Note to the Following Treatise
- The following Letter, which is the 190th of S. Bernard, was ranked by Horst among the Treatises, on account of its length and importance. It was written on the occasion of the condemnation of the errors of Abaelard by the Council of Sens, in 1140, in the presence of a great number of French Bishops, and of King Louis the Younger, as has been described in the notes to Letter 187. In the Synodical Epistle, which is No. 191 of S. Bernard, and in another, which is No. 337, the Fathers of the Council announced to Pope Innocent that they had condemned the errors of Abaelard, but had pronounced no sentence against him personally out of respect for the appeal which he had made to the Holy See; and they add that “the chief heads of his errors are more fully detailed in the Letter of the Bishop of Sens.”
I think that the Letter of which mention is thus made can be no other than that given here, and in which we find, in fact, the chief heads of Abaelard’s errors, with a summary refutation of each. They are also the same as those which William, who had become a simple monk at Igny, after having been Abbot of Saint Thierry, had addressed to Geoffrey, Bishop of Chartres, and to Bernard, in a Letter which is inserted among those of Bernard.
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As regards the different errors imputed to Abaelard, there are some which he complained were wrongly attributed to him. Others, on the contrary, he recognized as his, and corrected them in his Apology, in which he represents Bernard as being his only opponent, his malignant and hasty denouncer. Two former partizans of Abaelard himself, but who had long recoiled from his errors, Geoffrey, who afterwards was the Secretary of Bernard, and “a certain Abbot of the Black Monks,” whose name is unknown, attempted to justify Bernard against these calumnies. Duchesne had spoken of these two writers in his notes to Abaelard, but the Treatises of both of them were lately printed in Vol. iv. of the “Bibliotheca Cisterciensis,” whose learned Editor, Bertrand Tissier, remarks that this unknown Abbot is some other person than William of Saint Thierry.
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Of the heads of errors attributed to Abaelard, some are wanting in his printed works, which has given occasion to some writers for accusing Bernard, as if he had attributed errors to Abaelard without foundation, and so had himself been fighting against shadows and phantoms. But it is certain that most of these errors are to be found even in his printed
writings, as we shall show each in its place. As for those which are no longer discoverable, William of Saint Thierry, Geoffrey, and this unknown Abbot, who had been once a disciple of Abaelard, and was perfectly acquainted with his doctrine, quote word for word statements both from his Apologyand from his *Theology,*which do not appear in the printed editions; and certainly Abaelard himself, in Book ii. of his “Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans,” p. 554, reserves certain points to be treated in his Theologyof which there is no mention in the printed copies, which close thus: “The rest is wanting,” so that it appears that the printed copies of the Theology have been mutilated.
- Those writers have, therefore, done a very ill service to Religion, to say nothing of the injury to Bernard, who, in order to justify Abaelard, accuse Bernard of having been hurried on by the impulse of a blind zeal. They ought at least to acknowledge, as Abaelard himself did, and also Berengarius, his defender, that he had erred in various matters. And, indeed, Abaelard himself, in his Apology, acknowledges, though perhaps not quite sincerely, that in some respects he was wrong. “It is possible,” he says, “that I have fallen into some errors which I ought to have avoided, but I call God as a witness and judge upon my soul that in these points upon which I have been accused, I have presumed to say nothing through malice or through pride.” It may well be that he might be able to clear himself of the reproach of malice, and even of that of heresy; but, a least, he could not deny that he had fallen into various errors—a liking for new words and phrases,
levity, and perhaps even pride and an excessive desire for disputation. However this maybe, Pope Innocent bade the Bishops by a rescript that the man was to be imprisoned and his books burned, and Godfrey declares that the Pope himself had them thrown into the flames at Rome. But Peter Abaelard at length returned to better views. He desisted from his Appeal by the advice and request of Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, who has described his last days in pleasing terms in a Letter which he wrote to Heloïse.