After his castration, at about 40 years of age, Abelard left Paris and entered monastic life at the monastery of Saint Denis; at Abelard’s command, Helo-ise became a nun at Argenteuil. Abelard writes in his autobiography that he desired to withdraw from the world that had bestowed so much acclaim and animosity upon him. If this was indeed his intention, Saint Denis was hardly a remote place to find seclusion. It was a wealthy monastery, very near to Paris, with close ties to the monarchy. In the twelfth century, the monastic ideal of withdrawal from the world to seek a secluded life of prayer was contrasted with actual practice, in which monks and abbots were often respected and prominent men. In fact, three of the most influential abbots of the twelfth century were Suger the abbot of Saint Denis, Peter the Venerable the abbot of Cluny, and Bernard the abbot of Clairvaux. All three men are connected with Abelard, although when Abelard came to Saint Denis, Suger was not yet the abbot there. It is not clear why Abelard chose to enter Saint Denis; perhaps it was the monastery’s close connection with the French crown, which was favorably disposed toward Abelard’s patrons at the time. Perhaps he desired a close proximity to Heloise at Argenteuil. However, it seems unlikely that Abelard sought the peaceful retreat from worldly affairs that he suggests in his Historia.
Whatever his purpose may have been, the peaceful life in the cloister eluded him, and he returned to learning. He reopened a school at a priory belonging to the monastery, and the throng of students, still enthralled by his scholarship and now with an almost devotional dedication, followed him as they had done before in Paris. Abelard provides several reasons for his return to teaching. He claims that Adam the abbot of Saint Denis begged him to resume teaching for the glory of God and to help the poor, rather than for money and prestige, as he had done before. Moreover, he writes that once again, he had made enemies of those around him by condemning the lax and degenerate lifestyle of the abbot and monks at Saint Denis, and so they were anxious to divest themselves of the troublesome critic. Abelard had not lost his proclivity for antagonism.
Moreover, Abelard was not finished with controversy, and the enemies he made earlier in his life proved to be lasting ones. Around 1120, Abelard’s first master, Roscelin of Compiegne, wrote a highly critical letter to Abelard, mocking his castration (for example, Roscelin refused to address him by the masculine name of Peter, since he wrote that he was no longer of that gender) and criticizing his theological teaching. Furthermore, Roscelin claims that after putting the monks of Saint Denis through a great deal of trouble to find suitable accommodations for his new school, Abelard took the money he earned there and delivered it personally to Heloise. No evidence exists that Abelard visited Heloise at this time, who had taken the veil at Argenteuil, and Roscelin’s accusation cannot be verified. Likely the bitterness in Roscelin’s tone can be attributed to Abelard’s request to Gilbert the bishop of Paris, who had punished Fulbert after Abelard’s attack by having Fulbert’s property seized, to convene an assembly to judge whether Abelard’s writings on the Trinity were heretical, as Roscelin had charged. Abelard asked that the council decide the matter and discipline either Roscelin or Abelard. It seems, however, that Abelard’s strategy against Roscelin failed, because Abelard, not Roscelin, was put on trial—not in Paris, but in Soissons in 1121.
Abelard describes the trial in his Historia, but he makes no mention of Roscelin; instead, he lays the blame for the trial at the feet of the enemies he had made in his rise to fame: Alberic of Reims and Lotulf of Novara, the pupils of Anselm of Laon whom Abelard had encountered some eight years earlier while studying theology. The work for which he was put on trial was his first treatise on theology, his analysis of the Trinity known as Theologia summi boni. Exposition of the nature of the Trinity was a topic fraught with potential for heretical drift. In fact, Roscelin himself had been condemned in 1092, also at Soissons, because he had apparently suggested that the three elements of the Trinity, the three persons as theologians refer to them, were separate deities. The conceptual nature of the Trinity requires a subtle and careful mind to stay within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, which states that the godhead comprises three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are equal, and compose a single deity, as Christian monotheism demands. The central element of Christianity is the belief that the Incarnation of God the Son on earth was when Jesus took on a human body and nature, living and suffering as a man to conquer human sin. Thus, the nature of Jesus and the Trinity is a complex topic, and even with careful exposition, one ran the risk of falling afoul of the ecclesiastical authorities.
Yet, the exercise of caution was never part of Abelard’s nature. In Theologia summi boni he uses logic, his sharpest intellectual tool, to address the problem of the Trinity. He writes that only dialectic and philosophy can lead to a full understanding of the complex subject. He posits that Christ can be understood by distinguishing names, which is in keeping with his understanding of Christ as logos or word. He assigns the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit different natures: power, wisdom, and goodness, respectively. Abelard was most open to criticism with his allocation of power to the Father, which his enemies suggested assigned a superior role to that person and was, therefore, heretical. In Abelard’s day, the legal framework for defining and trying heresy was not yet fully developed, and so those who sought to attack Abelard at the Council of Soissons for his controversial use of logic in theological exposition had to resort to a strategy that would prevent the most gifted logician of the day from gaining the upper hand.
