Abelard's reputation for oratory and for scholarship was so great
that he attracted hearers and disciples from all quarters. They
encamped around him like an army and listened to him with such
eagerness that the jealousy of some and the honest apprehension of
others were excited by the boldness with which he handled religious
subjects. He has been called the originator of modern rationalism,
and though he was apparently worsted in his contest with his great
rival, St. Bernard, he remains the most real and living personality
among the great pulpit orators of the Middle Ages. This is due in
large part, no doubt, to his connection with the unfortunate
Heloise. That story, one of the most romantic, as it is one of the
saddest of human history, must be passed over with a mere mention of
the fact that it gave occasion for a number of the sermons of
Abelard which have come down to us. Several of those were preached
in the convent of the Paraclete of which Heloise became abbess,--
where, in his old age, her former lover, broken with the load of a
life of most extraordinary sorrows, went to die. These sermons do
not suggest the fire and force with which young Abelard appealed to
France, compelling its admiration even in exciting its alarm, but
they prevent him from being a mere name as an orator.
He was born near Nantes, A. D. 1079. At his death in 1142, he was
buried in the convent of the Paraclete, where the body of Heloise
was afterwards buried at his side.
The extracts from his sermons here given were translated by
Rev. J. M. Neale, of Sackville College, from the first collected
edition of the works of Abelard, published at Paris in 1616. There
are thirty-two such sermons extant. They were preached in Latin, or,
at least, they have come down to us in that language.