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Authors: Susan Wise Bauer
Tags: History, Renaissance
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But the help of powerful patrons, and the enthusiasm of his many students, kept him from out-and-out condemnation by the Church—until 1141, when the revision of the Theologia drew the attention of none other than Bernard of Clairvaux: venerable in character, conspicuous for learning, evangelist for the Second Crusade.
The two men were polar opposites: Abelard determined to bring faith and logic together, Bernard holding the authority of the Church above all. “He had an abhorrence of teachers who put their trust in worldly wisdom and clung too much to human argument,” Otto of Freising explains. When, in 1140, a local monk sent Bernard a letter highlighting Abelard’s most recent doctrinal explorations, Bernard agreed that the matter required investigation. 7
He asked Abelard to come and explain himself; Abelard instead appealed to the Bishop of Sens, and then to the pope. Probably he believed that his own skill in argumentation would help him to triumph. But it was exactly this skill that frightened his traditionalist opponents: “Peter Abelard,” wrote Bernard, in his own appeal to the pope, “believes he can comprehend by human reason all that is God.” 8
To give Abelard a pass was to accept the categories of Aristotle; and accepting Aristotelian thought might well throw into doubt the entire authority structure of the Christian church. In 1141, the papal court agreed with Bernard. Abelard was to be imprisoned and condemned to perpetual silence. The sentence doomed him to pass the rest of his life without words: confined in a monastery, forbidden to speak, making his wants known only with signs.
In the eyes of his followers, the silencing of Abelard was a tacit acknowledgement that Aristotelian thought was both powerful and true. “The high priests and Pharisees convened an assembly,” wrote his student Berengar of Poitiers, using a New Testament metaphor for Bernard and the papal court, “and said: What should we do, since this man speaks of many wonderful things? If we let him go on like this, all will believe him.” But for Bernard of Clairvaux, authority had been properly reasserted; the old truths preserved, the old verities reaffirmed. 9
The penalty was never actually enforced. Abelard, who had been suffering already from the illness that would kill him, took shelter at the monastery of Cluny and was in the middle of writing a lengthy self-defense when he died. The abbot of Cluny, known as Peter the Venerable, exercised the authority given to him “in virtue of [his] office” and declared Abelard absolved of all his sins. He sent Abelard’s coffin to Heloise, now abbess of the Paraclete convent.
She buried him there; and when she also died, some twenty years later, she was buried beside him. 10
B ERNARD OF C LAIRVAUX had no idea that he was fighting a rearguard action.
Already, at the cathedral school of Chartres, the accomplished master Bernard of Chartres was at the height of his teaching career, making his students thoroughly familiar with the works of Plato and Aristotle as foundation for their ongoing education in Christian doctrine. “Bernard would bend every effort to bring his students to imitate [the poets and orators] they were hearing,” writes John of Salisbury, who studied at Chartres. “In some cases he would rely on exhortation, in others . . . flogging. . . . [He] used to compare us to puny dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.” 11
In Italy, a legal scholar named Gratian was already applying logic to the Church’s own proceeedings. He was creating a vast collection of Church law, putting together ecclesiastical pronouncements that contradicted each other, and then using dialectic to resolve the inconsistencies. His masterwork, the Concordance of Discordant Canons , became a core
The two men were polar opposites: Abelard determined to bring faith and logic together, Bernard holding the authority of the Church above all. “He had an abhorrence of teachers who put their trust in worldly wisdom and clung too much to human argument,” Otto of Freising explains. When, in 1140, a local monk sent Bernard a letter highlighting Abelard’s most recent doctrinal explorations, Bernard agreed that the matter required investigation. 7
He asked Abelard to come and explain himself; Abelard instead appealed to the Bishop of Sens, and then to the pope. Probably he believed that his own skill in argumentation would help him to triumph. But it was exactly this skill that frightened his traditionalist opponents: “Peter Abelard,” wrote Bernard, in his own appeal to the pope, “believes he can comprehend by human reason all that is God.” 8
To give Abelard a pass was to accept the categories of Aristotle; and accepting Aristotelian thought might well throw into doubt the entire authority structure of the Christian church. In 1141, the papal court agreed with Bernard. Abelard was to be imprisoned and condemned to perpetual silence. The sentence doomed him to pass the rest of his life without words: confined in a monastery, forbidden to speak, making his wants known only with signs.
In the eyes of his followers, the silencing of Abelard was a tacit acknowledgement that Aristotelian thought was both powerful and true. “The high priests and Pharisees convened an assembly,” wrote his student Berengar of Poitiers, using a New Testament metaphor for Bernard and the papal court, “and said: What should we do, since this man speaks of many wonderful things? If we let him go on like this, all will believe him.” But for Bernard of Clairvaux, authority had been properly reasserted; the old truths preserved, the old verities reaffirmed. 9
The penalty was never actually enforced. Abelard, who had been suffering already from the illness that would kill him, took shelter at the monastery of Cluny and was in the middle of writing a lengthy self-defense when he died. The abbot of Cluny, known as Peter the Venerable, exercised the authority given to him “in virtue of [his] office” and declared Abelard absolved of all his sins. He sent Abelard’s coffin to Heloise, now abbess of the Paraclete convent.
She buried him there; and when she also died, some twenty years later, she was buried beside him. 10
B ERNARD OF C LAIRVAUX had no idea that he was fighting a rearguard action.
Already, at the cathedral school of Chartres, the accomplished master Bernard of Chartres was at the height of his teaching career, making his students thoroughly familiar with the works of Plato and Aristotle as foundation for their ongoing education in Christian doctrine. “Bernard would bend every effort to bring his students to imitate [the poets and orators] they were hearing,” writes John of Salisbury, who studied at Chartres. “In some cases he would rely on exhortation, in others . . . flogging. . . . [He] used to compare us to puny dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.” 11
In Italy, a legal scholar named Gratian was already applying logic to the Church’s own proceeedings. He was creating a vast collection of Church law, putting together ecclesiastical pronouncements that contradicted each other, and then using dialectic to resolve the inconsistencies. His masterwork, the Concordance of Discordant Canons , became a core
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