A re-telling of the true 12th century love story of Heloise and Abelard. Abelard is a great philosopher and theologian who has taken, like many academics of the time, a vow of celibacy. When he is hired as a tutor for the brilliant and beautiful Hel...
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Finally, I receive a letter.
It has been stripped of any hint of joy, or love, or passion. It is matter-of-fact and cold. He no longer writes to someone he loves: he writes to me as one writes to their diary.
But its contents... its contents make me clutch my heart in pain, regardless of how emotionlessly they are recounted to me.
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He tells me that he has not known how to write this, but that he knows he must.
When Fulbert had noticed my absence, Abelard tells me, he had come to him to demand the location of my whereabouts.
Abelard, boldly, had told him it was of no concern to him any longer as I, as his wife, was now Abelard's property.
To this, in a fury, Fulbert disowned me fully as a niece. He disowned Abelard from his cathedral. He did not care, he professed, what was to become of us. He would not protect Abelard's profession; he would not protect his reputation.
In fact, in anger, he would be sure to tell the world of it: he would tell the world of how we had lain together, and of how we had borne a child in sin, and how we had wed in shame. Abelard would no longer be welcome as lecturer in any cathedral, Fulbert swore it.
"But where is the proof?" Abelard had ventured boldly. "Heloise is away. The proof of our love - our son - is away. I am beloved in all of Paris. My hundreds of students, they will respect and believe my word above yours. They will demand their teacher return to the cathedral!"
Abelard should not have done this.
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