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Petrus Abaelardus (1079-1142)
Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes)
CHAPTER II: OF THE PERSECUTIONHE HAD FROM HIS MASTER WILLIAM OF CHAMPEAUX
I CAME at length to Paris, where above all in those days the-art of dialectics was most flourishing,
and there did I meet William of Champeaux, my teacher, a man most distinguished in his science
both by his renown and by his true merit. With him I remained for some time, at first indeed well
liked of him; but later I brought him great grief, because I undertook to refute certain of his opinions,
not infrequently attacking him in disputation, and now and then in these debates I was adjudged
victor. Now this, to those among my fellow students who were ranked foremost, seemed all the
more insufferable because of my youth and the brief duration of my studies.
Out of this sprang the beginning of my misfortunes, which have followed me even to the present
day; the more widely my fame was spread abroad, the more bitter was the envy that was kindled
against me. It was given out that I, presuming on my gifts far beyond the warranty of my youth, was
aspiring despite my tender years to the leadership of a school; nay, more, that I was making ready
the very place in which I would undertake this task,, the place being none other than the castle of
Melun, at that time a royal seat.
CHAPTER IV: OF THE PERSECUTION HE HAD FROM HIS TEACHER ANSELM
NOW this venerable man of whom I have spoken was acutely smitten with envy, and straightway
incited, as I have already mentioned, by the insinuations of sundry persons, began to persecute me
for my lecturing on the Scriptures no less bitterly than my former master, William, had done for my
work in philosophy. At that time there were in this old man's school two who were considered far to
excel all the others: Alberic of Rheims and Lotulphe the Lombard. The better opinion these two held
of themselves,, the more they were incensed against me. Chiefly at their suggestion, as it afterwards
transpired, yonder venerable coward had the impudence to forbid me to carry on any further in his
school the work of preparing glosses which I had thus begun. The pretext he alleged was that if by
chance in the course of this work I should write anything containing blunders-as was likely enough in
view of my lack of training-the thing might be imputed to him. When this came to the ears of his
scholars, they were filled with indignation at so undisguised a manifestation of spite, the like of
which had never been directed against any one before. The more obvious this rancor became, the
more it redounded to my honor, and his persecution did naught save to make me more famous.
CHAPTER VI: OF HOW, BROUGHT LOW BY HIS LOVE FOR HELOISE, HE WAS WOUNDED IN BODY AND
SOUL
NOW there dwelt in that same city of Paris a certain young girl named Heloise, the niece of a canon
who was called Fulbert. Her uncle's love for her was equaled only by his desire that she should have
the best education which he could possibly procure for her. Of no mean beauty, she stood out above
all by reason of her abundant knowledge of letters. Now this virtue is rare among women, and for
that very reason it doubly graced the maiden, and made her the most worthy of renown in the entire
kingdom. It was this young girl whom I, after carefully considering all those qualities which are wont
to attract lovers, determined to unite with myself in the bonds of love, and indeed the thing seemed
to me very easy to be done. So distinguished was my name, and I possessed such advantages of
youth and comeliness, that no matter what woman I might favor with my love, I dreaded rejection of
none. Then, too, I believed that I could win the maiden's consent all the more easily by reason of her
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knowledge of letters and her zeal therefor; so, even if we were parted, we might yet be together in
thought with the aid of written messages. Perchance, too, we might be able to write more boldly
than we could speak, and thus at all times could we live in Joyous intimacy.
