In Our Time - Abelard and Heloise

Episode Date: May 5, 2005

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of Abelard and Heloise, a tale of literature and philosophy, theology and scandal, and above all love in the high Middle Ages. They were two of the greatest minds of their time and Abelard, a famous priest and teacher, wrote of how their affair began in his biography, Historia Calamitatum, “Her studies allowed us to withdraw in private, as love desired, and then with our books open before us, more words of love than of reading passed between us, and more kissing than teaching. My hands strayed oftener to her bosom than to the pages; love drew our eyes to look on each other more than reading kept them on our texts”. Years later, when she was an Abbess at the head of her own convent, Heloise wrote to Abelard: “Even during the celebration of Mass, when our prayers should be purer, lewd visions of those pleasures take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on prayers”. With Anthony Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London; Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Historian and Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford; Michael Clanchy, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the Institute of Historical Research.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, the story of Abelard and Eloise is a tale of literature and philosophy, theology and scandal, and romantic love in the high Middle Ages. They were two of the greatest minds of their time, and Abelard, a famous cleric and teacher, wrote to Eloise's pupil of how their affair began in his autobiography, Historia Calamitatum. Her studies, he said, allowed us to withdraw in private, as love desired, and then with our books open before us, more words of love than a love.

reading passed between us and more kissing than teaching. My hands strayed oftener to her bosom than to the pages. Love drew our eyes to look on each other more than reading kept them on our texts. Years later, when she was an abbess at the head of her own convent, Louise wrote to Abelard, even during the celebration of Mass, when our prayers should be purer, lewd visions of those pleasures take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on our prayers. What does their story tell us and what impact did these two thinkers have

on the tide of their times? We need to discuss Abelard and Eloise is Anthony Grayling, Professor in Philosophy at Birkbeck College University of London. Henrietta Leiser, medieval historian, a fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford and Michael Clanchi,

Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the Institute of Historical Research. Antoninne Grayling, can we start with Abelard? He was already well known at the time the affair began. Can you tell us why he was well known and what sort of person he was? He was a very clever and rather arrogant young man

who early on in life became a master of dialectical, as it was then called logic, as we would now say, and who was ferociously good at disputation. And when he went to Paris to study under a teacher there called William of Champo, he refuted his teacher's doctrines in public. It must have been very embarrassing, humiliating even perhaps for his teacher.

And he quickly gained a real. reputation as a debater and also quickly was able to start his own school of logic too. So by the time his affair with Heloise began, he was already very well known, a controversial figure. He had supporters, but he also had a lot of enemies, and that was one of the reasons why his story is such a colourful one. But we talked about a time when the idea of a university was still very much under the wing of the church, and it was at the time of Abelada began to move out as an independent entity, didn't it? Yes, this is actually rather before the age of the universities. This is when the schools associated with cathedrals flourished quite widely, and people

who had become masters in studying at one of these schools could go off and open their own schools. So it was a much more fluid and open textured situation than came to be later on in the century. We told that he was an enormous influence on, as it were, the tiny percentage of educated youth in Western Europe as it now is. Can you give us some idea of the reason why he attracted people to come in this country from Salisbury and various other places to and Durham to study with him? Well, for one thing, he was a wonderfully good lecturer, charismatic lecturer and students flocked to him. And I came to listen to him very, very large numbers. And he was also what we might in today's jargon call rather cool.

I mean, he was against established authority. He liked to epaet les bourgeois, you know, in the form of, of the masters of the other schools. And so he was a vibrant figure and a charismatic one, as I say. And even after some of the tragic events that happened to him, he was still able to draw very, very large numbers of students to him, even indeed when he was living as an Ehromite out in the country. Can you encapsulate the philosophy that he was preaching or teaching?

He's better, isn't it, at the time? Well, you might think of his work as falling into two phases in his life, and the early phase that we are concerned with now was, the period in which he was most interested in logic. And one of the principal topics that he concerned himself with was the question of universals, of whether universals like whiteness or humanity exist independently of particular white things

or particularly human beings, or whether there are only individual things, particular things, in the world. And prior to Abelod's time, the teachers, like, for example, his own teacher, William of Champo, had been a realist about universals regarding them as existing independently of individual things. And he argued the opposite case. And in fact, thereby founded a very considerable school of thought called the nominalist school.

