LADY'S THE MAGAZINE AND MUSEUM OF THE BELLES LETTRES, FINE ARTS, MUSIC, DRAMA, FASHIONS, &c. IMPROVED SERIES, ENLARGED. APRIL, 1834. MEMOIRS OF ABELARD AND ELOÏSE, WHOSE FIGURES, AS LARGE AS LIFE, AND TOMB, ATTRACT UNIVERSAL ATTENTION IN THE FREQUENTERS OF PERE LA CHAISE, AT PARIS. (Illustrated by an Authentic whole length Portrait of Eloïse, splendidly coloured.) Like the history of Petrarch and Laura, which has occupied no small portion of our recent numbers, Abelard and Eloïse, must also claim a joint narration, when more immediately speaking only of the latter. Of the ancient sources from which we had intended taking our materials for this purpose, we find a well arranged and accurate view in Stebbing's Christian Church, vol. II. (Lardner's Cyclopædia,) to which we shall make a brief reference. "At the period when St. Barnard was in the zenith of his reputation, there appeared in the church a man whose talents would have made him conspicuous under whatever circumstances they had been brought into action. This was the eloquent, the learned, the unfortunate Abelard. Having been expelled from Leon, on account of the boldness of his opinions, he propounded his doctrines at Paris, in the midst of those crowds of inquisitive and adventurous students, who came from all parts of Europe to that celebrated university. The force of his genius was irresistible. It was in the midst of his triumphs that he became enamoured of the beautiful Eloïse, the niece of Fulbert, one of the canons of the church of Paris. His passion was met with not inferior fervour: and the lovers fled during the night, to engage in a secret marriage." The annals of history teem with records of human misery produced by the tyrannical influence which the Roman VOL. IV. No. 4. church exercised over domestic ties. All that were connected with that splendid but erring establishment, were doomed to celibacy, under pain of reprobation in the next world, and scorn and infamy in this. This rule was imperative upon those who had taken upon themselves the priesthood, and it was by implication extended to all connected with the administration of the law or of the secular government of the church. For instance, supposing that the Roman hierarchy extended the dominion it exercised in the fourteenth century in the present day, all barristers at the Chancery bar, all serjeants at law, archdeacons, proctors, and also all ecclesiastical lawyers, and doctors of law and physic, and all professors and teachers of science, were expected to be unmarried men. It is true, that vows to that effect were not enforced under penalties of loss of life and torture, as in the case of the priesthood; but if one of either of these professions took unto himself a spouse, he lost all hopes of preferment, was deprived of his livelihood and scholastic honours, and, in short, finished existence in some such state of universal contempt as a Paria that has forfeited one of the Hindostanee castes. Our age has witnessed a relaxation of these hard rules of celibacy; the contingent branches have long since had their freedom, and the church itself sought on its own behalf for equal license. Petitions from all parts of the Continent poured 2 B in upon the supreme head of the Catholic church within the last few years, to allow the priesthood to marry, and that which seemed to be the general wish, was looked upon as a wholesome departure from the rules of the dark ages, (doubtless, however, at the time well-intentioned,) which may in the end produce a new order of things, by breaking down one other of the many yet existing walls of partition! It was on account of the law which we have reprobated, that Eloïse so firmly denied the marriage that had actually taken place between her and her lover. Feverishly alive to the fame of her distinguished husband, Eloïse persuaded Abelard to keep their union a mystery, and she became a nun in the Abbey of Argenteuil. Her acknowledgment of him would have stopped his career of fame and ambition, and would have consigned him to opprobrium for life. Yet this step proved fatal to Abelard. The arguments made use of by her to prevent him from marrying her, are strikingly fine: she adored him, and knew no tie to be stronger than the devotion of heart to heart. Abelard was not a priest, but of a calling something similar to the lecturers on science, and professors of our universities. This unfortunate and disinterested lady ought not, therefore, to be judged by the rules of modern life, as if she scorned and abhorred the sanctity of the marriage tie from vicious and irreligious motives. A slight slur of passing censure may have been cast on her, which history does not bear out; and whatever impropriety fiction may have blended with the names of these unfortunate victims of ecclesiastical law, it must be remembered that with it, neither they nor ourselves have aught to do, as it is historical fact that is alone recognised in the present memoir. These lovers were not the only persons sacrificed to the cruel policy, in those dark middle ages, of a barbarous church government: the misfortunes of our Saxon king, Edwin, who contracted a prohibited marriage with his cousin, Elgiva, is a proof what atrocity monkish rage and envy could perpetrate. St. Dunstan, it