ST. BERNARD
[Sidenote: Honorius II.]
Calixtus II died in December, 1124, and in a few months (May, 1125)
Henry V followed him to the grave. The imperial party at Rome had
disappeared, but, on the other hand, Calixtus had established only a
truce between the Roman factions. The Frangipani and Pierleoni
families each nominated a successor to him, but the former forcibly
placed their candidate in the papal chair. The six years of the
pontificate of Honorius II (1124-30) are unimportant.
[Sidenote: Lothair II.]
It was perhaps fortunate for the Papacy that the allegiance of Germany
was also divided. With Henry V expired the male line of the Salian or
Franconian House. He had intended to secure the succession for his
nephew, Frederick the One-eyed, Duke of Suabia and head of the family
of Hohenstaufen. But the anti-Franconian party procured the election
of Lothair, Duke of Saxony, who had built up for himself a practically
independent territorial power on the north-eastern side of Germany,
and had taken a prominent part in opposition to Henry V.
[Sidenote: Lothair and the Concordat.]
Lothair's election, then, was a triumph for the Papacy, and the Church
party could not let pass so good an opportunity of revising the
relations of State and Church in Germany. They had maintained from the
first that the Concordat of Worms was a personal arrangement between
Calixtus II and Henry V. But the exact nature of Lothair's promise on
election is a matter of great dispute. According to the account of an
anonymous writer, he undertook that the Church should exercise entire
freedom in episcopal elections without being controlled, "as formerly"
(an obvious reference to the Concordat of Worms), by the presence of
the lay power or by a recommendation from it, and that after the
consecration (not before, according to the terms of the Concordat) the
Emperor should, without any payment, invest the prelate with the
regalia by the sceptre and should receive his oath of fealty "saving
his Order." Lothair's actual conduct, however, in the matter of
appointments seems to have been guided by the terms of the Concordat.
[Sidenote: Lothair and the Hohenstaufen.]
Frederick of Hohenstaufen did homage with the rest of the nobles to
Lothair, but not unnaturally Lothair distrusted him. Frederick was
heir to all the allodial possessions of the late Emperor; but Lothair
persuaded to a decision which would have deprived Frederick of a large
portion of these, and thus have rendered him and his house practically
innocuous. When Frederick refused to accept this decision he was put
to the ban of the Empire. The Hohenstaufen party challenged Lothair's
title to the throne, and put up as their candidate Frederick's younger
brother Conrad, Duke of Franconia, who, having been absent in
Palestine, had never done homage to Lothair. Conrad was crowned King
in Italy, but he was excommunicated by Pope Honorius, and neither in
Germany nor in Italy did the Hohenstaufen cause advance.
[Sidenote: Schism in the Papacy.]
Meanwhile a crisis at Rome quite overshadowed the German disputes.
Honorius II died in February, 1130. Immediately the party of the
Frangipani, who had stood around him, met and proclaimed a successor
as Innocent II. This was irregular, and in any case the act was that
of a minority of the Cardinals. It must have been, therefore, with
some confidence in the justice of their cause that the opposition
party met at a later hour, and by the votes of a majority of the
College of Cardinals elected the Cardinal Peter Leonis, the grandson
of a converted Jew and formerly a monk of Cluny, as Anacletus II.
There was no question of principle at stake; it was a mere struggle of
factions. The partisans of Innocent charged Anacletus with the most
heinous crimes. Clearly he was ambitious and able, wealthy and
unscrupulous. Moreover, for the moment he was successful. By whatever
means, he gradually won the whole of Rome; and Innocent, deserted,
made his way by Pisa and Genoa to Burgundy, and so to France. His
reception by the Abbey of Cluny was a great strength to his cause, and
he there consecrated the new church, which had been forty years in
building and was larger than any church yet erected in France. In
order that the schism in the Papacy should not be reproduced in every
bishopric and abbey of his kingdom, Louis VI of France summoned a
Council at Etampes, near Paris, which should decide between the
respective merits of the rival Popes.
