strength of the sacerdotal, ceremonial, inflexibly dogmatic, imaginative religion of centuries-the profound and submissive faith, the monastic austerity, the cowering superstition; he was the spiritual dictator of the age, above kings, prelates, even above the Pope; he was the model of holiness, the worker of perpetual wonder. Abélard cannot be accepted as a prophetic type of the Future. Free inquiry could only emancipate itself at a much later period by allying itself with a strong counter religious passion; it must oppose the strength of individual Christianity to the despotism of ecclesiastical religion. Abélard's religion (it were most unjust to question his religion) was but a colder form of the dominant faith; he was a monk, though against his own temperament and tone of feeling. But Abelard was pure intellect, utterly unimaginative, logical to the most naked precision, analytical to the minutest subtlety; even his devotion had no warmth; he ruled the mind, but touched no heart. At best therefore he was the wonder, Bernard the object of admiration, reverence, love, almost of adoration. The second day of the Council (the first had been devoted to the solemn translation of the reliques) was appointed for this grand theological tournament. Not only the king, the nobles, the prelates of France, but all Christendom watched in anxious solicitude the issue of the conflict. Yet even before a tribunal so favourable, so pre-occupied by his own burning words, Bernard was awed into calmness and moderation. He demanded only that the most obnoxious passages should be read from Abélard's works. It was to his amazement, no less than that of the whole. council, when Abélard, instead of putting forth his whole strength in a reply, answered only, "I appeal to Rome," and left the hall of Council. It is said, to explain this unexpected abandonment of the field by the bold challenger, that he was in danger of his life. At Sens, as before at Soissons, the populace were so exasperated at the daring heretic, who was reported to have impeached the doctrine of the Trinity, that they were ready to rise against him. Bernard himself would hardly have inter "Dum de suâ fide discuteretur, sedis præsentiam appellavit." — Otho seditionem populi timens, apostolica Freisingen, i. 46. CHAP. V. CLOSE OF THE COUNCIL OF SENS. 373 fered to save him from that summary refutation; and Abélard, in the confidence of his own power and fame as a disputant, might perhaps expect Bernard to decline his challenge. He may have almost forgotten the fatal issue of the Council of Soissons; at a distance, in his retreat in Brittany, such a tribunal might appear less awful than when he saw it in undisguised and unappeased hostility before him. The Council may have been disappointed at this sudden close of the spectacle which they were assembled to behold; but they were relieved from the necessity of judging between the conflicting parties. Bernard, in the heat and pride of his triumph, after having in vain, and with taunts, provoked his mute adversary, proceeded now in no measured language to pursue his victory. The martial and unlearned prelates vainly hoped that as they had lost the excitement of the fray, they might escape the trouble and fatigue of this profound theological investigation. But the inflexible Bernard would as little spare them as his adversary. The faithful disciple of Ábélard describes with some touches of satire, but with reality which reads like truth, the close of this memorable day. The discomfited Abélard had withdrawn; his books were now produced, a person commanded to read aloud all the objectionable parts at full length in all their logical aridity. The bishops, as evening drew on, grew weary, and relieved their fatigue with wine. The wine and the weariness brought on sleep: the drowsy assembly sate, some leaning on their elbows, some with cushions under their heads, some with their heads dropping on their knees. At each pause they murmured sleepily "damnamus, we condemn, till at length some cut short the word and faintly breathed "namus. Abelard had appealed to Rome; at Rome his adversaries had prepared for his reception. The report of the Council to Rome is in such terms as these: "Peter Abélard makes void the whole Christian faith by attempting to comprehend the nature of God. through human reason. He ascends up into heaven, he goes down into hell. Nothing can elude him either in the height above or in the nethermost depths. A man great in his own eyes, disputing about faith against the faith, walking among the great and wonderful things which are above him, the searcher of the Divine Majesty, the fabricator of heresy. Already has his book on the Trinity been burned by order of one Council; it has now risen from the dead. Accursed is he that builds again the walls of Jericho. His branches spread over the whole earth; he boasts that he has disciples in Rome itself, even in the College of Cardinals; he draws the whole world after him; it is time therefore to silence him by apostolic authority." Bernard's An appeal from Bernard to Rome was an appeal from Bernard to himself. Pope Innocent II. was too completely under his influence, too deeply indebted to him, not to confirm at once his sentence. Bernard had already filled the ears of the Pope with the heresies of Abélard. He urged, he almost commanded, the Pope to proceed to instant judgment. "Shall he venture to appeal to the throne of Peter who denies the faith of Peter? For what has God raised thee up, lowly as thou wert in thine own eyes, and placed thee above kings and nations? Not