Abelard
Abelard, Peter, dialectician, philosopher, and theologian, b. 1079; d.
1142. Peter Abelard (also spelled Abeillard, Abailard, etc., while the best
MSS. have Abaelardus) was born in the little village of Pallet, about ten
miles east of Nantes in Brittany. His father, Berengar, was lord of the
village, his mother's name was Lucia; both afterwards entered the monastic
state. Peter, the oldest of their children, was intended for a military
career, but, as he himself tells us, he abandoned Mars for Minerva, the
profession of arms for that of learning. Accordingly, at an early age, he
left his father's castle and sought instruction as a wandering scholar at
the schools of the most renowned teachers of those days. Among these
teachers was Roscelin the Nominalist, at whose school at Locmenach, near
Vannes, Abelard certainly spent some time before he proceeded to Paris.
Although the University of Paris did not exist as a corporate institution
until more than half a century after Abelard's death, there flourished at
Paris in his time the Cathedral School, the School of Ste. Genevi�ve, and
that of St. Germain des Pr�, the forerunners of the university schools of
the following century. The Cathedral School was undoubtedly the most
important of these, and thither the young Abelard directed his steps in
order to study dialectic under the renowned master (scholasticus) William
of Champeaux. Soon, however, the youth from the province, for whom the
prestige of a great name was far from awe-inspiring, not only ventured to
object to the teaching of the Parisian master, but attempted to set up as a
rival teacher. Finding that this was not an easy matter in Paris, he
established his school first at Melun and later at Corbeil. This was,
probably, in the year 1101. The next couple of years Abelard spent in his
native place "almost cut off from France", as he says. The reason of this
enforced retreat from the dialectical fray was failing health. On returning
to Paris, he became once more a pupil of William of Champeaux for the
purpose of studying rhetoric. When William retired to the monastery of St.
Victor, Abelard, who meantime had resumed his teaching at Melun, hastened
to Paris to secure the chair of the Cathedral School. Having failed in
this, he set up his school in Mt. Ste. Genevieve (1108). There and at the
Cathedral School, in which in 1113 he finally succeeded in obtaining a
chair, he enjoyed the greatest renown as a teacher of rhetoric and
dialectic. Before taking up the duty of teaching theology at the Cathedral
School, he went to Laon where he presented himself to the venerable Anselm
of Laon as a student of theology. Soon, however, his petulant restiveness
under restraint once more asserted itself, and he was not content until he
had as completely discomfited the teacher of theology at Laon as he had
successfully harassed the teacher of rhetoric and dialectic at Paris.
Taking Abelard's own account of the incident, it is impossible not to blame
him for the temerity which made him such enemies as Alberic and Lotulph,
pupils of Anselm, who, later on, appeared against Abelard. The "theological
studies" pursued by Abelard at Laon were what we would nowadays call the
study of exegesis.
There can be no doubt that Abelard's career as a teacher at Paris, from
1108 to 1118, was an exceptionally brilliant one. In his "Story of My
Calamities" (Historia Calamitatum) he tells us how pupils flocked to him
from every country in Europe, a statement which is more than corroborated
by Ihe authority of his contemporaries. He was, In fact, the idol of Paris;
eloquent, vivacious, handsome, possessed of an unusually rich voice, full
of confidence in his own power to please, he had, as he tells us, the whole
world at his feet. That Abelard was unduly conscious of these advantages is
admitted by his most ardent admirers; indeed, in the "Story of My
Calamities," he confesses that at that period of his life he was filled
with vanity and pride. To these faults he attributes his downfall, which
was as swift and tragic as was everything, seemingly, in his meteoric
career. He tells us in graphic language the tale which has become part of
the classic literature of the love-theme, how he fell in love with Heloise,
niece of Canon Fulbert; he spares us none of the details of the story,
recounts all the circumstances of its tragic ending, the brutal vengeance
of the Canon, the flight of Heloise to Pallet, where their son, whom he
named Astrolabius, was born, the secret wedding, the retirement of Heloise
to the nunnery of Argenteuil, and his abandonment of his academic career.
He was at the time a cleric in minor orders, and had naturally looked
forward to a distinguished career as an ecclesiastical teacher. After his
downfall, he retired to the Abbey of St. Denis, and, Heloise having taken
the veil at Argenteuil, he assumed the habit of a Benedictine monk at the
royal Abbey of St. Denis. He who had considered himself "the only surviving
philosopher in the whole world" was willing to hide himself -- definitely,
as he thought -- in monastic solitude. But whatever dreams he may have had
of final peace in his monastic retreat were soon shattered. He quarrelled
with the monks of St. Denis, the occasion being his irreverent criticism of
the legend of their patron saint, and was sent to a branch institution, a
priory or cella, where, once more, he soon attracted unfavourable attention
by the spirit of the teaching which he gave in philosophy and theology.
