Joseph McCabe

A RETURN TO THE ARENA

The literary and personal activity described in the preceding chapter, together with the elaboration of a new ‘theology,’ of which we shall read presently, brings the story of AbÉlard’s life down to 1135 or 1136. His movements during the three or four years after his flight from St. Gildas are very obscure. St. Bernard seems to speak of his presence in Paris at one time, though the passages can, and perhaps should, be explained away. Heloise speaks of his visits to the Paraclete. On the whole he probably remained in Brittany, at Nantes or Pallet, and devoted his time to literary work. But in 1136 we find him in Paris once more. Whether the monks succeeded in making Brittany too insecure for him, or the count failed to guarantee his income, or a natural disgust with the situation and longing for the intellectual arena impelled him to return, we cannot say. It is only known that in 1136 he was once more quickening the scholastic life of Europe from the familiar slope of St. Genevieve.

So swift and eventful has been the career of the great teacher that one realises with difficulty that he is now almost an old man, a man in his fifty-seventh or fifty-eighth year. It is twenty years since the grim termination of his early Parisian activity, and a new generation fills the schools. The ideas with which he first startled and conquered the intellectual world have been made familiar. The vigour, the freshness, the charming pertinacity of youth have departed. Yet there is no master in Christendom, young or old, that can restrain the flood of ‘barbarians’ when ‘Li mestre’ reappears at Paris. John of Salisbury was amongst the crowd. It is from his Metalogicus that we first learn of AbÉlard’s return to the arena, and the renewal of his old triumph. St. Bernard fully confirms the story, after his fashion. Indeed, in one sense AbÉlard’s triumph was greater than ever, for he gathered a notable group of followers about him on St. Genevieve. There was Arnold of Brescia, the scourge of the Italian clergy, the ‘gad-fly’ of the hierarchy. There was Gilbert de la PorÉe, a dreaded dialectician and rationalistic theologian. There was Hyacinth, the young deacon and noble from Rome, afterwards a power in the sacred college. There was BÉrenger, the caustic critic, who gave Bernard many an unpleasant quarter of an hour. There were future bishops and theologians in remarkable numbers.

However, we have no information of a definite character until five years afterwards. In fact John of Salisbury complicates the situation by stating that AbÉlard withdrew shortly after 1136. Deutsch thinks that AbÉlard left Paris for a few years; Hausrath, on the contrary, conjectures that he merely changed the locality of his school. John of Salisbury would, in that case, have followed his lectures in the cloistral school in 1136, and would have remained faithful to the abbey, following AbÉlard’s successor, a Master Alberic, when AbÉlard was, for some unknown reason, constrained to move his chair to the chapel of St. Hilary, also on the slope of St. Genevieve. According to the Historia Pontificalis it was at St. Hilary that Bernard visited him in 1141. It is an ingenious way of keeping AbÉlard in Paris during the five years, as most historians would prefer to do. Its weak point is the supposition that John of Salisbury would continue to attend at the abbey of St. Genevieve with AbÉlard teaching a few yards away.

The difficulty may be gladly left to the chronologist. The first great fact in AbÉlard’s career after his return to Paris is that St. Bernard begins to take an active interest in his teaching in the spring of 1141. Ten short weeks afterwards the prestige of the great teacher was shattered beyond recall, and he set out upon his pathetic journey to the tomb. It was a tense, a titanic struggle, on the side of Bernard.

