On the street where they lived.

Heloise and Abelard
Lovers of Parisian Legend

By Josef M. Schomburg
Paris Kiosque - May 2005 - Volume 12, Number 05
Copyright © 2005 Josef M. Schomburg - Used with permission. Adapted from the author's detailed work regarding Paris Promenades.

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The story of Heloise and Abelard is one intimate and intertwined with one of Paris' oldest still-existing regions: its Cloître Notre-Dame. I normally tend to avoid the more anecdotic or dramatized stories I come across in my research about the city's past, but I made an exception for this one because it was an excellent mirror of what was Parisian life in the mediaeval ages. The catholic religion had not yet taken its final form then, nor had public education. The Cloître Notre-Dame, to the north of the Notre-Dame cathedral, would be a stage for the sculpting of both.

Charlemagne had created France's first schools when he decreed that all cathedrals provide an education at least to the younger whose lives were destined to the clergy, but this ruling would later be opened to all. Thus Paris' first cathedral, built around 528 during the Merovingian King Childebert's reign, meant also its first classes, and these were held in the cathedral gardens in what would become the Cloître Notre-Dame. In the Notre-Dame school's early years only the younger attended the open-air classes, as well as any passers-by, but with the city's rise in popularity during Capétian rule meant also a rise in the level of education and those attending. Its first teacher of renown, the Archbishop Albert, taught there in the very beginnings of the 11th century. One can still find proof of these open-air classes upon the outer wall of the Notre-Dame cathedral at the corner of the rue de la Cloître Notre-Dame and the rue Massillon: a line of seven stone bas-reliefs, depicting major events in the life of the Virgin Mary (Notre-Dame), were illustrations for lessons in theology for the school's youngest and illiterate.

The Cloître Notre-Dame wasn't reserved only to those in religious orders - though the church rulers owned all of the property within and controlled its gates and morals, they allowed those outside the order rent apartments and set up commerce there. Though civilian women were forbidden any place of residence there in the years before the Revolution, this detail doesn't seem to figure in the following story.

Pierre Abélard de Pallet, errant student turned controversial teacher, arrived at the Cloître Notre-Dame around 1110. The school there was already famous by then, and had already attained university levels – Abelard's own rather dogmatic teacher Guillaume de Champeaux had preceded him as a famous teacher. The two had been at odds even before Abelard's arrival, and would even become enemies because of Abélard's thencontroversial views about Christian dogma and abstract thought. Though it made him unpopular with his former teacher and the ruling clergy, it made him immensely popular with his students and brought a certain prestige to the school. Prestige also meant resources, as one had to pay for the level of education at which Abelard was teaching.

The façade of 9 - 100 quai aux Fleurs dates from 1849.

The building in front of which I told this story was one standing at numbers 9-11 quai aux Fleurs, the supposed former location of a house belonging to a certain canon Fulbert, the uncle of a young lady, Heloise, known in the Cloître for her beauty and intelligence. Soon after her arrival from an early education at a Coventry near Argenteuil, the young girl (it is thought that she was around twenty) caught Abélard's eye. Perhaps out of Fulbert's wish to continue his niece's education (as university for women was forbidden then), or perhaps out of Abelard's wish to open opportunity for relations more intimate, Abelard took up residence in Fulbert's house in exchange for, in addition to a healthy rent, a free continued education for Heloise. To make a long story short, Abelard moved in, and it became quite obvious that Heloise was with child by 1115.

To hide Heloise's pregnancy, the couple absconded for Abelard's hometown of Pallet (in north-western France near Nantes) until the child was born. A boy, they gave their child the fictitious name Pierre "Astrolabe" (a strange name, probably given in ironic provocation to Abelard's ex-teacher and rival Guillaume de Champeaux). Fulbert insisted that the couple marry, but Heloise was against the idea, as Abelard's brilliant teaching career would end if laws forbidding priests to marry pending then became reality. Abelard returned to Paris to bargain with the uncle, and later (after some unknown arrangement with Fulbert) sent for Heloise. Astrolabe was left to Abelard's sister, and the couple was married secretly at the Saint-Julien de Pauvre church. The couple tried to keep their relation secret, and went back to their respective lives as before, but Fulbert, (it is thought) proud of his niece's relation to the world-famous professor, did little to hide Abelard's relations to his family.

Detail of the façade, 9 - 100 quai aux Fleurs.

Abelard, probably fearing for his career, decided to return Heloise to her Argenteuil Coventry to become a nun, and he himself left the cloister for a teaching post at Saint- Denis cathedral. Upon his learning of this, Fulbert, mad with rage at the loss of his niece and family prestige, in the middle of the night sent two fellow canons in search of Abelard to castrate him.

Most of this last passage happened in the year 1118, and by its end Fulbert was decanonised, Abelard became a priest, and Heloise a nun. From then the couple maintained a rather aloof and chaste relationship, exchanging a correspondence that probably is the main reason that this story is here still here to tell today. Abelard continued his brilliant career, but the beginning of the Catholic tightening of morals and imposition of pure dogma that would end the century would bring him difficulties. Charged with heresy in 1122, he was obliged to leave the Notre-Dame University. Leaving Paris to reside in a small town in the suburbs of the capital, he had built an oratory that, under the name of Pereclet, would become the centre of a nunnery of which Heloise would later become Abbess. Abelard was obliged to take his teaching to Paris' left bank in 1136 to open a school on the Montagne Saint-Genevieve. He would be accused of heresy in 1140 and, condemned, would spend the last years of his life as a monk of the Saint-Victor order and constrained to silence. Upon his death in 1142 he would be buried at le Pereclet, and Heloise, sensing her end was near in 1164, demanded to be buried at his side.

The couple would lie undisturbed until the le Pereclet nunnery was sold as National Property following the 1789 revolution. Fortunately they were "saved" by the art collector turned curator Alexandre Lenoir, and in his "museum" set up in a recuperated Coventry (today l'École du Beaux-Arts), he laid them to rest in a sort of sepulchre built with bits and pieces of the different monasteries he was able to reclaim, topped with sculptured life-size "likenesses" made by his hand. There they would stay until the state would reclaim them in 1816.

The sepulcre of Heloise and Abelard in Père Lachaise.

After a few unfortunate years of being moved about, they were laid to rest in Père- Lachaise cemetery in 1819. As for the building at 9-11 quai aux Fleurs that bears "likenesses" similar to those topping their tomb - these were the work of the same artist. The architect of this building, erected in 1848, was following the supposition that his construction was being erected on grounds formerly occupied by the canon Fulbert's – but the only certainty to that note is that, on what today would be right side of the building below a stair there, there was once a garden and a wall mounted with an inscription and two medallions that, if not resembling the lovers, were dedicated to them. In fact the whole "garden monument" was a pure concoction by Alexandre Lenoir. The story of Heloise and Abelard is one of the earliest romances known to this city, and it is probably for this that their names are famous here even today. Their tomb at Père- Lachaise is one of the most remarkable and most visited sepulchres in the cemetery.

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Josef M. Schomburg came to Paris in 1989 for a holiday and never left. Artist turned photographer turned graphic artist and then art director, he recently realized that no particular description is apt. Jack of many trades and master of several, he is the creator of Paris Promenades from which this piece was adapted. You can contact Josef via this link.

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