Thus, utterly aflame with my passion for this maiden, I sought to discover means whereby I might
have daily and familiar speech with her, thereby the more easily to win her consent. For this purpose
I persuaded the girl's uncle, with the aid of some of his friends to take me into his household-for he
dwelt hard by my school-in return for the payment of a small sum. My pretext for this was that the
care of my own household was a serious handicap to my studies, and likewise burdened me with an
expense far greater than I could afford. Now, he was a man keen in avarice, and likewise he was most
desirous for his niece that her study of letters should ever go forward, so, for these two reasons' I
easily won his consent to the fulfillment of my wish, for he was fairly agape for my money, and at the
same time believed that his niece would vastly benefit by my teaching. More even than this, by his
own earnest entreaties he fell in with my desires beyond anything I had dared to hope, opening the
way for my love; for he entrusted her wholly to my guidance, begging me to give her instruction
whensoever I might be free from the duties of my school, no matter whether by day or by night, and
to punish her sternly if ever I should find her negligent of her tasks. In all this the man's simplicity was
nothing short of astounding to me; I should not have been more smitten with wonder if he had
entrusted a tender lamb to the care of a ravenous wolf. When he had thus given her into my charge,
not alone to be taught but even to be disciplined, what had he done save to give free scope to my
desires, and to offer me every opportunity, even if I had not sought it, to bend her to my will with
threats and blows if I failed to do so with caresses? There were, however, two things which
particularly served to allay any foul suspicion: his own love for his niece, and my former reputation
for continence.
Why should I say more? We were united first in the dwelling that sheltered our love, and then in the
hearts that burned with it. Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love,
and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our passion craved. Our speech was more of
love than of the books which lay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words.
Our hands sought less the book than each other's bosoms.- love drew our eyes together far more
than the lesson drew them to the pages of our text. In order that there might be no suspicion, there
were, indeed, sometimes blows, but love gave them, not anger; they were the marks, not of wrath,
but of a tenderness surpassing the most fragrant balm in sweetness. What followed? No degree in
love's progress was left untried by our passion, and if love itself could imagine any wonder as yet
unknown, we discovered it. And our inexperience of such delights made us all the more ardent in our
pursuit of them, so that our thirst for one another was still unquenched.
In measure as this passionate rapture absorbed me more and more, I devoted ever less time to
philosophy and to the work of the school. Indeed it became loathsome to me to go to the school or
to linger there; the labor, moreover, was very burdensome, since my nights were vigils of love and
my days of study. My lecturing became utterly careless and lukewarm; I did nothing because of
inspiration, but everything merely as a matter of habit. I had become nothing more than a reciter of
my former discoveries, and though I still wrote poems, they dealt with love, not with the secrets of
philosophy. Of these songs you yourself well know how some have become widely known and have
been sung in many lands, chiefly, methinks, by those who delighted in the things of this world. As for
the sorrow, the groans, the lamentations of my students when they perceived the preoccupation,
nay, rather the chaos, of my mind, it is hard even to imagine them.
A thing so manifest could deceive only a few, no one, methinks, save him whose shame it chiefly
bespoke, the girl's uncle, Fulbert. The truth was often enough hinted to him, and by many persons,
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but he could not believe it, partly, as I have said, by reason of his boundless love for his niece, and
partly because of the well-known continence of my previous life. Indeed we do not easily suspect
shame in those whom we most cherish, nor can there be the blot 'of foul suspicion on devoted love.
Of this St. Jerome in his epistle to Sabinianus (Epist- 48) says: "We are wont to be the last to know
the evils of our own households, and to be ignorant of the sins of our children and our wives, though
our neighbors sing them aloud." But no matter how slow a matter may be in disclosing itself, it is
sure to come forth at last, nor is it easy to hide from one what is known to all. So, after the lapse of
several months, did it happen with us. Oh, how great was the uncle's grief when he learned the truth,
and how bitter was the sorrow of the lovers when we were forced to part! With what shame was I
overwhelmed, with what contrition smitten because of the blow which had fallen on her I loved, and
what a tempest of misery burst over her by reason of my disgrace! Each grieved most, not for
himself, but for the other. Each sought to allay, not his own sufferings, but those of the one he loved.
The very sundering of our bodies served but to link our souls closer together; the plentitude of the
love which was denied to us inflamed us more than ever. Once the first wildness of shame had
passed, it left us more shameless than before, and as shame died within us the cause of it seemed to
us ever more desirable. And so it chanced with us as, in the stories that the poets tell, it once
happened with Mars and Venus when they were caught together.
