Speculum Spotlight: The Marriage of a Cleric & Canon in Twelfth-Century Paris: Heloise, Abelard, and the Evolution of Clerical Celibacy

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In this episode, producer Loren Cantrell chats with Stanford professor Fiona Griffiths about her latest contribution to Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, in which Griffiths revisits the famously complex relationship between Heloise and Abelard. Griffiths situates Heloise’s striking language within the shifting landscape of 12th-century debates on clerical marriage and reform, offering a powerful reinterpretation of one of the Middle Ages’ most challenging couples.

Fiona Griffiths is Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor of Humanities at Stanford University as well as a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. A historian of medieval Western Europe, Griffiths focuses on intellectual and religious life from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Her work explores the possibilities for social experimentation and cultural production inherent in medieval religious reform movements, addressing questions of gender, spirituality, and authority, particularly as they pertain to the experiences and interactions of religious men (priests or monks) with women (nuns and clerical wives).

Loren Cantrell is a series producer for The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast and a PhD candidate in the Department of French at the University of Virginia.

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