Women of Mediaeval France Part 3

But, either by accident or design, Peter Abelard kept away From the chapel that day, And a poor, young friar, who in his stead Drank the sacramental wine, Fell on the steps of the altar, dead!

The facts here presented are essentially the same as those vouched for by Abelard himself, even to the poisoning of the young monk. There were two attempts of this kind, and the wicked monks also hired a.s.sa.s.sins to waylay their abbot, who lived in constant terror of his life. He strove to control his monks by every sort of means, but at length was forced to fly to the protection of a friend in Brittany. He did not definitely abandon his abbey for some time, probably not before 1138; but his regular connection with it ceased some years earlier.

The years of his struggle with the monks of St. Gildas were not without their periods of relief. In the midst of his selfish preoccupation with his own tribulations his thoughts were distracted by solicitude for Helose. Helose, in the nunnery of Argenteuil, had led a life so exemplary that she had won universal esteem. But it happened, says Abelard, "that the Abbot of Saint-Denis had claimed, as a dependency formerly subject to his jurisdiction, the Abbey of Argenteuil, in which my sister in Christ, rather than my spouse, had taken the veil. Having obtained possession, he expelled the congregation of nuns, of whom my companion was prioress." When this happened Abelard bestirred himself to provide for Helose and her nuns, and at the same time to provide for the maintenance of religious services in his old temple of the Paraclete. He returned thither, and invited the nuns to come. He donated to them the oratory and its dependencies, and Pope Innocent II.

confirmed the donation to them and to their successors forever. For some time Helose and her nuns endured great privations, for the Paraclete, after its abandonment by Abelard, had relapsed into the condition of a wilderness; "but," continues Abelard, "for them, too, the Lord, showing himself in very truth the Comforter, touched with pity and good-will the hearts of the people in the neighborhood. In one single year... the fruits of the earth multiplied around them more than I could have made them do had I lived a century... The Lord granted that our dear sister, who directed the community, should find favor in the eyes of all men: bishops cherished her as their daughter, abbots as their sister, laymen as their mother; all admired equally her piety, her wisdom, and her incomparably sweet patience."

It has been doubted by some biographers whether Helose ever saw her lover after she took the veil. His language in the pa.s.sage just quoted as well as that in the following would seem to leave no room for doubt that they met frequently at this time: "All their neighbors blamed me for not doing all that I could, all that I ought, to help them in their misery, when the thing would have been so easy for me to do, by preaching. Accordingly I made them more frequent visits, in order to work for their good." The voice of calumny, he continues, would not even yet be still; but, in spite of evil tongues, "I was resolved to do my best to take care of my sisters of the Paraclete, to administer their affairs for them, to increase their respect by my very bodily presence in such a way as to give me, at the same time, a better opportunity to look out for their wants." When or how often he visited the Paraclete we do not know; but in some of these visits Helose and Abelard must have met again.

While visiting a friend, during one of his enforced flights from Saint-Gildas, Abelard wrote the history of his woes, _Historia Calamitatum_, to which we owe most of the details given previously. This work, in the form of a letter, is addressed to a friend whose name we do not know. Abelard calls him "my old friend and very dear brother in Christ, my intimate companion," so that it is at least certain that he was a clerk. It may have been that this letter was meant for Peter the Venerable, who afterward showed himself a devoted friend to Abelard as well as to Helose. But to whomsoever the letter was written, it came into the hands of her who had sacrificed so much for the writer. All the old love awoke in Helose's heart when chance threw in her way the story, in Abelard's own hand, of their misfortunes. Moved beyond her powers of repression, her feelings overflowed in a beautiful letter to her lost husband. In all the literature of love there is nothing finer than this letter, either for pa.s.sion or for tenderness and pathos. It is no wonder that Abelard replied, as she besought him to do. A sort of correspondence was opened; she wrote three letters in all, and he four.

The actual text of these letters is in a Latin ma.n.u.script of a date one hundred years later than the time of Helose. The preservation of such a series of letters has seemed to some investigators improbable, but there is every reason to believe that Helose herself would have collected and preserved with the greatest care a correspondence so precious to her.

That the letters excited the highest admiration from the very first we have ample proof, for one of the authors of the _Romance of the Rose_, Jean Clopinel, translated them as early as 1285. In the fifteenth century they were printed, and since then numberless translations, imitations, and perversions have appeared. We need feel no doubt, therefore, that we are reading an actual love letter, dating from about 1135, when we follow the glowing lines addressed to Abelard by Helose.

