Heloise was buried next to Abelard in the abbey church at the Paraclete, the small oratory that had been built by Abelard’s students in the early years after his arrival there. Beginning soon after her death, their remains contributed significantly to their enduring fame. In 1204, an anonymous poet wrote that when the tomb was opened to receive Heloise’s body, Abelard raised his arms and clasped her in an embrace. A new oratory was built, and the bones were moved from the dampness of the original tomb (caused by the proximity of the Ardus-son stream) to positions on either side of the high altar. By 1621, a more impressive monument was constructed for the famous couple, below an altar that was atop a stone with a carving depicting the Three Persons of the Trinity that Abelard had supposedly commissioned. As with so much else in France, the Revolution changed the circumstances of the dead lovers. Their bodies had been moved twice before then, in 1701 and 1780, each time to a more prestigious location in the Paraclete, but in 1791, the Paraclete was dissolved, the building abandoned, and the buildings sold and eventually demolished. Heloise and Abelard were moved to the church of Saint Laurent in nearby Nogent-sur-Seine, where they reportedly attracted visitors, although revolutionaries had vandalized their tomb in 1794. By 1800, the couple was on the move again, this time to Paris. Alexandre Lenoir had been instructed by the Assemblee Nationale to preserve artifacts from religious institutions that had been destroyed in the Revolution. Therefore, the remains of Heloise and Abelard were moved to the Musee des Monuments Frangais, where they stayed from 1800 to 1817.
In 1817, the remains were moved for the final time, to Pere Lachaise Cemetery, originally called Mont Louis, in an effort to raise the prestige of the 10-year-old cemetery, which had struggled to attract the attention of well-heeled Parisians because it was considered too far east of the city. The bodies, still in what Lenoir believed was Abelard’s original tomb, were installed under a large Gothic Revival canopy. Pere Lachaise today is a cemetery to the famous, the final resting place of notables like Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Honore de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Maria Callas, Frederic Chopin, Jacques-Louis David, Moliere, Edith Piaf, and Richard Wright. Today, the tomb of Heloise and Abelard attracts many visitors; most Parisian travel guides recommend a visit and often mention the tomb of the famous couple. On most days, flowers are found surrounding the full-sized effigies, left by admiring moderns who feel they know the celebrated couple through their extraordinary letters. What is actually in the tomb is uncertain. The last abbess of the Paraclete reported in 1792 that Abelard’s body had been completely reduced to dust except for the skull, which she described as unusually large.
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