Héloïse was a woman of high intellectual ability who strove by several different means to reach beyond what twelfth-century convention allowed her. The texts of some letters addressed to her one-time lover on the topic of the conventual life for women, as well as at least one which warmly recalls their former love, have come down to posterity.
Milestones
About 1100 Héloïse is generally believed to have been born.
1132 Héloïse, having read
Abelard's autobiographical
Historia calamitatum, began a correspondence with him in the same language, Latin.
1616 Nearly five hundred years after they were written, the letters of Héloïse and
Abelard were published at
Paris in Latin.
