The Influence Of Abelard 's And Heloise 's Views On Marriage, Religion, And Sexuality

The Courtier, originally written as a “courtesy book”, can now be considered to provide significant insight into the norms and practices associated with courtship and gender during the Renaissance era. The book’s third volume is a particularly insightful window into 16th century romantic ideals. Throughout Book Three, Baldassare Castiglione builds an elaborate perspective on what makes the perfect court lady, what sexual and social behavior is acceptable, and how an ideal couple (both courtier and court lady) should function.

Unlike Abelard, Heloise never wrote a unified and comprehensive piece of work. Instead we have to gather her philosophy from her few letters’ and our understanding of her from Abelard’s responses. From her writing Heloise seems conflicted in both major relationships of her life, both Abelard and with God. With Abelard she is upset that after everything she did for him, he does nothing for her “Tell me one thing, if you can. Why, after our entry into religion, which was your decision alone, have I been so neglected and forgotten by you that you neither speak to me when you are here nor write to me when you are absent?”(1) This portrays an interesting image of Heloise living a life pursuing God in the nunnery but not for Him, and not for herself but for Abelard, because he wanted her to. In doing this she puts Abelard’s interests before not only her own, but even God’s “I can expect no reward for this from God, for it is certain that I have done nothing as yet for love of him”(2). It is in this way that we can learn Heloise’s philosophy, of furthering the interests of others rather than your own. It is this motive that Heloise finds to be good, action performed for the best

Their relationship started when Abelard was hired by Heloise’s uncle to be her teacher and live in his home with Heloise and himself. In the beginning of their relationship, Abelard was just Heloise’s teacher and mentor, but he had another plan for the relationship. He put his plan into action and the relationship turned extremely sexual. When Heloise’s uncle

In the second letter, Abelard asserts his authority over Heloise, and states that she can only contact him if she is seeking help for matters "that pertain to God." Heloise acquiesced to this because she realized that to Abelard, she was the weaker sex, and that he needed her to seek his advice to prove his authority over her and also because she wanted to continue to correspond with him. According to Professor Stephen G. Nichols, writing was equivalent to the "caress" that Heloise used to receive from Abelard. In the fifth letter, she appeals to Abelard's ego by addressing his need to

female characters presented in her study “progress from trying to find sanctuary in the church to

The Song of Songs was a particularly important text for Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a Cistercian monk who wrote often about love of various forms (Evans 1, 5-8). In his “Sermons on the Song of Songs,” Bernard explored the relationship between the soul and Christ as between the Bride and Bridegroom. First, Bernard explored what was distinctive about marriage among other human relationships: “If someone is a slave, he fears his master’s face…If he is a son, he honors his father. But she who asks for a kiss feels love…for to [Bridegroom and Bride] everything is common, nothing is the property of one and

In order to have women change their “sinful ways,” men limited their roles. According to men, women are “prone” to love and have sexual desires. “Renaissance ideas on love and manners, more classical than medieval, and almost exclusively a male product, expressed this new subordination of women to the interests of husbands

The medieval literary genre of romance deals, according to Cooper, with the “subject-matter concerning love or chivalry, or both.” (10) In Romances love and marriage, two matters often associated with each other, are treated as two entirely separate things. In Eliduc by Marie de France and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, marriage is not done out of love, and keeping chivalric codes and promises is paramount, even if it complicates extramarital affairs.

The letters of Abelard and Heloise is ranked among many romance works.The art of romance is very popular between all generations, because it is very interesting, it happens to everyone, and it evokes many emotions. The story is about a man and woman whose affair threatened to embarrass the man. Peter Abelard is a very hated philosopher, because he has argued his way through school making his teachers look like fools. Constantly running from hate, he ends up teaching in a small town where he meets and falls in love with one of his students. The student is heloise d’Argenteuil, whose uncle is housing abelard. Heloise’s uncle eventually finds out about the affair, and they separate and met secretly. Heloise

Throughout the letters, Abelard and Heloise’s perspectives on gender roles were strictly based upon the traditional views on sexuality. For instance, in the egotistical mind of Abelard, women in the medieval society were viewed as a weaker sex who need help of the a stronger male since there were certainly things that “cannot be carried out by women”5. Moreover, Heloise, despite her being a woman, did not seem to be shocked at the idea that men are superior to women. Instead, she instinctively acknowledged the weaker nature of women indicated by her discussion of her abbey which she called “feminine”; she also described it as weak, frail, and needing a more careful attention6. Throughout the first four letters from Abelard and Heloise, they both held congruent views regarding masculinity and femininity, and this dichotomous way of looking at gender indeed did not deviate much from the conventional thinking of the medieval society.

The Society’s Perspective Portrayed in the Story of My Misfortune The Story of My Misfortune, written by Peter Abelard- a distinguished philosopher in Paris, describes how the middle-aged society examined his romantic affair with Heloise. Her uncle, Canon Fulbert, strived for the best educational instructor to further Heloise’s intellectual gift. Then Peter Abelard, who was the only one qualified, found himself astonished and seduced by her uncommon intelligence and soon sparked his love for her. However, the law of Paris prohibited them to persist their love and depicted it socially unacceptable. Regardless, their intrigue continued and even resulted in premarital pregnancy of Heloise in Brittany, where Peter Abelard was born.

It is evident that Florentine adopts the idea that a life of virginity is better than that of marriage and childbearing. She adopted this lifestyle after being passed down this religious meme, or cultural idea, from her brother Leander. In one of archbishop Leander’s 6th century letters, psychoanalysts were able to conclude that he believed that his family would benefit from the sacrifice of his sister giving up her right to sexual intercourse. It is argued that Leander’s strong opinions acted as dominant, almost contagious, ideas that his sister then inherited as a way of life. They argue this through the theory of the Meme vs. Gene — the idea that memes are like genes in the sense that the superior ones are always going to live on. If this

After Heloise and Abelard were split up they began to write letters to each other. What we see of Heloise’s letter is that she is writing to Abelard about how she is his, and how she was living only to love him. This is accurate due to to their intimate relationship with each other that got them in trouble.

Heloise, in her sixth letter to Abelard, wrote: “What could be so foolish as to set out on an unknown path, not yet defined, or so presumptuous as to choose and profess a way of life of which you know nothing, or to take a row you are not capable of keeping .” She was describing to him the nigh-daily conflict women in the monasteries face concerning The Rule of St Benedict. The Rule describes every aspect of life within the church, from how monks are to dress to how they interact with each other and the world at large. There is one problem with the Rule, however: it fails to properly govern its female followers. This lack of clarity causes some members to question their role, or roles, within the structure of the monastery. While there are finite roles for men within the monastery, it is more difficult to determine the roles for women and the importance feminine and masculine traits played in defining those roles.

High–ranking church officials, according to Voltaire, are deeply engrossed in promiscuity as depicted in the lines, “I am infact the daughter of Pope Urban the Tenth and the Princess of Palestrina” (535). The fact that the Pope, despite his vows of celibacy as a priest and leader of the Catholic Church, has a mistress and a daughter (the Old Woman) is very