CHAPTER VII
OF THE ARGUMENTS OF HELOISE AGAINST WEDLOCK
OF HOW NONE THE LESS HE MADE HER HIS WIFE
FORTHWITH I repaired to my own country, and brought back thence my mistress, that I
might make her my wife. She, however, most violently disapproved of this, and for two
chief reasons: the danger thereof, and the disgrace which it would bring upon me. She
swore that her uncle would never be appeased by such satisfaction as this, as, indeed,
afterwards proved only too true. She asked how she could ever glory in me if she should
make me thus inglorious, and should shame herself along with me. What penalties, she said,
would the world rightly demand of her if she should rob it of so shining a light! What
curses would follow such a loss to the Church, what tears among the philosophers would
result from such a marriage! How unfitting, how lamentable it would be for me, whom nature
had made for the whole world, to devote myself to one woman solely, and to subject myself
to such humiliation! She vehemently rejected this marriage, which she felt would be in
every way ignominious and burdensome to me.
Besides dwelling thus on the disgrace to me, she reminded me of the hardships of
married life, to the avoidance of which the Apostle exhorts us, saying: "Art thou
loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. But and marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin
marry she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh: but I spare
you" (I Cor. vii. 27). And again: "But I would have you to be free from
cares" (I Cor. vii. 32). But if I would heed neither the counsel of the Apostle nor
the exhortations of the saints regarding this heavy yoke of matrimony, she bade me at
least consider the advice of the philosophers, and weigh carefully what had been written
on this subject either by them or concerning their lives. Even the saints themselves have
often and earnestly spoken on this subject for the purpose of warning us. Thus St. Jerome,
in his first book against Jovinianus, makes Theophrastus set forth in great detail the
intolerable annoyances and the endless disturbances of married life, demonstrating with
the most convincing arguments that no wise man should ever have a wife, and concluding his
reasons for this philosophic exhortation with these words: "Who among Christians
would not be overwhelmed by such arguments as these advanced by Theophrastus?"
Again, in the same work, St. Jerome tells how Cicero, asked by Hircius after his
divorce of Terentia whether he would marry the sister of Hircius, replied that he would do
no such thing, saying that he could not devote himself to a wife and to philosophy at the
same time. Cicero does not, indeed, precisely speak of "devoting himself," but
he does add that he did not wish to undertake anything which might rival his study of
philosophy in its demands upon him.
Then, turning from the consideration of such hindrances to the study of philosophy,
Heloise bade me observe what were the conditions of honourable wedlock. What possible
concord could there be between scholars and domestics, between authors and cradles,
between books or tablets and distaffs, between the stylus or the pen and the spindle? What
man, intent on his religious or philosophical meditations, can possibly endure the whining
of children, the lullabies of the nurse seeking to quiet them, or the noisy confusion of
family life? Who can endure the continual untidiness of children? The rich, you may reply,
can do this, because they have palaces or houses containing many rooms, and because their
wealth takes no thought of expense and protects them from daily worries. But to this the
answer is that the condition of philosophers is by no means that of the wealthy, nor can
those whose minds are occupied with riches and worldly cares find time for religious or
philosophical study. For this reason the renowned philosophers of old utterly despised the
world, fleeing from its perils rather than reluctantly giving them up, and denied
themselves all its delights in order that they might repose in the embraces of philosophy
alone. One of them, and the greatest of all, Seneca, in his advice to Lucilius, says
philosophy is not a thing to be studied only in hours of leisure; we must give up
everything else to devote ourselves to it, for no amount of time is really sufficient
hereto" (Epist. 73)
It matters little, she pointed out, whether one abandons the study of philosophy
completely or merely interrupts it, for it can never remain at the point where it was thus
interrupted. All other occupations must be resisted; it is vain to seek to adjust life to
include them, and they must simply be eliminated. This view is maintained, for example, in
the love of God by those among us who are truly called monastics, and in the love of
wisdom by all those who have stood out among men as sincere philosophers. For in every
race, gentiles or Jews or Christians, there have always been a few who excelled their
fellows in faith or in the purity of their lives, and who were set apart from the
multitude by their continence or by their abstinence from worldly pleasures.
Among the Jews of old there were the Nazarites, who consecrated themselves to the Lord,
some of them the sons of the prophet Elias and others the followers of Eliseus, the monks
of whom, on the authority of St. Jerome (Epist. 4 and 13), we read in the Old Testament.
More recently there were the three philosophical sects which Josephus defines in his Book
of Antiquities (xviii. 2), calling them the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. In
our times, furthermore, there are the monks who imitate either the communal life of the
Apostles or the earlier and solitary life of John. Among the gentiles there are, as has
been said, the philosophers. Did they not apply the name of wisdom or philosophy as much
to the religion of life as to the pursuit of learning, as we find from the origin of the
word itself, and likewise from the testimony of the saints?
