To the bride of Christ
From his servant.
There are four points, by my count, in your last letter on which you base your sense of injury; I see nothing in the letter more than that. First, you complain that, “outside the well-known rules of writing letters” and even “against the order of nature itself,” my letter to you put your name ahead of mine in its greeting. Second, that I brought you sorrow when I owed you comfort and made your tears flow faster when I should have dried them—this, it seems, by my writing in my letter, “And if the Lord should deliver me up to my enemies,” and so on. Third is your old and continual complaint against God about the manner in which we came to the religious life and the savagery of the act of betrayal committed against me. Finally, you countered my praise of you with an accusation against yourself, along with a not-inconsiderable appeal that I refrain from praising you again.
I will answer each of these points in turn. My purpose is not to make excuses for myself but rather to instruct you and to urge you, first, to accede to my requests when you understand that they are grounded in reason; then, to hear me out when I speak of your requests, once you see I am not blameworthy in my own; and last, to be somewhat more reluctant to condemn me when you realize I do not deserve your reproach.
First, then, in the matter of my greeting, whose order you say I have reversed—You will note it was consistent with what you yourself have claimed. It is certainly common knowledge, as you say, that in letters to superiors their names should be placed first. But you must understand that you are my superior and have been so from the time you became my lady, that is, on your becoming the bride of my Lord. As Saint Jerome wrote to Eustochium, “I write to you as ‘My lady Eustochium’ because, surely, I ought to call my Lord’s own bride ‘my lady.’”1 A happy exchange of marriage ties for you, then—the wife, first, of the least of men, now raised to wedlock with the greatest of all kings. As a consequence of this honor, you have been lifted not only above the man who was once your husband but above all the other servants of that King. It should not seem strange to you, then, if I commend myself, living or dead, to the prayers of the women of your convent, since by a widely accepted right brides have power of intercession with their lords beyond that of any member of their households, as befits the relative status of ladies and servants. In fact, the type of these brides2 is the queen and bride of that great King himself, carefully presented in the psalm which says, “The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing, surrounded with splendor. Hearken, O daughter, and see…. The daughters of Tyre and the rich among the people shall entreat thy favor with gifts.”3 In other words, she stands next to her husband, clinging closely to his side, and walks at a pace with him while all the others, as it were, follow behind or stand a long way off.
In the Canticles the bride rejoices over her distinction, the Ethiopian woman whom, in a certain sense, Moses took to wife.4 “I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,” she says; “therefore, the king hath loved me and hath led me into his chamber.” And just after, “Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my color.”5 She represents in genus the contemplative soul, which in species is called the bride of Christ; but in a more particular way the terms pertain to all of you, as your outer habit also indicates.6 The garb of coarse black cloth you wear—so much like the mourning dress of worthy widows who lament the deaths of the husbands they loved—shows that you are, as the Apostle says, truly widowed in this world and desolate, deserving of the assistance of the Church.7 Scripture also remembers the widows’ grief for their Bridegroom who was slain, saying, “Women sat at the tomb, weeping and lamenting the Lord.”8
Now, the Ethiopian woman also has a black exterior—in her skin—and appears less beautiful than other women with respect to outward things. She is not different, though, in inward things, and in some of these she may even be whiter and more beautiful, as in, for example, her bones and teeth. [The whiteness of teeth, in fact, is praised even in a bridegroom, as in the phrase, “And his teeth are whiter than milk.”]9 She is black, then, in outward things but beautiful in inward things, as if because she is outwardly blackened in her flesh by her affliction in this life with tribulations of the flesh—as Saint Paul says, “All that live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution,”10 and, just as prosperity is signified by white, so adversity is appropriately signified by black. She is white within, though—as in her bones—as if because her soul remains strong in virtue, as it is written, “All the glory of the daughter of the king is within.”11 For the bones within, which are covered by the flesh, are the strength of the flesh they sustain; they then well represent the soul which is within the flesh, and gives life to the flesh, and sustains and moves and governs the flesh, and supplies all its well-being. And its whiteness, or its beauty, lies in the virtues which adorn it.
