To her lord, nay rather her father; to her husband, nay rather her brother; his handmaid, nay rather his daughter; his wife, nay rather his sister; to Abelard, Heloise. The letter sent to a friend for his consolation, dearest, your own, someone lately brought to me by chance. Recognizing at once from the very front of its title that it was yours, I began to read it the more ardently the more dearly I embrace its very writer, that I might at least be refreshed by the words of him whose substance I have lost, as by a certain image of him. There were, I remember, in this letter nearly all things full of gall and wormwood, namely those things which recounted the pitiable history of our conversion and your incessant crosses, O my only one.
You have indeed fulfilled in that letter what at its beginning you promised your friend, namely that in comparison with your own he might reckon his troubles as nothing or small; where, having first set forth the persecutions of your masters against you, then the injury of the most utter betrayal upon your body, you turned your pen also to the execrable envy and excessive harassment of your fellow-students, namely of Alberic of Rheims and Lotulf the Lombard. By whose suggestions, indeed, you did not omit to relate what was done concerning that glorious work of your theology, and what concerning yourself, as if condemned in a prison.
Thence you proceeded to the machination of your abbot and of false brethren, and those most grievous detractions of those two pseudo-apostles stirred up against you by the aforesaid rivals, and to the scandal raised among many because of the name of the Paraclete imposed upon the oratory contrary to custom. Finally, having reached those intolerable and still continual persecutions against you—namely of that most cruel tormentor and of the worst monks, whom you call sons, who made advance against you—you brought the pitiable history to its end. Which, since I think no one can read or hear with dry eyes, renewed my griefs the more the more diligently it expressed each particular, and increased them the more in that you related that perils still grow against you;
so that we are all alike compelled to despair of your life, and daily our trembling hearts and palpitating breasts await those final tidings of your death. By Him therefore who still in whatever way protects you for Himself, by Christ we beseech you, that you would deign by frequent letters to inform His little handmaids—and yours—concerning these shipwrecks in which you still are tossed, that you may have us at least, who alone remain to you, as partakers of your grief or joy. For those who share in grief are wont to bring some consolation to the grieving, and any burden laid upon many is the more lightly borne or carried. But if this tempest should subside a little, then your letters ought to be the more hastened the more joyful they are to be in the future.
But of whatever things you write to us, you will confer upon us no small remedy, by this one thing at least, that you will show yourself mindful of us. For how pleasant the letters of absent friends are, Seneca himself teaches us by his own example, writing thus in a certain place to his friend Lucilius: 'That you write to me frequently, I give you thanks; for in the one way you can, you show yourself to me. Never do I receive your letter, but that at once we are together.
If the images of absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew memory and lighten the longing of absence with a false and empty solace, how much more pleasant are letters, which bring the true marks of an absent friend?' But thanks be to God, that in this manner at least you are forbidden by no envy from restoring your presence to us, hindered by no difficulty; nor, I beseech you, may you be delayed by any negligence. You have written at length a letter of consolation to a friend, and for his adversities indeed, but about your own; which adversities of yours, diligently recalling, while you aimed at his consolation, you added greatly to our desolation, and while you desired to heal his wounds, you inflicted certain new wounds of grief upon us and increased the former ones.
Heal, I beseech you, the very wounds you have made, you who are so busy to cure those which others have made. You have indeed performed the office of a friend and a companion, and have discharged the debt both of friendship and of fellowship, but you have bound yourself to us by a greater debt—us who ought to be named not so much friends as the dearest of friends, not so much companions as daughters, or if any sweeter and holier name can be devised. How great a debt you have laid yourself under toward them needs no arguments, no testimonies, that it may be proved as though doubtful: and if all should be silent, the thing itself cries out. For of this place you alone, after God, are the founder, alone the builder of this oratory, alone the constructor of this congregation. You have built here nothing upon another's foundation.
