CLOUD UPON CLOUD
The abbey of St. Médard, to which Abélard accompanied his friendly
jailer, was a very large monastery on the right bank of the Aisne,
just outside Soissons. At that time it had a community of about
four hundred monks. It derived a considerable revenue from its two
hundred and twenty farms, yet it bore so high a repute for regular
discipline that it had become a general ‘reformatory school’ for
the district. ‘To it were sent the ignorant to be instructed, the
depraved to be corrected, the obstinate to be tamed,’ says a work of
the time; though it is not clear how Herr Hausrath infers from this
that the abbey also served the purpose of monastic asylum. For this
character of penitentiary the place was chosen for the confinement
of Abélard. Thither he retired to meditate on the joy and the wisdom
of ‘conversion.’ ‘God! How furiously did I accuse Thee!’ he says of
those days. The earlier wound had been preceded, he admits, by his
sin; this far deeper and more painful wound had been brought upon him
by his ‘love of our faith.’
Whether Abbot Geoffrey thought Abélard an acquisition or no, there
was one man in authority at St. Médard who rejoiced with a holy joy
at his advent. This was no other than Abélard’s earlier acquaintance,
St. Goswin. The zealous student had become a monastic reformer, and
had recently been appointed Prior[18] of St. Médard. In the recently
reformed abbey, with a daily arrival of ‘obstinate monks to be
trained,’ and a convenient and well-appointed ascetical armoury or
whipping-room, the young saint was in a congenial element. Great was
his interest when ‘Pope Innocent,’[19] as his biographers say, ‘sent
Abélard to be confined in the abbey, and, like an untamed rhinoceros,
to be caught in the bonds of discipline.’ Abélard was not long in the
abbey before the tamer approached this special task that Providence
had set him. We can imagine Abélard’s feelings when the obtuse monk
took him aside, and exhorted him ‘not to think it a misfortune or an
injury that he had been sent there; he was not so much confined in a
prison, as protected from the storms of the world.’ He had only to
live piously, and set a good example, and all would be well. Abélard
was in no mood to see the humour of the situation. He peevishly
retorted that ‘there were a good many who talked about piety and did
not know what piety was.’ Then the prior, say his biographers, saw
that it was not a case for leniency, but for drastic measures. ‘Quite
true,’ he replied, ‘there are many who talk about piety, and do not
know what it is. But if we find you saying or doing anything that is
not pious, we shall show you that we know how to treat its contrary,
at all events.’ The saint prevailed once more—in the biography: ‘the
rhinoceros was cowed, and became very quiet, more patient under
discipline, more fearful of the lash, and of a saner and less raving
mind.’
[18] A prior is the second in command in an abbey, or the head of
a priory; a priory was a small branch monastery, in those days,
though it may now, as with the Dominicans, be a chief house.
[19] This is erroneous; Calixtus II. filled the papal chair at
the time.
Fortunately, the boorish saint had a cultured abbot, one at least who
did not hold genius to be a diabolical gift, and whose judgment of
character was not wholly vitiated by the crude mystic and monastic
ideal of the good people of the period. The abbot seems to have
saved Abélard from the zeal of the prior, and possibly he found
companionable souls amongst the four hundred monks of the great
abbey, some of whom were nobles by birth. We know, at all events,
that in the later period he looked back on the few months spent at
St. Médard with a kindly feeling.
His imprisonment did not last long. When the proceedings of the
council were made known throughout the kingdom, there was a strong
outburst of indignation. It must not be supposed that the Council
of Soissons illustrates or embodies the spirit of the period or the
spirit of the Church; this feature we shall more nearly find in the
Council of Sens, in 1141. The conventicle had, in truth, revealed
some of the evils of the time: the danger of the Church’s excessively
political attitude and administration, the brutality of the spirit
it engendered with regard to heresy, the fatal predominance of dogma
over ethic. But, in the main, the conventicle exhibits the hideous
triumph of a few perverse individuals, who availed themselves of all
that was crude and ill-advised in the machinery of the Church. When,
therefore, such men as Tirric, and Geoffrey of Chartres, and Geoffrey
of the Stag’s-neck, spread their story abroad, there were few who did
not sympathise with Abélard. The persecutors soon found it necessary
to defend themselves; there was a chaos of mutual incriminations.
Even Alberic and Lotulphe tried to cast the blame on others. The
legate found it expedient to attribute the whole proceeding openly to
‘French malice.’ He had been ‘compelled for a time to humour their
spleen,’ as Abélard puts it, but he presently revoked the order of
confinement in St. Médard, and gave Abélard permission to return to
St. Denis.
