The Letters Of Abelard And Heloise

Abelard’s exhortation to Heloise to shed her bitterness toward God and see his punishment as an act of divine mercy and love must have had a profound effect on Heloise, because her response takes on an entirely new, more measured and reserved tone. After vowing to no longer write about her grief to him, she turns to more practical matters.

In her first letter to Abelard, Heloise remarks that he is more knowledgeable than her on the matter of the education of holy women. In this letter, she follows up and asks Abelard to instruct the Paraclete community on how the order of nuns began and “what authority there is for our profession” (94).  

She elaborates that she and her nuns are in need of a Rule, a guide for their daily lives and activities as nuns. She notes that their predecessors had never written down a Rule suitable for women, but that this is necessary, given the numbers of women entering monasteries and the fact that women and men are fundamentally different in the burdens that they are able to shoulder.

Specifically, she asks about the ordering of psalms, whether the nuns should eat together with men, whether they should consume wine, whether they should fast, whether they should eat meat, and whether they should avoid contact with “women of the world” (95).