Would it be too agreed to say that he tried to apply Greek logic and the Greek notion of reasoning to Christianity and tried to prove Christianity through the prism of Greek ideas? Not quite that. No, I think that some of his contemporaries and... notably John of Sorchby later, said of him that he was the person who best understood the intentions of Aristotle at his time. Now, Aristotle was relatively little known during Abelard's lifetime. Most of the great texts of Aristotle only became available later on. But what was known was two of the chief logical works of Aristotle and some of the commentaries on them.

And it was in his study of these that Abelard formed some of his ideas. and so in that sense, yes, you could say he had applied Greek ideas. Later on, after his personal tragedies, he turned much more to theology and try to make contributions to thinking about the nature, for example, of the Trinity. And there he just, there it was a case really of his using this very sharp logical mind of his to try to understand some of the difficulties there about, for example, how it's possible for God to be three persons in one being. So we have the idea from you anyway, that he was this charismatic,

teacher. And he writes himself that he became plumped up with world's success and a sense of his own importance and turned, as people do in that situation, to sin, including carnal desires and lighted on Eloise. Can you tell us about Eneluis, Henrietta? Well, to some extent, Eloise is a bit of a mystery because although we know she is brought up at the confit of Argenti, we don't really know about her parents. At the time that Avald meets her. She's living with her uncle Fulbert, who's a canon, and she has allegedly come to Paris because she wants to further her learning. But I think we can imagine that she's already, I think in fact we know that she's already very learned. She's already exceptionally well read. What we're talking about, in your view, a person of 17 or 18 years old? Probably not. She's probably a little bit older than this. I think this is something Michael Clanchi has indeed established in his book on Abelar, that the idea that she is a kind of young Star Trek. teenager who really knew nothing until she met Abelard

is probably part of a kind of later attempt to turn her into a rather wishy-washy in a sense, romantic heroine who really owes everything to Abilard and who never recovers from... Because he was in his early 30s, isn't she? Yes, from the great love affair. And I think more recently she's become to be seen as a much more independent thinker, probably older in the first place,

and somebody who in fact helps to shape Abelard's opinions. But I'll come to Michael Canchier's, obviously, in a few moments, but he does speak of her as this young Eloise in the Cloisters there in Paris, is a right for the picking, doesn't he? Oh, yes. Well, I mean, that's certainly how he presents her. And he claims that, yes, he's established himself as a scholar, and all he needs now is a bit of sex,

and that up to now he hasn't actually been leading a kind of loose life, but he thinks it's time and he looks around, and the one person who is really going to be good enough for him is Eloise, because. she is very clever and she's not bad looking too, but it's partly her intellect which attracts him in the first place. Can we rattle through the brief story thing and then we can get back to the ideas and their relationship as well?

They did, one of them seduced the other. They quickly became erotically very fond of each other. Then what? Well, there she is in Fulbert's house. Abelard is teaching her. Fulbert allegedly doesn't know... I'm a cold uncle, but it might have been her father. There's a little bit of a mystery.

There are, you know, there are mysteries about Ely's. We don't know who her parents are. We don't exactly know why she hasn't either become a profess nun or married. What she's doing as a sort of independent scholar, so to say, living in Fulbert's house, it strikes us as unusual. We don't really know how unusual it is. But anyway, there she is. Abelard's been employed to teach her, their hands stray to their bodies rather than their books.

She becomes pregnant. She desperately claims that the solution to this situation is not. not to marry Abelard. She really doesn't want to. She has an idea that it is nobler and better to be his mistress than his wife. And in, I mean, this is all, of course, we know this from the letters that are written much, much later, in which she plays a lot with the words and how she says she would rather be a whore, a meritrix than an empress, an impratrix. So we only know it through a very literary presentation of the affair. On the other hand, we also have the, the gory details, that what actually happens is that Fulbert is enraged, that Abelard says,

well, look, I think the only way of assuaging his anger is to have a marriage, but the plan is to keep it secret because although it's not yet impossible for somebody to rise in the church if they have a wife, it's beginning to be very problematic, and the church is actually taking a much firmer line on chastity. So they marry in secret, which seems to be the worst of all worlds, He puts her in a nunnery, which she does. First of all, she goes off to have the baby with his family back in Brittany. He takes her away to have the baby.

