Cloister & Hearth

PETER ABELARD--Helen Waddell--Holt ($2.50).

Historians rarely reconstruct a world convincingly: their models may be correct to the last detail but the clockwork that runs them is modern. Really moving pictures of the past are made not by scholarship but by imagination. Authoress Waddell has resurrected the famed love-affair of Heloise and Abelard not simply by the dusting and patching of documents but by putting together many a vanished two and two. The result, as any reader may verify without benefit of historical knowledge. seems historically true. And though its horizon is ringed with the theological thunder of that far-off day, its medieval scholastic air is not oppressive but exhilarating. Peter Abelard is an exciting book.

The scientists of the 12th Century were theologians. The Church was not only the narrow way of salvation but the only road to knowledge. When Peter Abelard sought fame as a scholar he inevitably became a tonsured celibate. Within the frame of orthodox Catholic theology (once thought sufficient to contain the universe) Abelard was not only a brilliant scholar but a bold thinker. Envious' and less able enemies had maneuvered him out of one hall of learning after another, but wherever he was he drew throngs of worshipful listeners. Authoress Waddell's narrative finds him at the peak of his career, the shining star of the Paris Schools. When old Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame, invited Abelard to share his house and tutor his beautiful niece Heloise, Abelard was living the unconsciously uncomfortable life of a natural bachelor. Under Fulbert's roof he quickly caught fire from Heloise's adoration. One night the old man found them in bed together.

Though it was shameful for Abelard to have a mistress, it would have been ruinous to his career to marry. But to make amends to Fulbert he married Heloise secretly, trusted Fulbert to keep it dark. The shock of Abelard's betrayal had unsettled Fulbert's mind: when he boasted of his niece's marriage and she boldly denied it, he swore a terrible revenge. One night as Abelard slept hired bravos seized and gelded him. Now there was no longer any place for the arrogant Abelard; he who might have been a prince of the Church became its pauper. He and Heloise were separated forever. But when Authoress Waddell's story leaves him, an infinitely sadder, somewhat wiser man, his thatched hut in the country has become another lecture-hall, and once more he is emptying Paris of its scholars.

Peter Abelard is the October choice of the Literary Guild.

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