Un chevalier courtois et sages, Hardis et de grant vasselages, Nus mieudres en chevalerie, Moult amoit la vierge Marie. Pour son barnage demener Et son franc cors d'armes pener, Aloit a son tournoiement Garnis de son contentement. Au dieu plaisir ainsi avint Que quant le jour du tournoi vint Il se hastoit de chevauchier, Bien vousist estre en champ premier. D'une eglise qui pres estoit Oi les sains que l'on sonnoit Pour la sainte messe chanter. Le chevalier sans arrester S'en est ale droit a l'eglise Pour escouter le dieu servise. L'en chantoit tantost hautement Une messe devotement De la sainte Vierge Marie; Puis a on autre comencie. Le chevalier vien l'escouta, De bon cuer la dame pria, Et quant la messe fut finee La tierce fu recomenciee Tantost en ce meisme lieu. "Sire, pour la sainte char dieu!" Ce li a dit son escuier, "L'heure passe de tournoier, Et vous que demourez ici? Venez vous en, je vous en pri! Volez vous devenir hermite Ou papelart ou ypocrite? Alons en a nostre mestier!"

A knight both courteous and wise And brave and bold in enterprise. No better knight was ever seen, Greatly loved the Virgin Queen. Once, to contest the tourney's prize And keep his strength in exercise, He rode out to the listed field Armed at all points with lance and shield; But it pleased God that when the day Of tourney came, and on his way He pressed his charger's speed apace To reach, before his friends, the place, He saw a church hard by the road And heard the church-bells sounding loud To celebrate the holy mass. Without a thought the church to pass The knight drew rein, and entered there To seek the aid of God in prayer.

High and dear they chanted then A solemn mass to Mary Queen; Then afresh began again. Lost in his prayers the good knight stayed; With all his heart to Mary prayed; And, when the second one was done, Straightway the third mass was begun, Right there upon the self-same place. "Sire, for mercy of God's grace!" Whispered his squire in his ear; "The hour of tournament is near; Why do you want to linger here? Is it a hermit to become, Or hypocrite, or priest of Rome? Come on, at once! despatch your prayer! Let us be off to our affair!"

The accent of truth still lingers in this remonstrance of the squire, who must, from all time, have lost his temper on finding his chevalier addicted to "papelardie" when he should have been fighting; but the priest had the advantage of telling the story and pointing the moral. This advantage the priest neglected rarely, but in this case he used it with such refinement and so much literary skill that even the squire might have been patient. With the invariable gentle courtesy of the true knight, the chevalier replied only by soft words:—

"Amis!" ce dist li chevalier, "Cil tournoie moult noblement Qui le servise dieu entent."

In one of Milton's sonnets is a famous line which is commonly classed among the noblest verses of the English language:—

"They also serve, who only stand and wait."

Fine as it is, with the simplicity of the grand style, like the "Chanson de Roland" the verse of Milton does not quite destroy the charm of thirteenth-century diction:—

"Friend!" said to him the chevalier, "He tourneys very nobly too, Who only hears God's service through!"

No doubt the verses lack the singular power of the eleventh century; it is not worth while to pretend that any verse written in the thirteenth century wholly holds its own against "Roland":—

"Sire cumpain! faites le vus de gred? Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vos soelt amer!"

The courtesy of Roland has the serious solidity of the Romanesque arch, and that of Lancelot and Aucassins has the grace of a legendary window; but one may love it, all the same; and one may even love the knight,—papelard though he were,—as he turned back to the altar and remained in prayer until the last mass was ended.

Then they mounted and rode on toward the field, and of course you foresee what had happened. In itself the story is bald enough, but it is told with such skill that one never tires of it. As the chevalier and the squire approached the lists, they met the other knights returning, for the jousts were over; but, to the astonishment of the chevalier, he was greeted by all who passed him with shouts of applause for his marvellous triumph in the lists, where he had taken all the prizes and all the prisoners:—

Les chevaliers ont encontrez, Qui du tournois sont retournes, Qui du tout en tout est feru. S'en avoit tout le pris eu Le chevalier qui reperoit Des messes qu' oies avoit. Les autres qui s'en reperoient Le saluent et le conjoient Et distrent bien que onques mes Nul chevalier ne prist tel fes D'armes com il ot fet ce jour; A tousjours en avroit l'onnour. Moult en i ot qui se rendoient A lui prisonier, et disoient "Nous somes vostre prisonier, Ne nous ne pourrions nier, Ne nous aiez par armes pris." Lors ne fu plus cil esbahis, Car il a entendu tantost Que cele fu pour lui en l'ost Pour qui il fu en la chapelle.

His friends, returning from the fight, On the way there met the knight, For the jousts were wholly run, And all the prizes had been won By the knight who had not stirred From the masses he had heard. All the knights, as they came by, Saluted him and gave him joy, And frankly said that never yet Had any knight performed such feat, Nor ever honour won so great As he had done in arms that day; While many of them stopped to say That they all his prisoners were: "In truth, your prisoners we are: We cannot but admit it true: Taken we were in arms by you!" Then the truth dawned on him there, And all at once he saw the light, That She, by whom he stood in prayer, —The Virgin,—stood by him in fight!

The moral of the tale belongs to the best feudal times. The knight at once recognized that he had become the liege-man of the Queen, and henceforth must render his service entirely to her. So he called his "barons," or tenants, together, and after telling them what had happened, took leave of them and the "siecle":—

"Moult est ciest tournoiement beaux Ou ele a pour moi tournoie; Mes trop l'avroit mal emploie Se pour lui je ne tournoioie! Fox seroie se retournoie A la mondaine vanite. A dieu promet en verite Que james ne tournoierai Fors devant le juge verai Qui conoit le bon chevalier Et selonc le fet set jutgier." Lors prent congie piteusement, Et maint en plorent tenrement. D'euls se part, en une abaie Servi puis la vierge Marie.

"Glorious has the tourney been Where for me has fought the Queen; But a disgrace for me it were If I tourneyed not for her. Traitor to her should I be, Returned to worldly vanity. I promise truly, by God's grace, Never again the lists to see, Except before that Judge's face, Who knows the true knight from the base, And gives to each his final place." Then piteously he takes his leave While in tears his barons grieve. So he parts, and in an abbey Serves henceforth the Virgin Mary.

Observe that in this case Mary exacted no service! Usually the legends are told, as in this instance, by priests, though they were told in the same spirit by laymen, as you can see in the poems of Rutebeuf, and they would not have been told very differently by soldiers, if one may judge from Joinville; but commonly the Virgin herself prescribed the kind of service she wished. Especially to the young knight who had, of his own accord, chosen her for his liege, she showed herself as exacting as other great ladies showed themselves toward their Lancelots and Tristans. When she chose, she could even indulge in more or less coquetry, else she could never have appealed to the sympathies of the thirteenth-century knight- errant. One of her miracles told how she disciplined the young men who were too much in the habit of assuming her service in order to obtain selfish objects. A youthful chevalier, much given to tournaments and the other worldly diversions of the siecle, fell in love, after the rigorous obligation of his class, as you know from your Dulcinea del Toboso, with a lady who, as was also prescribed by the rules of courteous love, declined to listen to him. An abbot of his acquaintance, sympathizing with his distress, suggested to him the happy idea of appealing for help to the Queen of Heaven. He followed the advice, and for an entire year shut himself up, and prayed to Mary, in her chapel, that she would soften the heart of his beloved, and bring her to listen to his prayer. At the end of the twelvemonth, fixed as a natural and sufficient proof of his earnestness in devotion, he felt himself entitled to indulge again in innocent worldly pleasures, and on the first morning after his release, he started out on horseback for a day's hunting. Probably thousands of young knights and squires were always doing more or less the same thing, and it was quite usual that, as they rode through the fields or forests, they should happen on a solitary chapel or shrine, as this knight did. He stopped long enough to kneel in it and renew his prayer to the Queen:—

La mere dieu qui maint chetif A retrait de chetivete Par sa grant debonnairte Par sa courtoise courtoisie Au las qui tant l'apele et prie Ignelement s'est demonstree, D'une coronne corronnee Plaine de pierres precieuses Si flamboianz si precieuses Pour pou li euil ne li esluisent. Si netement ainsi reluisent Et resplendissent com la raie Qui en este au matin raie. Tant par a bel et cler le vis Que buer fu mez, ce li est vis, Qui s'i puest assez mirer. "Cele qui te fait soupirer Et en si grant erreur t'a mis," Fait nostre dame, "biau douz amis, Est ele plus bele que moi?" Li chevaliers a tel effroi De la clarte, ne sai que face; Ses mains giete devant sa face; Tel hide a et tel freeur Chaoir se laisse de freeur; Mais cele en qui pitie est toute Li dist: "Amis, or n'aies doute! Je suis cele, n'en doute mie, Qui te doi faire avoir t'amie. Or prens garde que tu feras. Cele que tu miex ameras De nous ii auras a amie."

God's Mother who to many a wretch Has brought relief from wretchedness. By her infinite goodness, By her courteous courteousness, To her suppliant in distress Came from heaven quickly down; On her head she bore the crown, Full of precious stones and gems Darting splendour, flashing flames, Till the eye near lost its sight In the keenness of the light, As the summer morning's sun Blinds the eyes it shines upon. So beautiful and bright her face, Only to look on her is grace.

"She who has caused you thus to sigh, And has brought you to this end,"— Said Our Lady,—"Tell me, friend, Is she handsomer than I?" Scared by her brilliancy, the knight Knows not what to do for fright; He clasps his hands before his face, And in his shame and his disgrace Falls prostrate on the ground with fear; But she with pity ever near Tells him:—"Friend, be not afraid! Doubt not that I am she whose aid Shall surely bring your love to you; But take good care what you shall do! She you shall love most faithfully Of us two, shall your mistress be."

