The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise: With Illustrations and Selected Poems of Peter Abelard

Almost one thousand years ago two people fell in love. Peter Abelard was the tutor of nineteen year old Heloise, and nearly twenty years her senior. It was a torrid affair, Heloise fell pregnant, and her guardian, Abbot Fulbert, plotted a hideous revenge. Abelard was seized and castrated. The lovers responded to this catastrophe by retreating into separate religious orders and seeking peace in the service of God.

Years later a letter from Abelard to a friend falls by chance into Heloise’s possession. She writes to him and there follows a series of letters that, even today, has the power to shock, excite and move the reader to tears. The poignant yearning to see one another once more is in every line of their correspondence. Heloise’s timeless declarations of love could have been written only yesterday; her reckless, ruthless honesty, her apotheosis of love over morality – “If the emperor Augustus saw fit to honor me with marriage … it would be dearer to me to be called not his empress, but your whore'' - cannot fail but impress with its hopeless, defiant fidelity. Absolutely captivating.