Kamuf, Peggy. 1982. Fictions of Feminine Desire: Disclosures of Heloise. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction: Prologue to What Remains XI, 1 Marriage Contracts: The Letters of Heloise and Abelard 1; 2 Writing on the Balcony: The Portuguese Letters 44; 3 A Mother’s Will: The Princess de Cleves 67; 4 Underground Rousseau: Julie, or the New Heloise 97; 5 Detour Signs: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 123; Notes 149; Bibliography 163; Index 167-170.

"My principal focus in each of these chapters is on the particular structure which is working to appropriate and disguise the force of a womans passion. In a first moment—that of The Portuguese Letters—the structure can be located in the subject / object syntax of the remembered discourse of seduction. The course which Mariana follows in the five letters is one which writes this syntax differently—and in a manner which exposes her desire to itself.

With The Princess de Cleves, the sentence that operates to obscure the heroine’s desire is not spoken in the lovers’ exchange but in the exchange between mother and daughter, from where it can continue to echo and drown other voices. For the princess, then, extricating her own desire from this sentence cannot be a matter of reversing its syntax but would require a break in the closed dialogue with the parent. In Julie, or the New Heloise, it is a parent’s name—the father’s—which functions to suppress the woman’s dissident passion and to bury the evidence of a difference within a singular identity. Finally, with Les Liaisons Dangereuses, we return to the syntax of seduction but as already doubled from the outset and therefore already reversed and uncovered. In this narrative of multiple seductions and multiple desires, the only space left for the appropriation of a disruptive difference is at the juncture of the fictional text with the text of the reader's reading. It is here as well that I conclude this book, and it will remain to my reader to assume—or not—the difference which no text can annihilate without leaving traces of such a violence." (Introduction pp. XVI-XVII)

(...)

"Epilogue [to the first chapter]

We have isolated what appear to be the most important terms of the exchange between Heloise and Abelard. These letters stage a confrontation between, on the one hand, a system of mirrored oppositions which cloisters the sexual object and, on the other, a generalized economy of desire in which the suspension of such oppositions is the scene of erotic pleasure. Written from within her cloister, Heloise’s text dissolves the distinction of inside and outside, the law and its transgression, her vows and her desire.

Likewise, the act of negation repeatedly calls up its contrary and maintains Heloise at a constant distance from any effective break with her sexual past. No sign can represent that negation except as a fiction, and in the space of that fiction, the space of one sign and its negated other, the movement of desire is again uncovered, displacing opposition with an unruly difference." (p. 41)
Kong, Katherine. 2010. Lettering the Self in Meideval and Early Modern France. Roodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer.

Chaoter 2: Writing the Subjunctive into the Indicative: Commanding Performances in the Letters of Abelard and Heloise, pp. 55-108.

"These letters attest to the profound possibilities and limits of epistolary discourse through which the terms of Abelard and Heloise’s complicated relationship are contested, established, and performed, but Heloise asks the question best in her gesture of an outside-in willed transformation: letter writing might well function as conduct, offering a kind of action and as such a specifically epistolary way of being, but are there limits to its performative, transformative powers? The multiplicity of positions and gestures performed by Heloise and Abelard reveals that social categories and structures can be inadequate to convey the complicated situations in which people find themselves. However, they are all we have, and in these letters Heloise provides a moving example of how discursive tools can be employed to shape ourselves to the world from the outside in.

Her epistolary performance hangs suspended between the representational and the real, and yet it shows how letters offer ways of articulating an unconventional idea of the self through writing, and it holds out the tantalizing possibility — whether realized or not — of writing ourselves out of the desired possibility of the subjunctive into the actual indicative." (p. 108)
Luscombe, David Edward. 1980. "The Letters of Heloise and Abelard since ‘Cluny 1972’." In Petrus Abaelardus (1079-1142). Person, Werk und Wirkung, edited by Thomas, Rudolf, 19–39. Trier: Paulinus-Verlag.

"It will have become clear by now how far it has been beyond my capability to offer here a precis or a omment on all that has been contributed or refuted on the subject of the Letters since 1972, That the last few years have been fertile in argument needs no further underlining. Three suggestions may, however, be briefly made by way of conclusion. First, the editions we possess of the works of Abelard are far from perfect.

The death of Father Buytaert was a great loss. But I am confident that what one scholar seems to have initiated will be completed soon by several. We need, too, a concordance to the works of Abelard in order to be able to study more closely the language and the vocabulary of this master of the arts of language. This, too, I hope to see done soon.

Secondly, it is up to the historians now to regain some of the ground they have recently lost to the students of literature. The Letters are literature but they are also history. M. Jolivet expressed himself wisely on this point: ‘L’Abélard et l’Heloise de la correspondence, fussent-ils de pures fictions litteraires, auraient le même droit que Julie et Saint-Preux à être appeles de leurs noms; mais ces noms sont aussi ceux de personnages reels..... Les linguistes tentent d’y échapper en s’en tenant, par methode, au texte: mais cela n’abolit pas la dimension historique et le probleme qui s’y pose(102).’

Jürgen Miethke’s study in Francia of Abelard’s contribution to church reform is a good example of how the Historia calamitatum, in spite of its exaggerations, can be treated as a valuable historical source containing much precise information(103). The Historia calamitatum fits together very well with other diplomatic and narrative sources. Much of the most interesting work done by Professor Benton, too, relates to the sources for the early history of the Paraclete, its cartulary, its ‘necrology’ and so on. But, as Monsieur Verdon has recently remarked(104), we know so much less about the history of nuns than of the history of monks. In the last few years the poverty of our knowledge of the institution of the Paraclete has become clearer. If Professor Benton would reedit the cartulary, if someone would analyse the ‘necrology,’ then, along with Father Waddell’s edition of the Ordinal and his study of the liturgy of the Paraclete, great progress would be made towards a clearer appreciation of the life of the nuns with whom both Abelard and Heloise became concerned in their letters. I say ‘became’ concerned because a conversion of some sort did occur." (p. 31)

(102) Abelard entre chien et loup,’ Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, XX (1977), p. 310.

(103) J. Miethke, ‘Abaelards Stellung zur Kirchenreform. Eine biographische Studie,’ Francia, 1 (1972), pp. 158-92.

(104) J. Verdon, ‘Les moniales dans la France de l’Ouest aux XI^e et XII^e siècles,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, XIX (1976), p. 247.
———. 1988. "From Paris to the Paraclete: The Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise." In Proceedings of the British Academy, edited by Luscombe, David, 247–283.

"In another letter to Heloise, Abelard writes that he is sending sermons, written at her request, for her and for her spiritual daughters gathered together, as he writes, in our oratory.(106) They follow the ordering of the feasts from the beginning of man's redemption. He mentions as a related fact that he has recently composed a book of hymns and sequences on her request.(107) The hymns survive as do three accompanying letters to Heloise, addressed again as his sister, and to the other sisters at the Paraclete. In the first of these he cites some lines from an otherwise unknown letter from Heloise giving her view that in the Latin and the Gallican church the use of hymns has become unsatisfactory. Abelard replies by reinforcing her arguments in a manner which reminds us of his prologue to the Sic et non: he insists on the need to stick to authentic and accurate texts, not to use incorrect translations of the Psalms or hymns by uncertain authors or hymns with corrupt versification. So persuaded is he by Heloise that he has written his new hymns to fill the gaps caused by the defective traditions to which she has drawn attention.

His collection contains 133 newly written hymns. They are a striking collection and embrace much of salvation history.(111)" (pp. 268-269, some notes omitted)

(106) PL. 178, 379-80 (...)

(107) Libello quodam hymnorum uel sequentiarum a me nuper precibus tuis consummato ... ' P.L. 178, 379-80.(...)

(111) The best exposition of the plan of the hymn books is that of Szövérffy, Hymnarius.

References

Szövérffy, Joseph (ed.), Peter Abelard's Hymnarius Paraclitensis. Vol. I: Introduction to Peter Abelard's Hymns. Vol. II: The Hymnarius Paraclitensis - Text and Notes, Albany: Classical Folia Editions 1975.
Marenbon, John. 2000. "Authenticity Revisited." In Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, edited by Wheeler, Bonnie, 19–33. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"In 1974, the distinguished literary historian Peter von Moos published a book called Mittelalteiforschung und Ideologie (Medieval Research and Ideology). It might seem, at first, an odd title for a book discussing the authenticity of the love letters of Abelard and Heloise, especially for one taken up entirely by a survey of previous scholarly controversy.

But von Moos's work is no ordinary history of scholarship.

(...)

This chapter continues the task von Moos began, and I, too, hope a general moral emerges from my particular observations, although not the same moral as his. I shall begin chronologically where von Moos stopped. He covered a span of 170 years; I shall have just 25. But they have been crowded years for specialists in this field, and an important new element has entered the discussion that makes my task particularly relevant for a volume that focuses not on Abelard but on Heloise. Much of the most recent writing about the love letters has been by scholars working from a variety of feminist perspectives (as this present volume indeed illustrates). Their contributions have given a new twist to the underlying ideological debate, which I shall look at later. Before that I will very briefly sketch out the main lines of the historical and philological debate, as they were in 1974 when von Moos wrote and as they have developed since then, and examine the ideological conflict before the major impact of feminist scholarship.(3)" (pp. 19-20)

(3) I present a very brief sketch of the controversy. For a fuller account, see John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 82-90.

