Updated 07-20-10
Heloise (d.1163/4)
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"I AM NOT SEEKING ANY CROWN OF VICTORY."
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Nothing is known of Heloise's parentage except that in her
letters she implies that she is of a lower rank than Pierre Abelard,
who was from the minor nobility. She was a ward of an uncle,
a canon in Paris, and was educated at the abbey of Argenteuil,
near Paris. Between the abbey and her uncle, she achieved an
unusually thorough education. Abelard had heard of her before
he met her; he wrote: "She was by no means the least handsome
of women, but in the extent of her learning she surpassed them
all. Since this gift is so rare in women, it won the highest
praise for her, and made her the most famous woman in the whole
kingdom" (McLaughlin, p.23). When Heloise was in her late
teens or early twenties, her uncle asked Abelard, one of the
most popular teachers in Paris, to help Heloise improve her knowledge
of philosophy. Abelard would later tell his story of the seduction
of Heloise and its aftermath --- their marriage, the birth of
a son, Abelard's castration --- near the beginning of his Historica
calamitatum.
By 1119, Heloise had, at Abelard's direction, become a nun
at Argenteuil, and Abelard had become a monk, though a rather
peripatetic one. Four years later Heloise was made prioress,
and so in charge of the education of the nuns, the novices, and
the children who were being taught there as she had been. In
1129, the nuns of the Argenteuil were evicted because of a dispute
about the ownership of the land, and the nuns were scattered
to various monasteries. Abelard went to see Heloise (for the
first time in ten years) and offered to her and some of her fellow
nuns possession of the Paraclete, an oratory that he had founded
some years before in the Champagne area. The women moved there
and received a charter in 1131 naming the Paraclete as a Benedictine
abbey; Heloise became the abbess.
In 1132, Abelard wrote a letter to a friend, his Historica
calamitatum; it circulated among his friends and Heloise
read it. It was this that initiated their correspondence. There
are extant four letters by Heloise to Abelard: the first two
are often called the "personal letters," the third
is on religious life, and the fourth accompanies a list
of 42 questions about scriptural passages posed by Heloise and
her fellow nuns (this last is usually called the Problemata).
It is assumed that the the first three letters were written by
1135 and the fourth perhaps in 1136, when Abelard was back in
Paris teaching. Although one of Abelard's letters outlines a
Rule for the nuns of the Paraclete, the actual Rule used by the
community (Institutiones nostrae) is believed by scholars
to have been written by Heloise in about 1147.
In 1141, some of Abelard's teachings were condemned; he was
on his way to Rome to argue his case when he became ill. He died
the following year. At his death his body was brought to the
Paraclete for burial. We have one more of Heloise's letters,
to Peter the Venerable, the abbot who had been Abelard's superior
at his death: she asks for a written statement of her husband's
absolution "to be hung above his tomb" (McLaughlin,
p.299) and for a position in the Church for their son.
Heloise served as abbess at the Paraclete for twenty more
years, until her death. Under her rule, five dependent priories
were established, and the monastery earned a reputation as one
of the most important in France. To her contemporaries, Heloise
was well known as the Paraclete's competent and learned abbess.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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Online
1. In English:
(a) Abelard's
Historia calamitatum, translated by Henry Adams
Bellows. It is this document to which Heloise's first letter
is a response.
(b) The first
four letters of the correspondence, two by Heloise and two
by Abelard, translated by Stephan T. Mayo. There is a useful
introduction by Mayo; the notes are limited to biblical references.
(c) Three other versions of Heloise's first letter: One is by
C.K.
Scott Moncrief, with a general introduction and bibliography
(through 1997) by Paul Halsall and a link to a discussion of
the authenticity of Heloise's letters. The second is by A.S.
Richardson; the third by Betty
Radice (with, at the top, an illumination from a 1300s manuscript
of Jean de Meung's Le roman de la rose, the work that
initiated the legend of Heloise and Abelard).
(d) Heloise's
third letter to Abelard, which describes the need of a women's
monastery for a rule of life different from those instituted
for men, translated by Mary Martin McLaughlin; the Latin original
is also given.