She leaves the baby back there. She comes as this secret wedding. And then, and Fulbert breaks his part of the pact, he spreads the news that she's married. Eloise then denies then denies because she knows this is going to compromise Avalade's career. And the whole thing just goes from bad to worse, because it really is a situation which is simply going to provoke scandal in conversation. courage, malicious talk, etc., etc. Right. I'm going to go across to Michael Clencher now,

because before I ask you to take the story on to its grisly conclusion at this particular stage, what about Eloise? I mean, you dispute the claim that she was a 17-18-year-old budding genius. Oh, yes. Now, that idea is mine, but also constant muse, who should be here today, who's a professor in Australia, but he first suggested this. And it's a very simple argument that later on, Peter the venerable, Abbott of Clooney, the most powerful abbot in Europe, writes of Eloise that he remembers Eloise, Peter says, when he was a young man and she was a woman. And that that Louise was at least of the same age as Peter the venerable or perhaps a bit older. And we know how old Peter the venerable was because he was such a little. famous person, Abbott of Clooney, and he is born in 1092.

And so that would make Eloise, whereas it's usually thought Eloise is born in 1,100, and might therefore only be 17 at the time of the affair with Abelard. If she was born in 1092 or 1090, she might be as much as 27, which would alter what we think of her. Do you think it would make more sense of it? Quite considerably. What it would account for is something that Abelard says, which he says, as Henry Hester said,

when Abelard planned to seduce her, that's Abelard's story, of course, that's what he did, when he planned to seduce her, he thought of the most distinguished person he could find, and that she was, because she was the most famous, he says, most famous woman in France for her studies. Now, whether she could have become that by the age of 17, and Peter Venerable likewise says she is most famous for her studies.

Right, so let's move on to the end of the story as laid out by Henrietta, this affair, this secret marriage, this refusal to acknowledge the secret marriage, this contradiction between Eloise's determination to Maria philosopher, because that is clear and that is a marriage of true minds, as it were, rather than compromising him by admitting a marriage,

but he insists she should have a marriage and so on, she thinks it compromises. Then what for, but in brief, I'm sorry to put it, this crude, takes revenge on him, her uncle, let us say, takes revenge on him. Can you describe the revenge and how it was carried out? Yes, and this is from Abelard's own description in his account,

but he says that Fulbert met with his relatives and supporters and discussed what to do, and they decided that they would castrate him. And according to, let's take Abelard's account first, according to Abelard's account, this was entirely unjust and by implication illegal. And he says, fool but's people, we don't know who exactly, probably not foolbert himself, came to his room at night, and they had bribed Abelard's servant already, and they castrated him, which I think in this case means they removed his testicles in the same way. It didn't cut off his penis.

They removed his testicles in the same way as you would castrate a bull. There was a sort of logic in this penalty. There are law books which mention it. It's taking revenge. member for member. It is Abelard's, it is his sexuality which is offended and therefore you will take away his sexuality. And so I've suggested I'm not the first that what Fulbert was doing was legal or certainly semi-legal and also perhaps was correct. That is that he didn't have Abilard killed. He was merciful to him. He simply had him castrated. It's rather

surprising, given the medicine of the time that we read about, that he survived the castration and actually lived to say that when one of his books was burnt, it was more painful to watch than their constration. Which is an interesting comment. Anthony Grayling, what was a general reaction to the affair at

the time in Paris in the church? Just before I say anything about that, just a couple of comments quickly. Well, one is I was very surprised by the fact that the castration took the form of removal of Abelos' testicles, because when that happens in adult life, it doesn't

remove sexual potency. So he could continue to have sexual relations with Helibis, had the opportunity provided itself. So I mean, it seems rather odd. Can I just comment on that? And I think that was probably the case, and it was only psychologically

