Heloise is everything a young woman living in 12th-century France is not supposed to be. She is curious, intellectually gifted, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge. She is living with her uncle Fulbert, a canon of the Cathedral of Notre Dame when she meets Peter Abelard—the most famous philosopher of the time in France. He is shrewd, ambitious, and politically threatening to the Church. When Abelard becomes her teacher, it is hard for either to resist the fascination that draws them together intellectually, spiritually and physically – despite the strict moral code of the time – and her family exacts a terrible revenge. The tale of Heloise and Abelard is one of the world’s great love stories, but it is also the philosophical story of two lovers who press a crucial question with great force against the Church: the proper relation of reason to faith.