disposed to try to solve this problem of reconciling God and a wife, he must be prepared to try with a woman who is not interested in religion, because she is the sort of person with whom he is probably going to fall in love. The prospect is daunting. In secular language, an attempt means hoping that love will change someone; when experience shows that human love never does. In religious language, it means contemplating attempting to overcome evil.
If the problem is soluble, the initiative as always must come from God. A man trying to solve the problem by himself, with God on the one hand not wanting to be reconciled, and his wife on the other hand not wanting to be reconciled either, is to all intents and purposes beating his head against a wall. Any “solution” will be at the price of his own honesty. The problem can only in fact be solved if all the parties are willing; and the moment they are willing, it is solved.
Peter Abelard became conscious of the problem too late. Having started off on the wrong foot by seducing Heloise, when she was 17 and he was 38, his principal concern before his mutilation was whether he could possibly allow his overweening ambition to be Pope or at least a Bishop to be impeded by the millstone of a wife. Perhaps I should explain; although it was possible for a mere clerk in holy orders to be married in those days, a wife absolutely precluded any promotion in the Church. Abelard saw marriage as condemning him to return to his brother's farm and to philosophize there. With sublime self-sacrifice Heloise urged him not to degrade himself by marrying her, saying she preferred to be his strumpet to his wife. Abelard adopted the cheap expedient of a secret marriage. It deceived nobody.
It was only after his mutilation in 1119, that Abelard faced the problem of God and his wife. After forcing her to become a nun, it was seven years before he met her again and installed her in the Community of the Paraclete as…