Abelard

Although he was a goliard, Peter Abelard, the glory of the Parisian milieu, meant and contributed much more. He was the first great modern intellectual figure — within the limits of the term “modernity” in the twelfth century. Abelard was the first professor.

To begin, Abelard’s career, like the man, was remarkable. This Breton from the outskirts of Nantes, born in Le Pallet in 1079, belonged to the petty nobility, for whom life was becoming difficult with the advent of a monetary economy. Abelard gladly abandoned a military career to his brothers and devoted himself to his studies.

If Abelard gave up the weapons of a warrior, it was to engage in another type of battle. Always the fighter, he was to become, in the words of Paul Vignaux, “the knight of dialectics.” Always in motion, he went wherever there was a battle to be waged. Always awakening new ideas, he brought enthralling discussions to life wherever he went.

Abelard’s intellectual crusade inevitably led him to Paris. There he revealed another trait of his character: the need to destroy idols. His admitted self-confidence — de me presumens, he willingly said, which does not mean “to be too presuming,” but rather, “being aware of my worth” — led him to attack the most illustrious of the Parisian masters, William of Champeaux. He provoked him, pushed him into a corner, won the students over to his own side. William forced him to leave. But it was too late to stifle that young talent. Abelard became a master. Students followed him to Melun, then to Corbeil, where he ran a school. But his body suddenly failed him, this man who lived only for knowledge; ill, he had to retire for a few years to Brittany.

Having recuperated he went to Paris to look for his old enemy William of Champeaux. There were new jousts; a shaken William modified his doctrine by taking the criticism of his young detractor into account. Abelard, far from being satisfied, intensified his attacks and went so far that he again had to retreat to Melun. But Williams’s victory was in fact a defeat. All his students abandoned him. The defeated old master gave up teaching. Abelard triumphantly returned to Paris and settled in the very place where his old adversary had retreated: on Mount Ste Genevieve. The die was cast. Parisian intellectual culture would no longer have the Ile de la Cité as its center, but would forever have Mount Ste Genevieve on the left bank: this time a man had established the destiny of a quarter.

But Abelard suffered in not having an adversary at his level. As a logician, he was irritated, moreover, at seeing theologians placed above everyone else. He made an oath: he, too, would be a theologian. He returned to his studies and hurried off to Laon to work with Anselm, the most illustrious theologian of the time. The glory of Anselm did not last long in the presence of the iconoclastic passion of the impetuous antitraditionalist:

I therefore approached the old man who owed his reputation more to his advanced age than to his talent or his culture. All those who approached him to have his advice on a subject about which they were uncertain left him even more uncertain. He was admirable in the eyes of his hearers, but of no account in the sight of questioners. His fluency of words was admirable, but in a sense they were contemptible and devoid of reason. When he kindled a fire he filled his house with smoke, rather than lighted it with a blaze. His tree, in full life, was conspicuous from afar to all beholders, but by those who stood near and diligently examined the same it was found to be barren. To this tree therefore, when I had come that I might gather fruit from it, I understood that it was the fig-tree which the Lord cursed, or that old oak to which Lucan compares Pompey, saying–

There stands the shadow of mighty name,
Like to a tall oak in a fruitful field.!”

Edified, I did not waste my time at his school.

Abelard was challenged to make good his promise. He took up the gauntlet. He was told that even if he had great knowledge of philosophy, he knew little of theology. Abelard’s reply was that the same method could be used for both. His inexperience was pointed out. “I replied that it was not my custom to have recourse to tradition to teach, but rather to the resources of my mind.” He then improvised a commentary on the prophesies of Ezekiel which delighted his listeners. People scurried for the notes taken at this lecture to have them copied. A growing audience implored him to continue his commentary. He returned to Paris to do so.

Abelard continued his rise to glory — which was abruptly interrupted in 1118 by his adventures with Heloise. We know the details of this adventure from Abelard’s extraordinary autobiography Historia Calamitatum—“The History of My Troubles” — those premature Confessions.

