Ethics

Historia Calamitatum

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Peter Abelard

c. 1132

Written as a letter of consolation to a friend, the Historia Calamitatum — "The Story of My Misfortunes" — is one of the most remarkable autobiographical texts of the Middle Ages. Abelard recounts his intellectual triumphs, his catastrophic love affair with Heloise and its violent ending, his condemnation at the Council of Soissons, the burning of his theological writings, and his harassment by enemies at every monastery he inhabited. Unflinching in its self-analysis and vivid in its portraiture of twelfth-century intellectual life, it is both a spiritual confession and a philosopher's self-portrait.