Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/20

8 "Finally she said that it would be dangerous for me to take her back to Paris; it was more becoming to me, and sweeter to her, to be called my mistress, so that affection alone might keep me hers and not the binding power of any matrimonial chain; and if we should be separated for a time, our joys at meeting would be the dearer for their rarity. When at last with all her persuasions and dissuasions she could not turn me from my folly, and could not bear to offend me, with a burst of tears she ended in these words: 'One thing is left: in the ruin of us both the grief which follows shall not be less than the love which went before.' Nor did she here lack the spirit of prophecy."

Heloïse's reasonings show love great and true and her absolute devotion to Abaelard's interests. None the less striking is her clear intelligence. She reasoned correctly; she was right, the marriage would do great harm to Abaelard and little good to her. We see this too, if we lay aside our sense of the ennobling purity of marriage—a sentiment not commonly felt in the twelfth century. Marriage was holy in the mind of Christ. But it did not preserve its holiness through the centuries which saw the rise of monasticism and priestly celibacy. A way of life is not pure and holy when another way is holier and purer; this is peculiarly true in Christianity, which demands the ideal best with such intensity as to cast reflection on whatever falls below the highest standard. From the time of the barbarian inroads, on through the Carolingian periods, and into the later Middle Ages, there was enough barbarism and brutality to prevent the preservation, or impede the development, of a high standard of marriage. Not monasticism, but his own half-barbarian, lustful heart led Charlemagne to marry and remarry at will, and have many mistresses besides. It was the same with the countless barons and mediaeval kings, rude and half civilized. This was barbarous lust, not due to the influence of monasticism. But, on the other hand, it was always the virgin or celibate state that the Church held before the eyes of all this semi-barbarous laity as the ideal for a Christian man or woman. The Church sanctioned marriage, but hardly lauded it or held it up as a condition in which lives of holiness and purity could be led. Such were the sentiments in which Heloïse was born and bred. They were subconscious factors in her thoughts regarding