One is at a loss to imagine what a young gentleman could do, in such a situation, except to obey, with the fewest words possible, the suggestion so gracefully intended. Queen's favours might be fatal gifts, but they were much more fatal to reject than to accept. Whatever might be the preferences of the knight, he had invited his own fate, and in consequence was fortunate to be allowed the option of dying and going to heaven, or dying without going to heaven. Mary was not always so gentle with young men who deserted or neglected her for an earthly rival;—the offence which irritated her most, and occasionally caused her to use language which hardly bears translation into modern English. Without meaning to assert that the Queen of Heaven was jealous as Queen Blanche herself, one must still admit that she was very severe on lovers who showed willingness to leave her service, and take service with any other lady. One of her admirers, educated for the priesthood but not yet in full orders, was obliged by reasons of family interest to quit his career in order to marry. An insult like this was more than Mary could endure, and she gave the young man a lesson he never forgot:—

Ireement li prent a dire La mere au roi de paradis: "Di moi, di moi, tu que jadis M'amoies tant de tout ton coeur. Pourquoi m'as tu jete puer? Di moi, di moi, ou est donc cele Qui plus de moi bone est et bele?... Pourquoi, pourquoi, las durfeus, Las engignez, las deceuz, Me lais pour une lasse fame, Qui suis du del Royne et Dame? Enne fais tu trop mauvais change Qui tu por une fame estrange Me laisses qui par amors t'amoie Et ja ou ciel t'apareilloie En mes chambres un riche lit Por couchier t'ame a grand delit? Trop par as faites grant merveilles S'autrement tost ne te conseilles Ou ciel serra tes lits deffais Et en la flamme d'enfer faiz!"

With anger flashing in her eyes Answers the Queen of Paradise: "Tell me, tell me! you of old Loved me once with love untold; Why now throw me aside? Tell me, tell me! where a bride Kinder or fairer have you won?... Wherefore, wherefore, wretched one, Deceived, betrayed, misled, undone, Leave me for a creature mean, Me, who am of Heaven the Queen? Can you make a worse exchange, You that for a woman strange, Leave me who, with perfect love, Waiting you in heaven above, Had in my chamber richly dressed A bed of bliss your soul to rest? Terrible is your mistake! Unless you better council take, In heaven your bed shall be unmade, And in the flames of hell be spread."

A mistress who loved in this manner was not to be gainsaid. No earthly love had a chance of holding its own against this unfair combination of heaven and hell, and Mary was as unscrupulous as any other great lady in abusing all her advantages in order to save HER souls. Frenchmen never found fault with abuses of power for what they thought a serious object. The more tyrannical Mary was, the more her adorers adored, and they wholly approved, both in love and in law, the rule that any man who changed his allegiance without permission, did so at his own peril. His life and property were forfeit. Mary showed him too much grace in giving him an option.

Even in anger Mary always remained a great lady, and in the ordinary relations of society her manners were exquisite, as they were, according to Joinville, in the court of Saint Louis, when tempers were not overwrought. The very brutality of the brutal compelled the courteous to exaggerate courtesy, and some of the royal family were as coarse as the king was delicate in manners. In heaven the manners were perfect, and almost as stately as those of Roland and Oliver. On one occasion Saint Peter found himself embarrassed by an affair which the public opinion of the Court of Heaven, although not by any means puritanic, thought more objectionable—in fact, more frankly discreditable—than an honest corrupt job ought to be; and even his influence, though certainly considerable, wholly failed to carry it through the law-court. The case, as reported by Gaultier de Coincy, was this: A very worthless creature of Saint Peter's—a monk of Cologne—who had led a scandalous life, and "ne cremoit dieu, ordre ne roule," died, and in due course of law was tried, convicted, and dragged off by the devils to undergo his term of punishment. Saint Peter could not desert his sinner, though much ashamed of him, and accordingly made formal application to the Trinity for a pardon. The Trinity, somewhat severely, refused. Finding his own interest insufficient, Saint Peter tried to strengthen it by asking the archangels to help him; but the case was too much for them also, and they declined. The brother apostles were appealed to, with the same result; and finally even the saints, though they had so obvious interest in keeping friendly relations with Peter, found public opinion too strong to defy. The case was desperate. The Trinity were—or was—emphatic, and—what was rare in the Middle Ages—every member of the feudal hierarchy sustained its decision. Nothing more could be done in the regular way. Saint Peter was obliged to divest himself of authority, and place himself and his dignity in the hands of the Virgin. Accordingly he asked for an audience, and stated the case to Our Lady. With the utmost grace, she instantly responded:—

"Pierre, Pierre," dit Nostre Dame, "En moult grand poine et por ceste ame De mon douz filz me fierai Tant que pour toi l'en prierai." La Mere Dieu lors s'est levee, Devant son filz s'en est alee Et ses virges toutes apres. De lui si tint Pierre pres, Quar sanz doutance bien savoit Que sa besoigne faite avoit Puisque cele l'avoit en prise Ou forme humaine avoit prise.

Quant sa Mere vit li douz Sire Qui de son doit daigna escrire Qu'en honourant et pere et mere En contre lui a chere clere Se leva moult festivement Et si li dist moult doucement; "Bien veigniez vous, ma douce mere," Comme douz filz, comme douz pere. Doucement l'a par la main prise Et doucement lez lui assise; Lors li a dit:—"A douce chiere, Que veus ma douce mere chiere, Mes amies et mes sereurs?"

"Pierre, Pierre," our Lady said, "With all my heart I'll give you aid, And to my gentle Son I'll sue Until I beg that soul for you." God's Mother then arose straightway, And sought her Son without delay; All her virgins followed her, And Saint Peter kept him near, For he knew his task was done And his prize already won, Since it was hers, in whom began The life of God in form of Man.

When our dear Lord, who deigned to write With his own hand that in his sight Those in his kingdom held most dear Father and mother honoured here,— When He saw His Mother's face He rose and said with gentle grace: "Well are you come, my heart's desire!" Like loving son, like gracious sire; Took her hand gently in His own; Gently placed her on His throne, Wishing her graciously good cheer:— "What brings my gentle Mother here, My sister, and my dearest friend?"

One can see Queen Blanche going to beg—or command—a favour of her son, King Louis, and the stately dignity of their address, while Saint Peter and the virgins remain in the antechamber; but, as for Saint Peter's lost soul, the request was a mere form, and the doors of paradise were instantly opened to it, after such brief formalities as should tend to preserve the technical record of the law-court. We tread here on very delicate ground. Gaultier de Coincy, being a priest and a prior, could take liberties which we cannot or ought not to take. The doctrines of the Church are too serious and too ancient to be wilfully misstated, and the doctrines of what is called Mariolatry were never even doctrines of the Church. Yet it is true that, in the hearts of Mary's servants, the Church and its doctrines were at the mercy of Mary's will. Gaultier de Coincy claimed that Mary exasperated the devils by exercising a wholly arbitrary and illegitimate power. Gaultier not merely admitted, but frankly asserted, that this was the fact:—

Font li deables:—"de cest plait, Mal por mal, assez miex nous plest Que nous aillons au jugement Li haut jugeur qui ne ment. C'au plait n'au jugement sa mere De droit jugier est trop avere; Mais dieu nous juge si adroit, Plainement nous lest notre droit. Sa mere juge en tel maniere Qu'elle nous met touz jors arriere Quant nous cuidons estre devant. . . . . . . . En ciel et en terre est plus Dame Par un petit que Diex ne soit. Il l'aimme tant et tant la croit, N'est riens qu'elle face ne die Qu'il desveile ne contredie. Quant qu'elle veut li fait acroire, S'elle disoit la pie est noire Et l'eue trouble est toute clere: Si diroit il voir dit ma mere!"

"In this law-suit," say the devils, "Since it is a choice of evils, We had best appeal on high To the Judge Who does not lie. What is law to any other, 'T is no use pleading with His Mother; But God judges us so true That He leaves us all our due. His Mother judges us so short That she throws us out of court When we ought to win our cause. . . . . . . . . In heaven and earth she makes more laws By far, than God Himself can do, He loves her so, and trusts her so, There's nothing she can do or say That He'll refuse, or say her nay. Whatever she may want is right, Though she say that black is white, And dirty water clear as snow:— My Mother says it, and it's so!"

If the Virgin took the feelings of the Trinity into consideration, or recognized its existence except as her Son, the case has not been reported, or, at all events, has been somewhat carefully kept out of sight by the Virgin's poets. The devils were emphatic in denouncing Mary for absorbing the whole Trinity. In one sharply disputed case in regard to a villain, or labourer, whose soul the Virgin claimed because he had learned the "Ave Maria," the devils became very angry, indeed, and protested vehemently:—

Li lait maufe, li rechinie Adonc ont ris et eschinie. C'en font il:—"Merveillans merveille! Por ce vilain plate oreille Aprent vo Dame a saluer, Se nous vorro trestous tuer Se regarder osons vers s'ame. De tout le monde vieut estre Dame! Ains nule dame ne fu tiez. II est avis qu'ele soit Diex Ou qu'ele ait Diex en main bornie. Nul besoigne n'est fournie, Ne terrienne ne celestre, Que toute Dame ne veille estre. Il est avis que tout soit suen; Dieu ne deable n'i ont rien."

The ugly demons laugh outright And grind their teeth with envious spite; Crying:—"Marvel marvellous! Because that flat-eared ploughman there Learned to make your Dame a prayer, She would like to kill us all Just for looking toward his soul. All the world she wants to rule! No such Dame was ever seen! She thinks that she is God, I ween, Or holds Him in her hollow hand. Not a judgment or command Or an order can be given Here on earth or there in heaven, That she does not want control. She thinks that she ordains the whole, And keeps it all for her own profit. God nor Devil share not of it."