In March 1121, Abelard was summoned to appear before the Council of Soissons, which was convened by Cardinal Cono of Palestrina, a papal legate, or representative from the pope to France and Germany. The cardinal was a supporter of the papal reform movement and a close colleague of William of Champeaux. In his Historia, Abelard makes it clear that Alberic and Lotulf were behind the summons, because they were now masters themselves and they used their influence over Ralph the archbishop of Reims, who presided over the council. Alberic and Lotulf served more or less as prosecutors during the council, although getting the charge of heresy to stick proved difficult. Using logic in the service of theology was not inherently heretical, so Abelard writes that the two began their attack before he even arrived in Soissons, by spreading the false rumor that Abelard was expounding that there was more than one God. The strategy of disinformation was sufficient to stir up anger among the clerics and people of Reims, and Abelard and a few students narrowly escaped being stoned by the populace upon their arrival in Soissons. However, Abelard had prepared a strategy of his own. He went immediately to Cono, the papal legate, and gave him a copy of the Theologia, stating that if, after reading the book for himself, Cono had found anything in it that was wrong, he was prepared to be corrected. Cono demonstrated his antagonism to Abelard by refusing his request and was instructed to go before the council, or, as Abelard writes, before his enemies. Abelard writes in his Historia that he sought to influence the outcome in his favor by preaching in public about the Trinity before the council met, and that all who heard him were impressed by his interpretation.
Many high-ranking ecclesiastics, including Geoffrey the bishop of Chartres, Thierry of Chartres (master of the school of the same city), and Adam the abbot of Saint Denis, attended the Council of Soissons. William of Champeaux may have been present, although the surviving records do not verify his presence. The accusations of heresy against Abelard were not the only business of the council, which was convened primarily to promote and to implement further the papal reform agenda of wresting control of ecclesiastical offices away from the laity and the prohibition of clerical marriage to churchmen above the rank of subdeacon. The charges against Abelard were put off until the final day. Abelard writes that the council could find nothing objectionable in the Theologia. He must have felt particularly vindicated when Alberic of Reims believed he had found a passage in the book that was heretical, only to have Abelard soundly refute his accusation by pointing out that the passage was, in fact, a quote from the magisterial church father Augustine of Hippo. Geoffrey the bishop of Chartres, who was an ally of Abelard’s patrons in the Garlande family, spoke in support of the logician, first proposing that Abelard be allowed to defend his ideas. When this was not allowed, Geoffrey proposed the time-honored strategy of all committees: that the matter should be postponed until another committee at Abelard’s monastery of Saint Denis could examine the issue. Although Cono at first agreed to this proposal, Alberic and Lotulf saw this for what it surely was: a move to defuse the situation and to bring the matter to a favorable resolution on Abelard’s behalf in his own diocese. Saint Denis was in the diocese of Sens, and the archbishop Henry Sanglier was a cousin of Stephen of Garlande. Unwilling to let this happen, Alberic and Lotulf sought out Ralph the archbishop of Reims, who presided over the council, and the legate Cono, whom Abelard describes as not as learned as he should have been. Perhaps not Abelard’s equal in logic, Alberic and Lotulf were adept at behind-the-scenes maneuvers, and they tailored their persuasion to the egotism of each man. To the archbishop, they spoke of the shame that would be cast on him if the case were moved to another set of judges and the danger that would result if Abelard escaped in this manner. To Cono, they maintained that Abelard should be condemned because, at the very least, he had read publicly from his book and allowed for it to be copied without papal or other ecclesiastical approval. Cono was convinced to condemn the treatise and have Abelard imprisoned in a monastery.
Geoffrey of Chartres informed Abelard of the decision. Abelard was summoned before the council, and without any further debate on the matter, he was ordered to throw his treatise into the fire, an act that was intended not so much to suppress the Theologia as to symbolically discredit the work and humiliate its author. Abelard writes that Master Thierry of Chartres shouted out in protest, but the archbishop ordered him to be silent. To further his humiliation, Abelard was ordered to recite the Athanasian Creed like a schoolboy—and even given a copy of the text should he not remember it— because it contained a statement about the equal omnipotence of the three persons of the Trinity. Furthermore, he was confined to the nearby monastery of Saint Medard.
About ten years earlier, when Abelard was a master at Saint Genevieve, a student named Goswin challenged Abelard over his irreverence for established authority, and the two entered into a heated disputation. Goswin went on to become the prior of Saint Medard. Goswin’s biographer wrote of the confrontation with Abelard, the only source for the encounter, claiming that Goswin got the better of Abelard in disputation. The biographer’s purpose is to present his subject in a favorable light, and the incident cannot be confirmed elsewhere, so the veracity of the account is unknown, but it suggests that a there was a history of hostility between the brash logician and Goswin abbot of Saint Medard. Nonetheless, Abelard’s confinement at Saint Medard lasted only a few days, and he was allowed to return to Saint Denis—where Abelard writes that he was widely detested.
World History
