THE FINAL BLOW
On the 4th of June 1141, the cathedral at Sens was filled with one
of the strangest throngs that ever gathered within its venerable
walls. Church and state and the schools had brought their highest
representatives and their motley thousands to witness the thrilling
conflict of the two first thinkers and orators of France. On the
previous day the magnificent ceremony of the veneration of the
relics had taken place. At that ceremony the abbot of Clairvaux had
discoursed of the meaning and potency of their act. And when the
vast crowds of gentle and simple folk had quickened and sobbed and
enthused at his burning words, he had ventured to ask their prayers
for the conversion of an unbeliever, whom he did not name.
Now, on the Monday morning, the great concourse had streamed into the
cathedral once more, an intense eagerness flashing from the eyes of
the majority. The red Mass of the Holy Spirit had been chanted by the
clerics, and the clouds of incense still clung about the columns and
the vaulted roof of the church. King Louis sat expectant, and stupid,
on the royal throne; the Count de Nevers and a brilliant group of
nobles and knights standing beside and behind him. Opposite them
another gaily apparelled group presented Henry, Archbishop of Sens,
with five of his suffragan bishops; beside him sat Samson, Archbishop
of Rheims, with three suffragans. Mitred abbots added to the
splendour with their flash of jewels. Shaven monks, with the white
wool of Cîteaux or the black tunic of St. Benedict, mingled with the
throng of canons, clerics, scholastics, wandering masters, ragged,
cosmopolitan students, and citizens of Sens and Paris in their gay
holiday attire.
It was, at first sight, just such an assembly as Abélard had dreamed
of when he threw down the gauntlet to the Cistercian. But he must
have looked far from happy as he stood in the midst of his small
band of followers. As he passed into the cathedral, he had noticed
Gilbert de la Porée in the crowd, the brilliant master who was to be
Bernard’s next victim, and he whispered smilingly the line of Horace:
‘It is thy affair when thy neighbour’s house is on fire.’
With Abélard were the impetuous young master, Bérenger of Poitiers;
the stern, ascetic, scornful young Italian, Arnold of Brescia,
flashing into the eyes of the prelates the defiance that brought him
to the stake fourteen years afterwards; and the young Roman noble,
Hyacinth, who afterwards became cardinal.
Beside these, and a host of admiring nonentities, Abélard almost
looked in vain for a friendly face amidst the pressing throng. The
truth was that, as Rémusat says, ‘if Bernard had not prepared for
debate, he had made every preparation for the verdict.’ The whole
cathedral was with him. After his discourse of the preceding day,
and the rumours that had preceded it, the priest-ridden citizens of
Sens were prepared to stone the heretic, as the people of Soissons
had threatened to do. The students would be divided, according to
their schools. The monks longed to see the downfall of their critic.
The king—the man who was to bear to his grave ‘the curse of Europe
and the blessing of St. Bernard’—was not likely to hesitate. The
Count de Nevers was a pious, credulous noble, who afterwards became
a Cistercian monk. Otto of Freising says Count Theobald of Champagne
was present, though the report does not mention him; in any case he
had fallen largely under Bernard’s influence since his sister had
gone down in the _White Ship_ in 1120. The clergy of Sens were with
Bernard; their motto was: ‘The church of Sens knows no novelties.’ Of
the judges proper, Geoffrey, Bishop of Chartres, was almost the only
one who could be termed neutral; and even he had now become greatly
amenable to Bernard’s influence. Archbishop Henry was completely in
the hands of Bernard, his converter, who scolded him at times as
if he were a boy. Archbishop Samson of Rheims owed his pallium to
Bernard, in the teeth of the king’s opposition; he was deprived of
it some years afterwards. Hugo of Mâcon, the aged Bishop of Auxerre,
was a relative of Bernard’s and a fellow-monk at Cîteaux. Joscelin of
Vieri, Bishop of Soissons, was the former teacher of Goswin, and the
associate of Bernard on a papal mission a few years before. Geoffrey,
Bishop of Châlons, Abélard’s former friend at St. Médard, had since
been helped to a bishopric by Bernard. Hatto, Bishop of Troyes, had
been won to Bernard. Alvise, Bishop of Arras, is said to have been a
brother of Abbot Suger and friend of Goswin. Of the only two other
bishops present, Helias of Orleans and Manasses of Meaux, we have no
information.