According to the religious story-books the episode is very clear and highly honourable to Bernard. Abbot AbÉlard had rewritten, with what he thought to be emendations, the theological treatise which had been burnt at Soissons. Under the title of the Theologia Christiana, this rationalistic exposition and defence of the dogmas of the faith, especially of the Trinity, had ‘crossed the seas and leaped over the Alps,’ in Bernard’s vivid phraseology. With it travelled also an Introductio ad theologiam, which was written soon after it, and his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, of earlier date. The books we have previously mentioned, the Sic et Non, and the Ethics or Know Thyself, had a more limited and secluded circulation. The theological work which has the title of Epitome Theologiae Christianae or Sententiae Petri Abaelardi is considered by most experts to be a collection of his opinions drawn up by some other masters for scholastic use.[25]

The story runs that these works chanced to intrude on the pious meditations of a mystic theologian of the name of William of St. Thierry. William was very nearly a saint, and the new theology shocked him inexpressibly. He had been abbot of St. Thierry at Rheims, but had been elevated from the Benedictine level to the Cistercian under Bernard’s influence, and was peacefully composing a commentary on the highly mystical ‘Song of Songs,’ in the Cistercian monastery at Signy, when AbÉlard’s heresies reached him.[26] In his horror he selected thirteen definite heretical statements from the books, and sent them, with the treatises, to his pious and powerful friend, Bernard of Clairvaux, with a pressing request to examine them and take action. Bernard replied that a cursory perusal of the books seemed to justify his follower’s zeal. He would put the matter aside until after Holy Week, then talk it over with William. In the meantime William must bear patiently with his inactivity, since he ‘had hitherto known little or nothing of these things.’ Easter over, and the conference having presumably taken place, Bernard was convinced of AbÉlard’s errors. Faithful to Christ’s direction, he went up to Paris, and personally reproved his erring brother, without witnesses. Bernard’s biographer (and secretary-monk) assures that AbÉlard promised to amend his ways. The amendment not taking place, Bernard paid him a second brotherly visit, and, as he refused to comply, Bernard followed out the evangelical direction of reproving him before others. He attacked him in the presence of his students, warning the latter that they must burn his heretical writings forthwith. It is one of the scenes in AbÉlard’s career which it would have been interesting to have witnessed.

However, we must defer for a moment the continuation of the Bernardist version of the encounter, and examine the course of events more critically.

The theory that St. Bernard had not occupied himself with the errors of AbÉlard until William of St. Thierry drew his attention to them is a very poor and foolish composition. We could as well imagine that Newman knew ‘little or nothing’ of Dr. Arnold’s views in the early thirties. Bernard and AbÉlard had been for many years the supreme representatives of the new ‘High’ and ‘Broad’ movements of the twelfth century; and Bernard had a far more intense dread of rationalism than Newman. Scarcely an event of moderate importance occurred in Church, school, or state, in France at least, that escaped the eye of the abbot of Clairvaux in those days. He was ‘acting-Pope’ to the Church of Christ, and he felt all the responsibility. And, amongst the multitudinous cares of his office, none gave him greater concern than the purity of the faith and the purification of the disquieting scholastic activity of the day.

We have seen in a former chapter how largely antithetic his position was to that of AbÉlard, and that he was a man who could not doubt for a moment the truth of his own conception of religion. There was the same marked antithesis at the very bases of their theological conceptions, in the mental soil in which those conceptions took root. Bernard was more authoritative than Anselm of Laon, more mystic than Anselm of Canterbury. He had gone further than Anselm on the theory that ‘faith precedes reason’; AbÉlard had gone beyond Roscelin with the inverse proposition. Perhaps Bernard’s commentary on the ‘Song of Songs’ furnishes the best illustration of his frame of mind and his outlook. Towards the close of his life he devoted himself to long and profound meditation on that beautiful piece of Oriental literature. We must not forget, of course, that the Church is largely responsible for his extravagance on this point. It has indeed taken the civilisation of the West more than two thousand years to discover that its glowing verses are inspired only by the rounded limbs and sweet breath of a beautiful woman; and its most erotic passages are still solemnly applied to the Mother of Christ on her annual festivals. But Bernard revelled in its ‘mystic’ phrases. Day by day, for more than a year, he gathered his monks about him in the auditorium at Clairvaux, and expounded to them the profound spiritual meanings of the ‘Song.’ Eighty-three long sermons barely exhausted the first two chapters. In the end he devoted three lengthy discourses, on successive days, to the elucidation of the words: ‘In my bed at night I have longed for him whom my soul loveth.’

