{"id":2076,"date":"2019-05-13T20:16:04","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T01:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/?p=2076"},"modified":"2019-11-29T09:27:16","modified_gmt":"2019-11-29T15:27:16","slug":"the-affection-of-heloise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/2019\/05\/13\/the-affection-of-heloise\/","title":{"rendered":"The Affection of Heloise"},"content":{"rendered":"

“In my case, the pleasures of lovers which we shared have been too sweet–they cannot displease me, and can scarcely shift from my memory<\/strong>.\u00a0 Wherever I turn they are always there before my eyes, bringing with them awakened longings and fantasies which will not even sleep.\u00a0 Even during the celebration of the Mass, when our prayers should be purer, lewd visions of those pleasures take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on prayers.\u00a0 I should be groaning over the sins I have committed, but I can only sigh for what I have lost.\u00a0 Everything we did and also the times and places where we did it are stamped on my heart along with your image<\/strong>, so that I live through them all again with you.” Heloise to Abelard, Letter 4 in The Letters of Abelard and Heloise<\/em>. Trans. Betty Radice, Revised edition by M.T. Clanchy (Penguin: London, 2003), p. 68 [Emphasis Added]<\/p>\n

Can you believe the abbess of a convent wrote this? Wow.\u00a0 Memory and Love leave a lasting impression. Emotions often shape who we are and what we believe.\u00a0 While twelfth-century monks and nuns did write in very emotion-laded ways, these words had more specific meanings.\u00a0 Affectus<\/em> can be translated as emotion<\/em>, but it meant something else to a medieval nun or monk.\u00a0 In this case the affectus<\/em> of love is powerful.\u00a0 It is a disposition or pull of the will toward someone or something.*<\/p>\n

Notice that she knows the truth: “I should be groaning over the sins I have committed…” but she can only lament the loss of the love of her life.<\/p>\n

In this quote we read Heloise, the abbess of a convent, describe the memory of her love for her husband\u00a0 and its effects on her in sexual terms.\u00a0 He was a famous theologian and philosopher: Peter Abelard.\u00a0 They had a torrid love affair when he was her teacher.\u00a0 She eventually became pregnant.\u00a0To please her family, they were secretly married.\u00a0 Peter taught at the early twelfth-century cathedral school in Paris and this was a problem for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As master at a cathedral school, Peter held status as a cleric and celibacy was becoming quite important at that time.\u00a0 Heloise’s family decided that a secret marriage was not good enough, so a few of the family members castrated Peter Abelard.\u00a0 She became a nun at his insistence and he became a monk, but remained a significant (and controversial) theologian.\u00a0 Later she became an abbess of a monastery, the Paraclete, which Peter helped establish and supported.<\/p>\n

In the same letter she acknowledges her hypocrisy and lack of virtue in her soul.\u00a0 While her outward behavior comported to the monastic ideal, she confesses the memory of sensual affections with her husband.\u00a0 Without the intention of loving God, Heloise, explains that her religious behavior is vanity.\u00a0 In fact, she explained that Peter, her husband and former teacher, was her real love and inspiration:<\/p>\n

“At every stage of my life up to now, as God knows, I have feared to offend you rather than God, and tried to please you more than him.\u00a0 It was your command, not love of God, which made me take the veil.\u00a0 Look at the unhappy life I lead, pitiable beyond any other, if in this world I must endure so much in vain, with no hope of future reward.” Ibid., 69.<\/p>\n

*William of St Thierry, The Nature and Dignity of Love,<\/em> trans. Thomas X. Davis (Cistercian: Kalamazoo, 1981), 47.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In my case, the pleasures of lovers which we shared have been too sweet–they cannot displease me, and can scarcely shift from my memory.\u00a0 Wherever I turn they are always there before my eyes, bringing with them awakened longings and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140,134,141,109,66],"tags":[142,143,125],"class_list":["post-2076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-heloise","category-love","category-peter-abelard","category-vice","category-virtue","tag-abelard","tag-heloise","tag-love","post_format-post-format-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2239,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions\/2239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}