[Sidenote: Bernard of Clairvaux.]
To this Council a special invitation was sent to the great monk who
for the next twenty years dominates the Western Church and completely
over-shadows the contemporary Popes. We have of seen that it was the
advent of Bernard and his large party at the monastery of Citeaux in
1113 that saved the newly founded Order from premature collapse.
Although only twenty-four years of age, Bernard was entrusted with the
third of the parties sent forth in succession to seek new homes for
the Order, and he and his twelve companions settled in a gloomy valley
in the northernmost corner of Burgundy, which was henceforth to be
known as Clairvaux. Here the hardships suffered by the monks in their
maintenance of the strict Benedictine rule and the entire mastery over
his bodily senses obtained by their young abbot built up a reputation
which reacted on the whole body of the Cistercians, and soon made them
the most revered and widespread of all the monastic Orders. Bernard
himself became the unconscious worker of many miracles: he was the
friend and adviser of great potentates in Church and State, and
without the least effort on his own part he was gradually acquiring a
position as the arbiter of Christendom.
[Sidenote: Acceptance of Innocent II.]
As yet he had confined his interferences in secular matters to the
kingdom of France and some of its great fiefs; he had rebuked the King
of France for persecution of two bishops; he had remonstrated with the
Count of Champagne for cruelty to a vassal. Now he was called upon to
intervene for the first time in a matter of European importance. The
whole question of the papal election was submitted to his judgment,
and his clear decision in favour of Innocent carried the allegiance of
France. Advocates of Innocent could not base his claims on legal
right, and Bernard led the way in asserting his superiority in
personal merit over his rival. At Chartres Innocent met Henry I of
England and Normandy, and again it was Bernard's eloquence which won
Henry's adhesion. A Synod of German clergy at Würzburg acknowledged
Innocent, and Lothair accepted the decision. But when Innocent met the
German King at Liège in March, 1131, fortunately for the Pope Bernard
was still by his side. It is true that Lothair stooped to play the
part of papal groom, which had been played only by Conrad, the
rebellious son of Henry IV; that he and his wife were both crowned by
the Pope in the cathedral; and that he promised to lead the Pope back
to Rome. But in return for his services Lothair tried to use his
opportunity for going back upon the Concordat and claiming the
restoration of the right of investiture. Bernard, however, came to the
help of the Pope, and, backed by the general indignation and alarm at
the meanness of Lothair's conduct, forced the Emperor to withdraw his
demands. Innocent spent some time longer in France, among other places
visiting Clairvaux, where the hard life of the inmates filled him and
his Italian followers with astonishment.
Throughout these wanderings since the Council of Etampes Bernard had
been the constant companion of the Pope, and had ultimately become not
merely his most trusted but practically his only counsellor. As a
matter of form questions were submitted to the Cardinals, but no
action was taken until Bernard's view had been ascertained. In April,
1132, Innocent once more appeared in Italy. Meanwhile Anacletus,
having failed to obtain the support of any of the great monarchs of
the West, turned to the Normans, and by the grant of the royal title
gained the allegiance of Roger, Duke of Apulia and Count of Sicily. A
few other parts of Europe still acknowledged Anacletus. Scotland was
too distant to be troubled by Bernard's influence; but in Lombardy the
great abbot worked indefatigably; and the Archbishop of Milan, who had
accepted his pallium from Anacletus, was driven out by the citizens,
who subsequently welcomed Bernard with enthusiasm and tried to keep
him as their archbishop. Duke William X of Aquitaine also continued to
acknowledge Anacletus, and when at length Bernard accompanied the
legate of Innocent to a conference at his court, the saint had
recourse to all the methods of ecclesiastical terrorism at his command
before he gained the fearful acquiescence of the ruler.
[Sidenote: Lothair at Rome.]
At length Lothair felt himself sufficiently free to fulfil his promise
to Innocent. But the turbulent condition of Germany prevented him from
bringing a force of any size, and, despite the vehement eloquence of
Bernard, among the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany the friend of
Innocent was still the German King and was viewed with much suspicion.
