CHAPTER XIX.
ABELARD.
From the foreground of the waving banners and the flashing arms of the Crusaders, of the dark throng of the chanting monks, and of feudal pageantry and glitter—and from that background of dead uniformity which equally characterized those mediaeval times—emerges a figure unique and notable. It is that of a man in the prime and pride of life—lofty in stature, handsome in face, captivating in address. He is already a tried debater and an unsurpassed logician. He has Aristotle at the tip of his tongue; he has read much and thought a little, and his ambition is great.
Such a man came one day into the lecture hall of William of Champeaux at Paris. It was in the early part of the twelfth century, and William was the most celebrated teacher of the period, his “doctrine of universals” being accepted almost as though it were inspired. But this morning, while the master lectured and the disciples drank in his words without criticism or debate, the visitor stirred uneasily in his place. When the lecture closed he availed himself of the usual freedom to ask some questions. To William’s dogmatic answers the stranger in his turn proposed shrewd difficulties. It was no longer the harmony of teacher and taught, but the clash of two rival minds maintaining opposite systems of logic. And in that short struggle William the Archdeacon went down before the free lance of Peter Abelard, the rustic challenger from Palais (Le Pallet) in Brittany. And from that agitation went out the widening circles whose story we are now to note, and whose latest ripples break faintly on a tomb in Père-la-Chaise visited by thousands of modern tourists. Few tales are sadder or more suggestive.
The name of Abelard is variously spelled. It appears in divers authorities as Abelard, Abaelard, Abaielardus, Abailard, Abaillard, Abelhardus, and Abeillard. The true name (on the authority of Ch. de Rémusat) was, however, not Abelard, but Beranger or Berenger; and the future controversialist was christened Pierre or Peter. His birthplace is near Nantes, the house being represented a few years ago by a square brier-grown ruin back of the church. The date of his birth is given as 1079—a period when the world was feudal and military. But this lad was born for debate and not for battle. It may even be seriously doubted if he ever possessed much physical courage of a sort to stand the rough shock of actual warfare. He preferred the method of those who intermeddle among metaphysical subtleties to those who must keep sword edges sharp and armor furbished. His delight was to dispute, to be engaged in undertakings
“Whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies;
In falling out with that or this
And finding somewhat still amiss.”
In those days not to be a warrior was to be—almost of compulsion—a monk. But Abelard’s independence forbade the second as his disputatious spirit had forbidden the first. He would neither risk his neck in the wars nor his opinions in the cloister. Instead of these he preferred the irregular combats of the scholar, and Bayle—with a touch of poetry—beholds him as he comes shining out of Brittany “darting syllogisms on every side.” Such was Peter Abelard—vain, handsome, opinionated, bound to swear by no master, a mighty voice crying in the desert of the Dark Ages for “free speech and free thought.”
The expedition to Paris hurt neither his reputation nor his purse. He arrived at perihelion as quickly as a comet. William of Champeaux—having first pushed him off and forced him to lecture on his own account at Melun and Corbeil—found that he returned like a cork thrust under water. The man’s buoyant, aggressive self-reliance, not to say self-conceit, was never contented with an inferior place. And while Alberic and Littulf and some of the older and more staid of his pupils held with William, it was plain that the popular favor inclined to the other side. The younger men were all for Abelard. The “doctrine of universals” was exploded as if with some of Friar Bacon’s “villainous saltpetre,” and doubtless the loss was small enough to mankind. His principal fort being taken, there was nothing left for the opposing general but a masterly retreat. Hence, by a convenient arrangement, combining several advantages, Guillaume des Champeaux became Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne. And it was, of course, beneath the dignity of a bishop to hold lectures or to engage in logical controversies!