ABELARD.
From the foreground of the waving banners and the flashing arms of the
Crusaders, of the dark throng of the chanting monks, and of feudal
pageantry and glitter—and from that background of dead uniformity which
equally characterized those mediaeval times—emerges a figure unique and
notable. It is that of a man in the prime and pride of life—lofty in
stature, handsome in face, captivating in address. He is already a tried
debater and an unsurpassed logician. He has Aristotle at the tip of his
tongue; he has read much and thought a little, and his ambition is
great.
Such a man came one day into the lecture hall of William of Champeaux at
Paris. It was in the early part of the twelfth century, and William was
the most celebrated teacher of the period, his “doctrine of universals”
being accepted almost as though it were inspired. But this morning,
while the master lectured and the disciples drank in his words without
criticism or debate, the visitor stirred uneasily in his place. When the
lecture closed he availed himself of the usual freedom to ask some
questions. To William’s dogmatic answers the stranger in his turn
proposed shrewd difficulties. It was no longer the harmony of teacher
and taught, but the clash of two rival minds maintaining opposite
systems of logic. And in that short struggle William the Archdeacon went
down before the free lance of Peter Abelard, the rustic challenger from
Palais (Le Pallet) in Brittany. And from that agitation went out the
widening circles whose story we are now to note, and whose latest
ripples break faintly on a tomb in Père-la-Chaise visited by thousands
of modern tourists. Few tales are sadder or more suggestive.
The name of Abelard is variously spelled. It appears in divers
authorities as Abelard, Abaelard, Abaielardus, Abailard, Abaillard,
Abelhardus, and Abeillard. The true name (on the authority of Ch. de
Rémusat) was, however, not Abelard, but Beranger or Berenger; and the
future controversialist was christened Pierre or Peter. His birthplace
is near Nantes, the house being represented a few years ago by a square
brier-grown ruin back of the church. The date of his birth is given as
1079—a period when the world was feudal and military. But this lad was
born for debate and not for battle. It may even be seriously doubted if
he ever possessed much physical courage of a sort to stand the rough
shock of actual warfare. He preferred the method of those who
intermeddle among metaphysical subtleties to those who must keep sword
edges sharp and armor furbished. His delight was to dispute, to be
engaged in undertakings
“Whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies;
In falling out with that or this
And finding somewhat still amiss.”
In those days not to be a warrior was to be—almost of compulsion—a monk.
But Abelard’s independence forbade the second as his disputatious spirit
had forbidden the first. He would neither risk his neck in the wars nor
his opinions in the cloister. Instead of these he preferred the
irregular combats of the scholar, and Bayle—with a touch of
poetry—beholds him as he comes shining out of Brittany “darting
syllogisms on every side.” Such was Peter Abelard—vain, handsome,
opinionated, bound to swear by no master, a mighty voice crying in the
desert of the Dark Ages for “free speech and free thought.”
The expedition to Paris hurt neither his reputation nor his purse. He
arrived at perihelion as quickly as a comet. William of Champeaux—having
first pushed him off and forced him to lecture on his own account at
Melun and Corbeil—found that he returned like a cork thrust under water.
The man’s buoyant, aggressive self-reliance, not to say self-conceit,
was never contented with an inferior place. And while Alberic and
Littulf and some of the older and more staid of his pupils held with
William, it was plain that the popular favor inclined to the other side.
The younger men were all for Abelard. The “doctrine of universals” was
exploded as if with some of Friar Bacon’s “villainous saltpetre,” and
doubtless the loss was small enough to mankind. His principal fort being
taken, there was nothing left for the opposing general but a masterly
retreat. Hence, by a convenient arrangement, combining several
advantages, Guillaume des Champeaux became Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne.
And it was, of course, beneath the dignity of a bishop to hold lectures
or to engage in logical controversies!
But, as generally happens, a sand-bag substitute was put in the bishop’s
place; and Abelard came back to open a school on Mt. St. Genevieve and
to bombard this professor. The battle was short and decisive, for the
next we learn of this nameless champion of a defeated cause, he is
absolutely enrolled as a humble follower of the great logician. This is
but a fair sample of the general success which attended the new ideas.
Everywhere they gained currency, attracting inquiry, arousing envy,
awaking ecclesiastical suspicion, and inflaming the hatred of his
defeated opponents.
