Héloïse (c. 1101 – 16 May 1164), variously Héloïse d'Argenteuil or Héloïse du Paraclet, was a French nun, philosopher, writer, scholar, and abbess.
Héloïse was a renowned "woman of letters" and philosopher of love and friendship, as well as an eventual high ranking abbess in the Catholic Church. She achieved approximately the level and political power of a bishop in 1147 when she was granted the rank of prelate nullius.
The Abbey of the Paraclete (French: Abbaye du Paraclet) was a Benedictine monastery founded by Peter Abelard in Ferreux-Quincey, France, after he left the Abbey of St. Denis about 1121. Paraclete comes from the Greek word meaning "one who consoles" and is found in the Gospel of John (16:7) as a name for the Holy Spirit.
In 1125 Abelard was elected by the monks of the Abbey at Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, near Vannes, Brittany, to be their abbot. He turned the Paraclete over to the recently displaced Héloïse, his wife, who had been in a nunnery in Argenteuil before its disbandment by Abbot Suger. The Paraclete was rededicated as a nunnery. Heloise became the Paraclete's abbess and spent the rest of her life there.
Julie or the New Heloise (French: Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse), originally entitled Lettres de Deux Amans, Habitans d'une petite Ville au pied des Alpes (Letters from two lovers, living in a small town at the foot of the Alps), is an epistolary novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1761 by Marc-Michel Rey in Amsterdam. The novel's subtitle points to the history of Héloïse d'Argenteuil and Peter Abélard, a medieval story of passion and Christian renunciation.