ABELARD
Super cuncta, subter cuncta,
Extra cuncta, intra cuncta,
Intra cuncta nec inclusus,
Extra cuncta nec exclusus,
Super cuncta nec elatus,
Subter cuncta nec substratus,
Super totus, praesidendo,
Subter totus, sustinendo,
Extra totus, complectendo,
Intra totus est, implendo.
According to Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans and Archbishop of Tours,
these verses describe God. Hildebert was the first poet of his time;
no small merit, since he was contemporary with the "Chanson de
Roland" and the first crusade; he was also a strong man, since he
was able, as Bishop of Le Mans, to gain great credit by maintaining
himself against William the Norman and Fulk of Anjou; and finally he
was a prelate of high authority. He lived between 1055 and 1133.
Supposing his verses to have been written in middle life, toward the
year 1100, they may be taken to represent the accepted doctrine of
the Church at the time of the first crusade. They were little more
than a versified form of the Latin of Saint Gregory the Great who
wrote five-hundred years before: "Ipse manet intra omnia, ipse extra
omnia, ipse supra omnia, ipse infra omnia; et superior est per
potentiam et inferior per sustentationem; exterior per magnitudinem
et interior per subtilitatem; sursum regens, deorsum continens,
extra circumdans, interius penetrans; nec alia parte superior, alia
inferior, aut alia ex parte exterior atque ex alia manet interior,
sed unus idemque totus ubique." According to Saint Gregory, in the
sixth century, God was "one and the same and wholly everywhere";
"immanent within everything, without everything, above everything,
below everything, sursum regens, dear sum continens"; while
according to Archbishop Hildebert in the eleventh century: "God is
overall things, under all things; outside all, inside all; within
but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up;
below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath,
sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling."
Finally, according to Benedict Spinoza, another five hundred years
later still: "God is a being, absolutely infinite; that is to say, a
substance made up of an infinity of attributes, each one of which
expresses an eternal and infinite essence."
Spinoza was the great pantheist, whose name is still a terror to the
orthodox, and whose philosophy is--very properly--a horror to the
Church--and yet Spinoza never wrote a line that, to the unguided
student, sounds more Spinozist than the words of Saint Gregory and
Archbishop Hildebert. If God is everywhere; wholly; presiding,
sustaining, embracing and filling, "sursum regens, deorsum
continens," He is the only possible energy, and leaves no place for
human will to act. A force which is "one and the same and wholly
everywhere" is more Spinozist than Spinoza, and is likely to be
mistaken for frank pantheism by the large majority of religious
minds who must try to understand it without a theological course in
a Jesuit college. In the year 1100 Jesuit colleges did not exist,
and even the great Dominican and Franciscan schools were far from
sight in the future; but the School of Notre Dame at Paris existed,
and taught the existence of God much as Archbishop Hildebert
described it. The most successful lecturer was William of Champeaux,
and to any one who ever heard of William at all, the name instantly
calls up the figure of Abelard, in flesh and blood, as he sang to
Heloise the songs which he says resounded through Europe. The
twelfth century, with all its sparkle, would be dull without Abelard
and Heloise. With infinite regret, Heloise must be left out of the
story, because she was not a philosopher or a poet or an artist, but
only a Frenchwoman to the last millimetre of her shadow. Even though
one may suspect that her famous letters to Abelard are, for the most
part, by no means above scepticism, she was, by French standards,
worth at least a dozen Abelards, if only because she called Saint
Bernard a false apostle.
Unfortunately, French standards, by which she must be judged in our
ignorance, take for granted that she philosophized only for the sake
of Abelard, while Abelard taught philosophy to her not so much
because he believed in philosophy or in her as because he believed
in himself. To this day, Abelard remains a problem as perplexing as
he must have been to Heloise, and almost as fascinating. As the west
portal of Chartres is the door through which one must of necessity
enter the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century, so Abelard
is the portal of approach to the Gothic thought and philosophy
within. Neither art nor thought has a modern equivalent; only
Heloise, like Isolde, unites the ages.
The first crusade seems, in perspective, to have rilled the whole
field of vision in France at the time; but, in fact, France seethed
with other emotions, and while the crusaders set out to scale heaven
by force at Jerusalem, the monks, who remained at home, undertook to
scale heaven by prayer and by absorption of body and soul in God;
the Cistercian Order was founded in 1098, and was joined in 1112 by
young Bernard, born in 1090 at Fontaines-les-Dijon, drawing with him
or after him so many thousands of young men into the self-immolation
of the monastery as carried dismay into the hearts of half the women
of France. At the same time--that is, about 1098 or 1100--Abelard
came up to Paris from Brittany, with as much faith in logic as
Bernard had in prayer or Godfrey of Bouillon in arms, and led an
equal or even a greater number of combatants to the conquest of
heaven by force of pure reason. None showed doubt. Hundreds of
thousands of young men wandered from their provinces, mostly to
Palestine, largely to cloisters, but also in great numbers to Paris
and the schools, while few ever returned.
Abelard had the advantage of being well-born; not so highly
descended as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas who were to complete
his work in the thirteenth century, but, like Bernard, a gentleman
born and bred. He was the eldest son of Berenger, Sieur du Pallet, a
chateau in Brittany, south of the Loire, on the edge of Poitou. His
name was Pierre du Pallet, although, for some unknown reason, he
called himself Pierre Abailard, or Abeillard, or Esbaillart, or
Beylard; for the spelling was never fixed. He was born in 1079, and
when, in 1096, the young men of his rank were rushing off to the
first crusade, Pierre, a boy of seventeen, threw himself with equal
zeal into the study of science, and, giving up his inheritance or
birthright, at last came to Paris to seize a position in the
schools. The year is supposed to have been 1100.
The Paris of Abelard's time was astonishingly old; so old that
hardly a stone of it can be now pointed out. Even the oldest of the
buildings still standing in that quarter--Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre,
Saint-Severin, and the tower of the Lycee Henri IV--are more modern;
only the old Roman Thermae, now part of the Musee de Cluny, within
the walls, and the Abbey Tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, outside,
in the fields, were standing in the year 1100. Politically, Paris
was a small provincial town before the reign of Louis-le-Gros (1108-
37), who cleared its gates of its nearest enemies; but as a school,
Paris was even then easily first. Students crowded into it by
thousands, till the town is said to have contained more students
than citizens, Modern Paris seems to have begun as a university town
before it had a university. Students flocked to it from great
distances, encouraged and supported by charity, and stimulated by
privileges, until they took entire possession of what is still
called the Latin Quarter from the barbarous Latin they chattered;
and a town more riotous, drunken, and vicious than it became, in the
course of time, hardly existed even in the Middle Ages. In 1100,
when enthusiasm was fresh and faith in science was strong, the great
mass of students came there to study, and, having no regular
university organization or buildings, they thronged the cloister of
Notre Dame--not our Notre Dame, which dates only from 1163, but the
old Romanesque cathedral which stood on the same spot--and there
they listened, and retained what they could remember, for they were
not encouraged to take notes even if they were rich enough to buy
notebooks, while manuscripts were far beyond their means. One
valuable right the students seem to have had--that of asking
questions and even of disputing with the lecturer provided they
followed the correct form of dialectics. The lecturer himself was
licensed by the Bishop.
