THE TRIAL OF A HERETIC
The swiftly multiplying charges seem to have impaired Abélard’s
health. He became much more sensitive to the accusation of heresy
than the mere injustice of it can explain. We have an evidence of
his morbid state at this period in a letter he wrote to the Bishop
of Paris. The letter must not be regarded as a normal indication of
the writer’s character, but, like the letter of Canon Roscelin which
it elicited, it is not a little instructive about the age in which
the writers lived. There are hypercritical writers who question the
correctness of attributing these letters to Abélard and Roscelin, but
the details they contain refer so clearly to the two masters that
any doubt about their origin is, as Deutsch says, ‘frivolous and of
no account’; he adds that we should be only too glad, for the sake
of the writers, if there were some firm ground for contesting their
genuineness.
A pupil of Abélard’s, coming down from Paris, brought him word
that Roscelin had lodged an accusation of heresy against him with
the bishop. As a monk of St. Denis, Abélard still belonged to
Bishop Girbert’s jurisdiction. Roscelin had himself been condemned
for heresy on the Trinity at Soissons in 1092, but his was an
accommodating rationalism; he was now an important member of the
chapter of St. Martin at Tours. Report stated that he had discovered
heresy in Abélard’s new work, and was awaiting the return of Girbert
to Paris in order to submit it to him. Abélard immediately grasped
the pen, and forwarded to Girbert a letter which is a sad exhibition
of ‘nerves.’ ‘I have heard,’ he says, after an ornate salutation of
the bishop and his clergy, ‘that that ever inflated and long-standing
enemy of the Catholic faith, whose manner of life and teaching are
notorious, and whose detestable heresy was proved by the fathers of
the Council of Soissons, and punished with exile, has vomited forth
many calumnies and threats against me, on account of the work I have
written, which was chiefly directed against his heresy.’ And so the
violent and exaggerated account of Roscelin’s misdeeds continues.
The practical point of the epistle is that Abélard requests the
bishop to appoint a place and time for him to meet Roscelin face
to face and defend his work. The whole letter is marred by nervous
passion of the most pitiful kind. It terminates with a ridiculous,
but characteristic, dialectical thrust at the nominalist: ‘in that
passage of Scripture where the Lord is said to have eaten a bit of
broiled fish, he [Roscelin] is compelled to say that Christ ate, not
a part of the reality, but a part of the term “broiled fish.”’
Roscelin replied directly to Abélard, besides writing to Girbert.
The letter is no less characteristic of the time, though probably an
equally unsafe indication of the character of the writer. ‘If,’ it
begins, in the gentle manner of the time, ‘you had tasted a little of
that sweetness of the Christian religion which you profess by your
habit, you would not, unmindful of your order and your profession,
and forgetful of the countless benefits you received from my teaching
from your childhood to youth, have so far indulged in words of
malice against me as to disturb the brethren’s peace with the sword
of the tongue, and to contemn our Saviour’s most salutary and easy
commands.’ He accepts, with an equally edifying humility, Abélard’s
fierce denunciation: ‘I see myself in your words as in a mirror. Yet
God is powerful to raise up out of the very stones,’ etc. But he
cannot long sustain the unnatural tone, and he suddenly collapses
into depths of mediæval Latin, which for filth and indecency rival
the lowest productions of Billingsgate. The venerable canon returns
again and again, in the course of his long letter, to Abélard’s
mutilation, and with the art of a Terence or a Plautus. As to the
proposed debate, he is only too eager for it. If Abélard attempts
to shirk it at the last moment, he ‘will follow him all over the
world.’ He finally dies away in an outburst of childish rage which
beats Abélard’s peroration. He will not continue any longer because
it occurs to him that Abélard is, by the strictest force of logic, a
nonentity. He is not a monk, for he is giving lessons; he is not a
cleric, for he has parted with the soutane; he is not a layman, for
he has the tonsure; he is not even the Peter he signs himself, for
Peter is a masculine name.
These were the two ablest thinkers of Christendom at the time.
Fortunately for both, the battle royal of the dialecticians did not
take place. Possibly Roscelin had not lodged the rumoured complaint
at all. In any case Girbert was spared a painful and pitiful scene.
