Peter Abélard

by Joseph McCabe

Nor was the daily life too dull and burdensome. Royal councils were frequently held at the abbey, and one does not need much acquaintance with monastic life to appreciate that circumstance. Then there was the school of the abbey, with its kingly and noble pupils—and corresponding visitors: there was the continual stream of interesting guests to this wealthiest and most famous of all abbeys: there was the town of St. Denis, which was so intimately dependent on the abbey. Above all, there were the country-houses, of which the abbey had a large number, and from which it obtained a good deal of its income. Some dying sinner would endeavour to corrupt the Supreme Judge by handing over a farm or a château, with its cattle, and men and women, and other commodities of value, to the monks of the great abbey. These would be turned into snug little ‘cells’ or ‘priories,‘ and important sources of revenue. Sometimes, too, they had to be fought for in the courts, if not by force of arms. Abélard complains that ‘we [monks] compel our servants to fight duels for us’: he has already complained of the frequent presentation to monasteries of both man and maid servants. In 1111 we find some of the monks of St. Denis, at the head of a small army, besieging the château of Puiset, capturing its lieutenant, and casting him into a monastic prison. At Toury Abbot Adam had his important dependence armed as a fortress, and made a financial speculation in the opening of a public market. Rangeard tells us, in addition, that many of the monks were expert in canon law, and they travelled a good deal, journeying frequently to Rome in connection with matrimonial and other suits.

But before Abélard turned his attention to the condition of the abbey, he was long preoccupied with the thought of revenge. Revenge was a branch virtue of justice in those days, and Abélard duly demanded the punishment of talio. The valet, who had betrayed him, and one of the mutilators, had been captured, and had lost their eyes, in addition to suffering the same mutilation as they had inflicted. But Abélard seems to have been painfully insistent on the punishment of Fulbert. The matter belonged to the spiritual court, since Abélard was a cleric, and Bishop Girbert does not seem to have moved quickly enough for the new monk. Fulbert escaped from Paris, and all his goods were confiscated, but this did not meet Abélard’s (and the current) idea of justice. He began to talk of an appeal to Rome.

In these circumstances was written the famous letter of Prior Fulques, to which we have referred more than once. It is a characteristic piece of mediæval diplomacy. Fulques was the prior of Deuil, in the valley of Montmorency, a dependency of the abbey of St. Florent de Saumur. He was apparently requested by the abbot of St. Denis to persuade Abélard to let the matter rest. At all events, he begins his letter with a rhetorical description of Abélard’s success as a teacher, depicting Britons and Italians and Spaniards braving the terrors of the sea, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, under the fascination of Abélard’s repute. Then, with a view to dissuading him from the threatened appeal to Rome, he reminds him of his destitution and of the notorious avarice of Rome. There is no reason why we should hesitate to accept Fulques’s assertion that Abélard had no wealth to offer the abbey when he entered it. If, as seems to be the more correct proceeding, we follow the opinion that he spent the interval between the first withdrawal of Heloise and the marriage with her at Pallet, he cannot have earned much during the preceding two or three years. He was hardly likely to be a provident and economical person. Most of whatever money he earned, after he first began to serve up stale dishes to his students in the absorption of his passion, would probably pass into the coffers of Fulbert or, later, of the nunnery at Argenteuil. There is no need whatever to entertain theories of licentiousness from that ground. We have, moreover, already sufficiently discussed that portion of Fulques’s letter.

But the second part of the prior’s argument, the avarice of Rome, requires a word of comment. It is characteristic of the ecclesiastical historian that in Migne’s version of Fulques’s letter the indictment of Abélard is given without comment, and the indictment of Rome is unblushingly omitted. It might be retorted that such historians as Deutsch and Hausrath insert the indictment against Rome, and make a thousand apologies for inserting the charge against Abélard. The retort would be entirely without sting, since a mass of independent evidence sustains the one charge, whilst the other is at variance with evidence. The passage omitted in Migne, which refers to Abélard’s proposal to appeal to Rome, runs as follows. ‘O pitiful and wholly useless proposal! Hast thou never heard of the avarice and the impurity of Rome? Who is wealthy enough to satisfy that devouring whirlpool of harlotry? Who would ever be able to fill their avaricious purses? Thy resources are entirely insufficient for a visit to the Roman Pontiff.... For all those who have approached that see in our time without a weight of gold have lost their cause, and have returned in confusion and disgrace.’