All that is here is your creation. This solitude, empty save for wild beasts and robbers, had known no human habitation, had possessed no dwelling. In the very lairs of beasts, in the very dens of robbers, where God is not wont even to be named, you raised a divine tabernacle and dedicated a temple proper to the Holy Spirit. You brought in nothing of the wealth of kings or princes for the building of this, though you could have brought in very much and very great, so that whatever was done might be ascribed to you alone. The clerics or scholars flocking hither in rivalry to your teaching ministered all things necessary;
and those who lived by ecclesiastical benefices and knew not how to make offerings but to receive them, and who had had hands for receiving, not for giving, here became prodigal and importunate in making offerings. Thus yours, truly yours, is properly this new plantation in a holy purpose, whose plants, still most tender, need frequent irrigation that they may thrive. This plantation is weak and infirm enough by the very nature of the female sex, even were it not new. Whence it demands a more diligent and frequent cultivation, according to that saying of the Apostle:
'I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.' The Apostle had planted and founded in the faith, through the teaching of his preaching, the Corinthians to whom he wrote. Afterward Apollos, the disciple of that very apostle, watered them with holy exhortations, and so the divine grace bestowed upon them the increase of virtues. The vineyard of an alien vine, which you did not plant, turned to bitterness for you, you cultivate with admonitions often empty and with holy discourses in vain. Consider what you owe to your own, you who thus expend care upon another's. You teach and admonish the rebellious, and profit nothing; in vain you scatter the pearls of divine eloquence before swine. You who expend so much upon the obstinate, consider what you owe to the obedient;
you who lavish so much upon enemies, meditate what you owe to daughters; and, to omit the rest, weigh by how great a debt you have bound yourself toward me, that what you owe in common to devout women you may more devoutly pay to your one and only. But how many and how great treatises the holy fathers have completed in the teaching, or exhortation, or even consolation of holy women, and with how great diligence they composed them, your excellence knows better than our littleness.
Whence it is with no slight wonder that your long-since forgetfulness has moved the tender beginnings of our religious life: that, admonished neither by reverence for God, nor by love of us, nor by the examples of the holy fathers, you have not attempted to console me—wavering and now worn out by long-continued sorrow—either present by speech or absent by letter; to whom indeed you should know yourself bound by so much the greater debt as it is established that you are more strictly tied by the covenant of the nuptial sacrament, and the more beholden to me in that I have always, as is manifest to all, embraced you with an immoderate love.
You know, dearest, all know, how much I have lost in you, and by what a pitiable chance that supreme and everywhere-notorious betrayal robbed me of my very self together with you, so that the grief is incomparably greater from the manner of the loss than from the loss itself. And the greater the cause of grieving, the greater the remedies of consolation to be applied; not, surely, by another, but by you yourself, that you who alone are the cause of my grieving may alone be the grace of my consoling. For you alone are he who can sadden me, who can gladden or console me, and you alone are he who owes this most to me—and now most of all, when I have so fulfilled all that you commanded that, when I could not offend you in anything, I endured to lose my very self for your command.
And what is greater and marvelous to tell, my love was turned into such madness that what alone it sought, this it took away from itself without hope of recovery, when at your bidding I straightway changed both my habit and my soul, to show that you were the one and only possessor both of my body and of my soul. Nothing ever (God knows) did I require in you but you yourself: desiring you purely, not your possessions. I looked not for the covenants of matrimony, nor for any dowry, nor finally did I study to fulfill my own pleasures or wishes, but yours, as you yourself know. And if the name of wife seemed holier and more valid, sweeter to me was always the word 'mistress,' or—if you be not indignant—'concubine' or 'harlot';
so that, by humbling myself the more for you, I might obtain the greater grace with you, and thus also might less injure the glory of your excellence. Which thing you yourself, for your own sake, did not entirely forget in that letter directed to a friend for consolation which I mentioned above, where you did not even disdain to set forth several reasons by which I tried to call you back from our marriage and ill-omened nuptials, but were silent about very many by which I preferred love to wedlock, freedom to a bond. I call God to witness, that if Augustus, presiding over the whole world, deigned to honor me with marriage, and confirmed the whole earth to me to be possessed forever, dearer and worthier would it seem to me to be called your harlot than his empress.
For it is not that whoever is richer or more powerful is therefore also better: that belongs to fortune, this to virtue. Nor let her esteem herself in the least not for sale, who more willingly marries a richer man than a poorer, and covets in her husband his possessions more than himself. Surely whomever this covetousness leads to marriage, wages rather than grace are owed to her. For it is certain that she follows the goods themselves and not the man, and would be willing, if she could, to prostitute herself to a richer man, as that argument of the philosopher Aspasia—held in the presence of Aeschines the Socratic with Xenophon and his wife—plainly proves; which argument indeed, when the aforesaid woman-philosopher had set it forth to reconcile them to one another, she concluded with such an ending:
'Wherefore, unless you bring it about that there be no better man, nor any more excellent woman on earth, assuredly you will always most exceedingly seek that which you shall deem to be best, namely that you, the husband, may be married to the best of women, and that she may be wedded to the best of men.' Holy indeed and more than philosophical is this sentence, to be called rather wisdom than philosophy. Holy is this error, and blessed the fallacy in the married, that perfect love may keep inviolate the covenants of matrimony not so much by the continence of bodies as by the chastity of souls.