is well-known, with his saintly hands, defaced the beauty of Elgiva's face, by searing it with branding irons, and cut the sinews of her arms and legs, to spoil the elasticity of her form. After such deformity was effected, a cloister was the only retreat for the un happy queen, alike dethroned from royalty, and deprived of her beauty. The relations of Eloise, when she became a nun, supposed that Abelard was only anxious to conceal his own disgrace and hers, by making her a sacrifice to his selfish fears, and they revenged themselves upon him. The transactions took place at Tours in the year 1130. Abelard then entered the monastery of St. Denys, and Eloïse consented to take the veil, but the hearts of these ill-fated lovers were little prepared for the change. It was at this time, that the abbey of the Paraclete (or Comforter) was founded by Eloise. This monastery lasted, for certain, till 1613. Eloise was erudite she knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. It was not till long after their retreat into these houses of religion, that the solitude of their cells was found to soften the poignancy of grief, or the regrets of their fatal passion. They carried on a correspondence, but he gave her not the least encouragement. His answer to her first letter was cold and harsh; by his own confession, he regarded her like the rest of her sex, as hurried on by passion, and bearing little real affection for himself. This savours of condemnable cruelty,and she reminds Abelard of the suspicious nature of his conduct, and his hurrying her to take the veil. Did she deserve such treatment? she eagerly asked him; his had been her only happiness. Not the creature of sense, she loved, she declared, only the man himself. In his subsequent letters, Abelard treats her more considerately, and he may be regarded as very faithfully endeavouring to conquer an unfortunate passion, and the language chosen by him is exceedingly fine. In another letter, the passion of Eloïse declares itself afresh, and carries her to wild excess. Having been ill, however, she writes in a very different strain, and seems to have resolved to think less of him-to forget him was impossible. She still, indeed, adored him, though he seemed to be, in reality, less ardent; yet his last letter is perfectly agreeable to the character he had assumed, and contains many good exhortations. In a word, the general complexion of his correspondence is cold and impassionate, moral and religious-and her letters are sensitively beautiful. One would have thought it natural for Abelard to have been the first to have offered consolation to his once so tenderly loved, in their mutual affliction, at least by writing to her; on the contrary, she it was who first broke the silence. Of Eloise, we have but little more to add in finishing her history: her sorrows were many and heartbreaking, unless subdued by deep thought of religion. But the career of Abelard was not yet to be finished in the gloom of a cloistered life. The form of absolution used in his behalf is still extant. The admiration of his eloquence was too great and general to allow of his remaining in obscurity. His scholars flocked to the monastery, and clamoured at its gates for the instructions of mind so original and so striking. Abelard was again permitted to open a school. Thither students flocked in numbers, from far distant countries, and he exhibited so great a vigour of mind and boldness of thought, that the heads of the church soon condemned this work of his to be burnt, and the author (but for a remission of the sentence) had well nigh been imprisoned in the monastery of St. Medail, at Soissons. The following adventure is too ridiculous to be omitted in our notice of this celebrated and unfortunate man. Having returned to St. Denys, and declared himself sceptical as to the truth of the traditions respecting the founder of that monastery, he was obliged to seek safety by flight. In the neighbourhood of Nogail-sur-Seine, he found a wild and solitary tract of country; on that lonely spot he built himself a little hermitage of the reeds and other materials furnished by the neighbourhood. Prayer and meditation were his sole employment, and his mind began to form a right estimate of the folly of the world and the vanity of its pursuits. Many of his pupils gathered round him, and built cells in the vicinity of their master's. His enemies pursuing him, he was obliged to escape into Brittany, and he was elected Abbot of St. Gilda's-but he soon returned into France. This was about the year 1139. It is in our province to notice that besides many abstruse and argumentative religious-doctrinal works, Abelard wrote answers to certain problems and questions proposed to him by Eloise. In the year 1140 St. Barnard brought his opinions before the council of Sens, and his works were condemned as before. Abelard set out for Rome to defend himself in person. In his way, however, Cluspie, the abbot, Peter the Venerable, pressed him into his monastery, and effected a reconciliation between him and St. Barnard. Thus exhausted by his long labours and many troubles, he was well content to find a home. His strength declined apace, and he was sent to the convent of St. Marcel, near