References

Peter von Moos, Mittelalteiforschung und Ideologiekritik. Der Gelehrtenstreit um Héloise, Munchen: Wilhelm Fink 1974.
———. 2008. "Lost Love Letters? A Controversy in Retrospect." International Journal of the Classical Tradition no. 15:267–280.

Review of Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in twelfth-century France, ser. The New Middle Ages (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), XVII + 378 pp.

"Constant Mews has been one of the leading scholars, on the textual side, in this recent recovery of Abelard as a philosopher. It is due to him that the evolution of the different of versions of his Theologia is now understood, that the Dialectica is seen as a work from early in his career, and that the Sententiae are recognized as an excellent guide to Abelard’s whole theological and ethical system. On first opening the present book and glancing at some of the pages, the reader might well – and, in many ways, with good reason – take it as another contribution to this process of historical elucidation: it is rich with Mews’s knowledge of the details of ecclesiastical politics in the early 1100s and of women’s role in the intellectual life of the times, of the varied sources for Abelard’s biography and the disputes over their interpretation, and it seems to move easily and purposefully into the more technical areas of his thought, such as his treatment of universals. But the title, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard (LLL), gives an immediate warning that Mews’s central purpose is to claim a sensational discovery: a new set of letters between the famous couple, completely distinct from the small collection known for centuries.

Mews’s claim has been strongly contested: the controversy has generated articles from many well-known specialists in Medieval Latin, a lengthy answer by Mews to his critics, and a fresh defence of the attribution by Sylvain Piron in his French translation of the letters.5 This is why, although eight years have passed since LLL was published, it makes sense to review it now: it is time for a retrospect, drawing together the various arguments, criticisms and replies, adding some new considerations, and seeing what conclusions emerge." (pp. 268-269)

(5) ‘Enquête sur un texte’ in Lettres des deux amants, attribuées à Héloïse et Abélard, tr. et pr. S. Piron, Paris: Gallimard, 2005, pp. 175–218 (= ‘Enquête’).
McLaughlin, Mary M. 1975. "Peter Abelard and the dignity of women: Twelfth century "feminism" in theory and practice." In Pierre Abélard - Pierre le Vénérable. Les courants philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en Occident au milieu du XII siècle, edited by Jolivet, Jean and Louis, René, 287–333. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Abstract: An examination of the ideas relating to women and their "dignity," frequently developed by Abelard in his writings concerning the monastery of the Paraclete and also taken up in a very significant manner in his other works, reveals him as the most eloquent spokesperson, in the 12th century, of what one might call "evangelical feminism." Indeed, making the evangelical life and the imitation of Christ the fundamental principle of all his reflections on the religious life of women, he sets out a conception of their dignity and exemplary role that is central to the reforming ideal he would like to see realized at the Paraclete by the nuns of this monastery. In those of his writings that deal with this subject, his personal and spiritual views on the imitatio Christi, considered from the perspective of women, are so revealing of the structure of his thought that his "feminism" becomes not only the touchstone of his teaching moral and religious, but also that of the authenticity of the letters in which this “feminism” is most widely exposed.
McNamer, Elizabeth Mary. 1991. The Education of Heloise: Methods, Content, and Purpose of Learning in the Twelfth Century. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

"Heloise is remembered in literature only because of her association with Abelard. This study seeks to rectify this situation, and to give the real accomplishments of this remarkable woman." (Preface, p. IX)

(...)

"Design of the Study

The case study qualitative research method was chosen as the most appropriate design for this study. This design lends itself to non-experimental studies when there is no manipulation of the data. Qualitative case study is 'particularistic," designed to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the person studied.(20) The education of Heloise is a particular study of a particular person at a particular time in history. This study is inductive, focusing on the process, understanding and interpretation of the data. Since this educational case study is historical, it necessarily borrows from historical methodology. It relies on primary documents and secondary sources as evidence. When dealing with primary documents, the writings of Heloise herself and the official documents of the Paraclete are referred to as ’'internal" evidence; other original documents and writings are called "external" evidence. The study is descriptive and analytical in nature.

The first step in the study was to collect data from both primary and secondary sources which formed the case study data base. One such source was found serendipitously. Baron Charles Walckenaer, the present owner of the Paraclete, pointed out the Rue de Juifs and the twelfth century synagogue at Quincy, less than a mile from the Paraclete. Another source, the Problemata, had not been translated into English. The official documents of the Paraclete had been translated into French [*], but were not available in English.

The data was then organized into categories. The first category included references to cultural and social attitudes that determined the education received by men and women in the twelfth century, and events that were effecting changes in society at this time. This category also included references to medieval education, what was studied, and how.

The second category included references to the education of Heloise and to her scholarship as well as references to other scholars who were her contemporaries. The last category covered references to the work of abbesses in the twelfth century, references to Heloise's achievements as abbess, references to her achievements as scholar-educator, and references to Heloise in literature.

Having collected the data, the second step was to do a critical examination of the sources. The primary sources used were: three personal letters from Heloise to Abelard; her letter to Peter the Venerable written after the death of Abelard; the Problemata, a series of questions on problematic passages in the Scripture, which is a letter she directed to Abelard and to which he replied; the Institutiones Nostrae, a redaction of Heloise's rule for her community; the Historia Calamitatum and the Confession of Faith, both in the form of letters written by Abelard; and four personal letters of Abelard to Heloise.

Internal examination of the primary sources required the creation of historical context. The study called for detailed knowledge of twelfth century culture so that there was an understanding of the milieu in which Heloise lived and wrote. To create this historical context, reliance was heavily placed on secondary sources, "someone else's description and analysis of data."(21)

Material was then selected from the sources that was relevant to education, to scholarship, to Heloise as abbess and educator-scholar, and analyzed in as fair a manner as possible. A modest amount of inference in interpreting the data was used to fill in gaps in the records, founded on the knowledge of the culture and social climate of the first two thirds of the twelfth century, and the concept of an intelligent woman operating in that environment.

Narrative was used to the extent that it was necessary to organize the material, to draw the facts together, and to give unity and coherence to the study." (pp. 7-8)

[*] A. Lalore, Le Chartulaire de L'Abbey de Paraclet. Collection des principaux chartulaires du diocese de Troyes. Troyes: Bibliothèque, 1878.

(20) Merriam, Sharan B., Case Study Research in Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, W). 11.

(21) Ibid., 110.

An appendix contains the translation of the Problemata by Heloise, pp. 111-183.
Mews, Constant J. 1998. "Peter Abelard and the Enigma of Dialogue." In Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment, edited by Laursen, John Christian and Nederman, Gary J., 25–62. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

"Peter Abelard (1079-1142) is often remembered as a victim of persecution.

Punished by castration in 1117 following his affair with Heloise, then accused of heresy at the Council of Soissons in 1121 and again by Bernard of Clairvaux at the Council of Sens in 1140, Abelard has long been considered a forerunner of the cause of toleration in the West. At one stage in his career, he contemplated going to live in Muslim territory, where he thought he would be made more welcome than in Christendom. Abelard lived at a time of unusual interest by some Latin scholars in the non-Latin

world, even though strong forces were afoot to re-assert Latin orthodoxy in Europe and the Middle East.(1) His Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian or Collationes has been seen by some as a plea for intellectual toleration.(2) Is this too idealistic a perspective? Was he rejecting a contemporary trend toward exclusion of the outsider, or did he in fact participate in that movement Anna Sapir Abulafia has identified as the Christianization of reason in the twelfth century, by which Christian thinkers found

reasons for proving that Jews and pagans were blind to the truth?(3) In order to assess Abelard's contribution to the idea and practice of religious toleration, we need to relate his Dialogus both to his other writings and to those of his contemporaries, for whom dialogue was often a technique for asserting the truth rather than for engaging in a listening exercise." (p. 25)
———. 2000. "Abelard and Heloise: Logic, Love, and Desire." Analysis (Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis) no. 9:37–57.