Five thousand students are supposed to have swarmed about the
cloister of Notre Dame, across the Petit Pont, and up the hill of
Sainte-Genevieve; three thousand are said to have paid fees to
Abelard in the days of his great vogue and they seem to have
attached themselves to their favourite master as a champion to be
upheld against the world. Jealousies ran high, and neither scholars
nor masters shunned dispute. Indeed, the only science they taught or
knew was the art of dispute--dialectics. Rhetoric, grammar, and
dialectics were the regular branches of science, and bold students,
who were not afraid of dabbling in forbidden fields, extended their
studies to mathematics--"exercitium nefarium," according to Abelard,
which he professed to know nothing about but which he studied
nevertheless. Abelard, whether pupil or master, never held his
tongue if he could help it, for his fortune depended on using it
well; but he never used it so well in dialectics or theology as he
did, toward the end of his life, in writing a bit of autobiography,
so admirably told, so vivid, so vibrating with the curious intensity
of his generation, that it needed only to have been written in
"Romieu" to be the chief monument of early French prose, as the
western portal of Chartres is the chief monument of early French
sculpture, and of about the same date. Unfortunately Abelard was a
noble scholar, who necessarily wrote and talked Latin, even with
Heloise, and, although the Latin was mediaeval, it is not much the
better on that account, because, in spite of its quaintness, the
naivetes of a young language--the egotism, jealousies, suspicions,
boastings, and lamentations of a childlike time--take a false air of
outworn Rome and Byzantium, although, underneath, the spirit lives:--
I arrived at last in Paris where for a long time dialectics had
specially flourished under William of Champeaux, rightly reckoned
the first of my masters in that branch of study. I stayed some time
in his school, but, though well received at first, I soon got to be
an annoyance to him because I persisted in refuting certain ideas of
his, and because, not being afraid to enter into argument against
him, I sometimes got the better. This boldness, too, roused the
wrath of those fellow students who were classed higher, because I was
the youngest and the last comer. This was the beginning of my series
of misfortunes which still last; my renown every day increasing,
envy was kindled against me in every direction.
This picture of the boy of twenty, harassing the professor, day
after day, in his own lecture-room before hundreds of older
students, paints Abelard to the life; but one may safely add a few
touches that heighten the effect; as that William of Champeaux
himself was barely thirty, and that Abelard throughout his career,
made use of every social and personal advantage to gain a point,
with little scruple either in manner or in sophistry. One may easily
imagine the scene. Teachers are always much the same. Pupils and
students differ only in degrees of docility. In 1100, both classes
began by accepting the foundations of society, as they have to do
still; only they then accepted laws of the Church and Aristotle,
while now they accept laws of the legislature and of energy. In
1100, the students took for granted that, with the help of Aristotle
and syllogisms, they could build out the Church intellectually, as
the architects, with the help of the pointed arch, were soon to
enlarge it architecturally. They never doubted the certainty of
their method. To them words had fixed values, like numbers, and
syllogisms were hewn stones that needed only to be set in place, in
order to reach any height or support any weight. Every sentence was
made to take the form of a syllogism. One must have been educated in
a Jesuit or Dominican school in order to frame these syllogisms
correctly, but merely by way of illustration one may timidly suggest
how the phrases sounded in their simplest form. For example, Plato
or other equally good authority deemed substance as that which
stands underneath phenomena; the most universal of universals, the
ultimate, the highest in order of generalization. The ultimate
essence or substance is indivisible; God is substance; God is
indivisible. The divine substance is incapable of alteration or
accident; all other substance is liable to alteration or accident;
therefore, the divine substance differs from all other substance. A
substance is a universal; as for example, Humanity, or the Human, is
a universal and indivisible; the Man Socrates, for instance, is not
a universal, but an individual; therefore, the substance Humanity,
being indivisible, must exist entire and undivided in Socrates.
The form of logic most fascinating to youthful minds, as well as to
some minds that are only too acute, is the reductio ad absurdum; the
forcing an opponent into an absurd alternative or admission; and the
syllogism lent itself happily to this use. Socrates abused the
weapon and Abelard was the first French master of the art; but
neither State nor Church likes to be reduced to an absurdity, and,
on the whole, both Socrates and Abelard fared ill in the result.
Even now, one had best be civil toward the idols of the forum.
Abelard would find most of his old problems sensitive to his touch
to-day. Time has settled few or none of the essential points of
dispute. Science hesitates, more visibly than the Church ever did,
to decide once for all whether unity or diversity is ultimate law;
whether order or chaos is the governing rule of the universe, if
universe there is; whether anything, except phenomena, exists. Even
in matters more vital to society, one dares not speak too loud. Why,
and for what, and to whom, is man a responsible agent? Every jury
and judge, every lawyer and doctor, every legislator and clergyman
has his own views, and the law constantly varies. Every nation may
have a different system. One court may hang and another may acquit
for the same crime, on the same day; and science only repeats what
the Church said to Abelard, that where we know so little, we had
better hold our tongues.
According to the latest authorities, the doctrine of universals
which convulsed the schools of the twelfth century has never
received an adequate answer. What is a species? what is a genus or a
family or an order? More or less convenient terms of classification,
about which the twelfth century cared very little, while it cared
deeply about the essence of classes! Science has become too complex
to affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives for
nothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits,
almost as earnestly as in the twelfth century, when the whole field
of human and superhuman activity was shut between these barriers of
substance, universals, and particulars. Little has changed except
the vocabulary and the method. The schools knew that their society
hung for life on the demonstration that God, the ultimate universal,
was a reality, out of which all other universal truths or realities
sprang. Truth was a real thing, outside of human experience. The
schools of Paris talked and thought of nothing else. John of
Salisbury, who attended Abelard's lectures about 1136, and became
Bishop of Chartres in 1176, seems to have been more surprised than
we need be at the intensity of the emotion. "One never gets away
from this question," he said. "From whatever point a discussion
starts, it is always led back and attached to that. It is the
madness of Rufus about Naevia; 'He thinks of nothing else; talks of
nothing else, and if Naevia did not exist, Rufus would be dumb.'"
Abelard began it. After his first visit to Paris in 1100, he seems
to have passed several years elsewhere, while Guillaume de Champeaux
in 1108, retired from the school in the cloister of Notre Dame, and,
taking orders, established a class in a chapel near by, afterwards
famous as the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The Jardin des Plantes and the
Gare d'Orleans now cover the ground where the Abbey stood, on the
banks of the Seine outside the Latin Quarter, and not a trace is
left of its site; but there William continued his course in
dialectics, until suddenly Abelard reappeared among his scholars,
and resumed his old attacks. This time Abelard could hardly call
himself a student. He was thirty years old, and long since had been
himself a teacher; he had attended William's course on dialectics
nearly ten years before, and was past master in the art; he had
nothing to learn from William in theology, for neither William nor
he was yet a theologist by profession. If Abelard went back to
school, it was certainly not to learn; but indeed, he himself made
little or no pretence of it, and told with childlike candour not
only why he went, but also how brilliantly he succeeded in his
object:--
I returned to study rhetoric in his school. Among other
controversial battles, I succeeded, by the most irrefutable
argument, in making him change, or rather ruin his doctrine of
universals. His doctrine consisted in affirming the perfect identity
of the essence in every individual of the same species, so that
according to him there was no difference in the essence but only in
the infinite variety of accidents. He then came to amend his
doctrine so as to affirm, not the identity any longer, but the
absence of distinction--the want of difference--in the essence. And
as this question of universals had always been one of the most
important questions of dialectics--so important that Porphyry,
touching on it in his Preliminaries, did not dare to take the
responsibility of cutting the knot, but said, "It is a very grave
point,"--Champeaux, who was obliged to modify his idea and then
renounce it, saw his course fall into such discredit that they
hardly let him make his dialectical lectures, as though dialectics
consisted entirely in the question of universals.