In such an assembly the nerve of the boldest speaker might well fail.
Bernard had preached during the Mass on the importance of the true
faith. Then when the critical moment came, he mounted the pulpit
with a copy of the writings of Abélard, and the dense crowd, totally
ignorant, most probably, of previous events, which were known only
to the intimate friends of each combatant, held its breath for the
opening of the struggle. The frail, worn, nervous figure in the
flowing, white tunic began to read the indictment, but suddenly
Abélard stepped forth before the astonished judges, and, crying out:
‘I will not be judged thus like a criminal; I appeal to Rome,’ turned
his back on them and strode out of the cathedral.
Chroniclers have left to our imagination the confusion that followed,
and we may leave it to that of the reader. Although the bishops
afterwards made a show of disputing it, the appeal was quite
canonical, and was admitted at Rome. But it was a course which had
not entered into the thoughts of the most astute of them, and which
completely upset their plans. They could not now touch the person
of Abélard. Bernard, indeed, did not deprive the great audience of
the discourse he had ‘not prepared,’ although it was now quite safe
from contradiction. We have it, some say, in his later letter to the
pope, a most vehement denunciation and often perversion of Abélard’s
teaching. He gained an easy victory, as far as Sens was concerned.
The next day the prelates met together, condemned Abélard’s teaching
as heretical, and forwarded a report, submitting his person and his
works, to Rome.
The question why Abélard behaved in so extraordinary a manner has had
many answers. The answer of the godly, given by Bernard’s monkish
biographer, is of the transcendental order. Brother Geoffrey relates
that Abélard confessed to his intimate friends that he mysteriously
lost the use and control of his mind when Bernard began. Bishop
Otto of Freising says that he feared ‘a rising of the people.’ He
would be more likely to provoke one by thus affronting their great
cathedral and prelates. The true interpretation is that the assembly
was a play, covering an unworthy intrigue, and he had been secretly
informed of it. The bishops had drawn up their verdict, over their
cups, on the preceding day.
Desperate efforts are made, of course, to destroy an interpretation
which does not leave the discredit on Abélard, but it has now been
based on incontrovertible evidence. In the first place the bishops
ingenuously confess it themselves in their eagerness to evade
a different accusation. In order to influence the judgment, or
rather the decision, of the pope, they told him that they had found
Abélard’s teaching to be heretical. How, then, were they to reconcile
this with the notice of Abélard’s appeal to Rome? ‘We had,’ they say
in their report, ‘already condemned him on the day before he appealed
to you.’ It matters little who wrote this report—whether Bernard[31]
or Henry’s secretary—because it was signed by the bishops. They
reveal their secret conclave of the Sunday evening. Henry was
particularly anxious to justify them, at all costs, on the charge of
disregarding the appeal, because he had been suspended by Innocent
for that offence a few years previously.
[31] It is singular that Mr. Poole, who credits Bernard with
writing the report, should speak of the words as a deliberate
‘lie of excuse,’ especially as he adopts the witness of Bérenger
to a previous condemnation. We are not only compelled by
independent evidence to take them as correct, but one imputes a
lesser sin to Bernard (from the Catholic point of view) in doing
so.
Again, in the _Historia Pontificalis_, attributed to John of
Salisbury, there is an account of Bernard’s attempt to secure the
condemnation of that other brilliant dialectician, Gilbert de la
Porée, in 1148. It is expressly stated that Bernard called the chief
personages together the night before the synod, and was leading them
to pronounce on Gilbert’s ‘errors,’ when an archdeacon of Châlons
spoiled his strategy. Further, the writer goes on to say that the
cardinals—there were a number present for the synod—were greatly
incensed with Bernard, and ‘said that Abbot Bernard had beaten Master
Abélard by a similar stratagem.’ It is not unlikely that they learned
the story from Hyacinth, the young Roman.