Abstract: "The article explores the notions of love and desire as expressed by the 12th century's most passionate, but tragic, lovers, Peter Abelard and Heloise. The focus is on the lovers' relationship as described in Abelard's 'Historia calamitatum' and in Heloise's love letters. Jacques Lacan's views on love, desire and logic and his comparison of his own situation with Abelard's imagined status as a persecuted logician are also discussed."
———. 2000. "Philosophical Themes in the Epistolae duorum amantium: The First Letters of Heloise and Abelard." In Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, edited by Wheeler, Bonnie, 35–52. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"The contrast in attitudes of the teacher and student toward love is very similar to that which divides Abelard from Heloise. Coupled with other parallels between the vocabulary of the love letters and that of early logical writings of Abelard, this similarity must constitute strong circumstantial evidence in favor of identifYing the Epistolae duorum amantium as an incomplete copy of the lost letters of Heloise and Abelard, exchanged at the time of their affair in 1116/17. If this exchange is an epistolary novel, it is a dialogue of astonishing brilliance. These letters document a student's desire to acquire mastery of philosophy, above all in relation to ethics. In the Historia calamitatum Abelard was eager to show that he had transcended what he considered to be the one major blemish on his career, his seduction of Heloise. She took the opportunity of reading his account (perhaps deliberately written with the idea that it should also be read by Heloise) to urge Abelard to enter again into a more intimate epistolary dialogue such as she had once enjoyed at Notre-Dame. Although initially reluctant to make that step, Abelard did evolve in his willingness to participate in the life of the Paraclete, as the unfolding of his correspondence makes clear. Yet Abelard always remained committed to academic and monastic values, profoundly patriarchal in character. There were limits to the extent to which an educated man was prepared to go in his dialogue with a woman. In those early years of their relationship, Abelard had difficulty in providing Heloise with the kind of philosophical dialogue that she sought. Those early difficulties never fully disappeared." (pp. 48-49)
———. 2001. "Hugh Metel, Heloise, and Peter Abelard: The Letters of an Augustinian Canon and the Challenge of Innovation in Twelfth-Century Lorraine." Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies no. 32:59–91.

Abstract: " The fifty-five letters of Hugh Metel (ca. 1080-1150), an Augustinian canon of Toul, were edited by C. L. Hugo in 1731, but have attracted little scholarly attention, even though some of them are addressed to such famous personalities as Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, and Heloise. This paper questions simplistic attempts to describe Hugh as a traditionalist by showing that although he admired Bernard of Clairvaux, he was much more interested than Bernard in combining classical poetic allusions with scriptural imagery. Hugh was interested in innovative educational trends in the twelfth century, but became critical of negative tendencies, such as those embodied in Peter Abelard. At the same time his two letters to Heloise provide valuable evidence into the extent of her reputation as an innovative writer. Hugh's prose is compared to other contemporary letter collections, in particular the Epistolae duorum amantium, which, this article argues, records the early letters of Abelard and Heloise."
———. 2002. "Interpreting Abelard and Heloise in the Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries: The Criticisms of Christine de Pizan and Jean Gerson." In Chemins de la pensée médiévale: Études ofertes à Zénon Kaluza, edited by Bakker, Paul J.J.M., Faye, Emmanuel and Grellard, Christophe, 709–724. Turnhout: Brepols.

"While Christine de Pizan (1365-ca. 1429) and Jean Gerson (1363-1429) are well known for their public criticisms of Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose, the occasional allusions they made to the letters of Abelard and Heloise during the years 1401/1402 have attracted less attention.(1)

The fact that Christine de Pizan does not mention Heloise at all in the Book of the City of Ladies is particularly intriguing, given her interest in providing historical precedents vindicating the dignity and wisdom of women. Christine’s alliance with Jean Gerson during the debate about the Romance of the Rose also raises important questions about her relationship to Latin clerical culture.Was she, as some have argued, a conservative prude, with little sympathy for the creative originality and naturalism of Jean de Meun? Have her admirers exaggerated the feminist aspect of her contribution to the debate? It deserves to be pointed out, however, that Christine and Gerson differed significantly in their response to the Romance of the Rose. Just as Zénon Kaluza has warned against using Gerson’s identification of philosophical schools to understand Parisian intellectual life in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, so we cannot rely on the chancellor’s rhetoric to classify contemporaries as either partisans or critics of Jean de Meun5(5 ristine de Pizan had her own reasons for distancing herself both from the Romance of the Rose and from the letters of Heloise." (pp. 709-710, some notes omitted)

(1) The key documents in this debate are edited by E. Hicks, Le débat sur le Roman de la Rose, Paris 1977 (Bibliothèque du xve siècle, 43). They have been translated into English by J. L. Baird and J. R. Kane, La Querelle de la Rose: Letters and Documents, Chapel Hill (NC) 1978 (North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 199).
———. 2004. "Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard and Heloise on the Definition of Love." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia no. 60:633–660.

Abstract: "This paper examines the thinking of Bernard of Clairvaux about love in relationship to the ideas of his two famous contemporaries, Peter Abelard and Héloise.

It looks at Bernard's intellectual debt to William of Champeaux on issues of sin and grace, and to William of Saint-Thierry for ideas about how amor evolves into caritas.

Bernard makes a stronger link between amor and dilectio, and introduces use of the Song of Songs, to explain how worldly love can develop into spiritual love. The author also considers the evolution of the ideas about love of Peter Abelard, observing that he draws on the same definition of Cicero in the Sic et Non and Theologia as underpins a rather crude attempt to define love in the Epistolae duorum amantium, which the author of the article thinks to be a record of the early letters of Abelard and Héloise. Whereas Abelard always contrasts worldly and spiritual love, the effort of Héloise to connect amor and dilectio parallels that of Bernard."
———. 2005. Abelard and Heloise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2. The early years: Roscelin of Compiègne and William of Champeaux, pp-21-42.

"This chapter examines Abelard's intellectual debt to both the vocalist theories of Roscelin of Compiègne and William of Champeaux's teaching about dialectic in shaping his philosophical nominalism. By looking at the earliest records of Abelard's teaching of dialectic and glosses on Aristotle, Porphyry and Boethius, it observes how students identified him as an iconoclast teacher, who quickly provoked laughter by the examples that he chose. It traces how Abelard's early conflict with his teachers laid the foundation for the subsequent difficulties he would experience in his career."

Chapter 3. Challenging tje Tradition: the Dialectica, pp. 43-57.

"This chapter examines Abelard's Dialectica, his first major treatise on dialectic. The treatise is structured around an analysis both of the major parts of speech, categories and of different kinds of argument, categorical and hypothetical. It argues that a driving theme is Abelard's desire to counter the philosophically realist arguments presented by William of Champeaux."

Chapter 5. Returning to Logica, pp. 81-100.

"This chapter examines the Logica 'Ingredientibus', a series of commentaries on Porphyry, Aristotle, and Boethius more profound than any of his earlier glosses. I argue that in these commentaries Abelard adopts a much more profound theory of universals and of other parts of speech than in the Dialectica. Rather than emphasizing differences of opinion with William of Champeaux, they demonstrate how far Abelard had come to distance himself from the arguments of Boethius. Instead of speaking uniquely about dialectic, he is now interested in logica, the arts of language in general."
———. 2008. The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Second edition with a bibliography since 1999 (First edition 1999). With a translation by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews.

"This book is the product of a journey that began in 1976 when I first came across Ewald Könsgen’s edition, Epistolae duorum amantium: Briefe Abaelards und Heloises? (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974) in Auckland University Library, New Zealand. I was attracted by the subtitle and was curious to find out how those letters related to the more well-known correspondence between Heloise and Abelard." (Introduction, p. XIII)

(...)

"It was when reading afresh the Epistolae duorum amantium in 1993, this time with greater awareness of Abelard’s vocabulary as a logician, that I encountered words and ideas that sent a shiver down my spine. Terms like “without difference” (indifferenter) and “knowability” (scibilitas) were words to which Abelard paid great attention in his logic. Could an incomplete copy have been made in the fifteenth century of the lost love letters of Heloise and Abelard?" (Introduction, p. XIV)

(...)

"This book focuses not just on the authorship of these letters, but on the broader issue of relationships between educated women and men in twelfth-century France. Heloise and Abelard have long occupied a key role in the collective mythology of European civilization as epitomizing values of love and reason respectively. The protracted debate over the authenticity of the famous letters of Abelard and Heloise is part of an ongoing process of re-interpretation of their legacy. By looking at the wider phenomenon in the twelfth century of men and women communicating with each other through the written word, always through the filter of the manuscript record, I hope to show how the relationship of Abelard and Heloise brings to a head many central tensions within French society in the twelfth century." (Introduction, p. XV)
———. 2009. "Discussing Love: The "Epistolae duorum amantium" and Abelard's "Sic et Non"." The Journal of Medieval Latin no. 19:130–147.

"There is no question that the definition of love that the teacher came up with in letter 24 is much less sophisticated than that presented by Abelard in his Theologia "Scholarium." The castration seems to have precipitated in Abelard a re-evaluation of many of his past ideas. The Sic et Non provides us with clear evidence that he applied himself to a thorough analysis of what the Fathers had to say about the subject, and expected his students to do the same. Yet even before Abelard became a monk, the Epistolae duorum amantium - if we accept them as an imperfect record of his exchanges with Heloise - suggest that he spent much time discussing the nature of love with his most brilliant student, Heloise. The hypothesis that the Epistolae duorum amantium is the work of an authentic couple, different from Abelard and Heloise, is highly speculative, and unsupported by historical evidence. The rival hypothesis, that the entire exchange was invented by an imaginative literary genius, writing sometime between the late twelfth and fifteenth centuries, creates an even more complex hypothesis, again unsubstantiated by any external evidence. The simplest solution to understanding these letters is to see them as imperfect copies of the letters that were exchanged by Abelard and Heloise. Their early discussions of love would indirectly influence Abelard's further presentation of the subject in his Sic et Non as well as in his later theological teaching." (pp. 146-147)
———. 2010. "Heloise." In Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition, c. 1100–c. 1500, edited by Minnis, Alastair and Voaden, Rosalynn, 267–289. Turnhout: Brepols.

