Around 1100, at about 21 years of age, Abelard made his way to Paris to study in the great cathedral school of Notre Dame under William of Champeaux (ca. 1070-1122). At this time, Paris was not yet the intellectual center of Europe, a position it would enjoy from about the thirteenth century as the great medieval university of Paris came to dominate the disciplines of higher learning, especially theology. In fact, for Abelard, Paris comprised little more than the lie de la Cite, the small island in the Seine River that would eventually hold both Notre Dame Cathedral and the royal palace and tower of King Louis VI. In 1100, one would be hard-pressed to describe Paris as a city at all; large town would be a more accurate description. Orleans, in the Loire valley, was more important than Paris was; it was larger, with a cathedral school of its own that was better known for Latin literary studies than for the study of dialectic. No doubt this was why Abelard did not remain in the Loire valley but instead traveled northward to the valley of the Seine, or as he writes in his Historia calamitatum, into France. (Just as Paris was a fraction of its present size, twelfth-century France was limited to the region immediately around Paris in the Seine valley, a region known as the Ile-de-France.) Abelard was drawn to Paris because, he said, the discipline of logic flourished there and William of Champeaux—archdeacon of Paris, canon of Notre Dame, and counselor to King Philip I (1052-1108)—was its most famous teacher.
Paris in Abelard's Day
Paris had been a Roman foundation of the first century b. c.e. called Lute-tia, which had been built near the site of an even older Celtic settlement of the Parisii tribe. Lutetia was typical of most towns in the Roman Empire, with a bathhouse, aqueducts, and a theatre, and as a prosperous trading center it spread southward from the Ile de la Cite up to what is now the Sorbonne on the Left Bank. However, the decline of the Roman Empire in Western Europe brought stagnation, contraction, and decay to its cities. When Abelard arrived in Paris, he would have found a town that had pulled back into a much more defensive position. Much of the landscape was still in ruins after a particularly ferocious Viking raid in 885 that had left the town burned and scarred. Fortified houses and walled monasteries became the dominant architecture. The royal palace at the west end of the island was still being rebuilt during Abelard's lifetime. The impressive cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris that dominates the Ile de la Cite today was not begun until 1163, 21 years after Abelard's death. A large Romanesque cathedral of Saint Stephen that was located just behind the site of the present-day cathedral lay in ruins, never to be rebuilt as the influence of Notre Dame increased.
To the south, the Petit-Pont bridge, rebuilt in stone around 1120, linked the Ile de la Cite with the Left Bank. To the north, a new bridge, called the Grand-Pont, and a fortified gate, called the Chdtlet, connected the Ile to the Right Bank. The old northern bridge was demolished by about 1116. On the Right Bank of the Seine was an emerging commercial quarter, and on the Left Bank was the student quarter. Today, only two buildings from Abelard's day survive. One is the tower of the church at Saint
Germain-des-Pres and the other is the chapel of Saint Aignan, north of Notre Dame cathedral on the lie de la Cite.
As a cathedral canon, William of Champeaux was allowed to collect revenue from his own property. A canon was a considered minor clergy, and in the twelfth century, the church was involved in an ongoing reform movement to ban clerical marriage and enforce celibacy among the minor clergy, although recurring papal decrees on the subject suggest that reform had not been fully realized. William of Champeaux was a champion of papal efforts of reform, and in the early 1120s, he worked on behalf of Pope Innocent II to resolve the conflict between the church and the German emperor over papal reforms that resulted in a settlement called the Concordat of Worms. William was the head of the cathedral school; he had studied under one of the great masters of the day, Anselm of Laon (ca. 1055-ca. 1117). During Abelard’s lifetime, “master” was a title denoting respect that was often attached before the names of those who had graduated from prestigious schools, or the men who taught at those schools, although use of the title was quite fluid and it may have been applied to a master craftsman as well. Master William of Champeaux adhered to the system of thought called realism, because he believed that universals are real.
Abelard was drawn to William of Champeaux at the cathedral school in Paris because his fame and mastery in logic were well known. Abelard seems to concede William’s eminent reputation indeed was merited when he writes that William was the supreme master both by reputation and by fact. Yet, rather than apply himself to learn at his teacher’s knee, Abelard pursued a course that would become a lifelong pattern of behavior for him; his seemingly relentless and reckless disregard for prudence repeatedly overturned his hard-won victories. Abelard never seemed to lack self-confidence, and perhaps it was never his intention to learn from William, but rather he meant to engage him in intellectual combat, defeat him, and enjoy the spoils of victory, which in this case would be to oust William and become a master at the school of Notre Dame. Nonetheless, Abelard seems to grasp that his habit of acquiring enemies, whom he claims were jealous of his superior intellect and growing reputation, cost him dearly, and, in fact, he sees his conflict with William as the beginning of his misfortunes.
The arena in which Abelard fought was the classroom, where instruction was carried out by two methods: lectio and disputatio. With lectio (from which we get the English word “lecture”), students heard the master read from recognized authorities. Disputatio favored dialogue and debate, with masters and students working through difficult problems through logical argumentation that relied on established authorities to uncover truths and eliminate contradictions. Disputatio was not an empty exercise in logic; its effective intellectual goal was not merely to tear down an opposing argument, but also to erect a stronger one that could bring the mind closer to the truth and eliminate error and contradiction. Abelard, never one to downplay his abilities, writes that he excelled at disputatio—both as a student, when he challenged and defeated his masters in dialectical combat; and as a teacher, when he stimulated lively debate among his avid students. In Paris, Abelard refuted William’s arguments, earned what he described as the master’s violent dislike, and alienated his follow students, who saw Abelard as a disrespectful young upstart. In his Historia calamitatum Abelard writes that he defeated his master in dialectical disputation by presenting a clear logical argument that forced William to modify his views on universals. Abelard forced William to amend his position, which held that the fundamental nature of all humanity was essentially the same and individuals were distinguished only by “accidents” or differentiated modifications beyond their common nature. Abelard handed William a humiliating defeat by arguing the absurdity of this position, which did not allow that individuals could be genuinely different from one another. Abelard had arrived in Paris as a virtual unknown and severely tarnished the great master’s reputation; he writes that the master’s lectures fell into disrepute.
Yet, the conflict with William of Champeaux does more than prefigure Abelard’s combative nature that would set so many against him; it also anticipates Abelard’s preoccupation with logic as a means of linguistic analysis. In Abelard’s view, one that was not shared by William of Champeaux, logic should be directed toward understanding how concepts were expressed in words, not toward things, which should be addressed by physics or metaphysics. The dual purpose of logic was the study of language and the study of the relationship between language and the things it tried to express. For instance, for William of Champeaux and many of his contemporaries, descriptions such as “red” had an independent reality that all red things share. Abelard rejected that notion, but he did not go so far as to claim that descriptions were mere words without meaning beyond themselves. Instead, Abelard held that universals such as redness do not exist on their own but that descriptive words like red have a real, unchanging meaning, just as matter has a form, but form cannot exist without matter. Therefore, for Abelard, language was both psychological and physical; it vocalized a sound, but also what that sound signified, both as a concept and as a thing (in Latin, sensus and res).
Abelard’s ability to challenge and to defeat his master in dialectical contests earned him the open hostility of William and the jealous resentment of other, more experienced—though less gifted—students. Although William was not vanquished entirely, his reputation as a teacher never again held the same preeminence, and Abelard’s career was launched.
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