|
Peter Abelard
|
Abélard and Héloïse depicted in a 14th century manuscript
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Peter Abelard
Encyclopaedia Britannica
French theologian and poet
French Pierre Abélard, or Abailard, Latin Petrus Abaelardus, or
Abeilardus
born 1079, Le Pallet, near Nantes, Brittany [now in France]
died April 21, 1142, Priory of Saint-Marcel, near Chalon-sur-Saône,
Burgundy [now in France]
Main
French theologian and philosopher best known for his solution of the
problem of universals and for his original use of dialectics. He is also
known for his poetry and for his celebrated love affair with Héloïse.
Early life
The outline of Abelard’s career is well known, largely because he
described so much of it in his famous Historia calamitatum (“History of
My Troubles”). He was born the son of a knight in Brittany south of the
Loire River. He sacrificed his inheritance and the prospect of a
military career in order to study philosophy, particularly logic, in
France. He provoked bitter quarrels with two of his masters, Roscelin of
Compiègne and Guillaume de Champeaux, who represented opposite poles of
philosophy in regard to the question of the existence of universals. (A
universal is a quality or property that each individual member of a
class of things must possess if the same general word is to apply to all
the things in that class. Redness, for example, is a universal possessed
by all red objects.) Roscelin was a nominalist who asserted that
universals are nothing more than mere words; Guillaume in Paris upheld a
form of Platonic realism according to which universals exist. Abelard in
his own logical writings brilliantly elaborated an independent
philosophy of language. While showing how words could be used
significantly, he stressed that language itself is not able to
demonstrate the truth of things (res) that lie in the domain of physics.
Abelard was a peripatetic both in the manner in which he wandered
from school to school at Paris, Melun, Corbeil, and elsewhere and as one
of the exponents of Aristotelian logic who were called the Peripatetics.
In 1113 or 1114 he went north to Laon to study theology under Anselm of
Laon, the leading biblical scholar of the day. He quickly developed a
strong contempt for Anselm’s teaching, which he found vacuous, and
returned to Paris. There he taught openly but was also given as a
private pupil the young Héloïse, niece of one of the clergy of the
cathedral of Paris, Canon Fulbert. Abelard and Héloïse fell in love and
had a son whom they called Astrolabe. They then married secretly. To
escape her uncle’s wrath Héloïse withdrew into the convent of Argenteuil
outside Paris. Abelard suffered castration at Fulbert’s instigation. In
shame he embraced the monastic life at the royal abbey of Saint-Denis
near Paris and made the unwilling Héloïse become a nun at Argenteuil.
Career as a monk
At Saint-Denis Abelard extended his reading in theology and tirelessly
criticized the way of life followed by his fellow monks. His reading of
the Bible and of the Fathers of the Church led him to make a collection
of quotations that seemed to represent inconsistencies of teaching by
the Christian church. He arranged his findings in a compilation entitled
Sic et non (“Yes and No”); and for it he wrote a preface in which, as a
logician and as a keen student of language, he formulated basic rules
with which students might reconcile apparent contradictions of meaning
and distinguish the various senses in which words had been used over the
course of many centuries. He also wrote the first version of his book
called Theologia, which was formally condemned as heretical and burned
by a council held at Soissons in 1121. Abelard’s dialectical analysis of
the mystery of God and the Trinity was held to be erroneous, and he
himself was placed for a while in the abbey of Saint-Médard under house
arrest. When he returned to Saint-Denis he applied his dialectical
methods to the subject of the abbey’s patron saint; he argued that St.
Denis of Paris, the martyred apostle of Gaul, was not identical with
Denis of Athens (also known as Dionysius the Areopagite), the convert of
St. Paul. The monastic community of Saint-Denis regarded this criticism
of their traditional claims as derogatory to the kingdom; and, in order
to avoid being brought for trial before the king of France, Abelard fled
from the abbey and sought asylum in the territory of Count Theobald of
Champagne. There he sought the solitude of a hermit’s life but was
pursued by students who pressed him to resume his teaching in
philosophy. His combination of the teaching of secular arts with his
profession as a monk was heavily criticized by other men of religion,
and Abelard contemplated flight outside Christendom altogether. In 1125,
however, he accepted election as abbot of the remote Breton monastery of
Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys. There, too, his relations with the community
deteriorated, and, after attempts had been made upon his life, he
returned to France.
Héloïse had meanwhile become the head of a new foundation of nuns
called the Paraclete. Abelard became the abbot of the new community and
provided it with a rule and with a justification of the nun’s way of
life; in this he emphasized the virtue of literary study. He also
provided books of hymns he had composed, and in the early 1130s he and
Héloïse composed a collection of their own love letters and religious
correspondence.
Final years
About 1135 Abelard went to the Mont-Sainte-Geneviève outside Paris to
teach, and he wrote in a blaze of energy and of celebrity. He produced
further drafts of his Theologia in which he analyzed the sources of
belief in the Trinity and praised the pagan philosophers of classical
antiquity for their virtues and for their discovery by the use of reason
of many fundamental aspects of Christian revelation. He also wrote a
book called Ethica or Scito te ipsum (“Know Thyself”), a short
masterpiece in which he analyzed the notion of sin and reached the
drastic conclusion that human actions do not make a man better or worse
in the sight of God, for deeds are in themselves neither good nor bad.
What counts with God is a man’s intention; sin is not something done (it
is not res); it is uniquely the consent of a human mind to what it knows
to be wrong. Abelard also wrote Dialogus inter philosophum, Judaeum et
Christianum (“Dialogue Between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian”)
and a commentary on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, the Expositio in
Epistolam ad Romanos, in which he outlined an explanation of the purpose
of Christ’s life, which was to inspire men to love him by example alone.
On the Mont-Sainte-Geneviève Abelard drew crowds of pupils, many of
them men of future fame, such as the English humanist John of Salisbury.
He also, however, aroused deep hostility in many by his criticism of
other masters and by his apparent revisions of the traditional teachings
of Christian theology. Within Paris the influential abbey of
Saint-Victor was studiously critical of his doctrines, while elsewhere
William of Saint-Thierry, a former admirer of Abelard, recruited the
support of Bernard of Clairvaux, perhaps the most influential figure in
Western Christendom at that time. At a council held at Sens in 1140,
Abelard underwent a resounding condemnation, which was soon confirmed by
Pope Innocent II. He withdrew to the great monastery of Cluny in
Burgundy. There, under the skillful mediation of the abbot, Peter the
Venerable, he made peace with Bernard of Clairvaux and retired from
teaching. Now both sick and old, he lived the life of a Cluniac monk.
After his death, his body was first sent to the Paraclete; it now lies
alongside that of Héloïse in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise in Paris.
Epitaphs composed in his honour suggest that Abelard impressed some of
his contemporaries as one of the greatest thinkers and teachers of all
time.
David Edward Luscombe
|
|
Peter Abelard
was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent
logician.
The story of his affair with and love for
Heloise has become legendary.
Heloise (1101-16 May 1164) was a French nun,
writer, scholar, and abbess,
best known for her love affair and correspondence with Peter Abelard.
|
|
|
|
|
19th-century drawing of Heloise at her studies
|
|
The Love Letters of Abelard and
Heloise
Translated by Anonymous, edited by Israel
Gollancz and Honnor Morten
1901
|
|
|
|
|
LETTER I
Abelard to Philintus
THE last time we were together, Philintus, you gave me a melancholy
account of your misfortunes; I was sensibly touched with the relation,
and like a true friend bore a share in your griefs. What did I not say
to stop your tears? I laid before you all the reasons philosophy could
furnish, which I thought might anyways soften the strokes of fortune.
But all these endeavours have proved useless; grief, I perceive, has
wholly seized your spirits, and your prudence, far from assisting, seems
to have forsaken you. But my skilful friendship has found out an
expedient to relieve you. Attend to me a moment, hear but the story of
my misfortunes, and yours, Philintus, will be nothing as compared with
those of the loving and unhappy Abelard. Observe, I beseech you, at what
expense I endeavour to serve you; and think this no small mark of my
affection; for I am going to present you with the relation of such
particulars as it is impossible for me to recollect without piercing my
heart with the most sensible affliction. You know the place where I was
born, but not, perhaps, that I was born with those complexional faults
which strangers charge upon our nation--an extreme lightness of temper,
and great inconstancy. I frankly own it, and shall be as free to
acquaint you with those good qualities which were observed in me. I had
a natural vivacity and aptness for all the polite arts. My father was a
gentleman and a man of good parts; he loved the wars, but differed in
his sentiments from many who follow that profession. He thought it no
praise to be illiterate, but in the camp he knew how to converse at the
same time with the Muses and Bellona. He was the same in the management
of his family, and took equal care to form his children to the study of
polite learning as to their military exercises. As I was his eldest, and
consequently his favourite son, he took more than ordinary care of my
education. I had a natural genius for study, and made extraordinary
progress in it. Smitten with the love of books, and the praises which on
all sides were bestowed upon me, I aspired to no other reputation than
that of learning. To my brothers I leave the glory of battles and the
pomp of triumphs; nay, more, I yielded them up my birthright and
patrimony. I knew necessity was the great spur to study, and was afraid
I should not merit the title of learned if I distinguished myself from
others by nothing but a more plentiful fortune. Of all the sciences
logic was the most to my taste. Such were the arms I chose to profess.
Furnished with the weapons of reasoning I took pleasure in going to
public disputations to win trophies; and wherever I heard that this art
flourished, I ranged, like another Alexander, from province to province,
to seek new adversaries with whom I might try my strength.
The ambition I had to become formidable in logic led me at last to
Paris, the centre of politeness, and where the science I was so smitten
with had usually been in the greatest perfection. I put myself under the
direction of one Champeaux, a professor who had acquired the character
of the most skilful philosopher of his age, but by negative excellencies
only as being the least ignorant! He received me with great
demonstrations of kindness, but I was not so happy as to please him
long; for I was too knowing in the subjects he discoursed upon, and I
often confuted his notions. Frequently in our disputations I pushed a
good argument so home that all his subtlety was not able to elude its
force. It was impossible he should see himself surpassed by his scholar
without resentment. It is sometimes dangerous to have too much merit.
Envy increased against me in proportion to my reputation. My enemies
endeavoured to interrupt my progress, but their malice only provoked my
courage. Measuring my abilities by the jealousy I had raised, I thought
I had no further need for Champeaux's lectures, but rather that I was
sufficiently qualified to read to others. I stood for a post which was
vacant at Melun. My master used all his artifice to defeat my hopes, but
in vain; and on this occasion I triumphed over his cunning as before I
had done over his learning. My lectures were always crowded, and my
beginnings so fortunate, that I entirely obscured the renown of my
famous master. Flushed with these happy conquests, I removed to Corbeil
to attack the masters there, and so establish my character of the ablest
logician. The rush of travelling threw me into a dangerous distemper,
and not being able to recover my health, my physicians, who perhaps were
in league with Champeaux, advised me to remove to my native air. Thus I
voluntarily banished myself for some years. I leave you to imagine
whether my absence was not regretted by the better sort. At length I
recovered my health, when I received news that my greatest adversary had
taken the habit of a monk; you may think it was an act of penitence for
having persecuted me; quite the contrary, ’twas ambition; he resolved to
raise himself to some church dignity, therefore fell into the beaten
track and took on him the garb of feigned austerity; for this is the
easiest and shortest way to the highest ecclesiastical dignities. His
wishes were successful and he obtained a bishopric; yet did he not quit
Paris and the care of his schools: he went to his diocese to gather in
his revenues, but returned and passed the rest of his time in reading
lectures to those few pupils which followed him. After this I often
engaged with him, and may reply to you as Ajax did to the Greeks:--
'If you demand the fortune of that day
When stak’d on this right hand your honours lay,
If I did not oblige the foe to yield,
Yet did I never basely quit the field.'
About this time my father, Beranger, who to the age of sixty had
lived very agreeably, retired from the world and shut himself up in a
cloister, where he offered up to Heaven the languid remains of a life he
could make no further use of. My mother, who was yet young, took the
same resolution. She turned a Religious, but did not entirely abandon
the satisfactions of life; her friends were continually at the grate,
and the monastery, when one has an inclination to make it so, is
exceedingly charming and pleasant. I was present when my mother was
professed. At my return I resolved to study divinity, and inquired for a
director in that study. I was recommended to one Anselm, the very oracle
of his time, but, to give you my own opinion, one more venerable for his
age and his wrinkles than for his genius or learning. If you consulted
him upon any difficulty, the sure consequence was to be much more
uncertain in the point. They who only saw him admired him, but those who
reasoned with him were extremely dissatisfied. He was a great master of
words and talked much, but meant nothing. His discourse was a fire,
which, instead of enlightening, obscured everything with its smoke; a
tree beautified with variety of leaves and branches, but barren of
fruit. I came to him with a desire to learn, but found him like the fig
tree in the Gospel, or the old oak to which Lucan compares Pompey. I
continued not long underneath his shadow. I took for my guides the
primitive Fathers and boldly launched into the ocean of the Holy
Scriptures. In a short time I had made such progress that others chose
me for their director. The number of my scholars was incredible, and the
gratuities I received from them were proportionate to the great
reputation I had acquired. Now I found myself safe in the harbour, the
storms were passed, and the rage of my enemies had spent itself without
effect. Happy had I known to make a right use of this calm! But when the
mind is most easy ’tis most exposed to love, and even security is here
the most dangerous state.
And now, my friend, I am going to expose to you all my weaknesses.
All men, I believe, are under a necessity of paying tribute at some time
or other to Love, and it is vain to strive to avoid it. I was a
philosopher, yet this tyrant of the mind triumphed over all my wisdom;
his darts were of greater force than all my reasonings, and with a sweet
constraint he led me wherever he pleased. Heaven, amidst an abundance of
blessings with which I was intoxicated, threw in a heavy affliction. I
became a most signal example of its vengeance, and the more unhappy
because, having deprived me of the means of accomplishing satisfaction,
it left me to the fury of my criminal desires. I will tell you, my dear
friend, the particulars of my story, and leave you to judge whether I
deserved so severe a correction.
I had always an aversion for those light women whom ’tis a reproach
to pursue; I was ambitious in my choice, and wished to find some
obstacles, that I might surmount them with the greater glory and
pleasure.
There was in Paris a young creature (ah, Philintus!) formed in a
prodigality of nature to show mankind a finished composition; dear
Heloise, the reputed niece of one Fulbert, a canon. Her wit and her
beauty would have stirred the dullest and most insensible heart, and her
education was equally admirable. Heloise was the mistress of the most
polite arts. You may easily imagine that this did not a little help to
captivate me; I saw her, I loved her, I resolved to make her love me.
The thirst of glory cooled immediately in my heart, and all my passions
were lost in this new one. I thought of nothing but Heloise; everything
brought her image to my mind. I was pensive and restless, and my passion
was so violent as to admit of no restraint. I was always vain and
presumptive; I flattered myself already with the most bewitching hopes.
My reputation had spread itself everywhere, and could a virtuous lady
resist a man who had confounded all the learned of the age? I was
young--could she show an insensibility to those vows which my heart
never formed for any but herself? My person was advantageous enough, and
by my dress no one would have suspected me for a doctor; and dress, you
know, is not a little engaging with women. Besides, I had wit enough to
write a billet-doux, and hoped, if ever she permitted my absent self to
entertain her, she would read with pleasure those breathings of my
heart.
Filled with these notions I thought of nothing but the means to speak
to her. Lovers either find or make all things easy. By the offices of
common friends I gained the acquaintance of Fulbert; and can you believe
it, Philintus, he allowed me the privilege of his table, and an
apartment in his house?
