HISTORIA CALAMITATUM

THE STORY OF MY MISFORTUNES

An Autobiography by Peter Abélard

Translated by Henry Adams Bellows

Introduction by Ralph Adams Cram

INTRODUCTION

The "Historia Calamitatum" of Peter Abélard is one of those humandocuments, out of the very heart of the Middle Ages, thatilluminates by the glow of its ardour a shadowy period that hasbeen made even more dusky and incomprehensible by unsympatheticcommentators and the ill-digested matter of "source-books. " Likethe "Confessions" of St. Augustine it is an authentic revelation ofpersonality and, like the latter, it seems to show how unchangeableis man, how consistent unto himself whether he is of the sixthcentury or the twelfth--or indeed of the twentieth century. "Evolution" may change the flora and fauna of the world, or modifyits physical forms, but man is always the same and the unrolling ofthe centuries affects him not at all. If we can assume the vividpersonality, the enormous intellectual power and the clear, keenmentality of Abélard and his contemporaries and immediatesuccessors, there is no reason why "The Story of My Misfortunes"should not have been written within the last decade. 

They are large assumptions, for this is not a period in worldhistory when the informing energy of life expresses itself throughsuch qualities, whereas the twelfth century was of precisely thisnature. The antecedent hundred years had seen the recovery from thebarbarism that engulfed Western Europe after the fall of Rome, andthe generation of those vital forces that for two centuries were toinfuse society with a vigour almost unexampled in its potency andin the things it brought to pass. The parabolic curve thatdescribes the trajectory of Mediaevalism was then emergent out of"chaos and old night" and Abélard and his opponent, St. Bernard, rode high on the mounting force in its swift and almost violentascent. 

Pierre du Pallet, yclept Abélard, was born in 1079 and died in1142, and his life precisely covers the period of the birth, development and perfecting of that Gothic style of architecturewhich is one of the great exemplars of the period. Actually, theNorman development occupied the years from 1050 to 1125 while theinitiating and determining of Gothic consumed only fifteen years, from Bury, begun in 1125, to Saint-Denis, the work of Abbot Suger, the friend and partisan of Abélard, in 1140. It was the time of theCrusades, of the founding and development of schools anduniversities, of the invention or recovery of great arts, of thegrowth of music, poetry and romance. It was the age of great kingsand knights and leaders of all kinds, but above all it was theepoch of a new philosophy, refounded on the newly revealed cornerstones of Plato and Aristotle, but with a new content, a newimpulse and a new method inspired by Christianity. 

All these things, philosophy, art, personality, character, were theproduct of the time, which, in its definiteness and consistency, stands apart from all other epochs in history. The social systemwas that of feudalism, a scheme of reciprocal duties, privilegesand obligations as between man and man that has never been excelledby any other system that society has developed as its own method ofoperation. As Dr. De Wulf has said in his illuminating book"Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages" (a volume thatshould be read by any one who wishes rightly to understand thespirit and quality of Mediaevalism), "the feudal sentiment _parexcellence_ . . . Is the sentiment of the value and dignity of theindividual man. The feudal man lived as a free man; he was masterin his own house; he sought his end in himself; he was--and this isa scholastic expression, --_propter seipsum existens_: all feudalobligations were founded upon respect for personality and the givenword. "

Of course this admirable scheme of society with its guild system ofindustry, its absence of usury in any form and its just sense ofcomparative values, was shot through and through with religion bothin faith and practice. Catholicism was universally and implicitlyaccepted. Monasticism had redeemed Europe from barbarism and Clunyhad freed the Church from the yoke of German imperialism. Thisunity and immanence of religion gave a consistency to societyotherwise unobtainable, and poured its vitality into every form ofhuman thought and action. 

It was Catholicism and the spirit of feudalism that preserved menfrom the dangers inherent in the immense individualism of the time. With this powerful and penetrating coördinating force men were safeto go about as far as they liked in the line of individuality, whereas today, for example, the unifying force of a common andvital religion being absent and nothing having been offered to takeits place, the result of a similar tendency is egotism and anarchy. These things happened in the end in the case of Mediaevalism whenthe power and the influence of religion once began to weaken, andthe Renaissance and Reformation dissolved the fabric of a unifiedsociety. Thereafter it became necessary to bring some order out ofthe spiritual, intellectual and physical chaos through theapplication of arbitrary force, and so came absolutism ingovernment, the tyranny of the new intellectualism, the CatholicInquisition and the Puritan Theocracy. 

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, the balance isjustly preserved, though it was but an unstable equilibrium, andtherefore during the time of Abélard we find the widest diversityof speculation and freedom of thought which continue unhampered formore than a hundred years. The mystical school of the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris follows one line (perhaps the most nearly right ofall though it was submerged by the intellectual force and vivacityof the Scholastics) with Hugh of St. Victor as its greatestexponent. The Franciscans and Dominicans each possessed greatschools of philosophy and dogmatic theology, and in addition therewere a dozen individual line of speculation, each vitalized by someone personality, daring, original, enthusiastic. This prodigiousmental and spiritual activity was largely fostered by the schools, colleges and universities that had suddenly appeared all overEurope. Never was such activity along educational lines. Almostevery cathedral had its school, and many of the abbeys as well, asfor example, in France alone, Cluny, Citeaux and Bec, St. Martin ofTours, Laon, Chartres, Rheims and Paris. To these schools studentspoured in from all over the world in numbers mounting to manythousands for such as Paris for example, and the mutual rivalrieswere intense and sometimes disorderly. Groups of students wouldchoose their own masters and follow them from place to place, evensubjecting them to discipline if in their opinion they did not liveup to the intellectual mark they had set as their standard. Asthere was not only one religion and one social system, but oneuniversal language as well, this gathering from all the fourquarters of Europe was perfectly possible, and had much to do withthe maintenance of that unity which marked society for three centuries. 

At the time of Abélard the schools of Chartres and Paris were atthe height of their fame and power. Fulbert, Bernard and Thierry, all of Chartres, had fixed its fame for a long period, and at ParisHugh and Richard of St. Victor and William of Champeaux were namesto conjure with, while Anselm of Laon, Adelard of Bath, Alan ofLille, John of Salisbury, Peter Lombard, were all from time to timestudents or teachers in one of the schools of the Cathedral, theAbbey of St. Victor or Ste. Geneviève. 

Earlier in the Middle Ages the identity of theology and philosophyhad been proclaimed, following the Neo-Platonic and Augustiniantheory, and the latter (cf. Peter Damien and Duns Scotus Eriugena)was even reduced to a position that made it no more than theobedient handmaid of theology. In the eleventh century however, St. Anselm had drawn a clear distinction between faith and reason, andthereafter theology and philosophy were generally accepted asindividual but allied sciences, both serving as lines of approachto truth but differing in their method. Truth was one and thereforethere could be no conflict between the conclusions reached afterdifferent fashions. In the twelfth century Peter of Blois led acertain group called "rigourists" who still looked askance atphilosophy, or rather at the intellectual methods by which itproceeded, and they were inclined to condemn it as "the devil'sart, " but they were on the losing side and John of Salisbury, Alanof Lille, Gilbert de la Porrée and Hugh of St. Victor prevailed intheir contention that philosophers were "_humanae videlicetsapientiae amatores_, " while theologians were "_divinae scripturaedoctores. "

Cardinal Mercier, himself the greatest contemporary exponent ofScholastic philosophy, defines philosophy as "the science of thetotality of things. " The twelfth century was a time when men werestriving to see phenomena in this sense and established a greatrational synthesis that should yet be in full conformity with thedogmatic theology of revealed religion. Abélard was one of the mostenthusiastic and daring of these Mediaeval thinkers, and it is notsurprising that he should have found himself at issue not only withthe duller type of theologians but with his philosophical peersthemselves. He was an intellectual force of the first magnitude anda master of dialectic; he was also an egotist through and through, and a man of strong passions. He would and did use his logicalfaculty and his mastery of dialectic to justify his own desires, whether these were for carnal satisfaction or the maintenance of anoriginal intellectual concept. It was precisely this danger thataroused the fears of the "rigourists" and in the light ofsucceeding events in the domain of intellectualism it is impossibleto deny that there was some justification for their gloomyapprehensions. In St. Thomas Aquinas this intellectualizing processmarked its highest point and beyond there was no margin of safety. He himself did not overstep the verge of danger, but after him thislimit was overpassed. The perfect balance between mind and spiritwas achieved by Hugh of St. Victor, but afterwards the severancebegan and on the one side was the unwholesome hyper-spiritualizationof the Rhenish mystics, on the other the false intellectualism ofDescartes, Kant and the entire modern school of materialisticphilosophy. It was the clear prevision of this inevitable issuethat made of St. Bernard not only an implacable opponent of Abélardbut of the whole system of Scholasticism as well. For a time he wasvictorious. Abélard was silenced and the mysticism of theVictorines triumphed, only to be superseded fifty years later whenthe two great orders, Dominican and Franciscan, produced theirtriumphant protagonists of intellectualism, Alelander HalesandAlbertus Magnus, and finally the greatest pure intellect of alltime, St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Bernard, St. Francis of Assisi, theVictorines, maintained that after all, as Henri Bergson was to say, seven hundred years later, "the mind of man by its very nature isincapable of apprehending reality, " and that therefore faith isbetter than reason. Lord Bacon came to the same conclusion when hewrote "Let men please themselves as they will in admiring andalmost adoring the human kind, this is certain; that, as an unevenmirrour distorts the rays of objects according to its own figureand section, so the mind . . . Cannot be trusted. " And Hugh of St. Victor himself, had written, even in the days of Abélard: "Therewas a certain wisdom that seemed such to them that knew not thetrue wisdom. The world found it and began to be puffed up, thinkingitself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom it becamepresumptuous and boasted it would attain the highest wisdom. And itmade itself a ladder of the face of creation. . . . Then those thingswhich were seen were known and there were other things which werenot known; and through those which were manifest they expected toreach those that were hidden. And they stumbled and fell into thefalsehoods of their own imagining . . . So God made foolish thewisdom of this world, and He pointed out another wisdom, whichseemed foolishness and was not. For it preached Christ crucified, in order that truth might be sought in humility. But the worlddespised it, wishing to contemplate the works of God, which He hadmade a source of wonder, and it did not wish to venerate what Hehad set for imitation, neither did it look to its own disease, seeking medicine in piety; but presuming on a false health, it gaveitself over with vain curiosity to the study of alien things. "

These considerations troubled Abélard not at all. He was consciousof a mind of singular acuteness and a tongue of parts, both ofwhich would do whatever he willed. Beneath all the tumultuous talkof Paris, when he first arrived there, lay the great and unsolvedproblem of Universals and this he promptly made his own, rushing inwhere others feared to tread. William of Champeaux had rested on aPlatonic basis, Abélard assumed that of Aristotle, and the clashbegan. It is not a lucid subject, but the best abstract may befound in Chapter XIV of Henry Adams' "Mont-Saint-Michel andChartres" while this and the two succeeding chapters give the mostluminous and vivacious account of the principles at issue inthis most vital of intellectual feuds. 

"According to the latest authorities, the doctrine of universalswhich convulsed the schools of the twelfth century has neverreceived an adequate answer. What is a species: what is a genus ora family or an order? More or less convenient terms of classification, about which the twelfth century cared very little, while it careddeeply about the essence of classes! Science has become too complexto affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives fornothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits, almost as earnestly as in the twelfth century, when the whole fieldof human and superhuman activity was shut between these barriersof substance, universals, and particulars. Little has changed exceptthe vocabulary and the method. The schools knew that their societyhung for life on the demonstration that God, the ultimate universal, was a reality, out of which all other universal truths or realitiessprang. Truth was a real thing, outside of human experience. Theschools of Paris talked and thought of nothing else. John of Salisbury, who attended Abélard's lectures about 1136, and became Bishop ofChartres in 1176, seems to have been more surprised than we need be atthe intensity of the emotion. 'One never gets away from this question, 'he said. 'From whatever point a discussion starts, it is always ledback and attached to that. It is the madness of Rufus about Naevia;"He thinks of nothing else; talks of nothing else, and if Naevia didnot exist, Rufus would be dumb. "'

. . . "In these scholastic tournaments the two champions started fromopposite points:--one from the ultimate substance, God, --theuniversal, the ideal, the type;--the other from the individual, Socrates, the concrete, the observed fact of experience, the objectof sensual perception. The first champion--William in this instance--assumed that the universal was a real thing; and for that reason hewas called a realist. His opponent--Abélard--held that theuniversal was only nominally real; and on that account he wascalled a nominalist. Truth, virtue, humanity, exist as units andrealities, said William. Truth, replied Abélard, is only the sum ofall possible facts that are true, as humanity is the sum of allactual human beings. The ideal bed is a form, made by God, saidPlato. The ideal bed is a name, imagined by ourselves, saidAristotle. 'I start from the universe, ' said William. 'I start fromthe atom, ' said Abélard; and, once having started, they necessarilycame into collision at some point between the two. "

In this "Story of My Misfortunes" Abélard gives his own account ofthe triumphant manner in which he confounded his master, William, but as Henry Adams says, "We should be more credulous thantwelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abélard's word in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most accomplisheddialectician of the age by an objection so familiar that no otherdialectician was ever silenced by it--whatever may have been thecase with theologians-and so obvious that it could not have troubleda scholar of fifteen. William stated a selected doctrine as old asPlato; Abélard interposed an objection as old as Aristotle. ProbablyPlato and Aristotle had received the question and answer fromphilosophers ten thousand years older than themselves. Certainlythe whole of philosophy has always been involved in this dispute. "

So began the battle of the schools with all its more than militarystrategy and tactics, and in the end it was a drawn battle, inspite of its marvels of intellectual heroism and dialecticalsublety. Says Henry Adams again:--

"In every age man has been apt to dream uneasily, rolling from sideto side, beating against imaginary bars, unless, tired out, he hassunk into indifference or scepticism. Religious minds preferscepticism. The true saint is a profound sceptic; a totaldisbeliever in human reason, who has more than once joined hands onthis ground with some who were at best sinners. Bernard was a totaldisbeliever in Scholasticism; so was Voltaire. Bernard brought thesociety of his time to share his scepticism, but could give thesociety no other intellectual amusement to relieve its restlessness. His crusade failed; his ascetic enthusiasm faded; God came no nearer. If there was in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typicalEnglishman of the future Church of England type than John ofSalisbury, he has left no trace; and John wrote a description ofhis time which makes a picturesque contrast with the picturepainted by Abélard, his old master, of the century at its beginning. John weighed Abélard and the schools against Bernard and thecloister, and coolly concluded that the way to truth led ratherthrough Citeaux, which brought him to Chartres as Bishop in 1176, and to a mild scepticism in faith. 'I prefer to doubt' he said, 'rather than rashly define what is hidden. ' The battle with theschools had then resulted only in creating three kinds of sceptics:--the disbelievers in human reason; the passive agnostics; and thesceptics proper, who would have been atheists had they dared. Thefirst class was represented by the School of St. Victor; the secondby John of Salisbury himself; the third, by a class of schoolmenwhom he called Cornificii, as though they made a practice ofinventing horns of dilemma on which to fix their opponents; as, forexample, they asked whether a pig which was led to market was ledby the man or the cord. One asks instantly: What cord?--WhetherGrace, for instance, or Free Will?

