Unfortunately for Abélard, his perverse destiny had sent him down to the neighbourhood of Rheims. It will be remembered that Anselm of Laon was urged to suppress Abélard’s early theological efforts by two of his fellow-pupils, Alberic of Rheims and Lotulphe of Novare. Alberic appears to have been a man of ability, and he had been made archdeacon of the cathedral, and head of the episcopal school, at Rheims. He had associated Lotulphe with himself in the direction of the schools, and they were teaching with great success when Abélard appeared on the near horizon. Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux had gone, and the two friends were eager to earn the title of their successors. The apparent extinction of Master Abélard had largely increased their prestige, and had filled the school of Rheims. Indeed, we gather from the details of a ‘town and gown’ fight which occurred at Rheims about this time that the students had almost come to outnumber the citizens.
Hence it is not surprising that Abélard’s newfound peace was soon disturbed by rumours of the lodging of complaints against him in high quarters. The Archbishop of Rheims, Ralph the Green, began to be assailed with charges. In the first place, he was reminded, it was uncanonical for a monk to give lectures, and take up a permanent residence, outside his monastery; moreover, the said monk was most unmonastically engaged in reading Aristotle, with a flavour of Vergil, Ovid, and Lucan. Raoul le Vert probably knew enough about St. Denis not to attempt to force Abélard to return to it. Then the grumblers—‘chiefly those two early intriguers,’ says the victim—urged that Abélard was teaching without a ‘respondent’; but the archbishop still found the pretext inadequate. Then, at length, came the second great cloud, the accusation of heresy.
The convert had now made theology his chief object of study. The students who gathered about him in his village priory loudly demanded a resumption of the lectures on dialectics and rhetoric, but Abélard had really passed to a new and wholly religious outlook. He complied with the request, only with a secret intention that, as he states in the ‘Story,’ philosophy should be used as a bait in the interest of divinity. The religious welfare of his followers now seriously concerned him. It will be seen presently that he exercised a strict control over their morals, and it was from the purest of motives that he endeavoured, by a pious diplomacy, to direct their thoughts to the study of Holy Writ. His rivals and enemies have attempted to censure him for this casting of pearls before swine. Certainly there were dangers accompanying the practice, but these were not confined to Abélard’s school. We can easily conceive the disadvantage of discussing the question, for instance, utrum Maria senserit dolorem vel delectationem in Christo concipiendo? before a crowd of twelfth century students. However, Abélard’s attitude was wholly reverent, and his intention as pure as that of St. Anselm.
The one characteristic feature of Abélard’s theological work—the feature which was constantly seized by his enemies, and which invests him with so great an interest for the modern student—was his concern to conciliate human reason. His predecessors had complacently affirmed that reason had no title to respect in matters of faith. They insulted it with such pious absurdities as ‘I believe in order that I may understand’ and ‘Faith goeth before understanding.’ Abélard remained until his last hour constitutionally incapable of adopting that attitude. He frequently attributes his obvious concern to meet the questioning of reason to the desire of helping his followers. This is partly a faithful interpretation of their thoughts—for which, however, he himself was chiefly responsible—and partly a subtle projection of his own frame of mind into his hearers. The development of the reasoning faculty which was involved in so keen a study of dialectics was bound to find expression in rationalism.
Abélard seems already to have written two works of a very remarkable character for his age. One of these is entitled A Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian. It may have been founded on the Octavius of Minucius Felix; on the other hand it may be classed with Lessing’s Nathan. It has been called ‘the most radical expression of his rationalism,’ and it would certainly seem to embody his attitude during the period of his highest prosperity. The ultimate victory lies with the Christian, so far as the work goes (it is unfinished), but incidentally it shows more than one bold departure from traditional formulæ. Abélard’s reluctance to consign all the heathen philosophers to Tartarus would be highly suspect to his pious contemporaries. It is a matter of faith in the Roman Catholic Church to-day that no man shall enter heaven who has not a belief in a personal God, at least; many theologians add the narrower qualification of a literal acceptance of the Trinity. But Abélard tempered his audacity by proving that his favourite heathens had this qualification of a knowledge of the Trinity, probably under the inspiration of St Augustine.
The Dialogue was not much assailed by his rivals; probably it was not widely circulated. It is, however, an important monument of Abélard’s genius. It anticipated not merely the rationalistic attitude of modern theology, but also quite a number of the modifications of traditional belief which modern rational and ethical criticism has imposed. Abélard regards the ethical content of Christianity, and finds that it is only the elaboration or the reformation of the natural law, the true essence of religion. God has given this essential gift in every conscience and in every religion; there are no outcasts from the plan of salvation; the higher excellence of the Christian religion lies in its clearer formulation of the law of life. The popular notions of heaven and hell and deity are travesties of true Christian teaching. God, as a purely spiritual being, is the supreme good, and heaven is an approach to Him by obedience; hell, isolation from Him. When we remember that Abélard had before him only the works of the fathers and such recent speculations as those of Anselm, we shall surely recognise the action of a mind of the highest order in these debates.
The second work was not less remarkable. It was a collection of sentences from the fathers on points of dogma. So far the compilation would be an admirable one, but apart from the growing accusation that Abélard was wanting in reverence for the authority of the fathers, there was the suspicious circumstance that he had grouped these eighteen hundred texts in contradictory columns. Thus one hundred and fifty-eight questions are put by the compiler, relating to God, the Trinity, the Redemption, the Sacraments, and so forth. The quotations from the fathers are then arranged in two parallel columns, one half giving an affirmative, and the rest a negative, answer to the question. Such a work would be perfectly intelligible if it came from the pen of a modern freethinker. Abélard’s Sic et Non (Yes and No), as the work came to be called, has borne many interpretations. Such careful and impartial students of Abélard’s work as Deutsch pronounce the critical element in it to be ‘constructive, not sceptical.’ Most probably it was the intention of the compiler to shatter the excessive regard of his contemporaries for the words of the fathers, and thus to open the way for independent speculation on the deposit of revelation (to which he thought he had as much right as Jerome or Augustine), by making a striking exhibition of their fallibility.
Neither of these works seems to have fallen into the hands of Alberic. Twenty years afterwards we find a theologian complaining of the difficulty of obtaining some of Abélard’s works, which had been kept secret. He probably refers to one or both of these works. However that may be, Abélard wrote a third book during his stay at Maisoncelle, and on this the charge of heresy was fixed.
Wiser than the Church of those days, and anticipating the wisdom of the modern Church of Rome, Abélard saw the great danger to the faith itself of the Anselmian maxim, Fides praecedit intellectum. He argued that, as the world had somehow outlived the age of miracles, God must have intended rational evidence to take its place. In any case, there was an increasingly large class of youths and men who clamoured for ‘human and philosophic grounds,’ as he puts it, who would lie to their consciences if they submitted to the current pietism. Abélard believed he would render valuable service to the Church if he could devise rational proofs, or at least analogies, of its dogmas. It was in this frame of mind, not in a spirit of destructive scepticism, that he raised the standard of rationalism. He at once applied his force to the most preterrational of dogmas, and wrote his famous Treatise on the Unity and Trinity of God.
A manuscript of the treatise was discovered by Stölzle a few years ago. It is unnecessary to inflict on the reader an analysis of the work. It is perfectly sincere and religious in intention, but, like every book that has ever been penned on the subject of the Trinity, it contains illustrations which can be proved to be heretical. We may discuss the point further apropos of the Council of Soissons.