(e) Sometime after writing her third letter, Heloise put together
a group of 42 biblical questions that she and her fellow nuns
wished to have answered by Abelard. Here is McLaughlin's translation
of Heloise's
fourth letter, which introduced the questions; it is followed
by the nuns' questions and Abelard's answers, and then by the
Latin of the introductory letter. For more from McLaughlin, see
below, under "In print.")
(f) In Radice's translation, Heloise's 1144
letter to Peter the Venerable, thanking him for allowing
Abelard's body to be interred at the Paraclete, and asking him
for prayers for herself and a position for her son; the Latin
is also given.
2. Other sites for the Latin originals:
(a) Abelard's Historia
Calamitatum.
(b) Links to Heloise's
first two letters to Abelard.
(c) Heloise's
third letter to Abelard.
3. Essays:
(a) "Heloise
& Abelard: Love Hurts," by Cristina Nehring, is
a 2005 review of several books; it provides a useful introduction
to the lovers' story.
(b) "Female
Monasticism in the Twelfth Century: Peter Abelard, Heloise, and
Paul's Letter to the Romans" (2003), by
Brenda Deen Schildgen, discusses Heloise's third letter, about
an appropriate rule for a women's monastery, and Abelard's responses
to her letter; Schildgen includes a brief description of the
debate on the authenticity of the letters.
(c) Brenda M. Cook's 2000 essay, "The
Birth of Heloise: New Light on an Old Mystery?" on what
is known and what can be conjectured about her background.
(d) A 1996 essay by Bruce L. Venarde, "Praesidentes
Negotiis: Abbesses as Managers in Twelfth-Century France."
Although the entire essay is useful, you can use your browser's
search function to go to "Heloise"; she is discussed
in some detail.
(e) A brief abstract of a 2009 dissertation by Carmel Marie Posa,
"The Theology
and Spirituality of the Body in the Writings of Heloise of the
Paraclete"; you can download the dissertation as a PDF
file (338 KB). Posa looks at Heloise's themes and language, and
provides her own translation of passages from Problemata and
Institutiones nostrae.
(f) In Ch. 15 of his 1869 Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's
Progress, Mark
Twain's version of the story of Heloise and Abelard. Not
intended to be historically reliable, the essay is amusing for
Twain's view of Heloise's uncle and the men who castrated Abelard.
At another site, the Parisian
tomb that inspired Twain's thoughts (the two bodies were
moved there in 1817, after considerable traveling over the centuries).
4. Reviews (for information on the Levitan and Radice translations,
see below, under "In print"; for information on the
other books' treatment of Heloise, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Carol Symes on William Levitan's 2007 translation of Heloise
and Abelard, The
Letters and Other Writings.
(b) Ben Dutton on the 2003 revision of Radice's 1974 translation,
The
Letters of Abelard and Heloise.
(c) Barbara Newman on Neville Chiavaroli's and Constant Mews'
1999 translation of Epistolae duorum amantium, Lost
Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue
in Twelfth-century France; elsewhere, another
review, this by Susan R. Kramer. (And at still another site,
a transcript of a 2000 Australian radio program's interview
with Mews, which includes passages of the "lost letters.")
(d) A later review by Newman, this of Mews' 2005 study Abelard
and Heloise, which includes Newman's description of the
reaction to Lost Love Letters; and
another review, by Kevin Guilfoy.
(e) Ann Higgins on Marilynn Desmond's 2006 study,
Ovid's Art and the Wife of Bath: The Ethics of Erotic Violence;
and
another review, by Nunzio N. D'Alessio; and still another,
by Elizabeth Scala.
(f) Rebecca Krug on the 2005 essay collection, Voices
in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages; and another review,
by Kirsten M. Christensen.
(g) Priya Jain on James Burge's 2003 book, Heloise
and Abelard: A Twelfth-century Love Story.
(h) Diane Watt on the 2003 anthology, Guidance
for Women in Twelfth-century Convents.
(i) Cynthia Ho on Barbara Newman's 1995 study, From
Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and
Literature.
(j) Mews on the 1993 essay collection, Dear
Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre.
