Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pullen, Robert
PULLEN, ROBERT (d. 1147?), philosopher, theologian, and cardinal, whose name also appears as Polenius, Pullenus, Pullein, Pullan, and Pully, is said to have come from Exeter to Oxford, and to have remained at Oxford for five years (Annals of Oseney). In 1133 ‘he began to read at Oxford the divine scriptures, the study of which had grown obsolete in England.’ He is thus, with one exception (Theobaldus Stampensis), the first master known to have taught in the schools—not yet the university—of Oxford. According to John of Hexham (Continuation of Sym. Dunelm in Raine's Priory of Hexham, Surtees Soc. i. 152), Pullen refused a bishopric offered him by Henry I. Subsequently he taught logic and theology at Paris. John of Salisbury was his pupil there (Metalogicus, i. 24) in 1141 or 1142, and describes him as a man ‘whom his life and learning alike commended.’ In 1134 and 1143 Pullen is mentioned as archdeacon of Rochester (Le Neve), and, probably a little before the latter date, St. Bernard (Ep. 205) wrote to apologise to Pullen's diocesan, the bishop of Rochester, for detaining him at Paris, ‘on account of the wholesome doctrine that is in him.’ St. Bernard reproached the bishop, however, for ‘stretching out his hand upon the goods of the appellant after his appeal was made,’ which looks as if the bishop had taken proceedings against him for non-residence.
In the same letter St. Bernard spoke of Pullen as ‘of no small authority in the court’ (i.e. probably of Rome). There is no doubt that Pullen settled in Rome in his last years, but the exact date of his arrival there is uncertain. According to Ciaconius, Robert Pullen was ‘called’ to Rome by Innocent II (who died in September 1143), and was created a cardinal by Cœlestine II, Innocent II's successor. This is probably correct. The ‘Annals of Oseney’ state less convincingly that Pullen, after both the Anglican and Gallican churches had profited by his doctrine, was called to Rome by Lucius II, who became pope in 1144 (‘Annals of Oseney,’ in Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, Rolls Ser. iv. 19, 20; Bodl. MS. 712, f. 275, quoted in Rashdall, Universities of the Middle Ages, ii. 335). All authorities agree that Pope Lucius promoted Pullen to the chancellorship of the holy Roman church. He was certainly chancellor in 1145 and 1146 (Jaffé, Reg. Pont. Rom. 1851, pp. 609, 616). On the accession to the papacy of St. Bernard's friend and pupil, Eugenius III, in 1145, St. Bernard wrote (Ep. 362) to Pullen warmly commending the new pontiff to him, and inviting him to become Eugenius's ‘consoler and counsellor.’ In an extract, printed by Migne, from a work of St. Bernard's biographer, William, abbot of St. Theodoric at Reims, against the ‘De relationibus Divinis’ of Gilbert de la Poirée (which does not appear in the printed works of the abbot), Robertus Pullen, ‘chancellor of the apostolic see,’ is appealed to, with Anselm of Laon, Hugh of S. Victor, and others, against Gilbert's doctrine, which makes the persons of the Trinity into ‘proprietates,’ and in favour of the view that ‘whatever is in God’ is God.
The praise bestowed on Pullen by Bernard and by Bernard's biographer, the abbot of St. Theodoric, clearly indicates the position of Pullen as an upholder of the orthodox conservative cause against the Abelardian influence. But the influence of Pullen's ‘Sententiarum Theologicarum Libri VIII,’ in which he embodied his views, was soon supplanted by the treatise of Peter the Lombard, ‘the Master of the Sentences,’ who was a pupil of Abelard. Peter's book, representing Abelard's full-blown scholastic method, and (with some modification) Abelard's doctrine of the Trinity, gradually triumphed, over its opponents. Another cause of the superior popularity of the Lombard is said to be the fact that he suggests more questions, and decides them less peremptorily, than his predecessor; hence his book lent itself better to the purposes of a text-book for lecturers and a basis for endless disputation.
Some writers make Pullen die in 1147, and, as he does not appear as chancellor of Rome after 1146, this date is probably not far wrong. His ‘Sententiarum Theologicarum libri VIII’ was published by the Benedictine Hugh Mathoud at Paris in 1655, and is reprinted by Migne in ‘Patrologiæ Cursus, series Latina.’ Pits (De Angliæ Scriptoribus, 1619, p. 211) ascribes to him the following works: ‘In Apocalypsim S. Johannis;’ ‘Super aliquot Psalmos;’ ‘De Contemptu Mundi;’ ‘Super Doctorum dictis;’ ‘Prælectiones;’ ‘Sermones.’ Of the last work a manuscript is preserved in the Lambeth Library (No. 458). The sermons, which breathe a very ascetic spirit, were evidently delivered to scholars.
Pullen is undoubtedly a different person from the Robert who became archbishop of Rouen in 1208. It is also impossible to identify him with a Robert who, according to Ciaconius, was made a cardinal by Innocent II in 1130, and was afterwards chancellor of the holy Roman church. Cardinals were at that time usually resident at Rome, and it is scarcely possible that Cardinal Robert should, as Pullen did, have taught at Oxford and Paris after 1130, the year of his elevation to the cardinalate.
[The passage from William, abbot of Theodoric and St. Bernard's biographer, coupled with the statement of the Oseney chronicler and of John of Salisbury (Met. i. 5), sufficiently establishes the identity of the eminent theologian with the archdeacon of Rochester, St. Bernard's correspondent, and of the archdeacon with the Roman chancellor, a point about which Bishop Stubbs (Lectures on Med. and Mod. Hist. p. 133) has raised some ingenious doubts. The fullest abstract of Pullen's Sentences is given in Ceillier's Hist. Gén. des Auteurs Sacrés et Ecclés. xiv. 391–9. There are also notices in Brucker's Hist. Crit. Phil. (1766–7), iii. 767; Dupin's Hist. des Controverses Ecclés. 1696, pp. 719–23; Oudin, De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis, 1722, ii. 1118–21; Cave, De Scriptoribus Eccles. (1745), iii. 223; Tanner's Bibliotheca Brit.-Hib. 1788; Fabricius's Bibl. Med. Ævi, 1858, iii. 406. The rhetorical and no doubt apocryphal details of Pullen's life and work at Oxford, which some of the writers mentioned in the article reproduce, seem to have come from Boston of Bury.]