Peter Abélard

by Joseph McCabe

In this official document, therefore, the pope is informed, not so much that a dispute about Abélard’s orthodoxy is referred to his court, as that ‘Peter Abélard is endeavouring to destroy the merit of faith, in that he professes himself able to comprehend by his human reason the whole being of God.’ From this gross calumny[32] the writer passes on to assure the pope that Abélard ‘is a great man in his own eyes, ever disputing about the faith to its undoing, walking in things that are far above him, a searcher into the divine majesty, a framer of heresies.’ He goes on to recount that Abélard’s book had been condemned and burnt once before, at Soissons, ‘because of the iniquity that was found in it’; whereas every scholar in France knew that it was condemned on the sole ground that it had been issued without authorisation. ‘Cursed be he who has rebuilt the walls of Jericho,’ fulminates the abbot of Clairvaux. Finally, he represents Abélard as boasting of his influence at Rome. ‘This is the boast of the man,’ he says, ‘that his book can find wherein to rest its head in the Roman curia. This gives strength and assurance to his frenzy.’ The sole object of his appeal is ‘to secure a longer immunity for his iniquity. You must needs apply a swift remedy to this source of contagion.’ And the monstrous epistle closes with a trust that Innocent will do his part, and that swiftly, as they had done theirs. Thus was the pope introduced, in a handwriting he had so many reasons to respect, to Abélard’s appeal for consideration.

The second report, which is signed by Archbishop Henry and his suffragans, and which may not have been drawn up by Bernard, is more free from diplomatic turnings, but also gravely unjust to the appellant. It gives the pope a lengthy account of the order of events since the receipt of the letter of William of St. Thierry. From it we have quoted the words in which the bishops themselves confess the secret conclave on the Sunday. The bishops were affronted, it says, by Abélard’s appeal, which was ‘hardly canonical,’ but they were content with an examination of his doctrines (consisting of Bernard’s vehement harangue) and found them to be ‘most manifestly heretical.’ They therefore ‘unanimously demand the condemnation of Abélard.’ To put the point quite explicitly, the pope is clearly to understand that the Church of France has already dealt with Abélard. It is not quite so insidious as the report which Bernard wrote, and to which—sad sign of the growing quality of the Church—even Geoffrey of Chartres lent his venerable name.

Bernard’s official task seemed to be at an end with the despatch of the report. His profound and generous trust in the Holy Spirit would lead one to expect a complete withdrawal from the quarrel into which he had been so unwillingly forced. But Bernard’s conception of the activity of the Holy Spirit, though equal in theoretical altitude, was very different in practice from that of a Francis of Assisi. We have amongst his works no less than three epistles that he wrote at the time to Pope Innocent in his own name. One of them consists of a few prefatory remarks to the list of Abélard’s errors. The two others are of a much more personal and interesting character. It is difficult to say whether, and if so, why, the two letters were sent to the pope, but it is not necessary to determine this. Both were certainly written by Bernard for the purpose.

The first letter is addressed ‘to his most loving father and lord, Innocent, Sovereign Pontiff by the grace of God, from Brother Bernard, called the abbot of Clairvaux.’ From the first line he aims at determining the case in the pope’s mind. ‘It is necessary that there be scandals amongst us—necessary, but assuredly not welcome.’ Hence have the saints ever longed to be taken from this troubled world. Bernard is equally tired of life. He knows not whether it be expedient that he die, yet ‘the scandals and troubles’ about him are pressing his departure. ‘Fool that I was to promise myself rest if ever the Leonine trouble[33] was quelled and peace was restored to the Church. That trouble is over, yet I have not found peace. I had forgotten that I still lingered in the vale of tears.’ His sorrow and his tears have been renewed. ‘We have escaped the lion [Pierleone], only to meet the dragon [Abélard], who, in his insidious way, is perhaps not less dangerous than the lion roaring in high places. Did I say insidious? Would indeed that his poisoned pages did lurk in the library, and were not read openly in the streets. His books fly in all directions; whereas they, in their iniquity, once shunned the light, they now emerge into it, thinking the light to be darkness.... A new gospel is being made for the nations, a new faith is put before them.’ After Pierleone it is useful to remind Innocent of his second great bête noire. ‘The Goliath [Abélard] stalks along in his greatness, girt about with that noble panoply of his, and preceded by his weapon-bearer, Arnold of Brescia. Scale is joined to scale, so closely that not a breath can get between.[34] For the French bee [Abeille-ard] has hummed its call to the Italian bee; and they have conspired together against the Lord and his anointed.’ He must even deny them the merit of their notoriously ascetic lives: ‘Bearing the semblance of piety in their food and clothing, but void of its virtue, they deceive many by transforming themselves into angels of light—whereas they are devils.’ The pope must not be misled by rumours of Abélard’s present fervour of life; he is ‘outwardly a Baptist, but inwardly a Herod,’ Bernard assures him. Then follows a passage we have already quoted. He tells the pope the edifying story of the archbishop’s summons, his refusal, the entreaties of his friends, the gathering of Abélard’s supporters, and his final resolve to go: ‘Yielding to the counsel of my friends, I presented myself at the appointed time and place, unprepared and unequipped, save that I had in mind the monition: “Take ye no thought what and how ye shall speak.”’ Then ‘when his books had begun to be read [he does not say by whom], he would not listen, but went out, appealing from the judges he had chosen. These things I tell thee in my own defence, lest thou mayst think I have been too impetuous or bold in the matter. But thou, O successor of Peter, thou shalt decide whether he who has assailed the faith of Peter should find refuge in the see of Peter.’ In other words, do not allow Abélard to come to Rome, but condemn him unheard, on my word. He ends with a final diplomatic argumentum ad invidiam. ‘Hyacinth has done me much injury, but I have thought well to suffer it, seeing that he did not spare you and your court when he was at Rome, as my friend, and indeed yours, Nicholas, will explain more fully by word of mouth.’