There is naturally a marked difference in the tone of the letters, due to a difference of character and to different environment. While pa.s.sages in the first letter of Helose are almost lyric in their intensity, like the words of a Juliet, at times almost of a Sappho, the reply from Abelard is apparently cold in many places, certainly constrained, only occasionally throbbing an answer to the touch of her whom he had loved. As we shall have some very unfavorable things to say of Abelard's character in general, it seems but fair to say that this constraint and evident desire to suppress the violence of Helose's love and to direct her thoughts to the duties of her calling cannot be charged against him as a fault. Not one of his replies shows lack of affection. In justice to him we may say that he was seeking to teach her resignation; to divert her thoughts from the past, where was only storm and s.h.i.+pwreck in their brief love.

It is pleasant to believe that, when he wrote these letters, Abelard was in some sort aware of and repentant for the great wrong he had done.

There was never a more disgustingly deliberate and inhumanly selfish seduction than that of Helose by Abelard. He was by nature excessively vain of his personal appearance no less than of his attainments. We have seen how he speaks of Anselm; in the same tone, in the same florid, turgid, pedantic style he was constantly boasting of his achievements.

Having won all the laurels available in the intellectual world, he sought new experiences. It has been remarked, not inaptly, that this sudden awakening of the man in the scholar is a reproduction of the Faust legend with living actors. As the scholar, Faust, bent with age and labors, is suddenly transformed into the youthful, ardent, and selfish lover, so Abelard's long dormant pa.s.sions transform him. But his real nature is not altered; he is always fundamentally selfish. The very terms in which he relates his first feelings toward Helose are almost brutal. He praises the unusual extent of her knowledge, an attraction of special force for him; and then, "physically, too, she was not bad."

While he condescends to allow that Helose was "not bad" as regards looks, it is quite another tale with regard to himself: "Seeing her adorned with all the charms that attract lovers, I thought to enter into a liaison with her, and I felt sure that nothing would be easier than to succeed in this design. I enjoyed such reputation, and had so much grace of youth and good looks, that I thought I should have no rebuff to fear, whoever might be the woman whom I should honor with my love."

All through the man's career one finds the same exaggerated self-esteem, the same preoccupation with his own selfish interests. He positively chuckles over the perfect success of his ruse to deceive Fulbert.

"Fulbert was fond of his money. Add to this the fact that he was eager to procure for his niece all possible advantages in belles-lettres. By flattering these two pa.s.sions, I easily won his consent, and obtained what I desired.... He urged me to devote to her education all of my spare time, by day as well as by night, and not to fear to punish her should I find her at fault. I wondered at his naivete!... Entrusting her to me not only for instruction but for chastis.e.m.e.nt, what was this but allowing full licence to my desires and furnis.h.i.+ng me, even against my will, with the opportunity of conquering by blows and threats if caresses should be unavailing?" When he has ruined this niece, of whom Fulbert was so proud, a moment of apparent remorse comes to him as he witnesses the old man's distress: "I promised him any reparation which it might please him to demand; I protested that what I had done would surprise no one who had ever felt the violence of love and who knew into what abysses women had, since the very beginning of the world, plunged the greatest men. To appease him still further, I offered him a sort of atonement _far greater than anything he could have hoped: I proposed to marry her whom I had seduced, on condition only that the marriage be kept secret, so as not to injure my reputation._" The italics are ours; they can but faintly indicate our astonishment at the impudence no less than the selfishness of this piece of condescension. This pa.s.sage is followed by four pages devoted to pedantic arguments, enforced by appeal to historic cases, seeking to prove how prejudicial a thing marriage is to holy men, to wise men, to great men, and that therefore it must be so to Abelard. All this argument he ascribes to Helose, who implored him not to marry her; but the tone is his own; there is never a thought of what it may mean for her, only for himself. In the same way, after Fulbert has taken vengeance on him, in two pages of lamentations over his fate there is not one word of pity for the grief of the woman who had given all to him. It is: How shall I appear in public? What a wreck I have made of my life! Not once: How shall I care for Helose? What amends can I make her for the wreck of her young life? One need not wonder--since this was the sentiment of the period--that he fears the vengeance of G.o.d only because he has broken the rule of continence, not at all because he has led into wrong doing one who trusted and loved him.

The shame of his punishment and the griefs of his life do seem to have made some impression on him, however. Abelard actually learns to speak of "the shameful treachery of which I was guilty towards your uncle."

One can but compare him with Rousseau; those who have read the latter's fascinating, eloquent, but disgusting _Confessions_ cannot fail to remember that there is the same inordinate vanity and selfishness in them as young men, the same misery and insane fear of foes, sometimes purely imaginary, in them as old men.