It was a question of Scylla or Charybdis, of Prior Goswin or Abbot
Adam. The legate seems to have acted in good faith in granting the
permission—perhaps we should say in good policy, for he again acted
out of discreet regard for circumstances; but when we find Abélard
availing himself of what was no more than a permission to return
to St. Denis we have a sufficient indication of the quality of his
experience at St. Médard. He does indeed remark that the monks of the
reformed abbey had been friendly towards him, though this is inspired
by an obvious comparison with his later experience at St. Denis. But
St. Médard was a prison; that sufficed to turn the scale. A removal
from the penitentiary would be equivalent, in the eyes of France, to
a revocation of the censure passed on him. So with a heart that was
hopelessly drear, not knowing whether to smile or weep, he went back,
poor sport of the gods as he was, to the royal abbey.
For a few months Brother Peter struggled bravely with the hard task
the fates had set him. He was probably wise enough to refrain from
inveighing, in season and out of season, against the ‘intolerable
uncleanness’ of Adam and his monks. Possibly he nursed a hope—or was
nursed by a hope—of having another ‘cell’ entrusted to his charge. In
spite of the irregularity of the abbey, formal religious exercises
were extensively practised. All day and night the chant of the
breviary was heard in the monastic chapel. There was also a large
and busy _scriptorium_; the _archivium_ of the ancient abbey was a
treasury of interesting old documents; and there was a relatively
good library. It was in the latter that Brother Peter found his next
adventure, and one that threatened to be the most serious of all.
Seeing the present futility of his theological plans, he had turned
to the study of history. There was a copy of Bede’s _History of
the Apostles_ in the library, and he says that he one day, ‘by
chance,’ came upon the passage in which Bede deals with St. Denis.
The Anglo-Saxon historian would not admit the French tradition about
St. Denis. He granted the existence of a St. Denis, but said that
he had been Bishop of Corinth, not of Athens. The legend about the
martyrdom of Denis the Areopagite, with his companions Rusticus and
Eleutherius, at Paris in the first century, is now almost universally
rejected by Roman Catholic historians, not to mention others. It is,
however, still enshrined with honour in that interesting compendium
of myths of the Christian era, the Roman breviary, and is read with
religious solemnity by every priest and every monastic choir in the
Catholic world on the annual festival.
However, the abbey of St. Denis, the monastery that owed all
its wealth and repute to its possession of the bones of ‘the
Areopagite,’ was the last place in the world in which to commence
a rationalistic attack on the legend. With his usual want of tact
and foresight Brother Peter showed the passage in Bede to some of
his fellow-monks, ‘in joke,’ he says; he might as well have cut the
abbot’s throat, or destroyed the wine-cellar ‘in joke.’ There was a
violent commotion. Heresy about the Trinity was bad, but heresy about
the idol of the royal abbey was more touching. It is not quite clear
that Abélard came to the opinion of modern religious historians, that
the St. Denis of Paris was a much later personage than the Areopagite
of the Acts of the Apostles, but he seems to hold that opinion. In
any case, the monks felt that to be the substance of his discovery,
and held it to be an attack on the glory of the abbey. Venerable
Bede was, they bluntly replied, a liar. One of their former abbots,
Hilduin, had made a journey to Greece for the special purpose of
verifying the story.
When the monks flew to Abbot Adam with the story of Brother Peter’s
latest outbreak, Adam saw in it an opportunity of terrifying the
rebel into submission, if not of effectually silencing him. He called
a chapter of the brethren. One’s pen almost tires of describing
the cruel scenes to which those harsh days lent themselves. The
vindictive abbot perched on his high chair, prior and elder brethren
sitting beside him; the hundreds of black-robed, shaven monks lining
the room; on his knees in the centre the pale, nervous figure of the
Socrates of Gaul. With a mock solemnity, Abbot Adam delivers himself
of the sentence. Brother Peter has crowned his misdeeds, in his pride
of mind, with an attack, not merely on the abbey that sheltered
him, but on the honour and the safety of France. The matter is too
serious to be punished by even the most severe methods at the command
of the abbey. Brother Peter is to be handed over to the king, as a
traitor to the honour of the country. The poor monk, now thoroughly
alarmed, abjectly implores the abbot to deal with him in the usual
way. Let him be scourged—anything to escape the uncertain temper of
King Louis. No, the abbey must be rid of him. He is taken away into
confinement, with an injunction that he be carefully watched until it
is convenient to send him to Paris.