"Bishop John used the science he had learned in the school only toreach the conclusion that, if philosophy were a science at all, itsbest practical use was to teach charity--love. Even the early, superficial debates of the schools, in 1100-50, had so exhaustedthe subject that the most intelligent men saw how little was to begained by pursuing further those lines of thought. The twelfthcentury had already reached the point where the seventeenth centurystood when Descartes renewed the attempt to give a solid, philosophical basis for deism by his celebrated '_Cogito, ergo sum_. 'Although that ultimate fact seemed new to Europe when Descartesrevived it as the starting-point of his demonstration, it was asold and familiar as St. Augustine to the twelfth century, and aslittle conclusive as any other assumption of the Ego or the Non-Ego. The schools argued, according to their tastes, from unity tomultiplicity, or from multiplicity to unity; but what they wantedwas to connect the two. They tried realism and found that it led topantheism. They tried nominalism and found that it ended inmaterialism. They attempted a compromise in conceptualism whichbegged the whole question. Then they lay down, exhausted. In theseventeenth century--the same violent struggle broke out again, andwrung from Pascal the famous outcry of despair in which the Frenchlanguage rose, perhaps for the last time, to the grand style of thetwelfth century. To the twelfth century it belongs; to the centuryof faith and simplicity; not to the mathematical certainties ofDescartes and Leibnitz and Newton, or to the mathematicalabstractions of Spinoza. Descartes had proclaimed his famousconceptual proof of God: 'I am conscious of myself, and must exist;I am conscious of God and He must exist. ' Pascal wearily repliedthat it was not God he doubted, but logic. He was tortured by theimpossibility of rejecting man's reason by reason; unconsciouslysceptical, he forced himself to disbelieve in himself rather thanadmit a doubt of God. Man had tried to prove God, and had failed:'The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote (_éloignées_) from thereasoning of men, and so contradictory (_impliquées_, far fetched)that they made little impression; and even if they served toconvince some people, it would only be during the instant that theysee the demonstration; an hour afterwards they fear to havedeceived themselves. '"

Abélard was always, as he has been called, a scholastic adventurer, a philosophical and theological freelance, and it was after theCalamity that he followed those courses that resulted finally inhis silencing and his obscure death. It is almost impossible for usof modern times to understand the violence of partisanship arousedby his actions and published words that centre apparently aroundthe placing of the hermitage he had made for himself under thepatronage of the third Person of the Trinity, the Paraclete, theSpirit of love and compassion and consolation, and the consequentarguments by which he justified himself. To us it seems that he wasonly trying to exalt the power of the Holy Spirit, a pious actionat the least but to the episcopal and monastic conservators of thefaith he seems to have been guilty of trying to rationalize anunsolvable mystery, to find an intellectual solution forbidden toman. In some obscure way the question seems to be involved in thatother of the function of the Blessed Virgin as the fount of mercyand compassion, and at this time when the cult of the Mother of Godhad reached its highest point of potency and poignancy anything ofthe sort seemed intolerable. 

For a time the affairs of Abélard prospered: Abbot Suger of Saint-Deniswas his defender, and he enjoyed the favor of the Pope and theKing. He was made an abbot and his influence spread in everydirection. In 1137 the King died and conditions at Rome changed sothat St. Bernard became almost Pope and King in his own person. Within a year he proceeded against Abélard; his "Theology" wascondemned at a council of Sens, this judgment was confirmed by thePope, and the penalty of silence was imposed on the author--probably the most severe punishment he could be called upon toendure. As a matter of fact it was fatal to him. He startedforthwith for Rome but stopped at the Abbey of Cluny in the companyof its Abbot, Peter the Venerable, "the most amiable figure of thetwelfth century, " and no very devoted admirer of St. Bernard, towhom, as a matter of fact, he had once written, "You perform allthe difficult religious duties; you fast, you watch, you suffer;but you will not endure the easy ones-you do not love. " Here hefound two years of peace after his troubled life, dying in the fullcommunion of the Church on 21 April, 1142. 

The problems of philosophy and theology that were so vital in theMiddle Ages interest us no more, even when they are less obscurethan those so rife in the twelfth century, but the problem of humanlove is always near and so it is not perhaps surprising that theabiding interest concerns itself with Abélard's relationship withHéloïse. So far as he is concerned it is not a very savoury matter. He deliberately seduced a pupil, a beautiful girl entrusted to himby her uncle, a simpleminded old canon of the Cathedral of Paris, under whose roof he ensconced himself by false pretences and withthe full intention of gaining the niece for himself. Abélard seemsto have exercised an irresistible fascination for men and womenalike, and his plot succeeded to admiration. Stricken by a belatedremorse, he finally married Héloïse against her unselfish protestsand partly to legitimatize his unborn child, and shortly after hewas surprised and overpowered by emissaries of Canon Fulbert andsubjected to irreparable mutilation. He tells the story withperfect frankness and with hardly more than formal expressions ofcompunction, and thereafter follows the narrative of theirseparation, he to a monastery, she to a convent, and of his carefor her during her conventual life, or at least for that part of itthat had passed before the "History" was written. Through the wholestory it is Héloise who shines brightly as a curiously beautifulpersonality, unselfish, self sacrificing, and almost virginal inher purity in spite of her fault. One has for her only sympathy andaffection whereas it is difficult to feel either for Abélard inspite of his belated efforts at rectifying his own sin and hislife-long devotion to his solitary wife in her hidden cloister. 

The whole story was instantly known, Abélard's assailants werepunished in kind, . And he himself shortly resumed his work oflecturing on philosophy and, a little later, on theology. Apparently his reputation did not suffer in the least, nor didhers; in fact her piety became almost a by-word and his name as agreat teacher increased by leaps and bounds: neither his offencenor its punishment seemed to bring lasting discredit. This fact, which seems strange to us, does not imply a lack of moral sense inthe community but rather the prevalence of standards alien to ourown. It is only since the advent of Puritanism that sexual sinshave been placed at the head of the whole category. During theMiddle Ages, as always under Christianity, the most deadly sinswere pride, covetousness, slander and anger. These implied inherentmoral depravity, but "illicit" love was love outside the law ofman, and did not of necessity and always involve moral guilt. Christ was Himself very gentle and compassionate with the sins ofthe flesh but relentless in the case of the greater sins of thespirit. Puritanism overturned the balance of things, and byconcentrating its condemnation on sexual derelictions became blindto the greater sins of pride, avarice and anger. We have inheritedthe prejudice without acquiring the abstention, but the Middle Ageshad a clearer sense of comparative values and they could forgive, or even ignore, the sin of Abélard and Héloïse when they could lesseasily excuse the sin of spiritual pride or deliberate cruelty. Moreover, these same Middle Ages believed very earnestly in theDivine forgiveness of sins for which there had been real repentanceand honest effort at amendment. Abélard and Héloise had beengrievously punished, he himself had made every reparation that waspossible, his penitence was charitably assumed, and therefore itwas not for society to condemn what God would mercifully forgive. 

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were not an age of morallaxity; ideals and standards and conduct were immeasurably higherthan they had been for five hundred years, higher than they were tobe in the centuries that followed the crest of Mediaevalism. It washowever a time of enormous vitality, of throbbing energy that wasconstantly bursting its bounds, and as well a time of personalliberty and freedom of action that would seem strange indeed to usin these days of endless legal restraint and inhibitions mitigatedby revolt. There were few formal laws but there was _Custom_ whichwas a sovereign law in itself, and above all there was the morallaw of the Church, establishing its great fundamental principlesbut leaving details to the working out of life itself. Behind thesin of Abélard lay his intolerable spiritual pride, his selfishnessand his egotism, qualities that society at large did not recognizebecause of their devotion to his engaging personality and theiradmiration for his dazzling intellectual gifts. Their idol hadsinned, he had been savagely punished, he had repented; that wasall there was about it and the question was at an end. 

In reading the Historia Calamitatum there is one consideration thatsuggests itself that is subject for serious thought. Written as itwas some years after the great tragedy of his life, it was aportrait that somehow seems out of focus. We know that during hisearly years in Paris Abélard was a bold and daring champion in thelists of dialectic; brilliant, persuasive, masculine to a degree;yet this self-portrait is of a man timid, suspicious, frightened ofrealities, shadows, possibilities. He is in abject terror ofcouncils, hidden enemies, even of his life. The tone is querulous, even peevish at times, and always the egotism and the pridepersist, while he seems driven by the whip of desire forintellectual adventure into places where he shrinks from defendinghimself, or is unable to do so. The antithesis is complete and oneis driven to believe that the terrible mutilation to which he hadbeen subjected had broken down his personality and left him in allthings less than man. His narrative is full of accusations againstall manner of people, but it is not necessary to take all theseliterally, for it is evident that his natural egotism, overlaid bythe circumstances of his calamity, produced an almost pathologicalcondition wherein suspicions became to him realities and terrorsestablished facts. 

It is doubtful if Abélard should be ranked very high in the list ofMediaeval philosophers. He was more a dialectician than a creativeforce, and until the development of the episode with Héloïse heseems to have cared primarily for the excitement of debate, withsmall regard for the value or the subjects under discussion. As anintellectualist he had much to do with the subsequent abandonmentof Plato in favour of Aristotle that was a mark of purescholasticism, while the brilliancy of his dialectical methodbecame a model for future generations. Afer the Calamity he turnedfrom philosophy to theology and ethics and here he revealsqualities of nobility not evident before. Particularly does heinsist upon the fact that it is the subjective intention thatdetermines the moral value of human actions even if it does notchange their essential character. 

The story of this philosophical soldier of fortune is a romancefrom beginning to end, a poignant human drama shot through withpassion, adventure, pathos and tragedy. In a sense it is an epitomeof the earlier Middle Ages and through it shines the bright lightof an era of fervid living, of exciting adventure, of phenomenalintellectual force and of large and comprehensive liberty. As asingle episode of passion it is not particularly distinguishedexcept for the appealing personality of Héloïse; as a phase in thedevelopment of Christian philosophy it is of only secondary value. United in one, the two factors achieve a brilliant dramatic unitythat has made the story of Abélard and Héloïse immortal. 

HISTORIA CALAMITATUM

FOREWORD

Often the hearts of men and women are stirred, as likewise they aresoothed in their sorrows, more by example than by words. Andtherefore, because I too have known some consolation from speechhad with one who was a witness thereof, am I now minded to write ofthe sufferings which have sprung out of my misfortunes, for theeyes of one who, though absent, is of himself ever a consoler. ThisI do so that, in comparing your sorrows with mine, you may discoverthat yours are in truth nought, or at the most but of smallaccount, and so shall you come to bear them more easily. 

CHAPTER I

OF THE BIRTHPLACE OF PIERRE ABÉLARD AND OF HIS PARENTS

Know, then, that I am come from a certain town which was built onthe way into lesser Brittany, distant some eight miles, as I think, eastward from the city of Nantes, and in its own tongue calledPalets. Such is the nature of that country, or, it may be, of themwho dwell there--for in truth they are quick in fancy--that my mindbent itself easily to the study of letters. Yet more, I had afather who had won some smattering of letters before he had girdedon the soldier's belt. And so it came about that long afterwardshis love thereof was so strong that he saw to it that each son ofhis should be taught in letters even earlier than in the managementof arms. Thus indeed did it come to pass. And because I was hisfirst born, and for that reason the more dear to him, he soughtwith double diligence to have me wisely taught. For my part, themore I went forward in the study of letters, and ever more easily, the greater became the ardour of my devotion to them, until intruth I was so enthralled by my passion for learning that, gladlyleaving to my brothers the pomp of glory in arms, the right ofheritage and all the honours that should have been mine as theeldest born, I fled utterly from the court of Mars that I might winlearning in the bosom of Minerva. And since I found the armory oflogical reasoning more to my liking than the other forms ofphilosophy, I exchanged all other weapons for these, and to theprizes of victory in war I preferred the battle of minds indisputation. Thenceforth, journeying through many provinces, anddebating as I went, going whithersoever I heard that the study ofmy chosen art most flourished, I became such an one as thePeripatetics. 

CHAPTER II

OF THE PERSECUTION HE HAD FROM HIS MASTER WILLIAM OF CHAMPEAUX--OFHIS ADVENTURES AT MELUN, AT CORBEIL AND AT PARIS--OF HIS WITHDRAWALFROM THE CITY OF THE PARISIANS TO MELUN, AND HIS RETURN TO MONTSTE. GENEVIÈVE--OF HIS JOURNEY TO HIS OLD HOME

I came at length to Paris, where above all in those days the art ofdialectics was most flourishing, and there did I meet William ofChampeaux, my teacher, a man most distinguished in his science bothby his renown and by his true merit. With him I remained for sometime, at first indeed well liked of him; but later I brought himgreat grief, because I undertook to refute certain of his opinions, not infrequently attacking him in disputation, and now and then inthese debates I was adjudged victor. Now this, to those among myfellow students who were ranked foremost, seemed all the moreinsufferable because of my youth and the brief duration of mystudies. 

Out of this sprang the beginning of my misfortunes, which havefollowed me even to the present day; the more widely my fame wasspread abroad, the more bitter was the envy that was kindledagainst me. It was given out that I, presuming on my gifts farbeyond the warranty of my youth, was aspiring despite my tender, years to the leadership of a school; nay, more, that I was makingread the very place in which I would undertake this task, the placebeing none other than the castle of Melun, at that time a royalseat. My teacher himself had some foreknowledge of this, and triedto remove my school as far as possible from his own. Working insecret, he sought in every way he could before I left his followingto bring to nought the school I had planned and the place I hadchosen for it. Since, however, in that very place he had manyrivals, and some of them men of influence among the great ones ofthe land, relying on their aid I won to the fulfillment of my wish;the support of many was secured for me by reason of his ownunconcealed envy. From this small inception of my school, my famein the art of dialectics began to spread abroad, so that little bylittle the renown, not alone of those who had been my fellowstudents, but of our very teacher himself, grew dim and was like todie out altogether. Thus it came about that, still more confidentin myself, I moved my school as soon as I well might to the castleof Corbeil, which is hard by the city of Paris, for there I knewthere would be given more frequent chance for my assaults in ourbattle of disputation. 

No long time thereafter I was smitten with a grievous illness, brought upon me by my immoderate zeal for study. This illnessforced me to turn homeward to my native province, and thus for someyears I was as if cut off from France. And yet, for that veryreason, I was sought out all the more eagerly by those whose heartswere troubled by the lore of dialectics. But after a few years hadpassed, and I was whole again from my sickness, I learned that myteacher, that same William Archdeacon of Paris, had changed hisformer garb and joined an order of the regular clergy. This he haddone, or so men said, in order that he might be deemed more deeplyreligious, and so might be elevated to a loftier rank in theprelacy, a thing which, in truth, very soon came to pass, for hewas made bishop of Châlons. Nevertheless, the garb he had donned byreason of his conversion did nought to keep him away either fromthe city of Paris or from his wonted study of philosophy; and inthe very monastery wherein he had shut himself up for the sake ofreligion he straightway set to teaching again after the samefashion as before. 

To him did I return, for I was eager to learn more of rhetoric fromhis lips; and in the course of our many arguments on variousmatters, I compelled him by most potent reasoning first to alterhis former opinion on the subject of the universals, and finally toabandon it altogether. Now, the basis of this old concept of hisregarding the reality of universal ideas was that the same qualityformed the essence alike of the abstract whole and of theindividuals which were its parts: in other words, that there couldbe no essential differences among these individuals, all beingalike save for such variety as might grow out of the many accidentsof existence. Thereafter, however, he corrected this opinion, nolonger maintaining that the same quality was the essence of allthings, but that, rather, it manifested itself in them throughdiverse ways. This problem of universals is ever the most vexed oneamong logicians, to such a degree, indeed, that even Porphyry, writing in his "Isagoge" regarding universals, dared not attempt afinal pronouncement thereon, saying rather: "This is the deepest ofall problems of its kind. " Wherefore it followed that when Williamhad first revised and then finally abandoned altogether his viewson this one subject, his lecturing sank into such a state ofnegligent reasoning that it could scarce be called lecturing on thescience of dialectics at all; it was as if all his science had beenbound up in this one question of the nature of universals. 

Thus it came about that my teaching won such strength and authoritythat even those who before had clung most vehemently to my formermaster, and most bitterly attacked my doctrines, now flocked to myschool. The very man who had succeeded to my master's chair in theParis school offered me his post, in order that he might puthimself under my tutelage along with all the rest, and this in thevery place where of old his master and mine had reigned. And when, in so short a time, my master saw me directing the study ofdialectics there, it is not easy to find words to tell with whatenvy he was consumed or with what pain he was tormented. He couldnot long, in truth, bear the anguish of what he felt to be hiswrongs, and shrewdly he attacked me that he might drive me forth. And because there was nought in my conduct whereby he could come atme openly, he tried to steal away the school by launching thevilest calumnies against him who had yielded his post to me, and byputting in his place a certain rival of mine. So then I returned toMelun, and set up my school there as before; and the more openlyhis envy pursued me, the greater was the authority it conferredupon me. Even so held the poet: "Jealousy aims at the peaks; thewinds storm the loftiest summits. " (Ovid: "Remedy for Love, " I, 369. )

Not long thereafter, when William became aware of the fact thatalmost all his students were holding grave doubts as to hisreligion, and were whispering earnestly among themselves about hisconversion, deeming that he had by no means abandoned this world, he withdrew himself and his brotherhood, together with hisstudents, to a certain estate far distant from the city. ForthwithI returned from Melun to Paris, hoping for peace from him in thefuture. But since, as I have said, he had caused my place to beoccupied by a rival of mine, I pitched the camp, as it were, of myschool outside the city on Mont Ste. Geneviève. Thus I was as onelaying siege to him who had taken possession of my post. No soonerhad my master heard of this than he brazenly returned post haste tothe city, bringing back with him such students as he could, andreinstating his brotherhood in their for mer monastery, much as ifhe would free his soldiery, whom he had deserted, from my blockade. In truth, though, if it was his purpose to bring them succour, hedid nought but hurt them. Before that time my rival had indeed hada certain number of students, of one sort and another, chiefly byreason of his lectures on Priscian, in which he was considered ofgreat authority. After our master had returned, however, he lostnearly all of these followers, and thus was compelled to give upthe direction of the school. Not long thereafter, apparentlydespairing further of worldly fame, he was converted to themonastic life. 