About this time of inception and premonition, say 1113, Abelard
undertook to examine the instruction given by William’s teacher, Anselm
of Laon, who there vegetated as dean of the cathedral church. We must
not confuse his name with that of the great Archbishop of Canterbury,
whose method and science have outlasted the most of his contemporaries,
and whom Neander styles “the Augustine of the twelfth century.” Had he
been the teacher and Abelard the pupil, history might have made a
different record. A profounder and a more reverent line of thought might
have affected the acute and daring mind of the rising dialectician. And,
above every other consideration, the new philosophy might have contained
those elements of religion whose absence neutralized for centuries that
wholesome independence which held mere dogmatism cheap as compared to
the sacred light of truth. It would, indeed, have been well if such an
Anselm had been at Laon, but the dean was a weak and futile person. And
so it was inevitable that Abelard should again be in trouble and almost
in disgrace, but even in his pathetic _Historia Calamitatum_ the pupil
did not forget to satirize his master. “He was that sort of a man,” he
says, “that if any went to him being uncertain he returned more
uncertain still.... When he lit a fire he filled his house with smoke,
but he did not brighten it with light.” He adds, sarcastically, that
Anselm’s philosophy always suggested to his mind the story of the
fig-tree that our Lord cursed because it bore plenty of leaves and no
fruit.
Abelard himself, however, was a genuine educator, and many bishops and
other ecclesiastics, with nineteen cardinals and two popes, came from
the ranks of his pupils. He loved liberty, although he loved it to that
extent to which his own will—and no other authority, human or
divine—restricted it. In this he differed from Anselm of Canterbury, who
loved liberty, not according to license but according to law. Mere
freedom to inquire, to complain, or to theorize, does not invariably
carry with it profitable results. And Abelard—whose very freedom was in
itself a noble revelation to the shackled intellects of his
age—committed the grave error of supposing that the sweep of a free hand
would certainly give lines of beauty and forms of grace. Something
deeper than the mere distaste of false opinions is needful for this.
Art, meditation, truth—all must lie beneath the O of Giotto or the
masterly strokes of Apelles. And our rhetorician would have done well to
have confined himself to the _Trivium_—grammar, rhetoric, and
dialectics. When he undertook theology he first quarrelled with Anselm
of Laon, and next he encountered all Christendom and Bernard of
Clairvaux. His was the fatal blunder of every “free inquirer” who
forgets reverence, and who, in his pride of intellect, may likely fall
as the angels fell. Surely no Lucifer ever plunged more swiftly down
from heaven’s battlements than did poor Peter Abelard from the dizzy
height of his sudden success.
This is no place to criticise his “system,” if system it can be properly
called. The _Sic et Non_—“Yes and No”—his most famous work, is really a
mere challenge. He quotes the Bible against the Fathers and the Fathers
against the Bible, touching on deep tideways and bogs and quicksands
which he never attempts to ford, fathom, or bridge. The Arians,
Sabellians, Nestorians and Pelagians are resuscitated in these pages. He
flings their doubts before us like a gauntlet cast into the arena of
debate. One may choose which side he will take. Such a man, arising in
the nineteenth century and claiming sympathy with Christianity, would be
by some suspected as a secret enemy and his vanity would loosen his
armor for the entrance of many a venomed shaft. His genuine ardor would
be misunderstood and his opinions would be heavily attacked before they
could deploy at their full strength. If this be true to-day how
infinitely more true must it have been of an age narrower, more
illiterate, and with an arm which wielded not in vain the sword of
excision against heretics!
This, then, was the man who in the prime of manhood and at the topmost
peak of prosperity found himself with money in his pocket, in Paris, and
his own master. He had not yet said of the dogmas of Mother Church as
Luther said of Tetzel, “By God’s help I will go down and beat a hole in
your drum.” Hitherto he had safely kept to Aristotle—at once the
blessing and the bane of Middle-Age reasoners—and he had the
vainglorious sense that five thousand students hung breathless on his
words. He considered himself upon the firmest footing that one could
desire, and behold, he fell!
The “damned spot” of Abelard’s character is that which, after all, has
insured his fame. And, since it is indispensable, a few sentences must
exhibit it in its repulsive ugliness. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we
do not need the help of any other biographer than his own bitter soul.
His _Historia Calamitatum_ is the sufficient history. In this he tells
us that his life had been previously irreproachable and of the strictest
moral correctness. Now, however, he began to “let himself go”—how far,
or how fast, it is of no use for us to investigate. But Fulbert, the
Canon of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, had a perfect Hypatia for a niece,
and to this lady Abelard’s gaze was turned.
She was eighteen, and there was an irresistible charm about her, as of
some fragrant white lily. She was a woman fit to lend grace and beauty
to prosaic surroundings. And Abelard has the unspeakable audacity to
declare that he, a man of thirty-eight, deliberately selected this pure
and perfect flower and meant to take it for himself. Not to marry; for
the truth demands that we should perceive his own thorough appreciation
of the fact that marriage would sink him out of the ranks of scholars
into those of tradesmen and would be the death-blow to his ambition. Not
to marry; for it was a bad age, and sin sometimes clothed itself in the
cowl of the monk and the robe of the prelate, and such a sin was better
forgiven than such a blunder. Let all contemporaneous history bear
witness! For every account of the lives of Heloise and Abelard reveals
the impossibility of passing these unpleasant facts without notice or
comment. On this pivot turns the golden world of that deathless love.
