to care for them; or whether she turned to them to distract her mind and keep up some poor makeshift of intercourse with one who would and could no longer be her lover; or whether all these motives mingled, and in what proportion, perhaps may best be left to Him who tries the heart.
The abbess writes:
"All of us here, servants of Christ and thy daughters, make two requests of thy fathership which we deem most needful. The one is, that you would instruct us concerning the origins of the order of nuns and the authority for our calling. The other is, that you would draw up a written regula, suitable for women, which shall prescribe and set the order and usages of our convent. We do not find any adequate regula for women among the works of the holy Fathers. It is a manifest defect in monastic institutions that the same rules should be imposed upon both monks and nuns, and that the weaker sex should bear the same monastic yoke as the stronger."
Heloïse, having set this task for Abaelard, proceeds to show how the various monastic regulae, from Benedict's downward, failed to make suitable provision for the habits and requirements and weaknesses of women, the regulae hitherto having been concerned with the weaknesses of men. She enters upon matters of clothing and diet, and everything concerning the lives of nuns. She writes as one learned in Scripture and the writings of the Fathers, and sets the whole matter forth, in its details, with admirable understanding of its intricacies. She concludes, reminding Abaelard that it is for him in his lifetime to set a regula for them to follow forever; after God, he is their founder. They might thereafter have some teacher who would build in alien fashion; such a one might have less care and understanding, and might not be as readily obeyed as himself; it is for him to speak, and they will listen. Vale.
The first of Heloïse's letters is a great expression of a great love; in the second, anguish drives the writer's hand; in the third, she has gained self-control; she suppresses her heart, and writes a letter which is discursive and impersonal from the beginning to the little Vale at the end.
Abaelard returned a long epistle upon the Scriptural origin of the order of nuns, and soon followed it with another, still longer, containing instruction, advice, and rules