4. Of historical interest: Definitely not an accurate
version of the letters, but one that would be much used for two
centuries: The
Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise, a 1901 edition of
a 1714 version by John Hughes. The introduction, by Honnor Morten,
describes it politely as "rather a paraphrase than a translation";
William Levitan sees it as "the source of much misinformation"
(p.302); and Radice describes it as a "travesty" and
one of the "wilder flights of fancy" surrounding the
story of the lovers (2003, pp. 52, 50).
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[Mary Martin McLaughlin's translation contains all of Heloise's
extant writing, including the Problemata and Institutiones
nostrae. The introduction is rather skimpy (it refers readers
to a "companion biography" of Heloise that has not
yet been published); however, there are "explanatory notes
for person and places," and an appendix describes the manuscript
history of the documents. The book has no index. (See
the book's table of contents online.)]
The letters of Heloise and Abelard: a translation of their
collected correspondence and related writings / translated and
edited by Mary Martin McLaughlin with Bonnie Wheeler (The new
Middle Ages). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (xiv, 366 p.:
maps)
LC#: PA8201 .A4 2009; ISBN: 9780312229351
Includes bibliographical references
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"She would prostitute herself to a richer man."
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[If you read Heloise's letters online, note these passages.
In the first letter is the sentence that has made her notorious
from the time that Jean de Meun quoted it in the Roman de
la Rose (c.1280) to the present (the phrase works better in
Latin, where "meretrix" is rhymed with "imperatrix").
The sentences that immediately follow it have generally been
ignored:]
As God is my witness, if Augustus, who ruled over the whole
earth, should have thought me worthy of the honor of marriage
and made me ruler of all the world forever, it would have seemed
sweeter and more honorable to me to be called your mistress than
his empress.
The fact that a man is rich and powerful does not make him
therefore better; the one depends on fortune, the other on character.
The woman who marries a rich man rather than a poor one, and
desires her husband's possessions more than the man himself,
should realize that she is only putting herself up for sale.
Surely anyone who is led to marry by this kind of greed deserves
to be paid rather than loved by her husband. It is obvious that
what she is seeking is not a man but what he owns, and that if
she could, she would prostitute herself to a richer man. [p.54]
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"...your presence, which might at times restore me."
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[Abelard answered Heloise's first letter, writing as if
their old passionate love had now been sublimated into a love
of God, so that there was no reason for them to see each other
or even to write. Heloise's second letter quickly disabused Abelard
of that notion:]
But what hope is left for me if I lose you? What reason have
I for continuing in this pilgrimage, in which I have no solace
but you, and the only comfort I have in you is that you are still
alive? I am forbidden all other pleasure in you, and I am not
allowed to enjoy your presence, which might at times restore
me in every way! [p.64]
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"Do not believe that I am not in need."
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For a long time my pretense has deceived you, as it has deceived
many others, into mistaking hypocrisy for piety. So you ardently
commend yourself to my prayers, demanding me what I expect of
you. Do not, I beg you, have such confidence in me that you cease
helping me with your prayers. Do not, I beg you, think that I
am healthy and so withdraw the grace of healing from me. Do not
believe that I am not in need and put off aiding me in my necessity.
Do not consider me strong, or I may collapse and fall before
you can sustain me. [p.68]
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"It is safer to avoid danger than to engage in battle."
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I do not want you to say, by way of exhorting me to virtue
and urging me to struggle, that..."the athlete will win
no crown, if he does not observe the rules of the contest."
I am not seeking any crown of victory. To keep out of danger
is enough for me. It is safer to avoid danger than to engage
in battle. No matter what corner of heaven God places me in,
I shall be satisfied. No one there will envy anyone else, since
everyone will be content with what he has. [p.67]
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"If only the suffering heart were as ready to obey as the
writer's hand!
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[Abelard's reply to Heloise's second letter told her to
stop complaining: "I had thought that your bitterness of
soul... had vanished long ago.... If, as you claim, you are eager
to please me in every way,...give this up.... By complaining
in this way, you can neither please me nor reach eternal blessedness
with me" (p.76). Heloise obeyed her husband. She wrote a
third letter in which after the opening, she spoke only as an
abbess who needed specific information and detailed guidance
in order to establish in her monastery a practical and logical
observance of the monastic life the nuns had agreed to follow.
