Heloise and Abelard 1st Letter
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To her master, nay father, to her husband, nay brother; his handmaid, nay daughter, his spouse, nay sister: to ABELARD, HELOISE.
Your letter written to a friend for his comfort, beloved, was lately brought to me by chance. Seeing at once from the title that it was yours, I began the more ardently to read it in that the writer was so dear to me, that I might at least be refreshed by his words as by a picture of him whose presence I have lost. Almost every line of that letter, I remember, was filled with gall and wormwood, to wit those that related the miserable story of our conversion, and your unceasing crosses, my all.
You didst indeed fulfil in that letter what at the beginning of it you hadst promised your friend, namely that in comparison with your troubles he should deem his own to be nothing or but a small matter. After setting forth your former persecution by your masters, then the outrage of supreme treachery upon your body, you have turned your pen to the execrable jealousy and inordinate assaults of your fellow-pupils also, namely Alberic of Rheims and Lotulph the Lombard; and what by their instigation was done to that famous work of your theology, and what to yourself, as it were condemned to prison, you havet not omitted.
From these you comest to the machinations of thine Abbot and false brethren, and the grave detraction of you by those two pseudo-apostles, stirred up against you by the aforesaid rivals, and to the scandal raised by many of the name of Paraclete given to the oratory in departure from custom: and then, coming to those intolerable and still continuing persecutions of your life, you havet carried to the end the miserable story of that cruellest of extortioners and those wickedest of monks, whom you callest your sons. Which things I deem that no one can read or hear with dry eyes, for they renewed in fuller measure my griefs, so diligently did they express each several part, and increased them the more, in that you relatedst that your perils are still growing, so that we are all alike driven to despair of your life, and every day our trembling hearts and throbbing bosoms await the latest rumour of your death.
And so in His Name Who still protects you in a certain measure for Himself, in the Name of Christ, as His handmaids and thine, we beseech you to deign to inform us by frequent letters of those shipwrecks in which you still art tossed, that you mayest have us at least, who alone have remained to you, as partners in they grief or joy. For they are wont to bring some comfort to a grieving man who grieve with him, and any burden that is laid on several is borne more easily, or transferred. And if this tempest should have been stilled for a space, then all the more hasten you to write, the more pleasant your letter will be. But whatsoever it be of which you mayest write to us, you wilt confer no small remedy on us; if only in this that you wilt shew yourself to be keeping us in mind.
For how pleasant are the letters of absent friends Seneca himself by own example teaches us, writing thus in a certain passage to his friend Lucilius: “Because you writest me often, I thank you. For in the one way possible you shewest yourself to me. Never do I receive a letter from you, but immediately we are together.” If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the absent friend. But thanks be to God, that in this way at least no jealousy prevents you from restoring to us your presence, no difficulty impedes you, no neglect (I beseech you) need delay you.
You have written to your friend the comfort of a long letter, considering his difficulties, no doubt, but treating of thine own. Which diligently recording, whereas you didst intend them for his comfort, you havet added greatly to our desolation, and while you wert anxious to heal his wounds has inflicted fresh wounds of grief on us and made our former wounds to ache again. Heal, I beseech you, the wounds that you yourself hast given, who art so busily engaged in healing the wounds given by others. You have indeed humoured your friend and comrade, and paid the debt as well of friendship as of comradeship; but by a greater debt you havet bound yourself to us, whom it behoves you to call not friends but dearest friends, not comrades but daughters, or by a sweeter and a holier name, if any can be conceived.
As to the greatness of the debt which binds you to us neither argument nor evidence is lacking, that any doubt be removed; and if all men be silent the fact itself cries aloud. For of this place you, after God, art the sole founder, the sole architect of this oratory, the sole builder of this congregation. Nothing didst you build here on the foundations of others. All that is here is your creation. This wilderness, ranged only by wild beasts or by robbers, had known no habitation of men, had contained no dwelling. In the very lairs of the beasts, in the very lurking places of the robbers, where the name of God is not heard, you didst erect a divine tabernacle, and didst dedicate the Holy Ghosts own temple. Nothing didst you borrow from the wealth of kings or princes, when you couldst have obtained so much and from so many, that whatsoever was wrought here might be ascribed to you alone. Clerks or scholars flocking in haste to your teaching ministered to you all things needful, and they who lived upon ecclesiastical benefices, who knew not how to make but only how to receive oblations, and had hands for receiving, not for giving, became lavish and importunate here in the offering of oblations.
Thine, therefore, truly thine is this new plantation in the divine plan, for the plants of which, still most tender, frequent irrigation is necessary that they may grow. Frail enough, from the weakness of the feminine nature, is this plantation; it is infirm, even were it not new. Wherefore it demands more diligent cultivation and more frequent, after the words of the Apostle: “I have planted, Apollos watched; but God gave the increase.” The Apostle had planted, by the doctrines of his preaching, and had established in the Faith the Corinthians, to whom he wrote. Thereafter Apollos, the Apostles own disciple, had watered them with sacred exhortations, and so by divine grace the increment of virtues was bestowed on them. You are tending the vineyard of anothers vine which you didst not plant, which is turned to thine own bitterness, with admonitions often wasted and holy sermons preached in vain. Think of what you owest to thine own, who thus spendest your care on anothers. You teachest and reprovest rebels, nor gainest than aught. In vain before the swine dost you scatter the pearls