Peter Abelard (1079-1142) | Issue 134 | Philosophy Now

On June 3, 1140, French scholar Peter Abelard was found guilty of heresy. He is famous for his much celebrated love for Heloise. An excerpt from the article:

Abelard may have encountered Bernard, the Cistercian abbot of Clairvaux, as early as 1125, but the two really locked horns in 1140. Certainly the conflict between Bernard and Abelard was, as Betty Radice put it, “a cause célèbre of the twelfth century.”

Bernard is best known today as the author of a series of mystical sermons on the love of God. He was also an ardent heresy-hunter, a reactionary, and most importantly, a power-broker: Pope Innocent II owed his throne to him. Bernard organised a Council at Sens to look into Abelard’s allegedly heretical opinions. Abelard turned up there expecting a disputation of the kind he was used to winning. Instead he encountered not a meeting of scholars, but an assembly of bishops and lords. It was a show trial. Abelard refused to take part and left, intending to appeal directly to the Pope. Bernard had already organised a papal condemnation which bound Abelard to silence.

Abelard set out for Rome. On the way he stopped off at the Abbey of Cluny and was befriended by the abbot.

Abbot Peter was an unusual combination. As head of the Benedictine Order, he was a power-broker on a par with Bernard of Clairvaux; he was also a decent human being. He took advantage of the presence of Renault, abbot of Cîteaux, who was Bernard’s superior, to arrange a reconciliation between Bernard and Abelard. Abelard’s retractation represented the minimum which he could get away with conceding. Abelard’s defender, Berengar, was careful to include in one of his letters the alleged confession of faith which Abelard addressed to Heloïse. Logic, says Abelard, “has made me hated by the world… I do not wish to be a philosopher if it means conflicting with [Saint] Paul, nor to be an Aristotle if it cuts me off from Christ.” He believed that he could have philosophy, Paul, and Christ.

Having resolved the problem to his satisfaction, Abbot Peter wrote to the Pope suggesting that Abelard should remain at Cluny as a monk. The Pope agreed, no doubt glad to be rid of the problem. Abelard was by now in his sixties – old by the standards of the time. He died at the priory of Saint Marcel in 1142.

Abelard has been criticised for lacking originality. He did not invent the method of disputatio which replaced lectio. But, it can be argued, he developed it and wrote the texts which established it as the new standard. He was arguably a great synthesiser. He accepted the principle of authority on which lectio was based, but moved it forward by arguing that only reason and disputatio can enable us to choose between authorities. Paradoxically, Peter Abelard stands between the discovery of reason as a means of interpreting authority and the rediscovery of Aristotle, who became the overweening authority of the later Middle Ages."