I paid him, indeed, a considerable sum, for persons of his character
do nothing without money. But what would I not have given! You, my
friend, know what love is; imagine then what a pleasure it must have
been to a heart so inflamed as mine to be always so near the dear object
of desire! I would not have exchanged my happy condition for that of the
greatest monarch upon earth. I saw Heloise, I spoke to her--each action,
each confused look told her the trouble of my soul. And she, on the
other side, gave me ground to hope for everything from her generosity.
Fulbert desired me to instruct her in philosophy; by this means I found
opportunities of being in private with her, and yet I was surely of all
men the most timorous in declaring my passion.
As I was with her one day alone, 'Charming Heloise,' said I,
blushing, 'if you know yourself you will not be surprised with the
passion you have inspired me with. Uncommon as it is, I can express it
but with the common terms--I love you, adorable Heloise! Till now I
thought philosophy made us masters of all our passions, and that it was
a refuge from the storms in which weak mortals are tossed and
shipwrecked; but you have destroyed my security and broken this
philosophic courage. I have despised riches; honour and its pageantries
could never wake a weak thought in me, beauty alone has stirred my soul;
happy if she who raised this passion kindly receives this declaration;
but if it is an offence?--'
'No,' replied Heloise, 'she must be very ignorant of your merit who
can be offended at your passion. But for my own repose I wish either
that you had not made this declaration, or that I were at liberty not to
suspect your sincerity.'
'Ah, divine Heloise, said I, flinging myself at her feet, 'I swear by
yourself--' I was going on to convince her of the truth of my passion,
but heard a noise, and it was Fulbert: there was no avoiding it, I had
to do violence to my desire and change the discourse to some other
subject. After this I found frequent opportunities to free Heloise from
those suspicions which the general insincerity of men had raised in her;
and she too much desired that what I said might be true not to believe
it. Thus there was a most happy understanding between us. The same
house, the same love, united our persons and our desires. How many soft
moments did we pass together! We took all opportunities to express to
each other our mutual affection, and were ingenious in contriving
incidents which might give us a plausible occasion of meeting. Pyramus
and Thisbe's discovery of the crack in the wall was but a slight
representation of our love and its sagacity. In the dead of night, when
Fulbert and his domestics were in a sound sleep, we improved the time
proper with the sweets of love; not contenting ourselves, like those
unfortunate lovers, with giving insipid kisses to a wall, we made use of
all the moments of our charming interviews. In the place where we met we
had no lions to fear, and the study of philosophy served us for a blind.
But I was so far from making any advances in the sciences that I lost
all my taste for them, and when I was obliged to go from the sight of my
dear mistress to my philosophical exercises, it was with the utmost
regret and melancholy. Love is incapable of being concealed; a word, a
look, nay, silence, speaks it. My scholars discovered it first; they saw
I had no longer that vivacity of thought to which all things are easy; I
could now do nothing but write verses to soothe my passion. I quitted
Aristotle and his dry maxims to practise the precepts of the more
ingenious Ovid. No day passed in which I did not compose amorous verses;
love was my inspiring Apollo. My songs were spread abroad and gained me
frequent applause. Those who were in love as I was took a pride in
learning them, and by luckily applying my thoughts and verses they
obtained favours which perhaps they would not otherwise have gained.
This gave our amours such an éclat that the lives of Heloise and Abelard
were the subject of all conversations.
The town talk at last reached Fulbert's ears; it was with great
difficulty he gave credit to what he heard, for he loved his niece, and
was prejudiced in my favour; but upon closer examination he began to be
less credulous. He surprised us in one of our more tender conversations.
How fatal sometimes are the consequences of curiosity! The anger of
Fulbert seemed too moderate on this occasion, and I feared in the end
some more heavy revenge. It is impossible to express the grief and
regret which filled my soul when I was obliged to leave the Canon's
house and my dear Heloise. But this separation of our persons the more
firmly united our minds; and the desperate condition we were reduced to
made us capable of attempting anything.
My intrigues gave me but little shame, so lovingly did I regard the
occasion; think what the gay young divinities said when Vulcan caught
Mars and the Goddess of Beauty in his net, and impute it all to me.
Fulbert surprised me with Heloise, but what man that had a soul in him
would not have borne any ignominy on the sane conditions? The next day I
provided myself with a private lodging near the loved house, being
resolved not to abandon my prey. I abode some time without appearing
publicly. Ah! how long did those few days seem to me! When we fall from
a state of happiness with what impatience do we bear our misfortunes!
It being impossible that I could live without seeing Heloise, I
endeavoured to engage her servant, whose name was Agaton, in my
interest. She was brown, well-shaped, and a person superior to her rank;
her features were regular and her eyes sparkling, fit to raise love in
any man whose heart was not prepossessed by another passion. I met her
alone and entreated her to have pity on a distressed lover. She answered
she would undertake anything to serve me, but there was a reward. At
these words I opened my purse and showed the shining metal which puts to
sleep guards, forces a way through rocks, and softens the heart of the
most obdurate fair.
'You are mistaken,' said she, smiling and shaking her head, 'you do
not know me; could gold tempt me, a rich abbot takes his nightly station
and sings under my window; he offers to send me to his abbey, which, he
says, is situated in the most pleasant country in the world. A courtier
offers me a considerable sum and assures
me I need have no apprehension, for if our amours have
consequences he will marry me to his gentleman and give him a handsome
employment. To say nothing of a young officer who patrols about here
every night and makes his attacks in all sorts of imaginable forms. It
must be love only which could oblige him to follow me, for I have not,
like your great ladies, any rings or jewels to tempt him. Yet, during
all his siege of love, his feathers and his embroidered coat have not
made any breach in my heart. I shall not quickly be brought to
capitulate, I am too faithful to my first conqueror.'
She looked earnestly at me, and I said I did not understand.
'For a man of sense and gallantry,' she replied, 'you are slow of
apprehension. I am in love with you, Abelard; I know you adore Heloise,
and I do not blame you, I desire only to enjoy the second place in your
affections. I have a tender heart as well as my mistress; you may
without difficulty make returns to my passion. Do not perplex yourself
with scruples; a prudent man should love several at the sane time, then
if one should fail he is not left unprovided.'
You can imagine, Philintus, how much I was surprised at these words:
so entirely did I love Heloise that, without reflecting whether Agaton
spoke reasonably or not, I immediately left her. When I had gone a
little way from her I looked back and saw her biting her nails in a rage
of disappointment; this made me fear some fatal consequences. She
hastened to Fulbert and told him the offer I had made her, but I suppose
concealed the other part of the story. The Canon never forgave this
affront; I afterwards perceived he was more deeply concerned for his
niece than I had at first imagined. Let no lover hereafter follow my
example, for a woman rejected is an outrageous creature. Agaton was at
her window night and day on purpose to keep me away from her mistress,
and so she gave her gallants every opportunity to display their
abilities.
I was infinitely perplexed what course to take; at last I applied
myself to Heloise's singing-master. The shining metal, which had no
effect on Agaton, charmed him: he was excellently qualified for
conveying a billet with the greatest dexterity and secrecy. He delivered
one of mine to Heloise, who, according to my appointment, met me at the
end of the garden, I having scaled the wall with a ladder of ropes. I
confess to you all my failings, Philintus; how would my enemies
Champeaux and Anselm have triumphed had they seen this redoubted
philosopher in such a wretched condition. Well! I met my soul's joy--my
Heloise! I shall not transcribe our transports, they were not long, for
the first news Heloise acquainted me with plunged me into a thousand
distractions. A floating Delos was to be sought for, where she might be
safely delivered of a burden she began already to feel. Without losing
much time in debating, I made her presently quit the Canon's house and
at break of day depart for Brittany; where she, like another goddess,
gave the world another Apollo, which my sister took care of.
This carrying off of Heloise was sufficient revenge on Fulbert. It
filled him with the deepest concern, and had like to have deprived him
of the small share of wits which Heaven had allowed him. His sorrow and
lamentation gave the censorious an occasion of suspecting him for
something more than the uncle of Heloise.
In short, I began to pity his misfortune, and to think this robbery
which love had made me commit was a sort of treason. I endeavoured to
appease his anger by a sincere confession of all that was past, and by
hearty engagements to marry Heloise secretly. He gave me his consent,
and with many protestations and embraces confirmed our reconciliation.
But what dependence can be made on the word of an ignorant devotee? He
was only plotting a cruel revenge, as you will see by what follows.
I took a journey into Brittany in order to bring hack my dear
Heloise, whom I now considered my wife. When I had acquainted her with
what had passed between the Canon and me I found she was of a contrary
opinion to me. She urged all that was possible to divert me from
marriage--that it was a bond always fatal to a philosopher; that the
cries of children and the cares of a family were utterly inconsistent
with the tranquillity and application which study require. She quoted to
me all that was written on the subject by Theophrastus, Cicero, and,
above all, insisted on the unfortunate Socrates, who quitted life with
joy because by that means he left Xanthippe.
'Will it not be more agreeable to me,' said she, 'to see myself your
mistress than your wife? And will not love have more power than marriage
to keep our hearts firmly united? Pleasures tasted sparingly and with
difficulty have always a higher relish, whilst everything that is easy
and common grows stale and insipid.'
I was unmoved by all this reasoning, so Heloise prevailed upon my
sister to speak to me. Lucilla (for that was her name) therefore took me
aside and said,--
'What do you intend, brother? Is it possible that Abelard should in
earnest think of marrying Heloise? She seems, indeed, to deserve a
perpetual affection; beauty, youth and learning, all that can make a
person valuable meet in her. You may adore all this if you please, but
not to flatter you, what is beauty but a flower which may be blasted by
the least fit of sickness? When those features with which you have been
so captivated shall be sunk, and those graces lost, you will too late
repent that you have entangled yourself in a chain from which death
alone can free you. I shall see you reduced to the married man's only
hope of survivorship. Do you think that learning makes Heloise more
amiable? I know she is not one of those affected females who are
continually oppressing you with fine speeches, criticising looks, and
deciding upon the merit of authors. When such a one is in the rush of
her discourse, husband, friends and servants all fly before her. Heloise
has not this fault, yet ’tis troublesome not to be at liberty to use the
least improper expression before a wife which you hear with pleasure
from a mistress. But you say you are sure of the affection of Heloise; I
believe it; she has given you no ordinary proofs. But can you be sure
marriage will not be the tomb of her love? The name of husband and
master is always harsh, and Heloise will not be the Phoenix you now
think her. Will she not be a woman? Come, come, the head of a
philosopher is less secure than those of other men!'
My sister grew warm in the argument, and was going on to give me a
hundred more reasons of this kind, but I angrily interrupted her,
telling her only that she did not know Heloise.
A few days after we departed together from Brittany and came to
Paris, where I completed my project. It was my intent my marriage should
be kept secret, and therefore Heloise retired among the nuns of
Argenteuil.
I now thought Fulbert's anger disarmed; I lived in peace; but alas!
our marriage proved but a weak defence against his revenge. Observe,
Philintus, to what a barbarity he pursued it! He bribed my servants; an
assassin came into my bedchamber by night, with a razor in his hand, and
found me in a deep sleep. I suffered the most shameful punishment that
the revenge of an enemy could invent; in short, without losing my life,
I lost my manhood. So cruel an action escaped not justice, the villain
suffered the same mutilation, poor comfort for so irretrievable an evil.
I confess to you that shame more than any sincere penitence made me
resolve to hide myself from the sight of men, yet could I not separate
myself from my Heloise. Jealousy took possession of my mind, and at the
very expense of her happiness I decreed to disappoint all rivals. Before
I put myself in a cloister I obliged her to take the habit and retire
into the nunnery of Argenteuil. I remember somebody would have opposed
her making such a cruel sacrifice of herself, but she answered in the
words of Cornelia after the death of Pompey the Great,--
'O my loved lord, our fatal marriage draws
On thee this doom, and I the guilty cause!
Then whilst thou goest th’ extremes of fate to prove,
I'll share that fate and expiate thus my love.'
Speaking these verses she marched up to the altar and took the veil
with a constancy which I could not have expected in a woman who had so
high a taste of pleasures which she might still enjoy. I blushed at my
own weakness, and without deliberating a moment longer I buried myself
in a cloister and resolved to vanquish a useless passion. I now
reflected that God had chastised me thus grievously that He might save
me from that destruction in which I had like to have been swallowed up.
In order to avoid idleness, the unhappy incendiary of those criminal
flames which had ruined me in the world, I endeavoured in my retirement
to put those talents to a good use which I had before so much abused. I
gave the novices rules of divinity agreeable to the holy Fathers and
Councils. In the meanwhile the enemies that my new fame had raised
up,--and especially Alberic and Lotulf, who, after the death of their
masters Champeaux and Anselm, assumed the sovereignty of
learning,--began to attack me. They loaded me with the falsest
imputations, and, notwithstanding all my defence, I had the
mortification to see my books condemned by a Council and burnt. This was
a the cutting sorrow, and, believe me, Philintus, former calamity I
suffered by the cruelty of Fulbert was nothing in comparison to this.
The affront I had newly received and the scandalous debaucheries of
the monks obliged me to banish myself, and retire near to Nogent. I
lived in a desert where I flattered myself I should avoid fame and be
secure from the malice of my enemies. I was again deceived. The desire
of being taught by me drew crowds of auditors even hither. Many left the
towns and their houses, and came and lived in tents; for herbs, coarse
fare and hard lodging, they abandoned the delicacies of a plentiful
table and an easy life. I looked like the prophet in the wilderness
attended by his disciples. My lectures were perfectly clear from all
that had been condemned. Happy had it been if our solitude had been
inaccessible to envy! With the considerable gratuities I received I
built a chapel, and dedicated it to the Holy Ghost by the name of the
Paraclete. The rage of my enemies now awakened again and forced me to
quit this retreat. This I did without much difficulty, but first the
Bishop of Troyes gave me leave to establish there a nunnery, and commit
it to the care of my dear Heloise. When I had settled her there, can you
believe it, Philintus, I left her without taking leave.
I did not wander long without any settled habitation, for the Duke of
Brittany, informed of my misfortunes, named me to the Abbey of St.
Gildas, where I now am, and where I suffer every day fresh persecutions.
I live in a barbarous country, the language of which I don't
understand; I have no conversation but with the rudest people. My walks
are on the inaccessible shore of a sea which is always stormy. My monks
are known only for their dissoluteness, and live without any rule or
order. Could you see the abbey, Philintus, you would not recognise it
for one: the doors and walls are without any ornament save the heads of
wild boars and the feet of hinds, which are nailed up, and the hides of
frightful animals. The cells are hung with the skins of deer; the monks
have not so much as a bell to wake them, the cocks and dogs supply that
defect. In short, they pass their time in hunting, and I would to God
that were their greatest fault! Their pleasures do not terminate there,
and I try in vain to recall them to their duty; they all combine against
me, and I only expose myself to continual vexations and dangers. I
imagine I see every moment a naked sword hang over my head. Sometimes
they surround me and load me with infinite abuses; sometimes they
abandon me, and I am left alone to my own tormenting thoughts. I make it
my endeavour to merit by my sufferings and so appease an angry God.