Why was this point so "very grave"? Not because it was mere
dialectics! The only part of the story that seems grave today is the
part that Abelard left out; the part which Saint Bernard, thirty
years later put in, on behalf of William. We should be more
credulous than twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard's
word in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most
accomplished dialectician of the age by an objection so familiar
that no other dialectician was ever silenced by it--whatever may
have been the case with theologians--and so obvious that it could
not have troubled a scholar of fifteen. William stated a settled
doctrine as old as Plato; Abelard interposed an objection as old as
Aristotle. Probably Plato and Aristotle had received the question
and answer from philosophers ten-thousand years older than
themselves. Certainly the whole of philosophy has always been
involved in the dispute.
The subject is as amusing as a comedy; so amusing that ten minutes
may be well given to playing the scene between William and Abelard,
not as it happened, but in a form nearer our ignorance, with liberty
to invent arguments for William, and analogies--which are figures
intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent
toys if they fail--such as he never imagined; while Abelard can
respond with his true rejoinder, fatal in a different sense. For the
chief analogy, the notes of music would serve, or the colours of the
solar spectrum, or an energy, such as gravity--but the best is
geometrical, because Euclid was as scholastic as William of
Champeaux himself, and his axioms are even more familiar to the
schoolboy of the twentieth, than to the schoolman of the twelfth
century.
In these scholastic tournaments the two champions started from
opposite points--one, from the ultimate substance, God--the
universal, the ideal, the type--the other from the individual,
Socrates, the concrete, the observed fact of experience, the object
of sensual perception. The first champion--William in this instance--
assumed that the universal was a real thing; and for that reason he
was called a realist. His opponent--Abelard--held that the universal
was only nominally real; and on that account he was called a
nominalist. Truth, virtue, humanity, exist as units and realities,
said William. Truth, replied Abelard, is only the sum of all
possible facts that are true, as humanity is the sum of all actual
human beings. The ideal bed is a form, made by God, said Plato. The
ideal bed is a name, imagined by ourselves, said Aristotle. "I start
from the universe," said William. "I start from the atom," said
Abelard; and, once having started, they necessarily came into
collision at some point between the two.
William of Champeaux, lecturing on dialectics or logic, comes to the
question of universals, which he says, are substances. Starting from
the highest substance, God, all being descends through created
substances by stages, until it reaches the substance animality, from
which it descends to the substance humanity: and humanity being,
like other essences or substances, indivisible, passes wholly into
each individual, becoming Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, much as
the divine substance exists wholly and undivided in each member of
the Trinity.
Here Abelard interrupts. The divine substance, he says, operates by
laws of its own, and cannot be used for comparison. In treating of
human substance, one is bound by human limitations. If the whole of
humanity is in Socrates, it is wholly absorbed by Socrates, and
cannot be at the same time in Plato, or elsewhere. Following his
favourite reductio ad absurdum, Abelard turns the idea round, and
infers from it that, since Socrates carries all humanity in him, he
carries Plato, too; and both must be in the same place, though
Socrates is at Athens and Plato in Rome.
The objection is familiar to William, who replies by another
commonplace:--
"Mr. Abelard, might I, without offence, ask you a simple matter? Can
you give me Euclid's definition of a point?"
"If I remember right it is, 'illud cujus nulla pars est'; that which
has no parts."
"Has it existence?"
"Only in our minds."
"Not, then, in God?"
"All necessary truths exist first in God. If the point is a
necessary truth, it exists first there."
"Then might I ask you for Euclid's definition of the line?"
"The line is that which has only extension; 'Linea vocatur illa quae
solam longitudinem habet.'" "Can you conceive an infinite straight
line?"
"Only as a line which has no end, like the point extended."
"Supposing we imagine a straight line, like opposite rays of the
sun, proceeding in opposite directions to infinity--is it real?"
"It has no reality except in the mind that conceives it."
"Supposing we divide that line which has no reality into two parts
at its origin in the sun or star, shall we get two infinities?--or
shall we say, two halves of the infinite?"
"We conceive of each as partaking the quality of infinity."
"Now, let us cut out the diameter of the sun; or rather--since this
is what our successors in the school will do,--let us take a line of
our earth's longitude which is equally unreal, and measure a degree
of this thing which does not exist, and then divide it into equal
parts which we will use as a measure or metre. This metre, which is
still nothing, as I understand you, is infinitely divisible into
points? and the point itself is infinitely small? Therefore we have
the finite partaking the nature of the infinite?"
"Undoubtedly!"
"One step more, Mr. Abelard, if I do not weary you! Let me take
three of these metres which do not exist, and place them so that the
ends of one shall touch the ends of the others. May I ask what is
that figure?"
"I presume you mean it to be a triangle."
"Precisely! and what sort of a triangle?"
"An equilateral triangle, the sides of which measure one metre
each."
"Now let me take three more of these metres which do not exist, and
construct another triangle which does not exist;--are these two
triangles or one triangle?"
"They are most certainly one--a single concept of the only possible
equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each face."
"You told us a moment ago that a universal could not exist wholly
and exclusively in two individuals at once. Does not the universal
by definition--THE equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each
face--does it not exist wholly, in its integrity of essence, in each
of the two triangles we have conceived?"
"It does--as a conception."
"I thank you! Now, although I fear wearying you, perhaps you will
consent to let me add matter to mind. I have here on my desk an
object not uncommon in nature, which I will ask you to describe."
"It appears to be a crystal."
"May I ask its shape?"
"I should call it a regular octahedron."
"That is, two pyramids, set base to base? making eight plane
surfaces, each a perfect equilateral triangle?"
"Concedo triangula (I grant the triangles)."
"Do you know, perchance, what is this material which seems to give
substantial existence to these eight triangles?"
"I do not."
"Nor I! nor does it matter, unless you conceive it to be the work of
man?"
"I do not claim it as man's work."
"Whose, then?"
"We believe all actual creation of matter, united with form, to be
the work of God."
"Surely not the substance of God himself? Perhaps you mean that this
form--this octahedron--is a divine concept."
"I understand such to be the doctrine of the Church."
"Then it seems that God uses this concept habitually to create this
very common crystal. One question more, and only one, if you will
permit me to come to the point. Does the matter--the material--of
which this crystal is made affect in any way the form--the nature,
the soul--of the universal equilateral triangle as you see it
bounding these eight plane surfaces?"
"That I do not know, and do not think essential to decide. As far as
these triangles are individual, they are made so by the will of God,
and not by the substance you call triangle. The universal--the
abstract right angle, or any other abstract form--is only an idea, a
concept, to which reality, individuality, or what we might call
energy is wanting. The only true energy, except man's free will, is
God."