"More subtle and more learned than ever", as a contemporary (Otto of
Freising) describes him, he took up the former quarrel with Anselm's
pupils. Through their influence, his orthodoxy, especially on the doctrine
of the Holy Trinity, was impeached, and he was summoned to appear before a
council at Soissons, in 1121, presided over by the papal legate, Kuno,
Bishop of Praneste. While it is not easy to determine exactly what took
place at the Council, it is clear that there was no formal condemnation of
Abelard's doctrines, but that he was nevertheless condemned to recite the
Athanasian Creed, and to burn his book on the Trinity. Besides, he was
sentenced to imprisonment in the Abbey of St. M�dard, at the instance
apparently, of the monks of St. Denis, whose enmity, especially that of
their Abbot Adam, was unrelenting. In his despair, he fled to a desert
place in the neighbourhood of Troyes. Thither pupils soon began to flock,
huts and tents for their reception were built, and an oratory erected,
under the title "The Paraclete", and there his former success as a teacher
was renewed.
After the death of Adam, Abbot of St. Denis, his successor, Suger, absolved
Abelard from censure, and thus restored him to his rank as a monk. The
Abbey of St. Gildas de Rhuys, near Vannes, on the coast of Brittany, having
lost its Abbot in 1125, elected Abelard to fill his place. At the same
time, the community of Argenteuil was dispersed, and Heloise gladly
accepted the Oratory of the Paraclete, where she became Abbess. As Abbot of
St. Gildas, Abelard had, according to his own account, a very troublesome
time. The monks, considering him too strict, endeavoured in various ways to
rid themselves of his rule, and even attempted to poison him. They finally
drove him from the monastery. Retaining the title of Abbot, he resided for
some time in the neighbourhood of Nantes and later (probably in 1136)
resumed his career as teacher at Paris and revived, to some extent, the
renown of the days when, twenty years earlier, he gathered "all Europe" to
hear his lectures. Among his pupils at this time were Arnold of Brescia and
John of Salisbury. Now begins the last act in the tragedy of Abelard's
life, in which St. Bernard plays a conspicuous part. The monk of Clairvaux,
the most powerful man in the Church in those days, was alarmed at the
heterodoxy of Abelard's teaching, and questioned the Trinitarian doctrine
contained in Abelard's writings. There were admonitions on the one side and
defiances on the other; St. Bernard, having first warned Abelard in
private, proceeded to denounce him to the bishops of France; Abelard,
underestimating the ability and influence of his adversary, requested a
meeting, or council, of bishops, before whom Bernard and he should discuss
the points in dispute. Accordingly, a council was held at Sens (the
metropolitan see to which Paris was then suffragan) in 1141. On the eve of
the council a meeting of bishops was held, at which Bernard was present,
but not Abelard, and in that meeting a number of propositions were selected
from Abelard's writings, and condemned. When, on the following morning,
these propositions were read in solemn council, Abelard, informed, so it
seems, of the proceedings of the evening before, refused to defend himself,
declaring that he appealed to Rome. Accordingly, the propositions were
condemned, but Abelard was allowed his freedom. St. Bernard now wrote to
the members of the Roman Curia, with the result that Abelard had proceeded
only as far as Cluny on his way to Rome when the decree of Innocent II
confirming the sentence of the Council of Sens reached him. The Venerable
Peter of Cluny now took up his case, obtained from Rome a mitigation of the
sentence reconciled him with St. Bernard, and gave him honourable and
friendly hospitality at Cluny. There Abelard spent the last years of his
life, and there at last he found the peace which he had elsewhere sought in
vain. He donned the habit of the monks of Cluny and became a teacher in the
school of the monastery. He died at Chal�n-sur-Sa�ne in 1142, and was
buried at the Paraclete. In 1817 his remains and those of Heloise were
transferred to the cemetery of P�re la Chaise, in Paris, where they now
rest. For our knowledge of the life of Abelard we rely chiefly on the
"Story of My Calamities", an autobiography written as a letter to a friend,
and evidently intended for publication. To this may be added the letters of
Abelard and Heloise, which were also intended for circulation among
Abelard's friends. The "Story" was written about the year 1130, and the
letters during the following five or six years. In both the personal
element must of course, be taken into account. Besides these we have very
scanty material; a letter from Roscelin to Abelard, a letter of Fulco of
Deuil, the chronicle of Otto of Freising, the letters of St. Bernard, and a
few allusions in the writings of John of Salisbury. Abelard's philosophical
works are "Dialectica," a logical treatise consisting of four books (of
which the first is missing); "Liber Divisionum et Definitionum" (edited by
Cousin as a fifth book of the "Dialectica"); Glosses on Porphyry, Bo�ius,
and the Aristotelian "Categories"; "Glossulae in Porphyrium" (hitherto
unpublished except in a French paraphrase by R�musat); the fragment "De
Generibus et Speciebus", ascribed to Abelard by Cousin; a moral treatise
"Scito Teipsum, seu Ethica", first published by Pez in "Thes. Anecd.