Let us, in justice, make some allowance for the exigency of diplomacy and the purposes of rhetoric; the substance of the charge is abundantly supported by other passages in Migne’s own columns. For instance, Abbot Suger, in his Vita Ludovici Grossi, says of his departure from Rome after a certain mission, ‘evading the avarice of the Romans we took our leave.’ The same abbot speaks of their astonishment at St. Denis when Paschal II. visited the abbey in 1106: ‘contrary to the custom of the Romans, he not only expressed no affection for the gold, silver, and precious pearls of the monastery (about which much fear had been entertained),’ but did not even look at them. It may be noted, without prejudice, that Paschal was seeking the sympathy and aid of France in his quarrel with Germany. In the apology of Berengarius, which is also found in Migne, there is mention of ‘a Roman who had learned to love gold, rather than God, in the Roman curia.’ Bernard of Cluny, a more respectable witness, tersely informs us that ‘Rome gives to every one who gives Rome all he has.’ Matthew of Paris is equally uncomplimentary. We have spoken already of the licentious young Étienne de Garlande and his proposal of going to Rome to buy the curia’s consent to his installation in a bishopric; also of the rumour that Pope Paschal disapproved, out of avarice, the censure passed on the adulterous king. Duboulai, after giving Fulques’s letter, is content to say that the pope feared too great an interference with the officials of the curia on account of the papal schism.

Whether the letter of the monastic diplomatist had any weight with Abélard or no, it seems that he did desist from his plan, and laid aside all thought of Fulbert. But the unfortunate monk soon discovered the disastrous error he had made in seeking peace at the abbey of St. Denis. There had, in fact, been a serious mistake on both sides. The monks welcomed one whom they only knew as a lively, witty, interesting associate, a master of renown, a poet and musician of merit. A new attraction would accrue to their abbey, a new distraction to their own life, by the admission of Abélard. The diversion of the stream of scholars from Paris to St. Denis would bring increased colour, animation, and wealth. The erudite troubadour and brilliant scholar would be an excellent companion in the refectory, when the silent meal was over, and the wine invited conversation.

They were rudely awakened to their error when Abélard began to lash them with mordant irony for their ‘intolerable uncleanness.’ They found that the love-inspired songster was dead. They had introduced a kind of Bernard of Clairvaux, a man of wormwood valleys, into their happy abbey: a morose, ascetic, sternly consistent monk, who poured bitter scorn on the strong wines and pretty maids, the high festivals and pleasant excursions, with which the brothers smoothed the rough path to Paradise. And when the gay Latin Quarter transferred itself to St. Denis, and clamoured for the brilliant master, Abélard utterly refused to teach. Abbot Adam gently remonstrated with his ‘subject,’ pointing out that he ought now to do more willingly for the honour of God and the sake of his brothers in religion what he had formerly done out of worldly and selfish interest. Whereupon Abbot Adam was urgently reminded of a few truths, nearly concerning himself and ‘the brothers,’ which, if not new to his conscience, were at least novel to his ears.

So things dragged on for a while, but Adam was forced at length to rid the monastery of the troublesome monk. Finding a pretext in the importunity of the students, he sent Abélard down the country to erect his chair in one of the dependencies of the abbey. These country-houses have already been mentioned. Large estates were left to the abbey in various parts of the country. Monks had to be sent to these occasionally, to collect the revenue from the farmers and millers, and, partly for their own convenience, partly so that they might return something in spiritual service to the district, they built ‘cells’ or ‘oratories’ on the estates. Frequently the cell became a priory; not infrequently it rebelled against the mother-house; nearly always, as is the experience of the monastic orders at the present day, it was a source of relaxation and decay.

The precise locality of the ‘cell’ which was entrusted to Brother Peter is matter of dispute, and the question need not delay us. It was somewhere on the estates of Count Theobald of Champagne, and therefore not very far from Paris. Here Abélard consented to resume his public lectures, and ‘gathered his horde of barbarians about him’ once more, in the jealous phrase of Canon Roscelin.

Otto von Freising relates that Abélard had now become ‘more subtle and more learned than ever.’ There is no reason to doubt that he continued to advance in purely intellectual power, but it seems inevitable that he must have lost much of the brightness and charm of his earlier manner. Yet his power and his fascination were as great as ever. Maisoncelle, or whatever village it was, was soon transformed into the intellectual centre of France. It is said by some historians that three thousand students descended upon the village, like a bewildering swarm of locusts. Abélard says the concourse was so great that ‘the district could find neither hospitality nor food’ for the students. One need not evolve from that an army of several thousand admirers, but it seems clear that there was a second remarkable gathering of students from all parts of Christendom. There was no teacher of ability to succeed him at Paris; he was still the most eminent master in Europe. Even if he had lost a little of the sparkle of his sunny years, no other master had ever possessed it. Indeed, it is not audacious to think that the renewal of his early success and the sweetness of life in lovely Champagne may have in time quickened again such forces and graces of his character as had not been physically eradicated. He began to see a fresh potentiality of joy in life.