"Heloise’s interest in the text of Scripture is vividly illustrated by the forty-two Problemata that she sent to Abelard, with an introductory letter asking for his response to them.41 Many of these deal with ethical dilemmas presented by the Bible, and implicitly question traditional notions of morality. For example, if Christ commanded that he who was without sin should cast the first stone (John 8. 7), how could any judgement be made upon a sinner? The final question, about whether anyone could sin when doing something commanded by God, was interpreted by Abelard as a key question occupying Heloise: how could God’s command to go forth and multiply (Genesis 1. 28) be sinful?(42) The choice of problemata to describe what traditionally were called quaestiones itself reflects a shared interest of Heloise and Abelard in Greek vocabulary, as ‘more authentic’ than Latin. Through these questions, Heloise engaged in serious commentary on the Bible. They give us a clue to the sort of moral teaching which the abbess was expected to give during general chapter at the Paraclete." (p. 279)

(41) Patrologia Latina, CLXXVIII, cols 677B–78D.

(42) Ibid., cols 723A–30B
———. 2011. "Heloise." In Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500 and 1500, Second Edition, edited by Lagerlund, Henrk, 699–701. Dordrecht: Springer.

Abstract: "Heloise (c. 1095–1164) was the lover and intellectual partner of the controversial philosopher and theologian, Peter Abelard (1079–1142), and abbess of a religious community that he entrusted to her, the abbey of the Paraclete from 1129 until her death. She is most well-known for the letters that she exchanged with Peter Abelard c. 1132/1133, after reacting to his Historia Calamitatum, in which he argued that providence had enabled him to survive a turbulent career in which she herself was profoundly implicated. Whereas Abelard had presented their affair simply in terms of lust, Heloise emphasizes that she had always been driven by ideals of selfless love. In a third letter, she extends her interest in the ethics of intention, asks him for an account of religious women in history, and a rule better adapted to the needs of women. Widely revered for her learning, she prompted Abelard to provide many writings for the Paraclete, including responses to a series of 42 Problemata about questions presented by inconsistencies within the Bible. Mews (The lost love letters of Heloise and Abelard, 2nd edn, 2008. St Martin’s Press, New York, 1999), Mews (J Mediev Latin 19:130–147, 2009) argues that she is the young woman whose voice is preserved in an exchange of over 100 Latin love letters (the Epistolae duorum amantium) between a controversial teacher and his brilliant pupil, preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript of Clairvaux."
———. 2014. "Between authenticity and interpretation: On the letter collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise and the Epistolae duorum amantium." Tijdschrift voor Filosofie no. 76:823–842.

Summary: "This article reviews the recent edition by David Luscombe, accompanied by an English translation (based on that of Betty Radice) of The Letter Collection of Abelard and Heloise (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2013). In particular it considers Luscombe's claim that the exchange begins with quarrelling about love, but concludes with shared reflection on religious life. It examines the unity of the letter collection as preserved in manuscripts, with particular attention to the way it is often reproduced, as in this volume, without the final text, the Institutiones nostre, which sets out the actual observances of the Paraclete in the time of Heloise, adapted from early Cistercian observances. This is despite the fact that it follows Abelard's Rule (correctly identified by Luscombe as his Institutio for the Paraclete) in the fullest surviving manuscript of the exchange, Troyes, Mediathèque MS 802.

The article also re-examines issues of philosophical vocabulary raised by the Epistolae duorum amantium, preserved in the library of Clairvaux, responding to Luscombe's summary of debate about whether these might be the letters that both Abelard and Heloise say they exchanged at the time of their affair."
———. 2014. "Abelard, Heloise, and Discussion of Love in the Twelfth-Century Schools." In Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Criticai Essays, edited by Hellemans, Babette, 11–36. Leiden: Brill.

"One consequence of Peter Abelard’s account in the Historia calamitatum of his early relationship with Heloise is that he is more often associated with love as sexual passion (amor) than with love as either caritas, the spiritual ideal to which all Christians are called, or dilectio, selfless love for a friend. Yet Abelard was fully aware of the complexities of discusssion about the relationship between caritas, dilectio and amor taking place within both the schools and monastic cloisters during the twelfth century.(1)" (p 11)

(...)

"The ideas about caritas reported in records of Abelard’s Sententie were relatively crude compared to those in his own writings, but they provoked alarm among some of his contemporaries, in particular Hugh of Saint Victor—who was devoting his own great synthesis of theology throughout the 1130s, in his treatise On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith. Much more thoroughly than either William of Saint-Thierry or Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh rejected what seemed to be Abelard’s purely human understanding of love. He did not understand the subtleties of Abelard’s discussions with Heloise about the nature of love and true intention. In their way, his criticisms of Abelard were not unlike those of Heloise, that he assumed love already existed between intimate friends, rather than as an ideal to be reached. Hugh, however, like William and Bernard, believed that love could only be attained through grace. Yet there were others in the twelfth-century schools who recognised that there were elements of value in what Abelard had to say about caritas in the Theologia ‘Scholarium’. The author of the highly influential Summa Sententiarum, a masterly synthesis of doctrine from the late 1130s, included Abelard’s definition of caritas as honorable love, directed to its due end, along with Cicero’s definition of friendship as good will to another, for that person’s sake, as a way of giving a more human dimension to the meaning of caritas.

Did this definition of love in the Summa Sententiarum transmit to the schools of the mid twelfth century a distant memory of Abelard’s early discussions on the subject with Heloise?" (pp. 35-36)

(1) A significant exception is the study of C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).
———. 2015. "Bertrada de Montfort, Peter Abelard and Adelard of Bath. The Critique of Authoriry in the Early Twelfth Century." Parergon no. 32:1–29.

Abstract: "Bertrada de Montfort is well known Jor provoking the wrath of senior churchmen in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, for leaving her husband, Count Fulk IV of Anjou, and engaging in what they considered to be an illegitimate marriage to Philip I of France. This article explores hitherto unexamined connections between Bertrada’s role as Queen of France and two intellectuals, both celebrated for promoting the cause of reason against blind respect for authority, namely Peter Abelard and Adelard of Bath. Bertrada deserves to be considered not as a self-seeking virago, as claimed by her critics, but as someone who challenged ecclesiastical authority in a similar way to these two celebrated thinkers of the early twelfth century. Both thinkers sought to place authority on a firmer, more rational foundation, echoing Bertrada’s own critique of ecclesiastical authority in marrying Philip against the view of many reforming ecclesiastics."
———. 2020. "Imagining Heloise as Abbess of the Paraclete." Journal of Religious History no. 44:422–442.

Abstract: "This article argues that traditional presentations of Heloise focus on her image as a heroine of love rather than giving sufficient attention to her status as abbess of the Paraclete. In particular, there has been unjustified neglect of the final dossier in her exchange, known as the Institutiones nostre, written in response to Peter Abelard's Institutio, or Rule for the Paraclete. These observances were formulated to establish uniform practices at both the Paraclete and its first daughter‐house at Trainel, dedicated to Mary Magdalen. This neglect of Heloise's role as an abbess encouraged a tendency in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to focus on themes of erotic rather than religious longing, as well as a subsequent tendency to question the authenticity of the letters of Heloise, without full appreciation of her role as abbess of the Paraclete. A translation of the Institutiones nostre is included as an appendix."
Muckle, Joseph T. 1950. "Abelard's Letter of Consolation to a Friend (Historia Calamitatum)." Mediaeval Studies no. 12:163–213.

"This work is commonly known today as Historia Calamitatum, a title which is not found in any of the manuscripts in the first hand and in only one in a second hand, Ms Rheims 872 (see note 2, page 175), and then only as an alternative title.

In the first editions of the works of Abelard by Amboesius (Franc;ois d'Amboise) and Quercetanus (André Duchesne) in 1616, and in those of Orelli (1841), Cousin (1849) and of Migne (1855), the title is: Epistola prima quae est Historia Calamitatum Abaelardi ad Amicum scripta. The name Historia Calamitatum was probably taken from a sentence in the last paragraph of the work (p. 210) where Abelard says: Haec ... de calamitatum mearum historia ... me ... scripsisse sufficiat. We know it was so called as early as the time of Petrarch,(1) for he speaks of the work as historia suarum calamitatum. It does not adequately designate the contents of the letter, much of which is devoted to an account of Abelard's triumphs and also to consideration of the value of a quiet life for a student.

I have retained the title found in the first hand in the two best manuscripts: Troyes 802 and Paris, B.N. lat. 2923: Abaelardi ad Amicum suum consolatoria (Epistola). It was not likely given as a title by Abelard himself.

