. Heiming, CCSL 159B (1984): rubrics 515, 519.
81. Used of the bond between God and his people (Genesis 15.8; Deuteron-
omy 29.1; 1 Kings [= III Regum, Vulgate] 8.9; 2 Kings [= IV Regum]
11.17), the king and his people (2 Chronicles 23.16) and between Jonathan
and David (1 Samuel [= I Regum] 20.16).
82. Tilliette comments on Baudri’s use of the phrase foedus amor, also found in
Metamorphoses 10.319 in “Hermès amoureux, ou les métamorphoses de la
chimère,” 154–55 (p. 338, n. 80 above).
83. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, pp. 114, 116; ed. Hicks, pp. 48, 52; trans. Radice, pp. 114,
117.
84. See p. 96.
85. Ep. 5, ed. Hicks, p. 78; trans. Radice, p. 146.
86. Ep. 4, ed. Monfrin, p. 120; ed. Hicks, p. 78; trans. Radice, p. 130.
87. Ep. 5, ed. Hicks, pp. 80, 83; trans. Radice, pp. 147, 153.
88. Robert Wielockx, “La Sentence De caritate et la discussion scolastique sur
l’amour,” Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses 58 (1982): 50–86 [edition
69–73], 334–56; 59 (1988): 26–45. Marenbon discusses Abelard’s debt to
the De caritate and his subsequent distancing from this work in The Philos-
ophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 299–303 (p. 292, n. 11 above).
 N OT ES 377

89. See, p. 95.

90. Jerome, Ep. 72.3, CSEL 54: 10. He mentions Bezalel in Ep. 60.12, CSEL
54: 564; cf. Isidore, Etymologiae 7.6.65.
91. Comm. in Ezechielem 14.48 and 8.27, ed. Franciscus Glorie, CCSL 75
(1964): 734, 381. A phrase in the woman’s Letter 49 (qui sibi videtur sciolus)
is slightly closer to a phrase in this commentary of Jerome 22.6 (75: l. 485)
(qui sciolus sibi uidetur) than to Jerome’s Ep. 48.3 (uidentur sibi scioli).
92. Jerome, Ep. 3.6, CSEL 54: 18, noted by Könsgen, p. 15 n. 1: “Amicitia, quae
desinere potest, vera numquam fuit.”
93. Jerome, Ep. 60.10, CSEL 54: 559; also Ep. 45.2, CSEL 54: 324.
94. Könsgen, p. 83. He notes possible such allusions in: letters 25 (Jerome, Ep.
3.6, 45.2. 49.1, 53.11 and 60.10.3; CSEL 54: 18, 324, 350, 464, 559), 27 (In-
terpretation of Hebrew names; CCSL 72: 105), 45 (Ep. 52.12.3, CSEL 54:
437), 49 (Ep. 48.3, CSEL 54: 382), 69 (Ep. 108.1, CSEL 55: 307). The al-
lusion in the man’s letter 41 to Jerome, Ep. 31.3 (CSEL 54: 251) seems too
remote to be plausible. One could add the woman’s use of vinculum dilec-
tionis in letter 71, perhaps a reminiscence of Ep. 82.11 (CSEL 55: 118).
95. HC, ed. Monfrin, pp. 75–78; ed. Hicks, pp. 14–17; trans. Radice, pp. 71–74,
drawing on Theologia christiana 2.38, 67, 96–97, 101, CCCM 12: 148,
159–60, 173–77. See Philippe Delhaye, “Le Dossier anti-matrimonial de
l’Adversus Jovinianum et son influence sur quelques écrits latins du XIIe siè-
cle,” Mediaeval Studies 13 (1951): 65–86 and Mews, “Un lecteur de Jérôme
au douzième siècle,” in Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient, ed. Yves-Marie
Duval (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1988), pp. 31–44.
96. Könsgen (p. 44) notes parallels in Virgil’s Aeneid 7.201 (portuque sedetis) and
Terence’s Andria 480 (Ego in portu navigo).
97. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 74; ed. Hicks, p. 13; trans. Radice, p. 69; Ep. 5, ed.
Hicks, p. 79. Radice translates te . . . transmisi as “I took you,” but the Latin
clearly demands “I sent you,” indicating that Abelard did not accompany
Heloise to Brittany.
98. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 75; ed. Hicks, p. 13; trans. Radice, p. 70.
99. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 78; ed. Hicks, p. 17.

Chapter 6
1. Ep. 115, ed. Constable, 1: 304–5; ed. Hicks, pp. 156–57. Radice (pp.
277–78) leaves out the phrase pro physica apostolum (the apostle for natural
science) from her translation of this passage.
2. On its date, see Constable, 2: 177.
3. Ep. 115, ed. Constable, 2: 305–6; trans. Radice, p. 280. Penthesilea was de-
picted as queen of the Amazons on tapestries in Dido’s chamber according
to Virgil, Aeneid 1.491–94; on Deborah, see Judges 4: 4–10.
4. Constable, 2: 55–59; ed. Hicks, pp. 156–61.
378 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

5. Ep. 332, SBO 8: 270; see, p. 304, n. 24.

6. The extent of his influence is well documented by David Edward Lus-
combe, The School of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1969) and “The School of Peter Abelard Revisited,” Vivarium 30
(1992): 127–38.
7. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 101; ed. Hicks, p. 37; trans. Radice, p. 97.
8. She alludes to winter in letter 18 (1115/16?); he refers to the passing of a
complete year in letter 87, perhaps (but not necessarily) implying that the
final letters belong to the first part of 1117; see above, p. 317, n. 1.
9. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 79; ed. Hicks, p. 18; trans. Radice, p. 75; see p. 319,
n. 16.
10. See, p. 319, n. 18.
11. Ep. ad Abaelardum, ed. Reiners, p. 79 (p. 298, n. 55).
12. Carole Straw provides an excellent visual summary of these traditional dis-
tinctions in Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1988), p. 54.
13. Vita Ludovici 9, ed.Waquet, p. 52; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead, p. 47 and
p. 179 n. 4.
14. Bernard, Ep. 77, SBO 7: 203, 210.
15. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 81; ed. Hicks, pp. 19–20; trans. Radice, p. 77.
16. For a summary of the argument and context of the Theologia Summi boni,
see my introduction to the work in CCCM 13: 39–71.
17. See, p. 351, n. 64.
18. See, p. 351, n. 68.
19. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 88; ed. Hicks, p. 25; trans. Radice, p. 83; William of
Saint-Thierry’s presence at Soissons was discovered by Benton, “Fraud,
Fiction and Borrowing,” p. 486 n. 41 (p. 314, n. 95).
20. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 88; ed. Hicks, p. 25; trans. Radice, p. 83.
21. Theologia christiana 4.78, 83, CCCM 12: 301–2, 304; HC, ed. Monfrin, pp.
84–85; ed. Hicks, pp. 22–23; trans. Radice, p. 80. Michael Clanchy argues
that St. Anselm’s arguments were used by Alberic against Abelard at Sois-
sons, in “Abelard’s Mockery of St Anselm,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41
(1990): 1–23.
22. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 90; ed. Hicks, p. 28; trans. Radice, p. 86; cf. Ep. 11, ed.
Smits, pp. 249–55.
23. On Hato’s connections to Sens, see Constable, 2: 97–98 and p. 318, n. 8
above.
24. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 93; ed. Hicks, p. 30; trans. Radice, p. 89; cf. Theologia
christiana 2.61–63, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 12: 156–57.
25. Theologia christiana 4.66, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 12: 292.
26. HC, ed. Monfrin, pp. 97–98; ed. Hicks, pp. 34–35; trans. Radice, pp. 93–94.
Radice (p. 93) follows Muckle, “Abelard’s Letter of Consolation to a
Friend (Historia calamitatum),” Mediaeval Studies 12 (1950): 212–13 in ar-
 N OT ES 379

guing against the traditional identification, on the grounds that no texts at-
tacking Abelard survive by Norbert, elected archbishop of Magdeburg in
1126, or Bernard from this time. Edward Little developed this argument,
“Relations between St Bernard and Abelard before 1139,” in Saint Bernard
of Clairvaux. Studies commemorating the eighth centenary of his canonization, ed.
Basil Pennington (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1977), pp.
155–68.
27. Sermo 33, PL 178: 605C.
28. Ep. 13, SBO 7: 62–63.
29. Bernard, Ep. 8, 38, 78, SBO 7: 49, 97, 201–10.
30. Ep. 77, SBO 7: 184–200. Hugh Feiss provides a complete translation of this
letter in his valuable study, “Bernardus Scholasticus: The Correspondence of
Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh of Saint Victor on Baptism,” in Bernardus
Magister, ed. Sommerfeldt, pp. 349–72 (p. 304, n. 23 above).
31. Ep. 31, 37–41, SBO 7: 85–86, 94–100.
32. PL 173: 1421A-1422D.
33. PL 173: 1418A-1420B (wrongly dated to 1134), Recueil 15: 329–30. Gualo
(or Walo, Galo, not to be confused with Galo, bishop of Paris) is praised as
“another Aristotle” in the two poems of the Zurich anthology (see p. 109).
No other teacher at Notre-Dame is recorded after Abelard’s departure in
1117/18. Bautier notes that he may be the Gualo, cantor at Beauvais from
1108 to 1114/17, in “Paris au temps d’Abélard,” pp. 66–67. It is not clear
if this is the same Gualo as wrote an Invectio in monachos, ed. Thomas
Wright, Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, 2 vols. (London: Longman,
1872), 2: 201–7; see Jan Ziolkowski, “A Bouquet of Wisdom and Invective:
Houghton MS. Lat. 300,” Harvard Library Bulletin 1 (1990): 29–30.
34. Émile Lesne presented this as a dispute between Gualo and Algrin (d.
1150), Les Écoles de la fin du VIIIe siècle a la fin du XIIe, Histoire de la pro-
priété ecclésiastique en France V (Lille: Facultés catholiques, 1940), pp.
208–9. A canon of Étampes and archdeacon of Orléans (as well as canon
of Notre-Dame in 1120, with a house outside the cloister), Algrin had
been an associate of Stephen of Garlande and served as chancellor in 1132
prior to Garlande’s restoration (Luchaire, nos. 254, 268, 284, 497, pp. 122,
127, 133, 229); in 1132, Algrin was associated with opposition to subdea-
con Archibald, thought to have been murdered by friends of Stephen of
Garlande. Algrin replaced Stephen of Garlande as royal chancellor in 1137
with the accession of Louis VII; see Luchaire, no. 505, pp. 233 and 305–306
and Constable, 2: 309–310.
35. Matthew of Albano resolved this dispute in Rome, PL 173: 1263B-64C;
see p. 317, n. 5 above.
36. See an exchange between Stephen of Senlis and the archbishop of Sens, as
well as with Geoffrey of Chartres, the papal legate, PL 173: 1411A-14B.
37. Ep. 45–49, SBO 7: 133–41; see Luchaire, no. 424, p. 196.
380 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

38. Vita Ludovici 31, ed. Waquet, p. 254; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead, pp.
144–45 and notes on pp. 208–9 (with a mistaken reference to the niece as
Stephen’s daughter). Stephen was dismissed as royal chancellor sometime
between 3 August 1127 and 10 March 1128, when the new royal chancel-
lor is Simon, Bautier, “Paris au temps d’Abélard,” p. 68 n. 4 (p. 317, n. 1
above). John Benton doubted Bautier’s suggestion that this Simon was
Suger’s nephew Simon (d. ca. 1178/80), royal chancellor 1150 – 51, as he
would have to have been a young man when he took this office in 1128,
“Suger’s Life and Personality,” in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium,
ed. Paula Lieber Gerson (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986),
p. 5 and n. 22. Michel Bur argues (against Benton) that Suger was not di-
rectly involved in the ousting of Stephen, Suger. Abbé de Saint-Denis, régent
de France (Paris: Perrin, 1991), pp. 133–34, as does Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger,
pp. 124–29 (p. 321, n. 39).
39. Luchaire calls this a coup d’État, p. lii and 304; see also Hallam, Capetian
France 987–1328, pp. 159–60 (p. 300, n. 77) and Boussard, Nouvelle Histoire
de Paris, p. 138 (p. 317, n. 2 above).
40. Dufour, no. 263, 2: 59–62 and Galbert of Bruges, De multro, traditione, et oc-
cisione gloriosi Karoli comitis Flandriarum 47–52, ed. Jeff Rider, CCCM 131
(1994): 97–102; trans. James Bruce Ross, The Murder of Charles the Good
Count of Flanders (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), pp.
186–98. Suger comments on Louis’ support for William Clito, Vita Ludovici
30, ed. Waquet, p. 246; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead, p. 140, as does Or-
deric Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 12.1, 12.45, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 6: 184,
368–78. On Clito’s hostile attitude to knights and burgers, see Herman of
Tournai, De restauratione monasterii Tornacensis 36, trans. Nelson, pp. 52–53.
41. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 100; ed. Hicks, p. 35; trans. Radice, p. 96; Abelard’s ac-
cusation is supported by the close study of the suspect document offered
by Thomas G. Waldman, “Abbot Suger and the nuns of Argenteuil,” Tradi-
tio 41 (1985): 239–72, and Grant, Abbot Suger, pp. 190–93 (p. 321, n. 39
above). Luchaire, no. 97, p. 53; Suger, Vita Ludovici 27, ed. Waquet, pp.
216–18; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead, pp. 126–27.
42. PL 173: 1265CD, quoted by Waldman, “Abbot Suger and the nuns of Ar-
genteuil,” 252, n. 62. For the royal charter, see Dufour, no. 281, 3: 100–106.
43. Ep. 48, SBO 7: 138: “An certe quod Lauduni de prostibulo Veneris suum
Deo sanctuarium restitutum est?” Luchaire, no. 410, pp. 190–91. Dufour ob-
serves political factors behind their replacement by monks, no. 263, 2: 61.
44. PL 179: 64, 66, nos. 15 and 17; see also Matthew of Albano, PL 173:
1268AB.
45. Stephen’s confirmation of the 1134 charter, repeating claims about the sex-
ual immorality of the nuns of Saint-Éloi, is printed in PL 173: 1424D-
1427A.
 N OT ES 381

46. Duchesne prints a document from 1207 revealing these events, PL 178:
169D-70A; DHGE 4.25–26.
47. Vita Ludovici 32, ed. Waquet, pp. 256–68; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead,
pp. 145–51 and Bernard, Ep. 124–127, SBO 7: 305–21; see Mary Stroll,
The Jewish Pope: Ideology and Politics in the Papal Schism of 1130 (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1987). Robinson notes the sympathy of the Pierleone family for
Rome, but questions the traditional idea that the majority faction sup-
porting Anacletus were either predominantly Roman or in favor of older
models of reform, as distinct from the party of Innocent, The Papacy
1073–1198, pp. 69–78 (p. 327, n. 101).
48. Bernard, Ep. 124, 150–51, SBO 7: 305–307, 354–58; Philip of Tours was
degraded by Innocent II in 1139; John of Salisbury, Historia Pontificalis 16,
ed. and trans. Chibnall, p. 43 (p. 305, n. 25).
49. Two letters from the Duke of Burgundy to William X of Aquitaine, per-
haps written by Bernard in 1131, are preserved as Ep. 127–28, SBO 7:
320–22, alongside Ep. 126, SBO 7: 309–319, to the bishops of Aquitaine;
see Robinson, The Papacy 1073–1198, pp. 158–59.
50. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 101; ed. Hicks, pp. 36–37; trans. Radice, p. 97.
51. Chronicon Mauriniacensis, ed. Mirot, p. 54 (p. 321, n. 39).
52. Luchaire, no. 420, p. 194. Letters of the archbishop and of Stephen of Sen-
lis (PL 173: 1416) reveal that the archbishop warned the bishop of Paris to
come to Provins to examine the case of Stephen of Garlande, but the
bishop refused. Threats against the life of Stephen of Senlis are mentioned
in an anonymous letter to Stephen (PL 173: 1415AB). The atmosphere of
violence and political confusion are well illustrated in a letter from a cer-
tain frater P. to Geoffrey of Chartres written ca. 1132/33, in support of the
bishop of Paris and lamenting the behavior of certain canons who do not
conduct themselves properly, Edmé R. Smits, “An Unedited Letter (1132–
1133) to Geoffrey de Lèves, Bishop of Chartres, concerning Louis VI and
the Reform Movement,” Revue bénédictine 92 (1982): 407–417.
53. Innocent’s reply is printed as Ep. 552 among his letters, PL 179: 620BC.
The events were reported by Stephen of Senlis to Geoffrey of Chartres, PL
173: 1416B-1417D. The nephews of archdeacon Theobald were vassals of
Stephen of Garlande. In February 1133, Archembald, subdean at Orléans,
had been killed by supporters of archdeacon John, in turn loyal to Stephen
of Garlande; Bautier, “Paris au temps d’Abélard,” p. 70.
54. Bernard wrote Ep. 158 to the Pope about the murder; Ep. 159 and 160 are
written in the name of bishop Stephen but seem to be written by Bernard
or his secretary (SBO 7: 365–69). On the related murder in 1133 of sub-
dean Archibald of Orléans, opposed by archdeacon Ralph and Stephen of
Garlande, dean of the cathedral at Orléans, see Constable, 2: 308–309.
55. Fassler, Gothic Song, pp. 203–206 (p. 317, n. 3 above).
382 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

