Héloïse

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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.
  • BirthName: Héloïse
  • Indexed: Eloisa
    This version of her name, the Latin form, has had long and wide currency in English.
Photograph of illustration of Héloïse from "World Noted Women", New York, 1883. She is imagined in the dress of a lay person, not of a nun, seated at a large table covered in books, apparently writing in a particularly large one. She wears a fairly low-cut dress with flowing sleeves, and has a veil over her hair.

Milestones

About 1100

Héloïse is generally believed to have been born.
Waithe, Mary Ellen. “Heloise”. Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment Women Philosophers, A. D. 500-1600, edited by Mary Ellen Waithe, Kluwer, 1989, pp. 67-83.
67
Radice, Betty. “The French Scholar-Lover: Héloïse”. Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, University of Georgia Press, 1984, pp. 90-108.
90

1132

Héloïse , having read Abelard 's autobiographical Historia calamitatum, began a correspondence with him in the same language, Latin.
Radice, Betty. “The French Scholar-Lover: Héloïse”. Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, University of Georgia Press, 1984, pp. 90-108.
94-5

16 May, probably 1164

Héloïse died at the Paraclete Convent, where the body of her former lover, Peter Abelard , had been buried twenty years before.
Among scholars on Héloïse, Etienne Gilson says that she died in 1164, while Radice says that she could have died in either 1163 or 1164. Both agree on the May 16th date.
Radice, Betty. “The French Scholar-Lover: Héloïse”. Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, University of Georgia Press, 1984, pp. 90-108.
99
Abelard, Peter, and Héloïse. “Editorial Materials”. The Letters of Abelard and Héloïse, translated by. Betty Radice, Penguin, 1974.
43
Gilson, Etienne. Héloïse and Abelard. Translator Shook, Laurence Kennedy, University of Michigan Press, 1960.
123
Radice, Betty. “The French Scholar-Lover: Héloïse”. Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, University of Georgia Press, 1984, pp. 90-108.
99
Abelard, Peter, and Héloïse. “Editorial Materials”. The Letters of Abelard and Héloïse, translated by. Betty Radice, Penguin, 1974.
43

1616

Nearly five hundred years after they were written, the letters of Héloïse and Abelard were published at Paris in Latin.
Charrier, Charlotte. Héloïse. Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1933.
599

30 July 1713

Letters of Abelard and Heloise, translated by John Hughes , was published at London.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
Pope, Alexander. The Poems of Alexander Pope. Editor Butt, John, Twickenham Edition, Methuen; Yale University Press, 1951–1969, 11 vols.
2: 295n6

Biography

Birth

About 1100

Héloïse is generally believed to have been born.
Waithe, Mary Ellen. “Heloise”. Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment Women Philosophers, A. D. 500-1600, edited by Mary Ellen Waithe, Kluwer, 1989, pp. 67-83.
67
Radice, Betty. “The French Scholar-Lover: Héloïse”. Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, University of Georgia Press, 1984, pp. 90-108.
90

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