She is also black in outward things because, so long as she remains an exile on her pilgrimage in this life, her condition is degraded and low so that she may be exalted in the life to come—the life which is hidden with Christ in God12—when she will have gained her home country at last. The true sun alters her color because the love of her Bridegroom in heaven humbles her or torments her with trials so that prosperity can never make her proud. He alters her color and, in that, distinguishes her from the rest of women who fix their eyes on earthly things and seek the glory of the world. She becomes a lily-of-the-valley in her humility,13 not a lily-of-the-mountain-peaks like those foolish virgins who swell themselves with pride at their purity of the flesh—their abstinence in outward things—only to wither in the heat of temptation. She is right to address the daughters of Jerusalem—that is, the more imperfect among the faithful who do not deserve the name of sons—and say to them, “Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my color,” or in other words, “If I bear my adversities in humility like a man, it is not through my own virtue but through the grace of him I serve.” Hypocrites and heretics will act otherwise, of course, who, always with their eyes on the eyes of other men, affect the most abject humility in the hope of earthly glory and endure their many trials to no avail. We can only wonder at their self-abasement and self-imposed austerity, for they are by far the wretchedest of men, with no share in the good things of this life or of the life to come. [Thinking about this carefully, then, the bride says, “Do not consider it strange why I do this.” But we can only wonder about them when, seething with a desire for earthly praise, they deprive themselves of earthly goods to no avail, remaining wretched both now and in the future.]14 Such, in fact, is the self-restraint of the foolish virgins of the parable who were shut outside the door.15
She is also right to say that, because she is black and beautiful, the king loved her and led her into his chamber—that is, into the seclusion and repose of contemplation—and to his bed, about which she says, “In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth.”16 Her color itself is not beautiful and prefers the hidden to the open, the private to the public; and a wife like this desires the private pleasures of her husband more than the open ones, would rather, for example, be touched in bed than seen at table. Though less appealing to the eye, the flesh of black women is often softer to the touch, and so the pleasure derived from them is greater and more suitably enjoyed in private than in public, and their husbands then take pleasure in their wives by leading them into their chambers rather than out in public view. Continuing with the figure, then, the spiritual bride is right to say, “I am black but beautiful,” and to add immediately, “therefore the king hath loved me and hath led me into his chamber,” aligning each particular with particular—that is, because she is beautiful, the king loved her, and because she is black, he led her into his chamber. As I said earlier, she is beautiful within, that is, with the virtues that the bridegroom loves; and she is black without, that is, with the adversity of the body’s tribulations.
This blackness—that is, of the body’s tribulations—can easily turn the minds of the faithful away from a love of earthly things toward a longing for eternal life, and it sometimes also draws them from the tumult of the world toward private contemplation, as Saint Jerome said happened in the case of Paul at the inception of our monastic way of life.17 This low, coarse clothing, too, indicates seclusion more than public life, in keeping with the humble retirement most appropriate to our calling. There is nothing that more calls for public display than the expensive clothes no one wants or needs for any other purpose than the empty pomp and glory of the world, as Saint Gregory has shown: “No one adorns himself like this in private, but only where he can be seen.”18 Moreover, the chamber of the bride I spoke of earlier is the one to which the Bridegroom in the Gospel invites anyone who prays: “When thou shalt pray,” he says, “enter into thy chamber and, having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret,” not in the streets or in public places like the hypocrites.19 He calls this chamber a place apart, secluded from the sight and tumult of the world, a place where prayer can be more quiet and more pure. The seclusion of monastic solitude is very much like this, a place where we are told to close the door and shut out anything that could disturb the purity of prayer or allow the eye to distract the unhappy soul.
I take it hard, then, that many members of my order choose to flout God’s teaching about this, as if it were a mere suggestion and no mandate—opening up their cloisters and their choirs when they celebrate the Divine Offices, carrying on without a scruple or a blush in full view of women as well as men, and polluting themselves with their high-priced trinkets above all during Mass, as worldly as the audience that watches their display. For them our rites are celebrated best when their outward show is richest and the offerings of their tables are overflowing. I know it is better to keep silent about this—disgraceful enough just to speak about their miserable blindness, so thoroughly opposed to the Christian faith, which should be concerned with the poor. They are more like the scribes and Pharisees of the Jews,20 as they follow their own custom, not the rule, and void the commandment of God for the sake of their traditions, not doing what they must but what they are most used to—as if Augustine never reminded us that the Lord said, “I am truth,” not “I am custom.”21 If someone wants to commend himself to the prayers of men like these—those prayers of the open door—let him go and do as he likes. I turn instead to you, to all of you who are led by heaven’s King into his chamber to rest in his embrace behind doors forever closed. There you are given wholly to him, and as the Apostle has said, “Whoever is joined with the Lord is one with him in spirit.”22 The more you cling to his side, the more I place my trust in the purity and power of your prayers, and the more I call upon their aid. I believe they will be offered on my behalf with all the devotion due our bond of mutual charity and love.
