The Letters and Other Writings

The text known as The Questions of Heloise (Heloisae Problemata) consists of forty-two short queries on scripture together with Abelard’s replies. Although it is not transmitted as part of the canonical letter collection, its introductory letter follows directly from Heloise’s words in the Fifth Letter and Abelard’s in the Seventh.

Saint Jerome would praise Marcella with extraordinary praise,
offering encomia to her studies,
her passion for scripture,
and her ever-questioning mind.
As he wrote in his commentary on Galatians:

“I know her ardor, I know her faith,
I know the fire she has in her heart
to surpass her sex, forget mankind,
beat the drum of Holy Writ,
and cross the raging Red Sea of this world.
While I lived in Rome, she never came to me so fast
as when she had some question about scripture—
not like some tractable Pythagorean,
to accept every word I said because I said it.¹
Authority without reason had no power over her.

She left nothing unexamined or unweighed,
nothing unsubjected to the keenest critical spirit.
She seemed less like my student than my judge.”²

The progress she had made in her studies
even led him to appoint her as a teacher
over others who shared her passion for this learning.
As he once wrote to Principia:

“You have Marcella and Asella both there with you,
as you pursue scripture and the sanctity of body and mind.
One will lead you through the meadows of Holy Writ
to him who sings,
‘I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys.’
The other is a flower of the Lord herself,
like you, and worthy of the words,
‘As a lily among thorns, so my love among the maidens.’”³

All this your wisdom knows far better than I.

Then, why do I repeat it, my beloved,
my heart’s own,
dear to us all but dearest to me?
Take it not as schooling but a reminder
not to neglect your obligations
nor be slow in discharging your debt.
We are the handmaids of Christ
and your daughters in the spirit.
You have gathered us together in your oratory
and bound us to the service of God.
You have always counseled us to turn our minds
to the word of God and the reading of his scriptures,
calling it the mirror of the soul,
in which we can see our true ugliness or beauty,
and which no bride of Christ should be without
if she seeks to please the one
to whom she has given her life.
You also told us that reading without understanding
is like holding up a mirror before the blind.⁴
My sisters and I have taken this to heart
and have acted in obedience to your words
as fully as we could,
until we have completely fallen in love
with the learning about which Jerome said,
“Love knowledge of the scriptures
and you will hate sins of the flesh.”⁵

But now we are disturbed by many questions,
which has made us slower in our reading.
We cannot love what we do not understand,
and as we labor in this field, it does not seem
that we can make much progress on our own.
So, we send our humble questions on to you—
   your students to their teacher,
   your daughters to their father—
and we ask and we implore you,
  we implore you and we ask,
that you do not think it beneath your dignity
to address yourself to answering them for us,
for it was at your urging—
no, it was at your command—
that we came to take up this study above all.

You will see we have not arranged them in the order of the scriptures, but only as they occurred to us each day. But here we have set them out, and we anticipate your reply.

1 Ancient Pythagoreans were notorious for their reliance on the authority of the master’s word. Ipse dixit—“He himself said it”—became a catchphrase sufficient to resolve all their disputes.