"Very good, Mr. Abelard! we can now reach our issue. You affirm
that, just as the line does not exist in space, although the eye
sees little else in space, so the triangle does not exist in this
crystal, although the crystal shows eight of them, each perfect. You
are aware that on this line which does not exist, and its
combination in this triangle which does not exist, rests the whole
fabric of mathematics with all its necessary truths. In other words,
you know that in this line, though it does not exist, is bound up
the truth of the only branch of human knowledge which claims
absolute certainty for human processes. You admit that this line and
triangle, which are mere figments of our human imagination, not only
exist independent of us in the crystal, but are, as we suppose,
habitually and invariably used by God Himself to give form to the
matter contained within the planes of the crystal. Yet to this line
and triangle you deny reality. To mathematical truth, you deny
compulsive force. You hold that an equilateral triangle may, to you
and all other human individuals, be a right-angled triangle if you
choose to imagine it so. Allow me to say, without assuming any claim
to superior knowledge, that to me your logic results in a different
conclusion. If you are compelled, at one point or another of the
chain of being, to deny existence to a substance, surely it should
be to the last and feeblest. I see nothing to hinder you from
denying your own existence, which is, in fact, impossible to
demonstrate. Certainly you are free, in logic, to argue that
Socrates and Plato are mere names--that men and matter are phantoms
and dreams. No one ever has proved or ever can prove the contrary,
Infallibly, a great philosophical school will some day be founded on
that assumption. I venture even to recommend it to your acute and
sceptical mind; but I cannot conceive how, by any process of
reasoning, sensual or supersensual, you can reach the conclusion
that the single form of truth which instantly and inexorably compels
our submission to its laws--is nothing."
Thus far, all was familiar ground; certainly at least as familiar as
the Pons Asinorum; and neither of the two champions had need to feel
ruffled in temper by the discussion. The real struggle began only at
this point; for until this point was reached, both positions were
about equally tenable. Abelard had hitherto rested quietly on the
defensive, but William's last thrust obliged him to strike in his
turn, and he drew himself up for what, five hundred years later, was
called the "Coup de Jarnac":--
"I do not deny," he begins; "on the contrary, I affirm that the
universal, whether we call it humanity, or equilateral triangle, has
a sort of reality as a concept; that it is something; even a
substance, if you insist upon it. Undoubtedly the sum of all
individual men results in the concept of humanity. What I deny is
that the concept results in the individual. You have correctly
stated the essence of the point and the line as sources of our
concept of the infinite; what I deny is that they are divisions of
the infinite. Universals cannot be divided; what is capable of
division cannot be a universal. I admit the force of your analogy in
the case of the crystal; but I am obliged to point out to you that,
if you insist on this analogy, you will bring yourself and me into
flagrant contradiction with the fixed foundations of the Church. If
the energy of the triangle gives form to the crystal, and the energy
of the line gives reality to the triangle, and the energy of the
infinite gives substance to the line, all energy at last becomes
identical with the ultimate substance, God Himself. Socrates becomes
God in small; Judas is identical with both; humanity is of the
divine essence, and exists, wholly and undivided, in each of us. The
equilateral triangle we call humanity exists, therefore, entire,
identical, in you and me, as a subdivision of the infinite line,
space, energy, or substance, which is God. I need not remind you
that this is pantheism, and that if God is the only energy, human
free will merges in God's free will; the Church ceases to have a
reason for existence; man cannot be held responsible for his own
acts, either to the Church or to the State; and finally, though very
unwillingly, I must, in regard for my own safety, bring the subject
to the attention of the Archbishop, which, as you know better than
I, will lead to your seclusion, or worse."
Whether Abelard used these precise words is nothing to the point.
The words he left on record were equivalent to these. As translated
by M. de Remusat from a manuscript entitled: "Glossulae magistri
Petri Baelardi super Porphyrium," the phrase runs: "A grave heresy
is at the end of this doctrine; for, according to it, the divine
substance which is recognized as admitting of no form, is
necessarily identical with every substance in particular and with
all substance in general." Even had he not stated the heresy so
bluntly, his objection necessarily pushed William in face of it.
Realism, when pressed, always led to pantheism. William of Champeaux
and Bishop or Archbishop Hildebert were personal friends, and
Hildebert's divine substance left no more room for human free will
than Abelard saw in the geometric analogy imagined for William.
Throughout the history of the Church for fifteen hundred years,
whenever this theological point has been pressed against churchmen
it has reduced them to evasion or to apology. Admittedly, the weak
point of realism was its fatally pantheistic term.
Of course, William consulted his friends in the Church, probably
Archbishop Hildebert among the rest, before deciding whether to
maintain or to abandon his ground, and the result showed that he was
guided by their advice. Realism was the Roman arch--the only
possible foundation for any Church; because it assumed unity, and
any other scheme was compelled to prove it, for a starting-point.
Let us see, for a moment, what became of the dialogue, when pushed
into theology, in order to reach some of the reasons which reduced
William to tacit abandonment of a doctrine he could never have
surrendered unless under compulsion. That he was angry is sure, for
Abelard, by thus thrusting theology into dialectics, had struck him
a full blow; and William knew Abelard well:--
"Ah!" he would have rejoined; "you are quick, M. du Pallet, to turn
what I offered as an analogy, into an argument of heresy against my
person. You are at liberty to take that course if you choose, though
I give you fair warning that it will lead you far. But now I must
ask you still another question. This concept that you talk about--
this image in the mind of man, of God, of matter; for I know not
where to seek it--whether is it a reality or not?"
"I hold it as, in a manner, real."
"I want a categorical answer--Yes or No!"
"Distinguo! (I must qualify.)"
"I will have no qualifications. A substance either is, or not.
Choose!"
To this challenge Abelard had the choice of answering Yes, or of
answering no, or of refusing to answer at all. He seems to have done
the last; but we suppose him to have accepted the wager of battle,
and to answer:--
"Yes, then!"
"Good!" William rejoins; "now let us see how your pantheism differs
from mine. My triangle exists as a reality, or what science will
call an energy, outside my mind, in God, and is impressed on my mind
as it is on a mirror, like the triangle on the crystal, its energy
giving form. Your triangle you say is also an energy, but an essence
of my mind itself; you thrust it into the mind as an integral part
of the mirror; identically the same concept, energy, or necessary
truth which is inherent in God. Whatever subterfuge you may resort
to, sooner or later you have got to agree that your mind is
identical with God's nature as far as that concept is concerned.
Your pantheism goes further than mine. As a doctrine of the Real
Presence peculiar to yourself, I can commend it to the Archbishop
together with your delation of me."
Supposing that Abelard took the opposite course, and answered:--
"No! my concept is a mere sign."
"A sign of what, in God's name!"
"A sound! a word! a symbol! an echo only of my ignorance."
"Nothing, then! So truth and virtue and charity do not exist at all.
You suppose yourself to exist, but you have no means of knowing God;
therefore, to you God does not exist except as an echo of your
ignorance; and, what concerns you most, the Church does not exist
except as your concept of certain individuals, whom you cannot
regard as a unity, and who suppose themselves to believe in a
Trinity which exists only as a sound, or a symbol. I will not repeat
your words, M. du Pallet, outside this cloister, because the
consequences to you would certainly be fatal; but it is only too
clear that you are a materialist, and as such your fate must be
decided by a Church Council, unless you prefer the stake by judgment
of a secular court."
In truth, pure nominalism--if, indeed, any one ever maintained it--
afforded no cover whatever. Nor did Abelard's concept help the
matter, although for want of a better refuge, the Church was often
driven into it. Conceptualism was a device, like the false wooden
roof, to cover and conceal an inherent weakness of construction.