So the avaricious Fulbert took Abelard to dwell in his own house, and
gave his niece’s education entirely into his care, and, as her teacher
himself expresses it, delivered her “like a lamb to a hungry wolf.”
Heloise was probably the better educated of the two. She was the child
of unknown parents. Bayle asserts that she was the daughter of a priest,
and his facilities and laboriousness respecting such abstruse
particulars no one will question. The authority from which he is
possibly quoting, says that this priest was John “Somebody” (_nescio
cujus_) and a canon of the same cathedral with Fulbert at Paris.
Doubtless the trace of her ancestry is utterly lost to us beyond these
meagre items. Even Fulbert’s alleged relationship has been questioned.
But the scholarship of Heloise speaks for itself in a terse, sparkling
Latin style, which is as pleasant beside Abelard’s lumbering sentences
as a bright mountain brook beside a turbid and turbulent stream. Count
de Bussy-Rabutin—no mean critic—has put on record that he never read
more elegant Latin. She also understood Greek and Hebrew, with neither
of which, strange to say, was Abelard acquainted. And at first blush it
would seem that the teacher should have been the pupil.
Absolute justice requires that the ugly and disgraceful slurs in the
_Historia Calamitatum_, and even in the correspondence, should not be
overlooked. Here is what will serve for a fair example. He says of her,
_Quae cum per faciem non esset infima, per abundantiam litterarum erat
suprema_—while she was not exactly the worst-looking of them, she was
the best educated; and therefore he selected her! The _spretae injuria
formae_ never went further than this. But this is by no means the
solitary instance of that low snarl in which the currish nature of the
Breton rustic now and then indulged.
What, then, could have been the spell by which this charming woman drew
Christendom after her? Popes and bishops called her “beloved daughter,”
priests entitled her “sister,” and all laymen laid claim to her as
“mother.” If she were not so beautiful as some authorities positively
state, she must certainly have been marvellously captivating. But
chiefest of her many graces was her crowning loyalty and love. It showed
itself in perfect sympathy, in entire self-devotion. Michelet, indeed,
has observed that the legend of Abelard and Heloise is all that has
survived in France out of the story of the Middle Ages.
Nor has the unanimity of literary judgment upon these lovers been less
remarkable than the interest which they have inspired. With one voice
Abelard is condemned and with one voice Heloise is extolled. “She was,”
says a brilliant writer, “a great, heroic woman, one of those formed out
of the finest clay of humanity.” “With the Grecian fire,” says another,
“she had the Roman firmness.” And even the rude picture which the
mechanical touch of Alexander Pope has painted, leaves to us in the
“Epistle of Heloise” a trace of the same beauty, and affords one line—
“And graft my love immortal on thy fame”—
which only needs to be reversed in order to be prophetic. Morison’s
tribute is both nobler and more acute, for he testifies, “She walked
through life with ever-reverted glances on the glory of her girlish
love.” It was the same thought which Dante—after Boethius—puts into the
lips of Francesca—
“There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery, and that thy Teacher knows.”
Nay, it is even the very cameo out of Tennyson:
“As when a soul laments, which hath been blessed,
Desiring what is mingled with past years,
In yearnings that can never be expressed
By sighs, or groans, or tears.”
This is the heart which Abelard won. Winning it he won, and forever
held, the woman whose it was. From that moment she merged her whole
existence in his with a complete and utter abandonment of self, to the
perfectness of which let her epistles from the Paraclete bear testimony.
Across this story of undeviating devotion Abelard’s vanity, pride, and
coarseness are written with smears and stains, like an illiterate monk
who blots his comments upon a precious missal full of saints and angels.
For, first of his offences, he revealed this love of his by really
becoming a troubadour. He composed verses in the Romance tongue,
recounting their loves, and set them to such stirring tunes that all the
world was soon singing them. Hence grew the legend that the “Romance of
the Rose” (_Roman de la Rose_) was his composition. It undoubtedly
contains their story, but it was not his work; it belongs to William de
Loris and Jean de Meung. But, as for Heloise, she was delighted. What
would have been a crown of sorrow to other women was to her a crown of
joy. She even announced to Abelard “with the utmost exultation” the
advent of that unhappy being christened Astrolabe and destined to pass
his forsaken and lonely existence shut up in a cloister. That people
sang of this love; that it went to the ends of the earth; that nothing
could prevent its being known—these were the happinesses of Heloise. Of
the merit of the songs we cannot ourselves decide. They were originally
anonymous, and only those familiar with the crabbed French of that
period may hope to find them again.
