THE MONK OF ST. DENIS
Abélard had now entered upon the series of blunders which were to
make his life a succession of catastrophes. A stronger man would have
retired to Pallet, and remained there until the discussion of his
outrage had abated somewhat; then boldly, and, most probably, with
complete success, have confronted the scholastic world once more,
with his wife for fitting companion, like Manegold of Alsace. In his
distraction and abnormal sense of humiliation, Abélard grasped the
plausible promise of the monastic life. In the second place, he, with
a peculiar blindness, chose the abbey of St. Denis for his home.
The abbey of St. Denis was not only one of the most famous
monasteries in Europe, but also a semi-religious, semi-secular
monarchical institution. It was the last monastery in the world to
provide that quiet seclusion which Abélard sought. It lay about six
miles from Paris, near one of the many bends of the Seine on its
journey to the sea. Dagobert was its royal founder; its church was
built over the alleged bones of the alleged St. Denis the Areopagite,
the patron of France; it was the burial-place of the royal house.
Over its altar hung the oriflamme of St. Denis, the palladium of
the country, which the king came to seek, with solemn rite and
procession, whenever the cry of ‘St. Denis for France’ rang through
the kingdom. Amongst its several hundred monks were the physicians
and the tutors of kings—Prince Louis of France was even then studying
in its school.
Rangeard, in his history of Brittany, says, that at the beginning of
the twelfth century there were more irregular than regular abbeys
in France. Abélard himself writes that ‘nearly all the monasteries’
of his time were worldly. The truth is that few monasteries, beside
those which had been very recently reformed, led a very edifying
life. Hence it is not surprising, when one regards the secular
associations of the place, to find that the Benedictine abbey of St.
Denis was in a very lax condition. Abélard soon discovered that,
as he says, it was an abbey ‘of very worldly and most disgraceful
life.’ The great rhetorician has a weakness for the use of
superlatives, but other witnesses are available. St. Bernard wrote of
it, in his famed, mellifluous manner, that it was certain the monks
gave to Cæsar the things that were Cæsar’s, but doubtful if they gave
to God the things that were God’s. A chronicler of the following
century, Guillaume de Nangis, writes that ‘the monks scarcely
exhibited even the appearance of religion.’
The abbey had not been reformed since 994, so that human nature had
had a considerable period in which to assert itself. The preceding
abbot, Ives I., was accused at Rome of having bought his dignity in a
flagrant manner. The actual abbot, Adam, is said by Abélard to have
been ‘as much worse in manner of life and more notorious than the
rest as he preceded them in dignity.’ It is certainly significant
that the Benedictine historian of the abbey, Dom Félibien, can find
nothing to put to the credit of Adam, in face of Abélard’s charge,
except a certain generosity to the poor. Nor have later apologists
for the angels, de Nangis, Duchesne, etc., been more successful.
Ecclesiastical history only finds consolation in the fact that Adam’s
successor was converted by Bernard in 1127, and at once set about
the reform of the abbey.
When Abélard donned the black tunic of the Benedictine monk in it,
probably in 1119, the royal abbey was at the height of its gay
career. St. Bernard himself gives a bright picture of its life in one
of his letters. He speaks of the soldiers who thronged its cloisters,
the jests and songs that echoed from its vaulted roofs, the women
who contributed to its gaiety occasionally. From frequent passages
in Abélard we learn that the monks often held high festival. It may
be noted that monastic authorities nearly always give occasion to
these festivities, for, even in the severest rules, one always finds
an egg, or some other unwonted luxury, admitted on ‘feast-days.’ It
is the consecration of a principle that no body of men and women
on earth can apply and appreciate better than monks and nuns. The
feasts of St. Denis rivalled those of any château in gay France.
The monks were skilful at mixing wine—it is a well-preserved
monastic tradition—their farmer-vassals supplied food of the best
in abundance, and they hired plenty of conjurors, singers, dancers,
jesters, etc., to aid the task of digestion.