As regards Mary of Chartres, these charges seem to have been literally true, except so far as concerned the "laid maufe" Pierre de Dreux. Gaultier de Coincy saw no impropriety in accepting, as sufficiently exact, the allegations of the devils against the Virgin's abuse of power. Down to the death of Queen Blanche, which is all that concerns us, the public saw no more impropriety in it than Gaultier did. The ugly, envious devils, notorious as students of the Latin Quarter, were perpetually making the same charges against Queen Blanche and her son, without disturbing her authority. No one could conceive that the Virgin held less influence in heaven than the queen mother on earth. Nevertheless there were points in the royal policy and conduct of Mary which thoughtful men even then hesitated to approve. The Church itself never liked to be dragged too far under feminine influence, although the moment it discarded feminine influence it lost nearly everything of any value to it or to the world, except its philosophy. Mary's tastes were too popular; some of the uglier devils said they were too low; many ladies and gentlemen of the "siecle" thought them disreputable, though they dared not say so, or dared say so only by proxy, as in "Aucassins." As usual, one must go to the devils for the exact truth, and in spite of their outcry, the devils admitted that they had no reason to complain of Mary's administration:—

"Les beles dames de grant pris Qui traynant vont ver et gris, Roys, roynes, dus et contesses, En enfer vienent a granz presses; Mais ou ciel vont pres tout a fait Tort et bocu et contrefait. Ou ciel va toute la ringaille; Le grain avons et diex la paille."

"All the great dames and ladies fair Who costly robes and ermine wear, Kings, queens, and countesses and lords Come down to hell in endless hordes; While up to heaven go the lamed, The dwarfs, the humpbacks, and the maimed; To heaven goes the whole riff-raff; We get the grain and God the chaff."

True it was, although one should not say it jestingly, that the Virgin embarrassed the Trinity; and perhaps this was the reason, behind all the other excellent reasons, why men loved and adored her with a passion such as no other deity has ever inspired: and why we, although utter strangers to her, are not far from getting down on our knees and praying to her still. Mary concentrated in herself the whole rebellion of man against fate; the whole protest against divine law; the whole contempt for human law as its outcome; the whole unutterable fury of human nature beating itself against the walls of its prison-house, and suddenly seized by a hope that in the Virgin man had found a door of escape. She was above law; she took feminine pleasure in turning hell into an ornament; she delighted in trampling on every social distinction in this world and the next. She knew that the universe was as unintelligible to her, on any theory of morals, as it was to her worshippers, and she felt, like them, no sure conviction that it was any more intelligible to the Creator of it. To her, every suppliant was a universe in itself, to be judged apart, on his own merits, by his love for her,—by no means on his orthodoxy, or his conventional standing in the Church, or according to his correctness in defining the nature of the Trinity. The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over human imagination—as you can see at Lourdes—was due much less to her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people who suffered under law,—divine or human,—justly or unjustly, by accident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil. She cared not a straw for conventional morality, and she had no notion of letting her friends be punished, to the tenth or any other generation, for the sins of their ancestors or the peccadilloes of Eve.

So Mary filled heaven with a sort of persons little to the taste of any respectable middle-class society, which has trouble enough in making this world decent and pay its bills, without having to continue the effort in another. Mary stood in a Church of her own, so independent that the Trinity might have perished without much affecting her position; but, on the other hand, the Trinity could look on and see her dethroned with almost a breath of relief. Aucassins and the devils of Gaultier de Coincy foresaw her danger. Mary's treatment of respectable and law-abiding people who had no favours to ask, and were reasonably confident of getting to heaven by the regular judgment, without expense, rankled so deeply that three hundred years later the Puritan reformers were not satisfied with abolishing her, but sought to abolish the woman altogether as the cause of all evil in heaven and on earth. The Puritans abandoned the New Testament and the Virgin in order to go back to the beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve. This is the Church's affair, not ours, and the women are competent to settle it with Church or State, without help from outside; but honest tourists are seriously interested in putting the feeling back into the dead architecture where it belongs.

Mary was rarely harsh to any suppliant or servant, and she took no special interest in humiliating the rich or the learned or the wise. For them, law was made; by them, law was administered; and with their doings Mary never arbitrarily interfered; but occasionally she could not resist the temptation to intimate her opinion of the manner in which the Trinity allowed their—the regular—Church to be administered. She was a queen, and never for an instant forgot it, but she took little thought about her divine rights, if she had any,—and in fact Saint Bernard preferred her without them,—while she was scandalized at the greed of officials in her Son's Court. One day a rich usurer and a very poor old woman happened to be dying in the same town. Gaultier de Coincy did not say, as an accurate historian should, that he was present, nor did he mention names or dates, although it was one of his longest and best stories. Mary never loved bankers, and had no reason for taking interest in this one, or for doing him injury; but it happened that the parish priest was summoned to both death-beds at the same time, and neglected the old pauper in the hope of securing a bequest for his church from the banker. This was the sort of fault that most annoyed Mary in the Church of the Trinity, which, in her opinion, was not cared for as it should be, and she felt it her duty to intimate as much.

Although the priest refused to come at the old woman's summons, his young clerk, who seems to have acted as vicar though not in orders, took pity on her, and went alone with the sacrament to her hut, which was the poorest of poor hovels even for that age:—

Close de piex et de serciaus Comme une viez souz a porciaus.

Roof of hoops, and wall of logs, Like a wretched stye for hogs.

There the beggar lay, already insensible or at the last gasp, on coarse thatch, on the ground, covered by an old hempen sack. The picture represented the extremest poverty of the thirteenth century; a hovel without even a feather bed or bedstead, as Aucassins' ploughman described his mother's want; and the old woman alone, dying, as the clerk appeared at the opening:—

Li clers qui fu moult bien apris Le cors Nostre Seigneur a pris A l'ostel a la povre fame S'en vient touz seus mes n'i treuve ame. Si grant clarte y a veue Que grant peeur en a eue. Ou povre lit a la vieillete Qui couvers iert d'une nateite

Assises voit XII puceles Si avenans et si tres beles N'est nus tant penser i seust Qui raconter le vout peust. A coutee voist Nostre Dame Sus le chevez la povre fame Qui por la mort sue et travaille. La Mere Dieu d'une tovaille Qui blanche est plus que fleur de lis La grant sueur d'entor le vis A ses blanches mains li essuie.

The clerk, well in these duties taught, The body of our Saviour brought Where she lay upon her bed Without a soul to give her aid. But such brightness there he saw As filled his mind with fear and awe. Covered with a mat of straw The woman lay; but round and near

A dozen maidens sat, so fair No mortal man could dream such light, No mortal tongue describe the sight. Then he saw that next the bed, By the poor old woman's head, As she gasped and strained for breath In the agony of death, Sat Our Lady,—bending low,— While, with napkin white as snow, She dried the death-sweat on the brow.

The clerk, in terror, hesitated whether to turn and run away, but Our Lady beckoned him to the bed, while all rose and kneeled devoutly to the sacrament. Then she said to the trembling clerk:—

"Friend, be not afraid! But seat yourself, to give us aid, Beside these maidens, on the bed."

And when the clerk had obeyed, she continued—

"Or tost, amis!" fait Nostre Dame, "Confessies ceste bone fame Et puis apres tout sans freeur Recevra tost son sauveeur Qui char et sanc vout en moi prendre."

"Come quickly, friend!" Our Lady says, "This good old woman now confess And afterwards without distress She will at once receive her God Who deigned in me take flesh and blood."

After the sacrament came a touch of realism that recalls the simple death-scenes that Walter Scott described in his grand twelfth- century manner. The old woman lingered pitiably in her agony:—

Lors dit une des demoiselles A madame sainte Marie: "Encore, dame, n'istra mie Si com moi semble du cors l'ame." "Bele fille," fait Nostre Dame, "Traveiller lais un peu le cors, Aincois que l'ame en isse hors, Si que puree soil et nete Aincois qu'en Paradis la mete. N'est or mestier qui soions plus, Ralon nous en ou ciel lassus, Quant tens en iert bien reviendrons En paradis l'ame emmerrons."

A maiden said to Saint Marie, "My lady, still it seems to me The soul will not the body fly." "Fair child!" Our Lady made reply, "Still let awhile the body fight Before the soul shall leave it quite. So that it pure may be, and cleansed When it to Paradise ascends. No longer need we here remain; We can go back to heaven again; We will return before she dies, And take the soul to paradise."

The rest of the story concerned the usurer, whose death-bed was of a different character, but Mary's interest in death-beds of that kind was small. The fate of the usurer mattered the less because she knew too well how easily the banker, in good credit, could arrange with the officials of the Trinity to open the doors of paradise for him. The administration of heaven was very like the administration of France; the Queen Mother saw many things of which she could not wholly approve; but her nature was pity, not justice, and she shut her eyes to much that she could not change. Her miracles, therefore, were for the most part mere evidence of her pity for those who needed it most, and these were rarely the well-to-do people of the siecle, but more commonly the helpless. Every saint performed miracles, and these are standard, not peculiar to any one intermediator; and every saint protected his own friends; but beyond these exhibitions of power, which are more or less common to the whole hierarchy below the Trinity, Mary was the mother of pity and the only hope of despair. One might go on for a volume, studying the character of Mary and the changes that time made in it, from the earliest Byzantine legends down to the daily recorded miracles at Lourdes; no character in history has had so long or varied a development, and none so sympathetic; but the greatest poets long ago plundered that mine of rich motives, and have stolen what was most dramatic for popular use. The Virgin's most famous early miracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which was what one might call her salvation of Faust. Another Byzantine miracle was an original version of Shylock. Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists plundered the Church legends as freely as their masters plundered the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramatic material untouched. Let us pray the Virgin that it may remain untouched, for, although a good miracle was in its day worth much money—so much that the rival shrines stole each other's miracles without decency—one does not care to see one's Virgin put to money- making for Jew theatre-managers. One's two-hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors shrink.

For mere amusement, too, the miracle is worth reading of the little Jew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and was thrown into a furnace by his father in consequence; but when the furnace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of the flames, with the little child unharmed in her lap. Better is that called the "Tombeor de Notre Dame," only recently printed; told by some unknown poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as any of Gaultier de Coincy's. Indeed the "Tombeor de Notre Dame" has had more success in our time than it ever had in its own, as far as one knows, for it appeals to a quiet sense of humour that pleases modern French taste as much as it pleased the Virgin. One fears only to spoil it by translation, but if a translation be merely used as a glossary or footnote, it need not do fatal harm.