Beginning as a vulgar pa.s.sion, there is no doubt that Abelard's feeling for Helose afterward became more honorable. After their separation, and the softening, chastening influence of his misfortunes, he developed for her a real affection. Though there is a constraint, a coldness in the address of his letters, and often too much solicitude about form and too much display of erudition, the heart of the man is moved in spite of himself. He begins his first letter to her: "To Helose, his well-beloved sister in Christ, Abelard, her brother in Christ;" the second: "To the spouse of Christ, the servant of that same Christ." But he shows a tenderness for her at the very start; if he has not written to her and advised her before, he says, it is because he had such absolute confidence in her judgment. He calls her his "sister, once so dear in the flesh," and sends her a Psalter, which she is to use in imploring the Divine mercy for him. He will give counsel to her and to her nuns, if she desires it. And here he can dissemble no longer: "But enough of your holy congregation,... it is to you, to you whose goodness will, I know, have such power with G.o.d, that I address myself....

Remember in your prayers him who is your very own." He sends a form of prayer which she and her nuns are to use for him. Then the man once more gets the better of the monk: "If it chance that the Lord deliver me up into the hands of mine enemies, and that they, victorious, put me to death, or if, while far from you, some accident should bring me to that goal whither all flesh is tending, let my body, whether it be already buried or simply abandoned, be brought under your care, I implore you, to your cemetery."

It is pleasant to read his letters, after one has become convinced that the man really loved Helose; then, one finds in them gentleness and consideration for her feelings. With patience and adroitness, he answers the questions she asks, distracts her thoughts, still too much intent on him, and works out for her an elaborate scheme of government for use in the Paraclete; and one can understand that this, if anything, would have been a consolation to Helose, to feel that the whole tenor of her life was regulated by the affectionate legislation of the man whom she had loved.

About the love of Helose we need not hesitate. "Truly, she did love him," says the old chronicler of Saint Martin de Tours, and the ages since have been but echoing this. We must try, however, to form some more definite idea of the personality of one who is perhaps the greatest figure in an actual romance that the world has known. Of her beauty there can be no question; but we neither know nor very greatly care whether she was tall and dark or slender and fair. Probably we should be safe in a.s.suming, on general principles, that she was a blonde, since the predilection for that style of beauty was so strong that Saint Bernard devotes a whole sermon to proving that there is no contradiction in the statement in the Song of Songs: "I am black, but comely." The most remarkable thing about her was her learning. Even when Abelard first met her, she was "most distinguished for the extent of her learning,"... "in great renown throughout the kingdom" for her proficiency. Her knowledge included not only Latin, but Greek and even Hebrew, both rarely understood even among men in a day when men usually got all and women none of the education that could be had. Her monastery at the Paraclete became a school as famous in its way as Abelard had made Paris.

Of another trait in her character, too, we can speak with certainty.

Together with her learning went firmness of judgment and perfect sanity, the elements which go to make up what we vaguely call character. We have seen Abelard expressing his confidence in her wisdom and judgment. Saint Bernard, the bitter enemy of Abelard, could not withhold his admiration from her, although she herself, a faithful partisan of her husband, always spoke of Saint Bernard as "the false Apostle." The latter, as was natural in a man renowned for intellect and for asceticism, was more struck by the grandeur of her character than moved by her personal charms, and he wrote a letter to the Pope, commending her as a prioress, in a tone of lofty esteem rather than sympathy. Her own conduct, we have remarked, was above reproach, and her convent was so well governed that its rule became the standard for all the convents of her day. Whatever may have been the violence of her grief over the separation from Abelard, she was too proud to expose her feelings to the world. She lived on bravely, honorably, respected by high and low, yet making no secret of the fact that she had loved and still did love Abelard. One does not wonder that she won the popular fame which has kept her name alive, and which has fixed the epithet applied by Villon some three centuries later: _La tres-sage Helose_. In all the happy phrases of the _Ballade des Belles Dames du Temps Jadis_ there is no juster epithet.

In striking contrast to the brutal selfishness of Abelard is the n.o.ble disinterestedness and complete effacement of self seen in the conduct of Helose. Realizing that with him success in his vocation is everything and love but an episode, she is content. More than this, she does everything in her power to make him sacrifice her for the sake of the career which she knows he is bent upon. She flatters him, feeds his vanity, already overgreat, and consistently keeps out of view her own woman's feelings. When Abelard, with what he considers unusual and exemplary generosity, offers to marry her--one can fancy that he was not very urgent--this is part of the argument she uses to dissuade him: "She asked," says Abelard, "what atonement would not the world have a right to require of her should she deprive it of such a light? What curses she would call upon her head! What a loss this marriage would be to the Church! What tears it would cost philosophy! Would it not be an unseemly and deplorable thing to see a man whom nature had created for the whole world made the slave of one woman?... The marriage would be a shame and a burden to me... What agreement could there be between the labor of the school and the cares of a house, between the desk and the cradle?... Is there a man who, devoted to the meditations of philosophy or to the study of the Scriptures, could endure the cries of a child, the singing of the nurse as she put it to sleep, the continual coming and going of the servants, the incessant worries of young children?"