Abelard felt that he couldn't, evidently from a later letters, because he cannot have sexual relations with Elie's. Which ties in with the point about the consequences of the thing, I suppose. And the other thing is that even internal evidence would suggest that Eloise was a somewhat more mature young woman than 17. She very probably in her mid-20s at very least because, and if she wasn't, if she really were very young, she would be a quite, quite extraordinary girl, I would think, not only to know, be as accomplished as she was in Greek and Hebrew,

neither of which I think Abelad himself had, but also to be so thoroughly mature-minded about their relationship and what happened. But anyway, in answer to your question, the most almighty scandal, of course, It was a scandal already, brewing up the fact that he was having a true relationship with Heloise at all. And this denouement of it was, you know, just it was like throwing a match on kerosene-soaked wood. You know, it was a terrific scandal at the time. And for Abilard himself, probably, but I defer here to Michael on this, probably a terrible, humiliating, embarrassing blow. And, you know, here was somebody who, whether or not he had been successful earlier on in his career, in material terms, nevertheless regarded himself pretty highly as we see from his sort of

biographical remarks, somebody very clever, very gifted. He describes himself, I think, as the leading philosopher of the day. And here, you know, how were the mighty foreign? Henrietta, going back to Louise for a moment, in terms of what we know about the recent past, the 19th century and so and so forth, we have what might be called a fallen woman with a child by a cleric and a secret marriage unacknowledged and so. and so forth. And yet and yet, her career prospered after she, as it were, accepted her self-given fate that she would go in to, high to a donnery and make a way forward. Can you discuss the sort of what that says about the sort of ideas and morality of the 12th century? Well, I think the 12th century is much more interesting about morality than we sometimes give it credit for. I think to begin with, we have to start from the assumption that we are all for.

Everyone is a fallen woman, and indeed that's the whole point of Christianity. And Christ comes to redeem everybody, including Mary Maudlin, and actually there's some evidence that Eloise very much associates herself with Mary Maudlin and may indeed write... Abelman speaks very highly of Mary Moulin, doesn't it? Oh yes, well, of course you get this rather curious fact in the correspondence between them, that at one point Eloise writes and says how women has always been the cause of downfall for men. And Abelight writes back and says absolute rubbish.

I mean, women has actually been a man's saviour. and indeed don't forget that Christ is born of a woman and if God had wanted to Christ could have been born of a man if God had wanted it Christ could have been Christ could have emerged from Mary from some other part of her body in other words woman and the whole business of giving birth isn't itself has had God's blessing

so the idea that somehow sex is all bad is actually if you like it's a 19th century idea not a medieval idea. And Augustine, who is very often blamed, St Augustine, for sort of giving this idea that sex is at the root of all evil, doesn't say that. It's actually pride that the root of all evil.

And I think, in general, the debates in Paris about sex are extraordinarily interesting from a number of angers. At the end of the 12th century, you have people debating, is it all right for prostitutes to give the money they earn some of the money to the church? And they decide, yes, actually.

They've earned it. can do what they like with it. And so I just think you get across the spectrum, a lot of reactions that you wouldn't necessarily expect. And I think a much more sort of realistic attitude to sex than you might imagine. And as I said, we are all fallen and redemption is possible for all of us and you just move, you move on. And everybody's, you know, there isn't really this expectation except within a monastic cloister that people will be really free of sex, so to say. Soon after this, Ambalad changed his career and his career could be described as having,

his career, as distinct from his thinking, could be described as having a downward trajectory. For instance, he was hauled in three times hauled up for heresy. Do you think that was connected with the relationship with Eloise? Do you think a vendetta began or do you think they used it as an excuse to get this man who was in certain ways seemingly undermining the thought of the, of the great churchman of the time? Yes, he doesn't seem to move in that direction until after the affair of Eloise.

Otto of Freising, Bishop of Freising, who might have been a student of Abelard, he says that as a consequence of a castration, Abelard became, and becoming a monk, as he did, at the Abbey of Sandini, Abelard became even more learned and more thoughtful

and turned towards theology. And in that sense, the castration affected him. It made the direction of his studies alter because now he had become a monk and he determined when he'd been a master, he was going to be the best master now that he was a monk.

