[1] I am thinking, of course, of the thousands of simple folk who rushed blindfold into the fatal procession towards Jerusalem, setting their children on their rude carts, and asking naÏvely, at each tower that came in sight in their own France, if that was the Holy City: those whose bones marked the path to Palestine for later Crusaders. As to the professional warriors, there is surely more humour than aught else in the picture of the King of France and his like setting forth to ‘do penance’ for their vice and violence by a few months of adventure, carnage, and pillage.

[2] Locmenach = locus monachorum, ‘the place of the monks.’ The older name was Moriacum. It is now called LocminÉ, and lies a few miles to the east of Vannes.

[3] The name occurs in a dozen different forms in the ancient records. I adopt the form which is generally used by modern French writers. D’ArgentrÉ and other historians of Brittany say that it was not unknown about Nantes in those days. We must remember that it was the period when nicknames, trade-names, etc., were passing into surnames. Another pun on the name, which greatly tickled the mediÆval imagination, was ‘Aboilar,’ supposed to convey the idea that he was a dog who barks at heaven (aboie le ciel). It was perpetrated by Hugo Metellus, a rival master.

[4] This and other details I gather from fragments of the minor poets of the time.

[5] The Notre Dame of to-day, like the earlier Louvre, dates from the end of the twelfth century.

[6] Lest there be a suspicion of caricature, or of ignorance (though I too have sat in the chair of scholastic philosophy, and held grave discourse on genera and species), let me remind the reader of the theological import which was read into the problem.

[7] The reader would probably not be grateful for a long explanation of the meaning of the change. It amounted to a considerable approach of William’s position towards that of AbÉlard.

[8] To transfer a chair was frequently a physical operation in those days. There is, in one of the old records, a story of a dissatisfied master and his pupils removing their chair to another town, higher up the river. They were not welcome, it seems, and their chair was pitched into the river to find its way home.

[9] Until a comparatively recent date ‘aller sur le PrÉ’ meant, in the language of the Latin Quarter, to settle an affair of honour.

[10] As a mere illustration of the times—no one would think of taking it seriously—we may quote the passage referring to him in Dubois’s Historia EcclesiÆ Parisiensis (also found in Lobineau). A monk and bishop, Gaufridus Vindoniencensis, writes to remonstrate with Robert for ‘inventing a new kind of martyrdom’ ... ‘inter feminas et cum ipsis noctu frequenter cubare. Hinc tibi videris, ut asseris, Domini Salvatoris digne bajulare crucem, cum extinguere conaris male accensum carnis ardorem.’ Later he complains of Robert’s partiality, treating some nuns with unusual sweetness and others with excessive acrimony; and amongst the punishments inflicted on the latter he mentions the penance of ‘stripping.’

[11] It will interest many, however, to learn (from the pages of Du Boulai’s Historia Universitatis Parisiensis) that he is charged by the querulous Gaufridus Vindoniencensis with teaching that only the gravest sins were matter for obligatory confession. These particularly grave transgressions are heresy, schism, paganism, and Judaism—all non-ethical matters!

[12] When Anselm’s guilt was ultimately proved, people were somewhat troubled as to the ill-success of their Providential detective service, until they heard that the goldsmith, in accusing the canon, had broken faith with him.

[13] Luckily the citizen-parents were wiser than their Solomon for once. They proposed that the process should commence with the seven treasurers. In spite of preliminary experiments in private the canon was convicted. But the reader must go to the pious Geoffroy’s narrative (Migne, vol. 156, col. 1011) to read how the burglar was tortured, how he obtained release for a time by trickery, and how, being unable to sleep at night for a miraculous dove, he finally confessed and restored.

[14] The Count of Anjou had just invented them to hide the enormity of his bunions. Flattering courtiers found them excellent. The English king’s jester had exaggerated the turned-up points, and the nobles were driving the practice to death, as is the aristocratic wont.

[15] The condition of monasteries will be found treated more fully on p. 125; that of nunneries on p. 209.

[16] Not a single one of AbÉlard’s songs has come down to us. A few songs are to be found which bear his name, but they are not genuine. It is an unfortunate loss, since the religious hymns of his later years convey no better impression of his true and unspoiled poetic faculty than the moonlight does of the rays of the sun.

[17] This detail is found in AbÉlard’s second letter to Heloise. It is characteristic of Mr. Cotter Morison’s ‘sketch’ of AbÉlard that he should have missed it, and thought fit to deny it. Deutsch reads him a severe lesson on the duty of accuracy in his Peter AbÄlard.