Sometimes I grieve for the loss of the house of the Paraclete and wish
to see it again. Ah, Philintus! does not the love for Heloise yet burn
in my heart! I have not yet triumphed over that unhappy passion. In the
midst of my retirement I sigh, I weep, I pine, I speak the dear name of
Heloise, and delight to hear the sound! I complain of the severity of
Heaven; but oh! let us not deceive ourselves, I have not yet made a
right use of grace. I am thoroughly wretched; I have not yet torn from
my heart the deep roots which vice has planted in it, for if my
conversion were sincere, how could I take pleasure in relating my past
faults? Could I not more easily comfort myself in my afflictions; could
I not turn to my advantage those words of God Himself--If they have
persecuted Me they will also persecute you; if the world hate you, ye
know that it hated Me also. Come, Philintus, let us make a strong
effort, turn our misfortunes to our advantage, make them meritorious, or
at least wipe out our offences: let us receive without murmuring what
comes from the hand of God, and let us not oppose our will to His.
Adieu; I give you advice which, could I myself follow, I should be
happy.
|
Angelica Kauffman
The Farewell of Abelard and Héloïse
|
LETTER II
Heloise to Abelard
To her Lord, her Father, her Husband, her Brother; his Servant, his
Child, his Wife, his Sister, and to express all that is humble,
respectful and loving to her Abelard, Heloise writes this.
A CONSOLATORY letter of yours to a friend happened some days since to
fall into my hands; my knowledge of the writing and my love of the hand
gave me the curiosity to open it. In justification of the liberty I
took, I flattered myself I might claim a sovereign privilege over
everything which came from you. Nor was I scrupulous to break through
the rules of good breeding when I was to hear news of Abelard. But how
dear did my curiosity cost me! What disturbance did it occasion, and how
surprised I was to find the whole letter filled with a particular and
melancholy account of our misfortunes! I met with my name a hundred
times; I never saw it without fear, some heavy calamity always followed
it. I saw yours too, equally unhappy. These mournful but dear
remembrances put my heart into such violent motion that I thought it was
too much to offer comfort to a friend for a few slight disgraces, but
such extraordinary means as the representation of our sufferings and
revolutions.
What reflections did I not make! I began to consider the whole
afresh, and perceived myself pressed with the same weight of grief as
when we first began to be miserable. Though length of time ought to have
closed up my wounds, yet the seeing them described by your hand was
sufficient to make them all open and bleed afresh. Nothing can ever blot
from my memory what you have suffered in defence of your writings. I
cannot help thinking of the rancorous malice of Alberic and Lotulf. A
cruel Uncle and an injured Lover will always be present to my aching
sight. I shall never forget what enemies your learning, and what envy
your glory raised against you. I shall never forget your reputation, so
justly acquired, torn to pieces and blasted by the inexorable cruelty of
pseudo pretenders to science. Was not your treatise of Divinity
condemned to be burnt? Were you not threatened with perpetual
imprisonment? In vain you urged in your defence that your enemies
imposed upon you opinions quite different from your meanings. In vain
you condemned those opinions; all was of no effect towards your
justification, ’twas resolved you should be a heretic! What did not
those two false prophets accuse you of who declaimed so severely against
you before the Council of Sens? What scandals were vented on occasion of
the name of Paraclete given to your chapel! What a storm was raised
against you by the treacherous monks when you did them the honour to be
called their brother! This history of our numerous misfortunes, related
in so true and moving a manner, made my heart bleed within me
My tears, which I could not refrain, have blotted half your letter; I
wish they had effaced the whole, and that I had returned it to you in
that condition; I should then have been satisfied with the little time I
kept it; but it was demanded of me too soon.
I must confess I was much easier in my mind before I read your
letter. Surely all the misfortunes of lovers are conveyed to them
through the eyes: upon reading your letter I feel all mine renewed. I
reproached myself for having been so long without venting my sorrows,
when the rage of our unrelenting enemies still burns with the same fury.
Since length of time, which disarms the strongest hatred, seems but to
aggravate theirs; since it is decreed that your virtue shall be
persecuted till it takes refuge in the grave--and even then, perhaps,
your ashes will not be allowed to rest in peace!--let me always meditate
on your calamities, let me publish them through all the world, if
possible, to shame an age that has not known how to value you. I will
spare no one since no one would interest himself to protect you, and
your enemies are never weary of oppressing your innocence. Alas! my
memory is perpetually filled with bitter remembrances of passed evils;
and are there more to be feared still? Shall my Abelard never be
mentioned without tears? Shall the dear name never be spoken but with
sighs? Observe, I beseech you, to what a wretched condition you have
reduced me; sad, afflicted, without any possible comfort unless it
proceed from you. Be not then unkind, nor deny me, I beg of you, that
little relief which you only can give. Let me have a faithful account of
all that concerns you; I would know everything, be it ever so
unfortunate. Perhaps by mingling my sighs with yours I may make your
sufferings less, for it is said that all sorrows divided are made
lighter.
Tell me not by way of excuse you will spare me tears; the tears of
women shut up in a melancholy place and devoted to penitence are not to
be spared. And if you wait for an opportunity to write pleasant and
agreeable things to us, you will delay writing too long. Prosperity
seldom chooses the side of the virtuous, and fortune is so blind that in
a crowd in which there is perhaps but one wise and brave man it is not
to be expected that she should single him out. Write to me then
immediately and wait not for miracles; they are too scarce, and we too
much accustomed to misfortunes to expect a happy turn. I shall always
have this, if you please, and this will always be agreeable to me, that
when I receive any letter from you I shall know you still remember me.
Seneca (with whose writings you made me acquainted), though he was a
Stoic, seemed to be so very sensible to this kind of pleasure, that upon
opening any letters from Lucilius he imagined he felt the same delight
as when they conversed together.
I have made it an observation since our absence, that we are much
fonder of the pictures of those we love when they are at a great
distance than when they are near us. It seems to me as if the farther
they are removed their pictures grow the more finished, and acquire a
greater resemblance; or at least our imagination, which perpetually
figures them to us by the desire we have of seeing them again, makes us
think so. By a peculiar power love can make that seem life itself which,
as soon as the loved object returns, is nothing but a little canvas and
flat colour. I have your picture in my room; I never pass it without
stopping to look at it; and yet when you are present with me I scarce
ever cast my eyes on it. If a picture, which is but a mute
representation of an object, can give such pleasure, what cannot letters
inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that
force which expresses the transports of the heart; they have all the
fire of our passions, they can raise them as much as if the persons
themselves were present; they have all the tenderness and the delicacy
of speech, and sometimes even a boldness of expression beyond it.
We may write to each other; so innocent a pleasure is not denied us.
Let us not lose through negligence the only happiness which is left us,
and the only one perhaps which the malice of our enemies can never
ravish from us. I shall read that you are my husband and you shall see
me sign myself your wife. In spite of all our misfortunes you may be
what you please in your letter. Letters were first invented for
consoling such solitary wretches as myself. Having lost the substantial
pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure
compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing.
There I. shall read your most sacred thoughts; I shall carry them always
about with me, I shall kiss them every moment; if you can be capable of
any jealousy let it be for the fond caresses I shall bestow upon your
letters, and envy only the happiness of those rivals. That writing may
be no trouble to you, write always to me carelessly and without study; I
had rather read the dictates of the heart than of the brain. I cannot
live if you will not tell me that you still love me; but that language
ought to be so natural to you, that I believe you cannot speak otherwise
to me without violence to yourself. And since by this melancholy
relation to your friend you have awakened all my sorrows, ’tis but
reasonable you should allay them by some tokens of your unchanging love.
I do not however reproach you for the innocent artifice you made use
of to comfort a person in affliction by comparing his misfortune to
another far greater. Charity is ingenious in finding out such pious
plans, and to be commended for using them. But do you owe nothing more
to us than to that friend--be the friendship between you ever so
intimate? We are called your Sisters; we call ourselves your children,
and if it were possible to think of any expression which could signify a
dearer relation, or a more affectionate regard and mutual obligation
between us, we should use it. If we could be so ungrateful as not to
speak our just acknowledgments to you, this church, these altars, these
walls, would reproach our silence and speak for us. But without leaving
it to that, it will always be a pleasure to me to say that you only are
the founder of this house, ’tis wholly your work. You, by inhabiting
here, have given fame and holiness to a place known before only for
robberies and murders. You have in a literal sense made the den of
thieves into a house of prayer. These cloisters owe nothing to public
charities; our walls were not raised by the usuries of publicans, nor
their foundations laid in base extortion. The God whom we serve sees
nothing but innocent riches and harmless votaries whom . you have placed
here. Whatever this young vineyard is, is owing only to you, and it is
your part to employ your whole care to cultivate and improve it; this
ought to be one of the principal affairs of your life. Though our holy
renunciation, our vows and our manner of life seem to secure us from all
temptation; though our walls and gates prohibit all approaches, yet it
is the outside only, the bark of the tree, that is protected from
injuries; the sap of the original corruption may imperceptibly spread
within, even to the heart, and prove fatal to the most promising
plantation, unless continual care be taken to cultivate and secure it.
Virtue in us is grafted upon nature and the woman; the one is
changeable, the other is weak. To plant the Lord's vineyard is a work of
no little labour; but after it is planted it will require great
application and diligence to dress it. The Apostle of the Gentiles,
great labourer as he was, says he hath planted, Apollos hath watered,
but it is God that gives the increase. Paul had planted the Gospel
amongst the Corinthians, Apollos, his zealous disciple, continued to
cultivate it by frequent exhortations; and the grace of God, which their
constant prayers implored for that church, made the work of both be
fruitful.
This ought to be an example for your conduct towards us. I know you
are not slothful, yet your labours are not directed towards us; your
cares are wasted upon a set of men whose thoughts are only earthly, and
you refuse to reach out your hand to support those who are weak and
staggering in their way to heaven, and who with all their endeavours can
scarcely prevent themselves from falling. You fling the pearls of the
Gospel before swine when you speak to those who are filled with the good
things of this world and nourished with the fatness of the earth; and
you neglect the innocent sheep, who, tender as they are, would yet
follow you over deserts and mountains. Why are such pains thrown away
upon the ungrateful, while not a thought is bestowed upon your children,
whose souls would be filled with a sense of your goodness? But why
should I entreat you in the name of your children? Is it possible I
should fear obtaining anything of you when I ask it in my own name? And
must I use any other prayers than my own in order to prevail upon you?
The St. Austins, Tertullians and Jeromes have written to the Eudoxias,
Paulas and Melanias; and can you read those names, though of saints, and
not remember mine? Can it be criminal for you to imitate St. Jerome and
discourse with me concerning the Scriptures; or Tertullian and preach
mortification; or St. Austin and explain to me the nature of grace? Why
should I alone not reap the advantage of your learning? When you write
to me you will write to your wife; marriage has made such a
correspondence lawful, and since you can without the least scandal
satisfy me, why will you not? I am not only engaged by my vows, but I
have the fear of my Uncle before me. There is nothing, then, that you
need dread; you need not fly to conquer. You may see me, hear my sighs,
and be a witness of all my sorrows without incurring any danger, since
you can only relieve me with tears and words. If I have put myself into
a cloister with reason, persuade me to stay in it with devotion. You
have been the occasion of all my misfortunes, you therefore must be the
instrument of all my comfort.
You cannot but remember (for lovers cannot forget) with what pleasure
I have passed whole days in hearing your discourse. How when you were
absent I shut myself from everyone to write to you; how uneasy I was
till my letter had come to your hands; what artful management it
required to engage messengers. This detail perhaps surprises you, and
you are in pain for what may follow. But I am no longer ashamed that my
passion had no bounds for you, for I have done more than all this. I
have hated myself that I might love you; I came hither to ruin myself in
a perpetual imprisonment that I might make you live quietly and at ease.
Nothing but virtue, joined to a love perfectly disengaged from the
senses, could have produced such effects. Vice never inspires anything
like this, it is too much enslaved to the body. When we love pleasures
we love the living and not the dead. We leave off burning with desire
for those who can no longer burn for us. This was my cruel Uncle's
notion; he measured my virtue by the frailty of my sex, and thought it
was the man and not the person I loved. But he has been guilty to no
purpose. I love you more than ever; and so revenge myself on him. I will
still love you with all the tenderness of my soul till the last moment
of my life. If, formerly, my affection for you was not so pure, if in
those days both mind and body loved you, I often told you even then that
I was more pleased with possessing your heart than with any other
happiness, and the man was the thing I least valued in you.
You cannot but be entirely persuaded of this by the extreme
unwillingness I showed to marry you, though I knew that the name of wife
was honourable in the world and holy in religion; yet the name of your
mistress had greater charms because it was more free. The bonds of
matrimony, however honourable, still bear with them a necessary
engagement, and I was very unwilling to be necessitated to love always a
man who would perhaps not always love me. I despised the name of wife
that I might live happy with that of mistress; and I find by your letter
to your friend you have not forgot that delicacy of passion which loved
you always with the utmost tenderness--and yet wished to love you more!
You have very justly observed in your letter that I esteemed those
public engagements insipid which form alliances only to be dissolved by
death, and which put life and love under the same unhappy necessity. But
you have not added how often I have protested that it was infinitely
preferable to me to live with Abelard as his mistress than with any
other as Empress of the World. I was more happy in obeying you than I
should have been as lawful spouse of the King of the Earth. Riches and
pomp are not the charm of love. True tenderness makes us separate the
lover from all that is external to him, and setting aside his position,
fortune or employments, consider him merely as himself.
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. I believe indeed they may be followed
with some honours and advantages, but I can never think that this is the
way to experience the pleasures of affectionate union, nor to feel those
subtle and charming joys when hearts long parted are at last united.
These martyrs of marriage pine always for larger fortunes which they
think they have missed. The wife sees . husbands richer than her own,
and the husband wives better portioned than his. Their mercenary vows
occasion regret, and regret produces hatred. Soon they part--or else
desire to. This restless and tormenting passion for gold punishes them
for aiming at other advantages by love than love itself.
If there is anything that may properly be called happiness here
below, I am persuaded it is the union of two persons who love each other
with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination, and
satisfied with each other's merits. Their hearts are full and leave no
vacancy for any other passion; they enjoy perpetual tranquillity because
they enjoy content.
If I could believe you as truly persuaded of my merit as I am of
yours, I might say there has been a time when we were such a pair. Alas!
how was it possible I should not be certain of your mind? If I could
ever have doubted it, the universal esteem would have made me decide in
your favour. What country, what city, has not desired your presence?
Could you ever retire but you drew the eyes and hearts of all after you?
Did not everyone rejoice in having seen you? Even women, breaking
through the laws of decorum which custom had imposed upon them, showed
they felt more for you than mere esteem. I have known some who have been
profuse in their husbands' praises who have yet envied me my happiness.
But what could resist you? Your reputation, which so much attracts the
vanity of our sex, your air, your manner, that light in your eyes which
expresses the vivacity of your mind, your conversation so easy and
elegant that it gave everything you said an agreeable turn; in short,
everything spoke for you! Very different from those mere scholars who
with all their learning have not the capacity to keep up an ordinary
conversation, and who with all their wit cannot win a woman who has much
less share of brains than themselves.
With what ease did you compose verses! And yet those ingenious
trifles, which were but a recreation to you, are still the entertainment
and delight of persons of the best taste. The smallest song, the least
sketch of anything you made for me, had a thousand beauties capable of
making it last as long as there are lovers in the world. Thus those
songs will be sung in honour of other women which you designed only for
me, and those tender and natural expressions which spoke your love will
help others to explain their passion with much more advantage than they
themselves are capable of.