56. Many of the early charters are translated into French, including that the
very detailed 1147 charter of Eugenius III (Checklist, no. 420), and com-
mented upon by Charrier, Héloïse dans l’histoire et dans la légende, pp.
256–70 (p. 302, n. 10 above). On the gift of Matilda see Checklist, no. 434;
trans. Theodore Evergates in Medieval France. Documents from the County of
Champagne (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp.
62–63.
57. Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 111; ed. Hicks, p. 45; trans. Radice, p. 109; on Hugh
Metel, see above, p. 350, n. 56.
58. See, p. 316, n. 111.
59. PL 178: 313D; The Paraclete Statutes, ed. Waddell, p. 9 with commentary on
p. 77 and conclusions on pp. 199–203 (p. 316, n. 111).
60. Ep. 6, ed. Hicks, p. 106; trans. Radice, p. 178.
61. Waddell, The Paraclete Statutes, pp. 86–87; see Heloise’s Ep. 6, ed. Hicks, p.
89 and Ep. 8, ed. McLaughlin, pp. 268–69; trans. Radice, pp. 160 and
245–46.
62. See, p. 316, n. 111.
63. Ep. 10, ed. Smits, p. 239.
64. Peter Abelard’s Hymnarius Paraclitensis, ed. Joseph Szövérffy, 2 vols. (Albany,
New York: Classical Folia Editions, 1975) 2: 9–13.
65. Ibid. 2: 10.
66. Ed. Boutillier du Retail and Piétresson de Saint-Aubin, Recueil des historiens
de la France, Obituaires de la province de Sens, 4: 429 (p. 318, n. 12 above). The
Paraclete also had a confraternity of prayer with Fontevrault, noted by
Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, p. 98 (p. 322, n. 42). In the obituary
of Clairvaux, there is no reference to the Paraclete; see the edition of C.
Lalore in Le Trésor de Clairvaux du XIIe au XVIIIe siècle (Troyes: Thorin,
1875), pp. 174–85.
67. Bernard, Ep. 278, SBO 8: 190. This message was taken to Rome by a cer-
tain master Garnerius.
68. This poem was edited by Léopold Delisle, “Des documents paléo-
graphiques concernant l’usage de prier pour les morts,” Bibliothèque de l’é-
cole des chartes, 2e ser. 3 (1846): 361–411 and more fully in Rouleaux des
morts du IXe au XVesiècle (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1866), p. 299 and
Rouleau mortuaire du B. Vital, abbé de Savigny (Paris: Imprimerie nationale,
1909), pp. 22–24. Delisle (Rouleaux des morts, p. 262) edits also a shorter,
less sophisticated poem from Argenteuil in honor of Matilda, first abbess of
Sainte-Trinité, Caen (d. 6 July 1113). In its list of nuns Helvidis monacha is
mentioned twice, whereas there is only one Helvidis mentioned at Argen-
teuil in 1122. This could mean Heloise only moved to Notre-Dame in
1113, when Abelard was already teaching there.
69. Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History 8.27, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 4: 332.Vital
and Robert of Arbrissel are mentioned as leaders of a group of hermits in
 N OT ES 383

the Loire region in the Vita B. Bernardi Tironensis, PL 172: 1381A; on the
Life of Vital, see p. 350, n. 50 above. The chronology of the foundation of
Savigny and Neufbourg (re-dated to 1115, rather than to 1105) is consid-
ered by Jacqueline Buhot, “L’abbaye normande de Savigny, chef d’ordre et
fille de Cîteaux,” Le Moyen Age ser. 3, 7 (1936): 1–19, 104–21, 178–90,
249–72 (with note on 111 that all communities founded by Vital were
dedicated to the Holy Trinity, unlike Cistercian houses, customarily dedi-
cated to the Virgin Mary).
70. Ed. Hilberg, no. 195.14, p. 262.
71. Ep. 4, PL 171: 1474AB.
72. The records of Argenteuil prior to its being taken over in 1129 by monks
of Saint-Denis are so scanty, identification of these individuals is difficult.
Dépoin identifies abbess Judith with the daughter of Charles the Bald, se-
duced by and then married to Count Baldwin, before being given the
abbey of Argenteuil, Une élegie latine d’Héloïse suivie du Nécrologe d’Argenteuil
et autres documents inédits (Pontoise: Société du Vexin, 2nd ed., 1897), p. 4.
73. McLeod discusses the text and translation in Héloïse. A Biography, pp.
87–91, with reproduction of the original document as a frontispiece to
the book (p. 302, n. 10 above). Her comment that “the sentiments it ex-
presses are not in any way original” (p. 89) perhaps goes too far in the
opposite extreme to the enthusiasm of older scholars. A translation by
Patrick T. McMahon, O. Carm. is provided without detailed commentary
within Penelope Johnson’s excellent study of twelfth-century female re-
ligious communities, Equal in Monastic Profession, pp. 145–46 (p. 322, n.
42 above).
74. Delisle, Rouleaux des morts du IXe au XVe siècle, no. 47, p. 301 (n. 69 above).
75. The manuscript in which this occurs, (British Library, Add. 24199, fol. 77v)
is a twelfth-century verse anthology that includes poems of Hildebert of
Lavardin and Marbod of Rennes, perhaps coming from the region around
Bury St. Edmunds, edited by André Boutemy, “Recueil poétique du man-
uscrit Additional British Museum 24199,” Latomus 2 (1938): 30–52 at
42–44; Boutemy discusses its provenance in his earlier study, “Notice sur le
recueil poétique du manuscrit Cotton Vitellius A xii, du British Museum,”
Latomus 1 (1937): 278–313 at 293–95.
76. No. xiv.1–10, ed. Boutemy, 42–43. The translation is that of Gerald Bond,
given as an appendix to The Loving Subject, pp. 166–69 (p. 331, n. 13
above), to which I have made small modifications (gentilis as gentile rather
than noble) and the first person plural maintained for pellimur, rather than
turned into the singular.
77. Theologia Scholarium 2.1–61, ed. Buytert and Mews, CCCM 13: 406–38.
78. See, p. 64.
79. No. xii.10, ed. Boutemy, 42: “Dat pacem, lusus callidate uiri”; no. xiii, ed.
Boutemy, 42: “In cuius Venerem sexus uterque uenit.”
384 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

80. No. xvii.7–10, ed. Boutemy, 46: “Tunc musae celebres et erant in honore
poetae, / Nunc isti uiles, illaeque silent quasi spretae. / Tunc clari reges et
eorum gloria multa, / Nunc est istorum cum uita fama sepulta.”
81. No. xxvii.1–2, 13–14, 23–24: “Heu quid peccaui uel quid potui meruisse,
Quod non illa diu [est] passio nostra luat? . . . Es deprensa tuo cum Marte,
sub indice Phoebo; Vltio mouit eum: uirgo petenda deo. . . . Si culpa
Phoebi cum Marte reperta fuisti, Leucothoe misera cur luit acta Dei.”
82. Thomas Wright edits this poem as well as those of Serlo which follow
from British Library, Cotton, Vitellius A. xii in Satirical Poets of the Twelfth
Century, pp. 233–58 (n. 33 above); see also Boutemy, “Deux poèmes in-
connus de Serlon de Bayeux,” Le Moyen Age 51 (1938): 241–69.
83. E.g. Peter Abelard’s Hymnarius Paraclitensis, ed. Szövérffy, 2: 102–104, 117, 2:
206 “cum viris amazones.”
84. Lorenz Weinrich, “‘Dolorum solatium’. Text und Musik von Abaelards
“«Planctus David»,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 5 (1968): 59–78 and Dronke,
Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages, p. 146 (p. 331, n. 10 above).
85. See above, p. 129.
86. Ed. Chrysogonus Waddell, “Epithalamica: An Easter Sequence by Peter
Abelard,” Musical Quarterly 72 (1986): 239–71 at 249.
87. For reference to the extensive manuscript sources for these sequences, en-
tirely based on the work of Waddell, see Mews, Peter Abelard (London:Var-
iorum, 1995), pp. 69–71.
88. Vita Ludovici 34, ed. Waquet, pp. 282–84; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead,
pp. 158–59.
89. Vita Ludovici 34, ed. Waquet, pp. 280–82; trans. Cusimano and Moorhead,
pp. 156–57.
90. Metalogicon 2.10, ed. Hall, CCCM 98: 70–71.
91. Bernard, Ep. 189, SBO 8: 12–16; on the date of the council of Sens, see, p.
303, n. 22. On the nature of the manuscript of the Theologia christiana
owned by Cardinal Guy (a copy of which survives at Montecassino), see
Mews, CCCM 13: 210–217, with references to further literature.
92. John of Salisbury, Historia pontificalis 31, ed. and trans. Chibnall, p. 64 (p.
305, n. 25 above). On the persistent claims of the city of Rome to appoint
the prefect, apparent in a revolt of 1116, a conflict which spilled into open
warfare with the papacy, see Robinson, The Papacy 1073–1198, pp. 12–14
(p. 327, n. 101).
93. See, p. 38.
94. Heloise’s letter and Peter’s reply are edited as Ep. 167–68 by Constable, 1:
400–402; trans. Radice, pp. 285–87. The discrepancy observed by Consta-
ble (2: 210) between the comment of Richard of Poitiers that Abelard’s
body was brought to the Paraclete soon after his death and Heloise’s com-
ment that Peter gave him Abelard’s body could be explained if Peter sim-
ply allowed the body to be transported, rather than brought it in person.
95. McLeod, Héloïse, pp. 283–84 (p. 302, n. 10).
 N OT ES 385

96. See p. 306, n. 41.

97. Eudes visited the Paraclete 15–17 June 1249, and twice again later that
year, [4 Kal] October and [xvii kal] February, as well as once in 1253 [17
kal February], Regestrum Visitationum Archiepiscopi Rothomagensis, ed. Th.
Bonnin (Rouen, 1852), pp. 39, 52, 53, 177.
98. John Benton, “The Paraclete and the Council of Rouen of 1231,” Bulletin
of Medieval Canon Law, n.s. 4 (1974): 33–38, anticipated in n. 72, appended
to his article “Fraud, Fiction and Borrowing in the Correspondence of
Abelard and Heloise,” p. 502 (p. 314, n. 95 above).

Chapter 7
1. This chapter completely rewrites the Postface published in French (trans.
M. Lejbowicz), included within La voix d’Héloïse. Un dialogue de deux
amants (Fribourg-Paris: Academic Press Fribourg-Éditions du Cerf, 2005),
pp. 287–321, translated by Emilie Champs, with the collaboration of
François-Xavier Putallaz and Sylvain Piron, of The Lost Love Letters of
Heloise and Abelard (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999). I am indebted to
Sylvain Piron for discussion of many themes in this chapter.
2. Sylvain Piron, Lettres des deux amants, attribuées à Héloïse et Abélard (Paris:
Gallimard 2005), with a significant discussion about their authorship (pp.
175–218).
3. Und wärst du doch bei mir. Ex epistolis duorum amantium. Eine mittelalterliche
Liebesgeschichte in Briefen. Lateinisch-deutsche Ausgabe. Übersetzt und mit einem
Nachwort von Eva Cescutti und Philipp Steger (Zurich: Manesse Verlag, 2005).
They have been translated afresh into Italian as Lettere di due amanti. At-
tribute a Eloisa e Abelardo, trans. Claudio Fiocchi, with a preface by Maria
Teresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri (Archinto: Collana, 2006).
4. James Burge, in his Heloise & Abelard: A Twelfth-Century Love Story (London:
Profile, 2003). See for example Cristina Nehring, “Abelard and Heloise:
Love Hurts,” in the New York Times, February13, 2005, and Priya Jain, “Lust,
Revenge and the Religious Right in 12th- Century Paris,” printed in
http://dir.salon.com for December 18, 2004.
5. Umberto Eco, Baudolino (Milan: Bompiani, 2000), pp. 84–85; trans.William
Weaver (London: Secker & Warburg, 2002), pp. 79–80. See Ewald Köns-
gen, “Der Nordstern scheint auf dem Pol. Baudolinos Liebesbriefe an Beatrix,
die Kaiserin—oder Ex epistolis duorum amantium,” in Nova de veteribus. Mit-
tel- und neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed. A. Bihrer, E. Stein
(Munich-Leipzig: Saur, 2004), pp. 1113–21.
6. Positive comments on the attribution have been made by: Michael
Clanchy in Times Literary Supplement (25 February 2000), pp. 24–25, W. P.
Gerritsen in NEC Handelsblat (6 May 2000), p. 49; Barbara Newman, in
the on-line review journal, The Medieval Review (6.1.2000); Albrecht
Classen, “Abaelards Historia Calamitatum, der Briefwechsel mit Heloise
386 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

und Gottfrieds von Strassburg Tristan,” Arcadia 35 (2000): 225–53; John O.

Ward and Neville Chiavaroli, “The Young Heloise and Latin Rhetoric:
Some Preliminary Comments on the ‘Lost’ Love-Letters and Their Signif-
icance,” in Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, ed.
Bonnie Wheeler (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 53–119; Paola de
Santis, I Sermoni di Abelardo per le monache del Paracleto (Louvain: Leuven
University Press, 2002), pp. xxv–xxviii; Juanita Ruys, “Eloquencie vultum
depingere: Eloquence and Dictamen in the Love Letters of Heloise and
Abelard,” in Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100–1540. Essays in Ho-
nour of John O.Ward, ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman and Rodney
M. Thomson (Brepols: Turnhout, 2003), pp. 99–112; Jane Stevenson,
Women Latin Poets. Language, Gender, and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eigh-
teenth Century, Oxford 2005, pp. 474–75, and p. 121. The publication of
Piron’s translation of the Lettres de deux amants and of La voix d’Héloïse has
also elicited positive responses in reviews by Laurent Cornaz, “Des nou-
velles d’Héloïse,” Agenda de la pensée contemporaine, (2005): 45–66 ; Damien
Boquet, Médiévales, 51 (2006): 185–88, and Elisabeth Lalou, “Quid sit
amor ?,” in Critique, 716/717 (January 2007): 80–90. Guy Lobrichon,
Héloïse. L’amour et le savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), pp. 43–48, recognizes
the closeness between the EDA and Abelard and Heloise, but concludes
that the question remains open.
7. For more critical views, see n.10 (Peter von Moos), n. 18–19 (Peter
Dronke), and n. 20 (Jan Ziolkowski). See also, Sylvain Piron and Réka For-
rai, who have produced an unpublished paper for a seminar on the EDA
held at Arezzo, “The debate on the Epistolae duorum amantium. Current sta-
tus quaestionis and further research” (March 9, 2007), available online at
http://www.monnalisagarden.com/tdtc/personale/materiale_didattico/
stella/Piron-status%20quaestionis.pdf, and Sylvain Piron, “Heloise’s literary
self-fashioning and the Epistolae duorum amantium,” in Memory Construc-
tions, ed. Lucie Dolezalova (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008) (forthcoming).
8. C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love. In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 157–73.
9. C. Stephen Jaeger, “The ‘Epistolae duorum amantium’ and the Ascription
to Heloise and Abelard,” and Giles Constable, “The Authorship of the Epis-
tolae duorum amantium. A Reconsideration,” in Voices in Dialogue: New Prob-
lems in Reading Women’s Cultural History, ed. Linda Olson and Kathryn
Kerby-Fulton (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp.
125–66, and 167–78, with Jaeger, “A Reply to Giles Constable,” on pp.
179–86 of the same volume. The response of Constable first appeared as
“Sur l’attribution des Epistolae duorum amantium,” Académie des Inscriptions
et Belles-Lettres (Nov.-Dec. 2001): 1679–93.
10. Peter von Moos, “Die Epistolae duorum amantium und die säkulare Religion
der Liebe. Methodenkritische Vorüberlegungen zu einem einmaligen Werk
mittellateinischer Briefliteratur,” Studi Medievali 3a ser. 44 (2003): 1–115.
 N OT ES 387