The story is that of a tumbler—tombeor, street-acrobat—who was disgusted with the world, as his class has had a reputation for becoming, and who was fortunate enough to obtain admission into the famous monastery of Clairvaux, where Saint Bernard may have formerly been blessed by the Virgin's presence. Ignorant at best, and especially ignorant of letters, music, and the offices of a religious society, he found himself unable to join in the services:—

Car n'ot vescu fors de tumer Et d'espringier et de baler. Treper, saillir, ice savoit; Ne d'autre rien il ne savoit; Car ne savoit autre lecon Ne "pater noster" ne chancon Ne le "credo" ne le salu Ne rien qui fust a son salu.

For he had learned no other thing Than to tumble, dance and spring: Leaping and vaulting, that he knew, But nothing better could he do. He could not say his prayers by rote; Not "Pater noster", not a note, Not "Ave Mary," nor the creed; Nothing to help his soul in need.

Tormented by the sense of his uselessness to the society whose bread he ate without giving a return in service, and afraid of being expelled as a useless member, one day while the bells were calling to mass he hid in the crypt, and in despair began to soliloquize before the Virgin's altar, at the same spot, one hopes, where the Virgin had shown herself, or might have shown herself, in her infinite bounty, to Saint Bernard, a hundred years before:—

"Hai," fait il, "con suis trais! Or dira ja cascuns sa laisse Et jo suis ci i hues en laisse Qui ne fas ci fors que broster Et viandes por nient gaster. Si ne dirai ne ne ferai? Par la mere deu, si ferai! Ja n'en serai ore repris; Jo ferai ce que j'ai apris; Si servirai de men mestier La mere deu en son mostier; Li autre servent de canter Et jo servirai de tumer." Sa cape oste, si se despoille, Deles l'autel met sa despoille, Mais por sa char que ne soit nue Une cotele a retenue Qui moult estait tenre et alise, Petit vaut miex d'une chemise, Si est en pur le cors remes. Il s'est bien chains et acesmes, Sa cote caint et bien s'atorne, Devers l'ymage se retorne Mout humblement et si l'esgarde: "Dame," fait il, "en vostre garde Comant jo et mon cors et m'ame. Douce reine, douce dame, Ne despisies ce que jo sai Car jo me voil metre a l'asai De vos servir en bone foi Se dex m'ait sans nul desroi. Jo ne sai canter ne lire Mais certes jo vos voil eslire Tos mes biax gieus a eslicon. Or soie al fuer de taurecon Qui trepe et saut devant sa mere. Dame, qui n'estes mie amere A cels qui vos servent a droit, Quelsque jo soie, por vos soit!"

Lors li commence a faire saus Bas et petits et grans et haus

Primes deseur et puis desos, Puis se remet sor ses genols, Devers l'ymage, et si l'encline: "He!" fait il, "tres douce reine Par vo pitie, par vo francise, Ne despisies pas mon servise!"

"Ha!" said he, "how I am ashamed! To sing his part goes now each priest, And I stand here, a tethered beast, Who nothing do but browse and feed And waste the food that others need. Shall I say nothing, and stand still? No! by God's mother, but I will! She shall not think me here for naught; At least I'll do what I've been taught! At least I'll serve in my own way God's mother in her church to-day. The others serve to pray and sing; I will serve to leap and spring." Then he strips him of his gown, Lays it on the altar down; But for himself he takes good care Not to show his body bare, But keeps a jacket, soft and thin, Almost a shirt, to tumble in. Clothed in this supple woof of maille His strength and health and form showed well. And when his belt is buckled fast, Toward the Virgin turns at last: Very humbly makes his prayer; "Lady!" says he, "to your care I commit my soul and frame. Gentle Virgin, gentle dame, Do not despise what I shall do, For I ask only to please you, To serve you like an honest man, So help me God, the best I can. I cannot chant, nor can I read, But I can show you here instead, All my best tricks to make you laugh, And so shall be as though a calf Should leap and jump before its dam. Lady, who never yet could blame Those who serve you well and true, All that I am, I am for you."

Then he begins to jump about, High and low, and in and out,

Straining hard with might and main; Then, falling on his knees again, Before the image bows his face: "By your pity! by your grace!" Says he, "Ha! my gentle queen, Do not despise my offering!"

In his earnestness he exerted himself until, at the end of his strength, he lay exhausted and unconscious on the altar steps. Pleased with his own exhibition, and satisfied that the Virgin was equally pleased, he continued these devotions every day, until at last his constant and singular absence from the regular services attracted the curiosity of a monk, who kept watch on him and reported his eccentric exercise to the Abbot.

The mediaeval monasteries seem to have been gently administered. Indeed, this has been made the chief reproach on them, and the excuse for robbing them for the benefit of a more energetic crown and nobility who tolerated no beggars or idleness but their own; at least, it is safe to say that few well-regulated and economically administered modern charities would have the patience of the Abbot of Clairvaux, who, instead of calling up the weak-minded tombeor and sending him back to the world to earn a living by his profession, went with his informant to the crypt, to see for himself what the strange report meant. We have seen at Chartres what a crypt may be, and how easily one might hide in its shadows while mass is said at the altars. The Abbot and his informant hid themselves behind a column in the shadow, and watched the whole performance to its end when the exhausted tumbler dropped unconscious and drenched with perspiration on the steps of the altar, with the words:—

"Dame!" fait il, "ne puis plus ore; Mais voire je reviendrai encore."

"Lady!" says he, "no more I can, But truly I'll come back again!"

You can imagine the dim crypt; the tumbler lying unconscious beneath the image of the Virgin; the Abbot peering out from the shadow of the column, and wondering what sort of discipline he could inflict for this unforeseen infraction of rule; when suddenly, before he could decide what next to do, the vault above the altar, of its own accord, opened:—

L'abes esgarde sans atendre Et vit de la volte descendre Une dame si gloriouse Ains nus ne vit si preciouse Ni si ricement conreee, N'onques tant bele ne fu nee. Ses vesteures sont bien chieres D'or et de precieuses pieres.

Avec li estoient li angle Del ciel amont, et li arcangle, Qui entor le menestrel vienent, Si le solacent et sostienent. Quant entor lui sont arengie S'ot tot son cuer asoagie. Dont s'aprestent de lui servir Por ce qu'ils volrent deservir La servise que fait la dame Qui tant est precieuse geme. Et la douce reine france Tenoit une touaille blance, S'en avente son menestrel Mout doucement devant l'autel. La franc dame debonnaire Le col, le cors, et le viaire Li avente por refroidier; Bien s'entremet de lui aidier; La dame bien s'i abandone; Li bons hom garde ne s'en done, Car il ne voit, si ne set mie Qu'il ait si bele compaignie.

The Abbot strains his eyes to see, And, from the vaulting, suddenly, A lady steps,—so glorious,— Beyond all thought so precious,— Her robes so rich, so nobly worn,— So rare the gems the robes adorn,— As never yet so fair was born.

Along with her the angels were, Archangels stood beside her there; Round about the tumbler group To give him solace, bring him hope; And when round him in ranks they stood, His whole heart felt its strength renewed. So they haste to give him aid Because their wills are only made To serve the service of their Queen, Most precious gem the earth has seen. And the lady, gentle, true, Holds in her hand a towel new; Fans him with her hand divine Where he lies before the shrine. The kind lady, full of grace, Fans his neck, his breast, his face! Fans him herself to give him air! Labours, herself, to help him there! The lady gives herself to it; The poor man takes no heed of it; For he knows not and cannot see That he has such fair company.

Beyond this we need not care to go. If you cannot feel the colour and quality—the union of naivete and art, the refinement, the infinite delicacy and tenderness—of this little poem, then nothing will matter much to you; and if you can feel it, you can feel, without more assistance, the majesty of Chartres.



CHAPTER XIV

ABELARD

Super cuncta, subter cuncta, Extra cuncta, intra cuncta, Intra cuncta nec inclusus, Extra cuncta nec exclusus, Super cuncta nec elatus, Subter cuncta nec substratus, Super totus, praesidendo, Subter totus, sustinendo, Extra totus, complectendo, Intra totus est, implendo.

According to Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans and Archbishop of Tours, these verses describe God. Hildebert was the first poet of his time; no small merit, since he was contemporary with the "Chanson de Roland" and the first crusade; he was also a strong man, since he was able, as Bishop of Le Mans, to gain great credit by maintaining himself against William the Norman and Fulk of Anjou; and finally he was a prelate of high authority. He lived between 1055 and 1133. Supposing his verses to have been written in middle life, toward the year 1100, they may be taken to represent the accepted doctrine of the Church at the time of the first crusade. They were little more than a versified form of the Latin of Saint Gregory the Great who wrote five-hundred years before: "Ipse manet intra omnia, ipse extra omnia, ipse supra omnia, ipse infra omnia; et superior est per potentiam et inferior per sustentationem; exterior per magnitudinem et interior per subtilitatem; sursum regens, deorsum continens, extra circumdans, interius penetrans; nec alia parte superior, alia inferior, aut alia ex parte exterior atque ex alia manet interior, sed unus idemque totus ubique." According to Saint Gregory, in the sixth century, God was "one and the same and wholly everywhere"; "immanent within everything, without everything, above everything, below everything, sursum regens, dear sum continens"; while according to Archbishop Hildebert in the eleventh century: "God is overall things, under all things; outside all, inside all; within but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up; below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling." Finally, according to Benedict Spinoza, another five hundred years later still: "God is a being, absolutely infinite; that is to say, a substance made up of an infinity of attributes, each one of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence."

Spinoza was the great pantheist, whose name is still a terror to the orthodox, and whose philosophy is—very properly—a horror to the Church—and yet Spinoza never wrote a line that, to the unguided student, sounds more Spinozist than the words of Saint Gregory and Archbishop Hildebert. If God is everywhere; wholly; presiding, sustaining, embracing and filling, "sursum regens, deorsum continens," He is the only possible energy, and leaves no place for human will to act. A force which is "one and the same and wholly everywhere" is more Spinozist than Spinoza, and is likely to be mistaken for frank pantheism by the large majority of religious minds who must try to understand it without a theological course in a Jesuit college. In the year 1100 Jesuit colleges did not exist, and even the great Dominican and Franciscan schools were far from sight in the future; but the School of Notre Dame at Paris existed, and taught the existence of God much as Archbishop Hildebert described it. The most successful lecturer was William of Champeaux, and to any one who ever heard of William at all, the name instantly calls up the figure of Abelard, in flesh and blood, as he sang to Heloise the songs which he says resounded through Europe. The twelfth century, with all its sparkle, would be dull without Abelard and Heloise. With infinite regret, Heloise must be left out of the story, because she was not a philosopher or a poet or an artist, but only a Frenchwoman to the last millimetre of her shadow. Even though one may suspect that her famous letters to Abelard are, for the most part, by no means above scepticism, she was, by French standards, worth at least a dozen Abelards, if only because she called Saint Bernard a false apostle.