There were, however, some of the monks who were disgusted at the
savage proceeding. A few days afterwards he was assisted to escape
from the monastic dungeon during the night, and, ‘in utter despair,’
he fled from the abbey, with a few of his former pupils. It was, in
truth, a desperate move. As a deserter from the abbey, the canons
required that two stalwart brothers should be sent in pursuit of him,
and that he be reimprisoned. As a fugitive from the king’s justice,
to which he had been publicly destined, he was exposed to even
harsher treatment. However, he made his way into Champagne once more,
and threw himself on the mercy of his friends.
One of the friends whom he had attached to himself during his stay at
Maisoncelle was prior of St. Ayoul, near the gates of Provins. It was
a priory belonging to the monks of Troyes, and both Hatton, Bishop of
Troyes, and Theobald, Count of Champagne, were in sympathy with the
fugitive. The prior, therefore, received Abélard into his convent,
to afford at least time for reflection. His condition, however, was
wholly uncanonical, and the prior, as well as the abbot of St. Peter
of Troyes, urged him to secure some regularity for his absence from
St. Denis, so that they might lawfully shelter him at St. Ayoul.
Abélard summoned what diplomatic faculty he had, and wrote to St.
Denis.
‘Peter, monk by profession and sinner by his deeds, to his
dearly beloved father, Adam, and to his most dear brethren and
fellow-monks,’ was the inscription of the epistle. Brother Peter, it
must be remembered, was fighting almost for life; and he was not of
the heroic stuff of his friend and pupil, Arnold of Brescia. There
are critics who think he descended lower than this concession to
might, that he deliberately denied his conviction for the purpose
of conciliating Adam. Others, such as Poole, Deutsch, and Hausrath,
think the letter does not support so grave a censure. The point of
the letter is certainly to convey the impression that Bede had erred,
and that Abélard had no wish to urge his authority against the belief
of the monks. In point of fact, Bede is at variance with Eusebius
and Jerome, and it is not impossible that Abélard came sincerely to
modify the first impression he had received from Bede’s words; in the
circumstances, and in the then state of the question, this would not
be unreasonable. At the same time a careful perusal of the letter
gives one the impression that it is artistic and diplomatic; that
Abélard has learned tact, rather than unlearned history. It reads
like an effort to say something conciliatory about St. Denis, without
doing serious violence to the writer’s conscience. Perhaps the abbot
of St. Peter’s could have thrown some light on its composition.
Shortly afterwards Abbot Adam came to visit Count Theobald, and
Abélard’s friends made a direct effort to conciliate him. The prior
of St. Ayoul and Abélard hurried to the count’s castle, and begged
him to prevail upon his guest to release Abélard from his obedience.
The count tried to persuade Adam to do so, but without success.
Adam seemed determined, not so much to rid his happy convent of a
malcontent, as to crush Abélard. He found plenty of pious garbs to
cover his vindictiveness with. At first he deprecated the idea that
it was a matter for his personal decision. Then, after a consultation
with the monks who accompanied him, he gravely declared that it was
inconsistent with the honour of the abbey to release Abélard; ‘the
brethren had said that, whereas Abélard’s choice of their abbey had
greatly redounded to its glory, his flight from it had covered them
with shame.’ He threatened both Abélard and the prior of St. Ayoul
with the usual canonical penalties, unless the deserter returned
forthwith to obedience.
Adam’s departure, after this fulmination, left Abélard and his
friends sadly perplexed. The abbot had the full force of canon law
on his side, and he was evidently determined to exact his pound of
flesh. However, whilst they were busy framing desperate resolves,
they received information of the sudden death of Abbot Adam. He died
a few days after leaving Champagne, on the 19th of February 1122. The
event brought relief from the immediate pressure. Some time would
elapse before it would be necessary to resume the matter with Adam’s
successor, and there was room for hope that the new abbot would not
feel the same personal vindictiveness.
The monk who was chosen by the Benedictines of St. Denis to succeed
Adam was one of the most remarkable characters of that curious age.
Scholar, soldier, and politician, he had an enormous influence on
the life of France during the early decades of the twelfth century.
