For thy sweet sake!’
And, weeping and sobbing, she walked quickly up the steps of the altar, and covered herself with the veil of the religious profession.
CHAPTER VI
THE MONK OF ST. DENIS
Abélard had now entered upon the series of blunders which were to make his life a succession of catastrophes. A stronger man would have retired to Pallet, and remained there until the discussion of his outrage had abated somewhat; then boldly, and, most probably, with complete success, have confronted the scholastic world once more, with his wife for fitting companion, like Manegold of Alsace. In his distraction and abnormal sense of humiliation, Abélard grasped the plausible promise of the monastic life. In the second place, he, with a peculiar blindness, chose the abbey of St. Denis for his home.
The abbey of St. Denis was not only one of the most famous monasteries in Europe, but also a semi-religious, semi-secular monarchical institution. It was the last monastery in the world to provide that quiet seclusion which Abélard sought. It lay about six miles from Paris, near one of the many bends of the Seine on its journey to the sea. Dagobert was its royal founder; its church was built over the alleged bones of the alleged St. Denis the Areopagite, the patron of France; it was the burial-place of the royal house. Over its altar hung the oriflamme of St. Denis, the palladium of the country, which the king came to seek, with solemn rite and procession, whenever the cry of ‘St. Denis for France’ rang through the kingdom. Amongst its several hundred monks were the physicians and the tutors of kings—Prince Louis of France was even then studying in its school.
Rangeard, in his history of Brittany, says, that at the beginning of the twelfth century there were more irregular than regular abbeys in France. Abélard himself writes that ‘nearly all the monasteries’ of his time were worldly. The truth is that few monasteries, beside those which had been very recently reformed, led a very edifying life. Hence it is not surprising, when one regards the secular associations of the place, to find that the Benedictine abbey of St. Denis was in a very lax condition. Abélard soon discovered that, as he says, it was an abbey ‘of very worldly and most disgraceful life.’ The great rhetorician has a weakness for the use of superlatives, but other witnesses are available. St. Bernard wrote of it, in his famed, mellifluous manner, that it was certain the monks gave to Cæsar the things that were Cæsar’s, but doubtful if they gave to God the things that were God’s. A chronicler of the following century, Guillaume de Nangis, writes that ‘the monks scarcely exhibited even the appearance of religion.’
The abbey had not been reformed since 994, so that human nature had had a considerable period in which to assert itself. The preceding abbot, Ives I., was accused at Rome of having bought his dignity in a flagrant manner. The actual abbot, Adam, is said by Abélard to have been ‘as much worse in manner of life and more notorious than the rest as he preceded them in dignity.’ It is certainly significant that the Benedictine historian of the abbey, Dom Félibien, can find nothing to put to the credit of Adam, in face of Abélard’s charge, except a certain generosity to the poor. Nor have later apologists for the angels, de Nangis, Duchesne, etc., been more successful. Ecclesiastical history only finds consolation in the fact that Adam’s successor was converted by Bernard in 1127, and at once set about the reform of the abbey.
When Abélard donned the black tunic of the Benedictine monk in it, probably in 1119, the royal abbey was at the height of its gay career. St. Bernard himself gives a bright picture of its life in one of his letters. He speaks of the soldiers who thronged its cloisters, the jests and songs that echoed from its vaulted roofs, the women who contributed to its gaiety occasionally. From frequent passages in Abélard we learn that the monks often held high festival. It may be noted that monastic authorities nearly always give occasion to these festivities, for, even in the severest rules, one always finds an egg, or some other unwonted luxury, admitted on ‘feast-days.’ It is the consecration of a principle that no body of men and women on earth can apply and appreciate better than monks and nuns. The feasts of St. Denis rivalled those of any château in gay France. The monks were skilful at mixing wine—it is a well-preserved monastic tradition—their farmer-vassals supplied food of the best in abundance, and they hired plenty of conjurors, singers, dancers, jesters, etc., to aid the task of digestion.