Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy the Wilson and I'm Holly from today. We
Speaker 1: have something that has been for request of listeners. It
Speaker 1: was also something I planned to do, and that is
Speaker 1: the story of Abelard and Heloise. So. Abelard was a poet,
Speaker 1: of philosopher and a theologian, and he was born uh
Speaker 1: in Brittany, which is in northwest France today, in ten
Speaker 1: seventy nine. And in the words of the Stanford Encyclopedia
Speaker 1: of Philosophy, he was quote the pre eminent philosopher and
Speaker 1: theologian of the twelfth century. Helloise was one of his students,
Speaker 1: and she was born right around the turn of the
Speaker 1: twelfth century, and she was a respected abbess of a
Speaker 1: prominent community of nuns. So they sort of had their
Speaker 1: own lives there. But they are best known today for
Speaker 1: their very tragic love story. It's been commemorated in poems, songs,
Speaker 1: novels and films. If you've ever seen Being John Malkovich,
Speaker 1: you may even remember the Avalarde and Hiloise puppet show
Speaker 1: that features in that film. Um, this is a tragic
Speaker 1: love story. It's one. I described the plot of it
Speaker 1: to the boyfriend over the weekend, and every time I
Speaker 1: would sort of get to a turning point, he would
Speaker 1: go and then everyone's okay with that? Right? No, um,
Speaker 1: this is complete. That's so hopeful, you know, honey. They
Speaker 1: were not okay with that. It's complete with lovers who
Speaker 1: were forced to part, a secret marriage, a castration, and
Speaker 1: repeated exhumations, which is why we're talking about it right
Speaker 1: before Valentine's Day. What's more romantic than an exclamation? Really,
Speaker 1: I know, Well, the exhumations actually are kind of romantic
Speaker 1: in a way, So we will get to that towards
Speaker 1: the end of the episode. I'm laughing that awkward silent
Speaker 1: laugh are known always comes out. My face is just
Speaker 1: frozen in this odd scowl. Yeah, as as is often
Speaker 1: the case, we're talking about this story because I kind
Speaker 1: of love it, but it is very sad and and
Speaker 1: disturbing in many ways. So yes, so we'll kick it
Speaker 1: off with sort of the background of the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and we should say at the front, we don't really
Speaker 1: know very much about Heloise's life before she met Abelard.
Speaker 1: We do not even know the identity of her parents.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, Abelard had really made a name
Speaker 1: for himself before Heloise was even born, and he wrote
Speaker 1: his life story down in a letter which is known
Speaker 1: as Historia calamitatum, or the Story of My Misfortunes. So
Speaker 1: Pierre Abillard, also known as Peter Abelard, was the son
Speaker 1: of a knight and his family was on the lower
Speaker 1: wrungs of the nobility. His father was an educated man
Speaker 1: and took pains to make sure that all of his
Speaker 1: children were educated too, But as the eldest son, Abillard
Speaker 1: was really meant to follow in his father's knightly footsteps,
Speaker 1: and in doing so he would also be receiving a
Speaker 1: sizeable inheritance. However, what Abbillard really loved was letters and learning,
Speaker 1: and he gave up all of this potential knighthood to
Speaker 1: become a philosopher. And as he described it, quote, I
Speaker 1: fled utterly from the court of Mars that I might
Speaker 1: win learning in the bosom of Minerva, which is a
Speaker 1: lovely sentiment. This quite lovely. There are many lovely sentiments
Speaker 1: in this story to go with the parts that are horrifying.
Speaker 1: Um he became an inherent of Aristotle, also known as
Speaker 1: a peripatetic, and the peripatetics purportedly got their name from
Speaker 1: Aristotle's habit of pacing around while he was teaching, but
Speaker 1: it also came to just generally described people who moved
Speaker 1: around a lot, which applied to Abelard as well. By
Speaker 1: the time he met Heloise, he'd spent years studying and
Speaker 1: teaching Aristotelian philosophy and large logic all over what is
Speaker 1: now France, and he had developed his own philosophy of language,
Speaker 1: and along the way he studied in Paris under William
Speaker 1: of Shampoo, who was another prominent theologian and logician at
Speaker 1: the time, and it became the first of many conflicts
Speaker 1: between Abelard and another public figure. Allard really picked apart
Speaker 1: and debated William's teachings, and when he Abillard was judged
Speaker 1: to be the winner, he was quite boastful about it
Speaker 1: and unfortunately tried to shame and embarrass William. Not the
Speaker 1: most noble behavior, uh and this simultaneously increased Abalard's reputation
Speaker 1: and it caused him some understandable problems in the intellectual community.