11. Ibid., p. 44, n. 137.

12. Ibid., pp. 13, 43.
13. Ibid., p. 97.
14. Ibid., p. 99, n. 300: “Sie könnten zu einem Schlüssel der ‘intellectual histo-
ry’ des 14 und 15 Jhs.werden, wenn man sie von der dilettantischen
Zuschreibungen Heloise und Abaelard befreien konnte und andererseits
Mediävisten und Renaissanceforscher aufhorten, sich in zwei vershiede-
nen Booten zu fühlen.”
15. Ibid., p. 81, n. 249, referring to Aelred, De spiritali amicitia 1.19, ed. A. Hoste
and C. H.Talbot, CCCM 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), p. 292. Aelred speaks
of friendship creating a single mind in 2.11, p. 304, but without indifferenter.
Although von Moos claims that indifferenter is a favorite term of Aelred of
Rievaulx, it occurs only once in Aelred’s entire corpus, in Dialogus de anima
2.34, ed. Hoste and Talbot, CCCM 1: 87.
16. Peter von Moos, “Kurzes Nachwort zu einer langen Geschichte mit miss-
brauchten Liebesbriefen: Epistolae duorum amantium” included as an appen-
dix to “Abaelard, Heloise und ihr Paraclet” (see n. 88 below), printed in
von Moos, Abaelard und Heloise. Gesammelte Studien zum Mittelalter, Band 1,
ed. Gert Melville, Geschichte: Forschung und Wissenschaft, 14 (Münster:
Lit, 2005), pp. 282–92; “Vom Nutzen der Philologie für den umgang mit
anonymen Liebesbriefen. Ein Nachwort zu den Epistolae duorum aman-
tium,” forthcoming in: Schrift und Liebe in der Kultur des Mittelalters, ed. by
M. Schnyder, Trends in Medieval Philology (Berlin: De Gruyter) available
on-line http://centri.univr.it/RM/biblioteca/
17. See the essays collected in Constant J. Mews, ed., Listen Daughter.The Specu-
lum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages (New
York: Palgrave, 2001).
18. Peter Dronke, in a review of Bonnie Wheeler, ed., Listening to Heloise (n. 6
above), International Journal of the Classical Tradition 8/1 (2002): 134–39.
Dronke bases his argument on a few verbal similarities (of classical inspi-
ration) with the Tegernsee letters and the Regensburg verse exchange, also
a record of a male-female exchange from the early twelfth century.
19. Peter Dronke, Giovanni Orlandi, “New Works by Abelard and Heloise,”
Filologia mediolatina 12 (2005): 123–177, with discussion by Orlandi on pp.
146–77.
20. Jan Ziolkowski, “Lost and Not Yet Found: Heloise, Abelard, and the Epis-
tolae duorum amantium,” Journal of Medieval Latin 14 (2004): 171–202.
21. François Dolbeau offers a methodology based on more strictly positivist
lines, “Critique d’attribution, critique d’authenticité. Réflexions prélimi-
naires,” Filologia mediolatina 6–7 (1999–2000): 33–62.
22. Francesco Stella, “Le Epistolae Duorum Amantium: Nuovi Riscontri In-
tertestuali” (Toronto 2–6 agosto 2006) http://www.monnalisagarden.com
/tdtc/personale/materiale_didattico/stella/EDA-Loci%20similes.pdf.
23. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 73; Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 115.
388 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

24. Francesco Stella, “Analisi informatiche del lessico e individuazione degli

autori nelle Epistolae duorum amantium (XII secolo),” delivered Late and Vul-
gar Latin Conference, Oxford 6–9 September 2006, available at http://www
.monnalisagarden.com/tdtc/personale/materiale_didattico/stella/EDA-
Statistiche%20Lingua.pdf. Stella argues that from statistical analysis inde-
pendent from the chi-square factor that the variations in percentages of
types of cursus between the two sets of correspondence are not statistically
significant.
25. Heloise, Ep. 2, ed. Monfrin, p. 113; ed. Hicks, p. 48: “Quot autem et quan-
tos tractatus in doctrina vel exhortation seu etiam consolation sanctarum
feminarum sancti patres consummaverint, et quanta eas diligentia compo-
suerint, tua melius excellentia quam nostra parvitas novit.”
26. Ep. 167 among the letters of Peter the Venerable (ed. Constable, 1: 400):
“Gratulamur pater benignissime, et quod ad paruitatem nostram magni-
tudo uestra descenderit, gloriamur.”
27. St. Anselm uses variations on parvitas mea/nostra in his correspondence,
Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. F. X. Schmitt (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1946–1961);
Ep. 2 (3: 99), 10 (3: 113), 65 (3: 181), 85 (3: 210), 86 (3: 211), 92 (3: 219),
107 (3: 240), 126 (3: 266); 159 (4: 27), 321 (5: 321), 430 (5: 376). Bernard
uses the phrase in Ep. 2.8 (SBO 7: 19), 6.1 (7: 29); 45.2 (7: 134), 59 (7: 152),
61 (7: 154), 62 (7: 155), 76 (7: 183), 79.1 (7: 211), 82.1 (7: 214), 98.1 (7:
248), 123 (7: 304), 144.3 (7: 345), 357.1 (8: 301), 368.1 (8: 326), 377.2 (8:
341), 391 (8: 360), 457 (8: 433). The phrase is used by Jerome in his Ep.
21.42 (CSEL 54: 142), 102.1 (55: 323), 138 (56: 266), 142 (56: 291), 155.2
(58: 131).
28. Some of the subsequent argument I develop in “Cicero and the Bound-
aries of Friendship in the Twelfth Century,” Viator 38/2 (2007): 369–84,
but take further in “Discussing Love: the Epistolae duorum amantium and the
Sic et Non”
29. Dialectica, ed. Lambert Marie De Rijk (Assen : van Gorcum, 1970), p. 185:
“Et utrumque [omne et totum] quidem quantitatis signum esse potest, illud
quidem quantitatis universalis rei secundum comprehensionem singularum
specierum. Hoc vero individui compositi secundum constitutionem com-
ponentium partium. . . . ; (p. 186) Nam universalis rei quantitas in diffusione
sua per inferiora consistit ; (p. 574): In distributione enim rei universalis non
quantitatis eius vel integritatis comprehensio, sed sola participationis diffu-
sio per inferiora monstratur.”
30. Abelard, HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 65 : “Sic autem istam tunc suam correxit sen-
tentiam, ut deinceps rem eamdem non essentialiter sed indifferenter
diceret.”
31. See Mews, “The Foundation St.Victor (Easter, 1111) and the Evolution of
Abelard’s Early Career,” in Irène Rosier-Catach (forthcoming). The key
document requiring a change from the traditional date (1108) assigned to
 N OT ES 389

the foundation of St. Victor is a charter describing William as still an

archdeacon in 1110; Dufour, Actes de Louis VI, no. 43, 1: 81 . Other signa-
tories are Bernier, dean of Notre-Dame, Reinaldus de Cala (the other
archdeacon of Paris), precentor Adam (subsequently a canon of Saint-Vic-
tor) and an otherwise unknown figure, Ratherius de Dongione.
32. Abelard does not identify William’s initial successor by name, only that
William turned against him; HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 66. That Joscelin was al-
ready a significant teacher at this time is implicit in the Vita Goswini, Re-
cueil, 14: 444, a narrative that never mentions William of Champeaux, who
may have ceded his position to Joscelyn after becoming archdeacon of
Paris by 1107 (when Goswin first came to Paris).
33. Peter Abelard, Sic et Non 138: 20–21, ed. Blanche Boyer and Richard McK-
eon (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1976–77), p. 473, quoting Cicero,
De amicitia 20: “Quanta autem vis amicitiae sit, ex hoc intelligi maxime
potest, quod ex societate infinita generis humani, quam conciliavit ipsa
natura, ita contracta est res et adducta in angustum, ut omnis caritas aut
inter duos aut inter paucos iungeretur.”
34. Cicero, De inventione 2.55.166: “Amicitia est voluntas erga aliquem
bonarum rerum illius ipsius causa, quem diligit, cum eius pari voluntate.”
Although the passage from the De amicitia is quoted in the Florilegium Gal-
licum, an influential twelfth-century anthology of classical texts, the defin-
ition of friendship from Cicero’s De inventione is not found there, making
it less likely the love letters could have been inspired by that anthology; Jo-
hannes Hamacher, ed., Florilegium Gallicum. Prolegomena und Edition der
Exzerpte von Petron bis Cicero, De oratore, Lateinische Sprache une Literatur
des Mittelalters 5 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1975), p. 359. Passages from the
De inventione (but not that about friendship) are edited on pp. 255–58. This
anthology seems to have been composed near Orleans, Rosemary Burton,
Classical Poets in the ‘Florilegium Gallicum’, Lateinische Sprache und Liter-
atur des Mittelalters 14 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1983), p. 31.
35. Theologia ‘Scholarium’ 1.3–4, CCCM 13: 319. This is a more detailed ver-
sion of a passage found in the Sententie Magistri Petri Abaelardi, ed. David E.
Luscombe et al., CCCM 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 5–6.This record
of Abelard’s teaching explains caritas more fully in Sententie 243 (p. 127–28).
In 245 (p. 129), Abelard also supplies the Augustinian definition; in one
manuscript the additional point is made that although the wording is dif-
ferent, the fundamental teaching is the same.
36. Cicero, De amicitia 16.58: “Altera sententia est quae definit amicitiam
paribus officiis ac voluntatibus. Hoc quidem est nimis exigue et exiliter ad
calculos vocare amicitiam, ut par sit ratio acceptorum et datorum.”
37. Jerome, Ep. 3.6 (CSEL 54: 18). SN 138. 7 begins with this final line of
Jerome, but then continues with a passage inspired by a quotation in
Jerome’s Ep. 68.1 (54: 675: In amicis enim non res quaeritur sed voluntas) and
390 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

various other sources (summarized by Boyer-McKeon, p. 471): “Amicitia

quae desinere postest, vera numquam fuit. In amico non res quaeritur sed
voluntas. Amicitia quae finiri potest, nunquam vera fuit. Magis enim in in-
sidiis nostrorum periclitamur quam aliorum.”
38. Letter 25: “Et nos, licet omnibus integram caritatem exhibeamus, non
tamen omnes equaliter diligimus.” Cf. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana
1.61 (28), ed. W. M. Green (CSEL 80: 23): “Omnes autem aeque diligendi
sunt. Sed cum omnibus prodesse non possis, his potissimum consulendum
est qui pro locorum et temporum vel quarumlibet rerum opportunitatibus
constrictius tibi quasi quadam sorte iunguntur.”
39. Evident from the tables given by Boyer-McKeon, Sic et Non, p. 643.
40. Questions 136–138 all occur in the version CT of the Sic et Non (manuscripts
that also contain the Theologia Christiana, and incorporate passages from this
version of the Sic et Non). On the chronology of the Sic et Non, see Mews,
“Peter Abelard’s Theologia Christiana and Theologia ‘Scholarium’” re-examined,”
in Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 52 (1985): 109–58, esp. 127–29 ;
reprinted in Abelard and his Legacy (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2001).
41. In his edition, Baldricus Burgulianus, Carmina, 2 vols (Paris: Belles Lettres,
1998, 2001), Jean-Yves Tilliette follows the reading of speciale in the sole
surviving manuscript as spetiale in some places; for example: Carmina 200
(vv. 77–80), ed. Tilliette 2: 125: “Ergo patet liquido quoniam genus istud
amoris / Non commune aliquid, sed spetiale sapit. Est spetialis amor, quem
nec caro subcomitatur, / Nec desiderium sauciat illicitum.” This theme is
also raised in no. 138, ed. by Tilliette, 2: 47: “Non est communis quae spe-
ciale sapit, / Haec speciale sapit, quia carmen cantat amoris.” No. 142 (v.
2), 2: 50: “Fac speciale tibi Burguliensis aue.”
42. Baudri, Carmina, no. 99 (vv. 185–86, 213–14), to Godfrey of Reims, ed.
Tilliette, 1: 110: “Nam scripsi quaedam quam complectuntur amorem /
Carminibusque meis sexus uterque placet. . . . Tu magis alter ego, non ut
communis amicus, / Sed specialis, aue.”
43. Ep. 6, ed. Hicks, p. 88. Jean de Meun provides the correct translation: “Ou
sien specialment, la sieue senglement.” While the correct reading of Suo
rather than as Domino (the mistaken reading in Duchesne’s 1616 edition,
reprinted in PL 178: 213A) was given by Muckle in his edition of this let-
ter in Mediaeval Studies 17 (1955): p. 241, Betty Radice, The Letters of
Abelard and Heloise (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 159, persisted in
reading it as Domino, translating the greeting as “God’s own in species, his
own as individual.” The correct reading is given in the revised and ex-
panded edition of Radice’s translation, published in 2003 (p. 93).
44. Ep. 3, ed. Hicks, 57: “Memento itaque semper in orationibus tuis ejus qui
specialiter est tuus.”
45. Ep. 3, ed. Hicks, p. 54: “Heloise, dilectissime sorori sue in Christo, Abaelar-
dus, frater ejus in ipso.”
 N OT ES 391

46. Ep. 50: “verum dicis, o omnium mulierum dulcissima, quod vere talis
dilectio nos non colligavit, qualis solet colligare, qui sua tantum querunt.”
47. Ep. 52: “Quia mandatum domini non observamus, nisi dilectionem ad in-
vicem habeamus, oportet nos divine scripture obedire.” In Ep. 54, he
speaks de tua dilectione. The first time he speaks of himself sharing in an un-
divided dilectio is in Ep. 85.
48. Ziolkowski, p. 185, quoting Dronke’s review of Wheeler, IJCT 8/1 (2001):
136 (n. 18 above). Albert the Great employs scibilitas in his commentary on
the Metaphysics 7.1, ed. B. Geyer, Alberti Magni Opera Omnia 16.2 (Mün-
ster: Aschendorff, 1964), p. 331, and in his Summa theologiae, ed. D. Siedler,
34 (1978), p. 796. Albert the Great, a voracious reader, could have come
across the notion of scibilitas through Abelard’s Dialectica, preserved at
Saint-Victor, during his studies in Paris. The term was used more exten-
sively by Ramon Lull, who quite likely had access to Albert the Great.
49. This suggestion is made by Piron, Lettres des deux amants, pp. 25–26. He
persuasively suggests that the exchange ended abruptly because Abelard
sent Heloise to his sister to have the child. Whenever the final poem was
written, it does seem to have been added as a coda.
50. See William D. Patt, “The Early ‘ars dictaminis’ as Response to a Changing
Society,” Viator 9 (1978): 133–55, and more fully Carol Dana Lanham,
“Freshman Composition in the Early Middle Ages: Epistolography and
Rhetoric before the Ars Dictaminis,” Viator 23 (1992): 115–34.
51. A recent summary of treatises on the ars dictaminis is that of Anne-Marie
Turcan-Verkerk, “Répertoire chronologique des théories de l’art d’écrire
en prose (milieu du XI s.–années 1230),” Archivum Latinitatis medii aevi 64
(2006): 193–239; on love letters attached to these manuals, see Ernstpeter
Ruhe, De amasio ad amasiam. Zur Gattungsgeschichte des mittelalterlichen
Liebesbriefes, Beiträge zur romanischen Philologie des Mittelalters, 10 (Mu-
nich: Wilhelm Fink, 1975). The publication of the thesis of Turcan-Verk-
erk on the early treatises on letter writing of Bernard of Bologna, and his
student Guido of Arezzo, is eagerly awaited, as well as critical editions of
these texts.
52. Die Reinhardsbrunner Briefsammlung, ed. Friedel Peeck, MGH Epistolae Se-
lectae 5 (Munich, 1952; reprinted 1978), Ep. 97, ed. Peeck, p. 81. She also
requests the herb gentian for medical reasons, a modest example of a pri-
vate letter. The manuscript containing the Reinhardsbrunn letters (Pom-
mersfelden, Schönbornsche Bibliothek, MS 31, formerly MS 2750, ff.
2v–50), also contains copies of Adalbertus Samaritanus’ De praeceptis dicta-
minum (on ff. 50–57), and (on ff. 57–69v) the Rationes dictandi prosaice of
Hugh of Bologna.
53. Peter von Moos (p. 45, n.141) quotes from the as yet unpublished thesis on
prose rhyme of Anne-Marie Turcan-Verkerk, Forme et réforme. Le Grégori-
anisme du moyen âge latin. Essai d’interprétation historique du phenomène de la
392 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