But what error had conferred upon others, manifest truth had conferred upon me; since what those women indeed esteemed about their husbands, this I about you—this the whole world—not so much believed as knew, so that my love for you was the truer the further it stood from error. For what king or philosopher could equal your fame? What region, or city, or village did not burn to see you? Who, I ask, did not hasten to behold you when you came forth in public, and, as you departed, with neck stretched and eyes fixed, did not follow you? What wife, what maiden did not long for you when absent, and did not burn for you when present? What queen or powerful woman did not envy my joys or my marriage-bed?
Two things, moreover, I confess, were specially in you, by which you could at once allure the hearts of any women whatever: namely the grace of composing and of singing, which we know that other philosophers have least of all attained. By which, refreshing as it were by a kind of play the labor of philosophical exercise, you left behind many songs composed in amatory meter or rhythm, which, by reason of their exceeding sweetness both of words and of melody, being very often repeated, kept your name unceasingly in the mouth of all, so that the sweetness of the melody did not suffer even the unlettered to be unmindful of you; and from this chiefly women sighed in love of you.
And since the greatest part of these songs sang of our loves, it made me known in a short time through many regions, and kindled the envy of many women against me. For what good of soul or body did not adorn your youth? Whom, then envying me, does not my calamity now compel to pity me, deprived of such great delights? Whom—man or woman—though formerly an enemy, does not due compassion now soften toward me? Who, though most guilty, am yet, as you know, most innocent: for it is not the effect of the deed, but the disposition of the doer, that is in the crime; nor does equity weigh the things that are done, but with what intention they are done. What disposition I have always had toward you, you alone who have proved it can judge:
to your examination I commit all things, to your testimony in all things I yield. Say one thing, if you are able: why, after our conversion, which you alone decreed to bring about, I have come into such neglect and forgetfulness with you that I am refreshed neither by converse with you present nor consoled by a letter when you are absent; say, I beg, if you are able—or I shall say what I feel, nay, what all suspect. It was concupiscence rather than friendship that joined you to me, the ardor of lust rather than love. Where, therefore, what you desired ceased, whatever you displayed for the sake of this likewise vanished away. This, most beloved, is not so much my conjecture as that of all, not so much particular as common, not so much private as public.
Would that it might so seem to me alone, and that your love might find some who would excuse it, through whom my grief might a little subside; would that I could feign occasions by which, excusing you, I might in some way cover my own worthlessness. Attend, I beseech you, to what I ask, and these things will seem small to you and most easy for you. While I am defrauded of your presence, by the offerings of words at least—of which you have abundance—present to me the sweetness of your image. In vain do I expect you to be bountiful in deeds, if I endure you to be miserly in words. Now indeed I had believed that I deserved very much from you, since I have accomplished all things for your sake, now most of all persevering in your service;
I, a young girl indeed, whom not the devotion of religion but only your command drew to the harshness of monastic life; where, if I deserve nothing from you, judge how vainly I labor. No reward over this is to be expected by me from God, by love of whom it is established that I have done nothing as yet. Hastening to God, I followed you in habit—nay, I went before you; for, as though mindful of Lot's wife turned back, you delivered me first to God in sacred garments and monastic profession before yourself. In which, I confess, that in this one thing you trusted me less concerning myself, I grieved and blushed vehemently. And yet (God knows) I would in no way hesitate, at your command, to go before or follow you even to the regions of Vulcan. For my soul was not with me, but with you;
but even now most of all, if it is not with you, it is nowhere: for without you it can in no wise exist. But that it may be well with you, act, I beseech you. And it will be well with you, if it find you favorable, if you render grace for grace, small things for great, words for deeds. Would that, beloved, your love for me trusted less, that it might be the more solicitous! But the more secure I have now rendered you, the more negligent I endure you to be. Remember, I beseech you, what I have done, and attend how much you owe. While I enjoyed carnal pleasure with you, whether I did it from love or from lust was held doubtful by many; but now the end shows with what beginning I began it. I have finally forbidden myself all pleasures that I might obey your will;
I have reserved nothing for myself, except that you should now become wholly mine in this very way. Consider, then, how great your injustice would be, if to one who deserves more you should pay less—nay, nothing at all—especially since what is asked of you is small and most easy for you. Therefore, by that very God to whom you have offered yourself, I beseech you to restore your presence to me in whatever way you can, namely by writing back to me some word of consolation, on this condition at least: that, thus refreshed, I may give myself with greater eagerness to the divine service. When once you sought me out for shameful pleasures, you used to visit me with frequent letters; in many a song you set your Heloise on the lips of all; every street, every house resounded with my name. How much more rightly might you now rouse me toward God than you then roused me toward lust?