WALTER A ST. VICTORE AS AN OPPONENT OF ABELARD'S. 381 by his pupils; as he was very well aware how easily a teacher may be misconceived, and how easily it may happen for pupils to ascribe to the master their own opinions, in order to give them additional authority. He waited till he could get sight of Abelard's book, which has been mentioned; where, again, he met with many of these positions which had offended him, as uttered by his disciples. Nor did he even then stand forth publicly against Abelard; but wrote him a letter, in which he explained at large his doubts, and invited him, by mutual communications in writing, to come to an understanding with him on these points, since in this way the whole matter might be investigated in the most quiet manner.2 Walter was, to be sure, by no means a match for so practised a dialectician. It is remarkable that he brought against him the most contradictory accusations; on the one hand, that he attributed too much to knowledge; on the other, that he spoke too skeptically,when in the preface to his work he observed, he did not promise so much to speak the truth, as to exhibit, in compliance with the requests of his pupils, his own opinions.3 Who, in discoursing of the Catholic faith, could so express himself as if he were discoursing of a mere opinion? Who, on hearing another promise, not the truth, but only his opinions, would place any faith in what he held forth? Abelard was right, however, in warning his pupils against the delusive idea that any man could present absolute truth. He was right in distinguishing the truth of faith, in itself, from a human attempt to make it intelligible. Walter, again, in endeavoring to draw sharply the line of discrimination between the hither side and the yonder side in the knowledge of divine things,-in opposition to Abelard,-committed the mistake of robbing several passages in the Gospel of St. John-which refer to the connection of the hither side and the yonder side in the life of Christian faith-of their true significance, and distorting their meaning. Thus, for example, he cited against Abelard, John 17: 3, and understood here, contrary to the connection of ideas in the evangelical writer, the eternal life as something future. With more propriety he could appeal to 1 Corinth. 13: 12.5 The other party presented in opposition to him, however, Matth. 11: 27, and John 14: 9. In the heat of controversy, Walter was driven to refer even these passages, 'Solet autem frequenter fieri, quod discipuli discordent a sensu magistrorum sive per imperitiam verba eorum male exponendo sive ad ostensionem sui aliquas novitates inducendo, quas majoris auctoritatis magistris suis licet ignorantibus consueverunt adscribere. 2 Sine ira et disceptatione, quae animos disputantium et praesentialiter colloquentium frequenter solent commovere et mentis oculum obfuscare. * Non tam nos veritatem dicere promittentes, quam opinionis nostrae sensum, quem efflagitant exponentes. Page 974. It would undoubtedly be more common to use these passages thus, since even Abelard already referred to such a mode of apprehending them; and did not once use the good right he had to turn such passages directly in opposition to his adversaries : Quae (which refers to the Trinity) penitus in hac vita non posse intelligi asseverant, sed hoc ipsum intelligi vitam dicunt aeternam. Juxta illud Joann. 17, 3 et iterum: Manifestabo eis meipsum. Opp. lib. ii, page 1061. His verbis aperte insinuat, se ad praesens imperfecte et obscure videre Deum, sed in futuro ad perfectam et claram Dei notitiam perventurum, et sicut a Deo est cognitus, ita in futuro se divinam essentiam nosciturum. 382 ABELARD'S CONTROVERSIES. also, to the future life, and to adopt an arbitrary method of interpretation often resorted to in far later times; maintaining that here, as frequently in the prophetic writings, the preterite tense was substituted for the future, in order to express certainty. Yet here, he did not feel sure of his ground, and therefore added: although these passages might, like John 6: 40, refer to the present life, still, they treated only of a position held by faith, and the imperfect knowledge connected therewith,-just as the promise in John 16: 13 treated only of that which in this life it was necessary for the faithful to know in order to salvation.1 The doctrines taught by Abelard in the book referred to, and in his lectures, afforded sufficient occasion for representing him-judged by the standard of the common theology as a teacher of error. Owing to the want of unprejudiced reports it is impossible to decide how much is to be attributed, in the first open attacks against him, to a pure interest for the cause of truth, and how much to jealousy and personal passion. Different motives may have operated together. Certainly, Abelard, under the existing circumstances, could expect to experience no better fate than Roscelin. At a synod held at Soissons, in the year 1121, he yielded to the power of his adversaries, and consented to cast his book with his own hands into the fire. He was for the present condemned, as a false teacher, to confinement in a monastery, where he was to do penance. But as Abelard's patron, bishop Gottfried of Chartres, who sought to bring the dispute to a peaceful termination at the council, had already, by way of consolation, assured him, this mode of condemning him without a hearing would only serve to call forth in the greater number of his enthusiastic adherents a livelier sympathy for his cause, in a very few days Conon, the papal legate, who had presided at that council, permitted him to return back to the abbey of St. Denis. But his restless spirit, which would never allow him to