Meanwhile, though the lectures suffered, and the students saw, and all
Paris smiled, Fulbert was totally in the dark. This condition of affairs
was predestined to come to an end, and it came in storm and anger.
Abelard saw himself forced, against his will, to marry secretly. It was
a sting to his egotism that ever rankled. It served, though, to pacify
Fulbert and the rest of the relations; and being too glad and too
loose-tongued to keep this handsome alliance from the public they
presently told everybody. Heloise, thereupon, fearing for Abelard’s
ambitious schemes, did not shrink from a point-blank falsehood. She
denied the marriage. She had been in Brittany and was now at Argenteuil,
of which she was by and by to become the abbess. And she added to her
denial the self-abnegating sentiment that Abelard, who was created for
all mankind, ought not to be sacrificed by “bondage to a woman.” It was
worthy of her who so admired the “philosophic Aspasia,” and whose tutor
and lover had done what he could to make her as “free from superstition”
as himself. Her moral ideas were what he taught her, and he could not
unteach them.
Among the complaisant and agreeable nuns of Argenteuil she now resided.
It was but a few miles from Paris. Her husband frequently went thither,
and in a short time thereafter she was enrolled as a novice. The fact
aroused her relatives, and their mutterings became ominous; Fulbert,
especially, taking this act in high dudgeon, as though it meant the
premeditated repudiation of his niece. Their anger did not stop at
words, but, knowing Abelard’s popularity, and fearing to attack him
during the day, they bribed his valet and assaulted him by night in his
own apartment.
It was this blow which flung Abelard from heaven to hell. His hitherto
impregnable attitude; his fierce zeal for his opinions; his hopes of a
new philosophy which should make his name immortal, all vanished before
it as spider-webs break before a sword. And when, conscious that he was
no more a god and a hero, but an insulted and defeated man, he rose from
his bed of pain, the prospect was not improved. The outpoured
indignation of bishops and canons and clergy—the lamentations of the
women and the students—did not appease him. A whisper was in his soul
like that of Haman’s wife. Mordecai, the despised, was coming to the
kingdom and the Agagite was doomed.
There were reasons which led him to think of seeking aid from the Pope
against his enemies. But Fulk of Deuil, his good friend, advised him not
to try it. “You have no money,” said honest, plain spoken Fulk, “and
what can you do at Rome without money?” It was bitter truth. Yet the
Abbé Migne, forgetting the much worse things Bernard had said of the
Roman Curia in the treatise _De Consideratione_, exscinds the passage
from Fulk’s letter on the ground that it would cause “scandal to
Catholic ears.” Edification first, truth afterward, if at all!
Therefore, with a poisoned soul, he sought the Abbey of St. Denis to
hide himself from the gaze of the world. To a man so proud a life
without imperial power was a living death. Yet from those walls he
issues his edict that Heloise shall take the veil. His vanity led him to
carry out the original cause of hostility even to its unalterable
result. But Heloise, whatever she might have thought or felt, marched
with lofty resignation to her fate. Quoting aloud—as his confession
pitifully recalls—the words of Cornelia to Pompey from the “Pharsalia”
of Lucan, she takes the vows. Never was there less of religion in such a
ceremony! Henceforth she walks like the moon in distant brightness,
coming to meet us down the ages as comes the Queen Louise of Gustav
Richter’s superb picture. She is transfigured by her self-forgetting
love, and “all that is left of her,” in the best and truest sense, is
now “pure womanly.”
For Abelard at St. Denis the case was different. He found the monks
worldly and dissolute and he reproved them. The effect was similar to
the case of Lot—the reformer departed with all his belongings. He then
renewed his old lectures. His scholars followed him to Maisoncelle,
where, in their avidity of knowledge, they overcrowded every resource of
shelter and food. He offered them that fascinating combination,
dialectics and divinity. Like the saltpetre and the charcoal these were
harmless when apart and explosive when together, particularly if you add
the sulphurous heart which now smoked in his bosom. A harsh and
vindictive tone was given to his disposition, and it was natural that he
should be, at least tentatively, a heretic. These moral bruises are
worse than any or all physical injuries; the man who has felt them can
never be again what he was before. And now Anselm and William and
Fulbert and everybody that he had bullied or taunted or threatened
turned upon him. The gates to the black cavern of the winds were open
and the blasts of fate were icy cold.