rime dans la prose latine des XIe et XIIe siècles (Paris, 1995). She observes that
prose rhyme effectively disappears from the ars dictaminis in France after the
second half of the twelfth century, although continuing in some hagio-
graphic texts. I am grateful to Turcan-Verkerk for providing a copy of her
thesis summary.
54. Constant J. Mews, “Hugh Metel, Heloise and Peter Abelard: The Letters of
an Augustinian Canon and the Challenge of Innovation in Twelfth-Cen-
tury Lorraine,” in Viator 32 (2001): 59–91.
55. Carol Dana Lanham, Salutatio Formulas in Latin Letters to 1200: Syntax, Style
and Theory (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2004 (originally published
1975), pp. 49–52. Arguing against Roscelin, Abelard singled out St. Anselm
for praise in around 1120, Ep. 14, ed. Smits, p. 280, and is familiar with his
writing, though more critical on a point of detail, in Theologia Christiana
4.83 (CCCM 12: 304). Anselm had exchanged letters with members of
Notre-Dame in the 1090s (Ep. 161–62, ed. Schmitt, 4: 32–34), and was in-
vited to France in 1104–1107 by prince Louis, Ep. 432 (ed. Schmitt, 5:
279). See Mews, “St. Anselm and the Development of Philosophical The-
ology in Twelfth-Century Paris” in Anselm and Abelard. Investigations and
Juxtapositions ed. Giles E. M. Gasper and Helmut Kohlenberger (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2006), pp. 196–222. On the early
diffusion of manuscripts of the letters, see Walter Fröhlich, in his introduc-
tion to The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, 1 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian
Publications, 1990), pp. 26–52.
56. Anselm, Ep. 57 (3: 171): “Domino et patri suo, reverendo archiepiscopo
Lanfranco: frater Anselmus suus quod suus. . . . sic mihi ad inculcandum
quis cui et quo anime loquatur, libet ut tam saepe epistolae nostrae, quas
vestrae dirigo paternae celsitudini, in fronte pictum praeferant: ‘domino et
patri’ et ‘suus quod suus’.”
57. Anselm, Ep. 68 (3: 188): “Suo domino, suo fratri, suo amico carissimo
domno Gondulfo: frater Anselmus quod suo suus.” Fröhlich translates this,
in The Letters of Saint Anselm, vol 1: 221. as “ . . . sends his whole self.” H.
M Canatella observes that Anselm’s letters, especially to Gundulf and Ida,
articulate a strong sense of friendship as love, “Friendship in Anselm of
Canterbury’s Correspondence: Ideals and Experience,” Viator 38/2 (2007):
351–67.
58. Anselm, Ep. 85 (3: 209): “Domino sponte diligenti, merito dilecto, non ut
ignoto, sed ut familiari amico Waltero: frater Anselmus quod suus.” Fröh-
lich, (1: 220) renders this as “To his lord Walter, . . .” losing the effect of
contrasting the impersonal Domino with the more intimate Waltero.
59. Anselm, Ep. 23 (3: 130), 25 (3: 132), 26 (3: 134), 27 (3: 134), 49 (3: 162),
57 (3: 171) [x 2], 66 (3: 186), 85 (3: 209), 127 (3: 269), 144 (3: 290). Al-
though Fröhlich rightly translates quod suus in Ep. 23 as “sends his whole
self ” his translation of the same phrase in subsequent letters, “brother
 N OT ES 393

Anselm, who is in everything totally his” does not capture quod suus fully.
St. Bernard singles out this greeting in a letter that he has received in Ep.
86, ed. Leclercq, SBO 7: 223: “Frater Bernardus de Claravalle suo illi quod
suo. Hanc mihi tu salutationis formulam tradidisti, scribendo: ‘Suus ille
quod suus.” Bernard then used the greeting quod suus in Ep. 147 (7: 350)
to Peter the Venerable, and 178 (7: 397) to the Pope.
60. Letters 2 (quid amplius quam seipsum); 5 (meipsam, quamdiu vivam), 11 (et
seipsam).
61. Piron, Lettres des deux amants, p. 44 discusses this ambiguity, but prefers to
translate it as equivalent to the the first (i.e., divine) being, “l’être qui est.”
62. Anselm, Ep. 85 (3:210): “Tanto namque flagrant caritatis ardore, tanto fra-
grant benignitatis odore, tanta suavitatis sunt iucundae, sic sunt salubris ad-
monitionis fecundae litterae, quibus meae parvitati vestra dignata est se
notificare dulcis dilectio et dilecta prudentia, ut nolit quiescere mens mea,
donec videant oculi mei vultum eius et audiant aures meae vocem eius et
fruatur anima mea praesentia eius, qui me tanto ignotus ignotum amore
gratis anticipavit . . .” with debt to the translation of Fröhlich, The Letters of
Saint Anselm, 1: 220–21.
63. Anselm, Oratio 18 (3: 71): “Tu scis, domine, qua dilectionem quam iubes
amo, amorem diligo, caritatem concupisco.”
64. Augustine, En. in Psalmos Ps. 9.5, CCSL 38 : “pes animae recte intellegitur
amor; qui cum pravus est, uocatur cupiditas aut libido; cum autem rectus,
dilectio uel caritas”. De diversis quaestionibus 35( CCSL 44A:) : “amor autem
rerum amandarum caritas uel dilectio melius dicitur.”
65. Mia Münster-Svendsen shows how such intimate discourse between
teachers and students (often highly erotic) can be found in the Carolingian
period, “The Model of Scholastic Mastery,” in Teaching and Learning in
Northern Europe 1000–1200, ed. Sally N. Vaughn and Jay Rubenstein
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 307–42. She quotes (p. 312) a poetic letter
of Froumund: “Salve confrater mihi dulcis semper amore / Dulcior es mihi
tu quam mellis gustus in ore. /Nescit amare loquor, sed amor dulcescit et
ad cor / Intrat et alterius coniungit foedere pectus. / Omnibus exceptis
mihi tu sis carior istis.” Tegernseer Briefsammlung, p. 28.
66. ”The Liber confortatorius of Goscelin of St-Bertin,” ed. C. H. Talbot, in:
Analecta Monastica series 3, ed. by M. M. Lebreton, J. Leclercq and C. H.
Talbot, Studia Anselmiana 37, (Rome 1955), pp. 1–117.
67. The Liber confortatorius [LC] has been translated by W. R. Barnes and Re-
becca Hayward, in Writing the Wilton Women, ed. Stephanie Hollis (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 97–212. There is also a translation by Monika
Otter, Goscelin of St. Bertin,The Book of Encouragement and Consolation (Liber
confortatorius) (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004). Why Eve chose to
go to Angers is not certain, although there may have been pre-existing
connections between Wilton and Le Ronceray. Given that hers is not an
394 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

English name, she could have been brought by her mother to Wilton from
the continent in around 1065, when Queen Edith rebuilt Wilton abbey
church; see Hollis in Writing the Wilton Women, p. 225. Rebecca Hayward
comments on parallels with Abelard and Heloise, “Spiritual Friendship and
Gender Difference in the Liber confortatorius” (Writing the Wilton Women, pp.
341–54), as does Monika Otter, pp. 7–10.
68. LC, ed. Talbot, p. 29: “Afferebant tibi Christum frequentes membrane et
scedule nostre, nec tue uacabant castissime littere.” Trans. Barnes and Hay-
ward, p. 104.
69. LC, ed.Talbot, p. 26: “Archanum duorum est Christo medio signatum, vir-
ginee simplicitatis et candide dilectionis prelibans officium.” Trans. Barnes
and Hayward, p. 99 (who translate dilectio as affection, rather than love, as
here).
70. LC, ed.Talbot, p. 27: “Quo autem longius corpore remouit, eo insepara-
bilius unicam aliquando duorum animam resolidabit.”Trans. by Barnes and
Hayward, p. 101.
71. LC, p. 27: “Vnde, quia nec potuit nec meruit unanimis tuus te accessibus
uisitare corporeis, querit nunc anxiis litteris et longis querelis. Parauit nobis
hanc consolationem prouida miseratio Domini, ut locis elongati, fide et
scriptis possimus representari. Et que meis debebantur sceleribus, hec sep-
arationis tormenta, alligare et refouere nos poterit intercurrens epistola.”
Trans. by Barnes and Hayward, p. 101.
72. Geoffrey of Vendôme writes Ep. 48 to Eve and Hervé (PL 157:
184A–186A). He also writes two subsequent letters in a more friendly
tone to Hervé as amico suo and as dilecto suo, Ep. 49–50 (PL 157: 186A–
188A); Œuvres, ed. by Geneviève Giordanengo (Paris: CNRS, 1996). Hi-
larii Aurelianensis Versus et ludi. Epistolae. Ludus Danielis Belouacensis, ed.
Walther Bulst and M. L. Bulst-Thiele (Leiden : Brill, 1989), p. 23: “Ibi vixit
Euua diu cum Herueo socio / Qui hec audis, ad hanc uocem te turbari
sentio; / Fuge, frater, suspicari, nec sit hic suspicio, / Non in mundo, sed in
Christo fuit hec dilectio.” Bulst observes that most of the datable letters of
Hilary were written in the time of Tiburg, abbess of Le Ronceray
1104–22.
73. For further detail on what follows, see Mews, “Negotiating the Boundaries
of Gender in Religious Life: Robert of Arbrissel and Hersende, Abelard
and Heloise,” Viator 37 (2006): 113–48.
74. Werner Robl, Heloisas Herkunft. Hersindis Mater (Munich: Olzog, 2001),
summarized in his chapter “Hersindis Mater. Neues zur Fami-
liengeschichte Heloisas mit Ausblicken auf die Familie Peter Abaelards,” in
Peter Abaelard. Leben, Werk, Wirkung, ed. Ursula Niggli (Freiburg im Breis-
gau: Herder, 2003), pp. 25–89. Obituaire du Paraclet, ed. A. Boutillier du
Retail and P. Piétrisson de Saint-Aubin, Obituaires de la province de Sens, IV.
Diocèses de Meaux et de Troyes (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1923), p. 428.
 N OT ES 395

The Fontevrault necrology is recorded in Gallia Christiana, vol. 2 (Paris,

1720) col. 1313; see also Obituaires de la province de Sens, II. Diocèse de
Chartres, ed. A. Molinier (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1906), p. 198 [Obit-
uaire de Saint-Père-en-Vallée] and p. 661 [Obituaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Jean-
en-Vallée]. The awareness of Hersende of Fontevraud in Chartres may be
connected to the proximity of Haute-Bruyère, where Bertrada de Mont-
fort, queen of France and nun of Fontevraud from 1108, established a
daughter house of Fontevraud.
75. Robl provides a useful family tree in “Hersindis mater,” p. 89; cf. Amboise,
PL 178: 74A. Heloise was not mentioned by Duchesne, however, in his
1624 history of the Montmorency family, presumably because this was an
oral tradition of the Paraclete, rather than officially documented.
76. Lobrichon, Héloïse. L’amour et le savoir, pp. 121–25. The suggestion that
Heloise gained access to Argenteuil through the Montmorency or Gar-
lande connections of an illegitimate father was made by Bautier, “Paris au
temps d’Abélard,” p. 76. Bautier, unaware of Hersende of Fontevrault, did
not think of Hersende as having a Montmorency family connection to
Argenteuil.
77. Marbod’s letter is edited and translated into both English and French in a
definitive collection of texts relating to Robert of Arbrissel, Les deux vies
de Robert d’Arbrissel, fondateur de Fontevraud. Légendes, écrits et témoignages, ed.
Jacques Dalarun, Geneviève Giordanego, Armelle Le Huërou, Jean
Longère, Dominique Poirel, Bruce L. Venarde (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006),
pp. 526–57. The English versions of these texts, translated by Bruce Ve-
narde, had previously been published within Robert of Arbrissel: a Medieval
Religious Life (Washington: Catholic University of America, 2004). On
Robert’s reputation for having sinned sexually, and the presence of infants
alongside his followers, see Marbod, Deux vies, pp. 530–32: “Mulierum co-
habitationem, in quo genere quondam peccasti, dicere plus amare . . .
Quod quam periculose sit factum, ut compendiose dicam, vagitus infan-
tium prodiderunt.”
78. Baudri’s Life of Robert is edited and translated within Deux vies, pp.
124–87; cf. HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 64: “Proinde diversas disputando peram-
bulans provincias” and Baudri, Deux vies, p. 144: “Perambulat regiones et
provincias irrequietus et in litterarum studiis non poterat non esse sollici-
tus.” Jacques Dalarun observes that a copy of this Life, followed by the early
statutes of Fontevrault, was preserved at Saint-Denis in the early seven-
teenth century, Deux vies, pp. 46–47.
79. Abelard, Ep. 14, ed. Smits, p. 280, cited in Deux vies, p. 631 (no. 17). The
royal abbey of St-Martin of Tours, where Roscelin was a canon was en-
gaged in a legal battle with Fontevraud between 1117 and 1119 over land
of St-Martin, given to Bertrada as a dower by Philip, that Bertrada had
given to Fontevrault; Dufour, Recueil des Actes, no. 155, 1: 319–21.
396 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

80. Baudri, Carmina, no. 26, ed.Tilliette 1: 45–46 and 175; Baudri in Deux vies,
p. 72: “Constituit igitur ex sororibus unam responsis et operibus assistricem
et magistram, Hersendim nomine, quae, spreta sua qua praelucebat nobili-
tate, choris foeminarum adhaeserat imo prior conversa fuerat. Vivebat
autem Hersendis et magnae religionis et magni partier consilii.” A poem
that Baudri sent a poem addressed to Peter, “a boy of outstanding intellect”
may be addressed to the young Abelard; no. 113 (1: 119–20).
81. Supplementum historiae vitae Roberti, in Deux vies, p. 252 : “Ibi jacet
Hersendis monacha, bona coadiutrix mea, cujus consilio et opere con-
struxi Fontis Ebraudi aedificia.”
82. On the importance of these reforms, see Mary Stroll, Calixtus II
(1119–1124). A Pope Born to Rule (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 400–405.
83. Peggy Kamuf, translator of Jacques Derrida, argued that Heloise’s letters
subvert those of Abelard, without making any biographical claims about
Heloise, in Fictions of Feminine Desire: Disclosures of Heloise (Lincoln: Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press, 1982). Barbara Newman by contrast argues that
attributing the correspondence as a whole to Abelard, continues a repres-
sion of her voice, “Authority, Authenticity, and the Repression of Heloise,”
The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22 (1992): 121–58, repr. in
From Virile Woman to WomanChrist. Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 46–75. See also
the range of perspectives assembled in Bonnie Wheeler (ed.), Listening to
Heloise (n. 6 above).
84. Lobrichon, Héloïse. L’amour et le savoir (n. 6 above), pp. 318–28.
85. Abaelards “Historia calamitatum”. Text-Übersetzung-literaturwissenschaftliche
Modellanalysen, ed. Dag Nikolaus Hasse (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002).
86. An extended psychological reading of the correspondence is offered by
Roland Oberson, Abélard mon frère. Essai d’interprétation (Lausanne: L’Age
d’homme, 2001). A recent novel exploring the story of their relationship,
with a preface by Jean Jolivet, is that of Suzanne Bernard, Le Roman
d’Héloïse et Abélard (Pantin: Le temps des cerises, 2001). I am grateful to all
these authors for sharing their work with me.
87. Many of the most important studies of Peter von Moos are reprinted in
Peter von Moos, Abaelard und Heloise. Gesammelte Studien zum Mittelalter,
Band 1 (n. 16 above).
88. Von Moos put forward the single author hypothesis in “Heloise und Abae-
lard,” in Gefälscht. Betrug in Politik, Literatur, Wissenschaftliche Kunst und
Musik, ed. Karl Corino (Nördlingen: Greno, 1988), pp. 150–61, rewritten
with an explanation of his shifting position as “Das Abaelard und Heloise
zugeschriebene Briefwerk. Am Nullpunkt der Zuschreibungsversuche?” in
Abaelard und Heloise, pp. 199–21. He is much more nuanced in “Abaelard,
Heloise und ihr Paraklet: ein Kloster nach Mass. Zugleich eine Streitschrift
gegen die ewige Wiederkehr hermeneutische Naivität,” in Das Eigene und
 N OT ES 397

das Ganze. Zum Individuellen im mittelalterlichen Religiosentum, ed. Gert

Melville and Th. Schürer, Vita regularis (Münster, 2002), pp. 563–620;
reprinted in Abaelard und Heloise, pp. 233–301.
89. Morgan Powell, “Listening to Heloise at the Paraclete: Of Scholarly Di-
version and a Woman’s ‘Conversion’,” in Listening to Heloise, ed. Wheeler,
pp. 255–86.
90. Two small phrases might possibly indicate such cross references: Letter 5,
ed. Hicks, p. 83 (quibus etiam ut iam supra memini scriptum est: Mulieres sedentes
ad monumentum lamentabantur flentes Dominum), although this could refer
back to earlier (p. 72) in the same letter, or to Letter 3 (p. 60); his comment
about the Apostle’s devotion to women (ut jam satis alibi meminimus) in
Abelard’s Rule, p. 258, which may refer back just to the previous letter, and
does not necessarily constitute evidence of the exchange as a unified
whole.
91. The claim that Heloise was born in 1100 has no foundation. The reminis-
cence of Peter the Venerable (1092/94–1156) that he remembered Heloise
as a learned mulier before she became a nun, suggests they may have been
of about the same age; Peter the Venerable, Ep. 115, ed. Constable, 1: 303
and 2: 257. Piron, Lettres des deux amants, p. 27, plausibly suggests that the
affair might have begun in autumn 1114, rather than 1115 as I had sug-
gested in 1999, and that Abelard’s statement that he taught quietly at the
cathedral school for several years (HC, ed. Monfrin, p. 70) refers to the pe-
riod until his castration. He suggests the relationship was discovered in
1116, with Astralabe being born later in that year. Because Fulbert is not
mentioned in a charter issued between March/April and May 15, 1117
(Dufour, Actes de Louis VI, no. 123, 1:256), it is quite possible that he had
gone into exile, as attested by Fulk of Deuil (Ep. 16, PL 178: 375B), dur-
ing this period, and that the castration was thus in early 1117. Fulbert is
not mentioned in a similar list from 1118, but reappears in a charter of
April 1, 1119, Lasteyrie, Cartulaire, nos. 179, 182, pp. 202, 204.
92. Sic et Non, Prol., p. 98, quoting Augustine, In Iohannis epistulam ad Parthos
tractatus 7, PL 35: 2033C; also used in Sermon 107 (PL 39:1958A) attrib-
uted to Augustine: “Dilige ergo, et quidquid volueris, fac” and sermon 5
(PL 46: 985A): “dilige et quidquid vis fac.”
93. Abelard borrowed this form of the quotation from Ivo of Chartres, Decre-
tum, Prol., PL 161: 48B in SN Prol., p. 98, 138:16, in Commentarium ad Ro-
manos 4 (13.10), CCCM 11: 293, and in his Ethica, ed. Luscombe, p. 38; ed.
Rainer Ilgner, CCCM 190 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), p. 25. On the history
of this saying, see Giles Constable, “Love and Do What You Will”:The Medieval
History of an Augustinian Precept (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1999).
94. Sermo domni Roberti, in Deux vies, pp. 460–79, esp. p. 464 : “dilige et quic-
quid vis fac.”
95. Heloise, Letter 4, ed. Hicks, p. 69.
398 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

