Joseph McCabe

THE MONK OF ST. DENIS

AbÉlard had now entered upon the series of blunders which were to make his life a succession of catastrophes. A stronger man would have retired to Pallet, and remained there until the discussion of his outrage had abated somewhat; then boldly, and, most probably, with complete success, have confronted the scholastic world once more, with his wife for fitting companion, like Manegold of Alsace. In his distraction and abnormal sense of humiliation, AbÉlard grasped the plausible promise of the monastic life. In the second place, he, with a peculiar blindness, chose the abbey of St. Denis for his home.

The abbey of St. Denis was not only one of the most famous monasteries in Europe, but also a semi-religious, semi-secular monarchical institution. It was the last monastery in the world to provide that quiet seclusion which AbÉlard sought. It lay about six miles from Paris, near one of the many bends of the Seine on its journey to the sea. Dagobert was its royal founder; its church was built over the alleged bones of the alleged St. Denis the Areopagite, the patron of France; it was the burial-place of the royal house. Over its altar hung the oriflamme of St. Denis, the palladium of the country, which the king came to seek, with solemn rite and procession, whenever the cry of ‘St. Denis for France’ rang through the kingdom. Amongst its several hundred monks were the physicians and the tutors of kings—Prince Louis of France was even then studying in its school.

Rangeard, in his history of Brittany, says, that at the beginning of the twelfth century there were more irregular than regular abbeys in France. AbÉlard himself writes that ‘nearly all the monasteries’ of his time were worldly. The truth is that few monasteries, beside those which had been very recently reformed, led a very edifying life. Hence it is not surprising, when one regards the secular associations of the place, to find that the Benedictine abbey of St. Denis was in a very lax condition. AbÉlard soon discovered that, as he says, it was an abbey ‘of very worldly and most disgraceful life.’ The great rhetorician has a weakness for the use of superlatives, but other witnesses are available. St. Bernard wrote of it, in his famed, mellifluous manner, that it was certain the monks gave to CÆsar the things that were CÆsar’s, but doubtful if they gave to God the things that were God’s. A chronicler of the following century, Guillaume de Nangis, writes that ‘the monks scarcely exhibited even the appearance of religion.’

The abbey had not been reformed since 994, so that human nature had had a considerable period in which to assert itself. The preceding abbot, Ives I., was accused at Rome of having bought his dignity in a flagrant manner. The actual abbot, Adam, is said by AbÉlard to have been ‘as much worse in manner of life and more notorious than the rest as he preceded them in dignity.’ It is certainly significant that the Benedictine historian of the abbey, Dom FÉlibien, can find nothing to put to the credit of Adam, in face of AbÉlard’s charge, except a certain generosity to the poor. Nor have later apologists for the angels, de Nangis, Duchesne, etc., been more successful. Ecclesiastical history only finds consolation in the fact that Adam’s successor was converted by Bernard in 1127, and at once set about the reform of the abbey.

When AbÉlard donned the black tunic of the Benedictine monk in it, probably in 1119, the royal abbey was at the height of its gay career. St. Bernard himself gives a bright picture of its life in one of his letters. He speaks of the soldiers who thronged its cloisters, the jests and songs that echoed from its vaulted roofs, the women who contributed to its gaiety occasionally. From frequent passages in AbÉlard we learn that the monks often held high festival. It may be noted that monastic authorities nearly always give occasion to these festivities, for, even in the severest rules, one always finds an egg, or some other unwonted luxury, admitted on ‘feast-days.’ It is the consecration of a principle that no body of men and women on earth can apply and appreciate better than monks and nuns. The feasts of St. Denis rivalled those of any chÂteau in gay France. The monks were skilful at mixing wine—it is a well-preserved monastic tradition—their farmer-vassals supplied food of the best in abundance, and they hired plenty of conjurors, singers, dancers, jesters, etc., to aid the task of digestion.