What rivalries did your gallantries of this kind occasion me! How
many ladies lay claim to them? ‘Twas a tribute their self-love paid to
their beauty. How many have I seen with sighs declare their passion for
you when, after some common visit you had made them, they chanced to be
complimented for the Sylvia of your poems. Others in despair and envy
have reproached me that I had no charms but what your wit bestowed on
me, nor in anything the advantage over them but in being beloved by you.
Can you believe me if I tell you, that notwithstanding my sex, I thought
myself peculiarly happy in having a lover to whom I was obliged for my
charms; and took a secret pleasure in being admired by a man who, when
he pleased, could raise his mistress to the character of a goddess.
Pleased with your glory only, I read with delight all those praises you
offered me, and without reflecting how little I deserved, I believed
myself such as you described, that I might be more certain that I
pleased you.
But oh! where is that happy time? I now lament my lover, and of all
my joys have nothing but the painful memory that they are past. Now
learn, all you my rivals who once viewed my happiness with jealous eyes,
that he you once envied me can never more be mine. I loved him; my love
was his crime and the cause of his punishment. My beauty once charmed
him; pleased with each other we passed our brightest days in
tranquillity and happiness. If that were a crime, ’tis a crime I am yet
fond of, and I have no other regret save that against my will I must now
be innocent. But what do I say? My misfortune was to have cruel
relatives whose malice destroyed the calm we enjoyed; had they been
reasonable I had now been happy in the enjoyment of my dear husband. Oh!
how cruel were they when their blind fury urged a villain to surprise
you in your sleep! Where was I--where was your Heloise then? What joy
should I have had in defending my lover; I would have guarded you from
violence at the expense of my life. Oh! whither does this excess of
passion hurry me? Here love is shocked and modesty deprives me of words.
But tell me whence proceeds your neglect of me since my being
professed? You know nothing moved me to it but your disgrace, nor did I
give my consent, but yours. Let me hear what is the occasion of your
coldness, or give me leave to tell you now my opinion. Was it not the
sole thought of pleasure which engaged you to me? And has not my
tenderness, by leaving you nothing to wish for, extinguished your
desires? Wretched Heloise! you could please when you wished to avoid it;
you merited incense when you could remove to a distance the hand that
offered it: but since your heart has been softened and has yielded,
since you have devoted and sacrificed yourself, you are deserted and
forgotten! I am convinced by a sad experience that it is natural to
avoid those to whom we have been too much obliged, and that uncommon
generosity causes neglect rather than gratitude. My heart surrendered
too soon to gain the esteem of the conqueror; you took it without
difficulty and throw it aside with ease. But ungrateful as you are I am
no consenting party to this, and though I ought not to retain a wish of
my own, yet I still preserve secretly the desire to be loved by you.
When I pronounced my sad vow I then had about me your last letters in
which you protested your whole being wholly mine, and would never live
but to love me. It is to you therefore I have offered myself; you had my
heart and I had yours; do not demand anything back. You must bear with
my passion as a thing which of right belongs to you, and from which you
can be no ways disengaged.
Alas! what folly it is to talk in this way! I see nothing here but
marks of the Deity, and I speak of nothing but man! You have been the
cruel occasion of this by your conduct, Unfaithful One! Ought you at
once to break off loving me! Why did you not deceive me for a while
rather than immediately abandon me? If you had given me at least some
faint signs of a dying passion I would have favoured the deception. But
in vain do I flatter myself that you could be constant; you have left no
vestige of an excuse for you. I am earnestly desirous to see you, but if
that be impossible I will content myself with a few lines from your
hand. Is it so hard for one who loves to write? I ask for none of your
letters filled with learning and writ for your reputation; all I desire
is such letters as the heart dictates, and which the hand cannot
transcribe fast enough. How did I deceive myself with hopes that you
would be wholly mine when I took the veil, and engage myself to live for
ever under your laws? For in being professed I vowed no more than to be
yours only, and I forced myself voluntarily to a confinement which you
desired for me. Death only then can make me leave the cloister where you
have placed me; and then my ashes shall rest here and wait for yours in
order to show to the very last my obedience and devotion to you.
Why should I conceal from you the secret of my call? You know it was
neither zeal nor devotion that brought me here. Your conscience is too
faithful a witness to permit you to disown it. Yet here I am, and here I
will remain; to this place an unfortunate love and a cruel relation have
condemned me. But if you do not continue your concern for me, if I lose
your affection, what have I gained by my imprisonment? What recompense
can I hope for? 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. Thus I strive and labour in vain. Among those who are wedded to
God I am wedded to a man; among the heroic supporters of the Cross I am
the slave of a human desire; at the head of a religious community I am
devoted to Abelard alone. What a monster am I! Enlighten me, O Lord, for
I know not if my despair or Thy grace draws these words from me! I am, I
confess, a sinner, but one who, far from weeping for her sins, weeps
only for her lover; far from abhorring her crimes, longs only to add to
them; and who, with a weakness unbecoming my state, please myself
continually with the remembrance of past delights when it is impossible
to renew them.
Good God! What is all this? I reproach myself for my own faults, I
accuse you for yours, and to what purpose? Veiled as I am, behold in
what a disorder you have plunged me! How difficult it is to fight for
duty against inclination. I know what obligations this veil lays upon
me, but I feel more strongly what power an old passion has over my
heart. I am conquered by my feelings; love troubles my mind and
disorders my will. Sometimes I am swayed by the sentiment of piety which
arises within me, and then the next moment I yield up my imagination to
all that is amorous and tender. I tell you to-day what I would not have
said to you yesterday. I had resolved to love you no more; I considered
I had made a vow, taken a veil, and am as it were dead and buried, yet
there rises unexpectedly from the bottom of my heart a passion which
triumphs over all these thoughts, and darkens alike my reason and my
religion. You reign in such inward retreats of my soul that I know not
where to attack you; when I endeavour to break those chains by which I
am bound to you I only deceive myself, and all my efforts but serve to
bind them faster. Oh, for pity's sake help a wretch to renounce her
desires--her self--and if possible even to renounce you! If you are a
lover--a father, help a mistress, comfort a child! These tender names
must surely move you; yield either to pity or to love. If you gratify my
request I shall continue a religious, and without longer profaning my
calling. I am ready to humble myself with you to the wonderful goodness
of God, Who does all things for our sanctification, Who by His grace
purifies all that is vicious and corrupt, and by the great riches of His
mercy draws us against our wishes, and by degrees opens our eyes to
behold His bounty which at first we could not perceive.
I thought to end my letter here, but now I am complaining against you
I must unload my heart and tell you all its jealousies and reproaches.
Indeed I thought it somewhat bard that when we had both engaged to
consecrate ourselves to Heaven you should insist upon my doing it first.
'Does Abelard then,' said I, 'suspect that, like Lot's wife, I shall
look back?' If my youth and sex might give occasion of fear that I
should return to the world, could not my behaviour, my fidelity, and
this heart which you ought to know, banish such ungenerous
apprehensions? This distrust hurt me; I said to myself, 'There was a
time when he could rely upon my bare word, and does he now want vows to
secure himself to me? What occasion have I given him in the whole course
of my life to admit the least suspicion? I could meet him at all his
assignations, and would I decline to follow him to the Seats of
Holiness? I, who have not refused to be the victim of pleasure in order
to gratify him, can he think I would refuse to be a sacrifice of honour
when he desired it?' Has vice such charms to refined natures, that when
once we have drunk of the cup of sinners it is with such difficulty we
accept the chalice of saints? Or did you believe yourself to be more
competent to teach vice than virtue, or me more ready to learn the first
than the latter? No; this suspicion would be injurious to us both:
Virtue is too beautiful not to be embraced when you reveal her charms,
and Vice too hideous not to be abhorred when you display her
deformities. Nay, when you please, anything seems
lovely to me, and nothing is ugly when you are by. I am only weak
when I am alone and unsupported by you, and therefore it depends on you
alone to make me such as you desire. I wish to Heaven you had not such a
power over me! If you had any occasion to fear you would be less
negligent. But what is there for you to fear? I have done too much, and
now have nothing more to do but to triumph over your ingratitude. When
we lived happily together you might have doubted whether pleasure or
affection united me more to you, but the place from whence I write to
you must surely have dissolved all doubt. Even here I love you as much
as ever I did in the world. If I had loved pleasures could I not have
found means to gratify myself? I was not more than twenty-two years old,
and there were other men left though I was deprived of Abelard. And yet
I buried myself alive in a nunnery, and triumphed over life at an age
capable of enjoying it to its full latitude. It is to you I sacrifice
these remains of a transitory beauty, these widowed nights and tedious
days; and since you cannot possess them I take them from you to offer
them to Heaven, and so make, alas! but a secondary oblation of my heart,
my days, my life!
I am sensible I have dwelt too long on this subject; I ought to speak
less to you of your misfortunes and of my sufferings. We tarnish the
lustre of our most beautiful actions when we applaud them ourselves.
This is true, and yet there is a time when we may with decency commend
ourselves; when we have to do with those whom base ingratitude has
stupefied we cannot too much praise our own actions. Now if you were
this sort of creature this would be a home reflection on you. Irresolute
as I am I still love you, and yet I must hope for nothing. I have
renounced life, and stript myself of everything, but I find I neither
have nor can renounce my Abelard. Though I have lost my lover I still
preserve my love. O vows! O convent! I have not lost my humanity under
your inexorable discipline! You have not turned me to marble by changing
my habit; my heart is not hardened by my imprisonment; I am still
sensible to what has touched me, though, alas! I ought not to be!
Without offending your commands permit a lover to exhort me to live in
obedience to your rigorous rules. Your yoke will be lighter if that hand
support me under it; your exercises will be pleasant if he show me their
advantage. Retirement and solitude will no longer seem terrible if I may
know that I still have a place in his memory. A heart which has loved as
mine cannot soon be indifferent. We fluctuate long between love and
hatred before we can arrive at tranquillity, and we always flatter
ourselves with some forlorn hope that we shall not be utterly forgotten.
Yes, Abelard, I conjure you by the chains I bear here to ease the
weight of them, and make them as agreeable as I would they were to me.
Teach me the maxims of Divine Love; since you have forsaken me I
would glory in being wedded to Heaven. My heart adores that title and
disdains any other; tell me how this Divine Love is nourished, how it
works, how it purifies. When we were tossed on the ocean of the world we
could hear of nothing but your verses, which published everywhere our
joys and pleasures. Now we are in the haven of grace is it not fit you
should discourse to me of this new happiness, and teach me everything
that might heighten or improve it? Show me the same complaisance in my
present condition as you did when we were in the world. Without changing
the ardour of our affections let us change their objects; let us leave
our songs and sing hymns; let us lift up our hearts to God and have no
transports but for His glory!
I expect this from you as a thing you cannot refuse me. God has a
peculiar right over the hearts of great men He has created. When He
pleases to touch them He ravishes them, and lets them not speak nor
breathe but for His glory. Till that moment of grace arrives, O think of
me--do not forget me--remember my love and fidelity and constancy: love
me as your mistress, cherish me as your child, your sister, your wife!
Remember I still love you, and yet strive to avoid loving you. What a
terrible saying is this! I shake with horror, and my heart revolts
against what I say. I shall blot all my paper with tears. I end my long
letter wishing you, if you desire it (would to Heaven I could!), for
ever adieu!
|
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale
Abelard and Heloise French Scholar and Nun Embracing in the Scriptorium
|
LETTER III
Abelard to Heloise
COULD I have imagined that a letter not written to yourself would
fall into your hands, I had been more cautious not to have inserted
anything in it which might awaken the memory of our past misfortunes. I
described with boldness the series of my disgraces to a friend, in order
to make him less sensible to a loss he had sustained. If by this
well-meaning device I have disturbed you, I purpose now to dry up those
tears which the sad description occasioned you to shed; I intend to mix
my grief with yours, and pour out my heart before you: in short, to lay
open before your eyes all my trouble, and the secret of my soul, which
my vanity has hitherto made me conceal from the rest of the world, and
which you now force from me, in spite of my resolutions to the contrary.
It is true, that in a sense of the afflictions which have befallen
us, and observing that no change of our condition could be expected;
that those prosperous days which had seduced us were now past, and there
remained nothing but to erase from our minds, by painful endeavours, all
marks and remembrances of them. I had wished to find in philosophy and
religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out an asylum to secure me
from love. I was come to the sad experiment of making vows to harden my
heart. But what have I gained by this? If my passion has been put under
a restraint my thoughts yet run free. I promise myself that I will
forget you, and yet cannot think of it without loving you. My love is
not at all lessened by those reflections I make in order to free myself.
The silence I am surrounded by makes me more sensible to its
impressions, and while I am unemployed with any other things, this makes
itself the business of my whole vacation. Till after a multitude of
useless endeavours I begin to persuade myself that it is a superfluous
trouble to strive to free myself; and that it is sufficient wisdom to
conceal from all but you how confused and weak I am.
I remove to a distance from your person with an intention of avoiding
you as an enemy; and yet I incessantly seek for you in my mind; I recall
your image in my memory, and in different disquietudes I betray and
contradict myself. I hate you! I love you! Shame presses me on all
sides. I am at this moment afraid I should seem more indifferent than
you fare, and yet I am ashamed to discover my trouble. How weak are we
in ourselves if we do not support ourselves on the Cross of Christ.
Shall we have so little courage, and shall that uncertainty of serving
two masters which afflicts your heart affect mine too? You see the
confusion I am in, how I blame myself and how I suffer. Religion
commands me to pursue virtue since I have nothing to hope for from love.
But love still preserves its dominion over my fancies and entertains
itself with past pleasures. Memory supplies the place of a mistress.
Piety and duty are not always the fruits of retirement; even in deserts,
when the dew of heaven falls not on us, we love what we ought no longer
to love. The passions, stirred up by solitude, fill these regions of
death and silence; it is very seldom that what ought to be is truly
followed here and that God only is loved and served. Had I known this
before I had instructed you better. You call me your master; it is true
you were entrusted to my care. I saw you, I was earnest to teach you
vain sciences; it cost you your innocence and me my liberty. Your Uncle,
who was fond of you, became my enemy and revenged himself on me. If now
having lost the power of satisfying my passion I had also lost that of
loving you, I should have some consolation. My enemies would have given
me that tranquillity which Origen purchased with a crime. How miserable
am I! I find myself much more guilty in my thoughts of you, even amidst
my tears, than in possessing you when I was in full liberty. I
continually think of you; I continually call to mind your tenderness. In
this condition, O Lord! if I run to prostrate myself before your altar,
if I beseech you to pity me, why does not the pure flame of the Spirit
consume the sacrifice that is offered? Cannot this habit of penitence
which I wear interest Heaven to treat me more favourably? But Heaven is
still inexorable because my passion still lives in me; the fire is only
covered over with deceitful ashes, and cannot be extinguished but by
extraordinary grace. We deceive men, but nothing is hid from God.
You tell me that it is for me you live under that veil which covers
you; why do you profane your vocation with such words? Why provoke a
jealous God with a blasphemy? I hoped after our separation you would
have changed your sentiments; I hoped too that God would have delivered
me from the tumult of my senses. We commonly die to the affections of
those we see no more, and they to ours; absence is the tomb of love. But
to me absence is an unquiet remembrance of what I once loved which
continually torments me. I flattered myself that when I should see you
no more you would rest in my memory without troubling my mind; that
Brittany and the sea would suggest other thoughts; that my fasts and
studies would by degrees delete you from my heart. But in spite of
severe fasts and redoubled studies, in spite of the distance of three
hundred miles which separates us, your image, as you describe yourself
in your veil, appears to me and confounds all my resolutions.
What means have I not used! I have armed my hands against myself; I
have exhausted my strength in constant exercises; I comment upon St.