96. Abelard, Collationes, ed. John Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi (Oxford :
Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 104–106.
97. Sententie 249–51, ed. Luscombe et al., p. 131–32.
98. Jacques Dalarun, “Nouveaux aperçus sur Abélard, Héloïse et le Paraclet,”
Francia 32 (2005): 19–66, correcting the date of Troyes, Bibl. mun. 802,
given by Monfrin, HC, p. 11.
99. On the manuscripts of the correspondence, see Monfrin’s introduction to
HC, p. 58 and that of Hicks, p. li. The manuscript belonging to Petrarch,
Paris, BNF lat. 2923, also dated by Monfrin (p. 19) to the late thirteenth
century is similarly needing to be redated to the mid thirteenth century,
or even a little earlier.
100. The additional texts are printed immediately after the authentic texts from
the Paraclete copy seen in 1616, reprinted in PL 178 : 317B–326A. Jacques
Dalarun suggested it was copied by William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris
from 1228 to 1249. John Benton observed that Eudes Rigaud, archbishop
of Rouen, visited his sister, Marie, abbess of the Paraclete, in June 10–12,
1249, the year after he became archbishop. Eudes had a known interest in
reforming religious life for women, and could have obtained the Abelard-
Heloise letters from his sister while she was simply a nun at the abbey, and
he was a teacher in Paris, perhaps even attending the Council of Rouen in
1231; see John Benton, “The Paraclete and the Council of Rouen of
1231,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law 4 (1974): 33–38, reprinted in John F.
Benton, Culture, Power and Personality in Medieval France, ed. Thomas Bisson
(London: Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 411–416.
101. Although Abelard’s Rule (erroneously identified as Letter VIII in the 1616
edition, reprinted in PL 178: 255A–314B) is copied without a break after
Abelard’s letter of introduction, Nicolas de Baye owned a copy of the let-
ters in the early fifteenth century that also including eight unbound gath-
erings of the Rule (Tripertitum . . . ; printed immediately after Valete in
Christo, sponsae Christi in PL 178: 258A, exactly as in Troyes, Bibl. mun. 802)
separately from the letters. This may be the original collection of letters,
from which the other copies were made that contain only Abelard’s letter
of introduction, not his Rule, such as Paris, BNF lat. 2923, obtained by Pe-
trarch in the 1330s, probably through his friend, Roberto de Bardi; see
Julia Barrow, Charles S. F. Burnett and David Edward Luscombe, “A
Checklist of the Manuscripts Containing the Writings of Peter Abelard and
Heloise and Other Works Closely Associated with Abelard and his School,”
Revue d’Histoire des Textes 14–15 (1984–85): 183–302, here no. 212 (p. 229)
and Mews, “La bibliothèque du Paraclet du XIIIe siècle à la Révolution,”
Studia Monastica 27 (1985): 31–67; reprinted in Mews, Reason and Belief in
the Age of Roscelin and Abelard (London: Ashgate, 2002).
102. Mews, “Heloise and Liturgical Experience at the Paraclete,” Plainsong and
Medieval Music 11.1 (2002): 25–35, and two chapters, “Liturgy and Identity
 N OT ES 399

at the Paraclete: Heloise, Abelard and the Evolution of the Cistercian Re-
form” and “Liturgy and Monastic Observance in Practice at the Paraclete,”
in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and
David Wulstan (Westhumble, Surrey-Ottawa: Plainsong and Medieval
Music Society-Institute of Medieval Music, 2003), pp. 19–33, 100–112 and
p. 143 in chapter 10.
103. David Wulstan, “Heloise at Argenteuil and the Paraclete,” and “Sources and
Influences: Lyric and Drama at the ‘School of Abelard’,” in The Poetic and
Musical Legacy, pp. 67–90 and 113–39. The plays of Vic, which he attributes
to Heloise, have been edited by Peter Dronke, Nine Medieval Latin Plays
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 92–105. Dronke (p.
85) thinks Epithalamica was composed by one of the sisters of the Paraclete,
inspired by the one of the plays of Vic.
104. See above, Chapter 6, n. 66 and 67.
105. La bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Clairvaux du XIIe au XVIIIe siècle. I Catalogues
et répertoires, ed. André Vernet (Paris: CNRS, 1979), p. 317; mentioned by
Piron, Lettres des deux amants, p. 210.
106. See above, Chapter 1, n. 24.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

his bibliography lists only the more important primary sources, either
T in Latin or in translation, as well as major secondary sources useful for
students to pursue further research. For more detailed bibliographies, see
my volume, Peter Abelard, Authors of the Middle Ages 2.5 (London:Vario-
rum, 1995), pp. 45–88, and for commentary on items published before
1988, Jean Jolivet and Constant J. Mews, “Peter Abelard and his Influence,”
Contemporary Philosophy: A new survey, ed. Guttorm Fløstad (Amsterdam:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), vol. 6 Philosophy and Science in the Mid-
dle Ages, 1:105–40.

Writings of Abelard and Heloise

Ballanti, Graziella, trans., Un Epistolario d’Amore del XII secolo (Abelardo e Eloisa?)
(Rome: Edizioni Anicia, 1988).
Boyer, Blanche B. and Richard McKeon, ed., Peter Abailard, Sic et Non: A Critical
Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976–77).
Burnett, Charles S. F., ed. [with translation], “Peter Abelard, ‘Soliloquium’. A Crit-
ical Edition,” Studi Medievali 3a Ser. 25 (1984), 857–94.
——“‘Confessio fidei ad Heloisam’—Abelard’s Last Letter to Heloise? A Discus-
sion and Critical Edition of the Latin and Medieval French Versions,” Mittel-
lateinisches Jahrbuch 21 (1986): 147–55.
——“Peter Abelard, Confessio fidei ‘Universis’: A Critical Edition of Abelard’s Reply
to Accusations of Heresy,” Mediaeval Studies 48 (1986): 111–38.
Buytaert, Eligius-Marie, ed., Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica I-II, CCCM 11–12
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1969) [CCCM 11: Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Ro-
manos; CCCM 12: Theologia christiana and early versions of Theologia Scholar-
ium].
——and Constant J. Mews, Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica III, CCCM 13 (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 1987) [Theologia Summi boni and Theologia Scholarium].
Cousin, Victor, ed., Petri Abaelardi opera hactenus seorsim edita, 2 vols. (Paris, 1849,
1859).
Dal Pra, Mario, ed., Pietro Abelardo. Scritti di Logica, 2nd ed (Florence: La Nuova
Italia Editrice, 1969).
402 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

De Rijk, Lambert Marie, ed., Petrus Abaelardus. Dialectica, Wijsgerige Teksten en

Studies 1, 2nd ed. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1970).
Geyer, Bernhard, ed., Peter Abaelards Philosophische Schriften. 1. Die Logica ‘Ingredien-
tibus’; 2. Die Logica ‘Nostrorum petitioni sociorum’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der
Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Band 21.1–3 (Münster: Aschen-
dorff, 1919 – 27); Band 21.4 2nd ed. (1970).
Hicks, Eric, ed., La vie et les epistres Pierres Abaelart et Heloys sa fame 1 (Paris: Hon-
oré Champion, 1991).
Könsgen, Ewald, Epistolae Duorum Amantium. Briefe Abaelards und Heloises?, Mittel-
lateinisches Studien und Texte 8 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974).
Luscombe, David Edward, ed. and trans, Peter Abelard’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1971).
McLaughlin, T. P., ed., “Abelard’s Rule for Religious Women,” Mediaeval Studies 18
(1956): 241–92.
McNamer, Elizabeth Mary, trans., “The Problems of Heloise” in The Education of
Heloise. Methods, Content, and Purpose of Learning in the Twelfth Century (Lewis-
ton: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), pp. 111–83.
Migne, Jacques-Paul, ed., Petri Abaelardi Abbatis Rugensis Opera Omnia, Patrologia
Latina 178 (Paris: Garnier, 1885).
Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo, ed., Twelfth Century Logic. Texts and Studies II: Abaelardiana
inedita, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1958).
Monfrin, Jacques, ed., Abélard. Historia calamitatum.Texte critique avec une introduction,
Bibliothèque des textes philosophiques (Paris: Vrin, 1959).
Morin, Patrick, ed. and trans., Abélard. Des intellections (Paris: Vrin, 1994).
Muckle, J. T., ed., “Abelard’s Letter of Consolation to a Friend,” Mediaeval Studies
12 (1950): 163–213.
——“The Personal Letters between Abelard and Héloïse,” Mediaeval Studies 15
(1953): 47–94.
——“The Letter of Héloïse on the Religious Life and Abelard’s First Reply,” Me-
diaeval Studies 17 (1955): 240–81.
Radice, Betty, trans. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1974).
Smits, Edmé, ed., Peter Abelard. Letters IX – XIV (Groningen: [privately published],
1983).
Szövérffy, Joseph, ed., Peter Abelard’s Hymnarius Paraclitensis, 2 vols. (Albany, NY:
Classical Folio Editions, 1975).
Thomas, Rudolf, ed., Petrus Abaelardus, Dialogus inter philosophum, Iudaeum et Chris-
tianum (Stuttgart: Friedrich Fromman, 1970).
Waddell, Chrysogonus, ed., “Epithalamica: An Easter Sequence by Peter Abelard,”
Musical Quarterly 72 (1986): 239–71.
——The Paraclete Statutes. Institutiones Nostrae. Introduction, Edition, Commentary,
CLS 20 (Gethsemani Abbey, Trappist: Cistercian Publications, 1987).
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 403

——Hymn Collections from the Paraclete, Cistercian Liturgy Series 8–9, 2 vols. (Geth-
semani Abbey, Trappist, Ky: Cistercian Publications, 1989).
Wolff, Étienne, trans., La Lettre d’amour au moyen âge: Boncompagno da Signa, La Roue
de Venus; Baudri de Bourgueil, Poésies; Manuscrit de Tegernsee, Lettres d’amours; Man-
uscrit de Troyes, Lettres de deux amants (Héloïse et Abélard?) (Paris: Nil Editions,
1996), pp. 117–51.

Other Primary Sources

Anselm of Canterbury, Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, 7
vols. (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1938 – 70).
Baudri of Bourgueil, Baldricus Burgulianus Carmina, ed. Karlheinz Hilbert, Editiones
Heidelbergenses 19 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1979).
Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. Jean Leclercq, 8 vols. (Rome: Edi-
tiones Cistercienses, 1957 – 75).
Cicero, On the Good Life [including De amicitia], trans. Michael Grant (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1971).
Dufour, Jean, ed., Recueil des Actes de Louis VI roi de France (1108 – 1137), 4 vols.
(Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 1992 - 94).
Guérard, M. ed., Cartulaire de l’Église Notre-Dame de Paris, Collection des Cartu-
laires de France 7, 4 vols. (Paris: Crapelet, 1850).
Guibert of Nogent, Monodiae, ed. Edmond-René Labande, Autobiographie (Paris:
Les Belles Lettres, 1981); Self and Society in Medieval France, trans. John F. Ben-
ton (1970; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984).
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum siue Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1912).
John of Salisbury, Historia pontificalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 2nd ed. (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
Lasteyrie, Robert de, ed., Cartulaire générale de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale,
1887).
Marbod of Rennes, Carmina, ed. Walther Bulst, “Liebesbriefgedichte Marbods,” in
Walther Bulst, Lateinisches Mittelalter. Gesammelte Beiträge, ed. Walter Berschin
(Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984).
Mirot, Léon, ed., La Chronique de Morigny (1095 – 1152) (Paris: Alphonse Picard,
1912).
Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969 – 78).
Ovid, The Erotic Poems [including Amores and Ars Amatoria], trans. Peter Green
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982).
——Heroides, trans. Harold Isbell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990).
——The Poems of Exile [Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto], trans. Peter Green (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1994).
404 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Otto of Freising, Ottonis et Rahewini Gesta Friderici Imperatoris, ed. Georg Waitz and
Bernard von Simson, 3rd ed. (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1912,
reprinted 1978).
Peter the Venerable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967).
Roscelin of Compiègne, Epistola ad Abaelardum, ed. Joseph Reiners, in Der Nomi-
nalismus in der Frühscholastik. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Universalienfrage im
Mittelalter, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, Bd 8.5
(Münster: Aschendorff, 1910), pp. 63–80.
Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. Henri Waquet (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1964);
The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. Richard C. Cusimano and John Moorhead
(Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1992).
Werner, Jakob, ed., Beiträge zur Kunde der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 2nd ed.
(Aarau: Sauerländer, 1905; reprinted Georg Olms: Hildesheim, 1979).