That Abelard has reported her arguments with accuracy we need not doubt when we come upon this remarkable and often quoted pa.s.sage in her first letter: "I never thought... of my own wishes; it was always yours, you know yourself, that my heart was bent upon satisfying. Although the name of wife seems both more sacred and more enduring, I should have preferred that of mistress, or even concubine... thinking that, the more humble I made myself for your sake, the more right I should have to your favor, and the less stain I should put upon the brilliancy of your glory."

When their misfortunes came upon them and Abelard wanted her to enter the cloister she obeyed without complaint; but the truth comes out at the close of her first letter: "When you entered the service of G.o.d, I followed, nay, I preceded you... You made me first take the veil and the vows, you chained me to G.o.d before yourself. This mistrust, the only lack of confidence in me you ever showed, filled me with grief and shame, me, who would, G.o.d knows, have followed you or have gone before you unhesitatingly into the very flames of h.e.l.l! For my heart was no longer with me but with you." In this letter are the only things that even look like reproaches on her part; she complains of his not writing to her, of his grudging her even the poor consolation of a letter, when she had done all for him: "Only tell me, if you can, why, since the retirement from the world which you yourself enjoined upon me, you have neglected me. Tell me, I say, or I will say what I think, and what is on everybody's lips. Ah! it was l.u.s.t rather than love which attracted you to me... and that is why, your desire once satisfied, all demonstrations of affection ceased with the desire which inspired them." She implores him, therefore, to write and silence these disquieting voices in her heart.

There was no hypocrisy in Helose; she never was resigned to her seclusion in the convent, and never pretended to be. She wrote to Abelard that she was continuing to live in the convent only to obey him, "for it was not love of G.o.d, but your wish, your wish alone which cast my youth into the midst of monastic austerities." From the very monastery of which she was prioress she writes her burning letters. The first is superscribed: _Domino suo, imo patri, conjugi suo, imo fratri; ancilla sua, imo filia; ipsius uxor, imo soror; Abelardo Heloissa_: "To her lord, nay, to her father; to her husband, nay, to her brother; his servant, nay, his daughter; his wife, nay, his sister; to Abelard, Helose." She seems to lack words to voice the pa.s.sionate devotion of her heart, and comes at the last to the best and simplest, a veritable cry of the heart it is To Abelard, Helose. Even in the letters subsequent to Abelard's patient endeavor to allay the transports of devotion to a mere man in one who had vowed her life to Christ, she does not restrain her feelings entirely. She superscribes them: "To him who is all for her after Christ, she who is all for him in Christ," and finally, "To her sovereign master, his devoted slave." It is true that the pa.s.sion is more under control, but it is there nevertheless; for in one of these letters she ever and anon addresses Abelard as "my greatest blessing," and deliberately says: "Under all circ.u.mstances, G.o.d knows, I have feared offending you more than I have feared offending Him; and it is you far more than G.o.d whom I wish to please; it was a word from you, no divine call, that made me take the veil." And she says, in reply to Abelard's request to be buried in the cemetery of the Paraclete: "I shall be more intent on following you without delay than upon providing for your burial."

Bigotry or narrow piety, which are so much alike as to be scarcely distinguishable, might find fault with the uncompromising frankness of Helose in confessing the persistence of love after she is a nun. She admits that she loved Abelard pa.s.sionately; moreover: "If I must indeed lay bare all the weakness of my miserable heart, I do not find in my heart contrition or penitence sufficient to appease G.o.d. I cannot withhold myself from complaining of His pitiless cruelty in regard to the outrage inflicted on you, and I only offend Him by rebellious murmurings against His decrees, instead of seeking to allay His wrath by repentance. Can it be said, in fact, that one is truly penitent, whatever be the bodily penances submitted to, when the soul still harbors the thought of sin and burns with the same pa.s.sions as of old?"

She cannot bring herself to regret or even to forget and to cease to long for the pleasures of their love. "They praise me for purity of life; it is only because they do not know of my hypocrisy. The purity of the flesh is set down to the credit of virtue; but true virtue is of the soul, not of the body." These confessions, it strikes us, are proof of the purity and loftiness of her ideals; she will not accept credit for virtues that are only skin deep; she honors the robe she wears too much to soil it by any sort of indulgence that might give occasion for scandal or for irreverent scoffing. But she bravely owns: "I do not seek the crown of victory (over my evil thoughts), it is enough for me to avoid the danger."

