Hello the story of Abilard and Eloise is a tale of literature and philosophy, theology and

scandal and romantic love in the high Middle Ages.

There were two of the greatest minds of their time, and Abilard, a famous cleric and teacher, wrote to Eloise his pupil of how their affair began

in his autobiography, Historia Calamitatum.

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 of reading pass between us and more kissing

than teaching. My hands straight oftener to her bosom than to the pages love draw our eyes to look on each other more than reading

kept them on our texts. Years later when she was an abbess at the head of her own convent,

Eloise wrote to Abilard, even during the celebration of Mass when our prayers should be purer,

lewd visions of those pleasures take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are

on their wantedness 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 Ablard and Eloise

is Anthony Graling, professor in philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London,

Henrietta Liza, medieval historian, a fellow of St Peter's College Oxford and Michael Clanchi,

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

And then grouting, can we start with Abilard?

He was already well known at the time dear Fair began.

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 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 Champau, He refuted his teachers doctrines in public.

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