Now, if I have given you cause for disturbance by mentioning the dangers I face or the death I have reason to fear, let me remind you that this too was done at your request, or I should say, at your most strenuous insistence. In your first letter to me, you wrote:
So, by that Christ who keeps you for his own even now, we beg of you, as we are his handmaids and yours, write to us, tell us of those storms in which you find yourself tossed. We are all you have left: let us share your grief or your joy. A community of grief can bring some comfort to one in need of it, since many shoulders will lighten any burden or even make it seem to disappear.23
Then why do you object that I let you share my fear when in fact it was you who insisted on it? When I am in despair for my life, is it better for you to feel glad? Or would you want to be partners only in joy but not in grief, to “rejoice with them that rejoice” but never “weep with them that weep”?24 There is no greater difference between a false and true friend than that one would share in prosperity alone, the other in adversity as well.
Then, stop your complaints on this subject, I beg of you: they are far from the heart of charitable love. You still may resent it, but I am at such a point of danger and despair for my life that I must take thought for the welfare of my soul and act to secure it while there is time. If you truly care for me, you will not object to this—no, I will go further: if you have any hope that God will show me mercy, you will want me to be freed from the troubles of this life when you see they are unbearable to me. Whoever frees me from this life, you can be sure, will rescue me from terrible suffering. No one can know what pains I will face hereafter, but what pains I will escape no one can doubt. The end of every wretched life is welcome, and those who truly feel compassion for the suffering of others and grieve when others grieve will want that suffering to end, even at some cost to themselves: if they truly care for those whom they see suffer, they will look to the others’ interests, not their own. This is how it is with a mother whose child has long been ill: she wants his illness to end even if it means his death, because the illness itself is unendurable to her, and she can more easily bear to lose her child than to keep him with her to share her agony. And someone who takes pleasure in the presence of a friend would rather that the friend be happy, although absent, than unhappy and present, because he cannot bear to see suffering unrelieved. But as it is, even my unhappy presence is denied you. So, unless you are acting to secure something in your interest, I cannot see why you want me to live on in this abject misery rather than to die in relative happiness. If it is to gain some interest, though, that you want my suffering prolonged, you have proved yourself my enemy, not my friend. But if this is not how you would like to appear, then, as I said, you must stop these complaints.
I do approve of your rejection of praise, however, since it shows you are even worthier of praise. “The just is first accuser of himself,” it is written, and “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”25 I only hope you take to heart what you have written. If you do, then yours is the true humility which will not vanish merely because of something I might say. I beg of you, though, take care that you are not looking for praise by seeming to avoid it or rejecting in your words what you long for in your heart. Jerome wrote to Eustochium about this, saying among other things:
We are led along by an evil in our nature. We listen happily to those who flatter us, and though we may say we are not worthy and a coy little blush may come over our cheeks, still the soul within us is very glad to hear the praise.26
Virgil describes the same coyness in the nymph Galatea, who sought what she wanted by running away and stirred her lover even more by the pretense of refusing him, “Fleeing to the willows, wanting to be seen.”27 That is, before she could hide, she wanted to be seen in the act of flight, by which she both gained and yet seemed to reject the company of the young man in love with her. It is the same with the praise of men: so long as we seem to shun it, we only increase it, and when we affect a wish to hide so that no one can find the good in us to praise, we lead our shameless flatterers on to praise us even more because we then seem to deserve it even more. Now, I am saying this because it often is the case and not because I suspect you of any coyness—about your humility I have no doubts—but I want you to refrain from this subject as well. Not everyone knows you as I do, and I would not want you to seem to be “chasing glory by running away,” in Jerome’s phrase.28 I know my praise will never puff you up but will only challenge you to higher things; and if you strive to please me, as you say, you will embrace the things I will have praised. And my praise does not pay tribute to your piety in a way that can feed your pride: we should put no more stock in the approval of our friends than we put in the censure of our enemies.