Paul; I contend with Aristotle: in short, I do all I used to do before I
loved you, but all in vain; nothing can be successful that opposes you.
Oh! do not add to my miseries by your constancy; forget, if you can,
your favours and that right which they claim over me; allow me to be
indifferent. I envy their happiness who have never loved; how quiet and
easy are they! But the tide of pleasure has always a reflux of
bitterness; I am but too much convinced now of this: but though I am no
longer deceived by love, I am not cured. While my reason condemns it my
heart declares for it. I am deplorable that I have not the ability to
free myself from a passion which so many circumstances, this place, my
person and my disgraces tend to destroy; I yield without considering
that a resistance would wipe out my past offences, and procure me in
their stead both merit and repose. Why use your eloquence to reproach me
for my flight and for my silence? Spare the recital of our assignations
and your constant exactness to them; without calling up such disturbing
thoughts I have enough to suffer. What great advantages would.
philosophy give us over other men, if by studying it we could learn to
govern our passions? What efforts, what relapses, what agitations do we
undergo! And how long are we lost in this confusion, unable to exert our
reason, to possess our souls, or to rule our affections?
What a troublesome employment is love! And how valuable is virtue
even upon consideration of our own ease! Recollect your extravagancies
of passion, guess at my distractions; number up our cares, our griefs;
throw these things out of the account and let love have all the
remaining tenderness and pleasure. How little is that! And yet for such
shadows of enjoyments which at first appeared to us are we so weak our
whole lives that we cannot now help writing to each other, covered as we
are with sackcloth and ashes. How much happier should we be if by our
humiliation and tears we could make our repentance sure. The love of
pleasure is not eradicated out of the soul save by extraordinary
efforts; it has so powerful an advocate in our breasts that we find it
difficult to condemn it ourselves. What abhorrence can I be said to have
of my sins if the objects of them are always amiable to me? How can I
separate from the person I love the passion I should detest? Will the
tears I shed be sufficient to render it odious to me? I know not how it
happens, there is always a pleasure in weeping for a beloved object. It
is difficult in our sorrow to distinguish penitence from love. The
memory of the crime and the memory of the object which has charmed us
are too nearly related to be immediately separated. And the love of God
in its beginning does not wholly annihilate the love of the creature.
But what excuses could I not find in you if the crime were excusable?
Unprofitable honour, troublesome riches, could never tempt me: but those
charms, that beauty, that air, which I. yet behold at this instant, have
occasioned my fall. Your looks were the beginning of my guilt; your
eyes, your discourse, pierced my heart; and in spite of that ambition
and glory which tried to make a defence, love was soon the master. God,
in order to punish me, forsook me. You are no longer of the world; you
have renounced it: I am a religious devoted to solitude; shall we not
take advantage of our condition? Would you destroy my piety in its
infant state? Would you have me forsake the abbey into which I am but
newly entered? Must I renounce my vows? I have made them in the presence
of God; whither shall I fly from His wrath should I violate them? Suffer
me to seek ease in my duty: though difficult it is to procure it. I pass
whole days and nights alone in this cloister without closing my eyes. My
love burns fiercer amidst the happy indifference of those who surround
me, and my heart is alike pierced with your sorrows and my own. Oh, what
a loss have I sustained when I consider your constancy! What pleasures
have I missed enjoying! I ought not to confess this weakness to you; I
am sensible I commit a fault. If I could show more firmness of mind I
might provoke your resentment against me and your anger might work that
effect in you which your virtue could not. If in the world I published
my weakness in love-songs and verses, ought not the dark cells of this
house at least to conceal that same weakness under an appearance of
piety? Alas! I am still the same! Or if I avoid the evil, I cannot do
the good. Duty, reason and decency, which upon other occasions have some
power over me, are here useless. The Gospel is a language I do not
understand when it opposes my passion. Those vows I have taken before
the altar are feeble when opposed to thoughts of you. Amidst so many
voices which bid me do my duty, I hear and obey nothing but the secret
cry of a desperate passion. Void of all relish for virtue, without
concern for my condition or any application to my studies, I am
continually present by my imagination where I ought not to be, and I
find I have no power to correct myself. I feel a perpetual strife
between inclination and duty. I find myself a distracted lover, unquiet
in the midst of silence, and restless in the midst of peace. How
shameful is such a condition!
Regard me no more, I entreat you, as a founder or any great
personage; your praises ill agree with my many weaknesses. I am a
miserable sinner, prostrate before my Judge, and with my face pressed to
the earth I mix my tears with the earth. Can you see me in this posture
and solicit me to love you? Come, if you think fit, and in your holy
habit thrust yourself between my God and me, and be a wall of
separation. Come and force from me those sighs and thoughts and vows I
owe to Him alone. Assist the evil spirits and be the instrument of their
malice. What cannot you induce a heart to do whose weakness you so
perfectly know? Nay, withdraw yourself and contribute to my salvation.
Suffer me to avoid destruction, I entreat you by our former tender
affection and by our now common misfortune. It will always to show none;
I here release you from all your oaths and engagements. Be God's wholly,
to whom you are appropriated; I will never oppose so pious a design. How
happy shall I be if I thus lose you! Then shall I indeed be a religious
and you a perfect example of an abbess.
Make yourself amends by so glorious a choice; make your virtue a
spectacle worthy of men and angels. Be humble among your children,
assiduous in your choir, exact in your discipline, diligent in your
reading; make even your recreations useful. Have you purchased your
vocation at so light a rate that you should not turn it to the best
advantage? Since you have permitted yourself to be abused by false
doctrine and criminal instruction, resist not those good counsels which
grace and religion inspire me with. I will confess to you I have thought
myself hitherto an abler master to instil vice than to teach virtue. My
false eloquence has only set off false good. My heart, drunk with
voluptuousness, could only suggest terms proper and moving to recommend
that. The cup of sinners overflows with so enchanting a 'sweetness, and
we are naturally so much inclined to taste it, that it needs only to be
offered to us. On the other hand the chalice of saints is filled with a
bitter draught and nature starts from it. And yet you reproach me with
cowardice for giving it to you first. I willingly submit to these
accusations. I cannot enough admire the readiness you showed to accept
the religious habit; bear therefore with courage the Cross you so
resolutely took up. Drink of the chalice of saints, even to the bottom,
without turning your eyes with uncertainty upon me; let me remove far
from you and obey the Apostle who hath said 'Fly!'.
You entreat me to return under a pretence of devotion. Your
earnestness in this point creates a suspicion in me and makes me
doubtful how to answer you. Should I commit an error here my words would
blush, if I may say so, after the history of our misfortunes. The Church
is jealous of its honour, and commands that her children should be
induced to the practice of virtue by virtuous means. When we approach
God in a blameless manner then we may with boldness invite others to
Him. But to forget Heloise, to see her no more, is what Heaven demands
of Abelard; and to expect nothing from Abelard, to I forget him even as
an idea, is what Heaven enjoins on Heloise. To forget, in the case of
love, is the most necessary penance, and the most difficult. It is easy
to recount our faults; how many, through indiscretion, have made
themselves a second pleasure of this instead of confessing them with
humility. The only way to return to God is by neglecting the creature we
have adored, and adoring the God whom we have neglected. This may appear
harsh, but it must be done if we would be saved.
To make it more easy consider why I pressed you to your vow before I
took mine; and pardon my sincerity and the design I have of meriting
your neglect and hatred if I conceal nothing from you. When I saw myself
oppressed by my misfortune I was furiously jealous, and regarded all men
as my rivals. Love has more of distrust than assurance. I was
apprehensive of many things because of my many defects, and being
tormented with fear because of my own example 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. I was very urgent to
persuade you that propriety demanded your withdrawal from the eyes of
the world; that modesty and our friendship required it; and that your
own safety obliged it. After such a revenge taken on me you could expect
to be secure nowhere but in a convent.
I will do you justice, you were very easily persuaded. My jealousy
secretly rejoiced in your innocent compliance; and yet, triumphant as I
was, I yielded you up to God with an unwilling heart.
I still kept my gift as much as was possible, and only parted with it
in order to keep it out of the power of other men. I did not persuade
you to religion out of any regard to your happiness, but condemned you
to it like an enemy who destroys what he cannot carry off. And yet you
heard my discourses with kindness, you sometimes interrupted me with
tears, and pressed me to acquaint you with those convents I held in the
highest esteem. What a comfort I felt in seeing you shut up. I was now
at ease and took a satisfaction in considering that you continued no
longer in the world after my disgrace, and that you would return to it
no more.
But still I was doubtful. I imagined women were incapable of
steadfast resolutions unless they were forced by the necessity of vows.
I wanted those vows, and Heaven itself for your security, that I might
no longer distrust you. Ye holy mansions and impenetrable retreats! from
what innumerable apprehensions have ye freed me? Religion and piety keep
a strict guard round your grates and walls. What a haven of rest this is
to a jealous mind! And with what impatience did I endeavour after it! I
went every day trembling to exhort you to this sacrifice; I admired,
without daring to mention it then, a brightness in your beauty which I
had never observed before. Whether it was the bloom of a rising virtue,
or an anticipation of the great loss I was to suffer, I was not curious
in examining the cause, but only hastened your being professed. I
engaged your prioress in my guilt by a criminal bribe with which I
purchased the right of burying you. The professed of the house were
alike bribed and concealed from you, at my directions, all their
scruples and disgusts. I omitted nothing, either little or great; and if
you had escaped my snares I myself would not have retired; I was
resolved to follow you everywhere. The shadow of myself would always
have pursued your steps and continually have occasioned either your
confusion or your fear, which would have been a sensible gratification
to me.
But, thanks to Heaven, you resolved to take the vows. I accompanied
you to the foot of the altar, and while you stretched out your hand to
touch the sacred cloth I heard you distinctly pronounce those fatal
words that for ever separated you from man. Till then I thought your
youth and beauty would foil my design and force your return to the
world. Might not a small temptation have changed you? Is it possible to
renounce oneself entirely at the age of two-and-twenty? At an age which
claims the utmost liberty could you think the world no longer worth your
regard? How much did I wrong you, and what weakness did I impute to you?
You were in my imagination both light and inconstant. Would not a woman
at the noise of the flames and the fall of Sodom involuntarily look back
in pity on some person? I watched your eyes, your every movement, your
air; I trembled at everything. You may call such self-interested conduct
treachery, perfidy, murder. A love so like to hatred should provoke the
utmost contempt and anger.
It is fit you should know that the very moment when I was convinced
of your being entirely devoted to me, when I saw you were infinitely
worthy of all my love, I imagined I could love you no more. I thought it
time to leave off giving you marks of my affection, and I considered
that by your Holy Espousals you were now the peculiar care of Heaven,
and no longer a charge on me as my wife. My jealousy seemed to be
extinguished. When God only is our rival we have nothing to fear; and
being in greater tranquillity than ever before I even dared to pray to
Him to take you away from my eyes. But it was not a time to make rash
prayers, and my faith did not warrant them being heard. Necessity and
despair were at the root of my proceedings, and thus I offered an insult
to Heaven rather than a sacrifice. God rejected my offering and my
prayer, and continued my punishment by suffering me to continue my love.
Thus I bear alike the guilt of your vows and of the passion that
preceded them, and must be tormented all the days of my life.
If God spoke to your heart as to that of a religious whose innocence
had first asked him for favours, I should have matter of comfort; but to
see both of us the victims of a guilty love, to see this love insult us
in our very habits and spoil our devotions, fills me with horror and
trembling. Is this a state of reprobation? Or are these the consequences
of a long drunkenness in profane love? We cannot say love is a poison
and a drunkenness till we are illuminated by Grace; in the meantime it
is an evil we doat on. When we are under such a mistake, the knowledge
of our misery is the first step towards amendment.
Who does not know that ’tis for the glory of God to find no other
reason in man for His mercy than man's very weakness? When He has shown
us this weakness and we have bewailed it, He is ready to put forth His
Omnipotence and assist us. Let us say for our comfort that what we
suffer is one of those terrible temptations which have sometimes
disturbed the vocations of the most holy.
God can grant His presence to men in order to soften their calamities
whenever He shall think fit. It was His pleasure when you took the veil
to draw you to Him by His grace. I saw your eyes, when you spoke your
last farewell, fixed upon the Cross. It was more than six months before
you wrote me a letter, nor during all that time did I receive a message
from you. I admired this silence, which I durst not blame, but could not
imitate. I wrote to you, and you returned me no answer: your heart was
then shut, but this garden of the spouse is now opened; He is withdrawn
from it and has left you alone. By removing from you He has made trial
of you; call Him back and strive to regain Him. We must have the
assistance of God, that we may break our chains; we are too deeply in
love to free ourselves. Our follies have penetrated into the sacred
places; our amours have been a scandal to the whole kingdom. They are
read and admired; love which produced them has caused them to be
described. We shall be a consolation to the failings of youth for ever;
those who offend after us will think themselves less guilty. We are
criminals whose repentance is late; oh, let it be sincere! Let us repair
as far as is possible the evils we have done, and let France, which has
been the witness of our crimes, be amazed at our repentance. Let us
confound all who would imitate our guilt; let us take the side of God
against ourselves, and by so doing prevent His judgment. Our former
lapses require tears, shame and sorrow to expiate them. Let us offer up
these sacrifices from our hearts, let us blush and let us weep. If in
these feeble beginnings, O Lord, our hearts are not entirely Thine, let
them at least feel that they ought to be so.
Deliver yourself, Heloise, from the shameful remains of a passion
which has taken too deep root. Remember that the least thought for any
other than God is an adultery. If you could see me here with my meagre
face and melancholy air, surrounded with numbers of persecuting monks,
who are alarmed at my reputation for learning and offended at my lean
visage, as if I threatened them with a reformation, what would you say
of my base sighs and of those unprofitable tears which deceive these
credulous men? Alas! I am humbled under love, and not under the Cross.
Pity me and free yourself. If your vocation be, as you say, my work,
deprive me not of the merit of it by your continual inquietudes. Tell me
you will be true to the habit which covers you by an inward retirement.
Fear God, that you may be delivered from your frailties; love Him that
you may advance in virtue. Be not restless in the cloister for it is the
peace of saints. Embrace your bands, they are the chains of Christ
Jesus; He will lighten them and bear them with you, if you will but
accept them with humility.
Without growing severe to a passion that still possesses you, learn
from your own misery to succour your weak sisters; pity them upon
consideration of your own faults. And if any thoughts too natural should
importune you, fly to the foot of the Cross and there beg for
mercy--there are wounds open for healing; lament them before the dying
Deity. At the head of a religious society be not a slave, and having
rule over queens, begin to govern yourself. Blush at the least revolt of
your senses. Remember that even at the foot of the altar we often
sacrifice to lying spirits, and that no incense can be more agreeable to
them than the earthly passion that still burns in the heart of a
religious. If during your abode in the world your soul has acquired a
habit of loving, feel it now no more save for Jesus Christ. Repent of
all the moments of your life which you have wasted in the world and on
pleasure; demand them of me, ’tis a robbery of which I am guilty; take
courage and boldly reproach me with it.
I have been indeed your master, but it was only to teach sin. You
call me your father; before I had any claim to the title, I deserved
that of parricide. I am your brother, but it is the affinity of sin that
brings me that distinction. I am called your husband, but it is after a
public scandal. If you have abused the sanctity of so many holy terms in
the superscription of your letter to do me honour and flatter your own
passion, blot them out and replace them with those of murderer, villain
and enemy, who has conspired against your honour, troubled your quiet,
and betrayed your innocence. You would have perished through my means
but for an extraordinary act of grace which, that you might be saved,
has thrown me down in the middle of my course.