Speaker 1: It was kind of his standard way of relating to people.
Speaker 1: He had a similar experience not long after with another
Speaker 1: teacher and Salm of Leone, who he sought out to
Speaker 1: learn from before later becoming his arrival. After leaving Leon,
Speaker 1: Abillard went to Paris again and became scholar and residence
Speaker 1: at Notre Dame. And that's when Heloise. His uncle Faubet,
Speaker 1: sent Heloise to abb Lard for tutoring. Full Bear was
Speaker 1: a cannon, which is a type of clergyman, so at
Speaker 1: this point in the story, Abillard would have been about
Speaker 1: thirty eight years old. Heloise's age is kind of subject
Speaker 1: to debate because we don't know exactly when she was born.
Speaker 1: It's cited as anywhere between seventeen and twenty five. And
Speaker 1: here's how Abelard described Heloise in his Historia Calamitatum quote
Speaker 1: of no mean beauty, she stood out above all by
Speaker 1: reason of her abundant knowledge of letters. Now, this virtue
Speaker 1: is rare among women, and for that very reason it
Speaker 1: doubly graced the maiden and made her the most worthy
Speaker 1: of renown in the entire kingdom. It was this young
Speaker 1: girl whom I, after carefully considering all those qualities which
Speaker 1: are wont to attract lovers, determined to unite with myself
Speaker 1: in the bonds of love, and indeed the thing seemed
Speaker 1: to me very easy to be done. Meanwhile, he described
Speaker 1: himself as quote possessed of such advantages of youth and
Speaker 1: comeliness that no matter what woman I might favor with
Speaker 1: my love, I dreaded rejection of none. Not really uh
Speaker 1: short on confidence. So the pair started out with a
Speaker 1: written courtship, and eventually they wanted to have more face
Speaker 1: to face conversations with one another. So Abillard convinced Heloise's
Speaker 1: uncle to offer him lodgings in his house, which was
Speaker 1: also near the school where he taught, and well, they're
Speaker 1: basically gave Abelard free reign over Heloise's education. He wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: the man's simplicity was nothing short of astounding to me.
Speaker 1: I should not have been more smitten with wonder if
Speaker 1: he had entrusted a tender lamb to the care of
Speaker 1: a ravenous wolf. So that, to me sounds a little alarming,
Speaker 1: but it's less romantic and more like, Yeah, he seems
Speaker 1: a little creepy, But his description of their developing relationship
Speaker 1: sounds a little bit less predatory because he says we
Speaker 1: were united first in the dwelling that sheltered our love
Speaker 1: and then in the hearts that burned with it, under
Speaker 1: the pretext of study, we spent our hours and the
Speaker 1: happiness of love. Heloise's point of view at the very
Speaker 1: start of their relationship, really his, was not documented. Some
Speaker 1: scholars argue that she was a willing participant, but others
Speaker 1: point out passages from letters in which Abelard says that
Speaker 1: he was sort of coercive and demanding, but in the
Speaker 1: end she insisted that she loved him passionately and completely,
Speaker 1: and their time together became so consuming and so extensive
Speaker 1: that Adelarde started to shirk his other duties, both of
Speaker 1: her education and of the school where he was supposed
Speaker 1: to be teaching. And Heloise's uncle seemed blind to all
Speaker 1: of this. So even as people gossiped and dropped hints
Speaker 1: to the to him that something was up with his
Speaker 1: niece and her teacher, uh, he didn't seem to catch on,
Speaker 1: and when he inevitably did wise up to it after
Speaker 1: several months, Heloise's uncle, as one would anticipate, separated them.