The classical witness to this over-night conclave is Abélard’s
pupil, Bérenger of Poitiers. Unfortunately, his narrative is marred
by obvious exaggerations and a careless, heated temper. It occurs
in an apology for Abélard, or an ‘open letter’ to Bernard, which
he wrote some months afterwards. After reminding Bernard of some
of the frivolities of his early youth, and much sarcastic comment
on his actual reputation, he gives what purports to be a detailed
description of the secret meeting. No one who reads it will take
it literally. Yet when, in later years, he was run down, like
Gilbert and Arnold, by the relentless sleuthhound, he made a partial
retractation. What he has written as to the person of ‘the man of
God’ must, he says, be taken as a joke. But a few lines previously
he has appealed to this very narrative in justification of his
abuse of Bernard: ‘Let the learned read my “Apology,” and they may
justly censure me if I have unduly blamed him [Bernard].’ It is
not impossible that Bérenger merely retracts such remarks as that
about Bernard’s juvenile ‘cantiunculas.’ In any case, we may justly
transcribe a portion of the narrative, after these qualifications.
‘At length, when the dinner was over, Peter’s work was brought in,
and some one was directed to read it aloud. This fellow, animated
with a hatred of Peter, and well watered with the juice of the grape,
read in a much louder voice than he had been asked to do. After a
time you would have seen them knock their feet together, laugh, and
crack jokes; you would think they were honouring Bacchus rather than
Christ. And all the time the cups are going, the wine is being
praised, the episcopal throats are being moistened. The juice of the
lethal drink had already buried their hearts.... Then, when anything
unusually subtle and divine was read out, anything the episcopal ears
were not accustomed to, they hardened their hearts and ground their
teeth against Peter. “Shall we let this monster live?” they cried....
The heat of the wine at length relaxed the eyes of all in slumber.
The reader continues amidst their snoring. One leans on his elbow in
order to sleep. Another gets a soft cushion. Another slumbers with
his head resting on his knees. So when the reader came to anything
particularly thorny in Peter, he shouted in the deaf ears of the
pontiffs: “Do you condemn?” And some of them just waking up at the
last syllable, would mutter: “We condemn.”’
It is not difficult to take off the due and considerable discount
from the youthful extravagance of Master Bérenger. Bernard’s
followers (in the _Histoire littéraire de la France_) say he had ‘too
noble a soul and too elevated a sentiment to stoop to the refutation
of such a work.’ He has never, at all events, essayed to rebut the
charge of procuring a verdict against Abélard on the day before the
synod. Even in our own days it is a familiar source of merriment
in ecclesiastical and monastic circles to see a group of prelates
fervently following the red Mass of the Holy Ghost as a preliminary
to a discussion of points which they have notoriously settled over
their cups the night before. Such a meeting of the bishops on the
Sunday would be inevitable. Bernard would inevitably be present, and
Abélard infallibly excluded. In any case, the evidence is too precise
and substantial to be rejected. Indeed, the story fully harmonises
with our knowledge of Bernard’s earlier and subsequent conduct. It
is not ours to inquire minutely how far Bernard was consistent with
himself and his lofty ideals in acting thus.
Bernard was defeated for the moment by the unexpected appeal from
the verdict of the unjust judges. But he knew well that Abélard had
avoided Scylla only to plunge into Charybdis. Abélard’s knowledge
of the curia was restricted to a few days’ acquaintance with it in
a holiday mood at Morigni. Arnold of Brescia probably urged his
own acquaintance with it in vain. Moreover many years had elapsed
since his name was inscribed by the side of that of Bernard in the
chronicle of Morigni. Bernard, the secluded contemplative, knew the
curia well. He hastened home, told his secretary to prepare for a
journey across the Alps, and sat down to write a batch of extremely
clever epistles. The battle was fought and won before Abélard had
covered many leagues in the direction of Italy.
The first document that Bernard seems to have written is the report
upon the synod which was sent to Innocent II. in the name of the
Archbishop of Rheims and his suffragans. Hausrath, who is the least
restrained by considerations of Bernard’s official sanctity of
all Abélard’s apologists, and others, hold that both the reports
of the proceedings, that of Samson and that of Henry (for the two
archbishops, with their respective suffragans, reported separately
to the pope), were written by Bernard. It is at least clear that the
Rheims report was drawn up by him. Mr. Poole says this is admitted
even by Father Hefele. Bernard’s style is indeed unmistakable.
