This essay will evaluate the text to illustrate the lives of women in European society during the Middle Ages by giving a synopsis of this couple's life, the setting in this period of history and finally what impact this world had on women as well as the role women made in shaping their social status.
Peter Abelard (1079-1142), a French philosopher and theologian, was an early exponent of scholasticism. After studying in Paris he soon became a recognized teacher himself. His brilliant academic career was cut short in 1118-19, however, by the consequences of his love affair with Heloise (1098-1164, his junior by 22 years), the young niece of Canon Fulbert of Notre-Dame. Castrated by order of Fulbert and publicly disgraced, Abelard became a Benedictine monk. He continued to devote his vast energies to theological studies and writing, but Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, doubting the orthodoxy of Abelard's teaching on the Trinity, instigated the burning of one of his books on the subject at the Council of Soissons (1121).
In 1125, Abelard established a convent called the Paraclete near Troyes, France - Heloise became prioress and a famous teacher there.
Abelard's intentions were not for instructing the already unusually well-educated Heloise but to turn her lessons into a more agreeable form of activity ("We exchanged more kisses than learned propositions -
my hands returned more often to her bosom than to our books.") This led to a child, Astrolabe (a high-tech christening). Although they married - against Heloise's will, for she preferred the title of lover to that of wife - Abelard kept the marriage secret and sent Heloise off to a convent at a time when a church career was becoming incompatible with marriage. Since Abelard had no other refuge but the monastery after his mutilation, he insisted...
Dissapointing
This essay lays down the beliefs of medieval society towards women and tells us a little of Heloise, but I found it very dissatisfying.
Little attempt is made to examine whether Heloise was a typical of the average medieval woman, or whether she was as exceptional as modern (mainly, but not exclusively female) historians make her out.
All we know of Heloise is in her deeply personal letters to Aberlard and his account of her in Historia Calimatatum. I was expecting a detailed cross-section of these texts including a comprehensive analysis of both authors, their relations to each other and the motives behind their writings.
For example you state about Heloise's second two letters:
"This is in part because clerical guide lines were produced by males for monasteries but also Heloise is taking the decidedly subservient role imposed upon her by the outside world."
I would dissagree and say that in the second two letters Heloise has abandoned hope of a word consolation from Abelard on her former terms because he was a changed man. I would say she asks for advice from him towar the Paraclete to both offer him respite from his dire situation at Bede and also because she was looking for a tiny bit of warmth and communcation from Abelard through any way possible.
An essay using Heloise as a model must question whether she is typical or untypical. This essay does not.
Also, we can tell from the work of men such as Abelard who used dialectic that the |Catholic authority was being challenged. No effort is made to examine whether people actually believed in what the church preached. Services were in Latin, not the vernacular and we know from the priest's handbooks that the problem of men and women falling to carnal temptation was common.
All in all an OK start but very dissapointing in its handling of the sources, of Heloise and in its evaluative skills.
2 out of 2 people found this comment useful.