It all began like Cholderlos de Laclos’ novel, Dangerous Liaisons. Abelard was not a rake. But middle-aged lust attacked this intellectual who, at the age of thirty-nine, knew love only through the books of Ovid and the songs he had composed — in true goliard spirit, but not through experience. He was at the height of his glory and pride. He confessed as much: “I believed there was only myself, the only philosopher in the world.” Heloise was a conquest to add to those of his intelligence. And it was at first an affair of the head as much as of the flesh. He learned of the niece of a colleague, the Canon Fulbert; she was seventeen, pretty, and so cultivated that her scholarship was already famous throughout France. She was the woman he was meant to have. He would not have tolerated an idiot, but he was pleased that Heloise was also very pretty. It was a question of taste and prestige. He coolly devised a plan which succeeded beyond his greatest hopes. The canon entrusted the young Heloise to Abelard’s care as a pupil, proud to be able to give her such a master. When they discussed his salary Abelard easily convinced the thrifty Fulbert to accept payment in kind: room and board. The devil was keeping watch. There were fireworks between the master and the pupil: first, intellectual exchanges, then, soon after, carnal exchanges. Abelard abandoned his teaching, his work — he was possessed. The affair continued and deepened. A love was born which would never end. It would resist all difficulties, then tragedy.

The first difficulty came when they were caught in the act. Abelard had to leave the home of his deceived host. The lovers met elsewhere. At first hidden, their relationship was soon flaunted. They believed they were above all scandal.

Next, Heloise became pregnant. Abelard took advantage of Fulbert’s absence to take his lover, disguised as a nun, to his sister's home in Brittany. There Heloise gave birth to a son whom they called Astralabe (the danger of being the child of a couple of intellectuals . . .).

The third difficulty was the issue of marriage. Abelard, with a heavy heart, would have made amends to Fulbert for his actions by offering to marry Heloise. In his admirable study on the famous couple, Etienne Gilson has shown that Abelard’s repugnance was not due to his being a clerk. As an unordained priest he was canonically allowed to have a wife. But Abelard feared that as a married man he would see his academic career hindered, and would become the laughing stock of the scholarly world.

WOMEN AND MARRIAGE IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

In the twelfth century, there was in fact a very strong antimarriage current. At the same time that women were being liberated, were no longer considered the property of men or as baby-making machines, when the question of whether women had souls was no longer being asked — this was the age of Marian expansion in the West — marriage was the object of disdain, both in noble circles — courtly love, carnal or spiritual, existed only outside marriage; it was embodied in Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere — as well as in scholarly circles, where a complete theory of natural love, later found in the Roman de la Rose in the following century, was being developed.

There was a strong female presence, therefore. And Heloise’s appearance beside Abelard, while it accompanied the movement supported by the goliards, which demanded the pleasures of the flesh for clerks as well as priests, strongly highlighted an aspect of the new face of the intellectual in the twelfth century. His humanism demanded that he be fully a man. He rejected anything that might appear to be a diminution of his self. He needed a woman by his side to be complete. With the freedom of their vocabulary, the goliards stressed, with the support of citations from the two Testaments, that men and women were endowed with organs whose use should not be made light of.

Disregarding the memory of so many lewd and dubious jokes, we should think of that climate and psychology, to better grasp the significance of the tragedy which was to occur, and to better understand the feelings of Abelard.

Heloise was the first to express her feelings. In a surprising letter she begs Abelard to reject the notion of marriage. She evokes the image of the couple of poor intellectuals which they would form:

You could not give your attention at the same time to a wife and to philosophy. What concord is there between pupils and serving-maids, desks and cradles, books or tablets and distaves, styles or pens and spindles? Who, either, intent upon sacred or philosophic meditations can endure the wailing of children, the lullabies of the nurses soothing them, the tumultuous mob of the house- hold, male as well as female? Who, moreover, will have strength to tolerate the foul and incessant squalor of babes? The rich, you will say, can, whose palaces or ample abodes contain retreats, of which their opulence does not feel the cost nor is it tormented by daily worries. But the condition of philosophers is not, I say, as that of the rich, nor do those who seek wealth or involve themselves in secular cares devote themselves to divine or philosophic duties.