A short time afterwards, however, Alberic and Lotulphe found an
excellent opportunity to take action. Some time in the year 1121
a papal legate, Conon, Bishop of Praeneste, came to Rheims. Conon
had been travelling in France for some years as papal legate, and
since it was the policy of Rome to conciliate France, in view of
the hostility of Germany, the legate had a general mission to make
himself as useful and obliging as possible. Archbishop Ralph, for his
part, would find it a convenient means of gratifying his teachers,
without incurring much personal responsibility. The outcome of their
conferences was, therefore, that Abélard received from the legate a
polite invitation to appear at a provincial synod, or council, which
was to be held at Soissons, and to bring with him his ‘celebrated
work on the Trinity.’ The simple monk was delighted at the apparent
opportunity of vindicating his orthodoxy. It was his first trial for
heresy.
When the time drew near for what Abélard afterwards called ‘their
conventicle,’ he set out for Soissons with a small band of friends,
who were to witness the chastisement of Alberic and Lotulphe. But
those astute masters had not so naïve a view of the function of a
council. Like St. Bernard, with whom, indeed, they were already in
correspondence, they relied largely on that art of ecclesiastical
diplomacy which is the only visible embodiment of the Church’s
supernatural power. Moreover, they had the curious ecclesiastical
habit of deciding that an end—in this case, the condemnation of
Abélard—was desirable, and then piously disregarding the moral
quality of the means necessary to attain it. How far the two masters
had arranged all the conditions of the council we cannot say, but
these certainly favoured their plans.
Soissons, to begin with, was excellently suited for the holding
of a council which was to condemn, rather than investigate. Its
inhabitants would remember the sentence passed on Roscelin for a
like offence. In fact Longueval says, in his _Histoire de l’Église
Gallicane_, that the people of Soissons were religious fanatics as a
body, and had of their own impulse burned, or ‘lynched,’ a man who
was suspected of Manichæism, only a few years previously. Alberic and
Lotulphe had taken care to revive this pious instinct, by spreading
amongst the people the information that ‘the foreign monk,’ ‘the
eunuch of St. Denis,’ who was coming to the town to be tried, had
openly taught the error of tri-theism. The consequence was that when
the Benedictine monk appeared in the streets with his few admirers,
he had a narrow escape of being stoned to death by the excited
citizens. It was a rude shock to his dream of a great dialectical
triumph.
On one point, however, Abélard’s simple honesty hit upon a correct
measure. He went straight to Bishop Conon with his work, and
submitted it for the legate’s perusal and personal judgment. The
politician was embarrassed. He knew nothing whatever about theology,
and would lose his way immediately in Abélard’s subtle analogies.
However, he bade Abélard take the book to the archbishop and the two
masters. They in turn fumbled it in silence, Abélard says, and at
length told him that judgment would be passed on it at the end of the
council.
Meantime Abélard had succeeded in correcting, to some extent, the
inspired prejudice of the townsfolk. Every day he spoke and disputed
in the streets and churches, before the council sat, and he tells us
that he seemed to make an impression on his hearers. Alberic, in
fact, came one day with a number of his pupils for the purpose of
modifying his rival’s success; though he hurriedly retreated when
it was shown that his specially prepared difficulty had no force.
Premising ‘a few polite phrases,’ he pointed out that Abélard had
denied that God generated himself in the Trinity; for this statement,
he carefully explained, he did not ask reasons, but an authority.
Abélard promptly turned over the page, and pointed to a quotation
from St. Augustine. It was a swift and complete victory. But Abélard
must needs improve on it by accusing his accuser of heresy, and
Alberic departed ‘like one demented with rage.’ Priests and people
were now openly asking whether the council had discovered the error
to lie with itself rather than with Abélard. They came to the last
day of the council.