This mystic and unreasoning attitude brought him into fundamental antagonism with AbÉlard. To him faith was the soul’s first duty; reason might think itself fortunate if there were crumbs of knowledge in the accepted writings which it could digest. To reason, to ask a question, was honestly incomprehensible and abhorrent to him. He insisted that the rationalist told God he would not accept what he could not understand; whereas the rationalist was prevented by his own logic from questioning the veracity of the Infinite, and merely insisted that, in a world of hallucination and false pretence, it were well to make sure that the proposition in question really did come from God. Bernard thought reasoning about the Trinity implied irreverence or incredulity; AbÉlard felt it to be a high service to divine truth, in preparing it for minds which were not blessed with the mystic sense. Bernard believed Christ died purely and crudely to make amends to the Father; AbÉlard thought this would impute vindictiveness to God. And so on through a long list of dogmatic points which were of unspeakable importance in the eyes of the twelfth century.

A conflict was inevitable. In Bernard’s thought AbÉlard was employing an extraordinary ability to the grave prejudice of the honour of God, the safety of the Church, and the supreme interest of humanity. Bernard would have deserted his principles and his clear subjective duty if he had remained silent. If he had ‘a quick ear’ to catch ‘the distant thunder roll of free inquiry,’ as Cotter Morison says, and no one questions, he must have turned his zealous attention to AbÉlard long ago, as we have already seen. But the rationalist had been rendered powerless in Brittany for some years. Now that he was teaching with great effectiveness at Paris once more, Bernard could not but take action.

However, it is a task of extreme difficulty for an impartial student to trace with confidence the early stages of that memorable conflict. We have seen the Bernardist version; the version of some of the recent biographers of AbÉlard is very different. Deutsch and Hausrath, able and critical scholars, believe that the letter from William of St. Thierry had been written, wholly or in part, by Bernard himself; that Bernard’s reply was part of a comedy of intrigue; that a timid and treacherous conventicle of the Cistercian monks, including Bernard, had deliberately drawn up in advance this equivocal plan of campaign. Now, if the Catholic enthusiast is incapable of dealing quite impartially with such a problem, it is equally certain that the heretic has a similar disturbing element in his natural predilection for picking holes in the coats of the canonised. The evidence must be examined very carefully. The presumption is that a man of the exalted idealism and stern self-discipline of St. Bernard would not lend himself to such manoeuvres. Yet these things are not inconsistent with the dignity of canonisation; moreover, the object was a great and holy one—and Bernard had a mortal dread of the dialectician.

In the first place, then, it is impossible to credit Bernard with the whole of the letter which bears the name of William of St. Thierry. Much of it is by no means Bernardesque in style and manner; and there are passages which it is quite impossible, on moral grounds, to conceive as having been written by Bernard himself. At the same time much of it does certainly seem to have been written by Bernard. There are few better judges of such a point than Deutsch. The contention that William would not have dared to address such a demand simultaneously to Bernard and Geoffrey without instructions is more precarious.

On the other hand, the letter seems in many respects to support the idea of a diplomatic arrangement. It is addressed to Bernard and to Geoffrey of Chartres, and opens as follows: ‘God knows that I am filled with confusion, my lords and fathers, when I am constrained to address you, insignificant as I am, on a matter of grave urgency, since you and others whose duty it is to speak remain silent.’ After a little of this strain he recounts how he ‘lately chanced to read a certain work’ of the dreadful heretic he has named—the Theology of Peter AbÉlard. From it he selects thirteen heretical propositions (we shall meet them later), which he submits to their judgment. If they also condemn, he calls for prompt and effective action. ‘God knows that I too have loved him’ [AbÉlard], he says, ‘and would remain in charity with him, but in such a cause as this I know no friend or acquaintance.’ Finally, he says: ‘There are, I am told, other works of his, the Sic et Non and the Scito te Ipsum, and others ... but I am told that they shun the light, and cannot be found.’

