Héloïse d'Argenteuil

Heloisa (* around 1095 in the Loire region; † ca 1164 in the monastery of the Paraclete at Nogent -sur- Seine), Fr. Héloïse or Héloise, dt also called Heloïse or Heloise, was the wife of the philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard and abbess of the Cistercian founded by and fontevraldensischen models and exegetical underpinned by Abelard's writings woman Convention Paraclete.

Life

Heloisa was probably the daughter of Anjou Great nobles and later prioress of the Abbey of Fontevraud, Hersendis of Champagne; her father's name is unknown. Immediately after the birth came Heloisa for monastic education for young children in the Monastery of Nuns of Notre- Dame d' Argenteuil, where apparently her uncle Fulbert, who had since ascended to the subdeacon of Notre Dame in Paris, a kind of duty of supervision and guardianship role came up.

Later - around 1116/1117 - Peter Abelard met Heloise know and love. Abelard, a lecturer at the Chair dialectic of Paris, initially worked as a private tutor Heloisas and the two entered into a passionate but concealed love affair. After some time, however, the affair became known. Abelard left his mistress, who had become pregnant by him, bring secretly to Le Pallet, where she gave birth to her son Astralabius to the world.

Then Heloisa returned at the request of Abelard, who had meanwhile arranged with her uncle Fulbert, returned to Paris and was against their will, but, with her lover married complying with the requirements of canon law, which is the previous childbirth subsequently legitimized and a public scandal initially avoided. But in the same year prompted the revengeful uncle Fulbert Abelard's castration. This survived the mutilation and retired as a monk in the monastery of Saint- Denis back. Heloisa he had to retreat to the nuns convent at Argenteuil, which he wanted to make her remarriage in the case of a subsequent divorce impossible.

In 1118 Heloisa entered the Benedictine monastery of Argenteuil, where she had already spent her childhood, and made ​​his solemn vows. There she was possibly from 1123 Prioress, to Abbot Suger of Saint- Denis the Convention disbanded in 1129 and the nuns expelled from the monastery.

Only this time - after more than ten years - the contact between Heloise and Abelard revived. The 32 -year-old nun finally found with a group of nuns in Abelard's abandoned hermitage Paraclete near Nogent -sur -Seine, a new place to live. Heloisa built there as a prioress, and later as abbess, a new woman Convention, which is lived by a facilitated Benedictine Rule, partly under the proposals Abelard. The Convention grew rapidly under the wise leadership Heloisas and existed at the time of her death from five priories, and a branch monastery. Abelard remained Heloisa and the monastery until his death in a letter connected as a counselor.

The correspondence of the pair made ​​it famous. Heloisa turned out in their letters not only as a woman of extraordinary mind and heart formation, but in the subtlety and elegance of their formulations as a gifted writer, as was later confirmed by a contemporary ( Hugo Metellus from Toul ).

In 1131 Pope Innocent II placed the Paraclete Convent Heloisas under direct papal line, which did not prevent him, however, to condemn Abelard ten years later at the Council of Sens as heretics. In the spring of 1142 Peter Abelard died. Peter the Venerable, abbot of the monastery of Cluny, a little later Abelard remains personally brought for burial in the convent of the Paraclete. It was not until 22 years later, in 1164, Heloisa died there after a long time as a recognized religious leader. She was buried next to her beloved Abelard in the chapel Petit Moustier.

After the monastery was closed in 1792 during the time of the French Revolution and almost completely destroyed in 1817 a neo-gothic monument was erected in honor Heloisas and Abelard in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, in which the scanty remains of their dead bodies have been spent.

Use of the subject

• Jean -Jacques Rousseau: Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse. Roman 1761
• Hannes other: meeting with Melusine. Book 2 Sonnenberg, Annweiler 2007 (the two protagonists call themselves in their wild love so, with reference to the medieval clerics ( in ). )