Peter Abelard Biography
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Pierre Abélard (in English, Peter Abelard) or Abailard (1079
- April 21, 1142) was a French scholastic philosopher. The story
of his affair with Heloise has become legendary.
He was born in the little village of Pallet, about 10 miles east
of Nantes, in Brittany, the eldest son of a noble Breton family.
The name Abaelardus (also written Abailardus, Abaielardus, and
in many other ways) is said to be a corruption of Habelardus,
substituted by Abelard himself for a nickname ('Bajolardus') given
him when a student. As a boy, he learned quickly, and, choosing
an academic life instead of the military career usual for one
of his birth, acquired the art of dialectic, the contemporary
name for philosophy, meaning at that time chiefly the logic of
Aristotle transmitted through Latin channels; this was the great
subject of liberal study in the episcopal schools. Roscellinus,
the famous canon of Compiegne, claims to have been his teacher;
but whether this was in early youth, when he wandered from school
to school for instruction and exercise, or some years later, after
he had already begun to teach, remains uncertain.
Abelard's travels finally brought him to Paris while still in
his teens. There, in the great cathedral school of Notre-Dame
de Paris, he was taught for a while by William of Champeaux, the
disciple of Saint Anselm and most advanced of Realists. He was
soon able to defeat the master in argument, resulting in a long
duel that ended in the downfall of the philosophic theory of Realism,
till then dominant in the early Middle Ages, in favour of Nominalism.
First, against opposition from the metropolitan teacher, while
yet only twenty-two, Abelard set up a school of his own at Melun,
then, for more direct competition, he moved to Corbeil, nearer
Paris.
The success of his teaching was notable, though for a time he
had to give it up, the strain proving too great for his constitution.
On his return, after 1108, he found William lecturing in a monastic
retreat outside the city, and there they once again became rivals.
Abelard was once more victorious, and now stood supreme. William
was only temporarily able to prevent him from lecturing in Paris.
From Melun, where he had resumed teaching, Abelard went on to
the capital, and set up his school on the heights of Montagne
Sainte-Geneviève, overlooking Notre-Dame. From his success in
dialectic, he next turned to theology and attended the lectures
of Anselm at Laon. His triumph was complete; the pupil was able
to give lectures, without previous training or special study,
which were acknowledged superior to those of the master. Abelard
was now at the height of his fame. He stepped into the chair at
Notre-Dame, being also nominated canon, about the year 1115.
Distinguished in figure and manners, Abelard was seen surrounded
by crowds - it is said thousands of students, drawn from all countries
by the fame of his teaching. Enriched by the offerings of his
pupils, and entertained with universal admiration, he came, as
he says, to think himself the only philosopher in the world. But
a change in his fortunes was at hand. In his devotion to science,
he had always lived a very regular life, enlivened only by philosophical
debate: now, at the height of his fame, he encountered romance.
Living within the precincts of Notre-Dame, under the care of
her uncle, the canon Fulbert, was a girl named Heloise, of noble
birth, and born about 1101. She is said to have been beautiful,
but still more remarkable for her knowledge, which extended beyond
Latin, it is said, to Greek and Hebrew. Abelard fell in love with
her; and he sought and gained a place in Fulbert's house. Becoming
tutor to the girl, he used his power for the purpose of seduction,
and she returned his devotion. Their relations interfered with
his public work, and were not kept a secret by Abelard himself.
Soon everyone knew except the trusting Fulbert. When he found
out, they were separated, only to meet in secret. Heloise became
pregnant, and was carried off by her lover to Brittany, where
she gave birth to a son. To appease her furious uncle, Abelard
proposed a secret marriage, in order not to mar his prospects
of advancement in the church; but Heloise opposed the idea. She
appealed to him not to sacrifice the independence of his life,
but reluctantly gave in to pressure. The secret of the marriage
was not kept by Fulbert; and when Heloise boldly denied it, life
was made so difficult for her that she sought refuge in the convent
of Argenteuil.
Immediately Fulbert, believing that her husband, who had helped
her run away, wanted to be rid of her, plotted revenge. He and
some others broke into Abelard's chamber by night, and castrated
him. The priesthood and ecclesiastical office were canonically
closed to him. Heloise, not yet twenty, consummated her work of
self-sacrifice and became a nun. It was in the abbey of Saint-Denis
that Abelard, now aged forty, sought to bury himself with his
woes out of sight. Finding no respite in the cloister, and having
gradually turned again to study, he gave in to urgent entreaties,
and reopened his school at the priory of Maisonceile (1120). His
lectures, now framed in a devotional spirit, were once again heard
by crowds of students, and all his old influence seemed to have
returned; but he still had many enemies. No sooner had he published
his theological lectures (apparently the Introductio ad Theologiam
that has come down to us) than his adversaries picked up on his
rationalistic interpretation of the Trinitarian dogma. Charging
him with the heresy of Sabellius in a provincial synod held at
Soissons in 1121, they obtained an official condemnation of his
teaching, and he was made to burn his book before being shut up
in the convent of St Medard at Soissons. It was the bitterest
possible experience that could befall him. The life in his own
monastery proved no more congenial than formerly. For this Abelard
himself was partly responsible. He took a sort of malicious pleasure
in irritating the monks. Quasijocando, he cited Bede to prove
that Dionysius the Areopagite had been Bishop of Corinth, while
they relied upon the statement of the Abbot Hilduin that he had
been Bishop of Athens. When this historical heresy led to the
inevitable persecution, Abelard wrote a letter to the Abbot Adam
in which he preferred to the authority of Bede that of Eusebius
of Caesarea's Historia Ecelesiastica and St Jerome, according
to whom Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, was distinct from Dionysius
the Areopagite, bishop of Athens and founder of the abbey, though,
in deference to Bede, he suggested that the Areopagite might also
have been bishop of Corinth. Life in the monastery was intolerable
for Abelard, and he was finally allowed to leave. In a desert
place near Nogent-sur-Seine, he built himself a cabin of stubble
and reeds, and turned hermit. When his retreat became known, students
flocked from Paris, and covered the wilderness around him with
their tents and huts. When he began to teach again he found consolation,
and in gratitude he consecrated the new Oratory of the Paraclete.