Nor was the daily life too dull and burdensome. Royal councils were
frequently held at the abbey, and one does not need much acquaintance
with monastic life to appreciate that circumstance. Then there
was the school of the abbey, with its kingly and noble pupils—and
corresponding visitors: there was the continual stream of interesting
guests to this wealthiest and most famous of all abbeys: there was
the town of St. Denis, which was so intimately dependent on the
abbey. Above all, there were the country-houses, of which the abbey
had a large number, and from which it obtained a good deal of its
income. Some dying sinner would endeavour to corrupt the Supreme
Judge by handing over a farm or a château, with its cattle, and men
and women, and other commodities of value, to the monks of the great
abbey. These would be turned into snug little ‘cells’ or ‘priories,‘
and important sources of revenue. Sometimes, too, they had to be
fought for in the courts, if not by force of arms. Abélard complains
that ‘we [monks] compel our servants to fight duels for us’: he has
already complained of the frequent presentation to monasteries of
both man and maid servants. In 1111 we find some of the monks of St.
Denis, at the head of a small army, besieging the château of Puiset,
capturing its lieutenant, and casting him into a monastic prison. At
Toury Abbot Adam had his important dependence armed as a fortress,
and made a financial speculation in the opening of a public market.
Rangeard tells us, in addition, that many of the monks were expert in
canon law, and they travelled a good deal, journeying frequently to
Rome in connection with matrimonial and other suits.
But before Abélard turned his attention to the condition of the
abbey, he was long preoccupied with the thought of revenge. Revenge
was a branch virtue of justice in those days, and Abélard duly
demanded the punishment of _talio_. The valet, who had betrayed
him, and one of the mutilators, had been captured, and had lost
their eyes, in addition to suffering the same mutilation as they had
inflicted. But Abélard seems to have been painfully insistent on the
punishment of Fulbert. The matter belonged to the spiritual court,
since Abélard was a cleric, and Bishop Girbert does not seem to have
moved quickly enough for the new monk. Fulbert escaped from Paris,
and all his goods were confiscated, but this did not meet Abélard’s
(and the current) idea of justice. He began to talk of an appeal to
Rome.
In these circumstances was written the famous letter of Prior
Fulques, to which we have referred more than once. It is a
characteristic piece of mediæval diplomacy. Fulques was the prior of
Deuil, in the valley of Montmorency, a dependency of the abbey of
St. Florent de Saumur. He was apparently requested by the abbot of
St. Denis to persuade Abélard to let the matter rest. At all events,
he begins his letter with a rhetorical description of Abélard’s
success as a teacher, depicting Britons and Italians and Spaniards
braving the terrors of the sea, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, under the
fascination of Abélard’s repute. Then, with a view to dissuading him
from the threatened appeal to Rome, he reminds him of his destitution
and of the notorious avarice of Rome. There is no reason why we
should hesitate to accept Fulques’s assertion that Abélard had no
wealth to offer the abbey when he entered it. If, as seems to be the
more correct proceeding, we follow the opinion that he spent the
interval between the first withdrawal of Heloise and the marriage
with her at Pallet, he cannot have earned much during the preceding
two or three years. He was hardly likely to be a provident and
economical person. Most of whatever money he earned, after he first
began to serve up stale dishes to his students in the absorption
of his passion, would probably pass into the coffers of Fulbert
or, later, of the nunnery at Argenteuil. There is no need whatever
to entertain theories of licentiousness from that ground. We have,
moreover, already sufficiently discussed that portion of Fulques’s
letter.
But the second part of the prior’s argument, the avarice of
Rome, requires a word of comment. It is characteristic of the
ecclesiastical historian that in Migne’s version of Fulques’s
letter the indictment of Abélard is given without comment, and the
indictment of Rome is unblushingly omitted. It might be retorted that
such historians as Deutsch and Hausrath insert the indictment against
Rome, and make a thousand apologies for inserting the charge against
Abélard. The retort would be entirely without sting, since a mass
of independent evidence sustains the one charge, whilst the other
is at variance with evidence. The passage omitted in Migne, which
refers to Abélard’s proposal to appeal to Rome, runs as follows. ‘O
pitiful and wholly useless proposal! Hast thou never heard of the
avarice and the impurity of Rome? Who is wealthy enough to satisfy
that devouring whirlpool of harlotry? Who would ever be able to fill
their avaricious purses? Thy resources are entirely insufficient for
a visit to the Roman Pontiff.... For all those who have approached
that see in our time without a weight of gold have lost their cause,
and have returned in confusion and disgrace.’