Fortunately, however, Roger of Sicily, the one strong supporter of
Anacletus, was engaged in a struggle with his nobles and could give no
help. But Lothair desired to avoid bloodshed if possible. He made no
attempt, therefore, to get possession of St. Peter's and the Leonine
city, which were in the hands of Anacletus and his followers, but
contented himself with the peaceful occupation of the rest of Rome. He
and his wife were crowned in the church of St. John Lateran by
Innocent (June, 1133). Lothair seems again to have used his
opportunity to attempt a recovery of the right of investiture from the
Pope; but on this occasion the opponent of the Emperor was his own
favourite counsellor, Archbishop Norbert of Magdeburg, the founder of
the Premonstratensian Order. A few days later, however, Innocent
published two bulls dealing with the questions at issue between
himself and the Emperor. The first merely confirms the arrangements of
the Concordat, although it certainly omits all mention of the presence
of the King at the election. The second bull deals with the
inheritance of the Countess Matilda. Henry V had never recognised the
donation of the Countess to the Papacy, and consequently, as a lapsed
fief and part of the late Emperor's possessions, the lands could be
claimed by his Hohenstaufen heirs. This perhaps accounts for Lothair's
readiness to accept the conditions imposed by the Pope. Innocent
invested him by a ring with the allodial or freehold lands of the
Countess in return for an annual tribute and on the understanding that
at Lothair's death they should revert to the Papacy. Lothair took no
oath of fealty for them, but such oath was exacted from his
son-in-law, Henry the Proud of Bavaria, to whom the inheritance was
made over on the same conditions. Lothair had perhaps saved the
much-coveted lands from being lawfully claimed by the Hohenstaufen;
but it was the Pope who had really gained by these transactions, for
he had obtained from a lawfully crowned Emperor the recognition of the
papal right to their possession. Indeed, the whole episode of
Lothair's coronation was treated as a papal triumph, and by Innocent's
direction a picture was placed in the Lateran palace in which Lothair
was represented as kneeling before the throned Pope to receive the
imperial crown, while underneath as inscribed the following distich:--
"Rex stetit ante fores, jurans prius urbis honores,
Post homo fit papae, sumit quo dante coronam."
Lothair, however, never saw this record of his visit. He returned to
Germany, having secured, at any rate for himself, the right of
investing his ecclesiastics with their temporalities, the lands of the
Countess Matilda, and, most important of all, the imperial crown
bestowed at Rome by a Pope who was recognised practically throughout
the West. So strengthened, he intended to crush the still opposing
Hohenstaufen. But the intercessions of his own Empress and the papal
legates were backed up by the fiery eloquence of the all-powerful
Bernard, who appeared at the Diet of Bamberg (March, 1135). Lothair
was overruled and terms were granted, which first Frederick of Suabia
and, later on, Conrad were induced to accept. Frederick confined
himself to Suabia, but Conrad attached himself to Lothair's Court, and
became one of the Emperor's most honoured followers.
After Lothair's return to Germany, Roger of Sicily gradually recovered
his authority in Southern Italy, and he even made use of his
championship of Anacletus to annex unopposed some of the papal lands.
Finally, to the scandal of Christendom, the abbey of Monte Cassino,
the premier monastery of the West, declared for Anacletus. Both
Innocent and the Norman foes of Roger appealed to Lothair, who crossed
the Alps, for a second time, in August, 1136, this time, accompanied
by a sufficient force. He did not delay long in Lombardy: he ignored
Rome, which apart from Roger was powerless. One army, under Lothair,
moved down the shores of the Adriatic; another, under Henry of
Bavaria, along the west coast. The fleets of Genoa and Pisa
co-operated, and Roger retired into Sicily. But both Emperor and Pope
claimed the conquered duchy of Apulia, and the dispute was only
settled by both presenting to the new duke the banner by which the
investiture was made. It did not help to soothe the quarrel when the
recovered monastery of Monte Cassino was handed over to the Emperor's
Chancellor. Lothair could remain no longer in Italy; but he fell ill
on his way back, and died in a Tyrolese village on December 3rd, 1138.