Nor was the daily life too dull and burdensome. Royal councils were frequently held at the abbey, and one does not need much acquaintance with monastic life to appreciate that circumstance. Then there was the school of the abbey, with its kingly and noble pupils—and corresponding visitors: there was the continual stream of interesting guests to this wealthiest and most famous of all abbeys: there was the town of St. Denis, which was so intimately dependent on the abbey. Above all, there were the country-houses, of which the abbey had a large number, and from which it obtained a good deal of its income. Some dying sinner would endeavour to corrupt the Supreme Judge by handing over a farm or a chÂteau, with its cattle, and men and women, and other commodities of value, to the monks of the great abbey. These would be turned into snug little ‘cells’ or ‘priories,‘ and important sources of revenue. Sometimes, too, they had to be fought for in the courts, if not by force of arms. AbÉlard complains that ‘we [monks] compel our servants to fight duels for us’: he has already complained of the frequent presentation to monasteries of both man and maid servants. In 1111 we find some of the monks of St. Denis, at the head of a small army, besieging the chÂteau of Puiset, capturing its lieutenant, and casting him into a monastic prison. At Toury Abbot Adam had his important dependence armed as a fortress, and made a financial speculation in the opening of a public market. Rangeard tells us, in addition, that many of the monks were expert in canon law, and they travelled a good deal, journeying frequently to Rome in connection with matrimonial and other suits.

But before AbÉlard turned his attention to the condition of the abbey, he was long preoccupied with the thought of revenge. Revenge was a branch virtue of justice in those days, and AbÉlard duly demanded the punishment of talio. The valet, who had betrayed him, and one of the mutilators, had been captured, and had lost their eyes, in addition to suffering the same mutilation as they had inflicted. But AbÉlard seems to have been painfully insistent on the punishment of Fulbert. The matter belonged to the spiritual court, since AbÉlard was a cleric, and Bishop Girbert does not seem to have moved quickly enough for the new monk. Fulbert escaped from Paris, and all his goods were confiscated, but this did not meet AbÉlard’s (and the current) idea of justice. He began to talk of an appeal to Rome.

In these circumstances was written the famous letter of Prior Fulques, to which we have referred more than once. It is a characteristic piece of mediÆval diplomacy. Fulques was the prior of Deuil, in the valley of Montmorency, a dependency of the abbey of St. Florent de Saumur. He was apparently requested by the abbot of St. Denis to persuade AbÉlard to let the matter rest. At all events, he begins his letter with a rhetorical description of AbÉlard’s success as a teacher, depicting Britons and Italians and Spaniards braving the terrors of the sea, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, under the fascination of AbÉlard’s repute. Then, with a view to dissuading him from the threatened appeal to Rome, he reminds him of his destitution and of the notorious avarice of Rome. There is no reason why we should hesitate to accept Fulques’s assertion that AbÉlard had no wealth to offer the abbey when he entered it. If, as seems to be the more correct proceeding, we follow the opinion that he spent the interval between the first withdrawal of Heloise and the marriage with her at Pallet, he cannot have earned much during the preceding two or three years. He was hardly likely to be a provident and economical person. Most of whatever money he earned, after he first began to serve up stale dishes to his students in the absorption of his passion, would probably pass into the coffers of Fulbert or, later, of the nunnery at Argenteuil. There is no need whatever to entertain theories of licentiousness from that ground. We have, moreover, already sufficiently discussed that portion of Fulques’s letter.

But the second part of the prior’s argument, the avarice of Rome, requires a word of comment. It is characteristic of the ecclesiastical historian that in Migne’s version of Fulques’s letter the indictment of AbÉlard is given without comment, and the indictment of Rome is unblushingly omitted. It might be retorted that such historians as Deutsch and Hausrath insert the indictment against Rome, and make a thousand apologies for inserting the charge against AbÉlard. The retort would be entirely without sting, since a mass of independent evidence sustains the one charge, whilst the other is at variance with evidence. The passage omitted in Migne, which refers to AbÉlard’s proposal to appeal to Rome, runs as follows. ‘O pitiful and wholly useless proposal! Hast thou never heard of the avarice and the impurity of Rome? Who is wealthy enough to satisfy that devouring whirlpool of harlotry? Who would ever be able to fill their avaricious purses? Thy resources are entirely insufficient for a visit to the Roman Pontiff.... For all those who have approached that see in our time without a weight of gold have lost their cause, and have returned in confusion and disgrace.’