Her third letter opens:]
I do not wish to give you the slightest reason to accuse me
of disobedience in anything. So following your command, I have
put a rein on the outpouring of my boundless grief, in this way
restraining myself, at least in my letters, from writing words
against which it is not merely difficult but impossible to guard
oneself in speech. For nothing is less in our power than the
heart, and we must obey it since we cannot rule it....
I shall, therefore, keep my hand from writing what I cannot
keep my tongue from saying. If only the suffering heart were
as ready to obey as the writer's hand! [p.84]
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"We consider the answers to them most essential to us."
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[And now Heloise the abbess of the Paraclete, takes over
the letter, to speak with her nuns to the abbey's founder:]
All of us who are the servants of Christ and your daughters
in Christ now make as supplicants two requests of your paternal
kindness, and we consider the answers to them most essential
to us. One is that you will please instruct us concerning the
origins of women's religious life and the authority of our calling.
The other is that you draw up in writing and send us a rule that
is suitable for women, setting forth in its entirety the condition
and character of our monastic life. This is something, as we
know, that none of the fathers has done. [p.86]
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"...a burden under which we see almost all men staggering,
if they do not fall."
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[The nuns of the Paraclete were living under the Rule of
the Benedictine order, written 600 years before and written for
men. Heloise described the effects of an inappropriate Rule on
the women whom she must lead; then she speaks of both male and
female monastics:]
If today many of those who rashly enter the monastic life
would consider this very carefully and investigate beforehand
the state to which they vow themselves: by earnestly studying
the tenor of the Rule, they would offend less through ignorance
and sin less through negligence. But nowadays, when so many are
rushing indiscriminately into the monastic life, they are irregularly
received and live still more irregularly. Despising the Rule,
they have not studied as readily as they accepted it, they put
customs that please them in the place of law. So we should take
care that we women do not presume to take on a burden under which
we see almost all men staggering, if they do not fall. [pp.90-91]
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"Our ignorance of sacred learning makes us love it less."
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[Under their learned abbess, the nuns at the Paraclete
studied Scripture seriously; they wanted to understand, not merely
accept. They asked questions that demanded answers of a kind
not found in their library. Sometime after writing her third
letter, Heloise put together a group of 42 of these questions
"as they came up in the course of our daily studies,"
all from or related to passages in the Bible. Here is part of
the letter that accompanied the questions:]
You have always exhorted us to listen to the word of God and
devote ourselves to sacred studies. In urging us so often to
these studies, you have declared that the Bible is a mirror of
the soul in which we can discern its beauty or deformity. You
added... that reading the Scripture without understanding is
like holding a mirror before our eyes without seeing. Our sisters
and I have taken these admonitions very much to heart, obeying
you in this as much as possible, by devoting ourselves to the
love of learning....
But we find ourselves greatly hampered in our studies by many
perplexing questions, and our ignorance of sacred learning makes
us love it less, the more unfruitful the task we have undertaken
seems to us. So, as pupils to their teacher, daughters to their
father, we are sending you some small questions.... [p.214]
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"We ask whether anyone can sin in doing what the Lord has
permitted or commanded?"
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[Many of the 42 questions submitted to Abelard by Heloise
(which scholars call the Problemata) are ones that continue
to be debated by biblical theologians. The third one given here
is the last of the 42, and Abelard's reply involves him in a
rather circuitous discussion of the permissibility of "carnal
desire":]
There is no doubt that the Lord, on behalf of the adulteress
who was to be set free, replied to the Jews: "Let him who
is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her," and
so rescued her. Now since he did not permit her to be stoned
except by someone with out sin, he would seem to forbid anyone
from using the rod of punishment, since no one is without sin.... [p.225]
What is the meaning of the Lord's saying... "I tell you
there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents
that over ninety-nine righteous people who do not need to repent?"
For it is much better and more perfect to avoid sin than to make
amends for the one sin committed and doing many things well pleases
God more than doing only one. What does it mean, then, if God
approves the penitence of a single sinner more than the perseverance
of many righteous people? [p.227]
We ask whether anyone can sin in doing what the Lord has permitted
or commanded? [p.260]
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"We have renounced the world and fight for God."
