The Letters of Abelard and Heloise

By Peter Abelard, Héloïse, Betty Radice (translator)

Book cover of The Letters of Abelard and Heloise

Book description

The story of Abelard and Heloise remains one of the world's most celebrated and tragic love affairs. Through their letters, we follow the path of their romance from its reckless and ecstatic beginnings when Heloise became Abelard's pupil, through the suffering of public scandal and enforced secret marriage, to their…

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1 author picked The Letters of Abelard and Heloise as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sara Lipton

Author

The letters collected in this slim paperback collectively tell one of the most dramatic and moving stories of the entire Middle Ages. Letter 1, directed toward a (perhaps fictional) friend, is a spiritual autobiography, consciously modelled on Augustine's Confessions, in which the great philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard recounts his doomed love affair with his brilliant seventeen-year-old pupil Heloise. This affair resulted in Abelard's violent castration at the instigation of her outraged uncle. In Letter 1, written years later, Abelard explains how his suffering gradually led him towards God. Eight more letters, exchanged between Abelard and Heloise years after…

From Sara's list on medieval religious history.