Without straining an impressionist argument, it may be at once pointed out that the letter betrays itself. Several of the propositions in the list are not found in either of AbÉlard’s theologies; they are taken from the works which William affirms he has never seen. An intrigue is revealed; some other person, not at Signy, has had an important share in the epistle, if not in the actual writing of it. Again, as Neander says in his Life of St. Bernard, the passage about his affection cannot be taken seriously; he had been passionately devoted to Bernard for some years. The letter is evidently written for use or publication, and reveals a curious piece of acting.

Bernard’s reply is also clearly ‘part of the comedy,’ as Hausrath says. Bernard is much addicted to tutoyer his friends, even his lady friends.[27] His previous letters to William, written before he was a ‘son of religion’ and a devoted follower, are written in that familiar style. But in this brief note ‘thou’ and ‘thine’ become ‘you’ and ‘your.’ ‘I consider your action both just and necessary. The book itself, betraying the mouth of those that speak iniquity, proves that it was not idle.... But since I am not accustomed, as you know well, to trust my own judgment, especially in matters of such moment,’ it must wait a little. He will see William about it after Easter. ‘In the meantime be not impatient of my silence and forbearance in these matters; most of them, indeed nearly all of them, were not known to me before (cum horum plurima et pene omnia hucusque nescierim).’

The letter is almost incomprehensible, coming from such a man. He take the first discovery of so influential a heretic so calmly; he not trust his own judgment in such matters! Save for the literary form, which is unmistakable, the letter is wholly out of place in the bulky volume of Bernard’s correspondence. It is part of the play; and its brevity and vagueness seem to indicate an unwillingness or ethical discomfort on the part of the writer.

The closing sentence in it has given trouble even to Bernard’s biographers, and must disconcert every admirer of the great uplifter of the twelfth century. Cotter Morison says ‘he must refer to the special details’ of AbÉlard’s teaching. It is impossible to acquit the words of the charge of evasiveness and a half-conscious inaccuracy, even if they be so interpreted. We have already given the general considerations which compel us to think Bernard made himself fully acquainted with AbÉlard’s opinions. We have already discussed the probability of his share in the driving of AbÉlard into Brittany. Other indications are not wanting. In 1132 Bernard was sent on a papal mission into Burgundy; his companion was Joscelin, AbÉlard’s early rival. Bernard attacks with some spirit the errors of an unnamed master in his Treatise on Baptism; these errors are the opinions of AbÉlard. On one occasion, indeed, they had a direct controversy. Bernard had visited the Paraclete, and had criticised the way in which the nuns, following AbÉlard’s direction, recited the Lord’s Prayer. AbÉlard had inserted ‘supersubstantial’ for ‘daily.’ Heloise duly reported the criticism, and AbÉlard flew to arms. The letter was characteristic. A sweet and genial prelude, a crushing argumentative onslaught, and an ironical inversion of the charge. ‘But let each do as he pleases,’ the rhetorician concluded; ‘I do not wish to persuade any man to follow me in this. He may change the words of Christ as he likes.’

However, we need not strain detailed indications. It is impossible to think that Bernard was unacquainted with ‘novelties’ that the echo of a great name had borne to the ends of the earth.[28] When we have seen the whole story of Bernard’s share in the struggle, it will be easier to understand this letter. It is puerile to think that we detract anything from the moral and spiritual greatness of St. Bernard in admitting an occasional approach to the common level of humanity. And there was present in strength that delusive ideal which has led so many good men into fields that were foreign to their native grandeur—the good of the Church.