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[Abelard did provide the Paraclete with the Rule that Heloise
had requested, but it is not clear to what extent it was used.
We do have the brief Institutiones nostrae, which scholars
believe to have written by Heloise after Abelard's death. This
is its opening:]
Our statutes have their origin in the teachings of Christ,
preaching and observing poverty, humility, and obedience. We
also follow in the footsteps of the apostles, who lived a common
life. In our manner of life we observe poverty and humility;
in our submissiveness, obedience; in our monastic life, by living
in common, we follow the apostles. Since material benefactions
come to us from all kinds of sources, they are distributed to
each person as far as possible. If there is not enough for everyone,
preference is given to those in greatest need. And because we
have renounced the world and fight for God, we persevere in a
state of chastity, and with all our strength, according to the
measure of his gifts, we strive to please him. [p.313]
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[William Levitan's translation of the correspondence includes
Heloise's three complete letters to Abelard and one to Peter
the Venerable, as well as the introduction that opened her last
extant letter to Abelard (although not the Problemata).
Levitan's introduction includes a discussion of the letters'
Latin prose style. The book also includes eight of Abelard's
poems and hymns (translated by Stanley Lombardo and by Barbara
Thorburn); an excerpt from John Hughes' 1714 fanciful version
of the legend (see online); and Levitan's translation of excerpts
from Epistolae duorum amantium, attributed by some to
Abelard and Heloise. A chronology and bibliography are useful
aids. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
The letters and other writings / Abelard and Heloise; translated,
with introduction and notes, by William Levitan; selected songs
and poems translated by Stanley Lombardo and by Barbara Thorburn.
Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., c2007. (xli, 356 p.: ill., map, music)
LC#: B765.A21 L48 2007; ISBN: 9780872208766,
9780872208759
Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-333) and indexes.
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[Betty Radice's translation includes Abelard's Historica
calamitatum, his three letters to Heloise (the fourth is summarized),
and Heloise's first three letters (as well as a brief letter
to Peter the Venerable); it does not include Heloise's introductory
letter to the Problemata. The 2003 edition revised by
M.T. Clanchy provides updated notes and bibliography, a useful
essay on studies done since the 1974 first edition, and excerpts
from Mews' Lost Love Letters. Only a few minor word changes
have been made in the texts of Heloise's letters, so for those
the earlier edition would suffice:]
The letters of Abelard and Heloise / translated with an introduction
and notes by Betty Radice. Rev. ed. / revised by M.T. Clanchy
(Penguin classics). London; New York : Penguin, 2003. (lxxxvii,
296 p.: maps )
LC#: PA8201 .A4 2003; ISBN: 0140448993
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[C. K. Scott Moncrieff's 1925 translation was, until Radice's,
the only accurate one available in English. It includes Heloise's
first three letters. Scott Moncrieff provides no notes and his
brief introductions are of his time: he describes Heloise's first
letter as "full of great affection and querulous complaints,
in the feminine way":]
The letters of Abelard and Heloise, translated from the Latin
by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (Blue jade library). New York, A. A.
Knopf, 1933. (xxiii, 264 p.)