be silent where any antiquated prejudice confronted him with a lie, did not permit him to remain long here in the enjoyment of quiet. The monks, embittered towards him already on account of his lectures of reform, became still more excited by an assertion of his, which threatened greatly to injure the authority and interests of the abbey; which rested solely on the tradition that the person after whom it was named, the Areopagite converted by St. Paul, was the founder of the French church. Now Abelard, in attacking this error, which had stood its ground for so many centuries,3 afforded the angry monks the best opportunity for revenge; since he who would rob France of her patron saint could easily be held forth as the enemy of the empire and of the nation. He fled from the perse 1 Nec intelligendum est, quod sanctis in hac vita positis filius notificaverit omnia, quae audivit a patre, ad futurum seculum pertinentia, sed potius omnia, quae sunt eis in praesenti necessaria, ut salutem consequantur. For what Abelard (himself a party concerned, and very violent) says, in his His toria Calamitatum, cannot be considered as altogether worthy of credit. 3 In combating the error, he still did not light upon the truth; for he suffered himself to be misled by a false statement of Beda's, and to take this Dionysius for the bishop Dionysius of Corinth. ABELARD'S INTRODUCTION TO THEOLOGY. 383 cutions which assailed him to the territory of the count Theobald of Champagne. In the district of Troyes, he built himself a hermitage of reeds and straw, which afterwards he dedicated to the Holy Spirit, the Comforter (Paraclete), who permitted him here to find peace after so many storms. It was absolute poverty, as he himself relates, -the want of everything necessary for the support of life, which first induced him to resume his lectures in this place. Soon, multitudes of young men, of all ranks, resorted to the spot to hear him. Those who had been brought up in splendor and luxury shrunk not from sharing his deprivations, and imitating his strict mode of life. With the labor of their own hands, or with their substance, they provided for their own bodily wants, and rebuilt his chapel with stone. But the enthusiasm with which his pupils, scattered in all directions, spoke of him and of his teachings, was the means of drawing upon him new persecutions. He now retired from public notice, having accepted in the year 1128, the priory of Ruits in Brittany. But the place became very annoying to him, on account of his quarrels with the rude, undis ciplined monks. In 1136, he resigned this preferment, and for a year gave lectures again in Paris. His scholars were scattered over all France; and the writings which he had published since the time of those first contests, created a great sensation; new storms were thus excited against him, and the way was now prepared for a contest of more general interest and significance than any preceding one. Let us now first cast a glance at the writings which had meanwhile been published by him, and the doctrines in them which were particularly offensive to his times, so far as the subject is not immediately connected with the history of special doctrines. His "Introduction to Theology," which had been condemned at the council of Soissons, he sent forth, under another shape, in his work1 "on Christian Theology," but without softening the harshness of those passages which, in the first edition, had given offence to many. Some of them, on the contrary, were expressed still more pointedly than before. He endeavored, in this work, to show more clearly the agreement between the ancient philosophy and Christianity. "In life and doctrine," he maintained," the old philosophers came very near to apostolical perfection, and were not far, if at all, removed from Christianity; indeed, the very terms philosophy and Christianity were very nearly related to each other; for Christians were so called from Christ, the true wisdom, and they who truly loved Christ might, with propriety, be called philosophers."2 "If the appeal to motives of fear and reward constituted the main difference between the Jewish position of servitude and the Christian position of grace and freedom, where love is held forth as the motive of all actions; then philosophy, which represents love to God as the highest motive, was, on this point, more nearly akin to Christianity than Judaism."3 If it were objected that, 1 In Martene et Durand Thesaur. nov. anecdot. t. v. 2 Cum nos a vera philosophia, hoc est sapientia Dei patris, Christiani dicamur, vere in hoc dicendi philosophi, si vere Christum diligimus. Theol. Christian, lib. ii, t. v, f. 1210. 3 Morum et honestatis rationibus secun 384 THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY. with those philosophers, the matter of discussion was certainly not love to God, but only love to what is good, he replied, that "this amounted to the same thing, since God is the original fountain of all good;" a reply, indeed, very far from satisfactorily determining anything with regard to a religious principle of action; but he affirmed that the principle of love to God was also found actually expressed in them, as the motive to all true goodness. Hence the preaching of the gospel had met with a more ready reception from the philosophers than from the Jews; for it appeared more nearly conformed to the groundwork of their principles; differing, perhaps, from what they already possessed, only in the doctrine of the resurrection and of the incarnation of the Son of God: for the morality of the gospel, strictly taken, was but a reformation of the law of nature (reformatio legis naturalis), and this moral law of nature the