The second letter runs so largely on the same lines that it is thought by some to have been sent to the pope instead of the preceding, in which the reference to Hyacinth and the curia may have been impolitic. ‘Weeping has the spouse of Christ wept in the night,’ it begins, ‘and tears are upon her cheeks; there is none to console her out of all her friends. And in the delaying of the spouse, to thee, my lord, is committed the care of the Shunammite in this land of her pilgrimage.’ Abélard is a ‘domestic enemy,’ an Absalom, a Judas. There is the same play upon the lion and the dragon, and upon the scaly monster formed of Abélard and Arnold. ‘They have become corrupt and abominable in their aims, and from the ferment of their corruptions they pervert the faith of the simple, disturb the order of morals, and defile the chastity of the Church.’ Moreover Abélard ‘boasts that he has opened the founts of knowledge to the cardinals and priests of the Roman curia, and that he has lodged his books and his opinions in the hands and hearts of the Romans; and he adduces as patrons of his error those who should judge and condemn him.’ He concludes with an apostrophe to Abélard, which was well calculated to expel the last lingering doubt from the mind of the pope. ‘With what thoughts, what conscience, canst thou have recourse to the defender of the faith—thou, its persecutor? With what eyes, what brow, wilt thou meet the gaze of the friend of the Spouse—thou, the violator of His bride? Oh, if the care of the brethren did not detain me! If bodily infirmity did not prevent it! How I should love to see the friend of the Spouse defending the bride in His absence!’

The third letter, a kind of preface to Bernard’s list of errors and commentary thereon, is of the same unworthy temper, tortuous, diplomatic, misleading, and vituperative. It is not apparent on what ground Hausrath says this commentary represents Bernard’s speech at Sens; if it does so, we have another curious commentary on Bernard’s affirmation that he went to the synod unprepared. However that may be, the letter is a singular composition, when we remember that it accompanied an appeal to a higher court, to which the case had been reserved. It opens with a declaration that ‘the see of Peter’ is the due and natural tribunal to which to refer ‘all scandals that arise in the Kingdom of God’; a declaration which is hardly consistent with the assurance, when it is necessary to defend their condemnation of Abélard, that his appeal ‘seems to us wonderful.’ Then follows the familiar caricature. ‘We have here in France an old master who has just turned theologian, who has played with the art of rhetoric from his earliest years and now raves about the Holy Scriptures [Abélard had been teaching Scripture and theology for the last twenty-six years]. He is endeavouring to resuscitate doctrines that were condemned and buried long ago, and to these he adds new errors of his own. A man who, in his inquiries into all there is in heaven above or earth below, is ignorant of nothing save the word “I do not know.” He lifts his eyes to the heavens, and peers into the hidden things of God, then returns to us with discourse of things that man is not permitted to discuss.’ This last sentence, considered as a charge by Bernard of Clairvaux against others, is amusing. Bernard spent half his time in searching the hidden things of God, and the other half in discoursing of them. But Abélard conceived them otherwise than he.

