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Authors: Susan Wise Bauer
Tags: History, Renaissance
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rage. Abelard apologized, groveled, reassured, and generally did his best to make amends to his powerful landlord, but the most straightforward solution—marriage—was not on the cards. The master of a cathedral school was, by definition, a churchman; celibacy was increasingly the rule for churchmen, and marriage would cut Abelard’s career off at the roots.
Unable to appease the powerful Fulbert, Abelard finally proposed a solution. He would marry Heloise, but the marriage would remain secret so that his prospects at the school would not be blighted; Heloise would come back to her home in Paris, and Abelard would find lodging elsewhere. Fulbert agreed, but when Heloise—leaving her baby son in the care of Abelard’s family—returned to live in her uncle’s house, Fulbert made her life a misery. “In his exasperation,” Abelard records, “Fulbert heaped abuse on her. . . . As soon as I discovered this I removed her to a convent of nuns . . . near Paris.”
The convent was a way station, a place for Heloise to remain safe while Abelard could figure out his next move; but convents were the traditional refuge of wives whose husbands had repudiated them, and Fulbert used the move as an excuse to take revenge. He sent hired thugs to Abelard’s lodgings in the middle of the night. They pinned the schoolmaster down, and castrated him. “Next morning,” Abelard writes, “the whole city gathered before my house, and . . . tormented me with their unbearable weeping and wailing.” 3
Probably the real crowd was smaller than in Abelard’s recollections, but he was a popular teacher, and the attack was a nine-day wonder. When the fuss had died down, both Abelard and Heloise entered monastic orders, he in the abbey of St. Denis near Paris, she taking orders at the convent of Argenteuil, some twenty-five miles away. Over the next two decades they saw each other perhaps twice; but they wrote letters constantly, their marriage held together only by words.
At St. Denis, Abelard continued to study and teach, applying Greek logic to the doctrines of the Church. The first version of his Theologia argued that Plato’s philosophy of a “world soul” was actually a reference to the Holy Spirit; that through logic, any man could grasp the essence of the Trinity; that scripture was involucrum , inherently difficult and figurative, “fruitfully obscure” in a way that forced readers to use reason and dialectic as they wrestled with the meaning. 4
None of this was intended to destroy the faith. Like Anselm, Peter Abelard believed that truth would withstand Aristotle’s methods. But this alarmed his more traditionally minded brethren. When they accused him of endangering the doctrines of the Church, he offered to explain why his conclusions were true: “We take no account of rational explanation,” one opponent retorted, “nor of your interpretation in such matters; we recognize only the words of authority.” 5
7.1 Peter Abelard’s France
In 1121, a church council at Soissons, attended by a papal legate, ordered Abelard to throw his Theologia into the fire. He obeyed, but he did not change his views on the value of reason and logic. For the next twenty years, Abelard wrote and taught, defending his orthodoxy even while he criticized the church’s reliance on too-simple truth. He revised the Theologia twice, coming up with its final form in 1135; he assembled a whole collection of quotations from the church fathers that contradicted each other into a work called Sic et Non (Yes and No); he wrote a series of dialogues about ethics between a Christian, a Jew, and a character called the Ancient Philosopher; the Collationes , in which the Ancient Philosopher shows a clear understanding of the Highest Good—despite having only natural law to guide him. 6
He was often accused of heterodoxy, potentially dangerous departures from orthodox, accepted understandings of the Christian faith. At least once, he was briefly imprisoned.
Unable to appease the powerful Fulbert, Abelard finally proposed a solution. He would marry Heloise, but the marriage would remain secret so that his prospects at the school would not be blighted; Heloise would come back to her home in Paris, and Abelard would find lodging elsewhere. Fulbert agreed, but when Heloise—leaving her baby son in the care of Abelard’s family—returned to live in her uncle’s house, Fulbert made her life a misery. “In his exasperation,” Abelard records, “Fulbert heaped abuse on her. . . . As soon as I discovered this I removed her to a convent of nuns . . . near Paris.”
The convent was a way station, a place for Heloise to remain safe while Abelard could figure out his next move; but convents were the traditional refuge of wives whose husbands had repudiated them, and Fulbert used the move as an excuse to take revenge. He sent hired thugs to Abelard’s lodgings in the middle of the night. They pinned the schoolmaster down, and castrated him. “Next morning,” Abelard writes, “the whole city gathered before my house, and . . . tormented me with their unbearable weeping and wailing.” 3
Probably the real crowd was smaller than in Abelard’s recollections, but he was a popular teacher, and the attack was a nine-day wonder. When the fuss had died down, both Abelard and Heloise entered monastic orders, he in the abbey of St. Denis near Paris, she taking orders at the convent of Argenteuil, some twenty-five miles away. Over the next two decades they saw each other perhaps twice; but they wrote letters constantly, their marriage held together only by words.
At St. Denis, Abelard continued to study and teach, applying Greek logic to the doctrines of the Church. The first version of his Theologia argued that Plato’s philosophy of a “world soul” was actually a reference to the Holy Spirit; that through logic, any man could grasp the essence of the Trinity; that scripture was involucrum , inherently difficult and figurative, “fruitfully obscure” in a way that forced readers to use reason and dialectic as they wrestled with the meaning. 4
None of this was intended to destroy the faith. Like Anselm, Peter Abelard believed that truth would withstand Aristotle’s methods. But this alarmed his more traditionally minded brethren. When they accused him of endangering the doctrines of the Church, he offered to explain why his conclusions were true: “We take no account of rational explanation,” one opponent retorted, “nor of your interpretation in such matters; we recognize only the words of authority.” 5
7.1 Peter Abelard’s France
In 1121, a church council at Soissons, attended by a papal legate, ordered Abelard to throw his Theologia into the fire. He obeyed, but he did not change his views on the value of reason and logic. For the next twenty years, Abelard wrote and taught, defending his orthodoxy even while he criticized the church’s reliance on too-simple truth. He revised the Theologia twice, coming up with its final form in 1135; he assembled a whole collection of quotations from the church fathers that contradicted each other into a work called Sic et Non (Yes and No); he wrote a series of dialogues about ethics between a Christian, a Jew, and a character called the Ancient Philosopher; the Collationes , in which the Ancient Philosopher shows a clear understanding of the Highest Good—despite having only natural law to guide him. 6
He was often accused of heterodoxy, potentially dangerous departures from orthodox, accepted understandings of the Christian faith. At least once, he was briefly imprisoned.
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