Then back again to St. Denis, with more hatred and hard speeches than ever. But Suger, the new abbot, an easy-going lover of bric-à-brac and good living, set him free, a “masterless man” past forty years of age, with Heloise out of reach and the spears of exultant enemies bristling in every hedge. Is it a wonder that he took to the banks of the Ardusson near Troyes, wattled himself a rude hut and resolved to be a hermit? But even there in the desert the people thronged him and built a village of huts about his own. His misfortunes became a portion of his strength. And there they erected for him a church and a cloister which he dedicated to the Paraclete, a daring innovation, since it was then considered highly heterodox thus to distinguish one person of the Trinity from the other two.
Under such storms and heat the nature of the man had been seriously warped. He became suspicious, gloomy, and weakly unstable. His correspondence with Heloise had been completely broken off. He went into the monotonous Champagne, then out into the bleak Brittany, and finally (1125) he received the abbacy of St. Gildas. His friends, perhaps, desired to save him from homelessness and so from the dangers which the relentless malice of his old enemies was constantly piling up. But their choice of a refuge reveals how little their ecclesiastical influence was worth. The monks of St. Gildas lived in open sin, and the people around the cloister were semi-barbarians. It may be that they were ready to welcome Abelard because they supposed he would be charitable to their peccadilloes, but if they fancied this, their mistake was great. He really measured himself against their vices and suffered a predestined defeat. At St. Gildas he touched the nadir of his fate as at Paris he had reached its zenith. The monks conspired against him. They sought to poison him, contaminating with their drugs even the cup of the Eucharist. When his life was not fear it was horror, and when it was not horror it was despair.
At this time, too, for calamity never comes singly, Suger had succeeded in routing from Argenteuil the Abbess Heloise with all her nuns. He had complained to Rome that the lands of Argenteuil were the chartered right of St. Denis and that the nuns were very scandalous. So Abelard roused himself sufficiently to hand the deserted abbey of the Paraclete over to his wife; to confirm it by every possible act and deed against invasion; and to secure, in the despite of Bernard of Clairvaux, who was his presumptive enemy, a special bull of Innocent II. to make all this permanent. To these walls Heloise therefore removed. They were doubly dear to her for Abelard’s sake. She had no true “vocation” for her office, but the Pope called her and her sisterhood his “dear daughters,” and it was the best that they could do. Abelard prepared their forms of service for them, and thus again, after all these years, communication existed and letters passed between them.
These forms brought on a controversy with Bernard, who did not like them. The letters also are still extant, often translated, but never in anything except the original Latin, speaking out the real nature of the writers. On the part of Heloise they reveal the depth of an unending love. On the part of Abelard they are as cold and occasionally as cruel as anything to which a translator can turn his pen. After a careful survey of their contents the conclusion is irresistible that Heloise is a woman whose lofty love carries with it unhesitatingly the mind, the will, the senses—everything. Her faults are the faults of her time and of her teaching, not of her soul. But, by the survival of its most forcible elements, Abelard’s character has been developed into a selfish coldness both unnatural and ungrateful. As a man, at this stage of his career, one abhors and pities him.
Presently upon the dead colorlessness of this “burned-out crater healed with snow,” the red light of a new controversy is cast. In this final struggle the redoubtable force of the splendid debater flashed up once more. But he was defeated by Bernard at Sens (1140), and whether this defeat was by fair logic or by the hostile spirit of the age it does not matter. Defeated he was, and he rushed out declaring that he would appeal to Rome. Happily his way led him through Cluny, and there good, large-hearted, and large-bodied Peter the Venerable took him in. For the first time, perhaps, in all his life he came into close relations with a man genuinely great. And Peter of Cluny himself wrote to the Pope; detaining Abelard meanwhile by kind assiduities, in that genial cloister whose humanity cherished neither bigotry nor license. Later he even reconciled the two disputants, and the broken and weary debater died at last (April 21st, 1142) at St. Marcel, whither he had been sent for change of climate by the care of his hospitable friend.
There is a painting—a true artist’s conception, but a mere daub in fact—which hangs in a New York village and which represents a dead knight stretched upon the ground. He lies upon his back on the sodden earth in the melting snow. The sky above him is of a dull and awful gray, and the carrion birds are flying in a long, hurrying line to join those already at the feast. A broken sword is strained in his right hand, his armor is hacked and darkly spotted with mire and blood, and his feet have fallen into a little stream. So would have fallen Abelard but for the charity and mercy of Peter the Venerable. Remembering all that he had been it is somewhat comforting to read of his last days. For certain letters passed between Peter of Cluny and Heloise, and these, too, are extant and accessible.
The abbot says to her, after describing the daily life of Abelard, “How holily, how devoutly, in what a catholic spirit he made confession, first of his faith and then of his sins! ... Thus Master Peter finished his days, and he who for his knowledge was famed throughout the world, in the discipleship of Him who said, ‘Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart,’ persevered, in meekness and humility, and, as we may believe, passed to the Lord.” It is in such language that this benevolent man addresses his “venerable and very dear sister,” concerning, as he tenderly puts it, her “first husband in the Lord.” And doubtless this same Abelard became, at the last, a little child, who through much tribulation had unlearned his haughty and selfish temper, and had gone back from subtleties and logic to say in all simplicity, Abba, Father! And it is not less interesting for us to discover in the second epistle of Heloise to Peter of Cluny, that the mother’s heart yearns over her boy, and that she commends Astrolabe to the care and protection of his father’s benefactor, a trust which, in his next letter, Peter accepts and promises to discharge.
Of the poetry of Abelard much has unquestionably been lost. His troubadour ballads may have been conveniently suppressed; it is often the fate of wise men’s lighter productions. And his hymns were for long years untraced, except in the instance of the Mittit ad virginem and of another upon the Trinity, which was ascribed to him, but is now accredited to Hildebert. A very pretty poem, Ornarunt terram germina, preserved by Du Meril (Poesies Populaires Lat., p. 444) is given in the collection of Archbishop Trench and again in that of Professor March. Even in English its grace and daintiness do not entirely escape us, and they show how possible it was for him to have written the love-songs which celebrated Heloise.
The earth is green with grasses;
The sky is filled with lights—