The papal legate Conan held a council at Soissons in 1121. The opinions
of Abelard were received with disfavor. They humiliated the poor wretch
among them and made him burn his own book, and then mumble through a
_credo_ amid his “sobs and sighs and tears.” These words are his own,
and his is also the statement that he was put into the custody of the
Abbot of St. Medard and there he was lectured, and even lashed by the
convent whip, until he exhibited proper submission. Poetical justice had
befallen him. For he confesses, to his shame, that he had coerced and
even struck Heloise. Now he, too, was coerced, and he, too, was struck.
Then back again to St. Denis, with more hatred and hard speeches than
ever. But Suger, the new abbot, an easy-going lover of bric-à-brac and
good living, set him free, a “masterless man” past forty years of age,
with Heloise out of reach and the spears of exultant enemies bristling
in every hedge. Is it a wonder that he took to the banks of the Ardusson
near Troyes, wattled himself a rude hut and resolved to be a hermit? But
even there in the desert the people thronged him and built a village of
huts about his own. His misfortunes became a portion of his strength.
And there they erected for him a church and a cloister which he
dedicated to the Paraclete, a daring innovation, since it was then
considered highly heterodox thus to distinguish one person of the
Trinity from the other two.
Under such storms and heat the nature of the man had been seriously
warped. He became suspicious, gloomy, and weakly unstable. His
correspondence with Heloise had been completely broken off. He went into
the monotonous Champagne, then out into the bleak Brittany, and finally
(1125) he received the abbacy of St. Gildas. His friends, perhaps,
desired to save him from homelessness and so from the dangers which the
relentless malice of his old enemies was constantly piling up. But their
choice of a refuge reveals how little their ecclesiastical influence was
worth. The monks of St. Gildas lived in open sin, and the people around
the cloister were semi-barbarians. It may be that they were ready to
welcome Abelard because they supposed he would be charitable to their
peccadilloes, but if they fancied this, their mistake was great. He
really measured himself against their vices and suffered a predestined
defeat. At St. Gildas he touched the nadir of his fate as at Paris he
had reached its zenith. The monks conspired against him. They sought to
poison him, contaminating with their drugs even the cup of the
Eucharist. When his life was not fear it was horror, and when it was not
horror it was despair.
At this time, too, for calamity never comes singly, Suger had succeeded
in routing from Argenteuil the Abbess Heloise with all her nuns. He had
complained to Rome that the lands of Argenteuil were the chartered right
of St. Denis and that the nuns were very scandalous. So Abelard roused
himself sufficiently to hand the deserted abbey of the Paraclete over to
his wife; to confirm it by every possible act and deed against invasion;
and to secure, in the despite of Bernard of Clairvaux, who was his
presumptive enemy, a special bull of Innocent II. to make all this
permanent. To these walls Heloise therefore removed. They were doubly
dear to her for Abelard’s sake. She had no true “vocation” for her
office, but the Pope called her and her sisterhood his “dear daughters,”
and it was the best that they could do. Abelard prepared their forms of
service for them, and thus again, after all these years, communication
existed and letters passed between them.
These forms brought on a controversy with Bernard, who did not like
them. The letters also are still extant, often translated, but never in
anything except the original Latin, speaking out the real nature of the
writers. On the part of Heloise they reveal the depth of an unending
love. On the part of Abelard they are as cold and occasionally as cruel
as anything to which a translator can turn his pen. After a careful
survey of their contents the conclusion is irresistible that Heloise is
a woman whose lofty love carries with it unhesitatingly the mind, the
will, the senses—everything. Her faults are the faults of her time and
of her teaching, not of her soul. But, by the survival of its most
forcible elements, Abelard’s character has been developed into a selfish
coldness both unnatural and ungrateful. As a man, at this stage of his
career, one abhors and pities him.
Presently upon the dead colorlessness of this “burned-out crater healed
with snow,” the red light of a new controversy is cast. In this final
struggle the redoubtable force of the splendid debater flashed up once
more. But he was defeated by Bernard at Sens (1140), and whether this
defeat was by fair logic or by the hostile spirit of the age it does not
matter. Defeated he was, and he rushed out declaring that he would
appeal to Rome. Happily his way led him through Cluny, and there good,
large-hearted, and large-bodied Peter the Venerable took him in. For the
first time, perhaps, in all his life he came into close relations with a
man genuinely great. And Peter of Cluny himself wrote to the Pope;
detaining Abelard meanwhile by kind assiduities, in that genial cloister
whose humanity cherished neither bigotry nor license. Later he even
reconciled the two disputants, and the broken and weary debater died at
last (April 21st, 1142) at St. Marcel, whither he had been sent for
change of climate by the care of his hospitable friend.
