Philosophy is not necessarily at odds with love. But love does not always have a place in the refined thoughts of philosophers or theologians: marriage weighs them down, mating devastates them. So that he is never far from his love affairs, when they occur, the condemnation of others to what the participants conceived as a pure act. The story of Abelardo and Eloísa attests to this.
Born in 1079 in French Brittany, Abelardo, when he reached thirty, was already considered in Paris the first polemicist of his time, but not without his daring thoughts raising controversy or rejection among a not inconsiderable part of a society dedicated in body and soul to the demands of the Church. Even so, his charisma and indisputable oratorical brilliance were enough for a canon of the Paris cathedral to ask Abelardo to give private lessons to his niece (or perhaps daughter?) Eloísa, a talented minor whom he had taught to read. and write in Latin.
The truth is that the young woman and her future professor were already corresponding before he placed himself under the orders of the canon. There was a crush, shared eroticism, secret love affairs and Eloísa became pregnant.
Overall, in the face of such a scandal, there was a hasty marriage, but, anyway, Eloísa ended up locked up in a convent, where she gave birth, but not before her furious uncle sent some thugs to castrate Abelardo. But not even such barbarity could cool her love. And after years of not communicating, tender letters were written again in which they gave free rein to the love they felt for each other.
This romantic love story has traversed the centuries, although with notable falsifications along the way in the correspondence attributed to the lovers full of macaronic Latin inappropriate for them, as well as their own additions, transfers to our days, from a sensationalist television program.
Mark Twain, the author of Huckelberry Finn, perhaps the greatest novel to come out of the United States, along with Moby Dick, is now being shot at by the woke movement, which sees him as nothing more than a textbook racist. However, it was precisely Twain who uncovered the dark side of Abelardo in his writings, which he labeled as repugnant macho.
When the canon found out about his niece's (or daughter's) pregnancy, Twain enlightens us, he could not but condemn Abelardo for being a villain who had deliberately perverted an innocent and trusting minor, under the roof of his own house. But when the scandal broke, the depraved Abelard took Heloise to Calais, where she gave birth to a child.
There was, as we have said, a secret marriage that, although it served to restore Abelardo's good name, left the reputation of Eloísa and her uncle (or father) in the ground, who, furious, ordered some ruffians to castrate the newlywed , crime that Mark Twain rejoices greatly.
Eloísa entered a convent and for twelve years knew nothing of Abelardo. But she wanted fate that one unexpected day she came into her hands a letter written by her lost love, in which he narrated his own story. It didn't take long for them to correspond again with sublime ardor.
But the eunuch Abelardo was no longer the brilliant polemicist of before, and in a public debate in front of San Benardo, he was defeated and humiliated. He died oblivious at the age of 63 and was buried at Cluny. Twenty years later, Eloísa's body was buried next to him. After many years, the two bodies were transferred to the Parisian cemetery of Perè Lachaise, where, according to Twain, "they remain in peace and tranquility until their lodgings are changed again."
Well, where Twain denounces Abelardo as a cowardly seducer, now the woke people deem the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a disgusting racist. Let's find out what our grandchildren will think of us.