Moreover, there were authorities to support this position and condemn the marriage of the sage. One might cite Theophrastus or rather St Jerome, who repeated his arguments in Adversus Jovinianum, which was so popular in the twelfth century. And, joining the Ancient to the Church Father, there was Cicero who, after rejecting Terentia, refused the sister of his friend Hirtius. And yet Abelard rejected Heloise’s sacrifice. The wedding was decided, but remained a secret. Fulbert, whom they wished to appease, was notified, and even attended the nuptial benediction.

But the intentions of the various actors in this drama were not the same. Abelard, with his conscience at peace, wanted to resume his work with Heloise remaining in the shadows. And Fulbert wanted to announce the marriage, make public the satisfaction he had obtained, and undoubtedly weaken the credibility of Abelard, whom he had never pardoned.

Abelard, in distress, conceived of a strategy. Heloise would go into retreat in the convent of Argenteuil, where he had her wear a novice’s habit. That would put an end to the stories. In that disguise, Heloise, who had no other will than that of Abelard, waited for the rumors to cease. They had not counted on Fulbert, for he thought he had been tricked. He believed that Abelard had gotten rid of Heloise by having her enter a convent, and that the marriage had been dissolved. One night he led an angry mob to Abelard’s house where a crowd gathered, Abelard was mutilated, and the next morning there was a huge scandal.

Abelard went to hide his shame at the royal abbey of Saint-Denis. Remembering what was said above, one can understand the extent of his despair. Could a eunuch still be a man?

We will abandon Heloise here, as she no longer plays a role in the present work. Yet we know how the two lovers, from one cloister to another, continued to exchange the essence of their souls until death did them part.

NEW BATTLES

His intellectual passion cured Abelard. With his wounds bandaged he once again found his fighting spirit. The ignorant and slovenly monks weighed heavily on him. With his arrogant attitude Abelard weighed equally heavily on the monks, whose solitude was all the more troubled by the many disciples who came to implore the master to resume his teaching again. He wrote his first treatise on theology for them. Its success did not make everyone happy. In 1112 a conventicle in the guise of a council assembled in Soissons to judge it. In a tumultuous atmosphere — to impress the council his enemies had stirred up the mob who threatened to lynch Abelard — in spite of the efforts of the bishop of Chartres who demanded additional information, the book was burned and Abelard was sentenced to end his days in a monastery.

He returned to Saint-Denis, where his quarrels with the monks became increasingly heated. He inflamed them by showing that the famous pages by Hilduin on the founder of the abbey were only so much nonsense, and that the first bishop of Paris had nothing to do with Denis of Athens [a.k.a. Dionysius the Areopagite], the Areopagite whom St Paul had converted. The following year he fled the monastery and finally found refuge with the bishop of Troyes. He was given some land, near Nogent-sur-Seine, settled there as a recluse, and built a little oratory to the Trinity. He had forgotten nothing; the condemned book was dedicated to the Trinity.

But his disciples soon discovered his refuge and there was a stampede toward solitude. A scholarly village of tents and huts rose up. The oratory, enlarged and rebuilt out of stone, was dedicated to the Paraclete, which was a provocative innovation. Only Abelard’s teachings could make these ersatz country folk forget the satisfactions of the city. They sadly recalled that “in the city students enjoy all the conveniences they need.”

Abelard’s peace did not last long. Two “new apostles,” he said, were organizing a conspiracy against him. They were St Norbert, the founder of the Prémontré, and St Bernard, the reformer of Citeaux. He was persecuted so harshly that he dreamt of fleeing to the East:

God knows, I fell into such a state of despair that I thought of quitting the realm of Christendom and going over to the heathen [to go to the Saracens, as is specified in Jean de Meung’s translation], there to live a quiet Christian life amongst the enemies of Christ at the cost of what tribute was asked. I told myself they would receive me more kindly for having no suspicion that I was a Christian on account of the charges against me.”