Let us, in justice, make some allowance for the exigency of diplomacy and the purposes of rhetoric; the substance of the charge is abundantly supported by other passages in Migne’s own columns. For instance, Abbot Suger, in his Vita Ludovici Grossi, says of his departure from Rome after a certain mission, ‘evading the avarice of the Romans we took our leave.’ The same abbot speaks of their astonishment at St. Denis when Paschal II. visited the abbey in 1106: ‘contrary to the custom of the Romans, he not only expressed no affection for the gold, silver, and precious pearls of the monastery (about which much fear had been entertained),’ but did not even look at them. It may be noted, without prejudice, that Paschal was seeking the sympathy and aid of France in his quarrel with Germany. In the apology of Berengarius, which is also found in Migne, there is mention of ‘a Roman who had learned to love gold, rather than God, in the Roman curia.’ Bernard of Cluny, a more respectable witness, tersely informs us that ‘Rome gives to every one who gives Rome all he has.’ Matthew of Paris is equally uncomplimentary. We have spoken already of the licentious young Étienne de Garlande and his proposal of going to Rome to buy the curia’s consent to his installation in a bishopric; also of the rumour that Pope Paschal disapproved, out of avarice, the censure passed on the adulterous king. Duboulai, after giving Fulques’s letter, is content to say that the pope feared too great an interference with the officials of the curia on account of the papal schism.

Whether the letter of the monastic diplomatist had any weight with AbÉlard or no, it seems that he did desist from his plan, and laid aside all thought of Fulbert. But the unfortunate monk soon discovered the disastrous error he had made in seeking peace at the abbey of St. Denis. There had, in fact, been a serious mistake on both sides. The monks welcomed one whom they only knew as a lively, witty, interesting associate, a master of renown, a poet and musician of merit. A new attraction would accrue to their abbey, a new distraction to their own life, by the admission of AbÉlard. The diversion of the stream of scholars from Paris to St. Denis would bring increased colour, animation, and wealth. The erudite troubadour and brilliant scholar would be an excellent companion in the refectory, when the silent meal was over, and the wine invited conversation.

They were rudely awakened to their error when AbÉlard began to lash them with mordant irony for their ‘intolerable uncleanness.’ They found that the love-inspired songster was dead. They had introduced a kind of Bernard of Clairvaux, a man of wormwood valleys, into their happy abbey: a morose, ascetic, sternly consistent monk, who poured bitter scorn on the strong wines and pretty maids, the high festivals and pleasant excursions, with which the brothers smoothed the rough path to Paradise. And when the gay Latin Quarter transferred itself to St. Denis, and clamoured for the brilliant master, AbÉlard utterly refused to teach. Abbot Adam gently remonstrated with his ‘subject,’ pointing out that he ought now to do more willingly for the honour of God and the sake of his brothers in religion what he had formerly done out of worldly and selfish interest. Whereupon Abbot Adam was urgently reminded of a few truths, nearly concerning himself and ‘the brothers,’ which, if not new to his conscience, were at least novel to his ears.

So things dragged on for a while, but Adam was forced at length to rid the monastery of the troublesome monk. Finding a pretext in the importunity of the students, he sent AbÉlard down the country to erect his chair in one of the dependencies of the abbey. These country-houses have already been mentioned. Large estates were left to the abbey in various parts of the country. Monks had to be sent to these occasionally, to collect the revenue from the farmers and millers, and, partly for their own convenience, partly so that they might return something in spiritual service to the district, they built ‘cells’ or ‘oratories’ on the estates. Frequently the cell became a priory; not infrequently it rebelled against the mother-house; nearly always, as is the experience of the monastic orders at the present day, it was a source of relaxation and decay.

The precise locality of the ‘cell’ which was entrusted to Brother Peter is matter of dispute, and the question need not delay us. It was somewhere on the estates of Count Theobald of Champagne, and therefore not very far from Paris. Here AbÉlard consented to resume his public lectures, and ‘gathered his horde of barbarians about him’ once more, in the jealous phrase of Canon Roscelin.