Unity either is, or is not. If soldiers, no matter in what number,
can never make an army, and worshippers, though in millions, do not
make a Church, and all humanity united would not necessarily
constitute a State, equally little can their concepts, individual or
united, constitute the one or the other. Army, Church, and State,
each is an organic whole, complex beyond all possible addition of
units, and not a concept at all, but rather an animal that thinks,
creates, devours, and destroys. The attempt to bridge the chasm
between multiplicity and unity is the oldest problem of philosophy,
religion, and science, but the flimsiest bridge of all is the human
concept, unless somewhere, within or beyond it, an energy not
individual is hidden; and in that case the old question instantly
reappears: What is that energy?
Abelard would have done well to leave William alone, but Abelard was
an adventurer, and William was a churchman. To win a victory over a
churchman is not very difficult for an adventurer, and is always a
tempting amusement, because the ambition of churchmen to shine in
worldly contests is disciplined and checked by the broader interests
of the Church: but the victory is usually sterile, and rarely harms
the churchman. The Church cares for its own. Probably the bishops
advised William not to insist on his doctrine, although every bishop
may have held the same view. William allowed himself to be silenced
without a judgment, and in that respect stands almost if not quite
alone among schoolmen. The students divined that he had sold himself
to the Church, and consequently deserted him. Very soon he received
his reward in the shape of the highest dignity open to private
ambition--a bishopric. As Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne he made for
himself a great reputation, which does not concern us, although it
deeply concerned the unfortunate Abelard, for it happened, either by
chance or design, that within a year or two after William
established himself at Chalons, young Bernard of Citeaux chose a
neighbouring diocese in which to establish a branch of the
Cistercian Order, and Bishop William took so keen an interest in the
success of Bernard as almost to claim equal credit for it. Clairvaux
was, in a manner, William's creation, although not in his diocese,
and yet, if there was a priest in all France who fervently despised
the schools, it was young Bernard. William of Champeaux, the chief
of schoolmen, could never have gained Bernard's affections. Bishop
William of Chalons must have drifted far from dialectics into
mysticism in order to win the support of Clairvaux, and train up a
new army of allies who were to mark Abelard for an easy prey.
Meanwhile Abelard pursued his course of triumph in the schools, and
in due time turned from dialectics to theology, as every ambitious
teacher could hardly fail to do. His affair with Heloise and their
marriage seem to have occupied his time in 1117 or 1118, for they
both retired into religious orders in 1119, and he resumed his
lectures in 1120. With his passion for rule, he was fatally certain
to attempt ruling the Church as he ruled the schools; and, as it was
always enough for him that any point should be tender in order that
he should press upon it, he instantly and instinctively seized on
the most sensitive nerve of the Church system to wrench it into his
service. He became a sort of apostle of the Holy Ghost.
That the Trinity is a mystery was a law of theology so absolute as
in a degree to hide the law of philosophy that the Trinity was meant
as a solution of a greater mystery still. In truth, as a matter of
philosophy, the Trinity was intended to explain the eternal and
primary problem of the process by which unity could produce
diversity. Starting from unity alone, philosophers found themselves
unable to stir hand or foot until they could account for duality. To
the common, ignorant peasant, no such trouble occurred, for he knew
the Trinity in its simpler form as the first condition of life, like
time and space and force. No human being was so stupid as not to
understand that the father, mother, and child made a trinity,
returning into each other, and although every father, every mother,
and every child, from the dawn of man's intelligence, had asked why,
and had never received an answer more intelligible to them than to
philosophers, they never showed difficulty in accepting that trinity
as a fact. They might even, in their beneficent blindness, ask the
Church why that trinity, which had satisfied the Egyptians for five
or ten-thousand years, was not good enough for churchmen. They
themselves were doing their utmost, though unconsciously, to
identify the Holy Ghost with the Mother, while philosophy insisted
on excluding the human symbol precisely because it was human and led
back to an infinite series. Philosophy required three units to start
from; it posed the equilateral triangle, not the straight line, as
the foundation of its deometry. The first straight line, infinite in
extension, must be assumed, and its reflection engendered the
second, but whence came the third? Under protest, philosophy was
compelled to accept the symbol of Father and Son as a matter of
faith, but, if the relation of Father and Son were accepted for the
two units which reflected each other, what relation expressed the
Holy Ghost? In philosophy, the product of two units was not a third
unit, but diversity, multiplicity, infinity. The subject was, for
that reason, better handled by the Arabs, whose reasoning worked
back on the Christian theologists and made the point more delicate
still. Common people, like women and children and ourselves, could
never understand the Trinity; naturally, intelligent people
understood it still less, but for them it did not matter; they did
not need to understand it provided their neighbours would leave it
alone.
The mass of mankind wanted something nearer to them than either the
Father or the Son; they wanted the Mother, and the Church tried, in
what seems to women and children and ourselves rather a feeble way,
to give the Holy Ghost, as far as possible, the Mother's attributes
--Love, Charity, Grace; but in spite of conscientious effort and
unswerving faith, the Holy Ghost remained to the mass of Frenchmen
somewhat apart, feared rather than loved. The sin against the Holy
Ghost was a haunting spectre, for no one knew what else it was.
Naturally the Church, and especially its official theologists, took
an instinctive attitude of defence whenever a question on this
subject was asked, and were thrown into a flutter of irritation
whenever an answer was suggested. No man likes to have his
intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts
about it himself. The distinguishing essence of the Holy Ghost, as a
theological substance, was its mystery. That this mystery should be
touched at all was annoying to every one who knew the dangers that
lurked behind the veil, but that it should be freely handled before
audiences of laymen by persons of doubtful character was impossible.
Such license must end in discrediting the whole Trinity under
pretence of making it intelligible.
Precisely this license was what Abelard took, and on it he chose to
insist. He said nothing heretical; he treated the Holy Ghost with
almost exaggerated respect, as though other churchmen did not quite
appreciate its merits; but he would not let it alone, and the Church
dreaded every moment lest, with his enormous influence in the
schools, he should raise a new storm by his notorious indiscretion.
Yet so long as he merely lectured, he was not molested; only when he
began to publish his theology did the Church interfere. Then a
council held at Soissons in 1121 abruptly condemned his book in
block, without reading it, without specifying its errors, and
without hearing his defence; obliged him to throw the manuscript
into the fire with his own hands, and finally shut him up in a
monastery.
He had invited the jurisdiction by taking orders, but even the
Church was shocked by the summary nature of the judgment, which
seems to have been quite irregular. In fact, the Church has never
known what it was that the council condemned. The latest great work
on the Trinity, by the Jesuit Father de Regnon, suggests that
Abelard's fault was in applying to the Trinity his theory of
concepts.
"Yes!" he says; "the mystery is explained; the key of conceptualism
has opened the tabernacle, and Saint Bernard was right in saying
that, thanks to Abelard, every one can penetrate it and contemplate
it at his ease; 'even the graceless, even the uncircumcised.' Yes!
the Trinity is explained, but after the manner of the Sabellians.
For to identify the Persons in the terms of human concepts is, in
the same stroke, to destroy their 'subsistances propres.'"