I come now to the last remaining point—what I called your old, continual complaint, in which you dare lay charges against God for how we came to the religious life when in justice you ought to glorify his name. I had thought that your bitterness of heart at such a clear example of God’s mercy had vanished long ago—as dangerous as it is to you, eating away at your body and soul, it is as sad and disturbing to me. If, as you claim, you strive to please me in all things, then to please me most—or at least in this one thing to keep from torturing me further—you will put this bitterness aside. You cannot please me with it or attain the state of blessedness at my side. Could you bear it that I come to this without you when you say you would follow me even to Vulcan’s flames? Hold fast to your religious life at least in this, so that you and I will never be apart as I go “striding off to God,” as you believe29—and do it gladly, my dear sister, for where we must come is blessed, and our company should be as gracious as it will be full of joy. Remember what you have said, recall what you have written about the way I turned to God, that although he seemed my enemy, he proved my friend.30 Be reconciled to his will at least in this, for it has been so thoroughly to my good—no, to my good and to yours, if you can admit the claims of reason in your grief. Do not torment yourself that you have been the cause of this great good, or doubt that God created you for this.31 And do not grieve over what I may have suffered, except when the blessings that flow from the suffering of the martyrs and the death of our Lord himself will also make you sad. Would you find it any less offensive or any easier to bear if what happened to me had happened in accord with perfect justice? Surely if this had been the case, it would redound more to my discredit and more to my enemies’ honor, for the justice of their act would bring them praise and my guilt would bring me scorn, and no one then would blame what they had done or be moved by compassion for me.
Nonetheless, it may relieve the bitterness of your grief if I demonstrate to you that what happened to us was both in accord with justice and to our advantage as well,32 and that God acted more properly against us after our marriage than he had done before. After you and I were married and you were living with the nuns at Argenteuil, you know how I came to visit you one day and what my lust then did with you even within the walls of the refectory itself, when there was nowhere else for us to go. You know how shamelessly we acted in that holy place, consecrated to the Blessed Virgin. Now even if there were no other sins, that one alone deserves a heavy retribution. But do I need to remind you of those shameful and polluting acts that came before our marriage? Or of my treachery toward your uncle, whom I so foully deceived about you even while I kept living in his house? Could anyone think that, when I had broken faith, his broken faith toward me was in any way unjust? Do you imagine that the momentary pain I suffered from my wound is enough to atone for all these sins? Or rather, that all the good that I derived from it is really proper payment for the wrongs that I have done? What wound do you suppose would be enough to satisfy God’s vengeance for the pollution of his mother’s precinct? Unless I am badly in error, it was not so much that soul-preserving wound that became my punishment as it is all these that I suffer every day without an end.
[And on the journey to Brittany when you were pregnant, you know how you disguised yourself in the habit of a nun and with that pretense mocked the religious calling that now is yours. Consider then how appropriately God’s justice—or rather, it was God’s grace—dragged you against your will to the calling you were not afraid to mock, wanting you to atone for that desecration while wearing the same habit you once profaned, to answer the lie with the truth of the event and correct the falsehood of your pretense.]33
But if you look beyond God’s justice to see the advantages we have gained, you can no longer call what he did for us his justice, but only properly his grace. Then, look, my dearest, look and see how the nets of God’s mercy have fished us up from the depths of that dangerous sea, and how the Lord has drawn our shipwrecked souls safely from the whirlpool of Charybdis—yes, even despite our will—so that each of us may break out in that cry, “The Lord taketh thought for me!”34 Think and think again about the dangers we were in and how we found our rescue in the Lord. And always with the deepest gratitude proclaim what great things he hath done for our soul.35 Use the force of our example to console the unrighteous who despair of the goodness of God: let all of them know what may be done for suppliants in prayer, when such blessings come to sinners against their will. Ponder the high purpose of God’s compassion—with what mercy he turned his judgment to our correction, with what wisdom he used these evils for our good, with what piety he then threw down all our impiety, and with a stroke of justice to one part of my body he began to work the healing of two souls. Measure our danger against the manner of our deliverance. Measure our illness against its cure. Examine the cause, what our actions deserve; stand in awe of the effect, which is his mercy.
You know to what vile corruption my lust enslaved our bodies, how no reverence for God or any self-respect could keep me from wallowing in filth even on the days of the Passion of our Lord or on any holy day, however sacred—but when you resisted and you argued and you struggled to the limits of your strength, I would force you to my will with greater strength. I was welded to you by desire so hot that I set those low and degenerate pleasures—which we are at a loss even to name—ahead of both God and myself. His mercy had no other way, it seemed, but to sever me entirely from those pleasures and set them forever beyond my reach. And so with perfect justice and with perfect clemency—the treachery of your uncle not withstanding—I was lessened in that part of my body where lust had its dominion and desire its root cause, to become a greater man in many ways. What justice that those organs should lament all they had done to us and expiate in pain when they had sinned in taking pleasure, cutting me off from the loathsome filth in which I had been sunk to leave me circumcised in mind as well as body.36 It then would make me only the more fit to approach the altar of God with no stain of pollution in my flesh to call me back again. What mercy, too, that God should have me suffer only in that organ whose loss would advance the salvation of my soul but not disfigure my body or debar me from any exercise of the Offices.37 On the contrary, it only made me readier in all the things that can be done in decency and honor, once I was free of the yoke of that desire.