There is no record of a conference with William of St. Thierry after Easter. The pupil has played his part, and he now vanishes completely from the theatre. But from the subsequent report which was sent to the pope, and from the Life of St. Bernard, written by his admiring secretary, we learn that Bernard visited AbÉlard in private, and admonished him of his errors. The scene is unfortunately left to the imagination; though the report we have mentioned speaks of a ‘friendly and familiar admonition.’ Bernard’s biographer would have us believe that AbÉlard was quite subdued—the ‘rhinoceros’ was tamed again—by Bernard’s brotherly address, and promised to retract his errors. It is possible that AbÉlard put him off with amiable generalities, but quite incredible that he made any such promise. We need not speculate, with Hausrath, on the probability of interference from his more ardent students. The episcopal report to the pope does not mention any broken promise. It could have used such a circumstance with great effect.

Then followed Bernard’s second visit and warning. It would be difficult to say which dreaded the other more in these curious interviews, but Bernard had convinced himself of his duty to crush AbÉlard, and he was following out a very correct and excellently-devised scheme. The Gospel required a twofold personal correction of an erring brother, before he was denounced to the synagogue. The second one was to have witnesses. Bernard therefore boldly admonished AbÉlard in the presence of his students, and bade them burn the works of their master. It is a thousand pities we have no AbÉlardist record of these proceedings.

If AbÉlard said little during the conferences, he must have known that he was rapidly approaching another, perhaps a supreme, crisis in his life. He knew his Gospel, and he knew Bernard. The next step was the denunciation to the synagogue. He had had an experience of such denunciation, and he would certainly not expect a less insidious attack from the abbot of Clairvaux, who had avoided his dialectical skill so long. He determined to checkmate the Cistercians. Very shortly afterwards Bernard was dismayed to receive a letter from the Archbishop of Sens, in which he was invited to meet the redoubtable dialectician at Sens in a few weeks’ time, and discuss the right and wrong of their quarrel before the whole spiritual and temporal nobility of France.

It was now a question of dialectics and rhetoric versus diplomacy; though indeed we must credit AbÉlard—or his ‘esquire,’ as Bernard calls Arnold of Brescia—with a fine diplomatic move in claiming the discussion. There are several reasons for thinking that the Bishop of Paris was in Rome at the time, or the discussion should have been sought at Notre Dame. The next instantia was the Archbishop of Sens, and AbÉlard continued to assail that prelate until he was forced to accept the petition. Not improbably it appealed to the sporting instinct of old ‘Henry the Boar,’ a man of noble extraction, and of extremely worldly life before he fell under the influence of the ubiquitous Bernard. The quarrel of the two great luminaries of France was now notorious. He could not well refuse to open the lists for a superb trial by combat.

But Bernard had an entirely different theory of the condemnation of a heretic. He trusted to his personal influence and immense epistolary power. AbÉlard’s works were available, and were sufficient for the grounding of a condemnation, he said. He was not merely impatient of the implied doubt of the infallibility of his judgment; he shrank nervously from the thought of such an encounter. He did not conceal for a moment his dread of AbÉlard’s power. ‘I am a boy beside him,’ he pleaded, ‘and he is a warrior from his youth.’ On the other hand, if it became a question of a diplomatic struggle for a condemnation of the books at Rome, the positions would be exactly reversed. He refused to enter the lists with AbÉlard.

In the meantime the day which the Archbishop of Sens had appointed was rapidly approaching. It was the Octave of, or eighth day after, Pentecost. On the Sunday after Whitsunday, now dedicated to the Trinity, there was to be a brilliant religious function in the cathedral at Sens. It was customary to expose the relics to veneration on that day, and as Sens, the metropolitan church of Paris[29] and other important towns, had a very valuable collection of relics, the ceremony attracted a notable gathering of lords, spiritual and temporal. Louis VII. was to be there, with the usual escort of French nobles: the curiously compounded monarch had a profound veneration for relics, and something like a passion for the ceremonies that accompanied their translation, veneration, and so forth. All the suffragans of the archbishop would be present, with a number of other bishops, and abbots, clerics, and masters innumerable. Quite apart from the duel between the greatest thinker and the greatest orator in Europe, there would be a very important and weighty gathering at the cathedral on that day. AbÉlard willingly assented. Bernard is fond of repeating in his later letters that AbÉlard set to work ‘to summon his friends and followers from all parts.’ We shall see that the only noteworthy supporters of AbÉlard at Sens were pupils or masters from Paris, which lay at a convenient distance. Bernard was shortly to lose his serenity in a sea of rhetoric.