Although the Saviour seems to have felt no compunctions about
identifying the persons of the Trinity in the terms of human
concepts, it is clear that tourists and heretics had best leave the
Church to deal with its "subsistances propres," and with its own
members, in its own way. In sum, the Church preferred to stand firm
on the Roman arch, and the architects seem now inclined to think it
was right; that scholastic science and the pointed arch proved to be
failures. In the twelfth century the world may have been rough, but
it was not stupid. The Council of Soissons was held while the
architects and sculptors were building the west porch of Chartres
and the Aquilon at Mont-Saint-Michel. Averroes was born at Cordova
in 1126; Omar Khayyam died at Naishapur in 1123. Poetry and
metaphysics owned the world, and their quarrel with theology was a
private, family dispute. Very soon the tide turned decisively in
Abelard's favour. Suger, a political prelate, became minister of the
King, and in March, 1122, Abbot of Saint-Denis. In both capacities
he took the part of Abelard, released him from restraint, and even
restored to him liberty of instruction, at least beyond the
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Abelard then took a line of
conduct singularly parallel with that of Bernard. Quitting civilized
life he turned wholly to religion. "When the agreement," he said,
"had been executed by both parties to it, in presence of the King
and his ministers, I next retired within the territory of Troyes,
upon a desert spot which I knew, and on a piece of ground given me
by certain persons, I built, with the consent of the bishop of the
diocese, a sort of oratory of reeds and thatch, which I placed under
the invocation of the Holy Trinity ... Founded at first in the name
of the Holy Trinity, then placed under its invocation, it was called
'Paraclete' in memory of my having come there as a fugitive and in
my despair having found some repose in the consolations of divine
grace. This denomination was received by many with great
astonishment, and some attacked it with violence under pretext that
it was not permitted to consecrate a church specially to the Holy
Ghost any more than to God the Father, but that, according to
ancient usage, it must be dedicated either to the Son alone or to
the Trinity."
The spot is still called Paraclete, near Nogent-sur-Seine, in the
parish of Quincey about halfway between Fontainebleau and Troyes.
The name Paraclete as applied to the Holy Ghost meant the Consoler,
the Comforter, the Spirit of Love and Grace; as applied to the
oratory by Abelard it meant a renewal of his challenge to
theologists, a separation of the Persons in the Trinity, a
vulgarization of the mystery; and, as his story frankly says, it was
so received by many. The spot was not so remote but that his
scholars could follow him, and he invited them to do so. They came
in great numbers, and he lectured to them. "In body I was hidden in
this spot; but my renown overran the whole world and filled it with
my word." Undoubtedly Abelard taught theology, and, in defiance of
the council that had condemned him, attempted to define the persons
of the Trinity. For this purpose he had fallen on a spot only fifty
or sixty miles from Clairvaux where Bernard was inspiring a contrary
spirit of religion; he placed himself on the direct line between
Clairvaux and its source at Citeaux near Dijon; indeed, if he had
sought for a spot as central as possible to the active movement of
the Church and the time, he could have hit on none more convenient
and conspicuous unless it were the city of Troyes itself, the
capital of Champagne, some thirty miles away. The proof that he
meant to be aggressive is furnished by his own account of the
consequences. Two rivals, he says, one of whom seems to have been
Bernard of Clairvaux, took the field against him, "and succeeded in
exciting the hostility of certain ecclesiastical and secular
authorities, by charging monstrous things, not only against my
faith, but also against my manner of life, to such a point as to
detach from me some of my principal friends; even those who
preserved some affection for me dared no longer display it, for
fear. God is my witness that I never heard of the union of an
ecclesiastical assembly without thinking that its object was my
condemnation." The Church had good reason, for Abelard's conduct
defied discipline; but far from showing harshness, the Church this
time showed a true spirit of conciliation most creditable to
Bernard. Deeply as the Cistercians disliked and distrusted Abelard,
they did not violently suppress him, but tacitly consented to let
the authorities buy his silence with Church patronage.
The transaction passed through Suger's hands, and offered an
ordinary example of political customs as old as history. An abbey in
Brittany became vacant; at a hint from the Duke Conan, which may
well be supposed to have been suggested from Paris, the monks chose
Abelard as their new abbot, and sent some of their number to Suger
to request permission for Abelard, who was a monk of Saint-Denis, to
become Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, near Vannes, in Brittany.
Suger probably intimated to Abelard, with a certain degree of
authority, that he had better accept. Abelard, "struck with terror,
and as it were under the menace of a thunderbolt," accepted. Of
course the dignity was in effect banishment and worse, and was so
understood on all sides. The Abbaye-de-Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, though
less isolated than Mont-Saint-Michel, was not an agreeable winter
residence. Though situated in Abelard's native province of Brittany,
only sixty or eighty miles from his birthplace, it was for him a
prison with the ocean around it and a singularly wild people to deal
with; but he could have endured his lot with contentment, had not
discipline or fear or pledge compelled him to hold his tongue. From
1125, when he was sent to Brittany until 1135 when he reappeared in
Paris, he never opened his mouth to lecture. "Never, as God is my
witness,--never would I have acquiesced in such an offer, had it not
been to escape, no matter how, from the vexations with which I was
incessantly overwhelmed."
A great career in the Church was thus opened for him against his
will, and if he did not die an archbishop it was not wholly the
fault of the Church. Already he was a great prelate, the equal in
rank of the Abbe Suger, himself, of Saint-Denis; of Peter the
Venerable of Cluny; of Bernard of Clairvaux. He was in a manner a
peer of the realm. Almost immediately he felt the advantages of the
change. Barely two years passed when, in 1127, the Abbe Suger, in
reforming his subordinate Abbey of Argenteuil, was obliged to
disturb Heloise, then a sister in that congregation. Abelard was
warned of the necessity that his wife should be protected, and with
the assistance of everyone concerned, he was allowed to establish
his wife at the Paraclete as head of a religious sisterhood. "I
returned there; I invited Heloise to come there with the nuns of her
community; and when they arrived, I made them the entire donation of
the oratory and its dependencies ... The bishops cherished her as
their daughter; the abbots as their sister; the laymen as their
mother." This was merely the beginning of her favour and of his. For
ten years they were both of them petted children of the Church.
The formal establishment of Heloise at the Paraclete took place in
1129. In February, 1130, on the death of the Pope at Rome, a schism
broke out, and the cardinals elected two popes, one of whom took the
name of Innocent II, and appealed for support to France. Suger saw a
great political opportunity and used it. The heads of the French
Church agreed in supporting Innocent, and the King summoned a Church
council at Etampes to declare its adhesion. The council met in the
late summer; Bernard of Clairvaux took the lead; Peter the
Venerable, Suger of Saint-Denis, and the Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-
Rhuys supported him; Innocent himself took refuge at Cluny in
October, and on January 20, 1131, he stopped at the Benedictine
Abbey of Morigny. The Chronicle of the monastery, recording the
abbots present on this occasion,--the Abbot of Morigny itself, of
Feversham; of Saint-Lucien of Beauvais, and so forth,--added
especially: "Bernard of Clairvaux, who was then the most famous
pulpit orator in France; and Peter Abelard, Abbot of Saint-Gildas,
also a monk and the most eminent master of the schools to which the
scholars of almost all the Latin races flowed."
Innocent needed popular support; Bernard and Abelard were the two
leaders of popular opinion in France. To attach them, Innocent could
refuse nothing. Probably Abelard remained with Innocent, but in any
case Innocent gave him, at Auxerre, in the following November, a
diploma, granting to Heloise, prioress of the Oratory of the Holy
Trinity, all rights of property over whatever she might possess,
against all assailants; which proves Abelard's favour. At this time
he seems to have taken great interest in the new sisterhood. "I made
them more frequent visits," he said, "in order to work for their
benefit." He worked so earnestly for their benefit that he
scandalized the neighbourhood and had to argue at unnecessary length
his innocence of evil. He went so far as to express a wish to take
refuge among them and to abandon his abbey in Brittany. He professed
to stand in terror of his monks; he excommunicated them; they paid
no attention to him; he appealed to the Pope, his friend, and
Innocent sent a special legate to enforce their submission "in
presence of the Count and the Bishops."