In a person so honest with herself we are not surprised to find a charity for the weaknesses of others and a catholicity of view in regard to things moral and religious quite in advance of the rather cramped asceticism distinctive, for example, of Saint Bernard, whom we take as a typical representative of the religious feeling of the age. In the last of her letters, she shows her learning, it must be admitted, with a little too much pedantry; but that was in accord with the habit of the day. She overloads her letter with useless erudition in the way of appeals to this and that holy man or this and that text of Scripture to support a point which the reader would accept as axiomatic. But behind this there is good sense and kindness. She asks Abelard to determine, in the rule he is to make for her convent, all sorts of practical points.

Can women, being physically weaker, fast as rigidly as men? Yet meat is not so necessary for women; is it really a deprivation, then, to make them abstain from meat? Women are not so p.r.o.ne to intemperance as men, and at times they really need some stimulant; how shall we determine in regard to wines? We should avoid, of course, male visitors; but do not vain, gossiping, worldly women corrupt their own s.e.x just as much as men would? Above all, she says, nuns must learn to eschew Pharisaism, the better-than-thou frame of mind. "The blessings promised us by Christ were not promised to those alone who were priests; woe unto the world, indeed, if all that deserved the name of virtue were shut up in a cloister."

The close of this last letter is in a tone of religious exaltation which but poorly conceals the more human sentiments of the n.o.ble Abbess Helose: "It is for thee, O my master, it is for thee, as long as thou livest, to inst.i.tute the rule which we are to follow evermore. For, after G.o.d, thou wast the founder of our community; it is for thee, then, with G.o.d's a.s.sistance, to legislate for our order."

The two letters in which Abelard answers this request are more coldly formal, less personal, than any of the others. At the end, for example, instead of some tender reminiscence, some hint that it was at the bidding of love that he had poured forth his erudition on the subject of the monastic life, we find merely an exhortation such as might be addressed by any father confessor to one seeking his direction: "Imitate, in the love of study and of good books, those blessed disciples of Saint Jerome, Paula and Eustochia, at whose request this great doctor wrote so many works that are a guiding light to the church."

What were the rules by which Helose and her nuns were to live? In essence not fundamentally different from those in use in regular monasteries of the Benedictine rule, they are yet of sufficient interest to warrant us in giving a brief account, a mere abstract, of the very lengthy and verbose commentary on monasticism which Helose received from Abelard. We cannot doubt that a person of her intelligence and strength of character followed the spirit, not the letter, of the law, and made her nuns live as she lived, beyond the utmost reach of evil report.

The three cardinal virtues in the view of monasticism are Chast.i.ty, Poverty, Silence. These the nuns must observe most strictly, and such observance involves the renunciation of all family ties, of all worldly affections and desires. As there is less of temptation to worldliness in the solitary places of the earth, the convent should be remote. The absurd extent to which the cult of mere chast.i.ty was exalted in the mediaeval mind has been commented on by many a writer; but one little incident or ill.u.s.tration from the book by which Helose was to govern herself and her community may be forgiven us. Abelard quotes from a letter of Saint Jerome. In the life of Saint Martin, written by Sulpicius, we read that the saint wished to pay his respects to a virgin renowned for her exemplary conduct and her chast.i.ty, who, it seems, had spent all her life since girlhood shut up in a small cell. She refused to allow Saint Martin to come into her dwelling, but, looking out of the crevice which served for a window, she said: "Father, pray where you are, for I have never received a visit from any man." Saint Martin "gave thanks to G.o.d that, thanks to such a mode of life, she had preserved her chast.i.ty." The humor, the irony, of such a remark appeals to us; but it never occurred to Saint Martin, to Saint Jerome, to Abelard, or to Helose, that she who had continued chaste merely because she had bottled herself up in a living tomb did not merit praise for any extraordinary virtue: one might as well praise Robinson Crusoe on his island for not indulging in the dissipations of society.

To continue the rules for the Paraclete, which was certainly situated in a place remote enough to protect its inmates from worldly intrusions, we may add that the rule advises that the grounds or inclosure of the convent should contain "all that is needful for the life of the convent, that is to say, a garden, water, a mill, a bolting house and a bakery oven," in short, everything that can be thought of, in order to obviate the necessity of communication with the outside world.