Unfortunately, French standards, by which she must be judged in our ignorance, take for granted that she philosophized only for the sake of Abelard, while Abelard taught philosophy to her not so much because he believed in philosophy or in her as because he believed in himself. To this day, Abelard remains a problem as perplexing as he must have been to Heloise, and almost as fascinating. As the west portal of Chartres is the door through which one must of necessity enter the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century, so Abelard is the portal of approach to the Gothic thought and philosophy within. Neither art nor thought has a modern equivalent; only Heloise, like Isolde, unites the ages.

The first crusade seems, in perspective, to have rilled the whole field of vision in France at the time; but, in fact, France seethed with other emotions, and while the crusaders set out to scale heaven by force at Jerusalem, the monks, who remained at home, undertook to scale heaven by prayer and by absorption of body and soul in God; the Cistercian Order was founded in 1098, and was joined in 1112 by young Bernard, born in 1090 at Fontaines-les-Dijon, drawing with him or after him so many thousands of young men into the self-immolation of the monastery as carried dismay into the hearts of half the women of France. At the same time—that is, about 1098 or 1100—Abelard came up to Paris from Brittany, with as much faith in logic as Bernard had in prayer or Godfrey of Bouillon in arms, and led an equal or even a greater number of combatants to the conquest of heaven by force of pure reason. None showed doubt. Hundreds of thousands of young men wandered from their provinces, mostly to Palestine, largely to cloisters, but also in great numbers to Paris and the schools, while few ever returned.

Abelard had the advantage of being well-born; not so highly descended as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas who were to complete his work in the thirteenth century, but, like Bernard, a gentleman born and bred. He was the eldest son of Berenger, Sieur du Pallet, a chateau in Brittany, south of the Loire, on the edge of Poitou. His name was Pierre du Pallet, although, for some unknown reason, he called himself Pierre Abailard, or Abeillard, or Esbaillart, or Beylard; for the spelling was never fixed. He was born in 1079, and when, in 1096, the young men of his rank were rushing off to the first crusade, Pierre, a boy of seventeen, threw himself with equal zeal into the study of science, and, giving up his inheritance or birthright, at last came to Paris to seize a position in the schools. The year is supposed to have been 1100.

The Paris of Abelard's time was astonishingly old; so old that hardly a stone of it can be now pointed out. Even the oldest of the buildings still standing in that quarter—Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Saint-Severin, and the tower of the Lycee Henri IV—are more modern; only the old Roman Thermae, now part of the Musee de Cluny, within the walls, and the Abbey Tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, outside, in the fields, were standing in the year 1100. Politically, Paris was a small provincial town before the reign of Louis-le-Gros (1108- 37), who cleared its gates of its nearest enemies; but as a school, Paris was even then easily first. Students crowded into it by thousands, till the town is said to have contained more students than citizens, Modern Paris seems to have begun as a university town before it had a university. Students flocked to it from great distances, encouraged and supported by charity, and stimulated by privileges, until they took entire possession of what is still called the Latin Quarter from the barbarous Latin they chattered; and a town more riotous, drunken, and vicious than it became, in the course of time, hardly existed even in the Middle Ages. In 1100, when enthusiasm was fresh and faith in science was strong, the great mass of students came there to study, and, having no regular university organization or buildings, they thronged the cloister of Notre Dame—not our Notre Dame, which dates only from 1163, but the old Romanesque cathedral which stood on the same spot—and there they listened, and retained what they could remember, for they were not encouraged to take notes even if they were rich enough to buy notebooks, while manuscripts were far beyond their means. One valuable right the students seem to have had—that of asking questions and even of disputing with the lecturer provided they followed the correct form of dialectics. The lecturer himself was licensed by the Bishop.

Five thousand students are supposed to have swarmed about the cloister of Notre Dame, across the Petit Pont, and up the hill of Sainte-Genevieve; three thousand are said to have paid fees to Abelard in the days of his great vogue and they seem to have attached themselves to their favourite master as a champion to be upheld against the world. Jealousies ran high, and neither scholars nor masters shunned dispute. Indeed, the only science they taught or knew was the art of dispute—dialectics. Rhetoric, grammar, and dialectics were the regular branches of science, and bold students, who were not afraid of dabbling in forbidden fields, extended their studies to mathematics—"exercitium nefarium," according to Abelard, which he professed to know nothing about but which he studied nevertheless. Abelard, whether pupil or master, never held his tongue if he could help it, for his fortune depended on using it well; but he never used it so well in dialectics or theology as he did, toward the end of his life, in writing a bit of autobiography, so admirably told, so vivid, so vibrating with the curious intensity of his generation, that it needed only to have been written in "Romieu" to be the chief monument of early French prose, as the western portal of Chartres is the chief monument of early French sculpture, and of about the same date. Unfortunately Abelard was a noble scholar, who necessarily wrote and talked Latin, even with Heloise, and, although the Latin was mediaeval, it is not much the better on that account, because, in spite of its quaintness, the naivetes of a young language—the egotism, jealousies, suspicions, boastings, and lamentations of a childlike time—take a false air of outworn Rome and Byzantium, although, underneath, the spirit lives:—

I arrived at last in Paris where for a long time dialectics had specially flourished under William of Champeaux, rightly reckoned the first of my masters in that branch of study. I stayed some time in his school, but, though well received at first, I soon got to be an annoyance to him because I persisted in refuting certain ideas of his, and because, not being afraid to enter into argument against him, I sometimes got the better. This boldness, too, roused the wrath of those fellow students who were classed higher, because I was the youngest and the last comer. This was the beginning of my series of misfortunes which still last; my renown every day increasing, envy was kindled against me in every direction.

This picture of the boy of twenty, harassing the professor, day after day, in his own lecture-room before hundreds of older students, paints Abelard to the life; but one may safely add a few touches that heighten the effect; as that William of Champeaux himself was barely thirty, and that Abelard throughout his career, made use of every social and personal advantage to gain a point, with little scruple either in manner or in sophistry. One may easily imagine the scene. Teachers are always much the same. Pupils and students differ only in degrees of docility. In 1100, both classes began by accepting the foundations of society, as they have to do still; only they then accepted laws of the Church and Aristotle, while now they accept laws of the legislature and of energy. In 1100, the students took for granted that, with the help of Aristotle and syllogisms, they could build out the Church intellectually, as the architects, with the help of the pointed arch, were soon to enlarge it architecturally. They never doubted the certainty of their method. To them words had fixed values, like numbers, and syllogisms were hewn stones that needed only to be set in place, in order to reach any height or support any weight. Every sentence was made to take the form of a syllogism. One must have been educated in a Jesuit or Dominican school in order to frame these syllogisms correctly, but merely by way of illustration one may timidly suggest how the phrases sounded in their simplest form. For example, Plato or other equally good authority deemed substance as that which stands underneath phenomena; the most universal of universals, the ultimate, the highest in order of generalization. The ultimate essence or substance is indivisible; God is substance; God is indivisible. The divine substance is incapable of alteration or accident; all other substance is liable to alteration or accident; therefore, the divine substance differs from all other substance. A substance is a universal; as for example, Humanity, or the Human, is a universal and indivisible; the Man Socrates, for instance, is not a universal, but an individual; therefore, the substance Humanity, being indivisible, must exist entire and undivided in Socrates.

The form of logic most fascinating to youthful minds, as well as to some minds that are only too acute, is the reductio ad absurdum; the forcing an opponent into an absurd alternative or admission; and the syllogism lent itself happily to this use. Socrates abused the weapon and Abelard was the first French master of the art; but neither State nor Church likes to be reduced to an absurdity, and, on the whole, both Socrates and Abelard fared ill in the result. Even now, one had best be civil toward the idols of the forum. Abelard would find most of his old problems sensitive to his touch to-day. Time has settled few or none of the essential points of dispute. Science hesitates, more visibly than the Church ever did, to decide once for all whether unity or diversity is ultimate law; whether order or chaos is the governing rule of the universe, if universe there is; whether anything, except phenomena, exists. Even in matters more vital to society, one dares not speak too loud. Why, and for what, and to whom, is man a responsible agent? Every jury and judge, every lawyer and doctor, every legislator and clergyman has his own views, and the law constantly varies. Every nation may have a different system. One court may hang and another may acquit for the same crime, on the same day; and science only repeats what the Church said to Abelard, that where we know so little, we had better hold our tongues.

According to the latest authorities, the doctrine of universals which convulsed the schools of the twelfth century has never received an adequate answer. What is a species? what is a genus or a family or an order? More or less convenient terms of classification, about which the twelfth century cared very little, while it cared deeply about the essence of classes! Science has become too complex to affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives for nothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits, almost as earnestly as in the twelfth century, when the whole field of human and superhuman activity was shut between these barriers of substance, universals, and particulars. Little has changed except the vocabulary and the method. The schools knew that their society hung for life on the demonstration that God, the ultimate universal, was a reality, out of which all other universal truths or realities sprang. Truth was a real thing, outside of human experience. The schools of Paris talked and thought of nothing else. John of Salisbury, who attended Abelard's lectures about 1136, and became Bishop of Chartres in 1176, seems to have been more surprised than we need be at the intensity of the emotion. "One never gets away from this question," he said. "From whatever point a discussion starts, it is always led back and attached to that. It is the madness of Rufus about Naevia; 'He thinks of nothing else; talks of nothing else, and if Naevia did not exist, Rufus would be dumb.'"