In this official document, therefore, the pope is informed, not so
much that a dispute about Abélard’s orthodoxy is referred to his
court, as that ‘Peter Abélard is endeavouring to destroy the merit
of faith, in that he professes himself able to comprehend by his
human reason the whole being of God.’ From this gross calumny[32]
the writer passes on to assure the pope that Abélard ‘is a great
man in his own eyes, ever disputing about the faith to its undoing,
walking in things that are far above him, a searcher into the divine
majesty, a framer of heresies.’ He goes on to recount that Abélard’s
book had been condemned and burnt once before, at Soissons, ‘because
of the iniquity that was found in it’; whereas every scholar in
France knew that it was condemned on the sole ground that it had
been issued without authorisation. ‘Cursed be he who has rebuilt the
walls of Jericho,’ fulminates the abbot of Clairvaux. Finally, he
represents Abélard as boasting of his influence at Rome. ‘This is
the boast of the man,’ he says, ‘that his book can find wherein to
rest its head in the Roman curia. This gives strength and assurance
to his frenzy.’ The sole object of his appeal is ‘to secure a longer
immunity for his iniquity. You must needs apply a swift remedy to
this source of contagion.’ And the monstrous epistle closes with a
trust that Innocent will do his part, and that swiftly, as they had
done theirs. Thus was the pope introduced, in a handwriting he had
so many reasons to respect, to Abélard’s appeal for consideration.
[32] Abélard explicitly and very emphatically rebukes such
pretension in the very books which Bernard is supposed to have
read.
The second report, which is signed by Archbishop Henry and his
suffragans, and which may not have been drawn up by Bernard, is
more free from diplomatic turnings, but also gravely unjust to the
appellant. It gives the pope a lengthy account of the order of events
since the receipt of the letter of William of St. Thierry. From it
we have quoted the words in which the bishops themselves confess
the secret conclave on the Sunday. The bishops were affronted, it
says, by Abélard’s appeal, which was ‘hardly canonical,’ but they
were content with an examination of his doctrines (consisting of
Bernard’s vehement harangue) and found them to be ‘most manifestly
heretical.’ They therefore ‘unanimously demand the condemnation of
Abélard.’ To put the point quite explicitly, the pope is clearly to
understand that the Church of France has already dealt with Abélard.
It is not quite so insidious as the report which Bernard wrote, and
to which—sad sign of the growing quality of the Church—even Geoffrey
of Chartres lent his venerable name.
Bernard’s official task seemed to be at an end with the despatch of
the report. His profound and generous trust in the Holy Spirit would
lead one to expect a complete withdrawal from the quarrel into which
he had been so unwillingly forced. But Bernard’s conception of the
activity of the Holy Spirit, though equal in theoretical altitude,
was very different in practice from that of a Francis of Assisi. We
have amongst his works no less than three epistles that he wrote at
the time to Pope Innocent in his own name. One of them consists of
a few prefatory remarks to the list of Abélard’s errors. The two
others are of a much more personal and interesting character. It is
difficult to say whether, and if so, why, the two letters were sent
to the pope, but it is not necessary to determine this. Both were
certainly written by Bernard for the purpose.
The first letter is addressed ‘to his most loving father and lord,
Innocent, Sovereign Pontiff by the grace of God, from Brother
Bernard, called the abbot of Clairvaux.’ From the first line he aims
at determining the case in the pope’s mind. ‘It is necessary that
there be scandals amongst us—necessary, but assuredly not welcome.’
Hence have the saints ever longed to be taken from this troubled
world. Bernard is equally tired of life. He knows not whether it
be expedient that he die, yet ‘the scandals and troubles’ about him
are pressing his departure. ‘Fool that I was to promise myself rest
if ever the Leonine trouble[33] was quelled and peace was restored
to the Church. That trouble is over, yet I have not found peace.