Following the return of our master to the city, the combats indisputation which my scholars waged both with him himself and withhis pupils, and the successes which fortune gave to us, and aboveall to me, in these wars, you have long since learned of throughyour own experience. The boast of Ajax, though I speak it moretemperately, I still am bold enough to make:

 ". . . If fain you would learn now How victory crowned the battle, by him was I never vanquished. " (Ovid, "Metamorphoses, " XIII, 89. )

But even were I to be silent, the fact proclaims itself, and itsoutcome reveals the truth regarding it. 

While these things were happening, it became needful for me againto repair to my old home, by reason of my dear mother, Lucia, forafter the conversion of my father, Berengarius, to the monasticlife, she so ordered her affairs as to do likewise. When all thishad been completed, I returned to France, above all in order that Imight study theology, since now my oft-mentioned teacher, William, was active in the episcopate of Châlons. In this held of learningAnselm of Laon, who was his teacher therein, had for long yearsenjoyed the greatest renown. 

CHAPTER III

OF HOW HE CAME TO LAON TO SEEK ANSELM AS TEACHER

Sought out, therefore, this same venerable man, whose fame, intruth, was more the result of long-established custom than of thepotency of his own talent or intellect. If any one came to himimpelled by doubt on any subject, he went away more doubtful still. He was wonderful, indeed, in the eyes of these who only listened tohim, but those who asked him questions perforce held him as nought. He had a miraculous flock of words, but they were contemptible inmeaning and quite void of reason. When he kindled a fire, he filledhis house with smoke and illumined it not at all. He was a treewhich seemed noble to those who gazed upon its leaves from afar, but to those who came nearer and examined it more closely wasrevealed its barrenness. When, therefore, I had come to this treethat I might pluck the fruit thereof, I discovered that it wasindeed the fig tree which Our Lord cursed (Matthew xxi, 19; Markxi, 13), or that ancient oak to which Lucan likened Pompey, saying:

 ". . . He stands, the shade of a name once mighty, Like to the towering oak in the midst of the fruitful field. " (Lucan, "Pharsalia, " IV, 135. )

It was not long before I made this discovery, and stretched myselflazily in the shade of that same tree. I went to his lectures lessand less often, a thing which some among his eminent followers tooksorely to heart, because they interpreted it as a mark of contemptfor so illustrious a teacher. Thenceforth they secretly sought toinfluence him against me, and by their vile insinuations made mehated of him. It chanced, moreover, that one day, after theexposition of certain texts, we scholars were jesting amongourselves, and one of them, seeking to draw me out, asked me what Ithought of the lectures on the Books of Scripture. I, who had asyet studied only the sciences, replied that following such lecturesseemed to me most useful in so far as the salvation of the soul wasconcerned, but that it appeared quite extraordinary to me thateducated persons should not be able to understand the sacred bookssimply by studying them themselves, together with the glossesthereon, and without the aid of any teacher. Most of those who werepresent mocked at me, and asked whether I myself could do as I hadsaid, or whether I would dare to undertake it. I answered that ifthey wished, I was ready to try it. Forthwith they cried out andjeered all the more. "Well and good, " said they; "we agree to thetest. Pick out and give us an exposition of some doubtful passagein the Scriptures, so that we can put this boast of yours to theproof. " And they all chose that most obscure prophecy of Ezekiel. 

I accepted the challenge, and invited them to attend a lecture onthe very next day. Whereupon they undertook to give me good advice, saying that I should by no means make undue haste in so important amatter, but that I ought to devote a much loner space to workingout my exposition and offsetting my inexperience by diligent toil. To this I replied indignantly that it was my wont to win success, not by routine, but by ability. I added that I would abandon thetest altogether unless they would agree not to put off theirattendance at my lecture. In truth at this first lecture of mineonly a few were present, for it seemed quite absurd to all of themthat I, hitherto so inexperienced in discussing the Scriptures, should attempt the thing so hastily. However, this lecture gavesuch satisfaction to all those who heard it that they spread itspraises abroad with notable enthusiasm, and thus compelled me tocontinue my interpretation of the sacred text. When word of thiswas bruited about, those who had stayed away from the first lecturecame eagerly, some to the second and more to the third, and all ofthem were eager to write down the glosses which I had begun on thefirst day, so as to have them from the very beginning. 

CHAPTER IV

OF THE PERSECUTION HE HAD FROM HIS TEACHER ANSELM

Now this venerable man of whom I have spoken was acutely smittenwith envy, and straightway incited, as I have already mentioned, bythe insinuations of sundry persons, began to persecute me for mylecturing on the Scriptures no less bitterly than my former master, William, had done for my work in philosophy. At that time therewere in this old man's school two who were considered far to excelall the others: Alberic of Rheims and Lotulphe the Lombard. Thebetter opinion these two held of themselves, the more they wereincensed against me. Chiefly at their suggestion, as it afterwardstranspired, yonder venerable coward had the impudence to forbid meto carry on any further in his school the work of preparing glosseswhich I had thus begun. The pretext he alleged was that if bychance in the course of this work I should write anythingcontaining blunders--as was likely enough in view of my lack oftraining--the thing might be imputed to him. When this came to theears of his scholars, they were filled with indignation at soundisguised a manifestation of spite, the like of which had neverbeen directed against any one before. The more obvious this rancourbecame, the more it redounded to my honour, and his persecution didnought save to make me more famous. 

CHAPTER V

OF HOW HE RETURNED TO PARIS AND FINISHED THE GLOSSES WHICH HE HADBEGUN AT LAON

And so, after a few days, I returned to Paris, and there forseveral years I peacefully directed the school which formerly hadbeen destined for me, nay, even offered to me, but from which I hadbeen driven out. At the very outset of my work there, I set aboutcompleting the glosses on Ezekiel which I had begun at Laon. Theseproved so satisfactory to all who read them that they came tobelieve me no less adept in lecturing on theology than I had provedmyself to be in the held of philosophy. Thus my school was notablyincreased in size by reason of my lectures on subjects of boththese kinds, and the amount of financial profit as well as glorywhich it brought me cannot be concealed from you, for the matterwas widely talked of. But prosperity always puffs up the foolish, and worldly comfort enervates the soul, rendering it an easy preyto carnal temptations. Thus I, who by this time had come to regardmyself as the only philosopher remaining in the whole world, andhad ceased to fear any further disturbance of my peace, began toloosen the rein on my desires, although hitherto I had always livedin the utmost continence. And the greater progress I made in mylecturing on philosophy or theology, the more I departed alike fromthe practice of the philosophers and the spirit of the divines inthe uncleanness of my life. For it is well known, methinks, thatphilosophers, and still more those who have devoted their lives toarousing the love of sacred study, have been strong above all elsein the beauty of chastity. 

Thus did it come to pass that while I was utterly absorbed in prideand sensuality, divine grace, the cure for both diseases, wasforced upon me, even though I, forsooth, would fain have shunnedit. First was I punished for my sensuality, and then for my pride. For my sensuality I lost those things whereby I practiced it; formy pride, engendered in me by my knowledge of letters--and it iseven as the Apostle said: "Knowledge puffeth itself up" (I Cor. Viii, 1)--I knew the humiliation of seeing burned the very book inwhich I most gloried. And now it is my desire that you should knowthe stories of these two happenings, understanding them more trulyfrom learning the very facts than from hearing what is spoken ofthem, and in the order in which they came about. Because I had everheld in abhorrence the foulness of prostitutes, because I haddiligently kept myself from all excesses and from association withthe women of noble birth who attended the school, because I knew solittle of the common talk of ordinary people, perverse and subtlyflattering chance gave birth to an occasion for casting me lightlydown from the heights of my own exaltation. Nay, in such case noteven divine goodness could redeem one who, having been so proud, was brought to such shame, were it not for the blessed gift ofgrace. 

CHAPTER VI

OF HOW, BROUGHT LOW BY HIS LOVE FOR HÉLOISE, HE WAS WOUNDED IN BODYAND SOUL

Now there dwelt in that same city of Paris a certain young girlnamed Héloïse, the niece of a canon who was called Fulbert. Heruncle's love for her was equalled only by his desire that sheshould have the best education which he could possibly procure forher. Of no mean beauty, she stood out above all by reason of herabundant knowledge of letters. Now this virtue is rare among women, and for that very reason it doubly graced the maiden, and made herthe most worthy of renown in the entire kingdom. It was this younggirl whom I, after carefully considering all those qualities whichare wont to attract lovers, determined to unite with myself in thebonds of love, and indeed the thing seemed to me very easy to bedone. So distinguished was my name, and I possessed such advantagesof youth and comeliness, that no matter what woman I might favourwith my love, I dreaded rejection of none. Then, too, I believedthat I could win the maiden's consent all the more easily by reasonof her knowledge of letters and her zeal therefor; so, even if wewere parted, we might yet be together in thought with the aid ofwritten messages. Perchance, too, we might be able to write moreboldly than we could speak, and thus at all times could we live injoyous intimacy. 

Thus, utterly aflame with my passion for this maiden, I sought todiscover means whereby I might have daily and familiar speech withher, thereby the more easily to win her consent. For this purpose Ipersuaded the girl's uncle, with the aid of some of his friends, totake me into his household--for he dwelt hard by my school--inreturn for the payment of a small sum. My pretext for this was thatthe care of my own household was a serious handicap to my studies, and likewise burdened me with an expense far greater than I couldafford. Now, he was a man keen in avarice, and likewise he was mostdesirous for his niece that her study of letters should ever goforward, so, for these two reasons, I easily won his consent to thefulfillment of my wish, for he was fairly agape for my money, andat the same time believed that his niece would vastly benefit by myteaching. More even than this, by his own earnest entreaties hefell in with my desires beyond anything I had dared to hope, opening the way for my love; for he entrusted her wholly to myguidance, begging me to give her instruction whensoever I might befree from the duties of my school, no matter whether by day or bynight, and to punish her sternly if ever I should find hernegligent of her tasks. In all this the man's simplicity wasnothing short of astounding to me; I should not have been moresmitten with wonder if he had entrusted a tender lamb to the careof a ravenous wolf. When he had thus given her into my charge, notalone to be taught but even to be disciplined, what had he donesave to give free scope to my desires, and to offer me everyopportunity, even if I had not sought it, to bend her to my willwith threats and blows if I failed to do so with caresses? Therewere, however, two things which particularly served to allay anyfoul suspicion: his own love for his niece, and my formerreputation for continence. 

Why should I say more: We were united first in the dwelling thatsheltered our love, and then in the hearts that burned with it. Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness oflove, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that ourpassion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the book whichlay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words. Our hands sought less the book than each other's bosoms; love drewour eyes together far more than the lesson drew them to the pagesof our text. In order that there might be no suspicion, there were, indeed, sometimes blows, but love gave them, not anger; they werethe marks, not of wrath, but of a tenderness surpassing the mostfragrant balm in sweetness. What followed? No degree in love'sprogress was left untried by our passion, and if love itself couldimagine any wonder as yet unknown, we discovered it. And ourinexperience of such delights made us all the more ardent in ourpursuit of them, so that our thirst for one another was stillunquenched. 

In measure as this passionate rapture absorbed me more and more, Idevoted ever less time to philosophy and to the work of the school. Indeed it became loathsome to me to go to the school or to lingerthere; the labour, moreover, was very burdensome, since my nightswere vigils of love and my days of study. My lecturing becameutterly careless and lukewarm; I did nothing because ofinspiration, but everything merely as a matter of habit. I hadbecome nothing more than a reciter of my former discoveries, andthough I still wrote poems, they dealt with love, not with thesecrets of philosophy. Of these songs you yourself well know howsome have become widely known and have been sung in many lands, chiefly, methinks, by those who delighted in the things of thisworld. As for the sorrow, the groans, the lamentations of mystudents when they perceived the preoccupation, nay, rather thechaos, of my mind, it is hard even to imagine them. 

A thing so manifest could deceive only a few, no one, methinks, save him whose shame it chiefly bespoke, the girl's uncle, Fulbert. The truth was often enough hinted to him, and by many persons, buthe could not believe it, partly, as I have said, by reason of hisboundless love for his niece, and partly because of the well-knowncontinence of my previous life. Indeed we do not easily suspectshame in those whom we most cherish, nor can there be the blot offoul suspicion on devoted love. Of this St. Jerome in his epistleto Sabinianus (Epist. 48) says: "We are wont to be the last to knowthe evils of our own households, and to be ignorant of the sins ofour children and our wives, though our neighbours sing them aloud. "But no matter how slow a matter may be in disclosing itself, it issure to come forth at last, nor is it easy to hide from one what isknown to all. So, after the lapse of several months, did it happenwith us. Oh, how great was the uncle's grief when he learned thetruth, and how bitter was the sorrow of the lovers when we wereforced to part! With what shame was I overwhelmed, with whatcontrition smitten because of the blow which had fallen on her Iloved, and what a tempest of misery burst over her by reason of mydisgrace! Each grieved most, not for himself, but for the other. Each sought to allay, not his own sufferings, but those of the onehe loved. The very sundering of our bodies served but to link oursouls closer together; the plentitude of the love which was deniedto us inflamed us more than ever. Once the first wildness of shamehad passed, it left us more shameless than before, and as shamedied within us the cause of it seemed to us ever more desirable. And so it chanced with us as, in the stories that the poets tell, it once happened with Mars and Venus when they were caught together. 

It was not long after this that Héloïse found that she waspregnant, and of this she wrote to me in the utmost exultation, at the same time asking me to consider what had best be done. Accordingly, on a night when her uncle was absent, we carried outthe plan we had determined on, and I stole her secretly away fromher uncle's house, sending her without delay to my own country. Sheremained there with my sister until she gave birth to a son, whomshe named Astrolabe. Meanwhile her uncle, after his return, wasalmost mad with grief; only one who had then seen him could rightlyguess the burning agony of his sorrow and the bitterness of hisshame. What steps to take against me, or what snares to set for me, he did not know. If he should kill me or do me some bodily hurt, hefeared greatly lest his dear-loved niece should be made to sufferfor it among my kinsfolk. He had no power to seize me and imprisonme somewhere against my will, though I make no doubt he would havedone so quickly enough had he been able or dared, for I had takenmeasures to guard against any such attempt. 

At length, however, in pity for his boundless grief, and bitterlyblaming myself for the suffering which my love had brought upon himthrough the baseness of the deception I had practiced, I went tohim to entreat his forgiveness, promising to make any amends thathe himself might decree. I pointed out that what had happened couldnot seem incredible to any one who had ever felt the power of love, or who remembered how, from the very beginning of the human race, women had cast down even the noblest men to utter ruin. And inorder to make amends even beyond his extremest hope, I offered tomarry her whom I had seduced, provided only the thing could be keptsecret, so that I might suffer no loss of reputation thereby. Tothis he gladly assented, pledging his own faith and that of hiskindred, and sealing with kisses the pact which I had sought ofhim--and all this that he might the more easily betray me. 

