As originally published in the Meliorist.
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Greetings, and welcome to :Historical Relationships That Ended Badly” Month!
The first up on our list is a particularly intelligent teenager and her philosopher teacher (twenty-two years her senior) who loved her. It is a tale part romantic and part squick-inducing.
First, the hero: Peter Abelard, born in 1079, philosopher and Breton. After being educated in the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, he spent much time setting up schools in the area by which he could annoy his philosophical rivals. Things he liked included science and debating.
Next, the heroine: Heloise, born in 1101, skilled with pen and languages – in addition to her native French, she also understood Latin, Hebrew and Greek. Her uncle Fulbert was a canon in, you guessed it, Paris, and she was his ward. Fulbert thought she needed a teacher. He picked Abelard. Trouble ensued: seduction. In case they had any ambitions of hiding that fact, so ensued a pregnancy and a son. It seems that giving your spawn a weird ass name is hardly a modern phenomenon, as evidenced by the name they gave the babe, Astrolabe.
Fulbert, quite naturally, was somewhat less than amused. A marriage was proposed so that the uncle wouldn’t knock Abelard’s block off and while Heloise didn’t think much of the idea, the couple went through with it anyway. The matter and marriage was kept hush hush until Uncle Fulbert started prattling on about it in public. Heloise didn’t hesitate in denying it and to escape her uncle’s wrath, she hurried off to visit a convent at Abelard’s suggestion.
Out of doubtless many decisions of dubious quality, this was probably the worst decision Abelard had made in his lifetime.
One of these two things happened: either Fulbert thought Abelard was being a sneaky bastard on him and that he’d left his niece to be eaten by wolves somewhere (this is the most commonly accepted view), or other members of the Clan Heloise and got royally ragey. Then, well…
Men, cross your legs. Abelard was castrated.
So he became a monk and Heloise was forced to become a nun. (For the love of criminy, doesn’t she get a say in anything that happens to her?) Heloise wasn’t too keen on the career change at all, but again, no one gave her much choice in the matter. On a positive note, the church wasn’t too shabby a place for a woman back in those days, at least compared to the other options. Being married to Jesus (even if you were already bigamously married to Abelard) gave them a chance for authority they’d seldom see in the secular realm. Heloise herself became in turn a prioress and then an abbess.
Abelard continued to have his enemies and his students, although the former were to have their licks in. They managed to get banned and burned his collection of theological lectures on account of heresy – “Yes, we know you’ve been feeling very down about the whole ‘balls chopped off’ incident. However, we’d very much like to destroy your life’s work.” After that, he got forced in a monastery himself.
There, he annoyed and was made annoyed by the monks, shoved off, and became a hermit. Eventually, roaming packs of students found him out and he was obliged to teach again and set up an oratory.
For which he, after taking his leave, successfully angled for Heloise to become a prioress of. Huzzah!
We’re not sure where he himself ended up, but he took up writing again, both for philosophy and for Heloise. This included songs, hymns for her priory and love letters. It’s obvious that they still loved each other dearly, but it wasn’t an easy matter to deal with. Nevertheless, when Abelard died in 1142, while in the midst of still more troubles with the church, his body was taken to Heloise in accordance to his wishes. When she died twenty-two years later, she was buried beside him.
As for Astrolabe, it appears that he entered the church – or at least, Abelard intended for him to enter the church – and he died in 1150. Nothing else is known.
The nice thing about this story is that the tragedy of it was largely contained to the two protagonists. The subjects of the next three weeks were not quite so lucky.
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