Nature intended him for a minister and a great soldier: chance made
him a monk; worldly brothers made him an abbot, and St. Bernard
completed the anomaly by ‘converting’ him in 1127. At the time we
are speaking of he was the more active and prominent of two men whom
Bernard called ‘the two calamities of the Church of France.’ He was
born of poor parents, near one of the priories or dependencies of
St. Denis. His talent was noticed by the monks, and his ‘vocation’
followed as a matter of course. He was studying in the monastic
school when King Philip brought his son Louis to St. Denis, and the
abbot sent for him, and made him companion to the royal pupil. He
thus obtained a strong influence over the less gifted prince, and
when Louis came to the throne in 1108, Suger became the first royal
councillor. Being only a deacon in orders, there was nothing to
prevent him heading the troops, directing a campaign, or giving his
whole time to the affairs of the kingdom. He had proved so useful
a minister that, when some of the monks of St. Denis came in great
trepidation to tell the king they had chosen him for abbot, they
were angrily thrust into prison. Suger himself was in Rome at the
time, discharging a mission from the king, and he tells us, in his
autobiography, of the perplexity the dilemma caused him. However,
before he reached France, the king had concluded that an abbot could
be as useful as a prior in an accommodating age. In the sequel, St.
Denis became more royal, and less abbatial than ever—until 1127. St.
Bernard complained that it seemed to have become the ‘war office’
and the ‘ministry of justice’ of the kingdom.
Abélard now seems to have been taken in hand by a more astute
admirer, Burchard, Bishop of Meaux. They went to Paris together, and
apparently did a little successful diplomacy before the arrival and
consecration of Suger. The newly created abbot (he had been ordained
priest the day before his consecration) refused to undo the sentence
of his predecessor. He was bound by the decision of the abbey, he
said; in other words, there was still a strong vindictive feeling
against Abélard in the abbey, which it was not politic to ignore. It
is quite impossible that Suger himself took the matter seriously.
But before Suger’s arrival Abélard and his companions had made
friends at court. Whether through his pupils, many of whom were
nobles, or through his family, is unknown, but Abélard for the
second time found influence at court when ecclesiastical favour was
denied. One of the leading councillors was Étienne de Garlande,
the royal seneschal, and means were found to interest him in the
case of the unfortunate monk. We have already seen that Stephen
had ecclesiastical ambition in his earlier years, and had become
a deacon and a canon of Étampes. But when his patron, King Philip,
submitted to the Church and to a better ideal of life, Stephen
concluded that the path to ecclesiastical dignities would be less
smooth and easy for the ‘illiterate and unchaste,’ and he turned to
secular ambition. At the time of the events we are reviewing he and
Suger were the virtual rulers of France; from the ecclesiastical
point of view he was the man whom St. Bernard associated with Suger
as ‘a calamity of the Church.’
‘Through the mediation of certain friends’ Abélard had enlisted the
interest of this powerful personage, and the court was soon known
to favour his suit. There are many speculations as to the motive of
the king and his councillors in intervening in the monastic quarrel.
Recent German historians see in the incident an illustration of a
profound policy on the part of the royal council. They think the king
was then endeavouring to strengthen his authority by patronising
the common people in opposition to the tyrannical and troublesome
nobility. Following out a parallel policy with regard to the Church,
whose nobles were equally tyrannical and troublesome, Stephen and
Suger would naturally befriend the lower clergy in opposition to
the prelates. Hence the royal intervention on behalf of the monk of
St. Denis is associated with the intervention on the side of the
peasantry a few years before.
The theory is ingenious, but hardly necessary. Abélard says that the
court interfered because it did not desire any change in the free
life of the royal abbey, and consequently preferred to keep him out
of it. That is also ingenious, and complimentary to Abélard. But
it is not a little doubtful whether anybody credited him with the
smallest influence at St. Denis. We shall probably not be far from
the truth if we suppose a court intrigue on the monk’s behalf which
his friends did not think it necessary to communicate fully to him.
Geoffrey of Chartres and other friends of his were French nobles.
Many of his pupils had that golden key which would at any time give
access to Étienne de Garlande.
In any case Stephen and Suger had a private discussion of the matter,
and the two politicians soon found a way out of the difficulty.
Abélard received an order to appear before the king and his council.
The comedy—though it was no comedy for Abélard—probably took place
at St. Denis. Louis the Fat presided, in robes of solemn purple,
with ermine border. Étienne de Garlande and the other councillors
glittered at his side. Abbot Suger and his council were there to
defend the ‘honour’ of the abbey; and Brother Peter, worn with
anxiety and suffering, came to make a plea for liberty. Louis bids
the abbot declare what solution of the difficulty his chapter has
discovered. Suger gravely explains that the honour of their abbey
does not permit them to allow the fugitive monk to join any other
monastery. So much to save the face of the abbey. Yet there is a
middle course possible, the abbot graciously continues: Brother Peter
may be permitted to live a regular life in the character of a hermit.
Brother Peter expresses his satisfaction at the decision—it was
precisely the arrangement he desired—and departs from the abbey with
his friends, a free man once more, never again, he thinks, to fall
into the power of monk or prelate.