Speaker 1: Abillard is quite poetic about this too. He says each
Speaker 1: grieved most not for himself, but for the other. Each
Speaker 1: thought to allay not his own sufferings but those of
Speaker 1: the one he loved. The very sundering of our bodies
Speaker 1: served but to link our souls closer together. The plenitude
Speaker 1: of the love which was denied to us inflamed us
Speaker 1: more than ever. Sometime after her uncle found them out,
Speaker 1: Heloise realized she was pregnant, and she told Abelard that
Speaker 1: she was so. One night, while her uncle was away,
Speaker 1: Abelard spirited her out of the house and sent her
Speaker 1: to live with his sister in Brittany until the baby
Speaker 1: was born. Halloiss Uncle, no surprise, was outraged. Abillard went
Speaker 1: to him and begged for forgiveness, insisting that he and
Speaker 1: Heloise truly loved one another. He offered to marry Heloise
Speaker 1: in secret, and Filbert agreed, but neither one of them
Speaker 1: really wanted to get married. They both sort of looked
Speaker 1: at marriage as this morally weak way to get away
Speaker 1: with having physical lust. Getting married would also have been
Speaker 1: a huge blow to Avalard's reputation, and it would have
Speaker 1: put a cap on how far he could advance in
Speaker 1: the church, since the highest levels of the clergy couldn't
Speaker 1: really marry, and since church was really the only path
Speaker 1: for somebody who had Abelard's education at that point this
Speaker 1: was a problem. If he married her, he was going
Speaker 1: to be stalling his career permanently. But he was willing
Speaker 1: to do it because it seemed like the only way
Speaker 1: to appease her uncle's fury. Abillard went back to Brittany
Speaker 1: to retrieve Heloise and to marry her, but she actually
Speaker 1: refused him. She said that the plan was too dangerous,
Speaker 1: that she was not willing to sacrifice his potential in
Speaker 1: his reputation, and that there was no way her uncle
Speaker 1: was really going to forgive Abelard anyway, just because he
Speaker 1: married her. According to Avlard, after going on just at
Speaker 1: length about how damaging marriage and children were to the
Speaker 1: study of philosophy, Eloise said this, if layman and gentiles
Speaker 1: bound by no profession of religion lived after this fashion,
Speaker 1: what ought you a cleric and a cannon do, in
Speaker 1: order not to prefer base voluptuousness to your sacred duties,
Speaker 1: to prevent this charibdis from sucking you down headlong, and
Speaker 1: to save yourself from being plunged shamelessly and irrevocably into
Speaker 1: such filth as this not a favorite of the idea
Speaker 1: of marriage at all? Yeah, what a pity, She went
Speaker 1: on to say how much sweeter and romantic it would
Speaker 1: be for her to be his mistress rather than his wife,
Speaker 1: because love would be a stronger bond between them than
Speaker 1: marriage could ever be, And in doing this, Heloise was
Speaker 1: basically saying she would sacrifice herself entirely for Avalard's sake
Speaker 1: to allow him to have her without standing in the
Speaker 1: way of his life and career, while she would endure
Speaker 1: basically all the consequences. Avalard could not be convinced, though,
Speaker 1: and she finally gave up, saying, then there is no
Speaker 1: more left but this, that in our doom, the sorrow
Speaker 1: yet to come, shall be no less than the love
Speaker 1: we two have already known, which is some foreshadowing. When
Speaker 1: the baby was born, she named it Astrolabe, and they
Speaker 1: left him with Abalard's sister and returned to Paris to
Speaker 1: be married in secret very early one morning, in the
Speaker 1: presence of Heloise's uncle and some of Abillard's friends, and Heloise,
Speaker 1: being an intelligent woman, was definitely right about her uncle.
Speaker 1: Even though their marriage was supposed to be a secret,
Speaker 1: Fulbert told other people that they had gotten married, so
Speaker 1: Heloise publicly insisted that her uncle was lying, which infuriated him,
Speaker 1: and fearing for her safety, Abillard sent her to the
Speaker 1: convent where she had been educated when she was younger,
Speaker 1: a place outside of Paris called Argentoya. They continued to
Speaker 1: see one another. There's a passage in one of Heloise's
Speaker 1: letters and which she talks about making love in a
Speaker 1: corner of the convent itself. But Helloy's his uncle, interpreted
Speaker 1: her entry into the convent as a ploy by Abillard
Speaker 1: to get rid of her. So he bribed the servants
Speaker 1: in the house where Abelard was staying so they could
Speaker 1: get access to his rooms, and he sent his own
Speaker 1: servants to break into Abelard's room in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, where they actually castrated him. So, according to Abelard,
Speaker 1: the next morning there was an enormous crowd who came out.
