Hell Yeah: Héloïse
So I call my God to witness now:
If great Augustus, ruler of the world,
ever thought to honor me by making me his wife
and granted me dominion over the earth,
it would be dearer to me
and more honorable to be called
not his royal consort but your whore1.
(c.1090 – c.1163), in Abelard & Heloise: The Letters and Other Writings. p.56.In 1116, Héloïse, one of the brightest students of Northern France, began a secret relationship with her teacher, the superstar scholar Pierre ("Peter") Abélard. When she became pregnant a year later, despite her general dismissal of the institution of marriage, she reluctantly wedded Abélard. Her guardian uncle agreed to the wedding, but afterwards gathered a mob of family together, snuck into Abélard's house, and castrated him. The bereft lovers agreed to enter the church, with Héloïse becoming a nun, but, again, reluctantly, and only to prove her dedication to Abélard. Eventually Abélard set up a convent which Héloïse led as abbess, and during this period they wrote a number of letters to each other. This quote comes from the first letter of Héloïse to Abélard; one might note that the letters were written with public circulation very much in mind2.
Notes:
1The general theme of this part of the letter from Héloïse is that marriage is tainted with a disingenuous self-interest, and she would rather degrade herself for Abélard, founded, as their relationship is, on a genuine conjunction of love and lust. One might note that a religious life wouldn't have been her first choice.
1On the semi-public nature of the letters, see Abelard & Heloise: The Letters and Other Writings p.xxvi.