There is a passage on this subject in the eighth book of St. Augustine's "City of
God," wherein he distinguishes between the various schools of philosophy. "The
Italian school," he says, "had as its founder Pythagoras of Samos, who, it is
said, originated the very word 'philosophy'. Before his time those who were regarded as
conspicuous for the praiseworthiness of their lives were called wise men, but he, on being
asked of his profession, replied that he was a philosopher, that is to say a student or a
lover of wisdom because it seemed to him unduly boastful to call himself a wise man."
In this passage, therefore, when the phrase "conspicuous for the praiseworthiness of
their lives" is used, it is evident that the wise, in other words the philosophers,
were so called less because of their erudition than by reason of their virtuous lives. In
what sobriety and continence these men lived it is not for me to prove by illustration,
lest I should seem to instruct Minerva herself.
Now, she added, if laymen and gentiles, bound by no profession of religion, lived after
this fashion, what ought you, a cleric and a canon, to do in order not to prefer base
voluptuousness to your sacred duties, to prevent this Charybdis from sucking you down
headlong, and to save yourself from being plunged shamelessly and irrevocably into such
filth as this? If you care nothing for your privileges as a cleric, at least uphold your
dignity as a philosopher. If you scorn the reverence due to God, let regard for your
reputation temper your shamelessness. Remember that Socrates was chained to a wife, and by
what a filthy accident he himself paid for this blot on philosophy, in order that others
thereafter might be made more cautious by his example. Jerome thus mentions this affair,
writing about Socrates in his first book against Jovinianus: "Once when he was
withstanding a storm of reproaches which Xantippe was hurling at him from an upper story,
he was suddenly drenched with foul slops; wiping his head, he said only, 'I knew there
would be a shower after all that thunder.'"
Her final argument was that it would be dangerous for me to take her back to Paris, and
that it would be far sweeter for her to be called my mistress than to be known as my wife;
nay, too, that this would be more honourable for me as well. In such case, she said, love
alone would hold me to her, and the strength of the marriage chain would not constrain us.
Even if we should by chance be parted from time to time, the joy of our meetings would be
all the sweeter by reason of rarity. But when she found that she could not convince me
or dissuade me from my folly by these and like arguments, and because she could not bear
to offend me, with grievous sighs and tears she made an end of her resistance, saying:
"Then there is no more left but this, that in our doom the sorrow yet to come shall
be no less than the love we two have already known." Nor in this, as now the whole
world knows, did she lack the spirit of prophecy.
So, after our little son was born, we left him in my sister's care, and secretly
returned to Paris. A few days later, in the early morning, having kept our nocturnal vigil
of prayer unknown to all in a certain church, we were united there in the benediction of
wedlock her uncle and a few friends of his and mine being present. We departed forthwith
stealthily and by separate ways, nor thereafter did we see each other save rarely and in
private, thus striving our utmost to conceal what we had done. But her uncle and those of
his household, seeking solace for their disgrace, began to divulge the story of our
marriage, and thereby to violate the pledge they had given me on this point. Heloise, on
the contrary, denounced her own kin and swore that they were speaking the most absolute
lies. Her uncle, aroused to fury thereby, visited her repeatedly with punishments. No
sooner had I learned this than I sent her to a convent of nuns at Argenteuil, not far from
Paris, where she herself had been brought up and educated as a young girl. I had them make
ready for her all the garments of a nun, suitable for the life of a convent, excepting
only the veil, and these I bade her put on.
When her uncle and his kinsmen heard of this, they were convinced that now I had
completely played them false and had rid myself forever of Heloise by forcing her to
become a nun. Violently incensed, they laid a plot against me, and one night while I all
unsuspecting was asleep in a secret room in my lodgings, they broke in with the help of
one of my servants whom they had bribed. There they had vengeance on me with a most cruel
and most shameful punishment, such as astounded the whole world; for they cut off those
parts of my body with which I had done that which was the cause of their sorrow. This
done, straightway they fled, but two of them were captured and suffered the loss of their
eyes and their genital organs. One of these two was the aforesaid servant, who even while
he was still in my service, had been led by his avarice to betray me.
CHAPTER VIII
OF THE SUFFERING OF HIS BODY
OF HOW HE BECAME A MONK IN THE MONASTERY OF ST. DENIS AND HELOISE A NUN AT ARGENTEUIL
WHEN morning came the whole city was assembled before my dwelling. It is difficult,
nay, impossible, for words of mine to describe the amazement which bewildered them, the
lamentations they uttered, the uproar with which they harassed me, or the grief with which
they increased my own suffering. Chiefly the clerics, and above all my scholars, tortured
me with their intolerable lamentations and outcries, so that I suffered more intensely
from their compassion than from the pain of my wound. In truth I felt the disgrace more
than the hurt to my body, and was more afflicted with shame than with pain. My incessant
thought was of the renown in which I had so much delighted, now brought low, nay, utterly
blotted out, so swiftly by an evil chance. I saw, too, how justly God had punished me in
that very part of my body whereby I had sinned. I perceived that there was indeed justice
in my betrayal by him whom I had myself already betrayed; and then I thought how eagerly
my rivals would seize upon this manifestation of justice, how this disgrace would bring
bitter and enduring grief to my kindred and my friends, and how the tale of this amazing
outrage would spread to the very ends of the earth.
