Notthere responds And I m reinserting it Let me remind you that this is the talk page for the Abelard article not the article itself and also that the events referred to are matters of record not inventions of mine Further I have directed interested readers to the source and will make the references more specific in the near future It is perhaps true that I may derive a certain amount of titillation from visualising these lessons but that small pleasure does not ipso facto mean the material is incorrect or irrelevant And anyway who in all honesty male or female could not be moved by the scenes Abelard described Lizzard is a retro feminist and does not wish readers to know that Heloise the prototypical feminist of the medieval era conspired with her tutor to experience numerous and semi public bare bottom spanking from him and moreover grew to love him more passionately for the experience But then again what normal woman would not The passages censored by the Uber Libber who would wish us all women to go back to being boiler suited hairy bodied harridans of the 70s and will expunge anything that is not politically correct as determined by her should go back to that time Here is the offending passage that Uber Libber does not want you to see Ah but read a little further He does indeed punish her in exactly that way Abelard s Historia Calamamitum are almost without peer for their unembroidered honesty but he is discrete about his role as schoolmaster to the young Heloise It is obvious from his narrative though that the two were falling passionately in love and that love talk and indeed love making had well nigh totally replaced Latin declensions during their time together leading to a dearth of noise from within the classroom that those without might have found suspicious Abelard was moved according to his own account to provide the sound effects that traditionally accompany such teaching the sounds of corporal punishment administered to an inattentive or negligent student Such punishment was considered an essential component of an education of any quality at all and it was the universal practice to use a whip or birch on the student s bare bottom Abelard had been exhorted by Heloise s father not to grant her any special dispensation in this regard on account of her gender but it is apparent from his description that Abelard did not apply the switch or stick but only gentle blows which refers to slapping by the open hand The two hoped that the characteristic sounds of a bare bottom being slapped and Heloise s attendant cries would allay any suspicion that Fulbert might have had about what was going on inside the classroom The result was of course that Heloise came to love him even more intensely finding the pain to be surpassing the sweetness of all ointments Will post full citations later and add a line to clarify this matter in the article which has no record of it