Select Secondary Sources

Barrow, Julia, Charles S. F. Burnett and David Edward Luscombe, “A Checklist of
the Manuscripts Containing the Writings of Peter Abelard and Heloise and
Other Works Closely Associated with Abelard and his School,” Revue d’Histoire
des Textes 14–15 (1984 – 85): 183–302.
Bautier, Robert-Henri, “Paris aux temps d’Abélard,” in Abélard en son temps, ed.
Jean Jolivet (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1981), pp. 21–77.
Benson, Robert L. and Giles Constable, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth
Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).
Beonio Brocchieri, Mariateresa Fumagalli, Eloisa e Abelardo (Milan: Arnoldo Mon-
dadori, 1984).
Bond, Gerald, The Loving Subject. Desire, eloquence and power in Romanesque France
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).
Charrier, Charlotte, Héloïse dans l’histoire et dans la légende (Paris: Honoré Cham-
pion 1933; reprinted Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977).
Clanchy, Michael T., Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
Cherewatuk, Karen and Ulrike Wiethaus, eds., Dear Sister. Medieval Women and the
Epistolary Genre (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).
Constable, Giles, Letters and Letter-Collections, Typologie des sources du moyen âge
occidental 17 (Brepols: Turnhout, 1976).
Dronke, Peter, Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love-Lyric, 2 vols., 2nd ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968).
——Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Testimonies, W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture 26
(Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1976).
——Women Writers of the Middle Ages. A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (†203)
to Marguerite Porete (†1310) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 405

——Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letter-

atura, 1992).
Gilson, Étienne, Héloïse et Abélard, 3rd revised ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1978); Heloise and
Abelard, trans. L. K. Shook (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1960).
Johnson, Penelope D., Equal in Monastic Profession. Religious Women in Medieval
France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
Jolivet, Jean, Arts du langage et théologie chez Abélard (Paris: Vrin, 1969).
——and René Louis, eds., Pierre Abélard—Pierre le Vénérable: les courants
philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en occident au milieu du XIIe siècle (Paris:
CNRS, 1975).
——ed., Abélard en son temps (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1981).
Kauffman, Linda, Discourses of Desire: Gender, Genre, and Epistolary Fictions (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1986).
Kristeva, Julia, Tales of Love, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1987).
Lanham, Carol Dana, Salutatio Formulas in Latin Letters to 1200: Syntax, Style, and
Theory, Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance-Forschung 22
(Munich: Arbeo-Gesellschaft, 1975).
Luchaire, Achille, Louis VI le Gros. Annales de sa vie et de son règne (Paris, 1890;
reprinted Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1964).
Luscombe, David Edward, “From Paris to the Paraclete: the correspondence of
Abelard and Heloise,” Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988): 247–83.
Marenbon, John, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1997).
McLeod, Enid, Héloïse. A Biography, 2nd ed. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971).
Mews, Constant J. “La bibliothèque du Paraclet du XIIIe siècle à la Révolution,”
Studia Monastica 27 (1985): 31–67.
——“An excerpt from Guibert of Nogent’s Monodiae (III, 17) appended to Au-
gustine’s De haeresibus,” Revue des études augustiniennes 33 (1987): 113–27.
——“In search of a name and its significance: a twelfth-century anecdote about
Thierry and Peter Abaelard,” Traditio 44 (1988): 175–200.
——“Un lecteur de Jérôme au douzième siècle,” in Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Ori-
ent, ed. Yves-Marie Duval (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1988), pp. 31–44.
——“Philosophy and Theology 1100 – 1150: The Search for Harmony,” in Le XIIe
siècle: Mutations et renouveau en France dans la première moitié du XIIe siècle, ed.
Françoise Gasparri (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1994), pp. 159–203.
——Peter Abelard, Authors of the Middle Ages 2.5 (London: Variorum, 1995).
——“Peter Abelard and the Enigma of Dialogue,” in Beyond the Persecuting Society.
Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment, ed. John Christian Laursen and Cary
J. Nederman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 25–52.
Moos, Peter von, Mittelalterforschung und Ideologiekritik. Der Gelehrtenstreit um Héloïse
(Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1974).
406 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Newman, Barbara, “Authority, authenticity, and the repression of Heloise,” Journal

of Medieval and Renaissane Studies 22 (1992): 121–57.
Ruhe, Ernstpeter, De amasio ad amasiam: Zur Gattungsgeschichte des mittelalterlichen
Liebesbriefes, Beiträge zur romanischen Philologie des Mittelalters 10 (Munich:
Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1975).
Ruys, Juanita Feros, “Role-playing in the Letters of Heloise and Abelard,” Parergon
n.s. 11 (1993): 53–78.
Schine Gold, Penny, The Lady and the Virgin. Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-
Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
Southern, Richard William, “The Letters of Abelard and Heloise,” Medieval Hu-
manism and Other Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), pp. 95–104.
Verger, Jacques, L’amour castré. L’histoire d’Héloïse et Abélard (Paris: Hermann, 1996).
BIBLIOGRAPHY SINCE 1999

This bibliography contains significant publications relating to the Epistolae duorum

amantium, or more generally to Abelard and Heloise, but is not exhaustive.

Epistolae duorum amantium

Cescutti, Eva and Philipp Steger, trans., Und wärst du doch bei mir. Ex epistolis duo-
rum amantium. Eine mittelalterliche Liebesgeschichte in Briefen. Lateinisch-deutsche
Ausgabe (Zurich: Manesse Verlag, 2005).
Fiochi, Claudio, trans., Lettere di due amanti. Attribute a Eloisa e Abelardo, with a pref-
ace by Maria Teresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri (Archinto: Collano, 2006).
Piron, Sylvain, ed. and trans. Lettres des deux amants, attribuées à Héloïse et Abélard
(Paris: Gallimard 2005).

Other Primary Sources

Abelard:
De Santis, Paola, ed., I Sermoni di Abelardo per le monache del Paracleto (Louvain: Leu-
ven University Press, 2002).
Ilgner, Rainer M., ed. Scito te ipsum, CCCM 190 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001).
Luscombe, David E. et al., Sententie Magistri Petri Abaelardi, CCCM 14 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2006).
Marenbon, John and Giovanni Orlandi, eds., Collationes (Oxford : Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2001).
Romig, Mary and David Luscombe, Expositio in Hexaemeron, CCCM 15 (Turn-
hout : Brepols, 2004).

Baudri de Bourgueil:
Tilliette, Jean-Yves, ed. and trans., Baldricus Burgulianus, Carmina, 2 vols. (Paris:
Belles Lettres, 1998, 2001).

Goscelin of St-Bertin:
Hollis, Stephanie, ed. and trans. Writing the Wilton Women (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004)
Otter, Monika, trans. Goscelin of St. Bertin, The Book of Encouragement and Consola-
tion (Liber confortatorius) (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004).
408 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Robert of Arbrissel:
Dalarun, Jacques, Geneviève Giordanego, Armelle Le Huërou, Jean Longère, Do-
minique Poirel, Bruce L. Venarde, eds., Les deux vies de Robert d’Arbrissel, fonda-
teur de Fontevraud. Légendes, écrits et témoignages, ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006).
Venarde, Bruce, trans., Robert of Arbrissel: A Medieval Religious Life (Washington:
Catholic University of America, 2004).

Secondary Sources
Classen, Albrecht, “Abaelards Historia Calamitatum, der Briefwechsel mit Heloise
und Gottfrieds von Strassburg Tristan,” Arcadia 35 (2000): 225–53.
Constable, Giles, “Sur l’attribution des Epistolae duorum amantium,” Académie des In-
scriptions et Belles-Lettres (Nov.–Dec. 2001): 1679–93.
——“The Authorship of the Epistolae duorum amantium. A Reconsideration,” in
Voices in Dialogue: New Problems in Reading Women’s Cultural History, ed. Linda
Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2005), pp. 167–78.
Dalarun, Jacques, “Nouveaux aperçus sur Abélard, Héloïse et le Paraclet,” Francia 32
(2005): 19–66.
Dronke, Peter, review of Bonnie Wheeler (ed.): Listening to Heloise, in International
Journal of the Classical Tradition 8/1 (2002): 134–39.
Dronke, Peter and Giovanni Orlandi, “New Works by Abelard and Heloise,” Filolo-
gia mediolatina 12 (2005): 123–77.
Findley, Brooke Heidenreich, “Sincere Hypocrisy and the Authorial Person in the
Letters of Heloise,” Romance notes, 45/3 (2005): 281–92.
——“Does the Habit Make the Nun? A Case Study of Heloise’s influence on
Abelard’s Ethical Philosophy,” Vivarium, 44 (2006): 248–75.
Hasse, Dag, ed., Abaelards “Historia calamitatum”.Text-Übersetzung-literaturwissenschaftliche
Modellanalysen, ed. Dag Nikolaus Hasse (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002).
Jaeger, C. Stephen, Ennobling Love. In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).
——“The ‘Epistolae duorum amantium’ and the Ascription to Heloise and
Abelard,” and “A Reply to Giles Constable,” in Voices in Dialogue: New Problems
in Reading Women’s Cultural History, ed. Linda Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 125–66 and 179–86.
Lobrichon, Guy, Héloïse. L’amour et le savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 2005).
Mews, Constant J. “Thèmes philosophiques dans les Epistolae duorum amantium: les
premiers lettres d’Héloïse et Abélard?” in Biard, Joel, ed., Langage, sciences, philoso-
phies au XIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1999), pp. 23–38.
——“Philosophical Themes in the Epistolae duorum amantium: Early Letters of
Heloise and Abelard?” in Listening to Heloise, ed. Wheeler, pp. 32–58.
——“Hugh Metel, Heloise and Peter Abelard: the Letters of an Augustinian Canon
and the Challenge of Innovation in Twelfth-Century Lorraine,” in Viator 32
(2001): 59–91
 BIBLIOGRAPHY SINCE 1999 409

——“Les lettres d’amour perdues d’Héloïse et la théologie de Pierre Abélard,” in

Pierre Abélard. Colloque international de Nantes, ed. Jean Jolivet and Henri Habrias
(Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003), pp. 137–59.
——“Heloise and Liturgical Experience at the Paraclete,” Plainsong and Medieval
Music 11.1 (2002): 25–35.
——“Liturgy and Identity at the Paraclete: Heloise, Abelard and the Evolution of
the Cistercian Reform” and “Liturgy and Monastic Observance in Practice at
the Paraclete,” in The Poetic and Musical Legacy, ed. Stewart and Wulstan, pp.
19–33, 100–112.
——La voix d’Héloïse. Un dialogue de deux amants (Fribourg-Paris: Academic Press
Fribourg–Éditions du Cerf, 2005), pp. 287–321, trans. Emilie Champs.
——Abelard and Heloise (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2005).
——“St. Anselm and the Development of Philosophical Theology in Twelfth-Cen-
tury Paris” in Anselm and Abelard. Investigations and Juxtapositions ed. Giles E. M.
Gasper and Helmut Kohlenberger (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 2006), pp. 196–222.
——“Negotiating the Boundaries of Gender in Religious Life: Robert of Arbris-
sel and Hersende, Abelard and Heloise,” Viator 37 (2006): 113–48.
——“Cicero and the Boundaries of Friendship in the Twelfth Century,” Viator
38/2 (2007): 369–84.
——“Discussing Love: the Epistolae duorum amantium and the Sic et Non,” Journal
of Medieval Latin, 19 (2009) (forthcoming).
——“William of Champeaux, the Foundation of Saint-Victor (Easter, 1111), and
the Evolution of Abelard’s Early Career,” in Actes du Colloque “Glosulae in
Priscianum” (Paris, 15–17 février 2007), ed. Irène Catach-Rosier and Anne Gron-
deux (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).
Moos, Peter von, “Die Epistolae duorum amantium und die säkulare Religion der
Liebe. Methodenkritische Vorüberlegungen zu einem einmaligen Werk mittel-
lateinischer Briefliteratur,” Studi Medievali 3a ser. 44 (2003): 1–115.
——“Kurzes Nachwort zu einer langen Geschichte mit missbrauchten Liebesbriefen:
Epistolae duorum amantium,” in von Moos, Abaelard und Heloise. pp. 282–92.
——“Das Abaelard und Heloise zugeschriebene Briefwerk. Am Nullpunkt der
Zuschreibungsversuche?” in von Moos, Abaelard und Heloise, pp. 199–21.
——“Abaelard, Heloise und ihr Paraklet: ein Kloster nach Mass. Zugleich eine
Streitschrift gegen die ewige Wiederkehr hermeneutische Naivität,” in Das
Eigene und das Ganze. Zum Individuellen im mittelalterlichen Religiosentum, ed.
Melville, Gert and Th. Schürer,Vita regularis (Münster: Lit, 2002), pp. 563–620;
in von Moos, Abaelard und Heloise, pp. 233–301.
——Abaelard und Heloise. Gesammelte Studien zum Mittelalter, Band 1, ed. Gert
Melville, Geschichte: Forschung und Wissenschaft, 14 (Münster: Lit, 2005).
——“Vom Nutzen der Philologie für den umgang mit anonymen Liebesbriefen.
Ein Nachwort zu den Epistolae duorum amantium,” in: Schrift und Liebe in der
Kultur des Mittelalters, ed. M. Schnyder,Trends in Medieval Philology (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2008).
410 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Münster-Svendsen, Mia “The Model of Scholastic Mastery,” in Teaching and Learn-

ing in Northern Europe 1000–1200, ed. Sally N. Vaughn and Jay Rubenstein
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 307–42.
Piron, Sylvain, “Heloise’s literary self-fashioning and the Epistolae duorum aman-
tium,” in Memory Constructions, ed. Lucie Dolezalova (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008)
(forthcoming).
Powell, Morgan, “Listening to Heloise at the Paraclete: Of Scholarly Diversion and
a Woman’s ‘Conversion’,” in Listening to Heloise, ed. Wheeler, pp. 255–86
Robl, Werner, Heloisas Herkunft. Hersindis Mater (Munich: Olzog, 2001).
——“Hersindis Mater. Neues zur Familiengeschichte Heloisas mit Ausblicken auf
die Familie Peter Abaelards,” in Peter Abaelard. Leben, Werk, Wirkung, ed. Niggli,
Ursula (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2003), pp. 25–89.
Ruys, Juanita, “Eloquencie vultum depingere: Eloquence and Dictamen in the Love
Letters of Heloise and Abelard,” in Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West
1100–1540. Essays in Honour of John O.Ward, ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Ne-
derman and Rodney M. Thomson (Brepols: Turnhout, 2003), pp. 99–112.
Stella, Francesco, “Le Epistolae Duorum Amantium: Nuovi Riscontri Intertestuali”
(Toronto 2–6 agosto 2006) (forthcoming).
——“Analisi informatiche del lessico e individuazione degli autori nelle Epistolae
duorum amantium (XII secolo),” Late and Vulgar Latin Conference, Oxford 6–9 Sep-
tember 2006, ed. Roger Wright (Leiden: Brill, 2008) (forthcoming).
Stewart, Marc and David Wulstan, eds., The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and
Abelard (Westhumble, Surrey–Ottawa: Plainsong and Medieval Music Soci-
ety–Institute of Medieval Music, 2003).
Ward, John O. and Neville Chiavaroli, “The Young Heloise and Latin Rhetoric:
Some Preliminary Comments on the ‘Lost’ Love-Letters and Their Signifi-
cance,” in Listening to Heloise, ed. Wheeler, pp. 53–119.
Wheeler, Bonnie, ed., Listening to Heloise.The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman (New
York: Palgrave, 2000).
Wulstan, David, “Heloise at Argenteuil and the Paraclete,” and “Sources and Influ-
ences: lyric and drama at the ‘School of Abelard’,” in The Poetic and Musical
Legacy, ed. Stewart and Wulstan, pp. 67–90 and 113–39.
Ziolkowski, Jan, “Lost and Not Yet Found: Heloise, Abelard, and the Epistolae duo-
rum amantium,” Journal of Medieval Latin 14 (2004): 171–202.
INDEX

abp.= archbishop; abs. = abbess; abt. = Alberic of Montecassino (d. 1088), 190
abbot; ard. = archdeacon; bp. = bishop. Alberic of Rheims (abp. of Bourges
Latin spellings are standardized in this 1136–41), 72, 150, 152
index, so that amicicia is listed as amicitia Albert the Great (d. 1280), 189
etc. Individual letters of the Epistolae Alluis, Jacques, 44–45
duorum amantium are identified in bold amare (to love), 23, 25, 28, 38b, 48,
type, those of the man in italics. 51, 56, 61, 72 (x4), 75 (x3), 83, 84
References to footnotes to the letters (x3), 105, 113
are cited as 1a (i.e., letter 1 note a). For Amboise, François d’, 43–44, 46
a full concordance to these letters, see amica (friend), 33–35, 38, 95, 103, 113,
Könsgen, pp. 113–37. 144, 25, 40, 55, 57, 76, 108
amicitia (friendship)16–19, 22, 26, 99,
Abelard, see Peter Abelard 113–14, 117, 124–25, 144, 147,
Absalom, 18, 138, 27 186–88, 9, 12, 25 (x2), 28, 42, 49
Achilles, 12, 91, 45c (x3), 50 (x3), 61 (x2), 98
Adalbertus Samaritanus, 190 amicus (friend), 144, 22, 25, 49, 50,
Adam of Saint-Victor (precentor of 54, 56, 58, 61 (x2), 69 (x2), 72, 94
Notre-Dame 1107–34), 57, 119, (x2), 99, 103 (x2)
157 amor (passionate love), 6, 16–19,
Adams, Henry, 48 21–26, 31, 54, 60, 76, 84, 92, 99,
Adela of Blois (daughter of William I), 101, 103, 114, 116–17, 124–28,
61, 65 136–37, 140–44, 147, 183, 187,
Adelaide of Maurienne (queen of 189, 191–93, 197, 228 1, 3, 6, 12,
France, m. Louis VI 1115), 58, 80, 18, 21, 22 (x2), 23, 24 (x7), 25 (x9),
154–55 26, 35, 38b, 42, 46, 48 (x3), 49
adolescentula /-us (young woman / (x2), 50, 53, 54 (x3), 56, 57, 58, 60
man), 32 (x2), 61 (x3), 69 (x2), 72 (x2), 76,
Aelred of Rievaulx, 181 79 (x2), 81, 82, 84, 85 (x2), 86 (x4),
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405–64), 87 (x4), 88 (x2), 90 (x3), 92, 93,
10 94, 98, 99 (x2), 100, 101 (x4), 102
affectus (disposition, feeling), 133–35, (x2), 103, 104 (x3), 105 (x2), 112a,
150, 176, 7, 21, 23 (x2), 76 (x2), 113 (x6)
79, 86 (x2) Andreas Capellanus, 42, 89
412 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Angers, 192–95 Bede, 22a

