One of the most colorful figures of 12th century Christedom was the theologian and philosopher Peter Abelard (1079-1142). Perhaps best known for his infamous affair with his pupil Heloise (for which he was castrated), as well his controversial writings, Abelard was one of the great contrarians of the high Middle Ages. He was frequently accused of heresy by such eminent figures as William of St. Thierry, Alberich of Reims, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Though he entered monastic life after his tragic affair with Heloise, he was in constant conflict with whichever community he belonged to and was driven from his monasteries more than once. While professing orthodoxy, Abelard’s written works were crafted to be deliberately offensive to theological authorities and he took malicious delight in irritating his critics. With cutting intellect, a sharp tongue, and a flair for the dramatic, Peter Abelard was the medieval equivalent of a pop star, an internationally known character whose rise and meteoric fall unfolded in lurid detail before the Christian public.
While Abelard may have relished his celebrity status for a time, by the end of his life he was a tired and broken man. Having been condemned as a heretic by the Council of Sens (1141), driven from his monastery, and with his pupils and spiritual children facing persecution from his powerful enemies, Abelard set out for Rome hoping to plead his case before Pope Innocent II and win some reprieve. Even Rome had turned against him, however, for Abelard soon learned that Innocent II had excommunicated Abelard and his followers, ordered his books burned, and sentenced him to confinement in a monastery for life where he was to maintain perpetual penance.
Already suffering from ill health and at age 62, we can imagine how this news must have devastated Abelard. At this point, however, Abelard found an ally in Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny. The monks of Cluny had no particular investment in the theological disputes of Abelard, but they were rivals of St. Bernard’s Cistercians and were inclined to favor anyone whom St. Bernard opposed. But beyond this, Peter the Venerable was a genuinely saintly man who saw in Abelard a broken, contrite soul not long for the world—one who merely required compassion and a quiet place to get himself right with God. He persuaded Abelard to remain at Cluny doing penance while Peter promised to try to get Abelard’s sentence mitigated. In this he was partially successful—the eminent Cluniac abbot achieved a partial reconciliation with Bernard, got the sentence of excommunication lifted, and persuaded Pope Innocent to allow Abelard to serve his sentence at Cluny under Peter’s own supervision.
Peter the Venerable’s Letter to Heloise
Peter remained at Cluny in the abbey of Saint-Marcel for a year before his death, living his final days in a spirit of penance admirably befitting any pious soul. After his passing on April 21, 1042, Peter the Venerable wrote a letter to Heloise, now Abbess of the Paraclete convent in Ferreux-Quincey. In this letter, Abbot Peter lovingly descibes Abelard’s last days of penance at Cluny:
I do not remember to have known a man whose appearance and bearing manifested such humility. Saint Germain cannot have seemed humbler or Saint Martin poorer. I set him among the first of this great flock of brethren; but by the carelessness of his apparel he seemed the least of all. When in our processions he walked before me with the community I have often marvelled and been amazed that a man of so great and so famous a name should be able thus to despise himself and thus to abase himself. There are some who profess religion, who when they donned the religious habit, do not find it splendid enough; but instead he was so sparing in his wants that, contented with a plain habit, he demanded nothing further. He maintained the same simplicity in his food and drink, and in every need of his body; and by word and deed condemned in himself and all men, I do not say only superfluities, but everything not absolutely necessary. He was continually reading, frequently at his prayers, and almost always silent; unless obliged to speak by friendly conversation with his brethren or by some discourse on holy things to the community. He offered the holy sacrifice of the immortal Lamb of God as often as might be, and after by my letters and labour he had been reinstated in the graces of the Holy See, he hardly missed a day. What more can I say? His mind, his speech, his actions, were ever meditated, and taught and bore witness to holiness, philosophy, and learning. Such among us was this man, simple and righteous, fearing God and shunning evil; such among us for a little while, consecrating the last days of his life to God.
For the sake of the rest—for he was more than usually troubled with the itch and other weaknesses of the body—I sent him to Chalon, for the mildness of the climate, which is the best in our part of Burgundy; and to a home well fitted for him, near the town, but yet with the Saône flowing between. There, as much as his infirmities permitted, returning to his former studies, he was ever bent over his books, not —as we read of Gregory the Great—did he ever allow a moment to pass in which he was not either praying or reading or writing or dictating. In the midst of such labour’s Death, the bearer of good tidings, found him not, like so many, asleep, but awake… all the monks of Saint-Marcel can tell you with what saintly devotion he made his profession of faith and confessed his sins; with what fervent love he received the holy viaticum, the pledge of eternal life, the body of our Redeemer; and with what trust he commended his body and soul to Him… (1)
What an edifying account! What a testimony to the power of grace and the Holy Spirit’s ability to penetrate men’s hearts in their darkest moments. It seems that in death, Abelard finally found the spirit of quiet, humble holiness that had so eluded him during his tempetuous life. After narrating Abelard’s passing, Peter consoles Heloise with the thought that before long she would be reconciled with her one-time lover (and legal husband) in heaven. Peter wrote:
…Venerable and beloved sister in Christ, he to whom you were first united by the bonds of the flesh and then by the stronger and more sacred bonds of divine love, he with whom and under whose guidance you have long served the Lord is now cherished in His bosom…God keeps him for you, and when the day comes that He shall descend from heaven to the voice of the Archangel and the sound of the trumpet, He will restore him to you forever. (2)
The Transfer of Abelard’s Body
Abelard was initially buried in Cluniac monastery of Saint-Marcel where he had passed his final days in quiet penance. A few months after his death, Heloise requested his body be brought to her nunnery at the Paraclete. Peter the Venerable had the body exhumed and personally escorted it to the Paraclete where he entrusted the remains to Heloise and personally celebrated a Mass for Abelard’s soul. He preached to the sisters, spent some time comforting Heloise on her loss, and then gave her a parchment with his own abbatial seal to be hung above Abelard’s tomb. The text on the parchment were Peter’s last words on Abelard and reflect the saintly abbot’s final judgment on the controversial man. The text, lovingly hung above the tomb by Heloise, read:
I Peter, Abbot of Cluny, who have received Peter Abelard into the monastic life, and have granted to Heloise, Abbess, and the nuns of the Paraclete, his body, which has been secretly brought here, by the authority of Almighty God and all the saints I absolve him from his sins. (3)
Heloise was over two decades Abelard’s junior and survived him almost twenty years, dying in 1162. At her death she was entombed beside him, and they have remained such ever since, for over eight centuries now, the teacher and his pupil, man and wife, one-time lovers turned monastics, lying in repose while they await the resurrection of the flesh at the end of time.
(1) Joan Evans, Monastic Life at Cluny 910-1157 (Oxford University Press: London, 1931), 63
(2) Ibid., 64
(3) Ibid.
Phillip Campbell, “The Penance of Peter Abelard,” Unam Sanctam Catholicam, October 16, 2025. Available online at https://unamsanctamcatholicam.com/2025/10/the-penance-of-peter-abelard