Helose's monastery, we may be a.s.sured, did not want for a diligent abbess, who was to be a.s.sisted by six subordinates: "For the entire administration of the convent we believe that there ought to be seven mistresses, so many and no more: the porteress, the cellaress, the vesturess (_robaria_), the infirmaress, the precentress (_cantaria_), the sacristan, and finally a deaconess, called now an abbess.... In this camp of Heaven's militia... the deaconess takes the place of the general-in-chief, to whom all are in all things obedient." The six other sisters called officers, who command under her, rank as colonels or captains. The rest of the nuns belonging regularly to the order are the soldiers of the Lord, while the lay sisters, who were employed in menial offices and were not initiated into the order, but merely took vows renouncing the world, were to be the foot soldiers.

Helose would accord quite well with the requirements for an abbess or deaconess. Such a one must have learning sufficient to read and to comprehend the Scriptures and the rules of her order. She must be dignified, able to command respect and obedience. "Only as a last resort and for pressing reasons should women of high rank or of great fortune be chosen as abbesses." Full of the importance of their t.i.tles, they are ordinarily vain, presumptuous, proud. Being the guardian of the whole community, the abbess should keep a close watch over her own conduct, lest she corrupt by evil example. Above all, the abbess is forbidden to "live in greater comfort, greater ease, than any of her nuns. She shall not have any private apartments for dining or sleeping; she shall share all with her flock, whose needs she will comprehend so much the better."

When guests are to be entertained at table the abbess is not to make this an excuse for providing delicacies on which she herself may feast, the guest is to sit at the table with the other nuns, though a special dish may be provided for her, and the abbess herself is to wait on her, and afterward to eat with the servants. According to a maxim of Saint Anthony, as fish that are kept long out of water die, even so monks who live long out of their cells in communication with worldly folk break their vow of seclusion. We may recall that Chaucer's jolly monk held this same text "not worth an oyster"; but the abbess of the Paraclete is specially enjoined "never to leave the convent to attend to outside business." This reminds us that it was provided that the Paraclete should have a certain number of monks attached to it. Convents, indeed, were rarely if ever independent of masculine supervision, if not control, and in this case it is specially provided that the convent "shall be subject always to a monastery, in such sort that one abbot may preside, and... that there be but one fold and one shepherd." The relations, however, are decidedly to the advantage of the nuns; their subjection is only nominal, and every provision is made, in the letter of the law, that the monks shall attend merely to things outside of the convent and shall not meddle with its administration: "If we wish that the abbot... should have control over the nuns, it is only in such sort that he shall recognize as his superiors the spouses of Christ, whose servant only he is, and that he shall find pleasure in serving, not in commanding them. He should be like the intendant of a royal household, who does not venture to make his mistress feel his power.... He or his representatives shall never be at liberty to speak to the virgins of the Lord in the absence of their abbess.... He shall decide nothing concerning them or their affairs until he has taken counsel with her; and he shall transmit his instructions or orders only through her....

All that concerns costume, food, even money, if there be any, shall be gathered together and put in the custody of the nuns; out of their superfluity they shall provide what is needful for the monks. The monks, therefore, shall take charge of all outside affairs, and the nuns of all those things which it becomes women to attend to in the house, to wit, to sew the frocks of the monks, to wash them, to knead the bread, to put it in the oven and bake it. They shall have charge of the dairy and its dependencies; they shall feed the hens and geese; in short, they shall do all that women can do better than men.... Men and women both shall vow obedience to the abbess."

Though not so radical in some respects as the const.i.tution which Robert D'Arbrissel imposed upon his monastery of Fontevrault, where women were exalted above men in all respects, the provisions cited above seem sufficient to insure the independence of the nuns. There are, of course, careful rules to safeguard the virtue of both monks and nuns in the close relations necessitated by the conventual scheme; but as these are not different from what ordinary prudence would suggest--and ordinary craft circ.u.mvent--we need not pause to give them.

The deaconess or abbess was not absolute; she must take counsel with her subordinates, and for some things she must convene the whole convent to ask advice and consent. Her subordinates had duties and responsibilities of no mean sort. The sacristan, who is also treasurer, shall have charge of the chapel and its ornaments, their repairs, etc. She must care for the things needful for the services of the church, such as the incense, the relics, the bells, and the communion wafers, which latter the nuns are to make of pure wheat flour. The sacristan, too, having to decorate the church in keeping with the seasons of the religious year, must be enough of a scholar to know how to compute and determine the feast days according to the calendar.

With the precentress, or mistress of the choir, rested the responsibility for the church music. She was to train the choir, and to teach music, in which she must be well versed. Besides this, she was the librarian, must give out and take in the books, and take care of books and illuminations. In case of the illness or other incapacity of the abbess, the precentress took her place.