I had forgotten that I still lingered in the vale of tears.’ His
sorrow and his tears have been renewed. ‘We have escaped the lion
[Pierleone], only to meet the dragon [Abélard], who, in his insidious
way, is perhaps not less dangerous than the lion roaring in high
places. Did I say insidious? Would indeed that his poisoned pages did
lurk in the library, and were not read openly in the streets. His
books fly in all directions; whereas they, in their iniquity, once
shunned the light, they now emerge into it, thinking the light to be
darkness.... A new gospel is being made for the nations, a new faith
is put before them.’ After Pierleone it is useful to remind Innocent
of his second great _bête noire_. ‘The Goliath [Abélard] stalks along
in his greatness, girt about with that noble panoply of his, and
preceded by his weapon-bearer, Arnold of Brescia. Scale is joined
to scale, so closely that not a breath can get between.[34] For the
French bee [Abeille-ard] has hummed its call to the Italian bee; and
they have conspired together against the Lord and his anointed.’ He
must even deny them the merit of their notoriously ascetic lives:
‘Bearing the semblance of piety in their food and clothing, but void
of its virtue, they deceive many by transforming themselves into
angels of light—whereas they are devils.’ The pope must not be misled
by rumours of Abélard’s present fervour of life; he is ‘outwardly a
Baptist, but inwardly a Herod,’ Bernard assures him. Then follows
a passage we have already quoted. He tells the pope the edifying
story of the archbishop’s summons, his refusal, the entreaties of
his friends, the gathering of Abélard’s supporters, and his final
resolve to go: ‘Yielding to the counsel of my friends, I presented
myself at the appointed time and place, unprepared and unequipped,
save that I had in mind the monition: “Take ye no thought what and
how ye shall speak.”’ Then ‘when his books had begun to be read [he
does not say by whom], he would not listen, but went out, appealing
from the judges he had chosen. These things I tell thee in my own
defence, lest thou mayst think I have been too impetuous or bold in
the matter. But thou, O successor of Peter, thou shalt decide whether
he who has assailed the faith of Peter should find refuge in the see
of Peter.’ In other words, do not allow Abélard to come to Rome, but
condemn him unheard, on my word. He ends with a final diplomatic
_argumentum ad invidiam_. ‘Hyacinth has done me much injury, but I
have thought well to suffer it, seeing that he did not spare you
and your court when he was at Rome, as my friend, and indeed yours,
Nicholas, will explain more fully by word of mouth.’
[33] The reference is to the anti-pope, a Pierleone. It is a
subtle reminder of what Pope Innocent owes to Bernard.
[34] Recalling some of the zoology of the Old Testament.
The second letter runs so largely on the same lines that it is
thought by some to have been sent to the pope instead of the
preceding, in which the reference to Hyacinth and the curia may have
been impolitic. ‘Weeping has the spouse of Christ wept in the night,’
it begins, ‘and tears are upon her cheeks; there is none to console
her out of all her friends. And in the delaying of the spouse, to
thee, my lord, is committed the care of the Shunammite in this land
of her pilgrimage.’ Abélard is a ‘domestic enemy,’ an Absalom, a
Judas. There is the same play upon the lion and the dragon, and upon
the scaly monster formed of Abélard and Arnold. ‘They have become
corrupt and abominable in their aims, and from the ferment of their
corruptions they pervert the faith of the simple, disturb the order
of morals, and defile the chastity of the Church.’ Moreover Abélard
‘boasts that he has opened the founts of knowledge to the cardinals
and priests of the Roman curia, and that he has lodged his books and
his opinions in the hands and hearts of the Romans; and he adduces
as patrons of his error those who should judge and condemn him.’ He
concludes with an apostrophe to Abélard, which was well calculated to
expel the last lingering doubt from the mind of the pope. ‘With what
thoughts, what conscience, canst thou have recourse to the defender
of the faith—thou, its persecutor? With what eyes, what brow, wilt
thou meet the gaze of the friend of the Spouse—thou, the violator
of His bride? Oh, if the care of the brethren did not detain me! If
bodily infirmity did not prevent it! How I should love to see the
friend of the Spouse defending the bride in His absence!’
The third letter, a kind of preface to Bernard’s list of errors
and commentary thereon, is of the same unworthy temper, tortuous,
diplomatic, misleading, and vituperative. It is not apparent on what
ground Hausrath says this commentary represents Bernard’s speech at
Sens; if it does so, we have another curious commentary on Bernard’s
affirmation that he went to the synod unprepared. However that may
be, the letter is a singular composition, when we remember that it
accompanied an appeal to a higher court, to which the case had been
reserved. It opens with a declaration that ‘the see of Peter’ is the
due and natural tribunal to which to refer ‘all scandals that arise
in the Kingdom of God’; a declaration which is hardly consistent with
the assurance, when it is necessary to defend their condemnation of
Abélard, that his appeal ‘seems to us wonderful.’ Then follows the
familiar caricature. ‘We have here in France an old master who has
just turned theologian, who has played with the art of rhetoric from
his earliest years and now raves about the Holy Scriptures [Abélard
had been teaching Scripture and theology for the last twenty-six
years]. He is endeavouring to resuscitate doctrines that were
condemned and buried long ago, and to these he adds new errors of his
own. A man who, in his inquiries into all there is in heaven above or
earth below, is ignorant of nothing save the word “I do not know.”
