Volume 1
Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars.
- Date:
- 1908-1926
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars. Source: Wellcome Collection.
43/932
![into a nunnery, Abelard, at the age of thirty-four, put himself under the most famous theologian of the day, Anselm of Laon (c. 1113, Deutsch, op. cit. 30 n.). The venture, whether due to religious impulse or to ambition, was not a success. A few lectures convinced Abelard that he would find little fruit ‘on this barren fig-tree.’ ‘Anselm,’ continues Abelard, ‘was that sort of man that ii any one went to him in uncertainty, he returned more uncertain still. He was wonderful to hear, but at once failed if you ques- tioned him. He kindled a fire not to give light, but to fill the house with smoke - (Hist. Cal. c. 3). Abelard soon shocked his fellow - students by expressing the opinion that educated men should be able to study the Scriptures for themselves with the help of the ‘ glosses ’ alone. (As a matter of fact, the ‘ gloss ’ in universal use was his tutor Anselm’s amended form of the Glossa Ordinaria of Walafrid Strabo (1849) [Poole, op. cit. 135 n.]). In proof of his view, he gave, at their request, a series of lectures on Ezelciel. Such was his success, if we may accept his own statement, that it was only by expelling him from Laon as an unauthorized teacher, as in theology he certainly was, that the authorities were able to check the rush to his class- room. ‘Anselm,’ says Abelard, in a characteristic sentence, ‘had the impudence to suppress me’ (Hist. Cal. cc. 3, 4). On his return to Paris, Abelard resumed his lectures, though whether in the cathedral or in St. Genevihve is uncertain. Scholars from every land (Fulk of Deuil, Ep. ad AhcBlarchiin in Migne, PL clxxviii. 371, gives an interesting catalogue) hastened to sit at the feet of this wonder of the age—pliilosopher, poet, musician, and theologian in one. The Church smiled on his success, and appointed him, though not yet a sub-deacon, canon of Notre Dame (Poole, op. cit. 145 n. ; Rf musat, i. 39 n.). Abelard had reached the zenith of his fame. Henceforth the story of his life is one of ‘ calamity,’ not the least element in which was his own moral downfall, the conscious deliber- ateness of which, however, in our judgment, he characteristically exaggerates in his later reminis- cences (Hist. Cal. c. 6; cf. R6musat, i. 49, as against Cotter Morison, St. Bernard, 263). Into the romance of his connexion with Heloise (Heloissa= Louise) we need not enter. The repetition of this well-known story distracts attention from the real greatness of Abelard in the history of thought. In spite of the protests of Heloise that ‘Abelard was created for mankind, and should not be sacri- ficed for the sake of a single woman,’ Abelard privately married the woman he had seduced, and, when the secret was out, removed her to the convent of Argenteuil, the discipline of which was very lax. In Abelard’s opinion, as reported for us by one of his students, marriage was lawful for such of the clergy as had not been ordained priests (Sententice, c. xxxi. ; cf. Poole, 147 n.). We draw a veil over the story of the revenge of Fulbert, his wife’s uncle. Abelard in an agony of soul and body fled to St. Denys, while Heloise, on his demand, tried to transfer her passions to more spiritual objects, and took the veil at Argenteuil, chanting, as she did so, a verse out of Lucan’s Pharsalia (c. 1119). Their boy, to whom the parents had given the curious name of Astrolabe, was left with Abelard’s sister, Denys (Hist. Cal. c. 8. For his career see E6musat, i. 269). Abelard found the abbey of St. Denys worldly and dissolute. He retired in disgust to a cell of the house in Champagne, the exact location of which is a little uncertain (Recueil, xiv. 290 n.; R6- musat, op. cit. i. 73 n. ; Poole, op. cit. 156 n.), and opened a school of theology. Very soon the throng of his students made it difficult to procure either food or shelter. His lectures were as daring as they were brilliant. In his Tractatus dc Unitate et Trinitate Divina, a work recently discovered and edited by Dr. Stolzle (Freiburg, 1891), and afterwards recast into his Thcologia Christiana, he discussed the great mystery. His line of thought may be gathered from his position: a doctrine is not believed merely because God has said it; but because we are convinced by reason that it is so (cf. Int. ad Theol. ii. 18). We need not wonder that he was summoned by the legate. Cardinal Cuno of Preneste, to answer for his t^ching before a Synod at Soissons (1121) at the instance, curi- ously, of his first master, the aged Roscelin (on this see R6musat, i. 81 n.), and of two rival masters of theology, Alberic of Rheims and Lotulf of Novara, the leading spirits in his former expulsion from Laon. The charge against him of SabeUianism seems to have had little justification (Rashdall, i. 53 ; Deutsch, 265). In reality the chief cause of offence lay in his appeal to reason. According to Abelard, the Synod, without either reading or inquiring, in spite also of the efforts of bp. Geoffrey of Chartres to secure an adjournment, ‘ compelled me to burn the book with my ov-n hands. So it was burnt amid general silence.’ He was not allowed to justify his orthodoxy. A copy was handed to him of the Athanasian Creed, ‘ the which I read amid sobs and tears as well as I might.’ He was then sent to St. Medard, a convent near Soissons, which had acquired the reputation of a penitentiary through the stem discipline of its abbot Geoffrey and his frequent use of the whip (Hist. Cal. cc. 9, 10). ‘ Good Jesus,’ cried Abelard in his distress, ‘where wert Thou?’ There he suffered much from the zeal of its prior, the rude but canonized Goswin (Recueil des kistoriens des Gaules, xiv. 445), who had previously come into conflict with him at St. Genevibve, ‘as David with Goliath’ (ib. 442). (The student should note that the records of the Synod of Soissons have been lost. We are dependent on Abelard, Otto of Freising, and St. Bernard). Abelard was soon permitted to return to St. Denys. There his love for truth overwhelmed him in a new calamity. He had been led by Bede (Expos, in Acts, xvii. 34) to doubt whether the foundation vvas indeed due, as the monks pro- claimed, to Dionysius the Areopagite. Character- istically Abelard ‘showed the passage in a joke to some of the monks.’ Alarmed by their threats of handing him over to the king, the patron of the abbey, Abelard fled by night to St. Ayoul’s, a priory near Provins in Champagne. Efforts were made to secure his return, if necessary by force. He himself became willing to explain away the authority of Bede (Deutsch, op. cit. 38, for a de- fence of Abelard). Fortunately at this stage abbot Adam of St. Denys died (Feb. 19, 1122). He was succeeded by the famous Suger (1081-1152), at that time not the saint and reformer he became later through the influence of St. Bernai-d (1127), but one of the king’s trusted ministers. At the instance of certain courtiers, Suger gave permission to Abelard to seek any refuge he liked, provided he did not become the subject of any other monastery. Abelard thus became a hermit, or un- attached member of the house. But his eager pupils soon found out his retreat. His hut of wattles and stubble ‘ in a solitude abandoned to wild beasts and robbers ’ on the Ardusson, near Troyes, became the crowded monastery of the Paraclete. ‘ The whole world,’ wrote Abelard, ‘is gone out after me. By their persecutions they have prevailed nothing.’ Nor was his monastery one to escape suspicion. It was rather a school of philosophers, where disputations took the place of constant devotions, where there were neither vows nor rigid rules. The very title of Paraclete, ‘ the Comforter ’ of his sad life, was an innovation; ‘ dedications should](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29001225_0001_0043.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