There is a minor quarrel as to whether Bernard reversed his decision, and intimated his acceptance to the archbishop before the day arrived. Father Hefele thinks he did so. It is, however, clear that, in his letter to the pope afterwards, Bernard wishes to convey the impression that he held out until the last moment, and only yielded to the entreaties of his friends in actually presenting himself.

We shall refer to this letter to Pope Innocent shortly, but it is worth while to notice now the edifying picture he draws of his own preparation in contrast with that of ‘the dragon.’ AbÉlard is represented as feverishly whipping up his supporters, whilst Bernard refuses to hear of such an encounter, not only on account of AbÉlard’s world-famed skill in debate, but also because he thinks it improper to discuss sacred things in this fashion. But friends represent that the Church will suffer, and the enemies of Christ triumph. Wearily and ‘without preparation’—trusting wholly in the divine promise of inspiration—he presents himself on the appointed day before ‘Goliath.’

In point of historical fact there is no reason for thinking that AbÉlard made any effort to gather supporters. The few we read of accompanied him from Paris. He had scarcely a single friend in the ranks of his ‘judges.’ On the other hand we do know that Bernard himself sent out a strong and imperious ‘whip’ to his episcopal supporters. There is a brief letter, contained in the Migne collection, which was despatched to all the French bishops on whom Bernard could rely for sympathy and support. They have heard, he says, of his summons to appear at Sens on the Octave of Pentecost. ‘If the cause were a personal one,’ he goes on, ‘the child of your holiness could perhaps not undeservedly look to your support [patrocinium]. But it is your cause, and more than yours; and so I admonish you the more confidently and entreat you the more earnestly to prove yourselves friends in this necessity—friends, I should say, not of me, but of Christ.’ And he goes on to prejudge the case in the mind of the official judges with his rhetorical denunciation of AbÉlard’s heresies. ‘Be not surprised,’ he concludes, ‘that I summon you so suddenly and with so brief a notice; this is another ruse of our cunning adversary, so that he might meet us unprepared and unarmed.’

The consequence of the sending of this whip will be apparent when we come to examine the composition of the gathering at Sens. It marks the beginning of a period of most remarkable intrigue. The idyllic picture of the poor abbot making his way at the last moment to the assembly with a sublime trust in Providence and the righteousness of his cause must be regarded again at the close of the next chapter.

Whether Bernard formally accepted the summons or not, therefore, authentic information was conveyed to both sides that the debate would take place. It will be readily imagined how profoundly stirred the kingdom of France would be over such an expectation. The bare qualities of the antagonists put the discussion leagues above any remembered or contemporary event in the scholastic world; the object of the debate—the validity of the new thought that was rapidly infecting the schools—was a matter of most material concern. Deutsch has a theory of the conflict which seems to be only notable as an illustration of the profundity of the Teutonic mind. He opines there may have been a political struggle underlying the academic demonstration. Louis was just beginning his struggle with Rome over the vexed question of investitures, and it is conceivable that the AbÉlardists leaned to the side of the king, in opposition to Bernard and the ‘ultramontanes.’ It is conceivable, but not at all probable. AbÉlard’s sermon on St. Peter indicates a really ultramontane sentiment; moreover, he has ever kept aloof from the political side of life. His follower, Arnold of Brescia, would be likely enough to fall in with any such regal design. Arnold was a young Luther, of premature birth. Born in Italy at the beginning of the twelfth century, he had travelled to France, and studied under AbÉlard, at an early age. He returned to Italy, and assumed the monastic habit. An enthusiastic idealist and a man of proportionate energy and audacity, he soon entered upon a fiery crusade against the sins of the monks, the clergy, and the hierarchy. He was driven from Italy in 1139, then from Switzerland, and he had just taken refuge in Paris when Bernard started his campaign. Since one of his most prominent theories was that the higher clergy should be stripped of all temporal privileges and possessions, his place is easily determined on the question of investitures. However, it is most unlikely that he should have dragged AbÉlard into these semi-political and dangerous questions. And although Bernard most sedulously urges the association of the hated Arnold with AbÉlard in his letters to Rome, he never mentions a suspicion of such a coalition as Deutsch suggests; nor, in fine, does the conduct of the secular arm give the least countenance to the theory.

