Hello, the story of Abeladen Eloise is a tale of literature and philosophy, theology and scandal and romantic love in the high Middle Ages.

They were two of the greatest minds of their time, and Abeladen, a famous cleric and teacher,

wrote to Eloise his pupil of how their affair began in his autobiography Historia Calamitartham.

Her studies, he said, allowed us to withdraw in private, as love desired, and then with our books open before us,

more words of love than a reading pass between us and more kissing than teaching.

My hands strayed off into her bosom than to the pages, love drew our eyes to look on each other more than reading kept them on our texts.

Years later, when she was an abyss at the head of her own convent, Eloise wrote to Abeladen,

even during the celebration of mass, when our prayers should be purer,

lured visions of those pleasures take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on our prayers.

What does their story tell us, and what impact did these two thinkers have on the tide of their times?

We need to discuss Abeladen Eloise's Anthony Grayling, professor in philosophy at Berkbeck College University of London,

Henrietta Lyser, medieval historian, fellow of St. Peter's College Oxford, and Michael Clanchi,

emeritus professor of medieval history at the Institute of Historical Research.

And an engraling, can Mr. with Abeladen? He was already well known at the time, dear Furby Garnett.

Can you tell us why he was well known and what sort of person he was?

He was a very clever and rather arrogant young man who early on in life became a master of dialectical,

as it was then called logic as we would now say, and who was ferociously good at disputation.

And when he went to Paris to study under a teacher there called William of Shampo,

he refuted his teacher's doctrines in public, must have been very embarrassing, humiliating even perhaps for his teacher.

And he quickly gained a reputation as a debater, and also quickly was able to start his own school of logic too.

So by the time his affair with the Eloise began, he was already very well known, a controversial figure.

He had supporters, but he also had a lot of enemies, and that was one of the reasons why history is such a colourful one.

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