This is the thought you ought to have of a fugitive who desires to
deprive you of the hope of ever seeing him again. But when love has once
been sincere how difficult it is to determine to love no more! ’Tis a
thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love. I hate this
deceitful, faithless world; I think no more of it; but my wandering
heart still eternally seeks you, and is filled with anguish at having
lost you, in spite of all the powers of my reason. In the meantime,
though I should be so cowardly as to retract what you have read, do not
suffer me to offer myself to your thoughts save in this last fashion.
Remember my last worldly endeavours were to seduce your heart; you
perished by my means and I with you: the same waves swallowed us up. We
waited for death with indifference, and the same death had carried us
headlong to the same punishments. But Providence warded off the blow,
and our shipwreck has thrown us into a haven. There are some whom God
saves by suffering. Let my salvation be the fruit of your prayers; let
me owe it to your tears and your exemplary holiness. Though my heart,
Lord, be filled with the love of Thy creature, Thy hand can, when it
pleases, empty me of all love save for Thee. To love Heloise truly is to
leave her to that quiet which retirement and virtue afford. I have
resolved it: this letter shall be my last fault. Adieu. If I die here I
will give orders that my body be carried to the House of the Paraclete.
You shall see me in that condition, to demand tears from you, for it
will be too late; weep rather for me now and extinguish the fire which
burns me. You shall see me in order that your piety may be strengthened
by horror of this carcase, and my death be eloquent to tell you what you
brave when you love a man. I hope you will be willing, when you have
finished this mortal life, to be buried near me. Your cold ashes need
then fear nothing, and my tomb shall be the more rich and renowned.
|
Illustration of Abelard Reading to Heloise
|
LETTER IV
Heloise to Abelard
To Abelard her well-beloved in Christ Jesus, from Heloise his
well-beloved in the same Christ Jesus.
I READ the letter I received from you with great impatience: in spite
of all my misfortunes I hoped to find nothing in it besides arguments of
comfort. But how ingenious are lovers in tormenting themselves. Judge of
the exquisite sensibility and force of my love by that which causes the
grief of my soul. I was disturbed at the superscription of your letter;
why did you place the name of Heloise before that of Abelard? What means
this cruel and unjust distinction? It was your name only--the name of a
father and a husband--which my eager eyes sought for. I did not look for
my own, which I would if possible forget, for it is the cause of all
your misfortunes. The rules of decorum, and your position as master and
director over me, opposed that ceremony in addressing me; and love
commanded you to banish it: alas! you know all this but too well!
Did you address me thus before cruel fortune had ruined my happiness?
I see your heart has forsaken me, and you have made greater advances in
the way of devotion than I could wish. Alas! I am too weak to follow
you; condescend at least to stay for me and animate me with your advice.
Can you have the cruelty to abandon me? The fear of this stabs my heart;
the fearful presages you make at the end of your letter, those terrible
images you draw of your death, quite distract me. Cruel Abelard! you
ought to have stopped my tears and you make them flow. You ought to have
quelled the turmoil of my heart and you throw me into greater disorder.
You desire that after your death I should take care of your ashes and
pay them the last duties. Alas! in what temper did you conceive these
mournful ideas, and how could you describe them to me? Did not the dread
of causing my immediate death make the pen drop from your hand? You did
not reflect, I suppose, upon all those torments to which you were going
to deliver me? Heaven, severe as it has been to me, is not so insensible
as to permit me to live one moment after you. Life without Abelard were
an insupportable punishment, and death a most exquisite happiness if by
that means I could be united to him. If Heaven but hearken to my
continual cry, your days will be prolonged and you will bury me.
Is it not your part to prepare me by powerful exhortation against
that great crisis which shakes the most resolute and stable minds? Is it
not your part to receive my last sighs, superintend my funeral, and give
an account of my acts and my faith? Who but you can recommend us
worthily to God, and by the fervour and merit of your prayers conduct
those souls to Him which you have joined to His worship by solemn vows?
We expect those pious offices from your paternal charity. After this you
will be free from those disquietudcs which now molest you, and you will
quit life with ease whenever it shall please God to call you away. You
may follow us content with what you have done, and in a full assurance
of our happiness. But till then write me no more such terrible things;
for we are already sufficiently miserable, nor need to have our sorrows
aggravated. Our life here is but a languishing death; would you hasten
it? Our present disgraces are sufficient to employ our thoughts
continually, and shall we seek in the future new reasons for fear? How
void of reason are men, said Seneca, to make distant evils present by
reflections, and to take pains before death to lose all the joys of
life.
When you have finished your course here below, you said that it is
your desire that your body be borne to the House of the Paraclete, to
the intent that being always before my eyes you may be ever present in
my mind. Can you think that the traces you have drawn on my heart can
ever be worn out, or that any length of time can obliterate the memory
we hold here of your benefits? And what time shall I find for those
prayers you speak of? Alas! I shall then be filled with other cares, for
so heavy a misfortune would leave me no moment's quiet. Can my feeble
reason resist such powerful assaults? When I am distracted and raving
(if I dare say it) even against Heaven itself, I shall not soften it by
my cries, but rather provoke it by my reproaches. How should I pray or
how bear up against my grief? I should be more eager to follow you than
to pay you the sad ceremonies of a funeral. It is for you, for Abelard,
that I have resolved to live, and if you are ravished from me I can make
no use of my miserable days. Alas! what lamentations should I make if
Heaven, by a cruel pity, preserved me for that moment? When I but think
of this last separation I feel all the pangs of death; what should I be
then if I should see this dreadful hour? Forbear therefore to infuse
into my mind such mournful thoughts, if not for love, at least for pity.
You desire me to give myself up to my duty, and to be wholly God's,
to whom I am consecrated. How can I do that, when you frighten me with
apprehensions that continually possess my mind both night and day? When
an evil threatens us, and it is impossible to ward it off, why do we
give up ourselves to the unprofitable fear of it, which is yet even more
tormenting than the evil itself? What have I hope for after the loss of
you? What can confine me to earth when death shall have taken away from
me all that was dear on it? I have renounced without difficulty all the
charms of life, preserving only my love, and the secret pleasure of
thinking incessantly of you, and hearing that you live. And yet, alas!
you do not live for me, and dare not flatter myself even with the hope
that I shall ever see you again. This is the greatest of my afflictions.
Merciless Fortune! hadst thou not persecuted me enough? Thou dost not
give me any respite; thou hast exhausted all thy vengeance upon me, and
reserved thyself nothing whereby thou mayst appear terrible to others.
Thou hast wearied thyself in tormenting me, and others have nothing
to fear from thy anger. But what use to longer arm thyself against me?
The wounds I have already received leave no room for others, unless thou
desirest to kill me. Or dost thou fear amidst the numerous torments
heaped on me, dost thou fear that such a final stroke would deliver me
from all other ills? Therefore thou preservest me from death in order to
make me die daily.
Dear Abelard, pity my despair! Was ever any being so miserable? The
higher you raised me above other women, who envied me your love, the
more sensible am I now of the loss of your heart. I was exalted to the
top of happiness only that I might have the more terrible fall. Nothing
could be compared to my pleasures, and now nothing can equal my misery.
My joys once raised the envy of my rivals, my present wretchedness calls
forth the compassion of all that see me. My Fortune has been always in
extremes; she has loaded me with the greatest favours and then heaped me
with the greatest afflictions; ingenious in tormenting me, she has made
the memory of the joys I have lost an inexhaustible spring of tears.
Love, which being possest was her most delightful gift, on being taken
away is an untold sorrow. In short, her malice has entirely succeeded,
and I find my present afflictions proportionately bitter as the
transports which charmed me were sweet.
But what aggravates my sufferings yet more is, that we began to be
miserable at a time when we seemed the least to deserve it. While we
gave ourselves up to the enjoyment of a guilty love nothing opposed our
pleasures; but scarcely had we retrenched our passion and taken refuge
in matrimony, than the wrath of Heaven fell on us with all its weight.
And how barbarous was your punishment! Ah! what right had a cruel Uncle
over us? We were joined to each other even before the altar, and this
should have protected us from the rage of our enemies. Besides, we were
separated; you were busy with your lectures and instructed a learned
audience in mysteries which the greatest geniuses before you could not
penetrate; and I, in obedience to you, retired to a cloister. I there
spent whole days in thinking of you, and sometimes meditating on holy
lessons to which I endeavoured to apply myself. At this very juncture
punishment fell upon us, and you who were least guilty became the object
of the whole vengeance of a barbarous man. But why should I rave at
Fulbert? I, wretched I, have ruined you, and have been the cause of all
your misfortunes. How dangerous it is for a great man to suffer himself
to be moved by our sex! He ought from his infancy to be inured to
insensibility of heart against all our charms. 'Hearken, my son' (said
formerly the wisest of men), attend and keep my instructions; if a
beautiful woman by her looks endeavour to entice thee, permit not
thyself to be overcome by a corrupt inclination; reject the poison she
offers, and follow not the paths she directs. Her house is the gate of
destruction and death.' I have long examined things, and have found that
death is less dangerous than beauty. It is the shipwreck of liberty, a
fatal snare, from which it is impossible ever to get free. It was a
woman who threw down the first man from the glorious position in which
Heaven had placed him; she, who was created to partake of his happiness,
was the sole cause of his ruin. How bright had been the glory of Samson
if his heart had been proof against the charms of Delilah, as against
the weapons of the Philistines. A woman disarmed and betrayed he who had
been a conqueror of armies. He saw himself delivered into the hands of
his enemies; he was deprived of his eyes, those inlets of love into the
soul; distracted and despairing he died without any consolation save
that of including his enemies in his ruin. Solomon, that he might please
women, forsook pleasing God; that king whose wisdom princes came from
all parts to admire, he whom God had chosen to build the temple,
abandoned the worship of the very altars he had raised, and proceeded to
such a pitch of folly as even to burn incense to idols. Job had no enemy
more cruel than his wife; what temptations did he not bear? The evil
spirit who had declared himself his persecutor employed a woman as an
instrument to shake his constancy. And the same evil spirit made Heloise
an instrument to ruin Abelard. All the poor comfort I have is that I am
not the voluntary cause of your misfortunes. I have not betrayed you;
but my constancy and love have been destructive to you. If I have
committed a crime in loving you so constantly I cannot repent it. I have
endeavoured to please you even at the expense of my virtue, and
therefore deserve the pains I feel. As soon as I was persuaded of your
love I delayed scarce a moment in yielding to your protestations; to be
beloved by Abelard was in my esteem so great a glory, and I so
impatiently desired it, not to believe in it immediately. I aimed at
nothing but convincing you of my utmost passion. I made no use of those
defences of disdain and honour; those enemies of pleasure which
tyrannise over our sex made in me but a weak and unprofitable
resistance. I sacrificed all to my love, and I forced my duty to give
place to the ambition of making happy the most famous and learned person
of the age. If any consideration had been able to stop me, it would have
been without doubt my love. I feared lest having nothing further to
offer you your passion might become languid, and you might seek for new
pleasures in another conquest. But it was easy for you to cure me of a
suspicion so opposite to my own inclination. I ought to have foreseen
other more certain evils, and to have considered that the idea of lost
enjoyments would be the trouble of my whole life.
How happy should I be could I wash out with my tears the memory of
those pleasures which I yet think of with delight. At least I will try
by strong endeavour to smother in my heart those desires to which the
frailty of my nature gives birth, and I will exercise on myself such
torments as those you have to suffer from the rage of your enemies. I
will endeavour by this means to satisfy you at least, if I cannot
appease an angry God. For to show you to what a deplorable condition I
am reduced, and how far my repentance is from being complete, I dare
even accuse Heaven at this moment of cruelty for delivering you over to
the snares prepared for you. My repinings can only kindle divine wrath,
when I should be seeking for mercy.
In order to expiate a crime it is not sufficient to bear the
punishment; whatever we suffer is of no avail if the passion still
continues and the heart is filled with the same desire. It is an easy
matter to confess a weakness, and inflict on ourselves some punishment,
but it needs perfect power over our nature to extinguish the memory of
pleasures, which by a loved habitude have gained possession of our
minds. How many persons do we see who make an outward confession of
their faults, yet, far from being in distress about them, take a new
pleasure in relating them. Contrition of the heart ought to accompany
the confession of the mouth, yet this very rarely happens. I, who have
experienced so many pleasures in loving you, feel, in spite of myself,
that I cannot repent them, nor forbear through memory to enjoy them over
again. Whatever efforts I use, on whatever side I turn, the sweet
thought still pursues me, and every object brings to my mind what it is
my duty to forget. During the quiet night, when my heart ought to be
still in that sleep which suspends the greatest cares, I cannot avoid
the illusions of my heart. I dream I am still with my dear Abelard. I
see him, I speak to him and hear him answer. Charmed with each other we
forsake our studies and give ourselves up to love. Sometimes too I seem
to struggle with your enemies; I oppose their fury, I break into piteous
cries, and in a moment I awake in tears. Even into holy places before
the altar I carry the memory of our love, and far from lamenting for
having been seduced by pleasures, I sigh for having lost them.
I remember (for nothing is forgot by lovers) the time and place in
which you first declared your passion and swore you would love me till
death. Your words, your oaths, are deeply graven in my heart. My
stammering speech betrays to all the disorder of my mind; my sighs
discover me, and your name is ever on my lips. O Lord! when I am thus
afflicted why dost not Thou pity my weakness and strengthen me with Thy
grace? You are happy, Abelard, in that grace is given you, and your
misfortune has been the occasion of your finding rest. The punishment of
your body has cured the deadly wounds of your soul. The tempest has
driven you into the haven. God, who seemed to deal heavily with you,
sought only to help you; He was a Father chastising and not an Enemy
revenging--a wise Physician putting you to some pain in order to
preserve your life. I am a thousand times more to be pitied than you,
for I have still a thousand passions to fight. I must resist those fires
which love kindles in a young heart. Our sex is nothing but weakness,
and I have the greater difficulty in defending myself because the enemy
that attacks me pleases me; I doat on the danger which threatens; how
then can I avoid yielding?
In the midst of these struggles I try at least to conceal my weakness
from those you have entrusted to my care. All who are about me admire my
virtue, but could their eyes penetrate, into my heart what would they
not discover? My passions there are in rebellion; I preside over others
but cannot rule myself. I have a false covering, and this seeming virtue
is a real vice. Men judge me praiseworthy, but I am guilty before God;
from His all-seeing eye nothing is hid, and He views through all their
windings the secrets of the heart. I cannot escape His discovery. And
yet it means great effort to me merely to maintain this appearance of
virtue, so surely this troublesome hypocrisy is in some sort
commendable. I give no scandal to the world which is so easy to take bad
impressions; I do not shake the virtue of those feeble ones who are
under my rule. With my heart full of the love of man, I teach them at
least to love only God. Charmed with the pomp of worldly pleasures, I
endeavour to show them that they are all vanity and deceit. I have just
strength enough to conceal from them my longings, and I look upon that
as a great effect of grace. If it is not enough to make me embrace
virtue, ’tis enough to keep me from committing sin.
