10. Peter Abelard Was an Accomplished Intellectual
Peter Abelard was a famous French scholar, theologian, and philosopher in the 1100’s. He was born into a noble family in the countryside of the Loire Valley. His family expected him to become a knight, but he rejected his family title and moved to Paris to study theology at the Notre Dame Cathedral. This is where he met an accomplished female writer and philosopher named Héloïse. The two began to have a forbidden love affair, and had a child together out of wedlock. They got married in secret, but Héloïse’s uncle and guardian, Fulbert, did not want the two of them to be together. He knew that their relationship was basically destroying both of their budding academic careers.
Peter Abelard told Héloïse to go to a convent and take up the life of a nun, in order for her to escape from her uncle Fulbert. He planned to continue to visit her, but Fulbert was so angry that his niece left Paris, his men held Peter Abelard down while they castrated him. When Héloïse was away, she wrote to Peter that she decided to actually become a nun for real. This came as a shock to Peter, since he did not think she was ever a particularly religious person. Héloïse later wrote that she thought it was completely unfair that men can continue their academic pursuits while women are stuck taking care of children, and she no longer wanted that life. Divorce was not an option back then, and without his genitals, he couldn’t exactly move on to have a life with someone else, so he continued to dedicate his life to his academic work, and became a monk who took on a vow of celibacy.