I was purged, not deprived, of those organs—so vile they are called the parts of shame for what they do and have no proper name of their own—and the grace of God did nothing else but rid me of corruption to leave me purified and clean. Many of the wise, in fact, have longed for this same purity, even to the point of laying hands upon themselves to be rid of the shame of desire. Saint Paul, we read, repeatedly begged the Lord to remove this thorn in his flesh, though his prayers were never answered.38 But there is also the example of Origen, the great Christian philosopher, who was unafraid to do violence to himself to extinguish all trace of the fire within him39—as though he read too literally what is written about those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven, and believed that they fulfilled the Lord’s command to pluck out and cast away any organ that is our undoing; as though he understood Isaiah’s prophecy not as the veiled mystery it is but as simple fact declaring the Lord’s special love for eunuchs:
If they shall keep my Sabbaths and shall choose the things that please me …, I will give to them in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name which shall never perish.40
But Origen deserves our blame for seeking an answer for blame in the punishment of his body—an act of zeal for God, no doubt, but not in accord with knowledge41—becoming guilty of homicide through his self-mutilation. For surely it was at the suggestion of the devil, or else by some most serious mistake, that he did to himself what, through the mercy of God, was done to me by others. I escaped that blame, I did not incur it. And I deserve death, yet I live. I am called, I refuse, I persist in my wrongs and am dragged to God’s forgiveness against my will. And yet the Apostle prayed and was not heard; and yet he persisted in prayer and did not prevail. Yes, truly the Lord taketh thought for me: I will go and proclaim what great things he hath done for my soul.42
And you come, too, my inseparable companion, and join me in this common act of thanks, my partner in God’s grace as you once were my partner in our sins. Indeed God is thinking of your salvation as well—no, he is thinking of your salvation most of all, having marked you as his own with a sacred token of his name when he named you Heloise, that is to say, Of God, from the name that he himself bears, Heloim.43 In his merciful plan he provided for the two of us in one when the devil was contriving one destruction for us both. It was only a short time before that event took place that he joined us together in the bond of holy matrimony when I wanted to keep you forever for myself, beloved beyond measure. But God himself prepared this means to bring us both to him; for if you had not already been bound to me in marriage, you easily would have clung to the world after I had withdrawn from it, succumbing to the pressures of your family or yielding to the pleasures of the flesh.44
Then, see how the Lord hath taken thought for us, as if he would keep us for some great use and be grieved if the great sums of learning he had lent us were not dedicated to the glory of his name. Or perhaps he was afraid for his poor servant, so lacking in the power of self-restraint, for “women make even the wise fall away,” as we know happened to Solomon, the wisest man of all.45 But the sum of your wisdom earns the Lord interest every day in the form of the daughters in the spirit you have borne him—while I remain forever barren, laboring without issue among these sons of perdition. What a waste it would be, what a hateful sorry loss if you spent your life amid the pleasures of the flesh just to bear a few children in sorrow to the world,46 when now you can give birth to a multitude of offspring in joy and exultation to heaven. You would not then transcend the state of women, as you now surpass all men and have turned the curse of Eve into the blessing of Mary. What a sad misuse of your sacred hands, which now turn the pages of Holy Writ, to be slaves to the sordid business of women’s work. God himself saw fit to lift us from that mire, from that filthy sink of pleasure, and to bring us to himself—even if he used some force, as he once struck Paul at the hour of his conversion.47 [And perhaps by our example he could deter other learned men from their presumption.]48
But none of this should trouble you, my sister, or move you to resentment of our Father, who has only corrected us as a father should. Remember what is written: “Whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth, and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth,” and “He that spareth the rod hateth his son.” This is but a temporary punishment, not eternal, our purgation, not our damnation. And take some comfort in the words of the prophet that the Lord will not judge twice the same offense: “There shall not rise a double affliction.” Remember, too, what the Lord himself has said, his greatest and his highest exhortation: “In your patience you shall possess your souls.” Think also of the words of Solomon: “The patient man is better than the valiant, and he that ruleth his spirit better than he that taketh cities.”49