He lifts his eyes to the heavens, and peers into the hidden things
of God, then returns to us with discourse of things that man is not
permitted to discuss.’ This last sentence, considered as a charge by
Bernard of Clairvaux against others, is amusing. Bernard spent half
his time in searching the hidden things of God, and the other half in
discoursing of them. But Abélard conceived them otherwise than he.
Thus was the supreme judge instructed in his part, whilst the foolish
Abélard lingered idly in Paris, not improbably, as Bernard says,
boasting of his friends at the curia. It was very possible that he
had friends at Rome. Deutsch suspects the existence of a faction in
the sacred college, which was opposed to Innocent and the Chancellor
Haymerick, and would be favourable to Abélard. Bernard was not the
man to leave a single risk unchallenged—or to the care of the Holy
Ghost.
In the first place, therefore, he wrote a circular letter ‘to all my
lords and fathers, the venerable bishops and cardinals of the curia,
from the child of their holiness.’ His secretary was to deliver a
copy to each. ‘None will doubt,’ he says, ‘that it is your especial
duty to remove all scandals from the kingdom of God.’ The Roman
Church is the tribunal of the world: ‘to it we do well to refer,
not questions, but attacks on the faith and dishonour of Christ:
contumely and contempt of the fathers: present scandals and future
dangers. The faith of the simple is derided, the hidden things of God
are dragged forth, questions of the most sublime mysteries are rashly
debated, insults are offered to the fathers.’ They will see this by
the report. ‘And if you think there is just ground for my agitation,
be ye also moved’—and moved to take action. ‘Let him who has raised
himself to the heavens be crushed down to hell; he has sinned in
public, let him be punished in public.’ It is the fulmination of the
prophet of the age on the duty of the curia.
Then came eight private letters to cardinals of his acquaintance, an
interesting study in ecclesiastical diplomacy. To the chancellor of
the curia, Haymerick, he speaks chiefly of Abélard’s boast of friends
at court. He transcribes the passage from his letter to Innocent;
and he adds the earlier allusion to the Roman deacon, Hyacinth, who
was evidently a thorn in the side of the officials of the curia. To
Guido of Castello, afterwards Celestine II., who was known to be a
friend of Abélard, he writes in an entirely new strain. ‘I should
do you wrong,’ he begins, ‘if I thought you so loved any man as to
embrace his errors also in your affection.’ Such a love would be
animal, earthly, diabolical. Others may say what they like of Guido,
but Bernard is a man who ‘never judges anybody without proof,’ and
he will not believe it. He passes to a mild complaint that ‘Master
Peter introduces profane novelties in his books’; still ‘it is not
I that accuse him before the Father, but his own book.’ But he
cannot refrain from putting just a little _venenum in cauda_: ‘It is
expedient for you and for the Church that silence be imposed on him
whose mouth is full of curses and bitterness and guile.’
Cardinal Ivo, on the other hand, belongs to the loyal group. ‘Master
Peter Abélard,’ he is told, ‘a prelate without dependency, observes
no order and is restrained by no order.... He is a Herod in his soul,
a Baptist in outward appearance.’ However, that is not my business,
says the diplomatist, ‘every man shall bear his own burden.’ Bernard
is concerned about his heresies, and his boast that he will be
protected by a certain faction in the curia. Ivo must do his duty
‘in freeing the Church from the lips of the wicked.’ A young unnamed
cardinal is appealed to for support. ‘Let no man despise thy youth,’
begins the man who calls Abélard a ‘slippery serpent’; ‘not grey hair
but a sober mind is what God looks to.’ Another cardinal, who had
a custom of rising when any person entered his room, is playfully
approached with a reminder of this: ‘If thou art indeed a son of the
Church,’ the note ends, ‘defend the womb that has borne thee and the
breasts that have suckled thee.’ Guido of Pisa receives a similar
appeal: ‘If thou art a son of the Church, if thou knowest the breast
of thy mother, desert her not in her peril.’ The letter to another
Cardinal Guido is particularly vicious and unworthy. ‘I cannot but
write you,’ it begins, ‘of the dishonour to Christ, the trials
and sorrows of the Church, the misery of the helpless, and groans
of the poor.’ What is the matter? This: ‘We have here in France a
monk who observes no rule, a prelate without care, an abbot without
discipline, one Peter Abélard, who disputes with boys and busies
himself with women.’ There is a nasty ambiguity in the last phrase.
