Abelard composes Historia Calamitatum

1132

In a remote Breton abbey where his own monks had tried to poison him, the philosopher began dictating a confessional letter cataloguing his affair with Heloise, his castration by her uncle's thugs, and his serial ecclesiastical humiliations. The Latin autobiography has no real precedent. Its unflinching self-examination and literary brilliance spawned a correspondence with Heloise that remains the most famous love-letter exchange of the Middle Ages.