[CHAPTER X]
The first thing we did on arriving at Châlon was to mount our bicycles and cross the river to the Church of St. Marcel, all that now remains of the ancient abbey. The feature of the journey was the number of rough Bressane carts we met, filled with potatoes, and drawn, very deliberately, by yoked, dreamy, creamy oxen, whose mild eyes were veiled by fringes of string, tied across the forehead, to keep off the flies.
The Abbey church is a well-proportioned and satisfactory early Burgundian building, with a high narthex, a western tower, and a late Renaissance west front. It is designed rather in the Cistercian manner, with a square apse and two apsidal chapels, square and semi-circular respectively. The whole forms a fine example of early purity of style. Excepting the simple foliage of the capitals and the bosses of the high vault, one looks in vain for any carving, and there is very little moulding that catches the eye. The orders of the arches are left square-edged, and the ridges of the aisle vaulting scarcely show. The piers of the nave, too, are square, with circular shafts to carry the vault.
Over the High Altar are two châsses with the relics of St. Agricola and St. Marcel. A notice in the church informs one that, in the year 879, John VIII. canonized in this church the holy bishops of Châlon; also that, on Holy Saturday, April 13th, 1805, Pope Pius VII. came to visit the relics of Saint Marcel and Saint Agricola, and blessed the High Altar.
But the most interesting memory associated with the Abbey is that of the first of the modernists, Abélard, whose name is linked for ever with that of his lover, Héloïse. Only the peaceful, closing years of Abélard's stormy life connect him with Burgundy; but his stay at Cluny, under the care of Pierre le Vénérable, and his last days and burial at St. Marcel, justify me, I hope, in telling again here the life stories of two whose names, with those of Aucassin and Nicolette, Petrarch and Laura, Dante and Beatrice, Paolo and Francesca, are blazoned, for all time, upon the scrolls of love.
It was in the year 1105, or 1106, that a young Breton, about sixteen years of age, of good family, came to Paris to study at the schools of the Quartier Latin, on the Montagne St. Gêneviève, now occupied by the buildings of the Sorbonne. His father, the Seigneur de Pallet, near Nantes, had destined his son for the profession of arms; but a natural bent towards books and learning, and the consequent ambition to become formidable in "logic," induced the lad to abandon prospects of fortune and military glory, to play a prominent and extraordinarily romantic part in the religious and philosophical movements of the greatest century of the middle ages.
The schools of philosophy of Paris were already the most famous in the world, when Abélard put himself, as he expresses it in a letter to Philintus, "under the direction of one Champeaux, a professor who had acquired the character of the most skilful philosopher of his age, but by negative excellencies only, as being the least ignorant." The boy was well received at first, but his abilities in debate and dialectics soon aroused the natural jealousy of a master, who perceived himself to be no match for his pupil. Abélard withdrew to Melun for safety, and for the better establishment of his fast-developing theories concerning the necessary compatibility of dogma and reason, summed up in the phrase "Nul ne peut croire sans avoir compris," an axiom fraught with danger in the middle ages, and in those which succeeded them.
After some years of retirement, the young dialectician attended the schools of Anselm, Bishop of Laon, where, finding himself thoroughly dissatisfied with the teaching of one of whom he could only say, "Stet magni nominus umbra," he decided to take for his guides the primitive fathers, and to launch boldly, for himself, into the study of the Holy Scriptures.
When he deemed the time ripe, he returned to Paris, where his success drew many to him; so many that, before long, the fame of the young Breton, now Maitre Pierre, author of the "Gloze d'Ezéchiel," the great teacher of the new doctrine of Conceptualism, was finding an echo in all Paris. He became the centre of a school of young enthusiasts, who hung upon his words. These early years of success in Paris were, intellectually, the most fruitful of his life, but they had a disastrous effect upon a character, the strength of which was never equal to that of his mind. His pride and vanity, naturally great, became consuming. Freedom of thought was not sufficient for him; so great a liberationist must live a free life; the scholars must share him with the courtesans.