Speaker 1: It reads as though he's saying that they were mourning
Speaker 1: the loss of his man parts. Probably it was, this
Speaker 1: is the mark of the translation, that it was really
Speaker 1: that people were extremely upset at the uh the physical
Speaker 1: disfigurement he had undergone. And it's not so much just
Speaker 1: the loss of physical sexual prowess. Right, So he says,
Speaker 1: it is difficult, nay impossible for words of mine to
Speaker 1: describe the amazement which bewildered them, the lamentations they uttered,
Speaker 1: the uproar with which they harassed me, or the grief
Speaker 1: with which they increased my own suffering. He simultaneously bemoaned
Speaker 1: his fate and saw it as a fitting punishment, since
Speaker 1: it had removed from him the part of his body
Speaker 1: with which he had sinned. Abelard retreated to the monastery
Speaker 1: at sun Denis. At first, this was more to hide
Speaker 1: from what had happened to him than out of any
Speaker 1: newfound religious devotion. He became a monk, and Heloise, who
Speaker 1: at this point was already sheltering at a convent, took
Speaker 1: vows and became a Benedictine nun. While at Sandoni, Abillard
Speaker 1: tried to continue with his life of study and teaching,
Speaker 1: but to turn his attention to faith instead of philosophy.
Speaker 1: But the monastery at Sandony was, in Abalard's were words
Speaker 1: quote utterly worldly, and its abbot was corrupt. Abalard became
Speaker 1: popular as a teacher, even as he criticized the monastery
Speaker 1: and tried very hard to reform it. His constant and
Speaker 1: criticism na trually drew the ire of the other teachers
Speaker 1: and monks at the monastery who all rallied against him
Speaker 1: and complained about him to bishops, archbishops, and any other
Speaker 1: church official who would listen. He also, while he was there,
Speaker 1: wrote books that were deemed to be heretical, and his
Speaker 1: previous feuds with other philosophical and religious thinkers, which we
Speaker 1: referenced at the beginning of the podcast, kind of came
Speaker 1: back to haunt him. Abillard fled to Champagne and became
Speaker 1: a hermit. Students of philosophy continued to seek him out
Speaker 1: to try to get him to return to teaching, but
Speaker 1: he did, but he was constantly criticized and scrutinized for
Speaker 1: applying logic to matters of faith, and that was a
Speaker 1: practice that was viewed as very threatening to the medieval church.
Speaker 1: After a while, he and his students created this community
Speaker 1: of teaching and learning that they called law Paraclete. Eventually,
Speaker 1: he handed law Paraclete over to Helloise and the nuns
Speaker 1: from the convent where she'd been staying because their convent
Speaker 1: had been disbanded after some internal church feuding. She became
Speaker 1: the abbess at La Periclet, and Heloise became highly respected
Speaker 1: in her own right. At this point. Being an abbess
Speaker 1: required skill in both administrative and religious work, and she
Speaker 1: drew praise from Peter the Venerable and other prominent religious figures.
Speaker 1: She was also fluent in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and
Speaker 1: she taught these languages to the other nuns as well.
Speaker 1: Avelarne continued to teach and to serve as an abbot,
Speaker 1: although his skeptical manner of approaching religious thought continued to
Speaker 1: draw fire. Eventually he wound up because of this, being
Speaker 1: accused of heresy, and he was condemned at a council
Speaker 1: at Fants in eleven forty. His sentence was lifted only
Speaker 1: after Peter the Venerable intervened. Avelard's health started to really fail,
Speaker 1: and he died in eleven forty two. Peter the Venerable
Speaker 1: built a tomb for him in Saint Marcel, but Heloise
Speaker 1: had him moved and reburied at La Periclete so that
Speaker 1: she could watch over him. She lived another twenty years
Speaker 1: before dying sometime in eleven sixty three or eleven sixty four.
