Heloïse

Then follows the melancholy chant of the priests, mingled now and then with a sob of anguish escaping from some woman concealed behind a mass of flowers.

The shadow Monte Cristo had noticed passed rapidly behind the tomb of Abelard and Heloise, placed itself close to the heads of the horses belonging to the hearse, and following the undertaker’s men, arrived with them at the spot appointed for the burial.

Each person’s attention was occupied.

Monte Cristo saw nothing but the shadow, which no one else observed.

And it's beautiful, I think, to see the way the expression between them moves from curiosity to attraction to passion through letters.

And I think, you know, what are the kind of comparators? Famous love letters include Abelard and Heloise, Keats, wrote love letters to Fanny Braun.

There are 574 letters between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning before they eloped.

That's probably the nearest thing.

so that these personal letters, more even than the pictured emotions of Lucy Snow, stand out as a record of romantic love that, insofar as I know, has never before been rivaled.

It is true we have the romantic love letters of Abelard and Heloise, and the letters in the new Heloise of St. Proulx to Julie, and of Julie to St. Proulx, after their separation.

as beautiful

examples of love surviving hopes of happiness as sainte-beuve has quoted as examples of the tragical disinterested passion of love that claims no return but only the right to exist the letters of some eighteenth-century women mademoiselle de l'espinasse madame de la popelinire and mademoiselle d'aissaye but in none of these historic love-letters so at least it seems to me does one feel with the same truth and strength as in these recently published letters of charlotte bront to m the vibration of this tragical hopeless romantic love that asks for nothing but acceptance that does not seek its own the love that only asks to give compared with which all other sorts of love that do seek their own and claim return are as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal but now if we were to accept the view of these letters that they do not express love at all but merely the writer's desire of comradeship with a great man and that after she had become famous she found that literary comradeship she desired in half a dozen male correspondents to whom she addressed letters in every way as interesting as those written by her to m heger and that there is nothing in these letters that any enthusiastic woman might not write to a man double her age who was a married man with a family and who had been her teacher if we could accept all these views could we then hold the opinion that the publication of these letters places charlotte on a higher pedestal than ever it seems to me on the contrary that then we should find ourselves compelled to admit that charlotte bront had fallen very much in our esteem as a result of the publication of these letters for whilst romantic love is a noble sentiment that does honour to the heart that feels it an immense enthusiasm for literary comradeship with great men is not necessarily nor generally even a commendable sentiment it is very often merely a rather vulgar and selfish persistency in claiming the time and attention of busy people who don't want the comradeship and I suppose there are very few people in the least degree famous who have not been rightly harassed by the enthusiasm of professing admirers who have nothing to do themselves, and who want busy men or women of letters to correspond with them.

And the idea is to have an elegant, restrained Syrah, but with some of the fleshiness that comes from our climate grenache, and then the je ne sais quoi that comes from the beautiful perfumes of the Roussanne, give it a bit of charm and sex appeal, and offset the kind of more restrained style of the Syrah.

So that's Héloïse.

And then the Aboulard, which is our big boy, which is supposed to have this really lovely mouthfeel, good saturation of flavor and fruit from all that sunshine, but always reined in, held back by the fact that at the cooler climate, we get a very muscular, taut Grenache.

I was thinking about parallels and think about a Labrador versus a wine Maraner.

But we will let your audience look up.

Might be a good little interest, something you can give their children or something, a little history investigation to look up.

The medieval history of Abelard and Héloïse, of course, some of it being a love story was steamy and reflected the social mores of the day.

As Nicole said also, they had a deeper impact and maybe This is where we connect with them a little bit to answer your question.

We

can glimpse something of the painful tensions this creates in the correspondence between Peter Abelard and his wife, Héloïse.

Peter was a contemporary of Bernard.

He was the brightest spark in the philosophical world of 12th century Paris, able to run rings around his own teachers, and unimpressed by the great Anselm of Canterbury.

While teaching in Paris, he had a passionate affair with Héloïse of Argonteuil, and eventually married her secretly.

When this was discovered, Eloise's enraged uncle captured and castrated Abelard.

He became a monk and continued teaching.

He died at Munich in 1343.

The Introductio ad Theologiam of the famous Abelard, another schoolman, was fatal to him.

Abelard's name is more generally known on account of the golden haze of romance which surrounded him and the fair Heloise, and their loving letters have been often read and mourned over by thousands who have never heard of his theological writings.

At one time the famous Canon of Notre Dame at Paris had an enthusiastic following.

Thousands flocked to his lectures from every country.

Jesus Christ, God and man, is not one of the persons in the Trinity, and a man is not properly called God.

He did not descend into hell.

Such were some of the errors with which Abelard was reproached.

The Introductio ad Theologiam of the famous Abelard, another schoolman, was fatal to him.

Abelard's name is more generally known on account of the golden haze of romance which surrounded him and the fair Heloise, and their loving letters have been often read and mourned over by thousands who have never heard of his theological writings.

At one time the famous Canon of Notre Dame at Paris had an enthusiastic following.

Thousands flocked to his lectures from every country.

We have only fragments of Abelard's writings to judge from, which have been collected by Monsieur Cousin, Ouvrage Inédit d'Abelard, and therefore cannot speak with certain knowledge of his opinions.

At least, they were judged to be blasphemous and heretical by the Council of Soissons, when he was condemned to commit his books to the flames, and to retire to the convent of Saint-Denis.

Some years later, when he had recovered from the horrible mutilation to which he had been subjected by the uncle of Heloise, and his mind had acquired its usual strength, we find him at Paris, again attracting crowds by his brilliant lectures, and pouring forth books, and alas, another fatal one, Sic et Non.

The best edition of Abelard's letters is P. Abelardi et Heloisae conjugis ejus epistolae, ab erroribus purgatae et cum cod.

Here was a brilliant theologian.

We think of him best for his romance with Heloise, with his movement toward what is called nominalism in the school of philosophy.

What he represented was a different perspective.

In Abelard, we have somebody who introduced the term theology in the sense that we understand it today.

Anyway, students crossed oceans to see this man, and he knew it.

Now in the same city lives a young woman named Heloise and Heloise was brilliant.

Her Latin was better than the priests.

She developed a reputation for having a brilliant mind.

She had a great sense of humor and can like really talk some shit.

Lovely girl.

Anyway, Heloise lived with her uncle and Peter Abelard wanted her and he set his mind to it.

And guess what? He took her.

Somewhere or other, maybe far or near, With just a wall, a hedge between, With just the last leaves of the dying year Fallen on a turf grown green.

The Ballad of Dead Ladies by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Tell me now, in what hidden way is Lady Flora, the lovely Roman, Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais, neither of them the fairer woman? Where is Echo, beheld of no man, only heard on river and mere, she whose beauty was more than human? But where are the snows of yesteryear? Where's Héloïse, the learned nun, for whose sake Abelard, I ween, lost manhood and put priesthood on? From love he won such duel and teen.

And where, I pray you, is the queen who willed that Bourdon should steer, sewed in a sack's mouth, down the Seine? But where are the snows of yesteryear? white Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, with a voice like any mermaiden, Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, and Ermengarde, the Lady of Maine, and that good Joan, whom Englishmen at Rouen doomed and burned her there.

Mother of God, where are they then? But where are the snows of yesteryear? Nay, never ask this week, fair lord, where they are gone, nor yet this year, except with this for an overword, but where are the snows of yesteryear?