There is a painting—a true artist’s conception, but a mere daub in
fact—which hangs in a New York village and which represents a dead
knight stretched upon the ground. He lies upon his back on the sodden
earth in the melting snow. The sky above him is of a dull and awful
gray, and the carrion birds are flying in a long, hurrying line to join
those already at the feast. A broken sword is strained in his right
hand, his armor is hacked and darkly spotted with mire and blood, and
his feet have fallen into a little stream. So would have fallen Abelard
but for the charity and mercy of Peter the Venerable. Remembering all
that he had been it is somewhat comforting to read of his last days. For
certain letters passed between Peter of Cluny and Heloise, and these,
too, are extant and accessible.
The abbot says to her, after describing the daily life of Abelard, “How
holily, how devoutly, in what a catholic spirit he made confession,
first of his faith and then of his sins! ... Thus Master Peter finished
his days, and he who for his knowledge was famed throughout the world,
in the discipleship of Him who said, ‘Learn of Me, for I am meek and
lowly in heart,’ persevered, in meekness and humility, and, as we may
believe, passed to the Lord.” It is in such language that this
benevolent man addresses his “venerable and very dear sister,”
concerning, as he tenderly puts it, her “first husband in the Lord.” And
doubtless this same Abelard became, at the last, a little child, who
through much tribulation had unlearned his haughty and selfish temper,
and had gone back from subtleties and logic to say in all simplicity,
Abba, Father! And it is not less interesting for us to discover in the
second epistle of Heloise to Peter of Cluny, that the mother’s heart
yearns over her boy, and that she commends Astrolabe to the care and
protection of his father’s benefactor, a trust which, in his next
letter, Peter accepts and promises to discharge.
Of the poetry of Abelard much has unquestionably been lost. His
troubadour ballads may have been conveniently suppressed; it is often
the fate of wise men’s lighter productions. And his hymns were for long
years untraced, except in the instance of the _Mittit ad virginem_ and
of another upon the Trinity, which was ascribed to him, but is now
accredited to Hildebert. A very pretty poem, _Ornarunt terram germina_,
preserved by Du Meril (_Poesies Populaires Lat._, p. 444) is given in
the collection of Archbishop Trench and again in that of Professor
March. Even in English its grace and daintiness do not entirely escape
us, and they show how possible it was for him to have written the
love-songs which celebrated Heloise.
The earth is green with grasses;
The sky is filled with lights—
Sun, moon, and stars. There passes
Vast use through days and nights.
On either hand upbuilded,
Arouse, O man, and see!
Those heavenly realms are gilded
By help which shines for thee.
The suns of winter cheer thee
For lack of fire below;
While the bright moon draws near thee,
With stars, thy path to show!
Leave pride her ivory spaces;
The poor man on the grass
Looks up, from fragrant places
By which the song-birds pass.
The rich, with wasteful labor,
(For vaulted domes shall fall,)
Mocking his poorer neighbor,
Paints heaven within his hall.
But in that open chamber
Where all things fairest are,
Let the poor man remember
How God paints sun and star.
So vast a work and splendid
Is nature’s more than man’s!
No pains nor cost attended
Those age-enduring plans!
The rich man keeps his servant,
An angel guards the poor,
And God sends stars observant
To watch above his door!
At length the adage of Buddha was fulfilled that “Hatred does not cease
by hatred; hatred ceaseth by love.” This is an old rule. For in 1836 his
romantic story secured an editor for the scholar’s works in the person
of Monsieur Victor Cousin, who at that date, and again in 1849,
republished them. They had been issued in 1616 by Francis d’Amboise at
Paris, and the city of his fame and sorrow appropriately witnessed their
reappearance. But even then there were no more verses, and the editors
of the twelfth volume of the _Histoire Litteraire de la France_ also
regarded those productions as hopelessly lost. Yet they had been in
Paris, and when the _Patrologia_ of Migne reached “Tom. 178” they had
been actually recovered. The story is of the same pattern as the
author’s life—the man and his works had infinite vicissitudes.
When Belgium was occupied by the French, these ninety-three hymns,
written for the abbey of the Paraclete between 1125 and 1134, were lying
hid in _codice quincunciali_, whatever this may mean. The account seems
to require a _box_ of about five inches in height, rather than an
ordinary _codex_ or bound volume. This _codex_ was brought to Paris and
there remained during the days of Napoleon Bonaparte. When his Empire
fell, the box and its contents returned to Belgium. They bore the seals
of the Republic and of the Empire and they also had the stamp of the
Royal Library of Brussels. They were indeed a catalogued part of that
library’s treasures, but their value was unguessed. One day, after their
return, a German student named Oehler, while rummaging through the
_codex_ found in it the _libellus_, or little book, which contained
these three series of hymns. Like the “hymnarium” of Hilary they were
known to have been in existence, and hence he immediately inferred their
authorship. They embraced, to his delight, a complete collection for all
the religious hours and for the principal festivals of the Church.