LC#: PA8201 .A4 1933
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Secondary sources
[Three essays in this collection deal with writings once
attributed to Abelard or to "Anonymous" which some
scholars now assign to Heloise: (1) Constant J. Mews' "Heloise,
the Paraclete Liturgy and Mary Magdalen" discusses and provides
a translation of Institutiones nostrae. (2) David Wulstan's
"Heloise at Argenteuil and the Paraclete" analyzes
two liturgical plays and some hymns used at the Paraclete, showing
musical notation as well as text. (3) Juanita Feros Ruys' "Hearing
Mediaeval Voices: Heloise and Carmina Burana" discusses
Heloise's authorship of a 39-line secular love poem. In all of
the essays, translations of quoted verse are given in the text
or at the end of the book. All of the essay writers appear to
accept Mews' attribution of Epistolae duorum amantium to
Heloise and Abelard (see below). (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
The poetic and musical legacy of Heloise and Abelard: an anthology
of essays by various authors / edited by Marc Stewart and David
Wulstan (Musicological studies; v. 78). Ottawa, Canada: Institute
of Mediaeval Music; Westhumble, Surrey: Plainsong and Mediaeval
Music Society, c2003. (xv, 164 p.: geneal. table, map, music;
29 cm)
LC#: BV468 .P64 2003; ISBN: 1896926517
Includes bibliographical references
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[Neville Chiavaroli and Mews have translated Epistolae
duorum amantium, over 100 excerpts of letters from the 1100s
between a young woman and her teacher/lover. In a lengthy commentary,
Mews argues that the writers were Heloise and Abelard. Whether
or not you find the argument convincing, you will find useful
background on Heloise and Abelard and on the period. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
The lost love letters of Heloise and Abelard: perceptions
of dialogue in twelfth-century France / Constant J. Mews; with
a translation by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews (The
new Middle Ages). New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. (xvii,
378 p.)
LC#: PA8201.A9 M49 1999; ISBN: 0312216041
Includes bibliographical references (p. [363]-368) and index.
English commentaries and Latin texts with English translations
----------------------
[For a recent report on the question of The Lost Love
Letters, see two essays in this collection. In "Epistolae
duorum amantium and the Ascription to Heloise and Abelard,"
C. Stephen Jaeger analyzes the letters and finds "a strong
argument in favor of the ascription" (p.149). Jaeger's essay
is followed by Giles Constable's "The Authorship of the
Epistolae duorum amantium: A Reconsideration," which
questions some of Jaeger's conclusions but finds the letters
valuable whether or not written by Heloise and Abelard. This
essay is followed in turn by a brief "Reply" from Jaeger.
(See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Voices in dialogue: reading women in the Middle Ages / Linda
Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, editors. Notre Dame, Ind.: University
of Notre Dame Press, c2005. (xvii, 508 p.: ill.)
LC#: HQ1143 .V67 2005; ISBN: 0268037175
Includes bibliographical references and indexes
----------------------
[This collection contains several valuable essays, two
of which are perhaps most useful for the general reader: (1)"Textual
Strategies in the Abelard/Heloise Correspondence," by Katherine
Wilson and Glenda McLeod, analyzes the rhetoric of Heloise's
first two letters. (2)"'In Any Corner of Heaven': Heloise's
Critique of Monastic Life," by Linda Georgianna, discusses
Heloise's third letter in its historical context. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Listening to Heloise: the voice of a twelfth-century woman/
edited by Bonnie Wheeler (The new Middle Ages). New York: St.
Martin's Press, 2000. (xxii, 394 p.)
LC#: BX4705.H463 L57 2000; ISBN: 0312213549
Includes bibliographical references (365-390) and index
-----------------------
[One chapter of Marilynn Desmond's study of the influence
of Ovid's Ars amatoria is "Dominus/Ancilla: Epistolary
Rhetoric and Erotic Violence in the Letters of Abelard and Heloise,"
which sees Heloise's letters from the Paraclete not only clearly
stating her erotic desires but also continuing the "master/servant"
relationship of her earlier involvement with Abelard (although
now her master has a debt that is owed to her). (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Desmond, Marilynn. Ovid's art and the Wife of Bath: the ethics
of erotic violence. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006.
(xiii, 206 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN681.5 .D47 2006; ISBN: 0801443792, 0801473179
Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-199) and index.
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["Heloise and the Abbey of the Paraclete," Chrysogonus
Waddell's essay in this collection, focuses on Heloise's influence
on the liturgy used at the Paraclete and on the Rule, Institutiones
nostrae, which Waddell believes was written by her. (See
the work's table of contents online.):]
The making of Christian communities in late antiquity and the
Middle ages / [edited by] Mark Williams. London: Anthem Press,
2005. (xi, 193 p.)
