Peter Abélard

by Joseph McCabe

It was a question of Scylla or Charybdis, of Prior Goswin or Abbot Adam. The legate seems to have acted in good faith in granting the permission—perhaps we should say in good policy, for he again acted out of discreet regard for circumstances; but when we find Abélard availing himself of what was no more than a permission to return to St. Denis we have a sufficient indication of the quality of his experience at St. Médard. He does indeed remark that the monks of the reformed abbey had been friendly towards him, though this is inspired by an obvious comparison with his later experience at St. Denis. But St. Médard was a prison; that sufficed to turn the scale. A removal from the penitentiary would be equivalent, in the eyes of France, to a revocation of the censure passed on him. So with a heart that was hopelessly drear, not knowing whether to smile or weep, he went back, poor sport of the gods as he was, to the royal abbey.

For a few months Brother Peter struggled bravely with the hard task the fates had set him. He was probably wise enough to refrain from inveighing, in season and out of season, against the ‘intolerable uncleanness’ of Adam and his monks. Possibly he nursed a hope—or was nursed by a hope—of having another ‘cell’ entrusted to his charge. In spite of the irregularity of the abbey, formal religious exercises were extensively practised. All day and night the chant of the breviary was heard in the monastic chapel. There was also a large and busy scriptorium; the archivium of the ancient abbey was a treasury of interesting old documents; and there was a relatively good library. It was in the latter that Brother Peter found his next adventure, and one that threatened to be the most serious of all.

Seeing the present futility of his theological plans, he had turned to the study of history. There was a copy of Bede’s History of the Apostles in the library, and he says that he one day, ‘by chance,’ came upon the passage in which Bede deals with St. Denis. The Anglo-Saxon historian would not admit the French tradition about St. Denis. He granted the existence of a St. Denis, but said that he had been Bishop of Corinth, not of Athens. The legend about the martyrdom of Denis the Areopagite, with his companions Rusticus and Eleutherius, at Paris in the first century, is now almost universally rejected by Roman Catholic historians, not to mention others. It is, however, still enshrined with honour in that interesting compendium of myths of the Christian era, the Roman breviary, and is read with religious solemnity by every priest and every monastic choir in the Catholic world on the annual festival.

However, the abbey of St. Denis, the monastery that owed all its wealth and repute to its possession of the bones of ‘the Areopagite,’ was the last place in the world in which to commence a rationalistic attack on the legend. With his usual want of tact and foresight Brother Peter showed the passage in Bede to some of his fellow-monks, ‘in joke,’ he says; he might as well have cut the abbot’s throat, or destroyed the wine-cellar ‘in joke.’ There was a violent commotion. Heresy about the Trinity was bad, but heresy about the idol of the royal abbey was more touching. It is not quite clear that Abélard came to the opinion of modern religious historians, that the St. Denis of Paris was a much later personage than the Areopagite of the Acts of the Apostles, but he seems to hold that opinion. In any case, the monks felt that to be the substance of his discovery, and held it to be an attack on the glory of the abbey. Venerable Bede was, they bluntly replied, a liar. One of their former abbots, Hilduin, had made a journey to Greece for the special purpose of verifying the story.

When the monks flew to Abbot Adam with the story of Brother Peter’s latest outbreak, Adam saw in it an opportunity of terrifying the rebel into submission, if not of effectually silencing him. He called a chapter of the brethren. One’s pen almost tires of describing the cruel scenes to which those harsh days lent themselves. The vindictive abbot perched on his high chair, prior and elder brethren sitting beside him; the hundreds of black-robed, shaven monks lining the room; on his knees in the centre the pale, nervous figure of the Socrates of Gaul. With a mock solemnity, Abbot Adam delivers himself of the sentence. Brother Peter has crowned his misdeeds, in his pride of mind, with an attack, not merely on the abbey that sheltered him, but on the honour and the safety of France. The matter is too serious to be punished by even the most severe methods at the command of the abbey. Brother Peter is to be handed over to the king, as a traitor to the honour of the country. The poor monk, now thoroughly alarmed, abjectly implores the abbot to deal with him in the usual way. Let him be scourged—anything to escape the uncertain temper of King Louis. No, the abbey must be rid of him. He is taken away into confinement, with an injunction that he be carefully watched until it is convenient to send him to Paris.

