Heloise

Abstract

Heloise (c. 1095–1164) was the lover and intellectual partner of the controversial philosopher and theologian, Peter Abelard (1079–1142), and abbess of a religious community that he entrusted to her, the abbey of the Paraclete from 1129 until her death. She is most well-known for the letters that she exchanged with Peter Abelard c. 1132/1133, after reacting to his Historia calamitatum, in which he argued that providence had enabled him to survive a turbulent career in which she herself was profoundly implicated. Whereas Abelard had presented their affair simply in terms of lust, Heloise emphasizes that she had always been driven by ideals of selfless love. In a third letter, she extends her interest in the ethics of intention, asks him for an account of religious women in history, and a rule better adapted to the needs of women. Widely revered for her learning, she prompted Abelard to provide many writings for the Paraclete, including responses to a series of forty-two Problemata about questions presented by inconsistencies within the Bible. Mews (1999, 2009) argues that she is the young woman whose voice is preserved in an exchange of over one hundred Latin love letters (the Epistolae duorum amantium) between a controversial teacher and his brilliant pupil, preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript of Clairvaux.