What path lay open to me thereafter? How could I ever again hold up my head among men,
when every finger should be pointed at me in scorn, every tongue speak my blistering
shame, and when I should be a monstrous spectacle to all eyes? I was overwhelmed by the
remembrance that, according to the dread letter of the law, God holds eunuchs in such
abomination that men thus maimed are forbidden to enter a church, even as the unclean and
filthy; nay, even beasts in such plight were not acceptable as sacrifices. Thus in
Leviticus (xxii. 24) is it said: "Ye shall not offer unto the Lord that which hath
its stones bruised, or crushed, or broken, or cut." And in Deuteronomy (xxiii. 1),
"He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter
into the congregation of the Lord."
I must confess that in my misery it was the overwhelming sense of my disgrace rather
than any ardour for conversion to the religious life that drove me to seek the seclusion
of the monastic cloister. Heloise had already, at my bidding, taken the veil and entered a
convent. Thus it was that we both put on the sacred garb, I in the abbey of St. Denis, and
she in the convent of Argenteuil, of which I have already spoken. She, I remember well,
when her fond friends sought vainly to deter her from submitting her fresh youth to the
heavy and almost intolerable yoke of monastic life, sobbing and weeping replied in the
words of Cornelia:
"O husband most noble
Who ne'er shouldst have shared my couch! Has fortune such power
To smite so lofty a head? Why then was I wedded
Only to bring thee to woe? Receive now my sorrow,
The price I so gladly pay."
(Lucan, "Pharsalia," viii. 94.)
With these words on her lips did she go forthwith to the altar, and lifted therefrom
the veil, which had been blessed by the bishop, and before them all she took the vows of
the religious life. For my part, scarcely had I recovered from my wound when clerics
sought me in great numbers, endlessly beseeching both my abbot and me myself that now,
since I was done with learning for the sake of pain or renown, I should turn to it for the
sole love of God. They bade me care diligently for the talent which God had committed to
my keeping (Matthew, xxv. 15), since surely He would demand it back from me with interest.
It was their plea that, inasmuch as of old I had laboured chiefly in behalf of the rich, I
should now devote myself to the teaching of the poor. Therein above all should I perceive
how it was the hand of God that had touched me, when I should devote my life to the study
of letters in freedom from the snares of the flesh and withdrawn from the tumultuous life
of this world. Thus, in truth, should I become a philosopher less of this world than of
God.
The abbey, however, to which I had betaken myself was utterly worldly and in its life
quite scandalous. The abbot himself was as far below his fellows in his way of living and
in the foulness of his reputation as he was above them in priestly rank. This intolerable
state of things I often and vehemently denounced, sometimes in private talk and sometimes
publicly, but the only result was that I made myself detested of them all. They gladly
laid hold of the daily eagerness of my students to hear me as an excuse whereby they might
be rid of me; and finally, at the insistent urging of the students themselves, and with
the hearty consent of the abbot and the rest of the brotherhood, I departed thence to a
certain hut, there to teach in my wonted way. To this place such a throng of students
flocked that the neighbourhood could not afford shelter for them, nor the earth sufficient
sustenance.
Here, as befitted my profession, I devoted myself chiefly to lectures on theology, but
I did not wholly abandon the teaching of the secular arts, to which I was more accustomed,
and which was particularly demanded of me. I used the latter, however, as a hook, luring
my students by the bait of learning to the study of the true philosophy, even as the
Ecclesiastical History tells of Origen, the greatest of all Christian philosophers. Since
apparently the Lord had gifted me with no less persuasiveness in expounding the Scriptures
than in lecturing on secular subjects, the number of my students in these two courses
began to increase greatly, and the attendance at all the other schools was correspondingly
diminished. Thus I aroused the envy and hatred of the other teachers. Those way took who
sought to belittle me in every possible advantage of my absence to bring two principal
charges against me: first, that it was contrary to the monastic profession to be concerned
with the study of secular books; and, second, that I had presumed to teach theology
without ever having been taught therein myself. This they did in order that my teaching of
every kind might be prohibited, and to this end they continually stirred up bishops,
archbishops, abbots and whatever other dignitaries of the Church they could reach.
Pergite Legere
Pars Prima