Heloise and Abelard
Abelard and Heloise first met in 1115 when Abelard, a Canon of Notre Dame in Paris was engaged to teach her. The couple fell in love and eloped after Heloise became pregnant. Heloise finally agreed to marriage after the birth of their son, Astrolabe but returned to her Uncle’s house, keeping the marriage secret to protect Abelard’s career. However, Fulbert leaked the news, abusing his niece when she would not publicly confirm her marriage. To protect her, Abelard hid his wife in a nunnery. Convinced Heloise had been abandoned Fulbert had Abelard castrated. Unable to enjoy married life, Abelard forced Heloise to take vows as a nun and became a monk himself.
The couple’s letters, written ten years after they parted, give the best picture of the passion – and the personalities of these two lovers. Instigated by Heloise, the letters reveal how both suffered because of their separation. However, while Heloise can’t quite feel guilty about being married to god while still longing for Abelard, he seems to be more troubled. Abelard still clearly loves and thinks of Heloise. However, he has an easier time controlling his ‘passions” because of his castration: “your misfortune has been the occasion of your finding rest” as Heloise puts it. “God, who seemed to deal heavily with you, sought only to help you.”
In fact, Abelard frankly admits his inability to enjoy sex is why he urged Heloise into holy orders in the first place. “When I saw myself oppressed by my misfortune I was furiously jealous and regarded all men as my rivals, ” he confessed to her. “I imagined your heart so accustomed to love that it could not be long without entering on a new engagement. Jealousy can easily believe the most terrible things. I was desirous to make it impossible for me to doubt you.” Abelard regards his wife as a possession he has passed onto someone else for safekeeping.
Heloise, on the other hand, comes across as much more selfless. She freely admits she did not want to enter a convent- but only did so because she loved Abelard. However, Heloise is also more freethinking- despite her conventional devotion to her husband. She never wanted to marry Abelard; she explains because being a “mistress had greater charms because it was more free.” In Heloise’s opinion “It is not love, but the desire of riches and position which makes a woman run into the embraces of an indolent husband. Ambition, and not affection, forms such marriages.”
More importantly, Heloise had no regrets. ” The unhappy consequences of our love and your disgrace have made me put on the habit of chastity, but I am not penitent of the past,” she declared. On the other hand, Abelard, told Heloise to stop writing to him because, in her words: “letters…. have all the fire of our passions, they can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present”. However, the couple was eventually reunited -in the same tomb.
Abelard may have been ashamed of his passion. However, one-eighteenth century musician was quite unashamed in his peculiar erotic fantasies.