Even since that, they would not keep quiet. And quite recently,
since the expulsion of those of whom I have spoken, when I returned
to the abbey, abandoning myself to the rest of the brothers who
inspired me with less distrust, I found them even worse than the
others. It was no longer a question of poison; it was the dagger
that they now sharpened against my breast. I had great difficulty in
escaping from them under the guidance of one of the neighbouring
lords. Similar perils menace me still and every day I see the sword
raised over my head. Even at table I can hardly breathe ... This is
the torture that I endure every moment of the day; I, a poor monk,
raised to the prelacy, becoming more miserable in becoming more
great, that by my example the ambitious may learn to curb their
greed.
With this, the "Story of Calamity" ends. The allusions to Innocent
II seem to prove that it was written not earlier than 1132; the
confession of constant and abject personal fear suggests that it was
written under the shock caused by the atrocious murder of the Prior
of Saint-Victor by the nephews of the Archdeacon of Paris, who had
also been subjected to reforms. This murder was committed a few
miles outside of the walls of Paris, on August 20, 1133. The "Story
of Calamity" is evidently a long plea for release from the
restraints imposed on its author by his position in the prelacy and
the tacit, or possibly the express, contract he had made, or to
which he had submitted, in 1125. This plea was obviously written in
order to serve one of two purposes:--either to be placed before the
authorities whose consent alone could relieve Abelard from his
restraints; or to justify him in throwing off the load of the
Church, and resuming the profession of schoolman. Supposing the
second explanation, the date of the paper would be more or less
closely fixed by John of Salisbury, who coming to Paris as a
student, in 1136, found Abelard lecturing on the Mont-Sainte-
Genevieve; that is to say, not under the license of the Bishop of
Paris or his Chancellor, but independently, in a private school of
his own, outside the walls. "I attached myself to the Palatine
Peripatician who then presided on the hill of Sainte-Genevieve, the
doctor illustrious, admired by all. There, at his feet, I received
the first elements of the dialectic art, and according to the
measure of my poor understanding I received with all the avidity of
my soul everything that came from his mouth."
This explanation is hardly reasonable, for no prelate who was not
also a temporal lord would have dared throw off his official duties
without permission from his superiors. In Abelard's case the only
superior to whom he could apply, as Abbot of Saint-Gildas in
Brittany, was probably the Pope himself. In the year 1135 the moment
was exceedingly favourable for asking privileges. Innocent, driven
from Rome a second time, had summoned a council at Pisa for May 30
to help him. Louis-le-Gros and his minister Suger gave at first no
support to this council, and were overruled by Bernard of Clairvaux
who in a manner drove them into giving the French clergy permission
to attend. The principal archbishops, a number of bishops, and
sixteen abbots went to Pisa in May, 1135, and some one of them
certainly asked Innocent for favours on behalf of Abelard, which the
Pope granted.
The proof is a papal bull, dated in 1136, in favour of Heloise,
giving her the rank and title of Abbess, accompanied by another
giving to the Oratory of the Holy Trinity the rank and name of
Monastery of the Paraclete, a novelty in Church tradition so
extraordinary or so shocking that it still astounds churchmen. With
this excessive mark of favour Innocent could have felt little
difficulty in giving Abelard the permission to absent himself from
his abbey, and with this permission in his hands Abelard might have
lectured on dialectics to John of Salisbury in the summer or autumn
of 1136. He did not, as far as known, resume lectures on theology.
Such success might have turned heads much better balanced than that
of Abelard. With the support of the Pope and at least one of the
most prominent cardinals, and with relations at court with the
ministers of Louis-le-Gros, Abelard seemed to himself as strong as
Bernard of Clairvaux, and a more popular champion of reform. The
year 1137, which has marked a date for so many great points in our
travels, marked also the moment of Abelard's greatest vogue. The
victory of Aristotle and the pointed arch seemed assured when Suger
effected the marriage of the young Prince Louis to the heiress
Eleanor of Guienne. The exact moment was stamped on the facade of
his exquisite creation, the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, finished in
1140 and still in part erect. From Saint-Denis to Saint-Sulpice was
but a step. Louis-le-Grand seems to stand close in succession to
Louis-le-Gros.
Fortunately for tourists, the world, restless though it might be,
could not hurry, and Abelard was to know of the pointed arch very
little except its restlessness. Just at the apex of his triumph,
August 1, 1137, Louis-le-Gros died. Six months afterwards the anti-
pope also died, the schism ended, and Innocent II needed Abelard's
help no more. Bernard of Clairvaux became Pope and King at once.
Both Innocent and Louis-le-Jeune were in a manner his personal
creations. The King's brother Henry, next in succession, actually
became a monk at Clairvaux not long afterwards. Even the
architecture told the same story, for at Saint-Denis, though the
arch might simulate a point, the old Romanesque lines still assert
as firmly as ever their spiritual control. The fleche that gave the
facade a new spirit was not added until 1215, which marks Abelard's
error in terms of time.
Once arrived at power, Bernard made short work of all that tried to
resist him. During 1139 he seems to have been too busy or too ill to
take up the affair of Abelard, but in March, 1140, the attack was
opened in a formal letter from William of Saint-Thierry, who was
Bernard's closest friend, bringing charges against Abelard before
Bernard and the Bishop of Chartres. The charges were simple enough:--
Pierre Abelard seized the moment, when all the masters of
ecclesiastical doctrine have disappeared from the scene of the
world, to conquer a place apart, for himself, in the schools, and to
create there an exclusive domination. He treats Holy Scripture as
though it were dialectics. It is a matter with him of personal
invention and annual novelties. He is the censor and not the
disciple of the faith; the corrector and not the imitator of the
authorized masters.
In substance, this is all. The need of action was even simpler.
Abelard's novelties were becoming a danger; they affected not only
the schools, but also even the Curia at Rome. Bernard must act
because there was no one else to act: "This man fears you; he dreads
you! if you shut your eyes, whom will he fear? ... The evil has
become too public to allow a correction limited to amicable
discipline and secret warning." In fact, Abelard's works were flying
about Europe in every direction, and every year produced a novelty.
One can still read them in M. Cousin's collected edition; among
others, a volume on ethics: "Ethica, seu Scito teipsum"; on theology
in general, an epitome; a "Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum et
Christianum"; and, what was perhaps the most alarming of all, an
abstract of quotations from standard authorities, on the principle
of the parallel column, showing the fatal contradictions of the
authorized masters, and entitled "Sic et Non"! Not one of these
works but dealt with sacred matters in a spirit implying that the
Essence of God was better understood by Pierre du Pallet than by the
whole array of bishops and prelates in Europe! Had Bernard been
fortunate enough to light upon the "Story of Calamity," which must
also have been in existence, he would have found there Abelard's own
childlike avowal that he taught theology because his scholars "said
that they did not want mere words; that one can believe only what
one understands; and that it is ridiculous to preach to others what
one understands no better than they do." Bernard himself never
charged Abelard with any presumption equal to this. Bernard said
only that "he sees nothing as an enigma, nothing as in a mirror, but
looks on everything face to face." If this had been all, even
Bernard could scarcely have complained. For several thousand years
mankind has stared Infinity in the face without pretending to be the
wiser; the pretension of Abelard was that, by his dialectic method,
he could explain the Infinite, while all other theologists talked
mere words; and by way of proving that he had got to the bottom of
the matter, he laid down the ultimate law of the universe as his
starting-point: "All that God does," he said, "He wills necessarily
and does it necessarily; for His goodness is such that it pushes Him
necessarily to do all the good He can, and the best He can, and the
quickest He can ... Therefore it is of necessity that God willed and
made the world." Pure logic admitted no contingency; it was bound to
be necessitarian or ceased to be logical; but the result, as Bernard
understood it, was that Abelard's world, being the best and only
possible, need trouble itself no more about God, or Church, or man.