Let us, in justice, make some allowance for the exigency of diplomacy
and the purposes of rhetoric; the substance of the charge is
abundantly supported by other passages in Migne’s own columns. For
instance, Abbot Suger, in his _Vita Ludovici Grossi_, says of his
departure from Rome after a certain mission, ‘evading the avarice
of the Romans we took our leave.’ The same abbot speaks of their
astonishment at St. Denis when Paschal II. visited the abbey in 1106:
‘contrary to the custom of the Romans, he not only expressed no
affection for the gold, silver, and precious pearls of the monastery
(about which much fear had been entertained),’ but did not even
look at them. It may be noted, without prejudice, that Paschal was
seeking the sympathy and aid of France in his quarrel with Germany.
In the apology of Berengarius, which is also found in Migne, there is
mention of ‘a Roman who had learned to love gold, rather than God,
in the Roman curia.’ Bernard of Cluny, a more respectable witness,
tersely informs us that ‘Rome gives to every one who gives Rome all
he has.’ Matthew of Paris is equally uncomplimentary. We have spoken
already of the licentious young Étienne de Garlande and his proposal
of going to Rome to buy the curia’s consent to his installation in a
bishopric; also of the rumour that Pope Paschal disapproved, out of
avarice, the censure passed on the adulterous king. Duboulai, after
giving Fulques’s letter, is content to say that the pope feared too
great an interference with the officials of the curia on account of
the papal schism.
Whether the letter of the monastic diplomatist had any weight with
Abélard or no, it seems that he did desist from his plan, and
laid aside all thought of Fulbert. But the unfortunate monk soon
discovered the disastrous error he had made in seeking peace at
the abbey of St. Denis. There had, in fact, been a serious mistake
on both sides. The monks welcomed one whom they only knew as a
lively, witty, interesting associate, a master of renown, a poet and
musician of merit. A new attraction would accrue to their abbey,
a new distraction to their own life, by the admission of Abélard.
The diversion of the stream of scholars from Paris to St. Denis
would bring increased colour, animation, and wealth. The erudite
troubadour and brilliant scholar would be an excellent companion in
the refectory, when the silent meal was over, and the wine invited
conversation.
They were rudely awakened to their error when Abélard began to lash
them with mordant irony for their ‘intolerable uncleanness.’ They
found that the love-inspired songster was dead. They had introduced a
kind of Bernard of Clairvaux, a man of wormwood valleys, into their
happy abbey: a morose, ascetic, sternly consistent monk, who poured
bitter scorn on the strong wines and pretty maids, the high festivals
and pleasant excursions, with which the brothers smoothed the rough
path to Paradise. And when the gay Latin Quarter transferred itself
to St. Denis, and clamoured for the brilliant master, Abélard utterly
refused to teach. Abbot Adam gently remonstrated with his ‘subject,’
pointing out that he ought now to do more willingly for the honour
of God and the sake of his brothers in religion what he had formerly
done out of worldly and selfish interest. Whereupon Abbot Adam was
urgently reminded of a few truths, nearly concerning himself and
‘the brothers,’ which, if not new to his conscience, were at least
novel to his ears.
So things dragged on for a while, but Adam was forced at length to
rid the monastery of the troublesome monk. Finding a pretext in
the importunity of the students, he sent Abélard down the country
to erect his chair in one of the dependencies of the abbey. These
country-houses have already been mentioned. Large estates were left
to the abbey in various parts of the country. Monks had to be sent
to these occasionally, to collect the revenue from the farmers and
millers, and, partly for their own convenience, partly so that
they might return something in spiritual service to the district,
they built ‘cells’ or ‘oratories’ on the estates. Frequently the
cell became a priory; not infrequently it rebelled against the
mother-house; nearly always, as is the experience of the monastic
orders at the present day, it was a source of relaxation and decay.
The precise locality of the ‘cell’ which was entrusted to Brother
Peter is matter of dispute, and the question need not delay us. It
was somewhere on the estates of Count Theobald of Champagne, and
therefore not very far from Paris. Here Abélard consented to resume
his public lectures, and ‘gathered his horde of barbarians about him’
once more, in the jealous phrase of Canon Roscelin.
