Profiles in Virtue - Heloise, or, Finding A Way

It would be easy to conclude, based on my posts so far, that "virtue" is all a matter of men and arms, and that it is specifically devoted to various approaches to combat.  Nothing could be further from the truth; despite its Latin roots, virtue sees no gender, no sex, no race, no creed, no color, no profession, and no calling.  It is different things in different times and places, but anyone can practice it.

As an example, I offer Heloise, of the Abbey of Paraclet, who has the distinction of being better-known as part of a tragic romance than on her own.  The male half of said romance, Pierre Abelard, would have been better-served by being a theater kid in another century, so fond was he of dramatic scenes.  One can almost hear the emo-kid eyeshadow in quotes like "Logic has made me hated in the world."  In comparison, Heloise, who enters history first as a teenager, is remarkable not because of her love of drama, though there are plenty of dramatic lines to Heloise, but because of her ability to come back.

"My hair is uncovered! What do I have to do to get your attention, show an ankle?"

Heloise was born of uncertain parentage, probably daughter of a nun and "niece" of Fulbert, a canon of Notre Dame.  She apparently drew attention for her great intelligence even prior to coming to Notre Dame, where she lived with Fulbert in her mid-teens.  By this point she was already entering correspondence with leading intellectual figures of the period, such as Peter the Venerable, later abbot at Cluny and one of the men responsible for bringing Arabic works into European scholarship.  Fulbert arranged for her to be taught by Pierre Abelard.  Abelard was a celebrity intellectual at the time, something like the Jeff Goldblum character in Jurassic Park, but then, as now, even celebrity intellectuals need day jobs, and so it was that the rock-star theologian became tutor to the teenaged prodigy.  The usual course of events for cloistered girls and young men with more hormones than boundaries followed, though their own letters differ on which one of them approached the other.  In the fullness of time, she developed a certain fullness of figure, who was christened "Astrolabe" when he was born.  Fulbert eventually discovered their affair, and encouraged them to marry.  They wed in secret, he exposed them, she fled to a convent, and Abelard found himself exceptionally unlikely to father any more illegitimate babies.

For many young girls, it might have ended here - pushed into a convent without any particular calling to it, separated from the intellectual circles she loved, separated from a man that she loved enough to marry despite her own disdain for marriage, she might have decided that this was the end of the line.  This was not Heloise's way.  Instead, Heloise picked herself up, took stock, and worked with what she had.  For years, she did not hear from Abelard, despite trying to send word to him.  Finally, a letter from a mutual friend fell into her hands, and a lengthy correspondence between them ensued.

The Letters are fascinating reading.  Abelard comes across largely as self-pitying, especially early in the letters, though his intelligence shines through.  Pierre Abelard's writing reminds me of the one time I ever met David Petraeus - he struck me as almost as smart as he thought he was.  Heloise, meanwhile, points out that she has suffered as much as he, that she does not regret their affair, and that she was still his wife, mostly because he thought they should be married, not because she did; she considered both marriage and family obligations to be burdens to a scholar and restrictions on her freedom.

They generally fall into two categories - the love letters, and the letters of direction.  It is clear that Heloise's feelings toward Abelard were unresolved, while he, by shame and incapacity, had resolved his own; by the end of the love letters, it had become obvious to her as well that he would not be any help in her resolution.  Instead, she accepted communication with him on the terms he had set, as she was the abbess by now of a convent of nuns which he had established.  The later letters are purely intellectual and theological, and establish that she is at least his intellectual equal.

The distant sequel to all of this is that Abelard was prone to overreach in theology as well as romance, and was for a time declared a heretic for what is now conventional Catholic doctrine, and it was primarily due to Heloise's influence that he found sanctuary at Cluny; Heloise, meanwhile, rose as far as a woman could rise in the Church of the time, with broad authority over a half-dozen nunneries in France.  She died in 1163, widely respected for her intellect and business savvy, her early scandals less a hindrance than an added layer of interest.

There are a number of lessons that can be drawn from Heloise.  First, the early scandal of her life did not deter her from her aims, nor did it stop her rise.  Neither did subsequent scandals - the entire reason the Abbey of the Paraclete became a nunnery was because her original abbey was seized and shut down because of supposed impropriety.  In terms of actual influence in the world by 1141 she had eclipsed her onetime husband, since she was the one who had to arrange his sanctuary.  Second, she was determined.  Her writings make clear that she did not enter into a relationship with Abelard blind, and when she could not have the relationship she wanted with him, she found a relationship she could have.  Finally, she is very clear on the fact that she could not be dissuaded from what she thought was right, regardless of prevailing opinion.

Heloise, like Eleanor of Aquitaine, was an exception to most conventional morality of the 12th Century; as a young woman she entered willingly into what would widely have been considered an inappropriate relationship, she made clear that her religious vocation was not her first choice, and Abelard's letters make very clear his exasperation with how strong-willed she could be.  However, their examples raise questions.  There's a saying in paleontology, that for every fossil you find there were a hundred thousand lost samples.  If we have examples of Eleanor and Heloise, what else do we not know?

I've started from the beginning by saying that virtue is a choice.  Heloise, more than anyone else I've written about, is clear on this.  Her writings make clear that she chose to be Abelard's lover, even chose to be his wife, and that she chose to pursue him rather than stop, when that pursuit ended, she chose to maintain whatever contact she could with him, and when she could have wallowed in her sorrows, she chose to rise as far as her world would allow her, by her own efforts.  At any step, she could have chosen otherwise, and it would not have been remarkable, but she chose to continue.  This speaks to a diligence and determination that deserves to be closed out with a quote from the woman herself:

No one's real worth is measured by his property or power: Fortune belongs to one category of things and virtue to another.