One of the most trying places must have been that of infirmaress, who not only had charge of the sick in the capacity of nurse, but "must keep herself supplied with proper medicines, according to the resources of the place, and this she can do the better if she knows a little of medicine.... She must know how to let blood (the medicine of the period relied very largely upon phlebotomy), so that this operation may not require the access of any man among the nuns." Much of the simpler knowledge and practice of medicine was permitted to women; the simpler medicine, indeed, was the only hope of the unfortunate sick in the days of drastic doctoring.

The nun called the _robaria_, who had charge of the wardrobe, we have christened "vesturess," for lack of a better name. She provided and cared for the clothing of both monks and nuns, not so simple a matter as it might seem, for "she shall have the sheep sheared, and shall receive the leather (for shoes, etc.); she shall collect and take care of the wool and linen and see to the making of the cloth from them; she shall distribute thread, needles, and scissors (to the nuns a.s.signed to work under her). She shall have charge of the dormitory and of the beds; and she shall be charged with directing the cutting, sewing, and was.h.i.+ng of the table-cloths, napkins, and all the linen of the monastery.... She shall have all the necessary implements for her work, and shall regulate the tasks a.s.signed to each sister. She shall have charge of the novices until they are admitted to the community." The novices, by the way, were regularly taught in the convent, and a good deal of the work for which religious exercises left the nuns little time was a.s.signed to them.

The clothes worn by the nuns of Helose's convent were to be of the simplest kind. "The clothes shall be of black woollen stuff; no other color, for that best accords with the mourning of penitence; and no fur is more fitting than the fleece of lambs for the spouses of Christ...."

And this black robe was not to extend lower than the heel ("to avoid raising the dust"), or to have sleeves longer than the natural length to cover arm and hand,--a provision which one can understand only after seeing pictures of the immense sleeves in fas.h.i.+on. "The veils shall not be of silk, but of cloth or dyed stuff. They shall wear chemises of cloth next the skin, and these they shall not take off even to sleep.

Considering the delicacy of their const.i.tutions, we will not forbid the use of mattresses and sheets.... For covering (at night), we think a chemise, a robe and a lamb skin, adding over these, during the cold weather, a mantle for covering to the bed, will suffice. Each bed must have a mattress, a bolster, a pillow, a counterpane, and a sheet." In order to guard against vermin and dirt, all clothing should be provided for each nun in double sets. On their heads the nuns were to wear a white band with the veil over it; when necessary, on account of the tonsure, a bonnet of lamb skin might be worn. When a nun died, she was dressed in clean but coa.r.s.e garments, with sandals on her feet, and the garments sewn or fastened to the body, so that they might not be disarranged in the presence of the priests officiating at her funeral.

As a special honor, the abbess could be buried in a garment of haircloth, sewn around her like a sack.

The duties of the porteress were sufficiently simple, consisting chiefly in guarding the gate and admitting only persons properly accredited. But the cellaress had duties manifold. She "shall have charge of all that concerns the feeding of the nuns: cellar, refectory, kitchen, mill, bakery, bake ovens, gardens, orchards and fields, beehives, flocks, cattle of all kinds, and poultry." With keen insight into human nature, it is especially provided that she shall not reserve any tidbits for herself at the table, with the admonition that this was precisely what Judas did.

We have given but the merest sketch of the provisions by which Helose was to regulate her life. The rule determines points great and small; meat can be allowed three times a week, except during Lent; wine may be used in moderation; services must be held at such and such times, with work or sleep between; nuns must never go bare-footed, nor gossip with visitors, and so on. But one thing we must add, as ill.u.s.trative of the manners of the time: "There is one thing more which must be not only forbidden but held in abhorrence, although it is a custom in use in most monasteries: that is that the nuns should wipe their hands or their knives with the pieces of bread remaining from dinner, which are the portion of the poor. To save table linen it is not right to soil the bread of the poor."

In the way of actual facts little is really known of the life of Helose. We have sought to trace the fortunes of the man to whom she was so unselfishly yet so pa.s.sionately attached and to reproduce from her own scanty writings as much as may be of her character. We must now conclude the story of Abelard. After his departure from Saint-Gildas his days were still full of trouble. In 1136 we find him once more triumphing in his old field, delivering his lectures to crowds of students upon Mont Sainte-Genevieve. Not only did his teaching draw crowds, but his book on theology was in every hand, and his doctrines spread beyond the Alps. In the words of one of his enemies, writing to Saint Bernard: _Libri ejus transeunt maria, transvolant Alpes_: "His books are wafted across the seas, and fly over the Alps." Arnold of Brescia, a disciple of Abelard, was preaching in Italy a more democratic religion and a more liberal form of government, stirring up the wrath of the Church as another Tribune of the People daring to incite the Italian cities to proclaim their freedom. The final conflict of Abelard's life was preparing.