Speaker 1: La Periclet also became a highly respected convent under under
Speaker 1: her leadership, with six daughter houses as well, and there's
Speaker 1: a story that she was actually buried in Abalard's grave,
Speaker 1: but there's no substantiation of that in the record. She
Speaker 1: was buried next to him, and their burial place was
Speaker 1: moved to a drier location in four In sixteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: the letters that she and Abelard had exchanged between each
Speaker 1: other were published for the first time, and in sixteen
Speaker 1: twenty one the nuns at La Periclet moved their bodies
Speaker 1: to a new and more impressive tomb to satisfy curious visitors.
Speaker 1: They repeated this whole exhumation and reburial a few more
Speaker 1: times in conjunction, most of the time with new translations
Speaker 1: of the letters coming out and sort of influx of
Speaker 1: Abelard and Heloise letter tourists to constantly u upgrade the
Speaker 1: setting for the addition crowds. I presume yes. In the
Speaker 1: early nineteenth century, Avalard and Helloy's removed to the cemetery
Speaker 1: Pearl Chase in Paris, where they are today. They lie
Speaker 1: together in a stone sarcophagus carved with both of their resemblances,
Speaker 1: and it's under a roof supported by pillars and arches.
Speaker 1: The tomb in pear Le Chaise was designed by Alexandra
Speaker 1: Marie Lenoire, who was the director of the Muse de
Speaker 1: monument Francaise between seventeen ninety and eighteen sixteen. Lenoir actually
Speaker 1: obtained their remains from La Paraclete in eighteen hundred and
Speaker 1: then created this tomb that had sort of a faux
Speaker 1: medieval look and feel, and he incorporated some pieces from
Speaker 1: what was reported to be some of the earlier tombs
Speaker 1: that had existed at La Peraclet. The tomb itself is
Speaker 1: more about being evocative of their lives and their love
Speaker 1: story than authentic to the art and architecture of the
Speaker 1: period in which they lived. We believe that the real
Speaker 1: remains are probably buried there becaus they were measured and
Speaker 1: authenticated when Ludwar acquired them. So anytime bodies get moved
Speaker 1: that many times there's always a question markup. Is that
Speaker 1: really who we think it is? They were verified, especially
Speaker 1: since the remains started out in the twelfth century. UM.
Speaker 1: Before we talk about these letters that they exchanged with
Speaker 1: each other and their other writings, let's take another moment
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Speaker 1: Linda dot com slash history stuff and that is l
Speaker 1: y n d A dot com. And now to return
Speaker 1: to Abelard and Heloise. They both wrote extensively. Heloise's writings
Speaker 1: primarily included letters to abial Ard and to other religious figures,
Speaker 1: and then Abelard's writings also include works on theology, metaphysics, logic,
Speaker 1: the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. He
Speaker 1: also wrote poetry and songs, and some of these were
Speaker 1: about Heloise. He never explicitly credited her, but modern scholars
Speaker 1: contend that Heloise really was quite influential when it came
Speaker 1: to Abalard's thoughts in the area of ethics. This is
Speaker 1: a reversal of older scholarship which claimed that Heloise's thoughts
Speaker 1: were borrowed in their entirety from abial Art. Yeah has
Speaker 1: to do with how focused she was on the idea
Speaker 1: of hypocrisy and how the life you're living outwardly should
Speaker 1: match up with the life that you're living inwardly, which
Speaker 1: she herself was very distressed by that idea, given the
Speaker 1: fact that she had got into a convent for reasons
Speaker 1: other than a spiritual devotion. So they're in addition to
Speaker 1: all this. They are the letters that Abilard and Heloise
Speaker 1: wrote to each other after their relationship had ended. The
Speaker 1: first one was to Abillard from Heloise after she had
Speaker 1: read his Historia Calamitatum. He wrote this about fifteen years
Speaker 1: after their relationship had ended, and when Heloise got it
Speaker 1: and read it, she was deeply distressed and very worried
Speaker 1: by what she read there about his mental state and
Speaker 1: how they had depicted their relationship, and like she was
Speaker 1: also quite angry that in twelve years he had not
Speaker 1: once expressed concern or gratitude for her joining the convent,
Speaker 1: which she had not really wanted to do. And she
Speaker 1: had done entirely as like a sacrifice for his sake.