Nothing is known of the identity of the friend to whom the letter was addressed. Various guesses have been made, while some scholars think the epistolary form itself of the work is simply a literary device of Abelard to afford a setting and occasion. He had precedents enough for this in Cicero's dialogues, not to mention those of Plato wherein treatises are represented as records of discussions between friends on special occasions. Whatever theory one may adopt, it is plain that apart from the first and last paragraphs there is scarcely a word referring to a friend. On the other hand, Heloise in her first letter to Abelard considers that this work was a letter written to soine particular person.

In several of the previous editions the work is divided into fifteen chapters.

This division into chapters is found in the edition of d' Amboise, but I have not retained it as it is not found in any of the manuscripts." (p. 163)
Newman, Barbara. 1992. "Authority, authenticity, and the repression of Heloise." Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies no. 22:121–157.

Reprinted as Chapter 2 in B. Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1995, pp. 46-75.

"In the unlikely event that my title has left any suspense, let me state my own parti pris at the outset. My intention in this chapter is twofold. First, I will try to dispatch once for all the old hypothesis that Abelard forged the letters of Heloise as part of a literary fiction. Then, after concluding this fervent but no doubt futile attempt, I will show how the same questions that have vexed the scholarly debate over Heloise—questions of authority, authenticity, and repression of the female voice—are precisely the questions that most vexed Heloise herself in her pious and amorous wars with Abelard. There is, in short, an uncanny resemblance between the debate about the text and the debate within the text.

What, Heloise asks herself as well as her beloved, is the authority for her monastic conversatio, for the austere and undesired life that she chose "freely at his command"?(3) What kind of authenticity, given her undisguised lack of vocation, could she possibly aspire to or attain in that life? And what yoke of repression could she bear to impose, more than a decade into the course, on all that still displeased Abelard and God—her desire and her anger, her memories, her words? To the chagrin of many readers, the answer to all of these questions seems to be "obedience to Abelard's will."

Yet if Abelard's mastery appears complete when the correspondence ends—perhaps more complete than it ever was in reality—it has been yet more fully realized by certain latter-day interpreters. There are those for whom Heloise's letters are "authentic" only as part of Abelard's oeuvre; their authoritative word is Abelard's message of conversion; and the cost of this would-be redemption from the limbo of thirteenth-century forgery and eighteenth-century legend is not only the repression of Heloise's desire, but the complete obliteration of her voice.

I will try to show here that this "grotesque hypothesis"(4) is grounded in a priori notions of what a medieval abbess could write, frank disapproval of what Heloise did write, and at times outright misogyny. Further, I want to demonstrate that the thesis of Heloise as Abelard's literary creature not only fails to resolve the textual problems it is invoked to explain, but creates new and ludicrous problems that have so far been neglected only because the proponents of this thesis have ruled whole realms of investigation out of court." (pp. 46-47 of the reprint)

(3) "Ad imperium nostrum sponte velata," Abelard, Historia calamitatum, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris, 1959): 81

(4) Evelyne Sullerot, Women on Love: Eight Centuries of Feminine Writing, trans. Helen Lane (Garden City, 1979): 42. The "grotesque hypothesis" is part of a widespread pattern, as Sullerot notes: "Evaluations of women's writings on love are subject to two very common biases: an indulgence that borders on infatuation, on the one hand, and on the other a thoroughgoing skepticism, causing all texts attributed to women to be viewed as apocryphal, and in fact the handiwork of men" (41).
———, ed. 2016. Making Love in the Twelfth Century: Letters of Two Lovers in Context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

A new translation with commentary by Barbara Newman.

"My purpose in this book is not just to take sides (though i will do so) but still more to advance interpretation of the letters from three standpoints. First, while the pioneering english translation by Mews and his student Neville Chiavaroli has served scholarship well thus far, it is time now to correct its several inaccuracies and infelicities in the light of subsequent research. There is room for a translation with greater literary ambitions, especially with respect to the thirteen poems that nestle among the prose letters." (Preface, p. XIV)

(...)

"in the second place, I have done my best to situate the Epistolae more precisely in their intellectual and rhetorical milieu. Thus my comment on each letter ends with a list of citations, allusions, and parallels. Like any such apparatus, this is a collaborative project; i have added my own discoveries to the extensive work already done by Könsgen, Mews, Piron, von Moos,(35) and others." (Preface, p. XIV)

(...)

"Finally and most crucially, i want to ask what the Epistolae can tell us about the history of emotions, for which they are a uniquely valuable source. here alone do we have a substantial dossier of letters exchanged in real time between two lovers, a man and a woman. None of the twelfth century’s many fictional letters, verse epistles, troubadour and trouvère lyrics, goliardic songs, lais, or romances offer us a comparable opportunity to observe a real love relationship between two historical persons as it waxes and wanes, passing through every emotional phase from enchantment to disillusionment. The canonical letters of Abelard and Heloise come closest, but even though they are often called “love letters,” that label is misleading.

Exchanged between priest and nun, abbot and abbess, they dissect an affair that had long since ended, analyzing it within a context of spiritual formation and monastic direction. Whether or not the famous couple also wrote the Epistolae duorum amantium, the two exchanges are very different." (Preface, p. XV)

(...)

"If the lovers were Abelard and Heloise, these early letters show how they reached the point where we meet them in the Historia calamitatum. if we should decide the lovers were only a couple “like” Heloise and Abelard, as Könsgen proposed, their relationship can still yield much insight into the dilemma faced by their more famous contemporaries." (Preface, p. XVII)

(...)

"in the absence of a smoking gun, the case for Abelard and Heloise remains unprovable. But in light of all that we know thus far, it is highly probable." (p. 78)
Nye, Andrea. 1992. "A Woman's Thought or a Man's Discipline? The Letters of Abelard and Heloise." Hypatia no. 7:1–22.

Reprinted in Linda Lopez McAlister (ed.), Hypathia's Daughters: Fifteen Hundred Years of Women Philosophers, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1996, pp. 25-47.

"In what follows I consider this macroquestion of the nature and possible future of philosophy by way of microstudy of a disagreement between a woman student and her male philosophy teacher, a disagreement that occurred at the very beginnings of philosophy as an academic discipline. The woman is the twelfth-century abbess Heloise. Her teacher is the famous Peter Abelard, originator of many of the attitudes and practices of academic philosophy as we know it today. At issue between them were conflicting ideals of goodness and love but also differences regarding thought and language. It is my hope that a careful reading of their dispute will show that the personal nature of their disagreement is not irrelevant to the question of the nature of philosophy." (p. 25 of the reprint)

(...)

"Heloise’s thought not only has the negative quality of being unlike Abelard’s, it also offers a positive example. What would a philosophical community be like in which Heloise’s thought would be at home. It would have to accommodate passionate speech that comes from the problematic experience of women and of men. It would be motivated by a concern for mutual understanding that can stabilize and repair relations between persons.

Its discussions would be critical and, at the same time, constructive of new forms of understanding. Positions would be articulated not in battles of rival wills maneuvering within an accepted framework of concepts that may have lost any reference to experienced reality, but in the kind of free and open discussion that Abelard refused. If philosophy as we know it has often perpetuated and articulated that refusal, might a new philosophical community be informed by Heloise’s and Aspasia’s wisdom, their subtle, sensitive, mobile, flexible women’s tongues? Might philosophers finally admit what Saint Paul and Abelard denied, that a woman can be the teacher of a man?" (p. 41 of the reprint)
Ostrowski, Donald. 2020. Who Wrote That? Authorship Controversies from Moses to Sholokov. Ithaca: Northern Illinois University Press.

Chapter 4. Did Abelard and Heloise Write the Letters Attributed to Them?, pp. 75-103.

"Two sets of letters are in question here.

The first set has fifteen letters. Nine are attributed to Abelard, four of which are addressed to Heloise, and six attributed to Heloise (three addressed to Abelard and one to Peter the Venerable), which Jean de Meun claimed he found and used in the 1280s to translate the letters into French. The second set of 113 anonymous letters was transcribed in the late fifteenth century by the monk Johannes de Vepria (ca. 1445–ca. 1515), prior of Clairvaux from 1480 to 1499. This set has been referred to in the scholarship as Epistles of Two Lovers (Epistolae duorum amantium). To keep the two sets distinct, I will refer to the first set of letters as AH-1 and the second set as AH-2." (p. 81)

(...)

"In 2000, John Marenbon surveyed the controversy for the twenty-five years since von Moos’s book appeared in 1974 and came down squarely on the side of the traditional attribution—that is, that Abelard wrote the letters attributed to him and Heloise wrote those attributed to her.(66) It was clear that the defenders of the traditional view had been more resourceful in finding evidence and formulating arguments than the skeptics. Thus, by 2001, Dronke felt secure enough that the question of attribution had been resolved in favor of the traditional view to state: “I hope the oft-repeated older claim that these are forgeries no longer needs serious discussion.”(67) But just at the point when the Abelardo-Heloisians thought they had vanquished the challenges of the skeptics to AH-1, they found themselves faced with the challenge of the attribution of another set of letters to Abelard and Heloise." (p. 96)

(...)