Strange as the paradox seems, Saint Bernard and Lord Bacon, though
looking at the world from opposite standpoints, agreed in this: that
the scholastic method was false and mischievous, and that the longer
it was followed, the greater was its mischief. Bernard thought that
because dialectics led wrong, therefore faith led right. He saw no
alternative, and perhaps in fact there was none. If he had lived a
century later, he would have said to Thomas Aquinas what he said to
a schoolman of his own day: "If you had once tasted true food,"--if
you knew what true religion is,--"how quick you would leave those
Jew makers of books (literatoribus judaeis) to gnaw their crusts by
themselves!" Locke or Hume might perhaps still have resented a
little the "literator judaeus," but Faraday or Clerk-Maxwell would
have expressed the same opinion with only the change of a word: "If
the twelfth century had once tasted true science, how quick they
would have dropped Avicenna and Averroes!" Science admits that
Bernard's disbelief in scholasticism was well founded, whatever it
may think of his reasons. The only point that remains is personal:
Which is the more sympathetic, Bernard or Abelard?
The Church feels no doubt, but is a bad witness. Bernard is not a
character to be taken or rejected in a lump. He was many-sided, and
even toward Abelard he showed more than one surface. He wanted no
unnecessary scandals in the Church; he had too many that were not of
his seeking. He seems to have gone through the forms of friendly
negotiation with Abelard although he could have required nothing
less than Abelard's submission and return to Brittany, and silence;
terms which Abelard thought worse than death. On Abelard's refusal,
Bernard began his attack. We know, from the "Story of Calamity,"
what Bernard's party could not have certainly known then,--the
abject terror into which the very thought of a council had for
twenty years thrown Abelard whenever he was threatened with it; and
in 1140 he saw it to be inevitable. He preferred to face it with
dignity, and requested to be heard at a council to meet at Sens in
June. One cannot admit that he felt the shadow of a hope to escape.
At the utmost he could have dreamed of nothing more than a hearing.
Bernard's friends, who had a lively fear of his dialectics, took
care to shut the door on even this hope. The council was carefully
packed and overawed. The King was present; archbishops, bishops,
abbots, and other prelates by the score; Bernard acted in person as
the prosecuting attorney; the public outside were stimulated to
threaten violence. Abelard had less chance of a judicial hearing
than he had had at Soissons twenty years before. He acted with a
proper sense of their dignity and his own by simply appearing and
entering an appeal to Rome. The council paid no attention to the
appeal, but passed to an immediate condemnation. His friends said
that it was done after dinner; that when the volume of Abelard's
"Theology" was produced and the clerk began to read it aloud, after
the first few sentences the bishops ceased attention, talked, joked,
laughed, stamped their feet, got angry, and at last went to sleep.
They were waked only to growl "Damnamus--namus," and so made an end.
The story may be true, for all prelates, even in the twelfth
century, were not Bernards of Clairvaux or Peters of Cluny; all
drank wine, and all were probably sleepy after dinner; while
Abelard's writings are, for the most part, exceedingly hard reading.
The clergy knew quite well what they were doing; the judgment was
certain long in advance, and the council was called only to register
it. Political trials were usually mere forms.
The appeal to Rome seems to have been taken seriously by Bernard,
which is surprising unless the character of Innocent II inspired his
friends with doubts unknown to us. Innocent owed everything to
Bernard, while Abelard owed everything to Innocent. The Pope was not
in a position to alienate the French Church or the French King. To
any one who knows only what is now to be known, Bernard seems to
have been sure of the Curia, yet he wrote in a tone of excitement as
though he feared Abelard's influence there even more than at home.
He became abusive; Abelard was a crawling viper (coluber tortuosus)
who had come out of his hole (egressus est de caverna sua), and
after the manner of a hydra (in similitudinem hydrae), after having
one head cut off at Soissons, had thrown out seven more. He was a
monk without rule; a prelate without responsibility; an abbot
without discipline; "disputing with boys; conversing with women."
The charges in themselves seem to be literally true, and would not
in some later centuries have been thought very serious; neither
faith nor morals were impugned. On the other hand, Abelard never
affected or aspired to be a saint, while Bernard always affected to
judge the acts and motives of his fellow-creatures from a standpoint
of more than worldly charity. Bernard had no right to Abelard's
vices; he claimed to be judged by a higher standard; but his temper
was none of the best, and his pride was something of the worst;
which gave to Peter the Venerable occasion for turning on him
sharply with a rebuke that cut to the bone. "You perform all the
difficult religious duties," wrote Peter to the saint who wrought
miracles; "you fast; you watch; you suffer; but you will not endure
the easy ones--you do not love (non vis levia ferre, ut diligas)."
This was the end of Abelard. Of course the Pope confirmed the
judgment, and even hurried to do so in order that he might not be
obliged to give Abelard a hearing. The judgment was not severe, as
judgments went; indeed, it amounted to little more than an order to
keep silence, and, as it happened, was never carried into effect.
Abelard, at best a nervous invalid, started for Rome, but stopped at
Cluny, perhaps the most agreeable stopping-place in Europe.
Personally he seems to have been a favourite of Abbot Peter the
Venerable, whose love for Bernard was not much stronger than
Abelard's or Suger's. Bernard was an excessively sharp critic, and
spared worldliness, or what he thought lack of spirituality, in no
prelate whatever; Clairvaux existed for nothing else, politically,
than as a rebuke to them all, and Bernard's enmity was their bond of
union. Under the protection of Peter the Venerable, the most amiable
figure of the twelfth century, and in the most agreeable residence
in Europe, Abelard remained unmolested at Cluny, occupied, as is
believed, in writing or revising his treatises, in defiance of the
council. He died there two years later, April 21, 1142, in full
communion, still nominal Abbot of Saint-Gildas, and so distinguished
a prelate that Peter the Venerable thought himself obliged to write
a charming letter to Heloise at the Paraclete not far away,
condoling with her on the loss of a husband who was the Socrates,
the Aristotle, the Plato, of France and the West; who, if among
logicians he had rivals, had no master; who was the prince of study,
learned, eloquent, subtle, penetrating; who overcame everything by
the force of reason, and was never so great as when he passed to
true philosophy, that of Christ.
All this was in Latin verses, and seems sufficiently strong,
considering that Abelard's philosophy had been so recently and so
emphatically condemned by the entire Church, including Peter the
Venerable himself. The twelfth century had this singular charm of
liberty in practice, just as its architecture knew no mathematical
formula of precision; but Peter's letter to Heloise went further
still, and rang with absolute passion:--
Thus, dear and venerable sister in God, he to whom you are united,
after your tie in the flesh, by the better and stronger bond of the
divine love; he, with whom, and under whom, you have served the
Lord, the Lord now takes, in your place, like another you, and warms
in His bosom; and, for the day of His coming, when shall sound the
voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God descending from
heaven, He keeps him to restore him to you by His grace.