Epistolæ

• Peter Abelard

• Heloise, abbess of the Paraclete

To your charity, dearest sister, for you and your spiritual daughters, I shall write if I can a few things succinctly about the origin of your profession, how the religion of nuns began. The order of monks and of nuns fully assumed the form of its religion from our Lord Jesus Christ although before his incarnation there was some precedent of that purpose in men and women.
[There were some men and women in the Old Testament who lived a monkish life, but it was Christ who gave the authority and the model, the perfection of life for both sexes.]
With the apostles and other disciples and his mother, we read that there was an assembly (conventum) of holy women who renounced the world and gave up all their property so they might possess only Christ.. . . How devoutly these blessed women and true nuns followed Christ, how much grace and honor Christ and later the apostles showed for their devotion, sacred histories carefully relate.. . . The gospels recount that only women ministered to the Lord, took care of his daily nourishment and procured the necessities of his life. He showed himself a minister to his disciples at meals and in washing feet. But we know of him accepting this service from no disciple or man, only women performed these and other services of humanity. Martha the one (food), Mary the other (washing feet), Mary the more devout as she had been the more guilty.(!1) The Lord, with water from a basin, did the service of that ablution, she did this with the tears of inner remorse, not with external water. The Lord wiped the washed feet of disciples with a cloth, she used her hair for a cloth. She added the application of oils, which we never read that the Lord used. Who does not know that a woman anticipated his grace to the extent of anointing his head with oil? Not oil extracted in drops from the alabaster vessel, but poured out by breaking the vessel, to express the vehement desire of enormous devotion . . .
Behold that a woman anoints the holy of holies and believes him to be such; him whom the prophet [Daniel] had foretold in words, she proclaims with deeds. What is this kindness of the Lord, I ask, what merit/authority of women, that he offered his head as well as his feet only to women to be anointed? What is this prerogative of the weaker sex, I beseech, that a woman should anoint the highest Christ anointed from his conception with all the unguents of the Holy Spirit and as if consecrating him with bodily sacraments as king and priest, that is making him bodily the anointed Christ?
[We know that Jacob anointed a stone as a type of the Lord and from then on kings and priests were anointed, but only by men, though women could sometimes baptize.]
Christ was anointed by women, Christians by men, his head by a woman, his members by men.
[Christ took the anointment as king from a woman, but scorned to take a kingdom from men. The woman performed the sacrament for the heavenly, not earthly king. Bishops now take pride in ceremonies wearing gilt robes to anoint earthly kings, blessing those God curses. Abelard contrasts the indignation of the Pharisees and the apostles over the sinner anointing Christ’s feet, with the enduring faith of the woman. Christ said her action would be remembered in her praise; he did not give similar authority to any other service. Women prepared Christ’s body for burial, they stayed with him, fearless, while the male disciples denied him and fled.
[Job spoke of his skin adhering to his bones when his flesh was consumed; Abelard interprets the bone as the strength of the body, that is Christ and the church, the flesh inside is man, the skin outside woman. The flesh recedes, the skin sticks to the bone. The preaching of the apostles gives food to the interior soul, the women provide what is necessary to the body. When the flesh was consumed, the bone of Christ adhered to the skin; the apostles despaired at Christ’s passion, but the devotion of the holy women did not flinch. Men are stronger in mind and body but the apostles’ words were stronger than their deeds. Peter had said the right things, but he betrayed Christ. The men slept, while the women watched; they showed by their deeds that they loved him living and dead. Women followed the body, and were therefore given the honor of announcing the resurrection to the disciples. Women were as apostles to the apostles, sent by the Lord and the angels to announce the resurrection so that the apostles learned first from them what they would afterwards preach to the whole world.(!2)
[It was Jewish women first who were converted to the faith and began the form of this religious life, then Greek widows, given special attention by the ministry of the protomartyr Stephen. Women, wives and sisters, were inseparable companions of the apostles and women were equally involved with men in establishments of religious houses. Abelard quotes Eusebius and Jerome citing Philo on male and female virgins and early monasteries. Then he talks about men and women performing the same functions in the old testament, singing and composing, celebrating the divine office: Miriam and other prophets, Debora, Judith, Mary the mother of Christ, and Hannah, whose example gives parental authority to offer a child to God. The tribe of Aaron, daughters as well as sons, shared the heritage of serving in the sanctuary just as women participated in the clerical order in the early church, as deaconesses. When women were excluded from the tabernacle they showed their faith keeping watch outside, a model for monastic penitence, preparing for the next life at the exit of this. Their mirrors were made into vessels for Aaron and his sons to wash, as the constancy and good works of holy women reproach the negligence of pontiffs and priests. As Gregory asked: "Why should they be called bearded men when delicate girls sustain so much for Christ and the fragile sex triumphs in such a contest that it more frequently wins the twin crown of virginity and martyrdom?"