"When the monk Johannes de Vepria transcribed AH-2 in the late fifteenth century, interest in them remained dormant. The letters are unattributed but most of them, have either a V or an M at the beginning. V is understood to stand for Vir (Man) and M for Mulier (Woman)." (p. 96)

(...)

"In 2009, Sylvain Piron analyzed the content of M’s letters in AH-2 and found connections with those of Heloise in AH-1: “The crucial difference between the two women voices we have been discussing is that one was preparing herself for the eventuality of dramatic events, while the other had already been through tragedy.”(81) Here then is the fundamental conundrum of AH-2. They are letters written apparently by two individuals who find themselves in the same or similar position that Abelard and Heloise found themselves. There are no noticeable anachronisms in the letters, and there is nothing in the contents of them that would preclude their having been written by Abelard and Heloise. Yet stylistic analysis beyond citing particular words tends not to support the identification of V with Abelard and M with Heloise. That leaves open the possibility, as I mentioned above, that a third party wrote these form letters with the exchange between Abelard and Heloise in mind but was unconcerned about stylistic verisimilitude. The items of AH-2 may simply have been a literary exercise and not intended to be understood as having been written by Abelard and Heloise." (p. 101)

(67) Peter Dronke, review of Listening to Heloise. The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, ed. Bonnie Wheeler, in International Journal of Classical Tradition 8, no. 1 (2001): 135.

(81) Sylvain Piron, “Heloise’s Literary Self-fashioning and the Epistolae duorum amantium,” in Strategies of Remembrance: From Pindar to Hölderlin, ed. Lucie Doležalová (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), 50.
Pernoud, Régine. 1973. Heloise and Abelard. New York: Stein and Day.

Translated from French by Peter Wiles.

"The Abelard who emerges from the Letter to a Friend must have been exceptionally hard to get on with. He seems to have been entirely lacking in empathy and to have shown no concern for others - except perhaps his pupils, but here he was swayed by vanity and the desire to strengthen his hold over them. It is extraordinary that he should have been thrown into contact with such an extreme ‘temperamental opposite’ as Peter the Venerable, and even more extraordinary that it was Peter who - quite literally, by publicly absolving him after death - had the last word.

By the time the two met, however, Abelard had undergone an inner change which opened his heart to Peter’s loving-kindness and enabled him to feel its benefits to a degree which would have been wholly impossible at the time of Peter’s earlier approach, soon after the Council of Soissons. But for the ordeals which he had suffered in the intervening years he would never have assented to the reconciliation with himself and others which Peter urged upon him." (p. 224)
Piron, Sylvain. 2009. "Heloise’s literary self-fashioning and the Epistolae duorum amantium." In Strategies of Remembrance: From Pindar to Hölderlin, edited by Doležalová, Luice, 102–162. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"By addressing issues connected with memory in two collections of twelfth century Latin letters – the famous correspondence exchanged between Heloise and Abelard(2) and the anonymous set of love letters known as Epistolae duorum amantium(3) – this article pursues two different goals at the same time. On the one hand, it will be easily recognised that such personal documentation, not often preserved from the medieval period, offers appropriate material for observing how memories of educated people were constructed, sustained and expressed. But the choice of studying these two collections side by side is also connected to another explicit purpose. Such a confrontation provides an occasion to put to the test the claim made by Constant Mews that the two anonymous lovers are indeed Heloise and Abelard in the early phase of their affair;(4) this test will eventually result in formulating a new argument in favour of this ascription. As will gradually become clear, these two perspectives are in fact closely related, since they are both investigating the ways in which literary memory is shaping personal identity at its most intimate." (p. 103)

(2) Abelard, Historia Calamitatum, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Vrin, 1974); Lettres d’Abélard et Héloïse, ed. Éric Hicks, transl. É. Hicks, Th. Moreau (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 2007). I will quote from Monfrin for HC and Ep. II and IV, from Hicks for the remaining letters.

(3) Ewald Könsgen, Epistolae duorum amantium: Briefe Abaelards und Heloises? (Leiden: Brill, 1974).

(4) Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard. Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France, with translations by N. Chiavaroli and C. J. Mews (New York: Palgrave, 1999). An additional chapter to the second edition, forthcoming in 2008, “New discoveries and insights 1999-2006,“ presents a number of new arguments in favour of the ascription. My references will be to that new edition.
———. 2018. "Heloise’s sentimental education." Clio. Women, Gender, History no. 47:155–166.

Translated from the French by Anne Stevens.

"In producing a new English translation, with commentary, of the Epistolae duorum amantium (EDA), Barbara Newman has reshuffled the cards of an already much-discussed topic.(1) These extracts from 116 anonymous letters, poems or short messages exchanged between a man and a woman were edited in 1974 by Ewald Könsgen. They gave rise to a lively discussion when, in 1999, the Australian historian Constant Mews suggested that they could be identified as parts of the correspondence between Heloise and Peter Abelard during their love affair.(2) These documents constitute by far the most extensive exchange of letters known from the entire Middle Ages." (p. 153)

(...)

"Our understanding of the documents is substantially enriched by the commentary and the identification of new sources which she attaches to them. On the other hand, the way in which she has altered the order in which the extracts are presented in the manuscript is highly questionable. Barbara Newman has, in fact, decided to place the two final pieces at the start of the exchange of letters, since she regards them as constituting the opening of the correspondence. This is not the place to embark upon an in-depth philological analysis to demonstrate that there is no serious textual or material justification for this decision. I will, however, come back to it briefly below, to demonstrate that this decision obstructs our understanding of the relationship developed between the two correspondents." (p. 154)

(1) Newman, Barbara. 2016. Making Love in the Twelfth Century. Letters of two lovers in context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Posa, Carmel. 2007. "Divine love in the writings of Heloise of the Paraclete." Tjurunga no. 73:77–90.

"I want to approach this present investigation, from simply one perspective and a theological one at that. I would like to suggest that "Absence" is not only a metaphorical theme, but also a theological theme, which underscores both the context of, and expression within Heloise's writings to Abelard. In these writings we discover an absent Abelard; an absent monastic rule suitable for women an absent motherhood due to the absence of the curiously named Astrolabe their son;(6) and, as I will demonstrate in this paper, the implicit sense of an absent, though not insignificant God. All of these moments of "absence" culminate in the "absence" of the particular identity of Heloise as she takes on the universal identity of the Christian subject in her role as Abbess of the Paraclete.

The platonic temptation, pervasive through the history of Christian theology, is to abstract the body in the discussion of the soul's journey towards God and this has been particularly detrimental to women's bodies and their "otherness" in relation to men, symbolically considered more capable of imaging God in their bodies than are the bodies of women. God, the "irreducible Other", is not found in abstraction, but in and through loving relationships with other bodies who are also "other"." (pp. 78-79)
———. 2011. "Problemata Heloissae: Heloise’s Zeal for the Scriptures " Journal of Religious History no. 35:337–351.

Abstract: "Both the early love letters of Heloise and Abelard, and their later correspondence, are suffused with the biblical text. In these collections, Heloise either refers directly or indirectly to the scriptures in order to sustain her arguments with Abelard, or as in the early love letters particularly, she moves freely in and out of either direct quotation of the scriptural texts or allusion to it, with the ease of any monastic writer of her era.

However, it is in the Problemata Heloissae that we find direct evidence of Heloise’s approach to the study of Scripture for her community of the Paraclete. The series of forty-two questions raised in the Problemata reflects concerns with which Heloise had been preoccupied all her life and appear consistently within all her correspondence with Abelard. These concerns stressed the ethical interpretation of the Bible and focused on the struggle to maintain a life of inner integrity in the face of sin, and the meaning of love particularly as expressed by the “freedom of the Gospel”."
Robertson Jr., Durant Waite. 1972. Abelard and Heloise. New York: The Dial Press.

"There is something very attractive about the idea of a man who is at once a great philosopher and a great lover, and it is perhaps unfortunate that the philosopher and the lover must here be separated by over five hundred years. There are, in effect, two ‘“‘Abelards,” each of whom has profoundly influenced subsequent generations. The second Abelard, moreover, has influenced the first Abelard, at least in reputation, producing a tangle of fact and fiction of a kind that makes history one of the most fascinating (and diverting) of all studies. Both Abelards are described in the pages that follow. There is first an account of Abelard’s life. It is impossible to write a very full account without resorting to conjecture, but I have tried carefully to distinguish conjecture from verifiable fact, so that the reader can identify my own attempts at elaboration. There follows a brief survey of the high points of the legend of Heloise, in which the second Abelard appears in a number of different guises. In this legend both Abelard and Heloise shamelessly adapt themselves to current fashions, shifting to flatter succeeding stylistic tastes. Economic, social, and cultural changes have given them a remarkable plasticity. Even here there is room for differing interpretations, especially where the major documents are concerned, but I have thought it best to set forth my own views, without calling attention to the views of others, a procedure that would lead the reader into a maze of footnotes inappropriate in a book of this kind." (Preface, p. XIV)
Ruys, Juanita Feros. 1993. "Role-playing in the Letters of Heloise and Abelard." Parergon no. 11:53–78.