[Sidenote: The end of the schism.]
Lothair had done nothing to end the schism. Innocent was back in Rome,
but Anacletus had never been ousted from it. Meanwhile, in the spring
of 1137, Bernard had also responded to the appeal of Innocent and
returned to Italy. While Lothair was overrunning Apulia Bernard was
winning over the adherents of Anacletus in Rome. When Lothair retired
Roger immediately began to recover his dominions; but when Bernard
made overtures to him on behalf of Innocent, he professed himself
quite ready to hear the arguments on both sides. A conference took
place between a skilful supporter of Anacletus and this "rustic
abbot"; but although Bernard convinced his rhetorical adversary, Roger
had too much to lose in acknowledging Innocent, for he would be
obliged to surrender the papal lands which he had occupied and,
perhaps, the royal title, the gift of Anacletus. The end, however, was
at hand. Less than two months after Lothair's death Anacletus died
(January 25, 1138). His few remaining followers elected a successor,
but this was more with the desire of making good terms than of
prolonging the schism. Innocent bribed and Bernard persuaded, and the
anti-Pope surrendered of his own accord. Bernard, to whom was rightly
ascribed the merit of ending the scandal of disunion in Christendom,
immediately escaped from his admirers and returned to the solitude of
Clairvaux and his literary labours. These were not all self-imposed.
Among his correspondents were persons in all ranks of life; and his
letters, no less than his formal treatises, prove his influence as one
of the most deeply spiritual teachers of the Middle Ages.
[Sidenote Roger of Sicily.]
Roger of Sicily alone had not accepted Innocent; but a foolish attempt
to coerce him ended in the defeat and capture of the Pope. In return
for the acknowledgment of papal suzerainty, which involved oblivion of
the imperial claims, Innocent not only confirmed to Roger and his
successors both his conquests in Southern Italy and the royal title,
but even, by the grant of the legatine power to the King himself,
exempted his kingdom from the visits of papal legates. Roger was
supreme in Church and State. A cruel yet vigorous and able ruler, he
built up a centralised administrative system from which Henry II of
England did not disdain to take lessons. His possession of Sicily
carried him to Malta and thence to the north coast of Africa; and
before his death in 1154 Tunis was added to his dominions. He was thus
one of the greatest among the early Crusaders, and perhaps the most
notable ruler of his time.
[Sidenote: Conrad III.]
Lothair hoped to leave in his son-in-law a successor with irresistible
claims. But the very influence to which Lothair owed his own election
was now to be cast into the scale against the representative of his
family; while the grounds of objection to the succession of Frederick
of Hohenstaufen to Henry V now held good against Henry of Bavaria,
Saxony, and Tuscany. The Pope and the German nobles were equally
afraid of a ruler whose insolent demeanour had already won him the
title of "the Proud." They took as their candidate the lately rejected
Hohenstaufen Conrad, whose behaviour since his submission had gained
him favour in proportion as the conduct of Henry of Bavaria had
alienated the other nobles. Conrad was crowned at Aachen by the papal
legate, and Henry made his submission. But Conrad, like Lothair, felt
himself insecure with so powerful a subject. Accordingly he took away
from him the duchy of Saxony, and gave it to the heir of the old dukes
in the female line. When Henry refused to accept the decision Conrad
put him to the ban of the Empire and deprived him of Bavaria also,
which he proceeded to confer upon a relative of his own. But Conrad's
obvious attempt to advance his own family offended the nobles, and the
death of Henry the Proud in 1139 opened the way for a compromise.
Saxony was made over to Henry's youthful son, known in history as
Henry the Lion, while Bavaria was to be the wedding portion of Henry
the Proud's widow if she married Conrad's relative, who was already
Margrave of Austria.
[Sidenote: Arnold of Brescia.]