Châlon-surLaone, that the beautiful scenery and salubrious climate might cheer his latter days. Brief was the further span of his enjoyment. His spirit obeyed the call, and he left behind him an imperishable name, as the most learned and acute, as well as the first of scholars. We wish, before closing this history, to introduce a few remarks upon the preservation of ancient portraits, begging our readers to remember the very early period, the beginning of the twelfth century, when Eloïse lived. It may be questioned, and with some show of justice, how it is possible to procure authentic likenesses of illustrious persons who flourished in the centuries before the art of painting revived and engraving was invented? But the researches of antiquaries, who are in truth the only real historians, have set this question at rest; and above all, the labours of the lamented Mr. Stothard, in his “Monumental Antiquities," have cast a strong light on the resemblances that still remain to us of the illustrious dead. In his valuable numbers published on the effigies of the earlier Plantagenets at Fontevraud in Normandy, he has proved, from comparison of the embalmed corpse of Henry II. with the enamelled effigy lying on the tomb, that the image was a facsimile of the person of the deceased. There is, indeed, a peculiarly energetic formation in the bones of the forehead and chin of that mighty Plantagenet, which, owing to the art of embalming, has been spared by the fingers of decay: and this circumstance, minutely agreeing with the expression and formation of the effigy above, convinced the antiquary that these monumental figures were strong resemblances of the personages they meant to commemorate. This clue once given, the truth has been corroborated in many instances; and on comparisons of the dress, jewels, size, hair, and height, the artificial figure above is a strong likeness of the body below, the day it was consigned to the tomb. Let us then for a moment consider the ceremonies that attended the burial of illustrious personages. From remote antiquity it was the custom to carry the body of a sovereign, or chief, dressed in his robes and regalia, on the bier, with the face uncovered; and that this was the general custom in all ranks, we find by the ballad of the "Friar of Orders Grey," quoted in Shakspeare"They bore him, barefaced, on the bier, Six proper youths, and tall." And this custom was long retained in remote country places, among the lower ranks; but in the eighth and ninth centuries it was discovered that the ghastly alteration produced by death, or, perhaps, the traces of poison or a violence, rendered it a most inconvenient custom to expose the real features of a great personage to the gaze of the multitude. A wax figure was therefore substituted, the face of which was a cast taken from the corpse. The figure, as large as life, attired in the costume of king, queen, noble, pontiff, bishop, abbott, or abbess, lay stretched on the top of the coffin; while the corpse in the coffin beneath was arrayed in a similar manner, adorned with false jewels, arranged after the pattern of the real, which were formerly worn by the representative above. Sometimes this waxen fac-simile was placed over the place of sepulture, until a monument was prepared to commemorate the deceased. To this custom we owe the preservation of waxen figures, in Westminster Abbey, of Queen Elizabeth, Charles II., the Duchess of Richmond, and General Monk, the exhibition of which has caused such public scorn: and how they came there has been repeatedly and insultingly questioned. There was a similar waxen effigy of Oliver Cromwell, who was buried with This more pomp than Louis XIV. figure was carried in state, on his coffin, at his funeral; but at the Restoration the populace, who had been very angry at this effigy, broke into Whitehall, where it was kept, and suspended the waxen figure by a rope from one of the windows of the palace, and afterwards demolished it, or it might have kept company with the waxen worthies in Westminster Abbey, which ought not in fact to be despised or destroyed, as they are doubtless the truest resemblances of the personages they represent. These effigies afterwards served as models for the peculiar sculpture of the day, which was carving in wood, and then enamelling of the colours of the robes and jewels, precisely after the manner in which the waxen model was clad. There is a wonderful degree of talent to be discovered in some of these performances; and they have the still higher merit of faithful resemblances, and are far preferable in point of good sense, clad as they are in the very dress and fashion of the day, compared with the Greek and Roman dresses in which it is an absurd custom to array our modern monumental busts. Which would be the nearest resemblance to George Canning, suppose no paintings of him survived seven centuries, an engraving from his statue near St. Margaret's, Westminster, or a bust enamelled in this antique fashion? We know it is constantly asked how we can be confident that the ancient portraits now publishing by us are authentic resemblances. Some argue, that the very accuracy with which we pourtray, not merely the face and figure, but the minutest paraphernalia, betokens