Download Documents relating to `In a Valley of This Restless Mind` 1 `However

Documents relating to ‘In a Valley of This Restless Mind’
1
‘However, it may allay the bitterness of your grief if I prove that this came upon us justly, as
well as to our advantage, and that God’s punishment was more properly directed against us
when we were married than when we were living in sin. After our marriage, when you were
living in the cloister with the nuns at Argenteuil and I came one day to visit you privately,
you know what my uncontrollable desire did with you there, actually in a corner of the
refectory, because we had nowhere else to go, I repeat, you know how shamelessly we
behaved on that occasion in so hallowed a place, dedicated to the most holy Virgin. . Even if
our other shameful behavior was ended, this alone would deserve far heavier punishment.’
Abelard, Letter 4, The Letters of Abelard and Héloïse tr. Betty Radice, Penguin Classics,
1974, p. 146.
‘Moreover, to add to my indignation at the outrage you suffered, all the laws of equity in our
case were reversed. For while we enjoyed the pleasures of an uneasy love and abandoned
ourselves to fornication (if I may use an ugly but expressive word) we were spared God’s
severity. But when we amended our unlawful conduct by what was lawful, and atoned for
the shame of fornication by an honourable marriage, then the Lord in his anger laid his hand
heavily upon us, and would not permit a chaste union though he had long tolerated one which
was unchaste. The punishment you suffered would have been proper vengeance for men
caught in open adultery. But what others deserve for adultery came to you through a marriage
which you believed had made amends for all previous wrongdoing; what adulterous women
have brought upon their lovers, your own wife brought on you. Nor was this at the time when
we abandoned ourselves to our former delights, but when we had already parted and were
leading chaste lives, you presiding over your school in Paris and at your command living
with the nuns at Argenteuil. Thus we were separated, to give you more time to devote
yourself to your pupils, and me more freedom for prayer and meditation on the Scriptures,
both of us leading a life which was holy as well as chaste.’ Héloïse, Letter 3, ibid., p.130.
2
‘I set off at once…and brought back my mistress to make her my wife. But she was strongly
opposed to the proposal… She absolutely rejected this marriage; it would be nothing but a
disgrace and a burden to me. Along with my loss of reputation, she put before me the
difficulties of marriage.. she argued, I could listen to the philosophers…Theophrastus sets out
in considerable detail the unbearable annoyances of marriage and its endless anxieties, in
order to prove by the clearest possible arguments that a man should not take a wife. ..But
apart from the hindrance to such philosophic study, consider, she said, the true conditions for
a dignified way of life. What harmony can there be between pupils and nursemaids, desks
and cradles, books or tablets and distaffs, pen or stylus and spindle? Who can concentrate on
thoughts of Scripture or philosophy and be able to endure babies crying, nurses nothing them
with lullabies, and all the noisy coming and going of men and women about the house? Will
he put up with the constant muddle and squalor which small children bring into the home?’
Abelard, Historia calamitatum, ibid., p.70 et seq.
‘Héloïse.. argued that the name of mistress instead of wife would be dearer to her and more
honourable to me – only love freely given should keep me for her, not the construction of a
marriage tie’ Abelard, Historia calamitatum, ibid., p.74.
‘I looked for no marriage –bond, no marriage portion.. The name of wife may seem more
sacred or more binding, but sweeter for me will always be the word mistress, or if you will
permit me, that of concubine or whore. ..But you kept silent about most of my arguments for
preferring love to wedlock and freedom to chains. God is my witness that if Augustus,
Emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honour me with marriage and conferred all the
earth on me to possess for ever, it would be dearer and more honourable to me to be called
not his Empress but your whore. / For a man’s worth does not rest on his wealth or power;
these depend on fortune, but worth on its merits. And a woman should realize that if she
marries a rich man more readily than a poor one, and desires her husband more for his
possessions than himself, she is offering herself for sale’ Héloïse, Letter 1, ibid., pp. 113/4.
3
‘We have in France an old teacher turned into a new theologian, who in his early days
amused himself with dialectics and now gives utterance to wild imaginations upon the Holy
Scriptures…. I know not what there is in heaven above and in the earth beneath which he
deigns to confess ignorance of; he raises his eyes to Heaven, and searches the deep things of
God, and then returning to us, he brings back unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a
man to utter, while he is presumptuously prepared to give a reason for everything, even of
those things which are above reason; he presumes against reason and against faith. For what
is more against reason than by reason to attempt to transcend reason? And what is more
against faith than to be unwilling to believe what reason cannot attain?... He promises
understanding to his hearers, even on those most sublime and sacred truths which re hidden
in the very bosom of our holy faith; and he places degrees in the Trinity, modes in the
Majesty, numbers in the Eternity. He ahs laid down, for example, that God the Father is full
power, the Son a certain kind of power, the Holy Spirit no power… Did Arius ever go
further? Who can endure this? Who would not shut his ears to such sacrilegious words? Who
not shudder at such novel profanities of words and ideas?’
www.ccel.org/ccel/bernard/letters.lxiii.ii.i.html
‘If sentences were to denote or put forward real things, then surely they would have to be
names. But sentences differ from all words precisely in this regard, namely that they propose
something to be (or not to be) something else. Yet ‘being (or not being) some real thing’ is
not any real thing at all. Thus sentences do not simply denote any real things, the way names
do, but instead propose how they stand towards each other’ Abelard, Dialectica, quoted in
Peter King, ‘The Metaphysics of Peter Abelard’,
individual.utoronto.ca/pkingarticles/Abelard-on-Metaphysics
4
illustrated with Powerpoint
5
For it is not only now that I begin to love you; I can remember having done so for a long
time. I had not yet quite passed the bounds of youth and reached early manhood when I knew
of your name and your reputation, not yet for religion but for virtuous and praiseworthy
studies. I used to hear at that time of the woman who although still caught up in the
obligations of the world, devoted all her application to knowledge of letters, something which
is very rare…. Later on when.. you turned your zeal for learning in a far better direction, and
as a woman wholly dedicated to philosophy in the true sense, you left logic for the Gospel,
Plato for Christ, the academy for the cloister’ ibid., p.277-278
For you are one of those animals in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, woman though you are,
and must not only burn like coal but glow like a lamp and give light as well’ ibid., p.279.
‘We have still been granted (the presence) of him who was yours, ..Master Peter, whom in
the last years of his life that same Providence sent to Cluny.. Him, therefore, venerable and
dearest sister in the Lord, him whom after your union in the flesh you are joined by the
better, and therefore stronger, bond of divine love;.. God cherishes (him) in his bosom, and
keeps him there to be restore to you at the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet-note of
God descending from heaven’ Peter the Venerable, Letter (115) to Héloïse, ibid., p.281-4
‘I, Peter, Abbot of Cluny, who received Peter Abelard as a monk of Cluny, and gave his
body, removed in secret, to the Abbess Héloïse and the nuns of the Paraclete, by the authority
of Almighty God and of all the saints, in virtue of my office, absolve him from all his sins.’
The Absolution of Peter Abelard, ibid., p.288