And yet it is in vain to try and separate these two things: they must
be guilty who are not righteous, and they depart from virtue who delay
to approach it. Besides, we ought to have no other motive than the love
of God. Alas! what can I then hope for? I own to my confusion I fear
more to offend a man than to provoke God, and I study less to please Him
than to please you. Yes, it was your command only, and not a sincere
vocation, which sent me into these cloisters; I sought to give you ease
and not to sanctify myself. How unhappy am I! I tear myself from all
that pleases me; I bury myself alive; I exercise myself with the most
rigid fastings and all those severities the cruel laws impose on us; I
feed myself with tears and sorrows; and notwithstanding this I merit
nothing by my penance. My false piety has long deceived you as well as
others; you have thought me at peace when I was more disturbed than
ever. You persuaded yourself I was wholly devoted to my duty, yet I had
no business but love. Under this mistake you desire my prayers--alas! I
need yours! Do not presume upon my virtue and my care; I am wavering,
fix me by your advice; I am feeble, sustain and guide me by your
counsel.
What occasion had you to praise me? Praise is often hurtful for those
on whom it is bestowed: a secret vanity springs up in the heart, blinds
us, and conceals from us the wounds that are half healed. A seducer
flatters us, and at the same time destroys us. A sincere friend
disguises nothing from us, and far from passing a light hand over the
wound, makes us feel it the more intensely by applying remedies. Why do
you not deal after this manner with me? Will you be esteemed a base,
dangerous flatterer? or if you chance to see anything commendable in me,
have you no fear that vanity, which is so natural to all women, should
quite efface it? But let us not judge of virtue by outward appearances,
for then the reprobate as well as the elect may lay claim to it. An
artful impostor may by his address gain more admiration than is given to
the zeal of a saint.
The heart of man is a labyrinth whose windings are very difficult to
discover. The praises you give me are the more dangerous because I love
the person who bestows them. The more I desire to please you the readier
am I to believe the merit you attribute to me. Ah! think rather how to
nerve my weakness by wholesome remonstrances! Be rather fearful than
confident of my salvation; say our virtue is founded upon weakness, and
that they only will be crowned who have fought with the greatest
difficulties. But I seek not the crown which is the reward of victory I
am content if I can avoid danger. It is easier to keep out of the way
than to win a battle. There are several degrees in glory, and I am not
ambitious of the highest; I leave them to those of greater courage who
have often been victorious. I seek not to conquer for fear I should be
overcome; happiness enough for me to escape shipwreck and at last reach
port. Heaven commands me to renounce my fatal passion for you, but oh!
my heart will never be able to consent to it. Adieu.
|
Edmund Blair Leighton
Abelard and his pupil, Heloise
|
LETTER V
Heloise to Abelard
DEAR ABELARD,--YOU expect, perhaps, that I should accuse you of
negligence. You have not answered my last letter, and thanks to Heaven,
in the condition I am now in it is a relief to me that you show so much
insensibility for the passion which I betrayed. At last, Abelard, you
have lost Heloise for ever. Notwithstanding all the oaths I made to
think of nothing but you, and to be entertained by nothing but you, I
have banished you from my thoughts, I have forgot you. Thou charming
idea of a lover I once adored, thou wilt be no more my happiness! Dear
image of Abelard! thou wilt no longer follow me, no longer shall I
remember thee. O celebrity and merit of that man who, in spite of his
enemies, is the wonder of the age! O enchanting pleasures to which
Heloise resigned herself--you, you have been my tormentors! I confess my
inconstancy, Abelard, without a blush; let my infidelity teach the world
that there is no depending on the promises of women--we are all subject
to change. This troubles you, Abelard; this news without surprises you;
you never imagined Heloise could be inconstant. She was prejudiced by
such a strong inclination towards you that you cannot conceive how Time
could alter it. But be undeceived, I am going to disclose to you my
falseness, though, instead of reproaching me, I persuade myself you will
shed tears of joy. When I tell you what Rival hath ravished my heart
from you, you will praise my inconstancy, and pray this Rival to fix it.
By this you will know that ’tis God alone that takes Heloise from you.
Yes, my dear Abelard, He gives my mind that tranquillity which a vivid
remembrance of our misfortunes formerly forbade. Just Heaven! what other
rival could take me from you? Could you imagine it possible for a mere
human to blot you from my heart? Could you think me guilty of
sacrificing the virtuous and learned Abelard to any other but God? No, I
believe you have done me justice on this point. I doubt not you are
eager to learn what means God used to accomplish so great an end? I will
tell you, that you may wonder at the secret ways of Providence. Some few
days after you sent me your last letter I fell dangerously ill; the
physicians gave me over, and I expected certain death. Then it was that
my passion, which always before seemed innocent, grew criminal in my
eyes. My memory represented faithfully to me all the past actions of my
life, and I confess to you pain for our love was the only pain I felt.
Death, which till then I had only viewed from a distance, now presented
itself to me as it appears to sinners. I began to dread the wrath of God
now I was near experiencing it, and I repented that I had not better
used the means of Grace. Those tender letters I wrote to you, those fond
conversations I have had with you, give me as much pain now as they had
formerly given pleasure. 'Ah, miserable Heloise!' I said, 'if it is a
crime to give oneself up to such transports, and if, after this life is
ended, punishment certainly follows them, why didst thou not resist such
dangerous temptations? Think on the tortures prepared for thee, consider
with terror the store of torments, and recollect, at the same time,
those pleasures which thy deluded soul thought so entrancing. Ah! dost
thou not despair for having rioted in such false pleasures?' In short,
Abelard, imagine all the remorse of mind I suffered, and you will not be
astonished at my change.
Solitude is insupportable to the uneasy mind; its troubles increase
in the midst of silence, and retirement heightens them. Since I have
been shut up in these walls I have done nothing but weep our
misfortunes. This cloister has resounded with my cries, and, like a
wretch condemned to eternal slavery, I have worn out my days with grief.
Instead of fulfilling God's merciful design towards me I have offended
against Him; I have looked upon this sacred refuge as a frightful
prison, and have borne with unwillingness the yoke of the Lord. Instead
of purifying myself with a life of penitence I have confirmed my
condemnation. What a fatal mistake! But, Abelard, I have torn off the
bandage which blinded me, and, if I dare rely upon my own feelings, I
have now made myself worthy of your esteem, You are to me no more the
loving Abelard who constantly sought private conversations with me by
deceiving the vigilance of our observers. Our misfortunes gave you a
horror of vice, and you instantly consecrated the rest of your days to
virtue, and seemed to submit willingly to the necessity. I indeed, more
tender than you, and more sensible to pleasure, bore misfortune with
extreme impatience, and you have heard my exclaimings against your
enemies. You have seen my resentment in my late letters; it was this,
doubtless, which deprived me of the esteem of my Abelard. You were
alarmed at my repinings, and, if the truth be told, despaired of my
salvation. You could not foresee that Heloise would conquer so reigning
a passion; but you were mistaken, Abelard, my weakness, when supported
by grace, has not hindered me from winning a complete victory. Restore
me, then, to your esteem; your own piety should solicit you to this.
But what secret trouble rises in my soul--what unthought-of emotion
now rises to oppose the resolution I have formed to sigh no more for
Abelard? Just Heaven! have I not triumphed over my love? Unhappy
Heloise! as long as thou drawest a breath it is decreed thou must love
Abelard. Weep, unfortunate wretch, for thou never hadst a more just
occasion. I ought to die of grief; grace had overtaken me and I had
promised to be faithful to it, but now am I perjured once more, and even
grace is sacrificed to Abelard. This sacrilege fills up the measure of
my iniquity. After this how can I hope that God will open to me the
treasure of His mercy, for I have tired out His forgiveness. I began to
offend Him from the first moment I saw Abelard; an unhappy sympathy
engaged us both in a guilty love, and God raised us up an enemy to
separate us. I lament the misfortune which lighted upon us and I adore
the cause. Ah! I ought rather to regard this misfortune as the gift of
Heaven, which disapproved of our engagement and parted us, and I ought
to apply myself to extirpate my passion. How much better it were to
forget entirely the object of it than to preserve a memory so fatal to
my peace and salvation? Great God! shall Abelard possess my thoughts for
ever? Can I never free myself from the chains of love? But perhaps I am
unreasonably afraid; virtue directs all my acts and they are all subject
to grace. Therefore fear not, Abelard; I have no longer those sentiments
which being described in my letters have occasioned you so much trouble.
I will no more endeavour, by the relation of those pleasures our passion
gave us, to awaken any guilty fondness you may yet feel for me. I free
you from all your oaths; forget the titles of lover and husband and keep
only that of father. I expect no more from you than tender protestations
and those letters so proper to feed the flame of love. I demand nothing
of you but spiritual advice and wholesome discipline. The path of
holiness, however thorny it be, will yet appear agreeable to me if I may
but walk in your footsteps. You will always find me ready to follow you.
I shall read with more pleasure the letters in which you shall describe
the advantages of virtue than ever I did those in which you so artfully
instilled the poison of passion. You cannot now be silent without a
crime. When I was possessed with so violent a love, and pressed you so
earnestly to write to me, how many letters did I send you before I could
obtain one from you? You denied me in my misery the only comfort which
was left me, because you thought it pernicious. You endeavoured by
severities to force me to forget you, nor do I blame you; but now you
have nothing to fear. This fortunate illness, with which Providence has
chastised me for my good, has done what all human efforts and your
cruelty in vain attempted. I see now the vanity of that happiness we had
set our hearts upon, as if it were eternal. What fears, what distress
have we not suffered for it!
No, Lord, there is no pleasure upon earth but that which virtue
gives. The heart amidst all worldly delights feels a sting; it is uneasy
and restless until fixed on Thee. What have I not suffered, Abelard,
whilst I kept alive in my retirement those fires which ruined me in the
world? I saw with hatred the walls that surrounded me; the hours seemed
as long as years. I repented a thousand times that I had buried myself
here. But since grace has opened my eyes all the scene is changed;
solitude looks charming, and the peace of the place enters my very
heart. In the satisfaction of doing my duty I feel a delight above all
that riches, pomp or sensuality could afford. My quiet has indeed cost
me dear, for I have bought it at the price of my love; I have offered a
violent sacrifice I thought beyond my power. But if I have torn you from
my heart, be not jealous; God, who ought always to have possessed it,
reigns there in your stead. Be content with having a place in my mind
which you shall never lose; I shall always take a secret pleasure in
thinking of you, and esteem it a glory to obey those rules you shall
give me.
This very moment I receive a letter from you; I will read it and
answer it immediately. You shall see by my promptitude in writing to you
that you are always dear to me.
You very obligingly reproach me for delay in writing you any news; my
illness must excuse that. I omit no opportunities of giving you marks of
my remembrance. I thank you for the uneasiness you say my silence caused
you, and the kind fears you express concerning my health. Yours, you
tell me, is but weakly, and you thought lately you should have died.
With what indifference, cruel man, do you tell me a thing so certain to
afflict me? I told you in my former letter how unhappy I should be if
you died, and if you love me you will moderate the rigours of your
austere life. I represented to you the occasion I had for your advice,
and consequently the reason there was you should take care of
yourself;--but I will not tire you with repetitions. You desire us not
to forget you in our prayers: ah! dear Abelard, you may depend upon the
zeal of this society; it is devoted to you and you cannot justly fear
its forgetfulness. You are our Father, and we are your children; you are
our guide, and we resign ourselves to your direction with full assurance
in your piety. You command; we obey; we faithfully execute what you have
prudently ordered. We impose no penance on ourselves but what you
recommend, lest we should rather follow an indiscreet zeal than solid
virtue. In a word, nothing is thought right but what has Abelard's
approbation. You tell me one thing that perplexes me that you have heard
that some of our Sisters are bad examples, and that they are generally
not strict enough. Ought this to seem strange to you who know how
monasteries are filled nowadays? Do fathers consult the inclination of
their children when they settle them? Are not interest and policy their
only rules? This is the reason that monasteries are often filled with
those who are a scandal to them. But I conjure you to tell me what are
the irregularities you have heard of, and to show me the proper remedy
for them. I have not yet observed any looseness: when I have I will take
due care. I walk my rounds every night and make those I catch abroad
return to their chambers; for I remember all the adventures that
happened in the monasteries near Paris.
You end your letter with a general deploring of your unhappiness and
wish for death to end a weary life. Is it possible so great a genius as
you cannot rise above your misfortunes? What would the world say should
they read the letters you send me? Would they consider the noble motive
of your retirement or not rather think you had shut yourself up merely
to lament your woes? What would your young students say, who come so far
to hear you and prefer your severe lectures to the ease of a worldly
life, if they should discover you secretly a slave to your passions and
the victim of those weaknesses from which your rule secures them? This
Abelard they so much admire, this great leader, would lose his fame and
become the sport of his pupils.
If these reasons are not sufficient to give you constancy in your
misfortune, cast your eyes upon me, and admire the resolution with which
I shut myself up at your request. I was young when we separated, and (if
I dare believe what you were always telling me) worthy of any man's
affections. If I had loved nothing in Abelard but sensual pleasure,
other men might have comforted me upon my loss of him. You know what I
have done, excuse me therefore from repeating it; think of those
assurances I gave you of loving you still with the utmost tenderness. I
dried your tears with kisses, and because you were less powerful I
became less reserved. Ah! if you had loved with delicacy, the oaths I
made, the transports I indulged, the caresses I gave, would surely have
comforted you. Had you seen me grow by degrees indifferent to you, you
might have had reason to despair, but you never received greater tokens
of my affection than after you felt misfortune.
Let me see no more in your letters, dear Abelard, such murmurs
against Fate; you are not the only one who has felt her blows and you
ought to forget her outrages. What a shame it is that a philosopher
cannot accept what might befall any man. Govern yourself by my example;
I was born with violent passions, I daily strive with tender emotions,
and glory in triumphing and subjecting them to reason. Must a weak mind
fortify one that is so much superior? But I am carried away. Is it thus
I write to nay dear Abelard? He who practises all those virtues he
preaches? If you complain of Fortune, it is not so much that you feel
her strokes as that you try to show your enemies how much to blame they
are in attempting to hurt you. Leave them, Abelard, to exhaust their
malice, and continue to charm your auditors. Discover those treasures of
learning Heaven seems to have reserved for you; your enemies, struck
with the splendour of your reasoning, will in the end do you justice.
How happy should I be could I see all the world as entirely persuaded of
your probity as I am. Your learning is allowed by all; your greatest
adversaries confess you are ignorant of nothing the mind of man is
capable of knowing.
My dear Husband (for the last time I use that title!), shall I never
see you again? Shall I never have the pleasure of embracing you before
death? What dost thou say, wretched Heloise? Dost thou know what thou
desirest? Couldst thou behold those brilliant eyes without recalling the
tender glances which have been so fatal to thee? Couldst thou see that
majestic air of Abelard without being jealous of everyone who beholds so
attractive a man? That mouth cannot be looked upon without desire; in
short, no woman can view the person of Abelard without danger. Ask no
more therefore to see Abelard; if the memory of him has caused thee so
much trouble, Heloise, what would not his presence do? What desires will
it not excite in thy soul? How will it be possible to keep thy reason at
the sight of so lovable a man?
I will own to you what makes the greatest pleasure in my retirement;
after having passed the day in thinking of you, full of the repressed
idea, I give myself up at night to sleep. Then it is that Heloise, who
dares not think of you by day, resigns herself with pleasure to see and
hear you. How my eyes gloat over you! Sometimes you tell me stories of
your secret troubles, and create in me a felt sorrow; sometimes the rage
of our enemies is forgotten and you press me to you and I yield to you,
and our souls, animated with the same passion, are sensible of the same
pleasures. But O! delightful dreams and tender illusions, how soon do
you vanish away! I awake and open my eyes to find no Abelard: I stretch
out my arms to embrace him and he is not there; I cry, and he hears me
not. What a fool I am to tell my dreams to you who are insensible to
these pleasures. But do you, Abelard, never see Heloise in your sleep?
