I’m welcoming Sherry Jones, author of The Sharp Hook of Love, with a guest post about her novel and its tale of star-crossed love.
Why do tragic love stories thrill us so?
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet may be the world’s most famous lovers today, but they were not the first “star-crossed” couple to capture the popular imagination. Tristan and Isolde, Dante and Beatrice, Lancelot and Guinevere, Scarlet and Rhett, “Titanic’s” Jack and Rose: the course of true love never did run smooth, wrote the Bard, and Western civilization boasts a long list of made-for-each-other-yet-thwarted lovers to prove it.
The mother of all tear-jerkers, however, happened not between the pages of a book, nor on a theater stage, nor even on camera. It happened in real life, between the great philosopher and poet Peter Abelard and the brilliant woman scholar Heloise d’Argenteuil, a couple who risked all for their forbidden love, and who lost everything in one shocking, brutal act of revenge.
Abelard’s version of the tale
Abelard tells the tale with near-swaggering bravado in his autobiographical Historia Calamitatum (“The Story of My Misfortunes”), which he wrote some 15 years after he and Heloise were forced to part.
In this tale and in the correspondence with Heloise that followed, we read that Abelard, newly in Paris in 1115 as headmaster of the Notre-Dame Cloister School, decided he must meet the celebrated Heloise. To do so, he befriended her uncle, Fulbert, a Notre Dame canon and subdeacon. It was a relationship he no doubt regretted for the rest of his life.
Once he’d moved in with the uncle, he began teaching the niece. Supposedly they studied philosophy, but in actuality, Abelard wrote, “more words of love than of our reading passed between us, and more kissing than teaching.” As time went on, they grew bolder and more adventuresome, even careless. At last Fulbert caught them together and cast Abelard out of the house.
But to forbid the fruit only sweetens its flavor. Heloise and Abelard didn’t stay apart for long, but met secretly until she became pregnant. Fearing the increasingly abusive Fulbert, the couple hatched a plan: wearing a nun’s habit for a disguise, Heloise set off for far-off Brittany to bear the child at Abelard’s family home.
When Abelard arrived to collect his lover and their son, he presented Heloise with a surprise: a marriage proposal, and her uncle’s blessing. She refused him, saying she “preferred love to wedlock, and freedom to chains.”
Heloise: Ahead of her time
Wow! This sounds so thoroughly modern, especially for the 12th century. And it was—Heloise was ahead of her time. But she also knew that, if Abelard married, he might lose his prestigious position at the cloister school, the pinnacle of his career. As headmaster, according to tradition, Abelard was supposed to remain celibate.
Mistresses, on the other hand, were tolerated. The “Gregorian reforms” of the previous century had required clerical celibacy—remaining unmarried—but enforcement had been lax. Now the reform movement had begun to take hold, and some of its most zealous supporters already hated the talented, arrogant Abelard.
For Heloise, being Abelard’s mistress seemed preferable to a marriage that might destroy his career: “The name of wife may seem more sacred or more binding, but sweeter for me will always be the word friend, or, if you will permit me, that of concubine or whore.”
A doomed marriage?
Despite her protests, Abelard insisted they wed. Heloise’s uncle Fulbert had been outraged when she’d vanished, and enraged to find where she’d gone. “If you don’t marry me,” Abelard said, in essence, “Fulbert will kill me.”
He and Fulbert had agreed: The wedding would take place in secret, with only a few witnesses. That way, Abelard could keep his job.
At last, Heloise consented, with misgivings. Her uncle, she knew, would not be satisfied for long with a “secret” marriage. She predicted disaster. Indeed, soon after the wedding, Fulbert began telling people they were married. Heloise denied it, invoking her uncle’s wrath. To protect Heloise, Abelard took her to live in the Royal Abbey of Agenteuil near Paris, the convent where she’d been raised and educated.
Her residency at the convent was supposed to be a stop-gap measure, we presume. Abelard visited her frequently, and the two made love wherever they could find privacy, including in the abbey refectory, or dining hall, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. But when Fulbert heard that she’d gone to Argenteuil, he saw red. Abelard had abandoned her there, he assumed. Enraged, he exacted his terrible act of revenge, one that forced the lovers to part for the rest of their lives.
Love conquers all
But even this devastating stroke couldn’t destroy the bond they shared. As many as 20 years after they’d parted, Heloise ended a letter to Abelard with this line: “Farewell, my only love.”
After Abelard’s death, Heloise prayed over his tomb for twenty more years. And when she died, she was buried with him. Her fears that God would keep them apart in heaven as punishment for their sins seem to have been unfounded. According to one chronicler:
“When her dead body was carried to the opened tomb, her husband, who had died long before her, raised his arms to receive her, and so clasped her closely in his embrace.”
What an ending. This—not their poetic letters, not the scandalous act of revenge, not their celebrity status—is what makes the tale of Abelard and Heloise the greatest love story of all time: Their enduring love, transcending all efforts to keep them apart.
About The Sharp Hook of Love:
Among the young women of 12th century Paris, Heloise d’Argenteuil stands apart. Extraordinarily educated and quick-witted, she is being groomed by her uncle to become an abbess in the service of God.
But with one encounter, her destiny changes forever. Pierre Abelard, headmaster at the Nôtre Dame Cloister School, is acclaimed as one of the greatest philosophers in France. His controversial reputation only adds to his allure, yet despite the legions of women swooning over his poetry and dashing looks, he is captivated by the brilliant Heloise alone. As their relationship blossoms from a meeting of the minds to a forbidden love affair, both Heloise and Abelard must choose between love, duty, and ambition.
Sherry Jones weaves the lovers’ own words into an evocative account of desire and sacrifice. As intimate as it is erotic, as devastating as it is beautiful, The Sharp Hook of Love is a poignant, tender tribute to one of history’s greatest romances, and to love’s power to transform and endure.
“Jones’s impeccable eye for detail and beautifully layered plot makes this not only a standout historical, but an impressive novel in its own right, regardless of genre.” —Publishers Weekly on Four Sisters, All Queens
About Sherry Jones:
Sherry Jones is an internationally best-selling author of five historical/biographical fiction books: The Sharp Hook of Love; Four Sisters, All Queens; White Heart; The Jewel of Medina, and The Sword of Medina. She is now at work on a novel for Simon & Schuster/Gallery about the African-American dance sensation Josephine Baker. Sherry’s works have been translated into twenty languages. She lives in Spokane, Washington.
Connect with Sherry Jones on her website, Facebook, or Twitter.
Thank you, Judith, for hosting me. I hope you enjoy THE SHARP HOOK OF LOVE. 🙂
I’m looking forward to reading The Sharp Hook of Love. Thanks for the enjoyable guest post.
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