Abelard began it. After his first visit to Paris in 1100, he seems to have passed several years elsewhere, while Guillaume de Champeaux in 1108, retired from the school in the cloister of Notre Dame, and, taking orders, established a class in a chapel near by, afterwards famous as the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The Jardin des Plantes and the Gare d'Orleans now cover the ground where the Abbey stood, on the banks of the Seine outside the Latin Quarter, and not a trace is left of its site; but there William continued his course in dialectics, until suddenly Abelard reappeared among his scholars, and resumed his old attacks. This time Abelard could hardly call himself a student. He was thirty years old, and long since had been himself a teacher; he had attended William's course on dialectics nearly ten years before, and was past master in the art; he had nothing to learn from William in theology, for neither William nor he was yet a theologist by profession. If Abelard went back to school, it was certainly not to learn; but indeed, he himself made little or no pretence of it, and told with childlike candour not only why he went, but also how brilliantly he succeeded in his object:—

I returned to study rhetoric in his school. Among other controversial battles, I succeeded, by the most irrefutable argument, in making him change, or rather ruin his doctrine of universals. His doctrine consisted in affirming the perfect identity of the essence in every individual of the same species, so that according to him there was no difference in the essence but only in the infinite variety of accidents. He then came to amend his doctrine so as to affirm, not the identity any longer, but the absence of distinction—the want of difference—in the essence. And as this question of universals had always been one of the most important questions of dialectics—so important that Porphyry, touching on it in his Preliminaries, did not dare to take the responsibility of cutting the knot, but said, "It is a very grave point,"—Champeaux, who was obliged to modify his idea and then renounce it, saw his course fall into such discredit that they hardly let him make his dialectical lectures, as though dialectics consisted entirely in the question of universals.

Why was this point so "very grave"? Not because it was mere dialectics! The only part of the story that seems grave today is the part that Abelard left out; the part which Saint Bernard, thirty years later put in, on behalf of William. We should be more credulous than twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard's word in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most accomplished dialectician of the age by an objection so familiar that no other dialectician was ever silenced by it—whatever may have been the case with theologians—and so obvious that it could not have troubled a scholar of fifteen. William stated a settled doctrine as old as Plato; Abelard interposed an objection as old as Aristotle. Probably Plato and Aristotle had received the question and answer from philosophers ten-thousand years older than themselves. Certainly the whole of philosophy has always been involved in the dispute.

The subject is as amusing as a comedy; so amusing that ten minutes may be well given to playing the scene between William and Abelard, not as it happened, but in a form nearer our ignorance, with liberty to invent arguments for William, and analogies—which are figures intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent toys if they fail—such as he never imagined; while Abelard can respond with his true rejoinder, fatal in a different sense. For the chief analogy, the notes of music would serve, or the colours of the solar spectrum, or an energy, such as gravity—but the best is geometrical, because Euclid was as scholastic as William of Champeaux himself, and his axioms are even more familiar to the schoolboy of the twentieth, than to the schoolman of the twelfth century.

In these scholastic tournaments the two champions started from opposite points—one, from the ultimate substance, God—the universal, the ideal, the type—the other from the individual, Socrates, the concrete, the observed fact of experience, the object of sensual perception. The first champion—William in this instance— assumed that the universal was a real thing; and for that reason he was called a realist. His opponent—Abelard—held that the universal was only nominally real; and on that account he was called a nominalist. Truth, virtue, humanity, exist as units and realities, said William. Truth, replied Abelard, is only the sum of all possible facts that are true, as humanity is the sum of all actual human beings. The ideal bed is a form, made by God, said Plato. The ideal bed is a name, imagined by ourselves, said Aristotle. "I start from the universe," said William. "I start from the atom," said Abelard; and, once having started, they necessarily came into collision at some point between the two.

William of Champeaux, lecturing on dialectics or logic, comes to the question of universals, which he says, are substances. Starting from the highest substance, God, all being descends through created substances by stages, until it reaches the substance animality, from which it descends to the substance humanity: and humanity being, like other essences or substances, indivisible, passes wholly into each individual, becoming Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, much as the divine substance exists wholly and undivided in each member of the Trinity.

Here Abelard interrupts. The divine substance, he says, operates by laws of its own, and cannot be used for comparison. In treating of human substance, one is bound by human limitations. If the whole of humanity is in Socrates, it is wholly absorbed by Socrates, and cannot be at the same time in Plato, or elsewhere. Following his favourite reductio ad absurdum, Abelard turns the idea round, and infers from it that, since Socrates carries all humanity in him, he carries Plato, too; and both must be in the same place, though Socrates is at Athens and Plato in Rome.

The objection is familiar to William, who replies by another commonplace:—

"Mr. Abelard, might I, without offence, ask you a simple matter? Can you give me Euclid's definition of a point?"

"If I remember right it is, 'illud cujus nulla pars est'; that which has no parts."

"Has it existence?"

"Only in our minds."

"Not, then, in God?"

"All necessary truths exist first in God. If the point is a necessary truth, it exists first there."

"Then might I ask you for Euclid's definition of the line?"

"The line is that which has only extension; 'Linea vocatur illa quae solam longitudinem habet.'" "Can you conceive an infinite straight line?"

"Only as a line which has no end, like the point extended."

"Supposing we imagine a straight line, like opposite rays of the sun, proceeding in opposite directions to infinity—is it real?"

"It has no reality except in the mind that conceives it."

"Supposing we divide that line which has no reality into two parts at its origin in the sun or star, shall we get two infinities?—or shall we say, two halves of the infinite?"

"We conceive of each as partaking the quality of infinity."

"Now, let us cut out the diameter of the sun; or rather—since this is what our successors in the school will do,—let us take a line of our earth's longitude which is equally unreal, and measure a degree of this thing which does not exist, and then divide it into equal parts which we will use as a measure or metre. This metre, which is still nothing, as I understand you, is infinitely divisible into points? and the point itself is infinitely small? Therefore we have the finite partaking the nature of the infinite?"

"Undoubtedly!"

"One step more, Mr. Abelard, if I do not weary you! Let me take three of these metres which do not exist, and place them so that the ends of one shall touch the ends of the others. May I ask what is that figure?"

"I presume you mean it to be a triangle."

"Precisely! and what sort of a triangle?"

"An equilateral triangle, the sides of which measure one metre each."

"Now let me take three more of these metres which do not exist, and construct another triangle which does not exist;—are these two triangles or one triangle?"

"They are most certainly one—a single concept of the only possible equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each face."

"You told us a moment ago that a universal could not exist wholly and exclusively in two individuals at once. Does not the universal by definition—THE equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each face—does it not exist wholly, in its integrity of essence, in each of the two triangles we have conceived?"

"It does—as a conception."

"I thank you! Now, although I fear wearying you, perhaps you will consent to let me add matter to mind. I have here on my desk an object not uncommon in nature, which I will ask you to describe."

"It appears to be a crystal."

"May I ask its shape?"

"I should call it a regular octahedron."

"That is, two pyramids, set base to base? making eight plane surfaces, each a perfect equilateral triangle?"

"Concedo triangula (I grant the triangles)."

"Do you know, perchance, what is this material which seems to give substantial existence to these eight triangles?"

"I do not."

"Nor I! nor does it matter, unless you conceive it to be the work of man?"

"I do not claim it as man's work."

"Whose, then?"

"We believe all actual creation of matter, united with form, to be the work of God."

"Surely not the substance of God himself? Perhaps you mean that this form—this octahedron—is a divine concept."

"I understand such to be the doctrine of the Church."

"Then it seems that God uses this concept habitually to create this very common crystal. One question more, and only one, if you will permit me to come to the point. Does the matter—the material—of which this crystal is made affect in any way the form—the nature, the soul—of the universal equilateral triangle as you see it bounding these eight plane surfaces?"

"That I do not know, and do not think essential to decide. As far as these triangles are individual, they are made so by the will of God, and not by the substance you call triangle. The universal—the abstract right angle, or any other abstract form—is only an idea, a concept, to which reality, individuality, or what we might call energy is wanting. The only true energy, except man's free will, is God."

"Very good, Mr. Abelard! we can now reach our issue. You affirm that, just as the line does not exist in space, although the eye sees little else in space, so the triangle does not exist in this crystal, although the crystal shows eight of them, each perfect. You are aware that on this line which does not exist, and its combination in this triangle which does not exist, rests the whole fabric of mathematics with all its necessary truths. In other words, you know that in this line, though it does not exist, is bound up the truth of the only branch of human knowledge which claims absolute certainty for human processes. You admit that this line and triangle, which are mere figments of our human imagination, not only exist independent of us in the crystal, but are, as we suppose, habitually and invariably used by God Himself to give form to the matter contained within the planes of the crystal. Yet to this line and triangle you deny reality. To mathematical truth, you deny compulsive force. You hold that an equilateral triangle may, to you and all other human individuals, be a right-angled triangle if you choose to imagine it so. Allow me to say, without assuming any claim to superior knowledge, that to me your logic results in a different conclusion. If you are compelled, at one point or another of the chain of being, to deny existence to a substance, surely it should be to the last and feeblest. I see nothing to hinder you from denying your own existence, which is, in fact, impossible to demonstrate. Certainly you are free, in logic, to argue that Socrates and Plato are mere names—that men and matter are phantoms and dreams. No one ever has proved or ever can prove the contrary, Infallibly, a great philosophical school will some day be founded on that assumption. I venture even to recommend it to your acute and sceptical mind; but I cannot conceive how, by any process of reasoning, sensual or supersensual, you can reach the conclusion that the single form of truth which instantly and inexorably compels our submission to its laws—is nothing."