[Anna is praised in the gospel as a prophet and a widow, who publicly preached about the coming of the Lord. Paul and Jerome wrote about the profession of widows and deaconesses. Abelard says abbesses are the equivalent of deaconesses, though deaconess means minister, abbess mother — Jerome did not approve of the word abbot because Christ said our only father is God. In the Greek church, according to Cassiodorus, women were able to baptize. When he comes to consecrated virgins, Abelard notes that women are to be consecrated on special days by a bishop, whereas men, though the higher sex, may be blessed on any day and just by an abbot. The consecration of women virgins is more precious. As women are weaker, their virtue is more pleasing to God. Abelard notes that only women religious are called by the name formed from sanctitas, "holiness," sanctimonialis.
[As the last shall be first, the sex that was made contemptible by guilt and nature in Eve was restored in Mary before Adam was in Christ. Woman was created in paradise, man outside, so paradise is her natural home. Women gave the first examples of the religious profession in Anna and Mary, but they played other roles in which they were not inferior to the strength of the virile sex, Debora as judge when men were deficient, Judith destroying the enemy like David with Goliah (though David was armed with a sling, Judith approached Holofernes without a weapon of her own), Esther changing the king’s edict, the mother of the seven martyred sons in Maccabees. The daughter of Jephthah in her devotion to truth shows up the folly of her father’s vow. Women’s constancy is contrasted with the inconstancy of monks of Abelard’s time. A woman gave birth to the saviour, reversing Eve and Adam, God chose to take his body from a woman not a man; his birth gave more honor to the female body than circumcision does to the male.
[Elizabeth was a prophet who recognized Christ before his birth, John [the Baptist] only after. The Sibyl was a pagan prophet of Christ, whom Virgil quotes in the fourth eclogue. Why did Christ deign to instruct the Samaritan woman all alone? Because her virtue was more pleasing as her nature was weaker, and through her he converted many, whereas the magi were illumined by the star but they converted only themselves. Christ is said to have loved only one man among the apostles, John [the Evangelist], but he loved Martha and Mary. Women exhibit the extremes of virtue more than men, they follow Christ’s teachings with more zeal, witness the early virgin martyrs. Agatha performed a greater miracle with her veil, saving a multitude, than Elijah did with his mantle, parting the waters. Abelard speaks of virgin women in pagan religion and notes that the Sibyls were virgins. And finally he speaks of the Christian fathers who worked with or for women, Origen who castrated himself so he could continue to teach women without scandal, Jerome who wrote so much at the request of women but did not take the time to respond to Augustine. They knew how acceptable to God was the virtue of the weaker sex, we know how many women followed the example of the virgin, how few men, how women even mutilated themselves to preserve the integrity they vowed to God, how women disguised themselves as men to live holy lives and even became abbots.]
These things I think are enough to satisfy the first of your most recent requests, dearest sister in Christ, about the authority of your order and the commendation of its position/worth, so you may embrace the purpose of your profession the more zealously as you know its excellence better. Now [help] with your merits and prayers so that I can complete the second, with God willing. Fare well.
(Full translation will be provided from Mary McLaughlin's her forthcoming book.)

This letter answers part of Heloise’s request, see above ep.5, for a history of women’s monasticism. Abelard emphasizes the roles women played in the Old and New Testament — including anointing Christ as priest and king — and in early Christianity, arguing Christ’s authority for the monastic vocation of women and identifying modern abbesses with early deaconesses. He often repeats Heloise’s description of women as the weaker sex, but usually to show what they are capable of. This is a very long letter from which these are excerpts and summary [the summaries in brackets].

(!1) Abelard is presumably alluding to the tradition that made Mary Magdalene, conflated with Mary the sister of Martha, a prostitute. He also conflates Mary with the sinner who washed Christ’s feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. (!2)In a later passage Abelard puts it even more strongly: "as we call Mary Magdalene apostle of the apostles," Muckle, p.271.

Muckle, "The letter of Heloise on Religious Life and Abelard’s First Reply," MS 17 (1955), ep.6, p.253-81.