He was spared that extreme solution — the first temptation of the Western intellectual who despairs of the world in which he lives.

He was elected abbot of a Breton monastery, but there were new confrontations. Abelard felt he was living among barbarians. Only Low Breton [the language of Lower Brittany] was spoken there. The monks were unimaginably vulgar. He attempted to refine them. They tried to poison him. He fled from there ins 1132.

Abelard appeared once again on Mount Ste Geneviéve in 1136. He resumed teaching with more students than ever before. Arnold of Brescia, banished from Italy for fomenting unrest in the towns, took refuge in Paris, joined up with Abelard, and brought his poor disciples, who begged for a living to listen to his teaching. Ever since his book was burned in Soissons, Abelard never ceased to write. It was only in 1140, however, that his enemies again began attacking his works. His ties with the Roman proscript must have been the greatest incitement to their hostility. It is understandable that the alliance of town dialectics and the democratic communal movement would appear signifi- cant to his adversaries.

ST BERNARD AND ABELARD

Leading the movement against Abelard was St Bernard. According to the apt expression of Pere Chenu, the abbot of Citeaux “was in another realm of Christendom.” That rural man, who remained a medieval and foremost a soldier, was ill-suited to understand the town intelligentsia. He saw only one course of action against the heretic or the infidel: brute force. The champion of the armed Crusade, he did not believe in an intellectual crusade. When Peter the Venerable asked him to read the translation of the Koran in order to reply to Mohammed in writing, Bernard did not respond. In the solitude of the cloisters he delved into mystical meditation— which he raised to the greatest heights — to find what he needed to return to the world as an administrator of justice. That apostle of the reclusive life was always prepared to fight against innovations he deemed dangerous. During the last years of his life he essentially governed western Christian Europe, dictating his orders to the pope, approving military orders, dreaming of creating a Western cavalry, the militia of Christ; he was a great inquisitor before his time.

A clash with Abelard was inevitable. It was St Bernard’s second in command, William of Saint-Thierry, who led the attack. In a letter to St Bernard, William denounced the “new theologian,” and encouraged his illustrious friend to pursue him. St Bernard went to Paris, tried to lure Abelard’s students away (with the little success so far as we know), and became convinced of the seriousness of the evil Abelard was spreading. A meeting between the two men resolved nothing. One of Abelard’s disciples suggested they debate in Sens before an assembly of theologians and bishops. The master undertook once again to uproot Abelard’s followers. In secret St Bernard entirely changed the character of the gathering. He transformed the audience into a council, and his adversary into the accused. The night before the opening debate St Bernard assembled the bishops and gave them a complete file showing Abelard as a dangerous heretic. The next day Abelard could only impugn the competence of the assembly and make an appeal to the pope.
The bishops communicated a very mitigated condemnation to Rome. Alarmed, St Bernard quickly regrouped. His secretary gave the cardinals, who showed him complete devotion, letters which extracted a condemnation of Abelard out of the pope, and Abelard’s books were burned at St Peter’s. Abelard learned of this en route, and took refuge at Cluny. This time he was broken. 

Peter the Venerable, who welcomed him with infinite charity, arranged his reconciliation with St Bernard, persuaded Rome to lift his excommunication, and sent him to the monastery of St-Marcel, in Chalon-sur-Sa6éne, where he died on April 21, 1142. The great abbot of Cluny had sent him written absolution, and in a final gesture of exquisite delicacy, had it sent to Heloise, who was then the abbess of the Paraclete.

Abelard’s was a typical existence, while his destiny was extraordinary. From the considerable body of Abelard’s works we unfortunately have space to discern only a few remarkable aspects of it here.

THE LOGICIAN

Abelard was foremost a logician, and like all great philosophers he primarily contributed a method. He was the great champion of dialectics. With his Logica Ingredientibus, and especially with his Sic et Non of 1122, he gave Western thought its first Discours de la Méthode. In it he proves with shocking simplicity the necessity of having recourse to reason. The Church Fathers could agree on no issue; where one of them said white, the other said black — Sic et Non.
Whence the necessity of a science of language. Words are made to signify — nominalism—but they are based on reality.

