The Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Peter Abelard

Author:Peter Abelard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141915951
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Letter 7

Abelard to Heloise

This long letter is Abelard’s answer to Heloise’s first question about the origin of nuns. To us it seems prolix and not very logical in the arrangement of the many examples it gives of the specially favoured position of women among the followers of Christ and in the early Church. It also draws comparisons between Christian women and the heroines of the Old Testament and classical antiquity. (BR) A fuller summary than that supplied by Radice follows, including quotations from Abelard.1 (MTC)

‘Out of love, dearest sister, you and your spiritual daughters have sought to know about the origin of your profession and how the religion of nuns began. I will reply as succinctly and shortly as I can. The order of monks and also of nuns has taken the form of its religion most fully from our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Even before Christ, the germ of this idea already existed. The widow Anna, mentioned in St Luke’s Gospel,2 ‘equally with Simeon, was held worthy to receive the Lord in the temple and to be filled with the spirit of prophecy’. As the embodiment of justice and the fulfilment of all good things, Christ comes in the fullness of time to perfect what is incomplete and to manifest what is unknown. ‘As he came to call and redeem both sexes, he deigned to unite them in the true monkhood of his congregation, so that the authority of this profession is therefore granted to men and women alike and the perfection of the life he proposed is to be imitated by everybody.’ Along with the male apostles and disciples, we read in the gospels of ‘the convent of holy women who renounced the world and gave up all property so they might possess Christ only’. Scripture records ‘how devoutly these most blessed women and true nuns followed Christ, and with what gratitude and honour both Christ himself and the apostles after him showed their devotion to them’.

The principal examples are the sisters Martha who served Christ within the house and Mary who anointed his feet. ‘The Gospels record that it was only women who ministered to the Lord. They even devoted their own resources to his daily sustenance and provided the necessities of life especially for him.’ Who does not know that Mary Magdalene anointed the head of Christ with the oil spilling over from her alabaster box? ‘What, I ask, is this bounty of the Lord? What is this dignity of women, by which he should offer his head as well as his feet for anointing by none but women? What, I ask, is this privilege of the weaker sex by which a woman should anoint the supreme Christ, who was already anointed from conception with all the ointments of the Holy Spirit? As if by consecrating him as king and priest with bodily sacraments, she makes him “the Christ” meaning “the anointed one”.’ There are examples of anointing by patriarchs and priests in the Old Testament. But

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