Letters of Abelard and Heloise
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- The letters are partly available at Wikisource in an edition by Octave Gréard [1]
The Letters of Heloise and Abelard is a series of letters between French priest Peter Abelard and his female student Héloïse after their separation and his castration. These letters were also the inspiration for Alexander Pope's poem "Eloisa to Abelard".
These letters are only known by posthumous copies which makes it impossible to ascertain their authenticity, no original copies of these letters exist. Yet even if other authors have been attributed to the letters, the name of Jean de Meung has cropped up, the letters' authenticity remain the most probable thesis.
Eloisa to Abelard is a poem by Alexander Pope (1688–1744) inspired by the 12th-century story of Héloïse's illicit love for, and secret marriage to, her teacher Pierre Abélard, perhaps the most popular teacher and philosopher in Paris, and the brutal vengeance her family exacts when they castrate him, not realizing that the lovers had married.
Castration episode
- "[Philintus] 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."[2]
