cause a council was assembled, whereat he was present, and many things which were accused against him he steadily repelled, and very many he convincingly proved not to be his, which his opponents averred were his and said by him; yea, and at length he repudiated all heresy, and confessed and declared that he would be the son of the catholic church, and thereafter in the peace of brotherhood finished his life. He proceeds to relate the foundation of the Paraclete in the same terms as those upon which we have commented in Robert of Auxerre.[1] The testimony, it may doubtless be objected, is that of a partisan, although written a generation after the events to which it refers: but it is at least remarkable that, except among his own biographers, Bernard has to wait a good half-century more before his case is admitted into history-books.[2] The Cistercian Helinand, who died in 1227, is apparently the first to do this, in respect both to Abailard and to Gilbert of La Porrée; and those who follow him, Alberic of Trois Fontaines (as he is commonly known), towards the middle of the century, Vincent of Beauvais,[3] like Helinand a Cistercian, and others, all expressly rely upon
- ↑ I conjecture that this concluding portion in William, p. 675
b, c, is not original, but that he and the others have taken it from a common source. Else I know not how the latter writers, supposing that they drew from William, should have passed over the question of Abailard's trial in silence. For the rest, William is, so far as I know, the first writer who gives the famous epitaph:
Est satis in titulo Petrus hic iacet Abäelardus:
Huic soli patuit scibile quicquid erat. - ↑ This does not of course hold true of the proper theological literature. Compare below, appendix x.
- ↑ Vincent has elsewhere, Speculum naturale xxxiii. 94, a notice of the council of Sens in which he merely says that Abailard 'quadam prophana verborum vel sensuum novitate scandalizabat ecclesiam.' The phrase is characteristic, and recurs in some of the continuators of Sigebert, Appendix alterius Roberti, Bouquet 13. 330 e, 331 a, and Contin. Praemonstrat., Pertz 6. 452, who also apply it in modified terms to Gilbert of La Porrée. Gilbert's work, they say, a. 1148, Bouquet 332 d, Pertz 454, 'by reason of some new subtilty of words caused scandal to the church.' Robert however admits that it 'contained many useful things.' Among later writers William of Nangy, a. 1141 and 1148, Bouquet 20. 731 d, 733 d-734 a, is mainly dependent for his views upon Geoffrey, whose description of Abailard, 'celeberrimus in opinione scientiae sed do fide perfide dogmatizans' (Vit. Bern. v. 13 col. 1122 b) he substantially adopts.