Again, ‘We have escaped the roar of the lion [Pierleone] only to hear
the hissing of the dragon Peter.... If the mouth of the wicked be
not closed, may He who alone regards our works consider and condemn.’
A similar letter is addressed to Cardinal Stephen of Praeneste. ‘I
freely write to you, whom I know to be a friend of the spouse, of the
trials and sorrows of the spouse of Christ.’ Abélard is ‘an enemy
of Christ,’ as is proved, not only by his works, but by ‘his life
and actions.’ He has ‘sallied forth from his den like a slippery
serpent’; he is ‘a hydra,’ growing seven new heads where one has been
cut off. He ‘misleads the simple,’ and finally ‘boasts that he has
inoculated the Roman curia with the poison of his novelty.’
A ninth letter is addressed to an abbot who was in Rome at the time,
and who is drawn into the intrigue with many holy threats. ‘If any
man is for the Lord let him take his place. The truth is in danger.
Peter Abélard has gone forth to prepare the way for Anti-Christ....
May God consider and condemn, if the mouth of the wicked be not
closed forthwith.’
These letters were handed over, for personal delivery, to Bernard’s
monk-secretary, Nicholas; in many of them it is expressly stated
that the bearer will enlarge upon the text more freely by word of
mouth. We know enough about this monk to be assured of the more than
fidelity with which he accomplished his task. Enjoying the full
confidence of Bernard at that time, a very able and well-informed
monk, Nicholas de Montier-Ramey was a thorough scoundrel, as Bernard
learned to his cost a few years afterwards. He had to be convicted
of forging Bernard’s seal and hand for felonious purposes before the
keen scent of the abbot discovered his utter unscrupulousness.
With Abélard lingering at Paris in his light-hearted way, the
violence and energy of Bernard swept away whatever support he might
have counted on at Rome. Throughout the curia Bernard had scattered
his caricature of Abélard: a lawless monk, an abbot who neglected his
abbey, a man of immoral life, an associate of the recognised enemies
of the papacy, already condemned for heresy, a reviver of Arius and
Nestorius and Pelagius, a teacher without reverence, a disturber of
the faith of the simple. The pope did not hesitate a moment; the
letters sent to him are masterpieces of diplomatic correspondence.
The waverers in the curia were most skilfully worked. In mere secular
matters such an attempt to corrupt the judges would be fiercely
resented. Bernard lived in a transcendental region, that Hegelian
land in which contradictions disappear.
It was on the 4th of June that Abélard appealed to Rome. There
were no Alpine tunnels in those days, and the journey from Paris
to Rome was a most formidable one. Yet Bernard’s nervous energy
had infused such spirit into the work, and he had chosen so able a
messenger, that the whole case was ended in less than seven weeks.
There cannot have been a moment’s hesitation at Rome. On the 16th
of July the faithful of Rome gathered about the door of St. Peter’s
for the solemn reading of the decree of excommunication. The pope
was there, surrounded by his cardinals, and it was announced, with
the usual impressive flourishes, that Abélard’s works were condemned
to the flames and his person to be imprisoned by the ecclesiastical
authorities. Rome has not been a model of the humane use of power,
but she has rarely condemned a man unheard. On the sole authority
of Bernard the decree recognised in Abélard’s ‘pernicious doctrine’
the already condemned errors of the early heresiarchs. Arnold of
Brescia, who had not been officially indicted, was included in the
condemnation. It was Bernard’s skilful use of his association
with Abélard which chiefly impelled the pope. Innocent replies
to Bernard’s appeal by sending back to him the decree of the
condemnation of his antagonist, with a private note to the effect
that it must not be published until after it has been read at an
approaching synod.