In such an assembly the nerve of the boldest speaker might well fail. Bernard had preached during the Mass on the importance of the true faith. Then when the critical moment came, he mounted the pulpit with a copy of the writings of Abélard, and the dense crowd, totally ignorant, most probably, of previous events, which were known only to the intimate friends of each combatant, held its breath for the opening of the struggle. The frail, worn, nervous figure in the flowing, white tunic began to read the indictment, but suddenly Abélard stepped forth before the astonished judges, and, crying out: ‘I will not be judged thus like a criminal; I appeal to Rome,’ turned his back on them and strode out of the cathedral.
Chroniclers have left to our imagination the confusion that followed, and we may leave it to that of the reader. Although the bishops afterwards made a show of disputing it, the appeal was quite canonical, and was admitted at Rome. But it was a course which had not entered into the thoughts of the most astute of them, and which completely upset their plans. They could not now touch the person of Abélard. Bernard, indeed, did not deprive the great audience of the discourse he had ‘not prepared,’ although it was now quite safe from contradiction. We have it, some say, in his later letter to the pope, a most vehement denunciation and often perversion of Abélard’s teaching. He gained an easy victory, as far as Sens was concerned. The next day the prelates met together, condemned Abélard’s teaching as heretical, and forwarded a report, submitting his person and his works, to Rome.
The question why Abélard behaved in so extraordinary a manner has had many answers. The answer of the godly, given by Bernard’s monkish biographer, is of the transcendental order. Brother Geoffrey relates that Abélard confessed to his intimate friends that he mysteriously lost the use and control of his mind when Bernard began. Bishop Otto of Freising says that he feared ‘a rising of the people.’ He would be more likely to provoke one by thus affronting their great cathedral and prelates. The true interpretation is that the assembly was a play, covering an unworthy intrigue, and he had been secretly informed of it. The bishops had drawn up their verdict, over their cups, on the preceding day.
Desperate efforts are made, of course, to destroy an interpretation which does not leave the discredit on Abélard, but it has now been based on incontrovertible evidence. In the first place the bishops ingenuously confess it themselves in their eagerness to evade a different accusation. In order to influence the judgment, or rather the decision, of the pope, they told him that they had found Abélard’s teaching to be heretical. How, then, were they to reconcile this with the notice of Abélard’s appeal to Rome? ‘We had,’ they say in their report, ‘already condemned him on the day before he appealed to you.’ It matters little who wrote this report—whether Bernard[31] or Henry’s secretary—because it was signed by the bishops. They reveal their secret conclave of the Sunday evening. Henry was particularly anxious to justify them, at all costs, on the charge of disregarding the appeal, because he had been suspended by Innocent for that offence a few years previously.
Again, in the Historia Pontificalis, attributed to John of Salisbury, there is an account of Bernard’s attempt to secure the condemnation of that other brilliant dialectician, Gilbert de la Porée, in 1148. It is expressly stated that Bernard called the chief personages together the night before the synod, and was leading them to pronounce on Gilbert’s ‘errors,’ when an archdeacon of Châlons spoiled his strategy. Further, the writer goes on to say that the cardinals—there were a number present for the synod—were greatly incensed with Bernard, and ‘said that Abbot Bernard had beaten Master Abélard by a similar stratagem.’ It is not unlikely that they learned the story from Hyacinth, the young Roman.
The classical witness to this over-night conclave is Abélard’s pupil, Bérenger of Poitiers. Unfortunately, his narrative is marred by obvious exaggerations and a careless, heated temper. It occurs in an apology for Abélard, or an ‘open letter’ to Bernard, which he wrote some months afterwards. After reminding Bernard of some of the frivolities of his early youth, and much sarcastic comment on his actual reputation, he gives what purports to be a detailed description of the secret meeting. No one who reads it will take it literally. Yet when, in later years, he was run down, like Gilbert and Arnold, by the relentless sleuthhound, he made a partial retractation. What he has written as to the person of ‘the man of God’ must, he says, be taken as a joke. But a few lines previously he has appealed to this very narrative in justification of his abuse of Bernard: ‘Let the learned read my “Apology,” and they may justly censure me if I have unduly blamed him [Bernard].’ It is not impossible that Bérenger merely retracts such remarks as that about Bernard’s juvenile ‘cantiunculas.’ In any case, we may justly transcribe a portion of the narrative, after these qualifications.
‘At length, when the dinner was over, Peter’s work was brought in, and some one was directed to read it aloud. This fellow, animated with a hatred of Peter, and well watered with the juice of the grape, read in a much louder voice than he had been asked to do. After a time you would have seen them knock their feet together, laugh, and crack jokes; you would think they were honouring Bacchus rather than Christ. And all the time the cups are going, the wine is being praised, the episcopal throats are being moistened. The juice of the lethal drink had already buried their hearts.... Then, when anything unusually subtle and divine was read out, anything the episcopal ears were not accustomed to, they hardened their hearts and ground their teeth against Peter. “Shall we let this monster live?” they cried.... The heat of the wine at length relaxed the eyes of all in slumber. The reader continues amidst their snoring. One leans on his elbow in order to sleep. Another gets a soft cushion. Another slumbers with his head resting on his knees. So when the reader came to anything particularly thorny in Peter, he shouted in the deaf ears of the pontiffs: “Do you condemn?” And some of them just waking up at the last syllable, would mutter: “We condemn.”’
It is not difficult to take off the due and considerable discount from the youthful extravagance of Master Bérenger. Bernard’s followers (in the Histoire littéraire de la France) say he had ‘too noble a soul and too elevated a sentiment to stoop to the refutation of such a work.’ He has never, at all events, essayed to rebut the charge of procuring a verdict against Abélard on the day before the synod. Even in our own days it is a familiar source of merriment in ecclesiastical and monastic circles to see a group of prelates fervently following the red Mass of the Holy Ghost as a preliminary to a discussion of points which they have notoriously settled over their cups the night before. Such a meeting of the bishops on the Sunday would be inevitable. Bernard would inevitably be present, and Abélard infallibly excluded. In any case, the evidence is too precise and substantial to be rejected. Indeed, the story fully harmonises with our knowledge of Bernard’s earlier and subsequent conduct. It is not ours to inquire minutely how far Bernard was consistent with himself and his lofty ideals in acting thus.
Bernard was defeated for the moment by the unexpected appeal from the verdict of the unjust judges. But he knew well that Abélard had avoided Scylla only to plunge into Charybdis. Abélard’s knowledge of the curia was restricted to a few days’ acquaintance with it in a holiday mood at Morigni. Arnold of Brescia probably urged his own acquaintance with it in vain. Moreover many years had elapsed since his name was inscribed by the side of that of Bernard in the chronicle of Morigni. Bernard, the secluded contemplative, knew the curia well. He hastened home, told his secretary to prepare for a journey across the Alps, and sat down to write a batch of extremely clever epistles. The battle was fought and won before Abélard had covered many leagues in the direction of Italy.
The first document that Bernard seems to have written is the report upon the synod which was sent to Innocent II. in the name of the Archbishop of Rheims and his suffragans. Hausrath, who is the least restrained by considerations of Bernard’s official sanctity of all Abélard’s apologists, and others, hold that both the reports of the proceedings, that of Samson and that of Henry (for the two archbishops, with their respective suffragans, reported separately to the pope), were written by Bernard. It is at least clear that the Rheims report was drawn up by him. Mr. Poole says this is admitted even by Father Hefele. Bernard’s style is indeed unmistakable.