But despite this elimination of all rivals Conrad was so much occupied
elsewhere that he never managed to reach Italy. And yet his presence
there was eagerly desired. It was under the guidance of their bishops
that the cities of Lombardy had freed themselves from subjection to
the feudal nobles. But with the growth of wealth they resented the
patronage of the bishops and were inclined to listen to those who
denounced the temporal possessions of the Church. The movement spread
to Rome. Here the municipality still existed in name, but it was quite
overlaid by the papal prefect and the feudal nobles of the Campagna;
and the Roman people had no means of increasing their wealth by the
agriculture or the commerce which was open to the cities of Tuscany or
Lombardy. A leader was found in Arnold of Brescia (1138). He seems to
have been a pupil of Abailard, who devoted himself to practical
reforms. He began in his native Lombardy to advocate apostolic poverty
as a remedy for the acknowledged evils of the Church. Condemned by the
second Lateran Council (1139), he retired to France, and in 1140 stood
by the side of Abailard at the Council of Sens. After Abailard's
condemnation Arnold took refuge at Zurich, where, despite the
denunciations of Bernard, he found protection from the papal legate,
who had been a fellow-pupil of Abailard. Arnold returned to Italy in
1145, and was absolved by the Pope.
[Sidenote: The Roman Republic.]
The course of affairs in Rome brought him once more to the front. In
1143 Innocent II had offended the Romans, who in revenge proclaimed a
republic with a popularly elected senate and a patrician in place of
the papal prefect. Innocent died (September, 1143); his successor
survived him by less than six months, and the next Pope, Lucius II,
was killed in attempting to get possession of the Capitol, which was
the seat of the new government. The choice of the Cardinals now fell
upon the abbot of a small monastery in the neighbourhood of Rome, who
took the title of Eugenius III (1145-53). He was a pupil of Bernard,
who feared for the appointment of a man of such simplicity and
inexperience. But Eugenius developed an unexpected capacity, and
forced the Romans to recognise for a time his prefect and his
suzerainty. But Arnold's presence in Rome was an obstacle to permanent
peace. Both Arnold and Bernard eagerly sought the same end--the
purification of the Church. But in Bernard's eyes Arnold's connection
with Abailard convicted him of heresy, and his doctrine of apostolic
poverty was construed by the ascetic abbot of the strict Cistercian
Order as an attack upon the influence under cover of the wealth of the
Church. Nor was Arnold a republican in the ordinary sense. He expelled
the Pope and organised, under the name of the Equestrian order, a
militia of the lesser nobles and the more substantial burgesses, such
as existed in the cities of Lombardy. But he did not desire to
repudiate the Emperor; and at his instigation the Romans summoned
Conrad to their aid and to accept the imperial crown at their hands.
Eugenius spent almost his whole pontificate in exile; his successor,
Anastasius IV, during a short reign, accepted the republic, but
Hadrian IV (1154-9) took the first excuse for boldly placing the city
for the first time under an interdict. The consequent cessation of
pilgrims during Holy Week and the loss of their offerings caused the
fickle Romans to expel their champion, and Arnold wandered about until
a few months later Frederick Barbarossa sacrificed him to the renewed
alliance of Empire and Papacy (1154).
[Sidenote: The second Crusade.]
Conrad III, then, never was crowned Emperor. It was no fault of his
that he never visited Rome. Bernard's influence caused him to postpone
his immediate duties for a work which every Christian of the time
regarded as of paramount importance. The first Crusade had met with a
measure of success only because the Mohammedan powers were divided.
The Crusaders were organised into the kingdom of Jerusalem and the
principalities of Tripoli, Antioch, and Edessa. But they quarrelled
incessantly. Meanwhile Imad-ed-din Zangi, the Atabek or Sultan of
Mosul on the Tigris, extended his arms over all Mesopotamia and
Northern Syria, and in 1144 he conquered the Latin principality of
Edessa. The whole of Europe was shocked at the disaster. Pope Eugenius
delegated to Bernard the task of preaching a new crusade. The young
King, Louis VII of France, had already taken the Crusader's vow, but
so far the earnest entreaty of his minister, Suger, Abbot of St.