It is strikingly characteristic of the superficial nature of many
studies in Latin hymnology, that Oehler apparently thought of nothing
else that might be in the _codex_, but proceeded at once to publish
eight of the recovered hymns. These, attracting the notice of Monsieur
Cousin, he purchased a full transcript of the _libellus_ at a “fair
price” from the discoverer. It was, however, reserved for Émile Gachet,
a Belgian, to “give a not unlucky day to paleography” in the course of
which he lighted upon this same _codex_ and found it still to contain
the larger part of an epistle treating of Latin hymnology, addressed to
Heloise, and announcing the hymns of which it was the preface. Thus the
identification was perfect, and the introductions and the hymns are
again joined with the other works of their authors. In 1838 a set of
_Planctus_—“Lamentations”—had been found in the Vatican Library. They
are moderate in merit, and these new pieces were therefore invaluable in
determining Abelard’s rank as a poet. In the main, his hymns are
didactic and cold. But there is at least one which has held its place
anonymously in the service of the Church and upon this his reputation
may safely rest. It was translated by Dr. Neale from the imperfect text
of a Toledo breviary, and it can be found in _Hymns, Ancient and Modern_
(No. 343), and in Mone (_Lat. Hym. des Mittelalters_, I., 382). In the
Paraclete Breviary it is “xxviii., _Ad Vesperas_.”
O quanta, qualia sunt illa sabbata,
Quae semper celebrat superna curia!
Quae fessis requies, quae merces fortibus,
Cum erit omnia Deus in omnibus.
Vere Jherusalem illic est civitas
Cujus pax jugis est summa jucunditas,
Ubi non praevenit rem desiderium,
Nec desiderio nimis est praemium.
Quis rex! quae curia! quale palatium!
Quae pax! quae requies! quod illud gaudium!
Hujus participes exponant gloriae
Si, quantum sentiunt, possint exprimere.
Nostrum est interim mentem erigere,
Et totis patriam votis appetere,
Et ad Jherusalem a Babilonia,
Post longa regredi tandem exilia.
Illic, molestiis finitis omnibus,
Securi cantica Syon cantabimus,
Et juges gratias de donis gratiae
Beata referet plebs tibi, Domine.
Illic ex sabbato succedet sabbatum,
Perpes laetitia sabbatizantium,
Nec ineffabiles cessabunt jubili,
Quos decantabimus et nos et angeli.
Oh what shall be, oh when shall be, that holy Sabbath day,
Which heavenly care shall ever keep and celebrate alway;
When rest is found for weary limbs, when labor hath reward,
When everything, forevermore, is joyful in the Lord?
The true Jerusalem above, the holy town, is there,
Whose duties are so full of joy, whose joy so free from care;
Where disappointment cometh not to check the longing heart,
And where the soul in ecstasy hath gained her better part.
O glorious King, O happy state, O palace of the blest!
O sacred peace and holy joy and perfect heavenly rest.
To thee aspire thy citizens in glory’s bright array,
And what they feel and what they know they strive in vain to say.
For while we wait and long for home, it shall be ours to raise
Our songs and chants, and vows and prayers, in that dear country’s
praise;
And from these Babylonian streams to lift our weary eyes,
And view the city that we love descending from the skies.
There, there, secure from every ill, in freedom we shall sing
The songs of Zion, hindered here by days of suffering,
And unto thee, our gracious Lord, our praises shall confess
That all our sorrow hath been good, and thou by pain canst bless.
There Sabbath day to Sabbath day sheds on a ceaseless light,
Eternal pleasure of the saints who keep that Sabbath bright;
Nor shall the chant ineffable decline, nor ever cease,
Which we with all the angels sing in that sweet realm of peace.
The rhythm of the Trinity, previously mentioned, is so good that it is
usually, and, it may be, correctly, ascribed to Hildebert of Lavardin;
and the _Planctus Varii_ have really something more than that
“inconsiderable merit” which Archbishop Trench allows to them. They are
irregular in form and metre, and their subjects (which evidently reflect
their author’s feelings) are: The Wail of Dinah; Jacob’s Lament over
Joseph and Benjamin; The Sorrow of the Virgins over Jephthah’s Daughter;
The Israelites’ Dirge over Samson; The Grief of David over Abner and his
Elegy upon Saul and Jonathan. Abelard also composed a long poem to
Astrolabe, giving him plenty of good counsel in fair pentameter, but in
rather prosaic phrases. Some of it sounds like Lord Chesterfield’s
worldly wisdom, and there are portions of the production which are
plainly affected by the soured and saddened spirit of the author. “There
is nothing,” he tells the poor, forsaken lad, “better than a good woman,
and nothing worse than a bad one,” and, “as in all species of rapacious
birds,” the female is the most to be dreaded!