that thou shouldest destroy but that thou shouldest triumph. build up the faith. God has stirred up the fury of the schismatics that thou mightest have the glory of crushing it. This only was wanting to make thee equal to the most famous of thy predecessors, the condemnation of a heresy." Bernard addressed another long controversial epistle to Innocent, and through him to all Christendom; it was the full view of Abélard's theology as it appeared to most of his own generation. He inveighs against Abélard's dialectic theory of the Trinity, his definition of faith as opinion; his wrath is kindled to its most fiery language by the tenet which he ascribes to Abélard, that the Son of God had not delivered man by his death from the yoke of the devil; that Satan had only the permitted and temporary power of a jailer, not full sovereignty over mankind: in other words, that man had still free will; that Christ was incarnate rather to enlighten f Apud Labbe, et Mansi, et in Oper. S. Bernardi, CHAP. V. BERNARD'S VIEW OF ABÉLARD'S THEOLOGY. 375 .... mankind by his wisdom and example, and died not so much to redeem them from slavery to the devil, as to show his own boundless love. "Which is most intolerable, the blasphemy or the arrogance of his language? Which is most damnable, the temerity or the impiety? Would it not be more just to stop his mouth with blows than confute him by argument? Does not he whose hand is against every one, provoke the hand of every one against himself? All, he says, think thus, but I think otherwise! Who, then, art thou? What canst thou advance which is wiser, what hast thou discovered which is more subtile? What secret revelation canst thou boast which has escaped the saints and eluded the angels? Tell us what is this that thou alone canst see, that no one before thee hath seen? That the Son of God put on manhood for some purpose besides the deliverance of man from bondage. Assuredly this has been discovered by no one but by thee, and where hast thou discovered it? Thou hast received it neither from sage, nor prophet, nor apostle, nor from God himself. The apostle of the Gentiles received from God himself what he delivered to us. The apostle of the Gentiles declares that his doctrine comes from on high-'I speak not of myself.' But thou deliverest what is thine own, what thou hast not received. He who speaks of himself is a liar. Keep to thyself what comes from thyself. For me, I follow the prophets and the apostles. I obey the Gospel, but not the Gospel according to Peter. Thou makest thyself a fifth evangelist. What says the law, what say the prophets, what say the apostles, what say their successors, that which thou alone deniest, that God was made man to deliver man from bondage? What, then, if an angel should come from heaven to teach us the contrary, accursed be the error of that angel!" Absent, unheard, unconvicted, Abélard was condemned by the Supreme Pontiff. The condemnation was Condemnation uttered almost before the charge could be fully Rome. known. The decree of Innocent reproved all public "Ut dicat totum esse quod Deus in carne apparuit, nostram de vita et exemplo ipsius institutionem, sive ut postmodum dixit, instructionem: totum of Abelard at quod passus et mortuus est suæ erga nos charitatis ostensionem vel commendationem."-Epist. xcii. 1539. disputations on the mysteries of religion. Abélard was condemned to silence; his disciples to excommunication.h Abelard at Abelard had set out on his journey to Rome; he was stopped by severe illness, and found hospitable reception in the Abbey of Clugny. Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of that famous monastery, did more than protect the outcast to the close of his life. He had himself gone through the ordeal of a controversy with the fervent Bernard, though their controversy had been conducted in a milder and more Christian spirit. Yet the Abbot of the more luxurious or more polished Clugny might not be sorry to show a gentleness and compassion uncongenial to the more austere Clairvaux. He even wrought an outward reconciliation between the persecuted Abelard and the victorious Bernard. It was but an outward, a hollow reconciliation. Abélard published an apology, if apology it might be called, which accused his adversary of ignorance or of malice. The apology not merely repelled the charge of Arianism, Nestorianism, but even the slightest suspicion of such doctrines; and to allay the tender anxiety of Heloisa, who still took a deep interest in his fame and happiness, he sent her his creed, which might have satisfied the most austere orthodoxy. Even in the highest quarters, among the most distinguished prelates, there was at least strong compassion for Abélard, admiration for his abilities, perhaps secret indignation at the hard usage he had endured. Bernard knew that no less a person than Guido di Castello, afterwards Pope Cœlestine II., a disciple of Abélard, spoke of him at least with affection. To him Bernard writes, "He would not suppose that though Guido loved the man he could love his errors."i He suggests the peril of the contagion of such doctrines, and skilfully associates the name of Abelard with the most odious heresies. When he writes of the Trinity he has a savour of Arius; when of grace, of Pelagius; when of the person of Christ, of Nestorius. To the Cardinal Ivo he uses still stronger words "Though a Baptist without in his austerities, he is a Herod within." Still for the last two years of his life Abelard found peace, honour, seclusion, in the Abbey of h Apud Bernard, Epist. cxciv. i Epist. cxcii. |