At Clairvaux, in a valley so dismal as to have won the name of the _Valley of Wormwood_, lived the very incarnation of asceticism, stern religious orthodoxy, and uncompromising conservatism--Saint Bernard. To him, a restless, daring innovator like Abelard was abhorrent. To profess doctrines that led to the view that original sin was less a sin than a punishment, that the redemption of man was an act of pure love, not one of necessity for our redemption, that G.o.d, in short, was a G.o.d of Love, not a G.o.d of Wrath--what was all this but striking at the very root of that exquisite mortification of the flesh, the prayers, the fasting, the actual corporeal torment inflicted upon himself by Saint Bernard in the hope of purchasing remission of his sin? His sin, we may remark, consisted merely in being descended from Adam, for he had been pure in life from his youth up. Saint Bernard was looked upon even in his own life as almost a saint; his influence was tremendous. He now began to stir up the powers of the Church, from the Pope down, against Abelard.

The latter, puffed up with pride at his renewed success, or perhaps willing to risk all at one throw, did not wait for the Church to proceed against him: he challenged his enemies to prove his doctrines heretical; he challenged Bernard himself to meet him in debate before a council that was to meet at Sens in 1140. Fully aware of his inferiority as a logician to this trained thinker, Saint Bernard reluctantly consented to take up the battle for orthodoxy. All was ready; Abelard appeared before the council, realized that his case was prejudged, and appealed to Rome.

Nevertheless, Saint Bernard got the council to pa.s.s judgment against Abelard and to sentence him to silence and to perpetual reclusion in a monastery, and Innocent II., the next year, confirmed the finding of the council. Broken in spirit, Abelard nevertheless set out for Rome to urge his plea in person, but at Cluni he broke down in health. Tenderly cared for by the good abbot, Peter the Venerable, who effected a sort of reconciliation between Abelard and the triumphant Abbot of Clairvaux, Abelard lingered but a few months. To ease his dying days Peter the Venerable had him removed to the little priory of Saint Marcel, a dependency of Cluni, where he died, April 21, 1142.

In accordance with the wishes of Helose and of Abelard himself, Peter the Venerable sent his remains secretly to the Paraclete, writing to Helose: "May the Lord keep him for you, to give him back to you through His mercy." There was a heart still in the breast of this old monk; we trust that his prayer has been answered, even as we trust that the absolution which he sent at Helose's request has washed away the sins of her lover: "I, Peter, Abbot of Cluni, who received into the monastery of Cluni Peter Abelard, and granted that his body be borne secretly to the Abbess Helose and the convent of the Paraclete, by the authority of G.o.d Almighty and of all the saints, absolve him, by virtue of my office, from all his sins."

We hear nothing more of Helose, except that she provided for her child, left with Abelard's sister in Brittany; but we know that she lived her life not only bravely, but honorably. For twenty-two years more she lived on at the convent over which her husband had established her, and here she died, on the 16th of May, 1164. Her body was buried beside that of her husband in the cemetery of the Paraclete, and a touching legend relates that when, according to the order given by herself, her body was deposited in the tomb of her husband, "Abelard stretched out his arms to receive her and closed them in a last embrace." Through all the centuries love has guarded their remains; though often s.h.i.+fted, their resting place is still known: in the famous Cimetiere de L'Est, Pere Lachaise, at Paris, the traveller still sees the tomb of Abelard and Helose.

It is not her learning that has made Helose famous; it is the accident of her connection with Abelard which has served to keep her name alive.

It is not because she was learned or because she was loved by Abelard that we admire her. Her greatness is a moral greatness rare in her time, and not due to her intellect or to the tragic circ.u.mstances of her life.

The remarkable thing is that, overwhelmed in the ruin of her lover, forced into a convent at twenty, where she obeys him and imitates him, she yet does not change in her heart, she does not suffer the mystic death of the cloister; of her love she never repents, though she does repent of her faults; to the law of monastic asceticism her conscience refuses to submit, let Abelard preach as he will, for she vaguely feels that asceticism is in violation of some higher law of life. The great love in her heart knew no faltering; so much like devotion was it that one feels that she meant no name but that of Abelard to be a.s.sociated with the words of a dirge attributed to her:

"With thee I suffered the rigor of destiny; With thee shall I, weary, sleep; With thee shall I enter Sion."