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 novels to come. He's been called the Descartes of the twelfth century and credited as a forerunner of Rousseau, Kant, Spinoza, and modern empiricism. He died 21 April 1142, leaving philosophy and a love story that outlasted both.