Abelard, fearing new persecution, left the Oratory to find another
refuge, accepting an invitation to preside over the abbey of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys,
on the far-off shore of Lower Brittany. The region was inhospitable,
the domain a prey to outlaws, the house itself savage and disorderly.
Yet for nearly ten years he continued to struggle with fate before
he left. The misery of those years was lightened because he had
been able, on the breaking up of Heloise's convent at Argenteuil,
to establish her as head of a new religious house at the deserted
Paraclete, and in the capacity of spiritual director he often
was called to revisit the spot thus made doubly dear to him. All
this time Heloise had lived respectably. Living on for some time
apart (we do not know exactly where), after his flight from the
Abbey of St Gildas, Abelard wrote, among other things, his famous
Historia Calamitatum, and thus moved her to write her first Letter,
which remains an unsurpassed utterance of human passion and womanly
devotion; the first being followed by the two other Letters, in
which she finally accepted the part of resignation which, now
as a brother to a sister, Abelard commended to her. He soon returned
to the site of his early triumphs lecturing on Mount St Genevieve
in 1136 (when he was heard by John of Salisbury), but it was only
for a brief time: a last great trial awaited him. As far back
as the Paraclete days, his chief enemy had been Bernard of Clairvaux,
in whom was incarnated the principle of fervent and unhesitating
faith, from which rational inquiry like Abelard's was sheer revolt,
and now the uncompromising Bernard was moving to crush the growing
evil in the person of the boldest offender. After preliminary
negotiations, in which Bernard was roused by Abelard's steadfastness
to put forth all his strength, a council met at Sens (1141), before
which Abelard, formally arraigned upon a number of heretical charges,
was prepared to plead his cause. When, however, Bernard had opened
the case, suddenly Abelard appealed to Rome. Bernard, who had
power, notwithstanding, to get a condemnation passed at the council,
did not rest a moment till a second condemnation was procured
at Rome in the following year. Meanwhile, on his way there to
urge his plea in person, Abelard collapsed at the abbey of Cluny,
and there he lingered only a few months before the approach of
death. Removed by friends, for the relief of his sufferings, to
the priory of St Marcel, near Chalon-sur-Saone, he died. First
buried at St Marcel, his remains were soon carried off secretly
to the Paraclete, and given over to the loving care of Heloise,
who in time came herself to rest beside them (1164). The bones
of the pair were moved more than once afterwards, but they were
miraculously preserved even through the vicissitudes of the French
Revolution, and now lie in the well-known tomb in the cemetery
of Père Lachaise at Paris.
Abelard was an enormous influence on his contemporaries and the
course of medieval thought, but he has been known in modern times
mainly for his connection with Heloise. It was not till the 19th
century, when Cousin in 1836 issued the collection entitled Ouvrages
inedits d'Abelard, that his philosophical performance could be
judged at first hand; of his strictly philosophical works only
one, the ethical treatise Scito te ipsum, having been published
earlier, namely, in 1721. Cousin's collection, besides giving
extracts from the theological work Sic et Non ("Yes and No") (an
assemblage of opposite opinions on doctrinal points, culled from
the Fathers as a basis for discussion, the main interest in which
lies in the fact that there is no attempt to reconcile the different
opinions), includes the Dialectica, commentaries on logical works
of Aristotle, Porphyry and Boethius, and a fragment, De Generibus
et Speciebus. The last-named work, and also the psychological
treatise De Intellectibus, published apart by Cousin (in Fragmens
Philosophiques, vol. ii.), are now considered upon internal evidence
not to be by Abelard himself, but only to have sprung out of his
school. A genuine work, the Glossulae super Porphyrium, from which
Charles de Rémusat, in his classical monograph Abelard (1845),
has given extracts, remains in manuscript.
The general importance of Abelard lies in his having fixed more
decisively than anyone before him the scholastic manner of philosophizing,
with its object of giving a formally rational expression to the
received ecclesiastical doctrine. However his own particular interpretations
may have been condemned, they were conceived in essentially the
same spirit as the general scheme of thought afterwards elaborated
in the 13th century with approval from the heads of the church.
Through him was prepared in the Middle Age the ascendancy of the
philosophical authority of Aristotle, which became firmly established
in the half-century after his death, when first the completed
Organon, and gradually ail the other works of the Greek thinker,
came to be known in the schools: before his time it was rather
upon the authority of Plato that the prevailing Realism sought
to lean. As regards his so-called Conceptualism and his attitude
to the question of Universals, see Scholasticism. Outside of his
dialectic, it was in ethics that Abelard showed greatest activity
of philosophical thought; laying very particular stress upon the
subjective intention as determining, if not the moral character,
at least the moral value, of human action. His thought in this
direction, wherein he anticipated something of modern speculation,
is the more remarkable because his scholastic successors accomplished
least in the field of morals, hardly venturing to bring the principles
and rules of conduct under pure philosophical discussion, even
after the great ethical inquiries of Aristotle became fully known
to them.
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