The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise

The letters of Abelard and Heloise were written in Latin about the year 1128, and were first published in Paris in 1616. The 'Letters' appeared first in England in 1728 in their original Latin, but thereafter translations were numerous, the anonymous one given here being published in 1722. It is rather a paraphrase than a translation, but by its swiftness and sympathy best gives the spirit of the original. The story of these illustrious lovers is told in their correspondence, but the outline of their lives is briefly this:--Abelard, Professor of Logic and Canon of Notre Dame, the most celebrated man of his day, being thirty-seven years of age and having so far lived the life intellectual and scorned the passions, meets Heloise, a beautiful and learned woman of nineteen, and falls desperately in love--as only the late lover can. Reason and religion are thrown to the winds; he would marry her, but she loves with a devotion as mad as his, and marriage would arrest his advancement in the Church, so she refuses yet gives him all.

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