Denys, had kept him from his purpose. But at the Council of Vezelai in
1146 the eloquence of Bernard bore down all considerations of
prudence. Conrad III was much harder to persuade, for he felt the need
of his presence at home. But Bernard was not to be denied, and by
working upon Conrad's feelings at the moment of the celebration of the
Mass he entirely overcame the better judgment of the German King.
Events proved in every way the mischievous nature of Bernard's
influence. The Crusade was a total failure. Only a small remnant of
the force which followed either King reached Palestine; and the only
offensive operation undertaken--an attack upon Damascus--had to be
abandoned. Nothing had been done to break the growing power of Zangi's
son, Noureddin, the uncle and predecessor of the great Saladin.
[Sidenote: The divorce of Louis VII.]
The effects were scarcely less disastrous in Western Europe. Suger
supplied Louis with money and defended his throne against plots, and
ultimately persuaded him to return to France. But during the Crusade
Louis and his wife Eleanor, the daughter and heiress of William X of
Aquitaine, had quarrelled bitterly. Louis had disgusted his
high-spirited wife by behaving more like a pilgrim than a warrior;
while Eleanor had attempted to divert the French troops to the aid of
her uncle, Raymond of Antioch. Suger alone preserved some sort of
harmony between the ill-assorted pair; but he died in 1151, and
Bernard, who had never approved of the marriage on canonical grounds,
lent his support to Louis' desire for a declaration of its invalidity,
though Louis and Eleanor had been married for thirteen years and there
were two daughters. The dissolution of the marriage was pronounced by
an ecclesiastical Council in 1152, and in the same year Eleanor,
taking with her all her extensive lands, married the young Henry of
Anjou and Normandy, who two years later became King of England.
[Sidenote: Bernard as defender of the Faith.]
Bernard and Suger were friends; but while the predominant work of
Suger's life had been the supremacy of the House of Capet, it is vain
to attempt to trace in Bernard any prejudice in favour of a growing
French nationality. He represents the cosmopolitan Church of the
Middle Ages; and his career is a supreme instance of the power which
results from an absolutely single-minded devotion to a lofty cause. In
masterful vehemence he challenges comparison with Hildebrand; but
unlike the Pope, he never identified the Church with his own
interests. He steadfastly refused all offers of advancement for
himself, although he did not dissuade his own monks from accepting
preferment. He would have preferred to live out his life as the
obscure head of a poor and secluded community; and even if the
political condition of the time had not brought constant appeals for
help to him, his duty to the Church would have made him a public
character. For the work of his life which was perhaps most congenial
to him was the defence of the doctrine of the Church against heretical
teachers. He has been called "the last of the Fathers," and his whole
conception and methods were those of the great Christian writers of
the early centuries. To the great saint self-discipline through
obedience to the ordinances of the Church was the cure for all evil
suggestions of the human heart; while as for the intellect, its duty
was to believe the revealed faith as propounded by the authorities of
the Church. Like St. Augustine, Bernard did not despise learning; but
he would confine the term to the study of religion. Secular learning
was for the most part not only a waste of precious time, but an actual
snare of the devil. Thus Bernard stood for all that was most
uncompromising in the theological attitude of the time. Speculative
discussion was an abomination; for the end of conversation was
spiritual edification, not the advancement of knowledge; and what to
strong minds might be mental gymnastics, in the case of weaker
brethren caused the undermining of their faith. Against heretics of
the commoner sort, such as the Petrobrusians, who impugned the whole
system of the Church and appealed to the mere words of Scripture,
there was only one line to be taken. But Bernard was no persecutor.
During his preaching of the Crusade a monk perverted the popular
excitement to an attack upon the Jews in the cities of the Rhineland:
Bernard peremptorily interfered and crushed the rival preacher.