at once that there must be a deception. We have been induced, therefore, to place before the accompanying portrait, one of so many bygone ages, an historical prelude of the manner in which the closer resemblances of persons living in remoter times have been accurately handed down to posterity. The intermediate ages fur nish not the same facilities. Hence has arisen, amongst the partially-informed, Whoever wishes to see one of these enamelled monuments in a state of the highest perfection, must go to the ancient church of East Ham, in Essex. It has all the gloss of freshness about it, owing to the following circumstances: When the puritans were defacing all monuments, the rector of East Ham, of that day, covered this beautiful monument with two coarse painted deal boards, inscribed with the Ten Commandments; it was lately found, by the present rector, in the finest state of preservation, and he had it carefully cleaned; and there it is now, at the altar, to the great ornament of the church. This monument was erected to the memory of Lord Neville; it consists of three most expressive figures. Lord Neville died in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, and this monument was most likely not erected till the time of James; so that it has been kept new, as in a deal box, from that period to this. No one can look on the face of Lord Neville without an internal conviction that it is a faithful resemblance. On the subject of a general registration of births, deaths, marriages, and christenings, in the House of Commons, in March, 1833, the Solicitor-General said it was easier to trace a pedigree 500 years old than one of comparatively modern date; which remark is well applicable to our present comments. a very venial cause for doubt or disbelief. Having proved the faithful authenticity of the ancient mode of taking likenesses, we now proceed to the description of the portrait of Eloïse. DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATE. She is not here represented in her ecclesiastical costume as an abbess, but in the secular dress which she wore at the time when a lingering symptom of vanity may, perhaps, be visible. Her hair is parted, and confined by a fillet, like the Scotch snood. Her gown is of the simplest form, slightly gathered round the throat, in the fashion that the Italian painters, in after-times, represented the Virgin, and from that circumstance the mode has been called à la Vierge by modistes of the present day; the sleeves are straight, and buttoned at the wrists with six gold studs. The gown is not fashioned to the figure, but the fullness is confined by a ceinture of cream-coloured leather, with a gold buckle; one end hangs below the knee, and is guarded with gold. The skirt of the gown flows on the ground. The bag suspended from the girdle of Eloïse is exactly the form of the reticules that the Parisian correspondent of the " Lady's Magazine” has announced as fashionable in 1833. It was called, in 1150, escarcelle, and aumonière, as it was worn by the great for the purpose of giving alms. The effigy of Queen Berangaria, the wife of Richard Coeur de Lion, has one on the tomb at Fontevraud. In this costume of Eloïse we have the exact appearance of the citizen class in the twelfth century. There was little difference in the masculine and feminine habiliments in common life. The flowing gown was an Asiatic fashion, brought by the crusaders from the Greeks of Constantinople; it was worn alike by men and women. The surcoat, emblazoned with armorial bearings, was the peculiar privilege of female royalty and nobility. The tabard, likewise emblazoned, was the dress of knights and earls. Eloïse is here in a girlish dress. Had she been depicted as a married or consecrated female, her hair would have been concealed. Virgins alone wore their hair flowing, or if luxuriant, snooded, for convenience. Eloise was tall in stature, slender, and of a noble mien. Early misfortunes drove her to religious seclusion, and she died, aged 63 years, Abbess of the Paraclete. Abelard died on the 21st April, 1142. They brought his corpse to the Paraclete, that it might rest under the care of Eloise. She survived him until the 17th May in the year 1163, and was buried by his side. To shew how notable and far-famed a history is that of these two unfortunate but celebrated personages, on the day of Pentecost, divine service is performed in the Greek tongue (in the Greek church), in commemoration of the founder of the Paraclete. At the revolution of 1789, the remains of Abelard and Eloïse were exhumed by the municipal corps of Nogent-sur-Seine, and the abbey of the Paraclete was sold. Their monuments and bodies were transferred to the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, and now repose side by side, in full-length figures, under a beauteous canopy, partly of wood, partly of stone, supported by 12 pillars. The present portrait was taken from the effigy of Eloïse, assisted by an engraving affixed to a learned memoir of M. L'Evêque, in the "Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres," the subject of which is the bas reliefs of the time of Eloïse. The portrait has likewise been compared with the remains of the corpse. Its authenticity is therefore undoubted. |