Thus was the supreme judge instructed in his part, whilst the foolish Abélard lingered idly in Paris, not improbably, as Bernard says, boasting of his friends at the curia. It was very possible that he had friends at Rome. Deutsch suspects the existence of a faction in the sacred college, which was opposed to Innocent and the Chancellor Haymerick, and would be favourable to Abélard. Bernard was not the man to leave a single risk unchallenged—or to the care of the Holy Ghost.

In the first place, therefore, he wrote a circular letter ‘to all my lords and fathers, the venerable bishops and cardinals of the curia, from the child of their holiness.’ His secretary was to deliver a copy to each. ‘None will doubt,’ he says, ‘that it is your especial duty to remove all scandals from the kingdom of God.’ The Roman Church is the tribunal of the world: ‘to it we do well to refer, not questions, but attacks on the faith and dishonour of Christ: contumely and contempt of the fathers: present scandals and future dangers. The faith of the simple is derided, the hidden things of God are dragged forth, questions of the most sublime mysteries are rashly debated, insults are offered to the fathers.’ They will see this by the report. ‘And if you think there is just ground for my agitation, be ye also moved’—and moved to take action. ‘Let him who has raised himself to the heavens be crushed down to hell; he has sinned in public, let him be punished in public.’ It is the fulmination of the prophet of the age on the duty of the curia.

Then came eight private letters to cardinals of his acquaintance, an interesting study in ecclesiastical diplomacy. To the chancellor of the curia, Haymerick, he speaks chiefly of Abélard’s boast of friends at court. He transcribes the passage from his letter to Innocent; and he adds the earlier allusion to the Roman deacon, Hyacinth, who was evidently a thorn in the side of the officials of the curia. To Guido of Castello, afterwards Celestine II., who was known to be a friend of Abélard, he writes in an entirely new strain. ‘I should do you wrong,’ he begins, ‘if I thought you so loved any man as to embrace his errors also in your affection.’ Such a love would be animal, earthly, diabolical. Others may say what they like of Guido, but Bernard is a man who ‘never judges anybody without proof,’ and he will not believe it. He passes to a mild complaint that ‘Master Peter introduces profane novelties in his books’; still ‘it is not I that accuse him before the Father, but his own book.’ But he cannot refrain from putting just a little venenum in cauda: ‘It is expedient for you and for the Church that silence be imposed on him whose mouth is full of curses and bitterness and guile.’

Cardinal Ivo, on the other hand, belongs to the loyal group. ‘Master Peter Abélard,’ he is told, ‘a prelate without dependency, observes no order and is restrained by no order.... He is a Herod in his soul, a Baptist in outward appearance.’ However, that is not my business, says the diplomatist, ‘every man shall bear his own burden.’ Bernard is concerned about his heresies, and his boast that he will be protected by a certain faction in the curia. Ivo must do his duty ‘in freeing the Church from the lips of the wicked.’ A young unnamed cardinal is appealed to for support. ‘Let no man despise thy youth,’ begins the man who calls Abélard a ‘slippery serpent’; ‘not grey hair but a sober mind is what God looks to.’ Another cardinal, who had a custom of rising when any person entered his room, is playfully approached with a reminder of this: ‘If thou art indeed a son of the Church,’ the note ends, ‘defend the womb that has borne thee and the breasts that have suckled thee.’ Guido of Pisa receives a similar appeal: ‘If thou art a son of the Church, if thou knowest the breast of thy mother, desert her not in her peril.’ The letter to another Cardinal Guido is particularly vicious and unworthy. ‘I cannot but write you,’ it begins, ‘of the dishonour to Christ, the trials and sorrows of the Church, the misery of the helpless, and groans of the poor.’ What is the matter? This: ‘We have here in France a monk who observes no rule, a prelate without care, an abbot without discipline, one Peter Abélard, who disputes with boys and busies himself with women.’ There is a nasty ambiguity in the last phrase. Again, ‘We have escaped the roar of the lion [Pierleone] only to hear the hissing of the dragon Peter.... If the mouth of the wicked be not closed, may He who alone regards our works consider and condemn.’ A similar letter is addressed to Cardinal Stephen of Praeneste. ‘I freely write to you, whom I know to be a friend of the spouse, of the trials and sorrows of the spouse of Christ.’ Abélard is ‘an enemy of Christ,’ as is proved, not only by his works, but by ‘his life and actions.’ He has ‘sallied forth from his den like a slippery serpent’; he is ‘a hydra,’ growing seven new heads where one has been cut off. He ‘misleads the simple,’ and finally ‘boasts that he has inoculated the Roman curia with the poison of his novelty.’