How does she appear to you? Do you entertain her with the same tender
language as formerly, and are you glad or sorry when you awake? Pardon
me, Abelard, pardon a mistaken lover. I must no longer expect from you
that vivacity which once marked your every action; no more must I
require from you the correspondence of desires. We have bound ourselves
to severe austerities and must follow them at all costs. Let us think of
our duties and our rules, and make good use of that necessity which
keeps us separate. You, Abelard, will happily finish your course; your
desires and ambitions will be no obstacle to your salvation. But Heloise
must weep, she must lament for ever without being certain whether all
her tears will avail for her salvation.
I had liked to have ended my letter without telling you what happened
here a few days ago. A young nun, who had been forced to enter the
convent without a vocation therefor, is by a stratagem I know nothing of
escaped and fled to England with a gentleman. I have ordered all the
house to conceal the matter. Ah, Abelard! if you were near us these
things would not happen, for all the Sisters, charmed with seeing and
hearing you, would think of nothing but practising your rules and
directions. The young nun had never formed so criminal a design as that
of breaking her vows had you been at our head to exhort us to live in
holiness. If your eyes were witnesses of our actions they would be
innocent. When we slipped you should lift us up and establish us by your
counsels; we should march with sure steps in the rough path of virtue. I
begin to perceive, Abelard, that I take too much pleasure in writing to
you; I ought to burn this letter. It shows that I still feel a deep
passion for you, though at the beginning I tried to persuade you to the
contrary. I am sensible of waves both of grace and passion, and by turns
yield to each. Have pity, Abelard, on the condition to which you have
brought me, and make in some measure my last days as peaceful as my
first have been uneasy and disturbed.
|
Jean Vignaud
Abaelardus and Heloïse surprised by Master Fulbert
|
LETTER VI
Abelard to Heloise
WRITE no more to me, Heloise, write no more to me; ’tis time to end
communications which make our penances of nought avail. We retired from
the world to purify ourselves, and, by a conduct directly contrary to
Christian morality, we became odious to Jesus Christ. Let us no more
deceive ourselves with remembrance of our past pleasures; we but make
our lives troubled and spoil the sweets of solitude. Let us make good
use of our austerities and no longer preserve the memories of our crimes
amongst the severities of penance. Let a mortification of body and mind,
a strict fasting, continual solitude, profound and holy meditations, and
a sincere love of God succeed our former irregularities.
Let us try to carry religious perfection to its farthest point. It is
beautiful to find Christian minds so disengaged from earth, from the
creatures and themselves, that they seem to act independently of those
bodies they are joined to, and to use them as their slaves. We can never
raise ourselves to too great heights when God is our object. Be our
efforts ever so great they will always come short of attaining that
exalted Divinity which even our apprehension cannot reach. Let us act
for God's glory independent of the creatures or ourselves, paying no
regard to our own desires or the opinions of others. Were we in this
temper of mind, Heloise, I would willingly make my abode at the
Paraclete, and by my earnest care for the house I have founded draw a
thousand blessings on it. I would instruct it by my words and animate it
by my example: I would watch over the lives of my Sisters, and would
command nothing but what I myself would perform: I would direct you to
pray, meditate, labour, and keep vows of silence; and I would myself
pray, labour, meditate, and be silent.
And when I spoke it should be to lift you up when you should fall, to
strengthen you in your weaknesses, to enlighten you in that darkness and
obscurity which might at any time surprise you. I would comfort you
under the severities used by persons of great virtue: I would moderate
the vivacity of your zeal and piety and give your virtue an even
temperament: I would point out those duties you ought to perform, and
satisfy those doubts which through the weakness of your reason might
arise. I would be your master and father, and by a marvellous talent I
would become lively or slow, gentle or severe, according to the
different characters of those I should guide in the painful path to
Christian perfection.
But whither does my vain imagination carry me! Ah, Heloise, how far
are we from such a happy temper? Your heart still burns with that fatal
fire you cannot extinguish, and mine is full of trouble and unrest.
Think not, Heloise, that I here enjoy a perfect peace; I will for the
last time open my heart to you;--I am not yet disengaged from you, and
though I fight against my excessive tenderness for you, in spite of all
my endeavours I remain but too sensible of your sorrows and long to
share in them. Your letters have indeed moved me; I could not read with
indifference characters written by that dear hand! I sigh and weep, and
all my reason is scarce sufficient to conceal my weakness from my
pupils. This, unhappy Heloise, is the miserable condition of Abelard.
The world, which is generally wrong in its notions, thinks I am at
peace, and imagining that I loved you only for the gratification of the
senses, have now forgot you. What a mistake is this! People indeed were
not wrong in saying that when we separated it was shame and grief that
made me abandon the world. It was not, as you know, a sincere repentance
for having offended God which inspired me with a design for retiring.
However, I consider our misfortunes as a secret design of Providence to
punish our sins; and only look upon Fulbert as the instrument of divine
vengeance. Grace drew me into an asylum where I might yet have remained
if the rage of my enemies would have permitted; I have endured all their
persecutions, not doubting that God Himself raised them up in order to
purify me.
When He saw me perfectly obedient to His Holy Will, He permitted that
I should justify my doctrine; I made its purity public, and showed in
the end that my faith was not only orthodox, but also perfectly clear
from all suspicion of novelty.
I should be happy if I had none to fear but my enemies, and no other
hindrance to my salvation but their calumny. But, Heloise, you make me
tremble, your letters declare to me that you are enslaved to human love,
and yet, if you cannot conquer it, you cannot be saved; and what part
would you have me play in this trial? Would you have me stifle the
inspirations of the Holy Ghost? Shall I, to soothe you, dry up those
tears which the Evil Spirit makes you shed--shall this be the fruit of
my meditations? No, let us be more firm in our resolutions; we have not
retired save to lament our sins and to gain heaven; let us then resign
ourselves to God with all our heart.
I know everything is difficult in the beginning; but it is glorious
to courageously start a great action, and glory increases
proportionately as the difficulties are more considerable. We ought on
this account to surmount bravely all obstacles which might hinder us in
the practice of Christian virtue. In a monastery men are proved as gold
in a furnace. No one can continue long there unless he bear worthily the
yoke of the Lord.
Attempt to break those shameful chains which bind you to the flesh,
and if by the assistance of grace you are so happy as to accomplish
this, I entreat you to think of me in your prayers. Endeavour with all
your strength to be the pattern of a perfect Christian; it is difficult,
I confess, but not impossible; and I expect this beautiful triumph from
your teachable disposition. If your first efforts prove weak do not give
way to despair, for that would be cowardice; besides, I would have you
know that you must necessarily take great pains, for you strive to
conquer a terrible enemy, to extinguish a raging fire, to reduce to
subjection your dearest affections. You have to fight against your own
desires, so be not pressed down with the weight of your corrupt nature.
You have to do with a cunning adversary who will use all means to seduce
you; be always upon your guard. While we live we are exposed to
temptations; this made a great saint say, 'The life of man is one long
temptation': the devil, who never sleeps, walks continually around us in
order to surprise us on some unguarded side, and enters into our soul in
order to destroy it.
However perfect anyone may be, yet he may fall into temptations, and
perhaps into such as may be useful. Nor is it wonderful that man should
never be exempt from them, because he always hath in himself their
source; scarce are we delivered from one temptation when another attacks
us. Such is the lot of the posterity of Adam, that they should always
have something to suffer, because they have forfeited their primitive
happiness. We vainly flatter ourselves that we shall conquer temptations
by flying; if we join not patience and humility we shall torment
ourselves to no purpose. We shall more certainly compass our end by
imploring God's assistance than by using any means of our own.
Be constant, Heloise, and trust in God; then you shall fall into few
temptations: when they come stifle them at their birth--let them not
take root in your heart. 'Apply remedies to a disease,' said an ancient,
'at the beginning, for when it hath gained strength medicines are of no
avail': temptations have their degrees, they are at first mere thoughts
and do not appear dangerous; the imagination receives them without any
fears; the pleasure grows; we dwell upon it, and at last we yield to it.
Do you now, Heloise, applaud my design of making you walk in the
steps of the saints? Do my words give you any relish for penitence? Have
you not remorse for your wanderings, and do you not wish you could, like
Magdalen, wash our Saviour's feet with your tears? If you have not yet
these ardent aspirations, pray that you may be inspired by them. I shall
never cease to recommend you in my prayers and to beseech God to assist
you in your design of dying holily. You have quitted the world, and what
object was worthy to detain you there? Lift up your eyes always to Him
to whom the rest of your days are consecrated. Life upon this earth is
misery; the very necessities to which our bodies are subject here are
matters of affliction to a saint. 'Lord,' said the royal prophet,
'deliver me from my necessities.' Many are wretched who do not know they
are; and yet they are more wretched who know their misery and yet cannot
hate the corruption of the age. What fools are men to engage themselves
to earthly things! They will be undeceived one day, and will know too
late how much they have been to blame in loving such false good. Truly
pious persons are not thus mistaken; they are freed from all sensual
pleasures and raise their desires to Heaven.
Begin, Heloise; put your design into action without delay; you have
yet time enough to work out your salvation. Love Christ, and despise
yourself for His sake; He will possess your heart and be the sole object
of your sighs and tears; seek for no comfort but in Him. If you do not
free yourself from me, you will fall with me; but if you leave me and
cleave to Him, you will be steadfast and safe. If you force the Lord to
forsake you, you will fall into trouble; but if you are faithful to Him
you shall find joy. Magdalen wept, thinking that Jesus had forsaken her,
but Martha said, 'See, the Lord calls you.' Be diligent in your duty,
obey faithfully the calls of grace, and Jesus will be with you. Attend,
Heloise, to some instructions I have to give you: you are at the head of
a society, and you know there is a difference between those who lead a
private life and those who are charged with the conduct of others: the
first need only labour for their own sanctification, and in their round
of duties are not obliged to practise all the virtues in such an
apparent manner: but those who have the charge of others entrusted to
them ought by their example to encourage their followers to do all the
good of which they are capable. I beseech you to remember this truth,
and so to follow it that your whole life may be a perfect model of that
of a religious recluse.
God heartily desires our salvation, and has made all the means of it
easy to us. In the Old Testament He has written in the tables of law
what He requires of us, that we might not be bewildered in seeking after
His will. In the New Testament He has written the law of grace to the
intent that it might ever be present in our hearts; so, knowing the
weakness and incapacity of our nature, He has given us grace to perform
His will. And, as if this were not enough, He has raised up at all
times, in all states of the Church, men who by their exemplary life can
excite others to their duty. To effect this He has chosen persons of
every age, sex and condition. Strive now to unite in yourself all the
virtues of these different examples. Have the purity of virgins, the
austerity of anchorites, the zeal of pastors and bishops, and the
constancy of martyrs. Be exact in the course of your whole life to
fulfil the duties of a holy and enlightened superior, and then death,
which is commonly considered as terrible, will appear agree- able to
you.
'The death of His saints,' says the prophet, 'is precious in the
sight of the Lord.' Nor is it difficult to discover why their death
should have this advantage over that of sinners. I have remarked three
things which might have given the prophet an occasion of speaking
thus:--First, their resignation to the will of God; second, the
continuation of their good works; and lastly, the triumph they gain over
the devil.
A saint who has accustomed himself to submit to the will of God
yields to death without reluctance. He waits with joy (says Dr. Gregory)
for the Judge who is to reward him; he fears not to quit this miserable
mortal life in order to begin an immortal happy one. It is not so with
the sinner, says the same Father; he fears, and with reason, he trembles
at the approach of the least sickness; death is terrible to him because
he dreads the presence of the offended Judge; and having so often abused
the means of grace he sees no way to avoid the punishment of his sins.
The saints have also this advantage over sinners, that having become
familiar with works of piety of during their life they exercise them
without trouble, and having gained new strength against the devil every
time they overcame him, they will find themselves in a condition at the
hour of death to obtain that victory on which depends all eternity, and
the blessed union of their souls with their Creator.
I hope, Heloise, that after having deplored the irregularities of
your past life, you will 'die the death of the righteous.' Ah, how few
there are who make this end! And why? It is because there are so few who
love the Cross of Christ. Everyone wishes to be saved, but few will use
those means which religion prescribes. Yet can we be saved by nothing
but the Cross: why then refuse to bear it? Hath not our Saviour bore it
before us, and died for us, to the end that we might also bear it and
desire to die also? All the saints have suffered affliction, and our
Saviour himself did not pass one hour of His life without some sorrow.
Hope not therefore to be exempt from suffering: the Cross, Heloise, is
always at hand, take care that you do not receive it with regret, for by
so doing you will make it more heavy and you will he oppressed by it to
no profit. On the contrary, if you bear it with willing courage, all
your sufferings will create in you a holy confidence whereby you will
find comfort in God. Hear our Saviour who says, 'My child, renounce
yourself, take up your Cross and follow Me. Oh, Heloise, do you doubt?
Is not your soul ravished at so saving a command? Are you insensible to
lwords so full of kindness? Beware, Heloise, of refusing a Husband who
demands you, and who is more to be feared than any earthly lover.
Provoked at your contempt and ingratitude, He will turn His love into
anger and make you feel His vengeance. How will you sustain His presence
when you shall stand before His tribunal? He will reproach you for
having despised His grace, He will represent to you His sufferings for
you. What answer can you make? He will then be implacable: He will say
to you, 'Go, proud creature, and dwell in everlasting flames. I
separated you from the world to purify you in solitude and you did not
second my design. I endeavoured to save you and you wilfully destroyed
yourself; go, wretch, and take the portion of the reprobates.'
Oh, Heloise, prevent these terrible words, and avoid, by a holy life,
the punishment prepared for sinners. I dare not give you a description
of those dreadful torments which are the consequences of a career of
guilt. I am filled with horror when they offer themselves to my
imagination. And yet, Heloise, I can conceive nothing which can reach
the tortures of the damned; the fire which we see upon this earth is but
the shadow of that which burns them; and without enumerating their
endless pains, the loss of God which they feel increases all their
torments. Can anyone sin who is persuaded of this? My God! can we dare
to offend Thee? Though the riches of Thy mercy could not engage us to
love Thee, the dread of being thrown into such an abyss of misery should
restrain us from doing anything which might displease Thee.
I question not, Heloise, but you will hereafter apply yourself in
good earnest to the business of your salvation; this ought to be your
whole concern. Banish me, therefore, for ever from your heart--it is the
best advice I can give you, for the remembrance of a person we have
loved guiltily cannot but be hurtful, whatever advances we may have made
in the way of virtue. When you have extirpated your unhappy inclination
towards me, the practice of every virtue will become easy; and when at
last your life is conformable to that of Christ, death will be desirable
to you. Your soul will joyfully leave this body, and direct its flight
to heaven. Then you will appear with confidence before your Saviour; you
will not read your reprobation written in the judgment book, but you
will hear your Saviour say, Come, partake of My glory, and enjoy the
eternal reward I have appointed for those virtues you have practised.
Farewell, Heloise, this is the last advice of your dear Abelard; for
the last time let me persuade you to follow the rules of the Gospel.
Heaven grant that your heart, once so sensible of my love, may now yield
to be directed by my zeal. May the idea of your loving Abelard, always
present to your mind, be now changed into the image of Abelard truly
penitent; and may you shed as many tears for your salvation as you have
done for our misfortunes.
|
Jenny Chi
Heloise and Abelard
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