It was not long after this that Heloise found that she was pregnant, and of this she wrote to me in the
utmost exultation, at the same time asking me to consider what had best be done. Accordingly, on a
night when her uncle was absent, we carried out the plan we had determined on, and I stole her
secretly away from her uncle's house, sending her without delay to my own country. She remained
there with my sister until she gave birth to a son,, whom she named Astrolabe. Meanwhile her uncle
after his return, was almost mad with grief; only one who had then seen him could rightly guess the
burning agony of his sorrow and the bitterness of his shame. What steps to take against me, or what
snares to set for me, he did not know. If he should kill me or do me some bodily hurt, he feared
greatly lest his dear-loved niece should be made to suffer for it among my kinsfolk. He had no power
to seize me and imprison me somewhere against my will, though I make no doubt he would have
done so quickly enough had he been able or dared, for I had taken measures to guard against any
such attempt.
At length, however, in pity for his boundless grief, and bitterly blaming myself for the suffering which
my love had brought upon him through the baseness of the deception I had practiced, I went to him
to entreat his forgiveness, promising to make any amends that he himself might decree. I pointed out
that what had happened could not seem incredible to anyone who had ever felt the power of love, or
who remembered how, from the very beginning of the human race, women had cast down even the
noblest men to utter ruin. And in order to make amends even beyond his extremest hope, I offered
to marry her-whom I had seduced, provided only the thing could be kept secret, so that I might suffer
no loss of reputation thereby. To this he gladly assented, pledging his own faith and that of his
kindred, and sealing with kisses the pact which I had sought of him-and all this that he might the
more easily betray me.
CHAPTER VII: OF THE ARGUMENTS OF HELOISE AGAINST WEDLOCK OF HOW NONE THE LESS HE
MADE HER HIS WIFE
FORTHWITH I repaired to my own country, and brought back thence my mistress, that I might make
her my wife. She, however, most violently disapproved of this, and for two chief reasons: the danger
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thereof, and the disgrace which it would bring upon me. She swore that her uncle would never be
appeased by such satisfaction as this, as, indeed, afterwards proved only too true. She asked how she
could ever glory in me if she should make me thus inglorious, and should shame herself along with
me. What penalties, she said, would the world rightly demand of her if she should rob it of so shining
a light! What curses would follow such a loss to the Church, what tears among the philosophers
would result from such a marriage! How unfitting, how lamentable it would be for me, whom nature
had made for the whole world, to devote myself to one woman solely, and to subject myself to such
humiliation! She vehemently rejected this marriage, which she felt would be in every way
ignominious and burdensome to me.
Besides dwelling thus on the disgrace to me, she reminded me of the hardships of married life, to the
avoidance of which the Apostle exhorts us, saying: "Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. But
and marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall
have trouble in the flesh: but I spare you" (I Cor. vii. 27). And again: "But I would have you to be free
from cares" (I Cor. vii. 32). But if I would heed neither the counsel of the Apostle nor the exhortations
of the saints regarding this heavy yoke of matrimony, she bade me at least consider the advice of the
philosophers, and weigh carefully what had been written on this subject either by them or
concerning their lives. Even the saints themselves have often and earnestly spoken on this subject for
the purpose of warning us. Thus St. Jerome, in his first book against Jovinianus, makes Theophrastus
set forth in great detail the intolerable annoyances and the endless disturbances of married life,
demonstrating with the most convincing arguments that no wise man should ever have a wife, and
concluding his reasons for this philosophic exhortation with these words: "Who among Christians
would not be overwhelmed by such arguments as these advanced by Theophrastus?"
Again, in the same work, St. Jerome tells how Cicero, asked by Hircius after his divorce of Terentia
whether he would marry the sister of Hircius, replied that he would do no such thing, saying that he
could not devote himself to a wife and to philosophy at the same time. Cicero does not, indeed,
precisely speak of "devoting himself," but he does add that he did not wish to undertake anything
which might rival his study of philosophy in its demands upon him.