He intended to be the best monk and so he turns to do theology instead. When we talking about heresy, can you explain to the listeners what, if you can Anthony briefly, what this heresy was? Why did they accuse him of heresy? What was he saying that was he a reticul?

As I understand it, one central part of it was his view of the Trinity. This was a rather of vexed matter at the time because it's a great complication to explain to people independently of faith, that's to try and do it by reason anyway, how it is that God can be one being, one existing thing, and yet also be three persons. And Abelard, because of his logical origins, so to say,

having been a logician, had come up with a theory of identity in which it was possible for the Son to be identical with the Father and the Holy Ghost to be identical with the Father, but for the Son and the Holy Ghost not to be identical to one another. And this takes a certain amount of logical leisure demand, you might say, and he put forward a theory which didn't recommend itself to his contemporaries. Although I suspect that one really has to take a step back

from the particular theological dispute and put the theological dispute into the slightly wider pattern. Because as I understand it, one of Abelard's major enemies at the time was Bernard of Clairvaux, who I think was a friend of Karen Fulberts. And there may have been some background connection there with the scandal, the view that Bernard took that Abelard was a dangerous individual in his personal life as well as in his thinking. Although later on when Abelard published a work called Siket Non, Yes and No, where he pairs up sayings of the,

of the fathers and from the Bible, without any commentary or gloss, without any attempt to resolve these apparent contradictions. This was intended to be a teaching device, I suppose, that Abelard had arranged. That was regarded by Bernard as proof positive of the fact that trying to apply reason to matters of faith would be very undermining, and for that reason, he was hostile to him. Before we go on with the story, can we just, just from Michael Leone, have some idea of how important sick and knowing was and what it brought to the table in terms of of the advancement of and the refreshment of philosophy at the time.

The vicetnon means in Latin, yes and no, and it also meant that in French in their vernacular then, I think, Cé en non. And it consists of, it's a gigantic book consisting of whole masses of quotations, mainly from the church fathers, occasionally from scripture, but most of them come from the church fathers, arranged under propositions, for example, a proposition that Adam was the first man and the contrary, that God is good and the contrary. He and his students, I think, they found these quotations, they put them together,

and then the intention is to discuss these questions in a coherent order, and out of this opposition of Siketna, then use logic, use reason, use use, use, use, you. human philosophical methods to resolve all the problems that existed in discussion of Christianity. I don't think I've quite, for my satisfaction, nailed why this was specifically important in Retic. Can you take that on? Well, I think it's only because it's important in relation to a different way of approaching God, which St Bernard is advocating very much. When St. Bernard says, forget about books, really.

Just go and sit by a nice little babbling brook and think about God, and you'll understand a lot more. And so there is... That it's mystery rather than reason. Yeah. And then the church develops authority out of mystery rather than challenge reason. Yes.

And there's a lot of personal rivalry, I think, between Bernard and Abelard as to who's really going to attract the best mind, the youth of Europe. Which way are they going to go? Are they going to become superstitions? Are they going to go and sit at Abelard's feet? And there's, again, there are,

in terms of why Bernard dislikes Abelard, there's also a lot of rivalries are within Paris. There are, you know, the, the, the, the, Stephen of Garland, who's kind of very influential, and Sujo, he's the abbot of San Dene. They've all got slightly different agendas,

and some of them are philosophical, but some of them, I think, are personal, and just about power. I think it also, Siket, Non, also anticipated what happened once the universities had begun to come into existence in an established syllabus, was organised,

in the very, very high period of scholasticism, which followed the 12th century, you had a lot of commentaries on the writings of Aristotle principally, but of others, other earlier thinkers. And these commentaries took the form of quotation or statement of proposition and then a commentary on it. And when you look at the writings of people like Aquinas and Scotus and others, you see that there are a much more finished form of what it was that Abelard was starting.

So in a way, he sort of got that technique going. Now, after the castration and him becoming a monk, his career falls up, it's a slightly downward, it is a downward trajectory as a career, but he does seem to keep having his fingers and levers of power. He's given things, he's put in charge of things. He can, when Eloise is in difficulties, he gets a place for her to occupy, in turns of monastery, into a convent of which she becomes abbess, an enormous, is successful and enormously influential and so on. So we have two things happening with him. and then we get this out the way and get to Abilard and Eloise.

