Heloise’s Silence

Abstract

This article is a review of some of the circumstances of the emergence, circula- tion, and reception of the letters of Peter Abelard and his (former) beloved Heloise. Although these circumstances have long been studied and the correspondence itself is among the most famous monuments of the Latin literature of the 12th century, its contradictory readings show the ambivalence of the texts and the relationship of the famous thinkers behind them. The first Russian translation of the Letter 5, in which Abelard reminds Heloise of the sins of her youth, for which, the author assures her, he is justly punished, is appended to this article. This exhortation becomes an occa- sion for him to describe to Heloise the image of a “sister in Christ” instead of a lover, a wife, the mother of his son, an image that seemed to him himself the only true one by that time, between 1130 and 1140. Many historians of the 20th and 21st centuries see in this correspondence a literary game, a kind of “sincere hypocrisy” (Peter Godman), that is, a pretense. If Abelard has taken on the image of Hieronymus, a persecuted and misunderstood intellectual and mentor of pious women of the 4th and 5th centuries, Eloise in her letters appears as a new “heroine” abandoned by her lover, or as a repentant sinner, a new Magda- lene seeking her Christ. All this literary “self-modeling” is certainly present in the correspondence. But does it explain everything in their relationship and in the poet- ics of the texts that interest us? Eloise is known to have written little, but all of Abe- lard’s work in the last years of his life, according to his personal testimony, is related to the spiritual needs of the Paraclete. Abelard responded to his wife’s requests. The phenomenon of the monastic friendship that bound the monasteries of the time explains much of this, as it also explains their relationship. History of My Calami- ties is important to consider simultaneously within the framework of the collection of letters created at Paraclete and ending with the monastic charter, as well as in the context of those writings that Abelard wrote at Eloise’s request.