Which we with all the angels sing in that sweet realm of peace.
The rhythm of the Trinity, previously mentioned, is so good that it is usually, and, it may be, correctly, ascribed to Hildebert of Lavardin; and the Planctus Varii have really something more than that “inconsiderable merit” which Archbishop Trench allows to them. They are irregular in form and metre, and their subjects (which evidently reflect their author’s feelings) are: The Wail of Dinah; Jacob’s Lament over Joseph and Benjamin; The Sorrow of the Virgins over Jephthah’s Daughter; The Israelites’ Dirge over Samson; The Grief of David over Abner and his Elegy upon Saul and Jonathan. Abelard also composed a long poem to Astrolabe, giving him plenty of good counsel in fair pentameter, but in rather prosaic phrases. Some of it sounds like Lord Chesterfield’s worldly wisdom, and there are portions of the production which are plainly affected by the soured and saddened spirit of the author. “There is nothing,” he tells the poor, forsaken lad, “better than a good woman, and nothing worse than a bad one,” and, “as in all species of rapacious birds,” the female is the most to be dreaded!
Thus the poems which we possess number one hundred and two all told. But for ordinary readers not more than five—if we exclude the present correct Latin form of the O quanta qualia—are available in the original, and these are scattered through three or four collections. An unkind fate has still pursued these poor relics of the man who took shelter under the broad wing of Peter the Venerable, and who, by having escaped into such sanctuary, has barred out from thenceforth all uncharitable thoughts. It may be added that of Heloise also we have a reputed hymn, Requiescat a labore, but Königsfeld and Daniel both deny the authorship. In this they are doubtless correct.
We may best remember the great controversialist when he is lying dead in his new-found peace and childlikeness. At the request of Heloise, Peter of Cluny delivered up his body to be buried within the walls of the Paraclete, in defiance of any misconstruction or of any sneer. He accompanied the act with the absolution which she asked. It reads thus:
“I, Peter, Abbot of Cluny, who received Peter Abelard as a Cluniac monk, and who have granted his body to be delivered secretly [furtim delatum, wrote the big-hearted bishop] to Heloise, the abbess, and to the nuns of the Paraclete, by the authority of the Omnipotent God and of all saints, do absolve him in virtue of my office from all his sins.” This was to have been engraved upon a metal plate and fastened above the tomb of the dead rhetorician, but for some reason—perhaps connected with the furtim delatum—the plan was never carried out. But the absolution was probably attached to the tomb for a short time in order to make it effective.
“Women,” says Mrs. Browning, “are knights-errant to the last.” For a score of years, Heloise went each evening to that tomb to weep and pray. She remembered and observed nothing of those unpleasant traits which later times have noticed. If she ever cursed any one it must have been Fulbert, or others of the dead man’s enemies, and
“A curse from the depths of womanhood
Is very salt and bitter and good.”
At length, like every watching and every waiting, this, too, came to an end, and she died on May 17th, 1164, precisely at his age of sixty-three years. And they laid her beside him in the same grave, as was meet and right.
But evil fate still flapped a raven wing above the pair. Even in death they have scarcely rested in peace. In 1497 the tomb was opened from religious motives and the bodies were removed and placed in separate vaults. In 1630 the Abbess Marie de Rochefoucauld placed them in the chapel of the Trinity. In 1792 they were again removed to Nogent, near Paris. In 1800, by order of Lucien Bonaparte, they were transferred to the garden of the “Musée des Monumens Français.” This being destroyed in 1815, they were again entombed in Père-la-Chaise. M. Lenoir, keeper of the Museum, had constructed the present Gothic sepulchre out of the ruins of the abbey of the Paraclete, uniting with these an ancient tomb from St. Marcel in which Abelard had at first been laid. Pugin says that this was transferred from the Musée grounds. The monument reared at the Paraclete and ornamented with a figure of the Trinity, perished in 1794 during the confusion of the Revolution. General Pajol, the subsequent owner of the grounds, placed a marble pillar above the stone sarcophagus which yet existed, but the lead coffin had already been taken to Paris. The tomb in Père-la-Chaise has been recently repaired, and there the sentimental of all nations have brought flowers and scrawled names and scribbled verses. Even at the present day a curious collection of wire crosses, immortelles, and visiting-cards can be seen constantly upon it.