[22] I hardly like to speak of the feeble creation of Robert Buchanan in such a company, but his ‘New Abélard’ is a further illustration. His pitiful Mr. Bradley has no earthly resemblance to Abélard, except in a most superficial sense. It is grotesque to compare him to Abélard for his ‘heresy’; and to say that he recalls Abélard in his weakness (to the extent of bigamously marrying and blasting the life of a noble woman) is deeply unjust. Abélard was not a cad.
[23] The one from which the nuns had been driven ‘on account of the enormity of their life.’
[24] At a later date one of the censures passed by the doctors of the Sorbonne on this classic sinner of the twelfth century is that he finds a shade of sin in legitimate conjugal relations.
[25] It is quite beside the writer’s purpose, and probably the reader’s pleasure, to give an analysis of these works. I shall presently treat the specific points that have relation to his condemnation, and I add a supplementary chapter on his teaching in general. Deutsch may be read by the curious, and Herr Hausrath gives a useful shorter analysis.
[26] A good idea of the man, and of the rapidly growing school he belonged to, will be formed from the opening sentence of one of his treatises: ‘Rotting in the lake of misery and in the mire of filth, and stuck in the mud of the abyss that has no substance, and from the depths of my grief, I cry out to Thee, O Lord.’ He was in the midst of a similar Bernardesque composition when he received Abélard’s works.
[27] Witness his genial letter to our English Matilda.
[28] Fas est et ab hoste doceri. The Benedictine defenders of Bernard (in Migne) say, in another connection: ‘Was there a single cardinal or cleric in Rome who was unacquainted with his dogmas?’
[29] The see of Paris was not elevated into an archbishopric until a much later date.
[30] And the thesis is rejected in Abélard’s Apology.
[31] It is singular that Mr. Poole, who credits Bernard with writing the report, should speak of the words as a deliberate ‘lie of excuse,’ especially as he adopts the witness of Bérenger to a previous condemnation. We are not only compelled by independent evidence to take them as correct, but one imputes a lesser sin to Bernard (from the Catholic point of view) in doing so.