Otto von Freising relates that AbÉlard had now become ‘more subtle and more learned than ever.’ There is no reason to doubt that he continued to advance in purely intellectual power, but it seems inevitable that he must have lost much of the brightness and charm of his earlier manner. Yet his power and his fascination were as great as ever. Maisoncelle, or whatever village it was, was soon transformed into the intellectual centre of France. It is said by some historians that three thousand students descended upon the village, like a bewildering swarm of locusts. AbÉlard says the concourse was so great that ‘the district could find neither hospitality nor food’ for the students. One need not evolve from that an army of several thousand admirers, but it seems clear that there was a second remarkable gathering of students from all parts of Christendom. There was no teacher of ability to succeed him at Paris; he was still the most eminent master in Europe. Even if he had lost a little of the sparkle of his sunny years, no other master had ever possessed it. Indeed, it is not audacious to think that the renewal of his early success and the sweetness of life in lovely Champagne may have in time quickened again such forces and graces of his character as had not been physically eradicated. He began to see a fresh potentiality of joy in life.

Unfortunately for AbÉlard, his perverse destiny had sent him down to the neighbourhood of Rheims. It will be remembered that Anselm of Laon was urged to suppress AbÉlard’s early theological efforts by two of his fellow-pupils, Alberic of Rheims and Lotulphe of Novare. Alberic appears to have been a man of ability, and he had been made archdeacon of the cathedral, and head of the episcopal school, at Rheims. He had associated Lotulphe with himself in the direction of the schools, and they were teaching with great success when AbÉlard appeared on the near horizon. Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux had gone, and the two friends were eager to earn the title of their successors. The apparent extinction of Master AbÉlard had largely increased their prestige, and had filled the school of Rheims. Indeed, we gather from the details of a ‘town and gown’ fight which occurred at Rheims about this time that the students had almost come to outnumber the citizens.

Hence it is not surprising that AbÉlard’s newfound peace was soon disturbed by rumours of the lodging of complaints against him in high quarters. The Archbishop of Rheims, Ralph the Green, began to be assailed with charges. In the first place, he was reminded, it was uncanonical for a monk to give lectures, and take up a permanent residence, outside his monastery; moreover, the said monk was most unmonastically engaged in reading Aristotle, with a flavour of Vergil, Ovid, and Lucan. Raoul le Vert probably knew enough about St. Denis not to attempt to force AbÉlard to return to it. Then the grumblers—‘chiefly those two early intriguers,’ says the victim—urged that AbÉlard was teaching without a ‘respondent’; but the archbishop still found the pretext inadequate. Then, at length, came the second great cloud, the accusation of heresy.

The convert had now made theology his chief object of study. The students who gathered about him in his village priory loudly demanded a resumption of the lectures on dialectics and rhetoric, but AbÉlard had really passed to a new and wholly religious outlook. He complied with the request, only with a secret intention that, as he states in the ‘Story,’ philosophy should be used as a bait in the interest of divinity. The religious welfare of his followers now seriously concerned him. It will be seen presently that he exercised a strict control over their morals, and it was from the purest of motives that he endeavoured, by a pious diplomacy, to direct their thoughts to the study of Holy Writ. His rivals and enemies have attempted to censure him for this casting of pearls before swine. Certainly there were dangers accompanying the practice, but these were not confined to AbÉlard’s school. We can easily conceive the disadvantage of discussing the question, for instance, utrum Maria senserit dolorem vel delectationem in Christo concipiendo? before a crowd of twelfth century students. However, AbÉlard’s attitude was wholly reverent, and his intention as pure as that of St. Anselm.

The one characteristic feature of AbÉlard’s theological work—the feature which was constantly seized by his enemies, and which invests him with so great an interest for the modern student—was his concern to conciliate human reason. His predecessors had complacently affirmed that reason had no title to respect in matters of faith. They insulted it with such pious absurdities as ‘I believe in order that I may understand’ and ‘Faith goeth before understanding.’ AbÉlard remained until his last hour constitutionally incapable of adopting that attitude. He frequently attributes his obvious concern to meet the questioning of reason to the desire of helping his followers. This is partly a faithful interpretation of their thoughts—for which, however, he himself was chiefly responsible—and partly a subtle projection of his own frame of mind into his hearers. The development of the reasoning faculty which was involved in so keen a study of dialectics was bound to find expression in rationalism.