Otto von Freising relates that Abélard had now become ‘more subtle
and more learned than ever.’ There is no reason to doubt that he
continued to advance in purely intellectual power, but it seems
inevitable that he must have lost much of the brightness and charm
of his earlier manner. Yet his power and his fascination were as
great as ever. Maisoncelle, or whatever village it was, was soon
transformed into the intellectual centre of France. It is said
by some historians that three thousand students descended upon
the village, like a bewildering swarm of locusts. Abélard says
the concourse was so great that ‘the district could find neither
hospitality nor food’ for the students. One need not evolve from
that an army of several thousand admirers, but it seems clear that
there was a second remarkable gathering of students from all parts
of Christendom. There was no teacher of ability to succeed him at
Paris; he was still the most eminent master in Europe. Even if he had
lost a little of the sparkle of his sunny years, no other master
had ever possessed it. Indeed, it is not audacious to think that the
renewal of his early success and the sweetness of life in lovely
Champagne may have in time quickened again such forces and graces of
his character as had not been physically eradicated. He began to see
a fresh potentiality of joy in life.
Unfortunately for Abélard, his perverse destiny had sent him down to
the neighbourhood of Rheims. It will be remembered that Anselm of
Laon was urged to suppress Abélard’s early theological efforts by
two of his fellow-pupils, Alberic of Rheims and Lotulphe of Novare.
Alberic appears to have been a man of ability, and he had been made
archdeacon of the cathedral, and head of the episcopal school, at
Rheims. He had associated Lotulphe with himself in the direction of
the schools, and they were teaching with great success when Abélard
appeared on the near horizon. Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux
had gone, and the two friends were eager to earn the title of their
successors. The apparent extinction of Master Abélard had largely
increased their prestige, and had filled the school of Rheims.
Indeed, we gather from the details of a ‘town and gown’ fight which
occurred at Rheims about this time that the students had almost come
to outnumber the citizens.
Hence it is not surprising that Abélard’s newfound peace was soon
disturbed by rumours of the lodging of complaints against him in
high quarters. The Archbishop of Rheims, Ralph the Green, began to
be assailed with charges. In the first place, he was reminded, it
was uncanonical for a monk to give lectures, and take up a permanent
residence, outside his monastery; moreover, the said monk was most
unmonastically engaged in reading Aristotle, with a flavour of
Vergil, Ovid, and Lucan. Raoul le Vert probably knew enough about
St. Denis not to attempt to force Abélard to return to it. Then the
grumblers—‘chiefly those two early intriguers,’ says the victim—urged
that Abélard was teaching without a ‘respondent’; but the archbishop
still found the pretext inadequate. Then, at length, came the second
great cloud, the accusation of heresy.
The convert had now made theology his chief object of study. The
students who gathered about him in his village priory loudly
demanded a resumption of the lectures on dialectics and rhetoric,
but Abélard had really passed to a new and wholly religious outlook.
He complied with the request, only with a secret intention that, as
he states in the ‘Story,’ philosophy should be used as a bait in the
interest of divinity. The religious welfare of his followers now
seriously concerned him. It will be seen presently that he exercised
a strict control over their morals, and it was from the purest of
motives that he endeavoured, by a pious diplomacy, to direct their
thoughts to the study of Holy Writ. His rivals and enemies have
attempted to censure him for this casting of pearls before swine.
Certainly there were dangers accompanying the practice, but these
were not confined to Abélard’s school. We can easily conceive the
disadvantage of discussing the question, for instance, _utrum Maria
senserit dolorem vel delectationem in Christo concipiendo_? before a
crowd of twelfth century students. However, Abélard’s attitude was
wholly reverent, and his intention as pure as that of St. Anselm.
The one characteristic feature of Abélard’s theological work—the
feature which was constantly seized by his enemies, and which invests
him with so great an interest for the modern student—was his concern
to conciliate human reason. His predecessors had complacently
affirmed that reason had no title to respect in matters of faith.
They insulted it with such pious absurdities as ‘I believe in order
that I may understand’ and ‘Faith goeth before understanding.’
Abélard remained until his last hour constitutionally incapable
of adopting that attitude. He frequently attributes his obvious
concern to meet the questioning of reason to the desire of helping
his followers. This is partly a faithful interpretation of their
thoughts—for which, however, he himself was chiefly responsible—and
partly a subtle projection of his own frame of mind into his
hearers. The development of the reasoning faculty which was involved
in so keen a study of dialectics was bound to find expression in
rationalism.