CHAPTER VII

OF THE ARGUMENTS OF HÉLOÏSE AGAINST WEDLOCK--OF HOW NONE THE LESSHE MADE HER HIS WIFE

Forthwith I repaired to my own country, and brought back thence mymistress, that I might make her my wife. She, however, mostviolently disapproved of this, and for two chief reasons: thedanger thereof, and the disgrace which it would bring upon me. Sheswore that her uncle would never be appeased by such satisfactionas this, as, indeed, afterwards proved only too true. She asked howshe could ever glory in me if she should make me thus inglorious, and should shame herself along with me. What penalties, she said, would the world rightly demand of her if she should rob it of soshining a light! What curses would follow such a loss to theChurch, what tears among the philosophers would result from such amarriage! How unfitting, how lamentable it would be for me, whomnature had made for the whole world, to devote myself to one womansolely, and to subject myself to such humiliation! She vehementlyrejected this marriage, which she felt would be in every wayignominious and burdensome to me. 

Besides dwelling thus on the disgrace to me, she reminded me of thehardships of married life, to the avoidance of which the Apostleexhorts us, saying: "Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in theflesh: but I spare you" (I Cor. Vii, 27). And again: "But I wouldhave you to be free from cares" (I Cor. Vii, 32). But if I wouldheed neither the counsel of the Apostle nor the exhortations of thesaints regarding this heavy yoke of matrimony, she bade me at leastconsider the advice of the philosophers, and weigh carefully whathad been written on this subject either by them or concerning theirlives. Even the saints themselves have often and earnestly spokenon this subject for the purpose of warning us. Thus St. Jerome, in his first book against Jovinianus, makes Theophrastus set forthin great detail the intolerable annoyances and the endlessdisturbances of married life, demonstrating with the mostconvincing arguments that no wise man should ever have a wife, andconcluding his reasons for this philosophic exhortation with thesewords: "Who among Christians would not be overwhelmed by sucharguments as these advanced by Theophrastus?"

Again, in the same work, St. Jerome tells how Cicero, asked byHircius after his divorce of Terentia whether he would marry thesister of Hircius, replied that he would do no such thing, sayingthat he could not devote himself to a wife and to philosophy at thesame time. Cicero does not, indeed, precisely speak of "devotinghimself, " but he does add that he did not wish to undertakeanything which might rival his study of philosophy in its demandsupon him. 

Then, turning from the consideration of such hindrances to thestudy of philosophy, Héloïse bade me observe what were theconditions of honourable wedlock. What possible concord could therebe between scholars and domestics, between authors and cradles, between books or tablets and distaffs, between the stylus or thepen and the spindle? What man, intent on his religious orphilosophical meditations, can possibly endure the whining ofchildren, the lullabies of the nurse seeking to quiet them, or thenoisy confusion of family life? Who can endure the continualuntidiness of children? The rich, you may reply, can do this, because they have palaces or houses containing many rooms, andbecause their wealth takes no thought of expense and protects themfrom daily worries. But to this the answer is that the condition ofphilosophers is by no means that of the wealthy, nor can thosewhose minds are occupied with riches and worldly cares find timefor religious or philosophical study. For this reason the renownedphilosophers of old utterly despised the world, fleeing from itsperils rather than reluctantly giving them up, and deniedthemselves all its delights in order that they might repose in theembraces of philosophy alone. One of them, and the greatest of all, Seneca, in his advice to Lucilius, says: "Philosophy is not a thingto be studied only in hours of leisure; we must give up everythingelse to devote ourselves to it, for no amount of time is reallysufficient thereto" (Epist. 73). 

It matters little, she pointed out, whether one abandons the studyof philosophy completely or merely interrupts it, for it can neverremain at the point where it was thus interrupted. All otheroccupations must be resisted; it is vain to seek to adjust life toinclude them, and they must simply be eliminated. This view ismaintained, for example, in the love of God by those among us whoare truly called monastics, and in the love of wisdom by all thosewho have stood out among men as sincere philosophers. For in everyrace, gentiles or Jews or Christians, there have always been a fewwho excelled their fellows in faith or in the purity of theirlives, and who were set apart from the multitude by theircontinence or by their abstinence from worldly pleasures. 

Among the Jews of old there were the Nazarites, who consecratedthemselves to the Lord, some of them the sons of the prophet Eliasand others the followers of Eliseus, the monks of whom, on theauthority of St. Jerome (Epist. 4 and 13), we read in the OldTestament. More recently there were the three philosophical sectswhich Josephus defines in his Book of Antiquities (xviii, 2), calling them the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. In ourtimes, furthermore, there are the monks who imitate either thecommunal life of the Apostles or the earlier and solitary life ofJohn. Among the gentiles there are, as has been said, thephilosophers. Did they not apply the name of wisdom or philosophyas much to the religion of life as to the pursuit of learning, aswe find from the origin of the word itself, and likewise from thetestimony of the saints?

There is a passage on this subject in the eighth book of St. Augustine's "City of God, " wherein he distinguishes between thevarious schools of philosophy. "The Italian school, " he says, "hadas its founder Pythagoras of Samos, who, it is said, originated thevery word 'philosophy. ' Before his time those who were regarded asconspicuous for the praiseworthiness of their lives were calledwise men, but he, on being asked of his profession, replied that hewas a philosopher, that is to say a student or a lover of wisdom, because it seemed to him unduly boastful to call himself a wiseman. " In this passage, therefore, when the phrase "conspicuous forthe praiseworthiness of their lives" is used, it is evident thatthe wise, in other words the philosophers, were so called lessbecause of their erudition than by reason of their virtuous lives. In what sobriety and continence these men lived it is not for me toprove by illustration, lest I should seem to instruct Minervaherself. 

Now, she added, if laymen and gentiles, bound by no profession ofreligion, lived after this fashion, what ought you, a cleric and acanon, to do in order not to prefer base voluptuousness to yoursacred duties, to prevent this Charybdis from sucking you downheadlong, and to save yourself from being plunged shamelessly andirrevocably into such filth as this? If you care nothing for yourprivileges as a cleric, at least uphold your dignity as aphilosopher. If you scorn the reverence due to God, let regard foryour reputation temper your shamelessness. Remember that Socrateswas chained to a wife, and by what a filthy accident he himselfpaid for this blot on philosophy, in order that others thereaftermight be made more cautious by his example. Jerome thus mentionsthis affair, writing about Socrates in his first book againstJovinianus: "Once when he was withstanding a storm of reproacheswhich Xantippe was hurling at him from an upper story, he wassuddenly drenched with foul slops; wiping his head, he said only, 'I knew there would be a shower after all that thunder. '"

Her final argument was that it would be dangerous for me to takeher back to Paris, and that it would be far sweeter for her to becalled my mistress than to be known as my wife; nay, too, thatthis would be more honourable for me as well. In such case, shesaid, love alone would hold me to her, and the strength of themarriage chain would not constrain us. Even if we should by chancebe parted from time to time, the joy of our meetings would be allthe sweeter by reason of its rarity. But when she found that shecould not convince me or dissuade me from my folly by these andlike arguments, and because she could not bear to offend me, withgrievous sighs and tears she made an end of her resistance, saying:"Then there is no more left but this, that in our doom the sorrowyet to come shall be no less than the love we two have alreadyknown. " Nor in this, as now the whole world knows, did she lack thespirit of prophecy. 

So, after our little son was born, we left him in my sister's care, and secretly returned to Paris. A few days later, in the earlymorning, having kept our nocturnal vigil of prayer unknown to allin a certain church, we were united there in the benediction ofwedlock, her uncle and a few friends of his and mine being present. We departed forthwith stealthily and by separate ways, northereafter did we see each other save rarely and in private, thusstriving our utmost to conceal what we had done. But her uncle andthose of his household, seeking solace for their disgrace, began todivulge the story of our marriage, and thereby to violate thepledge they had given me on this point. Héloïse, on the contrary, denounced her own kin and swore that they were speaking the mostabsolute lies. Her uncle, aroused to fury thereby, visited herrepeatedly with punishments. No sooner had I learned this than Isent her to a convent of nuns at Argenteuil, not far from Paris, where she herself had been brought up and educated as a young girl. I had them make ready for her all the garments of a nun, suitablefor the life of a convent, excepting only the veil, and these Ibade her put on. 

When her uncle and his kinsmen heard of this, they were convincedthat now I had completely played them false and had rid myselfforever of Héloïse by forcing her to become a nun. Violentlyincensed, they laid a plot against me, and one night, while I, allunsuspecting, was asleep in a secret room in my lodgings, theybroke in with the help of one of my servants, whom they had bribed. There they had vengeance on me with a most cruel and most shamefulpunishment, such as astounded the whole world, for they cut offthose parts of my body with which I had done that which was thecause of their sorrow. This done, straightway they fled, but two ofthem were captured, and suffered the loss of their eyes and theirgenital organs. One of these two was the aforesaid servant, who, even while he was still in my service, had been led by his avariceto betray me. 

CHAPTER VIII

OF THE SUFFERING OF HIS BODY--OF HOW HE BECAME A MONK IN THEMONASTERY OF ST. DENIS AND HÉLOISE A NUN AT ARGENTEUIL

When morning came the whole city was assembled before my dwelling. It is difficult, nay, impossible, for words of mine to describe theamazement which bewildered them, the lamentations they uttered, theuproar with which they harassed me, or the grief with which theyincreased my own suffering. Chiefly the clerics, and above all myscholars, tortured me with their intolerable lamentations andoutcries, so that I suffered more intensely from their compassionthan from the pain of my wound. In truth I felt the disgrace morethan the hurt to my body, and was more afflicted with shame thanwith pain. My incessant thought was of the renown in which I had somuch delighted, now brought low, nay, utterly blotted out, soswiftly by an evil chance. I saw, too, how justly God had punishedme in that very part of my body whereby I had sinned. I perceivedthat there was indeed justice in my betrayal by him whom I hadmyself already betrayed; and then I thought how eagerly my rivalswould seize upon this manifestation of justice, how this disgracewould bring bitter and enduring grief to my kindred and my friends, and how the tale of this amazing outrage would spread to the veryends of the earth. 

What path lay open to me thereafter? How could I ever again hold upmy head among men, when every finger should be pointed at me inscorn, every tongue speak my blistering shame, and when I should bea monstrous spectacle to all eyes? I was overwhelmed by theremembrance that, according to the dread letter of the law, Godholds eunuchs in such abomination that men thus maimed areforbidden to enter a church, even as the unclean and filthy; nay, even beasts in such plight were not acceptable as sacrifices. Thusin Leviticus (xxii, 24) is it said: "Ye shall not offer unto theLord that which hath its stones bruised, or crushed, or broken, orcut. " And in Deuteronomy (xxiii, 1), "He that is wounded in thestones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into thecongregation of the Lord. "

I must confess that in my misery it was the overwhelming sense ofmy disgrace rather than any ardour for conversion to the religiouslife that drove me to seek the seclusion of the monastic cloister. Héloïse had already, at my bidding, taken the veil and entered aconvent. Thus it was that we both put on the sacred garb, I in theabbey of St. Denis, and she in the convent of Argenteuil, of whichI have already spoken. She, I remember well, when her fond friendssought vainly to deter her from submitting her fresh youth to theheavy and almost intolerable yoke of monastic life, sobbing andweeping replied in the words of Cornelia:

 ". . . O husband most noble, Who ne'er shouldst have shared my couch! Has fortune such powerTo smite so lofty a head? Why then was I weddedOnly to bring thee to woe? Receive now my sorrow, The price I so gladly pay. " (Lucan, "Pharsalia, " viii, 94. )

With these words on her lips did she go forthwith to the altar, andlifted therefrom the veil, which had been blessed by the bishop, and before them all she took the vows of the religious life. For mypart, scarcely had I recovered from my wound when clerics sought mein great numbers, endlessly beseeching both my abbot and me myselfthat now, since I was done with learning for the sake of gain orrenown, I should turn to it for the sole love of God. They bade mecare diligently for the talent which God had committed to mykeeping (Matthew, xxv, 15), since surely He would demand it backfrom me with interest. It was their plea that, inasmuch as of old Ihad laboured chiefly in behalf of the rich, I should now devotemyself to the teaching of the poor. Therein above all should Iperceive how it was the hand of God that had touched me, when Ishould devote my life to the study of letters in freedom from thesnares of the flesh and withdrawn from the tumultuous life of thisworld. Thus, in truth, should I become a philosopher less of thisworld than of God. 

The abbey, however, to which I had betaken myself was utterlyworldly and in its life quite scandalous. The abbot himself was asfar below his fellows in his way of living and in the foulness ofhis reputation as he was above them in priestly rank. Thisintolerable state of things I often and vehemently denounced, sometimes in private talk and sometimes publicly, but the onlyresult was that I made myself detested of them all. They gladlylaid hold of the daily eagerness of my students to hear me as anexcuse whereby they might be rid of me; and finally, at theinsistent urging of the students themselves, and with the heartyconsent of the abbot and the rest of the brotherhood, I departedthence to a certain hut, there to teach in my wonted way. To thisplace such a throng of students flocked that the neighbourhoodcould not afford shelter for them, nor the earth sufficientsustenance. 

Here, as befitted my profession, I devoted myself chiefly tolectures on theology, but I did not wholly abandon the teaching ofthe secular arts, to which I was more accustomed, and which wasparticularly demanded of me. I used the latter, however, as a hook, luring my students by the bait of learning to the study of the truephilosophy, even as the Ecclesiastical History tells of Origen, thegreatest of all Christian philosophers. Since apparently the Lordhad gifted me with no less persuasiveness in expounding theScriptures than in lecturing on secular subjects, the number of mystudents in these two courses began to increase greatly, and theattendance at all the other schools was correspondingly diminished. Thus I aroused the envy and hatred of the other teachers. Those whosought to belittle me in every possible way took advantage of myabsence to bring two principal charges against me: first, that itwas contrary to the monastic profession to be concerned with thestudy of secular books; and, second, that I had presumed to teachtheology without ever having been taught therein myself. This theydid in order that my teaching of every kind might be prohibited, and to this end they continually stirred up bishops, archbishops, abbots and whatever other dignitaries of the Church they couldreach. 

CHAPTER IX

OF HIS BOOK ON THEOLOGY AND HIS PERSECUTION AT THE HANDS OF HISFELLOW STUDENTS--OF THE COUNCIL AGAINST HIM

It so happened that at the outset I devoted myself to analyzing thebasis of our faith through illustrations based on humanunderstanding, and I wrote for my students a certain tract on theunity and trinity of God. This I did because they were alwaysseeking for rational and philosophical explanations, asking ratherfor reasons they could understand than for mere words, saying thatit was futile to utter words which the intellect could not possiblyfollow, that nothing could be believed unless it could first beunderstood, and that it was absurd for any one to preach to othersa thing which neither he himself nor those whom he sought to teachcould comprehend. Our Lord Himself maintained this same thing whenHe said: "They are blind leaders of the blind" (Matthew, xv, 14). 

Now, a great many people saw and read this tract, and it becameexceedingly popular, its clearness appealing particularly to allwho sought information on this subject. And since the questionsinvolved are generally considered the most difficult of all, theircomplexity is taken as the measure of the subtlety of him whosucceeds in answering them. As a result, my rivals became furiouslyangry, and summoned a council to take action against me, the chiefinstigators therein being my two intriguing enemies of former days, Alberic and Lotulphe. These two, now that both William and Anselm, our erstwhile teachers, were dead, were greedy to reign in theirstead, and, so to speak, to succeed them as heirs. While they weredirecting the school at Rheims, they managed by repeated hints tostir up their archbishop, Rodolphe, against me, for the purpose ofholding a meeting, or rather an ecclesiastical council, atSoissons, provided they could secure the approval of Conon, Bishopof Praeneste, at that time papal legate in France. Their plan wasto summon me to be present at this council, bringing with me thefamous book I had written regarding the Trinity. In all this, indeed, they were successful, and the thing happened according totheir wishes. 

Before I reached Soissons, however, these two rivals of mine sofoully slandered me with both the clergy and the public that on theday of my arrival the people came near to stoning me and the fewstudents of mine who had accompanied me thither. The cause of theiranger was that they had been led to believe that I had preached andwritten to prove the existence of three gods. No sooner had Ireached the city, therefore, than I went forthwith to the legate;to him I submitted my book for examination and judgment, declaringthat if I had written anything repugnant to the Catholic faith, Iwas quite ready to correct it or otherwise to make satisfactoryamends. The legate directed me to refer my book to the archbishopand to those same two rivals of mine, to the end that my accusersmight also be my judges. So in my case was fulfilled the saying:"Even our enemies are our judges" (Deut. Xxxii, 31). 