"Widely differing readings of the Letters of Heloise to Abelard have been offered over the years, principally because the attitudes Heloise expresses appear to be inconsistent. even contradictory, from one letter to another. This paper attempts to show that the clisjunctures perceived are evidence of role-playing by Heloise. It is my contention that she adopts different roles in order to bend Abelard to her will, pragmatically taking up, modifying, or abandoning roles as the situation and Abelard's response demand." (p. 53)
———. 2011. "From Virile Eloquence to Hysteria Reading the Latinity of Heloise in the Early Modern Period." In Latinity and Alterity in the Early Modern Period, edited by Haskell, Yasmin and Feros Ruys, Juanita, 137–167. Turnhout: Brepols.

"As Yasmin Haskell has asked in introducing this volume: “Did the Latin writing of early modern women mitigate, or merely accentuate, their otherness?”. (5) This paper will attempt to answer this question through a reading of the early modern reception of the Latinity of the accomplished and eloquent medieval abbess Heloise.(6) It will show that there is a clearly chartable swing in the reception of Heloise’s Latinate writing in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where an initial medieval reading of this Latinity as a virile rhetoricity that allowed Heloise to surpass her own sex and become the equal of the male sex in eloquence was overtaken by a perception of Heloise’s writings as quintessentially female — abandoned, natural, unmediated, irrepressible. This shift, driven in large part by the vernacularization, popularization, and poeticization of Heloise’s writings, meant that the reception of these writings became coded for gender, and it was these gender considerations that eventually allowed the authenticity of these writings to be questioned. In this process not only was Heloise’s Latinity first marginalized and then forgotten, but the concept of female Latinity in general was constructed as at once a curiosity, and later, an impossibility." (pp.138-139)

(5) This is a pertinent question, for we must remember that in parallel with the evidence listed in the note above detailing the acceptance of medieval women’s Latinity by their male peers, there remained a strong undercurrent sense of the (potential) alterity of women’s Latin: see Barbara Newman, “More Thoughts on Medieval Women’s Intelligence: Denied, Projected, Embodied,” in Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Linda Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Notre Dame, 2005), 231–243, here 234–235: “a woman’s unexpected Latinity could be taken as a symptom of demonic possession . . . . In short, since it was as ‘unnatural’ for a woman to know Latin as it was for her to write, one who confounded male expectations had to be inspired by either God or the devil.”

(6) There have been a signiicant number of studies dealing with the trajectory of the figure of Heloise through the early modern period, focusing on visual images of her or her appearance in French and/or English literature. No study to date, however, has speciically considered issues relating to her Latinity and its reception.(...)
———. 2019. "Before the Affective Turn: Affectus in Heloise, Abelard, and the Woman Writer of the Epistolae duorum amantium." In Before Emotion: The Language of Feeling, 400–1800, edited by Ruys, Juanita Feros, Champion, Michael W. and Essary, kirk, 61–75. New York: Routledge.

"As other essays in this volume reveal, there was a revolution in thinking about the nature of emotions, their functioning in the human person, and their role in the relationship between the individual soul and God taking place in twelfth-century monastic and early scholastic culture. These ideas, often focused on the terms affectus and affectio, are evident amongst the Victorines (Michael Barbezat), the Cistercians (Constant J. Mews), and female-centric monastic culture (Barbara Newman). Yet in this same period, the highly influential philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard (1079–1142), and Heloise, his former student, long-term intellectual colleague, and abbess of the Convent of the Paraclete (d. 1164), show themselves less moved by this new thinking on emotions, and more indebted to Augustinian ideas of affectus based in the will as disposition, intention, or inclination." (p. 61, a note omitted)
Smith, Anne Collins. 2002. "The Problemata of Heloise." In Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe. Volume 2: Medieval Women Writing Latin, edited by Churchill, Laurie J., Brown, Phyllis R. and Jeffrey, Jane E., 173–190. New York: Routledge.

"While Heloise did curtail her expression of her grief and perplexity about their personal relationship in response to Abelard’s command,(9) by no means did she cease to write. Among the valuable writings by Heloise during this period are the Problemata, a list of questions that Heloise and her students collected as they studied scripture and submitted to Abelard.(10) At first glance, the Heloise who emerges in the Problemata appears far less personally engaged with her topic and thus far less personally accessible to the reader than the Heloise of the Letters. Unlike the Letters, which directly concern issues of relevance to Abelard and Heloise’s personal history, the Problemata draw nearly all their questions from scripture. They are written in the first person plural, and there is no indication which questions, if any, are asked by Heloise herself and which come from her students.

Nevertheless, the Problemata offer us considerable insight into Heloise’s teaching persona and pedagogy. The text opens with a cover letter that functions as an apologia for the project. Its first paragraph cites St. Jerome’s praise of Marcella for her scholarly enthusiasm. Heloise records Jerome’s approval that Marcella did not “think that anything I might answer was right, in the manner of the Pythagoreans, nor did a prejudged authority without reason have value according to her; but she examined all things, and thought broadly with a wise mind, so that I felt that I had not so much a student as a judge.” Marcella is clearly held up as a type that Heloise intends to emulate. Abelard, meanwhile, is cast in the role of Jerome, whose answers are to be judged by examination and not simply accepted on authority." (pp. 174-175)

(9) Clanchy remarks on the implications of this command: “More significant in its consequences for European culture than the castration and persecution of Abelard (the ‘calamities’ that followed his marriage) was the silencing of Heloise, as that was a prelude to the silencing of academic women as a class for the next eight centuries” ([Abelard: A Medieval Life (Oxford: Blackwell’s, 1998)],p. 46).

(10) A complete English version of Heloise’s Problemata and Abelard’s responses may be found in McNamer’s The Education of Heloise [(Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991)
Southern, Richard William. 1970. Medieval Humanism and Other Studies. Oxford: Blackwell.

"We may reasonably suppose that it was Heloise who preserved the correspondence and placed the earlier letters in front of the monastic instructions. They contained the only record of the life of the founder, and they provided an explanation for the foundation of the monastery and its customs. Heloise and Abelard alone can have had copies of both sides of the correspondence, and she survived him in the monastic life for twenty years. The letters dominated her life as they did not dominate Abelard’s; indeed they were her life, and the basis for the life of the monastic foundation that she did her best to make great. Why should she alter them?

She would scarcely alter Abelard’s; as for her own, she has not removed her blemishes, and it is hard to see why she should add to them. Nor does she give the impression that she was a woman who easily changed her mind. At the end of the collection of letters, someone—possibly Heloise herself—added additional rules and texts for the discipline of the nuns, and these additions have been preserved in one of the best manuscripts of the letters that we have. In this form the letters remained (as I picture it) at the Paraclete unknown to the outside world till nearly the end of the thirteenth century, when perhaps a chance visitor from Paris or a renewed interest in Abelard brought the correspondence to a wider public and made it part of the world’s literature." (p. 103)
Sweeney, Eileen C. 2007. "Abelard's Historia Calamitatum and Letters: Self as Search and Struggle." Poetics Today no. 28:303–336.

Abstract: "In this essay, I offer an interpretation of Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum and letters exchanged with Heloise, arguing that both are informed by the attempt to look below the surfaces of language, self, and action to a reality beneath and to achieve authenticity, by which I mean coherence between surface and depth. This reading shows an emerging sense of self and self-knowledge based on the relationship between external act and internal intention. While using traditional medieval narrative forms, I argue, Abelard gives his story a modern-sounding autobiographical twist: that its moral is about matching outer to inner self. While the project is never complete, the search itself becomes an identity; Abelard achieves authenticity in his rejection of all the models of it that were available to him. This is not done to unmask a self without place or parallel but to make the case for a new way of life in a new community for the inner self who is truly seeking God. Thus, like Augustine before and Rousseau after him, Abelard writes about his own life with a philosophical aim: to display the nature of what it is to be human and to make claims about how human life ought to be lived."
Synan, Edward A., and Jeauneau, Édouard. 1995. "Some Remarks on the Muckle Translation of Abelard's Adversities." Mediaeval Studies no. 57:337–343.

"The late J. T. Muckle, C.S.B., has made a substantial contribution to our understanding of the celebrated letters of Peter Abelard. This contribution has been especially valuable in the case of Abelard's Historia calamitatum, for this scholar has given us both an edition of the Latin text and a splendid translation of that text into English, the latter enhanced by Etienne Gilson's preface.(1) Our intention here is to provide, in the interest of precision and clarity, four "remarks" on that text and on its translation.