Thus far, all was familiar ground; certainly at least as familiar as the Pons Asinorum; and neither of the two champions had need to feel ruffled in temper by the discussion. The real struggle began only at this point; for until this point was reached, both positions were about equally tenable. Abelard had hitherto rested quietly on the defensive, but William's last thrust obliged him to strike in his turn, and he drew himself up for what, five hundred years later, was called the "Coup de Jarnac":—

"I do not deny," he begins; "on the contrary, I affirm that the universal, whether we call it humanity, or equilateral triangle, has a sort of reality as a concept; that it is something; even a substance, if you insist upon it. Undoubtedly the sum of all individual men results in the concept of humanity. What I deny is that the concept results in the individual. You have correctly stated the essence of the point and the line as sources of our concept of the infinite; what I deny is that they are divisions of the infinite. Universals cannot be divided; what is capable of division cannot be a universal. I admit the force of your analogy in the case of the crystal; but I am obliged to point out to you that, if you insist on this analogy, you will bring yourself and me into flagrant contradiction with the fixed foundations of the Church. If the energy of the triangle gives form to the crystal, and the energy of the line gives reality to the triangle, and the energy of the infinite gives substance to the line, all energy at last becomes identical with the ultimate substance, God Himself. Socrates becomes God in small; Judas is identical with both; humanity is of the divine essence, and exists, wholly and undivided, in each of us. The equilateral triangle we call humanity exists, therefore, entire, identical, in you and me, as a subdivision of the infinite line, space, energy, or substance, which is God. I need not remind you that this is pantheism, and that if God is the only energy, human free will merges in God's free will; the Church ceases to have a reason for existence; man cannot be held responsible for his own acts, either to the Church or to the State; and finally, though very unwillingly, I must, in regard for my own safety, bring the subject to the attention of the Archbishop, which, as you know better than I, will lead to your seclusion, or worse."

Whether Abelard used these precise words is nothing to the point. The words he left on record were equivalent to these. As translated by M. de Remusat from a manuscript entitled: "Glossulae magistri Petri Baelardi super Porphyrium," the phrase runs: "A grave heresy is at the end of this doctrine; for, according to it, the divine substance which is recognized as admitting of no form, is necessarily identical with every substance in particular and with all substance in general." Even had he not stated the heresy so bluntly, his objection necessarily pushed William in face of it. Realism, when pressed, always led to pantheism. William of Champeaux and Bishop or Archbishop Hildebert were personal friends, and Hildebert's divine substance left no more room for human free will than Abelard saw in the geometric analogy imagined for William. Throughout the history of the Church for fifteen hundred years, whenever this theological point has been pressed against churchmen it has reduced them to evasion or to apology. Admittedly, the weak point of realism was its fatally pantheistic term.

Of course, William consulted his friends in the Church, probably Archbishop Hildebert among the rest, before deciding whether to maintain or to abandon his ground, and the result showed that he was guided by their advice. Realism was the Roman arch—the only possible foundation for any Church; because it assumed unity, and any other scheme was compelled to prove it, for a starting-point. Let us see, for a moment, what became of the dialogue, when pushed into theology, in order to reach some of the reasons which reduced William to tacit abandonment of a doctrine he could never have surrendered unless under compulsion. That he was angry is sure, for Abelard, by thus thrusting theology into dialectics, had struck him a full blow; and William knew Abelard well:—

"Ah!" he would have rejoined; "you are quick, M. du Pallet, to turn what I offered as an analogy, into an argument of heresy against my person. You are at liberty to take that course if you choose, though I give you fair warning that it will lead you far. But now I must ask you still another question. This concept that you talk about— this image in the mind of man, of God, of matter; for I know not where to seek it—whether is it a reality or not?"

"I hold it as, in a manner, real."

"I want a categorical answer—Yes or No!"

"Distinguo! (I must qualify.)"

"I will have no qualifications. A substance either is, or not. Choose!"

To this challenge Abelard had the choice of answering Yes, or of answering no, or of refusing to answer at all. He seems to have done the last; but we suppose him to have accepted the wager of battle, and to answer:—

"Yes, then!"

"Good!" William rejoins; "now let us see how your pantheism differs from mine. My triangle exists as a reality, or what science will call an energy, outside my mind, in God, and is impressed on my mind as it is on a mirror, like the triangle on the crystal, its energy giving form. Your triangle you say is also an energy, but an essence of my mind itself; you thrust it into the mind as an integral part of the mirror; identically the same concept, energy, or necessary truth which is inherent in God. Whatever subterfuge you may resort to, sooner or later you have got to agree that your mind is identical with God's nature as far as that concept is concerned. Your pantheism goes further than mine. As a doctrine of the Real Presence peculiar to yourself, I can commend it to the Archbishop together with your delation of me."

Supposing that Abelard took the opposite course, and answered:—

"No! my concept is a mere sign."

"A sign of what, in God's name!"

"A sound! a word! a symbol! an echo only of my ignorance."

"Nothing, then! So truth and virtue and charity do not exist at all. You suppose yourself to exist, but you have no means of knowing God; therefore, to you God does not exist except as an echo of your ignorance; and, what concerns you most, the Church does not exist except as your concept of certain individuals, whom you cannot regard as a unity, and who suppose themselves to believe in a Trinity which exists only as a sound, or a symbol. I will not repeat your words, M. du Pallet, outside this cloister, because the consequences to you would certainly be fatal; but it is only too clear that you are a materialist, and as such your fate must be decided by a Church Council, unless you prefer the stake by judgment of a secular court."

In truth, pure nominalism—if, indeed, any one ever maintained it— afforded no cover whatever. Nor did Abelard's concept help the matter, although for want of a better refuge, the Church was often driven into it. Conceptualism was a device, like the false wooden roof, to cover and conceal an inherent weakness of construction. Unity either is, or is not. If soldiers, no matter in what number, can never make an army, and worshippers, though in millions, do not make a Church, and all humanity united would not necessarily constitute a State, equally little can their concepts, individual or united, constitute the one or the other. Army, Church, and State, each is an organic whole, complex beyond all possible addition of units, and not a concept at all, but rather an animal that thinks, creates, devours, and destroys. The attempt to bridge the chasm between multiplicity and unity is the oldest problem of philosophy, religion, and science, but the flimsiest bridge of all is the human concept, unless somewhere, within or beyond it, an energy not individual is hidden; and in that case the old question instantly reappears: What is that energy?

Abelard would have done well to leave William alone, but Abelard was an adventurer, and William was a churchman. To win a victory over a churchman is not very difficult for an adventurer, and is always a tempting amusement, because the ambition of churchmen to shine in worldly contests is disciplined and checked by the broader interests of the Church: but the victory is usually sterile, and rarely harms the churchman. The Church cares for its own. Probably the bishops advised William not to insist on his doctrine, although every bishop may have held the same view. William allowed himself to be silenced without a judgment, and in that respect stands almost if not quite alone among schoolmen. The students divined that he had sold himself to the Church, and consequently deserted him. Very soon he received his reward in the shape of the highest dignity open to private ambition—a bishopric. As Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne he made for himself a great reputation, which does not concern us, although it deeply concerned the unfortunate Abelard, for it happened, either by chance or design, that within a year or two after William established himself at Chalons, young Bernard of Citeaux chose a neighbouring diocese in which to establish a branch of the Cistercian Order, and Bishop William took so keen an interest in the success of Bernard as almost to claim equal credit for it. Clairvaux was, in a manner, William's creation, although not in his diocese, and yet, if there was a priest in all France who fervently despised the schools, it was young Bernard. William of Champeaux, the chief of schoolmen, could never have gained Bernard's affections. Bishop William of Chalons must have drifted far from dialectics into mysticism in order to win the support of Clairvaux, and train up a new army of allies who were to mark Abelard for an easy prey.

Meanwhile Abelard pursued his course of triumph in the schools, and in due time turned from dialectics to theology, as every ambitious teacher could hardly fail to do. His affair with Heloise and their marriage seem to have occupied his time in 1117 or 1118, for they both retired into religious orders in 1119, and he resumed his lectures in 1120. With his passion for rule, he was fatally certain to attempt ruling the Church as he ruled the schools; and, as it was always enough for him that any point should be tender in order that he should press upon it, he instantly and instinctively seized on the most sensitive nerve of the Church system to wrench it into his service. He became a sort of apostle of the Holy Ghost.

That the Trinity is a mystery was a law of theology so absolute as in a degree to hide the law of philosophy that the Trinity was meant as a solution of a greater mystery still. In truth, as a matter of philosophy, the Trinity was intended to explain the eternal and primary problem of the process by which unity could produce diversity. Starting from unity alone, philosophers found themselves unable to stir hand or foot until they could account for duality. To the common, ignorant peasant, no such trouble occurred, for he knew the Trinity in its simpler form as the first condition of life, like time and space and force. No human being was so stupid as not to understand that the father, mother, and child made a trinity, returning into each other, and although every father, every mother, and every child, from the dawn of man's intelligence, had asked why, and had never received an answer more intelligible to them than to philosophers, they never showed difficulty in accepting that trinity as a fact. They might even, in their beneficent blindness, ask the Church why that trinity, which had satisfied the Egyptians for five or ten-thousand years, was not good enough for churchmen. They themselves were doing their utmost, though unconsciously, to identify the Holy Ghost with the Mother, while philosophy insisted on excluding the human symbol precisely because it was human and led back to an infinite series. Philosophy required three units to start from; it posed the equilateral triangle, not the straight line, as the foundation of its deometry. The first straight line, infinite in extension, must be assumed, and its reflection engendered the second, but whence came the third? Under protest, philosophy was compelled to accept the symbol of Father and Son as a matter of faith, but, if the relation of Father and Son were accepted for the two units which reflected each other, what relation expressed the Holy Ghost? In philosophy, the product of two units was not a third unit, but diversity, multiplicity, infinity. The subject was, for that reason, better handled by the Arabs, whose reasoning worked back on the Christian theologists and made the point more delicate still. Common people, like women and children and ourselves, could never understand the Trinity; naturally, intelligent people understood it still less, but for them it did not matter; they did not need to understand it provided their neighbours would leave it alone.

The mass of mankind wanted something nearer to them than either the Father or the Son; they wanted the Mother, and the Church tried, in what seems to women and children and ourselves rather a feeble way, to give the Holy Ghost, as far as possible, the Mother's attributes —Love, Charity, Grace; but in spite of conscientious effort and unswerving faith, the Holy Ghost remained to the mass of Frenchmen somewhat apart, feared rather than loved. The sin against the Holy Ghost was a haunting spectre, for no one knew what else it was.