The conflict was inevitable, without the concurrence of any political intrigue. AbÉlard and Bernard were the natural representatives of schools which could no longer lie down in peace in the fold of the Church. AbÉlard foresaw disaster to the Church in the coming age of restless inquiry unless its truths could be formulated in his intellectual manner. Bernard was honestly convinced that AbÉlard was ‘preparing the way for Anti-Christ.’ And it followed as a further consequence that Bernard should wish to avoid the discussion to which AbÉlard looked for salvation from the menace of the mystical school.

It will appear presently that Bernard was less concerned with the details of AbÉlard’s teaching than with his spirit. He, however, dwells on them for controversial purposes, and they are certainly full of interest for the modern mind. The point will be more fully developed in a supplementary chapter. For the moment a brief glance at them will be instructive enough. They differ a little in Bernard’s letter from the list given by William of St. Thierry, but one cannot even glance at them without noticing how remarkably this thinker of the twelfth century anticipated the judgment of the nineteenth century. His theses, like the theses of the advanced theology of these latter days, indicate two tendencies—an intellectual tendency to the more rational presentment of dogma, and an ethical tendency to the greater moralisation of ancient dogma.

We have already seen a good illustration of this anticipation of modern tendencies in AbÉlard’s treatment of the traditional doctrines of heaven and hell respectively, and we shall see more later on. Of the fourteen specific points (thirteen in William’s letter) contained in the present indictment, we may pass over most of those which refer to the Trinity as without interest. AbÉlard’s phrases were new, but he cordially rejected the Arianism, Nestorianism, and so forth, with which Bernard insisted on crediting him. In the ninth proposition, that the species of bread and wine remain in the air after transubstantiation, and that adventurous mice only eat the species, not the Body of Christ, AbÉlard enunciated an opinion which has been widely adopted by modern Catholic theologians. In his second proposition, that the Holy Ghost was the Platonic anima mundi, AbÉlard was merely trying to save Plato from the damnation of the Bernardists.

On the ethical side, AbÉlard’s theses (in their context in his works) are truly remarkable. Thus the third, ‘That God can only do those things which He actually does, and in the way and at the time that He does them,’ and the seventh, ‘That God is not bound to prevent evil,’ are obviously indications of an ethical attempt to save the sanctity of the Infinite in view of the triumph of evil. ‘That Christ did not become Man for the purpose of saving us from the yoke of the devil’ is an early formulation of the familiar modern conception of the Incarnation. ‘That God does not do more for the elect, before they accept his grace, than for the damned,’ and ‘That we have shared the punishment but not the guilt of Adam,’ are further clear anticipations of the refined theology of modern times. ‘No man can sin before he exists,’ said AbÉlard, to Bernard’s mighty indignation. ‘That God alone remits sin’ is heretical to the modern Catholic, but the dogma was not completely born until the following century;[30] ‘that evil thoughts, and even pleasure, are not of themselves sinful, but only the consent given to them,’ and ‘that the Jews who crucified Christ in ignorance did not sin, that acts which are done in ignorance cannot be sinful,’ express the universal opinion of even modern Catholic theologians, in the sense in which AbÉlard held them.

And ‘these,’ wrote Bernard, with fine contempt, to his friend, Pope Innocent, ‘are the chief errors of the theology, or rather the stultilogy, of Peter AbÉlard.’