Book description
Constant J. Mews offers an intellectual biography of two of the
best known personalities of the twelfth century. Peter Abelard was a
controversial logician at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame in Paris when
he first met Heloise, who was the brilliant and outspoken niece of a
cathedral canon and who was then engaged in the study of philosophy. After
an intense love affair and the birth of a child, they married in secret in a
bid to placate her uncle. Nonetheless the vengeful canon Fulbert had Abelard
castrated, following which he became a monk at St. Denis, while Heloise
became a nun at Argenteuil.
Mews, a recognized authority on Abelard's writings, traces his evolution as
a thinker from his earliest work on dialectic (paying particular attention
to his debt to Roscelin of Compiegne and William of Champeaux) to his most
mature reflections on theology and ethics. Abelard's interest in the
doctrine of universals was one part of his broader philosophical interest in
language, theology, and ethics, says Mews. He argues that Heloise played a
significant role in broadening Abelard's intellectual interests during the
period 1115-17, as reflected in a passionate correspondence in which the
pair articulated and debated the nature of their love. Mews believes that
the sudden end of this early relationship provoked Abelard to return to
writing about language with new depth, and to begin applying these concerns
to theology. Only after Abelard and Heloise resumed close epistolary contact
in the early 1130s, however, did Abelard start to develop his thinking about
sin and redemption--in ways that respond closely to the concerns of Heloise.
Mews emphasizes both continuity and development in what these two very
original thinkers had to say.
About the author
Constant Mews is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre
for Studies in Religion and Theology at Monash University. He is author
of The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard (1999) and
Listen Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of
Religious Women in Medieval Europe (2001) and co-editor of
Ecology, Gender and the Sacred (1999).
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