Then, turning from the consideration of such hindrances to the study of philosophy, Heloise bade me
observe what were the conditions of honourable wedlock. What possible concord could there be
between scholars and domestics, between authors and cradles, between books or tablets and
distaffs, between the stylus or the pen and the spindle? What man, intent on his religious or
philosophical meditations, can possibly endure the whining of children, the lullabies of the nurse
seeking to quiet them, or the noisy confusion of family life? Who can endure the continual untidiness
of children? The rich, you may reply, can do this, because they have palaces or houses containing
many rooms, and because their wealth takes no thought of expense and protects them from daily
worries. But to this the answer is that the condition of philosophers is by no means that of the
wealthy, nor can those whose minds are occupied with riches and worldly cares find time for
religious or philosophical study. For this reason the renowned philosophers of old utterly despised
the world, fleeing from its perils rather than reluctantly giving them up, and denied themselves all its
delights in order that they might repose in the embraces of philosophy alone. One of them, and the
greatest of all, Seneca, in his advice to Lucilius, says philosophy is not a thing to be studied only in
hours of leisure; we must give up everything else to devote ourselves to it, for no amount of time is
really sufficient hereto" (Epist. 73)
It matters little, she pointed out, whether one abandons the study of philosophy completely or
merely interrupts it, for it can never remain at the point where it was thus interrupted. All other
occupations must be resisted; it is vain to seek to adjust life to include them, and they must simply be
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eliminated. This view is maintained, for example, in the love of God by those among us who are truly
called monastics, and in the love of wisdom by all those who have stood out among men as sincere
philosophers. For in every race, gentiles or Jews or Christians, there have always been a few who
excelled their fellows in faith or in the purity of their lives, and who were set apart from the
multitude by their continence or by their abstinence from worldly pleasures.
Among the Jews of old there were the Nazarites, who consecrated themselves to the Lord, some of
them the sons of the prophet Elias and others the followers of Eliseus, the monks of whom, on the
authority of St. Jerome (Epist. 4 and 13), we read in the Old Testament. More recently there were the
three philosophical sects which Josephus defines in his Book of Antiquities (xviii. 2), calling them the
Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. In our times, furthermore, there are the monks who
imitate either the communal life of the Apostles or the earlier and solitary life of John. Among the
gentiles there are, as has been said, the philosophers. Did they not apply the name of wisdom or
philosophy as much to the religion of life as to the pursuit of learning, as we find from the origin of
the word itself, and likewise from the testimony of the saints?
There is a passage on this subject in the eighth book of St. Augustine's "City of God," wherein he
distinguishes between the various schools of philosophy. "The Italian school," he says, "had as its
founder Pythagoras of Samos, who, it is said, originated the very word 'philosophy'. Before his time
those who were regarded as conspicuous for the praiseworthiness of their lives were called wise
men, but he, on being asked of his profession, replied that he was a philosopher, that is to say a
student or a lover of wisdom because it seemed to him unduly boastful to call himself a wise man." In
this passage, therefore, when the phrase "conspicuous for the praiseworthiness of their lives" is
used, it is evident that the wise, in other words the philosophers, were so called less because of their
erudition than by reason of their virtuous lives. In what sobriety and continence these men lived it is
not for me to prove by illustration, lest I should seem to instruct Minerva herself.
Now, she added, if laymen and gentiles, bound by no profession of religion, lived after this fashion,
what ought you, a cleric and a canon, to do in order not to prefer base voluptuousness to your sacred
duties, to prevent this Charybdis from sucking you down headlong, and to save yourself from being
plunged shamelessly and irrevocably into such filth as this? If you care nothing for your privileges as a
cleric, at least uphold your dignity as a philosopher. If you scorn the reverence due to God, let regard
for your reputation temper your shamelessness. Remember that Socrates was chained to a wife, and
by what a filthy accident he himself paid for this blot on philosophy, in order that others thereafter
might be made more cautious by his example. Jerome thus mentions this affair, writing about
Socrates in his first book against Jovinianus: "Once when he was withstanding a storm of reproaches
which Xantippe was hurling at him from an upper story, he was suddenly drenched with foul slops;
wiping his head, he said only, 'I knew there would be a shower after all that thunder.'"