His career is sort of, it seems to be peripatetic and rather sad and battered, but at the same time he keeps coming across people, obviously value him enough to give him the means to run things and do things. Well, right. I mean, one of the interesting things is that at this particular moment, there are so many, you can have career choices. I mean, Abelard himself is actually an older son who really should have, you know, in one sense, might have stayed at home and just looked after the estate,

but he chooses to go off. And one of the points about the time when he's born, if you like, is that these opportunities are there. You can go and make a name for yourself. And in fact, that there's controversy, I think, just helps his career rather than hinders it. He is most remarkable in a way he keeps re-emerging. And a very good example of that is,

but after he's condemned as a heretic at a Council of Suasson, 1121, and he then goes back to the Abbey of Sandini and he then has a controversy with the monks questioning the authenticity of St. Denis Sandini himself and as a consequence of that he's virtually expelled from the Abbey and this is when he becomes a hermit. Nevertheless, when he becomes a hermit, the Abbey of San Deney insists that he should still recognize

the authority of the Abbey of San Deney insists. and I think I say, suggesting that this is because he's like a top footballer. They didn't want him to go to any other team. He has to remain signed up with them. But even after he's been condemned to heretic knowledge, he's still a very famous and person with a following.

He does, according to his great letter, the letter that starts it off that I mentioned at the beginning of this program, have a heck of a time up to that. He goes and looks after places, but he gets battered up if we are to believe him, and let's believe him for the sake of this program. He gets beaten up by the monks.

They threaten to kill him. He does seem to, wherever he goes, he seems to tell everybody you're not good enough. I can sort you out in 10 minutes, which might be a little bit aggravating. But there's that bit. There is that. So let's sort of leave that aside now

and talk about the letters, which is what brings Abelard and Eloise to life and why are we talking about them now so much later. his first letter, the great letter written to a friend, which begins, Michael, can you just say, in what circumstances that was written and why he wrote this, as it were, autobiographical tirade in that way?

Abelard writes this, when he's abbot of this monastery on the west coast of Brittany, a very remote place, it's very unusual in the 12th century, very unusual in the Middle Ages, for anybody to write, an autobiography. And it's quite difficult to see

what pattern he's thinking about. The theme that he takes, that this letter is supposedly written to a friend, but that friend is anonymous and maybe was fictitious. No one has ever established who

this friend who's meant to be a fellow monk is. And the theme that Abelard takes is, but he will show this fellow monk that Abelard's misfortunes and calamities, are much greater than anybody else's. And so then he gives an account of his life in the light of a series of calamities.

Calamity, for example, being castrated, calamity in being condemned to heretic, and now final calamity, having his dreadful monks in Brittany who are beating him up or who are threatening to kill him. And it's at that point that this autobiography stops. What Abelot intended to do with this,

whether it was to be published in Paris in quite a number of copies, say, so people would sympathise with him. There's no evidence that that's what the intention was, but it is a possibility. It has been suggested, Anthony, I think, that this was, in a sense, a letter to Eloise herself,

and that they had not corresponded for a very long time. She was deeply distressed about that, and she got a hold of this, and as I understand it, saw it as a covert letter to her. Well, firstly, the model that he might have had in mind would have been Augustine or Beatheus or something. There was something autobiographical there. And in the case of Beatheus, there was some calamities involved too.

So it's just possible. Yes, exactly. So he may very well have had that consciously in mind when he did it. As to whether it was a covert way of communicating with Heloise, I don't know that there would have been any necessity for it. After all, she says herself in her very famous response. to this letter, you could have got in touch with me at any time and you didn't and why not? I mean, she ticks him off about it. How long did he not get in touch? How long were there? Ten years, wasn't it?

