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Updated: June 22, 2025
It was apparently in the closing period of Abélard's sojourn at the abbey of St. Gildas that he wrote the "Historia Calamitatum." He endured the life there for nearly ten years; the date of his flight is not certain, but it cannot have been far from 1134 or 1135. Leo IX, pope from 1049 to 1054, was a native of Upper Alsace.
His fellow-disputants have their places in the history of philosophy; the story of Abélard's love for Héloïse has set him apart, so that he has lived for eight centuries less as a fearless thinker and masterly logician than as one of the glowingly romantic figures of the Middle Ages.
John of Salisbury, who attended Abélard's lectures about 1136, and became Bishop of Chartres in 1176, seems to have been more surprised than we need be at the intensity of the emotion. 'One never gets away from this question, he said. 'From whatever point a discussion starts, it is always led back and attached to that.
Abelard's name is more generally known on account of the golden haze of romance which surrounded him and the fair Heloise; and their loving letters have been often read and mourned over by thousands who have never heard of his theological writings.
It is different here. People own a piece of land here, and a piece there, and another piece miles away, and there are no fences. For example, around Père Abelard's house there is a fruit garden and a kitchen garden. The rest of his land is all over the place. He has a big piece of woodland at Pont aux Dames, where he was born, and another on the route de Mareuil.
The opposition of the professional defenders of a mere system to that more sincere and general play of the forces of human mind and character, which I have noted as the secret of Abelard's struggle, is indeed always powerful.
Abelard's disciple, Arnold of Brescia, was preaching his theory of political and religious freedom; civil government was to return to the old republican forms of ancient Rome, and the clergy were to be separated from all secular jurisdiction. In Lombardy the growth of wealth, population, and trade, demanded a more developed jurisprudence, and a new study had sprung up of Roman law.
But Peter raises him up, receives him in his arms, opens to him his heart and the hospitalities of his convent, not as a repentant prodigal, but as the greatest genius of his age, brought low by religious persecution. Peter did all in his power to console his visitor, and even privately interceded with the Pope, remembering only Abélard's greatness and his misfortunes.
Some of the most famous imitations of her letters are those in the ancient poem entitled, "The Romance of the Rose," written by Jean de Meung, in the thirteenth century; and in modern times her first letter was paraphrased by Alexander Pope, and in French by Colardeau. There exist in English half a dozen translations of them, with Abelard's replies.
II. Abélard to Héloïse Abelard's answer to this letter is almost as passionate. He tells how he has vainly sought in philosophy and religion a remedy for his disgrace; how with equal futility he has tried to secure himself from love by the rigours of the monastic life. He has gained nothing by it all. "If my passion has been put under a restraint, my thoughts yet run free.
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