Similarly with heretics. He trusted to his preaching--attested, as it
was commonly supposed, by miracles--to convince the people; while the
leaders when captured were subjected to monastic discipline.
[Sidenote: Abailard.]
But such popular forms of unbelief were merely the outcome of the
speculations of subtler minds, which it was necessary to stop at the
fountain-head. The arch-heretic of the time was Peter Abailard, who
routed in succession two great teachers--William of Champeaux in
dialectic in the great cathedral school of Paris, and Anselm of Laon,
a pupil of Anselm of Canterbury, in theology. He gathered round him on
the Mount of Ste. Geneviève, just outside Paris, a large band of
students, in whom he inculcated his rationalistic methods. For his was
a definite attempt to obtain by reason a basis for his faith. How
could such teaching be allowed to continue unreproved by Bernard, who
held that the sole office of the reason was to lead the mind astray?
But in the height of his fame Abailard, still quite young, loved the
beautiful and erudite Heloise. He abused her trust, and when she in
her infatuation for his genius refused to monopolise for herself by
marriage the talents which were for the service of the world, she and
he both entered the monastic life. Abailard passed through several
phases of this--a monk at St. Denys; a hermit gradually gathering a
band of admirers round a church which they built and he dedicated to
the Third Person of the Trinity, the Paraclete; and finally the abbot
of a poor monastery in his own native Brittany. While an inmate of St.
Denys a work of his on the Trinity was condemned at a Council at
Soissons presided over by the papal legate (1121). It was twenty years
before he was again subjected to the censures of the Church. But,
meanwhile, he had more than once fallen foul of Bernard, and had not
hesitated to flout with his gibes the one man before whom the whole of
Catholic Europe bent in awestruck reverence. But the time came when
Bernard, noting the spread of the Petrobrusian heresy, determined to
strike at the source of these errors. He appealed for assistance to
the friends of orthodoxy from the Pope downwards. Abailard determined
to anticipate attack and desired to be heard before an assembly to be
held at Sens (1140). Bernard reluctantly consented to take part in a
public controversy. But when they met, Abailard, probably feeling
himself surrounded by an unsympathetic audience, suddenly refused to
speak and appealed to the Pope. On his way to Rome he fell ill at
Cluny, where the saintly abbot, Peter the Venerable, received him as a
monk. He made a confession which chiefly amounted to a regret that he
had used words open to misconstruction, and he died in 1142 the inmate
of a Cluniac house.
Bernard remained upon the alert, intent on checking any further spread
of the teaching of Abailard's followers. But he had pushed matters to
an extreme, and there were many in high place who resented his efforts
to dictate the doctrine of the Church. Thus Gilbert de la Porrée,
Bishop of Poictiers, a pupil of Abailard, was accused at the Council
of Rheims (1148) of erroneous doctrines regarding the being of God and
the Sacraments. Bernard tried to use his influence over Pope Eugenius
in order to procure the bishop's condemnation, and stirred up the
French clergy to assist him. The Cardinals addressed an indignant
remonstrance to the Pope, pointing out that as he owed his elevation
from a private position to the papacy to them, he belonged to them
rather than to himself, that he was allowing private friendship to
interfere with public duty, and that "that abbot of yours" and the
Gallican Church were usurping the function of the See of Rome. Bernard
had to explain away the action of his party, and the Council contented
itself with exacting from the accused a general agreement with the
faith of the Roman Church, and this was represented by Gilbert's
friends as a triumph.
Bernard's death restored the leadership of Christendom to the official
head, and the removal of several others of the chief actors of the
time opened the way not only for new men, but for the emergence of new
questions. In 1152 Conrad III ended his well-intentioned but somewhat
ineffectual reign. In 1153 Pope Eugenius died at Rome, to which he had
at length been restored a few months previously. Six weeks later St.
Bernard followed him to the grave. It was not long before the papal
act ratified the general opinion of Christendom, and in 1174 Alexander
III placed his name among those which the Church desired to have in
everlasting remembrance.