Naturally the Church, and especially its official theologists, took an instinctive attitude of defence whenever a question on this subject was asked, and were thrown into a flutter of irritation whenever an answer was suggested. No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself. The distinguishing essence of the Holy Ghost, as a theological substance, was its mystery. That this mystery should be touched at all was annoying to every one who knew the dangers that lurked behind the veil, but that it should be freely handled before audiences of laymen by persons of doubtful character was impossible. Such license must end in discrediting the whole Trinity under pretence of making it intelligible.

Precisely this license was what Abelard took, and on it he chose to insist. He said nothing heretical; he treated the Holy Ghost with almost exaggerated respect, as though other churchmen did not quite appreciate its merits; but he would not let it alone, and the Church dreaded every moment lest, with his enormous influence in the schools, he should raise a new storm by his notorious indiscretion. Yet so long as he merely lectured, he was not molested; only when he began to publish his theology did the Church interfere. Then a council held at Soissons in 1121 abruptly condemned his book in block, without reading it, without specifying its errors, and without hearing his defence; obliged him to throw the manuscript into the fire with his own hands, and finally shut him up in a monastery.

He had invited the jurisdiction by taking orders, but even the Church was shocked by the summary nature of the judgment, which seems to have been quite irregular. In fact, the Church has never known what it was that the council condemned. The latest great work on the Trinity, by the Jesuit Father de Regnon, suggests that Abelard's fault was in applying to the Trinity his theory of concepts.

"Yes!" he says; "the mystery is explained; the key of conceptualism has opened the tabernacle, and Saint Bernard was right in saying that, thanks to Abelard, every one can penetrate it and contemplate it at his ease; 'even the graceless, even the uncircumcised.' Yes! the Trinity is explained, but after the manner of the Sabellians. For to identify the Persons in the terms of human concepts is, in the same stroke, to destroy their 'subsistances propres.'"

Although the Saviour seems to have felt no compunctions about identifying the persons of the Trinity in the terms of human concepts, it is clear that tourists and heretics had best leave the Church to deal with its "subsistances propres," and with its own members, in its own way. In sum, the Church preferred to stand firm on the Roman arch, and the architects seem now inclined to think it was right; that scholastic science and the pointed arch proved to be failures. In the twelfth century the world may have been rough, but it was not stupid. The Council of Soissons was held while the architects and sculptors were building the west porch of Chartres and the Aquilon at Mont-Saint-Michel. Averroes was born at Cordova in 1126; Omar Khayyam died at Naishapur in 1123. Poetry and metaphysics owned the world, and their quarrel with theology was a private, family dispute. Very soon the tide turned decisively in Abelard's favour. Suger, a political prelate, became minister of the King, and in March, 1122, Abbot of Saint-Denis. In both capacities he took the part of Abelard, released him from restraint, and even restored to him liberty of instruction, at least beyond the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Abelard then took a line of conduct singularly parallel with that of Bernard. Quitting civilized life he turned wholly to religion. "When the agreement," he said, "had been executed by both parties to it, in presence of the King and his ministers, I next retired within the territory of Troyes, upon a desert spot which I knew, and on a piece of ground given me by certain persons, I built, with the consent of the bishop of the diocese, a sort of oratory of reeds and thatch, which I placed under the invocation of the Holy Trinity ... Founded at first in the name of the Holy Trinity, then placed under its invocation, it was called 'Paraclete' in memory of my having come there as a fugitive and in my despair having found some repose in the consolations of divine grace. This denomination was received by many with great astonishment, and some attacked it with violence under pretext that it was not permitted to consecrate a church specially to the Holy Ghost any more than to God the Father, but that, according to ancient usage, it must be dedicated either to the Son alone or to the Trinity."

The spot is still called Paraclete, near Nogent-sur-Seine, in the parish of Quincey about halfway between Fontainebleau and Troyes. The name Paraclete as applied to the Holy Ghost meant the Consoler, the Comforter, the Spirit of Love and Grace; as applied to the oratory by Abelard it meant a renewal of his challenge to theologists, a separation of the Persons in the Trinity, a vulgarization of the mystery; and, as his story frankly says, it was so received by many. The spot was not so remote but that his scholars could follow him, and he invited them to do so. They came in great numbers, and he lectured to them. "In body I was hidden in this spot; but my renown overran the whole world and filled it with my word." Undoubtedly Abelard taught theology, and, in defiance of the council that had condemned him, attempted to define the persons of the Trinity. For this purpose he had fallen on a spot only fifty or sixty miles from Clairvaux where Bernard was inspiring a contrary spirit of religion; he placed himself on the direct line between Clairvaux and its source at Citeaux near Dijon; indeed, if he had sought for a spot as central as possible to the active movement of the Church and the time, he could have hit on none more convenient and conspicuous unless it were the city of Troyes itself, the capital of Champagne, some thirty miles away. The proof that he meant to be aggressive is furnished by his own account of the consequences. Two rivals, he says, one of whom seems to have been Bernard of Clairvaux, took the field against him, "and succeeded in exciting the hostility of certain ecclesiastical and secular authorities, by charging monstrous things, not only against my faith, but also against my manner of life, to such a point as to detach from me some of my principal friends; even those who preserved some affection for me dared no longer display it, for fear. God is my witness that I never heard of the union of an ecclesiastical assembly without thinking that its object was my condemnation." The Church had good reason, for Abelard's conduct defied discipline; but far from showing harshness, the Church this time showed a true spirit of conciliation most creditable to Bernard. Deeply as the Cistercians disliked and distrusted Abelard, they did not violently suppress him, but tacitly consented to let the authorities buy his silence with Church patronage.

The transaction passed through Suger's hands, and offered an ordinary example of political customs as old as history. An abbey in Brittany became vacant; at a hint from the Duke Conan, which may well be supposed to have been suggested from Paris, the monks chose Abelard as their new abbot, and sent some of their number to Suger to request permission for Abelard, who was a monk of Saint-Denis, to become Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, near Vannes, in Brittany. Suger probably intimated to Abelard, with a certain degree of authority, that he had better accept. Abelard, "struck with terror, and as it were under the menace of a thunderbolt," accepted. Of course the dignity was in effect banishment and worse, and was so understood on all sides. The Abbaye-de-Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, though less isolated than Mont-Saint-Michel, was not an agreeable winter residence. Though situated in Abelard's native province of Brittany, only sixty or eighty miles from his birthplace, it was for him a prison with the ocean around it and a singularly wild people to deal with; but he could have endured his lot with contentment, had not discipline or fear or pledge compelled him to hold his tongue. From 1125, when he was sent to Brittany until 1135 when he reappeared in Paris, he never opened his mouth to lecture. "Never, as God is my witness,—never would I have acquiesced in such an offer, had it not been to escape, no matter how, from the vexations with which I was incessantly overwhelmed."

A great career in the Church was thus opened for him against his will, and if he did not die an archbishop it was not wholly the fault of the Church. Already he was a great prelate, the equal in rank of the Abbe Suger, himself, of Saint-Denis; of Peter the Venerable of Cluny; of Bernard of Clairvaux. He was in a manner a peer of the realm. Almost immediately he felt the advantages of the change. Barely two years passed when, in 1127, the Abbe Suger, in reforming his subordinate Abbey of Argenteuil, was obliged to disturb Heloise, then a sister in that congregation. Abelard was warned of the necessity that his wife should be protected, and with the assistance of everyone concerned, he was allowed to establish his wife at the Paraclete as head of a religious sisterhood. "I returned there; I invited Heloise to come there with the nuns of her community; and when they arrived, I made them the entire donation of the oratory and its dependencies ... The bishops cherished her as their daughter; the abbots as their sister; the laymen as their mother." This was merely the beginning of her favour and of his. For ten years they were both of them petted children of the Church.

The formal establishment of Heloise at the Paraclete took place in 1129. In February, 1130, on the death of the Pope at Rome, a schism broke out, and the cardinals elected two popes, one of whom took the name of Innocent II, and appealed for support to France. Suger saw a great political opportunity and used it. The heads of the French Church agreed in supporting Innocent, and the King summoned a Church council at Etampes to declare its adhesion. The council met in the late summer; Bernard of Clairvaux took the lead; Peter the Venerable, Suger of Saint-Denis, and the Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de- Rhuys supported him; Innocent himself took refuge at Cluny in October, and on January 20, 1131, he stopped at the Benedictine Abbey of Morigny. The Chronicle of the monastery, recording the abbots present on this occasion,—the Abbot of Morigny itself, of Feversham; of Saint-Lucien of Beauvais, and so forth,—added especially: "Bernard of Clairvaux, who was then the most famous pulpit orator in France; and Peter Abelard, Abbot of Saint-Gildas, also a monk and the most eminent master of the schools to which the scholars of almost all the Latin races flowed."

Innocent needed popular support; Bernard and Abelard were the two leaders of popular opinion in France. To attach them, Innocent could refuse nothing. Probably Abelard remained with Innocent, but in any case Innocent gave him, at Auxerre, in the following November, a diploma, granting to Heloise, prioress of the Oratory of the Holy Trinity, all rights of property over whatever she might possess, against all assailants; which proves Abelard's favour. At this time he seems to have taken great interest in the new sisterhood. "I made them more frequent visits," he said, "in order to work for their benefit." He worked so earnestly for their benefit that he scandalized the neighbourhood and had to argue at unnecessary length his innocence of evil. He went so far as to express a wish to take refuge among them and to abandon his abbey in Brittany. He professed to stand in terror of his monks; he excommunicated them; they paid no attention to him; he appealed to the Pope, his friend, and Innocent sent a special legate to enforce their submission "in presence of the Count and the Bishops."

Even since that, they would not keep quiet. And quite recently, since the expulsion of those of whom I have spoken, when I returned to the abbey, abandoning myself to the rest of the brothers who inspired me with less distrust, I found them even worse than the others. It was no longer a question of poison; it was the dagger that they now sharpened against my breast. I had great difficulty in escaping from them under the guidance of one of the neighbouring lords. Similar perils menace me still and every day I see the sword raised over my head. Even at table I can hardly breathe ... This is the torture that I endure every moment of the day; I, a poor monk, raised to the prelacy, becoming more miserable in becoming more great, that by my example the ambitious may learn to curb their greed.