They correspond to the things they signify. The whole effort of logic must consist of making feasible the signifying appropriateness of language to the reality expressed by it. For this demanding mind, language was not the veil of reality, but rather its expression. This professor believed in the ontological value of his instrument, the word.

THE MORALIST

The logician was also a moralist. In his Ethica seu Scito te ipsum this Christian, nourished on ancient philosophy, grants introspection as much importance as monastic mystics such as St Bernard or William of Saint-Thierry did. But as de Gandillac has said, “whereas for the Cistercians ‘Christian Socratism’ was above all a meditation on the impotence of man-the-sinner,  self-knowledge appears in the Ethics as an analysis of free will through which it is up to us to accept or reject the contempt for God which constitutes sin.”

To St Bernard’s cries: “Born of sin, of sinners, we give birth to sinners; born of debtors, we give birth to debtors; born corrupt, we give birth to the corrupt; born slaves, we give birth to slaves. We are wounded as soon as we come into this world, while we live in it, and when we leave it; from the soles of our feet to the top of our heads, nothing is healthy in us,” Abelard replied that sin is only an omission:

To sin is to despise the Creator; that is, not to do for Him what we believe we should do for Him, or, not to renounce what we think should be renounced on His behalf. We have defined sin nega- tively by saying that it means not doing or not renouncing what we ought to do or renounce. Clearly, then, we have shown that sin has no reality. It exists rather in not deing than in being.
Similarly, we could define shadows by saying: The absence of light where light usually is.

And he insisted that man has that power to consent, that assent or refusal given to the uprightness which is the center of moral life.

Thus Abelard contributed strongly to questioning the conditions of one of the essential sacraments of the Christian Church: penance. Confronted with a radically evil man, the Church in the barbarous age had made lists of sins and the appropriate punishments, copied from barbarian laws. These penitentials attested that, for man of the High Middle Ages, what was essential in penitence was sin, and consequently, punishment. Abelard expressed and strengthened the tendency to inverse that attitude. Henceforth the sinner was most important, that is, his intention, and the primary act of penitence would be contrition. “Sin does not persist,” wrote Abelard, “along with this heartfelt contrition which we call true penitence. Sin is contempt of God or consent to evil; and the love of God which calls forth our grief, allows no vice. ”The many confessors who appeared at the end of the century had incorporated this reversal in the psychology —if not the theology —of penitence. Thus in the towns and town schools, psychological analysis gained increasing importance and the sacraments were humanized in the fullest sense of the term. What enrichment for the mind of Western man!

THE HUMANIST

Let us stress only one trait of Abelard the theologian. No one ever proclaimed more than he the alliance of reason and faith. In this realm, while awaiting St Thomas, he surpassed the great initiator of new theology, St Anselm, who in the preceding century had set forth his rich formula: faith itself seeking understanding (fides quarens intellectum).

In this he satisfied the needs of the scholarly milieux which in theology “demanded human and philosophic reasoning and sought more what could be understood rather than what could be said: of what use, they asked, were words devoid of intelligibility? One cannot believe in what one does not understand, and it is ridiculous to teach others what neither oneself nor one’s listeners cannot understand through thought.”

During the last months of his life at Cluny, this humanist undertook to write, in great serenity, his Dialogus inter philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum [“Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian”]. In it he wanted to show that neither original sin nor the Incarnation had caused an absolute break in the history of humanity. He sought to illustrate what the three religions, which for him represented the sum total of human thought, had in common. He aimed to discover the natural laws which, beyond religions, would enable one to recognize the son of God in all men. His humanism culminated in tolerance and, unlike those who were uncompromising, he sought that which connected men, remembering there are “many mansions in the Father’s house.” If Abelard was the highest expression of the Parisian milieu, we must go to Chartres to discover other traits of the emerging intellectual.

Intellectuals in the Middle Ages
Jacques Le Goff