Speaker 1: Her personal letters are very passionate and very pained. She
Speaker 1: wrote of how upset she is that, as we referenced
Speaker 1: a moment ago, she took thous and because she loved Abalard,
Speaker 1: not because she loved God. She also wrote of how
Speaker 1: much she loved Ablard, saying things like my heart was
Speaker 1: not in me but with you, and now even more,
Speaker 1: if it is not with you, it is nowhere. Truly
Speaker 1: without you, it cannot exist. She also wrote of her
Speaker 1: sexual frustration, quote, even during the celebration of Mass, when
Speaker 1: our prayers should be purer, lewed, visions of these pleasures
Speaker 1: take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my
Speaker 1: thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on our prayers.
Speaker 1: I should be groaning over the sins I have committed,
Speaker 1: but I can only sigh for what I have lost.
Speaker 1: At one point in her letters, she accused Abillard of
Speaker 1: feeling only lust for her and not love, and in
Speaker 1: a reply he agreed with her, that's not what you
Speaker 1: want to hear back. Abilard's letters are reserved, they're a
Speaker 1: bit luxury, and they're really lacking in romance. So some
Speaker 1: people framed this as Abalard being rational while Heloise is emotional.
Speaker 1: But a lot of Abalard's writing really is quite emotional too,
Speaker 1: It's just that all of his emotion is directed toward
Speaker 1: religious matters and his sort of personal torment uh and
Speaker 1: what his life has become, while Heloise's emotion is all
Speaker 1: directed at Abalarde. And they also exchange letters of direction
Speaker 1: about how to establish a rule for her community of nuns,
Speaker 1: and they discussed matters of faith in scripture, So not
Speaker 1: all of their correspondence was just I loved you, I
Speaker 1: loved you, I loved you so much, and you kind
Speaker 1: of dropped the ball and him. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: when you find collections of them, they're they're divided into
Speaker 1: like the more personal letters and the more spiritual letters,
Speaker 1: where they address questions about scriptures and how laperic Let
Speaker 1: should operate and that kind of thing. There is some
Speaker 1: debate about the authenticity of these letters. You know, their
Speaker 1: relationship happened during the eleven eleven hundreds, but the oldest
Speaker 1: copies of these letters are from the thirteen hundreds, so
Speaker 1: naturally this has led to speculation about whether they each
Speaker 1: really wrote everything that was attributed to them, and the
Speaker 1: three schools of thoughts are that they're exactly what they're
Speaker 1: said to be that and then there's another that is
Speaker 1: that Abelard in fact wrote all of the letters, and
Speaker 1: then there's another that some other unrelated person wrote them
Speaker 1: later on as a bit of medieval fanfic. Uh. The
Speaker 1: overall but you know, definitely not a hundred percent unanimous
Speaker 1: consensus is that they are what they say they are,
Speaker 1: that their letters from Abillard to Helloween's and vice versa.
Speaker 1: Because they are so old, you can read many of
Speaker 1: them on the internet for free, should you be so inclined. Yes,
Speaker 1: Happy Valentine found they castration And we don't really or
Speaker 1: at least I couldn't find what happened to baby Asterlabe,
Speaker 1: like we know that. Yeah, I don't remember ever hearing
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, baby aster Labe stayed in Brittany with
Speaker 1: Abelard's sister. But otherwise, like, don't really have any sense
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, and it's interesting to me that they
Speaker 1: have been uh buried many times together when it seems like,
Speaker 1: at least from romantic point of view, things had kind
Speaker 1: of fizzled out. Yeah, well they were the time they
Speaker 1: were both deceased. Yeah, they're there. I think they're there.
Speaker 1: Romantic relationship with one another seems to have come to
Speaker 1: a complete halt, uh from the time that he was castrated.
Speaker 1: I think had he not been castrated, they probably would
Speaker 1: have continued to have some kind of in secret relationship
Speaker 1: with one another. But that then, once that happened, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just because he did not have the physical parts anymore,
Speaker 1: but because that was such a hugely devastating experience for him.