Well, no, I don't really, I'm not sure that I believe that. I mean, he has helped her to set up the paraclete. I mean, I think the whole, that is part of the kind of fiction. That's the Abbey at which you've been over and, yes. That's, you know, because she's had to, she's been sort of turfed out of her little place and so she inherits Abelards. And I think this is part of the fiction. It's part of the way that they want to lay out their story. I'm not at all sure that he's deserved. her. Yes, well, this is a powerful current theory now that in fact the correspondence really is

something that they organised and plotted together in a way. And that may very well be true. For my own part, however, it just feels when I read that first letter of Heloises that it has such a depth of honesty and genuine feeling in it. So, I mean, either she's a really tremendously wonderful writer and succeeded in manufacturing that impression, or really has it, that she felt that he hadn't been in. in touch with her for some time and that she tremendously missed him. And that's the strong feeling that comes across. Henry, I can I ask you rather briefly to talk about that incredible

first letter, really, which is extraordinary, because she really takes him to task and she really expresses this massive and erotic and continuing passion for him. Can you just give us a flavour of it? Oh, she does. I mean, she says, you know, the pleasures of lovers which we had, they can never be erased from my mind. Men call me a hypocrite. I mean, I am a hypocrite. Men call me pious, but actually they don't realise how even at mass I've got kind of lewd thoughts in my mind and so on and so forth. I mean, it's incredibly powerful. She says that nothing that they did, is she really sorry about as far as their lovemaking is concerned.

But actually, I am quite introduced, and I use the word advisedly, by the idea that the whole correspondence is something we have to see as a whole. I mean, she keeps at the paraclete, this Abelard's letter or Abelard's autobiography, the replies, and you get taken from the, this very, very evocative and erotic beginning to a much more measured consideration of how nuns should live. And the whole thing is sort of wrapped up in language which, again, I think interestingly, unites the kind of erotic and the spiritual. It gets wrapped up in the language of the Song of Songs.

Yes, but even so, that first letter, it's worth just staying on for a moment longer because there's several things happening there, it seems to me. This person bursts on the scene, as it were, And not only should say that famous phrase, she would, rather than be the empress of the greatest emperor, it would be dear and more honourable to me to be called not his empress but your haw, which rings down the centuries.

She also takes him to task, Kabbalad, to task, saying, you didn't really love me, it was lust, because as soon as lust went, you went. So she hits him between the eyes in a very 20th, 21st century way. And she also is, and as the letters go on, very easy with what, We would think of, I think of anyway, U3 probably comes with your, comes with the water, but I think of an enormous learning and range of, so they're talking about a complicated mind already?

Oh, it's very complicated, but the language is so heavily larded with actually classical allusions that, again, it's very easy to read it as a sort of simple, heartfelt cry. But actually, the more you look at it, the more you realize how very cleverly constructed it is and how it's all, how, in both cases, I mean, again, his description of what happens when actually they both enter religious life after his castration.

The whole thing has always got behind it. Well, she says she wouldn't have gone and he pushed her into it. She's quite straightforward about that. But again, you know, she is described as rushing to the altar to take her final vows, quoting classical authors. And all the time there's either wordplay or some allusion to Ovid or to Jerome. you can't read it simply as a transparent cry of anguish. I think everybody does. I have great difference in saying to Henrietta.

But I would have thought that writing in Latin, which would have been the language of her learning and not the language that she spoke to the kitchen made, given that her education would have consisted in early on, at any rate, emulating the classical authors and using a lot of, rather formulate quotations on them, that it's scarcely surprising that even personal letters of this kind written in Latin would have had something of that form.

So, I mean, I'm very reminded about the suggestion that there was something prearranged about the correspondence and it's a very careful and elaborate work of literature that they've fabricated between them. But on the other hand, that immediacy and this shining personality of Heloises that comes through the letter seems to me far too strong, you know, even for the... I don't think it's fabrication.

