his pupils, his dogmatism, his brave assurance, were just those which irritated his elders and contemporaries. In earlier years William of Champeaux had done everything in his power to keep his rival away from Paris: now it was Abailard's oldest master, the nominalist Roscelin, just closing his troubled career as a canon of Saint Martin's at Tours, who renewed the attack.
Abailard had indeed taken no pains to conceal his opinions. He had but recently published a work On the divine Unity and Trinity,[1] which appeared to his critics to contain grave errors with respect to the cardinal doctrine: for this he was to be called to account. Roscelin, eager no doubt to demonstrate his own innocence of a heresy for which he had suffered nearly a generation previously, and which he may have recognised as the object of certain pointed references in the new book,[2] came forward as the champion of the faith. He disseminated a rumour against Abailard's orthodoxy. The latter reported the calumny to the bishop of Paris in a letter couched in language of indecent violence against his assailant. He reminded the bishop of Roscelin's past history and of the notorious contumely with which it had been attended. He also wrote, but the letter has not been preserved, in
- ↑ That this Tractatus de unitate et trinitate divina is the work that remains to us under the title of Theologia Christiana, was argued by H. Goldhorn, in the Zeitschrift für die historische Theologie 36 (30, of the new series) 161-229, Gotha 1866. Dr. Deutsch, however, pref., p. v. maintains, I think with good reason, that the Theologia is not identical with, but a new edition of, the Tractatus. [This is made certain by the discovery of the work in a manuscript at Erlangen by R. Stölzle, who published it under the title of Tractatus de Unitate et Trinitate divina, Freiburg 1891. I drew attention to the importance of the discovery in an article on Abailard as a theological Teacher, which appeared in the Church Quarterly Review, 41. 132-145; 1895.] Formerly the work had been considered to be identical with the Introductio ad Theologiam: see Rémusat, 1. 75 (cf. pp. 81 n., 88 n.), Cousin, Abacl. Opp. 2. 1 sq., and Hefele, 5. 321 n. 1.
- ↑ At least such expressions are plainly given in the Theologia Christiana and in the Introductio ad Theologiam, which are on all accounts enlargements of the earlier work and in all probability follow its lines pretty closely in the part where they deal with the same subject. [These references are in fact found in the Tractatus de Trinitate, e.g., pp. 48, 54: see also Stölzle's preface, pp.xxvi-xxxii, and my article, pp. 137 seq.]