These three, then, took my book and pawed it over and examined itminutely, but could find nothing therein which they dared to use asthe basis for a public accusation against me. Accordingly they putoff the condemnation of the book until the close of the council, despite their eagerness to bring it about. For my part, everydaybefore the council convened I publicly discussed the Catholic faithin the light of what I had written, and all who heard me wereenthusiastic in their approval alike of the frankness and the logicof my words. When the public and the clergy had thus learnedsomething of the real character of my teaching, they began to sayto one another: "Behold, now he speaks openly, and no one bringsany charge against him. And this council, summoned, as we haveheard, chiefly to take action upon his case, is drawing toward itsend. Did the judges realize that the error might be theirs ratherthan his?"

As a result of all this, my rivals grew more angry day by day. Onone occasion Alberic, accompanied by some of his students, came tome for the purpose of intimidating me, and, after a few blandwords, said that he was amazed at something he had found in mybook, to the effect that, although God had begotten God, I deniedthat God had begotten Himself, since there was only one God. Ianswered unhesitatingly: "I can give you an explanation of this ifyou wish it. " "Nay, " he replied, "I care nothing for humanexplanation or reasoning in such matters, but only for the wordsof authority. " "Very well. " I said; "turn the pages of my book andyou will find the authority likewise. " The book was at hand, for hehad brought it with him. I turned to the passage I had in mind, which he had either not discovered or else passed over ascontaining nothing injurious to me. And it was God's will that Iquickly found what I sought. This was the following sentence, underthe heading "Augustine, On the Trinity, Book I": "Whosoeverbelieves that it is within the power of God to beget Himself issorely in error; this power is not in God, neither is it in anycreated thing, spiritual or corporeal. For there is nothing thatcan give birth to itself. "

When those of his followers who were present heard this, they wereamazed and much embarrassed. He himself, in order to keep hiscountenance, said: "Certainly, I understand all that. " Then Iadded: "What I have to say further on this subject is by no meansnew, but apparently it has nothing to do with the case at issue, since you have asked for the word of authority only, and not forexplanations. If, however, you care to consider logicalexplanations, I am prepared to demonstrate that, according toAugustine's statement, you have yourself fallen into a heresy inbelieving that a father can possibly be his own son. " When Albericheard this he was almost beside himself with rage, and straightwayresorted to threats, asserting that neither my explanations nor mycitations of authority would avail me aught in this case. With thishe left me. 

On the last day of the council, before the session convened, thelegate and the archbishop deliberated with my rivals and sundryothers as to what should be done about me and my book, this beingthe chief reason for their having come together. And since they haddiscovered nothing either in my speech or in what I had hithertowritten which would give them a case against me, they were allreduced to silence, or at the most to maligning me in whispers. Then Geoffroi, Bishop of Chartres, who excelled the other bishopsalike in the sincerity of his religion and in the importance of hissee, spoke thus:

"You know, my lords, all who are gathered here, the doctrine ofthis man, what it is, and his ability, which has brought him manyfollowers in every field to which he has devoted himself. You knowhow greatly he has lessened the renown of other teachers, both hismasters and our own, and how he has spread as it were the offshootsof his vine from sea to sea. Now, if you impose a lightlyconsidered judgment on him, as I cannot believe you will, you wellknow that even if mayhap you are in the right there are many whowill be angered thereby, and that he will have no lack ofdefenders. Remember above all that we have found nothing in thisbook of his that lies before us whereon any open accusation can bebased. Indeed it is true, as Jerome says: 'Fortitude openlydisplayed always creates rivals, and the lightning strikes thehighest peaks. ' Have a care, then, lest by violent action you onlyincrease his fame, and lest we do more hurt to ourselves throughenvy than to him through justice. A false report, as that same wiseman reminds us, is easily crushed, and a man's later life givestestimony as to his earlier deeds. If, then, you are disposed totake canonical action against him, his doctrine or his writingsmust be brought forward as evidence, and he must have freeopportunity to answer his questioners. In that case, if he is foundguilty or if he confesses his error, his lips can be wholly sealed. Consider the words of the blessed Nicodemus, who, desiring to freeOur Lord Himself, said: 'Doth our law judge any man before it hearhim and know what he doeth? '" (John, vii, 51). 

When my rivals heard this they cried out in protest, saying: "Thisis wise counsel, forsooth, that we should strive against thewordiness of this man, whose arguments, or rather, sophistries, thewhole world cannot resist!" And yet, methinks, it was far moredifficult to strive against Christ Himself, for Whom, nevertheless, Nicodemus demanded a hearing in accordance with the dictates of thelaw. When the bishop could not win their assent to his proposals, he tried in another way to curb their hatred, saying that for thediscussion of such an important case the few who were present werenot enough, and that this matter required a more thoroughexamination. His further suggestion was that my abbot, who wasthere present, should take me back with him to our abbey, in otherwords to the monastery of St. Denis, and that there a largeconvocation of learned men should determine, on the basis of acareful investigation, what ought to be done. To this last proposalthe legate consented, as did all the others. 

Then the legate arose to celebrate mass before entering thecouncil, and through the bishop sent me the permission which hadbeen determined on, authorizing me to return to my monastery andthere await such action as might be finally taken. But my rivals, perceiving that they would accomplish nothing if the trial were tobe held outside of their own diocese, and in a place where theycould have little influence on the verdict, and in truth havingsmall wish that justice should be done, persuaded the archbishopthat it would be a grave insult to him to transfer this case toanother court, and that it would be dangerous for him if by chanceI should thus be acquitted. They likewise went to the legate, andsucceeded in so changing his opinion that finally they induced himto frame a new sentence, whereby he agreed to condemn my bookwithout any further inquiry, to burn it forthwith in the sight ofall, and to confine me for a year in another monastery. Theargument they used was that it sufficed for the condemnation of mybook that I had presumed to read it in public without the approvaleither of the Roman pontiff or of the Church, and that, furthermore, I had given it to many to be transcribed. Methinks itwould be a notable blessing to the Christian faith if there weremore who displayed a like presumption. The legate, however, beingless skilled in law than he should have been, relied chiefly on theadvice of the archbishop, and he, in turn, on that of my rivals. When the Bishop of Chartres got wind of this, he reported the wholeconspiracy to me, and strongly urged me to endure meekly themanifest violence of their enmity. He bade me not to doubt thatthis violence would in the end react upon them and prove a blessingto me, and counseled me to have no fear of the confinement in amonastery, knowing that within a few days the legate himself, whowas now acting under compulsion, would after his departure set mefree. And thus he consoled me as best he might, mingling his tearswith mine. 

CHAPTER X

OF THE BURNING OF HIS BOOK--OF THE PERSECUTION HE HAD AT THE HANDSOF HIS ABBOT AND THE BRETHREN

Straightway upon my summons I went to the council, and there, without further examination or debate, did they compel me with myown hand to cast that memorable book of mine into the flames. Although my enemies appeared to have nothing to say while the bookwas burning, one of them muttered something about having seen itwritten therein that God the Father was alone omnipotent. Thisreached the ears of the legate, who replied in astonishment that hecould not believe that even a child would make so absurd a blunder. "Our common faith, " he said, "holds and sets forth that the Threeare alike omnipotent. " A certain Tirric, a schoolmaster, hearingthis, sarcastically added the Athanasian phrase, "And yet there arenot three omnipotent Persons, but only One. "

This man's bishop forthwith began to censure him, bidding himdesist from such treasonable talk, but he boldly stood his ground, and said, as if quoting the words of Daniel: "'Are ye such fools, ye sons of Israel, that without examination or knowledge of thetruth ye have condemned a daughter of Israel? Return again to theplace of judgment, ' (Daniel, xiii, 48--The History of Susanna) andthere give judgment on the judge himself. You have set up thisjudge, forsooth, for the instruction of faith and the correction oferror, and yet, when he ought to give judgment, he condemns himselfout of his own mouth. Set free today, with the help of God's mercy, one who is manifestly innocent, even as Susanna was freed of oldfrom her false accusers. "

Thereupon the archbishop arose and confirmed the legate'sstatement, but changed the wording thereof, as indeed was mostfitting. "It is God's truth, " he said, "that the Father isomnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. And whosoever dissents from this is openly in error, and must notbe listened to. Nevertheless, if it be your pleasure, it would bewell that this our brother should publicly state before us all thefaith that is in him, to the end that, according to its deserts, itmay either be approved or else condemned and corrected. "

When, however, I fain would have arisen to profess and set forth myfaith, in order that I might express in my own words that which wasin my heart, my enemies declared that it was not needful for me todo more than recite the Athanasian Symbol, a thing which any boymight do as well as I. And lest I should allege ignorance, pretending that I did not know the words by heart, they had a copyof it set before me to read. And read it I did as best I could formy groans and sighs and tears. Thereupon, as if I had been aconvicted criminal, I was handed over to the Abbot of St. Médard, who was there present, and led to his monastery as to a prison. Andwith this the council was immediately dissolved. 

The abbot and the monks of the aforesaid monastery, thinking that Iwould remain long with them, received me with great exultation, anddiligently sought to console me, but all in vain. O God, who dostjudge justice itself, in what venom of the spirit, in whatbitterness of mind, did I blame even Thee for my shame, accusingThee in my madness! Full often did I repeat the lament of St. Anthony: "Kindly Jesus, where wert Thou?" The sorrow that torturedme, the shame that overwhelmed me, the desperation that wracked mymind, all these I could then feel, but even now I can find no wordsto express them. Comparing these new sufferings of my soul withthose I had formerly endured in my body, it seemed that I was invery truth the most miserable among men. Indeed that earlierbetrayal had become a little thing in comparison with this laterevil, and I lamented the hurt to my fair name far more than the oneto my body. The latter, indeed, I had brought upon myself throughmy own wrongdoing, but this other violence had come upon me solelyby reason of the honesty of my purpose and my love of our faith, which had compelled me to write that which I believed. 

The very cruelty and heartlessness of my punishment, however, madeevery one who heard the story vehement in censuring it, so thatthose who had a hand therein were soon eager to disclaim allresponsibility, shouldering the blame on others. Nay, matters cameto such a pass that even my rivals denied that they had hadanything to do with the matter, and as for the legate, he publiclydenounced the malice with which the French had acted. Swayed byrepentance for his injustice, and feeling that he had yieldedenough to satisfy their rancour, he shortly freed me from themonastery whither I had been taken, and sent me back to my own. Here, however, I found almost as many enemies as I had in theformer days of which I have already spoken, for the vileness andshamelessness of their way of living made them realize that theywould again have to endure my censure. 

After a few months had passed, chance gave them an opportunity bywhich they sought to destroy me. It happened that one day, in thecourse of my reading, I came upon a certain passage of Bede, in hiscommentary on the Acts of the Apostles, wherein he asserts thatDionysius the Areopagite was the bishop, not of Athens, but ofCorinth. Now, this was directly counter to the belief of the monks, who were wont to boast that their Dionysius, or Denis, was not onlythe Areopagite but was likewise proved by his acts to have been theBishop of Athens. Having thus found this testimony of Bede's incontradiction of our own tradition, I showed it somewhat jestinglyto sundry of the monks who chanced to be near. Wrathfully theydeclared that Bede was no better than a liar, and that they had afar more trustworthy authority in the person of Hilduin, a formerabbot of theirs, who had travelled for a long time throughoutGreece for the purpose of investigating this very question. He, they insisted, had by his writings removed all possible doubt onthe subject, and had securely established the truth of thetraditional belief. 

One of the monks went so far as to ask me brazenly which of thetwo, Bede or Hilduin, I considered the better authority on thispoint. I replied that the authority of Bede, whose writings areheld in high esteem by the whole Latin Church, appeared to me thebetter. Thereupon in a great rage they began to cry out that atlast I had openly proved the hatred I had always felt for ourmonastery, and that I was seeking to disgrace it in the eyes of thewhole kingdom, robbing it of the honour in which it hadparticularly gloried, by thus denying that the Areopagite was theirpatron saint. To this I answered that I had never denied the fact, and that I did not much care whether their patron was theAreopagite or some one else, provided only he had received hiscrown from God. Thereupon they ran to the abbot and told him of themisdemeanour with which they charged me. 

The abbot listened to their story with delight, rejoicing at havingfound a chance to crush me, for the greater vileness of his lifemade him fear me more even than the rest did. Accordingly hesummoned his council, and when the brethren had assembled heviolently threatened me, declaring that he would straightway sendme to the king, by him to be punished for having thus sullied hiscrown and the glory of his royalty. And until he should hand meover to the king, he ordered that I should be closely guarded. Invain did I offer to submit to the customary discipline if I had inany way been guilty. Then, horrified at their wickedness, whichseemed to crown the ill fortune I had so long endured, and in utterdespair at the apparent conspiracy of the whole world against me, Ifled secretly from the monastery by night, helped thereto by someof the monks who took pity on me, and likewise aided by some of myscholars. 

I made my way to a region where I had formerly dwelt, hard by thelands of Count Theobald (of Champagne). He himself had some slightacquaintance with me, and had compassion on me by reason of mypersecutions, of which the story had reached him. I found a homethere within the walls of Provins, in a priory of the monks ofTroyes, the prior of which had in former days known me well andshown me much love. In his joy at my coming he cared for me withall diligence. It chanced, however, that one day my abbot came toProvins to see the count on certain matters of business. As soon asI had learned of this, I went to the count, the prior accompanyingme, and besought him to intercede in my behalf with the abbot. Iasked no more than that the abbot should absolve me of the chargeagainst me, and give me permission to live the monastic lifewheresoever I could find a suitable place. The abbot, however, andthose who were with him took the matter under advisement, sayingthat they would give the count an answer the day before theydeparted. It appeared from their words that they thought I wishedto go to some other abbey, a thing which they regarded as animmense disgrace to their own. They had, indeed, taken particularpride in the fact that, upon my conversion, I had come to them, asif scorning all other abbeys, and accordingly they considered thatit would bring great shame upon them if I should now desert theirabbey and seek another. For this reason they refused to listeneither to my own plea or to that of the count. Furthermore, theythreatened me with excommunication unless I should instantlyreturn; likewise they forbade the prior with whom I had takenrefuge to keep me longer, under pain of sharing my excommunication. When we heard this both the prior and I were stricken with fear. The abbot went away still obdurate, but a few days thereafter hedied. 

As soon as his successor had been named, I went to him, accompaniedby the Bishop of Meaux, to try if I might win from him thepermission I had vainly sought of his predecessor. At first hewould not give his assent, but finally, through the intervention ofcertain friends of mine, I secured the right to appeal to the kingand his council, and in this way I at last obtained what I sought. The royal seneschal, Stephen, having summoned the abbot and hissubordinates that they might state their case, asked them why theywanted to keep me against my will. He pointed out that this mighteasily bring them into evil repute, and certainly could do them nogood, seeing that their way of living was utterly incompatible withmine. I knew it to be the opinion of the royal council that theirregularities in the conduct of this abbey would tend to bring itmore and more under the control of the king, making it increasinglyuseful and likewise profitable to him, and for this reason I hadgood hope of easily winning the support of the king and those abouthim. 

Thus, indeed, did it come to pass. But in order that the monasterymight not be shorn of any of the glory which it had enjoyed byreason of my sojourn there, they granted me permission to betakemyself to any solitary place I might choose, provided only I didnot put myself under the rule of any other abbey. This was agreedupon and confirmed on both sides in the presence of the king andhis councellors. Forthwith I sought out a lonely spot known to meof old in the region of Troyes, and there, on a bit of land whichhad been given to me, and with the approval of the bishop of thedistrict, I built with reeds and stalks my first oratory in thename of the Holy Trinity. And there concealed, with but onecomrade, a certain cleric, I was able to sing over and over againto the Lord: "Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in thewilderness" (Ps. IV, 7). 

CHAPTER XI

OF HIS TEACHING IN THE WILDERNESS

No sooner had scholars learned of my retreat than they began toflock thither from all sides, leaving their towns and castles todwell in the wilderness. In place of their spacious houses theybuilt themselves huts; instead of dainty fare they lived on theherbs of the field and coarse bread; their soft beds they exchangedfor heaps of straw and rushes, and their tables were piles of turf. In very truth you may well believe that they were like thosephilosophers of old of whom Jerome tells us in his second bookagainst Jovinianus. 