I don't think it's fabrication. I don't think she's saying anything that she doesn't actually feel. But I think the way in which she expresses it is it's meant to be literature, not just a sort of, it's not just a kind of outpouring of somebody who's, you know, really had a kind of rough time. And I think you do need to understand it. I do think that it makes sense to see the correspondence as a whole, not only these early personal letters,

but also the letters that have been called the letters of direction. And so that you do actually move to some sort of resolution. And I think the fact that the whole course, correspondence is kept at the paraclete as an entirety really means that we should we should read it like that rather than as was once the sort of fashion that you read the first bit because it was so heart-rending and it did grip you and you thought oh well the rest is actually a bit kind of boring we don't really bother about that and I'm not sure that that really does justice to either a louise or al-Abalad because afterwards abelard actually attempted to tutor her how to be a serious not really

and how to approach her. Michael Rundj. In succession to each of Eloise's letters, Abelard does a reply, and some commentators have found his replies to be really very wooden and almost unwilling. And Eloise says, and so what are you going to do? How are you going to help me?

And you could say Abelard's answer is, pray, dear. And he does actually do a very eloquent, provides her with a very eloquent prayer. So he is, as it were, the straight man, and she has all these wonderful comments. And he writes at much greater length. And as the letters proceed, the last letters are Abelard's letters,

one on the origin of nuns, which in fact is very interesting because Abelard is arguing that women played a very active and sacramental part in the very early church. Abelard has sort of done his own research on this and then after that the follows an even longer letter

because Eloise had asked can you give us some rule for our nuns and Abelard writes this what survives is this very very long discursive in some ways rather muddled letter where you feel at the end of it maybe Abelard was saying will this do and of course it doesn't quite do

because Eloise when she comes to write her own rule for the parapet as far as we can tell doesn't take all that much notice of it Well, she uses some of it, but she certainly, she keeps her own mind. She remains her own woman to the end. And in fact, her rule is much better than his. Yes, yes. Yes, which again.

But there is one internal piece of evidence in Heloises's letters, which I think impines the argument slightly my way, which is this, that when Abelar was a young man, he wrote secular songs, songs of romance and poems and what have you, which unhappily are now lost. And she mentions them. Later, he wrote him. and things for the paracletes, in fact, a whole cycle of them, I think, for use by the nuns in the paraclete.

But had the intention been to show a movement from, you know, a life in the flesh to a life of spiritual endeavor, it might have been worth their while, I think, to include some of Abelard's earlier songs, or to allude to them much more specifically. So it seems to me that her mention of them in passing is more personal. You know, if you would ask me the question, do I think that they were both writing, of you to publication. Of Abelard, I would say yes and of Heloise. I'd be inclined to say no, at least for the early letters. Yes, but I don't think it needs to be publication for everybody, but I think it's publication for her community. I mean, she does in the second letter already.

I mean, she very much talks about you need to tell us, you need to tell me and my sisters in religion. I mean, I think it is for the whole community. I don't think it's just for her. Can I ask two questions finally, if I can have two final questions. Briefly, what do you think, How do you think that their relationship in Avalon always plays in the nature of romantic love from the high middle ages, the early 12th century from then on? Do they symbolise it? Do they – how does it play in that? Oh, I think it plays in the sense that in the 12th century there is such a lot of writing about love and people are really interested in love and the rediscovery of Ovid. And love is something that you kind of celebrate.

On the other hand, do you actually consummate it? And it is a sort of a burning question. How does Ambalad stand in the, as it were, the chronology of intellectuals at that time, Anthony? Well, he's very well regarded now as a philosopher, and there's been increasing a number of papers and books about him in strict academic philosophy, because his work in logic, despite the fact that it was mainly addressed to what was called the old logic, even in his own day, is so rich in suggestions for philosophy of language and metaphysics that people are finding all sorts of rather fascinating angles and aspects to him.

And he's now quite widely studied. I think prior to 20 years ago, so he would have just been regarded as the famous nominalist who had a love affair with Heloise, but now his reputation is larger than that. And finally, Michael, can you tell us where you think that Eloise stands in the, as it were, the chain of women intellectuals? and what role she plays in that? She's very strange because she stands there by herself. We can't give other examples of,

scarcely at all, of women in cloisters, of women in the schools at that time. And we don't know how she became so well educated. And then this whole mystery of, did she wish, what's been raised, did she wish to publish these letters? What were her other publications? We simply don't know. So I would simply say she stands by herself.

Well, thank you all very, very much. at New York New Grayling, Henry Tlazer and Michael Clanchie. And thank you for listening.