Chapter I: Preface

The author does not think it necessary to offer any apology for having written a life of Abélard. The intense dramatic interest of his life is known from a number of brief notices and sketches, but English readers have no complete presentation of the facts of that remarkable career in our own tongue. The _History of Abailard_ of Mr. Berington, dating from the eighteenth century, is no longer adequate or useful. Many French and German scholars have rewritten Abélard’s life in the light of recent knowledge and feeling, but, beyond the short sketches to be found in Compayré, Poole, Rashdall, Cotter Morison, and others, no English writer of the nineteenth century has given us a complete study of this unique and much misunderstood personality. Perhaps one who has also had a monastic, scholastic, and ecclesiastical experience may approach the task with a certain confidence.

In the matter of positive information the last century has added little directly to the story of Abélard’s life. Indirectly, however, modern research has necessarily helped to complete the picture; and modern feeling, modern humanism, reinterprets much of the story.

Since the work is intended for a circle of readers who cannot be assumed to have a previous acquaintance with the authorities who are cited here and there, it is necessary to indicate their several positions in advance. The chief sources of the story are the letters of Abélard and Heloise. The first letter of the series, entitled the ‘Story of my Calamities,’ is an autobiographical sketch, covering the first fifty years of Abélard’s life. To these must be added the letters of St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux: of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny: of Jean Roscelin, canon of Compiègne, Abélard’s early teacher: and of Fulques of Deuil, a contemporary monk. A number of Latin works written shortly after Abélard’s death complete, or complicate, the narrative. The principal of these are: the _Vita Beati Bernardi_, written by his monk-secretary: the _Vita Beati Goswini_, by two monks of the period: the _De gestis Frederici I._ of a Cistercian bishop, Otto of Freising: the _Metalogicus_ and the _Historia Pontificalis_ of John of Salisbury: and the _Vita Ludovici Grossi_ and _De rebus a se gestis_ of Suger, abbot of St. Denis, and first royal councillor. Many of the chronicles of the twelfth century also contain brief references.

Chief amongst the later French historians is Du Boulai with his _Historia Universitatis Parisiensis_—‘the most stupid man who ever wrote a valuable book,’ says Mr. R. L. Poole. Amongst other French chroniclers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we may mention: De Launoy (_De scholis celebrioribus_), Dubois (_Historia Ecclesiæ Parisiensis_), Lobineau (_Histoire de Bretagne_), Félibien (_Histoire de l’abbaye de Saint Denys_ and _Histoire de la ville de Paris_), Longueval (_Histoire de l’Église Gallicane_), Tarbé (_Recherches historiques sur la ville de Sens_), and, of course, the _Histoire littéraire de la France_, _Gallia Christiana_, and ecclesiastical historians generally.

A large number of ‘lives’ of Abélard have been founded on these documents. In French we have _La vie de P. Abélard_ of Gervaise, a monkish admirer of the eighteenth century, far from ascetic in temper, but much addicted to imaginative description: the historical essay of Mme. and M. Guizot, prefixed to M. Oddoul’s translation of the letters of Abélard and Heloise: the _Abélard_ of M. Rémusat, pronounced by Ste. Beuve himself to be ‘un chef d’œuvre’: and the _Lettres Complètes_ of M. Gréard, with a helpful introduction. In German Reuter chiefly discusses Abélard as a thinker in his _Geschichte der religiösen Aufklärung_: Deutsch is mainly preoccupied with his theology in his _Peter Abälard_, but gives an exhaustive study of the last years of his life in _Abälards Verurtheilung zu Sens_: Neander discusses him in his _Heilige Bernhard_: and Hausrath offers the most complete and authoritative study of his career and character in his recent _Peter Abälard_. In English we have, as I said, the eighteenth-century work of Berington, a small fantastic American version (quite valueless), and the more or less lengthy studies of Abélard found in Rashdall’s fine _Universities of Europe_, Cotter Morison’s _Life and Times of St. Bernard_ (scarcely a judicious sketch), Compayré’s _Abélard and the Universities_ (in which the biography is rather condensed), Roger Vaughan’s _Life of St. Thomas of Aquin_, and Mr. R. L. Poole’s _Illustrations of the History of Mediæval Thought_ (from whom we may regret we have not received a complete study of Abélard).

_January_ 31, 1901.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE QUEST OF MINERVA 1

II. A BRILLIANT VICTORY 18

III. PROGRESS OF THE ACADEMIC WAR 41

IV. THE IDOL OF PARIS 64

V. DEAD SEA FRUIT 96

VI. THE MONK OF ST. DENIS 124

VII. THE TRIAL OF A HERETIC 146

VIII. CLOUD UPON CLOUD 163

IX. BACK TO CHAMPAGNE 181

X. THE TRIALS OF AN ABBOT 202

XI. THE LETTERS OF ABÉLARD AND HELOISE 224

XII. A RETURN TO THE ARENA 253

XIII. THE FINAL BLOW 281

XIV. CONSUMMATUM EST 309

XV. THE INFLUENCE OF ABÉLARD 329