"Pour son amour eut cest essoyne"
Here's a lovely photo of the 19C Gothic revival effigies on the tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris that echoes through Claude's plight…
Pierre Abelard and his wife and pupil Héloïse, niece of Canon Fulbert…
As Villon wrote in his Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis:
Où est la très sage Heloïs,
Pour qui fut chastré et puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart à Sainct-Denys?
Pour son amour eut cest essoyne…
Where is the most-wise Héloïse,
For whom was gelded and made monk
Pierre Abelard at Saint-Denis?
For his love he bore this penalty…
Claude's tragedy seems to me to be shadowed by that other great love-tragedy of the Cloister of Notre Dame: an Abelard worthy of another Héloïse, for whom the world might be well lost, instead his doom is the empty-headed Esméralda, green glass masquerading as an emerald…
It's why I put the line, "Pour son amour eut cest essoyne", in the background of my painting of Claude.
Pierre Abelard and his wife and pupil Héloïse, niece of Canon Fulbert…
As Villon wrote in his Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis:
Où est la très sage Heloïs,
Pour qui fut chastré et puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart à Sainct-Denys?
Pour son amour eut cest essoyne…
Where is the most-wise Héloïse,
For whom was gelded and made monk
Pierre Abelard at Saint-Denis?
For his love he bore this penalty…
Claude's tragedy seems to me to be shadowed by that other great love-tragedy of the Cloister of Notre Dame: an Abelard worthy of another Héloïse, for whom the world might be well lost, instead his doom is the empty-headed Esméralda, green glass masquerading as an emerald…
It's why I put the line, "Pour son amour eut cest essoyne", in the background of my painting of Claude.