At a time when academics are required to observe chastity, he falls in love with one of his students, Héloïse d'Argenteuil, a sixteen-year-old gentlewoman raised in a convent, who has both intellectual curiosity and a rebellious view of the low status of women in 12th-century Europe.

[1] Nevertheless, Abelard and Heloise pursue their relationship; they make love in her bed and also within a barn (they are overheard by a peasant girl when they come) and eventually have a child and later are secretly married.

Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times called the movie "fascinatingly retrograde", as it "suggests the ‘60s: decade of turbulence, idealism, sex and riot."

"[3] Caryn James reviewed the picture in The New York Times: The wonder is not that Stealing Heaven ultimately fails, but that this relatively modest production comes so close to succeeding.

Directed by Clive Donner with a small budget, an uneven script and a wonderful cast, Stealing Heaven at times seems like a poor cousin to The Lion in Winter crossed with Camelot and highlighted with steamy sex scenes.