Before the formal opening of the last session, the legate invited
the chief actors in the comedy (except Abélard) to a private
discussion of the situation. Conon’s position and attitude were
purely political. He cared little about their dialectical subtleties;
was, in fact, quite incompetent to decide questions of personality,
modality, and all the rest. Still it was mainly a minor political
situation he had to deal with, and he shows an eagerness to get
through it with as little moral damage as possible. Ralph the Green,
president of the council, knew no more than Conon about theology;
he also regarded it as a political dilemma, and the prestige of
his school would gain by the extinction of Abélard. Ralph had nine
suffragan bishops, but only one of these is proved to have taken part
in the ‘conventicle.’ It was Lisiard de Crespy, Bishop of Soissons,
who would support his metropolitan. Joscelin, an earlier rival of
Abélard, was teaching in Soissons at that time, and would most
probably accompany his bishop. Abbot Adam of St. Denis was present;
so were Alberic and Lotulphe. One man of a more worthy type sat with
them, an awkward and embarrassing spokesman of truth and justice,
Geoffroi, Bishop of Chartres, one of the most influential and most
honourable members of the French episcopacy.
Conon at once shrewdly introduced the formal question, what heresy
had been discovered in Abélard’s book? After his ill-success in
the street-discussion, Alberic seems to have hesitated to quote
any definite passage in the work. Indeed, we not only have two
contradictory charges given, but the texts which seem to have
been used in this council to prove the charge of tri-theism were
quoted by the Council of Sens in 1141 in proof of an accusation of
Sabellianism. Otto von Freising says that Abélard held the three
divine persons to be modifications of one essence (the Anselmists
claiming that the three were _realities_); Abélard himself says he
was accused of tri-theism. Every ‘analogy’ that has been found in
the natural world for the dogma of the Trinity, from the shamrock
of St. Patrick to the triangle of Père Lacordaire, exposes its
discoverer to one or other of those charges—for an obvious reason.
After the death of Dr. Dale I remember seeing a passage quoted by
one of his panegyrists in illustration of his singularly sound and
clear presentation of dogma: it was much more Sabellian than anything
Abélard ever wrote.
However, the explicit demand of the legate for a specimen of
Abélard’s heresy was embarrassing. Nothing could be discovered in
the book to which Abélard could not have assigned a parallel in
the fathers. And when Alberic began to extort heresy by ingenious
interpretation Geoffroi de Lèves reminded them of the elementary
rules of justice. In the formal proceedings of a trial for heresy no
one was condemned unheard. If they were to anticipate the trial by
an informal decision, the requirement of justice was equally urgent.
They must give the accused an opportunity of defending himself. That
was the one course which Alberic dreaded most of all, and he so
well urged the magical power of Abélard’s tongue that the bishop’s
proposal was rejected. Geoffroi then complained of the smallness of
the council, and the injustice of leaving so grave and delicate a
decision to a few prelates. Let Abélard be given into the care of
his abbot, who should take him back to St. Denis and have him judged
by an assembly of expert theologians. The legate liked the idea. The
Rheims people regarded it, for the moment, as an effective removal of
Abélard from their neighbourhood. The proposal was agreed to, and the
legate then proceeded to say the Mass of the Holy Ghost.
Meantime Archbishop Ralph informed Abélard of the decision.
Unsatisfactory as the delay was, he must have been grateful for an
escape from the power of Rheims. He turned indifferently from the
further session of the council. Unfortunately another conference was
even then taking place between Alberic, Ralph, and Conon; and Abélard
was presently summoned to bring his book before the council.
Alberic and Lotulphe were, on reflection, dissatisfied with the
result. Their influence would have no weight in a trial at Paris,
and their ambition required the sacrifice of the famous master. They
therefore went to the archbishop with a complaint that people would
take it to be a confession of incompetency if he allowed the case
to go before another court. The three approached the legate again,
and now reminded him that Abélard’s work was published without
episcopal permission, and could justly be condemned on that ground.
As ignorant of canon law as he was of theology, and seeing the
apparent friendlessness of Abélard, and therefore the security of a
condemnation, Conon agreed to their proposal.
Abélard had long looked forward to the hour of his appearance
before the Council. It was to be an hour of supreme triumph. The
papal legate and the archbishop in their resplendent robes in the
sanctuary; the circle of bishops and abbots and canons; the crowd
of priests, theologians, masters, and clerics; the solemn pulpit
of the cathedral church, from which he should make his highest
effort of dialectics and oratory; the scattered rivals, and the
triumphant return to his pupils. He had rehearsed it daily for a
month or more. But the sad, heart-rending reality of his appearance!
