A ninth letter is addressed to an abbot who was in Rome at the time, and who is drawn into the intrigue with many holy threats. ‘If any man is for the Lord let him take his place. The truth is in danger. Peter Abélard has gone forth to prepare the way for Anti-Christ.... May God consider and condemn, if the mouth of the wicked be not closed forthwith.’
These letters were handed over, for personal delivery, to Bernard’s monk-secretary, Nicholas; in many of them it is expressly stated that the bearer will enlarge upon the text more freely by word of mouth. We know enough about this monk to be assured of the more than fidelity with which he accomplished his task. Enjoying the full confidence of Bernard at that time, a very able and well-informed monk, Nicholas de Montier-Ramey was a thorough scoundrel, as Bernard learned to his cost a few years afterwards. He had to be convicted of forging Bernard’s seal and hand for felonious purposes before the keen scent of the abbot discovered his utter unscrupulousness.
With Abélard lingering at Paris in his light-hearted way, the violence and energy of Bernard swept away whatever support he might have counted on at Rome. Throughout the curia Bernard had scattered his caricature of Abélard: a lawless monk, an abbot who neglected his abbey, a man of immoral life, an associate of the recognised enemies of the papacy, already condemned for heresy, a reviver of Arius and Nestorius and Pelagius, a teacher without reverence, a disturber of the faith of the simple. The pope did not hesitate a moment; the letters sent to him are masterpieces of diplomatic correspondence. The waverers in the curia were most skilfully worked. In mere secular matters such an attempt to corrupt the judges would be fiercely resented. Bernard lived in a transcendental region, that Hegelian land in which contradictions disappear.
It was on the 4th of June that Abélard appealed to Rome. There were no Alpine tunnels in those days, and the journey from Paris to Rome was a most formidable one. Yet Bernard’s nervous energy had infused such spirit into the work, and he had chosen so able a messenger, that the whole case was ended in less than seven weeks. There cannot have been a moment’s hesitation at Rome. On the 16th of July the faithful of Rome gathered about the door of St. Peter’s for the solemn reading of the decree of excommunication. The pope was there, surrounded by his cardinals, and it was announced, with the usual impressive flourishes, that Abélard’s works were condemned to the flames and his person to be imprisoned by the ecclesiastical authorities. Rome has not been a model of the humane use of power, but she has rarely condemned a man unheard. On the sole authority of Bernard the decree recognised in Abélard’s ‘pernicious doctrine’ the already condemned errors of the early heresiarchs. Arnold of Brescia, who had not been officially indicted, was included in the condemnation. It was Bernard’s skilful use of his association with Abélard which chiefly impelled the pope. Innocent replies to Bernard’s appeal by sending back to him the decree of the condemnation of his antagonist, with a private note to the effect that it must not be published until after it has been read at an approaching synod.
CHAPTER XIV
CONSUMMATUM EST
It was well for Bernard’s cause that he succeeded in obtaining the decree without delay. He had carefully represented that the whole of France supported him in his demand. It does seem as if some of Abélard’s friends were puzzled for a time by his appeal, but before long there came a reaction in his favour, just as had happened after his condemnation at Soissons. Bernard himself may have been perfectly self-justified in his determined effort to prevent Abélard from having a fair chance of defending himself, but there are two ways of regarding his conduct.[35] Abélard’s followers naturally adopted the view which was less flattering to Bernard’s reputation, and they seem to have had some success in enforcing it. In a letter of Bernard’s to a certain cardinal we find him defending himself against the charge of ‘having obtained the decree by improper means [subripere] from the pope.’
One of the chief instruments in the agitation on the Abélardist side was the apology of Bérenger of Poitiers, which we have quoted previously. Violent and coarse as it was, it was known to have a foundation of fact; and, in the growing unpopularity of Bernard, it had a wide circulation. It was not answered, as the Benedictines say; yet we may gather from Bérenger’s qualified withdrawal of it, when he is hard pressed, that it gave Bernard and the Cistercians a good deal of annoyance. Arnold of Brescia was, meanwhile, repeating his fulminations at Paris against the whole hierarchical system. He had taken Abélard’s late chair in the chapel of St. Hilary on the slope of St. Genevieve, and was sustaining the school until the master should return from Rome in triumph. But Arnold had no hope of any good being done at Rome, and rather preached rebellion against the whole of the bejewelled prelates. Sternly ascetic in his life and ideals—St. Bernard scoffingly applies to him the evangelical description of the Baptist: ‘He ate not, neither did he drink’—he was ever contrasting the luxurious life of the pastors of the Church with the simple ideal of early Christianity. He had not such success in France as elsewhere, and Bernard secured his expulsion a few years later. But the same stern denunciation was on his noble lips when the savage flames sealed them for ever, under the shadow of St. Peter’s, in 1155.
Abélard himself seems to have taken matters with a fatal coolness, whilst his adversary was moving heaven and earth to destroy him. He allowed a month or two to elapse before he turned in the direction of Rome.[36] Secure in the consciousness of the integrity of his cause and his own power of pleading, and presuming too much of Rome’s proud boast that it ‘condemned no man unheard,’ he saw no occasion for hurry. Late in the summer he set out upon his long journey. It was his purpose to travel through Burgundy and Lyons, and to cross the Alps by the pass which was soon to bear the name of his energetic enemy. After the fashion of all travellers of the time he rested at night in the monastery nearest to the spot where he was overtaken. Thus it came to pass that, when he arrived in the neighbourhood of Mâcon, he sought hospitality of the great and venerable Benedictine abbey at Cluny.