ABSTRACT
Most of what is known about Abe´lard’s life, and to a lesser extent about that ofHe´loı¨se,waswritten around 1133 by Abe´lard in his Historia calamitatum [The Story of My Calamities]. From it we learn that he was born in the small village of Le Pallet near Nantes in southern Brittany in 1079. He studied under scholastic theologians such as Guillaume de Champeaux (?–1121) and Anselme de Laon (c. 1050-1117), then taught rhetoric and dialectics in Paris and at the cathedral school of Notre Dame, where he obtained a chair in 1113. While in Paris, he met He´loı¨se and became her teacher at the request of her uncle, Canon Fulbert. Their clandestine and passionate love affair soon developed. Abe´lard was not able to maintain the quality of his teaching and, after Fulbert became aware of the relationship, the lovers were sepa-
rated. When He´loı¨se found out that she was pregnant, she fled with Abe´lard to his sister’s house, where their son, Astrolabe, was born. Abe´lard then convinced Fulbert to let him marry his niece. At first, He´loı¨se refused marriage, considering this to be both dangerous and disgraceful for Abe´lard. But they returned to Paris and were married secretly. Eventually theirweddingbecame public knowledge and Abe´lard was forced to take He´loı¨se to an abbey in Argenteuil, where she had been raised and educated. He settled in the nearby Saint-Denis monastery.
