Abelard-Heloise Letters Written by the Two Lovers

U Ideas of General Interest -- December 2001University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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LITERATUREAbelard-Heloise letters written by the two lovers, scholar asserts

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The ayes have won another vote in the hotly contested scholarly debate over the authorship of a set of medieval love letters.

C. Stephen Jaeger now sides with those who believe that 113 anonymously transmitted love letters were the letters exchanged by Peter Abelard, the vain and overly ambitious master at Notre Dame of Paris, and Heloise, his brilliant young student -- a philosopher-poetess who had no rivals even before she began studying with Abelard -- in the early days of their famous and scandalous love affair.

While no single element is "decisive" in proving that the star-crossed lovers wrote the letters, "the accumulated weight of evidence makes for a very strong argument in favor of the ascription," said Jaeger, the Gutgsell Professor of German and Comparative Literature and director of the Program in Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois. Jaeger defends his position in an essay to appear early next year in "Voices in Dialogue: New Problems in Reading Women's Cultural History."

The original love letters -- written between 1115 and 1117 -- have never been found. However, the manuscript that excerpted them does exist, in a library in Troyes, France. It was Johannes de Vepria, a 15th century Cistercian monk, who found, copied and abridged the letters, titling them "Ex Epistolis duorum amantium" ("From the Letters of Two Lovers"). He didn't -- perhaps he couldn't -- attribute them. A German scholar, Ewald Koensgen, edited de Vepria's manuscript in 1974. A book by Constant Mews arguing authorship of Heloise and Abelard in 1999 set off a large-scale squabble over the ascription. Some scholars claim the letters are fiction or the work of one author; others suggest they are forgeries.

Jaeger's position hinges on the character of the two authors, their writing styles and educational backgrounds. He also sees close parallels between Abelard's autobiography, "Historia calamitatum," and the letters. "What we learn about these two lovers is consistent with what we know of Heloise and Abelard from the 'Historia' and personal writings," Jaeger said.

According to Jaeger, Heloise's writings reflect her training in the humanistic traditions of an 11th century "cathedral school."

Abelard's writings, on the other hand, reflect the "new" scholarship of the 12th century, characterized by rational philosophizing and plainness of exposition. The two lovers' representations of love and friendship also are divergent, in Jaeger's opinion. "Hers show a spiritualized Ciceronian brand of friendship; his are Ovidian, sensual, and often, explicitly sexual."

Heloise was well known, even as a girl, for her stunning intellectual accomplishments. "I am astonished at your genius," Abelard wrote to her. Her poetic style is "more learned, more elegant, more classical, more complex" than Abelard's, many of whose lines are "carpentered with all the sophistication of two sticks nailed together," Jaeger said.

"It is hard to account for the 'fit' of these letters with Abelard and Heloise other than assuming their authorship," Jaeger said.

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