Some things are simply better in France: croissants, lavender, Eric Rohmer films, Gothic cathedrals. "Farewell, My Only One," French novelist Antoine Audouard's tale of thwarted 12th century lovers ...

There is no doubt that the High Gothic tomb in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where Abelard and Heloise are presumed to repose, would not be the destination for lovers, which it has been for ...

Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter When Jean-Paul Sartre died in 1980, Simone de Beauvoir - who had shared with him a notorious, lifelong "open" relationship of great ...

Heloise and Abelard were not given a Shakespeare to mythologise their passion; but even so, it is doubtful if their story would have eclipsed that of the doomed lovers of Verona: it is far more ...

THIS week we have with us the twelfth century, condensed in the love affair of two medieval intellectuals and presented as a novel by Helen Waddell. Students reverence Miss Waddell as one of the ...

During his general audience on Nov. 4, Pope Benedict XVI continued his discussion of the differences in the monastic and scholastic approaches to theology, which developed in the 12th century. He ...