Abélard seems already to have written two works of a very remarkable
character for his age. One of these is entitled _A Dialogue between
a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian_. It may have been founded
on the _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix; on the other hand it may be
classed with Lessing’s _Nathan_. It has been called ‘the most radical
expression of his rationalism,’ and it would certainly seem to
embody his attitude during the period of his highest prosperity. The
ultimate victory lies with the Christian, so far as the work goes
(it is unfinished), but incidentally it shows more than one bold
departure from traditional formulæ. Abélard’s reluctance to consign
all the heathen philosophers to Tartarus would be highly suspect
to his pious contemporaries. It is a matter of faith in the Roman
Catholic Church to-day that no man shall enter heaven who has not a
belief in a personal God, at least; many theologians add the narrower
qualification of a literal acceptance of the Trinity. But Abélard
tempered his audacity by proving that his favourite heathens _had_
this qualification of a knowledge of the Trinity, probably under the
inspiration of St Augustine.
The _Dialogue_ was not much assailed by his rivals; probably it
was not widely circulated. It is, however, an important monument
of Abélard’s genius. It anticipated not merely the rationalistic
attitude of modern theology, but also quite a number of the
modifications of traditional belief which modern rational and
ethical criticism has imposed. Abélard regards the ethical content
of Christianity, and finds that it is only the elaboration or the
reformation of the natural law, the true essence of religion. God has
given this essential gift in every conscience and in every religion;
there are no outcasts from the plan of salvation; the higher
excellence of the Christian religion lies in its clearer formulation
of the law of life. The popular notions of heaven and hell and
deity are travesties of true Christian teaching. God, as a purely
spiritual being, is the supreme good, and heaven is an approach to
Him by obedience; hell, isolation from Him. When we remember that
Abélard had before him only the works of the fathers and such recent
speculations as those of Anselm, we shall surely recognise the action
of a mind of the highest order in these debates.
The second work was not less remarkable. It was a collection of
sentences from the fathers on points of dogma. So far the compilation
would be an admirable one, but apart from the growing accusation that
Abélard was wanting in reverence for the authority of the fathers,
there was the suspicious circumstance that he had grouped these
eighteen hundred texts in contradictory columns. Thus one hundred and
fifty-eight questions are put by the compiler, relating to God, the
Trinity, the Redemption, the Sacraments, and so forth. The quotations
from the fathers are then arranged in two parallel columns, one
half giving an affirmative, and the rest a negative, answer to the
question. Such a work would be perfectly intelligible if it came from
the pen of a modern freethinker. Abélard’s _Sic et Non_ (Yes and No),
as the work came to be called, has borne many interpretations. Such
careful and impartial students of Abélard’s work as Deutsch pronounce
the critical element in it to be ‘constructive, not sceptical.’
Most probably it was the intention of the compiler to shatter the
excessive regard of his contemporaries for the words of the fathers,
and thus to open the way for independent speculation on the deposit
of revelation (to which he thought he had as much right as Jerome or
Augustine), by making a striking exhibition of their fallibility.
Neither of these works seems to have fallen into the hands of
Alberic. Twenty years afterwards we find a theologian complaining
of the difficulty of obtaining some of Abélard’s works, which had
been kept secret. He probably refers to one or both of these works.
However that may be, Abélard wrote a third book during his stay at
Maisoncelle, and on this the charge of heresy was fixed.
Wiser than the Church of those days, and anticipating the wisdom of
the modern Church of Rome, Abélard saw the great danger to the faith
itself of the Anselmian maxim, _Fides praecedit intellectum_. He
argued that, as the world had somehow outlived the age of miracles,
God must have intended rational evidence to take its place. In any
case, there was an increasingly large class of youths and men who
clamoured for ‘human and philosophic grounds,’ as he puts it, who
would lie to their consciences if they submitted to the current
pietism. Abélard believed he would render valuable service to the
Church if he could devise rational proofs, or at least analogies,
of its dogmas. It was in this frame of mind, not in a spirit of
destructive scepticism, that he raised the standard of rationalism.
He at once applied his force to the most preterrational of dogmas,
and wrote his famous _Treatise on the Unity and Trinity of God_.
A manuscript of the treatise was discovered by Stölzle a few years
ago. It is unnecessary to inflict on the reader an analysis of the
work. It is perfectly sincere and religious in intention, but, like
every book that has ever been penned on the subject of the Trinity,
it contains illustrations which can be proved to be heretical. We may
discuss the point further apropos of the Council of Soissons.