Instead, you should be troubled and moved to tears by God’s only-begotten Son, who for your sake and the sake of all mankind was taken up by the wickedest of men, led off and scourged, blindfolded, mocked and beaten, spat upon and crowned with thorns, and finally, in what was then the basest form of punishment, hung on a cross between two thieves to die there in such appalling agony. He is your true Bridegroom, my sister, and the Bridegroom of all the Church. Keep him always before your eyes, hold him always in your mind. See how he goes to be crucified for you, see how he carries his cross. Be present there yourself among the “multitude of people and of women who bewailed and lamented him,” as Luke has said. And then he turned to the women in his kindness, and in mercy he foretold the destruction that would come as vengeance for his death and how they might escape it if they were wise. “Daughters of Jerusalem,” he said,
weep not over me, but weep for yourselves and your children. For behold, the days shall come wherein they will say, “Blessed are the barren and the wombs that have not borne and the paps that have not given suck.” Then they shall begin to say to the mountains, “Fall upon us,” and to the hills, “Cover us.” For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?50
Pity him who suffered willingly to redeem you. Save your remorse for his death upon the cross. In your mind be ever present at his sepulcher, mourning and lamenting with the women who “sat at the tomb, weeping and lamenting the Lord.”51 Prepare the oils for his burial—but let them be far better oils, the oils of the spirit, which he requires, not the oils of the body, which he did not take. Let all of your remorse and your devotion be for this, as he himself told the faithful when he spoke through Jeremiah, “All ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow”;52 that is to say, “When I in my innocence alone must pay the price for the sins of others, for whom else should you grieve?” Yes, he is the way out of exile for the faithful, the way to their home country. And his is the cross from which he calls out to us, and which he has made a ladder for our use. Here, the only-begotten Son of God died for your sake, “offered because it was his will.”53
Pity him in your grief, grieve for him in your pity. Fulfill the prophecy Zachariah spoke about devoted souls: “And they shall mourn for him as for an only son, and they shall grieve for him as for the death of the firstborn.”54 See, my sister, how those who love the King mourn the death of his first and only Son. See how the household mourns, how all the court is consumed with grief. And when you come to the widowed bride of God’s only-begotten Son, you will not be able to bear her wails of sorrow. These should be your wails, my sister, these your cries of grief, for you are joined in marriage to this Bridegroom. Your brideprice was not his property but himself, for he bought you and redeemed you with his blood. See what claim he has on you, look what price he has set on your worth. When Paul considered how little he was worth the price paid out for him and the debt he owed such grace in return, he said, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”55 But you are more than the heavens, you are more than the world, whose price was the Creator of the world. What did he see in you, I ask, when he himself lacked nothing, that he would buy you with the agony of his death? What does he seek in you except yourself? He is a true friend who wants nothing of what you own, but you yourself,56 a true friend who, when coming to his death for your sake, could say, “Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friends.”57
It was he who truly loved you—I did not. My love, which brought us both to sin, was lust, which is not worthy of the name of love. I glutted my wretched pleasures in you, and that was all I loved. You say I suffered for you, and perhaps that may be true; but more, I suffered through you and unwillingly at that, and not from love of you but from my own compulsion, and then not for your good but for your grief. He suffered for you willingly to bring you your salvation. His suffering heals all sickness and puts an end to suffering. To him, I beg of you, and not to me do you owe all your devotion, your compassion, your remorse. Lament the savage injustice worked against his innocence, not the just vengeance brought to bear on me—or what I must call instead, that most extraordinary grace that has come upon us both. You are unjust if you do not love his justice, and most unjust if you knowingly stand against the will, indeed against the grace, of God. Weep for your Savior, not for your seducer, for your Redeemer, not for the man who used you as his whore. Weep for the Lord who died for you, not his servant who is still living, or I should say, who only now has been truly freed from death. And, I beg of you, beware that the words that Pompey spoke to Cornelia in her grief not be said of you, and to your shame:
After the battle, Pompey is alive.
His fortune, though, is fallen. It is for that
You shed your tears and that which you have loved.58
Yes, remember this and blush, unless you really would commend our former, foul ways.
