while retaining his rank as abbat. The following years
are filled only with his correspondence with Heloïssa.
He is now the director of the fortunes of the Paraclete :
he resolves the various problems that arose in respect of
ritual and discipline ; his thoughts are absorbed in the
details, in the routine of practical religious life ; he seems
to have forgotten that he had ever been a master of worldly
lore and a teacher to whom all men listened. Yet in fact
this period was probably one of great intellectual activity.
It seems that he was now engaged in collecting and putting
in order his former works, in expanding and digesting the
notes and glosses that had once stood him in such good
stead at Saint Geneviève or at the Paraclete. It was
now, unless the indications deceive us, that he mainly
wrote, or at least brought into the form in which we now
have it, the treatise on Dialectic, which holds a most
important place in the history of learning, as well as that Theologia, distinguished by editors as the Introduction to Theology, which furnished his enemies with a weapon for
his final overthrow. Abailard had indeed lost neither the
desire nor the power of subduing an audience, and twice
again he was found on Saint Genevieve ; twice again he
became the centre of the dialectical world. How it was
that he recovered his popularity we have no means of
knowing, but it is a plausible conjecture that the History of his Misfortunes was written not only with a view to
publication, but also with the object of reminding the
world of the position which he had once held among
teachers, and which he was resolved to hold again. In
1136, when q John of Salisbury began his logical studies,
it was to Abailard that he addressed himself; and if
we may argue from the description of a keen young
student, the master had lost nothing of his hold upon his
hearers.
He appeared as a meteor, but soon vanished : his enemies had troubled themselves little about him, so long as he remained in obscurity. For fifteen years they had made no sign; but the mere dread of attack had driven him long