AbÉlard seems already to have written two works of a very remarkable character for his age. One of these is entitled A Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian. It may have been founded on the Octavius of Minucius Felix; on the other hand it may be classed with Lessing’s Nathan. It has been called ‘the most radical expression of his rationalism,’ and it would certainly seem to embody his attitude during the period of his highest prosperity. The ultimate victory lies with the Christian, so far as the work goes (it is unfinished), but incidentally it shows more than one bold departure from traditional formulÆ. AbÉlard’s reluctance to consign all the heathen philosophers to Tartarus would be highly suspect to his pious contemporaries. It is a matter of faith in the Roman Catholic Church to-day that no man shall enter heaven who has not a belief in a personal God, at least; many theologians add the narrower qualification of a literal acceptance of the Trinity. But AbÉlard tempered his audacity by proving that his favourite heathens had this qualification of a knowledge of the Trinity, probably under the inspiration of St Augustine.

The Dialogue was not much assailed by his rivals; probably it was not widely circulated. It is, however, an important monument of AbÉlard’s genius. It anticipated not merely the rationalistic attitude of modern theology, but also quite a number of the modifications of traditional belief which modern rational and ethical criticism has imposed. AbÉlard regards the ethical content of Christianity, and finds that it is only the elaboration or the reformation of the natural law, the true essence of religion. God has given this essential gift in every conscience and in every religion; there are no outcasts from the plan of salvation; the higher excellence of the Christian religion lies in its clearer formulation of the law of life. The popular notions of heaven and hell and deity are travesties of true Christian teaching. God, as a purely spiritual being, is the supreme good, and heaven is an approach to Him by obedience; hell, isolation from Him. When we remember that AbÉlard had before him only the works of the fathers and such recent speculations as those of Anselm, we shall surely recognise the action of a mind of the highest order in these debates.

The second work was not less remarkable. It was a collection of sentences from the fathers on points of dogma. So far the compilation would be an admirable one, but apart from the growing accusation that AbÉlard was wanting in reverence for the authority of the fathers, there was the suspicious circumstance that he had grouped these eighteen hundred texts in contradictory columns. Thus one hundred and fifty-eight questions are put by the compiler, relating to God, the Trinity, the Redemption, the Sacraments, and so forth. The quotations from the fathers are then arranged in two parallel columns, one half giving an affirmative, and the rest a negative, answer to the question. Such a work would be perfectly intelligible if it came from the pen of a modern freethinker. AbÉlard’s Sic et Non (Yes and No), as the work came to be called, has borne many interpretations. Such careful and impartial students of AbÉlard’s work as Deutsch pronounce the critical element in it to be ‘constructive, not sceptical.’ Most probably it was the intention of the compiler to shatter the excessive regard of his contemporaries for the words of the fathers, and thus to open the way for independent speculation on the deposit of revelation (to which he thought he had as much right as Jerome or Augustine), by making a striking exhibition of their fallibility.

Neither of these works seems to have fallen into the hands of Alberic. Twenty years afterwards we find a theologian complaining of the difficulty of obtaining some of AbÉlard’s works, which had been kept secret. He probably refers to one or both of these works. However that may be, AbÉlard wrote a third book during his stay at Maisoncelle, and on this the charge of heresy was fixed.

Wiser than the Church of those days, and anticipating the wisdom of the modern Church of Rome, AbÉlard saw the great danger to the faith itself of the Anselmian maxim, Fides praecedit intellectum. He argued that, as the world had somehow outlived the age of miracles, God must have intended rational evidence to take its place. In any case, there was an increasingly large class of youths and men who clamoured for ‘human and philosophic grounds,’ as he puts it, who would lie to their consciences if they submitted to the current pietism. AbÉlard believed he would render valuable service to the Church if he could devise rational proofs, or at least analogies, of its dogmas. It was in this frame of mind, not in a spirit of destructive scepticism, that he raised the standard of rationalism. He at once applied his force to the most preterrational of dogmas, and wrote his famous Treatise on the Unity and Trinity of God.

A manuscript of the treatise was discovered by StÖlzle a few years ago. It is unnecessary to inflict on the reader an analysis of the work. It is perfectly sincere and religious in intention, but, like every book that has ever been penned on the subject of the Trinity, it contains illustrations which can be proved to be heretical. We may discuss the point further apropos of the Council of Soissons.