He was brought in, condemned. He stood in the midst of the thronged
cathedral, with the brand of heresy on his brow, he, the intellectual
and moral master of them all. A fire was kindled there before the
Council. There was no need for Geoffrey of Chartres to come, the
tears coursing down his cheeks, to tell him his book was judged and
condemned. Quietly, but with a fierce accusation of God Himself in
his broken heart, as he afterwards said, he cast his treasured work
in the flames.
Even in that awful moment the spirit of comedy must needs assert
its mocking presence; or is it only part of the tragedy? Whilst the
yellow parchment crackled in the flames, some one who stood by the
legate muttered that one passage in it said that God the Father
alone was omnipotent. Soulless politician as he was, the ignorant
legate fastened on the charge as a confirmation of the justice of his
sentence. ‘I could scarcely believe that even a child would fall
into such an error,’ said the brute, with an affectation of academic
dignity. ‘And yet,’ a sarcastic voice fell on his ear, quoting the
Athanasian Creed, ‘and yet there are not Three omnipotent, but One.’
The bold speaker was Tirric, the Breton scholastic, who, as we
have seen, probably instructed Abélard in mathematics. His bishop
immediately began to censure him for his neat exhibition of the
legate’s ignorance, but the teacher was determined to express his
disgust at the proceedings. ‘You have condemned a child of Israel,’
he cried, lashing the ‘conventicle’ with the scornful words of
Daniel, ‘without inquiry or certainty. Return ye to the judgment
seat, and judge the judges.’
The archbishop then stepped forward to put an end to the confusion.
‘It is well,’ he said, making a tardy concession to conscience,
‘that the brother have an opportunity of defending his faith before
us all.’ Abélard gladly prepared to do so, but Alberic and Lotulphe
once more opposed the idea. No further discussion was needed, they
urged. The council had finished its work; Abélard’s errors had been
detected and corrected. If it were advisable to have a profession of
faith from Brother Peter, let him recite the Athanasian Creed. And
lest Abélard should object that he did not know the Creed by heart,
they produced a copy of it. The politic prelates were easily induced
to take their view. In point of fact the archbishop’s proposal was a
bare compliance with the canons. Abélard’s book had been condemned
on the ground that it had been issued without authorisation; nothing
had been determined as to the legitimacy of its contents. The canons
still demanded that he should be heard before he was sent out into
the world with an insidious stigma of heresy.
But charity and justice had no part in that pitiful conventicle.
Archbishop and legate thought it politic to follow the ruling of
Alberic to the end, and the parchment was handed to Abélard. And
priest and prelate, monk and abbot, shamelessly stood around, whilst
the greatest genius of the age, devoted to religion in every gift of
his soul, as each one knew, faltered out the familiar symbol. ‘Good
Jesus, where wert thou?’ Abélard asks, long years afterwards. There
are many who ask it to-day.
So ended the holy Council of Soissons, Provincial Synod of the
arch-diocese of Rheims, held under the ægis of a papal legate, in
the year of grace 1121. Its _acta_ are not found in Richard, or
Labbé, or Hefele: they ‘have not been preserved.’ There is an earlier
ecclesiastical council that earned the title of the _latrocinium_
(‘rogues’ council’), and we must not plagiarise. Ingenious and
audacious as the apologetic historian is, he has not attempted
to defend the Council of Soissons. But his condemnation of it is
mildness itself compared with his condemnation of Abélard.
For a crowning humiliation Abélard was consigned by the council to a
large monastery near Soissons, which served as jail or penitentiary
for that ecclesiastical province. The abbot of this monastery,
Geoffrey of the Stag’s-neck, had assisted at the council, and
Dom Gervaise would have it that he had secured Abélard for his
own purposes. He thinks the abbot was looking to the great legal
advantage, in the frequent event of a lawsuit, of having such an
orator as Abélard in his monastery. It is a possibility, like
many other details in Gervaise’s _Life of Abélard_. In forbidding
his return either to Maisoncelle or to St. Denis, and definitely
consigning him to the abbey of St. Médard, the council was once
more treating him as a legally convicted heretic. As far as it was
concerned, it was filling the chalice of the poor monk’s bitterness.
It is a mere accident that Geoffrey was a man of some culture, and
was so far influenced by the hideous spectacle he had witnessed as to
receive Brother Peter with sympathy and some honour.