Thus the poems which we possess number one hundred and two all told. But
for ordinary readers not more than five—if we exclude the present
correct Latin form of the _O quanta qualia_—are available in the
original, and these are scattered through three or four collections. An
unkind fate has still pursued these poor relics of the man who took
shelter under the broad wing of Peter the Venerable, and who, by having
escaped into such sanctuary, has barred out from thenceforth all
uncharitable thoughts. It may be added that of Heloise also we have a
reputed hymn, _Requiescat a labore_, but Königsfeld and Daniel both deny
the authorship. In this they are doubtless correct.
We may best remember the great controversialist when he is lying dead in
his new-found peace and childlikeness. At the request of Heloise, Peter
of Cluny delivered up his body to be buried within the walls of the
Paraclete, in defiance of any misconstruction or of any sneer. He
accompanied the act with the absolution which she asked. It reads thus:
“I, Peter, Abbot of Cluny, who received Peter Abelard as a Cluniac monk,
and who have granted his body to be delivered secretly [_furtim
delatum_, wrote the big-hearted bishop] to Heloise, the abbess, and to
the nuns of the Paraclete, by the authority of the Omnipotent God and of
all saints, do absolve him in virtue of my office from all his sins.”
This was to have been engraved upon a metal plate and fastened above the
tomb of the dead rhetorician, but for some reason—perhaps connected with
the _furtim delatum_—the plan was never carried out. But the absolution
was probably attached to the tomb for a short time in order to make it
effective.
“Women,” says Mrs. Browning, “are knights-errant to the last.” For a
score of years, Heloise went each evening to that tomb to weep and pray.
She remembered and observed nothing of those unpleasant traits which
later times have noticed. If she ever cursed any one it must have been
Fulbert, or others of the dead man’s enemies, and
“A curse from the depths of womanhood
Is very salt and bitter and good.”
At length, like every watching and every waiting, this, too, came to an
end, and she died on May 17th, 1164, precisely at his age of sixty-three
years. And they laid her beside him in the same grave, as was meet and
right.
But evil fate still flapped a raven wing above the pair. Even in death
they have scarcely rested in peace. In 1497 the tomb was opened from
religious motives and the bodies were removed and placed in separate
vaults. In 1630 the Abbess Marie de Rochefoucauld placed them in the
chapel of the Trinity. In 1792 they were again removed to Nogent, near
Paris. In 1800, by order of Lucien Bonaparte, they were transferred to
the garden of the “Musée des Monumens Français.” This being destroyed in
1815, they were again entombed in Père-la-Chaise. M. Lenoir, keeper of
the Museum, had constructed the present Gothic sepulchre out of the
ruins of the abbey of the Paraclete, uniting with these an ancient tomb
from St. Marcel in which Abelard had at first been laid. Pugin says that
this was transferred from the Musée grounds. The monument reared at the
Paraclete and ornamented with a figure of the Trinity, perished in 1794
during the confusion of the Revolution. General Pajol, the subsequent
owner of the grounds, placed a marble pillar above the stone sarcophagus
which yet existed, but the lead coffin had already been taken to Paris.
The tomb in Père-la-Chaise has been recently repaired, and there the
sentimental of all nations have brought flowers and scrawled names and
scribbled verses. Even at the present day a curious collection of wire
crosses, immortelles, and visiting-cards can be seen constantly upon it.
The principal inscription was composed by the Academie des Inscriptions
in 1766, at the instance of Marie de Roucy de Rochefoucauld, Abbess of
the Paraclete, like her namesake of 1497; and it was carved at her cost
upon the stone.
Nor is this all. The story of Abelard and Heloise has a literature of
its own. We have no authentic portraits, if we except the fine pictures
of Robert Léfèbvre engraved by Desnoyers, which rest upon I know not
what of possible likeness. But the Englishman, Berington; the Germans,
Brucker and Carriere and Fessler and Schlosser and Feuerbach; the
Frenchmen, De Rémusat and Cousin and Guizot and Delepierre and Lamartine
and Dom Gervaise; the Italian, Tòsti; the Americans, W. W. Newton,
Wight, and Abby Sage Richardson, and a host of other authors and
essayists and reviewers, have in one form or another told the sad, sweet
legend of this love. It has never lacked its audience, and its perpetual
charm has been the character of Heloise. Like the fair and unfortunate
maid of Astolat, who so pathetically loved Launcelot, it may be said of
her devotion that she “gave such attendance upon him, there was never a
woman did more kindlyer for man than shee did.” It was a rare exhibition
of that precious jewel, an unselfish, loyal, and flawless heart!