Peter Abelard

Born 12 February 1079, Peter Abelard rose as a leading logician and theologian in medieval France, teaching crowds and solving the problem of universals through nominalism and conceptualism. He took on a brilliant student, Héloïse d'Argenteuil, and their passionate relationship — and his eventual marriage to her — ended in scandal and tragedy. He pioneered intent in ethics, developed the concept of limbo, introduced the moral influence theory of atonement, and wrote The History of My Calamities, a publicly distributed letter that set the template for confessional autobiography and epistolary n…