philosophers had followed. On the other hand, the Mosaic law occupied itself more with those ceremonial ordinances which had a typical significance, than with the moral element, and more with external than with internal righteousness. But the gospel, like philosophy, estimated the worth of all actions by the disposition of the heart. Thus Abelard, from paying no regard to the connection between the ethical and dogmatic elements in Christianity, and hence failing to give prominence to what constitutes the grand distinction between the ancient and the Christian principle in morals, was brought up at a point where he seemed compelled to place Christianity in closer relation with the Hellenic philosophy than with Judaism; and the question would naturally suggest itself, What need, then, of Christianity? Has it only the merit of having perfected philosophical morality, and introduced it into the general consciousness of mankind? This was a position which Abelard, as we shall see by comparing it with his other doctrines, was very far from taking. At the same time we must not forget, that his impatience with the rudeness of his times, made him the more inclined to extol the life of antiquity. "Would that, by the examples of the heathens," says he, "the abbots of these times might at least be made ashamed of themselves, who, in the very eyes of their brethren the monks, that live on a spare and scanty diet, gorge, without blushing, vast quantities of the most costly viands." He contrasts the example of Plato, who banished poets from his republic, with the bishops of his time, who, on high festivals, instead of wholly spending the sacred time in giving praise to God, invited jesters, dancers, and singers of libidinous songs to their tables, entertaining themselves the whole day and night with such company, and then rewarding them dum caritatis libertatem, quod in gratia vocati sumus, non secundum Judaïcam ex timore poenarum et ambitione terrenorum, non (this non is without doubt a false reading, for it manifestly stands in contradiction with what follows), ex desiderio aeternorum, nobis plurimum philosophos certum est assentire. 1 Quodsi id minus videtur esse ad meritum salvationis, quod dicitur amore virtutis et non potius amore Dei, ac si virtutem vel aliquod bonum opus habere possimus, quod non secundum ipsum Deum ac propter ipsum sit. 2 Erubescant ad haec hujus temporis abbates, quibus summa religionis monasticae cura commissa est, erubescant, inquam, et resipiscant saltem gentilium exemplo commoti, quod in oculis fratrum vilia pulmentorum pabula ruminantum exquisità fercula ac multiplicia impudenter devorant, f. 1215. SUNDERING OF FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE. 385 with great presents at the expense of the poor. Nay more, they even profaned, with such sports, the very churches themselves.2 The ideas of Abelard, set forth already in his "Introduction," on the relation of ratio to fides, on the intellection proceeding from the interior religious life, we meet once more in this new form of his work. He declares himself strongly opposed to an aristocracy of knowledge in Christianity. He acknowledges that a right understanding of religious truths can only be obtained through the enlightening influences of the Holy Spirit; and that such influences are bestowed on none but the pure in heart. More was attained here by a religious life, than by intellectual talents. Nor could it be otherwise; for, if it were, our Lord would have signified that talents were more acceptable to him than a holy life. From the religion that has its seat in the feelings, everything should proceed, and back upon the same everything should react. He supposes a mutual action and reaction between knowing and feeling: "The more we feel of God, the more we love him; and, with progress in the knowledge of him, the flame of love grows brighter." Yet he is aware of the fact that religious life and intellectual culture do not always keep pace with each other; that a man may have more in his immediate religious consciousness than he is able to express or explain; since he may be destitute of the necessary organ for this, or the requisite degree of mental cultivation: "although they who to us seem simple and ignorant, and yet possess piety so much the more fervid, want only the ability to express that knowledge which divine inspiration bestows on them."3 He himself declaimed against those of his contemporaries who set up to be teachers of theology without reforming their lives, and who, while living to the flesh, pretended to a special knowledge of the divine mysteries. Furthermore, he published, after this work, his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, in which the dogmatic and ethical digressions constitute what is most peculiar. Among those doctrines of this book 1 Quid in solennibus magnarum festivitatum diebus, quae penitus in laudibus Dei expendi debent, joculatores, saltatores, incantatores turpium acciunt ad mensam, totam diem et noctem cum illis feriant atque sabbatizant, magnis postmodum eos remunerant praemiis, quae de ecclesiasticis rapiunt beneficiis, de oblationibus pauperum, ut immolent certe daemoniis ? * Parum fortassis et hoc diabolus reputat, quod extra sacra loca basilicarum gerunt, nisi etiam scenicas turpitudines in ecclesiam Dei introducat. f. 1240. 3 Quo plus de Deo a nobis sentitur, plus a nobis intelligitur et cum profectu intelligentiae caritatis accenditur flamma, licet hi qui simplices ac idiotae nobis videntur et ideo vehementer sint ferventes nec tantum exprimere aut disserere queant, quantum iis intelligentiae divina inspiratio confert. Lib. iii, f. 1250. ologiae nostrae opusculo," and the passage |