Heloise to Abelard

Abstract

How lavishly the Blessed Jerome praised St. Marcella, enthusiastically approving and especially commending her zeal for study, which was entirely devoted to questions of sacred literature, your wisdom knows better than my simplicity. Demonstrating this approval in his commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, he recalled in the first book:

Indeed, I know how her ardor, her faith, the flame that burns in her breast, have moved her to transcend her sex, to forget about men, to sound the tympanum of the holy books, to pass over the Red Sea of this world. Certainly, when I am in Rome, she never sees me without hastening to ask me a question concerning the Scriptures. Yet she follows the Pythagorean custom and does not accept whatever I may answer as correct; authority unsupported by reason does not convince her. Instead, she investigates everything, and weighs it all in her sagacious mind, and so she makes me feel that I have not so much a pupil as a judge.¹