"Through the senses, " says Jerome, "as through so many windows, dovices win entrance to the soul. The metropolis and citadel of themind cannot be taken unless the army of the foe has first rushed inthrough the gates. If any one delights in the games of the circus, in the contests of athletes, in the versatility of actors, in thebeauty of women, in the glitter of gems and raiment, or in aughtelse like to these, then the freedom of his soul is made captivethrough the windows of his eyes, and thus is fulfilled theprophecy: `For death is come up into our windows' (Jer. Ix, 21). And then, when the wedges of doubt have, as it were, been driveninto the citadels of our minds through these gateways, where willbe its liberty? where its fortitude? where its thought of God? Mostof all does the sense of touch paint for itself the pictures ofpast raptures, compelling the soul to dwell fondly upon rememberediniquities, and so to practice in imagination those things whichreality denies to it. 

"Heeding such counsel, therefore, many among the philosophersforsook the thronging ways of the cities and the pleasant gardensof the countryside, with their well-watered fields, their shadytrees, the song of birds, the mirror of the fountain, the murmur ofthe stream, the many charms for eye and ear, fearing lest theirsouls should grow soft amid luxury and abundance of riches, andlest their virtue should thereby be defiled. For it is perilous toturn your eyes often to those things whereby you may some day bemade captive, or to attempt the possession of that which it wouldgo hard with you to do without. Thus the Pythagoreans shunned allcompanionship of this kind, and were wont to dwell in solitary anddesert places. Nay, Plato himself, although he was a rich man, letDiogenes trample on his couch with muddy feet, and in order that hemight devote himself to philosophy established his academy in aplace remote from the city, and not only uninhabited but unhealthyas well. This he did in order that the onslaughts of lust might bebroken by the fear and constant presence of disease, and that hisfollowers might find no pleasure save in the things they learned. "

Such a life, likewise, the sons of the prophets who were thefollowers of Eliseus are reported to have led. Of these Jerome alsotells us, writing thus to the monk Rusticus as if describing themonks of those ancient days: "The sons of the prophets, the monksof whom we read in the Old Testament, built for themselves huts bythe waters of the Jordan, and forsaking the throngs and the cities, lived on pottage and the herbs of the field" (Epist. Iv). 

Even so did my followers build their huts above the waters of theArduzon, so that they seemed hermits rather than scholars. And astheir number grew ever greater, the hardships which they gladlyendured for the sake of my teaching seemed to my rivals to reflectnew glory on me, and to cast new shame on themselves. Nor was itstrange that they, who had done their utmost to hurt me, shouldgrieve to see how all things worked together for my good, eventhough I was now, in the words of Jerome, afar from cities and themarket place, from controversies and the crowded ways of men. Andso, as Quintilian says, did envy seek me out even in my hidingplace. Secretly my rivals complained and lamented one to another, saying: "Behold now, the whole world runs after him, and ourpersecution of him has done nought save to increase his glory. Westrove to extinguish his fame, and we have but given it newbrightness. Lo, in the cities scholars have at hand everything theymay need, and yet, spurning the pleasures of the town, they seekout the barrenness of the desert, and of their own free will theyaccept wretchedness. "

The thing which at that time chiefly led me to undertake thedirection of a school was my intolerable poverty, for I had notstrength enough to dig, and shame kept me from begging. And so, resorting once more to the art with which I was so familiar, I wascompelled to substitute the service of the tongue for the labour ofmy hands. The students willingly provided me with whatsoever Ineeded in the way of food and clothing, and likewise took charge ofthe cultivation of the fields and paid for the erection ofbuildings, in order that material cares might not keep me from mystudies. Since my oratory was no longer large enough to hold even asmall part of their number, they found it necessary to increase itssize, and in so doing they greatly improved it, building it ofstone and wood. Although this oratory had been founded in honour ofthe Holy Trinity, and afterwards dedicated thereto, I now named itthe Paraclete, mindful of how I had come there a fugitive and indespair, and had breathed into my soul something of the miracle ofdivine consolation. 

Many of those who heard of this were greatly astonished, and someviolently assailed my action, declaring that it was not permissibleto dedicate a church exclusively to the Holy Spirit rather than toGod the Father. They held, according to an ancient tradition, thatit must be dedicated either to the Son alone or else to the entireTrinity. The error which led them into this false accusationresulted from their failure to perceive the identity of theParaclete with the Spirit Paraclete. Even as the whole Trinity, orany Person in the Trinity, may rightly be called God or Helper, solikewise may It be termed the Paraclete, that is to say theConsoler. These are the words of the Apostle: "Blessed be God, eventhe Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and theGod of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation"(2 Cor. I, 3). And likewise the word of truth says: "And he shallgive you another comforter" (Greek "another Paraclete, " John, xiv, 16). 

Nay, since every church is consecrated equally in the name of theFather, the Son and the Holy Spirit, without any difference intheir possession thereof, why should not the house of God bededicated to the Father or to the Holy Spirit, even as it is to theSon? Who would presume to erase from above the door the name of himwho is the master of the house? And since the Son offered Himselfas a sacrifice to the Father, and accordingly in the ceremonies ofthe mass the prayers are offered particularly to the Father, andthe immolation of the Host is made to Him, why should the altar notbe held to be chiefly His to whom above all the supplication andsacrifice are made? Is it not called more rightly the altar of Himwho receives than of Him who makes the sacrifice? Who would admitthat an altar is that of the Holy Cross, or of the Sepulchre, or ofSt. Michael, or John, or Peter, or of any other saint, unlesseither he himself was sacrificed there or else special sacrificesand prayers are made there to him? Methinks the altars and templesof certain ones among these saints are not held to be idolatrouseven though they are used for special sacrifices and prayers totheir patrons. 

Some, however, may perchance argue that churches are not built oraltars dedicated to the Father because there is no feast which issolemnized especially for Him. But while this reasoning holds goodas regards the Trinity itself, it does not apply in the case of theHoly Spirit. For this Spirit, from the day of Its advent, has hadIts special feast of the Pentecost, even as the Son has had sinceHis coming upon earth His feast of the Nativity. Even as the Sonwas sent into this world, so did the Holy Spirit descend upon thedisciples, and thus does It claim Its special religious rites. Nay, it seems more fitting to dedicate a temple to It than to either ofthe other Persons of the Trinity, if we but carefully study theapostolic authority, and consider the workings of this SpiritItself. To none of the three Persons did the apostle dedicate aspecial temple save to the Holy Spirit alone. He does not speak ofa temple of the Father, or a temple of the Son, as he does of atemple of the Holy Spirit, writing thus in his first epistle to theCorinthians: "But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. "(I Cor. Vi, 17). And again: "What? know ye not that your body isthe temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have ofGod, and ye are not your own?" (ib. 19). 

Who is there who does not know that the sacraments of God'sblessings pertaining to the Church are particularly ascribed to theoperation of divine grace, by which is meant the Holy Spirit?Forsooth we are born again of water and of the Holy Spirit inbaptism, and thus from the very beginning is the body made, as itwere, a special temple of God. In the successive sacraments, moreover, the seven-fold grace of the Spirit is added, wherebythis same temple of God is made beautiful and is consecrated. Whatwonder is it, then, if to that Person to Whom the apostle assigneda spiritual temple we should dedicate a material one? Or to whatPerson can a church be more rightly said to belong than to Him toWhom all the blessings which the church administers areparticularly ascribed? It was not, however, with the thought ofdedicating my oratory to one Person that I first called it theParaclete, but for the reason I have already told, that in thisspot I found consolation. 'None the less, even if I had done it forthe reason attributed to me, the departure from the usual customwould have been in no way illogical. 

CHAPTER XII

OF THE PERSECUTION DIRECTED AGAINST HIM BY SUNDRY NEW ENEMIES OR, AS IT WERE, APOSTLES

And so I dwelt in this place, my body indeed hidden away, but myfame spreading throughout the whole world, till its echoreverberated mightily-echo, that fancy of the poet's, which has sogreat a voice, and nought beside. My former rivals, seeing thatthey themselves were now powerless to do me hurt, stirred upagainst me certain new apostles in whom the world put great faith. One of these (Norbert of Prémontré) took pride in his position ascanon of a regular order; the other (Bernard of Clairvaux) made ithis boast that he had revived the true monastic life. These two ranhither and yon preaching and shamelessly slandering me in every waythey could, so that in time they succeeded in drawing down on myhead the scorn of many among those having authority, among both theclergy and the laity. They spread abroad such sinister reports ofmy faith as well as of my life that they turned even my bestfriends against me, and those who still retained something of theirformer regard for me were fain to disguise it in every possible wayby reason of their fear of these two men. 

God is my witness that whensoever I learned of the convening of anew assemblage of the clergy, I believed that it was done for theexpress purpose of my condemnation. Stunned by this fear like onesmitten with a thunderbolt, I daily expected to be dragged beforetheir councils or assemblies as a heretic or one guilty of impiety. Though I seem to compare a flea with a lion, or an ant with anelephant, in very truth my rivals persecuted me no less bitterlythan the heretics of old hounded St. Athanasius. Often, God knows, I sank so deep in despair that I was ready to leave the world ofChristendom and go forth among the heathen, paying them astipulated tribute in order that I might live quietly a Christianlife among the enemies of Christ. It seemed to me that such peoplemight indeed be kindly disposed toward me, particularly as theywould doubtless suspect me of being no good Christian, imputing myflight to some crime I had committed, and would therefore believethat I might perhaps be won over to their form of worship. 

CHAPTER XIII

OF THE ABBEY TO WHICH HE WAS CALLED AND OF THE PERSECUTION HE HADFROM HIS SONS, THAT IS TO SAY THE MONKS, AND FROM THE LORD OF THELAND

While I was thus afflicted with so great perturbation of thespirit, and when the only way of escape seemed to be for me to seekrefuge with Christ among the enemies of Christ, there came a chancewhereby I thought I could for a while avoid the plottings of myenemies. But thereby I fell among Christians and monks who were farmore savage than heathens and more evil of life. The thing cameabout in this wise. There was in lesser Brittany, in the bishopricof Vannes, a certain abbey of St. Gildas at Ruits, then mourningthe death of its shepherd. To this abbey the elective choice of thebrethren called me, with the approval of the prince of that land, and I easily secured permission to accept the post from my ownabbot and brethren. Thus did the hatred of the French drive mewestward, even as that of the Romans drove Jerome toward the East. Never, God knows, would I have agreed to this thing had it not beenfor my longing for any possible means of escape from the sufferingswhich I had borne so constantly. 

The land was barbarous and its speech was unknown to me; as for themonks, their vile and untameable way of life was notorious almosteverywhere. The people of the region, too, were uncivilized andlawless. Thus, like one who in terror of the sword that threatenshim dashes headlong over a precipice, and to shun one death for amoment rushes to another, I knowingly sought this new danger inorder to escape from the former one. And there, amid the dreadfulroar of the waves of the sea, where the land's end left me nofurther refuge in flight, often in my prayers did I repeat over andover again: "From the end of the earth will I cry unto Thee, whenmy heart is overwhelmed" (Ps. Lxi, 2). 

No one, methinks, could fail to understand how persistently thatundisciplined body of monks, the direction of which I had thusundertaken, tortured my heart day and night, or how constantly Iwas compelled to think of the danger alike to my body and to mysoul. I held it for certain that if I should try to force them tolive according to the principles they had themselves professed, Ishould not survive. And yet, if I did not do this to the utmost ofmy ability, I saw that my damnation was assured. Moreover, acertain lord who was exceedingly powerful in that region had sometime previously brought the abbey under his control, takingadvantage of the state of disorder within the monastery to seizeall the lands adjacent thereto for his own use, and he ground downthe monks with taxes heavier than those which were extorted fromthe Jews themselves. 

The monks pressed me to supply them with their daily necessities, but they held no property in common which I might administer intheir behalf, and each one, with such resources as he possessed, supported himself and his concubines, as well as his sons anddaughters. They took delight in harassing me on this matter, andthey stole and carried off whatsoever they could lay their handson, to the end that my failure to maintain order might make meeither give up trying to enforce discipline or else abandon my postaltogether. Since the entire region was equally savage, lawless anddisorganized, there was not a single man to whom I could turn foraid, for the habits of all alike were foreign to me. Outside themonastery the lord and his henchmen ceaselessly hounded me, andwithin its walls the brethren were forever plotting against me, sothat it seemed as if the Apostle had had me and none other in mindwhen he said: "Without were fightings, within were fears" (II Cor. Vii, 5). 

I considered and lamented the uselessness and the wretchedness ofmy existence, how fruitless my life now was, both to myself and toothers; how of old I had been of some service to the clerics whom Ihad now abandoned for the sake of these monks, so that I was nolonger able to be of use to either; how incapable I had provedmyself in everything I had undertaken or attempted, so that aboveall others I deserved the reproach, "This man began to build, andwas not able to finish" (Luke xiv, 30). My despair grew stilldeeper when I compared the evils I had left behind with those towhich I had come, for my former sufferings now seemed to me asnought. Full often did I groan: "Justly has this sorrow come uponme because I deserted the Paraclete, which is to say the Consoler, and thrust myself into sure desolation; seeking to shun threats Ifled to certain peril. "

The thing which tormented me most was the fact that, havingabandoned my oratory, I could make no suitable provision for thecelebration there of the divine office, for indeed the extremepoverty of the place would scarcely provide the necessities of oneman. But the true Paraclete Himself brought me real consolation inthe midst of this sorrow of mine, and made all due provision forHis own oratory. For it chanced that in some manner or other, laying claim to it as having legally belonged in earlier days tohis monastery, my abbot of St. Denis got possession of the abbey ofArgenteuil, of which I have previously spoken, wherein she who wasnow my sister in Christ rather than my wife, Héloïse, had taken theveil. From this abbey he expelled by force all the nuns who haddwelt there, and of whom my former companion had become theprioress. The exiles being thus dispersed in various places, Iperceived that this was an opportunity presented by God himself tome whereby I could make provision anew for my oratory. And so, returning thither, I bade her come to the oratory, together withsome others from the same convent who had clung to her. 

On their arrival there I made over to them the oratory, togetherwith everything pertaining thereto, and subsequently, through theapproval and assistance of the bishop of the district, PopeInnocent II promulgated a decree confirming my gift in perpetuityto them and their successors. And this refuge of divine mercy, which they served so devotedly, soon brought them consolation, eventhough at first their life there was one of want, and for a time ofutter destitution. But the place proved itself a true Paraclete tothem, making all those who dwelt round about feel pity andkindliness for the sisterhood. So that, methinks, they prosperedmore through gifts in a single year than I should have done if Ihad stayed there a hundred. True it is that the weakness ofwomankind makes their needs and sufferings appeal strongly topeople's feelings, as likewise it makes their virtue all the morepleasing to God and man. And God granted such favour in the eyes ofall to her who was now my sister, and who was in authority over therest, that the bishops loved her as a daughter, the abbots as asister, and the laity as a mother. All alike marvelled at herreligious zeal, her good judgment and the sweetness of herincomparable patience in all things. The less often she allowedherself to be seen, shutting herself up in her cell to devoteherself to sacred meditations and prayers, the more eagerly didthose who dwelt without demand her presence and the spiritualguidance of her words. 

CHAPTER XIV

OF THE EVIL REPORT OF HIS INIQUITY

Before long all those who dwelt thereabouts began to censure meroundly, complaining that I paid far less attention to their needsthan I might and should have done, and that at least I could dosomething for them through my preaching. As a result, I returnedthither frequently, to be of service to them in whatsoever way Icould. Regarding this there was no lack of hateful murmuring, andthe thing which sincere charity induced me to do was seized upon bythe wickedness of my detractors as the subject of shameless outcry. They declared that I, who of old could scarcely endure to be partedfrom her I loved, was still swayed by the delights of fleshly lust. Many times I thought of the complaint of St. Jerome in his letterto Asella regarding those women whom he was falsely accused ofloving, when he said (Epist. Xcix): "I am charged with nothing savethe fact of my sex, and this charge is made only because Paula issetting forth to Jerusalem. " And again: "Before I became intimatein the household of the saintly Paula, the whole city was loud inmy praise, and nearly every one deemed me deserving of the highesthonours of priesthood. But I know that my way to the kingdom ofHeaven lies through good and evil report alike. "

When I pondered over the injury which slander had done to so greata man as this, I was not a little consoled thereby. If my rivals, Itold myself, could but find an equal cause for suspicion againstme, with what accusations would they persecute me! But how is itpossible for such suspicion to continue in my case, seeing thatdivine mercy has freed me therefrom by depriving me of all power toenact such baseness? How shameless is this latest accusation! Intruth that which had happened to me so completely removes allsuspicion of this iniquity among all men that those who wish tohave their women kept under close guard employ eunuchs for thatpurpose, even as sacred history tells regarding Esther and theother damsels of King Ahasuerus (Esther ii, 5). We read, too, ofthat eunuch of great authority under Queen Candace who had chargeof all her treasure, him to whose conversion and baptism theapostle Philip was directed by an angel (Acts viii, 27). Such men, in truth, are enabled to have far more importance and intimacyamong modest and upright women by the fact that they are free fromany suspicion of lust. 