Her final argument was that it would be dangerous for me to take her back to Paris, and that it would
be far sweeter for her to be called my mistress than to be known as my wife; nay, too, that this
would be more honourable for me as well. In such case, she said, love alone would hold me to her,
and the strength of the marriage chain would not constrain us. Even if we should by chance be
parted from time to time, the joy of our meetings would be all the sweeter by reason of its rarity. But
when she found that she could not convince me or dissuade me from my folly by these and like
arguments, and because she could not bear to offend me, with grievous sighs and tears she made an
end of her resistance, saying: "Then there is no more left but this, that in our doom the sorrow yet to
come shall be no less than the love we two have already known." Nor in this, as now the whole world
knows, did she lack the spirit of prophecy.
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So, after our little son was born, we left him in my sister's care, and secretly returned to Paris. A few
days later, in the early morning, having kept our nocturnal vigil of prayer unknown to all in a certain
church, we were united there in the benediction of wedlock her uncle and a few friends of his and
mine being present. We departed forthwith stealthily and by separate ways, nor thereafter did we
see each other save rarely and in private, thus striving our utmost to conceal what we had done. But
her uncle and those of his household, seeking solace for their disgrace, began to divulge the story of
our marriage, and thereby to violate the pledge they had given me on this point. Heloise, on the
contrary, denounced her own kin and swore that they were speaking the most absolute lies. Her
uncle, aroused to fury thereby, visited her repeatedly with punishments. No sooner had I learned this
than I sent her to a convent of nuns at Argenteuil, not far from Paris, where she herself had been
brought up and educated as a young girl. I had them make ready for her all the garments of a nun,
suitable for the life of a convent, excepting only the veil, and these I bade her put on.
When her uncle and his kinsmen heard of this, they were convinced that now I had completely
played them false and had rid myself forever of Heloise by forcing her to become a nun. Violently
incensed, they laid a plot against me, and one night while I all unsuspecting was asleep in a secret
room in my lodgings, they broke in with the help of one of my servants whom they had bribed. There
they had vengeance on me with a most cruel and most shameful punishment, such as astounded the
whole world; for they cut off those parts of my body with which I had done that which was the cause
of their sorrow. This done, straightway they fled, but two of them were captured and suffered the
loss of their eyes and their genital organs. One of these two was the aforesaid servant, who even
while he was still in my service, had been led by his avarice to betray me.
CHAPTER VIII: OF THE SUFFERING OF HIS BODY-OF HOW HE BECAME A MONK IN THE MONASTERY
OF ST. DENIS AND HE'LOISE A NUN AT ARGENTEUIL
WHEN morning came the whole city was assembled before my dwelling. It is difficult, nay,
impossible, for words of mine to describe the amazement which bewildered them,, the lamentations
they uttered, the uproar with which they harassed me, or the grief with which they increased my
own suffering. Chiefly the clerics, and above all my scholars, tortured me with their intolerable
lamentations and outcries, so that I suffered more intensely from their compassion than from the
pain of my wound. In truth I felt the disgrace more than the hurt to my body, and was more afflicted
with shame than with pain. My incessant thought was of the renown in which I had so much
delighted, now brought low, nay, utterly blotted out, so swiftly by an evil chance. I saw, too, how
justly God had punished me in that very part of my body-,whereby I had sinned. I perceived that
there was indeed justice in my betrayal by him whom I had myself already betrayed; and then I
thought how eagerly my rivals would seize upon this manifestation -of justice, how this disgrace
would bring bitter and enduring grief to my kindred and my friends, and how the tale of this amazing
outrage would spread to the very ends of the earth.