Noviss". All of these, with the exception of the "Glossulae" and the
"Ethica", are to be found in Cousin's "Ouvrages in�dits d'Ab�lard" (Paris,
1836). Abelard's theological works (published by Cousin, "Petri Abselardi
Opera", in 2 vols., Paris, 1849-59, also by Migne, "Patr. Lat.", CLXXVIII)
include "Sic et Non", consisting of scriptural and patristic passages
arranged for and against various theological opinions, without any attempt
to decide whether the affirmative or the negative opinion is correct or
orthodox; "Tractatus de Unitate et Trinitate Divin�", which was condemned
at the Council of Sens (discovered and edited by St�lzle, Freiburg, 1891);
"Theologia Christiana," a second and enlarged edition of the "Tractatus"
(first published by Durand and Mart�ne "Thes. Nov.," 1717); "Introductio in
Theologiam' (more correctly, "Theologia"), of which the first part was
published by Duchesne in 1616; "Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum, et
Christianum"; "Sententiae Petri Abaelardi", otherwise called "Epitomi
Theologiae Christianae", which is seemingly a compilation by Abelard's
pupils (first published by Rheinwald, Berlin, 1535); and several exegetical
works hymns, sequences, etc. In philosophy Abelard deserves consideration
primarily as a dialectician. For him, as for all the scholastic
philosophers before the thirteenth century, philosophical inquiry meant
almost exclusively the discussion and elucidation of the problems suggested
by the logical treatises of Aristotle and the commentaries thereon, chiefly
the commentaries of Porphyry and Bo�tius. Perhaps his most important
contribution to philosophy and theology is the method which he developed in
his "Sic et Non" (Yea and Nay), a method germinally contained in the
teaching of his predecessors, and afterwards brought to more definite form
by Alexander of Hales and St. Thomas Aquinas. It consisted in placing
before the student the reasons pro and contra, on the principle that truth
is to be attained only by a dialectical discussion of apparently
contradictory arguments and authorities. In the problem of Universals,
which occupied so much of the attention of dialecticians in those days,
Abelard took a position of uncompromising hostility to the crude nominalism
of Roscelin on the one side, and to the exaggerated realism of William of
Champeaux on the other. What, precisely, was his own doctrine on the
question is a matter which cannot with accuracy be determined. However,
from the statements of his pupil, John of Salisbury, it is clear that
Abelard's doctrine, while expressed in terms of a modified Nominalism, was
very similar to the moderate Realism which began to be official in the
schools about half a century after Abelard's death. In ethics Abelard laid
such great stress on the morality of the intention as apparently to do away
with the objective distinction between good and evil acts. It is not the
physical action itself, he said, nor any imaginary injury to God, that
constitutes sin, but rather the psychological element in the action, the
intention of sinning, which is formal contempt of God. With regard to the
relation between reason and revelation, between the sciences -- including
philosophy -- and theology, Abelard incurred in his own day the censure of
mystic theologians like St. Bernard, whose tendency was to disinherit
reason in favour of contemplation and ecstatic vision. And it is true that
if the principles "Reason aids Faith" and "Faith aids Reason" are to be
taken as the inspiration of scholastic theology, Abelard was
constitutionally inclined to emphasize the former, and not lay stress on
the latter. Besides, he adopted a tone, and employed a phraseology, when
speaking of sacred subjects, which gave offence, and rightly, to the more
conservative of his contemporaries. Still, Abelard had good precedent for
his use of dialectic in the elucidation of the mysteries of faith; he was
by no means an innovator in this respect; and though the thirteenth
century, the golden age of scholasticism, knew little of Abelard, it took
up his method, and with fearlessness equal to his, though without any of
his flippancy or irreverence, gave full scope to reason in the effort to
expound and defend the mysteries of the Christian Faith. St. Bernard sums
up the charges against Abelard when he writes (Ep. cxcii) "Cum de Trinitate
loquitur, sapit Arium; cum do grati�, sapit Pelagium; cum de person�
Christi, sapit Nestorium", and there is no doubt that on these several
heads Abelard wrote and said many things which were open to objection from
the point of view of orthodoxy. That is to say, while combating the
opposite errors, he fell inadvertently into mistakes which he himself did
not recognize as Arianism, Pelagianism, and Nestonanism, and which even his
enemies could characterize merely as savouring of Arianism, Pelagianism,
and Nestorianism. Abelard's influence on his immediate successors was not
very great, owing partly to his conflict with the ecclesiastical
authorities, and partly to his personal defects, more especially his vanity
and pride, which must have given the impression that he valued truth less
than victory. His influence on the philosophers and theologians of the
thirteenth century was, however, very great. It was exercised chiefly
through Peter Lombard, his pupil, and other framers of the "Sentences."
Indeed, while one must be careful to discount the exaggerated encomiums of
Compayr�, Cousin, and others, who represent Abelard as the first modern,
the founder of the University of Paris, etc., one is justified in regarding
him, in spite of his faults of character and mistakes of judgment, as an
important contributor to scholastic method, an enlightened opponent of
obscurantism, and a continuator of that revival of learning which occurred
in the Carolingian age, and of which whatever there is of science,
literature, and speculation in the early Middie Ages is the historical
development.
. .
WILLIAM TURNER.
(Taken from the Jacques Maritain Center Page on the World Wide Web,
http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/)
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