anima (soul), 129, 134, 186, 11, 15, 16 Benedict, Rule of, 36, 39, 44, 51
(x3), 23, 24 (x4), 46, 47, 49, 51, Benton, John, 49, 157
55, 61, 65 (x3), 69, 71, 74, 76, 86, Berengar of Poitiers, 41–42, 175
97 Berengar of Tours (ca. 1000–1088), 67,
animus (spirit), 17, 116–17, 124, 119
132–34, 186, 6, 23 (x3), 24, 25, 28, Bernard, St. (1090–1153; abt. of
37, 40, 41, 43 (x3), 46 (x2), 53 Clairvaux 1115–53), 3, 15, 31,
(x2), 60, 61, 62, 63, 74 (x2), 79, 84, 37–44, 48, 54–55, 72, 76–78,
87, 88, 90 (x3), 90, 95, 103, 105, 84–85, 113–14, 122, 129–30,
107 (x2), 111, 112a, 113 133–34, 145–46, 149–61, 170, 174,
Anjou 61–69, 88–90, 111, 156 184, 192, 201
Anselm of Laon (d. 1117), 60, 66, 72, Bertrada of Montfort (countess of
83, 130, 150 Anjou, m. Fulk IV; m. Philip I
Anselm, St. (1033–1109; abt. of Bec 1092), 61, 67, 77, 84, 98, 154–56
1078–92; abp. of Canterbury Bezalel, 18, 138, 27
1093–1109), 15, 61, 65–67, 70, Bezzola, Reto, 88
77–81, 114, 184, 191–93 Bible: Gen. 8.5:112d, 20.31–35:86a;
Antiphila, 19, 45 Exod. 6.12, 30:23g, 14.27:61d,
Argenteuil, 32, 34, 36, 40, 64, 76, 110, 31.2:138, 26a; Deut. 5.2:60c,
113, 137, 148, 154–56, 162–63, 6.5:74a, 18.16:60d, 26.15:102a;
168, 194–95 Judg. 16.13:138, 27b; Ruth
Aristotle, 89, 127–28, 164, 167–68, 2.12:29a; 1 Sam. 20.17:129, 15b; 2
173, 181 Sam. 14.25:138, 27c; 2 Kings 7.2
Astralabe, Peter (1117–?), 74, 148, 175 45a; 1 Chron. 17.1:45; 2 Chron.
astronomy, 16, 74; see also: solsticium; 9.1:10; Jdt. 8.27:23e, 16.29:45b;
sol; luna Job 3.20:71f, 7.12:9d, Ps. 4.9:8a,
Augustine, St. 18, 31, 92, 115, 120, 18.11:11a, 39.2:37a, 41.2:9d, 38aa,
133–34, 187–88, 192, 198–200; 44.6:69d, 44.16:79c, 54.7:86b, 60.4,
Rule 39, 60 20:60b, 70.5:5a, 101.8:42b,
Augustus (Caesar), 29, 35, 55, 84, 102.12:71b, 103.18:84c,
91–92, 96–97, 112, 82 118.127:45f, 79b, 120.6:92a,
authenticity debates 7–8, 12, 26–27, 136.5:25g; Song of Songs 1.8:18,
30, 47–53, 115 2.1:106, 90a, 2.5:25h, 2.10:87, 46a,
75g 2.11–12:32b, 104a, 4.10:15,
Barthélemy de Jur (bp. of Laon 138, 1a, 4.11:129, 5.8:25h, 5.10:50j,
1113–51), 72 84b, 6.9:33a, 7.4:45b, 8.6:16a; Prov.
Baudri (ca. 1045–1130; abt. of 4.10:104b, 8.19:103a; Wisdom
Bourgueil 1080/82–1107; bp. of 6.23:53a; Ecclesiasticus 24.27:56a,
Dol 1107–20), 14, 68, 82, 89–90, 32.7:10a, 48.11:45i; Is. 5.28:69d,
98–101, 112, 122, 147, 162, 182, 35.10:108a, 47.10:136, 60f; Jer.
187–88, 193, 195, 23, l, 49a 14.17:69c; Ezek. 28.12:138, 16;
Bayle, Pierre, 45 Dan. 7.20:23g; Joel 1.20:45c;
 INDEX 413

Malachi 4.5:45i; Matt. 3.17:20d, castratation, 33, 59, 70, 73, 108, 118,
5.14:9a, 5.15:50k, 5.28:133, 127, 134, 148–49, 168–70
6.9–13:160, 6.33:32c, 11.7:88e Cauno, 12, 91, 45
11.21:69b; 12.34:17, 36, 133, 24a, Celestine II (pope 1143–44), 174
13.8:94a, 13.23:98a, 19.6:50i, celibacy, 78–80, 113
22.37:74a, 25.29:78a; Mark cervicositas (pigheadedness), 4, 25, 54,
9.49:92c, 10.9:50i; Luke 2.14:45d, 129, 49
6.45:17, 36, 133, 24a, Charrier, Charlotte, 48–50
10.41–42:86a, 11.1–4:160, Chelles, 156
12.31:32c, 22.15:112f; John Chrétien de Troyes, 49, 89
5.35:9a, 13.34:18, 52a; Acts Christine de Pisan 42
26.14:71a; Rom. 1.9:135, 8.35:71d, Cicero, 4, 9, 19, 41, 75, 90, 93, 113–15,
12.2:60e; 1 Cor. 2.9:58a, 9.22:79d, 139, 152, 181, 190–91, 6a, 12b, 25a,
9.24:7, 9b, 84d, 13.4–5:50c; 2 Cor. 49c, 50 (x2), 75; De inventione, 186;
1.22:136, 5.5, 12.2:23, 141, 112b; Laelius [De amicitia] 17–19, 117,
Eph. 3.16:79a, 3.17:23a; 1 Thess. 124–26, 139, 162, 184–89, 198–99,
4.1, 10:23m; 1 Tim. 4.7:84d; 2 Tim. 24cd, 25b, 42c, 49b, 106a; see also
4.7:7, 84d; Hebr. 11.36:62a; James Rethorica ad Herennium
1.12:104b; 1 John 4.7:88f; Rev. Cistercian Order, 8–11, 54–55, 68,
7.17, 21.4: 91b 160–61, 168, 176, 201–202
Biblis, 12, 91, 45 Clairvaux, 3, 5, 8–11, 47, 157, 175; see
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 22, also: Bernard, St.; Johannes de
30, 112, 49g, 107a, 108b, 112c Vepria; Pierre de Virey
Boncompagno da Signa (ca. 1165–ca. clerics, wandering, 89
1240), Rota Veneris, 12 Clinia, 19, 45
Bond, Gerald, 89 Clio, see Muses
Brinkmann, Hennig, 89 Col, see Pierre Col, Gontier Col
Briseis, 12, 91, 45 Coluccio Salutati, 42
Brittany, 33–34, 107 composition, see dictamen
Bulst, Walter, 94–97 Conrad of Hirsau (ca. 1070–ca. 1150),
Burge, James, 179 93
Constable, Giles, 180
Caesar, see Augustus Constance (of Le Ronceray?), 99–101
Cajot, Dom Charles 47 contraception, 80–81
Calixtus II (pope 1119–24), 73, 80 cor, (heart) 128, 133, 15, 18, 19, 23,
Cambridge Songbook, 110 24, 25, 38a, 38b (x2), 43, 45, 49,
Camenae, see Muses 50, 53, 55 (x2), 56, 58, 60 (x2), 61
caritas (care), 17–18, 20, 24, 186, (x2), 69 (x3), 71, 74, 75 (x2), 79, 84
192–93, 199–200, 9, 23, 25, 47, (x2), 86, 88 (x2), 90, 95, 97, 100,
113 102 (x2), 104
Carmina burana, 89–90, 111, 20a Cornelia, 21, 33
Carolus Virulus (ca. 1413–93), 9 Courcelles, Catherine II de (abs. of the
Cassiodorus, 9, 41, 60b Paraclete 1482–1513), 43
414 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

courtly love, 13; see also fin’amor 13:97; 14:13, 16; 15:16, 129; 16:16,
Cousin, Victor, 47, 55 83, 126, 138; 17:16, 117, 129;
cursus, 120 18:16, 128–29, 185; 19:16; 20:16,
90, 105, 111, 129; 21:3, 16–17, 83,
Dalarun, Jacques, 200 121, 129, 183; 22:16, 21, 74, 121,
deus (God), 7, 9, 11, 23 (x2), 24, 25, 129, 131, 167; 23:17, 74–75, 117,
30, 32, 38b, 44, 45, 49 (x2), 50, 121, 131–37, 181–82; 24:17, 36, 70,
53, 54, 55, 56, 60, 62, 63, 75, 77, 74, 83–84, 116–117,121–22,
79, 84, 86 (x3), 110, 112 123–26, 128, 132, 135, 143, 150;
Deutsch, S. Martin 48, 50 25:16–17, 87, 121, 139; 26:18, 74,
dialectic, 17, 21, 25–26, 121 117; 27:16, 18, 117, 138; 28:18, 20,
dictamen (composition), 14, 18, 75, 69 74, 129, 186; 31:121; 32:18, 74, 87,
Dido, 21, 91, 112 135; 33:16, 18; 34:18, 35:18, 20;
dilectio (love), 17–20, 22, 24–26, 76, 84, 36:16, 18; 37:13, 18, 121, 129, 185;
101, 109, 114, 123, 129, 136–37, 38a-c:19–20, 111, 135; 43:121,
147, , 189-90. 192-93, 228, 3, 18, 129; 45:11, 19, 91, 135; 46:129;
21, 23, 25 (x3), 49 (x9), 50, 52, 53 47:121, 129; 48:16, 87, 111, 121,
(x4), 54, 55, 60 (x2), 69 (x2), 71, 129, 135; 49:4, 19, 25, 83, 87, 95,
76, 79 (x3), 82, 84 (x2), 84, 86, 111, 117, 129, 132, 135–37; 50:4,
88, 90, 96, 101, 102, 103, 104, 113, 128–29, 136, 186; 51:129;
105, 112 (x2), 112a 52:136; 53:19, 75, 87, 129, 131,
diligere (to love), 32, 136, 198, 11, 13 135; 54:19, 94, 121, 136, 167;
(x2), 21, 25 (x2), 38c, 45, 48 (x2), 55:135; 56:121, 182; 57:20, 74, 129,
49 (x7), 50, 53, 55, 57 (x2), 60 58:20; 59:20, 137, 140, 147, 182;
(x2), 84 (x4), 85, 88, 104 60:25, 112, 135–36, 139, 147, 182;
domina (lady) 16, 129, 36 (x2), 61, 72, 61:16, 20, 129; 62:16, 21, 135;
87, 108 63:121, 129; 65:129; 66:4, 21, 87,
Dronke, Peter, 7, 50, 75, 88–89, 105, 111, 117, 164; 69:14, 21, 75,
110–12, 181–82, 189 94, 103, 112, 129, 136, 167, 183;
Duby, Georges, 7–8, 13, 50–51 71:75; 72:16, 131; 73:21, 87, 112,
Duchesne, André, 43–44, 55 129; 74:21; 75:21, 75, 91, 105, 121,
129; 76:16, 21, 122, 129, 131, 133;
Eco, Umberto, 179 78:24, 141; 79:75, 87, 121, 129,
Eleanor of Aquitaine, 88, 173 131–35, 182; 80:16; 82:21, 55, 96,
Elijah, see Helyas 112, 137; 82:183; 84:7, 21, 74–75,
ellipse (scribal), 10, 182–83 117–118, 129, 135–36, 182;
envy, see invidia 85:21–22, 167; 86:129, 135, 171;
Epistolae duorum amantium: 1:3, 87, 87:16, 22, 75, 112, 118, 129, 182;
121; 2:15, 121, 129; 3:16, 111, 121, 88:129, 132, 136; 89: 121, 131;
135–36, 185; 4:16, 121, 129;5:16, 90:22, 87, 129; 91:16; 92:16, 93:22,
116, 121, 134, 185; 6:14, 16, 129; 129; 94:16, 22, 105, 129, 183;
7:16, 133, 135, 185; 8:16, 129, 186; 95–96:22; 97:171; 98:22, 129, 182;
9:16, 37, 121, 129, 135, 185; 99:121; 100:161, 185; 101:21–22,
11:135, 171; 12:16, 21, 128, 129; 140, 147; 102:22, 132; 103:22;
 INDEX 415

104:22, 117, 132, 136, 141; Fulgentius, 112, 167, 66a

105:21–22, 129; 106:22, 140, 147;
107:22, 140; 108:16, 22, 75, 88, Gallia (Gaul), 89
112, 129, 140; 109:22, 87, 129, Galo (bp. of Paris 1104–1116), 58,
140–41; 110:22, 121, 123, 140, 147; 60–65, 70–73, 78, 81, 83, 98, 105,
111:22, 112, 140; 112:4, 16, 23–24, 140, 155
35, 75, 83, 105, 117, 135, 141–42, Garlande, see Stephen of Garlande
147, 185; 112a:4, 24–25, 84, 102, gaudium (joy), 16, 2, 7, 23, 25, 28, 40,
141–42, 147; 113:4, 24–25, 76, 112, 44, 45 (x2), 46, 49 (x3), 51, 66,
118, 142, 147, 183. 75, 77 (x2), 79, 82, 84 (x2), 88, 89,
epitaphs(of Abelard and Heloise), 35, 98, 102, 103, 105, 108, 110, 112
46–47, 105, 120 Gaudry (bp. of Laon 1106–1112), 72
equipol(l)enter (regardlessly), 121, 21 Geoffrey of Auxerre (d. ca. 1188),
essentialiter (essentially), 70 37–38, 174
Ermengard of Brittany, 66–67, 95, 195 Geoffrey of Mayenne, 198
Eudes Rigaud (1215–75), abp. of Georgianna, Linda, 51–52
Rouen 175 Gerhoch of Reichersberg, 110
Eustochium, 92, 116 Gerson, Jean (1363–1429), 9, 42
Eve (of Wilton), 89 Gervaise, Dom Armand, 46
Gilbert of Poitiers (ca. 1075–1154), 37,
fashion, 64, 77–78 119
feeling, see affectus Gilson, Étienne, 49–50
Fessler, Ignaz, 48, 50 Girbert, bp. of Paris (1116–23), 41, 73
fin’amor, 8, 13, 30, 49, 88 Godel, see William Godel
Fleury poems, 93, 107–109; see also Godfrey of Reims, 187
Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire Gontier Col (ca. 1350/52–1418), 42
f(o)edus (bond, covenant), 20, 135–36, Goscelin of St Bertin (d. ca. 1099),
60, 88 192–93
Fontevrault, 13, 39–40, 61, 67, 194–95; Gréard, Octave, 48
see also Robert of Arbrissel greeting formulae, 14–16, 120, 183
fortuna (fortune), 45, 50 (x2) Gregory I (pope 590–604), 120, 135,
France, (as in Ile-de-France) 25, 57 23j, 103b
francigenus (French), 49 Gregory VII (pope 1073–85), 79–80
freshness, see viriditas Grenaille, Francois de, 44
friend, see amica, amicus Gualo (logician at Notre-Dame), 105,
friendship, see amicitia 153
Fulbert (d. 1124?), 32–33, 44, 57–59, Guibert of Nogent (ca. 1053–ca.
63, 69, 73–76, 118, 142, 146–48, 1124), 68–69, 72, 76–78, 82, 84, 93,
193, 195–96 98
Fulco of Deuil, 81, 148 Guilleragues, see Portuguese Letters
Fulco, monk of Bec (bp. of Beauvais Guy of Rochefort (seneschal of France
1089–95), 66 1104–1107), 62–63
Fulcoie of Beauvais (fl. 1070–1100),
97–98, 182 Haase, Dag, 197
416 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

hair, 64, 77–78 Hugh of Saint-Victor (d. 1141), 153

haughtiness, see superciliositas Hunt, Tony, 89
heart, see cor
heretics, 69 Ididia, see Solomon
Heloise (ca. 1094?–1164): date of Île-de-la-Cité, see Paris
birth, 32; early education, 58; at Index of Prohibited Books, 43
Notre-Dame (1113–1116), 148; at indifferenter (not differently), 17, 112,
Argenteuil (1117–29), 161–63; abs. 122, 124–27, 185, 16, 24
of Paraclete (1129–64), 124, individuality, see singularis, unicus
155–61, 175–76; ethical thought, ingenium (talent, ability), 17, 116–17,
35, 116–17, 131–35, 138–39, 132–33, 167, 5, 23 (x3), 25, 50 (x2)
186–87; friendship with St. innexibilis (unbindable), 129, 94
Bernard, 159–61; image of, 30–55; Innocent II (pope 1130–43), 37,
knowledge of languages, 39; letters 155–56, 174
to Abelard, 6, 34–37, 51, 122–24, intentio (intention), 131–35, 22, 23, 72,
133, 188–89, 192; poems (?) 76, 79 (x2), 88, 102, 104
161–69; Problems (Problemata), 37, interiority, see affectus, intentio
116, 171; see also: Epistolae duorum invidia (envy), -diosus, -dus (envious),
amantium; epitaphs; Peter Abelard, 19, 33, 93–94, 54, 69, 22, 85
Rule for Paraclete; rhyming prose Isidore of Seville, 138, 27d, 38aa, 98a,
Helyas (Elijah), 45 104a
Hersende (mother of Heloise), 19495; iuvenis (young man), -nilis (young), -
see also Fontevrault ntus (youth), 3–4, 1, 5, 21, 26, 53,
Hervé, 193, 195 73; see also youth
Hilary of Orléans, 35, 89–90 Ivo (ca. 1040–ca. 1116; bp. of Chartres
Hildebert of Lavardin (1055–1133; bp. 1090–ca. 1116), 15, 50, 60–61,
of Le Mans 1096–1125, abp. of 65–66, 71, 79–82, 113, 187, 198
Tours 1125–33), 90, 104, 112, 156,
164, 169, 182 Jacques de Bar, 201–02
Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), 39, Jaeger, C. Stephen, 180
135 jealousy, see invidia
Honorius II (pope 1122–30), 152, Jean de Cirey (abt. of Cîteaux
156 1476–1503), 11
Horace, 11b, 12c, 22d, 28a, 75fh, 87e, Jean de Hauville (fl. ca. 1200), 10
88c Jean de Hesdin, 42
Hrosvitha of Gandersheim (d. ca. Jean de Meun (d. 1305), Romance of the
1002, 191 Rose, 26, 29–31, 40–44, 49–50, 52,
Hugh I (count of Champagne and 101, 169, 175, 200
Troyes 1093–1125), 65, 153 Jean de Montreuil (1354–1418), 42
Hugh Metel (d. 1150), 130–31, 157, Jean Molinet, 42
163–64, 169 Jerome, St., 33–34, 39, 92, 113, 116,
Hugh of Crécy, son of Guy of 138–39, 151, 160, 186–88, 198,
Rochefort, 62–63 25c, 45e, 49f, 55c
Hugh of Mâcon (fl. ca. 1245), 10 Jews, 64
 INDEX 417