The sixth book of the Ecclesiastical History tells us that thegreatest of all Christian philosophers, Origen, inflicted a likeinjury on himself with his own hand, in order that all suspicion ofthis nature might be completely done away with in his instructionof women in sacred doctrine. In this respect, I thought, God'smercy had been kinder to me than to him, for it was judged that hehad acted most rashly and had exposed himself to no slight censure, whereas the thing had been done to me through the crime of another, thus preparing me for a task similar to his own. Moreover, it hadbeen accomplished with much less pain, being so quick and sudden, for I was heavy with sleep when they laid hands on me, and feltscarcely any pain at all. 

But alas, I thought, the less I then suffered from the wound, thegreater is my punishment now through slander, and I am tormentedfar more by the loss of my reputation than I was by that of part ofmy body. For thus is it written: "A good name is rather to bechosen than great riches" (Prov. Xxii, 1). And as St. Augustinetells us in a sermon of his on the life and conduct of the clergy, "He is cruel who, trusting in his conscience, neglects hisreputation. " Again he says: "Let us provide those things that aregood, as the apostle bids us (Rom. Xii, 17), not alone in the eyesof God, but likewise in the eyes of men. Within himself each one'sconscience suffices, but for our own sakes our reputations oughtnot to be tarnished, but to flourish. Conscience and reputation aredifferent matters: conscience is for yourself, reputation for yourneighbour. " Methinks the spite of such men as these my enemieswould have accused the very Christ Himself, or those belonging toHim, prophets and apostles, or the other holy fathers, if suchspite had existed in their time, seeing that they associated insuch familiar intercourse with women, and this though they werewhole of body. On this point St. Augustine, in his book on the dutyof monks, proves that women followed our Lord Jesus Christ and theapostles as inseparable companions, even accompanying them whenthey preached (Chap. 4). "Faithful women, " he says, "who werepossessed of worldly wealth went with them, and ministered to themout of their wealth, so that they might lack none of those thingswhich belong to the substance of life. " And if any one does notbelieve that the apostles thus permitted saintly women to go aboutwith them wheresoever they preached the Gospel, let him listen tothe Gospel itself, and learn therefrom that in so doing theyfollowed the example of the Lord. For in the Gospel it is writtenthus: "And it came to pass afterward, that He went throughout everycity and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of thekingdom of God: and the twelve were with Him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary calledMagdalene, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, andSusanna, and many others, which ministered unto Him of theirsubstance" (Luke viii, i-3). 

Leo the Ninth, furthermore, in his reply to the letter ofParmenianus concerning monastic zeal, says: "We unequivocallydeclare that it is not permissible for a bishop, priest, deacon orsubdeacon to cast off all responsibility for his own wife on thegrounds of religious duty, so that he no longer provides her withfood and clothing; albeit he may not have carnal intercourse withher. We read that thus did the holy apostles act, for St. Paulsays: 'Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well asother apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?' (ICor. Ix, 5). Observe, foolish man, that he does not say: 'have wenot power to embrace a sister, a wife, ' but he says 'to leadabout, ' meaning thereby that such women may lawfully be supportedby them out of the wages of their preaching, but that there must beno carnal bond between them. "

Certainly that Pharisee who spoke within himself of the Lord, saying: "This man, if He were a prophet, would have known who andwhat manner of woman this is that toucheth Him: for she is asinner" (Luke vii, 39), might much more reasonably have suspectedbaseness of the Lord, considering the matter from a purely humanstandpoint, than my enemies could suspect it of me. One who hadseen the mother of Our Lord entrusted to the care of the young man(John xix, 27), or who had beheld the prophets dwelling andsojourning with widows (I Kings xvii, 10), would likewise have hada far more logical ground for suspicion. And what would mycalumniators have said if they had but seen Malchus, that captivemonk of whom St. Jerome writes, living in the same but with hiswife? Doubtless they would have regarded it as criminal in thefamous scholar to have highly commended what he thus saw, sayingthereof: "There was a certain old man named Malchus, a native ofthis region, and his wife with him in his hut. Both of them wereearnestly religious, and they so often passed the threshold of thechurch that you might have thought them the Zacharias and Elisabethof the Gospel, saving only that John was not with them. "

Why, finally, do such men refrain from slandering the holy fathers, of whom we frequently read, nay, and have even seen with our owneyes, founding convents for women and making provision for theirmaintenance, thereby following the example of the seven deaconswhom the apostles sent before them to secure food and take care ofthe women? (Acts vi, 5). For the weaker sex needs the help of thestronger one to such an extent that the apostle proclaimed that thehead of the woman is ever the man (I Cor. Xi, 3), and in signthereof he bade her ever wear her head covered (ib. 5). For thisreason I marvel greatly at the customs which have crept intomonasteries, whereby, even as abbots are placed in charge of themen, abbesses now are given authority over the women, and the womenbind themselves in their vows to accept the same rules as the men. Yet in these rules there are many things which cannot possibly becarried out by women, either as superiors or in the lower orders. In many places we may even behold an inversion of the natural orderof things, whereby the abbesses and nuns have authority over theclergy, and even over those who are themselves in charge of thepeople. The more power such women exercise over men, the moreeasily can they lead them into iniquitous desires, and in this waycan lay a very heavy yoke upon their shoulders. It was with suchthings in mind that the satirist said:

 "There is nothing more intolerable than a rich woman. " (Juvenal, Sat. VI, v, 459). 

CHAPTER XV

OF THE PERILS OF HIS ABBEY AND OF THE REASONS FOR THE WRITING OFTHIS HIS LETTER

Reflecting often upon all these things, I determined to makeprovision for those sisters and to undertake their care in everyway I could. Furthermore, in order that they might have the greaterreverence for me, I arranged to watch over them in person. Andsince now the persecution carried on by my sons was greater andmore incessant than that which I formerly suffered at the hands ofmy brethren, I returned frequently to the nuns, fleeing the rage ofthe tempest as to a haven of peace. There, indeed, could I drawbreath for a little in quiet, and among them my labours werefruitful, as they never were among the monks. All this was of theutmost benefit to me in body and soul, and it was equally essentialfor them by reason of their weakness. 

But now has Satan beset me to such an extent that I no longer knowwhere I may find rest, or even so much as live. I am driven hitherand yon, a fugitive and a vagabond, even as the accursed Cain (Gen. Iv, 14). I have already said that "without were fightings, withinwere fears" (II Cor. Vii, 5), and these torture me ceaselessly, thefears being indeed without as well as within, and the fightingswheresoever there are fears. Nay, the persecution carried on by mysons rages against me more perilously and continuously than that ofmy open enemies, for my sons I have always with me, and I am everexposed to their treacheries. The violence of my enemies I see inthe danger to my body if I leave the cloister; but within it I amcompelled incessantly to endure the crafty machinations as well asthe open violence of those monks who are called my sons, and whoare entrusted to me as their abbot, which is to say their father. 

Oh, how often have they tried to kill me with poison, even as themonks sought to slay St. Benedict! Methinks the same reason whichled the saint to abandon his wicked sons might encourage me tofollow the example of so great a father, lest, in thus exposingmyself to certain peril, I might be deemed a rash tempter of Godrather than a lover of Him, nay, lest it might even be judged thatI had thereby taken my own life. When I had safeguarded myself tothe best of my ability, so far as my food and drink were concerned, against their daily plottings, they sought to destroy me in thevery ceremony of the altar by putting poison in the chalice. Oneday, when I had gone to Nantes to visit the count, who was thensick, and while I was sojourning awhile in the house of one of mybrothers in the flesh, they arranged to poison me, with theconnivance of one of my attendants, believing that I would take noprecautions to escape such a plot. But divine providence so orderedmatters that I had no desire for the food which was set before me;one of the monks whom I had brought with me ate thereof, notknowing that which had been done, and straightway fell dead. As forthe attendant who had dared to undertake this crime, he fled interror alike of his own conscience and of the clear evidence of hisguilt. 

After this, as their wickedness was manifest to every one, I beganopenly in every way I could to avoid the danger with which theirplots threatened me, even to the extent of leaving the abbey anddwelling with a few others apart in little cells. If the monks knewbeforehand that I was going anywhere on a journey, they bribedbandits to waylay me on the road and kill me. And while I wasstruggling in the midst of these dangers, it chanced one day thatthe hand of the Lord smote me a heavy blow, for I fell from myhorse, breaking a bone in my neck, the injury causing me greaterpain and weakness than my former wound. 

Using excommunication as my weapon to coerce the untamedrebelliousness of the monks, I forced certain ones among them whomI particularly feared to promise me publicly, pledging their faithor swearing upon the sacrament, that they would thereafter departfrom the abbey and no longer trouble me in any way. Shamelessly andopenly did they violate the pledges they had given and theirsacramental oaths, but finally they were compelled to give this andmany other promises under oath, in the presence of the count andthe bishops, by the authority of the Pontiff of Rome, Innocent, whosent his own legate for this special purpose. And yet even this didnot bring me peace. For when I returned to the abbey after theexpulsion of those whom I have just mentioned, and entrusted myselfto the remaining brethren, of whom I felt less suspicion, I foundthem even worse than the others. I barely succeeded in escapingthem, with the aid of a certain nobleman of the district, for theywere planning, not to poison me indeed, but to cut my throat with asword. Even to the present time I stand face to face with thisdanger, fearing the sword which threatens my neck so that I canscarcely draw a free breath between one meal and the next. Even sodo we read of him who, reckoning the power and heaped-up wealth ofthe tyrant Dionysius as a great blessing, beheld the sword secretlyhanging by a hair above his head, and so learned what kind ofhappiness comes as the result of worldly power (Cicer. 5, Tusc. )Thus did I too learn by constant experience, I who had been exaltedfrom the condition of a poor monk to the dignity of an abbot, thatmy wretchedness increased with my wealth; and I would that theambition of those who voluntarily seek such power might be curbedby my example. 

And now, most dear brother in Christ and comrade closest to me inthe intimacy of speech, it should suffice for your sorrows and thehardships you have endured that I have written this story of my ownmisfortunes, amid which I have toiled almost from the cradle. Forso, as I said in the beginning of this letter, shall you come toregard your tribulation as nought, or at any rate as little, incomparison with mine, and so shall you bear it more lightly inmeasure as you regard it as less. Take comfort ever in the sayingof Our Lord, what he foretold for his followers at the hands of thefollowers of the devil: "If they have persecuted me, they will alsopersecute you (John xv, 20). If the world hate you, ye know that ithated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the worldwould love his own" (ib. 18-19). And the apostle says: "All thatwill live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (II Tim. Iii, 12). And elsewhere he says: "I do not seek to please men. Forif I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ"(Galat. I, 10). And the Psalmist says: "They who have been pleasingto men have been confounded, for that God hath despised them. "

Commenting on this, St. Jerome, whose heir methinks I am in theendurance of foul slander, says in his letter to Nepotanius: "Theapostle says: 'If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant ofChrist. ' He no longer seeks to please men, and so is made Christ'sservant" (Epist. 2). And again, in his letter to Asella regardingthose whom he was falsely accused of loving: "I give thanks to myGod that I am worthy to be one whom the world hates" (Epist. 99). And to the monk Heliodorus he writes: "You are wrong, brother, youare wrong if you think there is ever a time when the Christian doesnot suffer persecution. For our adversary goes about as a roaringlion seeking what he may devour, and do you still think of peace?Nay, he lieth in ambush among the rich. "

Inspired by those records and examples, we should endure ourpersecutions all the more steadfastly the more bitterly they harmus. We should not doubt that even if they are not according to ourdeserts, at least they serve for the purifying of our soul. Andsince all things are done in accordance with the divine ordering, let every one of true faith console himself amid all hisafflictions with the thought that the great goodness of God permitsnothing to be done without reason, and brings to a good endwhatsoever may seem to happen wrongfully. Wherefore rightly do allmen say: "Thy will be done. " And great is the consolation to alllovers of God in the word of the Apostle when he says: "We knowthat all things work together for good to them that love God"(Rom. Viii, 28). The wise man of old had this in mind when he saidin his Proverbs: "There shall no evil happen to the just"(Prov. Xii, 21). By this he clearly shows that whosoever growswrathful for any reason against his sufferings has therein departedfrom the way of the just, because he may not doubt that thesethings have happened to him by divine dispensation. Even such arethose who yield to their own rather than to the divine purpose, andwith hidden desires resist the spirit which echoes in the words, "Thy will be done, " thus placing their own will ahead of the willof God. Farewell. 

APPENDIX

PIERRE ABÉLARD

Petrus Abaelardus (or Abailardus) was born in the year 1079 atPalets, a Breton town not far from Nantes. His father, Berengarius, was a nobleman of some local importance; his mother, Lucia, waslikewise of noble family. The name "Abaelardus" is said to be acorruption of "Habelardus, " which, in turn, was substituted byhimself for the nickname "Bajolardus" given to him in his studentdays. However the name may have arisen, the famous scholarcertainly adopted it very early in his career, and it went overinto the vernacular as "Abélard" or "Abailard, " though with amultiplicity of variations (in Villon's famous poem, for example, it appears as "Esbaillart"). 

For the main facts of Abélard's life his own writings remain thebest authority, but through his frequent contact with many of theforemost figures in the intellectual and clerical life of the earlytwelfth century it has been possible to check his own account ofhis career with considerable accuracy. The story told in the"Historia Calamitatum" covers the events of his life from boyhoodto about 1132 or 1133, --in other words, up to approximately hisfifty-third or fifty-fourth year. That the account he gives ofhimself is substantially correct cannot be doubted; making all dueallowance for the violence of his feelings, which certainly led himto colour many incidents in a manner unfavourable to his enemies, the main facts tally closely with all the external evidence nowavailable. 

A very brief summary of the events of the final years of his lifewill serve to round out the story. The "Historia Calamitatum" waswritten while Abélard was still abbot of the monastery of St. Gildas, in Brittany. The terrors of his existence there are fullydwelt on in his autobiographical letter, and finally, in 1134 or1135, he fled, living for a short time in retirement. In 1136, however, we find him once more lecturing, and apparently with muchof his former success, on Mont Ste. Genevieve. His old enemies werestill on his trail, and most of all Bernard of Clairvaux, to whosefiery adherence to the faith Abélard's rationalism seemed a sheerdesecration. The unceasing activities of Bernard and others finallybrought Abélard before an ecclesiastical council at Sens in 1140, where he was formally arraigned on charges of heresy. Had Abélard'scourage held good, he might have won his case, for Bernard wasfrankly terrified at the prospect of meeting so formidable adialectitian, but Abélard, broken in spirit by the prolongedpersecution from which he had suffered, contented himself withappealing to the Pope. The indefatigable Bernard at once proceededto secure a condemnation of Abélard from Rome, whither the accusedman set out to plead his case. On the way, however, he collapsed, both physically and in spirit, and remained for a few months at theabbey of Cluny, whence his friends removed him, a dying man, to thepriory of St. Marcel, near Châlons-sur-Saône. Here he died on April21, 1142. 

A discussion of Abélard's position among the scholasticphilosophers would necessarily go far beyond the proper limits of amere historical note. He stands out less commandingly as aconstructive philosopher than as a master of dialectics. He was, aseven his enemies admitted, a brilliant teacher and an unconquerablelogician; he was, moreover, a voluminous writer. Works by him whichhave been preserved include letters, sermons, philosophical andreligious treatises, commentaries on the Bible, on Aristotle and onvarious other books, and a number of poems. 

Many of the misfortunes which the "Historia Calamitatum" relateswere the direct outcome of Abélard's uncompromising position as arationalist, and the document is above all interesting for thepicture it gives of the man himself, against the background ofearly twelfth century France. A few dates will help the generalreader to connect the life surrounding Abélard with other and morefamiliar facts. William the Conqueror had entered England thirteenyears before Abélard's birth. The boy was eight years old when theConqueror died near Rouen during his struggle with Philip ofFrance. He was seventeen when the First Crusade began, and twentywhen the crusaders captured Jerusalem. 