Accept it then, my sister, I beg of you. Accept with patience what has come upon us through the mercy of God. It is the rod of our Father that strikes us, not the sword of our oppressor, and a father strikes to correct that an enemy not strike to kill. With his wound he forestalls death, he does not bring it. He wields the knife to cut out the disease. He wounds the body and heals the soul. He ought to have killed and he gives life. He cuts away the unclean to leave only the clean, and he punishes once, not to punish forever. One of us endures his wound that both may be spared death. One alone was punished while the two of us were at fault. This too was through God’s mercy—his indulgence of the weakness of your nature—and in its own way just, for inasmuch as you are by nature weaker in your sex and yet stronger in your self-restraint, you were not liable to further penalty.59
For this I thank the Lord, that he exempted you from punishment at the time and so preserved you for a crown. When I myself was seething with the lust that would consume me, he chilled me once and for all with what I suffered in my body, and so he kept me from my ruin. But what you suffer in your heart from all the longing of the flesh, which certainly is far greater for your youth, he left intact and kept you then in readiness for your crown. I know it wearies you to hear it and you have told me not to say it, but still the truth is plain—where there is struggle, there is also a crown: “No one is crowned who does not strive.”60 For me there is no crown, for there is no cause for strife, no grounds for struggle when the thorn of desire is gone.
Yes, I will win no crown, but even so, I still must think it something if I am spared some pain, if through that single momentary pain I may perhaps be pardoned many pains that last forever. It is written about the men of this most miserable life, “The beasts have rotted in their dung.”61 But I do not complain that my merit is diminished so long as I can trust that yours is growing greater. For we are one in Christ, one flesh through the law of marriage: whatever is yours must then be mine as well. And Christ is yours because you are his bride, and as I said, I am now your servant who was once your lord, but a servant joined with you in spiritual love, not bound over in obsequious fear. I place myself under your protection, then, fully trusting that through your prayers for me I yet may gain what I cannot gain alone. I do this now and now above all, when the dangers I face and my own deep agitation press on me every moment and give me no time to live, much less to pray. They will not let me follow the example of the eunuch of Ethiopia, that most blessed and powerful man who had charge over all the queen’s treasure and had come from so far to worship in Jerusalem.62 For when he was returning home, an angel sent Saint Philip to convert him to the faith since, though he was a rich man and a pagan, his prayers and constant reading of our scriptures had made him worthy. And even on his journey the goodness of God would not have him distracted from his reading, but instead it came to pass by God’s great will that a passage of scripture was open before him, which gave the apostle the means for his conversion.
Now nothing must impede my request or delay its fulfillment, so I have been quick to compose a prayer for you to offer to the Lord on behalf of us both. I send it to you now:
God,
who at the beginning of the human race
sanctified the sacrament of marriage,
creating woman from the rib of man;
who, with your birth from a woman given in marriage
and again with the first of your miracles,63
raised up the bond of marriage to honors without measure;
and who granted relief as it has pleased you
for my weakness and my lack of self-restraint—
do not despise the prayers of your poor handmaid,
which I pour out to you in the sight of your majesty
for my own transgressions
and those of someone dear to me.
O most beneficent Lord,
indeed Beneficence itself,
forgive our sins, so many and so great.
May your mercy without measure
test the multitude of our faults.
Punish the guilty now, I beg of you,
that you may spare us in the future.
Punish us for a time
and do not punish us forever.
Take up against your servants the rod of correction,
not the sword of wrath.
Afflict our flesh that you may preserve our souls.
Come to cleanse our sins, not to avenge them.
Be beneficent more than just,
our merciful Father more than our stern Lord.
Prove us, Lord, and test us,
as the prophet asked for testing of himself:64
Examine my strength and lighten the burden
of my temptations according to what it will bear.
As Saint Paul said to the faithful, “God is faithful,
who will not suffer you to be tempted
beyond what you are able,
but with temptation he will make release,
that you may be able to bear it.”65
You have joined us together, O Lord,
and you have put us asunder
when it has pleased you and how it has pleased you.
What you once began in mercy
now complete in perfect mercy,
and those whom you have sundered in the world for a time
join together with you in heaven for all time.
For you are our hope and our portion,
our comfort and our expectation,
our Lord who are blessed forever.
Amen.
Now, bride of Christ, farewell in Christ; in Christ may you live and be well.
_________________
1 Epistulae 22.2.
2 That is, the prototype or model, which may be presented in symbolic or allegorical terms. For the concept and its use in medieval exegesis, see the classic essay by Auerbach 1959.
3 Ps. 44:10–13. The manuscripts cite the passage up to “on thy right hand,” indicating the extended context with “etc.”
4 That is, applying a typological understanding to Moses’ marriage to an Ethiopian in Num. 12:1, so that Moses’ wife and the bride of the Canticles are expressions of the same type. Abelard will assimilate this kind of reading with the categories of his dialectic just below.
5 Cant. 1:4–5 in a pre-Vulgate version.
6 Abelard is using the terms of formal dialectic, speaking of the contemplative soul as the genus, or large category, of which the nun, or bride of Christ, is a species, or smaller category, of which the nuns of the Paraclete are particular examples.