Johannes de Butrio (d. 1522), 9 Lucia, mother of Abelard, 66, 107

Johannes de Vepria (ca. 1445–ca. 1518; Lucifer, 105, 111, 20
prior of Clairvaux 1480–99), 5, luna (moon), 16, 20, 22 (x3), 33, 45,
8–15, 179–80, 202, 223–26 66, 91 (x2), 92, 94
John of Garlande (d. ca. 1271), 191 Luscombe, David 51
John of Limoges (d. ca. 1250), 9
John of Salisbury (ca. 1115/20–1180), Machaut, 180
173 Manuscripts: Chaumont, Bibl. mun.
joie, see: fin’amor; gaudium 31:43; Orléans Bibl. mun. 266:126
Joscelin of Vierzy (bp. of Soissons Paris, BNF lat. 2923:40–41; Troyes,
1126–52), 70, 185 Bibl. mun. 802:39–43, 51, 157, 175,
Juvenal, 91–92 200–201; Troyes, Bibl. mun. 1452:5,
9, 181–84
Kamuf, Peggy, 51 Marbod of Rennes (ca. 1035–1123;
kharjas, 110 bp. of Rennes 1096–1123), 67–68,
knowability, see scibilitas 79, 87–90, 94–98, 101, 104, 111,
Könsgen, Ewald, 5–7, 9–10, 15, 26, 53, 113, 137–38, 162, 164, 169, 182,
94, 128, 138–39, 143, 180, 183, 193–94, 13a, 32b, 73b, 82a
223–26 Marenbon, John, 135, 138
marriage, 33–35, 63, 79–80, 114
La Rochefoucauld, Marie III de (abs. Mars, 33, 97, 168–69
of Paraclete 1599–1639), 43, 46 Matilda, countess of Blois and
Lalanne, Ludovic, 48 Champagne, 157
langue d’oeuil, 114 Matilda, Empress (1102–67), 9, 95,
Lanham, Carol, 15, 120 169, 173
Lateran Council II (1139), 39–40, Matthias, count of Nantes (d. 1101), 108
174 Maurice de Sully (bp. of Paris
Laurie, Helen, 49 1160–96), 57, 81, 155
letter collections, 9–13 McLeod, Enid, 50
Lettres portugaises, see Portuguese Letters memorials (of Abelard and Heloise),
linter (skiff), 17, 23 see epitaphs
Lioba, 109 meretrix (prostitute), 29, 35, 42, 81,
Lippoldsberg, 190 96–97, 144
literacy, female, 8, 13, 40 Michelet, Jules, 13
littera, -ae (writing), 21, 167 Misch, Georg, 49
Lobrichon, Guy, 194, 197 Montmorency, 194
Loches, 66, 83 moon, see luna
Louis VI (1108–37), 58, 61–62, 65, 69, Moos, Peter von, 48, 50, 180–83,
71–72, 153–56, 173 189–90, 197
Louis VII (1137–80), 88, 173 Muriel (of Wilton and Le Ronceray),
love, see: amicitia; amor; caritas; dilectio 99, 110, 169
love songs, 31, 33, 35, 110; see also Muses, 4, 21, 107, 112, 164–68, 66
Abelard, love songs
Lucan, 33, 20a, 26c, 108b natura (nature), 94, 43, 73, 113
418 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Nelli, René, 88 peccare (to sin), -atum (sin), -ator

Newman, Barbara, 51–52 (sinner), 20, 84, 140, 35, 59, 60, 61
Nicolas de Baye (ca. 1364–1419), 42 (x3)
Norbert of Xanten (ca. 1080–1134), Penelope, 35, 91
39, 152–53, 156 Penthesilea, 145
Notre-Dame (Paris), cathedral, 5, 41–43, Persius, 49e
57–65, 70, 76, 80, 105, 153, 175 Peter Abelard (1079–1142): parents, 66;
early studies, 65–67; at Melun, 32,
Octavian, see Augustus (Caesar) 61; debate with William of
Oenone, 12, 91, 45 Champeaux, 69–73; at Sainte-
Orderic Vitalis, 59, 77–78, 162 Geneviève, 62, 157, 173; at Laon,
Orelli, 48 72; at Notre-Dame, 33, 57–61, 63,
Origen, 33, 149 73–76; castration, 33, 70, 73, 118,
Orlandi, Giovanni, 181–82 134, 148–49; at Saint-Denis, 37,
Orléans, 25, 29, 62, 65, 89, 93, 98 148–51; at Soissons, 33; at Paraclete,
Otto of Freising, 37–38 34, 48, 151–53, 173–74; at Saint-
Ovid, 10–12, 19, 33–35, 45–46, 54, 75, Gildas, 66, 154; at Paris, 172–74; at
89–94, 112–13, 140, 167, 75; Sens, 37, 145, 174; at Cluny, 145,
Amores: 16, 22, 24, 91, 93, 101, 114, 174–75; Christian Theology (Theologia
139–40, 143, 167, 38ad, 75d, 113a; Christiana), 33, 73, 93, 127, 133,
Art of Loving (Ars Amatoria): 11, 16, 139, 151–52, 174; commentary on
91, 93–94, 140, 73c, 75i, 84a, 113a; Ezekiel, 72–73, 138; commentary
Cures for Love (Remedium Amoris): on the Hexaemeron, 138, 171;
91, 93, 87b; Fasti: 20a, 87b; Heroides: commentary on Romans, 134, 199;
10–11, 19, 35, 45–46, 91–93, Confessio fidei Universis, 41;
99–100, 114–15, 132, 15a, 21b, 22b, Dialectica, 66, 127, 130, 53b;
45g, 93a, 113in; Metamorphoses: 91, Dialogue of a philosopher with a Jew
20a, 22b, 23c, 26d, 45g, 61e, 75j, 77a, and a Christian (Collationes), 116,
80a, 82b, 88c, 93a, 108c, 113bjkln; 199, 201; Epithalamica, 171–72;
Ponticae: 50dfg, 59a, 66c, 113i; Ethics (Scito teipsum), 132, 134, 172;
Tristia: 91, 93–94, 99, 112 23, l, 28b Historia calamitatum, 5, 26, 29–35,
43, 47–54, 59–60, 68, 71–76, 81–84,
Paraclete (abbey), 34, 38, 46–47, 197, 93, 107, 114, 118, 122–28, 132,
198; liturgical manuscripts, 40, 137–42, 144–47, 152, 156–57, 167,
159–60, 171–72; monastic 169–71, 175–76, 183–84, 188, 191,
observances (Institutiones nostrae), 195, 197–99, 200; Hymns, 161, 172;
39, 51–52, 157–59, 201; see also: Laments (Planctus), 119, 129,
Peter Abelard, Rule; Heloise 171–72; letters to Heloise and nuns
Paris, 25, 57, 64–65, 71, 101 of Paraclete, 36–39, 122–24, 172;
parvitas, 184, 25, 112 Logica Ingredientibus, 127, 130,
Paschal II (pope 1099–1118), 63 151–52, 185–86, 189; love songs
Paula, 92, 116 (carmina amatoria), 31, 82; Rule for
Payen, Jean-Charles, 7 Paraclete 34, 36–37, 39–40, 157, 200,
 INDEX 419

201; Sententie secundum m. Petrum punctuation, 183–84

126–28; Sic et Non 152, 160, 174, pyre, funeral, 112
185–87, 196, 198–99; Soliloquium
41, 116; Confession of faith to Heloise Rabutin, Roger de, 45
(Confessio fidei ad Heloisam) 41–42, Radegund (ca. 520–587), 92, 159
44; Theologia Scholarium 137–38, Ralph of Vermandois, 155, 168, 173
149, 167, 196; Theologia Summi Regensburg verses, 7, 13–14, 89,
boni, 150; see also: Epistolae duorum 101–102, 104, 108–109, 111–12,
amantium; Heloise, Problems of 169, 181
Heloise (Problemata Heloissae); Reims, Council of (1119), 196
Paraclete Rémusat, Charles de, 47
Peter the Venerable (ca. 1094–1156; Rhabanus Maurus, 22a
abt. of Cluny 1122–56), 30, 38, Rhetorica ad Herennium (ps.-Cicero),
42–43, 119–20, 129, 133, 145–46, 119
170, 184, 191 rhetorical exercises, see dictamen
Petrarch (1304–74), 9–10, 15, 41–42, rhyming prose, 3, 6, 118–20, 158
91, 175 Richard of Poitiers, 66
Philip I (king of France 1060–1108), Robert de Bardi, 41, 43
60–62, 82, 173 Robert of Arbrissel (d. 1117), 13,
philosophia (philosophy), 17, 19, 26, 31, 67–69, 88, 98, 162, 194–95, 198
124, 5, 23, 50, 112 Robert of Auxerre, 39
Pierre Col, 42 Robert of Meulan, 70–71, 78
Pierre de Virey (d. 1504; abt. of Robertson, D. W., 49
Clairvaux 1471–96), 8–11 Robl, Werner, 194
pigheadedness, see cervicositas rolls, funerary, 110, 161–63
pignus (pledge), 59, 136, 60, 69, 84 Romance of the Rose, see Jean de Meun
(x2), 104 Ronceray, Notre-Dame du (Angers),
Piron, Sylvain, 179, 201–02 99, 110, 113, 147, 192, 195
Plautus, 77b Roscelin of Compiègne (d. ca.
pledge, see foedus, pignus 1120/25), 13, 58–59, 66–68, 79,
Pompey, 21, 33 128, 149–51
Pope, Alexander, 45–46 Rougemont, Denis de, 88
Porphyry, 122, 128, 132 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 46
Portuguese Letters, 44–45 Ruys, Juanita, 51
Powell, Morgan, 197
Prémontré, 39–40, 152; see also Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire (Fleury), 65,
Norbert of Xanten 70, 93, 154–55
Priscian, 70 Saint-Denis, 37, 64–65, 151, 154–57,
Prologue, (unidentified), 74, 138, 84 167–68, 170, 172–73
prostitute, see meretrix Saint-Éloi (Paris), 63–64, 98, 155
pudor (shame), 93, 101, 108, 113 Saint-Eutrope (Angers), 192
puella (young woman), 4, 8, 95–97, Saint-Jean (Laon), 64, 72, 155
168, 50, 73 Saint-Médard (Soissons), 151
420 THE LOST LOVE LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD

Saint-Victor, 58, 69–73, 84, 150, 1106/7–27, 1132–37; dean of

154–57, 168, 172–73 Sainte-Geneviève ca. 1109–47,
Sainte-Croix (Poitiers), 63, 92, 110 seneschal of France 1120–1127; d.
Sainte-Geneviève, 41, 64–65, 69–71, ca. 1147), 60–63, 65, 69–73, 83–84,
83–84, 172; see Stephen of 94, 149, 151–57, 168, 173
Garlande Statius, 76e, 87c, 113c
Sainte-Marie de Footel (Malnouë), 155 Stephen of Orléans, abt. of Sainte-
Samson, 18, 138, 27 Geneviève (1176–92; bp. of Tournai
Sappho, see Ovid, Heroides 1192–1203), 41
Schaffhausen, 104, 109 Stephen of Senlis (bp. of Paris
Schmeidler, Bernhard, 48–50 1123–43), 71, 73, 105, 153–56,
scibilitas (knowability), 19, 129–30, 189, 172–73
53 Suger (1081–1151; abt. of Saint-Denis
scripture, see Bible 1122–51), 65, 149, 151–56, 168–69,
seals, 13 173
seasons, 87 sun, see: sol; astronomy
Sens, council of (1141), 37–38, 41, superciliositas (haughtiness), 25, 129,
145, 161, 174, 201 49
Serlo (of Paris?) 79, 169
sexual morality of clergy, 78–83 tablets, wax, 13–14, 26, 143, 176
shame, see pudor Tegernsee love letters, 7, 89, 101–104,
Silvestre, Hubert, 49 106, 109, 119
simony, 63, 79–80 Terence, The Self-Torturer
sin, see peccatum (Heautontimorumenos) 19, 191, 26b,
singularis (individual), 121–22, 124, 45h, 50hl; Hecuba 113c
188, 2, 4, 23, 54, 56 Theobald (count of Blois and Brie
sodomy, 81–82, 104 1102–52, and of Champagne
Soissons, council of (1121), 33, 53, 66, 1125–52), 65, 153, 173
73, 150 Theodulf of Orléans, 93
sol (sun), 16, 22 (x4), 32, 33, 38a, 45, Tilliette, Jean-Yves, 99–100
49, 80, 87 (x3), 92, 96, 108 Tiresias, 12
Solomon, 18, 138, 27 tombs (of Abelard and Heloise), 43,
solsticium (solstice), 16, 92 46–47
soul, see anima Transmundus (d. 1216), 9
specialis (special), 121–24, 187–88, 21, troubadours, 88
25, 76, 79 Troyes, councils of: (1107), 63–64, 77;
Speculum virginum, 181 (1128), 153
spiritus (breath), 133–34, 186, 27, 28, Tullius, see Cicero
45, 79, 80, 105, 107, 108; see also
animus (spirit) Ulysses, 35
Stella, Francesco, 182–83 unicus (only), 123–24, 37, 47, 48, 63,
Stephen of Garlande (ard. of Paris ca. 75, 88, 89, 99, 110
1092–1147; royal chancellor universals, 17, 70, 185–87
 INDEX 421

Venantius Fortunatus (ca. 535–ca. 600), William of Auvergne (1190–1249),

92 200
Venus, 33, 97, 168–69 William of Champeaux (ard. of Paris
Vepria, see Johannes de Vepria ca. 1104–1108; d. 1121), 17, 54, 58,
Veyne, Paul 13, 92 60–65, 69–73, 78, 83–84, 98,
Virgil, 92, 141, 49i, 50a, 51b, 55a, 76d, 126–27, 130, 140, 150, 152–55
88b William of Malmesbury (ca.
viriditas (freshness, greenness), 15, 18, 1090–1143), 9, 77
87, 135, 25, 48 William of Montfort (bp. of Paris
virtus (virtue), 102, 125, 49 (x3), 50 1096–1103), 61
(x3), 57, 66, 76, 88, 90, 109 William of Montsoreau (d. ca. 1090),
Vital of Mortain (of Savigny), 161–63 194–95
William of Saint-Thierry (ca.
Waddell, Chrysogonus, 51–52, 157, 1075–1148), 54, 150, 174
159–60, 171–72 Wilton, 193
Walerann (cantor of Notre-Dame), Wolff, Étienne, 6–7.
70 Wulstan, David, 201
Walter of Mortagne (ca. 1090–1174),
95, 137–38 youth, see iuventus
William Godel, 38
William IX count of Poitiers, Duke of Ziolkowski, Jan, 182–83, 189
Aquitaine (1071–1126), 88–89 Zurich anthology, 104–106, 108