[18] A prior is the second in command in an abbey, or the head of a priory; a priory was a small branch monastery, in those days, though it may now, as with the Dominicans, be a chief house.

[19] This is erroneous; Calixtus II. filled the papal chair at the time.

[20] The statue was preserved in a neighbouring church until the eighteenth century. It was destroyed at the Revolution.

[21] Mr. Leslie Stephen has kindly drawn my attention to Elwin’s theory (Pope’s Works) that he followed the translation of J. Hughes, author of the Siege of Damascus. Hughes’s ‘translation’ was little more faithful than the current French versions; it is largely a work of imagination. Careful comparison does seem to show that Pope used this version, but he seems also to have used some of the very misleading French paraphrases. Elwin himself thinks Pope did not look at the original Latin.

[22] I hardly like to speak of the feeble creation of Robert Buchanan in such a company, but his ‘New AbÉlard’ is a further illustration. His pitiful Mr. Bradley has no earthly resemblance to AbÉlard, except in a most superficial sense. It is grotesque to compare him to AbÉlard for his ‘heresy’; and to say that he recalls AbÉlard in his weakness (to the extent of bigamously marrying and blasting the life of a noble woman) is deeply unjust. AbÉlard was not a cad.

[23] The one from which the nuns had been driven ‘on account of the enormity of their life.’

[24] At a later date one of the censures passed by the doctors of the Sorbonne on this classic sinner of the twelfth century is that he finds a shade of sin in legitimate conjugal relations.

[25] It is quite beside the writer’s purpose, and probably the reader’s pleasure, to give an analysis of these works. I shall presently treat the specific points that have relation to his condemnation, and I add a supplementary chapter on his teaching in general. Deutsch may be read by the curious, and Herr Hausrath gives a useful shorter analysis.

[26] A good idea of the man, and of the rapidly growing school he belonged to, will be formed from the opening sentence of one of his treatises: ‘Rotting in the lake of misery and in the mire of filth, and stuck in the mud of the abyss that has no substance, and from the depths of my grief, I cry out to Thee, O Lord.’ He was in the midst of a similar Bernardesque composition when he received AbÉlard’s works.

[27] Witness his genial letter to our English Matilda.

[28] Fas est et ab hoste doceri. The Benedictine defenders of Bernard (in Migne) say, in another connection: ‘Was there a single cardinal or cleric in Rome who was unacquainted with his dogmas?’

[29] The see of Paris was not elevated into an archbishopric until a much later date.

[30] And the thesis is rejected in AbÉlard’s Apology.

[31] It is singular that Mr. Poole, who credits Bernard with writing the report, should speak of the words as a deliberate ‘lie of excuse,’ especially as he adopts the witness of BÉrenger to a previous condemnation. We are not only compelled by independent evidence to take them as correct, but one imputes a lesser sin to Bernard (from the Catholic point of view) in doing so.

[32] AbÉlard explicitly and very emphatically rebukes such pretension in the very books which Bernard is supposed to have read.

[33] The reference is to the anti-pope, a Pierleone. It is a subtle reminder of what Pope Innocent owes to Bernard.

[34] Recalling some of the zoology of the Old Testament.

[35] I abstain from commenting on St. Bernard’s conduct, or making the ethical and psychological analysis of it, which is so imperfectly done by his biographers at this period, because they do not fully state the facts, or not in their natural order. It would be a fascinating task, but one beside the purpose of the present work and not discreet for the present writer. I have let Bernard speak for himself.

[36] He did, however, write an ‘apology’ or defence, but only a few fragments of it survive.

[37] Amongst other humane modifications we may note that he raised the age of admission to the abbey to twenty-one.

[38] One of the most widely-used of these manuals at present is that of the learned Jesuit, Father Hurter. On p. 472 of the first volume one finds the Bernardist notions of faith sternly rejected, and variously attributed to ‘Protestants,’ ‘Pietists,’ and ‘Kantists.’

[39] A typical illustration of the perplexity and inconsistency which resulted from the conflict of AbÉlard’s critical moral sense with apparently fixed dogmas is seen in his treatment of original sin in the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. He finds two meanings for the word sin—guilt and punishment; and he strains his conscience to the point of admitting that we may inherit Adam’s sin in the latter sense. Then comes the question of unbaptized children—whom Bernard calmly consigned to Hades—and he has to produce the extraordinary theory that the Divine Will is the standard of morality, and so cannot act unjustly. But his conscience asserts itself, and he goes on to say that their punishment will only be a negative one—the denial of the sight of God—and will only be inflicted on those children who, in the divine prescience, would have been wicked had they lived!