7 See 1 Tim. 5:3, 16.
8 From the antiphon to the Benedictus in the Roman Breviary for Holy Saturday. See the Second Letter.
9 A parenthetical remark included in the manuscripts, which most likely represents a scribal interpolation. The quotation is from Gen. 49:12.
10 2 Tim. 3:12.
11 Ps. 44:14.
12 Cf. Col. 3:4.
13 Cf. Cant. 2:1.
14 A partial doublet of the sentences preceding, apparently deriving from an alternate version of the paragraph only imperfectly reconciled with what else of the letter we have.
15 See the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in Matt. 25:1–13.
16 Cant. 3:1.
17 See Jerome’s Vita Pauli Primi Eremitae 5.
18 Homilia in Lucam 40.16.
19 Matt. 6:6 and cf. 6:5.
20 The sentence draws heavily from the language and thought of Jesus’ condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees in Matt. 15:1–6.
21 De Baptismo Contra Donatistas 3.6.9, with reference to John 14:6.
22 1 Cor. 6:17.
23 Abelard’s reference to this as the “first letter” indicates either that there indeed had been no earlier letter from Heloise or that the compiler of the letter collection has harmonized at least some of its elements.
24 Rom. 12:15.
25 Prov. 18:17; Luke 18:14.
26 Epistulae 22.24.
27 Eclogues 3.65.
28 Cf. Epistulae 22.27.
29 Cf. the First Letter, p. 60.
30 Cf. the Third Letter, p. 80.
31 Cf. the Third Letter, p. 76.
32 Abelard is adapting the familiar double-pronged appeal of deliberative rhetoric, that a proposed course of action is (or is not) both ethical and advantageous.
33 This short paragraph, which interrupts the steady rhetorical crescendo and anticipates the shift accomplished in the following paragraph from God’s justice to his grace, is most likely a later addition to the text. If taken at its face value, it could have been added only by someone in a position at least to pretend to know the facts, although it is unlikely to have been Heloise, who never exhibits this kind of religious sensibility in her own writings. But the story may also derive from a garbled version of Abelard’s dressing Heloise “in the garments of monastic life” when he first brought her to Argenteuil, as described in the Calamities.
34 Ps. 39:18. Charybdis is the whirlpool from which Ulysses escaped; cf. also its use as an image of sensuality in the Calamities.
35 Cf. Ps. 66:16.
36 Cf. Rom. 2:25–29.
37 Despite Abelard’s anxiety in the Calamities about biblical prohibitions (in the Calamities), canon law does not preclude eunuchs from the priesthood, except in cases of self-mutilation. See Muckle 1954, 89 n. 94.
38 See 2 Cor. 12:8, in which Paul reports that he offered this prayer three times. Abelard understands Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” to mean sexual desire.
39 See Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiae 6.7.
40 Cf. Matt. 19:12, 18:8–9; Isa. 56:4–5.
41 Cf. Rom. 10:2.
42 Ps. 39:18, 66:16.
43 There is no basis other than the pun for connecting Heloise’s name to the Hebrew Elohim or for taking its meaning as Abelard does here.
44 Abelard’s account here of his motives for marriage differs from the one he gives in his Calamities, but he may be revealing a significant reason for his insistence that Heloise take the veil, that is, his fear that she might remarry.
45 Ecclus. 19:2; see 3 Kings 11:1 ff. for Solomon’s fall.
46 Cf. Gen. 4:16.
47 See Acts 26:14.
48 A moralistic tag which, interrupting the flow of argument through to the next paragraph, is most likely a later interpolation.
49 Heb. 12:6; Prov. 13:24; Nah. 1:9; Luke 21:19; Prov. 16:32.
50 Luke 23:27, 28–31.
51 From the antiphon to the Benedictus in the Roman Breviary for Holy Saturday.
52 Lam. 1:12.
53 Isa. 53:7.
54 Zac. 12:10.
55 Gal. 6:14.
56 Cf. the First Letter, p. 55.
57 John 15:13.
58 Lucan, Pharsalia 8.84–85. With this Abelard responds to Heloise’s invocation of Cornelia as he had cited it in the Calamities.
59 Cf. the Third Letter, p. 76.
60 2 Tim. 2:5; and see the Third Letter, p. 83.
61 Joel 1:17.
62 See Acts 8:27 ff.
63 That is, at the wedding feast at Cana, John 2:1–11.
64 Cf. Ps. 25:2: “Prove me, Lord, and test me: burn my heart and mind.”
65 1 Cor. 10:13.