Two of the men who most profoundly influenced the times in whichAbélard lived were Hildebrand, famous as Pope Gregory VII, andLouis VI (the Fat), king of France. It was to Hildebrand that theChurch owed much of that regeneration of the spirit which gave itsuch vitality throughout the twelfth century. Hildebrand died, indeed, when Abélard was only six years old, but he left the Churchsuch a force in the affairs of men as it had never been before. Asfor Louis the Fat, who reigned from 1108 to 1137, it was he whobegan to lift the royal power in France out of the shadow which theslothfulness and incompetence of his immediate predecessors, HenryI and Philip I, had cast over it. Discerning enough to see that thechief enemies of the crown were the great nobles, and constantlyadvised by a minister of exceptional wisdom, Suger, abbot of St. Denis, Louis did his utmost to protect the towns and the churches, and to bring that small part of France wherein his power was feltout of the anarchy and chaos of the eleventh century. 

It was the France of Louis VI and Sager which formed the backgroundfor the great battle between the realists and the nominalists, thebattle in which Abélard played no small part. His life was dividedbetween the towns wherein he taught and the Church whichalternately welcomed and denounced him. His fellow-disputants havetheir places in the history of philosophy; the story of Abélard'slove for Héloïse has set him apart, so that he has lived for eightcenturies less as a fearless thinker and masterly logician than asone of the glowingly romantic figures of the Middle Ages. 

"A FRIEND"

It is not known to whom Abélard's letter was addressed, but it maybe guessed that the writer intended it to reach the hands ofHéloïse. This actually happened, and the first and most famousletter from Héloise to Abélard was substantially an answer to the"Historia Calamitatum. "

WILLIAM OF CHAMPEAUX

William of Champeaux (Gulielmus Campellensis) was born about 1070at Champeaux, near Melun. He studied under Anselm of Laon andRoscellinus, his training in philosophy thereby being influenced byboth realism and nominalism. His own inclination, however, wasstrongly towards the former, and it was as a determined proponentof realism that he began to teach in the school of the cathedral ofNotre Dame, of which he was made canon in 1103. In 1108 he withdrewto the abbey of St. Victor, and subsequently became bishop ofChâlons-sur-Marne. He died in 1121. As a teacher his influence waswide; he was a vigorous defender of orthodoxy and a passionateadversary of the heterodox philosophy of his former master, Roscellinus. That he and Abélard disagreed was only natural, butAbélard's statement that he argued William into abandoning thebasic principles of his philosophy is certainly untrue. 

"THE UNIVERSALS"

It is not within the province of such a note as this to discuss indetail the great controversy between the realists and thenominalists which dominated the philosophical and, to some extent, the religious thought of France during the first half of thetwelfth century. In brief, the realists maintained that the idea isa reality distinct from and independent of the individualsconstituting it; their motto, _Universalia sunt realia_, wasreadily capable of extension far beyond the Church, and William ofChampeaux himself carried it to the extent of arguing that nothingis real but the universal. The nominalists, on the other hand, argued that "universals" are mere notions of the mind, and thatindividuals alone are real; their motto was _Universalia suntnomina_. Thus the central question in the long controversyconcerned the reality of abstract or incorporate ideas, and it isto be observed that the realists held views diametrically oppositeto those which the word "realism" today implies. In upholding thereality of the idea, they were what would now be called idealists, whereas their opponents, denying the reality of abstractions andinsisting on that of the concrete individual or object, wererealists in the modern sense. 

The peculiar importance of this controversy lay in its effect onthe status of the Church. If nominalism should prevail, then theChurch would be shorn of much of its authority, for its greatestpower lay in the conception of it as an enduring reality outside ofand above all the individuals who shared in its work. It is notstrange, then, that the ardent realism of William of Champeauxshould have been outraged by the nominalistic logic of Abélard. Abélard, indeed, never went to such extreme lengths as thearch-nominalist, Roscellinus, who was duly condemned for heresy bythe Council of Soissons in 1092, but he went quite far enough towin for himself the undying enmity of the leading realists, whowere followed by the great majority of the clergy. 

PORPHYRY

The Introduction ("Isagoge") to the Categories of Aristotle, Written by the Greek scholar and neoplatonist Porphyry in the thirdcentury A. D. , was translated into Latin by Boetius, and in thisform was extensively used throughout the Middle Ages as acompendium of Aristotelian logic. As a philosopher Porphyry waschiefly important as the immediate successor of Plotinus in theneoplatonic school at Rome, but his "Isagoge" had extraordinaryweight among the medieval logicians. 

PRISCIAN

The _Institutiones grammaticae_ of Priscian (PriscianusCaesariensis) formed the standard grammatical and philologicaltextbook of the Middle Ages, its importance being fairly indicatedby the fact that today there exist about a thousand manuscriptcopies of it. 

ANSELM

Anselm of Laon was born somewhere about 1040, and is said to havestudied under the famous St. Anselm, later archbishop ofCanterbury, at the monastery of Bec. About 1070 he began to teachin Paris, where he was notably successful. Subsequently he returnedto Laon, where his school of theology and exegetics became the mostfamous one in Europe. His most important work, an interlinear glosson the Scriptures, was regarded as authoritative throughout thelater Middle Ages. He died in 1117. That he was something of apedant is probable, but Abélard's picture of him is certainly veryfar from doing him justice. 

ALBERIC OF RHEIMS AND LOTULPHE THE LOMBARD

Of these two not much is known beyond what Abélard himself tellsus. ALberic, indeed, won a considerable reputation, and was highlyrecommended to Pope Honorius II by St. Bernard. In 1139 Albericseems to have become archbishop of Bourges, dying two years later. Lotulphe the Lombard is referred to by another authority asLeutaldus Novariensis. 

ST. JEROME

The enormous scholarship of St. Jerome, born about 340 and dyingSeptember 30, 420, made him not only the foremost authority withinthe Church itself throughout the Middle Ages, but also one of thechief guides to secular scholarship. Abélard repeatedly quotes fromhim, particularly from his denunciation of the revival of Gnosticheresies by Jovinianus and from some of his voluminous epistles. Healso refers extensively to the charges brought against Jerome byreason of his teaching of women at Rome in the house of Marcella. One of his pupils, Paula, a wealthy widow, followed him on hisjourney through Palestine, and built three nunneries at Bethlehem, of which she remained the head up to the time of her death in 404. 

ST. AUGUSTINE

Regarding the position of St. Augustine (354-430) throughout theMiddle Ages, it is here sufficient to quote a few words of GustavKrüger: "The theological position and influence of Augustine may besaid to be unrivalled. No single name has ever exercised such powerover the Christian Church, and no one mind ever made so deep animpression on Christian thought. In him scholastics and mystics, popes and opponents of the papal supremacy, have seen theirchampion. He was the fulcrum on which Luther rested the thoughts bywhich be sought to lift the past of the Church out of the rut; yetthe judgment of Catholics still proclaims the ideals of Augustineas the only sound basis of pbilosopby. "

ABBEY OF ST. DENIS

The abbey of St. Denis was founded about 625 by Dagobert, son ofLothair II, at some distance from the basilica which the clergy ofParis had erected in the fifth century over the saint's tomb. Longrenowned as the place of burial for most of the kings of France, the abbey of St. Denis had a particular importance in Abélard's dayby reason of its close association with the reigning monarch. Theabbot to whom Abélard refers so bitterly was Adam of St. Denis, whobegan his rule of the monastery about 1094. In 1106 this same Adamchose as his secretary one of the inmates of the monastery, Suger, destined shortly to become the most influential man in Francethrough his position as advisor to Louis VI, and also the foremosthistorian of his time. Adam died in 1123, and his successor, referred to by Abélard in Chapter X, was none other than Sugerhimself. From 1127 to 1137 Suger devoted most of his time to thereorganization and reform of the monastery of St. Denis. If we areto believe Abélard, such reform was sorely needed, but othercontemporary evidence by no means fully sustains Abélard in hiscondemnation of Adam and his fellow monks. 

ORIGEN

The ALexandrian theological writer Origen, who lived from about 185to 254, was the most distinguished and the most influential of allthe theologians of the ancient Church, with the single exception ofAugustine. His incredible industry resulted in such a mass ofWritings that Jerome himself asked in despair, "Which of us canread all that he has written?" Origen's self-mutilation, referredto by Abélard, was subsequently used by his enemies as an argumentfor deposing him from his presbyterial status. 

ATHANASIUS

Abélard's tract regarding the power of God to create Himself wasone of the many distant echoes of the great Arian-Athanasiancontroversy of the fourth century. St. Athanasius, bishop ofAlexandria, well deserved the title conferred on him by the Churchas "the father of orthodoxy, " and it was by his name that thedoctrine of identity of substance ("the Son is of the samesubstance with the Father") became known. Much of the life ofAthanasius was passed amid persecutions at the hands of hisenemies, and on several occasions he was driven into exile. 

RODOLPHE, ARCHBISHOP OF RHEIMS

Rodolphe, or, as some authorities call him, Rudolph or Radulph, became archbishop of Rheims in 1114, after having served astreasurer of the cathedral. His importance among the French clergyis attested by the many references to him in contemporarydocuments. 

CONON OF PRAENESTE

Conon, bishop of Praeneste, whose real name may have been Conrad, came to France as papal legate on at least two occasions. Herepresented Paschal II in 1115 at ecclesiastical councils held inBeauvais, Rheims and Châlons; in 1120 he represented Calixtus II atSoissons on the occasion of Abélard's trial. 

GEOFFROI OF CHARTRES

Geoffroi, bishop of Chartres, the second of the name to hold thatpost, was subsequently a warm friend of St. Bernard. Abélard's highestimate of him is fully confirmed by other contemporaryauthorities. 

ABBOT OF ST. MÉDARD

This abbot was probably, though not certainly, Anselm of Soissons, who became a bishop in 1145. The chronology, however, is confusing. 

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

The confusion regarding the identity of Dionysius the Areopagitepersists to this day, at least to the extent that we do not knowthe real name of the fourth or fifth century writer who, under thispseudonym, exercised so profound an influence on medieval thought. That he was not the bishop of either Athens or Corinth, nor yet theDionysius who became the patron saint of France, is clear enough. Of the actual Dionysius the Areopagite we know practically nothing. He is mentioned in Acts, xvii, 34, as one of those Athenians whobelieved when they had heard Paul preach on Mars Hill. A century ormore later we learn from another Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, thatDionysius the Areopagite was the first bishop of Athens, astatement of doubtful value. In the fourth or fifth century a Greektheological writer of extraordinary erudition assumed the name ofDionysius the Areopagite, and as his works exerted an enormousinfluence on later scholarship, it was quite natural that thepersonal legend of the real Dionysius should have been extendedcorrespondingly. 

The Hilduin referred to by Abélard, who was abbot of St. Denis from814 to 840, was directly responsible for the extreme phase of thisextension. Accepting, as most of his contemporaries unquestioninglydid, the identity of the theological writer with the Dionysiusmentioned in Acts and spoken of as bishop of Athens, Hilduin wentone step further, and demonstrated that this Dionysius was likewisethe Dionysius (Denis) who had been sent into Gaul and martyred atCatulliacus, the modern St. Denis. There is no evidence to supportHilduin's contention, and the chronology of Gregory of Tours isquite sufficient to disprove it, but none the less it wasenthusiastically accepted in France, and above all by the monks ofSt. Denis. 

There was, however, a persistent doubt as to the identity of theDionysius whose writings had become so famous. Bede, the authorityquoted by Abélard, was, of course, wrong in saying that he was thebishop of Corinth, but anything which tended to shake the tripleidentity, established by Hilduin, of the Dionysius of Athens wholistened to St. Paul, of the pseudo-Areopagite whose works wereknown to every medieval scholar, and of the St. Denis who hadbecome the patron saint of France, was naturally anathematized bythe monks who bore the saint's name. Bede and Abélard were by nomeans accurate, but Bede's inkling of the truth was quite enough toget Abélard into serious trouble. 

THEOBALD OF CHAMPAGNE

Theobald II, Count of Blois, Meaux and Champagne, was one of themost powerful nobles in France, and by the extent of his influencefully deserved the title of "the Great" by which he wassubsequently known. His domain included the modern departments ofArdennes, Marne, Aube and Haute-Marne, with part of Aisne, Seine-et-Marne, Yonne and Meuse. Furthermore, his mother Adela, was the daughter ofWilliam I of England, and his younger brother, Stephen, was King ofEngland from 1135 to 1154. Theobald became Count of Blois in 1102, Count of Champagne in 1125, and Count of Troyes in 1128. Had he sochosen, he might likewise have become Duke of Normandy after thedeath of his uncle, Henry I of England, in 1135. He died in 1152. 

STEPHEN THE SENESCHAL

There is much doubt as to whether this Stephen was Stephen deGarland, _dapifer_, or another Stephen, who was royal chancellorunder Louis the Fat. A charter of the year 1124 is signed by bothStephen _dapifer_ and Stephen _cancellarius_. Probably, however, the authority identifying Stephen _dapifer_ as Stephen de Garland, seneschal of France, is trustworthy. 

THE PARACLETE

Among the terms which are characteristic of, or even peculiar to, the Gospel of St. John is that of "the Paraclete, " rendered in theKing games version "the Comforter. " The Greek word of which"Paraclete" is a reproduction literally means "advocate, " onecalled to aid; hence "intercessor. " The doctrine of the Paracleteappears chiefly in John, xiv and xv. For example: (xiv, 16-17) "AndI will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter(Paraclete) that be may abide with you for ever; even the spirit oftruth. " Again: (xiv, 26) "But the Comforter (Paraclete), which isthe Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shallteach you all things. " With John's words as a basis, the Paracletecame to be regarded as identical with the Third Person of theTrinity, but always with the special attributes of consolation andintercession. 

NORBERT OF PRÉMONTRÉ

In 1120 there was established at Prémontré, a desert place in thediocese of Laon, a monastery of canons regular who followed theso-called Rule of St. Augustine, but with supplementary statuteswhich made the life one of exceptional severity. The head of thismonastery was Norbert, subsequently canonized. His order receivedpapal approbation in 1126, and thereafter it spread rapidlythroughout Europe; two hundred years later there were no less thanseventeen hundred Norbertine or Premonstratensian monasteries. Norbert himself became archbishop of Magdeburg, and it was inGermany that the most notable work of his order was accomplished. 

BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

Regarding the illustrious St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, it isneedless here to say more than that his own age recognized in himthe embodiment of the highest ideal of medieval monasticism. Intellectually inferior to Abélard and to some others of those overwhom he triumphed, he was their superior in moral strength, inzeal, and above all in the power of making others share his ownenthusiasms. Born in 1090, he was renowned as one of the foremostof French churchmen before he was thirty years old; his share inthe contest which followed the death of Pope Honorius II in 1130made him one of the most commanding figures in all Europe. It wasto him that the Cistercian order owed its extraordinary expansionin the twelfth century. That Abélard should have fallen before soredoubtable an adversary (see the note on Pierre Abélard) is in noway surprising, but there can be no doubt that St. Bernard's"persecution" of Abélard was inspired solely by high ideals and anintense zeal for the truth as Bernard perceived it. 

ABBEY OF ST. GILDAS

Traditionally, at least, this abbey was the oldest one in Brittany. According to the anonymous author of the Life and Deeds of St. Gildas, it was founded during the reign of Childeric, the second ofthe Merovingian kings, in the fifth century. Be that as it may, itsauthentic history had been extensive before Abélard assumed thedirection of its affairs. His gruesome picture of the conditionswhich prevailed there cannot, of course, be accepted as whollyaccurate, but even allowing for gross exaggeration, the life of themonks must have been quite sufficiently scandalous. It wasapparently in the closing period of Abélard's sojourn at the abbeyof St. Gildas that he wrote the "Historia Calamitatum. " He enduredthe life there for nearly ten years; the date of his flight is notcertain, but it cannot have been far from 1134 or 1135. 

LEO IX

Leo IX, pope from 1049 to 1054, was a native of Upper Alsace. Itwas at the Easter synod of 1049 that he enjoined anew the celibacyof the clergy, in connection with which the letter quoted byAbélard was written.