Speaker 1: He felt completely shamed by the whole thing. He had
Speaker 1: sort of become this public figure who had been literally
Speaker 1: disfigured because of this whole thing. Like he was like, no,
Speaker 1: now I'm going to devote my whole life to this
Speaker 1: other thing. I think Hellois, though, continued to for the
Speaker 1: rest of her life, even after their correspondent stopped being
Speaker 1: about how much she missed him and how much she
Speaker 1: loved him. I think she really cared that for It
Speaker 1: certainly seems that way. Do you have some listener mail
Speaker 1: for us? I do, and it is not about this.
Speaker 1: This is actually so sometimes I go through the inbox
Speaker 1: for some reason and I find something that I meant
Speaker 1: to read a long time ago that then I forgot
Speaker 1: about all flag things and then go, oh, I forgot
Speaker 1: to read the Yeah, this was in my flag for
Speaker 1: follow up file, and I went, oh, yeah, I meant
Speaker 1: to read this. Uh. And this is from Alicia, and
Speaker 1: Alicia's is writing to us about our say shan agone
Speaker 1: episode from a while back. She said, I wanted to
Speaker 1: write in response to say Shangon in the hay On Court.
Speaker 1: This is a topic I'm well acquainted with, given that
Speaker 1: I'm majored in East Asian studies in college. Not only
Speaker 1: have I read the Pillow Book for class, including having
Speaker 1: written a list in the style of Stay Show, and
Speaker 1: mine was a list of fish and included shark week,
Speaker 1: but I've also read a variety of other hay On
Speaker 1: and uh Kamakura era diaries. I just had a couple
Speaker 1: of notes. You mentioned the clothing, but an important aspect
Speaker 1: that you only hinted at was how much clothing served
Speaker 1: as a status symbol. Like many courts, the kind of clothing,
Speaker 1: as well as colors one could wear, was directly related
Speaker 1: to one's status. This is especially true and the hay
Speaker 1: On era court. So many of these diaries include elaborate
Speaker 1: descriptions of clothing because it tells a lot about the
Speaker 1: person in question. I also wanted to give out to
Speaker 1: my favorite lady in Japanese court, Lady Niju. Unlike Shikibu
Speaker 1: or showed a Gon, she is basically unknown, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that she's a very impressive woman who, unlike the
Speaker 1: other two, seems to have demonstrated serious political savvy. It
Speaker 1: is speculated that had her father not passed away, she
Speaker 1: could have been empress and said she was a consort
Speaker 1: to the Emperor go Fuka Usa. Her diary, known in
Speaker 1: English as Confessions of Lady Niju or tew Asu Gatari.
Speaker 1: I hope I have done that correctly, which literally translates
Speaker 1: to an unasked for tale, is one of my favorite books.
Speaker 1: It includes a lot of the same slice of court
Speaker 1: life details, including a several year long bondside competition, and
Speaker 1: a very long and complicated incident involving the gruel stick
Speaker 1: ceremony you mentioned. If you enjoyed the Pillow Book, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. Thank you so much, Alicia. Indeed, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that I did not read this before now, because
Speaker 1: that is from back at the beginning of December that
Speaker 1: she wrote this. Well, yes, it does unless you are
Speaker 1: Abalard and Heloise, at which point time makes it exactly
Speaker 1: the same, except with a new final resting place that
Speaker 1: maybe moved later. So if you would like to write
Speaker 1: to us, you can. We're at History Podcast at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com. We're also on Twitter at miss in History
Speaker 1: and on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash missed in History.
Speaker 1: Our tumbler is missed in History dot tumbler dot com,
Speaker 1: and now we are on Pinterest at pinterest dot com
Speaker 1: slash missed in History. If you would like to learn
Speaker 1: a little more about what we've talked about today, you
Speaker 1: can come to our website and put the words Atalard
Speaker 1: and Heloise in the search bar, and you will find
Speaker 1: our article ten of History's most torrid love Affairs. We
Speaker 1: can do all of that and a whole lot more
Speaker 1: at our website, which is how stepworks dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Because at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. This episode of stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History classes brought to you by Linda dot com.
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