What path Jay open to me thereafter? How could I ever again hold up my head among men, when
every finger should be pointed at me in scorn, every tongue speak my blistering shame, and when I
should be a monstrous spectacle to all eyes? I was overwhelmed by the remembrance that,
according to the dread letter of the law, God holds eunuchs in such abomination that men thus
maimed are forbidden to enter a church, even as the unclean and filthy; nay, even beasts in such
plight were not acceptable as sacrifices. Thus in Leviticus (xxii, 24) is it said: "Ye shall not offer unto
the Lord that which hath its stones bruised, or crushed, or broken, or cut." And in Deuteronomy (xxiii,
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1), "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the
congregation of the Lord."
I must confess that in my misery it was the overwhelming sense of my disgrace rather than any ardor
for conversion to the religious life that drove me to seek the seclusion of the monastic cloister.
Heloise had already, at my bidding, taken the veil and entered a convent. Thus it was that we both
put on the sacred garb, I in the abbey of St. Denis, and she in the convent of Argenteuil, of which I
have already spoken. She, I remember well, when her fond friends sought vainly to deter her from
submitting her fresh youth to the heavy and almost intolerable yoke of monastic life, sobbing and
weeping replied in the words of Cornelia:
O husband most noble
Who ne'er shouldst have shared my couch! Has fortune such power
To smite so lofty a head? Why then was I wedded
Only to bring thee to woe? Receive now my sorrow,
The price I so gladly pay."
(Lucan, "Pharsalia," viii, 94.)
With these words on her lips did she go forthwith to the altar, and lifted therefrom the veil, which
had been blessed by the bishop, and before them all she took the vows of the religious life. For my
part, scarcely had I recovered from my wound when clerics sought me in great numbers, endlessly
beseeching both my abbot and me myself that now, since I was done with learning for the sake of
Pain or renown, I should turn to it for the sole love of God. They bade me care diligently for the
talent which God had committed to my keeping (Matthew, xxv, 15), since surely He would demand it
back from me with interest. It was their plea that, inasmuch as of old I had labored chiefly in behalf
of the rich, I should now devote myself to the teaching of the poor. Therein above all should I
perceive ho it was the hand of God that had touched me, when I should devote my life to the study
of letters in freedom from the snares of the flesh and withdrawn from the tumultuous life of this
world. Thus, in truth, should I become a philosopher less of this world than of God.
The abbey, however, to which I had betaken myself was utterly worldly and in its life quite
scandalous. The abbot himself was as far below his fellows in his way of living and in the foulness of
his reputation as he was above them in priestly rank. This intolerable state of things I often and
vehemently denounced, sometimes in private talk and sometimes publicly, but the only result was
that I made myself detested of them all. They gladly laid hold of the daily eagerness of my students
to hear me as an excuse whereby they might be rid of me; and finally, at the insistent urging of the
students themselves, and with the hearty consent of the abbot and the rest of the brotherhood, I
departed thence to a certain hut, there to teach in my wonted way. To this place such a throng of
students flocked that the neighborhood could not afford shelter for them, nor the earth sufficient
sustenance.
Here, as befitted my profession, I devoted myself chiefly to lectures on theology, but I did not wholly
abandon the teaching of the secular arts, to which I was more accustomed, and which was
particularly demanded of me. I used the latter, however, as a hook, luring my students by the bait of
learning to the study of the true philosophy, even as the Ecclesiastical History tells of Origen, the
greatest of all Christian philosophers. Since apparently the Lord had gifted me with no less
persuasiveness in expounding the Scriptures than in lecturing on secular subjects, the number of my
students in these two courses began to increase greatly, and the attendance at all the other schools
was correspondingly diminished. Thus I aroused the envy and hatred of the other teachers. Those
way took who sought to belittle me in every possible advantage of my absence to bring two principal
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charges against me: first, that it was contrary to the monastic profession to be concerned with the
study of secular books; and, second, that I had presumed to teach theology without ever having been
taught therein myself. This they did in order that my teaching of every kind might be prohibited, and
to this end they continually stirred up bishops, archbishops, abbots and whatever other dignitaries of
the Church they could reach.