There were, however, some of the monks who were disgusted at the savage proceeding. A few days afterwards he was assisted to escape from the monastic dungeon during the night, and, ‘in utter despair,’ he fled from the abbey, with a few of his former pupils. It was, in truth, a desperate move. As a deserter from the abbey, the canons required that two stalwart brothers should be sent in pursuit of him, and that he be reimprisoned. As a fugitive from the king’s justice, to which he had been publicly destined, he was exposed to even harsher treatment. However, he made his way into Champagne once more, and threw himself on the mercy of his friends.

One of the friends whom he had attached to himself during his stay at Maisoncelle was prior of St. Ayoul, near the gates of Provins. It was a priory belonging to the monks of Troyes, and both Hatton, Bishop of Troyes, and Theobald, Count of Champagne, were in sympathy with the fugitive. The prior, therefore, received Abélard into his convent, to afford at least time for reflection. His condition, however, was wholly uncanonical, and the prior, as well as the abbot of St. Peter of Troyes, urged him to secure some regularity for his absence from St. Denis, so that they might lawfully shelter him at St. Ayoul. Abélard summoned what diplomatic faculty he had, and wrote to St. Denis.

‘Peter, monk by profession and sinner by his deeds, to his dearly beloved father, Adam, and to his most dear brethren and fellow-monks,’ was the inscription of the epistle. Brother Peter, it must be remembered, was fighting almost for life; and he was not of the heroic stuff of his friend and pupil, Arnold of Brescia. There are critics who think he descended lower than this concession to might, that he deliberately denied his conviction for the purpose of conciliating Adam. Others, such as Poole, Deutsch, and Hausrath, think the letter does not support so grave a censure. The point of the letter is certainly to convey the impression that Bede had erred, and that Abélard had no wish to urge his authority against the belief of the monks. In point of fact, Bede is at variance with Eusebius and Jerome, and it is not impossible that Abélard came sincerely to modify the first impression he had received from Bede’s words; in the circumstances, and in the then state of the question, this would not be unreasonable. At the same time a careful perusal of the letter gives one the impression that it is artistic and diplomatic; that Abélard has learned tact, rather than unlearned history. It reads like an effort to say something conciliatory about St. Denis, without doing serious violence to the writer’s conscience. Perhaps the abbot of St. Peter’s could have thrown some light on its composition.

Shortly afterwards Abbot Adam came to visit Count Theobald, and Abélard’s friends made a direct effort to conciliate him. The prior of St. Ayoul and Abélard hurried to the count’s castle, and begged him to prevail upon his guest to release Abélard from his obedience. The count tried to persuade Adam to do so, but without success. Adam seemed determined, not so much to rid his happy convent of a malcontent, as to crush Abélard. He found plenty of pious garbs to cover his vindictiveness with. At first he deprecated the idea that it was a matter for his personal decision. Then, after a consultation with the monks who accompanied him, he gravely declared that it was inconsistent with the honour of the abbey to release Abélard; ‘the brethren had said that, whereas Abélard’s choice of their abbey had greatly redounded to its glory, his flight from it had covered them with shame.’ He threatened both Abélard and the prior of St. Ayoul with the usual canonical penalties, unless the deserter returned forthwith to obedience.

Adam’s departure, after this fulmination, left Abélard and his friends sadly perplexed. The abbot had the full force of canon law on his side, and he was evidently determined to exact his pound of flesh. However, whilst they were busy framing desperate resolves, they received information of the sudden death of Abbot Adam. He died a few days after leaving Champagne, on the 19th of February 1122. The event brought relief from the immediate pressure. Some time would elapse before it would be necessary to resume the matter with Adam’s successor, and there was room for hope that the new abbot would not feel the same personal vindictiveness.