LC#: BR163 .M35 2005; ISBN: 1898855773
Includes bibliographical references (p. [153]-193)
----------------------
[Elizabeth Freeman's article discusses the way in which
Heloise uses the quasi-public forum of her letters to present
her philosophic views and to create her autobiography. (See
the issue's table of contents online.):]
Freeman, Elizabeth. The public and private functions of Heloise's
letters. Journal of Medieval History, 23:1 (1997), 15-28.
LC#: D111 .J67; ISSN: 0304-4181
---------------------
[In her chapter "Authority, Authenticity, and the
Repression of Heloise," Barbara Newman defends Heloise's
authorship and discusses the first two letters. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Newman, Barbara. From virile woman to womanChrist: studies
in medieval religion and literature (Middle Ages series). Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, c1995. (355 p. : ill.)
LC#: BV639.W7 N48 1995; ISBN: 0812232739, 0812215451
Includes bibliographical references (p.[321]-343) and index.
[Newman's chapter on Heloise was originally published, with the
same title, in Journal of Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, 22:2 (Spring 1992), 121-157.]
---------------------
[This collection contains Glenda McLeod's essay, "Wholly
guilty, Wholly Innocent: Self-definition in Heloise's Letters
to Abelard," which discusses the first three letters. (See the
book's table of contents online.):]
Dear Sister: medieval women and the epistolary genre / edited
by Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus (Middle Ages series).
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, c1993. (viii,
215 p.)
LC#: PN6131 .D4 1993; ISBN: 0812231708, 0812214374
Includes bibliographical references (p. [193]-206) and index.
---------------------
[In his chapter on Heloise, Peter Dronke thoroughly discusses
all of the letters and, to a lesser extent, the Problemata.
He also has an "Excursus" defending Heloise's authorship
of her third letter. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Dronke, Peter. Women writers of the Middle Ages: a critical
study of texts from Perpetua (d. 203) to Marguerite Porete (d.
1310). Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1984. (xi, 338 p.)
LC#: PN671 .D7 1984; ISBN: 0521255805, 0521275733
Includes indexes. Bibliography: p. 320-332
---------------------
[Fiona Griffiths' article discusses the views of Abelard
and Heloise on the obligation of clerics to meet the spiritual
needs of nuns. Although the focus of the article is on Abelard,
Griffiths does treat Heloise's "negotiations": both
her demand for the "rule" that Abelard wrote for the
Paraclete and her later decision to use some but not all of it.
(See
the issue's table of contents online.):]
Griffiths, Fiona J. "Men's duty to provide for women's
needs": Abelard, Heloise, and their negotiation of the cura
monialium. Fifteenth Century Studies, 30 (2004), 1-24. LC#:
CB367 .F53; ISSN: 0164-0933
---------------------
[Like Griffiths' article above, Mews' 2005 study deals
mostly with Abelard's writing, but one chapter describes Epistolae
duorum amantium, and another briefly discusses works that
Heloise may have written both at Argenteuil and at the Paraclete.
(See
the book's table of contents online, with links to chapter abstracts.):]
Mews, C. J. Abelard and Heloise (Great medieval thinkers).
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. (xviii, 308 p.)
LC#: B765.A24 M49 2005 ; ISBN: 0195156889, 0195156897
Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-298) and index
----------------------
[Cecelia Feilla's article deals not with the letters themselves
but with the changing view of the correspondents over the centuries,
from monastic leaders to unhappy lovers, in what Feilla calls
a "novelization" of their story. (See
the issue's table of contents online.):]
Feilla, Cecilia. Translating Communities: The institutional
epilogue to the letters of Abelard and Heloise. The Yale Journal
of Criticism, 16:2 (2003), 363-79.
LC#: PN2 .Y34; ISSN: 0893-5378
---------------------
[James Burge's book "is not a scholarly work of academic
history, but neither is it fiction" (p.7); it is, however,
a useful introduction to Abelard and Heloise's story for the
general reader (although it focuses more on Abelard than Heloise).
Burge accepts the letters found by Constant J. Mews (see above)
and tells the story incorporating those letters:]
Burge, James. Heloise & Abelard: a twelfth-century love
story. London: Profile, 2003. (301 p., [8] leaves of plates:
ill., maps)
LC#: BX4705.H463 B87 2003; ISBN:1861974175
Includes bibliographical references and index
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