Although we have consulted on all four "remarks," the first two were raised originally by E. A Synan and the last two by E. Jeauneau." (p 337)

(1) J. T. Muckle, "Abelard's Letter of Consolation to a Friend (Historia Calamitatum)," Mediaeval Studies 12 (1950): 163-213 [hereafter, ALC]; idem, The Story of Abelard's Adversities: A Translation with Notes of the "Historia calamitatum," with a preface by Etienne Gilson, Mediaeval Sources in Translation 4 (Toronto, 1954, revised 1964) [hereafter, SAA, pagination of the 1964 edition]. The other letters edited by Muckle are in "The Personal Letters Between Abelard and Heloise: Introduction, Authenticity and Text," Mediaeval Studies 15 (1953): 47-94.
Waithe, Mary Ellen. 1989. "A History of Women Philosophers: Volume II: Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment Women Philosophers A.D. 500-1600." In, edited by Waithe, Mary Ellen, 67–83. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"IV. Summary

Dronke, referring to the Problemata, says that(32)

... Heloise should be considered not only in relation to Abelard, as has always been customary, but also in relation to other medieval women writers, to see precisely in what ways a womanly awareness comes to be expressed - and to be called in question - in her writings, and how her self-understanding compares with that of other medieval women who have left us written testimonies.

Prudence Allen(33) studies Heloise's views on women. In Allen's view, Heloise represents a curious contrast. One of the best educated and intellectually accomplished women of her time, her words clearly express views of women's inferiority to men, even though that view becomes modified over time. Yet, we can assess what Heloise says and contrast what she says to what her words reveal about her and about Abelard. Her letters reveal her teacher, her husband and her religious superior to be a man of enormous gifts and enormous shortcomings. The most brilliant philosopher of his day, Abelard could not live by the very principles he taught to Heloise. As his student, Heloise not only lived by those principles, but would have been disillusioned to realize that Abelard did not live by them. The man who fathered her child and became her husband against her better judgement cloistered his wife when marriage no longer served his career needs, and ignored her when he could no longer advantage himself of her sexually. The priest who was Heloise's religious superior had to be scolded into finally attending to the needs of the nuns of the Paraclete.

Heloise's comments about the inferiority of women to men are explicit. But we must remember that those comments came from a philosopher who held Ciceronian views on love, and who shared Abelard's "ethic of intent." In light of her philosophical views, and in light of the life which she had led consistent with those views, Heloise's comments ought to be understood as placing a high moral value on humility expressed as so-called "feminine inferiority". (pp. 81-82)

(32) Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1984), p. 54.

(33) Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 BC-AD 1250. Montreal: Eden Press, 1985, p. 291-292.
Ward, John O., and Chiavaroli, Neville. 2000. "The Young Heloise and Latin Rhetoric: Some Preliminary Comments on the "Lost" Love Letters and Their Significance." In Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman, edited by Wheeler, Bonnie, 53–119. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"Assuming that the "epistolae duorum amantium" are indeed the letters of Abelard and Heloise, this essay argues that studies in the trivium meant for Heloise a passport to an intellectually fulfilling life involving sex and children but not marriage, a package that Abelard could not comprehend." (p. 53)

(...)

"Conclusion:

Heloise the Arts Student, or Heloise the Anomaly?

We are compelled, we believe, to see Heloise not as the surviving member of a larger class of females attending the proto-university cathedral schools of Paris more or less on the same terms as males but as a rara avis, a young woman attracted to the environment of the city's schools by exceptional circumstances, circumstances not unrelated to her obvious literary talents but not a direct consequence of them. Once there she seems to have become renowned for her literary talents, but without formally enrolling as a student in any one of the masters' schools that were available at the time.

(...)

She must have been, as it were, "partially" in circulation, but not so fully as to make opportunities for acquaintance easy for Abelard. Nevertheless, some chance opportunities to see her would not have been unexpected, and, as he tells us, "bane igitur, omnibus circunspectis que amantes allicere solent, commodiorem censui in amorem mihi copulare." (240) He goes on, in famous lines, to say he felt her love for and knowledge of letters [litterarum scientiam] would facilitate his conquest.

(...)

Heloise's attempt to sort out her own emotions, the relationship between letters and love, between Abelard and the rest of her life, are vividly recalled in the de Vepria collection, but we are forced to conclude that what Abelard and Heloise taught each other or learned from each other belonged in the main to a world that was passing, the world of the Loire monastic verse friendship ambience. Transferred though this clearly was to the much more dynamic environment of the early twelfth-century Paris schools, fused with a genuine and relatively unrestricted physical relationship, and translated (for the most part) into prose of a unique and varying pattern, it is nevertheless observable that Heloise does not seem to have shared in the intellectual activities of the schools in her district. While not excluded from discussions with Abelard on various terms and positions that must have fallen within the fields of rational and moral philosophy, their mutual reading and "exercises" clearly fell more within the field of"grammar," sensitive reading and imitation of the prescribed auctores, exploration of the literary dimensions of amicitia as an alternative to nuptiae as a foundation for a sexual relationship, of amor as "a creative and complex natural force expressed in the sweetness of lovers' intimacy." (242) In all these respects the de Vepria collection does not so much change our picture of Heloise and Abelard in the second decade of the twelfth century, as sharpen it immensely and reveal its tragic poignancies, the shortcomings of the male and the infinite flexibility and optimism of the female, laying all the while a much firmer basis of understanding of the later, more celebrated letter collection and its vain but moving demand for a resumption of the dialogue that has been preserved for us in the "lost" letter collection." (pp, 81-82)
Wheeler, Bonnie, ed. 2000. Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Contents: Series Editor's Foreword IX; Acknowledgments X; Chronology XI; Abbreviations XIII; Bonnie Wheeler: Introduction: Listening to Heloise XVII-XXII;

Chapter 1 Mary Martin McLaughlin: Heloise the Abbess: The Expansion of the Paraclete 1; Chapter 2 John Marenbon: Authenticity Revisited 19; Chapter 3 Constant J Mews: Philosophical Themes in the Epistolae duorum amantium: The First Letters of Heloise and Abelard 25; Chapter 4 John 0. Ward and Neville Chiavaroli: The Young Heloise and Latin Rhetoric: Some Preliminary Comments on the "Lost" Love Letters and Their Significance 53; Chapter 5 Katharina Wilson and Glenda McLeod: Textual Strategies in the Abelard/Heloise Correspondence 121; Chapter 6 Phyllis R. Brown and John C. Peiffer II: Heloise, Dialectic, and the Heroides 143; Chapter 7 Jane Chance: Classical Myth and Gender in the Letters of"Abelard" and "Heloise": Gloss, Glossed, Glossator 161; Chapter 8 Linda Georgianna: "In Any Corner of Heaven": Heloise's Critique of Monastic Life 187; Chapter 9 Peggy McCracken: The Curse of Eve: Female Bodies and Christian Bodies in Heloise's Third Letter 217; Chapter 10 Donna Alfano Bussell: Heloise Redressed: Rhetorical Engagement and the Benedictine Rite of Initiation in Heloise's Third Letter 233; Chapter 11 Morgan Powell: Listening to Heloise at the Paraclete: Of Scholarly Diversion and a Woman's "Conversion" 255; Chapter 12 Alcuin Blamires: No Outlet for Incontinence: Heloise and the Question of Consolation 287; Chapter 13 Brian Patrick McGuire: Heloise and the Consolation of Friendship 303; Chapter 14 juanita Feros Ruys: Quae maternae immemor naturae: The Rhetorical Struggle over the Meaning of Motherhood in the Writings of Heloise and Abelard 323; Chapter 15 Deborah Fraioli: Pierre Bayle's Reflections on a Much Discussed Woman: The HELOISE Article in the Dictionnaire historique et critique 341; Contributors 361; Bibliography 365; Index 391-394.
Ziolkowski, Jan M. 2004. "Lost and Not Yet Found: Heloise, Abelard, and the Epistolae duorum amantium." The Journal of Medieval Latin no. 14:169–200.

"The outstanding editio princeps of the Epistolae had been published thirty years ago by Ewald Könsgen. The Epistolae, amounting to 113 items in Könsgen’s edition, are extant in a unique manuscript, Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 1452, with the incipit “Ex epistolis duorum amantium.” MS 1452 is a paper manuscript, written in the second half of the fifteenth century by a monk named Johannes de Vepria (also known as Jean de la Véprie and as Jean de Woëvre, ca. 1445–ca. 1518) when he was roughly twenty-five years old, long before he became prior of Clairvaux (1480–1499). The last element in his name is the Latin for La Voire or La Woëvre, near Verdun." (p. 171)

(...)

"My sense is that professional Latinists remain unconvinced that sufficient proofs on behalf of the ascription to Heloise and Abelard have been presented. I place myself squarely among those who believe that Könsgen went as far as due caution would allow in printing the Epistolae with the subtitle (and the punctuation thereof) he used, and that Mews and his supporters have gone too far.(76) Once again, the study of Abelard and Heloise is embroiled in controversy." (p. 199)

(76) On the punctuation, I can do no better than repeat the words of Jean Jolivet more than twenty-five years ago in appraisal of Könsgen’s edition: “Le point d’interrogation du sous-titre a toute sa valeur. Quoi qu’il en soit ce texte mérite d’être lu pour lui-même.” See Jean Jolivet, “Abélard entre chien et loup,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, Xe–XIIe siècles 20 (1977), 307–22, at p. 312, n. 20.

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