The reputed founder of definite Realism was William of Champeaux (1060-1121), a pupil of Roscelin himself, a teacher at Paris, and ultimately Bishop of Chalons. By the account of his enemy Abailard, he held an uncompromising Realism which maintained that the Universal was a substance or thing which was present in its entirety in each individual. It was the presence of such crude Realism as this which gave his opportunity to the greatest teacher of this early period of Scholasticism, Peter Abailard (1079-1142). A pupil of both Roscelin and William of Champeaux—the two extremes of Nominalism and Realism—he aimed in his teaching at arriving at a via media to which subsequent writers have given the name Conceptualism. According to him the individual is the only true substance, and the genus is that which is asserted of a number of individuals; it is therefore a name used as a sign—a concept, although he does not use the word. Thus he does not condemn the Realistic theory borrowed from Plato, of Universals as having an existence of their own; he regards them as ideas or exemplars which existed in the divine mind before the creation of things. But he opposes the tendency in Realism to treat as identical the qualities which resemble each other in different individuals, since that abolishes the personality of the individual which to him is the only reality. Like Roscelin he did not hesitate to apply his dialectic to theology. Here, while repudiating the tritheism of his master, he practically reproduced the old heresy of Sabellius which reduced the Trinity to three aspects or attributes of the Divine Being—power, wisdom, and love. "A doctrine is to be believed," he held, "not because God has said it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so." His whole attitude was that of the free, if reverent, enquirer. "By doubt," he says, "we come to enquiry; by enquiry we reach the truth." His book Sic et Non, a collection of conflicting opinions of the Christian Fathers on the chief tenets of the faith, was to be the first step towards arriving at the truth.
[Sidenote: Mysticism.]
He was condemned twice—his doctrine of the Trinity at Soissons in 1121, his whole position at Sens in 1141. The leaders of orthodoxy met him not with argument but with a demand for recantation. St. Norbert during the early part of his life, and St. Bernard both early and late, pursued him with their enmity. Their objection was not to his particular views, but to his whole attitude towards divine revelation; and the conclusions in which the use of the scholastic method landed its advocates perhaps justified the rigid theologians in the general distrust of the exercise of reason on such subjects. St. Bernard did not hesitate to attack even Gilbert de la Porrée, Bishop of Poictiers, an avowed Realist, who attempted to explain the Trinity. In fact, St. Bernard represents the reaction from Scholasticism, which took the form of Mysticism, that is, the purely contemplative attitude towards the verities of the Christian creed. In this he was followed with much greater extravagance by the school which found its home in the great abbey of St. Victor—Hugh (1097-1143), who formulated the sentence "Knowledge is belief, and belief is love," and Richard (died in 1173), who applied to the intuitive perception of spiritual things and to the love of them the same dialectical and metaphysical methods as the Schoolmen applied to reason.
[Sidenote: After Abailard.]
The results of Abailard's work are seen in two directions. His Sic et Non became the foundation of the work of the "Summists," who, in the place of Abailard's purely critical work, occupied themselves in systematising authorities with a view to the reconciliation of their conflicting opinions. The greatest of these was Peter the Lombard (died 1160), who became Bishop of Paris, and whose Sententiae was taken as the accredited text-book of theology for the next three hundred years. With the Summists theology returned to its attitude of unquestioning obedience to the conclusions of the early Fathers. But in the second place, Abailard was indirectly responsible for "the troubling of the Realistic waters," which resulted in many modifications of the original position.
[Sidenote: Classical revival.]
A justification for the attitude of the Church towards the followers of Abailard is to be found in the apparent exhaustion of the speculative movement which had started at the end of the eleventh century, and the consequent degeneracy of logical studies. It was a result of this that in the second half of the twelfth century many of the best minds were directing their energies into the channel of classical learning which was to prepare the way for the next phase of Scholasticism. Besides being a philosopher and a theologian, Abailard was also a scholar well read in classical literature. The cathedral school of Chartres, founded by Fulbert at the beginning of the eleventh century, was the centre of this classical Renaissance, and it rose to the height of its fame under Bernard Sylvester and his pupil, William of Conches; while the greatest representative of this learning was a pupil of William of Conches, John of Salisbury, an historian of philosophy rather than himself a philosopher or theologian.
[Sidenote: Origin of universities.]
It was in the twelfth century and out of the cathedral schools that the medieval universities arose. The monastic schools had spent their intellectual force, and during this century they almost ceased to educate the secular clergy. St. Anselm, when Abbot of Bec in Normandy, was the last of the great monastic teachers. But it was not from the school of Chartres but from that of Paris that the greatest University of the Middle Ages took its origin. Paris was identified with the scholastic studies of dialectic and theology, and it was the fame of William of Champeaux, and still more that of Abailard, which drew students in crowds to the cathedral school of Paris. But no university immediately resulted. Indeed, the Guild of Masters, from which it originated, is not traceable before 1170, and the four Nations and the Rector did not exist until the following century. Its recognition as a corporation dates from a bull of Innocent III about 1210. Its development starts from the close of its struggle with the Chancellor and cathedral school of Paris, in which contest it obtained the papal help. Before the middle of the thirteenth century the University had acquired its full constitution. But its great fame as a place of education dates from the teaching of the two great Dominicans, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas in the convent of their Order in Paris during the middle years of the century. This new outburst of philosophical studies was due to the recovery of many hitherto unknown works of Aristotle, and as a consequence classical studies were completely neglected and Chartres was deserted for Paris.
[Sidenote: Aristotle in the East.]